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Show "NO WORRIES?’ Inee it’s the national motto (except for all those damn flies), but for 1% of the population, it’s a bad — By Jim Stiles x By the second week in Australia, I had found and embraced my routine. Every morning we awakened at dawn, made cowboy coffee off the tailgate of Reggie's truck, struck the tents and took off. The beauty of it wes we never had any destination. It didn’t matter. We were in no hurry. We had ‘no worries.’ [earned that "no worries" was practically an Aussie Motto--wherever we went, the advice and admonition was always the same. "No worries, mate,” and they did their best to live up to their words. Words, however, often kept me a bit confused and bewildered. It’s like...those Australians | havea different word for everything. "Cookies’ are "biscuits" and "trucks" are "utes" and—get this— a "dust devil” is.a "willy willy.” I once heard an ABC Radio news reader solemnly announce that "a willy willy has struck the North Perth area with damaging consequences.” ' Once a grizzled old trucker with yellow teeth told us he was taking his last road train across the Oodnadata Track and asked us to wish him luck. I said, "We'll be rooting for you.” The bloke But I hated them and they hated me. I have never seen such persistent living entities. Once, walking in to a strong headwind along the Southern Ocean coast near Melbourne, I thought I'd lost them. Then I looked behind me and saw that they were actually tacking in the wind to stay with me. No horror film I’ve ever seen measured up to the Reality of the Flies. Of course, the Australians, the white Aussies, that is, have no one to blame but themselves. When the Brits first laid claim to the continent, flies hardly had a foothold, simply because most of the native fauna possessed very efficient kidneys in this hot and hostile climate and their pellet-like feces were poor hosts for flies to lay eggs. But when the "bloody Pommes” arrived (to borrow a popular derisive description of their ancestors), they brought their Holstein cows along too, and with them, subsequently, billions of wet, soft, mushy meadow wafer breeding areas. The flies were ecstatic and have been for 200 years. Add to the more than suitable environment for eggs, a temperate climate where it rarely freezes a aes may some day le me. Parliament. Some think that might aoean (L) When it got cool enough, the flies quit buzzing and just clung to our shirts. (ABOVE) The Pink Galahs, known to hang upside down from telephone lines— noisy but nearly as annoying as "the national bird.” improvement. Still, the flies did go away at night, although Inever figured out just where they went, and to be fair, not all of Australia was as bad as most of it. stopped suddenly, spun around on his work boots and said, "Hey mate, vou root for yourself, ok?'l don’t need any bloody Yank to do my rooting for me!" As he stomped off and climbed into his rig, I turned to Reggie and said, "What the hell was that all about?” "Having a ‘root’ means sex, you idiot.” Likewise, I made the mistake of asking the guy at the petrol station where the "rest room" was. "Rest room? Do you need a rest, mate?” he deadpanned. "No," I stammered, "I need to urinate, to tell you the truth.” "Ah...you got a drain the ol’ dragon, eh? Well, I don’t know where you Yanks go to syphon the python but we Aussies use a toilet ...it’s around the back." One glorious evening, we camped nearly fly-free just down the coast from a small community called Bateman’s Bay. Reggie prepared one of his curry dishes and after dinner, he went for a stroll along the beach, while I performed my specialty, washing the dishes. Afterwards, I found him with four guys from town. They all had fishing poles and cans of a beer called Toohy’s Old, kept cold in their little neoprene stubby holders. Jeff was nursing a beer himself. I introduced myself to Ted, Bobbie, Dougie and Larry. Ted said, "Hey Little Man, do you want a beer?" = Well...yes | wanted a beer, I thought, but why is-he calling me Little Man? I’m not so short as to incur that kind of abuse. I‘mean, 5 feet 8 inches is a respectable height. Who is this jerk, I wondered? We've barely met. Then Ted turned to Larry and said, "Hey Little Man, are you ready for another beer too?” "Sure Little Man," said Larry to Ted, "But give me a Fosters this time.” Dougie walked up. "Did Little Man drink the last Fosters, Little Man?” Ted started to answer. Although it was hard to tell, I think Dougie was talking to him. But Larry jumped up and said, "Yeah, Little Man, what are you going to do about it?” Dougie laughed and said, “You're lucky I’m in a good mood Little Man." It became apparent that we had fallen in with a group known among themselves at least as the Little Men, although they varied in height by more than a foot. All of them were cordial and Relieved and relaxed, we made our way slowly down the coast. Very slowly, in fact. Reggie is probably the world’s most dedicated and consistent conservationist and never lets his vehicle exceed 80 km/hour (about 48 mph). But we were in no hurry with "no worries,” so our tortoiselike forward movement was only occasionally annoying. "NO WORRIES!” Reggie would exclaim regularly. "No Davey Murrays! No wuckin’ furries!” Gubbins, the historian/economist, insisted that we listen each morning to the ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) and he was always trying to explain complex political issues to me. Like Malaysian monetary policy. In great detail. "That's fascinating,” | would yawn. Every three hours we stopped for tea. Reggie would not patronize the occasional roadhouses we passed, not after he discovered the cost to be more than a dollar per cup (and no refills). Gubbins calculated he could brew the tea himself for less than 13 cents a serving. I’m sure he was right. To the penny. "Besides," he explained, "the Australians really don’t know how to brew tea. They never prepare it quite the way I like it." The truth is, I came to look forward to tea time, almost as much as Reggie, although I couldn’t consume the massive quantities that Reggie gulped down. Or "quaffed," as Reggie liked to say. "Ahhh...this is the perfect quaffing temperature,” he’d moan contentedly as he finished his fourth cup of the morning. No worries. But what about all these wuckin’ flies? I'd never seen anything like it. I’d heard the stories, seen the bush hats with the dangling corks that Aussies supposedly wear to keep the flies at bay, heard the rumors that the bush fly was the national bird, and that those same flies had gained access via his ear canal to the brain of Prime Minister Howard and eaten all his compassionate parts, but then I experienced it for myself. The horror. The Horror. On a four day backpack trip into the Budawang Mountains, the flies found us and never said goodbye. Over the next few weeks, as they physically and mentally wore me down, I began to wonder if the continent was really inhabited by trillions of these evil insects, or if it was the same five to seven thousand that had "discovered" me back in New South Wales and stayed with me for the entire journey. interested fact. And in our it was trip. One of them, plain to see that Ted, Bobbie, Dougie, had been to the States recently, to Boise, Idaho, in and Bobbie were there to fish and drink and have a good time. I came to appreciate the casual way many Aussies embrace their pastimes. An activity like fishing is a social experience more than anything else. They haven’t been seduced by the very American "You must have the outfit’ Syndrome. They don’t care if they look silly or don’t have top notch gear. They’re not there to impress anybody; they just want to enjoy themselves and drink massive quantities of beer. Product marketing, the packaging of fun itself, is slowly making its way into Aussie Life, but it doesn’t own them yet. They still have a little time left to be human. Back to the Little Men... But what was the deal with Larry? He’d been examining us closely, I’d noticed. Almost squinting at us, it seemed. Finally he said, "So what do you think of the aboriginal situation over here? Do you think they’re a bunch of dole bludgers? Or are you a couple of bleedin’ hearts?” Every Eden has its dark sides. I’d just found one of Australia’s. The story of the Aboriginal people of Australia since 1788 is as tragic and brutal a tragedy as anyone can imagine. Its parallels to the plight of the Native Americans in the United States .during the last half of the 19th century are striking. When James Cook sailed into Botany Bay under the Queen’s flag in 1770, it is believed that Bil = |