A few weeks ago, having been persuaded to plan a trip to steamy Asia, I went along to my GP for an assortment of vaccinations. As a traveller mostly to Europe, I hadn’t endured the needle since cholera had been struck off the list of evils threatening antipodean travellers. Before that, easily my most memorable encounter with preventative medicine was a typhoid injection in the army.
This procedure was carried out under a high-noon Puckapunyal January sun. We stood around for a long time for no apparent reason—a penchant for inexplicable hiatus was characteristic of our National Service leaders, and exotic rumours would flower and spread during such intermissions. Eventually, we shuffled forward towards the two or three sweating, ill-tempered, needle-jabbing practitioners at the head of the ranks, where those who hadn’t already fainted from heat or dread were duly inoculated.
As I approached the front line, I incautiously watched as the medic more or less threw the needle like a dart at the exposed flesh of the bloke in front of me and then, swearing at some problem with the plunger, unscrewed the barrel from the needle, which remained protruding from the patient’s arm, and screwed on a new one. And so the long day wore on—a signal one for me because since then I have always consciously looked away from the action on the rare occasions when I’m enduring needles for this or that no doubt excellent reason.
But all of that was a long time in the past and my sturdy habit of looking elsewhere long since established when I fronted up to my GP for a battery of protection against the bacteriological and viral assaults awaiting me in our near north. These involved typhoid (again!), a pre-emptive strike against hepatitis A, and the painful administration of a disincentive for some encephalitic pestilence the name of which escapes me.
As I was leaving, I inquired casually if there would be any side effects. Instead of reassuring me, he wanted to know why I’d asked.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘as a matter of fact, I have to give a talk tonight. I’m launching a new CD by John Schumann …’
‘Of Redgum fame!’ he footnoted, obviously pleased to show he was up with the pace.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Anyway, Schumann’s made a wonderful CD, setting some of Lawson’s poems to music.
And, being a bit of a Lawson man myself, I was