The Blues

NT: Frogs in a Pond

On May 21, 2011, in Animals, Australia, Family, Travel, by Rosie

Travelling with family can be fraught with issues. Domestic, relationship-based, accommodation disputes, food sensitivities, old angers raised and brought to a head over hours in the car or campsite.

We usually invite extended family along on trips for a few different reasons: they’re really, really wealthy and they shout everything from textas to train tickets. They cook nicely and love spending time in the kitchen on hols. They are adept at child minding. They work a really mean jigsaw (and not just the border of an 1000-piece thing). They don’t snore, dry dishes, bring cash, perform foot massages. They entertain kids, make coffees, navigate, pay and STFU.

Mac and I have about 10 sibs between us. Taking them — or parents and cousins — along on a holiday is nothing new. It’s the first time we’ve taken an older sibling off the beaten track, asked her to cope with the great outdoors (which she handles with aplomb) only to have her remark that ‘please come here! I don’t really know what to do.’

My older sister is a responsible and efficient woman. She’s an experienced traveller, well versed at preparing meals, tending for herself and family, and monitoring her own personal bathroom needs. The other night when she called at me to accompany her into her camping toilet block to ‘look at something’, I said to her ‘OMG, it’s one of them spiders, innit?’ (we talk like this in the Northern Territory. It’s all about the Strine).

She assured me it was not. The other thing about large families is the abundance of teasing and practical joking which still goes on, from the ages of 5 to 55 (not my age), thus I thought my sister was about to show me ‘one of them spiders from the bowels of hell’.

I hesitated. Where was Mac or his brother when I needed them to escort Gayle into the amenity block? Males in the group have certain usefulness in the travel situation. Creature disposal, waste management, crowd control — although the females of the mob have the capacity to cope, it’s nice to delegate these issues to our companions.

But back to my sibling and her sudden phobia of the bathroom. Down here, we refer to the loo as the toilet, the dunny, the can. By the time you’re three or so, you should be able to avail your problems in the dunny by yourself, and Gayle has been flushed with toilet success for many, many years. That’s why the events of a couple of nights ago had me a wee bit troubled.

‘It’s okay, but I don’t really know what to do,’ announced Gayle as she bustled me into her toilet. I was still sure she was going to spring one of those mother cutter golden orb-bird eaters on me, so I had to be PUSHED into her cubicle by the sheer force she possesses. She’s kinda a bully. I don’t know what she expected me to do about the crap going down in her dunny.

‘It’s this,’ she said, flushing her toilet in emphasis, so that I was close enough to be nearly engulfed by the splooshes of the cistern. We’re a close family and all, but what kind of sister wants her younger sibling to be swooshed under the jettison of water and carried down into a turd tornado?

Just as I was about to answer ‘a sick one’ to my own question, a pair of luminous green legs plopped out of the side of the toilet where the water descends from the buttress of the seat. Once the flash of wet spurt had disappeared, so did the little green legs reabsorb up the side of the cusp. Ewwwwwwwww …

‘There,’ Gayle said, pointing to the spot where the green legs had been, and, as though she hadn’t demonstrated enough of the disgusting episode, she reached past me and flushed again. Once more, the jack-in-a-frog-box legs appeared, receded. Disgusted.

‘What do? I do?’

Um, you’re asking me? Do I look like the spirit of Steve Irwin, ffs? I don’t even look like Bindy. Bindy Irwin? Yeah, she’d know what the fuck to do!

So? This situation involved a creature. Some revulsion, something to ‘oooooh and ahhhh’ about … I gently called out to camp.

‘Mac? Where are you? Get in here, now! Please?’

When there was no answer, I gently called out to camp: ’Mac’s brother? Where the hell are you? Get in here. Now, please, now!’

By this time, the frog was starting to emerge. Like a green be-lob coming forth from a solid matter, the legs were manifesting, followed by the body, followed by …

Then Mac came in with sticks. Every ‘frog in a dunny story’ needs sticks, because they remove the creature from beneath the groove and plop it in to the water below. Then Mac’s brother came in with a camera because every ‘frog in a dunny story’ needs a photoshoot.

By the time the frog was banished to the nearest waterhole and Gayle had endured her 4th slimy experience of the trip, she’d also attracted enough of her share of spiders, bugs and cockroaches to earn her the award of ‘Best Woman in Nature’. After the holiday, she’s going to change her name to Ribberta and live life as an amphibian. Warts ‘n all.