Go the eels

It’s the last home game for Knights legend Danny Buderus. There’ll be a big crowd, but the Parramatta Eels will be hoping to spoil the party.

Eels have been in my mind lately. There are bloody hundreds of them in the creek at the moment, and really high upstream I’ve seen the water flash and boil as one turns and darts away. The other evening, around dusk, I was up near Griffiths Road bridge when one actually leapt out of the beck next to my feet, slithered around the concrete for a few seconds then jumped back into the beck and disappeared. If I could meet some old bushie from way back or some old Awabakal guy they’d probably be able to tell me what this means: a hot summer, a wet summer, a summer with lots of jellied eels for dinner.

This morning I was walking down towards Chinchen Street bridge on a high tide when I saw this big fella cruising against the tide in wide, languid sweeps. The picture doesn’t do him justice but he was bloody enormous.

I like the fact that Parramatta’s team name is the Eels, so much better than those rubbish imported names like Broncos and Giants. I bet that once upon a time the folk in Parramatta would have had eel as a staple food (though they wouldn’t want to become inordinately fond of them, like Henry I).

The other slippery creatures that we have a surfeit of at the moment are politicians. As well as four-foot-long eels as thick as a Portuguese sailor’s forearm the other thing I woke up to today was a shiny new government, full of promises and grandiose intentions. Country great Kinky Friedman (he of the classic They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Any More) defined politics perfectly: “poly, meaning more than one; ticks, being blood-sucking parasites”.

It’ll be interesting to see how things wash up with the new boys. I’m sure Nathan Tinkler will be happy. As if we didn’t already know that our once-community-owned football club was now the plaything of a mining magnate, here’s the other side of that Knights balloon I found in the creek.

Oh well. Go the Knights!