By Col Hellmuth

Let me introduce myself: my by-line is Mike Bawlsich.

It has doubled throughout (most of) my lifetime as a means of distinguishing myself from the other three-point-five to currently eight billion souls sharing our planet, though I haven’t always been a newspaper-man.

I have tried my hand at all sorts of careers, my only proviso being that they don’t involve any real work. You won’t find any callouses nor blisters on my extremities and, despite being well into middle age, I still haven’t learnt what ‘elbow grease’ is or even where to score it. I’ve never had the capital to play the markets so I play people instead. I’ve done some bad art forgery, sold some things I didn’t own, played ballads in a blues band and dabbled in most other kinds of charlatanry but I draw the line at politics.

Even I have standards.

I’ve tried writing fiction, however, found not only the poverty but also the necessary research and sometimes brutal honesty involved in crafting believable stories off-putting — so I settled for newspaper journalist instead. Were I writing up my day today as a headline it would read: Slow News Day.

Sure, there may be a war or two on: Kardashistan bombing the arse out of Amishaq, who don’t even have radios let alone a defence-force and our allies the United States of Anarchy dropping a nuke or three on Indychinia, but the public are violence-weary. If the average reader’s attention span were as long as a goldfish this might still move papers, but it isn’t.

Anyway, the editor requires snappier headlines.

Perhaps I should have followed up an earlier passion for photography and made that my career. It seems to work for the paper’s resident photographer and PR liaison (read Piss wRangler), Polaroid Prouffe; she’s always the classic picture of composure. I once made the embarrassing faux-pas of asking Polaroid how she came by the iconic and ironic handle. It developed she was named after her parents’ favourite sex-accessory.

Polaroid has won the Australian Geographic Wildlife Photography award three years running for her portrayals of domestic kittens gone feral on Facebook. She was stripped of the accolades and her credibility, after being exposed cultivating and chronicling her own menagerie of thirty-odd cats, along with a few ordinary ones. Polaroid may be a little tattered around the edges from too much handling but she isn’t jaded and she’s still as vibrant as any young thing touting a Kodachrome hairdo. Perhaps her impressive picture-stalking skills are due to her being a natural predator: she likes nothing better than a hard night’s cougaring. Polaroid still maintains a shapely figure and no one, bar the office girls, seems to notice that her eyes are slightly too far apart or that her nose is slightly overlarge — being overshadowed by her personable personality and pointedly underscored by a pair of perky breasts.

I, on the other hand (or more correctly, torso), may have breasts — but they have never been accused of perkiness, are somewhat hairy and have never cut me any slack with the editor: he has a similar set of his own he can look at.

So, what happens on a Slow News Day?

We sit down and apply our prosaic prose and unbiased analytical skills to writing up the topical issues of the day and editorialising the societal consequences.

Pig’s arse. We hit the road.

We, in this instance, being myself, Polaroid and ‘Titty’ the bush-mechanic. Titty has been hanging around the paper for so long now, nobody can remember where he blew in from or whether his real name is Robberty Bob or Bobbity Rob — including Titty himself. Titty has so many callouses on his hands they don’t all fit and reach almost to his elbows. He has a long, white, grizzled beard that hangs past his knees and tends to get tangled in his crotch when he walks. By casting his or her gaze down the length of Titty’s beard an economic anthropologist could catalogue his diet and calculate his social standing for the past month by the variety of small marsupial bones and various feathers intertwined or stuck in it. Titty’s inclusion in the crew meant it wasn’t going to be a local story. It was with some trepidation that I knocked on the door of the Ed’s office.

“Itchy,” said Ed (the Ed’s name is Edward, convenient), “You’re going on a road trip.”

No shit. I’d seen Titty in the car park sweeping feathers out of the company CruiseRover hybrid. I’m pretty sure he lives in it. Hell, I know he does: I’m a reporter, damn-it.

“What’s the story, boss?”

“Yourself, Paz, Titty and…

I wasn’t expecting this bombshell: “Major Les Visions, the Sustainably Harvested Native Cuisine Man… are going in search of the elusive blood-sucking, large-footed, swamp-dwelling werebunyip.”

This sounded more suitable for our sister publication the Bullshit Bulletin, “And where might we find such a myth?” I asked.

“In a swamp. Probably a fairly particular one… being elusive…

“You’re the bloody journalist….”

“I have a map, Mike,” interjected Polaroid, who had of course been standing in the office the whole time. She produced a soiled napkin covered in beer-mug condensation stains with a telephone number scrawled in one corner and straightened it out on the Ed’s desk. This meant nothing to me: her handbag is full of like artefacts. I looked at Polaroid, but she was a blank canvas. We both knew it wasn’t a map and I’m sure the Ed did too — but it would probably fool Titty, and trying to decipher it would help keep him occupied on the drive: he gets fidgety when no major mechanical breakdowns are in progress and starts fretting about things like the fuel-efficiency sticker peeling off the windscreen.

***

Titty and I wait out the front of Les’ house in the CruiseRover while Polaroid runs in to fetch him and pretty soon we’re all barrelling north along the Bruce Highway in the hybrid 4×4. It isn’t one of those fancy half-electric abominations, just the front half of a LandCruiser attached to the rear half of a Range Rover with lots of extra-long Zippy ties: a temporary bush-fix by Titty on the last assignment bar seven. Les sits in the back with Titty because he doesn’t trust Japanese cars; he bores us all with a long monologue about his belief their computers are programmed to do westerners in and how he didn’t want to suffer the same fate as Malcolm Douglas and how no one would be able to see over his Akubra anyway if he sat in the front.

As I drive, Polaroid consults the ‘map’ after retrieving it from Titty — only to find it rendered even more useless. Titty has gobbed his chewing ’baccy into it so that it now resembles a map of Canberra before it was built with all the homeless politicians huddled together in the centre to keep warm. Les, with a triumphant flourish, whisks from a pocket a well-creased coaster complete with wine-glass condensation stains and a phone number scrawled in a girlish script… “I too, have a map!”

We turn off the highway and a few kilometres after we hit dirt we hit a wallaby. Titty disembarks from the CruiseRover to do the humane thing and dispatch it. He then shoves a stick up its bum and uses it as a soft-faced mallet to beat out the ding in the fender. Les praises his ingenuity but is unimpressed when Titty discards the roadkill explaining (by way of a series of grunts) that he’d get himself a fresh one later.

We arrive at the billabong just on dusk; all starving hungry except for Titty as Les the Sustainably Harvested Native Cuisine Man has failed to locate any Clucky Dux or McChucks along the way, being too absorbed in his map. His bush tucker skills are useless to Paz and me as “These days” he only targets vegan food, reckoning the wildlife “… runs too shitting fast.” Titty has sustained himself throughout the day by reaching out the car window and plucking berries off passing vegetation, supplemented by the odd titbit shaken from his beard whenever we hit a pothole (ubiquitous in North Queensland).

By the time we’ve begun setting up our rude camp, darkness is nigh; tonight’s moon is full: Polaroid is bound to turn cougar at a moment’s notice. I have to do some quick thinking and work out where I fit into this quadrangle. Les is married and judging from the size of his stomach, happily so. He’s out. Polaroid may be a cougar but she’s house-trained and not a homewrecker — that leaves just myself and Titty as potential victims. I have history with Paz, and being the most cowardly do not want to wind up playing the role of Francis Macomber or red-faced white hunter. “Itchyballs”, I can handle but Paz’s pet name “Mediocre Mike” still stings like a 6.5mm Mannlicher round to the cerebellum. I decide to go for a long walk around the swamp and leave the others to get acquainted.

When I arrive back at camp the moon is not yet up and all is in darkness, barring a faint campfire glow which I rekindle into something more substantial. I note two single-person tents have been erected during my absence. A fearsome snoring from one confirms it belongs to Les; presumably the other is Polaroid’s. There is no sign of Titty — I’ve never seen any evidence he actually sleeps; most likely he spends his nights hunting small prey. I leave my swag rolled for now and sit on it. I don’t like tents. Four flimsy nylon walls are unlikely to protect the occupant from anything more frightening than a mosquito. I’d rather take my chances in a swag, from where I can at least see danger approaching.

A couple of hours later, the fire all but extinguished, I lay in my bedding still unable to sleep. From the corner of my eye I think I see something streak past, headed for Polaroid’s tent.

A loud, low, almost subsonic purring erupts, sup...

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