Prune It Back | Collision, decision and hilltop vision

I had worked out this thing called a motorbike, and since Bruce and his brothers assumed all lads were born with the required skills, I stepped up to the plate with more shtick than slick whenever I could.

I was given the bike that had no rear brakes, but by way of compensation had the purpose-built pad on the back on which three of the eight farm dogs would leap if I so much as walked toward the thing.

If I was ever to fling into the air from a forward flip, at least I’d have loyal company on the way down to certain death.

Alone one afternoon, I gave it a bash.

Gravel road, front brake, in a hurry and let your imagination do the rest but don’t forget the airborne kelpies.

Injuries were not noticed in my decision to cover the evidence.

I had bent the handle bars and promptly popped a haemorrhoid clamping the wheel beneath my thighs in trying to push them back. The handles, not the piles.

I stomped on a pedal to straighten it and only stopped searching for a mirror when I remembered the bike didn’t have one.

Now for the driveway.

A twelve-foot ‘yaw’ was hastily erased from the gravel as best that a twisted ankle would allow, and I popped a small stone into the hole that the pedal had made, and several smaller ones out from under the skin on my bloodied elbow.

I restarted the bike, wiped blood from the fuel cap and continued.

The dogs decided they would walk from here, thanks.

Bruce and his brother Phil were astute when we walked over the site later that day.

“Well looky what we have here,” Phil said.

And like forensic farmers, they saw through my cover-up, saw where I had braked, where my boot marks stood either side of a tyre mark (“I’m guessing you were trying to straighten the handlebars just here, would that be right, Ted?”) and it went on.

“Probably explains that five-inch graze on your chin.”

The next day was the ute’s turn.

They were harvesting lupin in a far paddock, and my job was to follow in the ute, Bruce in his enormous truck.

For a city driver, distance is relative.

Bruce paused at a gateway, and I stopped right behind him. What’s he waiting for?

Inside the lorry, Bruce looked sideways. Where’s Ted?

And so we waited until he figured he might be out of sight from me — instead of me being perched up his rear, out of sight of his mirrors — and decided to back the truck up.

I panicked (there was no other option), threw the ute into reverse, dropped the clutch and promptly jack-knifed the trailer I forgot I was towing.

Time for cursing was cut horribly short when the lorry backed clean into me, and I saw the bonnet fold up like tin foil in front of my eyes.

The week ended with my fiancée’s visit, and someone suggested a romantic bike ride to watch a chilly sunset from the farm’s only hill.

She held on.

The sharp incline got me nervy, but she didn’t blink as I dropped to one gear too low, and the motorbike went up on its rear wheel with the perfection of Evel Knievel nicking out for some milk.

There was sufficient time during this accidental and, I must admit, impressive stunt for said fiancée to shriek with delight and for me to think about how the heck we get back onto two wheels — the single brake that worked was, after all, up in the air.

A gentle clutch grab and down the bike came as smooth as butter and we stopped safely.

I turned around.

“Or would you prefer we go all the way up on two wheels?”

“Good idea, but that was impressive.”

It was chilly for the emperor without his clothes.

Andy Wilson writes for Country News. He is a pre-peer review science editor in a range of fields and has a PhD in ecology from the University of Queensland.