Leaving Bondi

by Robert G. Barrett

  After a shithouse night’s sleep, I dragged my tortured back off the water bed in time for breakfast and met Sunni, who worked at the Japanese Embassy. Sunni was also going to Nan Madol. We got our snorkelling shit together then climbed down another llama track with Allan, our Pohnpeian guide, to the boat, where we waited for Sarah. Sarah was from California and she’d been backpacking around Micronesia. Once we were organised, Allan got behind the twin outboard motors and flogged the skiff at warp speed out to some reef where we all went snorkel sucking for a couple of hours.

  Probably because of all the rain the water wasn’t all that clear, and probably because the locals had fished everything out I didn’t see all that many fish. We got back in the boat and Allan hit warp speed again to a desert island where we had a nice lunch, drank coconut milk and frolicked in the ocean. All this time genious me didn’t bother to wear a T-shirt like everybody else and soon my back looked like 20 kilos of boiled silverside. Allan said we had to catch the tide, so we cleaned up our mess and weighed anchor for Nan Madol.

  You don’t arrive at Nan Madol. Nan Madol creeps up on you. Allan cut the motors as we came in off the reef and started pushing the skiff over the shallows. The heat is absolutely crushing and an eerie silence suddenly seems to settle over everything. Then from out of nowhere these colossal stone walls appear all around you, stacked up out of huge crystalline basalt logs. It’s the most astonishing sight imaginable. We floated silently over shallows before Allan pulled up in front of what looked like a fortress made from these massive stone logs. I got off the boat and started snapping and filming everything in sight. Next thing we were joined by a Japanese film crew shooting a documentary. When our little party settled down, Allan gave us a talk on the people who supposedly built Nan Madol. Logic says it was the Saudeleurs who floated the logs out on huge bamboo rafts. Legend says it was two brothers, Olo-Chipa and Olo-Chopa, who ‘flew the logs through the air by magic’. I’ll take the legend, because some of the stones are as big as shipping containers and there wouldn’t be enough bamboo in Micronesia to make a raft big enough. Evidently some archaeologists tried the bamboo raft trip with just one small stone log and — no pun intended — it sank like a stone.

  I could have spent ages there, but we were running late and had to catch the tide again to visit Kepirohi Waterfall. Finally we returned to the hotel. I booked out and booked into the South Park Hotel, land of a thousand moggies, in beautiful downtown Kolonia, and dropped six nights at US$90 a night straight down the gurgler. The South Park wasn’t the Hilton but at least my room had a fridge, air-conditioning, and a bed that didn’t give you spina bifida. I caught up with Sarah and some local girls in the bar next door and had a cool one with her while the girls chewed beetle nut. Me being a Trekkie and Sarah coming from California, we bonded and got into a cosmological, New Age, UFO rap about Nan Madol. Both of us agreed it was one weird trip and vowed to return on Monday for a closer look. This time we’d drive around Pohnpei then walk in through the jungle and the canals. I had a few more beers, told Sarah I’d see her in the bar again on Sunday night then kicked my way back to my room through fifty hungry, miaowing cats.

  That night I slept a little better. However, when I got up my back felt like Captain Bligh had laid a lazy 500 lashes on it with a cat o’nine tails. After breakfast at the hotel I thought I’d take a drive around Pohnpei to take my mind off the pain. Driving in Pohnpei is fun. It’s left-hand drive, there’s no rules, you don’t have to wear a seat belt and there’s potholes in the roads big enough to swallow up a Russian nuclear submarine. Pedestrians meander all over the place with the pigs and chickens and you have to steer around them. Cars pull out in front of you and cut you off. But there’s no road rage because it’s too hot. Everybody drives like Grandma Duck after she’s had a few Valium. Your average, ethnic, Sydney westie wouldn’t last a day over here. The people live in corrugated-iron shacks with dirt floors and old sacks for curtains. Yet as you drive past they all smile and call out ‘Kaselehlie’, the local version of ‘G’daymateowyergoin’. I loved it.

  One thing they do have in Pohnpei is dogs. Thousands of them. All the same size, shape and colour, only in different stages of malnourishment. This had me curious. Pohnpeiens appear to be flat out feeding themselves, let alone families of dogs. Then according to my guide book, dog is on the menu. Between the pot lickers and the moggies, I made a mental note to be wary of any chicken or rabbit dishes. I met up with Sarah in the bar that night and shouted her dinner. I have to rap the food at the South Park Hotel, though. Especially the sashimi. The local tuna is sensational and they pile it up on your plate like Weetbix. I had a coupe more beers and told Sarah I’d see her about nine the following morning. And hopefully when we got to Nan Madol the tide would be out and we’d be safe wading through the canals before the tiger sharks came in at high tide.

  Sarah rang me the following morning to say she was running late. She didn’t have a watch and the wind-up thingy she had to tell the time wasn’t working. Did I mention Sarah came from California? It was raining when she called round. Being a gentleman I offered to let Sarah drive. The truth was, between my sunburn and the potholes the day before, my back was buggered. Being a Yank, Sarah was rapt. Yanks love to drive cars. A Seppo would rather drive twenty miles than walk fifty feet. Even in a little clapped-out Japanese hire job. I gave Sarah the keys, we checked our roadmaps then set off in the rain for the mysterious lost city of Nan Madol.

  By now Sarah and I had bonded enough to swap star signs. Sarah was a Gemini; the twins. Which figured, because it was like having three people in the car — Larry, Curly and Mo. We’d decided to check out some rock carvings first at Madolenihmw and all we did was keep getting get lost. Sarah was a good driver, but she had absolutely no sense of direction and I couldn’t read the map. We finished up in three piggeries, the local tip, a mangrove swamp and every backyard in the area. Between us we couldn’t find peace of mind.

  We drove as far as we could, then set off on foot just as it started to pour with rain. Before long we were soaked to the skin and completely lost. We never found the rock carvings. But as we stumbled through the jungle, I found an old stone building two metres high and 20 metres square totally hidden in the undergrowth. It had probably been there thousands of years and nobody knew. Evidently things like this are all over Micronesia. Soaking wet and reeking of BO in the humidity, we somehow managed to find the trail back to the car and stunk the seats up as we drove around getting lost again. Finally, we found the back way into Nan Madol, left the car, and set off through the canals.

  Walking in was a different buzz again. You slush through mangrove swamps and age-old pathways in almost indescribable heat, then these massive stone walls and buildings loom up in the jungle like something out of a Tarzan movie. It is absolutely mind-blowing. I started filming and snapping away again, then we came to the canal leading out to the reef and one of the bigger buildings. This time we had the place to ourselves and the eerie silence of Nan Madol sends shivers up your spine. It’s got a spiritual quality about it you can honestly feel. Sarah and I walked around filming and taking photos and looked for answers. But instead of answers, all we found were questions.

  The stone logs in the photo weigh up to 50 tonnes. There’s 250 million tonnes of stone logs in the buildings they know of so far, not counting the underwater columns out towards the reef. But this is the best part: they’re all built on 92 artificial islands. Before they brought the basalt logs over from Sokehs, about 40 kilometres away on the other side of Pohnpei, they built the islands, the foundations, out of coral. Put bluntly, thousands of years ago some race of ignorant savages with no electricity, no cranes and no bulldozers, no hard hats, work boots or work gloves, no paper to draw the plans on, no wages and no fresh water, in a place that hot and humid you can hardly breathe, was able to construct fantastic buildings to rival the pyramids. Buildings I don’t believe we could duplicate today. How?

  Evidently, basalt is not only crystalline,
it’s magnetic. I rubbed a piece of stone against one of the logs and it made an odd ringing sound. According to a book I got hold of, basalt would be an ideal stone to levitate. Levitation by sound has been experimented with by NASA and some physicists claim that gravity is really a frequency, part of Einstein’s Unified Field. Crystalline blocks of basalt need only be resonating at the frequency of gravity, 1012 hertz, and they lose their weight. Maybe that was the way the stones ‘flew through the air by magic’. In other words, humankind today can put a man on the moon, build atomic bombs, jumbo jets and cars, but thousands of years ago ignorant savages could move gigantic boulders around by sound waves. Is that how they built the pyramids? The Mayan temples? Nan Madol? Buggered if I know. But if somebody’s got a better answer I’m willing to listen.

  Sarah and I hung around Nan Madol taking photos and shooting videos for as long as possible. Then the tide started coming in. And the tide in Micronesia doesn’t come in, it rushes. So rather than risk being tiger shark sashimi, we left. I pocketed a piece of stone for a souvenir. But as we were walking back I took it out and tossed it into one of the canals. I’m not all that superstitious, but I honestly felt Nan Madol was one place that’s truly spiritual, and after what happened flying in, it wasn’t worth the risk.

  We only got lost twice on the way back to Kolonia. That night I shouted Sarah dinner at the South Park before she caught the eleven o’clock plane to Australia. I gave her a book and a couple of Team Norton T-shirts and told her to ring me when I got back and I’d look after her. I was a little sad to see Sarah go. We shared a lot of laughs together and she was one of those zany, happy people you can’t help but like.

  I spent the rest of the week hanging around in the heat, buying T-shirts and so forth. I called in on Mr Timothy Cole, the Australian consulate, and left him with a couple of books. Then I flew out on Friday. And I must say it was great to touch down in Sydney. However, there was another mystery waiting for me when I arrived home.

  I got back to Terrigal just after midnight and the stereo in my garage gym was glaring out FM radio. During my absence there was a power surge. And whenever this happens it turns on any stereos in the house not switched off at the power point. Lucky neighbours. I settled in, got my photos developed and made cassettes from my video camera. Sunday night I was downstairs in my den getting a little loose, listening to some music and thought, Shit! I’d love to knock up some roughs about my trip. But the computer wasn’t working. Just for fun I pushed the button and — bingo! The prick of a thing lit up like a Xmas tree. Windows 98. It had to be the power surge. So away I went. The next day I rang the bloke up to tell him what happened and asked could he explain it. He couldn’t. It was a complete mystery to him. Sorry.

  So I figure, between that and what I saw at Nan Madol — not counting all the money I lost in Pohnpei, the plane nearly crashing, the heat and getting sick on saccau — I’m entitled to write a mystery story. A science-shock thing set on a fictitious island somewhere in Micronesia. Complete with magic crystals, UFOs and mysterious force fields. Plus the usual gratuitous sex, drugs and violence you find in my books. And just to stir things up a bit, I’ll throw in a third world war. Sort of Independence Day meets Wag the Dog. How’s that for a mystery story?

  But of course the literary establishment has always considered me a mystery writer. It’s a complete mystery to them why anybody buys my books.

  A MESSAGE FROM THE AUTHOR

  Firstly, thanks for all your letters. It’s great to hear from you and I’m doing my best to reply. But I get bogged down and I am lazy, so please be patient. Especially my readers in various big houses across Australia. I also want to thank all those people who came to the book signings for the The Wind and the Monkey. Particularly Newcastle. When I walked into Charlestown Mall it was like Beatlemania. I’ve never seen so many people. Anyway, the book went to Number One, and I’d like to thank everyone for that.

  The Possum Lady also said to say hello and thanks for buying the T-shirts. Actually the Possum Lady had a bit of bad luck recently. She went to a doctor to get the hair lasered off her back and it all caught fire, and poor old Possum Lady finished up with third-degree burns. New she’s in a cast up to her chin and looks like the Phantom of the Opera. But she’s up and about and ready by the phone in a special chair we got made for her to take your orders for T-shirts, CDs, talking books or whatever at: Psycho Possum Productions, PO Box 3348, Tamarama NSW 2026.

  Now. People keep writing to me and asking me what’s going on with the Les Norton movie. Well, things have fallen in a bit of a hole there. I can’t elaborate on this for legal reasons. But the movie will get made. I’m just going to have to come at it from a different direction. So what I’ve done is this. I’ve paid a bloke an arm and a leg to write a film script for Davo’s Little Something. The script is finished, it looks sensational and I reckon Davo’s Little Something will make a red hot movie. We’ll find some investors and get it up. Then when we do, I’ll use the same team and make Les Norton movies the way they should be made. And it’s about time. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy Leaving Bondi. I’m not sure what’s coming up next. I might even give Les a break next year and do something else. Who knows? No matter what, thanks for your support and I’ll see you in the next book.

  Robert G. Barrett

  SO WHAT DO YOU RECKON?

  Robert G. Barrett

  There was a time when Robert G. Barrett was ‘in his forties, out of gaol, out of work, had three books published, but was stone motherless broke’. Political correctness had him confused and he had no desire to be more literary, even if he was the author of books that had been described as ‘the scatological nadir of the pile’ and ‘insidiously revolting … pray God they don’t get published overseas’.

  Then, through a twist of fate and good fortune, along came People magazine, who signed Barrett to produce a weekly column focusing on Australian life and its heroes and villains. So What Do You Reckon? is a collection of the best of these columns. Many are outrageous and all are written in Barrett’s highly popular and immediately recognisable style. Together they represent an often funny, always entertaining and uniquely telling assessment of modern-day Australia.

  So What Do You Reckon? Available Now

  MUD CRAB BOOGIE

  Robert G. Barrett

  Les caught the DJ’s eye. ‘Hey mate,’ he said. ‘If I give you ten bucks, will you play two songs for me?’

  ‘Mate,’ replied the DJ. ‘For ten bucks, I’ll play you Tiny Tim singing A Pub With No Beer in Vietnamese.’

  Look out Wagga Wagga, Les Norton’s in town and he feels like dancing.

  Extreme Polo. The wildest game on water. That’s what it said on TV. All Les had to do was drive down to Wagga Wagga for an old mate who owed him a favour, Neville (Nizegy) Nixon, and pick up the Murrumbidgee Mud Crabs. Then keep them at Coogee till they played the Sydney Sea Snakes in the grand final at Homebush Aquatic Centre. And naturally there would be a giant earn in it for him. Why not? thought Les, he had the week off from work.

  Next thing, Norton was on his way to the Riverina to meet the locals, the lovelies and oogie, oogie, oogie — do the Mud Crab Boogie.

  Mud Crab Boogie Available Now

  GOODOO GOODOO

  Robert G. Barrett

  Wolfman Les — Rock’n’Roll DJ.

  Another good idea down the gurgler …

  What should have been a quick gig on a radio station followed by a whitewater rafting holiday in Cairns finishes up a mud-soaked four-wheel drive trip to Cooktown with Norton looking for two missing scuba divers! The army, the air force and half the Queensland water police couldn’t find the two missing divers. So what chance does Les have?

  Along the way Les meets a kooky little space cadet who spends her time chasing UFO’s and predicting the future; man-eating crocodiles; heat and humidity; and strangers everywhere out for his blood. Then, in a place of indescribable beauty, he uncovers unimaginable terror …

  From FM ra
dio to FN Queensland, Goodoo Goodoo is a roller-coaster ride of thrills and spills and shows once again why Robert G. Barrett is one of Australia’s most popular contemporary authors.

  Goodoo Goodoo Available Now

  THE WIND AND THE MONKEY

  Robert G. Barrett

  A week’s holiday in Shoal Bay, courtesy of Price Galese. All Les had to do was help Eddie Salita get rid of a crooked cop. Why not? Les always wanted to visit Port Stephens. And nobody liked Fishcake Fishbyrne that much anyway.

  The first night in town, Les gets arrested by the federal police then collared by a drug-crazed, feminist author. The hit turned out to be a complete nightmare. Next thing, it’s a night drive into Newcastle with Eddie to sort out a team of local heavies.

  Somehow in the middle of all this Les meets Digger. Sweet Christian girl from The Church of the Peaceful Sea. Digger was a fiery little enigma wrapped in a burning secret. Digger found God. Les found Elvis. Together they journeyed to Virgin Island, discovered love and solved a mystery.