“If I only had a brain…”
Arlen/Harburg 1939
Wizard of Oz
Chapter Three
Retirement Begins…
Right now!
We were near Cow Bay Beach, Daintree, Queensland; the heart of the Northern Tropics and in the middle of a national park. We had lived in the tropics for a few years prior and a more idyllic spot could not be found…except for the Island of Roi Namur in the Bikini Atoll, a unique place for a university campus where we found ourselves as lecturers one endless warm year. However, the physics axiom is true. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The tropical streams were transparent and cool…and hid crocodiles. The overhanging rich, green foliage cast wonderful shadows…and hid crocodiles. The blue/green ocean surf sang soft golden lullabies…and contained lurking crocodiles. But we were old hands at crocodiles by now as we had taken two tours into the fabled crocodile infested tropical waters of the Queensland tropics which included one week in Cook Town, for us, the undisputed crocodile capital of the world although anyone from Darwin would dispute that title. In a typical manner we were having two experiences at the same time; starting retirement and taking our first holiday since Joan’s accident a few years prior. We both needed to be recharged. Our emotional batteries were about as flat as our bank account…but, “Merrily Onwards”, Joan sang. I felt more like Alfred E. Newman: “What! Me Worry?” We had become almost blasé about crocodiles, small, middle sized and giant five metre horse eaters. Our blaséness was about to be challenged. Our feelings about crocodiles had been masked by cocktails on a rather posh ten metre cruiser as it wound around glades and through dappled waterways. Some tourists even noted that small crocs were ‘cute’. I remember the woman who said it was wearing high heels and was redolent with red lipstick. I was hoping she would fall overboard. Now we were up and intimate with the crocodilian world; and we were on bicycles.
I remember the bike path to Cow Bay Beach very well. It was smooth and wide. I have always had a sticky mind, remembering some things that had best be forgotten, recalling words and songs and poetry that have no meaning but get stuck some place between the pituitary and the cerebellum and find exit at strange moments becoming a mantra of the moment, repeating the words endlessly. Perhaps I should have listened to this particular voice of warning which leapt out of my head and spilled over onto the handle bars of my bike. From Tennyson these words soared and Lord Alfred’s words jumped. From somewhere, I remembered, “The shadow of his loss drew like eclipse, darkening the world. We have lost him: he is gone…” For a brief moment I saw myself being swallowed by a giant crocodile. We glided silently on the forest track. In the Canadian woods one makes noises to alert the bears. I found myself, for obvious reasons to me, furiously ringing my bike bell.
“Buck! Stop!” Joan shrieked behind me. “A huge crocodile is on the path!” I had always said that in our biking I would take the lead…to protect Joan…but I never really meant it. I always thought that snarly dogs would chase the second person, thus allowing me to leave the scene quickly or at least have time to get out my ‘dog concoction’. The dog concoction was a mixture of turpentine, cayenne pepper and kerosene. This was used because a law had been passed that we citizen mortals could not carry a mace spray to protect ourselves from marauding hounds. Only the police were considered dependable enough to squirt dogs. The dog bottle concoction was kept in a squeeze pack and only once did I think it was water. That error would never be made again. I could squirt about two metres (with the bottle) and a hard squeeze could stop a raging Rhodesian Ridgeback…or so I figured with my unerring ability to predict the behaviour of wild beasts.
Sure enough! Joan knew her crocs! There, right there, ten feet in front of me, was a three meter croc. He was smiling and waiting. I swear he was smiling…at me! I skidded to a sideways stop and at least now if said croc was going to eat me he would have to swallow the bicycle first. That gave me some small comfort. I imagined the croc engorged with my new, expensive bike and my legs and arms entwined within. I also discovered that it is possible to go backwards on a bike as fast as you can move forward. Brave helpmate Joan simply disappeared and the croc continued to smile. I am sure that Cow Beach was named after the cow that a giant crocodile ate one day at an unnamed beach in the Daintree. I never did discover if crocs could be stopped by my cayenne pepper potion. We would discover a few days later if it stopped a lion killing Rhodesian Ridgeback. Retirement and old age, if this continued, would be just as difficult as picking blue berries in a Canadian swamp with black bears vying for the fruit. Damn! I forgot to write to Rockie…
“Dear Rockie,
It happened again. I started writing about what Joan and I have been doing or had done in our travel-retirement period with an eye on the problems of ageing and things we face. I don’t seem to be able to keep control of a single idea as I am having such a good time remembering the past. Right now I am sitting under the fig tree in the back yard and thinking of our past adventures. Oh, well, and I forget that I am helping you with your Honours paper…or at least some of the research. I just wrote about the beginning of our glorious retirement in Queensland when I just turned sixty and Joan was a dapper fifty-four. I will leave the foregoing as part of the emails I send to you. Hence, I will leave you to sort things out via our next meeting.
Things do conspire with each other to make unintended consequences and I know that one bad happening does not lead to another and that events do not happen in three. How was I to know that a ten foot Taipan snake would shortly chase us down a short hill? Yes, ten feet…that is three metres! Yes, chase us! About the same length as the croc…but thin…and very fast. Tasmanians like to brag that a large tiger snake has enough venom to kill 20,000 mice but the image of such a large number of mice standing in line waiting to be bitten somehow does not compute. Well, the Taipan is not only the most venomous snake in the world, so Australians claim, they are quick, fast strikers and they especially inhabit sugar cane fields. We were moving quickly by a cane field which was being harvested. Surely the local Taipans lurked and were being disturbed by the harvesting machinery. We were warned by our Queensland son-in-law Bruce, when we started our trip that the snake was found not only in and around sugar cane fields, especially at harvest time, but also in coastal heaths, grassy beach verges and generally cultivated areas. All of these we intended to visit frequently. “If you are far from help”, Bruce jokingly told us, “just lie down and die.” The Taipan has a bite, he informed us, which is fifty times more toxic than a cobra’s and I knew that about twenty thousand people die from cobra bite each year in India. We had already survived a crocodile experience. Two hours later we were about to be polished off by a giant Taipan. I continued to lead the way with Joan following a few metres behind…a continuing error.
The tropics are not only seductive for a person from cool Tasmania or chilled Canada, they are mesmeric mind stealers. It is quite possible to feel nothing, hear nothing and float with nothing but a warm trade wind on your back. It was in that somnambulant state that we glided along the sugar cane field. The Great Dividing Range was at its deepest green as storms had momentarily swept the slopes. Here was the great reward of being on a bike: sunshine, warm breezes and an empty road. Such moments do not happen very often when touring. In my mind I believe I was in a canoe on some Rocky Mountain glacier lake. I was shocked back into my senses.
My saving nemesis, Joan, shrieked again, “Oh, my God! A snake! Good Lord, a huge snake.” Then she shouted words I had never heard her utter, being the gentle woman she is, “Holy Shit! A bloody giant snake…and its coming after you Buck! Oh! Jesus!” Now, Joan and I have been items and happily yoked together for almost forty years. We are frequently referred to as, “The Bobsies” due to our virtually always being together. There is not much we do not know about each other. Joan has a special snake cry as I do. I first heard hers when we were working on a grave yard book series in Tasmania. I was about to step off a tombstone onto a curled and waiting tiger snake. Joan’s snake shriek registers at the top of about a 747 flying just over your head and at the highest registration possible for the human ear to recognize. Her snake shriek has been known to send flocks of ravens scuttling and cars stopping. I respond with very philosophical, “Oh, dear…” I believe those were the last words Mahatma Ghandi uttered before he died. “Oh, dear…,” I wisely repeated to the taipan and then added the very intelligent, “You are right!”
Taipans are fast. I mean they are really, really fast! This one was in practice for a snake marathon and undoubtedly would have been the winner of any competition. From Joan’s first terrified screech, when the Taipan was approximately ten metres away, to the end of Joan’s screech which ended with, …”Jesus!”, the Taipan was now only a few feet away and headed straight for me. I saw the headline in the Launceston Examiner, “Emberg Dead by Taipan Strike”. I remember thinking I would finally have my moment of Warhol glory. You know, time does slow down when you are about to die. My brother-in-law, Marvin, who drowned when he was about seventeen, in a Minnesota glacier lake, said that it was rather pleasant dying. He even remembered being pumped out and not wanting to go back to life. Perhaps, I thought as the snake in slow motion began his ultimate and final attack, I am sure he thought I was responsible for all the disruption in his cane field and he was going to deal with me…NOW! This was one existential snake.
Having the gift of emotional slow motion, I had already decided that if he kept coming as fast as he was I could not turn around and escape. Instead, I aimed directly at him, thinking that perhaps he could not strike straight up. And Taipan looked directly at me! I noticed that one eye was bigger than the other and he looked like a beautiful piece of golden marble. I wonder if he thought I looked good. I left a two inch groove in the tarmac from my spinning wheels. I moved in the near death-slow motion past the slow motioned snake. He struck! He missed my leg! His head and body were caught in the rear spokes and he was tumbled about! Taipan now looked like a pretty rope. I actually wondered if a person who is about to be hanged, sans head cover, would think that the rope around his neck looked like a snake. Now, I guess, Taipan was really mad…but, happily, badly wounded by the speeding spokes which were now slightly faster than the speed of sound. Old Taipan fell off the bike wheel and limped…if a snake can limp…away, getting ready for another day. And Joan? The coward was about 500 metres away shouting, “Are you alright, Buck?” What she really meant was that she was glad it was not her that tangled with Taipan but she was pleased I was not dead, I guess. Besides, we had no life insurance. Here we were, four hours into retirement and we had survived two near-death experiences. By the time I was seriously old, say eighty, what stories would I have to tell Rockie’s children?
Oh Mother, you were so right, old age ain’t for sissies!
Buck Thor Emberg
Buck is a traveller. He and his wife Joan began their travelling life together 37 years ago. They have lived in twelve countries and travelled in 126. Buck sees himself as a humourist with a philosophical bent. He recently completed his PhD in Tasmanian History and holds other degrees in Philosophy, History and Theology but still sees himself as a boy from a dirty little railroad village close to the border of Canada…on the USA side. He has been a cleaner of railroad spitoons, brick carrier, football player, teacher, city planner, clergyman and has been trying to retire for decades. For this he has always failed as the next book or work has already started and he has never been able to keep a job.
In this work, Old Age Ain’t for Sissies, Buck takes us travelling with him and Joan across Australia and North America as they attempt to retire. His humourous philosophy is scattered throughout the book as bits of home-spun truths and gleanings from other writers and thinkers. He refers to himself as a Kierkegaardian Existentialist…which essentially mean his mind and life come straight from the Chaos Theory. This is a work about how to or how not to retire.
Buck is deeply involved in the environmental problems of Tasmania and belongs to a number of conservation groups in which he is very active.
We would like you to take these trips with Buck and Joan and certainly respond with comments or additions if you wish. He may be reached by email at:
[email protected]
These installments of the serialized book continue fortnightly.
Get on your philosophical bicycle and join them.
