Searching for a Real Man

Kids at the Maheno wreck

I would never be considered to be a poster boy for the alpha male set. Skinny and bookish me. Whilst I am resigned to my lot, I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a little inadequate at times. Still, no man likes to have their own perceived masculine inadequacies rubbed in. However, just before I lined the Disco up for a third crack at the sand dune leading up to Indian Head on Fraser Island, I asked my ever supportive spouse if she was nervous. “Well” muttered she, “I wouldn’t be if you were Bill Fry.”

Alpha male food; Spam, Deb mashed potato,
rehydrated peas and carrots, YUM

Now Bill Fry is one of my brother in laws, and I consider him a good mate. He is without question an alpha male. But Sara wasn’t sitting beside Bill, she was sitting beside Hamish, and crikey, didn’t Hamish give the Disco some curry after that! Summited without a problem, and drove hard from then on. Got mildly bogged once. When Bill was on Fraser, he got bogged so badly he came within 15 minutes of losing his Landrover to the tide. But of course, that's a small detail Sara had decided to overlook! We spent 4 days on Fraser, and did a lot of driving. Camped on the beach and in the forest. Watched backpackers cavorting in the shallows of Lake Mackenzie and dodged dingos on the beach whilst trying to text friends at a Christmas dinner in Melbourne. Ned and I did a great hike up to Basin Lake, and I finally came through on my promise to cook old fashioned camping food, ie Spam and Deb and dried peas with canned plum pudding and custard for dessert! The boys loved it, Sara had tofu. Despite the fun and games, we won't be back though unless we develop a desire to fish and 4WD with passion.
 

Sandblow

Before we'd left for Fraser, the van had got itself caught on the Disco's over engineered towball hitch, destroyed that and fallen off the back of the disco in the caravan park. The park manager and his tractor saw us right, then suggested that Wayne of "Rainbow Wreckers" might be the person to speak to regarding fixing the twisted hitch. Wayne is an alpha male of a different sort. Short, with thinning hair and questionable dental hygiene, he is a wizard with all things mechanical. Wayne has at various times in his life created a 4WD Rolls Royce, a 6WD Cadillac, a hovercraft / fan boat among other bizarre crafts. He also has the Fraser Island transport contract which makes him a very wealthy man.
 

Wayne must have seen something in me, something in my desperation, that made his alpha tendencies go a bit beta. "I can fix that" he pronounced and took the hitch off my hands. Less than a day later, we'd managed to fit it into the Disco again, caravan ready. All for the cost of a case of XXXXGold. In the meantime, the electronic latch on the rear door failed. We left for Fraser anyway, but bumped into Wayne while de-salting the car after Fraser. "Did you fix the back door?" he demanded; "I can do it at 3:30 after I drop this load of cement off". He fixed the door latch, we hitched the van up, and left Rainbow Beach late on Tuesday evening. That's when Wayne's reputation got sullied.




Ivy running into Lake Wabby

The road out of Rainbow Beach is hilly and twisty. At 90kph, coming down one of the hills, Wayne's handiwork came undone and the hitch fell out of the car again, dropping the caravan onto the highway held only by the safety chains. A thump, sparks, and the screaming of metal. The road was straight and I was able to slow down gradually to a stop. If we'd been going around a corner, things would have been horribly different and the inertia of the van would have dictated where we ended up. Have been trying not to think about that.

Landrover hitch after being dragged for 100m's. Quality steel at least!

On the side of the highway, Sara corralled the kids whilst calling for help on a phone with a failing battery. Cars raced by in the darkness, then one stopped. Chris and Lyn stepped out of their Landrover and walked across the road to survey the situation. We got the van jacked up, and reconnected the hitch, and then decided not to use it. Wise. Instead, Chris and Lyn towed us back to their house, parked the van in the yard next door, made sure we had everything we needed, and left to go fishing, again. An alpha male and a good Samaritan in one neat package.




Backsons and Irwins

Still shell shocked the next morning, we said good bye to Chris, Lyn and Kimmy, and headed down the road towards Brisbane and the Australia Zoo. Was Steve Irwin an alpha male? You'd be hard pressed to argue that a bloke who could wrestle crocs, catch snakes, surf, live in pretty forbidding country and establish a multi-million dollar business wasn't. So in keeping with the theme of the past week, we dropped into his zoo to pay our respects, and I got all teary.

Alpha males in training

Australia Zoo is a massive operation. Clean as a whistle and co-ordinated to a fault. Not much in the way of animals we hadn't seen, but some nice shows, and plenty of room. Poor dead Steve is all over the place. Grinning from every available vantage point, he's screaming "crikey" from every screen and every sign. The problem though, is that because this particular alpha male jumped on the back of a sting ray, he's no longer here, and I can't help feeling that because of that, the Irwin empire is running out of time no matter how many crop tops Bindi sells. For as much as he made me cringe, I could never fault his ethics and his desire to improve our world. I miss you Steve, and if tearing up as I admit that disqualifies me from alpha status, I can deal with that. I still have my family. 


H