The Killer Koala (5 page)

'It's
got me!' I bellowed, rolling over on my back and clawing at the koala
with both hands. It rolled with me and clamped its hold tighter
—
all
its holds.

I
screamed again and started pummelling the brute with my fists. It was
like pummelling fur-covered wood and made as much impression. The
thing had muscles fashioned from some substance far harder than any
animal tissue ought to be.

Again
I screamed and I could hear Mary Anne crashing through the ferns
towards me.

The
koala, presumably thinking I had reinforcements coming, gripped
harder still at all points.

It
was growling like something demented, which it was, of course, and
its backside was almost in my face
—
even
my peril in no way diminished the frightful stench of the creature.

Mary
Anne's head came in sight over the ferns. I was thrashing and clawing
in a tangle of fern fronds and she couldn't see exactly what was
going on beyond the fact that I had the koala and the koala had me.

'Careful
you don't hurt it,' she called. I would have laughed in different
circumstances.

'Get
it off!' I gasped.

'Never
get him off now,' she said vexedly, 'I'll have to sedate him.' And
the bloody woman trotted off to the wharf to get her medical kit.

'Won't
be a minute,' I heard her call as she disappeared through the ferns.
'Just lie still
—
don't
worry, he won't let go now.'

That
wasn't my worry at all. 'Mary Anne!' I roared, 'The brute has got me
by the . . .' but she didn't hear me.

There
was no way I could lie there until she came back, with that creature
vigorously trying to desex me.

I
struggled to my feet complete with koala and tried to run after her.

Ever
tried to run with a koala's claws in your chest and thighs and its
teeth in your crotch? It's not possible.

I
was very close to tears of rage, pain and frustration. I floundered
through the ferns and tried barging into a tree, koala first. All I
did was drive tooth and claw further in. I tried falling on the
damned thing. I winded myself.

On
all fours now and near collapse, my disintegrating mind suddenly
grasped the fact that I was on the edge of the pool in the centre of
the koala-haunted grove of trees.

With
a manic cry of hope I scuttled forward, took a deep breath and flung
myself in, complete with koala.

The
water was blessedly deep and we went down like stones.

I
didn't know how long a koala could hold its breath but as far as I
was concerned we were both staying down until the koala let go or we
both drowned.

Unfortunately,
it seems that koalas can hold their breath indefinitely.

The
koala was a dead weight holding me down and we stayed in those brown
dark depths for what seemed like half an eternity. The pain in my
bursting lungs began to equal my other pains.

Eventually,
I realised that there was no need for me to have my head under water.
It may seem I was slow in reaching an obvious conclusion but if
you've never been submerged in a bush pool in the clutches of a
furious koala, you can't appreciate how difficult it is to think
clearly in the circumstances.

I
struck for the surface, got my head out, breathed deeply and
gratefully and set about trying to throttle the koala.

Koalas
are very hard to throttle, particularly when they have the sort of
grip on you this one had on me. But I tried hard, completely
disregarding the fact that it was a member of a protected species.

The
koala seemed determined to die under water with my fingers around its
neck. That was all right by me, as long as it died quickly.

Then,
even through my pain, I had the terrible worry that a dead koala
might not loosen its grip. Would I need surgery to detach me from
this malign beast?

Then
the beast gave up
—
a good
twenty minutes, I swear, after it was first submerged, although Mary
Anne has claimed she was away less than a minute. Time is, of course,
relative.

The
koala let go and surfaced near my face. Its toy features were
expressionless, but it coughed and growled viciously and I backed
away fearfully.

A
gleam of contempt seemed to appear in its bloodshot eyes and it
turned and swam expertly to the edge of the pool, clambered out,
trundled across to a tree, climbed it, looked down at me bleakly, and
went to sleep, dripping water.

I
climbed out of the pool.

Mary
Anne came back and expressed surprise that the koala had let go and
asked why I was all wet.

I
said I would explain later and went off into the bush to examine my
person.

The
overalls I was wearing were of very thick cloth and no serious damage
had been done. No thanks to the koala.

Mary
Anne and I eventually caught all the koalas on the island and set
them free on the mainland, but I didn't carry out the task with good
grace. I'll never go to the aid of the brutes again.

I
do
not
like
koalas.

One Hundred Stubbies

To
understand how this could happen, you have to know something about
where it happened
—
Coober
Pedy, an almost impossible town in the arid centre. Coober Pedy is an
opal mining town. The name is Aboriginal for 'white man in a hole'.
The 'hole' refers to the mines and to the houses, which are caves dug
into the sides of low hills. In the summer the temperature averages
around 50 degrees Celsius. You spend most of your time underground or
in a pub, or you die.

I
had driven up from Adelaide in an airconditioned car and I thought I
was going to die.

I
saw Coober Pedy in the distance as thousands of tiny round bubbles in
the shimmering desert heat haze. Soon these bubbles resolved
themselves into the waste piles from the opal mines that stretch
endlessly out from the town in all directions.

The
whole area looks as though it is infested by the termites that build
those huge nests of mud. Many of the mines are deserted and local
legend has it that they contain the bones of reckless men who have
welshed on gambling debts or tried robbing mines. I never actually
heard of a skeleton being found.

The
sight of the pub in Coober Pedy automatically brought my car to a
halt. I needed cold beer and lots of it. The heat out there is almost
solid and you can feel it dropping on your head when you step out of
the car. I trotted across to the pub, my whole being yearning for
beer, totally unaware that I was about to witness an event that would
put me off beer drinking for months.

The
pub was moderately full of pink men. Almost all the men in Coober
Pedy are pink because they are opal miners and the pink dust of the
mines becomes ingrained in their skins. Or perhaps they never wash,
because the water there is pretty foul stuff.

I
ordered beer, found it deliciously cold as beer always is in outback
Australia
—
often the only
evidence of any form of civilised living
—
and
began tuning in to the talk around me, as is my habit.

Two
pink men quite near me were having a conversation which was absurd,
like most conversations in outback pubs by the time everyone has had
five beers. The two of them were leaning on the bar peering earnestly
into each other's deep-etched faces. Like two grotesque dolls, they
carried on a nonsensical argument.

'He
can.'

'It'd
kill him.'

'It'd
take four hours.'

'It
wouldn't kill him. Nothing would.'

I
leaned closer. Their voices were beginning to hit an hysterical note.
Like buzzsaws, their shouts rose above the hubbub of the other
drinkers. They were obviously used to yelling at one another fifteen
metres underground with jackhammers going full blast.

'A
hundred stubbies in four hours. Do you reckon that would kill him?'

'It'll
kill anybody.'

'He's
not anybody.'

They
stared into each other's faces, the importance of the topic growing
in their minds as the beer ran down their throats.

'Why
are you so bloody sure?'

'Because
I'm bloody sure.'

One
of them was almost middle-aged, with grey hair all over his exposed
shoulders. At least, it would have been grey if he had washed off the
pink dust. His face was dulled and brutalised by years of grubbing
away in the ground all morning and drinking beer all afternoon. Or
perhaps he had been born with a dull and brutal face.

His
companion was younger, probably not thirty, a little fat but with the
heavy shoulders and arm muscles of the opal digger. If men keep on
digging in the ground for opal for a few generations, they will
probably develop forequarters and arms like wombats. This younger man
looked like a hairy-nosed wombat because of the three-day growth on
his face. Not exactly like a wombat, though, because a wombat has
some expression on its face if you look hard enough, while this
character's face was just a blob of pendulous blankness. With its
pink dusted stubble, it looked like a discarded serving of blancmange
growing a strange mould.

'Well,
if you're sure, will you bet on it?'

'Sure
I'll bet on it.'

You
couldn't tell who was speaking because their voices sounded
identical, like knives scraping on plates at an unbearably high
volume. But you could tell the sound was coming from them and
gradually a pool of silence was forming around them as the rest of
the bar tuned into their conversation.

'What
do you reckon, Ivan?'

Now
you could see who was speaking because the older man turned and
addressed himself to the drinker alongside him.

Ivan
turned slowly and I realised I was looking at a monster. He stood
barely a metre and a half high and was almost as wide across the
shoulders.

His
chest, black-singleted and covered with dust, stood out like a giant
cockerel's, a vast billow of muscles with dark streaks running over
the pink dust as the sweat made its own little rivers. One great arm
hung disproportionately low by his side, the other rested on the bar
with an enormous pink hand almost totally concealing a glass of beer.
His hair was short and closely cropped and he carried a comb of
bristles over a face that for one mad moment made me wonder whether
it is possible to cross a crocodile with a hippopotamus.

This
was a face that displayed complete lack of interest and malice, with
a blank complacency that made it obvious no thought had ever
disturbed the brain that nestled just under that absurd cockscomb of
hair.

He
was wearing shorts, and two massive legs, not unlike those of a
hippopotamus except that they were pink and hairy instead of grey and
wrinkly, propped up his body. It was as though the body was resting
on the legs rather than being joined to them, because he seemed to
have no waist; he was tree trunk-thick all the way down until
suddenly he had legs. The junction was concealed by the baggy shorts,
but I got the impression that the legs might walk away at any moment,
leaving the body standing there.

'What
do you reckon, Ivan? I reckon you could drink a hundred stubbies in
four hours.'

'
'Course I could,' said Ivan. His voice was flat and deep, almost
pleasant by comparison with those of the other two, but only by
comparison.

'There,'
said the older man, turning to his companion as though everything had
been proven.

'Bet
you he couldn't.'

'Bet
then. Go on, bet!'

'What
do you mean, bet?'

'I
mean what I say. What'll you bet he can't drink a hundred stubbies in
four hours?'

'Bet
you five hundred bucks.'

The
older man thrust his hand into his hip pocket and brought out a wad
of notes. He counted ten fifties on to the counter. The younger man
looked on impassively, while Ivan, losing interest, turned back to
his pint.

'Match
that.'

The
younger man, having waited until the last fifty was laid down, dived
into his own pocket and counted out his bundle of fifties. He paused
before laying down the tenth.

'Who's
paying for the beer?' he asked cunningly.

There
was a long pause while this was pondered.

'Take
it out of the centre,' said the older man at last.

'All
right, Ivan. Here's the biggest beer-up of your life, and on me,'
said the older man, grabbing Ivan by the shoulder.

'Come
on, Bill,' he said to the barman, 'set up ten stubbies. Ivan's gonna
sink a hundred.'

Bill
didn't react, just reached into the refrigerator and lined ten
stubbies up on the counter.

'Off
you go, Ivan. Remember, I'm betting on you.'