A long dark strand slides slowly from under the rim...Bladder full, tank empty. Time to reverse the situation. Ambrose is one of those family run road houses that won’t last the decade. A single loo, with the strong smell of piss. A short flush doesn’t do it, so, cursing the penny-pinching plumbing installed by the petit bourgeoisie, I press again. A long dark strand slides slowly from under the rim. Disgusting. And then, and then, no it can’t be, it articulates and pulls itself up. Jesus. This, as they say, is some clever shit. “This might sound odd” I report back, “but there appears to be something living in the toilet”.
Overconfidently, “That’s Freddy”. “Right, Freddy”. I let a silence fall. She’s kind hearted enough to fill it: “Freddy the Frog. He lives in the dunny”. All perfectly normal now. “Surely some people get the fright of their lives?”

“Yes” she smiles wistfully, pausing on their darned foolishness, “there are some screams. We always know it is Freddy”. I am in a David Lynch movie now, laughing manically, more than a little glad I didn’t meet Freddy recumbent peering down. Once, she explains, we cleared out all the frogs. A lady took them all the way to Gladstone. “Two days later they were back. Same ones. Very territorial are frogs.” I am loving this. Softly she adds, to no one in particular “You know who your frogs are”.

After adding the barrier reef to my short list of spectacular things in Australia I was at, but didn’t see, I fly out of Brisbane to San Francisco.

In fours weeks time my bike joins me.