Hello Possum

A crafty little scavenger, the urban possum, with their revving motor call, bushy tails, bulging eyes and ratty face. I’m inclined to compare them to a fat grey squirrel if only they didn’t boast a connection to both the koala and the kangaroo within their marsupial make up. Despite their native credentials, the Aussies can still spot a pest in these cute-ish bundles. At our previous address, possums were discouraged daily from devouring the paw paw trees. Where a bush turkey will build dirty embankments in your back yard (just for laughs, by the looks of things), the perilous possum will have the audacity to nest inside your actual house. The attic, mainly. Now that is crafty.

The noise becomes problematic, you see, not to mention the associated safety hazards, best encapsulated by the vitriolic Brisbane Times writer John Birmingham in one of his blog entries. “I have given no cause for aggression,” he fumes, “save a few muttered curses at four in the morning, some two days ago as the thunderous shenanigans of these wretched lice-infested, rat bastard vermin dislodged a line of track lighting in my kitchen.” No sympathy there, then. The Hardtuned.net forum offer a more hands-on approach under their thread ‘Rat or Possum in Attic: How to Catch the Bastard’. User KNG-515 suggests “put a snake in your roof”, which might work, but may also incur some bizarre animal-related Russian doll situation.

But I quite hate the thought of a taipan getting it’s poisonous jaws around this inquisitive joey which we have caught, quite brazenly, on our doorstep and now - with a little coaxing - on camera. We have watched this little possum develop since our initial meeting some months ago, when it was still digging it’s baby claws into its mother’s back. So close, in fact, that we’ve even given it a name: Paw Paw. I’ll be sure to update you on her developments in later entries. Now, as for the geckos, that’s a whole other story.

Australia’s most easterly point is Cape Byron, at Byron Bay in northern New South Wales, which, if nothing else, should make it quite easy to locate on a map. Here you’ll find a turn of the century lighthouse 100 metres above sea level and pristine views over the Byron coast. We needn’t have taken a tour of the lighthouse as I end up in deep conversation with the curator in the vestibule who tells me more than I needed to know about the physics involved in light refraction, pointing at the original kerosene burner and telling me, with some considerable enthusiasm, how the original optical lens (made by a Frenchman, Henry Lepante, and containing 760 pieces of prismatic glass) would help to navigate wayward ships from a range of over 20 kilometres. Weighing eight tons, it’s transportation alone must have been a frightfully careful process. I carefully sneak out when the curator is trying to locate a pen for the guestbook.

From here, we follow the well worn tourist trail passed schools of mostly English backpackers to the tip of the cliff where you will find a sign indicating your arrival at Australia’s fingertips. Not quite knowing what you’re supposed to do when you reach such a landmark, I take to admiring the scenery, which is much wilder and unkempt than the concrete jungle of the Gold Coast further north. We stand there for some time, windswept, hypnotised by crashing waves and rip tides, and trying to make out the movements of tiny people as they battle against the all-conquering ocean. The image I remember now is one of complete uninterrupted blueness, from both the sea and the sky.

We eat lunch at Twisted Sista, one of Byron’s many deli bars serving healthy yet hearty alternatives and monster portions of homemade cake that could easily double as a bookend. Alongside herbal high shops, vintage emporiums dealing in bohemian chic and quirky surf attire, the small township seems to have been developed in the eccentric spirit of entrepreneurial hippy escapism which understandably helps to make this one of Australia’s favourite beach towns. There’s an easy loveliness to the place, and I certainly had a great if brief time exploring it’s quaint high streets and mini roundabouts. The idea of some 20,000 revellers camping here for the Splendour music festival seems almost unfathomable to me, which may be part of the reason why it has now moved further north and into Queensland, in respect for both the local community and it’s environs. I don't balme them. Music festivals do have a tendancy to make even the most beautiful areas look like the fallout from Vietnam.

And, because Toxic Math seems to be brimming with inane Byron Bay facts at the moment, I feel obligated to tell you that the name is not in recognition of the poet Lord Byron but actually his grandfather, Royal Navy officer John Byron. Captain Cook must have found a kindred spirit in old ‘foul-weather Jack’, being as he was also a colonial explorer of some distinction, possessing the Falkland Islands for the British in 1765 and causing his fair share of conflict along the way. Also, Byron was no stranger to rotten luck: after his vessel, HMS Wager, was shipwrecked in Patagonia and a mutiny divided the crew, it took him six years to get home again.


AU Tube: Understanding Australian TV
‘Stephen Fry Live at the Sydney Opera House’ (ABC1)

I once saw Stephen Fry while punting in Cambridge. That, of course, makes me sound like a twat, but nonetheless it’s the god’s honest truth: there he was, reclining, like Norfolk royalty, being punted down the Cam. But even a rather redundant anecdote like that proves how everyone in England somehow feels connected to the 'National Treasure', whether through his incessant Tweeting, column inches, publications, TV or live appearances. Even for a class-conscious nation, he’s still the toff we’re proud to call our own: witty, self-deprecating and an unrivalled force of knowledge. Along with fish and chips, he is probably our finest and proudest export. So I won’t spend this column banging on about how brilliant Stephen Fry is, because it is clearly a notion that both the Aussies and the Brits can completely agree on.

This 90 minute talk fest proves his worth as an unbridled motor mouth, talking openly to an Opera House audience with no script or theme - apart from a very loose one, the letter W. So we’re drawn into Fry’s world of Wodehouse, Waugh and Wilde, the world wide web, and his episode of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ which has the raconteur trawling through Cambridge memories, his first graduate job (a teacher in Yorkshire) and meeting fellow Footlights Thompson and Laurie where hilarity ensues. The real revelations come out during his Q&A session with smiley Aussie talk queen Jennifer Byrne, where all the disturbing stuff from Fry’s past is expanded upon (his bipolar, cocaine abuse and time in prison). But all the while he remains his erudite self without once being aloof or patronising: a skill, of course, and his most endearing trait, something which is not common in every scholar.

So, in hindsight, I may have banged on a bit there, but watching Fry at the Opera House was like witnessing the meeting of two country's most iconic institutions. His growing adoration here makes me think that we should quickly draw up some form of rota system so that we can feasibly share him with the rest of the world.