Mr and Mrs Broadbent of number four, Melbourne Street, Sydney, were perfectly bonza, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to involved in anything whacko. You couldn't find them catching up with any galahs, that's for sure!
Mr Broadbent was the director of a company called Bunnings, which sold drills. He was a big man with a firm beer belly from skolling tinnies of Fosters while watching the Australian Rules football on the weekend—and also on the rare weekday, when he was chucking a sickie. Mrs Broadbent was a thin beach-blonde who spent all of her time gasbagging with the neighbours while also sticking her large schnozz in front of the telly to watch Neighbours. The Broadbents had a young son called Davo who was a fine young boy, and in their opinion, no boy could be more bonza. The problem was that the Broadbents had a secret, and bloody oath, they weren't too grouse on anyone finding out about it.
...
Our story starts on a fine, forty-five degree Celsius day in late October, 1981. Nothing about the blindingly hot Australian sun that fine morning seemed to foreshadow any of the crackers things that were happening around the colony right at that very moment. Mr Broadbent hummed Land Down Under as he picked out his most boring board shorts and hi-viz vest for work, and Mrs Broadbent gasbagged like a nag as she punted Davo into his cozzies. The poor boy desperately screamed for his lollies until Mrs Broadbent raced into the pantry for a stack of Allen's rattlesnakes to shove into his bloody mouth. Not a single one of them noticed the swag at the front door, patiently waiting for them like a tinnie at the pub waits for Mr Broadbent after a long day of hard yakka. Mr Broadbent rushed out the front door, his thoughts the same as they had been since time immemorial: he'd view the gorgeous vista of the Sydney Harbour Bridge as his thongs barely concealed his feet from the steaming sand of the desert underfoot, and think of how lucky he was to live in this country. If he'd been looking anywhere else, he would've noticed any number of bonkers and totally whacko occurrences: the swag, the dingo reading a map, aurora borealis shooting into the sky at this time of year concentrated entirely above his house. Instead, Mrs Broadbent pashed Mr Broadbent on the lips.
"Rack off, ya old nag," Mr Broadbent waved fondly.
Before he could listen to any more of her nagging, he whistled for his kangaroo, and began the trek through their cattle station and to Sydney. It was once he reached the edge of their station and onto the high street of Sydney that he first noticed something completely whacko. The dingo. He hadn't noticed it before, but here it was again, reading a Melways. That can't be right, Mr Broadbent thought, shaking his head. And, as if to reassure himself, he thought, She'll be right. He blinked twice, and looked again.
Just a regular dingo.
Of course. His mind had gone off the deep end, like he'd stuck his head in a dunny. He jumped off the roo and told her to rack off. He was at work now, and once he entered the giant green church of Bunnings, the dingo was the last thing on his mind. He walked down the car park, through the rows and rows of utes and V8 Commodores and station wagons. That's when he forgot about the drills. He was just before the entrance to Bunnings, where the empty sausage sizzle table was located. He could even see the esky where they housed the snags and the shrimps, the white plastic table, and the unused barbie. His throat filled with saliva, imagining the lunch he'd had every day for the last ten years—a warm snag encased in cheap Woolies bread, Rosella dead horse, and onions (on the outside, thank you very much!).
But before he could even take half a step, he froze in place, his mouth open like a chook in heat. People—people in funny cloaks. The young people you saw around these days! Probably a gaggle of bludgers, out to protest some lefty crook rubbish. Maybe it was some fashion the Yanks had brought over here? Get that nonsense out of here, Mr Broadbent thought. Maybe they think we celebrate Halloween here. He made to move again, but he saw there were sheilas and blokes, of all different ages. Okay, maybe they were definitely the lefty ABC protester types, yes, that had to be it. Why else wouldn't they be out in the real world, doing hard yakka like Mr Broadbent? He hurried through the sliding entrance, his cheeks flaming.
His mind focused on drills—and paint samples and drill parts and helping customers with enquiries about drills and paint samples—Mr Broadbent spent his morning entirely focused on normal things and not dingos and swathes of kookaburras and wankers in funny cloaks, though most of the Can't-Spells in the street did. These regular, fair dinkum Ozzies, all as true blue and Mr and Mrs Broadbent, all stared and pointed as they sheared sheep and climbed the Sydney Harbour and surfed in the beautiful ocean and sunbaked on the beach. The city-dwellers who'd never ventured to the outback had defo never seen a kookaburra, even in the daytime, let alone the chockers amount flooding the skyline.
At lunchtime, Mr Broadbent strolled outside to the snag table, where he accepted his usual tucker. He'd almost forgotten the bludgers in cloaks until he was walking along the sandy beaches of Sydney, the same as he did every lunchtime with his sanga in hand.
"The Ballarats, I can't believe the young cobber—"
"—yeah, nah, their little bloke Mick—"
He nearly carked it then and there, a piece of mushy bread lodging in his throat. Without thinking, Mr Broadbent sprinted back to Bunnings, through the crowds of cloaked figures, until he was safe in the staff break-room, and not even then, no, how could he ever be bonza ever again?
Ballarat.
Mick.
He sat on the loo, his snag thrown into the water, swirling around the wrong way into the abyss. Bloody oath, Mr Broadbent wasn't bonza at all about these aggro thoughts that brought him back to the Broadbent Family Secret. He stroked his mullet restlessly, dumb as dog sh*t. Ballarat wasn't that whacko of a name; there were at least three Ballarat cobbers he'd sold drills to this week. How could he be sure his secret—his nephew—was even called Mick? Maybe it was Mucko, or Mozzie or Mushie. No point beating a dead horse and making Mrs Broadbent a few stubbies short of a six-pack. She'd only needlessly whinge, and he wouldn't allow any of the rocks in her head transferring to his normal skull. He forced himself to think of drills and paint samples and smile as he made his way back to the main building. He couldn't stop thinking of Mrs Broadbent's whacko sister, the one who'd gone off the deep end. It couldn't be…
He didn't even notice when he found his fist before some unsuspecting customer, and before he knew it, he'd king hit the bloke to the ground. Despite nearly carking it, the bloke acted like a dopey c*nt and laughed like he'd just heard a ripper joke.
"Sorry, mate," Mr Broadbent said out of reflex.
That's when he noticed the bloke was wearing one of those funny cloaks—this drongo was decked out in blue flannel that was so vivid it nearly blinded Mr Broadbent.
The bloke stood up, grinning widely. "Yeah nah, don't be sorry, ay. This is a ripper arvo even for Can'ts like you. It's heaps grouse, 'cause Mr-Potato-Head has spit the dummy and gone for good. We should all be havin' a fair dinkum year of sickies!"
And, without warning, he slapped Mr Broadbent over the shoulder like a mate and went walkabout.
Mr Broadbent stood in place, unblinking. He'd been accosted by some bludging crook. Had he just been called a Can't? It was almost tea time when he finally moved, holding out his fingers and whistling for his roo to come take him back to the cattle station.
He could have almost forgotten the whacko if not for the dingo that was now at the front of number four when he got back at five fifty-nine p.m.
"Oi, do you want a go or something?" he roared at the dingo, his mind in shambles.
The dingo just stared back. Could they even do that? They were supposed to be feral maniacs, roaming around the outback attacking tourists and Yanks with reckless abandon. Mr Broadbent took a deep breath and closed his eyes, well aware that Mrs Flake from five k's down—number three, Melbourne Street—was peeking from behind her pet echidna to watch him acting like a flaming galah.
In the advert breaks between the six p.m. news and the latest episode of Number 96, Mrs Broadbent gasbagged about Mrs Next Door's—aka Mrs Flake—problems with her sick echidnas while hiking the Belanglo State Forest, and how Davo had learnt his first swear word (Maggot). He tried to listen to her nagging for once, because the telly was blasting more whacko nonsense.
"Last of all, it's crackers across the colony as uteloads of blokes and sheilas have noticed swarms of kookaburras flying all whacko like an alco at a Bottle-O," the broadcaster said in his broad accent. "So-called knuckleheads from the School of Hard Knocks have whinged that the kookas haven't acted like this in yonks, but we have to say it's no drama. At least they ain't tryin' to kill us, eh, Wally?"
"Nah yeah," the weatherman, Wally, laughed deeply. "Looks like the only thing that's tryna kill us over the next few days is this raging drought. But it ain't the kookas that are crackers, Smally. Viewers from as far as Tassie and New Zealand have been ringing in to whinge that ferals are lighting illegal firecrackers across the country. Maybe they're celebratin' early—New Year's fireworks aren't until five days before New Year's, ya grubs!"
Mr Broadbent shivered. He was used to grubs lighting firecrackers all year 'round—the week before New Year's, Grand Final Day, Australia Day, during the Boxing Day Test Match. But today? At the end of October? Even Melbourne Cup wasn't for a couple weeks. As if to accentuate his point, he could hear firecrackers being lit outside the house, the very aurora borealis that he hadn't noticed this morning, but he noticed it now.
The illegal firecrackers. Whacko kookaburras. Whispers about the Ballarats. He waited for Mrs Broadbent to hand him his tinnie, and skolled the Fosters to calm his nerves. She sat down beside him in her own recliner with goon bag in a wine glass.
"Er—Grevillea, ya tart—you haven't heard from your sister, have ya?"
Mrs Broadbent nearly choked on her goon. "Nah. Why, you wanna start something?'
Mr Broadbent shook his head too fast. "Nah yeah, just some tossers out on the street today, and on the telly. Wearin' cloaks on a boilin' hot day. Thought it might be…"
Instead of responding, Mrs Broadbent sipped her goon through pursed lips, her eyes gleaming with dialled-back rage.
"Their little tacker…he'd be around Davo's age, ay?" he struggled to get the words out.
Mrs Broadbent just nodded.
He continued, desperate to assuage his bonkers thoughts he wasn't too grouse on having. "Milco, right?"
"Mick," Mrs Broadbent said the words through spittle. "'Course the tart'd give him a derro name."
"Yeah nah, 'course," Mr Broadbent agreed.
Though they didn't speak any more of the Family Secret, Mr Broadbent struggled to sleep that night. He was about to doze off when a funnel web spider leapt down from the bed, and he was forced to grab the Mortein mozzie spray and save his family from killer spiders, just the same as he did every night. He was almost soothed as he sprayed the visceral elephantine monster, but through the curtains, he could almost see the dingo by the front door, and he could definitely now see the aurora borealis situated entirely above the corrugated iron roof.
His last thought: Even if those mugs were talkin' 'bout the Ballarats, it's not like I'll be caught up with those gronks.
Everything would be bonza.
...
Outside number four Melbourne Street, Sydney, sat the dingo. No longer reading the map, she rested on the verandah still as a Bottle-O on Good Friday, as if waiting on a mate, even though she was a sheila. She didn't even budge when the most fair dinkum bloke of all the Antipodes appeared out of nowhere.
Nothing like this bloke had ever been seen on Melbourne Street. He was the worst sort of bogan that could exist: a true blue old-school bogan, the sort of bloke you want to give a fair shake of the sauce bottle. He wore the most garish flannel-on-flannel combo, but he made it work. A gaudy red flannel t-shirt was paired with vivid green trackie daks that had a unique flannel pattern. To complete the combo was a giant Australian flag draped around his shoulders, except just above the stars of the Southern Cross, the design was curiously inlain with a stylishly designed 'B' in a startling shade of green and yellow. His face was thin and lined from smoking too many durries, and you couldn't tell if he was thirty or three hundred. His eyes were a distant, colourless blue, facing two separate directions, and his nose was broken in three places from too many drunken brawls as a teenager in the Cronulla riots.
This man's name: Barry 'Blowfly' Culicidae.
Blowfly Culicidae didn't seem to realise he'd arrived on a street where everything from his whacko name to his dipstick fashion made him stick out like a sore thumb. He rummaged through the seemingly endless pockets of his trackies, pulled out and discarded three pairs of sunnies, several ancient durries, a Stanley knife, and someone else's Social Security card, before he reached for what he bloody needed—the Bic lighter of all Bic lighters. This wasn't the sort of lighter you could buy at a servo—not a Can't-Spell servo anyway. Blowfly flicked it open, held it to the humid, still air above, and clicked on it. Once, twice. After muttering a few choice swear words, he clicked it again, and all the illegal fireworks in the sky disappeared at once, leaving the whole of Australia in abject darkness.
"Useless pricks," he muttered through his three teeth. "Never trust a Half-Spell from the arse end of the world who offers you his misso's lighter. Yeah or nah, Professor Macca?" He dropped said lighter to the ground and stubbed at it angrily.
Blowfly turned to smirk lopsidedly at the dingo, but it had gone walkabout. Instead, there stood a tall, thick, stern-looking lezzo chick. She wore a jersey with black-and-white stripes emblazoned with the number 5 on the back, an emerald green flannelette jacket, and the same Quidditch shorts she'd worn every day since she was drafted for the AQL some fifty years ago. She had a look that distinctly suggested she was on her rag.
"It's Professor McDonald," Professor Sheila 'Macca' McDonald said stiffly. "And how'd ya even spring me?"
"Strewth! On me nan's life, I've never seen a sheila so bloody cranky. Fair dinkum, I think I have a can of WB in here. This cracker here—" he nodded derisively at the direction of the Broadbent's bedroom. "—thinks he can drink Fosters. Champ thinks he can drive a Ford and call himself a 'Strayan. Absolute tosser. I've been drinkin' since I heard the news. Professor Snake was tryna wreck the mood, but oath, you can't knock one back without knocking 'em all back."
"Well, mate," Professor McDonald said, and Blowfly's face immediately turned serious. "You gotta tell me the bizzo. You know, about Mr-Potato-Head…?"
Blowfly let out a long, overstressed string of insults. "Faaaaaark. In the name of Merlin's tricked-out 1979 Holden Commodore, you know the bloody wanker has a name."
He pulled out a durry and scowled at it, then down at his smashed-up lighter on the ground. Without another thought, he muttered something under his breath—Accio farkin' lighter—and a brand-spanking new ciggy lighter flew through the air and into his outstretched hand.
"The bizzo?"
Blowfly sighed and took a long drag before he spoke. "It's Lord Tonneau, you mole."
Professor McDonald flinched and let out a squeal of surprise. "You're talking out your arse, Professor Culicidae," she said, struggling to retain her composure. "One: he hasn't been a Lord since he lost his WBE, and two: good onya for stirring the pot by sayin' his name, but we both know you were the only one Mr-Potato-Head wasn't right with."
"Lord Tonneau," Blowfly said with the hint of a threat in his tone, and blew smoke straight into Professor McDonald's face.
"Strewth, I'll say it if it you really wanna start something out of it," Professor McDonald stood up more straighter, and stared at her boss with a resolute determination. "I can't believe what I'm hearin'. Lord…Tonneau…" she shuddered. "…what's his bizzo? Is it true? Is he really, you know, did the Ballarat boy really make him cark it? I mean, it's been all over the Can't-Spell's news. Illegal fireworks in Tassie. Is that even a real place?"
Blowfly let out a soft, deep chuckle. "Yeah nah, that was Deddo. Can you believe it? The sick c*nt actually thought he could…" McDonald gave him a penetrating dingo-eye stare, and he coughed. "Well, you're no fun. Yeah nah, it's all bloody oath."
"Lilly Pilly and Gav Ballarat are.…" Professor McDonald held a hand to her mouth.
"Yeah," Blowfly said softly. "They went and carked it. Lord Tonneau turned up to Nar Nar Goon. He went to give one to the Ballarats. But the sheila, Lilly Pilly, she gave as good as it takes. I'll get little Mick to tell you more once I'm off and gone into the Great Outback in the Sky, but until then…their son, Mick, he'll be right."
Professor McDonald blinked away tears. "He'll…be right? How? How do you know?"
"F*cked if I know," Blowfly stubbed his blunt on the ground and shrugged. "I got, well, you know, someone else. F*cked if I'm tellin' you cops nothin'. But, y'know, apparently the dumb muppet could take over the whole of New Zealand and half of Darwin, but he was dumber than a box of rocks. Couldn't even off a farkin' one-year-old. Did better than that when I 1v1'd old Natho Buckley back in the day."
"Why're you even here then?" Professor McDonald snapped, her tears disapparated as quickly as they'd come.
"Well, no duh," Blowfly said sarcastically, lighting another durry. "Just makin' sure these absolutely useless pricks know for real they've got this kiddo for life. They can't do a runner if they try…"
Professor McDonald raised a bushy eyebrow quizzically Blowfly's way. He grinned mischievously, muttered something under his breath—Accio stubby—and McDonald recognised just in time as the stubby of WB (Wizard Bitter, not that rank Can't-Spell Victoria Bitter spew) needed latched itself to her thick fingers.
"This'll be one for the knuckleheads to write in their history books," Professor Blowfly's blue eyes gleamed with something—the vibrant blue of snorted billywig powder, perhaps? "Accio swag!"
From the front door of the Broadbents yard lay the swag that had been there since the morning. It levitated in the air in front of Blowfly, who magicked something nonverbal, and with that, the swag unveiled something Professor McDonald hadn't noticed in all her keeping guard.
A little bloke's bloated red head peered from beneath the bundled swag, fast asleep. Under his mess of black hair, they both noticed at once the cracked-out cut on his forehead—it was ovular, just like a Sherrin football.
"Is that—" Professor McDonald said breathlessly.
"Yeah nah," said Professor Blowfly. "He's pretty f*cked, but he'll be right, mate."
"Will he, though?" McDonald took a tentative sip of her WB for prepared measure, with shaky hands. "I've seen these Can't-Spells. They're the worst sort of Can'ts. The husband absolutely lost his tomato sauce at me, but he sits inside and drinks tinnies of Fosters and watches whacko Can't-Spell telly programs like the Channel 7 News and Number 96. Lilly Pilly's sister—oh, bloody oath, poor Lilly Pilly. I saw their son whinging and sooking his way through the whole five k's of the station until his mum stopped her gasbagging and bought him prawn lollies. She called them prawns, Professor Culicidae…prawns. Not shrimps, like bloody ripper true blue Australians. You can't leave him here. Every bloke and sheila in our world will grow up knowing his bloody name. He simply can't stay with these muppets!"
Professor Blowfly nodded slowly, but he was already lifting young Mick Ballarat into the air, closer to the Broadbent's bedroom window.
"Nah yeah, I can and I will," he said confidently, taking a long drag from his durry. "You farkin' watch me. I'm Headmaster of a wizard school. I defeated Natho Buckley. And Mick Ballarat needs the safest place for him. He needs a place away from all this b*llsh*t artistry. He'll grow up to be a tall poppy, and you really think you could take seven years with that stuck-up dog? I'd Avada Kedavra him meself if that was the case."
"Yeah nah, you've got a point," Professor McDonald conceded.
Professor Blowfly pulled out a WB for himself and clinked tinnies with Professor McDonald. Blowfly rose young Mick Ballarat into the air until he levitated before the bedroom window. Without waiting, the boy punted straight through the glass windows and onto the sleeping laps of poor Mr and Mrs Broadbent. The two professors guffawed like raging maniacs, like absolute tossers, but they didn't care, because they heard the Broadbents' screams of horror and shock, as Mr Broadbent's reaction as the sloppily written note fell out of the little bloke's swag.
"Now, you wanna go check out Deddo's party?" Blowfly said excitedly. "I'll apparate you there meself. He's started a bushfire in Kyneton spelling out the words 'Rot in piss, Lord Tonneau."
Professor McDonald shook her head, but she couldn't stop smiling. He held Professor Blowfly's thin wrist, and with a swish of his Australian flag, they were both gone.
A breeze ruffled at the edges of the blazing Australian drought, and colour and light were brought back to Australia in a swift movement. As Grevillea Broadbent held her nephew with horrified eyes, the young Mick Ballarat simply rolled over in his swag and smiled gently. Around the Antipodes, even as far as Thundelarra and even New Zealand, people gathered in large groups and loudly, roaringly celebrated, and the rest of Australia just accepted it as a new public holiday. These whacko groups of Australians held up their stubbies of WB and Firewhiskey and definitely not Fosters, and celebrated Mick Ballarat—'The Young Bloke Who Didn't Cark It!'