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Jesus, the kangaroo
This may be taking things too far, but we spent the weekend with the other Churtons, Kaelene's first husband and his second wife, but then we are all mature and sensible people. With Seath and Nicole, we headed down the Kwinana highway past Bunbury and inland to Bridgetown in the South West, to what is an essentially old-fashioned rural Australian town. They exist, these places with old, verandahed pubs and tree-lined streets, but to get there we had to pass the “ups”; Burekup, Boyanup, Kirup, Balingup, Manjimup, Dwellingup, Gnowangerup, Kojonup, Nannup, Kulikup, Beerelup, Dardanup, Mullalyup, Yowungup, Maranup, Naimup, Kakatherup, Winnejup, Mandalup but to name but a few. Up, we are told, is the indigenous term for water, but there seemed little around.
This is outback Australia where legend has it there are such things as Kangaroos and Emu in the wild; we’ve not seem any and we are not convinced they exist outside of wildlife parks and zoos; all we found were wineries, olive groves, orchards and market gardens, and traffic police hunting down wayward drivers. This is a place where, when forecasters’ talk about improving weather, they mean it will get colder and, better still, it may even rain. It is big, dry country but it does have quite an appeal if you can appreciate the beauty of straggly gum trees and red soil. Undeniably it is big country, the tourist brochures tell us in graphic form that this state is bigger than New Zealand, Japan, the British Isles and half of Europe put together. We believe it.
The first Mr Churton, Victor, and his second wife, Victoria, have a five acre block just out of Bridgeton and it is quite heavenly. In the mornings, vivid, almost iridescent, blue wrens fossick in the garden while, later, white Cockatoos and bright green parrots call by. Ravens and crows squeal, sounding for the world like new-born lambs and the flies, huge things, bite everything that gets in their way. We don’t like those one bit, but breakfast of garden fresh tomatoes, free-range eggs and local bacon make it all seem okay.
As if to prove that Kangaroos really do exist in the wild, the president of one of the University union branches provides a weekly update into his latest charge, a young Joey. As part of a rescue group, he and others pluck survivors from the pouches of road-killed kangaroos and hand rear them until ready for release back into to the wild. In this case, Jesus, as this Joey is known, lives in an eskie, the Australian equivalent of a chilly bin, until big and strong enough for release. What happens is that, once independent, they are put into a paddock with other similarly hand-reared joeys, the gates are left open and, eventually, they drift back off into their wild state.
Down at the beach, dressed in nothing more than red and gold surf lifesavers’ budgie smugglers, Australian Liberal Party leader, the ghastly Tony Abbott, has told women that their virginity is a gift that shouldn’t be given away lightly. Those he says who are tempted by sex before marriage should at least use contraceptives. This might seem obvious to some, but Tony Abbott for more than two decades was hoodwinked into believing he was the father of a love child conceived during his teenage years. “I have gone through twenty-seven years of life convinced that I was Daniel’s dad, but it appears that is not the case,” said Mr Abbott after DNA testing proved that an unidentified man was actually the father. Clearly Mr Abbott did not mean that young males need to give away their virginity so easily.