Kamikaze Kangaroos!

by Tony James Slater

  “Ah, okay George,” I said. “We’ll just sit inside, then?”

  “Yeah, no worries! Bobcat’ll sort it out. Too easy!”

  It was a tense few minutes, as we waited for George to get back to his beloved bobcat. Gill went over and over the procedure for push-starting Rusty. It was something we’d done many, many times already… but never whilst being pushed by an earthmover. We had no idea what George had planned, but I was hoping I’d be able to convince him to try something less extreme. Like towing us back to the top of the hill, and then lending us a shoulder to help push Rusty back down?

  Surely that was the wisest course of action. I resolved to tell George exactly this.

  We heard him coming long before we could see him. The bobcat’s engine roared loud and throaty, as it skidded around the corner. George must have decided that taking a run-up was the best course of action, as he wasn’t slowing at all as he approached us.

  “SHIT! Gill! He’s going to ram us!”

  “I know! What do we do?”

  “Fuck knows!”

  George was on the approach, barrelling towards us up the incline. I braced for impact, pressing so hard against Rusty’s floor panel that I was half afraid I’d put my feet through it. We both clung to the handbrake lever, as though it offered some kind of magical protection against onrushing maniacs.

  The bobcat bucket was lowering as it came. I’d seen bad guys dispatched this way at the end of action movies.

  But George, never subtle, was still a master of his tools. He dropped the throttle a fraction as he came into contact, and the tiny lull in speed, coupled with the uphill gradient, caused the bucket to clang hard into Rusty’s front bumper – without crushing right through it and decapitating his occupants.

  I was quite glad of that.

  That impressive forward momentum now transferred to Rusty – at least, once Gill had unclenched her hand long enough to release the hand brake – and Rusty lurched into sudden, violent, motion.

  Backwards.

  It was a little unnerving, to say the least. The bobcat steamed forwards, shoving Rusty along at break-neck speed. Gill, her eyes the size of dinner plates, was steering frantically with her gaze fixed on the rear-view mirror.

  “Pop the clutch!” I yelled at her.

  “What?”

  “Just start the frigging car!”

  “Oh, right!”

  Rusty lurched as Gill slammed him into reverse gear, and our speed definitely slowed – but nothing else happened. Gill’s leg was going up and down, pumping like mad, while she turned the key hard enough to break it.

  Nothing.

  We slowed to a crawl, then stopped, having reached the crest of the hill again. George was winking at me in a most unnerving way from above the digger bucket – he wore a grin that seemed to say ‘not bad – let’s give her one more go…’

  I shuddered at the thought.

  But Rusty was going nowhere.

  “No worries, George will sort it,” he said. “What we’ll do is swap out the batteries. Put the bobcat battery in this – that’ll get her going!”

  I collected my thoughts. I’d just won a ten-minute argument against repeating the process we’d just been through – downhill – “only faster!” By now I was having serious doubts that any amount of molestation would convince Rusty to start, and this seemed like a particularly stupid way to die. Even for me.

  This next plan, though? Did it have merit? Not for the first time (and certainly not for the last), I wished I had any kind of mechanical knowledge at all.

  “If we start it, won’t it stop when we take the battery out?” Gill asked. “How do we swap the batteries back?”

  “Nah, she’ll be right,” said George.

  “But George… how do we swap the batteries back?”

  “Just keep her running, keep your foot down.”

  “Can you take the battery out like that? Won’t you get electrocuted?”

  “Nah. No worries!”

  That seemed to settle it. We tipped the driver’s chair forwards to access the engine bay, realising at that point that to keep Rusty running at the same time as having access to the battery compartment, one of us would have to sit in the passenger seat and keep a foot on the accelerator from the opposite side of the van.

  Difficult. But not impossible.

  The whole scheme though? That seemed impossible. Just a bit.

  Especially when George beckoned us over to look at his battery. Bobcats are quite a mean piece of kit, so it was no surprise to find it was equipped with a battery the size of a bar fridge.

  “She’s a beauty, eh!” he enthused.

  But one of those embarrassingly over-sized beauties that didn’t really fit in.

  “Thanks anyway, George.”

  “No worries! Guess we’ll have to jump-start her after all, eh.”

  “But we don’t have any leads. Or we’d have tried that first, remember?”

  “No problem! George can sort it out. There’s brick ties everywhere. I’ll just grab a couple of those, and off we go.”

  “Brick ties? You mean those bits of wire?”

  “Yeah, too easy! There’s some.”

  And he picked out of the dust a pair of steel wires, slightly thicker than coat hangers, and started to untwist them for added length.

  “Um, George, I don’t think that’ll work mate.”

  “No, George can sort it out! Bring the van closer, so I can reach the bobcat.”

  And this was where we felt we had to pull the plug. Before a friendly, somewhat eccentric bloke gave himself a lethal electric shock on our behalf. It just wasn’t worth it.

  I let Gill talk George down this time, as the continued failure of his schemes seemed to be spurring him on to come up with even crazier ones.

  We stumbled through the front door, exhausted, more than two hours later.

  Roo, bless her, had been worried sick.

  Telling her the story was almost as traumatic as living through it.

  Finally, George had agreed to call the RAC. He’d told us he was a ‘platinum member’, and that they’d be obliged to fix our vehicle just because he was with us.

  That had sounded suspiciously like a load of bollocks – and had turned out to be just that. But George, in utterly inimitable style, had simply talked his way around it. He hadn’t convinced the RAC man he was a platinum member – probably because the RAC man knew that platinum membership didn’t exist. George’s card was silver – and it had expired. He also hadn’t convinced the bloke that Rusty was his van – that he’d bought him (in spite of the acid-trip exterior) to ferry his labourers to work. Not by a long shot. But he stuck to his story – and repeated it – and repeated it… and in the end, he talked so much, and for so long, that he wore the guy down. After listening to George’s bullshit for three quarters of an hour straight, the poor RAC bloke decided discretion was the better part of valour. Or something like that. He’d stuck his machine onto Rusty, super-fried his battery, started him up – and then fled.

  Against all the odds, George had, in fact, sorted it out.

  And that was when we’d fled, too.

  A few weeks later, we fled Trevor’s employ completely. We now had just enough time to complete the Bibbulmun Track – if we really pushed it – and still get over east to meet Mum.

  Trevor owed us nearly a month’s wages by this point, so I had to get tough; I called him, and threatened to report his reliance on illegal labour to the Australian Taxation Office if he didn’t cough up some dough.

  This had the desired effect; at our last meeting, he gave Gill and I fifteen-hundred dollars each.

  He promised to pay the rest of what he owed us by bank transfer the following week.

  He never did, of course, but we knew that would happen.

  To be honest, we were so glad to be rid of him that even hiking a thousand kilometres sounded like a relief.

  “I need to lay down,” I said to Roo after making the phone call
.

  “Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of time to rest on the Bibbulmun Track,” she said.

  From this brief exchange, I got the impression that our concepts of ‘rest’ were somewhat different.

  Be Prepared

  Leaving Trevor’s employ had a galvanising effect on us.

  The clock was now ticking – with no more money coming in, we had to get ready and get gone before our next rent cheque was due.

  Being deliciously, gloriously unemployed again after weeks of tough, thankless slog was such liberating experience it more than compensated for any misgivings we had. Amazingly, I’d come to fantasise about having nothing to do all day but walk – all three of us were unerringly positive about our chances of success, and our gear-shopping trips had an air of celebration about them.

  Going from op shop to op shop, we quickly amassed a variety of technical ‘outdoors’ clothing. I have a theory about this: because that stuff is so utterly, ridiculously, unnecessarily expensive, most people who buy it do so purely for that reason. Rather than putting the gear to its intended use in the jungles, deserts and mountains of this planet, they go shopping in it – only to realise, shortly after buying it, that it doesn’t look nearly as good as a nice pair of jeans and a t-shirt. So it sits in the back of the wardrobe for a year, then goes to the op shop the next time they have a clear out.

  Honestly – there are more pairs of moisture-wicking quick-drying insect repellent SPF 30+ breathable membrane ‘WindBreaker™’ technical trekking trousers sitting in charity shops than there are wrapped around hiker’s arses the world over.

  “Wow! These fit great, and I’m pretty sure they’re waterproof,” Roo said, holding up some grey hiking trousers. They still had the Nike shop tags hanging off them.

  “They’re like the plastic-y part of tracksuit bottoms, but without the lining. What else can they be?”

  Sold! For $8.

  We made one trip to a branded outdoor clothing supplier, where Gill and Roo bought hiking boots. While they were being fitted, I wandered around the store, boggling at the prices of things as simple as a plastic knife-and-fork set.

  Gill came up to me with her trademark mischievous grin. “Tony, Tony! Look!”

  And she held up a tin kettle, of the whistling, stove-top variety. She pressed a button with her thumb, and the lid flapped open and closed like a mouth. “Listen!” she waggled the button in perfect lip-synch to her sotto-voice; “Oh myyyy, darling, do behaaaaave yourself!”

  “Eh?”

  “Don’t you get it? Tony, it’s a camp kettle!”

  “Oh. My God. That’s it – we’re leaving.”

  “No, wait! Don’t you want to see my impression of a ‘camp stove’?”

  Next it was my turn. I’d been putting off buying boots, as the cheapest pair I’d seen so far was $250. And they say never to buy the cheapest of anything – especially when you’re going to depend on them for two months straight.

  Amidst reminders that if I didn’t buy some soon, I’d be doing the hike in flip-flops, I entered a store that sold work wear to the average Aussie tradesman. This was my last chance to find a pair of reasonably priced boots, and there were plenty to choose from. With or without steel reinforcement.

  “A size bigger?” I requested of the shop assistant. I’d read somewhere that wearing two pairs of thick socks was the most effective way to prevent blisters, and I was keen to size my boots accordingly.

  She brought a huge yellow box out to me and answered my questions as I tried on its contents.

  “Of course they’re waterproof,” she said at last, “they’re leather.”

  Well then. That seemed to end the debate.

  I left that shop $120 poorer, yet celebrating my win. I’d scored a moral victory against the purveyors of ridiculously over-priced hiking gear.

  So what if it meant I’d be hiking in work boots?

  With that done, we were one-third of the way through our list of essential pre-hike missions. The two remaining ones were to pack (which was bound to be easy, so we left that until last), and to arrange our free ‘Organisational Meeting’ with the Bibbulmun Track Foundation. We were lucky again; they had an appointment open for us, at whatever time suited us. Because apparently “not many people walk the Track at this time of year…”

  Well, that just had to be good news. Didn’t it? No crowds on the path, no jostling for space in the shelters.

  Jim, the veteran hiker assigned to guide us through the planning process, was in complete agreement. “It’s lovely to walk at this time of year,” he told us. “It makes everything a bit different. It’s good to have a challenge.”

  This, coming from a man who’d completed the hike himself more than a dozen times. “But never in winter,” he explained, “so I’ll be interested to find out how you get on.”

  His optimism was infectious, so we sort of glossed over what a less positive person might have called ‘the downsides’.

  “I think it’s a wonderful idea that you’re all doing this together,” said Jim.

  “Yeah, we all get along well enough,” Gill said.

  “And if not, I just overrule everyone else and we do what I say!” I added.

  “No we don’t,” said Gill. “Not ever.”

  “Riiight,” said Jim, “moving on, then. Let’s talk about food. You’ll each be carrying enough for eight days, because that’s the longest time between resupply opportunities. This time of year there’ll be plenty of rain water in the tanks, so you should be able to fill up your water bottles at each shelter. So long as you don’t mind a few wrigglers!”

  “Wrigglers?”

  “Mosquito larvae. They’re in all the tanks, but if it bothers you, you can take a water filter with you to screen them out.”

  “Nah,” I said. “More protein!”

  I could see Gill making a note on the back of her diary. I suspected it read something like: ‘1) BUY A FUCKING WATER FILTER!’

  Which of course we didn’t.

  Jim continued; “The best thing you can do is to take ready-made, dehydrated meals. They sell them in all the camping shops.”

  “Yes, we saw those, but they’re a bit out of our budget,” I confessed.

  “Yeah, it’s expensive stuff! A good alternative is to dehydrate your own food. My wife usually does mine. It takes several weeks to make enough, but there’s a machine you can buy to speed up the process. It is an investment, but well worth it.”

  I held my tongue. We’d made a decision, before coming in, to avoid mentioning that almost all our gear so far had been acquired second hand, from charity shops. This seemed like a suitable moment to unburden myself, but I held firm against the temptation.

  “Your food is the single most important thing to consider,” Jim explained, “it’s vitally important that you eat as balanced a diet as possible. You’ll be working your bodies hard, and you have to have the right mix of nutrients to keep going.”

  “Hm… yes, I can see what you mean…”

  “So, are you going to consider dehydrating your food?”

  “No. We’ve bought about fifty packets of instant noodles.”

  “Oh.”

  I thought I’d finally managed to faze him – which is probably not the best thing to be shooting for in a meeting like this, but it did have a certain appeal. Horrify the experts with our slapdash approach, and do it anyway – thereby proving, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we can accomplish anything!

  Well, so long as we accomplished it.

  Otherwise, we’d look like… well, exactly what we were. A bunch of idiots.

  “So you’re going the whole way, and you’ve got how many days?”

  “Two months. Sixty days.”

  “That’s pretty quick for your first time, but it is possible. You’ll have to double-hut it a few times – you know, walk two sections in one day. That could be twenty-five to thirty kilometres on those days. Think you can manage that?”

  I spoke for all of us. �
�We’ll try.”

  “Okay,” said Jim, “so let’s talk about your preparations. Are you doing much walking at the moment?”

  “Ah… no. Not really.”

  “Any of you?”

  There was a consensus of shrugs and head-shakes as he glanced around the group.

  “Okay. I usually advise people to do a few k’s every day for the first week, and see how you feel. Then you can up it to 10k’s, as often as you can over the next couple of weeks. And then start loading up your rucksacks, trying to walk with a little more weight each time.”

  I think he could tell by the slight shifting in our seats that he wasn’t really selling this idea to us.

  “Okay. So when are you actually setting off?”

  The three of us looked at each other.

  “Tomorrow,” Roo said.

  “Ah.”

  “But we’re quite fit,” she continued.

  “And we’ll get fitter as we walk,” I added.

  “Yes…” Jim’s reply seemed to have lost some of its conviction.

  “Don’t worry about us,” I said to him, “we’ll manage.”

  At this point Jim excused himself for a moment. I like to think he walked out of the office onto some sort of balcony, shook his fist at the sky and called out, “Why God, WHYYYYYYYYY?”

  More realistically, he was putting in a call to the state Fire and Rescue Service, telling them they’d most likely be needed in the next couple of days.

  And probably starting a betting pool on how long we’d last on his way back through the office.

  But the meeting wasn’t a total waste of time.

  For starters, we met Jim – who was a veritable mine of information, all of which will be very useful the next time we decide to walk the Track.

  I’d also like to point out that he was absolutely right, in every piece of advice he gave us. He was, in fact, a bone fide expert.

  The fact that we completely ignored it all says more about us than it does about him. Actually, it says everything about us; criminally unprepared, fiendishly overconfident, and blissfully ignorant of both inadequacies. Ha! Story of my life. Anyway, I think it’s safe to say that the world of long distance hiking had a new lowest standard of competitor.