I was being my normal goofy self attempting to make Jamie laugh. She wouldn’t laugh and I wouldn’t give up. I can only assume she was not amused because she finally looked at me and said, “It’s going to be a long winter, isn’t it?”

Yes, she’s trapped with me in isolation in this house for the next few months.

Talk about a captive audience.

I’ve written a lot about the differences between American and Australian dialects of the English language.

There’s a lingerie store in San Luis Obispo, California, where we lived for a dozen years, named Fanny Wrappers. When our Aussie friend Hamish first walked down Higuera Street and saw the store he did a double take, then whipped out his cell phone, took a photo of the store, immediately forwarded it to friends Down Under, and said, “No one back home will believe this.”

Why? What was so surprising about the name.

Well, in America a fanny is an innocent term for a woman’s rear end. Her buttocks. Her heinie. In Australia a fanny is a female anatomical feature that is, shall we say, very nearby and uniquely female.

American children carry fanny packs to school. Australian children definitely do not.

Our first stop on a normal Saturday morning is the Barossa Farmers Market. It’s everything you’d hope for in a small farm town farmers market. In addition to all the fresh fruits and veggies and baked and canned goods, you’re sure to run into friends and neighbors. We love it.

Unfortunately, it has temporarily fallen victim to the Coronavirus and is closed until further notice.

This is our friend John and his wife Lee. She’s the brains behind their thriving muesli and granola business. He’s the brawn.

This is one crazy map. But Australia is a crazy place, so nothing surprises us anymore.

We were once driving across the country and thought we couldn’t get to where we were going on time. Then we crossed the border from South Australia into Western Australia and found out we had suddenly gained an extra 2.5 hours by going from one time zone to another. We made it with time to spare.

Like I said, crazy.

Everyone must by this time know that the Diamond Princess has been ravaged by the Kung Flu and forced to dock and quarantine more than 3,600 passengers and crew in Yokohama, Japan.

Based on the constant drumbeat of the nightly news and hysterical headlines on CNN, I assumed that every damn person aboard the ship had been stricken with the virus.

But that’s not the case.

Despite living in close proximity to each other for several weeks and despite breathing the same recycled air day after day after day, only 712 of those 3600+ passengers and crew were infected. And only ten of them have died. 

Any death is sad, of course, but those seem like pretty good odds to me. 

So the good news is that only a small percentage of the passengers got sick and an even smaller percentage of them succumbed to the virus. The bad news is that they were on a cruise ship to begin with.

We know people who’ve taken dozens of cruises. We’ve been invited to join them on occasion, but we’ve always declined. We have absolutely no interest in taking a cruise. Paying to see Titanic is about as close as we’ve ever come, or as close as we ever want to come, to cruising.

Well, that’s not strictly true. We’ve actually taken three cruises, but none of them were the kind of luxurious excursions that come to mind when you hear the word “cruise.”

Cruise #1: San Pedro to San Pedro via San Pedro.

One of my friends, the infamous Godfather, was handling public relations for a major international cruise line and they wanted to take Southern California travel writers on a cruise.

Well, no, that’s an exaggeration. A considerable exaggeration. What they really wanted to do was give those writers the feel of going on a cruise without expending the time and money and effort that a cruise would would obviously entail.

Their solution was to invite a gaggle of them to spend the night aboard an ocean liner that never left the dock in San Pedro. They could drink. They could gamble. They could stuff their faces at countless buffets. They could see floor shows. The cruise line’s theory, apparently, was that if they plied the scribes with enough of those previously mentioned drinks they might begin to believe they actually took said cruise.

The Godfather’s unenviable assignment was to make sure that the ship’s suites and cabins and berths were overflowing with excited travel writers.

Unfortunately, very few legitimate ones were interested in spending the night bobbing around at the dock in San Pedro, so The Godfather started calling friends and begging them to fill the rooms to make it appear that floating fiasco was actually a success. Our last name begins with “d” so our invitation came relatively early in the journey through his Rolodex.

We agreed to help The Godfather and spent the night aboard the cruise ship. The food was adequate but plentiful. The music was far too loud. The casino was even louder. The only saving grace is that I learned how to do the Macarena, a skill I’m confident will surely come in handy at some point in my life.

Cruise #2: Stockholm to Helsinki aboard a former Russian troop ship.

Just adding the world “Russian” to any other word or phrase makes the accompanying syllables sound shabbier. Much like Mother Russia herself, this cruise ship had seen better days. Unfortunately, the best of them were back during World War II when it was built to be a troop transport.

The first people we met aboard the ship was a pair of  skinny, toothless Russians who were lurking in an empty hallway right outside the entrance to the ship’s restaurant. If they had been Americans I would have guessed “meth addicts,” but since they were Russians I inferred nothing from their skinny and toothless appearances other than “Russians.”

“Everyone goes for the lobster platter,” the advised us, ”so make sure you get here early before it’s all gone.”

Dinner service was not scheduled to begin for two more hours. So we thanked them for their kind advice and continued our exploratory tour around the ship, and later returned to the still empty hallway just as the restaurant’s doors reluctantly screeched open.

The Russian couple swooped into the restaurant like vultures eying roadkill and quickly dashed to the buffet as if they had never before experienced piscatorian pleasures. They stacked their plates as high as gravity would allow—crab, caviar, salmon, trout, herring and cod all stacked atop each other, all accompanied by potatoes boiled, fried and sautéed. Throw in a little koryushka and a finger bowl or two of sour cream or smetana and mmm-mmm-mmm. They engorged themselves as if they were trying to pate their own livers.

Jamie and I ordered chicken salads and watched the skinny, toothless Russians attempt to devour all the food on their heaping platters. It was far more entertaining than the floor show on the ship tied up in San Pedro.

Cruise #3: Straight across Cook Strait in the dark.

Help me out here: Does a three hour ferry ride in the dark really qualify as a cruise? If so, I guess this trip from New Zealand’s North Island to its South Island was indeed a cruise.

We had spent the prior night at a motel north of Wellington, New Zealand. When its owner found out we were going to take the ferry from the country’s North Island to its South Island, a distant look came across her face and she drifted off into her memories. “It’s not just a ship,” she enthused, “it’s a vacation in itself.”

Well, I don’t mind telling you that her comments set our expectations pretty damn high. Unrealistically high, as it turned out. We expected fine food and even finer wine. We assumed we’d have a luxurious suite, or at least a comfortable room, where we could rest up from our previous adventures while the nighttime ferry crossed the pitch black channel known as Cook Strait.

Hardly.

Instead of fine food we were offered stale meat pies, paltry bags of peanuts, and greasy chips. Instead of fine wine we got overpriced beer and bottled water. Instead of a luxurious suite, we got shabby, communal airline seating that reclined not the slightest.

I don’t mean to be completely negative about cruises because now that I’ve given it a little more thought I realize that there is one cruise I’ve taken many times and it never disappoints.

I’m referring to the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland. The guide’s witty patter hasn’t changed much since my first trip to the Magic Kingdom in 1956, but it still makes me laugh. I love the part where he frantically spins the wheel to avoid a collision with the elephants and I can’t wait until he fires his pistol at the rampaging hippo. I’m always amazed at how Walt Disney was able to transform an ordinary orange grove in Anaheim into a little piece of African jungle.

But there’s one other thing that makes Disney’s Jungle Cruise far superior to any other cruise in the world:

It lasts only eight minutes.

We went to the grocery store this morning. Not the little one here in Angaston, the big grocery store over in Nuriootpa. The last time I was at this store the toilet paper section had been picked cleaner than a Thanksgiving turkey.

When we finished our shopping I said, ”Let’s go over to the toilet paper aisle just to see if people are going crazy.”

Much to our surprise, the aisle was calm, uncrowded and quiet. Even more to our surprise, if was fully-stocked and there was a uniformed police officer patrolling the aisle. She had a handgun strapped one one hip and a taser on the other one.

“Is it really so crazy that your presence is required,” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I’m just here to tell people they can only buy one package at a time.”

I consider this to be an incredible testament to the low crime rate here in the Barossa.

Jamie and I have often wished we owned enough land to “run a herd of ‘roos” (as they might say in Texas). According to this map, they’re illegal in most states, but we’re good to go in Tejas. All we need is a permit. Sorry, Californians, you’re out of luck.

But about that permit. Which bureaucratic can of spaghetti do you dive into to get a kangaroo permit? The Texas Department of Kangaroos? The Marsupial Management Authority? The Kangaroo Commission?

And then there’s this: Jamie reminded me that male kangaroos get really big and really vicious. And when I say big, I mean “looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger jacked up on steroids” big. Here’s a real, unretouched photo of Roger, Australia’s most famous male kangaroo.

Maybe one dog and two cats is really all we need.

We’re self-quarantining for the foreseeable future which has led to a huge shortage of fun Aussie travel stories. So here’s a different kind of story that’s been sitting in my “Drafts” file for a couple months.

The following story is 100% true. Get me a bible. I will put my hand on it and swear to God. It has absolutely no connection to our travels, but it is a very worthy story nonetheless.

I don’t write advertising anymore. I gave it all up a couple years ago. But every once in a while something completely unrelated reminds me of a story from my advertising past. Tonight we saw an American comedian named Bill Burr and one portion of his monologue triggered a memory I hadn’t had in many years.

At one point very early in my career I landed a job as a copywriter at the biggest and best ad agency in Los Angeles. Just before hiring me, it had won the award for having created Southern California’s top ad campaign of the year for the second straight year. (By hiring me they made a loud declaration to the rest of the advertising community that they did not intend to win for a third time.)

I hated the job. I hated the agency. I hated my creative director. I don’t know why they hired me because I sat in my office day after day after day and was given nothing to do. I was bored out of my mind. I lasted only four and a half months before I quit.

Admittedly, I hadn’t thought out this career move very thoroughly. When I told my practical farmer father I had quit this job to become a freelance writer, he put it all in perspective for me:

Me: I’m now a freelance writer.

Dad: So let me see if I understand this. You had a job where they paid you good money to do nothing.

Me: Correct.

Dad: And now you’re still doing nothing but no one’s paying you?

Me: Hmmmmm.

Despite his disturbing perspective, I became a freelance writer.

In my mind that meant I would arise late each morning after an evening of carousing with attractive, exceptionally friendly young women, leisurely peruse the morning edition of the Los Angeles Times, and then check my answering machine to pick and choose from a huge selection of fascinating freelance assignments that were sure to come my way.

Reality, unfortunately, intruded in this scenario.

Most of those attractive, exceptionally friendly young women had day jobs that started at nine a.m. so they could not stay out all night. The remaining ones opted to carouse with men who had incomes.

As if that weren’t bad enough, my answering machine mocked me by remaining persistently void of freelance job offers.

(On the positive side of the ledger, I was able to spend an inordinate amount of time perusing the previous night’s baseball box scores in the LA Times while downing voluminous mugs of coffee down at the corner In ‘N Out.)

Then it happened. Filled to the brim with caffeine and baseball trivia, I walked into my little apartment one afternoon and found the red light on answering machine frantically blinking. The message, from someone I didn’t know, said, “I need a freelance copywriter and you’ve been recommended to me. Give me a call.”

Of course, I called immediately. I certainly had nothing better to do. The voice on the other end of the phone was very friendly, very interested in hiring me because of the outstanding recommendation he had received.

“Who recommended me,” I asked.

“Well, I’m really not sure,” he said. “It came from a friend of a friend.”

”Well, that’s not really important. What’s your address?”

I jotted it down. I didn’t know exactly where it was, but I knew it was in a rundown portion of East LA. Not the nicest neighborhood.

“We have some pretty tight security,” he warned me. “When you get here, push the button on the front door and identify yourself. The receptionist will buzz you in.”

“What kind of products do you make,” I asked.

“We can discuss that when you get here,” he answered.

My mind began racing. I’d never before worked for a company that needed this level of security. Some kind of exotic new high technology products maybe? Possibly a secret government contractor? I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, but it seemed very exciting.

I arrived at the appointed time on the appointed day. The neighborhood was just as shoddy as I had expected. But right there in the middle of the blight was a gleaming, solid black warehouse building with absolutely nothing in the way of identification attached. No name. No logo. Not even an address. I had to check the addresses of the buildings on each side to make sure I had the right location.

The front door was protected by a solid mesh of iron bars. The glass door behind the mesh was blacked out. I found the button to the right of the door and pushed it. A disembodied female voice said, “Yes?” I identified myself and said I had a 2:00 appointment with the president of the company.

The voice said, “Enter” and the door clicked open.

I walked in and found an ordinary looking lobby with an ordinary looking receptionist’s desk and an ordinary looking receptionist. There was no clue as to what the company’s business was.

“Have a seat,” she purred. “He’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

I sat. I waited. As promised, the president of the company came out a few moments later with a big smile on his face, introduced himself, and shook my hand.

“Come with me,” he said as he lead me down the hallway to his office. “We’ll talk.”

That’s where it got weird. Very weird. In fact, it was by far the weirdest meeting I have ever attended. Because when I walked through the door to his office I discovered that the walls of that office were covered — from floor to ceiling — with what can only be described as sex toys. It wasn’t a small office. It was a large office. Perhaps the largest office I had ever seen. That means there were a lot of sex toys. I won’t go into too much detail here, but I’m talking sex toys of every description. Sex toys for men. Sex toys for women. Sex toys of every size and every shape and every color. Manual sex toys, electrical sex toys. Inflatable sex today’s, deflatable sex toys. Sex toys for every perversion and proclivity. Sex toys for every cavity and every protuberance. Sex toys that jiggled and vibrated and elongated and stimulated some body parts that I didn’t know could be stimulated and other body parts I didn’t know existed. A lot of latex was involved. You name it, you could find it on this guy’s walls.

“Well,” the president said, “I guess you can see what business we’re in.”

“I’m not sure I do,” I stammered. I was young. I was naive. I didn’t really understand that manufacturers of sex toys were part of an actual industry that needed advertising just as much as Toyota or McDonald’s.

“We’re in the sex toy business,” he continued. “And I need you to write a catalog for me.”

I still didn’t comprehend.

“What do you mean you need a catalog,” I asked. “What for?”

“That’s how we sell this stuff,” he explained. “Mail order. It’s all mail order. You can’t go into a store to buy this stuff, so people order it out of our catalog. We deliver it in plain brown wrappers. We have a lot of new products and I need you to write our new catalog.”

I was still not processing the situation.

”What would I write?”

He handed me a copy of his old catalog. There, in glorious color and on high-quality glossy paper, were photos of each of the products displayed on the walls of his office. Each product was accompanied by an amusing headline and a few descriptive lines of copy. I won’t go into any details except to quote one headline and I will allow your imagination to fill in the details. The headline was:

TWO HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE.

My brain pingponged back and forth between How do I get out of here? and Which one of my so-called friends recommended me for this gig?

I flipped through the catalog as quickly as I could, handed it back to him, and said, “I don’t think I’m the right guy for this project. My advice would be to hire the same guy who wrote the ‘Two heads are better than one’ headline. I can’t top that one.”

He seemed disappointed. Very disappointed. But he said he appreciated my candor and would give the previous writer a call. But he also urged me to reconsider my decision.

And with that, he escorted me back to the lobby. I said good-bye to the receptionist, whose sweet, innocent smile had somehow been transformed into a lascivious sneer, and escaped back into the pristine beauty of the slums of east L.A.

Ahhhh, the polluted air of Los Angeles had never seemed quite so fresh, never quite so clean, never so worthy of being breathed.

Years later, when I was the creative director at my own ad agency, I tried to use this experience. Creative teams came into my office to present their work and get it approved. If I liked what they had done, I complimented them profusely. If I didn’t, I often said, “It’s no ‘Two heads are better than one.’“

Unfortunately, none of my friends ever ‘fessed up to recommending me for that gig.

A group of Aussie friends from Adelaide and the Barossa had scheduled a going away part for us in mid-April.

However, Prime Minister Scott Morrison just banned … well, I’m really not quite sure what he banned. Pretty much the same rules that were just put in place in California, I think.

Rules about how many people can attend any get-together. About how far apart those people must stand. The new rules mean we couldn’t sit down together at a table. Couldn’t share food. Couldn’t do much of anything that actually falls under the definition of the word party.

Looks like we’ll be here for at least another 90 days. So we can worry about a going away party somewhere down the road.

We miss everyone at home in America, but we love our Aussie friends, too, and will miss them when they finally let us leave.