Proper True Yarn

Part two with Luke Geiger opens with maybe the most innocent mistake ever made by a country footballer. Fresh out of Chinchilla and playing footy in Sydney, 18 year old Luke discovers the whole squad shaves, and the trainers won't rub you down before a game if you're hairy. After a leg waxing attempt back in Toowoomba ended at one leg, two girls and a lot of swearing, he spots a sign under his unit block: painless Brazilian waxing. He chews on it for a couple of days, wondering what's so special about this wax from Brazil, then walks in with all the confidence in the world and asks for the Brazilian on his chest. The beautician calls the hairdresser over just to hear him say it again. Once it's explained, Luke's out. They wax his chest with the regular stuff instead, it draws blood between the pecs, and as he puts it, painless my arse, but my arse did remain hairy.
The back half is the bush kid landing at Central Station with a bag of clothes and a swag, straight into the famous Souths player house next to the Juniors leagues club. Crazy Dave the minder in the front room you never saw, groceries lined up the hallway, grass past your knees, and a brand new mower big Ricky couldn't start because he'd been told to hold the primer button until fuel ran out of it. When Luke finally mows the yard, the apprentice in him horrified at the state of it, he starts hitting forks. Then spoons. Then he looks up and sees plates, cups and tomato sauce all over the roof. The boys' explanation: we had a roof party, better view up there. Fair play. The ultimate bachelor pad, and as Luke says, there's plenty of yarns from that house that can never come out.
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New guest series with one of the best blokes Knuckles knows, Queensland cowboy country singer Luke Geiger, and the pair front up fresh from trying to drink rum for Australia at the 16th It's a Bloke Thing prostate cancer luncheon, hosted by their good mate Jack Wagner at Wellcamp Airport. The lunch raised $39,000, and the cause is a beauty: a testing truck partnered with Heart of Australia that's already checked 541 blokes in rural Queensland, with 12 per cent sent for follow ups. That's near 60 blokes who'd never have been checked. If you see it out west, walk in.
Luke's job at the lunch was the grand entry, driving the auction Kenworth from one end of the airport to the other, then jumping out with guitar and mic. What the room didn't know is that he'd been out bush long enough to need a favour first, which is how he learnt the greatest airport secret in Australia: they confiscate hundreds of aerosols a day, so if you ever need a spray of deodorant at Wellcamp, they've got you covered. One donated can of Rexona later, he was fit to sit beside Knuckles and Ray Martin. Yes, that Ray Martin, and yes, he's coming on the pod.
The main event is Luke's teeth. Four implants and 18 crowns at the top clinic in Vietnam for about $10,000 all up, versus the $10,000 his Mackay dentist wanted for one implant. The catch: Luke refused to be put under for three and a half hours of drilling into his jawbone because he was convinced they'd knock him out and take his organs, ignored the dentist's warning that shade number one was too white, and learnt both lessons the hard way. There's also the small matter of Knuckles buying the South Sydney VIP box at auction purely as a thank you to Luke, a bloke he ribs relentlessly for supporting them.
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The final part with John Rayner is one big love letter to the bush, and it starts in Fred Brophy's boxing tent at the Birdsville races. After days patrolling the Simpson Desert, Johnny fronted up to the tent chasing the family legacy, his grandfather was a tent fighter back in the day. Jessie got caught in the crush at the front, and when the RFDS bloke helping Fred asked if there was anything he could do, she dobbed Johnny straight in: he really wants to fight. Hand up, on the board, matched with the tent champion Afro Savage, who reckons he's never lost.
Then the kicker. Unbeknown to Johnny, his grandfather had picked that exact year to tow the car up from Goulburn to Birdsville, spotted his grandson's name on the board, and ended up in his corner as ring man, calling the shots while Johnny went three rounds with a bloke who could've flogged him into next week. Afro bought him a beer afterwards and had the hide to claim Johnny broke his nose. Last year the crew went back for the final Brophy tent at Birdsville, and the trip out was half the fun: hot artesian baths at Charlotte Plains, bathtub races and a rock carrying comp at Quilpie lost by two seconds on a technicality with a grand on the line, yabby races at Windorah where the cheap yabby costs $800, and a mate's charity fight with his young fella screaming go dad from the front row.
It all lands on the message both blokes finish the series with: get out and see your own country. Stay at the pubs, buy the meat pie, get your fuel local, put money into the small towns doing it tough after the floods, and if you're struggling in the city, maybe the answer is a little further west. As Johnny says, the bush is good to everyone.
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Part four with John Rayner is the ranger years, and it opens with how he got there: taking the pay cut from mining money to a National Parks traineeship, moving down to Barmah on the Murray with his now fiancee Jessie after four months together, and walking into an Echuca bottle shop to tell the manager he'd work that night for free and be given a job by close. Advice to the young fellas, that's how it's done. The bottle shop yarns from houseboat party season are worth the listen on their own.
Then it's into the good stuff. Learning tree felling from the old forestry boys and dropping burning giants on fire jobs, cultural heritage lessons from the local mobs, ring trees and sacred country from the Murray to The Rock at Wagga, then landing the dream posting at Diamantina National Park, seven hours from Longreach, seven from Mount Isa, halfway pub and nothing else. Out there he watched floods to rival 1974 rip hundred year old trees out of the ground, met a bloke driving a camel wagon from north of Alice to Taree with chooks hanging off the side, had a plane club land uninvited and drink the social club's grog, and waged war on a dirty old cow that learnt to hold the floodgates open and let the whole herd into the only springs on earth where one tiny fish exists.
And the title moment: filming an inland taipan during bilby surveys, the world's deadliest snake, one bite and you're gone, and it wandered over, had a sniff of his boot and kept going, looking for mice. His boss called him an idiot. Johnny agrees. Knuckles also drops a proper true Middleton pub yarn of his own about how close his old man came to owning the loneliest pub in Queensland.
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Part three with John Rayner opens with the maddest scheme of the series. The same cousin from part two, now unlicensed and living back at mum and dad's, loses the plot when his mum vacuums a blonde wig out from under his bed and wants to wear it to a 70s party. His explanation: that's me licence. When he drives with the wig on, the cops think he's a woman. Her reply, God bless her, is the best line of the episode: mate, you've got a beard.
From there it's back to the Cudgegong River, hundred pound handlines, loaves of bread and carp as long as a shovel handle, plus a riverbank yarn about that same cousin, a hidden magazine and the clay bank that you'll simply have to hear for yourself, because there's no writing that one down. Then the old quarry at Mudgee: a three storey jump into crystal clear water, rope swings, a track mowed through the Bathurst burr, and a generation that looked after the place until the next lot drove cars through the fences.
The back half turns into something both blokes clearly care about: kids these days aren't allowed to climb a tree, let alone live on a push bike, build bows out of willow, go yabbying or hit the old man's golf balls into the paddock. Johnny's take is that if you've got the skills, fishing, hunting, fixing cars, any of it, passing them on to the kids in your community is your job. That's how you learnt it, so get out there and teach it.
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