True Stories

My Dear Princess & Dear Fellows,

I was very tired today. I'm not sure why. Suffice to say I put on a film this afternoon, and the next thing I knew it was just five minutes from the end. In the film, James Bond ended up in Germany, so literally it took an oompah band to wake me up.

That's my excuse for a slow news day. However, I do have a story to tell. It was on a show called, "True Story With Hamish & Andy". I think Hamish & Andy are Aussie DJs or something. 

(Teams of DJs with funny nicknames are a big thing here. There are billboards everywhere saying things like, "Join Megan, Jono & Biff for Drivetime on ZM" and stuff like that. But I digress).

"True Story With Hamish & Andy" is a chance for some random Australian to tell a story to them every week. I suppose it's a bit like Graham Norton's big red chair stories. But unlike Graham's stories, these ones don't necessarily involve people doing a poo in public or getting things stuck up their bum.

All that preamble is to allow me to repeat today's story to you. It involved an Aussie bloke named Phil whose job was to take crocodile eggs from nests. As you might imagine, he found this job a little bit stressful so when he saw an advert for a job working at a luxury resort, he decided to go for a career change.

"I imagined meself floating around the pool, handing out towels and cocktails," he said. Unfortunately for him, the picture in the advert was nothing at all like the "resort" he ended up at. 

It was an old cattle station in the middle of nowhere. Corrugated iron littered the grounds, there were holes in the roof and peeling wallpaper. The other workers looked more like ex-inmates, on the run from the law.  

So Phil was very surprised when the owner of the establishment called from the Gold Coast to say he had some French millionaires arriving soon. 

"Here?"
"Yeah."
"Do they know what this place looks like?"
"Well they saw the advert."
"Oh."

Dubious, but keen to make the best of the situation, Phil tried to get the place tidied up, then went to collect the French millionaires. They were dropped off on a dirt track. Phil could see their taxi driver laughing hysterically as he drove off.

They were dressed very stylishly, from head to foot in white. Phil described the man as having a head of immaculately coiffured silver hair. He spoke no English, but his wife (also immaculately groomed) spoke a little. Phil took them back to the cattle station and gave them the best room.

It was basically a shack. But it did have a fan in it. "IT GETS QUITE HOT," Phil explained slowly to the French lady. The two looked quite shocked, especially when they realised that due to bad construction, some of the  walls didn't quite reach the roof and there were huge holes near the top.

Phil wished them both a good sleep, but during the night heard screaming. It turns out that the tin roof plays havoc with the echo location of the flying foxes, and two of them had flown in. 

But that wasn't the cause of the screaming. What had happened was that the flying foxes had flown directly into the fan and got chopped to pieces. When Phil opened the shack door, he was confronted by two French people in white pyjamas, "covered in bat guts".

So a bad start. 

Phil hoped to turn things around on Day 2. He set up drinks in the pergola outside the shack. The French people seemed to appreciate this and were enjoying the scenery. This was further enhanced by the arrival of a Crimson Finch, a beautiful native bird. The French were delighted. They took out their cameras and started taking pictures when - 

WHAM! 

A python appeared OUT OF NOWHERE, snatched the Crimson Finch from the air and "started strangling it right in front of them". The French people were distressed and so one of Phil's dodgy colleagues, eager to help, produced a sawn-off "from somewhere" and - BLAM!

- Blew a hole in the roof of the pergola. The python also dropped down, apparently dead. 

I say "apparently" because the French dude went to look, at which point the snake reared up and hissed at him. The French guy leapt backwards onto the table, "like a ninja".

On Day 3, the Australians were desperate to do something nice for the poor French people. Phil decided a traditional Aussie barbecue was in order. He let one of the other employees drive them to a local beauty spot while he drove a tractor around, picking up all the rubbish littering the "resort".

The tractor had a big scoop at the front, so he tossed all the rubbish bags in there and drove off to the dump. It was about 10k away and he was nearly there when he saw two tired, dirty and exhausted French people walking toward him. 

"Pheeeeeel!!" they shouted in relief when they saw him.

It turned out that their truck had got bogged down at the local beauty spot. Stranded miles from anywhere, the other employee had suggested they walk back to the resort, not thinking that it was a good two hours away and also the middle of the day with the sun beating down. 

Phil described the woman's lips as looking like "two dried apricots" when he saw her. 

He deposited the exhausted French in the scoop with the rubbish. Too worn out to care, they bounced around with the rubbish back to the resort. It was at this point that Phil threw in the towel. He called his boss in the Gold Coast and said things weren't working out. 

An emergency helicopter was arranged to pull them out of there, like the Americans leaving Vietnam. "We couldn't get a light plane at the local airstrip," explained Phil, "it was under three foot of water at the time."

As they were being evacuated, the French lady turned to Phil. "Come weeth us," she pleaded. "Yew don't 'ave to stay 'eeere!"

"I think she thought she was helping me escape," explained Phil. "She didn't realise, I love it here. It's me home."

I was glad to hear that. And I hope Phil went back to his crocodiles. It sounds less stressful.

S.