A bloody good one, too. I started night shift last night. We've got the offsets hooked up and we're working up a lot of the newer dryland country so that we can put a grader board across it to fill in some melon holes and just generally smooth it out a bit. The last time we sprayed that country it nearly killed the poor old boomspray bouncing up and down; it'll make it easier on the headers, too. Because my boss is such a slave driving arsehole*, he made me work a few hours yesterday morning setting up the machine and giving the Young Bloke a few pointers on the efficient operation of same. That is, if by 'made me' you mean 'didn't argue when I volunteered'. So I didn't put my head down until about 11a.m., then the power went off at about 2p.m., meaning the electrickery powered air coldifying device ceased operations in support of the IR reform protests. In 35° heat. I woke up. I then proceeded to not go back to sleep when the sparks started flying again at 3p.m. On top of this (no, I'm not whinging, I'm just giving you the relevant information so that you can independantly arrive at the conclusion that I am indeed a machine.) I followed my usual pre-nightshift practise the previous night and sat up drinking beer and talking shit on the telling bone until around midnight. From the available data you should be able to deduce the precise amount of sleep I was able to sock away prior to night shift last night. 3/5 of 5/8. For persons not familiar with the imperial system that works out to roughly fuck all in metric. Did that slow me down? Do I really need to answer that? I already told you that I was a machine and I'm hardly likely to write a post highlighting how piss-weak I am, now am I? I soldiered on through the bleak and stormy night and covered heaps of ground. More than heaps. Big mobs of acres. Even stuck to the Thruster Code of Ethics and left the machine in better condition than I found it, adjusting a few things here and there. I do feel a tad weary at the present moment in time, going forwards in a proactive manner. Never let it be said that sleep is impossible on nightshift. Once you've managed to convince your body that the new routine is going to be a routine, sleep comes just as naturally twelve hours later. Indeedy, I prefer nightshift to dayshift in the summer. I'd much rather be crawling over a broken machine by torchlight in the cool of the night than slogging it out in 40° heat with 2,349,725,845,711,047 flies in the middle of the day. As an aside, one brief nightshift story: Several years ago, when I had not been working in the cotton industry all that long, I got work on a corporate farm Like a lot of cotton farms, it started life as a sheep station and still had the old shearers quarters. It was a bloody good setup, but most of the other blokes there were kids and therefore, by definition, pigs. I don't like living in my own mess, let alone anyone else's, so I bought a caravan and set it up next to the quarters so I could use the shower and toilet. Like a lot of farms out this way, it had a gravel pit on it and, like most corporate farms, a lot of time and money was spent on maintaining the network of roads on the farm. I was working nightshift on irrigation when a couple scrapers turned up with a laser bucket to put a couple of new roads in and do some maintenance on the existing ones. I had no idea where they were going to put the new roads. I found out where at least one of them was going when I got up to get ready for work. When I went to bed, my caravan was on the side of an empty grass paddock. When I woke up, there was a completely finished gravel road through the paddock which passed within twenty-five metres of my van, complete with a driveway for me. I slept through the whole thing.
*No, he isn't. That's known as ironic satire - or 'bullshit'.
Extrapolation on #19 in the post previous to the previous post
BOGAN ALERT!!! Do not read further if excessive interest in internal combustion engines offends. "What is a Maltese Ferrari" asked Rat. Oh, to be so young and innocent. A Maltese Ferrari is, of course, a Valiant Charger. These days they'd probably be known as a Lebanese Lamborghini. Extraordinary motor vee hickles. 14.1 second quarter miles,140m.ph. top speeds (from a six cylinder engine - 318, 340 and 360c.i. V8's were available, but the 265 powered E38's and E49's were quicker) amazing (for the day) handling and the most amazing induction roar from the triple Weber 48mm DCOE carburettors; all wrapped up in an Italian designed body in a project overseen by a ridgy didge racing driver, who was possibly known as Leo Geoghan. I'm old, so any of those figures may be wrong - except the e.t. for the quarter; I'd bet my left nut on that. I only use the right one these days, anyway. Of course, being Australian Chryslers, the Chargers had their share of problems due to poor build quality and cost cutting - the Bathurst homologation E38 had a three speed gearbox, f'rinstance. My own particular Charger was a bomb yard special; a 1972, '73, '74, '75 model, arriving in my possession for the princely sum of $900 as an emergency transportation measure after some father sucking, anal object inserting, goat molesting piece of shit misunderstood victim of society had relieved me of the effort of maintaing my show-quality Falcon coupe. I spent about two years of my life building that coupe. The Charger was more fun to drive. Especially after I fucked with it a bit and got around 350 hp out of it. Total cost of the whole thing was about three thousand dollars - excluding replacement clutches. The running gear on the Falcon cost many times that. I killed it in the end- a bit of brain fade, too fast into a corner on a dirt road, backwards over the bank, give it the berries in an attempt to drive it back up onto the road just like I saw Colin Bond do on 'This Is Your Life', attempt is working when the front guard hits a white post and flips the car over backwards down a thirty foot bank - through a clump of gum trees; one of which still has, to the best of my knowledge, scars on it eighteen feet from the base. I went out through the windscreen and the old girl tucked me in as she rolled over the top of me. The next car down the road was my sister-in-law, who meandered down the bank to see if I was o.k. I was unconscious and doing a pretty good impersonation of a claret fountain with my head. She got a bit upset, but not nearly as disturbed as she was when the the next car along stopped and the driver came down, looked at her, looked at me and started to steal the stereo out my car. Roaring Days, I believe ol' Henry called them. P.S. I pinched the pitcher from The Chrysler Owners Club. I hope their lawyers aren't very good.
Back in the days before I realised that New Years Eve should be retitled Loser's Night Out, a group of mates and I decided to go down to Lakes Entrance for the big night; and to catch up with an old mate whose family had moved down that way in High School years. As we were all young and stupid, we had a great night full of drunken debauchery. Our schoolfriend managed to disappear whilst scuba diving the day before we got there, but we didn't find that out until later and we were young and callous anyway. We got a broken windscreen on the way home and then it started pouring with rain, but a mate had his scuba gear in the back, so I put on his mask, snorkel thingy and hood and soldiered on. The animated collection of zits at the McDonalds drive-thru didn't blink an eye. Two or three years later I was living with the Catholic Girl and she wanted to do something - far away from her family - for New Years. Lakes seemed like a good idea at the time. We rocked down there and the first people we ran into was a small outlaw bike club (whose clubhouse was in Champ Street, Coburg, across the road from the entrance to Pentridge prison.). I'd met a couple of members before, neither of whom were there, but when I asked about them, they adopted me like a long lost son. We escaped their clutches an hour or two later (the prospects were giving me the shits) and wandered from pub to pub. I don't know if they still do it, but in those days they used to block the Esplanade off at either end with cop cars and just let people stagger about aimlessly. For some reason somebody decided to write something on the back of my shirt. Somebody else saw it and decided to write something, too. It pretty much snowballed after that and before long I had autographs pretty much everywhere. One girl asked if she could put her name on me. I said yes, she asked where she could sign, I told her anywhere that she could find room, she got down on her knees and wrote The Lord's Prayer on my penis*. Funnily enough, GF didn't mind that at all. We kept wandering about and wandered too far; right into the clutches of the coppers who were stationed at the end of the Esplanade to prevent people from wandering too far. One of the coppers was a woman, don't remember much about her, except that she looked like she was Italian. She grabbed me like I was a murder suspect, pushed onto the bonnet of the car, threw a leg over me to hold me down and stuck her tongue so far down my throat that I thought I was growing a tail, while checking whether or not I was circumcised and that my undies weren't too tight. Judging by the way that the other copper was laughing when she climbed off and pushed me away, I'd say it was a bet or a joke. GF got pretty steamed about it, I enjoyed it, though. *Actually, it was just her first name. In very small letter.
50ish things you didn't know, care or want to know about me. Which is in no way a meaningless time filler because I couldn't be bothered trying to
Wow. There's a limit on the length of titles. Who'dathunkit?
Anyhoo, here goes:
I don't like my family all that much, my Dad and my niece excepted. I think it must be genetic; Dad has eleven sisters and only speaks to one of them.
I have lived in every mainland State and Territory. The A.C.T. sucks.
My eyesight is deteriorating. Old already.
A doctor once told me that I probably had a brain tumour. I did nothing about it. That was eighteen years ago.
My brother (who is four years older than me) threw me through a plate glass window when I was four. I crucified him on the tines of a metal rake the next day.
I haven't fought with my brother since I was sixteen. We both were in hospital for a couple of days afterwards.
I have had the same three recurring dreams for thirty years.
I regret not having kids.
I can think of no viable proposition for a decent mother for those kids in my past.
I've been tongue-kissed by a cop, who also stuck a hand down the front of my pants. She was on duty at the time. My girlfriend wasn't amused.
I failed an army medical when I was twenty. At the time I was training about fifteen hours a week and had about 7% body fat. They thought that I had asthma. I had to start using inhalers ten years later.
I've been stabbed. By a stranger.
I don't 'get' quantum physics. I can tell you about fermions and tachyons and how Higgs's Boson is only a concept which may not exist, which was designed to endow sub-atomic particles with mass. I can tell you that, right now, you probably have neutrinos released from the Sun passing right through your body. But I don't 'get' it. I don't think anybody does.
I get overly involved when watching sporting contests. I can't watch sport without barracking for somebody and it immediately becomes vital to me that they win.
I used to be a very poor loser. Nowadays, I'm a poor loser.
I am a ruthless competitor. Funnily enough, I'm not a poor loser in participant sport; I'll kill your grandmother if I think it will give me an advantage during the game, but it's out of my system when the final siren blows.
I had blood tests done about eighteen months ago to check for possible causes for my deteriorating eyesight (20/20 in eyechart tests. Must have been bloody good when ah woor yoong). Apparently I've had Ross River Fever for quite some time.
I worked with a bloke who had two mates named Arthur and Ross. Whenever it was wet and there was mud-slogging to be done, one of his mates; Arthur Ritis or Ross River would turn up and give him the day off. He used to forget which leg he was limping on.
I grew up in the hills in Victoria. It was nine miles, fifty-four corners and six hundred feet in elevation down the hill to the next town. I could do it in 5'45" seconds post office to post office in either direction, both on the Mongrel Bike and in the Maltese Ferrari.
I never attracted attention to myself in towns, but used to do a lot of illegal racing between towns. I never lost a race.
A mate and I were out for a ride one weekend and stopped at a pub in Bruthen (or Buchan, I get those two confused.) We were just ordering our second beer when a cop came in, wanting to know who was riding those two bikes out the front. We shut up and he went away. Turns out he'd been chasing us since Bairnsdale. We didn't know anything about it.
I haven't had a sick day since the nineties.
Injuries don't count.
I have scars on every major body part except for my back and bum (which is getting more major lately).
I am a genius.Officially. At least I was, according to the Victorian Education Department. As part of some vast social engineering experiment carried out by Da Man to better allow him to subjugate the masses, I and the rest of my year had to do IQ tests when I was twelve, fourteen and sixteen. The genius level for these particular tests was arbitrarily set at 140. My results were, in chronological order; 149, 146 and 142. Which probably means that these days my IQ is about 35 and plummeting.
I like doing favours for random strangers. It makes me feel good.
It would seem that Barcoo Grunters are fairly capable in the fisticuffs (fin-icuffs?) department - unless yellowbellies have a previously unresearched capability to do the backstroke really slowly, my little water feature dweller is a hot blooded latin-type passionate killer.
I don't know if it's because I read Death In The Afternoon when I was a young bloke or some other reason, but I've always had a bit of a soft spot for bloodsports. Let's face it; fifty gazillion bloodthirsty peasants can't be wrong. Angry cattle with big horns getting poked with sharp sticks before some guy with a sword stabs them to death? Bring it on! Cockfights in Indonesia? Yay! Badger baiting in New England? Woohoo! Dogfights in Mount Druitt? Yippee! Quail fighting in Afghanistan? Meh.
With this in mind, I have created my very own Australian Native Animal bloodsport - fish fighting.
A while ago, the Young Bloke and I went to Roma for some liver abuse. On the Sunday morning we were staggering around waiting for the blood alcohol levels to drop sufficiently for the drive home when we spied an open Mitre 10. Every Aussie boy loves a hardware so we wandered in. Roma Mitre 10 is not only a hardware, it also has a little nursery and a pet store. Young Bloke expressed a desire for an indoor plant so we had a look around the nursery bit. One thing led to another and I bought a couple of standard ficus's, a couple of peace lilies and a couple of different philodendrons. As well as a little outdoor setting thingy and a fountain/water feature. I think I must have been channeling Jamie Durie. It's o.k. though fellow blokes, I also bought hand tools, power tools and a knife. The Young Bloke didn't buy a plant, but he did buy me a Barcoo Grunter, which is a fish native to the area North West of Roma.
The Barcoo Grunter is the world's most reclusive fish. He's got a little cubby house made of a rock and a bit of broken terracotta pot and the only time he comes out is when you poke him in the tail. He's getting used to that, too; he only moves a couple of inches and then he backs in again.
Yesterday afternoon, the Young Bloke accidentally caught a little Yellowbelly in a yabbie trap and brought it up for the Barcoo Grunter to play with. In a startling discovery, it turns out that the Barcoo Grunter is a territorial little beastie and has been giving the (larger) yellowbelly something of a towelling ever since.
I might have to declare a winner and chuck the yellowbelly back in the river. No wonder they call them yellowbellies.
We had about fifty points on Saturday afternoon, which meant no work for the rest of the weekend. Out of about 8,000 acres of cereal crops we put in, we had about thirty acres left to strip. Not bad. We've still got about 100 tonnes of hay left to bring in, but it should be o.k. I did fairly much nothing over the weekend except sleep, I feel pretty good now. The sorghum and dry planted cotton will like the drink, the irrigated cotton is probably getting a little bored with it by now, but shouldn't come to any harm. There appears to be some confusion about the weather/climate around here, so I'll try to describe it briefly for you. If you look at a map of Australia that has the state borders marked on it you will see that the eastern half of the border between New South Wales and Queensland follows a couple of rivers, while the western half of the border is an arbitrary straight line. I am just to the north of the straight line about 160km west of the rivers. For reasons I am yet to explore, it is called the Maranoa. It is flat - the nearest hill over a hundred feet high is at least a three hour drive away, which doesn't make for exciting motorcycling. It is dry - since 1922, this farm has averaged 16.4" of rain per annum. It doesn't snow here, although we do get subzero temperatures on winter nights now and then. It gets a bit warm in summer, with temperatures of 40° (104° in the old money) plus the norm. A bit too warm for cotton, really - the plant shuts down above about 35° but hey, our yeid averages would still break records in America. Pretty bloody good for here, too. The natural vegetation is mostly fairly short, thick scrubby looking trees like Coolibahs, Dogwoods and whitewoods with the occasional stands of Wilga and Ironbark, with an under layer of every vicious breed of spiky plant known to man - burrs of every variety being dominant (except nagoora burr, don't see much of that away from the cotton).
So we're stripping wheat and barley, we planted another three fields of cotton into moisture - we're just going to let nature take care of it; it was my idea I hope it works. On top of that I sprayed all the cotton we already put in, plus a dryland paddock which we sowed to forage sorghum, I modified some of the feeders in the feedlot to try and cut down on the mess when they are being filled, we bought a couple of hundred cattle which had to be put through the yards and today we are trucking out a hundred and fifty to match the hundred and fifty that we trucked out last week. We've started filling the hayshed with barley straw, it should be full in a couple of days. Add to that the five or six hours a day it takes to keep the roads in good order for the wheat trucks and I've nearly got enough to do to stop me getting bored.
