Meet the Natives

---

Turning up at campsites in our “Wicked” camper, we turn heads. Usually the wrong heads...


Last night, with staggering gait, slurring speech and bottle in hand a man approached us, “Hello, I see you brought your daughter on holiday with you then!” he laughs and winks at me.


Chris looks up and we introduce ourselves. The drunk man tells us all about his mother, his trip to Europe 20 years ago, and how all the European women want “it” all the time.


“Surely not from him?” I wondered


When pressed about what we were doing we explained our world trip.


“You haven’t got kids then” he stated


“No”


“Well, you can still have kids, there’s still time” he slurred to Chris, “I bet she’s knocking on this van all the time badgering you for sex”


“No, we can’t I’m too old, I’m 42” I replied icily.


“You don’t look 42 love, but he looks well over 45. Ha ha”. He cracks the joke 15 more times about Chris being on holiday with his daughter at a volume the whole campsite can hear.


“Yes I do, you’re wearing beer goggles” I replied.


He then insisted we join his group for a beer. As they were camped right next to us, we didn’t want to offend a bunch of very drunk Aussies, so against our better judgment we agreed to join them for just one.


He introduced us as “Chris & his daughter”. I sat next to a woman who told me the men had been drinking since noon (now 7 p.m.). I noticed the blanket on her very drunk partner’s lap was actually their 3 week old baby. Various children came and went, as the men got drunker, louder and cruder. And for some reason all the men wanted to disclose their relationships with their mothers. Had we stumbled upon a “recover from your mother” group on vacation?


As we made our excuses and left, one of the men implored us to return to hear their Aborigine friend tell a traditional Dreamtime story to the children. “It will be magical, you’ll really get something out of this.”


Walking back to our van we passed their kids as they were BBQing grass and feeding it to the Aborigine story teller. They’d convinced him it was “bush tucker” and good to eat.


As we washed up, we watched the drunk men rounding up the campsite children to hear the storyteller. So having escaped once, we were mad enough to go back thinking perhaps it might indeed be a “magical” authentic Aborigine cultural experience...


Turns out the Aborigine was even drunker than the others and looked a bit queasy after eating “bush tucker”. He got stage fright and couldn’t remember any of his stories. So the drunk white Aussies decided to coach him. This coaching consisted of saying “f**k” very loud and often. And then chastising each other for swearing in front of children.


One of the white drunk men “helped” the story teller by constantly interrupting and incoherently telling parts of the story for him.


We got our cue to escape when a drunk woman announced to us that she had to go and stop her extremely drunk husband, from burning down their caravan, because he had decided to deep fry some fish despite being barely able to stand.


The audience dispersed. We locked ourselves in our van and listened to our Aussie hosts yell at each other for the next 2 hours, occasionally giving the campsite some respite when they switched on their hi-fi and sang along, in the way that only very drunk people can.


The singing to “Theme from Titanic” with Celin Dion, stopped when the security guard arrived with his Rottweiler.


© Copyright 2009

Jules Aaron

All Rights Reserved

---