1 Chapter Four, in which Domenick wakes up in a crocodile's mouth, we shave off Weasel's beard for the first time in twenty five years, I get called a poof for drinking shandys and we scare a busload of tourists with a fake wrestling match in the outback. Oh yeah, and I burn a hole in my arse. All the way up the Queensland coast we'd been riding through sugar cane country just before the start of the harvest. The fields were at their tallest. All that you would see at times was a wall of green beside the road with a deep blue backdrop of sky. Add the network of cane train rail lines to the landscape, solitary stout wooden Queenslander homes and looming mountain ranges and you had grand cycling terrain. The Daintree River marks the end of sugar cane country. The other side of the river is World Heritage listed rainforest, home of unseen cassowarries, big trees by the lumberyardload and acres of old growth ferals. The ride from the ferry to Cape Tribulation seemed to take a long time but I did make lots of stops just to suck in the air. It had a presence of its own. Our Cape Tribulation show was at PK's backpacker bar. We hadn't had the best of luck with backpackers venues. The patrons weren't in need of our help to start having fun. If anything, we were going to be distracting them from the kind of fun they wanted to be having. And rest assured their champagne bottles didn’t have a coating of dust on them that made it look like they’d been lying untouched din the wine cellar since the middle ages. They also didn't have to worry about of having to get up early the next morning. So by and large everyone was too pissed to pay us much attention. But for a change our show was going well, 2 we were getting big laughs and had the crowd focused. Then a shrill female voice rang out from the side of the room. "You're not funny." I turned to find my heckler was one of bunch of feral locals who'd wandered in from the jungle earlier on in the night. They'd blithely been chattering away amongst themselves all show and I was surprised that she'd even bothered to close her mouth for long enough to listen to what we were doing. For the next few minutes she kept shouting out "not funny", pretty much at random. I pointed out to her that a hundred or so of her fellow patrons seemed to be disagreeing with her evaluation and I told her to turn around and look at her soap dodging buddies who were also enjoying the show. Though they stopped smiling when she did. I guess they knew her well enough not to get into her bad books. It took the momentum out of the night. We never quite got the crowd back which was a shame because it had finally looked like we were going to do a gig in a room full of drunk Scandinavian girls that would have made us look worthy of fawning over like rock stars. Alas we spent our post gig warm-down liaising with the "drunk and ugly blokes in the room club." I got button holed by a diminutive berk who suffered not only from short guy syndrome but one of the worst cases of short town syndrome that I'd ever encountered. I hadn't suggested that there was anything wrong with living at Cape Tribulation. I may even have remarked that it looked like a good place to live. That didn't save me from having to endure a solid haranguing about how people in the city thought they were better than people from the bush and that we all were up ourselves and spent all our spare time at the ballet. 3 He then revealed that he was worth about four million dollars. He stepped back to take in my gasp of awe, which I didn't do, even though I was genuinely amazed that a dumb fuck like him could be worth four dollars let alone four million. Ironic then, for all his wealth he actually did something that I saw no-one else do for the whole tour. He put a twenty dollar note in our donation bucket, which was very generous, but then he fished around and pulled out a ten for change. With all that money he was saving by not buying expensive tickets to the ballet, he could have left the other ten in there, but I guess looking after your money like that is how you become a millionaire in the first place. I also found a note in our donation bucket where instead of giving a donation our feral friend had written us an encouraging note. "Racist, Homophobic bullshit," it said, though it took us a while to work out that it wasn't meant to be a compliment. Cape Tribulation is where the sealed road ends. Northwards runs a controversial dirt road known as the "Bloomfield Track." James and Dom had been talking up the Bloomfield track since we'd left Sydney. They'd ridden along it a year ago and from their accounts I was bracing myself for having to hack my way through virgin rainforest with a machete. I remember there was a kerfuffle, maybe even a brouhaha, when the road was originally built back in the 1980's under the auspices of the totally off his trolley Joh Bjelke Petersen. It was described as a scar on the landscape and an excuse to open up the rainforest to logging, though twenty years later it's only major downside seems to be that it gives hippies easier access to the area. It did turn out to be a challenging bike ride. The drizzle came and went. Some of the uphills were so steep they were paved to allow four wheel drivers to climb them without toppling over backwards. The 4 creek crossings were under water. I told people who looked the photos of me pushing my bike through them that they were crocodile infested but I was lying. The biggest danger would have been from cutting your feet on a discarded bong and getting tetanus. Riding on the gravel slowed my average speed down, so it seemed to take forever to get to the Wujal Wujal aboriginal community and lunch at the general store. The slightly weatherbeaten white lady at the store was expecting me. Bushy and Dom had passed through an hour earlier and left a description of me. "You're not that fat," she said, giving me a good looking over. "I think your mate was exaggerating a bit." It was the quietest town I'd ever been in, I reflected, as I sat outside and ate my lollies. The midday silence was shattered by the agitated shouts of a thin bloke walking towards the shop. He didn't seem to be shouting at anyone in particular, just the world as a whole. I hoped he wouldn't think that I was part of the problem. When he saw me his mood lightened and he stopped for a chat. He liked living at Wujal Wujal, especially the serenity. I guess there's no point in loosening the lungs and having a good shout unless it's to break a heavy silence. It was my first introduction to the alien, unfathomable and never dull life of remote aboriginal Australia. I'd had a few aboriginal acquaintances but by and large my experience of Australia's indigenous population was limited to that episode of Skippy where a scary looking but ultimately benign tribe rescue Sonny when he gets lost in the bush. The next few months were to be an eye opener. On the way out of town, as I slogged up a hill that overlooked the backyard of one of the houses, I stopped when a strange scene caught my 5 eye. A very skinny old bloke, stripped to the waist and not showing a gram of excess fat, was shaping up to a young kid of about sixteen. It was a real two fists up in the air boxing pose, like the sort you see Jimmy Carruthers painted in on the outside of a boxing tent. He was working the young kid around the yard, urged on by a few other family members. I thought the old guy might have been actually giving the young bloke some boxing lessons and I was tempted to stick around and watch but everyone looked a bit too serious and I thought maybe it was a proper fight in action. I pedaled off out of there with a surreal image stuck in my head and a feeling of confusion about the ins and outs of the local culture, not for the last time in this part of the world. The cycling was no easier after lunch. I encountered my first loose cows on the road, not benign moo cows but belligerent looking tough outback cows who moved out of the way reluctantly. These cows would prove to be the most unflappable cows I met in the whole of the trip. A lot of the traffic was mini buses promising adventure tours up the track for backpackers. We questioned one of the tour guides about how much adventure their clients experience from the air conditioned seats of the vehicle. "You know, sometimes they have to get out and push the bus." He knew this sounded a little sheepish so he reached for more. "Everyone gets their feet wet." I hadn't been carrying a lot of liquid with me so the Lions Den Hotel was one of the most welcome pub stops of the ride. The Lions Den is one of those legendary pubs that always crops up when the conversation turns to Legendary Pubs. Located 35 k's south of Cooktown, it's big claim to fame is that it's the only pub in Australia that's been continuously licensed to a female owner since it was established, 6 sometime more than 130 years ago. It's current owner was at the bar practicing responsible service of alcohol, Far North Queensland style. "What'll you have." "A shandy thanks." "What are ya, a poof. It's full strength beer or nothing. You're not cycling all the way here from Cape Trib and drinking a shandy." I couldn't argue with that, though I did sneak some water in to avoid dehydrating, but only when she wasn't looking. I didn't want to end up suffering the same fate as the snake. The snake, or what was left of it, namely about twenty five foot of skin, was only produced from under the counter after we'd been drinking and chatting at the pub for more than an hour. It was some kind of python, the type that strangle you to death, and it had been putting the moves on the pub's dog when they'd pumped a round of bullets into it. Only after they'd unrolled it did they realise it was an endangered species. So the skin was kept under the counter and it was only proudly produced once they were satisfied we weren't undercover agents from the National Parks and Wildlife Department. It was a big snake. The skin stretched the length of the front bar and out the door into the lounge bar. We picked up a souvenir from the pub, a bright pink T-shirt that immediately became the object of the most intense competition of the ride, the battle for the "Pink Jersey". The "Pink Jersey" was sort of like the Tour de France's "yellow jersey", except that it was awarded to the slowest rider, not the fastest. It basically came down to Domenick and myself dueling our way around Australia, revealing a competitive side to our natures that bordered on the ugly. There were times when I felt that 7 if I could have strung razor wire across the road to stop him or at least slow him down I would have. We set off for Cooktown in the fading afternoon light like men possessed. I gave him a good kilometres head start out of the pub but caught him once the gravel ran out and we hit the last stretch of highway. Every time we passed each other we'd sing a song with the word "pink" as one of the lyrics. Though once we got past "Lily The Pink" we ran out of songs and had to resort to random insults as we passed. "Hey, ‘Statue Busker Magazine’, just called. They want you to pose for next month's front cover." One time Domenick passed me without insulting me. He slowed down, let me get ahead again and then passed me again this time with an insult and an apology for not insulting me the first time. The people at the Cooktown RSL were super friendly and the show really went off. A clue to this may be found in an exchange Domenick had with the audience. "We rode up the Bloomfield track today. I don't know why they called it that. We didn't see a single field in bloom." "Yeah, but you can see them from the Police helicopters," a local said, and the whole crowd as one went "Yeahhh." So maybe our good reaction was chemically enhanced. It didn't matter. I really didn't want to leave Cooktown. There's not much to do once you've checked out the view northwards, over the estuary to a dune covered bank backed with indistinct green hills that fog out to the horizon, but that's a lot of the attraction. The road will be paved all the way from Cairns in a few years and they won't know what's hit them once the tourist tat wagon rolls into town. 8 But move on we did, to a destination with fate and town called Lakeland. Lakeland lies in a surprisingly fertile plain 80 kilometres inland from Cooktown, though it was void of anything resembling a lake, though to be fair there was plenty of land with room for a lake if anyone wanted to build one. The pub didn't look promising. The half dozen inhabitants sat slumped open mouthed at one end of the bar engrossed in a suburban club rugby match from Sydney on the TV. Greg, the publican, put us on early so we'd be well out of the way before the night was too old and we could do too much damage to the ambience. Domenick started off the show, sweating away to a great round of indifference and when I came on I did my utmost to take the energy level even lower. The only person paying any attention at all was the three year old daughter of the biggest, toughest looking bloke in the bar. She wandered over and sat in the chairs that we'd optimistically provided for the audience and her dad came over to keep her company and glower at us. I came to point in my act where I try to get the crowd to sing the theme music from "Hawaii Five-o" for me. I figured she mightn't remember the show, so I asked her dad what her favourite song was. "She likes the Bananas in Pyjamas". Right. "Attention", I said to the whole pub. "For this next joke, I need everyone to sing the theme song from Bananas in Pyjamas." If you've never inspired a bored Saturday afternoon pub full of cattle station workers and truckies to sing the "Bananas in Pyjamas" song put it on your list of things to do before you die. The kid loved it. Her dad gave us his stamp of approval. The barflys started listening to our show and per head they might just have been the hardest laughers in Australia. I'd never seen an audience turn from lynch mob to overwelming 9 enthusiasm in so short a space of time. Domenick brought the show home in great form and whole place just transformed. At the end of the show we fronted the bar to find that Samantha, the cute barmaid, had four beers poured for us. "Greg wanted to stay but he had a dinner party to go to, but he gave us instructions to get you guys slaughtered." Behind the four beers she started laying out four shots of some evil looking shooter. "That's for in between the beers." Well, we're nothing if not polite and it would have been bad manners to knock the drinks back. Half an hour later we two thirds of the way to legless and we started to involve the crowd in a few of our favourite drinking games. There was our usual drinking of beers standing on our heads and a game of soccer broke out using my giant ball of clingwrap. Then it became time to play flaming arseholes. Now there are regional variations of how this game is played so I'll explain how we play it. We buy three beers. Middies. We’re not totally irresponsible. We line them up along the bar; one in front of us, one in the middle and one up the far end of the bar. We then take a page out of the local newspaper, roll it up into a tube, drop our strides and carefully clench one end of the newspaper in our bums. The other end of the newspaper is set alight. The aim of the clenchee is to waddle down the bar and drink all three beers before the flames can reach the undergrowth, so to speak. I volunteered to go first because I'm a little insecure and I wanted to look tough in front of the North Queenslanders. Besides, I fancied myself at this game. I was the flaming arseholes champion of the 1993 Macquarie University ecology field trip, a fact that I’ll have to remember to highlight when I submit my Ph.D thesis. I was no 10 novice. Now I'm not too sure what went wrong. There are several theories. One is that we're from Sydney and we're used to doing this with our local paper, the Sydney Morning Herald. That's a big newspaper. Broadsheet is the technical name for it. The only available newspaper in Lakeland is the Cairns Post. That's a considerably smaller newspaper. A tabloid. Some eyewitnesses suggest that the fault lay in how the newspaper was lit, that the person with the matches was at fault for lighting it in the middle instead of at the end. I've also had a talk with an experienced flaming arseholes player who suggested that the way the paper is rolled is very important. A tightly rolled paper will burn slower than one that is loosely rolled as more oxygen gets in. (In retrospect, maybe this is what my Ph.d thesis should have been about, rather than the immune system genes of sea squirts.) Whatever the reason, I didn't even get to the bottom of the first beer before the flames started licking at my cheeks. Domenick was standing behind me, holding a jug of water, because he was the occupational health and safety officer. I've got, or rather had, a hairy arse. When it went up, Dom just wasn't ready. He was hypnotised by the flames. So was everyone else. They were holding beers and could have thrown them on the flames but they made the calculations and decided that saving my arse wasn't worth wasting a beer over. I was feeling the same way myself. I could feel my arse on fire but was determined to skull my own beer down. There was pride at stake. Eventually I tossed half the glass in the general direction, hard to judge because I was facing the front. I finally knocked the paper out with my free hand and Dom finally reacted in time to put out some of the spot fires that were starting up all over my bum. 11 I stayed around for a few more beers before passing out face down on my bunk. I wasn't the only casualty during the night. Bushy and James decided in their drunken wisdom that a barefoot race around the parking lot of the hotel was a good idea. The parking lot was surfaced with small stones, sort of like the ones you find in a Japanese garden but sharper. Four well and truly slaughtered carcasses woke up on Sunday morning. One sporting a three inch by three inch burn on his arse, two with feet cut to shreds and one merely hung over. Doing what anyone with nine square inches of bubbling open wound on their arse would do, I jumped on my bike and cycled 140 kilometres. I wasn't feeling too well the next night at Mount Molloy, feeling alternately feverish and chilly and so I retired early to bed, though not before making this observation about the previous night. "You know, if I hadn't burnt a hole in my arse and passed out, I reckon I could have done okay with those barmaids." I wish I had a dollar for every time I've made that statement. We crossed the Atherton Tablelands to the town of Ravenshoe, the highest town in Queensland. (In regards to altitude above sea level that is. Cooktown is at sea level, but considerably higher in other aspects.) Bushy arrived late because I'd mistakenly ran over his bike with the car and trailer when he'd left it leaning up against the support vehicle when he'd gone to admire a feature called The Crater. I hadn't seen him arrive or seen the bike placed on the passenger side of the trailer and didn't even feel it as I ran over it. It wasn't until he wonkily made his way into town that I realised what had happened. 12 Marge, from the Tully Falls Hotel, had done a sensational job promoting the show. She'd even hand painted a large banner that was hanging out the front of the pub advertising our presence. Domenick got into a conversation about life in town with one of the locals. "One guy hung himself once. Another bloke went nuts and the cops had to shoot him. But don't get me wrong. We like it here. It's not all hangings and shootings." We hung around in the pub after the show, chatting with some of the local guys. It was all pretty friendly but you could sense the pub owner was keen to lock up. He slipped away and quietly put a porno film on the video player, then patched it through to the TV monitors over the bar. The conversation dwindled as one by one each bloke noticed the action on screen. Before long all the guys had made their excuses and slipped away home. No doubt self abuse was on everyone's mind. You've got to take your hat off to the ingenuity of that pub clearing tactic. The pub at Innot Hot Springs impressed me, not only because of the giant painted turtle shell on the wall but because the walls also sported a full set of “the dogs playing pool” paintings. We picked up a couple of good scar stories. One was from a middle aged lady called Di. "I was a bit of a tomboy when I was a kid. I was climbing this big tree in our backyard. I'd got to the very top when I lost my hold. I banged my little twat on every branch on the way down." Nothing too special there, but I did enjoy hearing a middle aged lady say, "twat". Our winner came from an aboriginal lady called Angela, but we had to have it explained to us later. 13 "Me and my husband, we're going forty miles an hour one night. He hadn't cut his toenails and he ended up cutting me lip." The crowd seemed to love this one but it left us baffled till James was chatting to her afterwards. "Forty miles an hour, it means rooting", he reported back to us. What about the toenails cutting the lips? I never did work it out. I think I need someone to draw me some diagrams. Maybe if I had watched some more porn at the Tully Falls Hotel, I might have learnt something. Past Innot Hot Springs, the proper outback started. The roads grew straighter and flatter, often narrowing down to one lane. There were only two types of traffic, road trains and caravanners. It was startling to realise just how many "grey nomads" were out and about. They'd number in tens of thousands. They joked that they were on their SKI trip, for Spending the Kids Inheritance, which was moderately amusing the first time I heard it but after hearing it from the fiftieth wrinkled old coot, it started to wear a bit thin. The road trains were intimidating at first but after a while I worked out I wasn't going to get sucked under the wheels every time one passed by and soon started to relax. I just braced myself and held my line and it became a thrill to be passed by so close to these vehicles. They're the best and most experienced drivers on the road so I never felt in danger around them. The "grey nomads"? Very good at brewing up tea and being able to produce chocolate biscuits from the dark insides of their caravans but not the most confidence inspiring drivers in the world. The cows out these ways were a lot more wary of cyclists. A fifty metre long road train wouldn't bother them but one man on a bike was seemingly the most terrifying sight of their lives. As we rode up to 14 them a few of the braver ones would make an effort to stand their ground, but then their knees would start to shake and their little bottom lips would start to quiver and then they'd turn and flee. I wondered if there wasn't some pervert cycling around outback Australia specially molesting cows. I discussed it with a person from the bush who suggested that it's possible that these cows have never seen a human being outside of a vehicle before. The cows would normally dash into the bush beside the road and take up a new position a respectful distance from us. But late in the afternoon, on the way into Georgetown, James and I encountered a herd of cows at the top of a long downhill. The road also headed into a mini canyon at that point. The result being that there was nowhere on the side for the cows to escape to. This being one of the only downhills that we'd hit for the past few days we weren't keen on hitting the brakes and missing out on it. The cows bounced from wall to wall like leather pinballs. We sucked in a big breath and weaved and braked and threaded our way through till we reached the bottom of the hill and the cows poured out either side of the canyon and we rolled out onto the flat road. We had thumping pulses and an exhilarating urge to turn around and go back to the top for another go. They were pretty excited about the show in Georgetown and the pub was full. We copped a bit of good natured and intelligent heckling off a bloke in the crowd who sported a magnificent white beard. His name was Weasel and we learnt that he hadn't shaved his beard for thirty years. A scheme was hatched. Weasel's beard had to go. He took a bit of persuading but finally agreed that if we could raise five hundred dollars from the crowd he'd let us shave it off. The crowd was up for it because most, if not all of them, had never seen Weasel's head without a beard on 15 it. We quickly got the pot up to three hundred dollars before the crowd decided that this was close enough and a razor, chair and towel were produced. A girl named Billie, short for William because her parents apparently wanted a boy, took on the job of de-bearding Weasel. As more of his face emerged it became more and more understandable why he grew the beard. A rousing cheer signaled the finish. But now it was Weasel's turn for revenge because part of the deal was that if we shaved him, he could give one of us a haircut. Domenick was the victim. Weasel attacked his head with a gusto that was frightening. Most people might have gingerly gone in with a few meek cuts but this didn't seem to be Weasel's style. In a whirlwind of scissors, fingers, blood and huge chunks of hair he set about shearing Dom at a lightning pace. It left him with a hairstyle that is known in hair cutting circles as the Dog's Breakfast. There were large areas of exposed scalp mixed with thicker tufts of untouched hair. Once the pub closed, the party made its way to someone's house where a texta was produced and Billie decided that as I'd missed out on a haircut the least I could do was sit still while she drew some black lines on my face. Weasel also copped a face full of texta. Dom was to later describe the sight of me and Weasel in intense conversation while we sported black rings around our eyes and clown smiles as the single most weird sight of the tour. I myself wouldn't have minded being a fly on the wall at Weasel's house the next morning when he woke up next to his wife, who'd never seen him clean shaven, having to explain to her who he was. I'd lent my bike to James a couple of days earlier and he'd returned it to me with the back wheel bent out of shape. I left Georgetown early the next morning with a borrowed wheel that wasn't 16 wide enough to allow my back brakes to work. With the lack of hills and sparse traffic I figured correctly that the brakes were something I wasn't going to be needing till we got to Perth. I made good time and just as I was congratulating myself in covering half the distance to Croydon in under three hours my front tyre packed it in and threw me down onto the road in a slow motion accident that left me with my handlebars facing backwards and my brake levers bent. It wasn't too serious, though now my front brakes weren't working too well either. A big motorhome pulled up behind me. It was Ross, a friendly bloke from Cairns who'd been at the show the night before. He'd just started a drive around Australia with his wife and they happened to be carrying two bikes of their own. Importantly, they also had a good supply of bike tools with them. We knocked my bike back into shape, pumped up my tire and I said goodbye, though it wouldn't be the last time our paths would cross. The show at Croydon turned out to be one of our duds. I might have been better off staying lying on the road. Friday night at the pub seemed to be kids’ night and not just any kids. These were rough, tough cattle station kids who'd think nothing of wrestling a poddy calf to the ground and trussing it up before breakfast and would, if given half a chance, treat a couple of wet behind the ears Sydney comedians the same way. We gave up trying to entertain the kids and handed the mic over to them and let them tell the jokes. The night got considerably better after that. People wanted to pose with us for photos afterwards so maybe we didn't do as bad as we thought. Then again, there were lots of photos of dead pigs and crocodiles on the walls so maybe they just liked taking pictures of things after slaughtering them. 17 Normanton was almost deserted when I drove in the next day except for the hawks that flew up and down the main street. They begged for food, sort of like the pigeons in Venice, though none of the pigeons in Venice look like they're capable of flying off with a small child in their claws. Everyone in town was at the rodeo, this being the highlight of Normanton's social calendar. I checked out the rodeo because, once I'd looked at the giant croc statue in the middle of town, there was nothing much else to do. Everyone was pissed of course. There was a sideshow alley, with stalls manned by the same scary looking carny folk who man sideshow alleys the world over. There were people riding bulls. It wouldn't be a rodeo without them. This was my first rodeo. I'd kind of thought that there must be some floating population of professional bull riders who travel from rodeo to rodeo doing the actual dangerous stuff. It's surprising to find out that this isn't what happens. Most of the bull riders are amateurs. Basically anyone who was pissed enough to think that they could ride a bull, which was just about everyone there, got up and had a go. No-one appeared to get hurt, or at least no-one was a big enough wuss to show that they got hurt. A local guy with no previous form stayed on long enough to win and then everyone trooped over to listen to the band and continue drinking. The boys were impressed at the lack of skills needed to participate. "I think it's settled then", said Dom. "Next rodeo we find, we're all having a go." We then did the next most dangerous thing you could do at the Normanton Rodeo. We ate some Dagwood Dogs. We rode back into town but our pub was virtually deserted which was probably a good thing. There were three pubs in town. One was the tourist pub. One was the respectable pub and one was the bloodhouse. 18 There was no doubt we'd drawn the bloodhouse. There were no loose furnishings and no fixtures that couldn't be cleaned by running a high pressure hose over them. We chatted amiably to the barman and the few barflies that were present. The barman went down to the basement and brought back up a six foot long crocodile. A stuffed six foot long crocodile I should add. When still alive it had floated into the bar on the back of some floodwaters and met a sticky end because it refused to buy a few rounds. We sat around out the front of our room the next morning soaking up the atmosphere and watching the hawks. There was a guy who helped around the bar who looked remarkably like George Clooney. He might well have been George Clooney. For all I know helping out at the middle pub in Normanton is what he does between movies. Every half hour he'd disappear into his room and come out wearing a complete change of clothes. He was a friendly bloke but there was obviously some kind of mental health pathology behind this behaviour. It was hypnotically compelling to watch. "Strange one that one," said one of the other hotel employees. "He went missing once. We couldn't find him for days. Finally found him fifty miles out of town standing in a waterhole." We had to drag ourselves away eventually to get on the road to Karumba, a town that makes regular appearances on the news when it's under water and the town residents retire to their roofs to await rescue. Forty k's out of town the landscape changed from a mixture of scrub and swamp to an eerie treeless plain. Small landmarks like windmills and water tanks were visible for ages. On the plains like this and traveling at our speed, an insignificant structure like a shed or a microwave repeater station could 19 be the only focus you have for an hour or two. I pushed my helmet up to widen my perspective and let the bigittyness of this open space overwhelm me. Karumba was a lot more popular than I expected it to be. People come from all over to watch the sunset sinking into the Gulf. I had a shower and wandered out to watch the famous sunset. There were lots of people walking the opposite way. I’d missed it by a minute. This was a long weekend in Queensland so a lot of station workers had headed to the gulf for a spot of fishing and drinking and socialising. Karumba is also the only town on the Gulf Of Carpenteria that's accessible by a sealed road, so the grey nomads were there in number too. There was also a row of Harleys parked out the front of the pub. A bikie gang was in town. The bikies were hustled out of town before our show started, which was a shame because they didn't look too unfriendly. The crowd that stayed were mainly grey nomads and as lively as roadkill. It didn't help that the pub owner decided, against our protests, that meal time was the best time for us to perform. Every punchline, and I mean every one, was trampled on by this sort of announcement. "Number eighty five to the snack bar, number eighty five. Your mixed grill and chips is ready." It was as if the kitchen staff were watching and waiting for the end of every joke. We retired to our own tents and pondered how we'd get up in time the next morning, because Dom had managed to line us up a gig the next night at Wondoola cattle station, a convenient 200 k's back down the road. I got packed up and under way while it was still dark. The treeless plain on the edge of Karumba had inspired awe in me on the way 20 in. Now, with the wind against me and no trees to break its path, I realised there was a downside to treeless plains. Then the sun rose and I forgave the plains. It was a sunrise to die for. I stopped and admired, but not for too long as I heard some wild pigs snorting somewhere nearby and decided lingering would not be wise. I struggled into Normanton mid morning.James caught me and after gutsing out on donuts and ice cream we made good time heading south. The turn off to Wondoola was down a dirt track, surface variable, from good and smooth, to tooth rattling and corrugated, to nearly impassable, wheel eating sand. We travelled much slower on the dirt and estimating distances became hard. The sun started to set and it seemed that we'd been riding for way too long on the dirt for our liking. We debated if we should turn back and try one of the side tracks we'd seen, but luckily we pressed on and found the turn off. The station manager passed us by and assured us we were on the right track. A few minutes later we had to pull over to let a road train pass. If you ever get a chance, get passed by a road train on a dirt road at least once in your life. Sensational. We were left in a fog of dust for a solid five minutes, the sunset colouring the scene purple. The progress of the truck ahead of us was easy to follow, the dust rising in a great plume above it. We arrived at the station right on dark. I'd been on the road the entire length of the day. It was the hardest days physical effort I'd ever put in in my life, which may say more about how sheltered my life has been than how hard the ride was. Whatever; I was stuffed. Not too stuffed to enjoy the barbecue. They must have knocked off the biggest cow in the world. I'd never seen a taller pile beef. Every piece of the cow seemed to be there. It was hot and juicy and I was 21 gnawing meat off the bones the shape of which I'd never seen lying in a butcher's shop window. You can't hoe into a feast of this proportion and not wonder why anyone would want to be vegetarian, but I guess it takes all types. I guess they'll be laughing into their lentil burgers at my funeral. The station people seemed pretty excited to be hosting us, or as excited as station people get, which is hard to gauge. It was fascinating listening to people describe why they loved working there. It's far more than just a job. There's a real romance to the lifestyle that draws someone to want to live out there. Everyone seemed to take great pride in the skills they had acquired. They had faraway look in their eyes as they talked about their work that I don't have when I talk to strangers about what it's like to write jokes for Australia's Funniest Home Video Show. We put on a fun show, polished off a few of the social club's beers and learnt that one of the station hands was on crutches because of an accident he'd had whilst "scruffing weiners". This sounded vaguely obscene till I found out it was a rodeo event where two people try to wrestle a feisty calf to the ground. The next morning we took a look around the station, comprising a dozen or so buildings set in surprisingly lush and well tended gardens. We took a peak into the “School of the Air” classroom, which was pretty cool. There was only one school age kid on the station. He'd kicked all of our arses at pool the night before and had proudly shown us a photo of his first wild pig kill. The drawings on display showed that he also had a softer, artistic side, which I'm sure he'll be glad I'm telling the world about right now. Maybe he’ll think twice before he beats us at pool again. 22 I rode out the next morning following Domonic down a very sandy and difficult to ride on track. He'd driven the car in from the direction that we were heading the night before so I assumed he knew where he was going. After an hour struggling along, a ute pulled up and the station manager stuck his head out and asked us if we knew where we were going. We were on the wrong road. If he hadn't happened along it would have been a 150 kilometres before we came to the next property, though by then we'd have already been drawing straws to decide who was going to eat whom. We accepted a lift to the right road and after the previous day's effort, the 100 k's to get to the Burke and Wills Roadhouse seemed almost relaxing. Burke and Wills came through this way in 1868. No doubt they remarked upon the coincidence of finding a roadhouse named after themselves when they arrived. The roadhouse was well stocked with Mars Bars and other goodies, so how Burke and Wills died of starvation out here beats me. Obviously they were idiots. The roadhouse was run by a lovely couple named Julie and Peter. Julie was renowned for never swearing, though in moments of extreme passion she had been heard uttering the phrase "pig's bottom", so we kept our ears open in the hope that she'd let fly. Everyone kicked on a bit after the show, Tom from Tully played "North to Alaska" for us on Bushy's guitar and another bloke called Laurie regaled us with some stories. Laurie was one of those quiet, serene storytellers who kept you enthralled without having to add any great dramatics. "This roadhouse, it never used to have guard dogs. It had guard geese." He let that sink in. 23 "Vicious. One day a truckie stops here. Big truckie. Gets under the truck and starts working on his truck. He's wearing tight stubbies. Very short stubbies." He let that image sink in. "No underpants. This goose sees this slug hanging out. Grabs hold of it. The roadhouse manager hears the commotion going on, comes running out. Shouts, "What's happening?" The truckie says, "Get this goose off me." The bloke from the roadhouse runs back inside, comes running out with a meat cleaver. The truckie looks up. "What are you going to do with that." "I'm gonna chop his neck off." "Don't do that," says the truckie. "I don't know how much he's swallowed." Now he might have been economical with the truth. We didn't care. He then provided us with one of the scar stories of the tour. "This is about three blokes working out on a cattle station. They're building a fence. One bloke, his job is to hold up the star picket fence posts in place. Another bloke has a big sledge hammer, hammering the posts into the ground. The third bloke, he's just there, watching. The bloke with the hammer, takes a big whack. Misses the top of the post that his mates holding. Gets his mate on the hand between the thumb and the pointer finger. Blood starts to gush out. The third bloke decides he's the doctor. Leaps into action. "Look at all that blood. Mate, you're gonna bleed to death. We need to do something about that blood. You need to put a tourniquet on that arm. That's what she needs." 24 They look around for something to use as a tourniquet. The doctor spots the perfect thing. "That bail of wire over there. That'll be a great tourniquet. Just wrap it around the top of your arm there. Sweet as." The blood slows down but our man is still worried. "Better get you to a hospital. Stop that bleeding for good. We'll get you into the ute." They carry him over and place him in the back of the ute. They don't want to put him in the cabin. They've got new car seat covers. Don't want to get any blood on them. They put the foot down and off they go, down the track to take him to the hospital. But they had forgotten something very important. The bail of wire they used for the tourniquet. It's the same wire they're building the fence with. It's still attached to the rest of the fence. They get ten foot down the road before the bloke in the back works out what's going on. He's watching the wire get less and less slack in it. He's looking at his arm and he's looking at the fence and he's putting two and two together. He starts banging on the roof of the ute. The blokes in the front hear him banging and they think, "Struth, he's in pain. He must want us to speed up." They really floor it, get another fifty foot down the road and they hear a loud twang. And our man disappears from the back of the ute." Laurie summed up the guy's scars. "He's got nothing on his hand. That was just a scratch. Would have stopped bleeding by itself in ten minutes. He's got a massive red 25 wire rip going up his arm. And he walks with a bit of a limp because he broke his hip when he hit the gravel." We could have listened to Laurie's stories all night. We would have but there were cute English backpackers working at the roadhouse and they needed us to dance with them. After a couple of weeks in the savannah, we were starting to look upon Cloncurry as a kind of throbbing metropolis. We were looking forward to once again acquainting ourselves with the world of supermarkets, laundries, banks, e-mail and bakeries. Not to mention a chemist shop where I could purchase a nice fresh piece of gauze to put on my arse as the burn hadn’t quite healed yet. I was still sleeping face down. After 58 days on the road, Cloncurry was show number 50. Fresh from a quiet night in Quamby, population 3, the Cloncurry show was a good one. The scar competition was won by Tom, a traveling chook judge. Looking back he may well have been the most distinguished person to win one of our scar competitions. He shed his shirt to reveal a melanoma scar the size of a satellite dish in the middle of his back. I had a pretty good chat about what it's like to be a chook judge too. (A bit of clarity here, Tom judged prize chickens at agricultural shows. He doesn't were a wig and black gown and sentence chooks to jail terms.) The information centre in town played a video that prided the racial harmony of Cloncurry and the town didn't have that threatening air about it that some of the outback places had. The only disturbance was from a lass who was loudly screaming outside our hotel window at two in the morning that she was "going to break that white bitch’s fucking arm." I guess she was a visitor from out of town. 26 I dropped in to visit the ghost town of Mary Kathleen halfway through the next day's ride. It used to be a uranium mining town but all the buildings had been packed off out of there in the mid 1980s. All that was left were the roads and concrete slabs of foundations and a few double headed goannas running around. It was fun cycling up and down the empty streets. I used to do this along the paths in my own backyard when I was a kid and imagined I was riding around a town. Now I was in a real town pretending I was in my own backyard. This time I didn't pretend I was a bus and make engine noises. Okay, maybe I did. You could see Mt Isa coming from a long way off. There was a great big smokestack dominating the town. "The Isa," as you're supposed to call it if you really want to sound like a wanker, is the sort of place that attracts a lot people from other parts of the country who then think that because they've moved to a town with a tough reputation that makes them tough. It's probably the "short guy syndrome" capital of Australia. "You're in 'The Isa' now," said more than one person when trying to justify why they were acting like a tool. Our gig was at the Irish Club, arguably the largest man made structure in Western Queensland. We were directed through a bistro, down a flight of stairs, along a corridor, were rowed across a lake, hiked for a day or so and finally found the room we were performing in. A decent sized crowd managed to find us, though this may have been due to the disco that started after the show more than any pulling power we had. James had spruiked the show up at the race track and there's nothing you want at your comedy show more than a bunch of off duty lead, zinc and silver miners who've already been on the piss all day long. It was strange show. I was off in the toilets wrapping my head up so I missed what was going on but I could hear Domenick getting 27 indignant at some sections of the audience. The table at the very front contained one young lady who had bitten the bullet and gone to hospital to have the sense of humour bypass, though I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and put her not getting any of our jokes down to the fact that she was simply as dumb as fuck. She chatted away all through the show and gave her editorial opinions on whatever jokes she didn't get, which were all of them, and generally drove Dom to distraction. I came in with all guns blazing and got stuck into her, "Seven Eleven called. They want to open a store in your mouth. It never shuts either." I enjoyed the gig myself but it was Domonic's least favourite of the whole tour. Her boyfriend had the misfortune to resemble Shrek, so we had him on toast after this was pointed out. There were signs though that they don't build rough, tough mining towns like they used to, because our scar contest was won by a lad who'd injured himself in a shelf packing accident at Coles. Shrek turned out to be a pretty good bloke and he was apologetic after the show. I'd never seen a heckler show more remorse for having stuffed up someone's act. I even started feeling sorry for him, he was that remorseful. His mate "Toxic" even gave me his favourite stubby holder as a present because he'd enjoyed the show so much. I was touched, and it still sits today with pride and place in my stubby holder collection. He was called "Toxic" because he farts a lot when he's drunk. While I was getting all touchy feely with the locals, Dom was getting agitated. He'd taken such an extreme dislike to Mt Isa that he wanted to get out of town right away, in the middle of the night. It wasn't such a bad idea. Our plan had been to get up at dawn and set off for Cammooweal to get there in time for the next show. But we were wide awake and probably would have wasted the time until dawn just tossing 28 and turning so we raced home to the caravan park, packed up and set off at midnight. I made about a kilometer before getting a flat tire, so we lingered in town for another hour fixing that and stocking up on hot food at an all night diner. Bushy wasn't having any of this. He stayed behind and got up at 7:30 in the morning. James had the car so he slept in. There was a full moon so we didn't even need our lights. I only turned mine on so passing trucks would know we were on the road. We kept ourselves entertained by backstabbing other comedians. There's really little else that comedians talk about. I don't know what the truckies thought of us, to suddenly come across two cyclists having laughing fits beside the road at two in the morning can't be something that happens every night. The moon would go behind clouds and look freaky every now and then. The low hills beside the road looked a lot more dramatic in the night then they would have in the day. Eventually we got beyond hill country and onto the plains and the slight tail wind got a little chilly. We may or may not have stopped at one stage to take out a black texta and vandalise the "road narrowing" signs so they looked like fourex cans, depending on how much of a felony this is in Queensland and whether it carries a jail sentence. The dawn was again something special, though by this time I was getting a little woozy and was starting to have microsleeps while still pedaling. We'd knocked off 110 kilometers in the dark. I flaked out in a roadside rest area for a twenty minute power nap, then got up and beat on. Dom found a sandy creek bed and dozed off there for a couple of hours. It was slow going even with a tail wind but I eventually rolled into Cammoweal around midday. 29 Cammooweal is not the most prepossessing town in the world. There's about four streets, a couple of roadhouses and a pub which sits in the middle of a largely featureless plain. Well worth a twelve hour cycle to get to. The staff at the Shell Roadhouse didn't seem to be expecting us. I nodded off to sleep at one of the tables and was politely asked to book a room or move outside. I moved outside and dozed off again on a bench. Near the bench, in a small grove of scrub, was a seven foot tall fibreglass kangaroo with two buffalo horns in its head, the not very legendary Cammooweal Buffaroo. I'm proud to present the award for most pissweak piece of dodgy tourist tat in Australia here and now to the Cammooweal Buffaroo. Bushy arrived in town an hour and a half after me. He was chuffed to have given Domenick a six hour head start and still beaten him. So chuffed that he implored me to mention it if I ever wrote a book about the ride. So here it is. Domenick eventually arrived and managed to locate the person at the roadhouse that knew that we were coming and we installed ourselves in the camping area out the back. It was nice and grassy, and we loved the facilities. Say what you want about the rest of Cammooweal, but the showers at the Shell Roadhouse were top of the range. A bench in each cubical, a plethora of hooks and leopard skin shower curtains. Shower facilities were starting to become important to our lives. We'd get together and have fifteen to twenty minute long talks about what we liked and didn't like to find in our shower facilities and at the time, none of us would think this was odd. We were getting into a groove and life was simplifying itself for us. In order of importance life went comedy gig, after show adventures with weirdo locals, cycling, sleeping, eating ice 30 creams at roadhouses, shower facilities and Laundromats. The rest of life fell into a 5% miscellaneous column. It was hypnotic. It was great. Just before the show that Domenick pulled me aside at the back of the cafe. "The manager's just told me that at every night at 10 o'clock the Macafferty's Bus stops here for a toilet and supper break. All the passengers get off and come in here to stretch their legs. They've just come from the Northern Territory and haven't stopped for six hours. He reckons we should do something to freak them out. What can we do?" We came up with a few suggestions and asked our audience to vote for their favourite. We narrowed it down to three options. The first was that we'd all play dead. The second option was for everyone to find a partner and pretend to be passionately kissing. The passengers would walk in and find everyone going the pash, like some kind of outback swingers’ club. With any luck, there'd be Swedish girls there and they might want to join in. We went for option number three, a full-on no holds barred wrestling contest. The show was going well. The crowd was a nice mixture of truckies, oldies, a few younger travellers and the roadhouse staff. We kept in touch with the bus driver, who was in on the joke, by radio. He gave us a two minute warning that he was about to pull in and we got to work. Bushy and I stripped off our shirts and got stuck into each other in the middle of the room, grappling like ancient Greek wrestlers. We're not the two most attractive blokes with our shirts on, take them off and we look like um...... the sort of blokes who'd be fighting each other in remote wayside town in the middle of the night. Domenick picked up the microphone and started commentating. The audience played their part and went nuts. They got in a circle around us and pulled out ten and twenty dollar notes and started waving them in the air and shouting and 31 cheering. We're talking grannies, truckies, the lot. When either of us would roll out of the circle they'd kick us back in. Into all this the Macafferty's bus pulls in, and out stumble thirty or so stiff and tired passengers scraping the sleep out of their eyes and about to get every fear they've ever had about the Australian outback confirmed for them. The staff were still talking about it the next day. "It was their eyes. The terror. It was a beautiful thing." The first in was a kid of about nine or ten. He gave the scene a puzzled glance and then took it all in his stride. I checked our video later and I'm pretty sure I actually saw him trying to put five dollars down on Bushy to win. The rest of the bus came in bunches and stayed that way, edging their way up to the back of the shop where they suddenly found themselves very interested in the motor oil and jumper leads for sale up there. To get to the toilets they had to go past us, which they did by staying together and hugging the walls as much as possible. My knee gave way and Bushy leapt up in victory. Domenick raised his arm. "The winner." The crowd roared. "Your prize is freedom from Cammooweal jail and a free bus ticket out of town. Grab your bag. The bus is about to leave." You have never seen a busload of passengers fill up a bus quite so fast and with quite so haunted expressions on their faces. Bushy stalked ominously towards the bus and I swear I heard this from inside it. "Bus driver, for God's sake close the door. Close the door." We settled back in to our normal comedy night and heard another of our favourite scar stories, off Terry from the navy. 32 "I was in port in a south east Asian country that I won't name. Late at night after a few beers some of us decided that we wanted a souvenir. A local flag. So we scaled a flagpole. I was at the top. I grabbed hold of the flag. As I did this, the authorities arrived. My mates scampered. I was left at the top of the pole thinking should I still be here or should I let go and join them. I let go and slid down the pole. Now flagpoles have these little bits of metal on them to tie the ropes onto. Cleats they're called." He gave a sardonic smile and looked around the room. A few of the blokes could already see where this was heading. "Sliced me clean open on the way down. I was so pissed I didn't notice till the next morning and woke up and there was blood all over my sheets. Please take time out to go, "Ooooooooooh!". Every male in the Cammooweal Roadhouse did. "That's the same injury that Dawn Fraser did to herself when she stole the flag at the Tokyo Olympics," I said. Actually, I didn't say that. I didn't think of that line till the next day, which is a pity. We got talking to a couple of the truckies. Their eyes filled with glee as they told us stories about what sort of damage trucks can do to caravans. The truckies and the caravanners are like the Israelis and the Palestinians of the Australian road. There's not much love lost between them. "Some of the old coots like to leave a window open in their caravan as they drive along. They want to air them out, get that old person smell out of them. You shouldn't do that. You see when a road train passes by them it creates a drop in air pressure in the immediate 33 vicinity. This sucks all the air out of the caravan. When they finish going past the road train, the air gets sucked back in. It blows the roof off." He took a suck on his beer. "That wrecks the holiday." He continued on with another horror story. "There was a bloke driving a rig out the other side of Hay heading for Adelaide. Copper pulls him over. Says to him, ‘Hey mate, do you remember passing a caravan about fifty kilometres back down the road?’ The truckie goes, ’No.’ ‘Well, I was wondering how you can explain your rear wheels.’ The truckie gets out of the cabin and walks down with the cop. Wrapped around his rear wheels are a dressing gown, tablecloth, bath towels, frilly ladies swimming costume. ‘Gee,’ says the truckie. ‘Must have blown there off someone's clothesline,’ says the cop. ‘Must have,’ says the truckie. There's some good cops out there." "Ever blown the roof off a caravan yourself?" we asked. He just smiled enigmatically, which probably meant "Yeah and I enjoyed it." There was only us and a young couple camped at our next stop, 100 kilometres of flat and treeless big sky country into the Northern Territory. We built a campfire and chewed the fat with Darren and Jocelyn, who were good value and even shared their damper with us. They then introduced us to a new game. "We discovered this the other night. We were camped beside a bit of the highway with two little dips in the road. We had a joint and then waited beside the road for a road train to go past with all its lights 34 on along the side. When they went over the dips, all the lights went up and down. It's very exciting. We call it the ‘rollercoaster’." We had to give this a go. The road trains are lit up at night like Christmas trees with, for want of a better word, "fairy lights" strung in a row along their sides. Jocelyn seemed to have a Radar O'reilly style ability to hear road trains coming before anyone else. When she heard one approaching we'd all leave the campfire and race up to the roadway and lie down on our stomachs with our heads about a foot away from the bitumen. We weren't on a dip in the road so we weren't getting the full roller coaster effect, but it's still a thrill and a half to have so many tonnes of heavy machinery whizzing past your face and the light show was pretty solid. It didn't pay to think about what might happen if a kangaroo hopped onto the road and the truckie had to swerve to avoid it. Who am I kidding? A truckie wouldn't swerve to avoid a kangaroo. As the earth in the rest area was diamond hard, banging in tent pegs wasn't an option unless you wanted to end up with pegs that resembled spaghetti. But then we realised we didn't need to put our tents up. It was the middle of the dry season in the middle of the worst drought of the century. We slept under the stars. Of course it rained. I pulled my tent fly over my folding chair and constructed a little fort for myself but still spent most of the night moving myself out of puddles and listening to the spooky windmill creaking in the wind. The night around the campfire was the sort of thing I'd dreamed about doing before we set off. It had taken almost two months to ride up the Queensland coast and then out to the Northern Territory. We'd played pubs, clubs, senior citizens centres, converted movie 35 theatres, backpackers, roadhouses and a cattle station. We still hadn't played under a boab tree and somehow, because of that, I felt incomplete. It was something that we had to rectify.