When I was a boy, you’d open a non-fiction book and find a chapter entitled Miscellaneous. Nowadays, not so much. Why? Has it got something to do with the spell it how you feel it movement? Do you think maybe people can’t be bothered learning tricksy words any more and just write other stuff in place of miscellaneous? Yeah, but then they miss out on the fun of using miscellany, a top word, and much more fun than other stuffery.
Maybe all the old-school book indexers have checked out and left the job to AI, and maybe AI can’t abide the thought of having random, left-over stuff in a book, so maybe AI just indexed every last thing. It’s hard to know, especially since for a long time I thought AI was a bloke called Al, as in You Can Call Me Al.
Anyway, miscellaneous stuff has been building up on my horizon like plaque on a wisdom tooth, so I’m going to deal with some right now.
Funny weather we’re having this year. I went to Tenterfield once. Nice thing about going to Tenterfield is that when you get there it’s still there, unlike Old Koreelah, Atlantis and American democracy.
Another nice thing about Tenterfield is the way they don’t talk as much about the weather as we do in the Northern Rivers. You’re not going to hear, Brrr, cold! from the Tentos. When you spend your days dealing with icy blasts that come straight off an insulted wife in Siberia, you’re not going to be very impressed by some blow-in from Ballina complaining about a little bit of frost in their whiskers.
I think Tenterfield folk might be a little bit more level-headed than us lowlanders. I mean I read an Indy news story recently (Fairy Hill Fracas), which detailed a preposterous punch-up after a netball match. In the cold light of Kyogle police station, it emerged that it all kicked off when Rick Panting, 35, Subaru Whisperer, of Fairy Hill remarked to Pagan Tidbit, 35, Hare and Rabbit Restorer, of Fairy Hill, You’re a bit of a dude, aren’t you? I mean, in Tenterfield you could insult somebody’s mother’s poddy lamb in flystrike season and all you’d cop would be a quiet growl, and maybe they wouldn’t doff their hat next time you passed on the Emmaville Road.
I have a dear friend in Tenterfield. His name is Butros Plumbago. When I say he’s a dear friend I mean that whenever I have anything to do with him it costs me money. He’s a Renaissance man. When I say he’s a Renaissance man I mean it’s best to phone first before paying a visit or else you’re likely to encounter him in the front yard buck starkers in the Tenterfield nip posing as that human clock dude that Leonardo drew to prove you could fit a bloke in a circle.
Butros makes docos, documentaries, about Olden Times in the bush. His latest is about the railway line to Tenterfield. It’s beaut. I learned heaps. Those train drivers were like the astronauts of their day, except an astronaut could never flick open the fire door and boil water for their cuppa, plus make toast, in under three seconds.
One thing I didn’t learn is how a driver managed to steer the thing and keep it on those skinny rails for hundreds of miles, let alone steer all those carriages too. Uncanny skill, I guess.
And on to dingos. Apparently, they maybe came south from Indonesia in canoes perhaps as recently as three and a half thousand years ago. Presumably it was their human mates doing the paddling for them. But here’s the thing. It is thought that they then went feral in Australia. Semi-domesticated when they arrived, then went completely feral. Now this doesn’t really explain some of the people I’ve run across in Rappville, but it doesn’t un-explain them either.
Moreover, dingos developed double-jointed shoulders and a puritan, once-a-year, breeding cycle. I mean, you only have to look around at all the three-metre tall teenagers walking the streets and cluttering up your kitchen to know that evolution is taking place much quicker than we thought.
Which brings me to brumbies. They’re a problem. I blame The Man from Snowy River. Jim Craig, the bastard. Okay, the dude could ride, and he did right by Sigrid Thornton, but he wilfully blew a golden opportunity to nip the brumby problem in the bud back then.
He’s rounded up the lot of them and turned their heads for home. All he had to do was drop off the colt from Old Regret with Old Man Harrison, then trot the rest of the mob to Corryong, or Mansfield, and flog them to the French restaurant. All gone, problem solved.
A lesson to us all.
Bullgoose
