AUTHOR and adventurer Geoff Hill is off on his latest big bike adventure, this time with fellow writer and lunatic Colin O'Carroll: 15,000 miles around Australia - and you can read all about the big trip next Saturday and every Saturday for the next three months in the Mirror or follow it on the website. Plus, you can win a fantastic trip to Adelaide for two. Check out next Saturday's Daily Mirror for details...
paper bag printing 'An elemental land where men are Bruce and women Sheila..'
GEOFF HILL
I'VE faced hill bandits in the Baluchistan desert of Pakistan, riding a Royal Enfield back from India and Colombian drug barons while riding a Triumph from Chile to Alaska.
But this time it's the biggest challenge yet: the wombats of Oz.
You see, although they may look soft and furry, apparently they have this layer of cartilage down their back to protect them from dingos.
And they go to sleep in the middle of the road because it's nice and warm - so if you're stupid enough to ride at night, you're roaring down the road at 70 when you suddenly hit this furry speed bump.
You end up in a pile of blood and wreckage down the road, and the wombat wakes up briefly, mutters: "Jeez, what was that, mate?" and goes back to sleep.
In retrospect, it was all so much simpler a year or two ago, when I knew everything there was to know about Australia.
After watching Crocodile Dundee and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, I knew that men wrestled crocodiles, shaved with knives and dressed up as women.
From further research at the local video store, I also knew that schoolgirls shouldn't have picnics at hanging rocks, and that at any given moment you were likely to round a corner and find Jenny Agutter swimming naked in a billabong. Whatever a billabong was.
It was an elemental land where all the men were called Bruce, and all the women Sheila.
For a bloke, the most important things in life were drinking beer, your mates and drinking beer with your mates, and the worst thing you could be was a Pom or a poofta.
Poms were easy to recognise because they couldn't play cricket, and pooftas because they didn't like footie and understood Sheilas.
If a bloke did turn out to be a poofta, the only way out was to dress up as a Sheila and drive a bus called Priscilla across the Outback.
As for Sheilas, their job was to keep their blokes happy and have a hot steak and a cold beer ready at the right time, usually three in the morning when their blokes came home from the pub.
If a Sheila was stupid enough to get herself pregnant, her only recourse was to throw herself off Sydney Harbour Bridge, plummeting towards the waiting sharks in a floral chiffon frock with Bruce's parting words ringing in her ears: "You're pregnant and you're going to kill your-self? Jesus, Sheila, you're a sport!" Yes, I could safely say I knew everything there was to know about Australia. Then I met Colin, who was born in Belfast and grew up in Oz before coming back, and everything changed.
"Pies, mate," he said over a beer or 14. "Y o u r Australian pie is the biggest danger you can face Down Under." "And why," I said hesitantly, "is that?" "Well, your Australian meat pie can be tepid on the outside, lulling you into a false sense of security, so that you bite into it only to discover that the centre is at the te