Ok So I went to the BUSH!!!
You get up at “sparrow fart” (first thing in the morning – which begs the all important question … do birds fart???) and you evidently have a competition to see which idiot can be the toughest and wear the least amount of clothes while convincingly telling everyone … “it’s not cold … look at me … I just wore a speedo ….” Now this is completely different from Canada where you are just darn sensible and put as many clothes on as you can because if you lose and you aren’t the warmest … well then you are dead … and the warm people eat you to survive …
So you all pile into your vehicles and some people pretend they are really tough and they drive their cars … or maybe they just thought, “hey …4 wheeling .. I got 4 wheels … bonus …” Then you drive like crazy to NOT be behind or in front of one of those cars cause you are supposed to look out for one another. So you follow each other down the road and at some point you see a big hill, rocks, impenetrable scrub, raging rivers, mud … or any combination of the above and you turn your vehicle towards it and step on the gas.
Now imagine yourself strapped into one of those rides at Universal Studios where they dump you all over the place back and forth, up and down, side to side … only with this one they add sides and a roof and I think the object is to see how many of those surfaces can come into contact with your head while you sit there unable to move ….
You drive maniacly through the trees to the top of one quasi mountain and then …. you drive down the other side … just because (hey this is riveting stuff here .. you don't think I could just dream this kind of excitement up do ya??) … and you sit in the vehicle and then stop for a sec and tie ropes around your waist and open the door and edge your way out – peer over the side and say “yup yup … sure up here ain’t we … “ and then someone pulls you back into the vehicle and off you go again ….
From time to time I rolled down the window and could hear, over the roar of the motors, the hysterical laughter of the Australians shouting “Wheeeeeeee!!” and “hoooooboyyyy” etc. From time to time they rolled down the window and could hear, over the roar of the motors, the hysterical screaming of the Canadian yelling “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!” along with intermittent whimpering…
We got one pee break, which was pointless … I had already gone … in the vehicle ….
Lunch - everyone gathered round and high-fived each other over the amount of mud on their vehicles. And then came time for “Billy Tea.” I did ask about it. You see all these men immediately got out their little gas tanks and their ancient cans (Billy’s) and filled them with water and studiously watched the water as it boiled. One guy had a hard time, his water wasn’t boiling for the longest time. He finally said he thought he heard something and I suggested it was just the water being bored …. evidently you don’t joke about a man’s ability to billy his tea. Then you throw tea leaves in and you go and you twirl the billy with the boiling water over your head 3 times. They pronounced each other’ actions as “perfect.” I shared how I twirled water in a bucket over my head once because Biff said that the water would stay in the bucket and it didn’t and I got completely soaked, just before I was supposed to go to church in my Sunday clothes and the grandparents had another way of describing what I had just done that had nothing to do with “perfect” and more to do with words that rhymed with “mupid” but started with “st” ... and that was right about 2 seconds before I got the whooping of a lifetime .... And then I asked them (the Australians) if they had ever considered using a “Spoon.”
Well once lunch was over we got back in the vehicles and drove some more. We stopped a couple of times so that some of the Australians could get some “elk-stag-hoof-horns” or something … evidently illegal…and I asked them if they thought they maybe contributed just a little to England’s whole inability to let go of the convict stigma ….. but they were too busy hooting and hollering and climbing trees to pay any attention to me. I wrote down all their names and figured if we got busted, I was going to sing like a canary ….
I find it kind of funny that the Australians drive willy nilly following some ancient “rules” to driving in the “bush” that they all were in on, cause they all nodded knowingly when someone said, “he’d never have gone over the side like that had he followed the rules …” And Australians head for the fallen rocks and trees and run their fingers over the gashes in their paint jobs with pride …. not like the Canadians who go insane if your fleece jacket brushes against their SUV in the shopping mall parking lot …
I tried to enjoy the scenery but the truth is my head was down on the floor and it was tough to appreciate everything when I had to keep wiping the vomit out of my hair ….
The only thing I find really peculiar …. not one person mentioned anything about a single bush ….
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