I suppose that, in evolution’s daring script, the millipede has a role, but intense scrutiny has failed to reveal it to me, and it’s not as if I’ve lacked opportunity for research, because our house has been the Hindenburg Line to wave after wave of this many-footed army.
Before Christmas, with a few millipede scouts and guerrillas appearing on the verandah, I called in my mate Les, of Southern Flinders Pest Control (SFPC)—not to be confused with Ron Scholar, sole proprietor of the splendidly named Academic Pest Control, who, when we lived in Little River, would regularly rid our eaves of swarming bees. He would, no doubt, have obliterated academic pests too, if we’d reported them in any numbers. Anyway, Les of SFPC came straightaway, laid down a heavy artillery barrage, and the enemy subsided, patiently planning a major assault in cooler weather.
It will not have escaped your notice that I’m referring here to Ommatoiulus moreletii, the Portuguese millipede, which, inspired no doubt by compatriots Vasco da Gama, Ferdinand Magellan and Bartolomeu Dias, made the long journey from its native shores to Western Australia in the 1980s and quickly colonised most of the other states. Whether it actually has a thousand legs may be still in doubt, but it is unquestionably well endowed in the matter of limbs, forelegs, hindlegs, ‘pins’ and general undercarriage support. Thus equipped, Ommatoiulus achieves a sort of gliding motion, like a Georgian dancer.
Remember the Georgian dancers? The women wore hooped dresses that just touched the floor and completely concealed their feet. They would cross the stage taking rapid, short, unseen steps. To the onlooker, they appeared to be on hidden wheels. Many of them, when their dancing careers ended, were employed by the BBC as Daleks in Dr Who—the Daleks, of course, being noteworthy not only for their obsessive desire to EXTERMINATE but also for sliding across the often visibly shuddering set as if on a cushion of air.
Dr Who first hit the television screen in 1963. Two years later, a mate of mine gathered together all his resources—well, he sold his battered FJ Holden and did a runner on the previous month’s rent—and sought acting fame in London. Within a few weeks he wrote to tell us of his stunning breakthrough—a job with BBC drama. The role, it turned out, was as a Dalek, but still it was a start. He left