I ain't the one

Hard hitting journalist
Says he's a communist
Says he believes in World War 3
Lives in a high-rent
Luxury apartment
He ain't fooling me...
- The Angels, 1978

The idea of Spam Filter camping on my floor for Schoolies did grow on me, though. Let’s face it, my social calendar wasn’t full to bursting as things stood, and it’d be nice to have people come and visit. God knew how I was going to fit everyone in, not to mention how I’d deal with the experience of having a former flame in Spam Filter’s lead singer (and one about six or seven months pregnant at that) staying under my roof, but it’d at least make life a little more interesting. I admitted as much when Lena called me on Monday night.

“So you’ve just been sitting around fantasizing about Jen Bailey all day?” she wanted to know. “I thought you were heading up north halfway to Noosa to get your car registered?”

“Yeah, I did. Except I went to Springwood instead. The fucktard at the call centre got it completely wrong with Zillmere - Christ knows what map he was looking at. Might have been closer as the crow flies, but seriously, have a bit of a think about it next time mate… Anyway I got over there first thing and the thing breezed through.”

“Any comment about the scraps of yellow sticker on the windscreen?”

“Not an issue.”

Actually, that was a complete lie. The inspector, a bright young fella who was probably the most on-the-ball guy in the entire organisation (making him completely wasted at QT) did casually inquire about the remnants of yellow adhesive-backed paper in the recess at the base of the windscreen, given that it was the exact same distinctive shade as the pleece farce used for defect notices. Reason he was asking, he said, was that when he’d put my registration into the database, it hadn’t come up flagged with any sort of notice, which would have automatically happened if it’d been logged from a normal unroadworthy from a police traffic stop.

“Or overstaying interstate registration?” I suggested, apropros of nothing.

The inspector gave me a funny look. “Overstaying interstate rego isn’t a defect notice,” he said. “It’s a different sort of notice altogether - you just have to get the registration switched over within 28 days, it doesn’t affect your ability to drive the thing. Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering,” I replied. And swore to go and read the rulebook properly next time Snr Cnt Toogood slapped a dubious sticker on my car and told me I couldn’t drive it. And also swore not to talk to anyone about it because the whole thing was just a little bit embarrassing.

“So no problems with your mate in the muscleshirt then?” Lena inquired.

“Nah, he’s not interested in me.”

Mainly because I left before dawn on my newly rebuilt, as-yet unregistered R 80 G/S - well, it needed a run, just to see if the thing was bolted together properly after I’d finished the rebuild early that morning - and hid the thing in the bushes near the park, proceeding to the JetCat station on foot. And though the Magna was now legitimately registered in my current home state, I didn’t quite have the bottle to drive it onto the vehicle barge and back through Toogood’s precinct - not just yet, anyway. No sense waving red rags. Instead, I parked it in the long-term carpark on the Cleveland side, took the JetCat over again on dusk - the JetCat’s twin advantages over the barge being speed and not having Toogood’s informant Rhonda Partridge manning the ticket booth, as she did the vehicle barge - and cautiously motored the R 80 G/S through the back streets. I wasn’t quite game to take the main road back to Point Lookout, not when there were mining roads and fire trails which led due east to the beach on the far side of the island, then hard, flat, deserted sand leading all the way home. Sure, it was probably ten or twelve kays out of my way, but there was no sign whatsover of anyone in a baby-blue uniform and a Rodeo ute, with a stupid hat and nightstick to go with his nine millimetre handgun. There was a beach access track which led around the back of town, almost to the end of my street, so I made it home safely without attracting the attention of Plod.

“He hasn’t come to pay you a visit then?”

“Seems not,” I replied. Another lie; he’d left his calling card in my absence, a pair of dirty great big Rodeo prints across the nature strip in front of the house when he’d dropped by to pay that visit he’d promised me. “He knows where to find me,” I said. That much was true, evidently.

“Be careful, Angus,” Lena said, and she even sounded a little concerned. “He’s not all there, you know.”

“Thanks for the breaking newsflash,” I offered. “You didn’t believe me when I said he was taking his job a little seriously, did you?”

“I did tell you his offsider pulled the lot of us over on the way to the ferry yesterday, didn’t I?” There was a little humour back in her voice again. “I’m guessing your mate called the station and tipped the young fellow off.”

“Sean Stevens? Little ginger kid? He’s pretty inoffensive,” I said.

“Yeah, he was no problem. Very polite and apologetic, seemed a bit embarrassed about it. Couldn’t find anything to book us for, so Marty and Phil blew into the bag - Phil was the only one with any sort of reading at all, comfortably legal - and he let us on our way. Maddy was livid about the whole thing, took his badge number, told him she’d be talking to his boss, making a formal complaint about his conduct and that of his off-duty colleague earlier in the day… the whole deal. That seemed to speed up the process a bit.”

I liked the sound of that. Maddy had a rare ability: that of being able to tear someone a new arsehole simply by phone.

“So the young fella didn’t find Phil’s stash in the spare tyre?”

“Phil moved it to the engine bay - there’s a cut-out section of the air cleaner recess where he stores the stuff - it’s all very professional, absolutely boggles the mind.”

“So you weren’t too badly delayed then?”

“No. Missed my flight though, so I’m stuck up here in Boganville. Look out your front door, I’m standing outside.”

“Yeah?” I considered getting up to check.

“Gotcha,” she said. “Home in my scabby old flat in scabby old Glebe, sorry. You miss me?”

“Yeah, but my aim’s improving,” I replied. We both laughed.

“So,” she said, “you saw the paper today, yeah?”

“I did,” I concurred.

“Well… what did you think?”

I paused thoughtfully before replying.

“I think you’re right,” I mused. “They will print any old crap on a Monday.”

The easiest edition of any daily newspaper to get a story into, I knew from both McCarthy’s and Lena’s experiences in journalism, is the Monday edition. Noone works on a Sunday (certainly not in any important newsworthy fields like politics), the few who do work don’t want to work on a Sunday, and no news, sports aside, is made on a Sunday, so you have to feel sorry for the poor misguided hacks who have to scrape together an interesting newspaper on a Sunday afternoon for a Monday on-sale date. Well, you can feel sorry for them, or you can send them suggestions, as Lena had done for one of her former UNSW journalism classmates who now worked for Uncle Rupert’s Queensland metropolitan paper.

When the Courier-Mail was still a broadsheet a few years ago, and had some pretence of not being a tabloid, the back page of the first section of the paper had a ‘Brisbane Diary’ section - most papers have this sort of thing, the SMH has the Stay In Touch section, no doubt your local daily has something similar. The Courier-Mail have renamed theirs a bunch of times, last I looked it was called ‘Q Confidential’ or some schtick. Basically it’s bits and pieces of news from around town, events and people, light entertainment fodder, what Jason fuckin’ Akermanis did yesterday (at least until he got packed off to Footscray). Crap, really. I hadn’t made any habit of regularly reading the Curious Snail for years - not since Dr Cletus had it delivered to our place in St Lucia on some half-price student deal, though it was usually kicking around the staffroom at the schools I frequented - but the Q Confidential (or near offer) section was still there, now mired in the no-mans-land between the end of the actual news (or near offer) and the start of the sports sections.

Still, there we were. The column-width photo looked decent, considering it was just from Lena’s little pocket digital; Marty, Phil and myself cheersing with Coronas (must have been Marty’s shout) at the front bar at the Fox-nee-Terminus the previous Friday. And about 250 words to go along with it.

Fans of erstwhile Aussie rockers Flange Gasket, regulars on the Brisbane scene during their short but spectacular career, be warned. This is the first photographic evidence of the band - well, most of the band - in the same room at the same time since the band’s supernova-esque breakup. Guitarist Andrew ‘Angus’ Young, bassist/keyboardist Marty di Biagini (yes Virginia, Marty WAS in a band before his eponymous chart-topping Vanity Project) and drummer Phil Duff were catching up over a beverage or three at South Bank’s Fox Hotel, shortly after di Biagini’s farewell performance as an instrumental composer at nearby Q-PAC. “No more,” di Biagini declared. “I’m hanging up the Cape of Pretentiousness.” Still, never fear; his next, as yet unnamed, solo album with the Vanity Project will be out early next year. The Duffer is still playing with his band Spam Filter on the boys’ native NSW North Coast, in which Young’s brother Jeff also plays, while the big news for Young - sorry, ladies - is his engagement to the lovely Bethany, proof that love can blossom from a workplace romance, as well as proof that someone ex-Gasket can actually hold down a real job. Young’s own back catalogue infamously includes fashion models, pop starlets and TV newsreaders (no, not our Marie-Louise), but true love (and monogamy) seems to suit the older, wiser Young. So, does this mean a Flange Gasket reunion is on the cards? Well, as Young himself points out, they’re short a showboating, sulking, spotlight-hogging frontman, someone who can monopolise the rider, whinge about foldback and throw a tanty over not getting enough solos without breaking a sweat. The search continues. Did I hear someone say ‘Rock Star: Flange Gasket’?

I never said them things, etc. But I still laughed. Even just at the idea of me dating Marie-Louise Thiele from Channel Ten Brisbane. She shat me.

I’d spent the day filling in time - most of my morning had been wasted at the motor registry, and I’d tooled over to St Lucia to drop in on Dr Cletus and the lab to see what was doing (no, he hadn’t cured anyone of anything yet) - which was where I’d first glanced over the story, in the tea room at the Institute for Molecular Biosciences. Actually, the good Doctor was kind enough to point it out to me. Along with the observation that only poofters got photographed drinking Coronas. Actually drinking Coronas, particularly three dollar Coronas during happy hour at the Adrenalin Bar (another dear departed Brisbane drinking establishment, along with the ‘old’ Victory Hotel) was fine; it was being caught in print doing so that was the poofter bit. I told him it was good to see that getting by on half an hour’s sleep a night with a screaming mini-him wasn’t making his comedy routine any less shit than it had always been. Actually, he didn’t look too bad, as far as sleep-deprived, hideously deranged zombies went. But Eloise and little Matty were doing fine, and Dr Cletus hadn’t burnt the lab down yet in his oblivious brain-dead stupor, so things were going about as well as could be hoped for.

The other visit I’d paid was up to Mount Road Motorcycles to drop in on my former employers and sponsors. Mick’s wrist was in a fibreglass cast; he claimed it was from falling off the roof, but there was a suspiciously dropped-looking Moto Guzzi Griso 8v in the workshop which suggested otherwise. He hadn’t been going that well - actually his recent life had read like a delta blues song - his woman had run off with his best mate (make that his ex-woman had run off with his ex-best mate) and his dog had died. If someone had stolen his ute as well, it could have even been a country and western song. But no, his ute - the Mount Road Monster, as it was called, being a bloody ignormous black twin-cab Dodge Ram 1500 truck covered in dealership signage - hadn’t been stolen, only claimed for the weekend by shop proprietor Uncle Doug to take his young fella (a promising junior-level motocrosser) and his dirtbikes up to the state titles in central Queensland. Mad Mick was dealing with his loss reasonably well - he’d picked up with his former mate’s missus, for starters - and what he really wanted to talk about was his new Supermoto bike. Supermoto bikes are basically motocrossers with road-racing shock setups and gumball semi-slick road tyres. They first became popular in France - about the only thing the French have produced in the past 50 years that isn’t shit, other than that brunette from Casino Royale - where they’re called Supermotards, which sounds more like a description of someone stupid enough to ride one. Basically the riding style involves throwing the thing around like a trailbike on dirt, lots of sliding under power and backing-it-into corners with locked rear brake, except you’re on tarmac. Sounds insane, because it is. I was surprised Mick had taken so long to get into Supermoto; it was totally mad, and so was he, so they were made for each other. His mount was a near-new Aprilia SXV450 - should have known he’d have gone for an Italian V-twin - and none of the few scratches on it were his work, not yet anyway.

“I’ve only had it a week or so,” he enthused, “but it’s awesome. It’s a whole new mindset. You can have shitloads of fun on it without needing to absolutely cane it flat out.”

“So… same accidents, but at lower speed?”

“Pretty much.”

My one concession to the gadgets of modern life is voicemail. Since I don’t have a mobile anymore, I do at least have voicemail on my homeline so that all the thousands of people who need to get in touch with me urgently, and can’t because I don’t have a mobile, can leave me an urgent message. Lena had called just as I’d skulked back into the house, so I didn’t get a chance to check my messages until she got off the line and stopped wasting my time, dammit.

First message: around nine this morning. It was the head of the science department from Dunwich State High, looking to see if I was able to cover at short notice for an unexpected absence. I winced. Someone’s told them I’m available again, that SCC don’t have a moratorium on my services - and I’ve missed the call and haven’t gotten back to them. That could hurt. Should probably call them tomorrow, regardless of my work situation. I needed them to know I was available, it wasn’t just a subversive rumour.

Second message: Bill from Dunwich State, around mid-morning, with some gentle introductory sledging about leaving a message from the rock star from the newspaper, and whether I’d be interested in some work later in the week. A definite call-back. Wasn’t sure entirely how I’d get to work those days - I was still working out what to do re the Magna - but I’d be there.

Third message: Jeff, around lunchtime. They had one of those ‘call anytime for two bucks’ sorts of deals on their phone, otherwise there’s no way the cheap little bastard would call during peak time. His line of conversation was pretty similar to Bill’s, if a bit more ripe: “G’day, you wanker. I hear you’ve managed to get yourself in the Courier-Mail. You’re a bigger media slut than K-Rudd, you know. That’s all I got. Keep away from the fuzzy muff. Don’t forget to call Mum on Saturday. Cheers mate.” No mention of coming up to visit in a few weeks - presumably Phil (or Kretin) would get around to telling the rest of the band at some stage. As for calling the folks on Saturday, that went without saying; Saturday was Matt’s anniversary, it wasn’t like I was going to forget.

And nothing from Bethany, of course. As there had been nothing for more than a fortnight, ever since the Night of the Long March, which had concluded with finding my house had been demolished and replaced with a bomb site. I was still finding discarded photo albums and broken CDs two weeks afterwards. I slouched into the chair at my computer desk to check my email, still no closer to figuring out what the hell to do about my supposed relationship with my alleged fiancee. Or my alleged relationship with my supposed fiancee, if that reads any better.

One new message. An involuntary shiver ran through me; suddenly seeing her name atop the list of names under ‘Sent From’ was reason enough to justify that. It was from her ‘home’ email, rather than her SCC work one; BigPond gave her folks a bunch of email accounts as part of their broadband deal and one of them had been appropriated by their eldest and only daughter. A little microcosm of her general attitude, which I was starting to regard as ‘Independence? That sounds expensive.’ Generation Y: fucked. As for the message itself, I had to re-read it a few times to fully comprehend what was going on.

Hi. It’s me. We need to talk. Call me.

Not much there to get, really. You’d think I’d have gotten the general idea on the first run-through.

I started punching her number into the handset, almost without thinking. Then I started thinking. And impulsively pressed Cancel, and replaced the receiver into its cradle.

No.

Not after weeks of silence. You don’t get me at your beck and call that easily. We’ll wait and see just how badly you do want to talk. We’ll just let this play out and see what develops. That’s what we’ll do. Right? Right?

She hadn’t mentioned the newspaper article – she hadn’t mentioned anything much in the eight words she'd used – but I was pretty sure it had triggered something. Even if she’d missed it, I knew old undertaker-face Gerald Toogood religiously read the paper over breakfast. Let’s face it, this was a more public announcement of our engagement than even the public announcement of our engagement, which had only made the ‘public announcement of engagements’ section of the paper (largely because we paid for it to go in there.) If she was getting cold feet - which I had to believe was more likely than a girl of her intelligence genuinely believing I was having an affair - this would make it a bit harder to explain to friends and family. A throwaway line of Lena’s came back to me from our conversation of only ten minutes beforehand: all I did was send a message. It’ll depend on whether that message is intepreted correctly, yeah?

Then again, I considered, who was that message really meant for? Young’s own back catalogue infamously includes fashion models, pop starlets and TV newsreaders… so what the fuck is he doing wasting his time with a PE teacher?

I decided to file that under ‘Things not to think about just at the moment’ and move on.

Along with Red Dwarf’s line about the ship’s computer having an IQ of six thousand, that being the same as twelve thousand PE teachers.

I don’t really know how Mike Cross from the Melbourne Age got my phone number. I guess that level of investigative nous was why he was Australia’s Leading Music Journalist™. I’d always thought he was a bit of a tosser, but then again he was from the highly self-involved Melbourne music scene, which usually meant ‘tosser by default’. The difference between Cross and a lot of music writers was that he was a real journalist and had trained as such, not just a self-promoting rent-a-quote marketing graduate who regurgitated whatever fungally infected bilge the label PR peeps fed them. He asked proper questions and wrote proper articles - mostly - although he was lazy enough to bust out vomitiferous stock music-critic wank far too regularly for my liking. He’d pretty much given us good reviews when we deserved them and bagged us unmercifully when we didn’t - McCarthy had sworn never to speak to him again after he’d predicted our rabid descent to oblivion on the basis of the Bollocks to This, That and The Other debacle, but he’d been proven right by the passage of time. And he had done stellar work propagating the rumour that deusexmachina were a Christian rock act in disguise. I didn’t like him, but I respected him. That said, I didn’t really want to talk to him. Not after a long day as circusmaster out front (if not ‘in charge’) of some of the worst behaved classes at Dunwich State High School.

It had been a quiet week, up to then. I’d worked Tuesday through Thursday at the primary school (never really got with the Education Queensland of calling them ‘state schools’) and had looked like getting Friday off until a late call-up from the high school. I was beginning to decide that nominally specialising in high school science had been a bad call - high school teaching was a shit of a gig, compared to primary teaching. Oddly enough, because it’s such a difficult environment for male teachers and scares a lot of them off (largely due to fear of being strung up as a kiddy fiddler), being a male teacher who’s willing to teach primary classes means you’re actually appreciated as a rare and valuable commodity. You just have to be very, very careful about the situations you put yourself into… something I was clearly better at managing at primary school level than secondary, judging by my pathetic attempts to manage my relationship with Annalise Crittenden.

Anyway it’d been a crap Friday at the high school, and I was settling down with a beer and a box of Arnott’s cheese and bacon Shapes (on special this week) when I discovered that Mike Cross had my phone number. He introduced himself over the bustle of the Age newsroom in the background - Saturday edition deadline would have been looming by then - and cut straight to the point without any toadying or pissing in one’s pocket, which was appreciated.

“Angus, the rumours are that Flange Gasket are reuniting. You’ve been quoted in Murdoch’s pissant Brisbane rag as saying you’re looking for a replacement for Sam McCarthy. Is this serious?”

“Mate, I was quoted saying fuck all,” I replied. “Your old buddy Lena the Unpronouncable fed them the story. Made the whole thing up.”He’d hate that. He hated being scooped, and he particularly hated being scooped by Lena, with whom he’d had a strong professional rivalry in the years when Lena was at the top of her game - it wasn’t really a fair fight anymore now that Lena was back with street press and he was syndicated throughout the Fairfax empire, but getting trumped by Lena still pissed him off, as it would had the roles been reversed. I reckoned most of the rivalry was really just sexual tension and they should have just banged each other silly and gotten on with it, for Christ’s sake.

Cross sounded… well, cross. “Should have expected this from Rupert's lot, they’ll print any old crap.”

“Particularly on a Monday,” I observed.

“So I can put you down for an official denial then?” he continued with a grimace, trying to come up with an angle. I felt a bit sorry for him and decided to feed him a quote, just so he had something to pad out the half-written story I could imagine sitting there in front of him on his laptop screen, just out of reach, taunting him as deadline loomed.

“Hey look, it’s a nice idea. You could say there might be unfinished business there. But I hate to point out the fuckin’ obvious mate, but we’re short a lead guitarist, singer and songwriter. You might have heard of him. You probably haven’t heard from him, not in a while anyway… so irrespective of anything else that would stop us getting back together, while there’s no McCarthy, there’s no Flange Gasket.”

“Your brother plays with Phil Duff in his band,” Cross began, and I wondered what he was getting to. “Reid Burton plays with Marty’s Vanity Project. There’s plenty of high profile hired guns out there who could fit the bill. You’ve got a genuine frontman in Marty, with far more popular support than the Gasket ever had. Yet you’re telling me there’s noone who could replace…”

“Isn’t that the point?” I cut in. “Why would Marty waste his precious time out front of a band like Gasket, when he’s got a massively successful solo career?” Who was I trying to convince here, Cross or me? “And, come on, there’s no fucking way you’d get an ex-deusexmachina guitarist like Bruce Reid to buy into playing Gasket riffs, or vice versa. There’s no common ground there whatsoever, personally or musically. I’m amazed he’s playing with Marty to begin with. And as for Jeff… Christ, man, he’s got a farm to run, playing’s just a hobby. He walked away from full time gigging years ago. Some of us have real jobs to do, you know. Personally, writing dumb rock songs about chicks with big tits doesn’t seem that fulfilling compared to teaching little kids to read…”

See this? This patch of dirt under my feet right here? That’s the moral high ground. Consider it claimed, motherfucker.

“So you’re saying there’s no Flange Gasket comeback, period.”

“Full stop.” I hated people using Seppoisms like ‘period’ almost as much as I hated music hacks using terms like ‘sophomore album’, and Cross was often guilty of both. But I did wonder afterwards whether he knew more about McCarthy’s current whereabouts than I did - he seemed pretty definitive, by my reading, that there was no McCarthy - and I wished I’d asked him about it, to tell the truth. But by the time the thought had occurred to me, my impromptu interview with Mike Cross had long since ended, and I was on my second beer, deliberating over whether to call Bethany or not, once again. It’d been four days and I still hadn’t called her, nor she me. Stalemate. Sure, I’d picked up the phone once or twice during the week, even started dialling - but something stopped me. I’d like to think it was dignity.

I hadn’t heard from old mate, the reason I’d stopped calling her in the first place, all week either, which was promising. Granted, I’d been sneaking out of the house and down the ‘back way’ to get to school - via the beach and an assortment of mining tracks and forestry trails - which was working rather well in terms of avoiding the fuzzy muff in their natural habitat, i.e. out on the East Coast Road booking tourists for doing three kays over the limit. And besides that, trailriding to work was a lot of fun, even if the dual-purpose tyres on the old BM weren’t really up to the heavy duty stuff, and even if I was having to get changed when I got to school on account of being covered with mud, sand and shite by the time I got there. But I hadn’t seen any fresh Rodeo prints on my lawn, nor had I detected Toogood’s unsubtle surveillance techniques on my trail. In fact, on the Thursday, Constable Sean Stevens actually showed up to the school to give a presentation to some of the classes (not mine) on Stranger Danger, and looked pretty bloody sheepish when we passed in a corridor. Something told me that Maddy had followed through on her threat to call up the area controller and tear both young Sean and his foul-mouthed off-duty senior a new ‘un, because since Monday, Stevens was looking very nervous and Toogood was lying very low.

Even so, there was only so long I could get away with riding an unregistered, very nearly unmuffled Dakar enduro bike around the place, and I really needed the car to go shopping for groceries, now that I was actually starting to run the risk of getting a paycheck at some stage. I still hadn’t been paid for my last fortnight of work at SCC, but neither Gerald Toogood nor his secretary were returning my calls. I considered consulting with my solicitor to see what my next legal move might be, but I decided not to on the basis that I didn’t actually have a solicitor. Disco Stu, these days a partner at AJ Park, a New Zealand law firm specialising in patent law, is now officially out of my price range. There isn’t enough Crown Lager in the world, I don’t think - and these days he seems to prefer Central Otago pinot noir.

I was kicking myself for not figuring out a way to get the R 80 G/S over to the Springwood motor registry and have it re-registered at the same time that I’d sorted the Magna out. Then again I couldn’t exactly ride it over there, and it wasn’t as though it would have fitted in the Magna’s boot. What I really needed was a ute, of some description. I could hire one, I supposed. Or I could hire someone who owned one, possibly with beer. There was Mad Mick, but I already knew from talking to him earier in the week that he and the Mount Road Monster were prebooked this weekend to take Doug and his young fella out out to another out-of-town motocross meeting. Besides, I wasn’t entirely sure that massive Viper-engined Dodge Ram truck would fit on the barge over here without capsizing the thing. They managed to fit mining trucks on the thing, but even so…

Then there was Dr Cletus, of course. He still had his beaten-up AU Falcon XR8 ute, Kelvinator-white with aftermarket (i.e. afterthought) blue GT stripes down the roof and bonnet like Allan Moffat’s Bathurst Falcon Cobras of the late 70s, and accessorised with Rum Pig stickers, dented bullbar (proving it worked, I guess) and roo-shooting spotlights on the rollover hoop. I’m sure it made Eloise, his elegant, well-spoken French-Canadian wife, feel ever-so thankful she’d chosen such a classy and sophisticated individual to father her child. It was probably just as well they had a late-model Corolla wagon as well, otherwise there’d have been nowhere to put the car seat for the baby. Not my problem, though; even if it was the quintessential bogan’s bogan’s boganmobile, I was only borrowing the thing, not buying it.

At least that was the plan, when I called up Dr Cletus later that evening to see whether he and his lovely wife would be interested in coming out to the beach on the weekend, by some coincidence. In a previous life, Friday nights would have seen him safely ensconced at the Red Room, the UQ union bar, in session with the more social members of his lab. No more, sunshine. He was home, as I knew he’d be, helping Eloise deal with the screaming, shitting, spewing, sleep-destroying terror that had cannibalised his life. Didn’t bode well for a potential nice afternoon out at the beach (with the possibility that he might like to help me transport a bike to Springwood on the way home), but I thought I’d try anyway, once he finally shut up about how wonderful it was to be a father, how it’d transformed his life, etc etc etc. Christ, he was like a broken record. It’s amazing how effective systematic brainwashing can be.

“Anyway mate… you know that ridiculous bogan shitbox ute you drive?”

He groaned like an old wharf. “Don’t even mention it,” he winced. “Eloise has gone ballistic over that thing. I thought the nesting stuff was bad before Matty popped out, but now…”

“Don’t tell me, she wants you to get rid of it?”

“That hideous thing is no way OK for a family car, understand?” he offered, with a passable imitation of his beloved’s slightly fruity Quebecois accent.

“She’s right, you know. You can’t even get a car seat in it. Not with front airbags. Not unless you want things to go horribly wrong…”

“Yeah, I know... But I’ve had the bloody thing in the paper for weeks now,” he admitted, “and I’d have more luck trying to wholesale anthrax…”

First I’d heard he’d put it on the block. “Less said about that the better,” I remarked, remembering the last biomedical researcher to be associated with that sort of stuff. Were ASIO bugging this line? “Can’t shift the bastard, geez I wonder why. A beaten-up AU Falcon ute with a hundred and fifty thousand on the clock, and a big fuel-sucking V8, with fuel costing what it does - I’d have thought that would have been snapped up, mate. You’re throwing the Rum Pig stickers in for free, yeah?”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” he remarked. A pause. “All that said, wanna swap?”

He was serious. And he made sense - guess that’s why the big ginga unit managed to finish his PhD and I didn’t even start. The facts: He needed a family car and I didn’t. His Falcon had pretty lousy resale - as did my Magna. Neither of us would get value from the market, and all things considered, both cars were worth about the same. He’d heard me dribble on about how I was thinking of selling the Magna when I’d dropped by on Monday, but he’d just sat there grinning smugly to himself without admitting his own problems.

I knew why, in hindsight. His ute was so iconic, so representative of him as a person, and he’d taken so much stick for buying it from everyone he knew - it’d been the first thing he’d gone out and bought on arriving back in the country a year or two ago, before he and Eloise had even sorted out a place to live - that it caused him a lot of anguish even to admit that he had to put the thing on the market, let alone that he couldn’t shift it with a big stick.

“Come on, mate. I couldn’t be seen driving around in that thing. People would think I’m a fuckin’ Queenslander or something. I’d be bleeding IQ points our my arse just sitting in traffic.”

But the thought began worming its way into my head, and started embedding itself there. Sure, it was an AU Falcon, one of the ugliest cars ever made - particularly the XR8 with the Spotlight-own-brand venetian blind front grille and the drooping headlights, and particularly in scratched, sunbleached Kelvinator white with those very understated blue GT stripes dominating the bonnet and roof. But the fact remained: I didn’t need a family car. I particularly didn’t need a family car which was known to the local constabulary, though I wasn’t stupid enough to underestimate the bacon-attracting properties of a lowered V8 ute with an exhaust note like Thor’s flatulence. That V8 liked the juice, but didn’t we all - and given that its drink of choice was LPG, with a tank mounted in the tray just behind the cabin, it was probably no more expensive to fuel than Eloise’s Corolla. Certainly not on country mileage, which was effectively what I was running most of the time.

And let’s face it, the idea of something which could carry stuff around really appealed to me, in a primal, blokey sense. Particularly if I decided, f’rinstance, to pack up all of the stuff I owned and make a break for the ferry one day, never to return, which was another idea that had seriously begun to appeal to me. In the Magna, it’d be at least two trips, which would kinda deflate the point of the exercise, and I wasn’t sure my old Orange amp would even fit in at all. With the ute, which had a towbar, I could even hire a trailer…