Day 442 | Mentana Creek: as good a spot as any

81 km | zzOz total: 13,432 km

Apparently I was featured on the UHF radio, (is that CB), yesterday, some clever cowboy, working on one of the stations along here sent out the warning: Hey, you won’t believe this, I just saw Russell Coight on a pushbike.

The aforesaid Mr Coight was a comic character with his own TV series in the early 2000s whose style was deadpan delivery while things fell apart or caught fire around him. He was supposed to be an experienced bushman, a survival expert travelling around Australia’s Outback and instructing the viewers on what to do.

(Here’s a couple of quotes I found later to give you some flavour:

“The outback is a dangerous place and I should know, I’ve injured myself out there. All I have to say is two words. Be ware.”

“I never go into the outback without a decent supply of water, and the general rule for how much you’ll need is three litres per day, per person, per man, per degree over 25 degrees Celsius, per kilometre if walking on foot, in the winter months dividing it by two, plus… another litre… at the end.”)

If I remember correctly he would do things such as change a tyre and have the 4WD fall off the jack, or would be talking about some poisonous flower and the much beaten up 4WD would be rolling backwards down a hill, him oblivious.

He ended the episode fully bandaged up but still talking enthusiastically about the correct way to do something.

There had been a few similar programs going back to the 70s, not self consciously funny, long before Steve Irwin, of the what’s-down-this-hole-oh-it’s-a-poisonous-snake school of TV entertainment, the Leyland Brothers springs to mind, but I guess Coight had Irwin in his sights.

I do object to that comparison, my shorts are nowhere near as large as his for a start, but while I may have the same propensity to get into ridiculous predicaments on my travels, ie, seat bolt snapping, or glasses screw ditto, I think I’m generally more resourceful than him in getting moving again.

PS. Coight, as in the game popular on cruise ships, is Australian slang for, err, arsehole, as in a particular physical location rather than definition of character type. But like me Coight was a generally cheery, personable if not genial character, just trying to get along with people.

Then again Coight was reasonably handsome.

Maybe that’s what the cowboy was referring to.