Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
It was my responsibility to heat up the wood burning stove and bring a large pot of water to
boil. I would then pour a dash of dish soap into this pot, and soak the two or three hapless
ducks there in. I would grasp their feathers and pluck them off with great care. I would slit
open their little bellies and scoop out the entrails and then lay them in a big cast iron stew-
ing pot, the ducks that is. The heavy lid would clang down and remain thus for the whole
day as the birds slowly simmered to a greasy and satisfying duck gruel that Gavin and I
would relish most evenings, in front of the huge hearth. I can still taste this delicious grease
some twenty five years later, and the heavy local bread they called “plowman's wholewheat
bread.”
A few days after the farm painting period, we met George and Helen, his Italian side dish.
Plump and pallid George was as English as roast beef, living a life of exile in Bundaberg
with his two sweet half Chinese young boys while their mother lived back in Hong Kong.
The boys both thought I looked just like the thin white duke, David Bowie, thus earning
them great favors. George was a brilliant businessman and ran a real estate office in the
heart of town. He was so successful that agents from Sydney came all the way up from
civilization to meet him and learn from him.
We met him through the friendly farmer, and he put us to work immediately. He had an
endless supply of houses and apartments that needed maintenance. Helen learned that I did
portraits and soon commissioned me to do hers. She was highly irritated by the jowl lines
I faithfully reproduced into her picture. They were hastily removed, and we were friends
again!
Our first maintenance job had us rubbing faces with Jane and Liza. They were encumbered
with the job of hanging wallpaper on the apartment we were to paint. They knew less about
this than we knew about rocket engines and asked us how to apply the sticky wallpaper.
Neither Gavin nor I had ever hung wallpaper before but did not let on either. Liza was par-
ticularly fascinating to both Gavin and I. She wore a pair of sawn-off denim shorts that
she called her “slut shorts.” She may as well not have worn them for they only sported a
thin trace of blue denim that rapidly disappeared up her legs. The rest of her long, brown
legs ended with her poetic ankles and delicate feet. Jane was also adorable but rather aloof
where Liza would guffaw roughly at our crude innuendos. She was, so she joked, occasion-
ally married to a farmhand that had an IQ of a dim-witted sheep. He had a fascinating way
of speaking the ten or so words in his vocabulary: Aar, ayematey, wogga wogga, drain the
drongo, sherbet mate, etc but had a heart of solid gold.
We were once again flush with money, and our spirits were high. We each bought bicycles
and would ride about exploring Bundaberg and its immediate countryside within pedaling
range. I used to ride down to the harbor mouth as a form of a physical challenge. It was a
