Ask any of my girlfriends and they’ll tell you flat-out that despite my shortcummins (see what I did there?) I’ve always been good with my hands – in the kitchen, around the house and other areas . . .
Anyhow, that can all be attributed to my grommet rooster days growing up with my brothers and our passion for heading out bush and building tree houses – each bigger, better and higher than the last. Our talents knew no bounds.
THE MORE EXTRAVAGANT THE TREE HOUSES GOT, THE MORE DANGEROUS THE BOOBY TRAPS BECAME.
We’d sneak some tools out of the old boy’s shed and head out for a hard day’s work knowing full well that others had their eye on our masterbuilt tree houses. As such, booby traps were a must. And the more extravagant the tree houses got, the more dangerous the booby traps became.
Deadliest of all were the booby traps we’d installed on our masterpiece – a four-storey tree house courtesy of my brother Nath. She was a beauty. A bush skyscraper.
It was a climb to get supplies up there and we’d go fully loaded with gear so we wouldn’t have to repeat the journey, but once upstairs at penthouse level, we felt invincible. Invincible, I tell ya! So long as the winds weren’t blowing.
WE WERE KINGS. GOLDEN GODS. LORDS OF OUR OWN DOMAIN.
We spent hours up there, just taking it all in. We were kings. Golden gods. Lords of our own domain. Well, you get the drift. Like our talents for building said abodes, our confidence, too, knew no bounds. Which is never a good thing for a bunch of adolescent grubs.
So one day Nath was on look-out and spots what can only be described as an intruder – possibly a sexual one on account of the man in question wearing nothing but worn-out joggers and a pair of budgie smugglers in an even sadder state than his Sauconys. It was a sight to behold and but a second went by before one of my brothers sang out from the top of his lungs: ‘Put some pants on, ya weirdo!’
It seemed justified given the nearest beach was some 100 nautical miles away and he was running in the suburbs. But as you can expect, he didn’t take too kindly to the insult.
So old mate spun on a dime and yelled back: ‘Right, get down here! I’m gonna give you a hiding!’
Forget that. We took enough beatings from each other let alone having some stranger give us what for in our own tree house. So it was a no-brainer – we’d stay up high in the fortress and continue to taunt him.
WE’D STAY UP HIGH IN THE FORTRESS AND CONTINUE TO TAUNT HIM.
‘Get stuffed!’ one of the brothers screamed. To Tony Abbott’s reply: ‘Take me to your parents now!’
Was he bluffing? We didn’t know. He was on a rager – the mental kind, sickos.
Bugger it! We decided to wait this one out. There was no sign of wind, we had a pocket full of Redskins and we could wait it out longer than he could. Until . . .
The weirdo threw caution to the wind and with his twig and berries dangling in the air began to climb the tree! ‘Things just got real’, I thought to myself. Because all of a sudden I was fearing for his safety and not ours.
Little did he know we were ready for such an intruder. And every fourth step on the timber ladder up was a fake – as in it wasn’t nailed in.
ALL OF A SUDDEN I WAS FEARING FOR HIS SAFETY AND NOT OURS.
‘Haha, got the bastard’, my brother yelled as the intruder took a tumble on the fourth. I hadn’t seen a grown man in dick togs hit the ground that hard since Trevor Hendy was dumped by a wave in old Uncle Toby’s Ironman.
He then threatened to cut down the tree – the next logical step by a man who thought it was okay to subject a family neighbourhood to the sight of his sweaty junk bounce up and down like a pogo stick.
However, at this stage I was shit scared and had a turtle head poking out and headbutting me undies. ‘Would he actually do it?’
As he stormed off to retrieve his cutting utensil, I didn’t want to be around to witness a bloke in that get-up wielding an axe or chainsaw. Surely it’s an OH&S issue. And quite frankly, we couldn’t take the chance that he might be serious so we bailed out and clapped it on all the way home in case he followed through with his plot.
He never caught us. And I suspect he thought twice before pulling on his budgie smugglers for his next jog.