11 October 2022
Tuesday. A busload of backpackers on the house tour today, all the way from the other side of the world, all of them here for me. I could tell. They had cameras.
One young fella asked Kev, the tour guide, what a “dunny” was. Kev looked at me. I looked at the sky. I have waited my whole life for that question.
A dunny, I told him, is a toilet. Not your fancy indoor arrangement with the tiles and the little soaps. A proper Aussie dunny is a timber shed out the back of the property with a long drop inside, a lantern if you’re lucky and a redback’s worth of character. Mine is the finest in the land. It has a view. Admittedly the view is of the inside of the door.
He asked where the flush was. I laughed so hard I fell off the woodpile. Smoko barked at me for an hour.
The group had dressed for the occasion: big hats, bum bags, sunscreen on their noses and good sturdy shoes. The Axeman approves. One of them did an Aussie accent so convincing that Smoko followed him to the bus.
— Huge Axeman
