LENNIE LOWER
PEOPLE WHO THINK THERE are no more thrills to be had in our wide-open spaces have not heard anything. Why, only the other day a man was attacked by a six-foot kangaroo in the bush near Corinda, and fought with it for ten minutes.
I have had similar experiences with wombats. Not dingbats—wombats!
While camped on the edge of a small nullah-nullah or waterhole I was startled by a loud roar. With true bushman’s instinct I fell into the waterhole, and, on looking around, observed a huge wombat devouring one of my dogs. From tip to tip its antlers were about eight feet across.
My rifle was on the bank, and I had broken my sheath-knife off at the hilt trying to cut a damper I had made. I knew I was safe so long as I stayed up to my neck in the water. Unfortunately I had not foreseen the cunning of this wombat.
Stamping its feet with rage, it approached the edge of the waterhole and commenced to drink. Rapidly the water level went down, from my neck to my armpits, then down to my waist.
Every now and then it would pause and glare at me with its little red eyes. This gave me an idea. Next time it glared at me I glared back at it. This seemed to disconcert the beast and it looked away and hiccuped.
It resumed drinking after a while but without any great enthusiasm.
The water was down to my ankles when the wombat gave me one last pitiful, frustrated look and rolled over on its side—full.
I splashed towards it. ‘Come on now,’ I said, ‘pull yourself together. I’ll get you a taxi. Where do you live?’
(This, of course, was sheer force of habit.)
‘Brr-hup! Groo,’ he answered.
‘Don’t give in to it,’ I said. ‘Do you think you can walk? Lean against me. That’s the way.’
Well, it was just the sort of thing you would do for anybody, but you wouldn’t believe how grateful that wombat was when next I met it. Of course, things don’t always work out that way. I could never get on with goannas—or iguanas, as you city folk say. They have a nasty habit of turning up at the wrong time. This would not be so bad if it were not for their penchant for climbing up trees.
I recall the time I was leaning against a gum tree talking to the squatter’s daughter. We were getting along famously, and I had even got to the point of shyly asking her what she thought about the price of fat lambs at the saleyards.
I could see the faint glow in her cheeks, her dewy, downcast eyes and tremulous lips as she replied, ‘You really want to know? You are not one of those . . . those men who, oh you wouldn’t understand.’
It was then that the goanna missed his footing and fell down the back of my shirt. If I had been wearing a belt all might have been well, but as I was wearing braces the thing went right down my left trouser leg. Its beady eyes looked out from just above my left boot and its tail waved frantically about the back of my neck.
‘Are you in the habit of indulging in this horseplay?’ she asked in icy tones. All the spirit of her ancestors—both of them—was in that steely glance.
I tried to explain. ‘You see,’ I said. ‘I’m wearing braces . . .’
‘I see,’ she said haughtily, ‘you usually keep your trousers up by sheer willpower, I suppose?’
I wanted to tell her that if I had been wearing a belt the goanna wouldn’t have gone all the way down. But she spurned me. She wheeled her horse with a look of utter loathing and gave it a slash with the whip. Surprised and indignant, the horse leapt in the air and the squatter’s daughter landed on a hard portion of one of her father’s many acres of grazing property.
‘Serves you right,’ I said.
Chivalry did not permit me to laugh out loud, so I contented myself with a quiet smile.
‘Are you in the habit of indulging in this sort of horseplay?’ I drawled.
Then we walked away—me and the goanna.
But for that goanna I might now have been the squatter’s son-in-law, pushing sheep about the place and picking the flies out of my ears, with a trip to the city once a year when the Show was on.
No, one doesn’t have to go abroad for thrills. In one day on an outback station I was—a) Kicked by a horse.
b) Chased by a bull.
c) Savaged by a dog.
d) Lacerated on a barbed-wire fence.
Also, in some mysterious fashion, I managed to put the lighting plant out of action.
You can’t tell me anything about bush life. I am fully qualified to put an advertisement on the ‘positions wanted’ column containing the words, ‘Do anything. Go anywhere.’
Address all communications to ‘Lantana W. (Wallaby) Lower’.
I am equally good as a horse-breaker, tutor, or native companion.