Talk of the North: John Andersen’s never been a neat freak, and it became painfully obvious when he walked the Bibbulumn Track

When you’re carrying an entire house on your back, you shouldn’t expect it to come out in a neat pile, that's weird … writes John Andersen in this week’s Talk of the North

John Andersen on the Bibbulmun Track

I read a definition which said neat people are lazier and meaner than sloppy people.

That made me feel good.

Neat people, it went on to say, have a “cavalier” attitude towards possessions and would get rid of them without any hint of remorse. No sentimentality. We, the people from sloppydom, know you. Yes, you, you cold, inward looking, sociopathic, psychos with paperless desks and geometrically crafted sock drawers.

Basically, a psychiatrist would tell you that an obsessively neat person is condescending and thoughtless. In other words, not just a psychopath, but a prick as well, if I may be so crude.

A sloppy person on the other hand is just the opposite. They are thoughtful and considerate. Lovely people, really. Furthermore, underneath that sloppiness there is a tranquillity and order. Inner peace reigns supreme. The inner core is chilled. Life is just one big schooner of Black Fish.

There is that person in the office who sits in his cubicle, head down at keyboard, while surrounding him are piles of papers, reminder notes and jottings of things to do. Ask him for something and he will shuffle through the papers for a few seconds and then surprise you by triumphantly holding up what you are looking for.

John Andersen on the Bibbulmun Track

The neat person’s desk, a clean vista, a windswept plain, is of course paperless. Ask him for something and he will look at you like “are you kidding me” and then say “sorry, haven’t got it”. Why? Because he has thrown it out. Neat freak.

I raise this because sloppydom is my world. Sloppy versus neat. I am currently going down a 400km section of track in Western Australia carrying a backpack that contains probably one hundred individual items. Condensed down into dry bags is my kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and wardrobe. Most nights I stay in huts that are scattered along the track. If not, I set up my coffin-like tent and camp.

The huts are where neat versus sloppiness come to the fore, especially when forced to share the small area of the hut real estate with other people. I put my pack down, loosen the side straps, open it up and then KABOOM. In one blinding flash of white light the floorboards around it are littered with what looks like the aftermath of a bunker buster bomb attack on an Iranian nuclear facility. Except all I’ve done is opened my backpack and started sorting out the odds and sods I need for the night like the inner dome of my tent (to keep the tiger snakes on the outside), air mattress, sleeping bag, bag liner, micro stove, cooking pot, dehydrated meals and dozens of other things I can’t live without. They are everywhere and I am helpless to rein them in, to gather them in, to corral them if you like in a tight circle right near me. It is like a mob of wild cattle that have bolted for the scrub.

John Andersen on the Bibbulmun Track

I look around and see that the two other people in the hut, total strangers, have their packs sorted and everything arranged in neat lines in an area not much bigger than a postage stamp. How do they do that? I ask myself. I then I warn myself: “watch out. Psychos.”

I was with a neat freak mate once on this same hike and he had everything out in precise little lines just minutes after we arrived. I’d be still reaching down into the depth of my pack looking for my little stove in its plastic case while around me for several square metres was the blast zone.

And then after we’d gone to bed at 6pm which is late on these hikes, he once yelled out, “hey, I’ve got one of your shoes here in my tent. Do you want it”?

I didn’t even know how it got there, but there you go. As I said, that’s a bunker buster for you. Things go everywhere.

I could feel he was waiting for an answer, so I said, “just chuck it outside”. A few seconds later I heard his mozzie dome unzip and watched him place the errant shoe in the same neat line as his. We continued that way for three weeks. His yin to my yang. Although he would say his yang to my yin.

As a famous person once said: “neatness makes me feel like I have to be on my best behaviour.”

Clutter is my natural habitat.

Grasshopper plague in the outback

Grasshopper plague hits the Outback

Where’s Alfred Hitchcock when you need him?

The man who created scary thrillers like Psycho and The Birds would have a field day at Muttaburra right now. The grasshopper plague there is Hitchcockian.

Peta Graham runs Tijuana Station, near Muttaburra, with her husband Bill. She said the grasshoppers had been in the area since April and were devouring grass on the stations.

“We are on our fourth round of hatchlings now. There’s been nothing we could do,” she said.

But help is on its way. She said local grazier Ben Hall had arranged for a contractor from Emerald to come up and spray the properties.

“They will do aerial spraying in two weeks. It’s all you can do,” Mrs Graham said.

She said the funny thing was that now when the grasshoppers splattered on the windscreen of a moving car nothing happens. She said it was like they were empty.

“Before, when you hit them, the guts would go everywhere,” she said.

Local publican Alison Barton said there had been a run of good seasons.

“People around here have or had good feed, but now the grasshoppers have decimated their paddocks,” she said.

Meanwhile, little old Muttaburra (pop. 158) keeps on keeping on. If you want to keep up with events in this thriving village 550km southwest of Townsville, tune into the Facebook page I’m Not Trying to Impress you, but I’m from Muttaburra.

That’s right, when you meet someone from Muttaburra, it’s hard not to be impressed.

And you might ask, how did a sheep and cattle station at Muttaburra end up being called Tijuana? I asked Peta Graham how this came to be.

“Well,” she said, “the family story is that when Bill’s grandfather drew the block, his brother was over in Tijuana, Mexico, for the races. It was the Tijuana Cup. So Bill’s grandfather called it Tijuana.”

I said to her, “It’s a good story Peta, stick to it”.

“Don’t worry,” she said. We will.”

Joke of the week

After an earthquake destroyed a hotel, rescuers were searching for survivors. They hushed as they heard a voice with an Irish lilt filtering weakly through the rubble.

The chief rescuers sked, “hello, who’s that?”

“Paddy”, came the response.

“And whereabouts are you, Paddy?”

“In room 139.”

Originally published as Talk of the North: John Andersen’s never been a neat freak, and it became painfully obvious when he walked the Bibbulumn Track