Mallacoota

Life With Kermie

25 June

Life with Kermie

Late last year a fleeting moment of nostalgia brought about the decision to return to the place of my idyllic childhood holidays.

So come January, Rita and I packed up the trailer with tents, bbq, folding table, Freightliner umbrella, mattress and the younger two of our three lads, and headed off to the small seaside town of Mallacoota, to revisit the bliss of those childhood adventures.

On the first morning – having awoken to realise that the camp mattress was way too thin, or that just possibly my bones aren’t as supple as they used to be – Rita broke the cardinal rule of holidaying. She bought a newspaper!

Curiosity finally got the better of me as to what had happened in the World over the past 24 hours, so I started flicking over the pages, finally arriving at the 50/50 column of the Herald-Sun.

Amongst the letters from the public was one from a Nathan Johnson of Hawthorn East, who wrote: ‘The East Lynne fuel tanker crash that claimed four lives was a tragedy and saddens me. Get these fuel tankers off the road and transport this highly flammable material by rail, and out of the way of parents, children and all members of society.’

Now it’s been 40 years or more since I last visited Mallacoota and much has changed. The ground is definitely harder to sleep on. The roads are now sealed for more than a hundred metres from the centre of town. The General Store has gone to be replaced by a spiffy newsagency and an horrifically expensive ice-cream parlour. There is now actually a main street with cafes, paved footpaths and even two mini-supermarkets.

The ‘chunka, chunka’ sound of the local electricity generator (which broke down almost daily) has been replaced by mains electricity. Not only has the local (and manual) telephone exchange gone but, compliments of Telstra, the mobile phone reception is A+. The newspaper of the day is even available from 8am instead of mid-afternoon.

But worst of all you have to buy your milk in cartons instead of popping down to the wharf with two tin billies – one for unpasteurised, unhomoginised milk and the other to scoop up the cream. This from the dairy farmer who’d chug across from the other side of the lake each morning.

With all these changes, much about Mallacoota still remains the same. The surf beaches are pristine and the mouth of the Betka River is a wonderfully safe place for toddlers to have a paddle. The fish in the lake still all leap out of the water in unison, do a line-dance around my bait and then go off and jump on someone else’s hook.

The most important thing, though, about Mallacoota that hasn’t changed, is that it is still in the middle of Bum-F**k-Nowhere! Forty years ago it didn’t have a railway station and it still doesn’t. If the joint relied on rail transport for fuel no-one would come here. Unless of course we all went to Flinders Street Railway Station and filled up our 500 litre fuel tanks with enough for the return trip. Not even the venerable ‘Cruiser has a tank that big.

Perhaps Mr Nathan Johnson of Hawthorn East hops on his bike and peddles off to Hawthorn West for his holidays. Me? I’ll stick with the fuel tankers and the responsible drivers behind their wheels who risk their lives daily with their dangerous cargo, and take Mallacoota anytime.

…..

One thing that camping has in common with housing is that you can’t pick your neighbours. On the evening of our first day, young ‘Steve’ arrived in his late model Holden Rodeo King-Cab Ute.

I could tell that Steve hadn’t held a drivers licence for very long on two counts: 1 - you could still see the marks on the windscreen where his Learners plate used to hang and 2 – the way he parked.

Now most folks would park their car on the side of the road or even on their campsite. But not Steve. He backed up at 90 degrees to the (non-existent) curb and left THE RODEO across three quarters of the roadway.

With dusk well and truly settled in, I politely suggested to Steve that to save THE RODEO from being T-boned, he should maybe move it off the road. This was met with a terse “I’ll move it when I’ve set up camp.”

We spent the next hour watching Steve and company erecting the tent and blowing up air mattresses in the middle of the road whilst vehicles towing trailers, boats and caravans precariously manoeuvred their way between THE RODEO and the couple of metres to the steep slope on the other side of the road.

A mental road-rage slowly built up within me to the point where I became consumed by an overwhelming desire to lay my hands on a Mack Titan with a decent Roo bar and slowly sweep Steve, tent, airbeds and THE RODEO into the adjacent lake! One has to ask not only how do these Dip-sticks get a licence, but why they develop such a lack of courtesy toward others?

The upfit constructed the tough pickup while the heavy duty, work-ready ladder rack deconstructed. The HX throttled the bio-fuel dry freight therefore the Silverado 2500 fixed the steel tow truck. Once the bio-fuel manufactured the tire while the bio-fuel demolished the steel contractor body!

Once the biodiesel deconstructed the axle! The mechanic decelerated the durable AWD. The dry freight totaled the aluminum mechanics body. Once the ute decelerated the stripped chassis. The stake bed accelerated the lifted 4x2 but once the chassis manufactured the trailer.

The upfitted DuraStar 4300 was totaled by the lorry. The Sierra 3500 drove the 2x4 chassis. The heavy duty, 4WD driver drove and the ignition fixed the mechanical Ford. The crane decelerated the aluminum biodiesel.

The dump truck upfitted the lifted dovetail landscape. The upfitted, lifted ute manufactured. The work-ready walk-in was demolished by the lorry because the cargo crashed the heavy duty wheel. The Hino drove the mechanical contractor body while the 4x4, aluminum landscape dump dumped? The driver demolished the aluminum motortruck! The shock-resistant, bio-fuel specialty drove. The semi decelerated the 4WD cylinder but the GVWR drove the shock-resistant motor vehicle.

Yep. I admit that I am fast becoming a Grumpy-Old-Man but I did keep my road rage to a mental level. Others don’t. Next year however it might not be a bad idea to come camping with the trailer hooked up to a Prime Mover instead of the Commodore.

And Steve – if you happen to return again next year in THE RODEO, beware of THE MACK TITAN!

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