Things That Go Bump In The Night.

I realise this has nothing what so ever to do Europe and my time here but I was recounting it to another person and I thought I should share it. The things we dooooooo!

We had a young Scottish guy who was working with us on a minerals exploration drilling program up in the far north of Australia on the Gulf of Carpentaria. We were camping out in an abandonded homestead about 300km north of the nearest town. Coming from central Scotland, Donald firmly believed in ghosties and ghouls and all things that go bump in the night.

A couple of us got together before Donald arrived at the camp and made a cassette tape with about 15 min of silence at the start and then we had people clanking lengths of chain, murmuring and laughing in deep spooky voices. This would go for about 20 seconds and then there would be a pause of about a minute or so before starting up again and so forth for about a total of 10 minutes.

On the night of his arrival, as we sat around the camp fire, we all told him tales of a group of murdered stockmen that were ambushed by aboriginies over 100 years before in the dry river bed below the homestead. Having sufficiently spooked him, we declared it a night, turned off the portable diesel generator that was running the lights and crawled into our swags / sleeping bags.
Behind the rusty old water tank about 30 meters away, we had placed the cassette player running on batteries and turned it on. Everyone said good night to each other and pretended to be fast asleep within minutes.

About 15 minutes later it began and Donald sat straight up and yelled, "Fook did you hear that???" We took it in turns in the dark to respond to him telling him to shut up and go to sleep and that there were no sounds and that he was dreaming. Of course we were all lying there quaking in stifled laughter as Donald rapidly progressed towards complete nervous hysteria. After about the 4th round of ghostly noises he bolted out of bed, ran outside and started up the portable generator, flooding the camp in lights. He stood with his back to the dying embers of the camp fire and a long handled shovel braced across his chest, staring wildly into the night.

We left him standing there to enjoy the sounds of a blissfully quiet evening in the bush whilst we all turned over and went to sleep.

Even to this day he has never been told the truth. I mean to say what are mates for.