How to chicken-fry a kangaroo.

Do you come from a land down under/Where women glow and men thunder? – Men at Work

Pinkawillinie. Karkoo. Koonibba. Eucla. The names don’t exactly roll off the tongue, and seem almost comically made-up, like some straight-to-tv Nickelodeon movie. But they’re real and really do exist–I know, I’ve been there. Let’s just pick one at random and see: Gundagai.

So we’ve just lunched at Wagga Wagga and my Aussie buddy Ben says we’ve got to take a little detour and go see the Dog on the Tucker Box, five miles from Gundagai. I’m like, what the heck is a tucker box?

He said it’s Australian slang for a lunch box, and there’s a famous song about it. I said ok, let’s go. But first a bit about lunch–have you ever had Vegemite? It’s horrible across all dimensions–texture, taste, color and smell– but for some reason Australians love it. I’m reading the ingredients off the label now: “Made from concentrated yeast extract.” You know what that means? I’ll tell you what that means–when they’re making beer and empty a huge vat, there’s a thin crusty scum of fermented hops spooge on the bottom. They scrape that crud up and put it in jars. Voila, Vegemite. Here’s some flavor:

“Some blokes I know have stacks of luck, no matter where they fall,/But there was I, Lord love a duck, no bloody luck at all./I couldn't keep me trousers dry,/And me dog shat in me tucker-box five miles from Gundagai.”

Kimba. We had just left Adelaide, and were heading west (with the night!) to eventually end up in Fremantle for the America’s Cup. Oh, let me backtrack. I was in Australia visiting a friend in Sydney after quitting my job at The Japan Times, when I decided to buy a motorcycle and drive across the entire continent to see some old sailor pals in Perth. I had been working in Newport, RI a few years earlier and I knew those guys–Dennis Connor, Jack Sutphen and the whole crew–when they lost in ’83. You should have been there when the winged-keel Australia II wonder won–stunning unbelievable agony!

Anyway, we’re heading up and over the bight on highway A1 to Port Augusta and I felt for a minute like I was in France or Italy: wineries all over the place. All up and down the hills as far as the eye could see were trellised grape vines. Bullamankanka Red, anyone? We were supposed to meet “Dave the Wine Guy” who was a friend of Bruce Kinlin, a childhood friend, and get a tour, but never ended up connecting. To this day I still ask Bruce about “Dave” since I haven’t yet met him.

When you get to Kimba, you’re basically and kind of literally turning the corner–the Nullarbor Plain (from Latin nullus “no”, and arbor “tree”) located on the great Australian Bight lies miles and miles ahead. “Crossing the Nullarbor” is the quintessential right of passage for most Aussies. We'd been warned about how dangerous it was, but what they didn't tell us is how unbelievably cold the desert gets. I wore every article of clothing I owned, including my heavy foul-weather gear. Still froze all my pretences off.

Most "stations," which are technically towns, consist of a small shack with a gas pump out front and a couple of skinny dogs lying around in the shade. Sometimes there’d be another shack or two out back, which are either tool sheds or a motel, depending. We pulled up to the pump and there was a hand-painted sign that read: "Just toot and we’re oot.” We tooted and oot they came. We asked if we could stay for the night and they said yes. We asked if there was a place to eat and they said we could eat with them–no lie, it was dingo stew night!

When we got to our room, we fell on the beds exhausted. There was an ancient black and white tv, and Ben turned it on just for yucks, and the movie Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes came on. I don’t know what kind of life you’ve lived, or if you’ve ever ridden a motorcycle over thousands of miles of scrub desert in the cold, but the memory of watching that film in the dimming twilight in a shack out back in the outback, tired and wild, is one of my fondest.

Fast forward 30 years–about a month ago I got an order from a woman in Kimba, and I wrote a short note that said I had been there, and since there are only 636 people in the town, I'd probably met someone she knew all those years ago. She wrote back and said I had definitely met someone she knew, her mother actually, and...?I was her father! I’m kidding.

How to chicken-fry a kangaroo.

My buddy Ben and I were crossing the Nullarbor on a Honda 350 with clip-on hanglebars, roadkill kangaroo and desert eagles everywhere, when the chain slowly and soon and then suddenly became so stretched we were literally spinning our wheels. Damn! The only chink in that?bullet-proof Japanese champion’s armour became a single link removal the last night, near Disappointement Rock of all places, outside of Widgiemooltha, Western Australia.

I started to fix it, when the next thing I know Ben’s back from a short wander carrying what looked like an old fur bag full of bones.

He fires up the stove, a beater Coleman 520 his dad got in North Africa fighting the Jerries, and he deftly whips out his K-Bar and slabs a kangaroo backstrap, searing it on a flat rock (what we called Tarzan-style) on top of the 520 and eventually elevating the meal to legend with piping hot Black Dragon tea–in that unlovely landscape of smeary nothingness, out of air, as easy as kiss my hand.

If you're ever in a similar sitchee-ayshun, additional and nice, but not necessary accoutrements: Zippo, cast-iron frying pan, or a Billy can, which of course isn’t as handy as a can-do, make-the-best-of-it attitude of self-reliance, as well as thick skin, a flexible, nimble mind; positivity.????

Directions

First, catch your kangaroo. Or pick one up off the road that's already dead, but not too pancaked yet. Otherwise, any wombat, goanna, capybara or emu, the warmer the better, will do. Skin, gralloch, and dress. Dredge chunked meat in a mixture of flour, salt, pepper, and baking powder. Then dip into a bowl of buttermilk, egg, Tabasco sauce, and garlic. Re-dredge in flour.

Get oil hot in a cast-iron skillet. Fry until golden brown. Remove. Don't waste the fond! Stir in milk mixture until thick. Slop gravy over meat and dig in, bogans.

This instructive misadventure, as well as many others even more depraved and charming can be found in The Official Old's Cool Education, our wicked smart-aleck's guide to a life full of recalcitrance, creativity, and wit.

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