Look, it's not what you think. At least if you're thinking what I think you're thinking it's not. AND you're on the wrong continent. Woop Woop is Australian slang used to describe the middle of nowhere, the boonies, an out of the way place with no one around, the sticks. Woop woop is not to be confused with the American English slang word that sounds a bit like woop woop and could be confused as woop woop but of course, like I say, isn't.
Having watched Crocodile Dundee and The Man From Snowy River hundreds of times I feel as if I'm part Aussie myself. And knowing the slang from 2 countries now makes me bi-slangual. In fact I've watched Crocodile Dundee so many times, I know what he's going to say...before he says it! My sheila says I'm prepubescent, and I laugh. She's so good at making up words that don't exist, but I think she means that I'm prescient. What can I say, it's a gift.
We decided to chuck a sickie & head off to the White Mountains of Arizona for a drive-about in some cooler temps as we look for Woop Woop. The first stop is here at the head-waters of the Little Colorado River. And since I've been to the head-waters AND the confluence with the Big Colorado, where the Little Colorado ends, would that be the foot waters? And what about the middle part of a river? So you see why I like Aussie slang so much, you know exactly what they mean when they say it! I mean where did we get "head-waters"? By the way, "chuck a sickie", of course that means to call in sick. You see what I mean? You already knew that! I just love Aussie slang.
Our first 2 nights we camp on the White Mountain Indian Reservation at...Reservation Lake, go figure. And we're lucky enough to get the only campsite left around the entire lake
Most blokes have the motor at the stern, my motor is a bow-drive
At some point though, all motors run out of gas.
Gassed up and ready to go, it was good to see all the bloomin trees in such good condition, as the drought of years past has been tough on them. A few good winters as well as wet summer monsoon seasons has them looking ripper (great).
As my bow motor glides the canoe around a point, we pass a tree full of weird looking birds.
Not knowing what they are, I did have to "crane" my neck to look at them. Each time we would pass they would start up this awful racket, sounding like something from a scary sci-fi movie, soundly cursing us with their fowl language. It was quite strange!!
This is just one arm of the lake and the view from the camper. Did you notice what's missing? No arm..
As much of a beaut as this place is it's not Woop Woop. The sticky beaks (nosy people) next to us had 3 loud bitzers (dogs) that would bark every time I got "flat out like a lizard drinkin" around camp. (busy, like a lizard drinking as fast as possible and as flat to the ground as possible so as to not have a shadow that an eagle can see and swoop down and eat the lizard. HUH?) The bludger (lazy dude) looked like a bogan (beer drinking slacker) and wore his budgie smuggler (mens bathing suit, don't ya love it!) around all bloomin day without a shirt. This made my sheila mad as a cut snake, he definitely needed a shirt. So off we went again in search of Woop Woop. (Slang was used as much as possible in this paragraph, I don't really know if they were nosy, or if he was a lazy beer drinking slacker. But he never did tell his dogs to be quiet!)
As we drive the backroads of the White Mountains one spot has me feeling like we're in Ferngully. The ferns, like the trees are in excellent shape this year
And of course the flowers are in show mode for my camera.
Holy dooley we just cleared those trees. Can I get a big whoya for pop-ups!
Third afternoon found us in the middle of the deep forest. Can this be Woop Woop? After our camp was all set up and I was out having a drink with the flies...gun shots, ALL AFTERNOON. Ruined my nap and made me...you got it now, mad as a cut snake! See, isn't being an Aussie fun?
So we left again the next morning, still in search of Woop Woop. As we drive an old corral appears and of couse I ask, "Where's the beef"? (Using my American slang now. See,
bi-slangual. Figjam!)
Well here's the beef, and that ain't no bull.
At last we found the perfect camp overlooking a meadow with the West Fork of the Black River somewhere in the distance.
Mrs. Whazoo, I mean my sheila, wants to know "Is this Woop Woop Whazoo"? And is that my diaper pail next to the tree? Depends...
Now to me, this is looking like Woop Woop. I could live here I'm thinking
The camper is in the middle of the far trees. I called this Whataview Acres.
Walking up to this lonely cabin you can almost hear the folks that lived and worked here. How great that some places like this still exist, without graffiti or vandalism.
After making myself at home I wonder, is this corn, I mean toilet paper, previously used??
I'm not sure why I took this picture, just a dandelion on steroids. I doubt if one big blow would take care of it, and I can't bring myself to even try.
The clouds were spectacular this afternoon. Can you see the faces in the clouds?
Me neither.
Walking to the front gate we were "fair suck of the sav" (amazed, and again...HUH?) at this little varmit. He didn't blink, didn't move a muscle. Even as I moved in for a close-up. We were very trepidacious, having seen the killer white rabbit on Monty Pythons "Holy Grail". Will we get past him alive?
Like the "Knights that say Ni" we did make it past and were glad to not have a flesh wound.
I'm thinking the last bludger to use the dunny (outhouse) didn't make it past the killer chipmunk. And he had a long snout too.
After a fashion we walked back to our camp at Woop woop and had that nap...only to be woken by a very strange sound. A half a dozen trucks and suv's had pulled up in the meadow and were shooting off, of all things, ROCKETS! ALL AFTERNOON! Not that I'm complaining mind you. They had a bunch of ankle biters(kids) that were having a good time looking for the rockets as they landed. It was just not my bowl of rice and again, Woop Woop disappeared from our very eyes. And that night sitting around the bush telly (camp fire) we talked about how we missed the old days when camping wasn't so...crowded and noisy.
So once again we went searching. My feelings are that the dirt roads in the White Mountains have been so improved as to be like super-highways that allow the super-sized rigs into the forest.
And Brentwood? Isn't that next to Hollywood? No wonder we are having a hard time finding Woop Woop.
Here we have a deep water crossing. How deep? Not very, as we're getting close to more head waters. I haven't seen any heads just yet though. Although the sound of running head waters does make one need to use the head. See where this is heading? American slang is SO confusing!
Insert your own caption here, maybe we have something in common.
So after driving over 200 miles of some good and some not-so-good dirt roads in the White Mountains, Mrs. Whazoo and I are quite disappointed at the state of affairs. Every, and I mean EVERY dirt road we drove had a small city of campers, if you could call them that, looking like refugee camps. It seems folks have to take every thing they own from home out into the bush with them these days. There are "no digging for worms" signs EVERYWHERE around the rivers and lakes. Most folks had huge trailers, huge toyhaulers, huge 5vers and motorhomes. Huge grills, huge radios and huge amounts of trash. I didn't have my wide angle with me but we tried to take a picture. Trust me, we didn't get even a small fraction of this camp that used to be our favorite, many years ago when our kids were young and we did...dig for worms.
So feeling a little depressed at not finding Woop Woop, I am also feeling a bit like I have a woobly boot on (intoxicated), having tried to drown myself in a bottle of rum. But look, the search for Woop Woop will continue another day. So please, keep smiling...you're on Whazoo camera.
I hope this was a fair dinkum trip report, G'day Mates.
Thanks for reading,
Dave Rogers (aka Crocodile Dundave)
Post Script:
A sad post script in my mind as having read that the Aussie slang is very quickly disappearing, being replaced by our own American English slang, "go figure". I can see the day when Crocodile Dundee becomes a documentary on Austrailian slang, or "strine". Also, all Aussie slang in this trip report is used, of course, with tongue-in-cheek and without disrespect. It will be a sad day indeed, when all things are the same and variety is lost. In the meantime you just might find me sitting around the bush telly singing. But instead of kumbaya...it will be "Waltzing Matilda"! (Which by the way has absolutely nothing to do with a sheila named Matilda or a dance called the waltz. But we all knew that didn't we? Didn't we??)
Having watched Crocodile Dundee and The Man From Snowy River hundreds of times I feel as if I'm part Aussie myself. And knowing the slang from 2 countries now makes me bi-slangual. In fact I've watched Crocodile Dundee so many times, I know what he's going to say...before he says it! My sheila says I'm prepubescent, and I laugh. She's so good at making up words that don't exist, but I think she means that I'm prescient. What can I say, it's a gift.
We decided to chuck a sickie & head off to the White Mountains of Arizona for a drive-about in some cooler temps as we look for Woop Woop. The first stop is here at the head-waters of the Little Colorado River. And since I've been to the head-waters AND the confluence with the Big Colorado, where the Little Colorado ends, would that be the foot waters? And what about the middle part of a river? So you see why I like Aussie slang so much, you know exactly what they mean when they say it! I mean where did we get "head-waters"? By the way, "chuck a sickie", of course that means to call in sick. You see what I mean? You already knew that! I just love Aussie slang.
Our first 2 nights we camp on the White Mountain Indian Reservation at...Reservation Lake, go figure. And we're lucky enough to get the only campsite left around the entire lake
Most blokes have the motor at the stern, my motor is a bow-drive
At some point though, all motors run out of gas.
Gassed up and ready to go, it was good to see all the bloomin trees in such good condition, as the drought of years past has been tough on them. A few good winters as well as wet summer monsoon seasons has them looking ripper (great).
As my bow motor glides the canoe around a point, we pass a tree full of weird looking birds.
Not knowing what they are, I did have to "crane" my neck to look at them. Each time we would pass they would start up this awful racket, sounding like something from a scary sci-fi movie, soundly cursing us with their fowl language. It was quite strange!!
This is just one arm of the lake and the view from the camper. Did you notice what's missing? No arm..
As much of a beaut as this place is it's not Woop Woop. The sticky beaks (nosy people) next to us had 3 loud bitzers (dogs) that would bark every time I got "flat out like a lizard drinkin" around camp. (busy, like a lizard drinking as fast as possible and as flat to the ground as possible so as to not have a shadow that an eagle can see and swoop down and eat the lizard. HUH?) The bludger (lazy dude) looked like a bogan (beer drinking slacker) and wore his budgie smuggler (mens bathing suit, don't ya love it!) around all bloomin day without a shirt. This made my sheila mad as a cut snake, he definitely needed a shirt. So off we went again in search of Woop Woop. (Slang was used as much as possible in this paragraph, I don't really know if they were nosy, or if he was a lazy beer drinking slacker. But he never did tell his dogs to be quiet!)
As we drive the backroads of the White Mountains one spot has me feeling like we're in Ferngully. The ferns, like the trees are in excellent shape this year
And of course the flowers are in show mode for my camera.
Holy dooley we just cleared those trees. Can I get a big whoya for pop-ups!
Third afternoon found us in the middle of the deep forest. Can this be Woop Woop? After our camp was all set up and I was out having a drink with the flies...gun shots, ALL AFTERNOON. Ruined my nap and made me...you got it now, mad as a cut snake! See, isn't being an Aussie fun?
So we left again the next morning, still in search of Woop Woop. As we drive an old corral appears and of couse I ask, "Where's the beef"? (Using my American slang now. See,
bi-slangual. Figjam!)
Well here's the beef, and that ain't no bull.
At last we found the perfect camp overlooking a meadow with the West Fork of the Black River somewhere in the distance.
Mrs. Whazoo, I mean my sheila, wants to know "Is this Woop Woop Whazoo"? And is that my diaper pail next to the tree? Depends...
Now to me, this is looking like Woop Woop. I could live here I'm thinking
The camper is in the middle of the far trees. I called this Whataview Acres.
Walking up to this lonely cabin you can almost hear the folks that lived and worked here. How great that some places like this still exist, without graffiti or vandalism.
After making myself at home I wonder, is this corn, I mean toilet paper, previously used??
I'm not sure why I took this picture, just a dandelion on steroids. I doubt if one big blow would take care of it, and I can't bring myself to even try.
The clouds were spectacular this afternoon. Can you see the faces in the clouds?
Me neither.
Walking to the front gate we were "fair suck of the sav" (amazed, and again...HUH?) at this little varmit. He didn't blink, didn't move a muscle. Even as I moved in for a close-up. We were very trepidacious, having seen the killer white rabbit on Monty Pythons "Holy Grail". Will we get past him alive?
Like the "Knights that say Ni" we did make it past and were glad to not have a flesh wound.
I'm thinking the last bludger to use the dunny (outhouse) didn't make it past the killer chipmunk. And he had a long snout too.
After a fashion we walked back to our camp at Woop woop and had that nap...only to be woken by a very strange sound. A half a dozen trucks and suv's had pulled up in the meadow and were shooting off, of all things, ROCKETS! ALL AFTERNOON! Not that I'm complaining mind you. They had a bunch of ankle biters(kids) that were having a good time looking for the rockets as they landed. It was just not my bowl of rice and again, Woop Woop disappeared from our very eyes. And that night sitting around the bush telly (camp fire) we talked about how we missed the old days when camping wasn't so...crowded and noisy.
So once again we went searching. My feelings are that the dirt roads in the White Mountains have been so improved as to be like super-highways that allow the super-sized rigs into the forest.
And Brentwood? Isn't that next to Hollywood? No wonder we are having a hard time finding Woop Woop.
Here we have a deep water crossing. How deep? Not very, as we're getting close to more head waters. I haven't seen any heads just yet though. Although the sound of running head waters does make one need to use the head. See where this is heading? American slang is SO confusing!
Insert your own caption here, maybe we have something in common.
So after driving over 200 miles of some good and some not-so-good dirt roads in the White Mountains, Mrs. Whazoo and I are quite disappointed at the state of affairs. Every, and I mean EVERY dirt road we drove had a small city of campers, if you could call them that, looking like refugee camps. It seems folks have to take every thing they own from home out into the bush with them these days. There are "no digging for worms" signs EVERYWHERE around the rivers and lakes. Most folks had huge trailers, huge toyhaulers, huge 5vers and motorhomes. Huge grills, huge radios and huge amounts of trash. I didn't have my wide angle with me but we tried to take a picture. Trust me, we didn't get even a small fraction of this camp that used to be our favorite, many years ago when our kids were young and we did...dig for worms.
So feeling a little depressed at not finding Woop Woop, I am also feeling a bit like I have a woobly boot on (intoxicated), having tried to drown myself in a bottle of rum. But look, the search for Woop Woop will continue another day. So please, keep smiling...you're on Whazoo camera.
I hope this was a fair dinkum trip report, G'day Mates.
Thanks for reading,
Dave Rogers (aka Crocodile Dundave)
Post Script:
A sad post script in my mind as having read that the Aussie slang is very quickly disappearing, being replaced by our own American English slang, "go figure". I can see the day when Crocodile Dundee becomes a documentary on Austrailian slang, or "strine". Also, all Aussie slang in this trip report is used, of course, with tongue-in-cheek and without disrespect. It will be a sad day indeed, when all things are the same and variety is lost. In the meantime you just might find me sitting around the bush telly singing. But instead of kumbaya...it will be "Waltzing Matilda"! (Which by the way has absolutely nothing to do with a sheila named Matilda or a dance called the waltz. But we all knew that didn't we? Didn't we??)
Originally posted on rv.net 8/20/09
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