Suspected something a bit suss when the passenger beside me launched into a story about his troupe of ‘sex slaves’ up in Bali.
He was a 60-something garbo/chippie/FIFO bloke from Gippsland en route to see a newly-minted son he figured was going to be ‘dumped’ on him.
Had to do the right thing, he said, whatever that was. A good few Bintangs were going to help him nut it out.
Things continued in a suss direction as a crowned molar soured on me. Off to the dentist, then an x-ray across town via a motorbike piloted by a 40kg kid. Looked like Magilla gorilla on a tiny circus trike.
On return, I was told I’d need a root canal when I went home. Two consults, an anorexic radiologist, bike rides, total $20.
Not so cheap was the doc I needed next for chest and Bali bugs courtesy freezer aircons and bar peanuts. Fifty a consult, 50 a script, total $250.
Always a story or two on the traffic-jammed Island of the Gods. I was reading a few, too, in a rewrite of Mark Twain’s Huck Finn, a book called James, penned from the runaway slave Jim’s perspective.
Highlights various slavery/racism evils, civil rights, some fanciful ideas of educated, philosophy-quoting slaves and overall a good but dark little adventure story.
As a kid, Huck and Tom Sawyer were role models who sent me up trees, into frog/snake-infested culverts, digging tunnels in giant haystacks, exploring dark silos, building tree huts, cubbies and makeshift rafts, digging underground hideouts, jumping from trees into rivers …
Basically played out all the murderer-on-the-run scripts a kid raised also on a diet of Tarzan, TV’s Combat and Al Capp’s hillbilly L’il Abner antics could dream up.
Heaven forbid any mum these days letting her kid run wild across 2000 acres of a government farm with bulls, cows, sheep, poultry, swamps, water channels, abandoned buildings, itinerant worker quarters, plantations of ageing trees and brittle branches, shearing sheds, laboratories, dairies and workshops.
Bali, though, offers stuff of that sort for grown-ups with all its rafting, volcanoes, river gorges, surf, jungle temples and so on.
This time I tackled its new glass bridge. Giant see-through suspension thing 200 metres long, 70 metres up.
Try to ignore the couples faking sex in the middle of thing. And ignore thoughts of the glass bridge in neighbouring Java which busted in 2023, sending 11 earthwards.
This one’s Chinese engineering at its best, what could go wrong?
I also read The Fabulist about 19th century raconteur Louis de Rougemont, who Henry Lawson said made a bigger splash in three months than any other writer in 100 years.
Louis survived a shipwreck to live as king of an Aborigine tribe in Northwest Australia, for 30 years.
His Crusoe-like stories of cannibals, stupefying feats and bizarre creatures stunned London and won the endorsement of scientists and made him a meteoric celebrity until he was revealed as an inveterate bullshit artist.
Twain, incidentally, made his way to Geelong in 1895, telling stories on a world tour when his fortunes were on a bankrupt wane to poor investments and mounting debts. Unrealised gains, you might say.
He recounted knocking off a water-melon from a farmer when he was a kid. The thing was green so he went to the owner and complained about him selling unripe fruit – then helped himself to another, riper melon.
Twain, of course, is something of a role model known widely for his insightful quotes and wise-arse observations. The one sticks most with me is, of course: ‘Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.’
Good luck, I suppose, to the Gippsland garbo, but more to the mum, she’s the one really needs it.
And that’s the truth.
This story appeared in the Geelong Advertiser 27 May 2025.
