Growing up in Australia leaves you with either a fear of everything, or a fear of pretty much nothing.
We’ve got spiders, snakes, poisonous toads, fanged lizards, deadly octopuses, and kangaroos that can kick a grown man to death. Even the cute and cuddly looking platypus is venomous, having a dedicated poison claw and gland – just for fucking up anything that it doesn’t like.
And that’s without even mentioning things like Bunyips, Yowies and the other supernatural horrors that are whispered about around campfires at school camps and sleepovers.
Being a regular visitor to my grandmother’s place, which bordered on some pretty wild country, I ended up being the kind of kid that probably should have died several times over from handling all sorts of creatures that I shouldn’t. Once, when I was eight, I came home dangling a frill-necked lizard that hissed indignantly, paddled its legs and lashed its huge tail, rolling its eyes madly while it snapped at my dangling hair.
So reflecting on my childhood, I guess I was one of those kids who grew up afraid of nothing.
That also made me the antithesis of my mother, who was afraid of basically everything and would practically throw me out of the car as we drove past grandma’s house, just so she wouldn’t have to interact with nature in any way.
Grandma’s place was a huge, colonial-era estate, with far too many rooms and lopsided verandas that circled the entire structure. With two stories, several outlying sheds and rooms full of dusty antiques that my deceased grandfather had left behind, it was a veritable wonderland for a hyperactive kid like myself.
I didn’t even mind that there was barely working electricity, a single landline phone, and running water that periodically broke down when the electric pump went out. But what I did mind was the longdrop.
For those of you not in the know, these are relics of Australia’s intrepid, pioneering days. Before running water and reliable power, our hardy ancestors used to take a lantern or a flashlight to an outdoor toilet that was not much more than a shed built over a huge hole in the ground. There, they would check for lurking redback and huntsman spiders, before sitting down to do their business. After they were done, there would be hurried wiping of their nether regions, hoping to finish before their aerial bombardment of the colonies of flies and midges below would cause the insects to rise up and attack the tender buttocks of the longdrop visitor.
And of course, longdrops stank.
Coming from a house with a porcelain throne, three-ply toilet paper and fragrant baskets of potpourri, I really wasn’t a fan of the traditional Australian dunny.
But I have to admit, Grandma’s was better than most. Whomever had dug the original pit had done an exceptional job; it was so deep that as the wee trickled from between your legs, you could sometimes feel a subterranean breeze rise up and kiss your bare arse, bringing with it the smell of stone and old earth, instead of potent urea and uncountable generations of rancid shit.
Sometimes I even imagined I could hear whispering from down below.
When I was younger, I used to throw things down the longdrop. Food I didn’t want to eat was hidden in the shallow pockets of a dress, then later tossed through the hole in the wooden seat. Once I even chucked my homework down there, claiming that a galah had flown down and snatched it right out of my lap.
And when I hit that age, it became an extremely convenient place to ditch all my bloody pads and swollen tampons – something I couldn’t do with the dunny back home.
I’m sure you other ladies reading this will know what I’m on about; there’s nothing worse than fiddling with a sanitary bin full of nasty chemicals while you try to chuck your carefully folded deposit into it without touching the lid or the sides.
