13 – The Naturalist Philosophy

“Hey look, there’s the old woman,” Colin piped up, pointing to the elderly woman who had approached them earlier. “Go talk to her, Drew.”

“Oh man, why me,” Drew sulked.

“Because there was a unanimous vote,” Chip perked.

“No there wasn’t, only Ryan voted,” Drew grumbled.

“And he’s big enough to vote for all of us,” Brad chirped and then turned to Ryan. “That was a crack about your height…nothing else.”

Ryan’s face fell into a scowl.

“I don’t wanna move,” Drew whined.

“OH MY GOD DREW THERE’S A CRAB ABOUT TO CRAWL UP YOUR BUTT,” Greg yelled.

Drew jumped to his feet and began scampering about. “Where, where,” he babbled.

Greg let out a cackle. “Oh, must have disappeared. Well, now you’re up.”

Drew narrowed his eyes, kicked some sand at Greg and then stormed off in the direction of the old lady.


Ryan meanwhile had become distracted by something in the water.

“What you watching?” Wayne asked.

“The fat guy who put his arm round me. I think I should go talk to him,” Ryan replied.

“That’s probably a good idea,” Colin nodded.

“Besides it means I can keep my lower half covered in the water…if you know what I mean,” Ryan chuckled, got to his feet and hurriedly made his way toward the water.

The leftover Whose Line men broke out into giggles. Ryan was funny enough fully clothed, being naked just made it worse.


Drew managed to calm down as he approached the old lady. He noticed an abandoned beach ball and held it in front of him to save the remainder of his pride.

“Excuse me,” he piped up.

The old lady looked up from her tanning lotion. “Oh, hello young man, how can I help you?” she asked, motioning for Drew to sit down. He did so awkwardly.

“I really need to ask you a few questions about me and my friends,” he laughed nervously.

“Oh yes, what would you like to know? My mind isn’t as good as it used to be, you know,” the old lady smiled.

“The thing is, we were kinda…what happened was…do you know how we got here?” he eventually spat out.

“Didn’t your mother tell you?” the old lady giggled.

Drew blushed. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know. Just teasing.” The old lady patted Drew’s arm.

He would have felt comforted had the old lady not reminded him of his mother, naked.

“From what I can remember there was only the bald one, the black fella, and the cute tall one,” the old lady perked.

Drew stifled a laugh. He’d never thought of Ryan as cute before.

“So the rest of us weren’t even here?” Drew gasped.

“No, dear,” the old lady nodded.

Drew could have yelled a thousand curses – he’d gotten naked for nothing.


Ryan waded through the water, feeling it go places he’d never imagined, and wondering if plankton could actually survive in various human orifices. He made it over to the man with the paunch who spoke before Ryan could even get a word out.

“Hello again, Mr Maslins.”

“Oh man, do you have to keep calling me that?” Ryan laughed.

“Hey, you beat out a lot of competition. I think it was because you’re a yank – the girls like that,” the man stated.

“I don’t know how happy the wife would be about that,” Ryan mused.

“Wife? Oh, you come down here for a bit on the side, huh?” the man said, raising an eyebrow.

“NO,” Ryan gasped.

The man moved closer and thrust out his hand. “The name’s Kev, by the way.”

“Ryan,” he breathed, shaking Kev’s hand.

“So Ryan, what brought you all this way then?” Kev asked.

“Well I was hoping you could tell me,” Ryan replied.

“You can’t remember?” Kev gasped.

“No…but in some way that’s not a bad thing,” Ryan smiled.

Kev looked at Ryan suspiciously and then he smiled again. “Well, I can’t tell you much.” Kev moved a bit closer and Ryan felt something brush his leg. He kept telling himself it was a sea sponge. “Let’s see, you, the bald one and the black fella only came that day. The black fella…”

“His name is Wayne.”

“Right. Anyway, the black fella was very eager to get his gear off. He went in the comp too. The bald guy was a bit more reserved. Spent a lot of time hiding out in the rock pools. You turned up with a group of women, although you didn’t really have much to do with them. I thought that maybe you fellas had hitched a lift.”

“What type of women?”

“Oh beautiful women: big breasted, tanned…”

“I get the picture.”

“Right…ah…yeah, anyway you and the black fella signed up for the Mr Maslins competition. I think the girls pushed you into it. You became crowd favourite after you started to do impressions of animals, startled deer and stuff. It was really funny.”

Ryan was cringing. That stuff was bad enough clothed. He felt something brush against his leg again. It had to be seaweed.

“You should be an actor you know,” Kev chuckled.

Ryan laughed. This guy was a complete dickhead, and he wanted to get away from him as quickly as possible.

“Anything else you can remember?”

Kev thought for a moment. “Not really…only that you and Miss Maslins got on very, very well.”

Ryan went quiet for a moment and then hurried out a “thank you” before he got out of the water more quickly than he’d gotten in.


By the time Ryan got back to the group, Drew was back as well.

“So Ry, did you find out anything?” Greg asked.

“Sort of. How did you go?” he asked Drew.

“Well I found out that me, Greg, Chip and Brad weren’t even here,” Drew grumbled.

“Yeah, I discovered we turned up with a group of women. I’m wondering if they weren’t Drew’s women,” Ryan announced.

“What women?” Drew scorned.

“The hookers,” Brad piped up.

“You mean we’ve got to hunt down a bunch of hookers now?” Wayne squealed.

“And we’ve got to find out what the rest of us did while you were here,” Greg chimed in.

“To the bus, people,” Ryan announced.

They stood up to leave and then remembered they had to get dressed again. Once dressed it was back to Adelaide and the unenviable job of searching for hookers.