A first trip ‘round the world, part 42

It was snowing lightly that night and my buddy Carey Petrovik, suggested that me, JP and a bunch of his friends from Mt. Beauty, go hunting the wombat down valley on the way to the town of Mansfield. 

I’d never been a hunter and the last time I held a firearm was about 4 years before, during boot-camp as I began my air force compulsory service. 

Never one to turn down the prospect of some adventure, JP was quite enthused by the prospect of leaving Mt. Buller for a night, so we acquiesced and down we went, piled-up in Carey’s friends in what seemed to be a beat-up Range Rover. 

When we got there, it was raining pretty hard, no snow on the ground, of course, and we found ourselves at night, in the middle of the bush and in the mud with nothing to see in front of us. With the rain and the cloud cover, it was pitch-dark, and I was afraid we might tear our ski school jackets as we moved into the deep thicket.

For the life of me, I didn’t even know what a wombat was or even looked like. In the state of Victoria, Wombats were seen as a varmint by many, particularly by farmers who had serious problems with their burrows in the meadows where their tractors could get stuck if the earth collapsed underneath. 

But as Carey put it, “if you're going to shoot a wombat on the paddock, another ten are going to come in and use that hole…” As we were “hunting” we caught sight of what appeared to be a wallaby, JP said he stepped on what felt like a platypus and I was afraid there might be snakes. 

Then later on, Carey’s friend said they saw a wombat, shot it, but missed it. Sometime, well after midnight we returned to Mt. Buller, soggy, our après-ski boots muddy, feeling cold and empty-handed. The wombat won 1-0, so we skipped bar closure time at Kooroora and went straight to bed.