As it was dubbed in Oz was Germany's trouncing of the Australian Socceroos 4-Nil in their World Cup opener in Durban, South Africa.
And then the knives came out.
Forget about kicking the team when they were down, this was a blood bath. Incompetent coaching, unfit players, poor training, ill discipline, lack of spirit, you name it and the team was guilty. Radio talk shows poured scorn on the Socceroos, callers lambasted them and their World Cup merchandise was knocked down to 50% off in the shops. The team had not so much lost a game as disgraced a nation. Australia had been mortally wounded on the international stage, nay, far more importantly, on the international sporting stage. How, people asked, was this possible for the 'Lucky Country'?
Most telling was that for the first time in two months the 'Super Profits Mining Tax' proposed by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd [who as I write this has been removed as PM by in a backroom coup and the Super Profits tax has now been dropped] was knocked out of the top news spot.
Surely Australians didn't actually think they'd beat Germany? And surely they have more important things to worry about such as why mining companies virtually run the country, dictate policy and believe they should pay less for the people's resources? Or for that matter even the appalling quality and price of beer in this vast nation of thirsty people?
Monday, July 12, 2010
'Number D3, that's D3'
Whoohoo! I grabbed the ticket off the table and went up to claim our prize in the meat raffle of the Northern Hotel in Byron Bay.
The prize table groaned under the weight of heavily laden BBQ trays of steak and chicken, lamb chops and burgers and artery clogging breakfast trays of eggs, bacon and sausages. A carnivore's delight, a meat eater's Garden of Eden laid out on the table, ours for the picking.
Our tray was piled high, but sadly not with ground offal and rump or wing and topside or ribs and legs but rather with oranges, kiwi fruit, apples, grapes, avocados, tomatoes and corn on the cob. Yep, we'd opted for one of the maligned 'fruit and veg' trays of the meat raffle.
An oxymoron and the carnivore's curse of living in a tent with no fridge.
The prize table groaned under the weight of heavily laden BBQ trays of steak and chicken, lamb chops and burgers and artery clogging breakfast trays of eggs, bacon and sausages. A carnivore's delight, a meat eater's Garden of Eden laid out on the table, ours for the picking.
Our tray was piled high, but sadly not with ground offal and rump or wing and topside or ribs and legs but rather with oranges, kiwi fruit, apples, grapes, avocados, tomatoes and corn on the cob. Yep, we'd opted for one of the maligned 'fruit and veg' trays of the meat raffle.
An oxymoron and the carnivore's curse of living in a tent with no fridge.
'Hold it, hold it! I call this scraping the bottom'
Jamie 'The Tactician' of Double Time, our racing yacht, was on the helm, well lubricated by pre-race beers in the pub, a can of XXXX lager balanced on the compass housing as we bore down on the seawall adjacent to the Cairns marina.
I was on the starboard winch ready to haul in the foresail sheet as soon as we tacked, one eye on the depth sounder. 4.0 metres, 3.5 metres, 3 metres, 2.5 metres...'maybe we should tack...' and still Jamie pressed on. Jean, the owner of Double Time started protesting in her Indiana-Australian drawl, Charlie the normally calm Australian navy man on the main sheet began tugging at his beard and the early evening strollers on the seawall, now 10 metres off the bow, raised their eyebrows in anticipation of our imminent wreck.
How did this happen? Hours before we had woken up in a tent in the ancient Daintree Rainforest at Cape Tribulation 120 km north of Cairns and now here we were manning the winches in a Cairns Yacht Club race on a boat with three skippers ploughing their way through a fridge full of beer.
Then Jamie spun the helm, Karen let go the back winded foresail, I hauled it in and we were off on the opposite tack, clearing the rocks by 5 metres and now bearing down on a forest of sailboats and mooring piles. Jean took a verbal strip off Jamie about it being her boat, rocks, burning in hell and all sorts. Jamie waved her off and promptly cracked another can of XXXX while pontificating about the need for smoother transitions on the winches when tacking to keep our speed up in the hope of catching the lead yacht.
An hour later, with a little surreptitious help from the engine, we drifted in fifth, boat and crew intact, beer fridge empty. It had been a heady day of America's Cup high drama on the seas, ducking and weaving amongst the competition, fast tacks and gybes, cutting angles, stealing wind and clashing egos all at a blistering 3 mph.
I was on the starboard winch ready to haul in the foresail sheet as soon as we tacked, one eye on the depth sounder. 4.0 metres, 3.5 metres, 3 metres, 2.5 metres...'maybe we should tack...' and still Jamie pressed on. Jean, the owner of Double Time started protesting in her Indiana-Australian drawl, Charlie the normally calm Australian navy man on the main sheet began tugging at his beard and the early evening strollers on the seawall, now 10 metres off the bow, raised their eyebrows in anticipation of our imminent wreck.
How did this happen? Hours before we had woken up in a tent in the ancient Daintree Rainforest at Cape Tribulation 120 km north of Cairns and now here we were manning the winches in a Cairns Yacht Club race on a boat with three skippers ploughing their way through a fridge full of beer.
Then Jamie spun the helm, Karen let go the back winded foresail, I hauled it in and we were off on the opposite tack, clearing the rocks by 5 metres and now bearing down on a forest of sailboats and mooring piles. Jean took a verbal strip off Jamie about it being her boat, rocks, burning in hell and all sorts. Jamie waved her off and promptly cracked another can of XXXX while pontificating about the need for smoother transitions on the winches when tacking to keep our speed up in the hope of catching the lead yacht.
An hour later, with a little surreptitious help from the engine, we drifted in fifth, boat and crew intact, beer fridge empty. It had been a heady day of America's Cup high drama on the seas, ducking and weaving amongst the competition, fast tacks and gybes, cutting angles, stealing wind and clashing egos all at a blistering 3 mph.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
'Ever since that foreign girl was taken a few years back
Parks doesn't let anyone up the road until they are sure .'
As I forked over $20 for a bush campsite in Kakadu National Park in the Top End of Oz, the warden explained why Sandy Billabong [a permanent waterhole left behind by a drying river] road was still closed to the public this season.
Late, heavy rain this year in the north meant that our campsite had been under water only a few weeks before and the swamp edge was now just past the legal 50m limit on camp proximity to croc habitat.
Known up here as 'salties' - the estuarine crocodiles are at the top of the food chain. They can grow to 5 metres plus, weigh 700 kg, see in the dark feel, have no natural predators, and since hunting was banned in the early 1970s their numbers have exploded. Salties are assumed to be in all waters not above a waterfall [crocs can't climb] and designated waterholes are only opened to swimming once they are cut off from the main river flow in the dry season and a croc management plan and trapping has ensured the water is croc free.
As the sun set we heard them come. I started a fire, frantically spread flaming branches around our campsite and even deployed chemicals to keep them a bay but it was futile. We should have known camping beside a World Heritage Area wetland, and the recent high water ensured that there were too many to contend with. We finally beat a hasty retreat to our tent, unable to leave for ten hours even to use the toilet.
In the morning the damage had been done. Twenty-one bites on my right elbow and ten on my finger from where they rested against the tent mesh as I slept.
The salties can be deadly up here but they have nothing on the Kakadu mossies.
As I forked over $20 for a bush campsite in Kakadu National Park in the Top End of Oz, the warden explained why Sandy Billabong [a permanent waterhole left behind by a drying river] road was still closed to the public this season.
Late, heavy rain this year in the north meant that our campsite had been under water only a few weeks before and the swamp edge was now just past the legal 50m limit on camp proximity to croc habitat.
Known up here as 'salties' - the estuarine crocodiles are at the top of the food chain. They can grow to 5 metres plus, weigh 700 kg, see in the dark feel, have no natural predators, and since hunting was banned in the early 1970s their numbers have exploded. Salties are assumed to be in all waters not above a waterfall [crocs can't climb] and designated waterholes are only opened to swimming once they are cut off from the main river flow in the dry season and a croc management plan and trapping has ensured the water is croc free.
As the sun set we heard them come. I started a fire, frantically spread flaming branches around our campsite and even deployed chemicals to keep them a bay but it was futile. We should have known camping beside a World Heritage Area wetland, and the recent high water ensured that there were too many to contend with. We finally beat a hasty retreat to our tent, unable to leave for ten hours even to use the toilet.
In the morning the damage had been done. Twenty-one bites on my right elbow and ten on my finger from where they rested against the tent mesh as I slept.
The salties can be deadly up here but they have nothing on the Kakadu mossies.
A cramp in my right right index finger
necessitated a switch from raising one finger to two, sometimes even three off the steering wheel. It was like clicking a computer mouse all day.
This is the Stuart Highway slicing through the red heart or Oz, 2,834 km from the last fish and chips of Post Augusta on the south coast of Australia to steamy Darwin on the Timor Sea in the north. On 'The Track' as it's known, you are either going north 'up the hill' or south 'down the hill'. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of dirt roads lead off The Track east and west, 200 km to a cattle station here, 500 km to a mine there or simply 1000 km to nowhere enroute to somewhere else.
There are a few rules on this highway. Carry enough water for two or three days, if you break down stay with your car, give way to the 'Kings of the Road,' the massive, wobbling three or four trailer, 54-metre long, 150-tonne Roadtrains, don't drive after 4:30-5 pm unless you have a bush bumper, comprehensive insurance and a hankering for roo steaks and above all other rules, bar none, you absolutely must give the Outback finger-lift-off-the-steering-wheel wave to every single oncoming vehicle.
That's 2,834 km worth. But to not do it wouldn't be very 'stralian would it?
This is the Stuart Highway slicing through the red heart or Oz, 2,834 km from the last fish and chips of Post Augusta on the south coast of Australia to steamy Darwin on the Timor Sea in the north. On 'The Track' as it's known, you are either going north 'up the hill' or south 'down the hill'. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of dirt roads lead off The Track east and west, 200 km to a cattle station here, 500 km to a mine there or simply 1000 km to nowhere enroute to somewhere else.
There are a few rules on this highway. Carry enough water for two or three days, if you break down stay with your car, give way to the 'Kings of the Road,' the massive, wobbling three or four trailer, 54-metre long, 150-tonne Roadtrains, don't drive after 4:30-5 pm unless you have a bush bumper, comprehensive insurance and a hankering for roo steaks and above all other rules, bar none, you absolutely must give the Outback finger-lift-off-the-steering-wheel wave to every single oncoming vehicle.
That's 2,834 km worth. But to not do it wouldn't be very 'stralian would it?
Glancing over my shoulder, the large, sweaty man was closing the gap.
We were rounding the path on the lip of the Henbury Meteorite Craters in the crushing heat and we could feel his heavy breath on our necks. It seemed a rather isolated spot - 140 km south of Alice Springs and 15 km up a red earth road from the Stuart Highway - to be nabbed from behind by a bare-chested Russian wrestler.
Then he was on us as we reached the car park and honesty box for the gravel campsite where his vast Governator Hummer dwarfed our hobbit-like Corrola.
'Do you have change for a $10?' - Slavic but encased in a light veneer of broad Aussie. 'No worries mate.' I forked over two fives and retreated to our rocky campsite while 'The Bear' unfolded his Hummer-top tent, wheeled a quad bike from his trailer and zoomed off down the road, shirtless, long hair streaming behind.
It seems Russian oligarchs have spread beyond Chelsea.
Later, as the sun set into the desert and Venus shone in the west, The Bear stopped work on his quad bike and appeared at our campsite with a stool and two bottles of chilled New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc courtesy of the fridge in his Hummer. As The Bear hydrated with a bottle of white over ice we learned that he was Polish, not Russian, and a doctor not a wrestler, who hailed from Sydney where he'd emigrated to from Poland in the late 1980s. He'd recently sold a large medical practice and had driven up to Alice Springs [$2000 in petrol for his Hummer] on an Australian national Medicare contract to provide medical service to isolated Aboriginal communities. Clearly a man of the people.
We offered him dinner but he waved it off - 'I ate sushi for lunch' - and he quaffed a second bottle of white.
For fun he was racing in the Finke Desert Rally on his quad bike - 500 km of sand dunes in one day - and between diagnosing diabetes and sewing up wounds 1000 km from nowhere his other passion was poker and his greatest joy, empty the bulging pockets of payday miners on the lash in the Alice Spring Casino.
Perhaps a Bear after all.
Then he was on us as we reached the car park and honesty box for the gravel campsite where his vast Governator Hummer dwarfed our hobbit-like Corrola.
'Do you have change for a $10?' - Slavic but encased in a light veneer of broad Aussie. 'No worries mate.' I forked over two fives and retreated to our rocky campsite while 'The Bear' unfolded his Hummer-top tent, wheeled a quad bike from his trailer and zoomed off down the road, shirtless, long hair streaming behind.
It seems Russian oligarchs have spread beyond Chelsea.
Later, as the sun set into the desert and Venus shone in the west, The Bear stopped work on his quad bike and appeared at our campsite with a stool and two bottles of chilled New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc courtesy of the fridge in his Hummer. As The Bear hydrated with a bottle of white over ice we learned that he was Polish, not Russian, and a doctor not a wrestler, who hailed from Sydney where he'd emigrated to from Poland in the late 1980s. He'd recently sold a large medical practice and had driven up to Alice Springs [$2000 in petrol for his Hummer] on an Australian national Medicare contract to provide medical service to isolated Aboriginal communities. Clearly a man of the people.
We offered him dinner but he waved it off - 'I ate sushi for lunch' - and he quaffed a second bottle of white.
For fun he was racing in the Finke Desert Rally on his quad bike - 500 km of sand dunes in one day - and between diagnosing diabetes and sewing up wounds 1000 km from nowhere his other passion was poker and his greatest joy, empty the bulging pockets of payday miners on the lash in the Alice Spring Casino.
Perhaps a Bear after all.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
While noodling I felt the pull
It's hard to identify the physical location in my body, harder yet to pin down the sensation itself. But there it was driving me to chip away at the building-sized pile of rubble with a broken prospector's adze.
Karen must have felt it too. She's hunched over a gravel outcropping, green hat pulled down against the white-hot mid-day sun, batting away the hundreds of bottle flies swarming around and digging away with a hand-sized stone.
Coober Pedy does this to you.
It's about the most God-forsaken wasteland imaginable. A treeless town of 3000, the largest in central Australia between the coast 500 km south and Alice Springs 1200 km north. Built with bare hands out of rubble and without a water well on the driest, rockiest plain in the Outback. Hundreds of thousands of piles of mine tailings encircle the town and the subsurface is a Swiss cheese of shafts and tunnels where every year they lose the odd tourist or late-night drunk.
The town site is filled with abandoned cars and apocalyptic film props and the people here are all a bit nuts. Mind you, except for a few hundred Aborigines, nobody seems actually to be from Coober Pedy. Half the population lives underground in houses and mines and we even pitched our tent in an underground campsite. Few would want to visit, let alone live here but everyone is digging
I look down through the chalky dust blowing in my face, my hands are caked with moisture sucking grime and then I see it. A little spit and I see a multi-coloured glint in the sunlight. I dig around and come up with two bits of a fossilized seashell the opal veneer visible where the adze cracked it. I can feel the pull now.
I hear a shout from Karen that she has found some opal chips. Sure it's all worthless 'potch' as the locals call it, not the rare 6% of opal that is precious. Still I see her go back to the digging in a swarm of flies and can see that she's got the opal fever too.
Karen must have felt it too. She's hunched over a gravel outcropping, green hat pulled down against the white-hot mid-day sun, batting away the hundreds of bottle flies swarming around and digging away with a hand-sized stone.
Coober Pedy does this to you.
It's about the most God-forsaken wasteland imaginable. A treeless town of 3000, the largest in central Australia between the coast 500 km south and Alice Springs 1200 km north. Built with bare hands out of rubble and without a water well on the driest, rockiest plain in the Outback. Hundreds of thousands of piles of mine tailings encircle the town and the subsurface is a Swiss cheese of shafts and tunnels where every year they lose the odd tourist or late-night drunk.
The town site is filled with abandoned cars and apocalyptic film props and the people here are all a bit nuts. Mind you, except for a few hundred Aborigines, nobody seems actually to be from Coober Pedy. Half the population lives underground in houses and mines and we even pitched our tent in an underground campsite. Few would want to visit, let alone live here but everyone is digging
I look down through the chalky dust blowing in my face, my hands are caked with moisture sucking grime and then I see it. A little spit and I see a multi-coloured glint in the sunlight. I dig around and come up with two bits of a fossilized seashell the opal veneer visible where the adze cracked it. I can feel the pull now.
I hear a shout from Karen that she has found some opal chips. Sure it's all worthless 'potch' as the locals call it, not the rare 6% of opal that is precious. Still I see her go back to the digging in a swarm of flies and can see that she's got the opal fever too.
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