In Rushworth, people don’t grow rice or fruit or milk cows. In Rushworth, they know about forests and timber. They know about the Ironbark Forest where there are lots of tall, straight ironbark trees, yellow gums, kookaburras, grass trees, kangaroos and the dreaded tiger snakes.
If you go walking or riding your bike in Ironbark Forest there are two things you have to look out for. One is Tiger Snakes and the other is abandoned gold mine pits. You don’t go too close to them because they can be quite deep and down the bottom there might be sharp rocks, rusty old mining tools and the bones of anything that might have fallen in. Rushworth kids don’t go anywhere near them because they think that if you fall in you might die and be turned into a skeleton and then you wouldn’t be able to watch television or go riding on your BMX or have Christmas and that would be really sad.
View austoryplace - Rushworth Stories in a larger map Now one day, Hamish, who lives in Rushworth and usually wears a cool Mongoose shirt that he got for Christmas and a blue watch, was riding his Dino BMX along Phillip Street heading for Ironbark Forest. He didn’t have a care in the world. The wind was blowing through his hair. He was thinking, “This time I’m going to have a really good ride. I’ll find a new track to ride on and do some jumps and go up to the lookout tower, huh!”
Half way up the hill something slithered across the track in front of him.
Hamish went, “Ahhhhhh!” He hit the brakes. Stood on the back pegs. Flipped up the front wheel and stepped off the back of the BMX. He dropped the bike and went running back down the track shouting, “Ahhhhhh! Snake!”
The bike dropped on top of the snake and the snake stayed there curled up around the pedals and the bars as if it was part of the bike.
By this time Hamish stopped and he thought, “Oh, fancy being scared of a snake. I’m going back.” He walked back up the hill towards his BMX lying half on the track and half in the grass.
“It’s almost time to get back home and watch South Park anyway.”
He walked up, picked up his BMX, sat down on the seat and felt something soft and squishy on the seat. It was the snake. The snake didn’t like being squashed so it bit Hamish on his backside. Hamish rode his bike as fast as he could, zooming down the track, along the road, across the bridge and down into Phillip Street. He shouted out, “A snake has bitten me, a snake has bitten me!”
Manisha, his sister, said, “What’s wrong Hamish?”
“A snake has bitten me on the back side!”
“Mum, mum, mum, a Tiger Snake has bitten Hamish.”
Hamish skidded to a stop in the front yard. He went running in with the tiger snake still hanging from his back side.
When his mum saw it she said, “Aaaaaaaah, I don’t like snakes. I’m out or here.!”
She jumped into the 4WD and drove down to the police station. The police officer came speeding back in the police car, the siren screaming, the lights flashing and with his gun went bang, bang and shot the snake.
Hamish said, “Who’s going to suck the poison out?”
Hamish’s Mum said, “No way. It’s the hospital for you. Somebody grab that snake so that they will know what sort bit Hamish.”
The ambulance drove him to the hospital where they gave him a big anti-venom injection, put him into bed just in time to watch the last five minutes of South Park.
When he woke up in the morning in his hospital bed he saw a bottle sitting on the table. In the bottle was the tiger snake and when he went home he put the bottle with the snake beside the television set. Every time Hamish watches South Park he remembs the time he went riding in Ironbark Forest at Rushworth and met a tiger (snake).
Rushworth Tiger by
Daryll Bellingham is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.
Based on a work at
plainstalking.deni.net.au.
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