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.