Room Service (15 page)

Well, Chief, there was movement at the restaurant when the word passed around that Francois Blase, the Balmain Bushman, was going to Lake Eyre.

You bet.

I'd been talking up my bush skills, I suppose, around Kinselas, EJs, Berowra Waters, Fannys, Florentinos, and I suppose someone took me seriously at last and they've invited me to join an expedition to the Lake. Susie from EJs is demanding that I settle the slate before I go – not very French of her – I wrote a draft of one of my pieces on a tablecloth in way of payment, but she didn't think much of that.

Enclosed is the EJs account, which I'd be pleased if you could settle against future earnings together with a letter to be opened in case of death.

You may have heard that the Lake has filled with water for the second time in 200 years and with this fashionable concern with the environment I thought you might like to style me as ‘ecology writer' or something like that – it would help me to ingratiate myself with the young chicks (memo sub-editor: delete that from published copy, thanks).

About insurance: double it. Dr C.T. Madigan tells me that the Lake is ‘under the evil influence of
Kuddimurkra, a djinn-like spirit that may appear in the form of a giant snake with the head of the Kangaroo, likely to do much harm to the unwary traveller.'

Of course, I intend packing a bottle or two of white-man's magic – ‘a gin-like spirit' – like it?

The expedition is made up of city folk, ABC producers and the like, and they are not at ease in the wilds. The planning session was carefully left ‘unstructured', I gather, and was, as you'd expect, very aware to the New Sensitivities. In a laid-back sort of way.

‘Let's watch the sex roles emerge out there in the desert,' said Janet, an ABC producer, which is an example of what I mean. However, there were some Old Sensitivities discussed as well, like toilet arrangements and nakedness.

Bill, a sociologist, was for everyone being naked and eating raw vegetables.

I'm a purist in my own way, Chief, as you know, but about the wilderness I like to do it the high-tech route. Plenty of Swiss Army gear and Gore-tex and star-gazer tents. You can hold the Velcro though – don't care for that noise of raw pain in the morning.

I said that as for toilet, nakedness and diet I was not prepared to participate in any consciousness-raising or reconditioning exercise in personal liberation. I said, perhaps bad-humouredly, that I had trouble enough with what liberation I already had. And that my consciousness was uncomfortably raised. I have to report a few horse laughs at this.

I also muttered, but was not heard, perhaps all for
the better, that too many people had ‘high self-esteem' and that most people were quite correct in having low self-esteem.

As something of a hunter, I broached the subject of bringing along my old Winchester over and under 12 gauge. I found that this was another sensitivity. I painted them a picture of living off the land, fishing and shooting, cooking wild ducks in gin and juniper sauce or with Colonel Hawker's sauce. Or some snowshoe rabbit and applejack, and I do a mean snipe straight off the skillet.

But the planning session demurred. They have inhibitions about me toting a Winchester and definitely vetoed my wearing of the customary side arm.

They were attracted to the Living-Off-the-Land Ethic, but unable to reconcile it with their Conservationist Ethic. I stated bluntly that I was untroubled by either ethic and told them a little about the doctrine of
ferae naturae
, that there is no property in wild birds and animals, that they belonged to all for food and for their beauty.

‘ “Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you,” ' I quoted to them, but the Bible doesn't seem to impress any more.

There were rumblings too about my ability to feed the party.

Still, if they wouldn't allow me to shoot I said that I would snare animals and birds and showed them my piano wire – a few lethal jerks and a couple of lethal knots. Some of the party found this disquieting, I could
tell, and would have preferred it if I were not going to the Lake with them. Bloody left-liberals. Hemingway, where are you?

They all talked of ‘travelling light', which is all very well I suppose, but I believe in camp-de-luxe wherever possible – take as much as you can carry.

For instance, Chief, I always carry my brass Alpinist's lantern for the tent, not only for the warm, mellow glow, but because it has a brass ring for warming the eight-ounce brandy snifter. Get what I mean?

And I carry a pillow. So did the great bushman George W. Sears.

Well, they were all for travelling light, so I let them.

No one raised, of course, the question of leadership. In these days of anti-elitism the question of leadership was undiscussable and I went home from the planning sessions quietly disappointed that they hadn't appointed someone, myself maybe, as Expedition Captain, say – nothing grand.

One of the party said that ‘We are all generals these days', which really means ‘We would all wish to be generals', but how many of us really are when it's down to the line?

Well, we flew the 1600 kilometres inland in a chartered twelve-seater Piaggio to the-dead-heart-which-now-lived, the mythical inland sea, the place that the explorers died searching for, this mysterious inland, the communal unconscious, the fabled outback. During the flight I made a speech from the aisle of the plane.

I said that I saw the expedition as a ‘re-birth trauma' where we were to take our bodies almost to the point of death and then back to life. The others disagreed and talked about alleged interest in wild-life and geography and ecology.

‘Well, I intend to immerse myself in the life water of the continent and be baptised as a true Australian,' I said, feeling at the time deeply moved. I told them that all the Australian explorers had been superficially scientific, but more driven by curiosity, romance, and the desire to take oneself to the edge of death.

The others said they had no intention to take themselves ‘to the edge of death'. I retired then to the back of the aircraft with a bottle of white-man's magic.

Almost to a person the dress was denim. I alone wore moleskins and I alone had on my belt pouches for my barometer, compass and watch – as well as my Puma Hunter's Companion sheath knife. I wore my empty forty-five holster as a protest, which would, in a time of crisis, when a forty-five might be a comfort, make a point to all the bleeding-heart liberals.

There were one hell of a lot of Adidas shoes.

Donald Stuart, the author-bushman, now in his sixties, wore an Arabic robe and went barefoot. He'd been toughened up in Pilbara while the rest of us had been softened up in Kinselas. I sure envied him his style, Chief.

There were more Swiss Army knives than you could poke through the holes of a Swiss cheese. I was still
waiting for my custom-made knife from Victurinox.

All of them feared the dreaded bush rats described by early explorers to the region. I must also say that I did not fancy making camp in a rat plague. I had in mind the digging of a moat, but I would have liked the ole-six-shooter. Don't like rats.

After landing, we were driven by truck forty kilometres to the Lake and left there with a pile of firewood – the Lake country is sand-dune with knee-high scrub – OK for a blaze but not for a proper cooking fire.

I was pleased and disconcerted as a hunter to see that the rabbits at the Lake were fat and orange, which seemed to contradict the laws of survival about merging with the environment. The others could see them
too.

I got out the piano wire, but again met the worried frowns of the other members of the party.

My plan for a ceremony of immersion in the Holy Lake (Chief, I am not without some spirituality you know) was impeded, if not desecrated by sight and stench of thousands of rotting fish – bony bream – strewn along the Lake's beach line for hundreds of kilometres into the distance. Aw hell, instead of a testament to the recuperative power and abundance of nature, instead of purity, I was faced with death – worse, wasteful slaughter of life, the rotting of the flesh, the self-wounding capacity of nature. What was I to do, Chief? This wasn't the first time that Australian wilderness had played its little joke on me. All that the Australian wilderness has ever said to me is ‘Life's tough, mate.'

I want a more affirmative statement from nature.

I suppose I was let down by it – the joke of the stinking fish – and kicked the sand, but I mixed myself a bloody mary (much to the contemptuous amusement of the bleeding liberals who were all now nature freaks) and calmed down.

(The bloody marys were pre-mixed by the Company of Two, Fresno, California – sub-editor, please leave in brand name, OK? Wink, wink.)

The Lake was also jumping with fish, if that was nature's attempt at an ambiguous statement. We had a water scientist with us, Marike, and she said that the lake was increasing its salinity as the fresh water which has filled it absorbs salt from the soil and at the same time evaporates. By the way, where do the fish all come from so quickly? Who tells the fish and the birds that it's all happening at Lake Eyre? That's a mystery, Chief. There may be an explanation, but I'm leaving that a holy mystery.

Marike did some tests. We do not stand in awe. We do some tests. Anyway, who could stand in awe of ten billion stinking fish that smell like Bombay Duck. Or just Bombay. She said that the Lake now had the same salinity as the sea. The jumping fish we were seeing were probably not frolicking or saluting the Miracle of the Lake, they were trying to
get out.

I recorded in my field log that the water was soft, that is, contained no calcium salts that prevent soap lathering, that it had a high buoyancy from the salt, no current, of course, and a tepid
temperature. Very benign, said Robert, a stock and station man. Since when do stock and station men get to say poetry?

But when whipped by wind, we were to see, the Lake can raise waves as high as thirty centimetres. Is that enough reporting, Chief? Can I get on with more important existential questions now?

The thing that excited me as a hunter and gatherer was the heavy animal, bird and insect traffic in the sand. I am some thing of an expert scat reader and it was the equivalent of
War and Peace
for a scat reader. I was relieved to find no Broadtoothed Rat
(Mastacomys fuscus)
or the dreaded Black Rat
(Rattus rattus).
The Lake teemed with black swans, herons, pelicans and ducks but they all stayed out of snaring range. Word travels fast.

I was putting together my demountable bush deck-chair, which packs away into a pack the size of a paperback book, when I heard the cry, ‘Blase! Quickly, a snake!'

I said to myself, but not in the hearing of the others, ‘Kuddimurkra'. I had been expecting the djinn-like spirit of the Lake. The Aboriginal Spirit of anti-tourism.

I went to where they were standing transfixed by a very long and very big fawn-coloured snake with ominous markings on its head. I moved them back away from the snake with my outspread arms. I then crouched and examined it. I picked it for a collared brown snake. They move very quickly. Easily aroused. When antagonised will strike repeatedly. Uses a very
powerful neurotoxin. You could say that the collared brown snake ‘goes for it'.

‘For Godsake do something, Blase!' they cried.

At last they needed a Leader. Ha ha. At last they realised the value of a man who can handle himself in the wilds. They would wish they had let me bring my forty-five.

‘We're eighty kilometres from medical attention, Blase.' I walked down to the edge of the Lake to give myself time to think through the problem. The others stood in a frightened, huddled group. The snake watched me, having rightly sensed where its match lay, from whence combat would come.

It was not just a snake. This would be a ritual slaying. I squatted down and bathed my arms in the Lake up to the armpits.

Some of the party had gone to their tents for their cameras.

When I go into action, I thought, I had better be damned good. This was going to get around Kinselas.

I stripped to the waist and selected an Estwing Number 2 half axe manufactured in Illinois, and adopted the mien of a warrior.

I first built a blind from a thicket of desert scrub and then, going some distance out from the snake, began to stalk my way in behind this mobile blind. Patience and stealth, Chief.

After a while the party drifted away with their cameras to play chess and to read Burke and Wills and so on.

After eight hours of stalking I approached the place where the snake was last seen and found it to be gone. It had apparently lost patience and gone to its hole. What sort of collared brown snake takes off like that? I threw away my blind in a fury and shouted at it down its hole, ‘Come out and fight!'

I gathered the party around me and told them that it was a ‘tactical victory'. Bloodshed had been avoided and the snake was gone. I explained that the party should make as much noise and movement as possible to keep it guessing.

I said that I'd established a concord with the snake. ‘The snake sensed my capacity to kill it, but at the same time my reservations about the need to kill it. The snake, however, was not in doubt as to my
will
to kill. Having computed this the snake decided to sit it out. I got through to the snake – there was dialogue occurring out there.'

I felt like Howard Hunter of the Desert Hill Street Precinct.

The party divided into those who sat around the camp fire and those who sat around porta-gas lamps.

It's all about tight and loose communication. The lamp is a defined and intense focus while the camp fire is diffuse. You see, the fire allows you to sit in the half light or dark and have a low presence both to others and yourself. The fire allows you to receive signals from the outer darkness because the fire light and the darkness imperceptibly meet and merge; it allows the noises of the outer darkness to come to you. The fire makes a
shapeless but contained play of light, which gets up things from the unconscious and it's a sort of mental plasticine too that you can turn into a TV screen of the psyche.