On DaVinci Planes, really big crows and why the guy at 000 is a douche bag.

You know that the words we speak are the only thing that keep our feet on the ground.  The whole thing about gravity is wrong don't you ? The man just tells you that so you keep talking.  Apparently scientists have worked out that it takes about four weeks for the weight of our words to work their way through to our feet and then out our toes. We float off into the groove and then beyond the great beyond.  

No but seriously. ...

Have you ever thought about what four weeks is? What can we achieve in four weeks that can permanently change us forever? We could learn a language, perhaps start a really decent garden, lose a tone of weight and get in shape. What if we only had four weeks to live? Could we achieve ten years worth of goals in those four weeks? I believe so at one stage.  I still do, but only because i have never had four weeks.

The closest I ever came was three and a bit.  Then I did fly.  I flew over Bribe Island in a sort of daze and all the way as far as the hospital at Caboolture.
 
This was about six years ago.  I had just left a life in Brisbane.  Packed up a life and one of those swishy houses and hit the road, hippie style. We got rid of all the expensive crap that life in the city demands we have, the shiney stuff and the stuff that makes noise.

We meant to travel around the country in a campervan, but at the time, half of Queensland was underwater and half of Victoria was on fire. Maybe not such a good idea.

We ended up living on Bribie Island. Looking back now, we really did do the hippie thing way too much. While we still shirk extravagance or money stuff, we were floating too far out in to the cosmos. I am really glad we did though, not that we gained anything from it overly, just as living in the city and then the suburbs teaches some of us that we don’t want to live in the city and the suburbs.

One of the many things that Bribie has going for it is it was the beginning of the Brisbane Line. Part of the job I had left behind involved teaching about Australian political history. One of the essays for this course asked for an answer to when and how Australia became legally independent from Great Britain. 

There are basically five answers to this question That Australia was never really tied to Great Britain in the way many think it was; that this happened in 1901 due to section 128 of the Constitution providing for any changes to be made by a referenda of the Australian People, so theoretically, we could have had a referenda on 2 January, 1901 to get rid of the ties to England; thirdly, it happened on the battlefields of both World Wars;  fourthly it happened in 1986 and finally, it hasn’t happened yet.

I always meant to write up a book on this subject as I don’t think that it has been ever clearly reviewed by the academy in an all-encompassing way. I will write this book someday, maybe tomorrow. Nah, I’d doubt it.

Anyway, it is one of those areas where legal scholars don’t really take into account what straight political historians say or what sociologists and other parts of the academy says, and visa versa. My whole idea came about as a result of, and in response to AT Ross’s wonderful book, “Armed and Ready – The Industrial Defence of Australia 1900-1945. It’s a very interesting read if your a dork like me due to it painting a very different picture of Australia’s reliance on Great Britain and general niaiveie that main stream history, and certainly political and legal history recall.

The part that I wanted to check out was the Brisbane Line, which starts on Bribie Island. A few kilometres north of the main settlement on the eastern side is a gunner’s nest, then about ten kilometres further up the beach are other things, including an underground hospital that has been (and still is) lost to the world probably by the changing sand bank. I had previously elected myself a military historian of great knowledge yet had never had a lesson.

I set out to see if I could find this lost hospital, ignoring the fact that many people who actually did have some skills in finding such things had been trying for a long time. I think I figured that I’d just fluke it. But mainly what I wanted to do was to look at these gunner’s nests and see if I could figure out whether they were a rouse, that would have been only designed to get the invading Japanese forces to land, or whether they were what the army at the time would have put all the effort into.

I initially thought it was the former with all of them due to where they were and what they looked like –they stood up tall and were very visible, but since talking to a few people about how the sand dunes of the island have changed drastically  over the years, I am not sure there is an answer here.

I set out on a push bike and was able to ride about eighteen miles up the beach. I put my bike in the dunes right on the eighteen mile marker as I kept falling off it. Due to the four-wheel drives that cut through and up the beach, the tracks they leave behind create a gutter that will throw you off your bike. I set off further up the coast on foot. By this stage it was mid morning.

It was mid November and the sun was hot that day my friends. I reached the top of the island, pondered my pondering and the like and turned back towards home. I only had a litre and a half of water on me, but I knew that there was another three litres on the back of my bike, which was at the eighteen mile marker.

Then it got really hot. I started to get very worried. I had run out of water and was starting to feel the dizziness that that sort of heat brings. I had a phone on me, but it wasn’t able to reach my wife. I knew that the signal for 000 would be considerably stronger once I called it, but was I really in that sort of situation?

I thought not.

I kept walking. The tide was coming in and pushed me onto the soft sand, which greatly slowed my pace. Still it got hotter. I didn’t think it could. I set my phone alarm for twenty minutes and kept walking. I figured someone would drive by sooner or later. Then someone did. A pudgy bloke in a dual cab hilux ute. I waived. He pretended to not see me.

My twenty minute alarm went off. I thought about what to do. I reset it for another twenty minutes and figured that I’d reassess my situation in twenty minutes. I did this another two times.

By this time I was really worried. But it wasn’t life threatening yet and I knew that I had another three litres of water and some shelter and other stuff at my bike, which was tied to the eighteen mile marker. I had passed the nineteen mile marker almost half and hour ago. It was slow going on the soft sand, but I kept going, figuring that it would be just over the next dune.

I kept in mind that my phone probably would be able to call 000, but was it a life threatening situation yet? I did have water just up ahead ...didn’t I.

I kept walking and then it occurred to me that I was starting to run. I was starting to run because I was being chased by one of those DaVinci planes and this really, really big crow. He must have been about the size of a four storey apartment block.

Now my situation was life threatening I thought. I called 000. Funnily enough, even though I was still thinking quite clearly (except for the DaVinci plane and the really, really big crow) when the bloke answered the phone to ask whether I needed police, ambulance or fire, I couldn’t seem to speak. My mouth was very dry, which made speaking hard, but mainly, I couldn’t seem to control my mouth. The noises I was making were more like drunken grunts than anything.

The person on the other end of the phone became very cross. “This is a emergency line, you’re wasting our time.” he said and threatened to hang up on me and inform the police.
I still couldn’t really say anything. Then I realised my problem was I was trying to explain my situation, rather than just stating the word “ambulance”.

I stated “Ambulance

He stroppily put me through.

Thankfully the guy at the ambulance place knew how to speak to people, told me to check that my phone was charged, which it was mostly, then told me to take three deep breaths and then start again. We got to the end of it. Not too long later I got back to my bike, sipped water on the advice of the ambulance guy, and waited there for help.

I didn’t really ask what help was. I realised that I couldn’t move my legs. I hadn’t even noticed that I’d sat down. There were more cars going down the beach now. Even though I was lying in the middle of nowhere on the beach, they pretended not to see me. I must have

Still more cars came by. None of them stopped. I felt lost, abandoned, I didn’t know where I was but was greatly angry with these unfeeling people for not stopping and for wrecking the beach with their cars and inappropriate tyres.

Now they’re landing a fucking helicopter on the beach. I was really getting cranky. I mean, walking, sure; cars, maybe if need be, but a helicopter? And to make things seem more silly, they were dressed up in ambulance overalls.