Of Meat and Men

Seriously, if you want to make the world's most hilarious reality TV show, get up here with cameras now. This is bigger than the 1940's gold rush, bigger than last year's riots.

It's Day 3 PTR (Post Truck Rollover). Here's my best attempt at a summary of the madness that has gripped the town:

DAY 1:
Neighbours rush to the scene with utes and trucks to help with the clean-up in true outback "lend a hand" style. "No worries mate!" "We'll load up all the trucks and share it all equally when we get back to town!" Camaraderie and mateship warm the hearts of all.

DAY 2:
Truckloads of vegies and food are happily distributed to the animal shelter and old people. Sacks of food are cheerfully handed over neighbours' fences. But as the men begin to unload the trucks, rumblings of concern emerge. "Oi. Anyone seen that pallet of bacon?" "Pallet? I found a 2 kilo box." "What about them prawns mate?" "They went to the tip mate." "Nah, didn't Kev have em on the back of his ute mate?" "Dunno mate. I can't find me box of sausages either mate." Men begin to look sideways at each other in the pub.

Ian comes home looking grim. "Something's up," he says darkly. "I 'ad three tubs of them bocconcini an no one's seen em." I stir my giant vat of pumpkin soup and try to look sympathetic. Backyard barbecues smoke out the town as night falls and men gather to exchange notes on who got what. Stories emerge of "hundreds" of cases of beer which have mysteriously gone missing, and no one knows what happened to the alleged crates of sirloin strips which no one actually remembers seeing in the first place. Women continue making vats of soup and using mallets to wedge food into overloaded fridges. Stars fill the night sky as the men of the town snore into an uneasy sleep, dreaming of missing steaks while dozens of dogs fart contentedly amid piles of barbecue bones.

DAY 3

Blokes continue to go to the tip in search of the mythical mountain of prawn cases. "It was only 8 degrees last night mate, they should be OK." Conspiracy theories spread wildly as blokes drive slowly around, spying over each other's fences, trying to peer subtly into each other's ute trays, and dropping round to compare notes. "I reckon someone did a deal with the truck driver over them cases of beer mate"  "Yer, and I reckon Wazza's got that old cool room of his running, why would he need all that space if he only took one box a them sausages like 'e said mate?" Ian spends the morning looking for the missing bocconcini, but comes home with a case of prawns and a promise from Gubby that we can have some of "them porterhouses" from his freezer in exchange for not telling Brian about a block of land that Brian thinks Gubby is going to sell him (!) (no, I can't keep up with it either).

I take a vat of soup over to Hazel & Patrice's house in exchange for some spare rib bones for the dogs, who are so full that they may never need to eat ever again; the combined farting from Ian, Atlas and Honey defies any efforts with the air freshener spray and the house smells like a charnel pit. Hazel's husband Sunshine comes round, muttering about "them crates of sirloin strips" which "someone must have taken off Greg's truck because Greg hasn't seem em and Bazza reckons he loaded em on with them barramundi fillets but I only found one box so I reckon that bastard's got em somewhere".

Every portable fridge, esky, caravan freezer and cool room in town has been plugged in to overheating powerboards; sacks of potatoes and carrots sit under sprinklers in people's yards to keep cool while us women-folk keep making astonishing quantities of soup. The last sad prawn hunters straggle back from the tip emptyhanded, and men frown grimly into their Sunday night beers, contemplating meat, mates and payback.

My bet is that when the pub opens again on Monday night there will be the biggest brawl of all time. Fortunately Ian and I will be in Geraldton, buying a freezer.