Roughing It (Sort Of)

SOMEWHERE IN AUSTRALIA—I arrive at the Bald Rock Bush Retreat expecting to check the prices and move on, but after cresting a hill on a dirt road for which my rented Ford Focus is woefully unequipped, I am instantly captivated by the stunning Spanish-style hacienda. Gorgeous flowering vines climb in manicured patterns up broad stucco walls, and peering into windows I see clean, open rooms painted in bright oranges, greens, blues and reds. I’m ahead of schedule so I opt to call it a day and settle into one of the dorm beds at the heart of the rugged, beautiful estate.

But the dorm has been claimed by a group of eight local high schoolers, so I follow the Model T of the small man in the over-worn sweater and slight facial hair down to the only other thing he has available: “the hut.” It has two lovely single beds, a gas stove, sink, fire place and stacks of wood. I run my hands over the walls to be sure the mischievous late afternoon sun hasn’t camouflaged a light switch, but no luck. The cabin lies on a small man-made lake filled with fish bred by the owner, Booker, a German man who immigrated in the ’60s and has held onto a heavy accent and a smoky cackle. (Do a lot of backpackers come through here? “No, mostly city couples foh dirty veekends. Heh heh heh heh!”) He says the fish don’t bite much in winter but I had come at the luckiest time, early evening, and informs me I’m entitled to keep anything I catch. I ask if he’s got an extra pole. “You ever done one of vese fings before?” he says, handing it to me. “Fishing?” I say, “Yeah, sure,” only sort of lying.

Booker (pronounced BOO-kehr, but still what a great name for a resort manager) points me to the compost heap, where there should be no shortage of “verms.” The sort of fishing I’ve done has always been with lures or not-live bait. After shoveling through four feet of partially decomposed fruit, hay and cow shit I faintly glimpse ugly translucent wiggles—not the cute pink type I used to step on in my driveway after a rain or the kind I opened up in freshman bio—but worms who seem like they’d be more comfortable eating my food from within my intestines than providing it for me at the end of a line. (In fairness I guess I’d make the same choice.) They squirm away from the harsh light, diving back into the soil. I pick out a dozen and drop them into the bucket, wondering if they need water or soil or something but concluding they’ll last the two-minute ride down to the lake.

On my way back to the car a cattle dog straight from a bag of hearty pup chow approaches me with a ball in his mouth. “That’s Rico!” He growls if I try to take the ball and I struggle for a while to figure out what he wants, discovering finally that if I pick up a stick he immediately drops the ball and comes running for me, and vice versa. Silly Rico, always wants what he can’t have. I know the feeling, buddy.

My dog back home, a thoroughly spoiled English cocker spaniel, doesn’t play fetch (I like to think it’s because she’s too smart, and not because I was too lazy to train her) so this keeps me fascinated for about 45 minutes, after which the dog collapses, panting and exhausted, on the grass. I imagine trying to tell Booker, already displeased with my ignorance of fishing, that I had killed his dog.

Satisfied with the state of Rico’s pulmonary health, I return to my bucket to find that more than half of the worms for which I had sifted through shit had, well, wormed their way out through cracks in the bottom of the bucket. Pleased that I would thus be forced to do less fishing, I take my remainders and head down to the water, where I proceed to sit, get cold and lose all my worms.

I don’t know how to clean and gut a fish anyway so it’s just as well, I think, although I’ve wasted the remaining light sticking rusty hooks through not-pinned-into-place worms and now face the prospect of starting a fire in the dark, unless I can get the kerosene lamp started. (Booker had given me a demonstration about how to use it. “You see? Vis and you pull vis and turn vis. Eezy. Got it?” I didn’t at all, but was too scared to ask questions, and at this point I hadn’t even almost killed his dog yet.) After several futile attempts I finally remembered the candles and contented myself with those.

The sun now fully set, I turn my attention to the fireplace. Fortunately it had only been two years since I last watched someone start a fire and only 11 since I had walked out mid-way through the intro meeting for the Cub Scouts and I remembered something about a pyramid. In just 45 minutes I build an impressive looking tower of sticks of varying sizes, filled on the inside with crumpled newspaper. It burns brilliantly—just long enough for me to take a proud, paternal photograph—before the paper burns away and the tower remains, singed but standing.

Determined, I try again, getting it going for a good three hours while I cook, eat and clean after my dinner (plain pasta boiled with garlic and peanut butter spread over my four remaining meusli bars—mmm!). I manage in the process to go through not only every log in the hut but every stick, twig or leaf in a 10-meter area outside.

Finally content that I have wasted enough natural resources for a night, I abandon the fire and step into the frigid night, where the sky is as crowded as it is quiet. I look for the new constellations I have learned. I take in the extraordinary silence and solitude.

Back inside I dump both blankets from each of the two beds on top of my hostel sheets, bring two candles next to the bed and read a chapter in Kangaroo, D.H. Lawrence’s Australian novel—my half-assed attempt at cultural immersion. Thankfully, a three-hour fire does heat up a small room quite a bit, so my sleep is just shy of miserable for the first half hour.

I wake unable to feel my feet.

In the morning Booker, far more cordial when he is not expecting eight teenagers about to destroy his newly-renovated dorm, offers me a cup of coffee and asks to see the write-up in Let’s Go. He is immensely pleased that the book mentions the Exodus festival, which occurs, it seems, whenever he feels like losing money on it. (“Not Woodstock,” he says, “Goodstock. Heh heh heh heh.”) Each January for the past few years, 5,000 people have descended on the tiny lake where I not-fished, filling in a 2-kilometer square area with tents, camper vans and drugs the government doesn’t even know exist. Booker’s just the host, not the booker (most people never get to see a pun that good in the wild, and the habitat is fading fast); a production company called Happy People Productions take care of all publicity, booking DJs and bands, equipment, as well as putting together a promotional video, which I have the privilege of viewing.

The main DJ stand last year was behind a Model T constructed entirely of CDs. Boats shaped like dragons, with snouts that spout fire, float across the lake. Fire twirlers on stilts meander around with no evident purpose.

Maybe they’re looking for the kerosene.

Hey, it’s over here! I’m not using any. Really, go ahead, it’s all yours.

David B. Rochelson ’05, an English and American literature and language concentrator in Mather House, is an executive editor of The Crimson. This summer he is a researcher-writer for Let’s Go Australia, cruising for freebies from Coffs Harbour to Rockhampton. Unfortunately he’s entering the job market in a brief 10 months, and it’s all down hill from there because he’s already got the best job in the world.