The experience of holidaying at Kaboora on Point Lookout Stradbroke Island in the 60s, could easily provide enough footage for a whole series of TVs Survivor Survivor today. Now, apart from the primitive bathing rituals already described, there were many other survival experiences at that cottage that had to be endured and conquered. Well, the survival urge was none more evident than when it was applied to Kabooras toilet facilities. See, high up the hill tucked neatly into the bush, far away from the house, stood a little timber out-house accommodating one of the scariest inventions of human ablution concepts the bottomless pit. See, the 60s era at Straddie was pre-sewerage and even pre-septic. In fact the simple idea of a hole in the ground in which to abult was originally, as I learnt at school, a carry over of the pre-historic era. The only development evident over the millennium on this island, was that, with the introduction of metal tools the holes could be dug much much deeper. Well, perched on top of this China directed hole, was a custom-made timber Thunder Box complete with a smooth bevelled edged carved hole, big enough for an average adult sized aaarrrrrhhh – bottom. Now I would imagine that those adult bottoms would have been quite comfortable sitting there completely filling the designated space and having their feet being firmly planted on the ground. But spare a thought for the half moon tiny bums sitting there and leaning intently forward with their legs dangling and hoping that whatever was living deep in that deep black hole has no interest in reaching up and grabbing our little white bums. Also, the fear of falling into that seething cesspool made our Niagara Falls and Bombs Away bodily functions a quicker experience than even brushing our teeth and that was done in minutes. There were never any of the usual books to read in the bottomless pit at Kaboora because firstly, us kids would not have had time to read past the first page and secondly, no kid was going to let go of the sides of that Thunder Box in a risky manoeuvre to turn the page past the front cover no sir eee! Well this describes our day time experience with this Temple of Boom – imagine the fear of any evening calls of nature as they occurred. For us boy the process was quite easy: the Banana trees for number 1s and wait till the morning for number 2s. For my sisters it was not such an easy choice. I believed it was the only time I chaperoned my sisters on their nights out. I would walk them up the concrete path and stand guard outside the pit door, carrying Dad’s very long black torch. One time curiosity got the better of us all and we bravely decided to peer over the bevelled timber edge with Dad’s torch to discover the bottom reality of the dreaded bottomless pit. We held on to each other tightly least any of us fell and we forced our eyes to look and face up to our irrational fears. Now I can’t speak for the others but what I saw made me pull back with hand firmly placed over my mouth or the lower intestines would have quickly been saved the long process of digesting the recent evening meal. It would have been regurgitated unprocessed there and then had I not withdrawn my membership of the bottom viewing club. I have come to the conclusion that the director’s of those boiling, seething, feeding-frenzy, devouring movie scenes, must have also shone their torches down a bottomless pit at some time in their past otherwise how could they have reproduced the effect on the big screen so well what I witnessed all too well in the bottomless pit at Kaboora. [Photo]
