Skatey...The life of Les Skate

Skatey
The Life of Les Skate
From there we hired an eight-seater van and decided we’d go inland, down through all the
good food growing country. The Atherton Tablelands. We visited quite a few interesting
little towns along the way. One in particular that springs to mind, I don’t remember the
name…but there was this lady.
She kept a terrific dining
room.
It was only a little town and she’d been there a long,
long time. She was the Mayor and she pretty much
ran the town. She ran the motel which was just men’s
huts that had been moved from the mining towns. But
she kept a terrific dining room. People came from
everywhere! I had thought, ‘How is she ever going to fill that dining room?’ Well, that night
it was filled up!
It happened to be Ted’s birthday, so I went to her, and I bought a bottle of whisky. Well
maybe I shouldn’t talk about people like this, she really was a lovely lady, but she was
already half tipsy by then. She had a couple of very good lasses looking after the dining
room. There was no doubt we had a beautiful spread. She sort of took a bit of a liking to us
because we were the new ones in town. She liked to put her arm around me!...
Anyway, the night went alright. Then in the morning
of course, being called a motel, we expected some
sort of a meal. But there didn’t seem to be anything
happening, so in the finish I had to go and knock on
her door. I knew she lived adjacent to the dining area. So, I knocked on her door, and the
poor old dear came out, with the long hair and the false teeth out, looking like she really
needed some repairs done! I think she was quite embarrassed and, in the end, we went
into the kitchen and got our own breakfast. It was a bit funny. I don’t know how many
times she had told us the night before that Joh and Flo always dined there. And I wouldn’t
really have been surprised!
The poor old dear came out, with the long
hair, and the false teeth out, and looking like
she really needed some repairs done!
Well maybe I shouldn’t talk
about people like this, she
really was a lovely lady,
Another quite laughable thing that happened there … it was Show Day. They had quite a
reasonable museum there, old wooden stables built a hundred years ago, that sort of
thing. Ted and I were looking around and we saw this nice big piston from an aeroplane.
And the caption underneath said, ‘This is the last piston from the working DC3s.’ Well we
knew first hand that it wasn’t! It just shows you what they can get away with! We had a
laugh about that too.
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