OZ TALES (Abridged)

Travels Among the Aussies

WE drove the truck northbound along the Stuart Highway, the north-south slick of bitumen Outback Australians called The Track. I was behind the wheel, working unsteadily through the gears. My Aboriginal passenger, a veteran boxer who once fought professionally, sat beside me, turning to gaze out at the passing riverbeds, as though wondering where they led, reminded perhaps of his boyhood, swimming in a murky river while the whites in town had a public pool all to themselves. His people know this land instinctively. They feel the slights deeply. 

We’d just left a petrol station, where we’d filled the tank and wandered the short aisle filling our arms with junk food. Potato chips. Salt and vinegar. Greasy meat pies. 

He unwrapped a package and stared at the road ahead, chewing. 

Then he turned to me. 

“OK if I throw this out the window?” he asked softly. It was how he always spoke. 

“I don’t know.”

Then it hit me, what he was asking. 

“It’s your country, not mine. Do what you want to do.”

I mean, who was I?

He paused in thought. 

“No, it’s not,” he said finally. “They took it from us a long time ago.”

Then he rolled down the window a bit and let the wrapper fly. 

He rolled the window up tight. And then nobody said anything.

We rolled along the red-dirt track in a sort of bush caravan, moving stealthily like big cats on the prowl so not to disturb our wary prey.

We were on the hunt for wild goats.

Michael Karaitiana stopped the lead truck, a husky white range-ute with a CB antennae swaying on the hood, and approached our vehicle.

He looked out into the scraggly rangeland, with groves of jacaranda trees separating vast and rolling open fields, and pointed to something in the quivering distance.

“You see that mob over there, mate?”

His son-in-law Harley, a strapping lad with the name of Michael’s daughter, Karla Joy, tattooed to his neck, followed Michael’s finger into the haze.

“Yeah, I see ‘em, moving toward those trees.”

I, too, looked. I squinted. I peered. I scrutinized the landscape.

But I, of course, saw nothing.

There were seven of us – six people in Michael’s tight family circle, and myself, the Yank outlier. The sore thumb.

There was Michael’s wife, Mandy, a warm capable mother of five who runs a girl’s gymnastics program in the community center across the road from the family home in Tullamore, a rural town of 400 residents some 500 miles west of Sydney. 

Along with Travis and Karla, there was Michael’s 21-year-old son Marshall – a quiet, watchful electrician and singer on a home visit from his performing life north in Darwin; and Michael’s 14-year-old nephew Lawrence, a neophyte whom the family had taken in after his parents’ divorce.

The ancestors of our prey were once-domesticated animals that had long ago escaped from local ranches and formed wandering mobs. For Michael and his family, they amounted to financial gold. Michael could sell the animals for $80 a head. One-hundred goats could bring $8,000, no small sum for a truck driver, mechanic and all-around opportunistic handyman who worked hard for a living. 

The land belonged to a wealthy rancher-turned-beekeeper for whom Michael had done projects, building sheds and fences. The owner told Michael to take as many wild goats as he needed. Michael knew the land intimately; he’d built, rebuilt or repaired most of the fences on the sprawling ranch. 

Michael, who’s one-half Maori, was our field general. At 54, a wiry man with a graying mullet and boxer’s physique, he’d worked such wild goat hunts all of his life. He knew the drill, knew that the goats were frightened by the slightest noise, such as the sound of an approaching truck. Some days before, he had driven two old ranch wrecks to strategic spots out onto the landscape, the type of vehicles started by touching ignition wires rather than the turn of any key. 

We huddled around Michael, who issued our marching orders: Marshall and Lawrence would hike out to one of the utes and head off any goats that moved in their direction. Mandy was to stay on the present dirt track as a rear-defense and backup while Michael, Harley, Karla and I crept another half-mile down the track to where Michael had stored an four-wheel ATV.

When we reached the spot, we eased out of the car. Michael warned us to be quiet, but too late. I had already slammed the door and I watched Michael wince. I scolded myself under my breath, “No. More. Fuckups. Mate.”

Michael motioned for us all to squat down low. He could hear the goats moving in the nearby brush. He was planning an ambush to move the mob toward a trap he’d set, a fenced-in area around a small pond a half-mile off. He was like a native guide, hearing things few others could hear, interpreting tracks on the road, craftily outfoxing the goats.

Then came a rush of action. Michael hopped atop the ATV and set off into the trees through the wait-high brush. “Karla! Take the ute down that road! Harley walk into the woods that way! John, you go in that way!”

Excuse me? You mean wade into unknown terrain, off the safety of the dirt track, and enter a landscape full of lethal predators (something like seven of the planet’s most poisonous spiders and snakes live here) in a wild land where even a newborn puppy could kill you? 

Couldn’t I just ride in the car?

Damn.

I headed in, walking delicately at first, watching each footfall, picking my way through the jacaranda grove as though wading through a waist-high swamp. Emerging on the far side, I came upon a chase already at hand: There was the rush of bleating of goats, with Michael in pursuit atop the ATV, rolling expertly along the blotchy uneven open field. It was beautiful in a way, a primal hunter with ancient instincts and modern tools. His hat had flown off and his hair blew in the wind. Marshall and Lawrence moved in from behind in one ute, Karla in the other.

As the chase ensued, small clutches of frightened kangaroos bounded away from the approaching pack, this time not the quarry. The goats were momentarily redirected by a flock of emu, large flightless birds – a distant cousin of the ostrich – that can kill a dog with one swift kick. 

Just then, a large horned-goat broke off from the pack and rushed past me into the woods, as desperate as a prison escapee. 

For a nanosecond, we assessed one another. He was wild-eyed. So was I.

By the time I emerged into the field, the chase had moved well beyond. In the distance, I could see the vehicles fanning out, with Michael waving directions from atop his ATV. Bringing up the rear, I saw that the mob was already inside the trap, 25 goats moving skittishly in a tight clutch. Karla was posted on one end, outside the trap; I was on the other, as Michael and the others moved inside the fence.

The idea was to wrestle down and hog tie the goats one at a time. It was like an old-school ranch roundup that has taken place for generations across the American West, but these wranglers had Aussie accents, shouting at one another in a brogue and dialect I often found difficult to decipher.

But, unfortunately, I understood this directive:

“John,” Michael said, “when the goats get near the fence, reach in and grab one by the horns. Watch his head, though. Make sure he doesn’t gore ya!”

Then Michael lunged at one billy goat, snatching his head and swinging him around until he gained leverage. Quickly, the goat was on its back as Michael leaned in to expertly tie up his legs, as the goat cried out in terror. This was no bleat; this was a all-out primal scream that, eerily, sounded almost human. 

Once the animal laws subdued, Michael reached down and stroked its neck, speaking gently, perhaps trying to calm it.

“You’re a wild boy, aren’t ya?”

Then he lifted up the goat by the legs and horns and hoisted him over the chest-high wire fence to me.

“Step on his neck, John,” he instructed. “Watch his horns.” And then he moved off.

I knelt down next to the goat, gripping its legs and horns. I could smell its wildness, its goatness. It had large brown eyes and slants for irises. It would rest for a moment and then struggle and cry out.

I felt its pain. In an odd reverse of the Stockholm syndrome, the captor related to the captive.

After all, this was not my battle, I thought. On one hand, I wanted to help the family, but on the other my instincts were to unravel the ropes and let the animal go. I suppose anyone who was raised on a farm or ranch would consider such feelings as folly. Animals were part of the food chain. They die so we can live. 

This place was rural and alive. And, as a whole, these were hard men who scraped out a life here. In queasy contrast, I was an urban faux-hipster from the bloody states, somebody who got an occasional pedicure or manicure, who was now far afield and an ocean away from his element.

I listened to the animal’s labored breathing.

“If it were up to me, boy, I’d let you go,” I said. “But it’s not.”

Marshall soon pulled up in a ute and we tossed the goat in with several others; bleating, hog-tied – packed like suburban soccer kids being carted off to a Saturday afternoon game. 

For an hour, I waited and watched as the men lunged at the goats one by one, occasionally stepping up to the fence if the pack came my way, yelling “Hah! Hah!”

At one point, Michael called over to me, “Goat hunting takes patience,” he said. “It’s a pain in the ass but just wait for the barbecue!”

By then, Mandy pulled up. She’d heard the ruckus but had been delayed by several bees that flew into her car, eventually discouraged by a few frantic waves of a coat. As the pack was picked off one by one, Mandy and Karla moved inside the fence to capture the last animal – women holding their place among men.

As the afternoon wore on, we loaded two-dozen goats into a makeshift cage Michael assembled on the back of one ute, his rough catcher’s mitt-sized hands expertly twirling wrenches and tying wires. Then Marshall moved in to a corral the size of a small kitchen to grab goats and haul them over to his father, who tossed them into the cage. Lawrence and I stood by to make sure no animal squirmed out of Michael’s grasp and made a run for it.

In all, there were some 60 goats, but Michael wanted more. He knew the main mob had split in half during the initial chase. With the sun setting, we moved along another dirt road trying to flush out the rest.

“There!” Michael shouted at a mob of 30 goats. He turned his ute onto the open field, me holding onto the safety handle, wishing I’d buckled my seat belt. We rumbled along like a motorized sheep dog, racing to head off the pack. Onto one side, Marshall and Harley sped past in another truck. I looked over just in time to see their vehicle hit a ditch and spin wickedly to one side, nearly rolling over, dust flying. We stopped to provide them a jack to fix a flat tire. 

I was just glad I wasn’t inside that truck, but the pair laughed it off.

“That was the most fun I’ve had all day,” Harley said. 

The goats were gone, but Michael wasn’t giving up. As dusk came on, he was back on the ATV, rolling through the thicket, trying to scare the pack back out onto the open. I waited with Marshall, who talked about family and his new life in Darwin. It was a peaceful moment in a day of aggression and screaming animals, as flocks of galahs rose from the bush – white cockatoos whose undersides flashed red as they spread their wings to leave the ground. 

Suddenly, we heard a faint “Woo! Woo!” call, like a scout signaling his regiment.

“It’s my Dad,” Marshall said matter-of-factly. “He’s found the goats.”

We never caught the second pack that day, though no fault to Michael. All day long, he’d led the efforts, grabbing the first goats, starting vehicles that wouldn’t start, lying on his back underneath overheated chassis in the red dust. At one point, he brought to life one stubborn old ute, a battered red 20-year-old Toyota Land Cruiser, using a product with a particularly Australian name: NULON “Start Ya Bastard” instant engine starter.

The engine roaring to life, we hopped inside. Back behind the wheel, Michael turned to me and smiled.

“Welcome to Australia, mate,” he shouted over the din. 

Indeed.

Then we were off to rejoin the chase.

On my first trip to Australia, way back in 1989, I was on an international vacation that I’d somehow turned into a job interview.

As a suburban kid from know-nothing Syracuse, N.Y., the Land of Oz seemed a world away (actually, it was). It felt like just the right exotic place to begin my career as an itinerant adventure journalist.

For me, the real plus was that they spoke English there.

Well, sort of.

A 2012 study in The Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal, found that the denizens Down Under consumed more marijuana than any other people on the planet – including the Jamaicans. 

Well, that explains a lot about Aussie-speak. (Just reading that story made me wonder: Is it The Great Barrier Reefer? And, what, precisely, is a billabong? Actually, it’s a waterhole.)

In the Australian playful laid-back dialect, few things are taken seriously. Like the names of towns, for example. Communities aren’t merely called something simple, like Smith Town or River City.

Oh no, not on your life. 

Instead, many geographic place names are cartoonish and often politically-incorrect, like Bong Bong, Boing Boing, Grong Grong and Tittybong. There’s Banana, Boyland, Butty Head, Broke (a home for the penniless,) Burpengary, Burrumbuttock and even Mount Buggery. (Haven’t a clue what they do there). There’s Chinaman’s Knob, Chinkapook, Cock Wash and Come By Chance, not to mention Delicate Nobby, Diapur, Doo Town and Dunedoo. 

How about Humpty Doo, Humpybong, Innaloo, Koolyanobbing, Eggs and Bacon Bay, Woolloomooloo and Woodie Woodie? (Seeing any trend here?) And my faves Tom Ugly, Nowhere Else and The End of the World, which it certainly was to this Yank back in 1989.

Before I left the States, I’d sent a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald, one of the nation’s most-respected family-owned newspapers. The letter was pure whim, a long shot. I never expected anything to come of it, but mentioned to the editor, Max Prisk, (whose name and title I’d found in the trusted Editor and Publisher bible) that I would give him a ring when I arrived in-country.

When I dialed his office from my hotel pay phone, his secretary said something that almost floored me.

“Oh! You’re the American! He’s been expecting your call.”

As it turned out, Prisk wanted to meet me. I rushed out, bought a suit jacket shirt and tie from a Chinese merchandiser and showed up at his office the following day.

The newspaper had only had one American-born staffer in its history, Prisk said. Tony Horwitz later went on to write several books, starting with “One for the Road: A Hitchhiker’s Outback,” work for the Wall Street Journal and win the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.

I would have been a decidedly more-humble hire.

But Prisk was definitely interested. Horwitz was already long gone and he was ready to take a chance on another Yank. But there was more: He was thinking of having me write a Metro column from an American’s point of view, you know, pointing out such linguistic differences as the fact that we called it a sidewalk and they called it a footpath; we said windshield and they said windscreen. 

I kid you not.

I sat there listening, sensing that I might be in a bit over my head. After all, I wasn’t quite sure about my own point of view at that age, let alone being able to speak for my entire country.

But no matter; Prisk hustled me off on my way and told me to call him when I’d acquired an Australian work visa.

I never went to Oz as a journo back then: When I finally reached Prisk a few months later, he said the paper had been purchased by a conglomerate (Nope, not Rupert, but close -- Fairfax Media). He announced that he himself was leaving and he didn’t think it was a good idea for me to come either.

Still, the trip to Oz, listening to all those blokes and their clipped accents, had left me a bit tongue-tied. When I got home, to demonstrate the cadence of the tongue, I’d often ask people to decipher a phrase I’d written on a piece of paper:

“R U natv strine?”

Translation: “Are you a native Australian?”

Some bearded bloke in a dusty roadside pub in Far North Queensland told me that his countrymen’s clipped manner of speaking came from time spent in the Outback, where you were advised not to open your mouth too wide for fear of capturing a few flies. (This, I seriously doubted.)

But where does this lyrical tongue find its roots? Where precisely did “strine” come from?

Well, part of the answer is that it’s a language forged from behind bars – from back in 1788 when the British government established a convict settlement in Sydney Cove. Many of these working-class arrivals were pickpockets, thieves and murderers who might have spent the rest of their lives in prison if not for this new penal colony. Once ashore, they took the pomp of the Queen’s English and gave it a decidedly-convict twist.

They adlibbed, made it more conversational. They twisted meanings of conventional words and made up their own. Throw in a bit if Irish inappropriateness and the mystical sounds of the native tongue, the colorful Aboriginal language, and you’re off to a good start.

Which leads us to the roots of perhaps Australia’s best-known word: kangaroo.

As the story goes, British sea captain James Cook and his men were flabbergasted by the sight of the bounding animals and asked the people of the Guugu Yimidhirr tribe of North Queensland what they were called.

Cook wrote the answer in his diary and – voila! – a spritely new word was added to the English language. But years later, the true nature of the Aboriginals’ response became apparent. Apparently, in their tongue, kangaroo meant “I don’t know,” or worse, something very rude.

The cultural exchanges got even muddier from there.

Over the years, I have passed through Australia as a journalist, but never spent much professional time there. 

Until now.

I’m here on a long-term project and am once again tuning into the wonders of Oz-speak. You have to love a language where the term for a busybody comes from an anteater; hence, a nosey person is a sticky beak. 

The glorious Australian glossary is just getting started with the phrases Americans know so well, such as “G’Day mate!” “Sheila,” “Shrimp on the Barbie,” “Fair Dinkum” and “No worries.”

The Aussies are able to laugh at themselves. Noting escapes their razor wit. As one story goes, for example, the city of Melbourne was almost named Batmania after forefather John Batman, who selected the city site in 1835.

In Oz, everything is reduced to the diminutive. Breakfast is brekkie. Bricklayers are brickies, a cigarette is a ciggie, lipstick is lippie, a politician is a pollie and children are kiddiewinks. The language is as colorful as the nation’s currency, which comes in hues of yellow and orange.

It’s not goodbye, but “check ya!” If you’re good-looking, you’re a “spunk.” A toilet is a “thunderbox.”

Your nose is your “beak,” your mouth your “laughing gear,” your teeth are “ivories” and your beard is “face fungus.”

An idiot is a “bloody drongo, boofhead or great galah.” Want to tell a mate to get lost? It’s “Get a big black dog up ya!” Things that aren’t quite right are “squiffy” and “wonky.” Toilet paper is called “poo tickets.” And a very hot day is known as a “stinker.”

Want someone to hurry up? Tell them to “Rattle your dags!”

And my favorite: fast food is the old chew’n’spew.” (This means you, McDonalds.)

Much of this, of course, is beyond me because often I can barely understand what my hosts are saying.

But slowly, I am getting the hang of it.

Just this morning, I was entertaining my host Michael Karaitiana’s two granddaughters, aged seven and six, challenging them to spell words.

I asked the elder Bella, a lovely young girl with long hair and freckles, to tackle the word “summer.” 

She did fine until the end, sussing it out phonetically in her mind, until she replaced the “er” with an “ah.”

I thought about it.

Of course! Summah!

She’d nailed it.

I just have to keep reminding myself that June in Oz is wintah, not summah.

Check ya!

I've been to both Australia and New Zealand, to both the legendary Oz and Kiwi Land.

Both are boundlessly beautiful. The people are cheeky and friendly.

But there are differences.

New Zealand has no equal in its natural beauty. A feast for the eyes and soul. I will miss its wonder around every corner, down every well-groomed trail and those quaint and maddening one-line bridges. I salute the nation that killed the penny.

But here's the thing, and to me this says volumes: There are no snakes in New Zealand. It's a safe place. You don't need to look over your shoulder or peer outside your sleeping bag.

Oz is different. Oz is huge. Oz can kill you.

It has snakes and spiders and big saltwater crocs that can ruin a perfectly good day. It has bounding Roos that make their suicide lunges in front of your vehicle at dawn and dusk. It has the Outback, the most primordial place on planet Earth.

And the Aussies have a ribald sense of humor that laughs in the face of the danger the Land presents. Where else would you get Camel Balls candy for the kiddies and Start Ya Bastard fluid for your ute?

Oz is a tour of duty.

You don't forget it. I know I won’t.