Chapter 14

I phoned Diana at lunchtime on Monday.

"How was your weekend?"

"Terrible. I hate Saturday and Sunday shifts."

"But that means you'll be free this coming weekend."

"True."

"Do you have any plans?"

"Want to go for a jaunt?"

"A weekend trip?"

"Yes."

"Want a really good Saturday dinner?"

"Your Dad's?"

"Yes."

"Is this 'meet the parents'?"

"Not in that sense. But it will get them off my back."

"How hard is the road?"

"Not bad. We could go there on what I think of as the southern route – down through Goulburn and Yass and return through Cowra and Bathurst."

"How far is it?"

"About 250 klicks each way."

"'And alone and unassisted brought them back.'"

"What?"

"Last but one stanza of 'The Man From Snowy River'. Banjo Paterson. Let's do it. You phone your parents and tell them we'll arrive about midday."

"Great. Call me tomorrow?"

"About this time? Fine." I got off. Two sets of parents on consecutive weekends. Good thing I'm serious about neither.

In 1847 immigrant Miles Murphy built a store and the first inn - The Swan Inn. A significant contributor to Binalong's early history, Murphy and his family established other businesses.

The Swan was run as an inn until aboout 1886 when the licence was transferred to Patterson's Hotel, closer to the new railway station. After many years as a residence and derelict it was renovated in the late 1970s as a popular restaurant - the Black Swan - which it remains today.

Argyle County description, 2010

I met Winnie and we went to UNSW. She knew where the showings were. I waved at Logan when we got there. He was with Jenny and looked quite drawn. We didn't sit with them. There were about 40 or 50 in attendance.

"Okay. Everyone sit down. We're going to show Them! then break for about 10 minutes, then Tarantula, then another break and finally The Wasp Woman. That'll be the invertebrate portion of the week."

They had a DVD wired to a very large screen – over a metre, certainly. When the "THEM!" in colour come on, there was an "m-m-m-m" through the room. But then the titles went to black and white and everyone relaxed. I held Winnie's hand and enjoyed myself. Them! has always been a favourite.

When the police picked up the little girl and stopped at the trailer, she really got into it. The discovery of 'Pops' body and then the off-screen death of the trooper got to her, too. And then the sand and the eerie noise. The tension eased off when the doctors arrived, but when Edmund Gwenn "broke" Sandy Drescher's "aphonia," there was a real spasm. And when Joan Weldon was threatened by the first ant, I nearly had my hand crushed.

The last 10 minutes in the flood drains with Whitmore's death and Gwenn's little speech at the end made the presentation perfect.

"Wow!" Winnie exclaimed. "And only 90 minutes."

"A bit over, I think."

"Doesn't matter. Anyway, I'm off to the ladies'."

"It won't be crowded."

She was back soon. "You were right. So what's Tarantula like?"

"It's shorter. Corday is far better looking than Weldon; Agar does a good job; and Carroll is very fine as the mad scientist. It's got the cube problem that most monster movies have."

"Cube problem?"

"When things grow, they grow in three dimensions. A tree trunk gets thicker as the tree gets taller."

"And?"

"And when the ants went from under an inch to over 10 feet, their mass would go up by 120 cubed. Those skinny legs wouldn't support them. The same becomes true with the giant carnivorous spider."

"Picky, picky."

"Yes. In fact, that's why there aren't any giant insects. All the giants are aquatic vertebrates like whales or terrestrial ones like elephants, with big columnar legs. Scale and form are important."