Jock Dusting
A Durham University study has shown that if you leave two humans alone on a deserted island for 24 hours, there is a 43% chance that they will have made up a game by the end of their tenure on the atoll. Another study at Gympie University in rural Queensland has shown that 59% of comedians invent university studies to scaffold tenuous opening paragraphs in blog posts.
Mosaics found in an archaeological dig in 1958, in Tambomachay Peru reveal what many Durham and Gympie academics believe is evidence of the earliest example of a physical game. An unripe chirimoya (custard apple) is connected by a vine to the top of a bamboo pole driven into the ground. In a tableaux of images, two men can be seen using branches from a rubber tree to belt the chirimoya back and forth. According to Emeritus Professor Baz Collins, Dean of Weird Shit at Gympie … ‘Ha! This proves once and for all that totem tennis is the oldest game in the world. So, Professor Bullfrog owes me a pineapple!
Much like Totem Tennis, or Golpear Las Mierda den un Chirmiya as its known in Peru, most games evolve out of the environment where they are created, utilising the resources at the disposal of the inventors, in order to fashion a crude form of entertainment. Some games begin with a bang, but fizzle into oblivion, while others form the foundation for some of the sports we still play today. Golf for instance, wouldn’t exist today if Clan Chief Gordy McNevitt from the Isle of Mull, hadn’t started hitting the severed testicles of his vanquished opponents off his castle battements with a bread stick. Fast forward to the 21st century and Bread Stick Testicle Hitting’s bastard child Golf, is one of the fastest growing sports in the world.
However, there are many sports, games and events that develop in a specific place and thrive, but never move beyond the geographical boundaries of their place of evolution. Australia is rampant with such peculiarly specific past times. I’ve gone to the trouble of tracking down some of the best exemplars of the unique game genre.
The first in this series is … Jock Dusting
JOCK DUSTING
In 1921 Lieutenant John McReady dropped a load of lead arsenate from a modified Curtiss JN4 Jenny over his catalpa tree grove in TJock, Ohio. Despite his 8 children wheezing, coughing, sneezing over that night’s vittles, he declared it a success. By the time their rashes had settled, other Ohioan farmers were already using it as standard practice in their orchards and plantations.
It didn’t take long for aviation mad, agrarian Australia to adopt crop dusting. The sight of a low flying Cessna passing over your car on a country road, dumping its toxic load vaguely near its intended target, is as fundamentally Australian as Lions Club Christmas Cakes on sale in August.
In the township of Teak Creek in South Australia’s Riverland, crop dusting is a ubiquitous part of life. In the 1960’s the constant prevalence in the air of De Havilland Beavers, Yeoman Cropmasters and Transavian Airtruks was such that the 1968 film ‘Crikey, You’re a Good Sort’, had to abandon plans to shoot the film there, due to the constant aircraft buzz that thwarted the beleaguered sound departments efforts to get a clean take.
In May 1966, Jock Tennant was a 19 year old farm hand working at Mauro Gilletti’s 800 acre orange grove, 5 miles out of Teak Creek. Running late for the third day in a row, his boss had had enough and took off in his Pawnee PA25 Pawnee without his co-pilot. Jock’s heart sank when he arrived in his Holden HK ute, only to see the plane taxiing down the red dirt runway without him.
Knowing he was on his last warning, and aware that he was the fastest runner in the district, Jock took off after the plane. He reckoned that if he could get the door open, he could swing into the cabin before it took off. However, just as he caught up, Mauro accelerated, and Jock started to lag behind. Without a plan, Jock launched himself at the plane just as it lifted off the ground. Remarkably, he somehow managed to get his arms around the wheel carriage and the plane took off with him tenuously attached. However, with Jock’s extra weight, the plane struggled to gain any altitude. Miraculously, Mauro kept some control. Flying with a pronounced tilt toward the side to which Jock was appended, the aircraft skimmed the top of the orange trees, dragging Jock through the upper canopy.
When Jock’s unconscious, bloodied and battered body was ironically pulled from the branches of a blood orange tree, the distance he had been dragged was said to be 2631 feet, or 802 metres. Despite breaking 4 ribs, both legs and a collarbone, Jock made a complete recovery and began looking for a new job.
Jock’s legend spread across the orchardist community, but rather than seeing his accident as a warning of the inherent dangers of hanging onto the landing gear of a crop duster in full flight, other young blokes saw it as a lark.
The caper caught on and before long became known as Jock Dusting. Within months it was a common sight across the Riverland to see a young bloke, legs dangling, hanging on for grim life to the wheel carriage of a light aircraft. An equally common sight was that of an ambulance with sirens blaring racing to the sight of a crumpled body wrapped around the trunk of a Murcott Mandarin tree.
Knowing that lads will be lads, the local Teak Creek Orchardist Association decided that rather than banning the practice, they would host an annual Jock Dusting Carnival.
The event attracted entries from all over the Riverland and even attracted interest from orchard districts in Victoria, Tasmania & WA. In the vein hope that they may be able to restrict the severity of the injuries, a list of rules and regulations was drafted and implemented. This is an extract from the entry form for the first Jock Dusting Carnival in 1968.
All entrants must …
- Be over 18 & shall not exceed the age of 30
- Be single
- Not be the (known) father or guardian of any offspring
- Wear a helmet
- Wear full body Country Fire Service standard overalls
- Have life and health insurance
- Have at least one middle name
Before being accepted into the field, entrants had to pass a test. The details of the assessment trial were listed on the entry form …
… to ensure that entrants are physically capable of meeting the challenge they must be able to run the 100 yard dash in less than 11 seconds; lift and hold a 220 pound crate of oranges for 1 minute and pick up and place a wet towel on a card table using only their toes. *
(*Despite, extensive enquiries by the author, it remains unclear why this last part of the physical test was included.)
Mauro, who by this time had served his jail sentence for aggravated assault, was asked to train up local pilots to cope with the high number of entrants, which numbered 37. However, only 36 ended up competing after it was established that William Veronica Hanlon from French Meadows, WA, had made up his middle name.
The first Jock Dusting Carnival was a huge success. It was won by local boy Guido Barbera who only fell 124 feet of short of Jock’s record, and into an open sewerage tank. The event brought the community together, the publicity sparked a tourism boom for the district, and it led to a $2 million upgrade to the local hospital to cope with the sudden surge of inpatients.
There were changes made over the years: Women were allowed to compete from 1985; flying over Texan Pink Grapefruit trees was outlawed in 1987 due to the high density of thorns and the wearing of cricket boxes became compulsory after Tim Judd lost a testicle in a lime tree in 1989.
Jock’s record was finally broken in 1990 when Yvonne Dillon from Jiparoo cracked the 1km mark, as well her clavicle, and 5 ribs.
Jock Dusting in that form lasted until 1991 when the Teak Creek Regional Council finally updated their Occupational Health and Safety Policy. The same administrative overhaul saw the banning of water skiing in irrigations canals; remote control prams and the peculiarly local practice of priest’s performing infant immunisations as part of the baptism ceremony.
Today the Teak Creek Jock Dusting Carnival still occurs, but the human cargo has been replaced by scarecrows. The pilot whose effigy lasts the longest after being dragged through the fruit tree canopy is declared the winner.
Next time you see a crop duster swooping overhead, spare a thought for Jock Tennant and maybe be a bit more forgiving next time one of your employees is late for work.
Although I’ve never had an inclination to play sport, I’d sure love to give Bread StickTesticle Hitting a crack! (Btw Best opening para ever.)
Absolutely love this 👏 - even if jock dusting 'briefly' took my mind elsewhere.