Ravings for Remedies

It was during The Mudbash of ‘93, that two virtual virgins of alcohol clumsily carried on like tools and by a miraculous effort beyond the stammering possibility of sobriety actually managed to score some chicks and make new mates but forget their names in the morning. Without question I had certainly been exposed to copious quantities of grog before, namely my brother’s indulgent venture to shout me as many cocktails as I desired, while on a ‘work party’ at our ski club and incidentally turned out to be my first sexual experience with something more than a tree branch or a bull-bar. It was deep within the Victorian highlands during winter that we experienced much more than most young men could hope for under more ‘heated’ circumstances.

Back then, Mudbash was true to its name, as it was rare for the premises and surrounding areas of Mafeking Rover Park not to be drenched in rain and in some cases, snow. For that reason, the ground had a rather crappy, sloppy, muddy and liquidy kind of surface that sticks to your boots no hassles and during a drinking session around our camp fire, our crew (Ken Tickell) were spouting deeds of such eloquence like they were going out of fashion.

Alcohol being that common element to keep us warm was hard to come by in a cheap form where we were situated and I’d only saved fifty dollars to spend. But there was a major problem as beer had a sobering affect on me, i.e. it wasn’t strong enough. That is where Mudbash port comes in, it was cheap and copious, almost like they were giving it away and as such I’d bought three bottles. Even had enough left over for donuts. Though as I later found it really needed a sticker of hazardous chemicals on the front and certain licenses to handle such acrid shit. Why didn’t my sponser tell me about it? For that matter, why didn’t the crew warn me? Mudbash port is rocket fuel and cannot be thought of as a likely choice in alcoholic beverages; as at it’s core, it’s environmentally unsound and psychoactive. Forget napalm, Mudbash Port is the new weapon. It was only after this experience that I noticed purple splash marks of scorched earth and white worm-like entrails that were later discovered to be crew-meal-spaghetti.

After finishing the three of the six donuts, I returned to camp and noticed the smile on Dave’s face had something to do with the consumption of alcohol, which he had taken. Passing Dave a bottle of HAZCHEM-port and the remainder of the donuts, we sat around the fire for another hour. The intention was to finish all the beer before we obliviously tackled the gut-wrenching port. It was when I stood up to throw the flat beer in the fire and retrieve another can from the remainder of the slab (three beers), that the whole world starting spinning and all of a sudden I collapsed underneath the flag-pole we’d constructed earlier. For a few seconds I passed out and when I woke everybody was laughing at me, which in turn forced me to laugh.

Dave tried to help me up as I said “If this is what it’s like being at the center of gravity, I don’t want to be here!” Dave laughed and much to his own dismay, I did a reverse cazaleigh back to the earth. On a final attempt I was lifted onto a chair by Fiona & Dave amidst crew laughter all about. With eyes as mere slits and the feeling that my face was swollen, I tried concentrating on the fire bin now twisting and contorting like Stevie Wonder doing a head-spin in a tumble-dryer. Of coarse, I had great trouble even focusing on the fire, that danced so enigmatically.

During this moment of undulating gravitational forces, the Moonshine Man (MM) made his entrance début and introduced himself to the crew. Amidst the pounding of a minutely shrunken brain, swigs and skulls were numerous throughout that evening and the distant sounds of drunken disorderly resonated off the walls of many a portaloo and receding hairline.

It took the absence of beer to motivate Dave and myself to leave the camp-site and search for some new excitement, our first mistake comprised of opening the Mudbash Port. Heading back down the main road to the carpark, we then turned left and walked along the fence-line, which was overgrown with entangled bracken and creepers. In the interests of warmth, we entered one site with a larger fire-bin than our own crew and just welcomed ourselves to their unrestricted hospitality. After some awkward silence, we introduced ourselves as Dad and Dave. A testament to the quality of my own memory is that even after ridiculous quantities of rocket-fuel, I remembered two people at that first site: Gus and Brutus. After warming up and the various ravings from the drunk, we said our goodbyes and left the same way we came, only this time I kept walking into fences and cars.

We had a definite intention to locate a familiar crew, Barak Rovers. Only problem, every crew looks the same from a distance. To make matters worse, most sites didn’t have any crew signs and being the rather quiet crew that they were – it wouldn’t have surprised me if we’d walked past it several times.