Uncut: Manjimup

21/7/2007

It’s not cold enough. Nowhere near.

And when the temperature does drop it doesn’t stay low enough long enough.

All right, I should explain.

It’s all about cherries.

Thing is, every year, in December, there’s a festival in Manjimup, my other home town: The Manjimup Cherry Harmony Festival.

Yes, I know, I’m a Bridgetown boy, but I’m also from Manjimup, another town full of people named Doust, Giblett, Blechynden and Muir. All right, there are also some Fontaninis, Ipsens, Omodeis, Radomiljacs, Reeves and Easts and some of them even married some of us.

Manjimup is one of those towns that was blessed from the beginning. It had everything: magnificent timber, excellent rainfall, healthy rivers and rich soils.

Along the way, some folk arrived blind, or became blind, or looked the other way, got something stuck in their eyes, or couldn’t help but look back to where they came from.

In short, they couldn’t see the blessings.

Thankfully, things and people change.

When I arrived in 1969, battered and bruised from a twelve month stint as a bank-johnny in Papua and New Guinea, I was blind too.

Manjimup was cold, wet, full of cousins I didn’t know existed, big men with big hands, three football teams and my father wanted me to run the family’s supermarket.

I stayed four years, regained my sight, played football for the mighty Deanmill Hawkes, fell in love a couple of times, added retailing to the list of things I didn’t want to do and met the finest group of people it had been my luck to encounter in my entire 24 years.

Rick Sneeuwjagt, then a fiery young man with a trunk like a karri tree, befriended me and invited me out to Deanmill, a mill town and home to one of country football’s legendary teams.

The mill has taken a battering over the years but the club hasn’t missed a beat.

The great John Todd started out there as did legendary weatherman Gary Boterhoven, one of the finest exponents of the drop kick ever. During a game against Boyup Brook Gary kicked a ball out of the ground and they found it one week later in Donnybrook.

Then there were these blokes: Harvey Giblett, or Three-trunks as we called him; Arthur Reeves, a noisy, tough bugger who once broke 15 jaws in an opposing team, all before half time; Peter Fontanini, a man who was a legend even before he was a legend; and Juggy Rice, named, not because he could scull a jug of beer in record time, or because of the shape of his person, but rather because the top of his head only came up to the average jugular.

My supermarket days included exciting events like a truck load of produce, an occasional break-in and disputes with the landlords over ablution block cleanliness.

If that wasn’t enough, there was always the annual illegal potato buy-up. It was a cat, shop-owners, and mouse, Potato Board Inspectors, game.

It was scary, thrilling and just what a young shop manager needed to keep him on his toes. Once, while on the shop-floor dripping sweat and evil smells, the team and I were confronted by a local politician who ranted about the evils of the black-market spud, the spud bought from dirty unofficial spud sellers. Friends of ours. I always wondered if he knew that as he droned on and on his wife was busy buying 10kilos of the devil’s tasty tubers.

Those days are long gone, of course, the Dousts no longer run a supermarket and all potatoes currently sold in the Shire of Manjimup are true blue Western Potatoes.

Cherries, however, are not blue, or a tuber, they are a fruit, red and Manjimup cherries are the finest, juiciest and reddest.

The Cherry Harmony Festival was born on a cold day in September in 2002, when 300 people gathered to talk about the town, its past, future and beyond.

2002 was shaping up as an ugly one for the Manjimup community, but four handsome women stood out from the crowd after I yelled “What this town needs is a cherry festival” and screamed “Yes it does and we’re going to do it”.

It did, they did and they are still doing it.

And if the weather gods give us 300 hours under 7degrees Celsius between now and December, we might even get a crop.

Uncut: pyschological models

14/7/2007

It’s an inconvenient truth, but we’re all different.

When I’m not writing this column, I work with a number of psychological models, all of them based on the work of a Swiss bloke called Carl Gustav Jung.

Jung, a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, was for many years a great mate of Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist and father of psychotherapy.

They had a helluva time in the beginning, lots of hi-teas and late night conversations, but then Jung went and wrote a couple of books Freud didn’t appreciate, or understand, or the pages were stuck together. I can’t remember.

Jung also made up his own mind about a couple of things Freud was very keen on and one day blurted out: “Oedipus, smedipus, give it a break, Siggy.”

Or something like that. Or nothing like that but whatever it was it was the end of their relationship.

All these models I work with are based on Jung’s book, Personality Types, first published in German in 1921.

When I’m not hard at it thumping words into keyboards, that’s what I do, not that I need to work, of course, because this column, as you can imagine, pays a lot of money, more than enough to pay the mortgage, the small loan on the other property, the big loan on the private jet, send all the kids to private schools and make sizeable contributions towards the International Monetary Fund debts of several South American nations.

One of the characteristics of a person with my particular profile is that we are easily distracted and tend to go on a bit in a way that seems to have very little to do with the point we are trying to make. Have you noticed?

Now, the beauty of a simple psychological mode is that it helps you come to grips with the fact that there is a kind of mind that will answer the simple question “How much are you paid to write that crap?” with a simple answer: “$50”.

What the model helps you realise is that most minds you interact with operate differently and people are not being the way they are in order to intimidate you, or incite you, it’s just the way they are.

Then again, some folk just can’t help being pricks, whatever their personality types.

Then there is another kind of mind, like the one I mentioned earlier, that will seem to disappear into a surreal world of crazy references, contradictions and weird juxtapositions, when all you wanted was a simple: “$50.”

You might have guessed by now, mine is a bit like that.

So is Terry Gilliam’s, the film director of Brazil, Baron Munchausen and the creator of the graphics for Monty Python. So was John Lennon’s. And Bill Cosby’s.

The strait forward mind, very much like the one my dad had, sees everything for what it is, nothing more, or less.

Hildegard has a mind like that too and often I would take a phone call from dad to be told: “Put your wife on will you. I need to talk some sense.”

The problem is, of course, those people with the seemingly crazy mind think the people with the strait-forward mind are boring and those with the strait-forward mind think those with the crazy mind have overdosed on some mind altering substance.

So, you can see why dad and I didn’t see mind to mind.

Mind you, he had a great sense of humour, and once said to a Manjimup Shire Officer who told him he couldn’t write on the pavement: “Didn’t I pay half the cost of this pavement? Right. Well the top half’s mine and the bottom half’s yours.”

Dad and Hildegard were pretty much aligned in most aspects of their personalities, but, at the same time, they were very different. Why? Good question.

Well, for a start, Hildy is a woman and dad was a man and dad was a born and raised Aussie, whereas Hildy was born and raised in Holland.

So, from time to time, if you have been reading this column and heard yourself saying “I wish he’d get to the bloody point”, it might be that you are not like me and need a point, while my point might be that I don’t.

Uncut: tennis

7/7/2007

1961 was a great year in Australian sport and great year for me too.

This was the year I stood up, I hit my straps, got on with it, made my mark, signed my name and started eating spinach.

It was the year of my first Wimbledon appearance and the 74^th time tennis legends from around the world gathered on hallowed lawn to do battle for King and country, but mainly themselves.

It was also a year that saw the arrival of one of the all time greats. No, I don’t mean me, my time was coming, or not coming, depending on how you looked at it.

All right, I can hear you plead, who were the winners that year, because time and bad eating habits have rendered you incapable of remembering, or you weren’t there, you’re not sure which.

Guess what, a British player, Angela Mortimer, won the women’s title beating another Brit, Christine Truman and Rod “The Rockhampton Rocket” won his first of four titles, beating Chuck “The Yank” McKinley.

It was Rod’s time. He had been runner up in the previous two years and it was cause for celebration that he beat an American rather than one of his own.

But the Rocket only got there because he thrashed me inside three sets. I played as hard as I could, wore my racquet down to a cat’s gut, gave it everything I had and finished up flatter than a snow pea.

In short, it was a bloodless massacre. Not surprising, given I was 12 at the time.

Oh, I knew all about Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewall and Ashley Cooper, but I’d never played them. They were just stories passed on by dad and his dad, or seen at the local picture theatre during the Kookaburra News, sometimes a year or so after their wins.

Rod Laver had already beaten me earlier in the year in the Australian Championships on his way to defeat by Roy Emerson. Roy beat Rod again to win the US Championships.

No-one beat Rod the next year, 1962, he thrashed everyone and took out the Grand Slam.

Back then my attitude was fight hard, never give a champion an even break, chase everything, bang my head against a brick wall for a laugh, swim in a shark infested ocean, eat a barrel of rotten plums and take on anyone.

And don’t forget the cricket. What a year that was.

I had to face the great Fred Truman in the third test at Headingly when he tore us apart, taking 11 wickets and then I had to watch as Colin Cowdrey slapped my best balls as though they were peanuts.

We eventually won the series 2:1 and I will never forget Bill “It’s All Happening” Lawry’s 130 in the 2^nd Test.

By 1965 I was retired, finished, washed up on a sandy beach clutching an open 26oz bottle of Emu Bitter.

All right, fair enough, I’ll admit I didn’t really play all those games against all those legends, but I imagined I did, because in 1961 I had a transistor radio attached to my ear and my father often threatened to have it surgically removed.

I wasn’t alone. My grandfather had one on his auricle too and sports broadcasts took us both into venues and up against greats and it also led me, about ten years later, to my first ever media job, down in the bowels of ABC Sport alongside three other greats: Wally Foreman, Dennis Cometti and George Grljusich.

George frightened the hell out of me but Dennis and Wally took me under their collective wings and taught me how to collect stats and make coffee.

What really happened in 1961 when I was 12 was my parents packed me off to boarding school with a brand new transistor radio and it was through its tiny speaker that I listened eagerly to the dulcet tones of Alan McGilvray, the croaks of Vic Richardson, the poetic musings of John Arlott and the unbridled enthusiasm of Norman “Gold Gold Gold” May.

And why does all this come back to me now? Well, Wimbledon is on again with a plethora of new players I’ll never play and, of course, I have to fill this page every Saturday morning.

Uncut: laptops

30/6/2007

Simplicity has lost its edge. I know this because recently I bought a new laptop.

In fact, I am writing this offering on my brand new, super-fast, memory-laden, handsomely designed, sleek laptop.

Looks great. Made by one of the world’s foremost laptop manufacturers. Promised everything. Had all the right specs. It’s driving me mad.

Right now, I am fighting back an almost uncontrollable urge to fling it out the window and let it rest by the racing bike up against a tree.

Good question, why is a racing bike up against a tree?

About 18-months ago I found the bike up against a tree in the public open-space in front of our house. It sat there nice and neat for three weeks.

At the end of the three I realised I had grown fond of it, so I took it and set it up against a tree on my side of the open-space.

Hildegard questioned its appearance and I innocently replied: “No idea how it got there but I quite like it.”

Life went on until the next curb-side collection when I noticed a proliferation of bikes, as though the householders had grown tired of them, forgotten to water them, feed them or care for them and had decided to dump them.

Driven by an urge to ensure my lone racing bike had a family of its own, I collected five of the lost souls and placed them all against trees and would have collected more until Hildy put a stop to it: “Enough, Jon. This is not a junkyard. It’s a domestic dwelling.”

Maybe so, but a dwelling housing folk of compassion, understanding and a willingness to take in lost machinery of all species and care for them, whatever their state. Junk maybe, but not discarded as though never having made a contribution to the forward lurch of humanity.

Bikes when bought are generally bought to last the lifetime of a rider’s riding legs.

Which brings me back to this laptop.

When purchasing I assumed it would at least last the lifetimes of this writer’s writing hands and I imagined it would be faster than anything I had ever driven before, faster than a blink, easy to get around, all commands logical and easy to implement.

Nuh. No way.

Its time is almost up.

It’s painfully slow.

I can’t find programs I know are there but it won’t help me find them and programs I thought I had closed-down keep popping back up to haunt me as though operated by a family member I once insulted who is no longer of this earth but has found a way to crawl inside a laptop.

Then there is the intensely irritating habit this particular piece of software I’m using now has of suddenly leaving the bit of page I am currently working on and darting over to another section and inserting words that make no sense whatsoever having seen the blue pineapple when it blurts yes nearly won a bazooka, oh, no, there it goes again.

It’s junk and I paid a handsome sum of money, so much that Hildy will never allow me to lean it up against a tree alongside a bike, even if it is an artistic statement highlighting the absurd claims of laptop manufacturers.

It’s unbelievable, have you seen the variety of cheeses available in your local supermarket? There’s light cheese, extra-tasty cheese, mature cheese, semi-retired cheese, sliced cheese, diced cheese, cheese crumbs, cheese bombs, cheese warts and cheese knees.

Sorry about that, that last paragraph made its way in from next week’s column.

The first laptop I owned was a large machine made by a prominent car manufacturer. I needed a fork lift to get it out of the car and on my lap.

It was a simple machine and I had to learn MS Dos, the Microsoft Operating System, to get around it.

I bought it 20 years ago and it was slow, cumbersome, unwieldy and, now I think of it, a lot like this complex piece of junk that Hells Angels would you marry pineapple fritters over my dead Paraguay baked ricotta.

Which is why I, when I decided to get back on a bike, that I didn’t go out and buy a brand new racing bike, I simply waited for the right one to appear during a roadside collection. Oh, no, that’s not the one up against a tree, this handsome machine is firmly tethered to the house.

Uncut: sociopaths

23/6/2007

We all have dark sides. Oh yes, even me.

Hard to imagine, I know, given the joy and happiness I spread each week from the confines of this very page.

But I do and some days I wake up I wonder why I bothered. And there are others, the really dark days, when I wake up and I wonder if I’m really me, or that other bloke, the one who thinks he’s Tony Soprano, a sociopath, a tyrant, a man who has a need to get his way no matter what it takes.

All of us occasionally hanker for absolute power, like when the people down the road, for example, rip out the native garden and plant palms, or, even worse, lawn.

Obviously there are a few things working against me being Big Tony, size for a start, me being a weasel man and Tony a massive brute who lumbers around his house sending nearby Richter scales crazy in anticipation of a major quake.

For those of you not sure who I’m talking about, Tony is the Mob Boss in The Sopranos, an American TV series, a good one, one of the best ever and, I know, I can hear your voice: “No way, American TV is crap.”

Hang on, don’t forget MASH and I Dream of Jeannie. All right, sorry, you’re right, I don’t dream of Jeannie, never did, but there was time when my dad did and I had to put up with it.

This month it all came to an end, The Sopranos, not here, but over there, in the US of A, it won’t finish here until it starts.

I’m not going to tell you how it ends, even though I know, even though I haven’t seen it yet, because it’s not pleasant and I don’t want to upset those folk who look to Tony Soprano for inspiration.

As I might have suggested, I’m one of them.

You’re probably thinking: You? Yes, me and I’m not alone.

There are others who enjoy dressing like Tony, all in black, with dark glasses and then walking around as though ready to whack anyone who looks at them before they look at them.

For some of us it doesn’t come natural, we have to work at it, acquire it.

Take Carl “Baby Face” Williams, well, they have taken him and now he’s doing the time because he ordered the taking of around 29 people who gave up their lives so photographers and journalists could make daily Soprano references.

He took out all those people because he didn’t like the way they looked at him and because he’s a Melbourne gangland leader and that’s what gangland leaders do when they have the power.

Then there’s Antonios “Fat Tony” Mokbel, recently nabbed in Athens sitting in a café.

Fat Tony ran an organised crime network called “The Company”, which is funny, not funny ha ha, because back in Sicily, before we were born, around 400BC there was bloke called Dionysius they called The Tyrant of Syracuse.

So what?

Good question.

Who helped him become all powerful in his home town and further his dream of conquering all of Sicily and defeating that island’s greatest enemy of the day, Carthage?

A secret organisation called, guess what, “The Company”.

Everything changes and everything stays the same.

Like Carl Williams, Dionysius could be seen in all the papers, on the telly, smiling, laughing, charming journos, holding small children, or walking beside fabulous looking women like butter would sit in his mouth forever.

Then there’s Stalin, Big Joe, whose mum said he was the most sensitive of small boys who loved flowers and once cried over spilt milk.

Joe didn’t muck about when he took people out and the average historical punter reckons about 20 million lost their lives to Joe-led purges.

Of all the things their mums said about these sociopaths and psychopaths, kind to animals, played with dolls, very sensitive, one thing they never said was: “Had a good old laugh at himself.”

And that’s why, when we wake up on the dark side embracing Tony Soprano, the first thing we must do is grab a notebook and write it all down.

There, I’m done, now I can get back to sleep.

Uncut: airports

16/6/2007

Airports, well, you can’t leave home by air without one and many decades ago you could find me living in one for weeks, waiting for flights that came and went without me.

Not anymore. These days I book a flight, depart, arrive, complete my tasks, depart again and return. Too easy.

Back then chaos was my preferred lifestyle and airports my home base.

I had no need for visas, onward tickets, ready cash, credit cards, or any visible means of support.

This often led to detention by authorities and a couple of stints in airport lockups.

But I do love a good wait in an airport lounge and a chance to view the chaos along with the assorted fashions, religions, cultures, shapes and shoe sizes.

That last long weekend, for example, on the Friday, I spent most of the afternoon and evening in a lounge.

At first I was there on my own business, flying to Palm City (Geraldton), returning, picking up an American friend and heading back to see her off on the first stage of her return to New York.

My flight north was characterised by my fellow passenger, a financial advisor, who swore vehemently that Kevin Rudd’s Labor would destroy civilisation as we knew it and then declared he chastised large numbers of his clients for investing in stocks that enhanced global warming.

In the evening we arrived to find a classic airport departure lounge, one packed with nervous, anxious travellers, eager to get on board, to leave, to say goodbye, to get home, to find someone old, someone new, someone one they were looking for who they hoped they would never find.

Angela, our American friend, was a classic.

As we loaded her five large items into the car, along with two smaller bags, we warned her that there were baggage limits, but she remained convinced there was no such thing and we wondered if it was because she was American.

Angela is an academic, a person who knows everything about everything she needs to know, but nothing about anything else, like fresh fruit, fridges, parking, electrical equipment, or water.

Apart from the occasional flood, power blackout and crockery catastrophes, she was a lot of fun around the house and insisted on buying more items than she broke and responding to our Aussie jibbing with hysterical laughter and apologies: “I’m sorry. It’s because I’m American.”

At Perth Airport we found the longest queue available and settled in for the night.

I’m not one for silent queuing and so quickly began a conversation with the chap behind who informed me, almost immediately, that he was “Darius,from Iran and, you know, Ahmadinejad is not as bad as portrayed by the Western media. Also, he will not be President of Iran next time, because nobody likes him”.

He also said he was flying to Brisbane with three cans of beer in his bag and was determined to become one of us because he loved Australia.

Then someone with a loud voice declared Brisbane was waiting and all those on flight Q-whatever should break ranks and run.

The last we saw of Darius was his laughing face yelling: “Are there really more girls in Brisbane?”

Not one to be left high and dry by the departure of an old friend, I turned to the next person and asked where she was going.

“I’m going to Melbourne, to the footy,” she said.

“Are they all, with you?” I asked, nodding at the 400 lined up behind her.

She laughed and our conversation ended because the loud voice took over again to inform all people flying to Melbourne that their plane was boarding.

Angela took it all in her stride and walked calmly to the flight attendant who broke out in a sweat when I said, no, there this was not the luggage of three people, just one, an American.

Twenty minutes and $480 later Angela, stumbled towards her plane with more luggage than the baggage handlers and I remembered why I spent 30 hours in a Dutch prison, because the authorities deemed I had no luggage, although I was more than happy with my sack containing one pair of underpants, a typewriter, a toothbrush, a roll of carbon paper and a copy of the Guardian Weekly.

Back then, chaos had a certain naivety.

Uncut: apples

9/6/2007

I’m waiting for them. They are usually here by June, the tree ripened granny smiths.

My farming brother and his overworked wife pick them, pack them and ship them, via their children, the university student and the scientist.

One year, around June, when I headed back to Israel to visit old friends, ex-wives and fast changing communities, I asked if I could take apples. The Israeli Embassy official said yes. So I did.

My brother found six of the biggest, yellowest, juiciest looking grannies you can imagine and I packed them in the middle of my case.

When we arrived at Danny’s house, north of Tel Aviv, I unpacked the six, showed him one, found a knife, cut it into neat quarters and asked him what he thought: “You know, Jonathon, when we worked together in the kibbutz, I thought the apples we grew were the finest, but you have proved me wrong, and I hate you for it.”

Then we laughed. And ate another one.

In an ideal world there would be peace in the Middle East and I would drive the long drive I know so well, down South West Highway, through Pinjarra, Harvey, Waroona, Dardanup, Donnybrook, Balingup and Greenbushes and pick the yellowing grannies myself.

And in another ideal world I would live there, under the trees, where I was born, raised and where I will be buried when my time ends.

My mother, who has now joined my father up high on the hill that overlooks the town, once confirmed that her favourite memories centred on our orchard life, back in the days when the entire family picked, packed and shipped.

Back then our Grandfather Roy made the apple boxes with jarrah slats and a rhythmic union of hammer and nail. He stood, bent over his workbench, a mouth full of nails and a hammer that seemed less wood and metal, more skin and bone extensions of his arm.

In the tiny shed built in one corner of our thirty acres of apples, peaches and plums, the family worked like Trojans, laughed like hyenas and exhausted themselves so folk in the Mother Country, England, could eat the very best apple that ever was and ever will be.

Mum and Gran were the packers and, boy, could they pack.

Into the box went the tray and in fluid movements you had to watch carefully to see, they brought an apple and a slip of tissue paper together, wrapped one in the other, and slotted each one into a vacant bed.

Before each grab for tissue they would lick their fingers and the youngest of us would sit spellbound, trying to catch a fault. I never saw one: finger lick, tissue, apple, wrap, box; finger lick, tissue, apple, wrap, box.

We couldn’t sit for long because somebody had to bring in the apples, and the some bodies employed were always us, the boys.

Early pickings were a hard slog, but the late run was a feast, because there is no finer apple on this planet, or any other planet I have been to, than the tree ripened granny smith. I would start one end, pick and eat, pick and eat, pick and eat, until my body screamed: “No more eating, stick with the picking.” And sometimes it would let me know in the traditional way a body does when it has too much of something.

But the memory that lingers clearest is of the day dad drove over a younger brother’s head.

It was early pickings, dad took a corner a little tight between two rows, the brother fell of the back of the tractor and under the trailer wheel. This was one time we thanked God for a lack of rain and the soft, powdery soil that allowed the brother’s head to sink under the wheel and come back up almost the same.

There were bruises and some swelling, but after mum had applied her legendary date and walnut cake poultice it soon went down and we all laughed our heads off until the neighbour’s cows went home.

Ah, the memories, and each and every year I sink my teeth into a Bridgetown tree-ripened granny, they flood back.

Every year but this one. Where are they, the student and scientist? Why have they forsaken me?

Uncut: Growth hormones

2/6/2007

Before I start, let me make it quite clear, no human growth hormones were used in the preparation of this column.

In addition, following the regular testing that all columnists on this paper must undergo, no evidence was found of any growth hormones normally used to enhance the performances or recoveries of horses, greyhounds, or racing pigeons.

In fact, nothing was used in the preparation of this column other than the two fingers on my left hand, the three on my right and the lump on my shoulders.

At one point I broke off for a small cup of coffee, made excellently and expertly by the neighbour who brought it over after I had assisted her husband in bringing down a palm tree.

This was a joyous job. There is no finer sight in the suburban garden than the recently-brought-down palm. Apart from, that is, the recently burnt-to-a-cinder palm or the disappearing-to-the-nearby-tip-on-the-back-of-a-truck palm.

All right, I don’t like palms and I take it seriously.

The palm is a tropical tree and, forgive me if global warming is moving faster than I am paying attention, most places where the palm is planted in this great state of ours are a long way from the tropics, sub-tropics or Bremer Bay.

Peter, not his real name, attacked one side of the palm with a tomahawk he had nicked from my shed, while I attacked the other side with a large axe I had bought in the local hardware shop.

After we returned to our respective sides of the fence I continued to work on a stump that has stumped me for a month and while swinging my axe in typical manly fashion, like I knew what I was doing and this was the most important task I would ever undertake, I crunched my hand between it and one of the pointy bits.

It hurt like hell. I screamed like I was in hell. Peter and Penelope, not her real name, did not appear over the fence to ask if I was ok.

The first thought that came to me was: I have ruined a perfectly good hand and the only way I will be able to reduce the ever expanding swelling and complete next week’s column is if I find some human growth hormones to speed up the recovery.

But this would never happen, because if there is one thing my addled brain does not need it is more medication and my body has long preferred fresh air and home grown garlic.

Eventually, like a lot of men I know who are in pain, I fell onto the settee and watched a perfectly healthy band of fit young men run onto a football field, fall over a ball, run into each other and two hours later return to their shed with their heads low and their faces showing a pain much deeper than mine.

I refer, of course, to the Dockers.

Now, I know about the rumours, each and every one of them is false and clearly started by columnists working for other papers, or politicians who were not mentioned last week.

Let me say once again, categorically, I have never taken illegal substances, parked illegally, worked in a fast food joint, trespassed, or even jay-walked, to assist in the production of this column.

All right, just the once, there was the time I left the keys in my car for 24 hours just to give me a topic, an idea, a starter, but once I got started, everything else was as factual as it can be in this modern world of spin, turn, twist and backflip.

Before I leave you, let me say that I understand the need for growth hormones, especially if you must constantly parade yourself in public, on film, or television, or there is someone at home who thinks your personality will be improved by massive doses of testosterone.

There is no need for that in our house. Or next door at Peter and Penelope’s.

And, rest assured, you have my word, no human growth hormones have been smuggled into this paper to endanger the equilibrium or health of the reader.

So please, read on.

Uncut: Spam

26/5/2007

They are starting to give me spasms again, the spams.

Not that they plug my inbox in the way they used to, in the beginning, when spam caught us all off guard, and we looked forward to it, because it fascinated us and we wondered where it all came from, who wrote it, who sent it and how did we get on their list, but now I have very efficient anti-spamming software that diverts all junk immediately and with precision.

Most days.

Not last week.

All of a sudden, without any warning, my anti-spamming spammer collapsed and my inbox jammed with news from across the world with my incredible luck and good fortune and the incredible bad luck and misfortune of others.

It stunned me, that I could be so lucky, at this late stage in my uneven life, while out there in the wide blue yonder, so many were copping it tough.

Were those stricken with the bad the victims of a pendulum swing towards me? Isaac Newton’s third law of motion: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."

I knew what to do.

Getting through the mail took time, wading through the inevitable penis enlargement promises, the cheap Viagra, the pleas from the Russian mothers living in single rooms with 37 children, the Belgian chocolate sales and the strange English Lord who claimed he had a cure for earache which involved a long stick, a lump of butter and if only he had the funds to get it off the ground he could get people listening again.

By the time I got through, I was through, but I kept going because I knew there was a column in it.

I tried to categorise and systematise but a couple of mails helped by not requiring a response, like this one from Frankfurt: “I have not been long with the Children, but, I am certain my captain will give me leave to escort my sister home.”

Then there was the inevitable lady from Russia, Kazan this time, along with two photos and assurances that she was “Your new the girlfriend from Kazan Elena”. Then the “Mail Delivery Failed” message informing me an email I had sent about a drug store in Toronto did not make it. That was lucky, because I realised there was no way I would be able to fill any orders for “low-price meds”.

On top of my list were the persistent chaps from Nigeria, not those promising money, but those requesting money for the final preparations necessary before I would receive $US870,000,000 for doing nothing other than sending them money, believing in God and trusting that my cash was only a token contribution to assist with streamlining matters at their end.

And then, out of nowhere, a note from a US soldier in Iraq: “I am a Captain J. G. Douglas of the US Marine Corps on Monitoring and Peace – keeping mission in Baghdad-Iraq, as you may know every day, there are several cases of insurgents attacks and suicide bombs going on here. We managed to Move funds belonging to some demised persons who were attacked and killed through insurgent attacks. The total amount is $23.2M dollars in cash.”

This was great news. I implemented my plan immediately.

Without hesitation I forwarded his email on to David Emeka from Nigeria, who required some initial funding and informed Captain Douglas that the entire $23.2M should be deposited in David’s account, and told David to forward his bank details to Capt Douglas.

Then, ecstatic as I was about winning the UK National Lottery, I knew I could never accept the money while there were others in need.

I replied to Mr John Mark, the Lottery’s Foreign Services Manager, Payment and Release Order Department, stating that that my entire winnings, “£3 million British Pounds Sterling national currency, should be signed over to Dr Edward Campbell from VIAGRA & CIALIS, email and postal address attached”.

Dr Campbell had informed me that my dosage was too low and I “urgently required renewal”. I told Dr Campbell that I had no idea how he “kept it up and I am only too happy to pass my windfall onto you so you can retire and ease the pressure on my inbox”.

None of the ungrateful bastards responded and now my spammer is back to normal I will never know if they do.

Uncut: Politics

19/5/2007

Politics has always fascinated me and led to many a feisty argument over a bottle of port, late into the night, with my father, a well known and highly respected political atheist.

One of his favourite quotes was straight from Cicero, the great Roman Senator: It is a true saying that "One falsehood leads easily to another".

Dad kept his distance from the action and although I was never a big player, there were a couple of times when I made myself stand up.

Let me relate my own political story. It’s sad. It’s all about failure.

My first election campaign was in 1993, the Federal election Paul Keating just had to have and the one John Hewson baked a cake for but forgot to share.

I threw my name in for the seat of Curtin, held by Allan Rocher, a man nobody seemed to know, had ever seen, or expected to see. You should have seen their faces when he showed his at the polling booth: Blank. They didn’t know who he was.

I didn’t go into the election lightly. I researched. I discovered that no-one in the history of the Australian electoral process had ever stood for a parliament without asking voters to put them first on the ballot paper.

Didn’t matter how crazy they were, how doomed, if there were 64 candidates and the seat was held by the most popular PM in the history of PMs, their cards still read: Vote Me 1.

Such egos. Such delusions.

My strategy: Vote Doust 6.

Why 6? It made sense, there were six candidates and I knew I wouldn’t, couldn’t didn’t want to, win.

What normal, sane, sensible human would be keen to spend year after year in a building packed with deluded narcissists with a plethora of other personality disorders playing pass-the-buck and some other games that rhyme with one of those previous words?

My election campaign was a farce.

A highlight for me campaigning in the Curtin Electorate was standing outside a house in Jutland Parade with a megaphone yelling: “Stay calm, don’t panic, you are completely surrounded, by air.”

Then there were the calls from the other candidates asking for my preferences. They were serious. I felt sorry for them.

“I don’t have any preferences.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m No 6 on my own card.”

Silence.

Eventually I got a call from the Natural Law Party, a collection of transcendental meditators.

Their pollster asked me if I would fax my card to him.

“What? Why don’t I just think of it, then you can pluck it out of the ether.”

Another mob who surprised me was a group of independents who wanted to put me No 1 on their ticket. I was sure that aligning with them would deny me my independence and declined their offer.

The second time I stood was the 1998 Federal election for the seat of Forest, up against Geoff Prosser, a man people knew, could see and hear coming their way, but when he arrived, wondered why he had bothered.

My campaign for Forest was pathetic. I couldn’t be bothered working up a policy, a proper vote card, or visiting voters, but I did enjoy working a polling both outside the Bridgetown town hall on election day.

It was a wonderful opportunity to catch up with mum, dad and other family members who would normally be too busy to see me

In both elections I finished exactly where I wanted, last.

The strangest aspect in both cases was that over 400 sad and disillusioned voters went against my specific instructions and placed me first on their voting slips.

I received 18 more first preferences in Forest than in Curtin, not surprising as Forest is home to at leat 18 more Dousts.

One of them was my father, whose favourite political quote came from a taxi driver he met in Mexico City: “We have the best political system in the world in Mexico. When we don’t like a politician, we shoot him.”

The Yarragadee is safe!

5/05/07
This is bloody good news.

Premier of the State of West Australia, Alan Carpenter, has announced that a second seawater desalination plant powered by renewable energy will be Western Australia’s next major water source.

In making the announcement, Mr Carpenter shelved Water Corporation plans to utilise the South West Yarragadee aquifer for the integrated water supply system.

“The internationally acclaimed wind-powered Kwinana seawater desalination plant has demonstrated that large quantities of water from an unlimited ocean supply can be provided using a clean and green process,” the Premier said.

“Unlike SW Yarragadee and traditional water sources, it is also climate independent.

The proposed site for a second desalination plant is at a Water Corporation wastewater treatment facility on Taranto Road north of Binningup - adjacent to a disused limestone quarry. It is expected to have minimal environmental and visual impact on the area, but will be subject to the usual approval processes.

The new plant will provide at least 45 gigalitres of water a year into the integrated water supply system by the end of 2011, with potential to increase to 100 gigalitres. Similar to the Kwinana plant, it will be powered by renewable energy.

“We can no longer rely on traditional, seasonal climate patterns and rainfall,” the Premier said.

“Seawater desalination is clearly the best long term feasible and practical option for our State, along with more water recycling initiatives.

The Premier said that while the SW Yarragadee aquifer had effectively received environmental approval, it remained a source that was still reliant on climate and rainfall.

“More work therefore needs to be done on assessing the full impact of climate change and declining rainfall on the south west and on the SW Yarragadee aquifer,” Mr Carpenter said.

He said the Government was also actively researching a major aquifer recharge recycling project north of Perth, which had the potential to yield an extra 25 gigalitres.

The West Uncut: garlic

12/5/2007

Is yours in? Mine is. I put it in around dusk, just before the April full moon.

And this year I am growing double the amount of garlic I grew last year. Good crop that last one, but not enough.

Took me a week to prepare the ground, moulding it into the mother-of-all-plots and already you can see handsome green stems rising with pride towards the light.

Those determined individuals from Albany, Manjimup and Baldivis who already supply me with copious quantities of organically grown knobs need not fear, I will not be able to grow enough to satisfy my needs. Even with my harvest in, I will remain an active buyer in the marketplace.

Why then must I grow garlic? Good question and I have answers.

One reason is that I come from a long line of fruit and vegetable growers and when I was a boy during the last ice-age in Bridgetown, we grew everything we needed.

In the beginning there was mum, dad, my older brother and me. This was nowhere near enough folk to work the sprawling orchards, so we grew two more brothers.

Four boys, a man and a hard working country woman who could bake a cake, darn a sock and drive a tractor, now that was a team.

And another reason, an outstanding reason, is that it is our patriotic duty to grow fruit and vegetables on the land surrounding our house.

Those of us nearing the end of our allotted allotment will well remember growing up in a house with a yard heavily laden with grape vines, vegi-patches and fruit trees.

This was before television. This was when boredom was an imaginary world inhabited by rampant drill-crews who roamed the landscape making holes in the ground in an endless search for water, oil and China.

Everyone had plenty to do and even when we didn’t want to do it we still did and all year round we dug, planted, watered and harvested.

Yes, my fellow West Australians, it is our patriotic duty to plant garlic and tell me this, could there be a greater defence of one’s nation that the ability to produce our own food?

Oh yes, there’s been a lot of talk about patriotism in recent years and some seem to think it’s about flying a flag from your front yard, your roof, or your car and driving around like a lunatic with your head out the window yelling “Aussie Aussie Aussie”.

What a lot of cocky poo!

Did you know that over 90% of all garlic sold in Australia comes from overseas? We should be ashamed of ourselves.

You know how hard it is to grow garlic? You move a sod, you add some sheep or chicken poo, bit of blood and bone, rake it in, water it, wait a couple of days, stick cloves all over it, bingo, around November, garlic! It’s a bloody miracle.

All this talk from Federal and local pollies about getting used to importing fruit and vegetables and the boys in Canberra recently deciding to let in New Zealand apples makes me want to get stroppy and picket parliaments.

Do they get out? Do they use the phone, watch the evening news, read a paper, search the internet, or engage in casual conversation?

Haven’t they heard that over here in the West we have a surplus of apples? We can’t sell all our apples. Orchardists are dumping apples. Would it make sense to send apples to the east where the drought has not only left them short of water but also apples?

Is anyone listening?

And anyone who buys land that was once prime fruit and vegi growing country should be required to grow garlic and apples in their back yard and make sensible use of available water and soil.

It’s Saturday morning. This is the first morning of the rest of your life. Make a stand, put the paper down, get of your butt, go outside and choose the best place to plant garlic. It’ll need good soil, sandy will do for now and a sunny spot. Go to it.

You’re a good person, a credit to your country, a true patriot.

The West Uncut: Pemberton

5/5/2007

I’m writing this in Pemberton. This is a town that looks like it gets good rain. I arrived two days ago and it hasn’t stopped.

Has that damped my enthusiasm? No.

Why am I here? Good question.

I am here to finish off the great Australian novel, not to read it, but to complete it. It was mine to write.

Ok, mine along with every other Australian who ever used a stick in sand, lifted a pen, a pencil, a typewriter, a keyboard, or even those old codgers like my grandfather who collected the words in their heads, stored them there and let them out every Christmas for the family.

Why Pemberton? Because it was here.

Back, way back, when my father was a young family man with great legs and he had two strapping boys who could lift things on instruction, he drove us most weekends to Pemberton to collect huge milk cans full of fingerlings, baby trout, and water, not milk, fingerlings can’t live in milk.

Once fully laden we drove all over this great south west tipping trout into creeks, brooks, rivers, dams and tanks. If you fish for trout in the Lower South West, we put them there. Well, not them, their great, great, great grandfathers and grandmothers.

Maybe not all of them because there might well have been others doing the same work in other towns and other streams but dad never mentioned them. It was our work.

Later, laden with the implements of fishing we would haunt those same streams and dad would fish until his fine legs buckled, or he had enough to eat and then we’d cook right there and then in a fire he made before he started, knowing he’d catch something because he put them there.

Years later, when dad was almost gone and many thought I had long gone, a few good friends and I helped Pemberton become the comedy capital of WA.

For a short three years it shone bright on the Australian comedy circuit. Everybody who was anybody, or who wanted to be somebody, came, performed, drank local wines, ate local trout and left.

Some, like the biggest stars, flew in and flew out the night they performed and wondered where the hell they had been.

Years later I worked alongside the long-thin Rod Quantok and reminded him of the night he did just that.

“I wondered about that town,” he said. “The thing that struck me most of all was the smell. It was dark when I arrived and dark when I left but I went with this sweet smell up my nose.”

I have it right now, as I sit in the grand hotel with same name as the town, eating the dish I ordered earlier. I couldn’t help myself.

“The trout,” I asked, “is it local?”

The answer was a natural “yes” and I placed my order and thought of my trout-fishing father and others like him.

Pemberton was the perfect location for a comedy festival, cold, friendly, nestled in a great and timeless forest, surrounded by water, vignerons, fresh produce and built by men and women who cut timber with their bare hands.

It is home to one of the two legendary mill-town football teams in the Lower South West Football League, the mighty Southerners

I once played for the other legendary team, Deanmill, and I once played against Southerners. Only once.

It was a day I expected to line up for the reserves but someone turned up lame and in I went to face eighteen hardened men with jarrah arms and karri legs and it wasn’t too long before a truck-load of lumber fell upon me.

Three days later they found me. I was a tiny splinter in the hand of Big Johnny Turner, man-mountain, Southerners captain coach, ruckman, full-back, full-forward, sweeper and a man who once pushed a wheelbarrow laden with railway sleepers from Pemberton to Bunbury in 45 minutes.

When I woke this morning and looked out over a misty lake backed by massive karris, I thought, just for a second: “All is well with the world.”

Then I went and spoilt it. I turned on the radio and listened to the news. All was not well in the world of radio.

In Pemberton, it’s still raining. I may stay awhile. You may never hear from me again.

Moving on

Betty's favourite family photo: that's me on the left, the one with the muscle.

I went to another funeral yesterday. This time to say goodbye to man called Normal Doust. He was my father's first cousin and a legendary nice bloke.
It is the allotted time for the Baby Boomer, the time to say goodbye to those of their parents who have lived the long life.
Norman was parent to three fine women and husband to one fine woman.
It has been a tough week for Dousts, because on the previous Friday four of us said goodbye to our mother, Betty Glorvina Doust.
Betty was my mother, mother to three others and wife of the deceased Stanley Roy Doust.
Betty's final day with her family was a classic: she was funny, chirpy, cheeky, alive. Most of us had been up all night at her bedside and if she saw someone nodding off she would clap her hands in front of him or her and say: "Come on. come on."
Betty loved the bible and so I read it to her, but made her fill in the gaps:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the ....
She would look up at me, pause, "earth".
And God said let there be ....
"Light."
And so on.
The hospital staff opened up an empty ward for family to sleep in on Betty's final night. Some of us went home to a brother's farm.
The final hour was tough. It's not a pretty sight, watching some you love struggle with the finality, but it is, at the same time, an honourable thing to do, to sit with them, and help them through.
My partner had just been through it all with her mother in Holland and she was ready to do certain things that had to be done to ensure the body was ready for the laying out.
And what a laying out.
My mother was an attractive woman and the morticians did a magnificent job. She looked beautiful and peaceful.
Not everybody wants to take a final look, but it is important for me, because I want the last image to be something other than the pain of the going. Betty looked so lovely and peaceful my face exploded in a smile that I couldn't get rid of.
Luckily for me it was happy funeral, full of laughter and joy at having had such a woman in our lives.
It wasn't always rosy, Betty's life, but bringing all that up is no way to say goodbye.
Thanks, Betty.
You too, Norman.

The West Uncut: car keys

28/4/2007

It’s not likely, but if ever you see me out and about, please ask if I have my car keys.

Chances are I will look shocked, disoriented, confused and then I’ll panic, because I know the stats, that chances are I will not have them on me, they will be somewhere else, anywhere but where they should be, in my pocket.

It’s not just my keys. And it’s not because I’m a Baby Boomer in the latter part of his life with brain cells disappearing faster than Australian flora and fauna. I‘ve done it all my life, leave things in a place they are needed least.

I dream about it, the leaving and forgetting of things, including forgetting to put things on, like pants.

Usually I’m in a shopping mall, wandering about, buying this and that, when suddenly, without warning, my pants are gone.

Once I have accepted I have none, then I remember I forgot to put them on, wonder why and why no-one is looking, pointing, yelling “Look, mummy, the man has no pants.”

It seems I am the only one who knows.

Hang on, I’ve drifted.

Here’s what happened on a week not long gone.

On the Wednesday I flew to Geraldton, or as I prefer to call it, Palm City, and then drove to Northampton to talk to a fine mob of farmers in the middle of the driest period they can remember.

On the Thursday I returned to Perth Airport, refreshed by the humour and generosity of the northerners and made ready to collect my car from its overnight bay.

With baggage held firm in one hand I scrambled about my body with the other for the illusive car-key with attached security device. Not in pocket, not in bag, not in hand luggage, nowhere.

In that instant, when the hand emerged from the last pocket without key, I knew where it would be.

I ran towards the car, to where I thought the car should be after the local car-stealing brigade had made their nightly sweep and plucked it from among the severely locked and disabled.

But no, there it sat, ignored as a model not worth the effort, all doors unlocked, security device with attached key firmly ensconced in ignition.

Knowing what a mob of Northampton farmers would do when they heard my story, I laughed, then I asked the questions I have asked before.

What is it that I have to do to make it easier for your average car thief?

What is it about my car that makes it unworthy of theft?

What is about the modern car thief that makes him or her bypass your wide open, key inserted, ready to go vehicle and make a b-line for the hard task, the locked-up, the security laden, alarm screaming, electronic masterpiece?

Is it the challenge?

As I have made clear, it’s not my marbles I have lost, it’s the marbles I have never had, for it is not the first time I have left my car, ready, waiting, enticing anyone with an eye for a vehicle not their own.

Once I left it in St George’s Terrace, not with the key in the ignition, but, in what I thought was an even more enticing positon, in the front door on the driver’s side.

Three hours later I came out of the luxury hotel to find it there, key glaring into the street, not a thief in sight.

I have left all manner of items in all kinds of places, only to return and find them sitting where I had once sat.

People have run after me in Greece, Spain, Switzerland and Japan, waving wallets, passports, room-keys and small change that was rightfully mine, but that I could have lived without.

There was, however, that once, when a very expensive pair of German sunglasses went missing from a South Perth beer garden and I was so shocked, surprised and confused I forgave the thief instantly and thanked him for not taking my car, which sat idling in the carpark.

As you can imagine, if there is one sentence I have heard more than most in my life it is this one: “You’d lose your head if it wasn’t screwed on.”

It is screwed on, but I think my makers crossed the threads.

The West: first rains

21/4/2007

That smell, the first rain smell, I love it, always have, always will.

When my boy was a boy and chose to live in the hills with his parents we would run outside with the first fall, tearing our clothes off as we ran.

Luckily for us his mother, Hildegard, descended as she is from a sensible line of Europeans, would always manage to convince us that wet nudity in a suburban street was probably a chargeable offense and it was best to run amuck with some covering.

We did our best.

Our best was not always good enough and Hildy, in an earlier year, could be seen running after us waving items of clothing.

Our first autumn rain this year up high in the Kalamunda hills was a beauty, a full 40mm they said in the all the places where they say how much rain we get.

There is nothing quite like sitting in your house safe and sound listening to the rain fall hard and heavy and relentless on your tin roof.

It conjures memories, visions and a kind of peace and quiet bound up in the knowledge that the long wait has ended and outside the parched earth is drinking and won’t stop until heaven has emptied itself.

There is, of course, a sound to dread.

That sound is the one that reminds you that you forgot to clean the gutters and the water has spilled over into your eaves and any second now the overflow will enter your house and drown you where you sit in front of your brand-new digital television set.

This is when I jump, as I have done on many occasions, remove my clothing with haste, don my Speedos and climb up in the drenching rain to work in the gutter where I belonged the week before and if I don’t clear the leaves, twigs and gumnuts Hildegard will make me live for the week after.

When I re-enter the house I bring water and blood and aching hands from thrusting into pathetically narrow gutters, stiffening knees from crouching low and a sore head from the inevitable bang on the solar hot water tank that has more peripheral piping than an aluminium smelter.

I am told by some of my neighbours that television no longer holds any wonders for them and they long for that first rain and the sight of me clambering up a ladder, soaked, shivering and near naked, stumbling, slipping and sliding on a roof they would not be seen dead on and they hope I won’t be either.

Hildegard often yelled and screamed but in both directions at the same time: Get on the roof and clean those gutters! Don’t you dare go on that roof dressed like that!

Hansl, the boy, would laugh and laugh and I’m surprised he didn’t drive up here that last good rain just for the sport and to watch his skinny father naked and wet and his mother yell and howl.

And it’s not just the roof. There is also the driveway.

The driveway drain is an ancient and unfortunate construction, built by a man who knew nothing of drains or water, or liquid flow, but everything about human drama.

This man built a drain that floods in seconds, allows water to run into the garage, my office, anywhere and everywhere but down the hill where it would logically flow if there was not a drain to block it.

This drain is, in fact, two drains.

Once again, almost naked, but full of the excitement of the chase, I follow the water from the driveway all the way down the hill, unblocking as I go and not resting until its body rests in the small gully we call Sleepy Hollow.

But not for long, because water waits for no man and in that one restful second I know the other drain has blocked, the driveway is again full and flooding and the neighbours on the other side of the house have not yet had their full of me ghostly white, shivering and splashed with mud and leaves.

But when the rain and I are exhausted and Hildy has forgiven me, we sit quietly with a window open, a cup of hot chocolate and smell that smell that rejuvenates, replenishes and turns prose into poetry.