As for site redesign - still on the cards - dunno.

What really has been taking up my time though is work - just before Christmas, I got a call from the South Burnett Times - a newspaper in Kingaroy. They also run the Kingaroy Mail, Central & North Burnett Times, Western Times and Balonne Beacon. Their journalist out at St George was going on holidays and they needed someone to fill in for her - I got the job.

I’ve never worked in newspapers before, so it’s been a pretty wild experience. St George is a pretty cool place - well, actually it’s pretty hot this time of year - but the people are cool - very friendly - small rural town sort of thing - very much like my home town of Esk - only bigger - population around 3,000 - and there are four pubs!

Anyway, expect changes to the website. When I’m not looking for work or continuing with the never-ending house renovations, I’ll be playing with the site design.

How then has Hollywood reacted to changes in attitude regarding sexuality since the ‘enlightenment’ decades of the sixties and seventies, which saw, as Benshoff and Griffin (2004, p. 4) state, people who did not identify with heteronormativity “coming out of the closet”, particularly after the Stonewall Riots of 1969 in New York? If popular film does reflect the attitudes and concerns of society, as Ryan and Kellner (1988, p. 12) suggest, what evidence does contemporary film provide that more fluid attitudes to questions of gender and sexuality are becoming more widely examined and accepted? A brief look at the history of Hollywood cinema from the 1930s to the end of the twentieth century, and a consideration of two films, both released in 1999, Boys Don’t Cry and Summer of Sam, suggests that although contemporary cinema may appear to be more open towards, even supportive of, non-heteronormative notions of gender and sexuality, it still insists on presenting the ‘normal’ heterosexual relationship of man/male and woman/female as the proper - and safest - sexual practice and expression of gender and sexuality.

While it would be difficult, indeed impossible, to deny that the most prominent gender and sexuality portrayed in Hollywood cinema has been, respectively, male and heterosexual, at the same time, other possibilities and potentialities have not been ignored. The way in which those ‘others’ have been represented, however, is certainly open to debate and contestation. Benshoff and Griffin (2004, p. 6) claim “one of the earliest films”, made in 1895 by W. K. L. Dickson, “showed two men dancing intimately together”. Admittedly, it was not a ‘film’ as such, but an experiment in the development of the camera and film as a medium. They may well have been “heterosexual workers … performing for the newly invented camera”, but it is not, as Benshoff and Griffin (2004, p. 6) point out, “the usual expected heterosexual couple”. One has to wonder, why have them dancing together? Why not, if masculinity is the dominant myth, have the two men engaged in an arm wrestle or a dance of a more pugilistic nature? After all, it was a time when homosexuality was being defined as distinct from heterosexuality - and a time of scandal and prosecution for acts of “homosexual male sexual activity”, the most notable case, according to Cranny-Francis et al. (2003, p. 22), being the judicial condemnation of Oscar Wilde. Perhaps, quite simply, it was a mere aberration that had slipped through the net before the establishment of the institutions, the motion picture studios, which would, and did, enforce the presentation of notions of normative heterosexuality within cinematic productions.

Hollywood was, according to Benshoff and Griffin (2004, p. 6) not reluctant in establishing the heteronormative romantic alignment of male-female as “fundamental to the story-telling formula”. When characters outside of this hegemonic ‘norm’ were portrayed, it was generally with contempt, derision or, Benshoff and Griffin (2004, p.6) claim, as “the butt of jokes”, thus promoting the preferred sexuality and gender identification compliant with heteronormativity. Indeed, in the 1930s, Hollywood’s Production Code Administration laid down Hollywood’s Movie Commandments, in which secretary, Olga J. Martin (Lugowski 1999, p. 5) explains, “No hint of sex perversion may be introduced into a screen story”. This only raises, however, another question: why is non-heteronormative, non-procreative, yet consensual, sexual activity or performance considered a perversion? Perhaps it is no mere coincidence that the Production Code Administration chose to title their regulatory edicts as ‘Commandments’. As Horrocks (1997, p. 3) asserts, “Any discussion of sexuality that ignores the Christian view is incomplete”. Christianity has, continues Horrocks (1997, p. 3), “dominated Western thinking for a very long time”, and continues to do so. The Catholic Church admonishes, indeed condemns to eternal damnation, any sexual activity outside of matrimonial procreativity (Horrocks 1997, p. 17). One cannot sin against heteronormativity and expect to go unpunished.

Brandon (Hilary Swank), from Boys Don’t Cry, and Ritchie (Adrien Brody), from Summer of Sam, though each predominantly portrayed in a positive light, are sinners and punished accordingly. The fact that Ritchie survives his beating, but Brandon dies for his wickedness, suggests, perhaps sardonically, that Hollywood is a fair and just God, administering retribution in keeping with the level of divergence. Boys Don’t Cry is based on the true story of Brandon Teena, who was born with female genitalia, yet grew up to identify himself as a heterosexual male. Summer of Sam is a story about two male, childhood friends, Vinny (John Leguizamo) and Ritchie, who grew apart: the former desperately clinging onto his cultural background as a Christian Italian American; the latter more adventurous, and arguably more successful, in developing his own identity and sexuality. But before further discussion on these particular texts, it is beneficial to trace a brief history of the cinematic representation of sexuality from the decade of the ‘Commandments’ up to the supposedly more liberated nineties.

Each film begins with a written text, a blueprint of sorts for what is to come. The opening shot of The Maltese Falcon is of the falcon itself – a black statue of the bird – emphatically Gothic in appearance. Lighting casts a dense, domineering shadow behind the bird, suggesting otherness. The words which scroll over this shot provide a brief history of the bird’s origin and its theft by pirates, but do not reveal what became of it. Indeed, the final words of this passage claim “the fate of the Maltese Falcon remains a mystery to this day”. Is this the beginning of an end to that mystery? Or is this, as Abramson (1988, p. 115) suggests, just another “episode in the falcon’s colorful written history”? As it turns out, Abramson is correct, but the film becomes less a tale of the falcon and more a humanist narrative that “confirms”, as Mules (2007, p. 180) claims, “the good of human existence … despite the fallenness of the world”.

While the opening shot of Pulp Fiction is not as dramatic as that of The Maltese Falcon, its apparent simplicity hides a complexity indicative of what is to follow. The white text on a black background is a dictionary definition:

PULP (pulp) n. 1. A soft, moist, shapeless mass of matter. 2. A magazine or book containing lurid subject matter and being characteristically printed on rough, unfinished paper.

One might read this as to suggest the film is not well-formed, perhaps even “unfinished”. Yet the accuracy of these words, as a dictionary definition, indicates the precision of director, Quentin Tarantino’s construction of this work of fiction. Precision and deliberateness are traits both films share.

Huston’s The Maltese Falcon is the third screen version of Dashiell Hammett’s novel and is, claims Maxfield (1989, p. 253), “the perfect and indelible incarnation” of that text. But it is not so much Huston’s accurate translation of novel to film that exemplifies the film’s perfection. This, rather, exists, as Maxfield (1989, p. 253) argues, in the film’s “visual style and the performances of its cast”. Mules (2007, p. 177) claims The Maltese Falcon “is one of the first films of the genre known as film noir”. As such, it displays quite prominently the iconography of that genre: the private eye; trench coats; the conspicuous follower who stands in lit doorways or hides behind a newspaper; constant cigarette smoking and the smoking gun; dark alleys; night rain on city streets; and the treacherous femme fatale. But perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of film noir is its use of lighting, or more precisely, shadow. Cooke (1985, p. 93), citing Schrader, suggests texts of film noir exhibit a “fondness for oblique lines and fractured light”. These oblique lines are often created by light through Venetian blinds or more solid, triangular shadows cast by the eaves of buildings, street lamps, staircases, and standard or table lamps. This technique provides for a visual depiction of the binary oppositions of fact/fiction, honesty/dishonesty, good/evil.

Rather than obscure what might be read from a scene, this technique has a tendency to highlight narrative intent. Huston craftily utilizes this visual style to both predict and confirm events in the story. When Brigid O’Shaughnessy (Mary Astor) first enters the office of Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) and his partner, Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan), she approaches confidently at first, then hesitates momentarily. She then passes through shadow before reaching Sam’s desk. It is as though she is physically stepping into the charadic persona of Miss Wonderly. As she tells her story to Sam, the brim of her hat casts a strong shadow over her eyes. If eyes be the window to the soul, this soul is in hiding. A backdrop to her histrionic story-telling is a window on which is painted “SPADE AND ARCHER”. Brigid’s head is positioned over Archer’s name, a hint, or more thematically appropriate, a clue to who will be responsible for the eventual demise of Miles. Later, after Miles is shot, Sam looks across from his desk to that of Miles. The shadow from the window sign falls against the wall behind the unoccupied desk. The shadow of “SPADE” is clearly visible, but the shadow of “ARCHER” is obscured. Through the use of shadow and the precise positioning of actors and objects, Huston has provided a summation of a driving thread in the narrative: the woman is not who she seems; Miles is murdered; ‘who dunnit’.

Another aspect of the mise en scène persistent throughout The Maltese Falcon is the confinement of its characters. As Naremore (1973, p. 243) notes, “Most of the action takes place inside four rooms – Spade’s office, his apartment, and the hotel rooms of Brigid O’Shaughnessy and Casper Gutman” (Sydney Greenstreet). The claustrophobic effect of these “close interiors”, which Naremore (1973, p. 243) considers as important an element of the film noir “as open vistas are to the western”, is further enhanced, again, by the use of lighting and the positioning of actors. When detectives, Dundy (Barton MacLane) and Polhaus (Ward Bond), enter Sam’s apartment to question him over the shooting of Miles, the first thing Dundy does is turn on another light, as if doing so will reveal the truth. But any openness that might be afforded by extra illumination is quickly closed down as Dundy and Polhaus form a tight triangle with Sam, seated on his bed, as the nadir. Sam, however, will not allow himself to be overcome by their dominance. He stands and breaks through them, forming a new triangle where, becoming the apex, he declares: “I know where I stand now”. But does he? Sam must now, as Abramson (1988, p. 112) states, “navigate among the verbal truths and lies of his adversaries” to fill in the gaps and complete the story which will, in the end, provide firmament to his moral standing. As an example of humanist ideology, when Sam finally uncovers the truth and opts for loyalty to his murdered partner over his love for Brigid, the film’s conclusion, as Mules (2007, p. 180) states, “sees the redemption of Sam as a ‘good man’”. The focalisation of “the redemption of humanity … through a male character”, however, as Mules (2007, p. 180) continues, presents women as “obstacles or threats” - the femmes fatale so iconic of the film noir genre.

Pulp Fiction, too, is a film that ends in redemption, though that ending is not the actual conclusion of the narrative - that occurs about two-thirds of the way through the film, when Butch (Bruce Willis) and Fabienne (Maria de Medeiros) ride out of town on the purloined ‘chopper’, Grace. While The Maltese Falcon expresses modernist concerns with paranoia and corruption, Pulp Fiction is schizoid. As Mules (2007, p. 210) states, “postmodernism mixes the past and the present …[so much so]… it becomes difficult to separate them”. Time in The Maltese Falcon follows a straight line. “Sequences of time outside the plot”, as Mules (2007, p. 210) claims, “are signified by flashbacks … anchored to a specific character speaking in the present”, in this case, Brigid O’Shaughnessy when she first meets Sam, and Casper Gutman when he tells Sam about his quest for the bird. In Pulp Fiction, however, “the distinction”, according to Mules (2007, p. 210), “between the past and the present is collapsed”.

The first scene is really part of the beginning of the final scene, which, as noted earlier, is not actually the end of the story. In an attempt to pull this confusion of time into a more usual narrative structure, Alleva (1994, p. 30) blocks the film into six segments: a prologue followed by chapters - one to five. Tarantino does break the film up into sections, but the overlapping, or ‘inter-lapping’, of the stories destroys any sequential concept of ‘chapters’ as such. It is, as Smith (1994, p. 33) claims, “a structure that scrambles chronology without flashbacks”. Any attempt to shuffle Alleva’s ‘chapters’ into a linear narrative will only end in a convoluted narrative maze. Alleva’s ‘chapter 1’ is the most obvious beginning and should lead into ‘chapter 4’ and ‘chapter 5’, which includes the ‘prologue’, and goes back to ‘chapter 3’, during which is ‘chapter 2’. This “improbably elaborate narrative architecture”, as Smith (1994, p. 33) proposes, “obliges the viewer to contemplate the usually invisible mechanisms of narrative selection”. Yet it is not a confusing text, being “put together”, as Alleva (1994, p. 31) states, “with a jeweler’s precision”. The apparent disruption of normative narrative structure actually tends to speed up the story rather than bog it down in concerns over when what should happen or how events slot into any set timeline. It gives the text fluidity. As Diawara, interviewed by Kolbowski (1998, p. 55), argues, “the movement and acceleration of movement are representations of being conversant with space, of being fluid, of making it easy to do things”.

While Pulp Fiction certainly handles time in a completely different fashion to The Maltese Falcon, there are similarities in visual and directorial style. Vincent (John Travolta) and Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) are hitmen in the employ of the mobster, Marcellus (Ving Rhames). They are sent to retrieve a briefcase stolen from Marcellus by some youths. When they arrive at the door of the apartment where the youths are, Jules asks Vincent, “What time ya got?” As it is only 7:22am, Jules decides, “It ain’t quite time yet”. The two walk out of the dark corridor to an area of light. It is as though they have momentarily moved off-stage. Some minutes later, Jules says, “Come on, let’s get into character”, and they walk back into the dark - back on-stage. This is, in a way, reminiscent of Brigid stepping into the character of Miss Wonderly. It also, as with Brigid, enables the characters to be seen in a strong light and a dark light, moving freely from one to the other, giving them the ability, as Mules (2007, p. 219) suggests, to be “both ‘bad’ and ‘good’ at the same time”. Tarantino’s use, throughout the film, of light and dark enables a potential for this text to be considered noir-esque, though it “mixes”, as Mules (2007, p. 219) points out, so many “styles and fashions” to make any clear generic positioning as problematic and tenuous as defining its narrative structure. “It is”, as Jewers ( 2000, p. 40) argues, “a labyrinth of verbal and visual intertexts”, drawing from, continues Jewers (2000, p. 55), “samurai films, the spaghetti Western … vigilante films, musicals, kung fu films … Hitchcock-style horror films, and film noir”. However, as Jewers (2000, p. 55) claims, Pulp Fiction does have at its heart “one image and object [which] dominates the unraveling of the narrative, and visually links disparate parts of the story: the briefcase”. And just as the statue of the bird leads Sam to his redemption, so too, the briefcase, its contents concealed like the real wealth of the bird, leads to the redemption of Jules.

A further similarity between these films is the confinement of characters within the mise en scène. While Huston utilises physical space and the positioning of characters in ever-changing triangles of power, Tarantino uses the camera itself. Numerous close-up shots place characters to one side of the frame with at least one half of the frame empty, suggesting both confinement and the possibility of movement or escape at the same time. But what confines the characters in both films the most is time. Huston’s characters, apart from being confined to a linear timeline, are under pressure by the detectives, yet must wait for the ship, which carries the bird, to come in. Ironically, given Tarantino’s deconstruction of time, it is time that his characters must break to gain freedom. Clocks, watches, and questions of “what time is it?” or declarations of “it’s time” are persistent motifs. Butch must retrieve his father’s watch before he can leave town. In doing so, he also achieves redemption in his saving of Marcellus from the rapist, Zed (Peter Greene). When Marcellus asks Mr. Wolf (Harvey Keitel) to clean up the mess created by Jules and Vincent, when Vincent accidentally shoots Marvin (Phil LaMarr), Mr. Wolf says, “It’s thirty minutes away. I’ll be there in ten”, an ability which saves what might otherwise have seen the demise of Jules and Vincent. Though it is time, in the form of Butch’s return for his father’s watch which does bring about an end to Vincent’s life. Vincent, even though he has seen ‘the light’ from the briefcase, refuses to redeem himself, as Jules does, and for this he must pay. His time is up.

While produced over fifty years apart, with different social, economic and political contexts - and within quite different periods of artistic, philosophical and ideological development - these quite disparate, yet in many ways, similar films confirm, in their own style, the argument by Thwaites, Davis and Mules (2002, p. 118) that narration is the “process and effects of representing time in texts”. However, narratives need not, as Pulp Fiction shows, be structured by time in a linear fashion. Both films undeniably express a humanist approach through the redemptions of Sam, Butch and Jules. Yet Huston’s text is modernist with, as Mules (2007, p. 210) claims, its “single temporal trajectory”. Tarantino, on the other hand, breaks those bounds to create the mutated body of postmodernism. Even so, though seemingly separated by time, style and ideology, these two films are both concerned with the construction of narrative over time.

As he stepped out of the car, he noticed there was a white cottage about a hundred, maybe two hundred metres down the hill to the north. No people that he could see. The carport was empty. There were a couple of dogs in a fenced-off yard to the side of the house. One, a typical cattledog, mostly white with a black patch around one eye was uninterested, more occupied with scratching itself, twisting on its back on the sandy ground. The other, a collie. It looked like a miniature version of Lassie. It had been busily digging a hole but stopped to look at him as he moved to the back of the ute. Nothing to worry about there, he thought, fenced and harmless. He grabbed an axe from the ute and proceeded with the task.

When he’d finished, he looked up to see the collie had somehow gotten out of the yard and had positioned itself under a tree just inside the property fence-line. At least, he thought, it wasn’t barking, just watching him, its tail thumping the dry earth creating little puffs of dust with each strike. He tossed his axe into the back of the ute and pulled out a hessian bag into which he placed his prize. He jumped into the driver’s seat and took off with a roar, tyres spinning and spewing gravel and dirt behind him. In the rear view mirror, he noticed the collie trotting up to where he’d left the body. It looked like the dog was scratching at the corpse. Huh, so what, he thought, it’s not as if the dumb dog’s gonna tell anyone, is it - like it’s gonna write down my rego for Christ’s sake. It’ll probably maul the bloody thing. Ha! Lassie did it!

“Hey Marko!”, she exclaimed, stopping her digging as she noticed a car pull over up at the road. “Look, someone’s pulled over”, she said excitedly, “Let’s go see, come on! Let’s go see!” She buzzed around him like a blowfly on the wrong side of a window.

“Bugger off, Sheba, can’t you see I’m busy?” Marko responded grumpily as he rubbed his back on the ground. “It’s probably just someone dropping off some empty beer cans for Dad”, he continued, “I don’t know why they do that. He has enough of his own and they all just end up in that big green thing that he takes back up to the road anyway.”

“It’s called a wheelie bin, dufus, and they don’t drop them off for him - that’s called littering”, Sheba explained as she carefully pushed aside the besser block covering a hole she’d dug under the fence. Silly Dad, she thought, he really should have put the block on the outside. Humans, humph. As Sheba squeezed herself under the fence, she said, “Come on, I’m gonna check it out.” She raced up to her favourite road-watching spot under a frangipani tree just near the front of the property. Marko, meanwhile, stopped his scratching, found an old bone and settled down for some serious chewing.

Sheba is a two-year-old Shetland Sheepdog, not, as many boorishly ignorant humans called her, a mini-Collie or worse, a miniature Lassie. She hates that. No, she’s a Shetland Sheepdog - a pedigreed Shetland Sheepdog. Well, maybe she’s not really pedigreed, but still, her elegant head and mane-like frill of abundant, long hair which envelops her shoulders and chest, give her the appearance of royalty. Marko, on the other hand, is, well, hard to say really. There’s definitely a bit of blue cattledog in there. Maybe a bit of Kelpie, a bit of Border-Collie, possibly even a bit of Labrador, though that’s unlikely as Labs are considered to be quite intelligent. In the end, Marko’s just a dog. No pretensions. No attitude. Just your average four-year-old Australian cattledog, though he’s not really sure what the ‘cattle’ bit means.

But Marko has an ability Sheba lacks. Marko understands. Marko knows. Marko understands when their human, the one they call ‘Dad’, says “Out!”, it’s time to leave the house. He understands ‘rug’ means to lie down on his rug in front of the heater. He understands ‘bed’ means it’s time to go to his kennel. Marko knows when he hears Dad pick up his car keys, it’s time to go into their yard at the side of the house, while Dad drives off to wherever - that’s something Marko doesn’t know or understand. But he does know that when Dad gets back from wherever he’s been, it’s time for a fresh bone from Marko’s favourite piece of furniture in the whole house, the tall white thing in the kitchen. He also knows it’s time for dinner when he hears a certain sound from the silver ‘picture-box’ in the corner of the lounge room, though he doesn’t understand why Dad has such a big dinner bell and why he sits and stares at it for hours at a time. But you’ve got to admit, Marko knows quite a bit. Sheba doesn’t know any of this stuff. She just bounces around the place like the annoying little puppy that she is. Marko thinks, no, Marko knows Sheba is just a nuisance. Sheba, however, knows that Marko is just a dumb dog, totally lacking, she believes, in any ability to understand anything at all. Their human, their Dad, Ruben Franks, doesn’t know why he has these two dogs. All they ever do is pester him for ballgames or food - usually at the same time - Sheba always wants to play; Marko always wants to eat.

“Oh honestly, Ted, you bastard”, I groaned as I fished some more change out of my pocket and placed it on the bar, “I really don’t know why I let you talk me into taking on those bloody dogs.” We were sitting at the bar of the Criterion Hotel, the hub of downtown Currandilla.

“Well geez, mate”, Ted replied, a big grin spread across his otherwise craggy, sun-damaged face, “you could have just said no. But then, of course, the poor little buggers would’ve probably ended up with the needle, ya know, and anyhow, you’re livin’ in the bush now. Ya gotta have a dog … or two.”

He chuckled as he tapped his empty beer glass on the bar and called out, “Hey, what’s a man gotta do to get a drink around here. This ain’t the local CWA shake’n’bake cookin’ class, is it?”
“Watch your mouth, you”, said the woman working behind the bar, “or you’ll be cooking your own dinner tonight.”

That was Barb, Ted’s wife, a strikingly attractive, tall and broad-shouldered woman in her sixties, similar in stature to Aussie swimming legend and anti-hero, Dawn Fraser. And just as any man who treasured his testicles wouldn’t want to cross Dawn on a bad day, you wouldn’t want to step on Barb’s toes any time. Not that she’s an aggressive person. Far from it. She’s the most lovable, caring and compassionate person you could meet. She’d have to be to put up with Ted. Sometimes I think they’re the epitome of that adage: opposites attract. No, the danger with Barb is her wit - one wrong move and she’ll slice you in half with her razor sharp tongue.

Ted and Barb were pretty much the only people I’d really been able to become friends with since moving here from the city about two years ago. I’d met them, as one does, in the pub when I’d unknowingly taken Ted’s spot at the bar. I was just sitting there having a quiet beer, wondering to myself why on earth I’d moved to Currandilla. My plan had been to move to the bush and write the great Australian novel. Sure, I did get my first novel off to the publisher within twelve months of being here, but I wouldn’t call it great. Still, Night of the Delivery Driver had secured me another advance and was actually selling quite well, though mostly at airport terminal outlets. But why Currandilla? Why not Maleny or Kenilworth, somewhere with a bit more style and class? As I was pondering the wisdom of my choice of retreat from the city, I became aware of someone standing close behind me. I slowly twisted around on the bar stool and saw a short, older man, sixty-plus, clad in ironed denim jeans, ironed flannelette shirt, and, could it be, I thought, an ironed cardigan. The only thing un-ironed about this guy was his face which bore the evidence of a man who had seen far too much sun and possibly too much hardship. It was not necessarily a hardened countenance. Indeed, his jowls displayed the softness of maturity and his eyes had an oddly oppositional glint of youthful mischievousness. But there was certainly something about him that presented an aura of ‘not-to-be-messed-with-ness’. He wasn’t looking at me, but rather, his eyes, looking up, slowly shifted from side to side as if there was a tennis match being played out on the ceiling.

“You right there, mate?”, I asked.

“Yeah, mate, yeah”, came a gruff and gravelly reply, as he continued to follow the game above.

“Excuse me, Sir”, beckoned a gentle voice from behind the bar. I turned back to see the domineering figure I was soon to know as Barb. “I’m sorry”, she continued, “you must be new in town. My name’s Barb. That strange, yet totally harmless, man behind you is my husband, Ted.” She held out a smooth white hand of greeting.

“Uh, hi”, I said, accepting her hand with my own, “I’m Ruben.” I turned to offer my hand to Ted. “Gidday, Ted, how ya doin’?” He shook my hand, mumbling what I took to be a hello. I was sure his eyes still had not left the ceiling.

“You see, Ruben”, continued Barb, “the thing is, Ted’s a little bit funny about where he sits at the bar. To tell you the truth, he’s a little bit funny full stop.”

I slipped across to the next stool. “Sorry, mate, I’m new to the area. Haven’t quite gotten a grasp on the cultural and social mores of Currandilla as yet”, I quipped. Ted plonked himself down on his stool, leaned over to me and said, “There’s only two things ya need to get a handle on ‘round ‘ere, Ruben, mate, ya beer and ya-self – buncha drunks and wankers – that’s all the culture you’ll get in this town.”

“And,” said Barb, gently patting my hand, “you’ve just met the Activities Director.”

Sheba watched in horror as the man swung the axe separating head from body in one strike. The man looked around, spotting her under the tree. She wagged her tail furiously. Play cute and dumb, she thought, this human is dangerous. When she saw the man get into his car, she raced up to the roadside. As the car sped off, she scratched into the soft fur of the mutilated body: FYC289. She then ran down to the house. She needed help. She needed strength. She needed brawn. Though she hated to admit it, she needed Marko.

“Marko! Marko! Quick. We’ve got a problem,” she barked at him urgently.

He turned one eye to her. “No, princess, you have a problem. I’ve got a bone, and it ain’t no problem at all.”

“Listen, Marko, there was a dead koala up there. That human just chopped its head off. He’s a trophy hunter. I got his rego. We need to get the body down here so Dad’ll find it.”

“Trophy hunters, fuck I hate that,” Marko snarled as he stood up, tossing his bone aside. “So what’ll we do?”

“I’m not sure,” pondered Sheba, “but first we need to get the body down here. Now we can’t just drag it down. We can’t risk damaging the body ‘cause I scratched the guy’s rego into it. Maybe we could rig up a pulley system.” She starting pawing at the ground. “Let me think, now, it’s an adult male, I’d say, hmm, minus the head, the weight would probably be about…”

While Sheba mused over the various mathematical equations involved in her elaborate scheme, Marko jumped up onto his kennel and from there, over the fence, then down the backyard to the shed. He squirmed his way into the harness of the trailer Ruben had built for him so that he could help with cleaning up fallen trees and branches. By the time Sheba was done with her calculations, concluding it would be impossible for them to get the koala’s body down to the house before Ruben got home, Marko had pulled up to the front of the house with the body in his trailer. Arching his back so that his backside stuck up in the air, he was able to tip the trailer, allowing the body to gently roll out and stop just before the steps to the verandah. He then took the trailer back to the shed. To get back into the dog yard, he had to jump up onto the feed bins at the back of the house, then up onto the carport, then down into the yard. If there was one thing Marko could do well, it was jump. Sheba looked up from the scrawls she’d made in the ground. “Marko! Get out here! You’ve got to help me!”, she barked frantically.

“Can it, professor. The job’s done already. And you’ll be done too if you don’t get yourself back in here. My tummy tells me Dad should be home soon.”

Sure enough, Ruben’s white station wagon was just turning into the driveway. “Shit,” said Sheba. She hurriedly squeezed herself under the fence. Then Marko effortlessly pushed the besser block back into place with his head. Sheba wondered which was thicker, the brick or Marko’s skull. “Act natural,” he told her. She started jumping up and down, barking in a high-pitched yip. “Sheesh,” sighed Marko, as he calmly walked over to the yard’s gate to wait for Ruben – and the fresh bone he knew he was soon to get.

“So they givin’ ya grief?”, asked Ted.

“Nah, not really,” I replied. “Actually, they’re pretty cool. It’s just a lot more work … and cost than I’d anticipated. But no, I’d be lost without ‘em now. Hmm, I’d better get down to the butcher. I’m outta bones an’ if Marko doesn’t get a bone after I’ve been to the pub, I’ll be grounded.” I finished my beer, said my ‘see ya later’s’ and headed out onto the street.

“Hey Ruben, how ya doin’?”
“Hi Bill. Hey there Rusty, what’s your problem?” Bill, ‘Wild Bill’, they called him, was struggling to keep his feisty Blue Cattledog, Rusty, from jumping up into the back of a garishly purple ute with a yellow stripe down the side.

“Aw, somethin’ in the backa’dis ute’s up ‘is nose, but all I can see is a bunch of power tools and shit. Just another knacker,” said Bill, his words only just able to slip through the mass of hair around his mouth. Sometimes the only way to know Bill was saying something was by the way the bottom of his beard would wiggle when he spoke.

Knackers are what the townsfolk call the many young new-comers to the area – ‘new-comer-renovators’ - mostly young newly-wed couples renovating old houses they’d had moved onto a vacant block. There was a lot of that. During the week, they’d commute to work in the city, which was only an hour or two drive south-east. Then on the weekends, there’d be nail-guns and circular saws, sanders and planers, you name it, every bloody power tool you could find at a Bunnings Warehouse, ka-popping, whirring, grinding and ring-a-ding-fucking-dinging from sun-up to sundown. Ah, the peace and tranquility of living in the bush.

“Maybe that’s the problem,” I suggested, “though they usually drive Prados, don’t they?”

“Nah, mate, Rav-4s,” he replied with a sneer, perceptible only by the quiver of a sideburn.

“Well in any case,” I said, looking at the vehicle’s tailgate, “this knacker’s got attitude. This is one of those new Falcons, you know, the XR8. ‘the power it gives blokes…’.”

“Is unbelievable, yeah, I seen the ad too,” sneered Bill. “The power those blokes need ain’t under the bonnet,” he grunted, tugging at his crotch as if his jeans were a garage for his own V8 man-machine.

“Give it a rest,” I groaned.
“Oi, get that mongrel away from my ute.”

We turned to see a young man, early to mid-twenties, five-day stubble on his face and a mobile phone stuck to one ear. “I’ll talk to you later,” he said to whoever. He came up to the car. “There better not be any scratches,” he growled as he wiped a hand across the side panel.

“Nah, it’s fine mate,” mumbled Bill. “The dog’s just curious. You got somethin’ dead in the back there or sumpin?”

“I’ll leave yas to it,” I said, patting Bill on the shoulder. “Gotta go, mate.” I didn’t like the look of this situation. Hopefully, the young punk’ll leave it alone. As I walked off, I glanced back to see the guy getting into his driver’s seat. Wise man. That Rusty could bring down a mad bull if Bill wanted it to. I picked up some bones from the butcher, found my car at the back of the pub and headed off for the safety of my cottage in the bush.

As I pulled into my driveway, I could see Marko waiting at the gate to the dog yard. Sheba was, as always, bouncing around like a ball in a squash court. I parked under the car port, grabbed my groceries – and the bag of dog bones – and took them into the kitchen. I could hear Sheba’s nagging bark.

“Yeah, yeah, hang on,” I called out as I walked back out and headed for their pen. When I opened the gate, Marko immediately raced into the kitchen. Sheba did her usual running around me in circles like she was rounding up sheep.

“I know, Sheba, you want a game, but you know how it goes. He won’t be interested until he’s had a bone.”

The game we play is really quite strange. I throw a ball; Marko races after it; Sheba races after Marko. As Marko brings the ball back to me, Sheba runs around in a big circle. By the time I’ve thrown the ball again and Marko has gone to get it, Sheba has reached the spot where Marko is jumping up to catch the bouncing ball. It’s kind of like a doggie version of AFL. The problem, however, is that Sheba won’t play without Marko. Sheba isn’t actually interested in the ball – she’s chasing the dog. Marko doesn’t mind playing the game, but his priorities are different. He prefers eating and sleeping.

In the kitchen, Marko was pacing back and forth in front of the fridge. “Hang on, mate, the bones are over here.” As I went to the bench where I’d left the bag of bones, an odd thing happened. Sheba had gone up to Marko and the two of them, mouths almost touching, were quietly growling at each other.

“Marko,” whispered Sheba, “we need to get Dad out the front so he can find the koala.”

“I want a bone,” snarled Marko.

“No, your bone can wait. This is important.”

“Oh, and like, bones aren’t important. Come on. It ain’t like the bloody koala’s goin’ anywhere. It’s dead.”

“I’ll tell ya what, work with me on this and you can have my bone,” pleaded Sheba.

“Now you’re talkin’.”

Marko suddenly raced out of the kitchen, grabbed a ball, and ran back up onto the verandah. Sheba bounded off through the lounge room to the French doors at the front of the house.

Now that, I thought, is pretty weird. Marko’s never gone for a game over a bone. Oh well. So I opened the doors onto the verandah. “Got your ball, boy. Come on then.”
I followed the dogs as they bounded off the front steps. That’s when I saw the body. “What the fuck’s this? A koala?” I grabbed a nearby stick and gently prodded at the body. You can’t be too careful. You don’t usually see koalas on the ground during the day. And they can get pretty nasty if you upset them.

It didn’t budge. “Hang on,” I said to the dogs, who were watching with keen interest.
“There’s no head. That’s really strange. You guys know anything about this?” Marko twisted his head at me as if he had absolutely no idea what I was on about. Sheba started nudging at the body with her nose.

“Leave it alone, girl.” Then I saw the scratch marks on the koala’s backside. “What the? This fella’s got some sort of branding or something. I think I’d better give someone a call.”

I picked up the body and placed it on a table on the verandah. Then we went inside. I was heading for the phone. Marko went straight to the fridge. “Hang on, boy. I just need to call the Council.”

The Council guy reckoned it was pretty odd; a headless koala with no other signs of damage or signs of being mauled. He gave me the number for the local Ranger, Shirley. Twenty minutes later, she and I were standing on the verandah, looking at the body.

“Those marks,” she said, scratching her head, “look like they’ve been scratched into the flesh. That’s very strange.”

“Yeah,” I replied, “it’s kinda like a rego plate, you know, six figures on the back.” I stretched the koala’s hide a little. “Yeah, it is…just like a rego. I reckon that’s an F, um, Y…C…3, no…2…8…ooh, um, 9, yeah, yeah, FYC289.”

She looked up at me, eyes wide, jaw dropped, as though I’d just asked her out on a date, not that I’d mind. My social – read sex – life had taken a bit of a dive since moving here. My mind started playing that Skyhooks song, ‘Women in Uniforms’, as my eyes surveyed her deliciously curvaceous, khaki-covered body.

“Excuse me a minute,” she said, pulling a mobile phone out of a trouser pocket.

“Um, uh, yeah sure,” I blubbered, shaking myself back into the real world.

She dialed a number. “Hi, it’s me…Yeah, yeah…” She walked off the verandah out into the yard. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but she seemed angry. I pulled a cigarette out of my pocket and moved to the other end of the verandah, as if to give her some privacy.

After she’d finished on the phone, she went to her Range Rover from which she retrieved a hessian bag. She came back up onto the verandah and scooped the koala’s body into the bag.

“So what do you think?” I asked.

“Not bad,” she replied with a rather strange grin, “not bad at all.”

Time for my jaw to drop. I could swear she was staring at the front of my jeans which, embarrassingly, was a little more filled out than usual.

“Um, sorry, what do you mean?” I clumsily moved myself behind the back of a chair beside the table.

“You sure you didn’t set this up just so you could get a nice girl like me out here in the bush,” she said with a wry smile and suggestively raised eyebrows. “I can tell you like what you see.”
“Sorry, I meant what do you think about the koala.” I tried to pretend nothing had happened.

“Yes, yes, of course,” she teased. “Look, how ‘bout I take this back to the office. I’ll make a few calls. See what I can find out about this number business and … well, what say we meet up in town for a drink or something … after work.”

“Yeah, sure,” I responded, perhaps too quickly. “That’d be great. How about dinner … at the pub … my shout.”

The dining room of the Criterion is what would once have been called the ‘Ladies Lounge’. There’s a short bar in one corner; a tea trolley in the other. Beside the bar are a couple of tall, round pub-tables and stools in front of an old, brick fireplace. On the other side of the room, there are eight or so laminated dining tables, each covered with plastic, blue and white plaid tablecloths. The walls, all the way around, feature a continuous landscape of gum trees, billabongs, cattle and men on horseback. The first time I walked into this room, I was reminded of the Australia Cafe in the far Western town of Roma, where I was born in the fifties and grew up in the sixties. More than just a dining room, this place is iconic of rural Australia.

Shirley and I sat at a table in the corner, as far away from the bar-end as possible. As is the case on most evenings, the public bar had overflowed into the dining room. Not that it was noisy. The half a dozen men standing at the bar and around the fireplace seemed more dedicated to their drinks than conversation. It may not have been the most romantic of places, but apart from the servo, the pub is the only place open in town after five. And they do serve a pretty mean Grilled Barra and the most delicious home-made apple pie I have ever tasted.

Barb brought over our wine, a delightfully spicy, Goulburn Valley Marsanne. “I hope this will be to Sir’s liking,” she quipped, “though I’ve heard it can be a little tart.”

“That will be fine. Thank you, waitress,” I sneered back at her.

“Glad to be of service, ma lud,” Barb said, doing a little curtsey as she moved backward toward the bar.

I poured the wine into our glasses and raising mine, said, “So, cheers, I’m, um, glad you could make it.”

“Yes indeed,” Shirley grinned as she gently clinked her glass against mine. I couldn’t help notice her tongue as it gently passed from side to side between her slightly opened lips. There was a sparkle in her eyes that sent a slight tingle through my loins.

“So why would anyone do something like that? You know, with the koala? The numbers on its back?” I queried, rhetorically, hoping to turn down the heat I was beginning to feel around my collar.

“Oh, you’d be surprised by some of the crazy shit we come across around this God-forsaken neck of the woods. Honestly, and people say Gympie’s bad.,” she replied, her tone surprisingly as venomous as a King Brown. “There really are some fruit-loops around these parts,” she continued, glancing around the room, her eyes squinting in a way that gave her face an expression reminiscent of Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane.

“Yeah, I’m kinda starting to believe it,” I replied, sucking in air to ease the sudden nervousness I felt as my mind ran through scenes from Basic Instinct. “So tell me. How does such an attractive and intelligent woman such as yourself end up in Currandilla?” I asked, wanting to change tack.

“Well, ah, to tell you the truth, I’m Currandilla – born and bred. But I got out as soon as I could. Went to Uni down in Lismore…”

As she spoke, I found my mind drifting. I began to wonder about how Marko had wanted to play ball rather than have a bone. He’d never behaved like that before. There must have been a reason. The way they behaved. It was like they were trying to tell me something. Like they wanted me to find the koala. Nah, I thought, that’s ridiculous. And those numbers scratched into the fur. Like surely, dogs can’t read – or write. But then, Sheba does have pretty sharp claws…

“They never worked out what had happened,” she was saying. I shook my head as I realised she’d just been telling me the story of her life, while I’d been off on some fantasy involving the dogs and a headless koala.

“Sorry, what?” I held out my hands as if I was frustrated that ‘they’, whoever they might be had not been able to work out whatever it was that had happened.

“The fire,” she said, twisting her head at me in the same way Sheba often does. “My parents…their house burnt down…they died in the fire. Ruben,” she softly but firmly placed the palms of her hands down on the table, “have you been listening to a word I’ve just said?”

“Shirley,” I said softly, stroking my chin as though I was a physicist about to expound on the Theory of Relativity, “this might sound a bit crazy, but what if…”

“You’re sure I can’t give you a lift home,” I pleaded. We were standing on the footpath outside the pub. Apart from a few of Currandilla’s ‘streeties’ doing stunts on their BMX bikes down one end, the street was empty. And dark. Dead. As dead as a headless koala. As dead as dinner had been. I really had blown it. Not only had I not paid attention to what she’d been saying, I’d rabbited on about the dogs being detectives, like a canine version of Sam Spade and Miss Marple.

“No, Ruben, it’s fine, honest. Andy said he’d be here soon.” She had rung her brother, Andy, asking, no, telling him to come and pick her up. That was around about the time I was suggesting maybe Sheba had scratched the culprit’s car rego into the koala’s hide.

“I’m sorry, Shirley, I just…”

“It’s ok, Ruben, really. Look, let’s get together again … soon. Maybe I could come out to your place. Tomorrow even. I’d love to get to know your dogs and … oh, look, there he is. I’ll give you a call,” she said as she started across the road. A ute had pulled over on the other side.

That’s odd, I thought, it looks just like the one Rusty had been keen on this morning.

As the car drove off, I caught a glimpse of the number plate. Was that F…Y…? Nah, surely not, I thought, scratching my head. I need a beer. This town’s startin’ ta get ta me. Hmm, better make that a scotch. Oh well, maybe if she comes ‘round tomorrow … who knows … it ain’t over yet. Not while this ol’ dog’s still got some bark in ‘im.