‘Big bastard, isn’t he?’ said the mechanic as he came up behind me and leant in, tracing, with the tip of his finger, the reptile’s languorous curves.
The sleepy creature gave a shudder. It rippled down its length but it continued to doze.
‘He’s a pet. Lived with us for yonks. Can’t hurt you. Only a python.’
‘Oh, right. Only a python?’ Get this man’s blithe spirit.
‘Diamond python. Eats mice ‘n stuff. Won’t poison you.’
‘Okay. And it won’t strangle me to death?’
‘Harmless.’
‘Okay, then.’ I brushed hair from my eyes and drew in a deep breath, determined not to let this reptilian monster get the better of me. My new neighbour must see me as being at one with God’s creatures. A true Byronian wouldn’t resile from a mere six-foot long deadly python, and anyway, I was curious. And they’re not deadly, anyway, said the man.
‘Touch him. Go on.'
‘Okay.’ I leant in, taking the mechanic at his word that the ductile creature wouldn’t rear up and strike me with its forked tongue.
For several moments I gazed down at the reptilian mandala. My chest felt constricted, my heart an electric blender pulsing at full speed. Primal fear. An involuntary reaction. Serpents. Sin. Adam and Eve. The Garden of Eden.
Of course, there would be a serpent in Byron Bay. This, after all, was Paradise.
Finally I took the plunge and traced the creature’s shape with the tip of my finger and watched what I imagined were ripples of pleasure run down his back. It seemed in the moment that I had just passed some kind of supernatural test, that I belonged.
‘I just moved in this morning,’ I said to the mechanic. ‘Bought a place round in Alcon Street.’
‘Yeah, I heard. You bought the shack. The one on the beach.’
I nodded, perplexed, and then I got it. ‘I guess I should open an account with you,’ I said. Young Mr. Real Estate Agent had possibly recognized me, and news travels fast in a small town.
‘Get used to it, then,’ he said, indicating the python. ‘Bet y’balls that fella’s got family around at your place. They live under the house,’ he chuckled.
‘You’re kidding me!’
‘And you got one of those ti-tree fences down the side of your joint, right? That’s what they love. Curl up on the top, the bushy part. Same colour as the fence. You’ll hardly notice but I betcha you’ll have ‘em. And smell ‘em. They pong a bit.’
This wasn’t good.
‘They come across the road from the everglades.’
‘Everglades?’
‘The rainforest, undergrowth, the stuff you’ve got all around you. That stuff,’ he said, indicating the darkness on the edge of the service station.
I stared into the depths of the shadowy undergrowth. Its green stillness appealed. Strange things could happen inside such denseness. Even the word ‘everglades’ resonated, conjured images of wetlands and alligators, nights on the bayous and Tony Joe White’s smoky swamp music. There was a creek in there. I could hear frogs. I also heard a bird, a high-pitched melodious call. Could one hear rustling through there as well, I wondered, still goose-bumped and freaked when I thought of the possibility I might have come face to face with one of these colossal pythons when I was dragging rubbish out from under the shack an hour ago.
‘Don’t know whether to say this or not,’ the mechanic said, interrupting the image of life on the bayou. He looked over his shoulder, scoping the place before continuing.
‘Say what?’
He stared into his workshop, then glanced across to the main shop, across at the pumps and then, having done the full scope, back at me. Finally, ‘Uh-uh. I can see the snake’s shaken you up a bit. Shouldn’t go putting me big foot in it about other things that might spook you.’
‘Other things?’
The man wasn’t smiling any more but creasing his bushy eyebrows and looking uncomfortable.
‘What other things?’
He seemed undecided.
‘What?’
‘That big shed at the front of your property? The huge garage? The windows all boarded up?’
‘What about the garage?’ I said. The fact I had lowered my voice to ask was probably symptomatic of the fact I felt bad stuff coming down the pike.
He hesitated. ‘Nah, don’t matter. You’ll find out soon enough.’
‘Please tell me? What should I know about the garage?’
He seemed to make some kind of compromise with himself. ‘Okay, the hydroponics ... for a start.’
‘Hydroponics?’
I knew what hydroponics were.
Not good news. Thirty-six poisonous chemicals.
I had smoked grass. Of course, I had smoked grass. And I had inhaled. But not the chemical variety. It had been years ago when the weed we smoked came down from heaven and not via a hydroponic lab.
I’d been a regular visitor to Canberra after Gough Whitlam’s victory, having worked hard campaigning for Gough in those 1972, 1974 and 1975 campaigns.
Thanks mainly to the Its time campaign I had become seriously addicted to federal politics, aided and abetted by a neighbour and close friend, the Member for Prospect, Richard Klugman. He and I discussed politics relentlessly; me from a bleeding heart Left perspective and Dick from his long-time Andersonian civil libertarian position. Along the way it seemed he recognized some kind of intelligence lurking within my Stepford Wives persona and in the early Seventies convinced me that although I had left school at fourteen and become a mum by the age of twenty, and now with five little darlings I was knee-deep in motherhood, I could yet matriculate and then go on to university.
Richard guided me all through the years of my Political Science and English Literature Honours degree at Macquarie University and thanks to his friendship––and his parliamentary travel entitlements, which enabled me to barter my research and writing skills with various politicians in return for interviews and information––I came to know several of the Labor Party’s luminaries during my frequent trips to Canberra.
This suburban housewife got off on being close to the centre of the action, and action there was aplenty in those turbulent political times. I was able to use my privileged access to the political elites to gain intimate knowledge of Canberra politics, and interesting perspectives on the policies, which helped me in pursuit of my degree.
It was during these heady days of the Whitlam era that I occasionally found myself, late at night after the House had risen, sitting in an outdoor steamy spa in the company of some of Canberra's elite who regularly coalesced around a beltway institution known fondly as a particular staffer's hot tub. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven!
‘But you said, "For a start". What else?’ I asked the mechanic.
‘Well ... um––’ He looked over his shoulder, then back at me. ‘…a bit of heroin dealing went on, too, I reckon. Plenty of junkies round at that joint. Coming an’ going at all hours. Never knew who was living round there. A Yank had it last, I think. Or maybe not.’
‘My place, you’re talking about? The old beach shack?’ I mentioned the street number.
‘Your property alright,