Paynesville, Oct 30

Thursday the 30th Gail and I began our journey East towards Paynesville. I suppose technically it was my journey. For Gail this was somewhat of a regular commute. We had a few errands to complete before we truly set off, including returning a movie we had rented the night before.

The renting of the movie had, of course, not gone smoothly and merits a brief story. The renter was a small independent with a shop perhaps only 10 feet by 20 feet. Quite small indeed, but they had managed to cram a lot of movies in. As with most movie shops, you had to be a member to rent. I assumed Gail was a member but it turned out she was not. The shop-keep was more than happy to sign us up, but he had a laundry list of items he required before simply entrusting us with the keys to his movies.

First up, photo ID: check. Second, proof of address: check. But hold old on there partner, not just any old address will do – has to be local. Busted. All of Gail’s ID listed her address in Paynesville, nothing for the Melbourne address. I couldn’t believe this was actually going to be a problem and felt the need to chime in.

“Why does it have to be a local address?” I asked.

“Because we have to be able to track you down if you don’t return a movie” the shop-keep explained.

I had anticipated this.
“Sure, but why does it have to be a local address? Are you going to come to her house and take the movie back or something?”

The robot repeated his script.
“No, but if you don’t return the movie we have to be able to find you somehow”

I was starting to get testy. This sounded like bullshit.
“Yeah, but then why does it have to be local? This rule seems completely arbitrary!”

So far the guy had been tolerant of my question asking, but his demeanor immediately changed when I began to challenge the rules.
“Look, that’s just the way it is, if you don’t have local ID you can’t rent a movie”

And that was that. I didn’t press the matter anymore, more out of respect for Gail since she would be the one returning here in the future, than out of any acceptance for this load of crap this movie Nazi was feeding us. Ironically, upon returning to the flat, I was the only one with a document with the Melbourne address on it so I was forced to return and get the membership. He would have been better off just giving Gail the membership in good faith. If I decided to skim one of his movies, the movie Nazi would find that my local address had suddenly gone international.

Given the previous day’s altercation, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to seeing the movie Nazi again. Luckily, the shop was closed. Instead, his tiny dog came out of nowhere and pounced on the glass door, barking furiously, as I attempted to put the movie in the slot. The little mongrel made me jump and I was glad his owner wasn’t there to see it.

We were eventually on our way and I watched as the passing scenery changed from urban, to suburban and gracefully into countryside. Secretly, I began to keep an eye out for kangaroo. Being the obvious foreigner I was still under the belief that these creatures were bountiful and could readily be seen anywhere out of the city. I realized I had spent all of my time tinkering around the Melbourne city-centre and hadn’t actually seen Australian countryside yet. Well, here it was. Large, open, rolling, green fields dotted with bushes, skinny, tall trees, sheep and cattle. In the distance, a range of small mountainous hills, covered with green paddocks and forests. This was of course not the outback. Perhaps obvious, but if you’ve never been to Australia it may be difficult to imagine what there is aside from outback and cities, as those are likely the two main areas one hears about as a foreigner. As we distanced ourselves from Melbourne the landscape became browner and dryer and it was exactly what I imagined Australian countryside would look like.

Before I knew it we reached the town of Paynesville. I was a bit confused that, after 3 hours of looking out the window, I had not seen one kangaroo. I hadn’t seen much of anything actually aside from cattle, sheep and a growing number of parrots. The wild parrots were a fascination though as I hadn’t really encountered these large, colourful birds outside of cages. I made due with that. We proceeded to the house where I would be staying.

The main house was occupied by one of Gail’s friends with whom ownership of the property was shared. My residence was to be in the granny suite behind the house which suited me fine as I’d be afforded more privacy. The friend was vacationing in Asia and had left her sister to house-sit. The sister had clearly let things go and the house was a bit of a disaster – Gail was not amused. The granny suite was equally dirty but apparently cleaner than it had been when Gail had come to inspect the week prior. The sister’s three children had seemingly been left to run amuck but she had apparently declared that they would be held to task and would clean things up. The children were evidently on the honour system. Gail was becoming more and more agitated by the second.

Later that evening I joined Gale and John at their other residence up the street for supper. I enjoyed a delicious lamb roast that John had prepared. I have to say I have only had lamb twice in my life; once, around 10 years ago, and the second that night. I distinctly remember disliking it the first time but couldn’t get enough the second. Oh lamb, where have you been all these years? So many meals I have looked you over because of a faint, distant memory from childhood. Pity.

I was initially hesitant when John presented me with cooked pumpkin to have with the meal. I had no idea people actually ate pumpkins, but why not? It’s of the squash family after all. Just me being Northamericacentric again, I suppose. Or maybe this actually was a common thing and I just had never heard of it? In any case, unappealing images of removing the guts from pumpkins before carving and the unpleasant smell that emerged from its bowels flooded my mind. In actuality, it was delicious – just like squash. I hadn’t come expecting to broaden my pallet, but here, two foods I would have never considered eating, both mouth-watering. Being a rather picky eater, I was rather pleased that I had found two more foods I would now consider in the future.

My stomach full and blood-alcohol level sufficiently high, I meandered back to my flat – but not before John and I managed to have a terrifying discussion on Australian spiders. Being curious what the actual deal was with the spider situation, I posed the question to John. It turned out to be mostly as I thought it would: lots of deadly ones, unlikely to see a lot of them, especially in the home, don’t pester them and they won’t bite. (Gail would later tell me of the funnel-web spider which, apparently infused with the furry of hell, will lunge at you and attack if you get too close to it. And by ‘too close’, Gail suggested even a number of feet away. Jesus). Just my luck however, that the one spider you may indeed see in the home is also one of the largest – the Huntsman. The Huntsman feeds on insects, is quite passive and not poisonous. Nevertheless, it can grow to the size of your palm (according to John). With John’s grande stories in the fore of my mind, I made my way back to the flat and proceeded to have one of the worst sleeps I can remember. I honestly can’t recall ever being so paranoid and irrational as I was that night. I must have woken six times throughout the night, instantly terrified that the walls were crawling with Huntsman, fighting for position to drop down on me and scare me back to Canada. I tried to remain calm and even turned the lights on once to show myself that it wasn’t so. Still, petrified I remained until morning. I have to say I was quite lucky that one of these things didn’t actually appear by chance on a distant wall in the room. Given my state that night I likely wouldn’t have gotten over the horror and would have remained paranoid about the spiders my entire time in Paynesville…