DRUGS & RADISHES

It will come as a terrible shock for those who know me to hear I embraced the drug culture in my youth. I know. Who'd have thought?

Standing by the Gundagai Bridge as the flooding Murrumbidgee River surges past the blurred memory of those times comes back to me, in as clear a focus as possible, given the state of semi-consciousness in which i lived for the greater part of a decade, or two.

To the left of where Tom sniffs right now is a work shelter. Sometime around 1973 I slept behind this very shed.

My friend Greg and I were hitching to Melbourne from Sydney. We weren’t too long back from the NIMBIN AQUARIUS FESTIVAL where we had gone to get our heads together. Greg was a strange hippy because he had always had some money. Something about a job or working or something.

South of Gundagai is the town of Yass. Two identical roadhouses used to stand either side of the highway. After thumbing a lift for 3 hours at Yass we finally got lucky. Unfortunately we'd been fooled by the roadhouses and were on the wrong side of the road, hitching back to Sydney. It could happen to anyone, especially after a spliff of Greg’s finest Durban Poison.

After trudging dejectedly back across the highway we got a ride to Gundagai, getting dropped off at this very shelter. We were so stoned and tired we slept the entire night on something lumpy.

In the morning we heard trucks arriving and the cheerful banter of Aussie workmen. Wordlessly, since the power of speech had not yet arrived, we frantically clambered down to the river bank with our meagre possessions. They would have included our sleeping bags, Greg’s stash, a bong and my nylon string guitar upon which I played Blowing in the Wind.

We hid behind the very same gum trees that lie half-buried in the flood water now.

"Someones been sleeping on the fucking radishes."

So that’s what they were. It was a lucky escape. These guys were very upset.

We still couldn’t talk but for a different reason. We were both convulsing in laughter as only hippies could when a straight’s radishes had been destroyed. It didn’t get any funnier than that. I mean they had actually grown the radishes and now we had flattened them. Hilarious!

Carefully we tracked around under the bridge and back to the highway, the sound of the furious horticulturalist fading in the distance.

It is eerie to stand here now, back outside a dilapidated work shelter which survives from 40 years ago. I am still on the road. In truth I have rarely been off it.

The Murrumbidgee River that has caused mass evacuations downstream in Wagga Wagga has dropped here but is still white with frothy whirlpools.

On our way, Tom and I got caught in the NSW town of Hay while we waited for the floods to subside. It did after 3 days and we made a dash via Deniliquin and then east across here to Gundagai. Hay is expecting the flooding Murrumbidgee to arrive in a week or so.

Who was it who said Australia is a land of drought broken by the occasional flood?

I am not sure what happened to Greg but it wouldn't have been good. Where I made a desperate lunge towards my version of sanity, I know Greg didn't.

Deep inside me I yearn for a resolution that wraps up this little post. Perhaps something that incorporates a flooding river metaphor, nostalgia, a reference to the Dog sat on the tuckerbox five miles from Gundagai and a warning against drug use. I can’t.

The Murrumbidgee River flows. Some houses get flooded. Others get swept away. Some young lives are caught in other tides. Some survive and are able to stand next to a marker from their youth, even if it's as inauspicious as a work shelter, and still wonder.

Why would anyone grow radishes?

Raymond

PS. Tommie shares some very personal information on his latest DOG BLOG. I ask that you be a little sensitive if you reply. He only shared this to help other dogs have the courage to admit to over-eating.