The gold coast super gp. that did it for us, we were outta here.
We drove 3 hrs inland to Warwick.
To the Rodeo!
As we walked down the roughly tarmac’ed street to the entrance that old Sesame Street tune came to mind….‘one of these things is not like the others..’.
Everyone wore a cowboy hat. Everyone wore jeans. Everyone was a friend of mother checker. You could count on your left hand those of us that weren’t. I felt like a black man in Cornwall.
It made me nervous, I started to picture the worst that could happen if someone were to draw attention to our infiltration. Pointy fingers? Laughter. Cold Stares? I quivered as we joined the queue of cowboys. As each person approached to pay, the rotary club members collecting money and dishing out wrist bands laughed and patted backs of the entry goers. I started to relax, who cares, it’s just people eh? It was our turn. “HI!’ I bellowed, still a little tense obviously. ‘HOW’S IT GOING GUYS!’ Pete shouted out next to me, hmm, not the only one a big edgy I thought. The old geezer looked at me. ‘Um, two adults?’ I asked, it was a questions not a statement, like asking the club bouncer if you can enter when you’ve got vomit down your shirt and you’re holding onto the doorframe for support. He gave us our tickets, his eyes gliding painfully slow between us and nodded us on. ‘Shee-it” I said to Pete, ‘that feel like some kind of Mexican stand off to you?’. Pete giggled nervously, looked me square in the face and said, ‘yup’.
We laughed, who cared eh? we were in and over a sea of hats we could smell horses and excitement. A fair dinkem rodeo, ye-HA!
That sign in the background that says ‘our town, our people, our daily’, really just wants to say ‘our town, our people only’. I felt a bit like we were hanging out in someone’s house without being invited. You know, that’s not even really it, unfair even. They were just perhaps a little wary. Like when you’re walking home and a rottweiler is cruising up the footpath towards you, he’s sniffing the grass, the lamp post, his butt and for all intense purposes is probably quite harmless but he’s big, he looks scary. He’s unpredictable, you cross the street.
Above are the ‘members only’ seats. teee heee
Whenever I copy our pics onto the pew pew there’s always two of the above, it always takes me two shots to prepare my face and even then, the second one rarely works out.
How does Pete’s city cowboy hat measure up? oh. 
The Rodeo was hot. Dry, dusty that hot hot dry heat that leaves you with a perma thirst even though you just drank a gallon.
We watched the steer roping, bare back riding, barrel racing. Paid 6 bucks for a ride on a spinning arm, met a bonafide cowboy from um….Milton Keynes!? Tried on a thousand cowboy hats only to conclude what we’d feared, only real cowboys look good in those things and left.
It was the heat that pushed us out really, the limited seats in the shade were sucked up by dedicated fans early on and we just weren’t prepared for the sun like our fellow outback residents. The sun bore down on our brows and shoulders and chests burning, I mean really BURNing, while the wide brims of the cowboy hat kept the other watchers well doused in shade. Then there were the flies. They settled on your cheek, crawled up your arms, I got one up my nose and Pete spat one out hurriedly as it made a wrong turn into his mouth. They were everywhere and they were unbearable. Again, our compatriots were prepared with long sleeved cotton checked shirts and jeans. The final blow to our inadequate attire was the shoes. By the time we left my black ballet pumps (I mean really, what was I thinking?!) were tan with dust, my ankles and calves were covered too. AHA, the cowboy boot has purpose!
We called it a day and left past the same old rotary club folk we’d come in past, now lying on concrete floor of their check shack, ‘Had enough then’. stated the old geezer as we passed. His smile that told me whatever he’d thought of us, he’d just been proven right and that had made him chuffed. Everything was right again in Rodeo World.
We headed back towards the mountain range and on through Beaudesert. It was hot, have I mentioned that, finally we hit the cool rainforest of Tamborine and took a hike.
You see that T-shirt Pete’s wearing, says ‘white city NY’ we bought it at Kmart. As we were walking down to the falls we passed a couple about the same age, ‘hello!’ I sing out and they smile warmly. Just as we’re about to disappear around the next corner the guy shouts back to Pete in a think American accent,
‘YO! that a New York t-shirt you got there?’ Pete frowns looking confused, ‘what?’ he says, ‘no, um…Woodstock’, he looks back at the American like he’s daft. They walk on. ‘What’d he say?’ I say to Pete, ‘something about me being from New York’ he says, ‘I think cause my t-shirt says Woodstock?!’. ‘Oh’, I say turning around, ‘or maybe cause it’s got the letters NY on the front’. Pete looks down at his chest. ‘huh.’ he says matter of factly, ‘so it does’.
Pete never thinks about what his clothes say. If it’s a good colour and a good fit, he’ll buy it. Is it true to assume then that girls that wear t-shirt’s that say things like ‘pop my cherry’, or ‘temptress’ are so oblivious? I would like to think so. It just struck me as odd. Because so often I judge people on what their t-shirt says, am convinced that that’s their world message. Guys that wear t-shirts that say something like ‘yes, I just farted’, or ‘girls enter here’ with an arrow pointing at their cock are mentally black listed by me without a flicker of remorse. Similarly are those woman with male attention drawing t-shirts. To me those t-shirts say, crass, boring, can’t operate sober, up for it, have no brain, got crabs. Harsh isn’t it. Where did I get that mind set from…and more importantly, am I wrong? hmmm…
