MELLIPOP AND THE DEAD KOOKABURRA AKA 20 GOOD REASONS NOT TO GO ON HOLIDAYS WITH YOUR PARENTS

Ok, so an initial disclaimer is called for. I absolutely love my folks and had a fabulous time during their stay with us in Perth. But gosh darn it, they are simply so gosh darn easy to take the piss out of. Keep in mind I kept all the good, generous (ie unfunny stuff) out of the following. Love you Mum & Dad!

1. You and your parents visit Margaret River, an area famed for its plethora of boutique wineries. After tasting a variety of different wines at one of the vineyards, your parents’ sole purchase is a $9 CASK of red wine.

2. You overhear your mother telling the haughty staff member, “That’s OK darl, I just mix it with lemonade anyway”. The haughty staff member smirks. You cringe.

3. Your father insists on eating cheese and tomato sandwiches everywhere you go. For some reason that really irritates you.

4. Your father insists on pointing out every bit of roadkill you pass on the five hour drive.

5. Your father also – inexplicably - insists on pointing out every Bayswater Rental white Hyundai you pass. This makes absolutely no sense to you because your parents have hired a white Hyundai from Europcar. This habit becomes alarmingly irritating rather quickly.

6. Your father insists on saving an injured kookaburra from the middle of the road – in the middle of Nowhere, WA. You and your parents shortly arrive at your intended destination – the Treetops Walk – and are dismayed to realise that your plan of dumping the injured kookaburra on some unsuspecting staff member will not eventuate because it appears that there are no facilities there. Just lots of trees and tourists.

7. You and your parents subsequently make a 30 kilometre round trip detour to a wildlife park to try and save the injured kookaburra.

8. Your father gives frequent pep talks to the ailing creature on your lengthy journey to the wildlife park. These pep talks start out as “You’re alright mate – we’re on the way to get help”, continue as “C’mon mate, we’re almost there – hold on” and descend into “Don’t die on me now, you scumbag”.

9. Your parents think that the kookaburra has been “sleeping”, on your arrival at the wildlife park. You take one look at the lifeless kookaburra and pronounce it DOA. You also take the opportunity to snidely remark that “sleeping” and “dead” look remarkably similar.

10. Your parents then get sucked into paying $30 entry into the shitty wildlife park you never wanted to visit anyway. The park superintendents promise to give the dead kookaburra a suitable burial for your trouble.

11. You and your parents leave the shitty wildlife park and head back to the Treetops Walk, your initial stop with the at-that-stage yet-to-be-dead kookaburra. Still reeling from the devastation of your failed rescue mission, you head down a bush track to reveal that there is, in fact, a souvenir shop and ticket sales booth at the attraction. Even more ironically, there is also a “Wildlife Rescue Centre” manned by a volunteer who has cages full of the fortunate wildlife she has saved in the past. You can’t help but think that the poor little bugger would still be alive if they had maybe posted some signs up around the place. Your father is crushed.

12. Your father offers you beer at 7 in the morning. Faced with the prospect of a full day in the car with your parents, you seriously consider the offer, but ultimately decline. Six hours later you regret your decision to forgo the beer.

13. You are constantly cold because all you pack are swimmers and boardshorts for the trip, to a region that subsequently boasts of itself as being “The Edge of Antarctica” - and for good reason. Your father offers his jacket for you to wear. You emphatically refuse to wear the jacket, claiming that is still smeared with the taint of roadkill, having been employed to wrap the dead kookaburra in. Your father has a dummy spit and calls you a “fucking idiot”. You choose to remain cold, regardless.

14. Your mother insists that you stop at shitty tourist places like the Bunbury Jetty, which she insists you walk all the way to the end and back. After what seems like hours, you complete the journey and stop to read the sign posted at the start of the jetty while you wait for your mother with her gammy knee to crawl her way back to dry land. Reading the sign, you are informed that it is the longest jetty in the Southern Hemisphere. Elementary mathematics calculate that you have walked four whole kilometres of fucking jetty.

15. Your mother somehow manages to lock herself in the hire car - twice - in the space of ten minutes. Your father has yet another dummy spit and calls your mother a “fucking idiot”.

16. Your parents choose to dine at the cheap-ass restaurant at the cheap-ass $50 a night motel. After much argument, and a spirited dummy spit or two by your father, you relent and decide to risk food-poisoning for the sake of family harmony. You and your parents rock up to the restaurant at 6:30pm to be told that without a booking you cannot be seated for dinner until 7:30pm. Your father has a dummy spit and refuses to wait. You decide to eat at Hungry Jacks instead. When you turn up to Hungry Jacks, you are unable to enter the restaurant because of renovations. You suggest drive-thru instead. Your mother refuses to do drive-thru because she needs to see the menu first. You stop for Chicken Treat instead. On returning to the motel your father has another dummy spit because someone else has parked in your car space.

17. Your father insists that you order seafood every time you eat out for dinner, even though every time you eat out for dinner, you tell your father, yet again, that you dislike seafood. Your father subsequently has a dummy spit whenever you order anything from the menu that isn't seafood

18. Your mother steals some rosemary from a display home site so she can use it to cook with that evening’s lamb chops.

19. Your father is utterly incapable of following road signs on his own. Your mother has to direct him at all times. Your father will see a road sign that quite clearly states in which direction one is to turn to reach one’s desired location. At each and every sign he will confer with your mother as to which direction he needs to turn. In absolutely all cases, your mother’s advice reflects that which the road sign has already clearly dictated. Your father even needs your mother to guide him in and out of carparks. You constantly marvel at your mother’s patience and quietly want to smack some sense into your father.

20. Your parents insist on paying for everything like you were only 14 years old, and treat you like a charity case, leaving a cash donation, a carton of fags, a six pack of beer and a pantry full of food on their departure.

My parents rock!!!! Plus, the house has never been cleaner!