Flying in the Face of Old Age (9): One Victorious Crocodile and Two Dead Pigs

CHAPTER NINE

Public Decency
A.E. Housman
1859-1936

Though some at my aversion smile
I cannot love the crocodile.
Its conduct does not seem to me
Consistent with sincerity.

One Victorious Crocodile and Two Dead Pigs

‘Dear Rockie,

Been awhile since I wrote but I can tell you that my hopeful story about growing older surrounded by golden halos and shadowed in warm shade by a silvered sun becomes less true as we get older. That is just not the way life happens. Sometimes things get caught in our emotional gizzards and living gets harder and more complex with each passing week. Oh, gosh, today I piled wood for about an hour and I am buggered and almost broken. A new pill I have been using for arthritis is causing indigestion so I now have to take a pill to cancel out another pill…where does it end? Don’t tell me. I know. Peggy Lee called it the ‘…final disappointment,’ which is pretty good existentialism.

Our bikes are still an important part of our ego projections and we take pride in knowing that we are now undoubtedly the oldest people at the outdoor race track…also the slowest and worst dressed but we take pride in whipping the smart-alec eight or nine year olds in a short spurt of former glories. I guess it has come to that. However, to get to ‘that’ you have to have been ‘somewhere’.

I take comfort in knowing I have learned a crafty way to defeat young cyclists who are all dressed up in the latest clobber, in the most expensive carbon bikes and replete with the most recent fifty-speed shifting system. Here is how I outwit them: like a spider, I wait at a green light just about to turn red and act like I am fumbling with the gears…ready to pounce. Young bucks come sidling up, snivelling at the old man who can’t keep his gears up. I engage them with useless chatter asking what goo they use in their tires to stop punctures, knowing they have to concentrate on their complex gear systems.

Just as the light is about to turn green I throw out the challenge, ‘Bet I can rip you off in a quick dash,’ and I spurt forward in my already properly shifted gear. These young bucks are always taken by surprise and become chagrined and irritated. I leap ahead while they are busy accepting the challenge by the ‘Really Old Guy with the Grey Beard’ and fiddling with their fancy gear systems. I am usually in front for the first forty metres and then I stop. They come thundering by and I shout my now well rehearsed one-liner, You should be ashamed, all you did was beat an eighty-year old man, I thought you guys were athletes! They usually know they have been ‘had’ and shout back imprecatory barbs and some see the humour and laugh.

The point is and herein is my new Old Man’s Motto: ‘Always bet on old age and guile rather than depending upon youth and ability. Old age and cunning will eventually win!’

On one trip somewhere around McKay, not long after the lion dog episode, Joan was cut off by a huge, black SUV which almost skittled her. The tires of the monster were almost as tall as she. Not to be outdone, tough little Joan sped after and followed for about two kilometres and when the young woman stepped down from the SUV in front of her home there was my lovely, kind and quiet bride full in her mug and showing all the signs of a red faced, homicidal maniac! I happily did not hear what she said to SUV Sal as she sometimes remembers words learned from miners on the West Coast of Tasmania. Never saw that sort of behaviour before…even towards one of our teenagers who would have earned any barbed phrases. SUV Sally took up the challenge and they looked more like two roosters about to join in mortal combat. Sally’s husband came out and saw what was happening and leaned against the porch post. He was not going to miss this one. I suspect he had to oversee his wife often. He glanced at me, nodded, winked and smiled. I watched, knowing I had help if my homicidal partner went totally amok. ‘Go back to Pommie Land where you came from you bitch,’ young Sal screeched. Joan’s mind blew and she spat back like a tigress, ‘I was born and raised in Tasmania. Don’t call me a bloody stupid Pom you idiot banana bender! Get a scooter that fits your insignificant ability.’ Now Sal was the offended and her red face exceeded Joan’s. Porch-leaning Sam came off his perch and I dismounted from my bike. Before the two roosters joined in real conflict I was able to get Joan back on her bike and Porch-husband was leading a shaking wife to the house who, like Joan, was babbling incoherently. Bike rage and road rage had met and the result was a draw.

For the next two hours nothing was said but I think we made about fifty kilometres on the Bruce Highway. Momentous I guess. Imagine, Joan saying nothing for two hours. No, a record.

Rockie, I know you have never seen Grandma blow up…and neither had I; but being on a bike, being a Tasmanian and called a stupid Pom, and being nearly sixty-four years old is a volatile and dangerous mix which can explode at any time. ‘Old age’, as mother used to say, ‘ain’t for sissies!’

We laugh about it now but don’t ever call Grandma a stupid Pom, you would be in danger. Just kidding.

Hugs,

Grandpa.

PS Killed nine chooks last week. Come over when you can.

…

The night had closed in on us three croc hunters.

Little Ernie was on my left, about ten metres away and said he was an avowed coward. Knocker, on my right, only grunted. It was now deep night. We were moving in the tall grass towards Big Bend Billabong, the sharp bend ox-bow, home of a legendary seventeen foot saltwater croc. I held in my shaking hand the largest pistol I have ever seen, a .357 Super Super Magnum which would have impressed Clint Eastwood. Wilbur, dropping it in my hand said that it would stop an elephant…fine, but would it stop a man-eating croc? The revolver weighed about four kilos I thought. This is insane! What am I doing here? My mind raced back to another crazy hunting moment in British Columbia, Canada… I was bear hunting. Then, as tonight, I was helping a farmer friend. A very large black sow, still with two cubs, had invaded his orchard and destroyed a number of apple trees. He said she came back every night. That evening, hunting a rogue bear, was my personal time of life when shooting and hunting deer, moose, caribou, squirrels… all game… was part of my way of life. If I ever make it to the pearly gates I am sure there will be dozens and hundreds of animals, whose life I have taken mostly for food but sometimes for trophies. They will be challenging me for entrance into the golden lights. If my former victims have a democratic vote I will definitely not make it in.

It was a beautiful morning, and the sun was coming up over the snow crested Golden Ears and the intimate glacier on which I had spent so many awful moments glinted its hard glare. The sheer joy of the moment should have been enough as the brisk autumnal odours pungently attacked my senses. But there I was, hunting a bear…which had now turned into three bears…and I was alone. I knew the bear was below me and the morning breeze hushed up the side of the mountain. I knew I was close to my first bear trophy. Or the bear was close to its own trophy. Then it happened! From nowhere, a fog descended from the Olympian heights and protected my target. Like Samson, I was eyeless. Sounds of apple trees being reduced to splinters shattered the fog-dampened quiet. Hair stood on the nape of my neck for now, all around me, were perfect indications that I was between mother bear and cubs. I was in serious trouble. Suddenly, my high-powered rifle felt more like a BB gun. Fortunately, I was an accomplished hunter and knew when and how to beat a retreat. I knew that big black mother bears do not simply attack. When protecting their cubs…they kill and then eat you! I had no intention of being apple sauce for any bear bunch. I followed a row of apple trees towards my truck and the fog was even denser. As happens so often to me at times of peril, I hum a nonsensical tune or sing a silly song to myself. A part of an old hymn sprang to my throat as I gingerly fingered the apple trees:

Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, some great decision, offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever, ‘twixt that darkness and that light.
Then it is the the brave man chooses wile the cowards stands aside…

I was now the coward. All my internal organs shouted to retreat. I prayed that none of my quarries were going to meet me head on. Finally, after long moments of grasping wet apple branches…there it was, my welcoming Ford ghost-like ute, outlined in the fog-drenched orchard. Shakily, I got in, set the rifle down and started to empty the magazine, something I had done hundreds of times. I shot a hole through the front of the car! Fortunately, the bullet went through the floorboards and did not ricochet into the engine. I never had to explain to anyone about the time I shot my car instead of a marauding bear.

Now, by a billabong in tropical Queensland, here I was halfway around the world, helping another farmer friend kill an animal that wanted to eat me. This time, the pistol felt more like a squirt gun than a high-powered weapon. Once more Joan was smarter than I as she was now luxuriating in a hot tub and probably drinking a bottle of cold riesling. What good would have been done for the world if we happened to destroy a giant animal that only ate dogs, kangaroos and stupid people? Instead, we should have captured him and sent him as a present for the American Stock Market. They needed a few lessons about being eaten.

Crazy Wilbur, the man who could cry over his dying dog and speak lovingly about the glories of being a simple dirt farmer had changed from the giant gargantuan man who jiggled when he walked to a man gloriously encased in his four wheel drive, cut-down-pig-shooting-vehicle. His ute blazed more brightly than Mel Gibson’s Road Warrior monster. He was after pigs and he would get them…’by gawd!’

I was left in the company of two other cowards. All of us had weapons and carried very large torches. We had been told by Wilbur that when we saw the giant saltie we should blind him with the torches and shoot him between the eyes. That was all very well and good except, how do you shoot a giant dinosaur when his mouth is wide open, and you cannot see his eyes, only his gapping mouth?

From the billabong, only a few metres away, came the sound. One cannot explain, express or describe the sound and feeling of a giant base drum accompanied by clashing cymbals of heavy metal. The old bull’s bellow could be felt as easily as heard. Knowing exactly what to do I bravely shouted, ‘I am getting the hell out of here,’ and quickly turned to run, but already my two hunting expert partners were well ahead of me and on their way to the house and cold beer.

Crazy Wilbur returned with his hunting partner and two large pigs tied to the roof rack. His face was aglow. His giant body seemed to have lost half of its bulk. He was almost athletic. It was easy to see why he had been such a successful politician: he had the killer instinct and could be as sweet as honey when it suited him….and he could cut up a carcass while it was still warm and kicking.

I have never been on a hunt when there was not a campfire around which the now elevated hunters share their exaggerations, outright lies and tales. Hunting with Wilbur was no different and Joan had new insights into the difference between male and female. Men are simply beasts! Wilbur told stories for at least three hours. Every one was funny and insightful. The next day we left and Wilbur was crying and asked us to stay. We wanted to stop but still had two thousand kilometres to travel and Joan was now making noises about biking across Canada when we got home and rested up.

Getting ready to illegally cross the Brisbane river on the dreadful meccano-set bridge (on which a sign blared ‘No Bike Riders’), we stopped for a cuppa to settle our nerves at a tiny espresso shop and amazingly met a friend we had not seen in five years. Travelling is like that. We read in the Brisbane Courier that Wilbur died. He made the front page as ‘Premiers Premier Man Dead’. His story went on to page two with additional pictures in the Feature section. Basically, we read that Wilbur had started life in the Outback shooting roos and pigs and had made his life sojourn quickly to become part of the glorious power people of Queensland without ever realizing he was either glorious or powerful. He had held ten different ministries in various governments. Wilbur must have been the same to everyone as he was to us those two glorious days. We had not written to tell him what an immense time we enjoyed on his farm. We hope he died before his dog Walda. We think it was probably the other way around. Walda probably died and Wilbur asked, ‘Is that all there is? If that’s all there is then I am going home.’ Must have been one helluva funny funeral…if people told the truth. One of my current dreams is of Wilbur astride a giant croc and I am standing in the tall grass…alone.

Once to every place and nation comes a person like Wilbur.