The Big S Tailored for Neatness Freaks…Selfie to Hell …Voluntary Exit Minus the Melee… My Brilliant Exit…Dust to Dust or Bust…Lonely road to Oblivion…
Sorry, just a few possibilities, all canned as you can see. For now. But don’t worry, time I have loads of. Sometimes, it almost overpowers me in here. And, contrary to what they’ll tell you, believe what you may, I’m not planning my own demise. Suffice to say after toying with some of the practicalities, I have something up my sleeve, a personal contingency plan. Anyhow, hang about. I’ve gotten way ahead of myself. I do that. Often. Time to digress…
My wife and I own/ share with the bank (tick box) a grazing blockin western Queensland where we run a flock of Dorpers; meat-sheep that thank you very much self-shear, so much so they pester their damned kids with SP 40 plus! Somehow, we’re still here, after half a doz’ droughty years.I should explain, at this point, that when I say we’re still here, I mean one of us is. The other being yours truly, is, shall we say, on a short vacation. Fancy!! And all for the crime of stacking a little firewood in readiness. Indeed!
So, what the hell has all this got to do with suicide. What gives me justification to blab-on about it? Well, for a start, topping one’s self is an oft-discussed topic in the bush where hardship has been known to push many of us to the brink, and beyond. Also, as I’m getting to, tragedy within the family spanning three generations (beyond that, I don’t want to know!) has lent, I feel, a measure of insight. It’s also inspired me (don’t laugh!) to set it down in three-tiered classification. All in good time.
It seems to have come out lately, (IT being SU-I-CIDE!! Pay attention!) what with all sorts of high-profile notables blazing a trail – actors and songstresses, writers and pollies – all going public with personal tussles with the black-dog, leaving us mortals in their wake to further contribute. By the by, if a familiar celebrity type in particular happens to come to mind along with mention of our four-legged friends, (think beyond, think Basenji) then you’re forgiven, given not all of us age gracefully nor bear scrutiny under intense studio lights!
Still, even with all the recent media hype, hari-kari may never be sexy enough to rival the big ‘M’ on prime-time. Not unless it addresses some of its image problems. For instance, how many perp’s actually get away with suicide, or come to that, even bother to cover their tracks? What’s the point? It’s a statement, as much as anything. Fuck yeah! Albeit a pretty gruesome and inconsiderate one for poor old grandma out walking Tiddles the following morning. Therefore, my humble guess is very few, since unlike any serial killer worth his salt, a suicidal perp is well aware he or she won’t be around to cop the rap!
“Lights out people! Please. Eight-thirty!”
Oh, horse crap! WHALE crap!! Wasn’t about to mention them, just yet. But don’t stress. There’s time yet. I’m right up at the far end of 3C, lucky last after silly O’Malley, poor old sod.
Minkie Downs, our little patch of paradise, is eighty odd thousand acres of variable land type. At the northern end, pebbly black-soil flats and gidgee woodland give way here and there to rocky escarpments and harder areas of mulga scrub. To the south, open plains once known as Brumby Flats run west into rocky, sandstone gorges. Nestled in just such a gorge is Ghost Gum Hole, a bottomless rock-pool holding sweet water year-round. Here, graceful red-gums, ghost gums, and the strange, ochre-barked Minnerichi rim sheer embankments, creating an oasis in every sense of the word. What I’d give to be there right now!
Pre-pastoral, GGH was significant to the local Iningai people. That’s pre-wipe-out, pre-ship-out, pre-what-ever-out-pops-ya-ghoulish-cork. Perhaps it was designated as sacred ceremonial grounds, and sometimes doubled as the local town hall. I don’t know. Do you? Or perhaps it was just a secluded getaway for those of artistic bent. With access to copious stones and roll-able boulders on an adjacent area of ‘top-rock’, it no doubt provided the ultimate blank canvas. In more recent times, it served as a handy natural stock-watering point for sheep and cattle, as well as a vital way-station for the pack-horse mail-runs in the years before dams and bores were constructed – think Gee-Gee’s at Gee-Gee-Hole!! Ha-ha! How clever am I?? Whatever. It was there, whilst pondering the lives of those most ancient caretakers, that the seeds of inspiration were sown. At GG Hole I envisaged a working model for my somewhat bazaar safety net.
Watched Game of Thrones? Remember loveable, diminutive Tyrion’s sloping prison cell in the clouds? Yes? No? If so, just tuck that thought away, for now. Personally, apart from enjoying how the little fella squirmed when his tormenter forced him to enjoy the view, I was annoyed with the whole scene since I felt I’d been galumphed! (Got an idea that’s gazumped…not sure, sorry!) Because my very own Brilliant Exit was conceived long before Mister Ar-Rah Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire came along, wholly and solely inspired by the aborigines. Correction, in actual fact by the lack of, way out at GGH.
“Time, old chap….so big swallow now, then out with that clever little tongue, just to be sure, eh? There now, so much easier now we’re settled in don’t you think?”
No, I fucking don’t! But, small mercies, I’ve gotten hold of a pencil and a few squares of date-roll from the shitter to pass the time. Now, where were we? Oh yeah, classification time!
Gen# 1
Under ‘K’ for Kildare Selfies
In the late fifties, my grandfather (mother’s side) was found floating face down in Mosquito Creek on the outskirts of Sorento in NSW’s western slopes. He’d gone missing after setting off on his early morning stroll, later to be discovered by Tommie, youngest of his brood and only son, and Greta. Auntie G and Alice were the youngest of five daughters after Emma, Beatrice, and Margherita
So it goes, Wal (for Wallace) takes a wake-up-cuppa for momma-still-in-bed along with a medical peck-on-the-cheek, then says see-ya-round-sometime from the grave. WTF! (Letters dummy, oon, derr, twa! Please pay attention!) Mumma gets one, as does Emma and Beatrice, the eldest daughters. In my mother’s, (Beatrice) he charges her to look after dearRicky, and expresses regret for leaving. Ricky, my older brother, was a previous spring drop at the time. Myself and Kenny, who wasnext in line after me,were distant twinkles. That means Raymond, numero cuatro, was Pluto in the days before the poor fella was downgraded. Pluto that is, not Raymond! Sheesh!
Wal was evidently a gentle soul before he went awol, with a passion for literature and photography. Nevertheless, he heeded Lord Kitchener’s call to arms in 1914 to face the horrors of war. Taken ill at Gallipoli, he recovered to rejoin the fray in the European theatre where he kept his head down (Wal was no Wal!) til the bitter end in 1918. How tragic then, able to summon the strength to face bullets, he was unable to bear the shame years later when he was caught dipping into the till of his accountancy firm. (Wal was a Wal!) Years later, my mother said her father often quipped he was waiting for his ship to come in, reference to his more than occasional flutter on the horses.
Ghost Gum Hole caste its spell over me right from the outset. Each time I ventured near, I became more and more fascinated with the intricate patterns in stone and the mysterious rock-piles long ago scattered and tumbled down, trying to make sense of it all. I’d stroll alone across the barren top-rock amongst a silence so absolute it felt criminal to scuff your boots, let alone fart or sneeze. In my mind I’d picture starry nights, and listen to the click of rhythm-sticks and timeless love-songs, echoing along the rocky gorge.
But it was always the absence of graves that really intrigued. After all, if they once lived here, then they certainly did the other. No good-ol’ flyin’ doc’ back then! So, after one of these dalliances checking out a few more nooks and crannies, I rested upon a handy boulder and pondered this very question. That was when I spied Lord Tyrion’s prison-cell, a sharply sloping rock-ledge directly above where I sat, jutting out over the dry, sandy water-course. With the germ of an idea niggling, I sussed a way to get up there, then bummed it towards the precipice – lucky for little me, minus the encouragement of an agro goaler.
Read much Idriess? Man Tracks? Said classic includes police accounts of early day perps, murderers in the main, and of how they didn’t get away with it thanks to the magical skills of the black-trackers. After reading some of this stuff, you’d almost be forgiven for believing those guys could read your mind through the faintest imprint of your boot! Not forgetting the gal’s o’course! After all, who brings in the yams and conkerberries and shinglebacks when the boys slink home empty handed? Seems these bloodhounds of the bush could tell which hand carried the water-bottle, what he or she ate for breakfast, (I expect not by examining footprints!) or even if the perp was getting weary, had an itchy bum or a tooth-ache, or was crazed from thirst!
As much as we can rely on these accounts, being extracts from police journals pre-FE (Fitzgerald Enquiry), there are lessons to be learnt if one prefers the lifestyle of perp to that of prisoner. Number one, for God’s sake, suppress fastidious personal habits. One poor miscreant was pinned simply by crossing his stirrups as per usual over the seat of his saddle upon hanging it on the stock-yard rail!
But it was the deviant that burned his victim in the sandy bed of a creek, not quite enough as it turned out, hoping for a deluge to erase his dirty deed. This was the account that gave me…. Oops! Almost outa the old bag, Eh? Whew! But don’t stress. The best’s yet to come, so read on. Oh, forgot to mention, the rotten cad was caught of course. It forgot to rain!
Gen#2 Suspect-Selfies
Under ‘R’ for Reverse-Bone-Pointers
Greta (Auntie G) kicked off for her team, reaching only into early her fifties. Tommie followed soon after. Yes, that Tommie and that Greta, those kids four decades on, the ones that pelted home to blab to momma, never before having seen their dad treading water. Greta’s passing was a little steeped in mystery and came after years of suffering depression. Found on a leafy walking track, elevated blood oxygen levels seemed the only likely cause of death. She was survived, as they say, by my cousins Paul and Damien. She most certainly was not survived by their sister Suzanne, who’s car-accident (according to Paul, the eldest) may have been catalyst for her mum’s melancholy, and slow decline.
Uncle Tommie, (Dr T or Prof T) was a botanist and paleontologist – at one time a highly regarded lecturer at Uni. A close friend and colleague once remarked that Dr T was one of the brightest minds there at the time. No surprises there for family members. His general knowledge and reputed photographic memory, tested often by skeptical nephews and nieces to his great amusement, was legendary. Mum told me as a child he annoyed his sisters with his encyclo-snozzle forever stuck in boring tomes – think Number Five Alive, input, input! She also revealed his penchant for wearing his sisters’ clothing.
Who knows in the end what triggered his decline? After reaching a professional pinnacle, fathering two beautiful daughters with a lovely lady with an even longer string of initials, he seemed to develop a death-wish by late fifties. Then, well… he died. My father, (Jack) always suspected Uncle T had a bet each way, and wondered if the repression of such led to his alcoholism. Uncle T himself always had it that his love of a tipple or two began as salve for pre-lecture nerves. Whatever. The striking similarities between Uncle T and Auntie G’s individual dust to dust or bust, given neither slit their wrists nor leaped the gap, leaves me no choice but to file them under R for Reverse Bone-Pointers.
Gen#3
Under ‘N/S’ for Non-Selfies
Cousin David, (first of Margherita’s two, leaving Jane) closely followed by cousin Suzanne, (Already mentioned her. Remember? Jesus! Move over silly O’Malley!) got the ball rolling for gen #3 in separate road accidents. Early twenties, they were followed soon after by Ricky (Wal’s dear Rick) at twenty-three from melanoma. Medicos bizarrely described said affliction as A-melanomic melanoma, never having discovered a primary. Much later, fortyish, Cousin Ian (second eldest of Emma’s four) succumbed to something similar. Even so, Kenny, my younger brother, beat Ian off the mark, now I come to think on it, therefore claiming poll position under…
‘S2’
for Kildare Selfies, Gen#3
Dad and I attended. Something neither of us ever really got over; Woop-WoopPrecinct foyer, where dad sobbed while I tried to be the strong one as we read Kenny’s will, scribbled on the back page of an Elders notebook; the greasy frying-pan set accusingly on the stove, caked with the dried remnants of fried bum-nuts…had to cook his own, lonely last breakfast, for fucks sake!… Crushed beer cans like Hansel and Gretel’s bread-crumbs leading out to the car; the fail-safe fitting from exhaust to vacuum hose, solving melt-down issues; the foam mattress he’d sat himself upon to… best not go there; the letter to family in the glove box, and everywhere the overpowering stench, and buzz of blowies.
Last cab off the rank for S2 goes to Frank, my youngest brother. As to how he crossed over, jury’s out in reality, as far as category goes. Personally, I lean Selfies. That’s why Frank’s under S2 for now. What would you do?
Frank suffered depression from an early age. Introverted and shy, he idolized John Newcombe, (Newk) former tennis great and towering persona of confidence and strength. Our Newk was alcoholic by twenty, and destined for asylum. Which reminds me. They say being touched throws down the line. But hell, what would they know? Whatever. Reminiscent of Wal, his grandpappy, Frank had an artistic streak. Over his forty-odd years, he managed to hock some quite stunning acrylic landscapes the length and breadth of Oz for g-n-f (Grog and fuel. C’mon! Get with it, baby! He also wrote poetry, a pastime which, so I’m informed, runs a close second to looking for hairs on the palms of your hands. Nevertheless, his rhythmic outpourings remain as poignant reminders of his love of outback and the natural world, even though life itself was an agony. It was almost a relief for family (those that were left) when police reported his death.
Found half submerged at the base of a rocky causeway, there’d been questions over actual cause of death. Perhaps he leaped, or walked in a drunken stupor over the edge in the dark. Maybe he was pushed. I dunno. Do you? Maybe you’re the dick that found your wife’s favourite garden-gnome in the local pawn shop one day? Or your much-prized collection of Phantom comics from the time you forgot to lock your man-cave. But like I said, I don’t fuckin know. Right!? I’m still trying to forget it, just like the coroner did when he recommended ‘death by misadventure’. No, I’m not gonna make up another file. In my illustrious opinion, (whatever that means) Kenny and Ray both go under S2, right next to good old Awol Wal under‘K’. Which reminds me. Must get out Gee-Gee Hole soon, dec-san or no dec-san.
It was my firewood stacking – a ‘worrying psychosis’, they called it, that led to talk of an order. I know that now. I told them it was for dead moo-cows when they were a distant memory. Then dug a deeper hole by asking what they’d do if one happened to wander through the boundary fence and…well, cark-it. But what the hell. Nobody’ll know if I check out the crutching-shed for the old browning and box of shells. Not far out to Gee-Gee Hole from there. Do me good too, a bit of foot-falcon, some aerobics while stackin-up. Gotta be gidgee though, decent sized stuff that leaves nothin’ but white ash, maybe a tooth or two and a charred, blackened barrel. Maybe shoot a ‘roo, prop ‘im up there, watch where he lands. Smart eh? Small matter then, some dead leaves and a tuft of spinifex to the windward side.
I’ll feel the ghosts all around me as Gee-Gee Hole weaves its magic. Alas, no one to wail and ululate as they anoint and paperbark my…teeth?! But I’m sure when the sun’s dippin’ low, and with the wood-smoke driftin’ along the gorge, I’ll be welcomed as a kindred spirit.
“OK mister pen-light-under-the-covers. Sleep-time now, enough!”
Yeah, yeah. Get a life! Pissy pen-light’s all you’ll find come daylight, sweetheart! Now where were we? Hmm…I did it My Way…Compulsive Kamikaze … Kildare Will dare…Kildare Selfies… Irksome Elfies! God, how funny am I? I’m coming to take me away, ha ha! Dare-to-kill-a-Selfie…Kildare Selfies… Kildare Selfies… KILDARE SELFIES!!
End
Steve Hawe 