All Terrain Thinking

A Compendium of things I think are Important

Wonderful strange stories from around the world

Australia - Top breeders recommend it!

Is your teenage son in Thailand in need of overseas experience - for an overdue dose of reality- but money's too tight too mention? No problem. All it requires is distance and foreign soil.

Instead of spending vast amounts sending him to the Royal Oxford King's Collage of Benson's Basic English, send him to Australia - to a farm. There are only two conditions. He must be over 15, and in acute danger of being pampered at home. Rewards? The chance to learn two languages for the price of none, and a whole lot more. A brief language test maybe necessary…

“ Arzzit garn Gazz?”

“ No wuckin' furries Wayne .”

“ Unreal! Goin'?'”

“ Oath! Fangin' the ute right now!”

You have two minutes to translate. No conferring.

In Australia , farms are called “stations” and they can be big. Very big.

I worked on one that was almost the size of Belgium- and there are plenty as large as Bali . The countryside is known as the “bush.” Beyond that it's called the “outback” Any further and you have 24 hours to live. Maybe.

In England a cow needs a square acre of grass to be useful. In Northern Australia it needs 25 square kilometers to survive.

Many cattle have never seen a human being until they are mustered. They then have to be tagged, injected, de-horned, and castrated. It's similar to wrestling with a small tank. It was my first job on my first day.

The next morning, I learned how to drive a trail-bike before breakfast, and how to use dynamite by lunch. I was told my third day would be light; a little sheep shearing. “Only about 80,000,” said my boss. “Coupla days, max.”

The real Australia is an initiation to a reality the spoilt have never known. It is not a place for wimps, but it should be.

In vast areas, Australia is a primitive place, shorn of trimmings and ornament. In western Australia alone, you can fit Japan once and Texas twice-comfortably. It is pristine, beautiful, and hostile. It can be crude and monotonous, but it is always vigorous and honest.

In the outback, only the dawn can nudge the frozen blanket that covers the desert. From the east comes light, from the sun comes heat; baking and penetrative. By noon, horizons blur, mirages shimmer, and the light blinds like ice in the ferocious glare and heavy silence. Wild animals find shade, wish they had Raybans, and hope to come back in their next life as tourists. Meanwhile, the afternoons melt into a yawning waste of heat rising from an ancient and empty landscape. The governance of sand.

Nightfall unrolls a celestial map literally stacked with stars, while beneath it, the silvery landscape swings to the sounds of rutting wildlife.

This is continent forged by fire, flood, and drought. Its largely un-fished southern seas are enriched by the nutrients from Antarctic currents, where some fish are rumored to be very, very old. Some of these creatures have been swimming since Captain Cook arrived 221 years ago. I've neither eaten, nor been eaten by one - but have no troubling believing they are there.

Back in the outback, cuisine is the art of deception. The rest is just elbow grease and heating. Feeling peckish and eight days walk from the nearest pizza? Easy.

First, catch lunch. Then follow the local recipe. For cockatoo soup: Kill bird when it is not looking; take one large pan and fill with water; place rock in bottom of pan and boil; add dead bird; simmer for two days; when cockatoo is cooked, chuck it away and eat the rock.

It is true that outback farms can be lonely places. Where I worked, the nearest McDonald's was ninety kilometers away - and that wasn't the fast food joint, it was the name of the neighbor.

Yet the interior is not without entertainment. You will hear the occasional : “ping” of a rifle bullet hitting road signs that declare, “KANGAROOS NEXT 1000 KM.” There's the monthly visit from the 97-kilogramme Avon lady wearing her entire rang of products on her face, and there's even some discreet smuggling in tractor magazines. A three-day drive to the nearest car wash is an exciting night out. Indeed, many Australians were conceived in one. Afterwards, they may spend a pleasant evening drinking in the Spitting Punk-a traditional pub-catching up with local papers that scream headlines like, “MAN MUGGED BY WOMBAT, AGAIN.”

Yes, but what about that woman? Relax. Pauline Hanson is not a person, she is a catch phrase that accuses the mouth that utters it. She's right about Australians being racist though - simply because there isn't a country on the planet that isn't. But she's wrong about who the Australians are racist towards. It's not the Asians they don't like. It's the English.

And why? Because we invented them. The country was founded by people we didn't want, who were sent to a place they'd never heard of. For a while, its inhabitants couldn't belch without cursing the English. Quite right too. They landed with few tools and a bad attitude, yet the first house ever built in Sydney looked quite impressive - until someone leaned against it.

Once these reluctant pioneers realized it was a one-way ticket, and had experienced several defining historical moments, they became Australians - irreverent, humorous, brave, inventive, and patient; a nation of individuals, and one of the most easy-going peoples on earth. I liked them so much, I married one.

By Roger Beaumont

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