“This is your next town. Your last town.”
Bill, the owner of the Rocky Creek Tourist Park, was sitting up front, behind the wheel of the transport bus. I was sitting in back with my second group—six girls from the UK, and three North Americans. He hadn’t said much since the Perth Airport. We were headed north, along the winding Swan River, and the only other detail he had pointed out was the Bandyup Women’s Prison. “You girls will end up there, if you don’t behave.”
On the way to the park I witnessed the most extraordinary and picturesque sunset to date, bursting with pinks and purples and every shade in between. The huge silhouetted eucalyptus trees added a nice touch and just when I thought it wouldn’t get better, a few ridiculously perfect grazing kangaroos appeared in the foreground. Ah. Pinch me!
The tourist park is our accommodation for the next two weeks while we work with the Chittering Landcare group planting trees. I can’t tell you much as I've only been here a little under three hours but I can tell you that I’ve never been anywhere quite like Rocky Creek Tourist Park.
Kay, Bill’s wife, met us as we rumbled along the short dirt track and up to our cabin-style accommodations. I was delighted (well, at first) to have my own room yet again! Wow.
One of the main features of the park is a petting zoo. On our quick ten minute tour of the facilities we must have met 20 alpacas--one that was only two weeks old and THE CUTEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN and also aptly named “Colorado”--chooks (chickens), sheep, geese, donkeys, horses, dogs, and a herd of goats-- including two baby goats that weren’t more than 4 hours old. They don’t eat these animals (we asked), but they do keep them as pets. The only thing that “gits em” is, once again, that little bastard, the fox.
Kay is quick, and all business. A woman of about 55ish, give or take a few years--it’s hard to tell age sometimes with Aussies as the weather, and sun, treats some better than others. Her and Bill moved here 3.5 years ago (I hope to get the rest of the story later). Bill, who I was warned about by one of our host organizers, Polly (who subsequently met us at the airport dressed like a hard core rocker and promised to give me her old guitar as she just bought a new one!) told me Bill is a talker but we haven’t heard much from him, yet. Just the usual: keep our bedroom doors closed otherwise rats, snakes and goannas (large lizards) will just wander in. Oh, and biting ants. So far so good in Western Australia! But it doesn’t stop there.
Kay is pleasant enough but you can tell she is a working woman, used to working hard. I suppose on a farm with some 30 odd living things waiting for feed daily, you’d have to work hard. But the animals weren’t always here. “We brought them,” Kay told me as the sun dipped below the horizon for good. “Along with the dolls.”
Oh, yeah, that’s the other thing. The tourist park is a petting zoo, AND a Doll Museum. Hear that, Dad? A Doll Museum! Way the hell out in the middle of nowhere! Hahahaha
Muhahahahahha
Anyway else afraid of dolls?
We’ve had enough good jokes (though, yes, many in poor taste) passed around about the dolls already. Tomorrow, I am told, we get to see the museum. I am both excited and nervous for this first, of what I'm sure will be many, encounters.
Last news of the day. After a voracious attack by all on the food stocking the kitchen to the gills we adjourned to our rooms. The girls are in groups of three in three different rooms. Less than fifteen minutes after I closed my door on the outside world, I heard a bloodcurdling scream! Seconds later, a frenzied knock on my door. I opened it up and three girls stumbled in sputtering something about, “do something” and “oh my god!” and “spider!”
My moment of truth? Time to make up for that one huntsman the students did away with back at Yookamurra? I can do this, I told myself, no problem.
(Ten seconds later)
NO FUCKING WAY was I going near that thing! Not once I saw the actual size and “thickness” of it. It wasn’t a huntsman, I had already asked about those. But this monster was similar, only it didn’t move sideways like the huntsman, but was a big round hairy beast about the size of the palm of my hand.
You want to hear ten females scream bloody hell at 9pm in complete and utter quiet! I was waiting for Bill to come down with his shotgun and see what was up. Everyone looking to me and all I could do was grab my camera and wince! Finally, two brave UK girls stepped up and it was a scream/laugh fest for the next 30 minutes as the spider wreaked havoc all over the walls, fell behind the bed, crawled across the bed sheet, became momentarily “lost”, then found, then finally trapped under a very large Tupperware bowl—the entire time all of us jumping up and down screaming “Ewwwwwwww!!!!” I honest to god felt like I was at some nightmarish summer camp! Moments later the bowl was tossed into the night. Talk about a way to start the trip! Now we all sit in our rooms (I alone in mine, maybe a roommate or two wouldn’t be so bad?) cringing and gazing about the walls. I really don’t know if I could handle the spiders and such down here, and its not even summer. That kills me. I haven’t even been here in snake season.
This group so far is AWESOME though, very fun and they all genuinely seem like they might get along—always a worry with more than a few girls. Also my first all-girl group which I thought would be great, then realizing how nice it would have been to have a DUDE attack that spider. Even if a guy were afraid, with 9 scared girls, he would have stepped it up. And now the truth is out: I can assign chores and pump up the students for work and lead conservation-based discussions with the best of them, but spiders? Give this wuss a can of potent bug spray any day.
(Note: I found out a few days later that those big spiders, that I guess are EVERYWHERE in the houses down here, can jump! And many jump right at YOU!)
Stay tuned for the Doll House….
laura
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