ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
“Left hand down, mate,” he yelled from the jetty.
“Yeah keep going. Nah go back up and straighten out, mate. Yeah, woo! Now come down slower.”
Nat Wilmott is trying to keep the peace down at the Betoota Sailing Club boat ramp – but he’s having a little bit of trouble.
The line this morning was nearing ten trailers and a sunburnt Betoota Grove financier was trying and failing spectacularly to launch his boat into Lake Yamma Yamma.
In the dry desert heat, people were getting frustrated.
But not everyone.
Those not in the line, the jetty fisherman and the like, we’re all laughing at the expense of Peter Mantis, a somewhat likable private fund manager at Macquarie Private Wealth in the French Quarter.
“Mate, you’re fucking useless!” screamed one bloke from beside the boat ramp.
“Do you want me to do it, mate? I’ve never driven a Merc before, but. Is the big silver cunt an auto or what?”
But that was when Nat, the owner-operator of the Betoota Sailing Club Tackle Shop, stepped in to help.
Peter had fallen into the trap of boat ownership without first thinking to master the art of reversing down a boat ramp – something he regrets now.
“It looks easy enough, to reverse a trailer, but it’s not,” said Peter.
“Then this nice old man, Nathan I think his name was, coached me through it and I ultimately got the thing in the water,”
“The whole episode certainly entertained these South Betoota mouthbreathers. Leering at me from the edge of the boat ramp.”
More to come.
