The Outside Dunny

In the fifties it was the suburban icon that survived the start of the renovation phase and still graced the backyards of most houses in the neighborhood, the ubiquitous Australian outside dunny. Ours was a corrugated iron oven that cooked you in the summer and would freeze even the most proud member down to a modest size in winter. Daddy long leg spiders would watch from the walls and ceiling and bounce about in their webs when the chain on the overhead cistern was pulled and water gushed out. One hot summer's day my Dad was sitting on the loo with the door open and saw a snake crawl across the lawn. Up with his trousers he pursued the snake until it slid into the shade house, grabbing it by the tail as it slipped through the wire netting fence. For an hour he called out hoping someone would hear and help him deal with the snake. Back then there were no snake catchers you could call, you either killed it or let it go and worried whether it would come back. Finally our neighbor, Jim Ireland, came running in armed with an axe and as Dad slowly pulled it back out, dealt the reptile a fatal blow. When I came home from school that day, there was this four foot brown hanging on the clothesline almost cut in half. It seemed too small to pack such danger, its jaws sealed shut in death over those lethal fangs. I couldn't bring myself to touch it in fear that it might spring back and bite me in a final revenge. That year, my Dad kept the dunny door open all summer. He never saw another snake. I should have been a better son. Notes. Though rather obvious, the term “dunny” refers to an outside toilet, a good old Australian colloquialism. It's rare to find snakes in suburban backyards these days unless near open areas and waterways. As a matter of interest, the snake referred to in the poem was an “Eastern Brown” whose venom is rated as the second most toxic in the world, the most toxic being the Inland Taipan another Australian species.