Pink death and the Monster

The monster is entirely unrelated to the pink death. But it did take place at the house.
I don't recall where exactly but we got our hands on a video camera.
It was small and portable and for a family without much it was an incredible prize. At first we bought some tapes and filmed us. Saying hi, waving at the camera. Everyone loves seeing themselves on tv, especially when you haven't been seen before.

A mirror is only instant, immediate.
To be able to see yourself move while you're in a different pose is why we watch ourselves on camera. It's the little voyeur inside. Watch myself, see what I do. Oh my is that how people see me. Wow, my hair sticks up at the back. I walk funny.

And then a master production was born.
It would be filmed entirely in one afternoon and I was to play 2 different parts. A Navy Commander with great authority and a lone Ninja who would fight evil. Filming went off without a hitch.
I walked onto camera in white pants and shirt, huge army boots on and a Navy hat. I spouted some entirely forgettable line and for an as yet unknown reason I kicked the door in on the cubbyhouse. Well that was the half baked plan. In actual effect my foot slowly, very slowly prised itself from the mud taking a large chunk with it. It hit the door with a wet thud and the mud instantly bonded. Next thing saw little Kal falling backwards into the mud and the camera making a sudden pan left.
Next scene is where the eventual title came from. I don't know why (the plot wasn't well planned) but I was to play a poor;y dubbed ninja and rescue my sister from the tank. She had fallen in the water for some reason. The scene went without a hitch until Paul emerged from the tank with welders goggles on and a pink rubber glove stretched over his head. Imagine a surreal cross between a tattoo-ed rooster and riddick.
Paul burst forth from the water complely unexpectedly, pushing me out of the way and diving onto my sisters foot. As he wrapped his mouth around her foot, he spat out the mouth full of tomato sauce he'd been hiding.
It was simultaneously terrifying and hilarious. It looked brilliant on film, and we never could have acted as effectively as we were thrown into shock.
The brilliant masterpiece was christened "Tank Monster" and we even re-filmed some of the earlier scenes to make it clear that defeat of the tank monster was our ultimate goal.

The tape was unfortunately lost in the great land cruiser migration several years later.

One of the other major highlights of life in Victoria was our video shop.
My uncle made friends with a Doctor, who for some reason or another loaned our family the money to open a video shop. Now this was a big deal. There were no videoshops in the entire of Robinvale at this time.
Many takeaway shops had a small selection of movies available for hire, and these were rotated once every 6 weeks or so. Ours was to be a whole store devoted to movies. And this was before computers were really feasible, in fact the PC wasn't even in existence in my world. Computers lived in movies.

We made a trip to Melbourne to buy stock. We didn't even plan in advance, just walked into some video wholesaler and Paul said we need some videos and you're going to help us find them. The man was a little short, and then Paul showed him a cheque for $32,000 and said we needed to spend it.
Things changed. People were brought to help us, we pushed trolleys around the store and filled them up. I purchased all the kids movies and helped pick the action ones. And they had stickers for us. We decided on a simple pricing structure. $4 overnight for new movies, and $2 a week after that. Really old movies were $1 a week.
This was a revolution at the time, Video shops in Bowen and other towns we'd been in charged $8 to $12 for a new release.
We wanted them to be for everyone.
Loaded down with movies in our broken transit van. We headed home. Over the next few weeks, cards were printed, cheap home-made shelves were painted and the shop was leased.
Everything seemed to be sailing smoothly until the day before we opened.
An angry greek woman came banging on the shop door. Her name was Toula and she ran the fish and chip shop around the corner. We couldn't open this store. Not allowed.
This was all the information we could get, my mother tried to talk to her and got some more information regarding her sister (who ran the shop next door). By an unexplained twist of fate, Toula's sister was english. And blonde.
She explained that Toula and her had a deal with the landlord, they couldnt sell the same things.
This prevented any price cuts and fighting.

Our Video store would have broken the agreement. Except we werent in it. It was only between Toula and her sister. So the big opening went ahead.
Customers would come in and show their license to get a video card. We would write their details in a book, along with the number on their card And the movies were written in another book. ( Each movie had a numbered sticker and we kept them out the back. The empty cases were easier to store and less likely to be stolen)

The primary downside seemed to be the manual paper method of writing the movies down and the locals lack of willingness to return them. The average movie stayed out for 4 days. And occasionally one would stay out for months. Each person you asked for the film would claim it had been lent to a cousin or a brother. Which meant half the town saw it for $4.

The two movies I recall in the video store above all others were ”The Lady in White” and Bill Murray in “Scrooged” I waited 4 weeks for scrooged to arrive. And when it did, I watched it twice before I let it go to any of the customers who had it booked.

In the end the store closed down, this was after we had moved to Queensland again and then back. I’ll always remember “BB Video” The shop named after a cockatoo who had been to war.

The next piece of desert life is a little more close to home. Not that the rest has been specifically vague ;)

We still lived in Victoria at this stage, except we now lived in a mobile home. It was a nice step up from where we had been and it was cosy. It was on a property belonging to the parent’s of my Uncle’s new wife. She was only 19 and he was in his late 30’s. At the time it seemed odd to me, and today……….well I still don’t think it seems entirely right.

Life on the farm was good, and mum and Paul saved money so I could go on year 7 camp. The end of school and the start of another. Actually it would have been year 6 camp. High School starts earlier in Victoria.
So, the big trip to Adelaide was prepared and we boarded the bus.
It was an amazing 7 days and I spent half of my allotted $40 on the first day buying a film for my camera. I didn’t imagine anything like this happening again, and wanted to remember it always.
We stayed in a scout camp in the hills outside Adelaide, and every day we got on the bus to visit a location. Everything from the zoo, the Berri Foods factory, down to the World’s largest Rocking Horse. And to think, I was there almost 20 years ago, It looks just like I recall.
The next big event on the trip was the Adelaide Grand Prix. We got to and walk around the track and even saw a real ferrari. Then they brought out the "stunt" car for the year. It was a backhoe with an enormous engine that shot flames out the side. We watched it play for 15 minutes and then we were given the chequered flag to keep. A long drive back to the scout camp followed.

The highlight of my trip though was Cassie. She was a girl from Queensland so we had something in common and spent most of the week yelling ridiculous things like “Everyone from Queensland run!” and rushing off ahead. I held her hand several times, including for the whole hour drive back from an observatory and finally on the last day I asked if she’d be my girlfriend. Unfortunately no. She wasn’t interested in me like that. It was the excitement of the trip, I understood didn’t I.
At the time I didn’t. I was heartbroken.
Neither she nor I was from here.

Our stay wouldn’t be permanent. I was only a guest.

Some things are more obvious than others.

The most obvious is my survival of the cyclone. Maybe it was a severe tropical storm? I'm not 100% sure. I am not a meteoreologist. I can spell it however. If that's any consolation.

After that storm, there was a lot of cleaning up to do. Mud and leaves and rubbish and general mess. It didnt reduce my love of storms, it did however make me a little more thoughtful of the side effects when you see one come through.
Our lives in Hervey Bay didn't continue there for very much longer. We moved on again quickly. Now I'm itching to tell some further stories, but they arent til much later in the tale, so I'll abate for a moment and move on to Victoria. As started in the Desert post.

In Victoria we lived in several places, Most notably they were Merbein, Mildura and Robinvale.
(I'll try and link you to these locations when they come up. Think Desert.)
Robinvale was where we arrived in Victoria, and it was to pick grape's for the Gareffa's. Nice people. Their son Donny took me riding on his 4 wheeler. And I had a young crush on Carmel the daughter. Donny was my age (approx 10) and Carmel was a yr younger. Crushes were a strange thing at that age. It's all about emulation. You have no idea what you would do with a girlfriend, but your parents and movies are all about having a partner so you want one. Even if you don't know why.
I never ever told Carmel I had a crush on her. In fact I don't think we spoke more than a few times. Girls and boys led very seperate lives. This was the 80's and the world was a different place.
We lived in free accomodation (I'm sure it was free) provided by the farm. It was a small shack. For lack of a better word. No more than 30 feet long and 15 feet wide. It consisted of a bathroom with a shower, a bedroom and one other room. This room contained our lounge/dining and kitchen. Not a complicated life, but noisy when the wind blew as it came through holes in the walls. Did I mention corrugated iron? No insulation, no interior. Just one layer of iron. I never realised until this shack that we insulated our walls. Never bothered to notice our houses werent all white on the outside, or all brick on the inside.

So, here we are in our little iron house. Wind whistling through the walls. Occasionaly some rain.
Stand out moments from living here.

• Donny came by to get me one day, and I quickly hid the fruit off the farm we had been eating. He took me for a ride on the bike and stopped and cut me a big bunch of grapes. I asked if we'd get in trouble. He said "No this is a farm, who cares what you eat. You're one person we sell grapes to stores that sell to thousands of people"
• We found a turtle one night down at the creek. Well Paul did. We brought him home and filled one side of the old twin tub washing machine. Tommy the Turtle lived here fine until my mother switched on the machine. Tommy was not spun to death, the water draining into the second half flooded it allowing Tommy to float right over the top and run away. I'd like to think he lived happily, but odds are a turtle in the middle of a farm did not make it far. :(

• My older sister K decided to mix cordial together. Lime and Raspberry. It became a strange murky colour, A deep purple with a hint of black. Like Death's garden in Terry Pratchett's "Mort". She christened this curse to all flavour "Berri Juice" and proceeded to mix it up on regular occasions. This resigned me to mixing up my lime cordial on a "per-glass" basis and foregoing the benefits of premixed and fridge cooled lime goodness :(

I only ever had one friend come to stay in the farm. It was more than a little embaressing to have porous walls. But I got past it. It's another defining moment. My children wouldn't do this. They wouldn't ever feel they werent warm and safe at night. I decided this at 10 yrs of age. Big decisions for a little man.
Money is important to me even now. Not accumulating wealth. Having it. Being able to buy what I need and some of what I want. Being able to buy a badge from people on the street and to drop money in when you see the Salvo's. I always, always give to the salvos. Sometimes twice on the same day. They were there for me.....

We eventually moved out of the shack and into another. This was on a small farm owned by one man. Vincent.
Vincents he called himself. And we could live here for free in the "pink house of death".
It was a whole house, walls, ceiling, floor. (did I mention the shack didnt have a floor?) And it was a nice pink. It just wasnt very well built.
There were gaps where walls should meet. Some rooms had larger holes where 2 walls and the cieling should meet. We quickly stuffed these gaps with newspaper and settled into normal life.
My uncle came to live with us for awhile, which was always exciting.

Outside the house was a cubby house. well built with walls, cieling, floor, windows etc. We lived in it almost. Next to this was a river water tank. Not for drinking, and used for irrigation. (river water tanks are used to get higher water pressure. You pump water from the river uphill to the tank and fill it. Then you can use a second smaller pump to generate water pressure for your farm) And this tank was huge. It would have been 40 feet across and we used to swim in its filthy black watered depths.

I think the other stand out point with this house was the external laundy. Outside the house. In a seperate building. And across a 2 foot wide 5 foot deep Chasm. yes, there was a trench that ran the length of our house, and yard, and as far as I could see. Perhaps the forgotten remnants of some wishful piping project.

The pink house of death was a gorgeous place. After multiple "shacks" and caravans and tractor sheds. It was lovely to be in a definite place.

My uncle brought things along to us that we didn't have before. For starters he bought our family a CD player. This is at a time when they cost thousands, or something. Very expensive. And he overtalked the technology like so many did. "Indestructable" "Lasts forever" and proceeded to stand on one of his new cd's and slide around the footpath on it. Rest assured it never played again.

He also brought along a bird. A cockatoo named Apollo Creed. Apollo lived in the backyard during the day. Tethered to a metal clothesline by a dogs choker chain. It seemed to suit him and he would bark along with the dogs all day. Occasionally he would call out. "Watch.....watch.....FLIP!" and he would leap off the clotheseline.
Sailing through the air until he reached the end of his 3 foot chain. He would stop flapping and drop like a stone. The chain carried him through an arc and as he approached the peak of the other side, a few quick flaps would settle him on the line again.

A few months later my uncle decided to let Apollo off the chain. I'm not sure why. He was the perfect guard.

You see, thepink house of death was at the bottom of a road. And there was nothing else on this road except us. So whenever dust could be seen coming down the road my uncle would yell "INCOMING!" at the top of his lungs. And Apollo soon caught on.

Anyway, back to the chain. Uncle would wake up at 6 and let Apollo out of his room and Apollo would walk and wait at the front gate. Someone would open the gate and the bird walked out and off through the fig trees. He would return sometime after sunset and knock on the door at the back of the house.
One day after months of this, he was followed.
Apollo would walk through the trees and across the property, he then emerged some 800m away behind a service station and would circle it. climb into a birdcage and proceed to greet people for the day. When the service station closed for the day at 5, Apollo would leave after the lights were off and come home.
The owner confirmed for us and said he used to have a cockatoo to greet people, but it died, And Apollo had often come to see it.
How he thought of replacing his friend amazes me. But our bird had a job.

That's most of what happened in the pink house of death with vincents.
Actually it isn't.... I'll revisit this time shortly.

The landlord didnt speak english, I shared a room, and I had no friends. I was clearly not a part of this house. I was only a guest.

Let's not be a sheep and mention the occasion

We all know what the big occasion was days ago. So let's all pretend we didn't see it and continue on with our journey.

A bit of a jump ahead, and at the same time a slide all the way back.
We're going to Hervey Bay. Home of whale watching, Vic Hislop and one of the Mcpherson sisters. The sweet one. Well technically I wouldn't know. It's only Mimi I've spoken to. Both in Hervey Bay as a child and years later I handled a complaint she made to a company I was working for. She was very polite for a complainant.

So we find ourselves in the bay. It was a family drive from Bundaberg to visit my Aunt and Uncle. Actually it may not have been from Bundaberg, I think we were coming from Mundubbera. It was at least a day on the road, which eliminates Bundaberg.......Then again we did so much driving in those years it's hard to keep one trip seperate from another.
The drive was only about a visit, come see my relatives, play with my cousins and go home in a few days.
We arrived just before lunch and Uncle Mick (not really my uncle and not a nice person) took us all for a walk along the Jetty at Urangan. It was always referred to as the mile long Jetty. But I don't think it was a mile by the time I got to see it. We walked along, smelling the sea air, which was a beautiful smell I enjoy to this day. Seeing fisherman bringing in a catch.
It seems every second person had a bin with them, lots of them had water. Little fish swimming in the bucket. Bait it seems.

Learning with Kal

When fishing, bait is important, and the bait used will play a major part in what you catch, if anything. Not surprisingly, many fish like to eat other fish. Small fish therefore make an excellent bait. And to keep things simple, the universe made them not very smart. So by using only a herring jig (read piece of line covered in little hooks) you can catch many of them quite quickly. All you do is lower it into the water and shake it up and down, this "jigs" the line and attracts the little herrings. They eat the hooks, get stuck and you reel them in. They can then be used for bait for other fish or to be sold........ as umm bait

So fisherman everywhere with buckets of bait, and a few started bringing in larger fish. Queenies, Kingfish, some big Trevally. It was exciting to see someone reel in a fish almost the size of me. And Paul decided we would move here. Immediately. At the time I thought this meant go home, sort things out and come back soon.

I was mistaken. It meant moving now. This minute and Paul would go home to collect our stuff and sell the caravan. So we did. But we moved to a house. It was so exciting. We lived right on the main road, 5 minutes walk from the beach and the "mile long jetty". Our Auntie lived next door, there was a supermarket at a small set of shops a hundred yards in the other direction and a second hand shop called "Telelist". We spent large portions of our meagre income here. And our pocket money.
The other big thing to spend money on was fishing gear. I wasn't the most excited fisherman ever, but I took part. We bough knives. And Axes. And rope. And Tomahawks. Back in the day young kids could buy anything.
By bike we would roam Hervey Bay. From one end to the other. Whether it was visiting Jonathan and his siter in one direction, or riding in the opposite direction to Max's Video shop. Max would hire us Ducktales and Herbie movies, or Sega Games. It would be years before I realised how nice Max was. We often got several movies for the price of 1 and we nearly always got a free sherbert lollipop. Those lollipops were fantastic, Sold all over Australia. Light pink or Tan and fizzy fizzy sherbert. (not sherbert filled, the whole lollipop was fizzy)
Max is one of the people I pride myself on being like.

I went to school while we lived here. Urangan State Primary School to be precise, it was year 3 or 4 I beleive. and my teacher was Mrs Rasmussen. An american woman with a shock of white curly hair. This was 1988. I know for sure because we got a coin at school. To celebrate 88.
The bicentennial coin all Australian kids got. Do you still have yours? I don't so I just bought one on ebay.

Other stand out moments here included learning to play Vigaro. Who uses a bat that shape? And learning about archery. We only shot little arrows, but Steve at Telelist explained to me what a compound bow was and how it worked. Unfortunately I did not have enough to buy one.

I also experienced a cyclone here. Dark clouds and strong winds filled the day before and as night came all hell broke loose. I slept through another on years later, but this one, I did not.
We all huddled together in one room. We heard a terrible roar as the wind pushed the rain hard against the house. Windows smashed, and being so close to the beach, the water made its way right to our steps. Luckily it was a high set house. This was a scary time. Would we make it through? Would our house collapse exposing us to the elements?

Was my time as a guest over?