Shouts From Down Under

I've pretended, to everyone, for too long. Its 'fess up time

Have you ever lived for years with a secret so...so shameful, so astoundingly terrible, that it finally wears you down so that in a strange reversal, to tell everyone is a huge relief.

So I'd better come clean right now, and say I've not told everyone the truth. I've hidden behind the anonymity of the internet, and the blindness of distance and sheer size of our planet. People can't see who I really am from other countries, or even other states.

I'm really a bushman, not a town bloke.



I live in a humpy, a bark hut, out a bit from civilimanization, in a little place called Rocky Glen. If you look up on google maps you'll find it, I kid you not. It's a long way from Tasmania, where I claim to live. It's in the middle of nowhere. It's isolated, boiling hot in summer, and freezing in winter, and the land is so poor you can't even fatten a crow with the animals that expire from thirst and hunger. The snakes here get so hungry and skinny, sometimes they are just scales slithering around, and their fangs are so small they can't bite anything except ants or lady bugs. That's how lady bugs got the black marks all over their orange domes.

I don't have electricity on here, and no internet, phone, water or sewerage connected to my hut. I don't have many clothes, only the ones I get from a distant relative sometimes, when he gets to fat to wear them anymore. To type my blog I sometimes have to hitchhike to town and do it at the online centre. Some days they don't let me in because I can't pay the fee. I don't have a car, and if I did, wouldn't be allowed to drive it because only Fords are allowed in my village, not Holdens. They only issue licenses to Ford owners.

All this time, everyone's thought I was a rich bloke, and that. Well, out where I live, I have to get a generator going to recharge my old car batteries. Then I run an inverter off these, to power up an old laptop. This laptop is so old hackers don't even write viruses anymore for its operating system. It's so old I'm expecting a call from Bill Gates to buy it for a Microsoft software museum.

Well, one thing that generators do is make you save your work a lot, because they can run out of petrol at any moment, or some other problem happens, and next thing the lights flicker and go out. One day the thing went bang and that was it. I had to wait til the next day to repair it, and had to araldite (Part A / Part B Epoxy) the head because it had cracked.

One day it rained, for a whole month, and to have meals I had to swim to my dining table. Serious. It's near the main road bridge.



I thought I better let everyone know just how it really is, instead of trying to trick people with this Tasmania yarn. You have to watch out for Australians. They can tell some whoppers and keep a straight face. Next thing you know, if your not careful, you've been had, led up the garden path, conned, had your leg well and truly pulled.

Mate, I'm just telling you this so that you don't get sucked in by any old fellow on the Internet who might write a blog and call it something about Down Under.
But that's ok, 'cause that's what mates do, look after each other see? Us Australians, whatever colour we are, like to watch out for our brothers. (and sisters). and make sure everythings all right. Nothing worse then, if you find out someone wasn't true blue, and nobody told you, no one warned you about the dodgy shyster.

Yep. You could find yourself believing any old story, couldn't you?

One person nearly found out, years ago, and thought I was a savage in a loin cloth. Lucky I was able to divert attention, change the subject and escaped having to tell the TRUTH.

Yes, you have to be careful of bushmen. They can spin a yarn better than a fisherman whose fish got away, and the length of it.



See? Don't say I didn't warn you, and that's why I'm confessing all this to you now.

Sparky