Tag: Port Stephens

Call me Bigs Bardot. Some weeks ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my Dolce & Gabbana clutch purse, and nothing particular to interest me on Netflix during those dark days between the final episode of Squid Game and the premiere of Tiger King 2, I thought I would ride my super-cute carnation pink Vespa about a little and see some oversized roadside attractions.

It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation, but mainly it’s just totally fun to hang out with giant bugs and huge bits of fruit and stuff like that.

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair through the Land of the Bigs when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke. And so it felt when, as I sauntered along the waterfront in Nelson Bay, I happened upon a tiny alien silhouetted against the endless ocean.

He did not feel the wind, or smell the salt air. He only stood, staring at the horizon, with the marks of some inner crucifixion and woe deep in his face. He was also wearing the most adorable knitted cardigan!

Anyway, long story short, Captain Gordon had spent most of his life searching for a great white whale. It consumed him, and he couldn’t eat or sleep until he found this massive mammal. The little alien seemed to be able to drink, though, because he was slurring his words and alternating between throwing punches and trying to kiss me.

“Gordon,” I told him, clutching his furry hand. “Your life’s journey has come to an end, because the Shoal Bay Whale is just up the road. We can even get some jalapeño poppers on the way.”

“Bigs,” he spouted, “The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run.”

“So that’s a no to the jalapeño poppers, then?”

The early bird gets the sperm whale

It’s not easy doubling a boozed-up Melmacian on a Vespa, especially when everything was ‘Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents’ beds, unerringly I rush’ this and ‘Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me’ that. We were going to see a massive marine creature, so I didn’t get the porpoise of his ramblings.

Fortunately, after passing The Big Red Bug and Bakker’s Big Peach, we soon arrived at the Whale. I was immediately smitten by his roguish good looks and cheeky smile. He’s built onto a trailer, meaning this oversized fish can splash around wherever he wants to.

It was all a bit much for Gordon, though. The Nelson Bay Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some furry little aliens feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. Or something like that.

Gordon piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole alien species; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it. It was a clear breach of the ‘Do Not Climb’ sign.

“To the last I grapple with thee,” Gordon whaled. “From hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.” The poor little fella had obviously had too much excitement for one day, so I popped him on the Vespa and, thankfully, he fell asleep on the way home.

The next morning Gordon had forgotten all about his desperate search for the white whale and had decided his newest lifelong obsession was to see the Big Apple Pie. Yes, it’s quite a story, and I only am escaped alone to tell thee about the extraordinary Moby Big.