KerrieJean.com

Dateline: Sydney, Australia, Friday June 11th, 2010.

Got back from Leeton Wednesday night but have only just woken up.

Still a bit iffy.

Low cumulus cover and one thunder clap at Wagga Wagga Airport set off a traditional free-floating pre-flight nervy. The last thing I remember is downing a handful of valium and ringing Gwennie to tell her how much I loved her……new perm.

What a wonderful trip!

I went to Leeton as a Woman and came back – still a Woman but with two high tech sound cards chock-a-block with honest, hard-working locals speaking openly of their hopes, dreams, fears, extra-marital affairs, water allocations, favourite rice recipes (Rice Medley, Festive Rice Ring) and deeply spiritual quests.

I asked everyone who gave so freely of their time:  Does God Know Leeton Exists?

A quick scan of my notes shows the community is split 50-50. But, I can break the deadlock – and I will!  Yes, yes, YES God knows Leeton exists and He sent his only draftsman Walter Burley Griffin to save it.

Highlights of the ‘embedded in Leeton’  freebie….sorry, ASSIGNMENT.

*The superb professionalism of The Producer. She wouldn’t let me smoke while conducting interviews and, in retrospect, I think her directive was harsh – but probably right in the circumstances.

*The raid on the Leeton-Whitton Crows dressing sheds on Sunday. So powerful was the testosterone aura I fainted and had to be carried out on a stretcher.

*Brazilian Wax, Tresses Salon. Don’t know why I didn’t have one years ago. Feel like Eve in The Garden Of Eden - Pre Original Sin.

Anyway, still a little disorientated…

AND there’s still so much heavy lifting to do for the upcoming kerriejean.com multi-platform series. 

I told The Producer I trusted her implicitly and was – albeit reluctantly – prepared to leave the editing, post-production, scripting, voiceover, on-line design, twittering, Facebook inserts and crazy rounds of pre-publicity interviews to her but she said:

Fat Chance!

Back to bed. Wobble, wobble, wobble……..[memo to self: see detox professional tomorrow if balance still not quite right]

Read on for the Leeton ’on location’ report……. 

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Memories – like the calling of a name, misty water coloured memories - of the way weez were……

Dear, dear kerriejean.com supporters it is now 97 hours since I flew Air Valium from Sydney to the Riverina where I’m darting around – with Australia’s most experienced out-of-work comedy producer - plucking out material for my upcoming ground breaking multi-platform series. 

All funded by YOU.

What, WHAT can I say to convince you that the hired Hyundai hatchback, the prawn cutlet platters, the crazy round of rice paddy visits, the explosive reunions with old flames – and hard edged journalism - are a valid use of YOUR hard earned money?

Perhaps this piece of (visual) evidence?

(The centrepiece of Walter Burley Griffin’s vision for Leeton: Band Rotunda, Chelmsford Place. Cr: Shirmax: flickr)

Or perhaps this (non-visual) snippet?

*Could it have been only Saturday that I was running the gauntlet in Banna Avenue Griffith, investigating reports of Organised Swearing in a city which continues to refuse to lance its boils, cut out the cancer eating away at its very heart – AND giving the Australian television viewing public – with its insatiable appetite for stories which speak to the very heart of who we are – the best night in since ‘My Name’s McGooley, What’s Yours?’

All in all, a personal and professional rollercoaster……..

…..Which today threatens to reach new and dizzying heights with a vist to the world famous bird watchers’ paradise, the Fivebough Swamp, Bog And Wetlands.  

My host is none other than Mr Brent Lawrence whose seminal presentation ‘Leeton In Sixty Seconds’ is shown, discussed and debated at tourism industry seminars worldwide.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdacvI0uRMU&feature=related

Today though, just two questions for Mr Lawrence:

The first:

So Mr Lawrence the Siberian Cranes come all the way from Russia – but why won’t a bloke even come 20 kms from Whitton to take me out?

I have no doubt Mr Lawrence will answer in the manner of the consumate professional he is.

But like most difficult interviews, I will leave my most controversial question to last.

Mr Lawrence, do you identify with the matinee idol, Forrest Tucker, who it is said loved nature in spite of what it did to him?

Apologies for such a quick report back….

It’s all go, go, GO.

My appointment book shows just for this morning – Mr Lawrence, ‘I Love Leeton’ intimate tattoo application, Walter Burley Griffin Memorial Water Towers re-enactment (Leeton High School students will be Tower 1, St Francis College students, Tower 2), Observation platform: Sunwhite Rice Cake processing line – Leeton Rice Mills.

As usual (sigh, sigh, sigh), I will still punch out a small hole in my windows of opportunities to read your posts.

Love to hear what’s happening in your patch (sigh, sigh, sigh) but to be honest I can’t think of anything that could beat what I’ve got going here.

Another thing – since I’ve been in Leeton I’m noticing a great improvement in my facial wrinkles and general jowl line. Gwennie (mum) says it because I’m packing on the weight but I truly think it’s more to do with my plummeting stress levels. You be the judge when the photos go up……

Just click on the ‘comment’ thingo and follow 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.

To live a double life is to be propelled into dark places way out of your usual personal TomTom range…….

(cr: Gabby DC: flickr)

How do I know?

Because I did.

I’d like to say it all started innocently, but that would be a lie.

On a day even more appalling than others, Sister Mary McKillya – of St Joseph’s Convent and Prison Farm, Leeton – made terrible accusations about my relationship with The Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Specifically, that I had weak ties with the best trio that (sort of) ever lived.

Sister Mary McKillya informed me that I was now on a Holy Trinity Disciplinary Programme. 

Daily - at 4pm - I was to collect eggs from Leeton’s most productive chookyard which was in the grounds of the nearby Presbytery. 

After collecting the eggs in a big enamel bucket (provided as part of my programme) I was to cross the road, knock on the convent kitchen door and hand over the eggs to Sister Egg Contact.

*Suspecting there were adult concepts involved I dared not ask why nuns could not – in pairs, if need be - harvest their own eggs.

That afternoon, I told Gwennie her daughter was an Egg Runner. 

Without hestitation, in a threatening tone which I had never heard before, or since, she said:

I WANT SOME AND I’LL PAY.

And so it was that Egg Pimp Gwennie put a false bottom in the enamel bucket.  

For a while, I was happy. I collected the eggs. I hid four and I handed over the rest to Sister Egg Contact. Sometimes, Sister Egg Contact would give me rainbow cake and lemonade. And talk about how Sister Mary McKillya was pleased with my progress on the Trinity Discipline Programme:

She is turning into a fine Egg Collector and is earning trust…..

Thank you Sister Egg Contact……

…..All the while thinking: 

You dare come near that bucket, and I swear to God I won’t be able to guarantee your personal safety…..swear to God I WON’T!!!

Every Friday, Gwennie paid up.

But she was changing. And not in a nice way. She was high, drowning in the compliments she got about cakes made with the contraband Super Eggs.

I’d take a vow of celibacy if it meant all my eggs could be like that……..

And then one day:

I want more KJ, I WANT MORE!

Soon, I was reporting to Sister Egg Contact that I wasn’t masquerading as a vet BUT the chooks didn’t look at all well – in fact, half dead -  AND hardly any were laying.

By then, I had so much cash I was laundering it in Griffith - buying dozens and dozens of boob tubes which I knew I’d never get to wear.

Gwennie, who had been so loved for her modest nature, turned obnoxious. She spent her days pushing sponges:

Look at this,  will you please just take a look at THIS!!!

So, how did it all end?

If I don’t say so myself, very well thank you.

One day, Sister Egg Contact announced that the St Vincent de Paul society wanted to resume the chookyard site for charitable purposes. I was to be re-assigned to altar cleaning duties.

And Gwennie?

She went back to being nice.

But not before she’d made it very clear around town that she thought the nuns use of child labour, disgraceful.

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*So, there you have it – I’m out, out, OUT and proud of it. I hope Gwennie feels the same way – I really, really do…..

Have you ever lived (or ARE living ) a double life? Would love to know all about it. Anyone who tells you it can’t  sometimes be fun is really having themselves on, don’t you think?

Perhaps you have just have fond memories of a chookyard from long ago…..

And, as usual, the poetry, the prose and the peccadillos that ARE  the stanzas of your life (did I really write that?) are eagerly awaited…….

All posters take a deep breath…and just click on the ‘comment’ thingo and follow 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.

‘Furnace like’ would be a gross understatement in describing the heat in the small irrigated township of Leeton on January 25th, 1957.

SO fierce, rice paddies turned into geysers and cling peaches became lethal when they exploded right off trees taking out thousands of innocent seasonal pickers….

Fearing for the lives of their sweltering elderly flock, church leaders declared nudity mandatory at a scheduled Methodist Picnic….

And at the Leeton Swimming Pool, desperate bathers had to be treated for shock when unprecedented evaporation emptied the Olympic size pool in just under eight minutes. 

In the middle of the chaos, Gwennie screamed: ‘It feels like I’ve got a catering size can of  peaches inside me!!!’

And out I came in the ’Warren’s Tiling  Memorial Delivery Room’ at the Leeton District Hospital. 

Girl number FIVE for Hec and Gwennie Ross who were already having trouble keeping their dignity, remaining proud of their brood in a town where the birth of a boy always generated up to 19 times as many pressies.

[Cr: Lynn (Gracie's mom) - I'm here and there's photostream: flickr]

While Gwennie was safely bringing her catering tin of peaches into The Riverina,  Hec was hard at work at the Letona Cannery telling everyone that  ‘he wouldn’t mind a boy’.  HOWEVER,  if God  - who had the right to be a real bastard -  decided this was not to be, so be it.

Hec appeared rational but underneath he was in turmoil, grappling with not only urgent gender issues but also recurring thoughts of  Gwennie’s birthing day routine.

And the fact that he’d experienced it several times before Januray, 1957, made it no less disturbing.

To be fair – by the time I was born – Gwennie always tried to get to hospital a good 20 minutes before having a baby.

Ever since Hec was forced to mentally scrub up and nearly had to go into delivery mode for girl two, Merrilee Anne, on the front bench seat of  Holden CLU 295 in his town’s bustling main street, Pine Avenue, he’d made himself  crystal clear on future obstetric protocols: ‘A man would appreciate a bit of warning.’

On the 25th of January, 1957,  things did go to plan but Hec was still left with free floating emotions – equal parts tenderness and terror.

As usual, a 34cms dilated Gwennie screaming:  ’When we going to get a Labor Government? WHEN we going to get a Labor Government? WHEN WE GOING TO GET A F****** LABOR GOVERNMENT?’ was conveyed in CLU 295 to Leeton’s crack Imminent Birth Squad. 

Hec - now with terror and tenderness threatening to bring him undone - drove (as per THE protocols) in a manner dangerous to work clutching at the certainty that a phone call would come though within the hour.

Which it did.

To say that the catering size tin of peaches had arrived in the form of Girl Number Five.

Apart from begging the doctor to closely monitor genitals and immediately report back  if there were any changes,  Hec was excited.

In line with protocol,  he drove in a manner dangerous back to the hospital, gave Girl Number Five a cuddle while winking at Gwennie and nodding: ‘ SHE’s a champion, another bloody champion!’

Not much later, Hec was heard telling a celebratory scrum in the Leeton Hotel that everyone in it had better comes to terms with the FACT that it was the most virile blokes – the blokes with the killer sperm – that had been proven to produce far more girls than their unfortunate counterparts*.

* It really is very sad that Hec wasn’t around to witness the scientific advances which proved him right.

‘To increase your chances of conceiving a girl, you should have intercourse 3-4 days before ovulation. Men produce two types of sperm — those carrying the X or female chromosome, and those that carry the Y or male chromosome. These two types of sperm are different in several ways: the male y-sperm cells are smaller, weaker, but faster than the female x-sperm cells, which are bigger, stronger, but slower. Therefore, if you have sex 3-4 days prior to ovulation, you have a better chance of conceiving a girl, because the weaker male sperm cells will die off, and the female sperm cells will be available in greater quantity when the egg is released.’

http://www.ovulation-calendar.com/hlp-d02-ovulation-and-pregnancy.html

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So good on Hec and all the other highly virile Australian fellas who produce girls. And let’s be all clear on this - these superb men have NEVER been given their due. 

Desperate to hear from particularly virile posters……

Perhaps you were born in the ‘Warren’s Tiling Memorial Delivery Room’ at Leeton District Hospital and want to publically thank  the great team there…….

And, as usual, just great to hear from everyone simply compelled to pass on their news/observations.  Everything is valid. Remember, you’re in a site which not only tolerates but positively celebrates the glorious rainbow that is humankind.

All posters take a deep breath…and just click on the ‘comment’ thingo and follow 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 – just ignore it

Call me old-fashioned, call me anything you like but Australia’s international reputation IS important. So important that currently, we have a PM who spends more than half our GDP living overseas, constantly spreading the message of an urbane, sophisticated Federation.

So, how could it come to this?

Pile of Gelato (flickr credit: Gio JL)

Before someone put shit in someone’s chocolate gelato served up in the bistro of Sydney’s iconic Coogee Bay Hotel, Australia had only been mentioned once this year in the international media. That was when the first of the Steve Irwin impersonators started do live crocodile taming acts in pubs around outback Queensland.

But now, thanks to the the most unspeakable case of shit sabotage ever reported anywhere, we’re hitting the international headlines like never before. I’m NOT proud and neither should you be….

Click here for:  Trusted Sample Of International Shit-In-Gelato Coverage.

So….Where to now?  (more…)

I would say at the outset that the ABC had the wrong title.
It should be The Prime Minister is MESSING.

credit: flickr dbking

Click here to remind yourself what the ABC was doing: The Prime Minister Is Missing.

Messing around is not uncommon among politicians, particularly those of high ministerial ranking, and Harold Holt was no exception.

In his case, it was not a typiste (forgive me for the non-feminist final vowel) or a reverent, kneeling Clintonesque internette.

At last it can be revealed. It was Messing with the Occult. (more…)

You know about growth spurts. Before going to sleep, your vital stats were (for example) age, 7, height, two-and-a-half feet, weight, 4 stone. But on awakening, great distress. Your revised vital stats? Age 7, height, two-and-three-quarters feet, weight 4 stone 8lbs. All very kooky, all potentially devastating.

BUT back then, tight-knit caring communities appointed growth spurt monitors. In my case, Betty from just up the road would just happen to rock up with much bigger, smellier Dunlop Volleys and a frayed selection of more appropriately sized outer garments. And Betty knew her job was to calm me down. Once, when I told her I was surely, surely headed for the back blocks of Idaho on a college basketball scholarship, she said: No way KJ – that’s just being right up yasself. It’s just a little growth spurt…..

Not so, with the potentially devastating syndrome that is the age spurt……. (more…)