Leechy Leech

Bushwalkers beware. Or that is, novice bushwalkers. Experienced ones are totally aware.

A fate worse than death awaits you.
Well, a bit of discomfit and creepiness awaits you.

Heavy rain and tropical temperatures have brought out the walker's enemy - the humble leech or R. aus­tralis. The blood-sucking animal variety.

Leeches have had an ignoble history. They've been worshipped as much as they've been despised. For hundreds of years doctors used them to suck the "bad" blood out of patients, and to try to cure everything from insomnia to cancer. Today they're back in fashion with some of the medical fraternity - who are using them to help with everything from micro­surgery to plastic surgery.

But that doesn't help those of us who just want to go for a walk in the rain without having our appendages covered in the little blighters getting fat on our blood.

So here's a few tips:

If you're in a group walk at the front. It will only dawn on the leeches after you have passed that prey awaits and the second, third and fourth walker will only be attacked.

Don't walk barefoot. You're asking for trouble as my son and his friends discovered on a recent hike on the NSW South Coast. Their feet were totally covered in leeches within a few minutes.

Wear Rid (or some such similar insect repellant). Smother your legs in it.You can also use it to get the blighters off. Salt also works wonders. And boots aren't a bad idea either as a prevention although they're sure to crawl inside.

I've heard there's such a miraculous thing as socks that stop leeches as well although I haven't found them anywhere.

And then ofcourse smoking bushwalkers get it easy. They just have to put their cigarette near the slimy animal and it's gone. For once, smokers are popular with non-smokers.

If all else fails, throw the Tea Tree oil on later to stop the itching.

Have a great bushwalk!

Strut your stuff

My number one advice to women travelling on their own is always sit at the bar.

First stop at your hotel after plonking your bags and checking out the movie list and the mini bar should be the hotel bar if it has one or a nearby establishment.

Don't let haughty waitresses fling you into a corner, where nobody - particularly eligible men - can see you.

They may think you're a high-class escort as you hold up the bar, but at least somebody will talk to you. And if they don't there's always the barman.

Discussion around women travelling on their own seems to centre on fear of being hassled by men. I'm going to go out on a limb now - but aren't many women travelling because they WANT to meet men?

OK nobody wants to be hassled or have crude comments made towards them as they walk down the street. But a little attention can be a good thing.

Once in New York I was walking past a building site and a workman whistled at me. (This was a few years - well, decades - ago.)

I turned round and said, "Say something nice, don't just whistle."

"Red's your colour," he announced as I was wearing a red shirt.

Well that made my day.

The best thing about travel is meeting people, although monuments like the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids and Angkor Wat surpass most you come across.

So get out there, order a Margarita or a Martini - not some silly cocktail for people who prefer dessert to alcohol - and strut your stuff.

P.S. The photo here is not of me in a bar but squeezing through a cave. It was the best I could find for the time being!

The Red Terror was a u beaut ute

I felt like a bit of a goose driving a Toyota ute to the Deniliquin Ute Muster.

Not because it was a ute but because it had AVIS painted very boldly on the passenger door.

I'd jokingly suggested I rent a ute but didn't expect there'd be one waiting for me at the airport in Albury.

Anyway it was a lot easier to drive than the 1970 Falcoln ute I used to own when I lived in the Kimberley and the Northern Territory in the early 80s.

That one was red, although I later had to replace its tailgate with a yellow one. With the black tyres, my Red Terror represented the Aboriginal colours.

I'd bought it from a depot for old government cars in Derby.

It had a lot of things wrong with it, and enough rust to sink a battleship but I loved that ute.

The gears would get stuck and I'd have to open the bonnet, jump out of the car and wiggle them around. And it was hard when I was at the top of a hill!

Then jumping back in I'd wave to all the people laughing at me.

But my beast certainly wasn't the hotted-up version of a ute that you see at the ute muster - with bullbars, aerials, flags and massive headlights and stickers of cow horns and pubs the owners had drunk at stuck to the rear windscreen.

I doubt if I would have been let into a B and S country ute club.

And the burnouts and donuts I did in it were not intentional.

It could go almost anywhere a four wheel drive could go and I drove that ute all over the country - across the Kimberley several times, up the Tanami from Alice Springs to Wave Hill and then on to the Kimberley, and eventually from Darwin to Sydney via Mt Isa and western Queensland.

Many people - including scores of kids - got lifts with me, as they piled into the back. Those were the days when you were allowed to do that.

While dust streamed in through every crack, music blasted from my portable tape recorder. The tapes would be played until the dust got the better of them.

On the back, I had a tin box with my food and gear, another with tools and ofcourse a swag. You could live out of it.

But it wasn't secure. Several times I had things, including my spare tyre, stolen out of the back - usually when I was in town.

I also had a dog who sat in the back, but not as obediently as most you see. She had a habit of jumping off at traffic lights to hide in the shade.

She'd been given to me by Aboriginal people from Borroloola in the Northern Territory and her name, Iyupi, meant good. Bit of a misnomer. Bitsa may have been better.

I eventually sold the ute to somebody in Adelaide for a few hundred dollars who I think just wanted it for spare parts. I was sad to see it go, but relieved to buy a car that didn't need the gears unjammed everytime I got into it.