Mad as Cut Snakes

There is always a simpler way of doing things. Sometimes it ain’t pretty but the further you are from the city, the less it seems to matter. In the “build-up” to the wet season in the Kimberley the days are long, hot and humid. Like the morning after a biggish night it’s kind of OK if you can sit still in the shade. If you have to move about to you know, work, things can get rough fast.

I just spent a couple of days following a survey crew round a mining lease somewhere between Derby and Fitzroy Crossing. At night there’s a choice between sleeping with the aircond yammering away on the wall or propping the window open with literature and fending off the odd six legged bedfellow. I have trouble sleeping with a 2hp fan in my ear.

Every bloke you talk to to refers to the next bloke as “a mad [insert choice expletive]”. Talk to enough blokes and you quickly find yourself being sucked into a vortex of madness so pervasive that it’s normal. Next thing you know you find yourself under a heavy sky watching some mad [insert choice expletive] butchering a bull carcass with a chainsaw. Suddenly you go home.