Monkeyrockworld

Spinifex was scratching our flip-flopped feet while walking through the bush, carrying the load with both hands. It was not too heavy, but definitely not a baby roo. We got far enough from the campsite when we dropped it on the ground, took it out of the bag and prepared a space where we put the bowl as a container to drain the blood and put the organs after the cut. Breathing heavy air, Adrian pushed his glasses back and started cutting the head with great professionalism. I could see the blade getting inside of the kangaroo’s throat, but no blood was coming out. It was like totally bloodless. And the stain it left on the road, that was too small to be all of the blood this creature had inside. So here we are, at the side of the highway, sometimes a flash of lights on the blade working in and out of the neck, doing something perfectly normal in another, more primitive world, and feeling now a little bit guilty of committing some sort of ancestral crime. But we are just trying to transform a dead animal into food, into new life to be spooned down our necks. When the head finally comes off rolling sideways into the bowl, I find myself holding a headless kangaroo, whose little eyes are now looking at me from below. A totally strange position they’d never been able to assume just minutes before. The paws and legs came off much easier, while the neckbone had tested Adrian’s skills, and soon I was left holding the torchlight and ordered to take some more pictures. Matt was still particularly excited, although he was just holding the animal by the tail, but I reckon he was really taken from what we were doing.

Then it was time to attack the fur, and here we made a quite moving discovery: a little long thing was coming out of the pouch, and it took us seconds to realize it was moving. But what was it, was still a mistery to me until Adrian opened the pouch gently and found what we didn’t want to. A baby kangaroo was sitting there, naked as a pinkish foetus, still moving and totally unhurt by the impact. Mother protected it very well, and in this very moment, when Adrian took it out and stared at it moving frantically in his cupped hands providing a bloodstained background, I thought I was witnessing birth, and not death. Because we had no better option than throwing it away. It was helpless, a strange little creature that, lacking the fur, looked almost like a baby alien, something really weird I never saw that up close. When a kangaroo has fur on, it doesn’t look as daunting and strange as this little thing looked like. Adrian was a bit shocked, seemed like he didn’t want to get the feast on, but then Matt helped out with very cold blood. I was motioning my torchlight, soul less for a few seconds. Then we reminded we had a job to do.

The fur came off relatively easily, especially because Adrian exactly knew what he was doing, he avoided cutting too deep to leave the animal as it was, without spilling blood and bowels out. Skin and fur was rolling down like an old piece of cloth, and by the time we got to the tail, what before was clearly a kangaroo now looked like some sort of strange mixture of a big turkey and a dog made of translucent red muscles. I tought I might have had problems or felt sick, but instead, it was like participating to a boy scouts’ outing. I was waving my torch and taking my pictures, sometimes holding the animal, sometimes just getting closer to make light where most needed. When he finally succeded in peeling the skin off, the resulting thing looked like a big lamb, all muscle…no blood whatsoever, it was very strange. It was finally time to remove the intestines, Adrian cut like a champion without touching the big white membrane where all of the bowels were floating, and this was the moment we started smelling that peculiar smell of shit and death. It was as unexpected and unpleasant as a caress mutating into a punch to the lower jaw. The big round white soft ball rolled out into the bowl, burying the severed head, and that was the last time I saw it. We washed the meat with some water, and crossed the highway to dump the intestines and body parts to the mercy of the eagles and falcons feasting over Northern Territory’s lonely roads and it was time to get back to the campground, and put some meat on the fire.

Now, I think this was one of the most authentic Australian experiences I ever had, and I’m sorry for the vivid graphic detail, but this needs to be taken exactly as it happened. Like the small adventure of some people randomly transformed into bushmen, trying to feel more the land they are exploring. I think for an hour or so I truly experienced what should be classified as normal and worth doing in such a wasteland. The drive to look for food, and in this particular case even the almost sick desire of some travellers to bring back some utterly intense memory, made us do it. And I can still reckon the great savage taste of that meat, especially when cooked in a curry sauce and eaten with pasta the next day. For many years I thought I’d never been able to do something like this, but now I know I am. Maybe now I’m ready for survival… so let the nuclear war coming, and let me try!! eheheheh…