KerrieJean.com

You know the place, you love the place……..

And then, some smart talkin’ guy in a fancy automobile suddenly turns up to do a travel piece for a big city newspaper……..

And then…

Without shame, without any feelins’ for the good folk livin’, lovin’ and learnin’ in my irrigated hometown, Leeton, New South Wales, declares:

‘A personal favourite is the automated carwash on Kurrajong Avenue, a must visit for anyone wishing to remove the coating of red mud/dust that clings to every vehicle that spends a day or two around Leeton. An extended wash and brush up costs $12, including the psychedelic lashings of green, white and purple foam. Red mist might impress the four wheel drivers of Mosman but, as the exit signs says, ‘a clean car is a happy car’.

[Sydney Morning Herald, Traveller: http://www.smh.com.au/travel/activity/great-outdoors/soaking-in-the-wetlands-20111019-1m7i5.html

[Mister Huxley on assignment: Cr: State Library, Archives Florida: flickr]

Well, well, well Mister John Huxley………

No wonder there’re 450 inquiries into the Australian media simultaneously underway with operators like you on the loose……

Descending on law abidin’  towns with big expense accounts, struttin’ down main streets swingin’ big notebooks and pointy biros…..

….Demanding, with menaces, to be taken right now to local attractions.

You only had to ask nicely Mister Huxley……..

I note you went to our World Heritage/UN Swamp Mission listed swamps and popped into the ‘modest’ SunRice Visitors’ Centre.

But Mister Huxley, you gotta understand that highly significant swamps and free sample bags of  ‘Two Second Rice With Three Second Prunes’ do not a town make.

Nor – for that matter – does the zaniest car wash on the Pacific Rim.

Come again to Leeton at Christmas Mr Huxley.

Walk the mysterious laneways at the back of the shops on Pine Avenue.

There you’ll see the most magnificent examples of historic rusted corrugated iron fences outside of India……

…..Tap on the steamed up windows of young lovers parking on irrigation channel banks under the most stunning moonlit skies outside of Uzbekistan……

……..Go crazy during a night of bacchanalian alcopop driven dancing and loose talk in the auditorium of the Leeton Soldiers’ Club ['anyone for the Kokoda Trail?']

And Mister Huxley, we won’t be going anywhere near a car wash.

To leave Leeton with an automobile covered with mud just like a choc top icecream is a long held and very important traditon……

You only had to ask.

* A bonus audio extravaganza: Kerrie Jean visits one of Leeton’s World Heritage/UN Swamp Mission listed swamps: 

Episode 3: A Lovely Day At The Swamp

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Gee, can’t journalists be insensitive?

I ask you: have you ever been to a place only to discover that your trip to the carwash was the highlight? I doubt it, I really do.

What can we do to clean up journalism?

If a journalist was visiting your town, what would you really demand he/she report back on? [and please don't, don't tell me your town has the most exciting car wash anywhere]

I await your news. Report in by:

Just clicking on the ‘comment’ thingo and following the simple instructions. The place to write your gems is at the bottom of the last published comment. *A little bit of counsel for people new to this caper. Your email (just called ‘mail’ in this case) address does NOT come up on site. And just ignore the URL thingo.

*For those who’ve never mooned or met a mooner, it’s an act of provocation whereby a non-thinking person bends over pointing their buttocks in the direction of another person or persons.  Read on…..

And so it was that a family was partaking of what had quickly become - in contemporary times - a traditional Christmas luncheon…

…….Compliments of  Delicious.

…..Prawns in prawn jus, goat’s cheese flan with elderflower garnish, lobster kebabs with wasabi crust, rocket with rocket and kumquats with kumquat inspired kumquat sorbet.

This was an extended Australian family which loved each other despite terrible underlying tensions and gross intolerances.

…..Two nihilstic nephews, three swearing sisters, four Catholic jihadists, five antsy atheists, six Labor loonies, seven National nutbags – and not a peacenik in sight.

The conversation was driven by passion and hard liquor. 

The same unbridegable differences in political orientations, opinions about appropriate hem lengths and same sex/different postcode marriages, remained. 

A teenager at the table could take no more.

[Whose side are you on? Cr: National Archives, Netherlands:flickr]

Excusing herself from the kumquat with kumquat inspired kumquat sorbet she – as if on automatic pilot - got up from the table and – as if in a dream - sashayed outside.

Soon after, our warring Yuletiders fell silent.

Their eyes – as if one big eye - bulged.

Their fists – as if one big fist -thumped the air.

Collective shouts went up:

No, no NO!

Yes, yes YES!

There it was in sharp relief.

The teenager had reappeared, pushed against the sliding doors backgrounding our Christmas luncheon.

Mooning……

The Yuletide Mooning Incident saw the family split even more [if that was possible]

The Free Expressionists went head to head against the Moral Anti-Mooning Majority.

There were no winners.

As for The Mooner, she was frozen out of all family talk and activities for what became known as her Decade In The Mooning Wilderness.

I know she learned a lot there.

For The Mooner was me.

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To tell you the truth, I still feel bad about what I did that Christmas.

But watching ‘The Slap’ has eased the pain.

‘I just couldn’t help it’ was my defence back then – and it remains so now.

But, whose side are you on?

Was The Mooner justified?

Can Mooning ever be justified?

One thing’s for sure, every Australian family has a ‘The Slap’ like incident in its history.

And it’s about time you came clean about yours.Be brave.
Do it now by:

Just clicking on the ‘comment’ thingo and following the simple instructions. The place to write your gems is at the bottom of the last published comment. *A little bit of counsel for people new to this caper. Your email (just called ‘mail’ in this case) address does NOT come up on site. And just ignore the URL thingo.

The Leeton Redlegs Australian Rules Club’s glory period co-incided with my less than glorious adolescence….

I was soooo pathologically nervy, soooooo godamm ‘kookified’ it’s a wonder I’m not writing as the Pacific Rim’s only known survivor of early seventies spontaneous self-combustion.

But……I’m not here [thankfully in one piece] to boast about how a very tortured teenager conquered her fears, eventually exploding onto the highly competitive Riverina dating scene as an audacious, even gleefully obnoxious participant.

No.

I want to speak candidly about a highly charged sports fitness/public/private life debate which always erupted in my hometown whenever a football team of any code resurrected traditional and potent images of masculinity……and made The Finals.

The question?

In the pursuit of maximum testosterone payloads, vital on-field aggression and team coherence should players refrain from conjugal activities the night before The Big Match?

[Coach and team: Pre-grand final training session. Cr: National Library Ireland: flickr]

Everyone had an opinion. Everyone was right. Everyone got cranky.

And, as the big day loomed closer, things got downright ugly.  

The Pre Big Match Abstainer Bloc was made up of sports loving spinsters, clergy, lawn bowlers and 50 percent of club officials. 

They were persistent, mad – and bad.

They even spoke of  kidnapping finals footballers’ wives.

For twenty four hours before The Big Game, they’d be held in camouflaged [dirt covered] caravans in the local Dusty Retreat Van Park and Dirt Slide. 

Their only comforts?

Nine dozen Cadbury Milk Trays and 10 dozen bottles of vintage Porphyry Pearl.

The Pre Big Match match Pro Conjugal Lobby was an unlikely coalition of potential players, players, former players, human rights activists and 50 percent of club officials.

They [many for the first time] spoke of sacred and mysterious relations between man and wife.

And they invoked a breathtaking range of anthropological, literary and scientific sources in support of their argument. 

Those sacred and mysterious relations had served as powerful nerve settlers for sportsmen throughout history -  chariot drivers and gladiators in particular. 

Furthermore, how could you ask brave men to do something which had never – and would NEVER - be asked of young and fit members of a champion netball team?

And so it was that The Big Game would be played – and won or lost.

And I’ll tell you this………

Post The Big Match,  no one ever dared to re-ignite the Coital Conversation whatever the result.   

*About 10 years ago, I was recording a story about the Australian Rules Football Club in the Tasmanian mining town of Queenstown.

It’s a famous club and so it should be.

Games in Queenstown are played on Australia’s only gravel oval. [Mine site 'leftovers']

Anyway, I finally had the chance to ask  a coach of the ‘modern game’ era his view on the ’sacred relations before finals footy’ imbroglio.

He thought, he thought again……he leaned into the mike……..

“There’s tremendous pressure on the blokes in the lead up to Big Games. Tremendous pressure….. 

“My recommendation? ’Don’t change ya routine no matter what it is.’”

…………………………………………………………….

So, is it okay that sports administrators think they have the God given right to go into bedrooms of young Australian sportsmen?

….Or is it just another sign of the ‘win at any cost’ mentality that has taken over our fine sporting traditions?

While I’ve got your attention, many commentators are saying it was very, very disrespectful for the ABC to portray Mr Mathieson and Ms Gillard in an intimate moment under the Southern Cross.

My response?

I think it’s time we got a new flag.

Anything else going on in your life….terrible or terrific?

Do report in…… 

By:

Just clicking on the ‘comment’ thingo and following the simple instructions. The place to write your gems is at the bottom of the last published comment. *A little bit of counsel for people new to this caper. Your email (just called ‘mail’ in this case) address does NOT come up on site. And just ignore the URL thingo.

It’s a terrible loss…

BHP will not be getting my professional services.

I cannot – nor want to - meet its preposterous office etiquette guidelines.

I ask you….

Just what sort of workplace bans open cut egg sandwiches and desk photos of dear old Uncle Fester in cossies……or demands that loud and harassing phone calls to delinquent family members be limited to just ten minutes?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-giant-gets-tough-with-staff-over-manners/story-e6frg8zx-1226120005820

At BHP, I would have been hauled before the Etiquette Committee even before getting the chance to demand with menaces  ’The Thomson Titanium’ company credit card.

…….So dear friends to a day long ago when me and the demands of workplace etiquette clashed in a drama fuelled two hours. 

From minute to minute I knew not where I was headed – and I knew not in what state I’d arrive. 

['Would you like to expand on this doctor's certificate Miss Ross?' cr: State Library, NSW: flickr]

[Warning: do not read on if you're 'queasy averse': adult themes, intimate body references, violence]

I have always sought to extend, to enrich, to frighten myself……

[For what is a job, a date, a diet if not a horror trip with potential perks?] 

And so it was I found myself teaching in a prestigious Department of Journalism at a Choko Bush League regional university: moulding young people into the most ruthless story gathering machines on the Pacific Rim.

I had a winter lecture to give.

Because the place, this place of higher learning had even higher pretensions to much, much higher learning, I arose at dawn to prepare my cutting edge presentation:

‘How to tell the difference between a plain clothes detective and a uniformed police officer at a crime scene’.

Unfortunately, the stresses of last-minute preparation took their grim toll and I’d developed what is sometimes described as an ‘intimate itch’.

Now people close to me [and particularly those a bit further away] know that I’m blind.

In the bathroom that chaotic winter’s morn, I grabbed what I thought was my ‘anti-intimate- itch-cream’.

On application, all hell broke loose. 

It was as if I was burning up – from the inside.

In the ensuing mania, I discovered I’d mistakenly attacked my very core with a wildly unsuitable potion, Nair Hair Removal Creme.  

The pain was unbelievable.

Then I was in a cold bath telling God that if  He would make me whole again I’d go to Africa for free.

My life’s project?

Every village would have a Radio Australia transmitter by 2090.

In a post-trauma state, I stumbled [in much residual pain] into that lecture theatre…….

……..In my favourite ‘bush florals’ flannette pyjamas hidden under a massive coat.

The woolly mammoth had come to speak. 

To my credit, no young news gatherer left the auditorium unable to tell the difference between a uniformed police officer and a plain clothes detective.

I had broken the number one rule of workplace etiquette: dress appropriately.

But I had done my job under supremely difficult conditions.

*A quick visit to a GP that afternoon confirmed that while oversize pyjama pants would provide the most comfortable apparel during a long and sometimes difficult healing process, there was no lasting damage.

***********************************

Thank you for coping with this story……..

It’s very hard to know where to draw the line with very personal information but I’ve always believed most lines are there to be crossed IF matters of good taste are adhered to.

I’d love to know whether you’re well mannered at work and always follow the protocols – no matter how stupid they are.

Perhaps you’ve got no time for workplace manners. How on earth are you surviving in these very regimented times?

Do file a report. It’s easy and fun. Do it by:

Just clicking on the ‘comment’ thingo and following the simple instructions. The place to write your gems is at the bottom of the last published comment. *A little bit of counsel for people new to this caper. Your email (just called ‘mail’ in this case) address does NOT come up on site. And just ignore the URL thingo.

Forgive me Bindi Boo…..

I thought we’d been landed with the most unrepentant foul-tempered family pet on the Pacific Rim.

I now know it wasn’t your fault:

You were depressed.

['I know how Bindi Boo felt': cr: Smithsonian: flickr]

*Ed’s note: I am on the email media release list for Dogs NSW. Spokesman Dr Peter Higgins recently warned that depression in dogs was a real problem but with proper treatment, outcomes were good. St Johns Wart can be helpful.  Signs of dog depression include changes in temperament, loss of appetite and over sleeping.

Like most things arriving in Hec Ross’s fibro palace – new fangled electric foot ticklers, cherry ripe ’seconds’ where the cherry ended up on the outside of the chocolate, bottles of beer which exploded on human contact -  Bindi Boo fell off the back of a truck.

Not a good start for any Australian Silky Terrier.

But Hec wanted his five lovely girls to love something other than Ray Brown And The Whispers, bad local boys and dirty books like ‘Papillon’ [ya know where he put those drugs, ya know where he put those drugs!]

If Dr Higgins had been active in dog mental health when Bindi Boo came to us all those years ago he wouldn’t have mucked around.

He would have told Hec to get Bindi Boo onto a depression fighting regime pronto.

‘Fifteen parts St Johns Wart, one part Pal twice a day Hec.’

Instead, Bindi Boo’s mood swings had a devastating effect on everyone.

One minute he was happily baring his little razor sharp teeth while trying to stick his head through the bars of poor old Cocky Ross’s cage.

Cocky Ross had enjoyed for many years a  quiet - though useless life - in his simple digs near the back door.

If anyone didn’t deserve this sort of unprovoked upset, it was Cocky Ross.

Then without warning, Bindo Boo would turn his crazed emotions on anyone brave enough to be in the backyard.

A mere ‘Hello Bindi Boo’ would see him spring into the air while letting out blood curdling staccato growls.

There followed precision ankle biting landings.

Everybody in my family had bandaged ankles  – and unseemly track marks on their arms from too many Bindi Boo generated tetanus shots. 

Dr Higgins warns that dog depression is also manifest in loss of appetite.

That was NOT our experience with Bindo Boo.

I think his untreated depression had quite the opposite effect.

Bindi Boo demanded – under threat of violence - more and more Pal. 

Fearing greatle what he might do if the answer was ‘no’, we all became Pal pushers.

Bindo Boo got fatter and fatter.

He let himself go which, looking back, would have only increased his anger and anxiety.

Knowing what I know now, I feel sorry that we misdiagnosed Bindi Boo as a ‘bloody awful dog’.

He was really a ‘nice dog’ trapped in a ‘bloody awful dog’s mind’.

I cannot save Bindi Boo.

But it’s up to all of us to closely monitor the mental health of our – and our neighbours’ – current pets.

Before things really get Well Beyond Bluey.

For new visitors, if you liked/hated this story – you probably will like/hate this one. The natural world – and all of its wonders – is a very big part of our ‘Living, Loving, Learning’ theme.

http://www.kerriejean.com.au/2009/03/what-bird-did-that/

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Everybody says the Dog On The Tuckerbox stayed there because he was loyal – but perhaps he was depressed……….isn’t that an awful thought?

Is your pet depressed?

Why not?

If your dog was depressed would you opt for St Johns Wart or go all out with traditional anti-depressants?

Would you be brave enough to ask your pet this straightforward question: Are you depressed?

Perhaps you don’t believe dogs get depressed. Why on earth not?

Write to me…….it’s free and it’s easy. Do it:

Just clicking on the ‘comment’ thingo and following the simple instructions. The place to write your gems is at the bottom of the last published comment. *A little bit of counsel for people new to this caper. Your email (just called ‘mail’ in this case) address does NOT come up on site. And just ignore the URL thingo.

Have just crawled from my bed to the keyboard…….

Why not keep it simple – and walk?

Because I can’t………

Because there’s appalling issues with my [usually reliable] legs…..

….Simultaneous horrendously painful muscle twitching and contractions, deep vein thrombotic knees,  putrid ankle rot,  fissues in the intimate upper inside thigh region………

Why?

Because I’ve just returned from a restorative jaunt to the  Blue Mountains World Heritage listed nature playground where my dear friends insisted I walk.

And being a person who always puts the needs and wishes of others’ before mine, walk I did.

['There's very little to see up here.' cr: University of Washington: flickr]

I am fuming.

I walk every day, mainly from my desk to the staff snacks’ fridge and from the ABC Complaints Department back to the lift before walking in an orderly manner back to my desk.

Why should I walk when I’m relaxing,  getting my dangerous tension/hypertension levels down a notch?

I do that by not walking.

By lying prostrate in World Heritage locations with Sara Lee’s complete product range within arms reach…….

By watching DVDs of my favourite romantic comedies……..’The Shining’,  ‘Silence of The Lambs’ and [and yes, yes, I know it's borderline] ‘Sleepless In Seattle’.

Then……

‘You can’t  lie there all day watching grossly inappropriate material for such a sensitive women…………you’re going for a walk. Get up!’ 

So I do my annual Dunlop Volley Walk.

Along ravines in which the bounties of drought-breaking rains cascade as if God had come back with long, peroxided locks…….

….Up rugged mountains where exquistite native bluebells clutch prehistoric boulders…..

[........Surely, most surely, they would cry out for help if bluebells could talk.......]

……And down, down dark and slippery tracks cradled by bedazzling arrays of moss……..

 And I know, I know as surely as I know the Leeton Redlegs will not be in this year’s grand final, that only one, only one track  will end…….back at the carpark.  

I have done my walk.

Now it seems I may never walk again.

*******************************************************

Is it in our nature to like nature?

Should walking in World Heritage listed areas be banned?

Why, oh why, has it become so hard for people to admit that walking is just not their thing?

****There’s a great untold history of Australian walking  horror stories.

Stop the cover up now. Tell yours. You owe it to yourself – and me.

Do it by:

Just clicking on the ‘comment’ thingo and following the simple instructions. The place to write your gems is at the bottom of the last published comment. *A little bit of counsel for people new to this caper. Your email (just called ‘mail’ in this case) address does NOT come up on site. And just ignore the URL thingo.