This Is My Street

It’s Sunday afternoon – or ‘arvo’ as my Year Five students would proudly tell you. They rock up to every class with a new word ensemble from the Aussie Slang Dictionary that rarely makes contextual sense but never fails to impress me.

Week one was all the usual suspects – Cheers, g’day, she’ll be right, no worries.

This week was a bit more advanced.

‘Can I go to the dunny?’ one student asked on Monday. This one seems to be the most popular now.

‘I busted a plugger,’ another student told me on Friday as he held up a broken pencil.

‘Try again next week, mate,’ I said to him with a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

It’s the thought that counts.

My Sunday arvo’s usually look the same. Not much stands in the way of a good routine in this quiet town of Ranong.

I spend a couple hours at the Iron Fit gym – subjectively the best of three gyms in town – then take my blue Honda Click 125i on a quick commute to Lotus’s Go Fresh to stock up on the same trusty tubs of Greek yoghurt and frozen curries. Separate tubs of course.  

The drive home from Lotus’s is simple. There’s not a single street in Ranong that my Honda Click – which I’m still yet to name – and I haven’t seen.

It’s a safe drive for the most part. Just a few potholes here and there and one or two locals on the wrong side of the road. Nothing out of the ordinary. The real danger is the strays.

There’s one slightly deranged-looking bitser that lurks on the gravel road outside my accommodation. It wags its scrawny tail at every Burmese local that walks past it but always appears to be plotting a vicious attack against me. Who knew dogs were racist.

The speedometer ticks over 80. I’m in my Wallabies footy shorts and a faded Oakley t-shirt that’s lasted seven years. It only has four holes around the pits. Now that’s quality!

Don’t worry, Mum, I’m also wearing a helmet. I can’t say the same for the locals speeding past me on their way home from a long day’s work in the fishing factories.

I squeeze hard on the brakes and take a sharp left turn off the main road. The groceries in the storage compartment under my seat aren’t rattling near as much as the heart in my chest as I edge closer to the scariest part of my day.

I follow my left indicator again, this time onto the gravel road that the brown and white spotted bitser has pissed on enough times to claim as its own.

It's lying on the left side of the road behind a thorny bush.

‘You think I can’t see you, huh?’

I stare into its weathered eyes for half a second too long with my helmet visor up. Then I remember: never make eye contact.

It springs to its paws and sprints at me savagely, its bare teeth ravenous for foreigner flesh. I instinctively rip the throttle with my right wrist and barely hold onto my handlebars as my Honda soars over twenty metres of gravel. For 125cc, this girl has some bite.

The malnourished bitser, now trapped in a hazy cloud of dust and engine fumes, calls it a day and retreats to the thorny bush.

Until next time.