THE NEW YEAR TRIP

If Paris was made to be seen in April, and New England in the Fall, then Geelong is a place to visit once in a blue moon, perhaps at the end of a month of Sundays sometime in 1973. I’m not saying that it doesn’t have a certain charm but generally I try to stay on the east side of the Westgate, not owning a plaid shirt or a pair of moccasins. I was once in a coffee shop with my wife in Geelong and we both ordered a Flat White and got Lattes. I can’t begin to tell you how distressing my wife found it.
Hairy is an old mate from way back. We went to university together and it is pure coincidence that we are both in Australia. I’m surprised he managed to get a visa after the incident when he did a ram-raid on a video store, then took photos of himself with of all the TV sets. These he then sent to his mates in jail to “show them how well he was doing.” Anyway we have for a long time decided to go down the surf coast together for a few days fishing.
I talked it over with my wife and she seemed to think it was a good idea. She even arranged for her mother to spend the week at our house to get the kids to and from school. The kids hate being picked up by her. I tend to stay in the car and wait by the gate, she marches into the playground yelling, “Cuckoo Darling.” Some days she even makes them walk home, and sing songs from the Sound of Music on the way.
When I told Penni I was going away for a while she was lying under the rear of a Nissan Patrol. All I could see were her boots. Her feet remained silent. I told her again and she asked where, and when. She seemed reluctant to come out and hold this conversation, as if afraid I, like Venus, was about to leave her for good.
“Just for the week, the week after next week that is, maybe a bit less than a week, we’ll see how it goes, B’s coming too so I can’t change it now I’d be letting the boy’s down.”
The explanation seemed good enough and slowly she emerged like a chick reversing from its shell.
“I could come too?” It was a question not a statement.
I knew that from a practical point of view it wasn’t a good idea as she was having trouble making ends meet. Since Venus had left she had been running a car repair and service business in her back yard. It was, of course, against every council planning regulation but we weren’t about to complain, and she didn’t rev engines in the middle of the night or anything. At the same time I knew that having her come along would be great fun, and we’d be able to spend some time together. She could sense that I was trapped in a dilemma and added, “if you want me too.” Which of course now made it impossible for me to say no.
Guys have rules, I think #5 is never take your wife on a fishing trip. It comes just before #6 which states never cheat on your wife. But what exactly constitutes cheating these days? According to Hairy it's not cheating you're in a different area code, better still a different state, and he should know he’s been divorced three times, twice from the same person. As he once pointed out “anytime you pass up sex, you're cheating on yourself.” Hairy’s parents were a couple of old hippies, all “free love” and “bean curd.” Unlike Hairy my upbringing wasn’t as liberal so I have all sorts of hang-ups over this kind of thing. I knew Penni shouldn’t come with us, but couldn’t think of a way out of it, so a planning meeting was held and arrangements made. Suddenly instead of three guys and a tent it became a military operation.
An old friend of Hairy, Ben, is always called simply, B. This comes from his school days where his brother Alvin was “Collin’s A” and he became “Collin’s B”. B tells a story that when asked by his school careers advisor what he wanted to be when he grew up he told her “a swagman.” Since then he had become a queens scout, a solider (involved in a number of peacekeeping ‘incidents’ that he doesn’t want to talk about so don’t even ask) and finally an outback tour guide. On the day of departure Hairy arrived at my house about lunchtime in B’s converted old ‘greyhound’ bus. B had just returned from a week in the Simpson Desert and everything on the rattler was covered in a layer of red dust. This was perhaps for the best as it disguised the rust. On the buses back window read a sign “in case of emergency exit through window.” Unfortunately the sign was on the wrong way so could be read from outside but not inside. This somehow made perfect sense, “In case of emergency outside in the real world escape on a fishing trip.”
The bus’ great advantage over our normal car is space. This can be a disadvantage too. Our equipment didn’t even take up half of the luggage storage so we just had to take a couple of spare rods, some extra fly tying stuff, those old waders with the leak in the knee (in case we feel the need to repair them), and the whole catastrophe. And it still left us with the whole bus, the rear half of which had been converted: four triple bunks, a kitchen, and a chemical toilet. It was just like Cliff Richard’s Summer Holiday if you smoked a really good joint.
We picked up B from the Newsagents where he was negotiating the purchase of the annual tobacco production of a small central American nation.
Penni had driven over to Hairy’s apartment earlier so that we didn’t have to arrive or depart together. Hairy’s lives in a flat above a pharmacist’s shop. Apparently the Chemist is so keen to have the place lived in at night that the rent is dirt-cheap. Little does he know that any would be drug thief would be better advised to raid Hairy’s flat than the shop below.
There was a loud cheer as I greeted Penni with a kiss. When I returned with her to the bus Hairy and B had hung a sign up over the door, “Just Eloped.” I could see it was going to be a fun week.
It was another half-hour before we were all together and ready to roll. B had spent the time going through a long checklist of what to do before leaving.
 Turn off all lights - check
 Make sure there isn’t anything that might go off in the fridge - check
 Set the video to record the X files – check
 Over feed the goldfish so they will last the week – surely that doesn’t work – and check
 Drape a piece of toilet paper over the bath to help the spiders climb out - check.
Within a hundred yards of his door B yelled out, “Stop the bus.” He was running before the air brakes hissed and it slowly ground to a halt.
Two minutes later he returned with a pet rat in a cage. “He’s called Archie.” He said as if this explained everything we needed to know, which it did.
The first evening we decided to stop off at a karaoke pub populated only by a party on a hens’ night strip show to the accompanying cry of “get ya kegs off.” B and Hairy obliged. I decided that with Penni present to be a bit more restrained. I later discovered that she was the one who originally started the shouting.
After their show B and Hairy went back to the bus for the night. Penni and I checked into a nearby motel. There has been a trend over the last few years to name hotels and restaurants after places in films or television shows. Fawlty Towers, and the Pie in the Sky have gained the appearance of a chain. The Bate’s Motel was however not such a good idea. Needless to say the place was deserted.
I decided not to have a shower.
The next day the drive from along the coast took about four hours. There were two reasons for this, firstly we decided to try and go the long way the second reason was because Hairy spent the morning being ill in a way the chemical toilet wasn’t designed to cope with. The smallest room on the bus had long since given up under the strain.
On the way we played petrol station lotto. Everyone on the bus picks a petrol price for the day and as we pass stations the nearest guess wins a point. This is a game that is best played in Australia where there is a “free, open and competitive” fuel market.
The other on board activity during the trip was, of course, cards. Most groups of men together soon develop their own variant on poker, bizarre and illogical rules to trick the unwary: two’s are wild, you can’t double the ante until after the draw, or three of a kind beats a straight if they are the beast’s hand (666). We played Old Maid. Much to her disgust Penni lost and became the officially designated the bus’ Old Maid.
B suggested that we play craps.
“I don’t know how you play, what are the rules?”
“Well we all lay a turd, and the one with the longest wins.”
We played old maid again.
When we had set up camp and strung up. It was then I realised that Penni was going to cut into my fishing time.
The river we were camped by is coastal and only fishable for a few kilometres from the sea up to a waterfall. It isn’t even what you’d call attractive in the traditional trout stream sense running through flat farmland. It’s claim to fame however are the sea trout that run up to the pool below the waterfall, where they discover they can’t go any further. Big angry fish all muscle and attitude. We were there at the wrong time of year, but then again there were no crowds so perhaps it was the right time.
There were fish, but they weren’t the big ones. There were hatches – but nothing to get excited about. Compared with most trips there was a lot of down time. Penni was happy to potter around camp or read a book: Chocolat – Joanne Harris (she only ever reads books when she’s already seen the film so she “knows what the characters look like.”)
One day we fished the estuarine part of the river, just to see if we had a chance with the sea trout down there. None of us had done that kind of fishing before so we didn’t expect much to go right, which as it happens is just as well. I’d done some research before the trip and couldn’t find anything about flies or techniques in the Australian press (Note to self – learn how to catch them and then write one yourself.) The three of us all took different approaches to fly selection. B went the highland gentleman route with traditional Scottish sea trout patterns (Teal Blue & Silver and Soldier Palmers) all beautifully tied (i.e. bought - because B can’t tie his shoe laces) I went for a more exotic approach going for some patterns I found in a US magazine and recommended by Capt. John Kumiski (a salt water fly fishing guide from Florida). They were big heavy flies (hard to cast on my gear) and looked great in the pictures only I had a bit of difficulty with the unfamiliar materials. You can see Capt. John’s flies tied properly at http://www.spottedtail.com/SexyFliesHome.htm, and no that’s not an advert I’ve never met the man. Hairy took the anarchist approach to life, no planning or preparation for the trip, so just fished something he normally has in his box anyway, (in this case a Black Woolly Buggers.) Needless to say he was the only one of us to catch a fish, well a trout. B caught a couple of flathead (after adding some shot to his line which is not the act of a highland gentleman.) All three of us normally catch and release but catch and release of the flathead given our lack of fresh provisions didn’t seem such a good idea so we ate them, just grilled on the campfire, and they were bloody good.
That evening back at camp B invented a new way of playing chase the ace, a variant on tag involving “the ace” running round the camp humming the theme music to the dam busters, using his underpants as goggles while trying to igniting his own farts. Penni and I decided to go off for a moonlight walk leaving while the others still had their dignity intact.
To cut a long story short Penni and I had a great time on the road together. There were all the disasters you could imagine, and some you couldn’t but we laughed them all off. At last we were together, and didn’t have the weight of the world on our shoulders. Penni even tried her hand at fishing, I took time off during the mid-day lull. It shouldn’t have worked but did. The only thing that disturbed me was a strange feeling that Archie wasn’t the only rat who had made the trip.