ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A French Quarter problem drinker last night found himself walking through Machattie Park at 1 am after being turfed out of the nearby Cracker’s Nelson Inn on Rue de Branlette, putting himself in great danger of either getting lost or being violently mugged by a vagrant.
Local tiler Gary Davidson lives, as the crow flies, about two kilometres from the pub he got ejected from, but between him and his bed is the 550-acre Machattie Park that’s home to all types of hideous and dangerous creatures.
The 48-year-old said he decided to make his way home on foot to “sober up” but came across a Lime scooter at the Green Road gates.
“So I beeped it open and off we went into the park,” he said.
“But not long after we got going, the headlight, it’s not too powerful, so I was hooning along down the road, had a few wobbles on account of my blood alcohol level but ah yeah, I was hooning along and hit a bend with a bit too much speed, and I found myself leaving the road at about 30 clicks. I went end over end, like I was some sort of gymnast doing front flips. Luckily, I was so pissed, my limp body just let gravity and the laws of physics run riot. Mind you, this was all happening in the pitch black. So I’ve ended up a crumpled head at the foot of this boab tree and the scooter is, no word of a lie, about ten meters away beeping away like it does when you boot one over for fun,”
“I must’ve lay there looking up at the stars for a good ten minutes. Wiggling my toes in my shoes, making sure I wasn’t now a head on a stick-type show. Dunno what they call it, a para or a quad, but fuck me, I was nervous. So I get up and go over to the scooter, and it’s proper fucked. Broken in half and flashing. I should’ve just walked back up the hill and caught a cab home then but due to my concussion and intoxication, I set off deeper into the park,”
“Using the moon and stars to navigate my way over to the eastern side, near my gaff, I instantly got lost because I’m not much of a bushman. So I was proper bushed, walking aimlessly through a dark park when I came across a mob of tramps trying to fish some carp out of the pond. I was friendly as hell, but they took one look at me and became aggressive, and I ended up having to run for my life,”
“Probably for the best because I’ve come running through this wetland area, sometimes up to my waist in the bullrush and muck when they turned around. I’ve followed the wetland down to the big dam, and I’ve ended up swimming across this vast body of freezing water and come up the other side. There, I saw the lights of the Post Office Hotel. I knew where I was then,”
“I was about 10 km from home; I’d pretty much gone into the park, walked around for hours, and come out not far from where I’d gone in. But now, I was nursing what was I suspected to be a Grade 3 ankle sprain, a mild concussion, a broken finger, and enough bark off my back to cover a soccer ball. Plus, I was completely soaked and covered to my nipples in mud,”
“So I beeped open another Lime scooter and decided to take it slowly this time.”
More to come.
