by Paul Carter
The penny dropped. ‘Oh fuck, what now?’
‘Shopping.’ He pulled into a Wal-Mart car park and hustled me into menswear and up to another fully vetted, fully prepared and fully willing middle-aged woman to whom he explained our predicament to, and she was off like a middle-aged rocket. ‘Come with me, young man.’
I followed while she fired questions over her shoulder at me about sizes and grabbed shoes, shirts, pants, the works. I stripped in the change room as fast as possible.
‘Have you enjoyed your visit to Texas?’ she said while handing me clothing over the top of the change room door.
‘Oh yes, it’s been wonderful.’ Fully dressed I swung open the door, my gear lying on the floor in a pile behind me.
‘Don’t worry about that, come on with me,’ she said and led me to a bathroom at the back of the store.
It took just fifteen minutes to get me fully kitted up in Levi’s jeans, Haines T-shirt, a pair of Converse, with a place to wash my face and hands thrown in, and get back in the car headed for the airport with time to make my flight, the bill $78.
Gregg dropped me off laughing and went home to clean his gun. I walked into the Emirates check-in section at Houston Intercontinental to no queue: my first reaction to this was the usual ‘Is it the right day, the right time?’ followed by the hurried checking of one’s itinerary and scanning of the airline staff while trying to figure out which was most approachable. Turned out it was the right day and the right time, just no one else showed up.
So I checked in and strolled through the empty customs and immigration area where they had a big clear tube you stand in that sniffs you for the two most prevalent things that make the world go round, drugs and things that go bang. It beeps, and lights up, then there’s a 300-pound policeman leading you into a little room where two more big Texas policemen fill opposite corners, smile and ask you how you’re doing.
‘Fine, thanks,’ I said and smiled like a man who thinks he’s about to get fisted in a cavity search that puts the 3D into Journey to the Center of the Earth. I had visions of an inflatable neck brace being the last of US purchases on this trip, except I wouldn’t be using it for my neck.
‘Mr Carter,’ Cop One was studying my passport, ‘we’ve detected trace elements of explosive material on your person.’ He paused for effect and folded his arms making his bicep flex until it was the same size as my head and gave me a hard direct stare; you know the one, where he’s picturing himself taking my head off with a shovel.
Cop Two spoke up from behind, putting my head on a swivel. ‘Can you tell us why, sir?’
He was pulling on a black surgical glove now, and I was thinking, Black, why is it black?
I realised my explanation was blurted out so quickly I started to go back in time.
‘Mr Carter, relax, have a seat.’ Cop Three gestured towards the empty chair in the only corner not filled with a uniform, so I sat down and explained myself to them, and for me this involved starting at the beginning. I suppose about half an hour went by without me taking a breath. Other officers came in to listen as I covered everything: why I was in the US in the first place, Americans I’d worked with, Afghanistan, reasons why I should not have brought up Afghanistan, oil, drinking, eating, OTC, more oil, Hooters, Poison Girl, American customer service, Australian gun laws, oil again, books, free books, free signed books, Wal-Mart, the shooting range.
‘I just bought everything I’m wearing,’ I blabbered, smiling and pulling out the Wal-Mart receipt. ‘I scrubbed down and dumped all my kit, even my belt.’
The big Texan cops were all sitting down now, listening and nodding, because my stories tend to go on a bit and go off on a tangent, especially if I think I’m in imminent danger of getting fisted. ‘Right, thank you, Mr Carter, that’ll be all we need,’ said Cop One. ‘Have a nice flight, sir.’
I nervously stood up. ‘I can go?’
‘Yup, we found very small traces of nitrates on your wristwatch, nothing to worry about.’
The watch was the only thing I didn’t wash. I couldn’t resist and paused halfway out the door. ‘So what if I hadn’t stopped at Wal-Mart on the way here?’
Cop One stopped smiling and gave me the shovel look. ‘You’d be missing your flight.’
I nodded in that fisted way and got out of there.
BONDED
JANELLE VAN DE VELDE has an excellent phone manner, speaking like a woman who is so organised she already knows what you’re going to say before you say it. She is meticulous and in possession of an excellent sense of humour. So when you eventually meet her and come unravelled during your business meeting, she is delicate and able to restore your fragile male ego so you don’t walk away from said meeting looking like a total idiot. You are, however, now acutely aware that you just got your arse handed to you by a charming woman, who was better dressed than you, taller than you (excluding heels) and more experienced than you in business.
I’m relatively new at this, being in business, being a businessman, the art of negotiation, of war. Learning that there are no friends in business. Judging who is who and where they fit in based on what they want.The information kings and the misinformation muppets.
Watching Janelle deal with her business, in her capacity as Linc Energy’s President of Shared Services, I realised how well she plays the game. Even more interesting was being invited to be part of Mr Peter Bond’s first jet flight across Australia using Linc Energy’s synthetic Jet A-1 fuel. I had lots of experience with Linc’s Clean Diesel fuel and found the process of producing that remarkable, to say the least.
As I mentioned earlier, Peter Bond is an interesting chap. A self-made man, his company now sets the pace in Australia for pushing the boundaries of exploring the future of affordable fuel.The fact that he went from an idea to producing fully vetted and internationally approved jet fuel that’s cheaper to produce and cheaper to purchase than the current fuel is just amazing; when you take into account the fact that he did it in five years, it’s staggering.
So when Peter is walking through a cow paddock, he knows there is coal below his feet at a thousand feet, he knows he can turn that coal into gas, then turn that gas into a clean fuel, then turn that fuel into jet fuel, and do it safely, with a minimal environmental impact, and make it all happen so it’s cost-effective in today’s dollars. Then just to prove it works, he sticks his new jet fuel in his own aircraft and flies it from Perth to Adelaide to Melbourne to Canberra to Sydney to Brisbane to Chinchilla.
At the end of the day he’s managed to produce fuel at a cheaper price that burns more efficiently and produces fewer emissions than conventional fuels. He’s come a long way in his 50 years, from a trainee metallurgist down at BHP Steel’s coke ovens in the Illawarra, in New South Wales, to a rich guy in his own jet flying on his own fuel to his own island. I say, ‘Well done’ and ‘May I please have another glass of that Macallan?’ and ‘Can I please go and sit in the cockpit?’.
He is also fascinating to watch in business, except he operates on a different level than the one I’m just beginning to understand, the one where I get to see him metaphysically shove his entire arm up some corporate oil executive’s bottom and work him like a puppet.
Frankly, I’m just happy sitting in the corner nursing a single malt that’s older than me and eating rinky-dinky handmade canapés offered up by a supermodel and made by a genuine candidate for the master-chef master-classy school of cocktail nibbles. Nibbles made from things you only see on telly and sometimes pass in an overpriced gourmet deli in a suburb you’re only in because you got lost. Food that is picked up between your thumb and forefinger with an extended pinkie and balanced on a napkin. I’m hungry and standing behind the scenes as best I can, hiding behind a very tall man in a tailored grey Prince of Wales check suit and polished dark brown brogues and the impeccable Janelle van de Velde.
Mr Bond is in the throes of delivering a rousing address to the packed room overlooking his jet. The media is there, the TV network
s are there, politicians are there—Canberra is BP-slick tonight and all I can think about is my empty stomach. It’s rumbling loud enough to make the occasional person look around; I’m drooling like Pavlov’s dog over the food that’s being quietly laid out on tables. As covertly and surreptitiously as possible, I stop being hypnotised by the amazing spread right next to me and just give in, faking a slight cough and stuffing five canapés in my mouth at once.
‘Special thanks to Paul Carter for joining us today—perhaps a few words from Paul.’
Fuuucckk! The inner scream fills my head. Lights search the room and I’m instantly lit up, lenses find their target and pull focus, my cheeks, now distended with canapé and whiskey, flush bright red, catching all the light in the room. I’m busted like an impatient greedy thief, I’m guilty as Kelly, Ned Kelly that is. All I need now is the bucket, not to wear over my head but to spit the contents of my mouth into.
‘Nicely done on the talking with your mouth full to the country’s news media earlier,’ Mr Bond’s full-time pilot Kane says to me later.
‘It takes great skill,’ I reply, smiling. He smiles back and hands me another scotch. ‘It’s a gift, really. I don’t like to talk about it.’
Kane and I stand there surrounded by deeply serious political, financial and heavily business-orientated conversation. We know we’re out of our depth and unable to jump in on any level, so we revert back to looking like we’re also engaged in big-boy I’m-a-player man talk.
‘So how many canapés do you think I could get in my mouth?’ I ask him, nodding at another table festooned in more gold-clad delicacies.
‘Well,’ he pauses in reflection as we glance around the room, ‘you give me a kiss, and I’ll tell you.’
I look over the rim of my glasses at him like we’ve just struck the biggest covert deal in political, financial and business history. ‘Dickhead.’
Kane nods then gives his best nonchalant smile to a middle-aged woman in a sheer black silk dress who glides past then he announces that he’s off to talk to her about her vagina and leaves me there in no man’s land.
One thousand two hundred canapés later I fall into my tennis-court-sized bed in my hotel suite. Mr Bond’s jet awaits the next morning.
Problem is, I’m starting to get used to this life. I sit at the back of the jet next to Mrs Bond. She’s lovely and blonde but not in a blonde way; the fact that she was finishing the crossword in the Australian in the same amount of time it takes me to read the front page should have alerted me this.
‘So you’re a writer?’ she politely asked me, and I nod, cutting straight to ‘What’s it like living on your own island?’ I picture the other Bond’s nemesis in a villainous lair hidden inside a volcano jutting out of the middle. ‘I mean, how do you do the shopping?’ Possibly the silliest question one could ask a woman like Mrs Bond and immediately I feel stupid. But Mrs Bond, of course, has her feet firmly planted on the ground. She is so down to earth it’s like chatting to my sister, and this, of course, just made the experience even more acceptable, easy, even expected—we fly, we schmoose, we canapé. And why? Because we can, because Mr Bond’s got affordable, eco-friendly jet fuel, he’s the George Clooney of jet fuel, and me, well, I was grateful for the free Clean Diesel he gave me last year to run the bike on. I certainly didn’t expect to get an invitation to fly the high life in his jet in the process. But when you’re Mr Bond you get to do that.
I am transported home with all the pampering and civility imaginable. I feel like the Queen Mother by the time I open the car door and step onto my suburban driveway. My neighbour Nick is watering his garden as Mr Bond’s limo tools off down the street.
‘What the fuck have you been doing?’ he asks, hose in one hand, bottle of beer in the other.
‘Flying all over the country on a new environmentally friendly aviation fuel that’s going to revolutionise the jet fuel industry and pave the way for innovative Aussies to show the rest of the world how it’s done.’
‘Fuck off, Pauli,’ he says and shakes my hand.
The next day I sat in my office trying to remember if the whole jet caper had actually happened; it was so surreal it seemed far away. The week stretched past slowly, punctuated by canapé flashbacks, until my old friend Erwin phoned me up to tell me he was off whatever god-awful drilling operation he’d been on and was now home and keen to jump on his bike.
As requested I arrived on my bike in his front yard 7 a.m. sharp on a sunny Saturday morning, brandishing the thousand-dollar carbon-fibre helmet I’d decided to purchase for Speed Week (if indeed Speed Week ever actually happened), and there he was, sitting on his porch drinking coffee, as solid and reliable as gravity. Erwin is a constant in my life; he remains as steadfast now as he did when I was twenty, and he still looks the same to me, only time has greyed the edges.
‘Nice lid,’ he said as I bounded up the steps to his porch. ‘Pity.’ He gulped his coffee.
‘What is?’ I asked, sitting down.
‘The dog’s pissing in it.’
‘What?’
I spun around in time to see Boston shaking off the last few drops on the rim of my upturned no-longer-smells-like-brand-new carbon-fibre helmet. That dog lets go like a racehorse. I spent an hour washing it out while Erwin got his bike out of storage mode. He kept laughing whenever the image of Boston popped into his head. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he said repeatedly. ‘How’s your lid?’
I had finished handwashing the liner and scrubbing out the inside, but it didn’t really matter what or how much I tried. I slipped my head inside its superlight carbony Darth Vader slick cottonwool internals, and for a second everything was fine, like shoving your head into an Aston Martin’s glovebox, then finding a sodden nappy in the corner.
The day only got better. When we finally got Erwin’s bike started and it looked like we would actually go for a ride, it pelted down. So I decided to take his bike up the road for a wet spin, and promptly dropped it while turning into his driveway and broke the big toe on my right foot. Erwin was gracious about it; the bike, a three-year-old Harley VRod, was barely scratched but my foot was a mess.
Off to hospital, home with pain meds and the diagnosis that I would need foot surgery to fix the problem. I had to wait a few days before my appointment with the orthopaedic surgeon and, as things are in life, this was when I got the phone call from National Geographic telling me I’d been cast and the contract was on its way over. It arrived with a breakdown of the content of the series; it all looked full-on, with lots and lots of things involving a fully functioning and reliable big toe.
So then I went to see the surgeon and he got to the bit where they talk about recovery from the operation. ‘You’re going to be incapacitated and without normal mobility for three months, Paul, so if there’s any reason why you can’t do this, we can postpone the procedure until later.’ He chewed on the end of his pen and searched my face for any type of reaction.
‘Postpone for how long?’
‘Well, not more than six months, at the most.’
I explained my situation after which he gave me more drugs and showed me how to tape up my foot. He also gave me a special shoe insert that stopped my toe from moving too much and that was it.
I didn’t tell a soul at National Geographic about my toe, so a week later, script not yet memorised, toe throbbing in period-accurate boots, I emerged from a wardrobe trailer, dressed circa 1788 convict, into the middle of a packed Circular Quay at Sydney Harbour, completely unprepared.
1788—THE YEAR OF
MIGRATING
DANGEROUSLY
RUSSELL VINES WAS the director. A big man, big and hairy in a nice way, he had lots and lots of experience filming hard, tough stuff on the fly. His last television directorial effort won awards and was the first series to cover on any level the stages of selection into the Special Air Service Regiment; SAS—The Search For Warriors would have been a difficult shoot for him and his crew. And of course all the guys on the crew had lots of ex
perience; we were roughly around the same age too. Meanwhile I had bucketloads of dialogue to learn, lots of factoids to inject at appropriate moments, and the whole lot left my head like David Copperfield’s jet the moment the trailer door cracked sunlight onto my woolly and extremely itchy wardrobe ensemble.
‘Lovely, you look suitably hot and uncomfortable,’ Russell said, glancing up from his gear as he set up his shot.
This would be the first image in the National Geographic series Australia—Life On The Edge, seven one-hour episodes covering pivotal moments in our country’s history and starting with the big one, the arrival of the First Fleet into Sydney Cove. There were four presenters involved in the series, three of them wonderfully qualified, experienced around cameras and good-looking—Mat McLachlan (historian), Giovanna Fasanelli (marine scientist and submarine pilot), Andrew Bales (geologist)—and me (I don’t have a special talent, eating canapés perhaps, although I used to paint when I was an alcoholic). I realised I was the odd one out as soon as I started holding my gut in and couldn’t remember factoid number one, my name.
Russell was supremely patient with me, as was the other director, Eliot Buchan; they knew exactly what to say and how to put me at ease. That’s hard as I’m easily distracted, especially when the first shoot is in the middle of Circular Quay during the morning peak-hour rush. They needed to fence off random people from walking into the shot, Russell and Eliot had this sixth sense, they would break from conversation, snap their gaze into the middle distance, look at a crew member and say, ‘Jeff, at your two o’clock,’ then straight back to the conversation. Jeff bolts off into the throng; he’s a guy on the crew whose job is to deal with ‘squeezers’. A squeezer is anyone in authority who will walk up to the crew regardless of what they’re doing and start demanding to see their varied forms of permission to film there, their insur–ance or safety or parking or lighting permit, or permit to be bald, or the official onsite filming authority that states that the filming can only be for fifteen minutes, in a southwesterly direction not to be panned up by more than 20 degrees, and everyone’s got to be dressed in blue. Shit like that, shit that had been signed off by the squeezer’s boss’s boss weeks earlier with a follow-up call, email, carrier pigeon sent that morning as a reminder. Squeezer control is a full-time gig.
