When I was in my 20s, I was living in Brisvegas and we had a young lady visiting from the UK, let’s call her Ms V. A delightful lady. Intelligent and had a great sense of humour. She practiced in the Old Bailey as a barrister. But it wasn’t prestige all the time, there was that one case where she defended the man who disrobed on a train. Her defense? “He was bonkers my lord!”
She had wonderful friends, who would blame her for flatulating on a crowded train when, they did the somewhat smelly deed themselves. All she could do was blush furiously.
But that is neither here nor there. This is a story of when she decided to visit Australia.
So, there we were, all on holidays. Eating tea and sipping biscuits. No clouds of smoke named either Mary or Jane was involved. It was merely a cloudy day, indoors. All week.
We played countless games of hearts or black bitch as we tended to call it; Australians are very prim and proper. Much tea was consumed. As a new person to Australia, we took Ms V under our wing. And of course, we warned her about Dropbears, as you do with all new visitors, for their safety.
If you don’t know about Dropbears they are a carnivorous cousin to the more friendly Koala. The friendly Koala eats, roots and leaves and is rather cuddly even if it has huge claws. The Carnivorous cousin is a tad more aggressive. It primarily is a denizen of the tropical rainforests. Where the lack of gum leaves forced it to evolve into a meat eater; this was a slow process that happened over time. Just normal evolutionary procedure.
Every animal in Australia wants to kill you. Even those that can’t kill you, wants to kill you.
The problem is the ATB (Australian Tourism Board) is a powerful political body. Do you think Australians really throw shrimp on the barbie? FFS, we don’t even call them shrimp, it’s bloody prawns. The ATB would never allow the truth to come out and stop the tourist dollars from coming in by admitting that the cute Koala had a darker bloodthirsty cousin.
Every Australian that has joked about dropbears not being real have been visited by ATB goons. Most of us bear scars. We tried to warn her. For about fifteen minutes we talked of the dangers. Told her of the common saying, “Look up and survive!”. And I thought we got through to her, her eyes were bright, her breath was bated and in those few moments she truly believed. We thought to ourselves, another pom warned of the dangers! But then she burst into peals of laughter, and I realised we had failed. We had lost her, now she was just another potential victim.
The last I heard she was backpacking across Australia, and that she had travelled to Cairns, the area known for its tropical rainforests. I think and hope she survived but if she didn’t look up, her chances were low. I wish her well.