<- Back

Wellington Boots

"Too tight, " complained the girl.

The rough hemp ropes cut into her thighs. "I'll only be a couple of minutes" said Helmut, "got to change film - last one jammed in the mag." He left the studio, disappearing behind the darkroom door in front of her. She could hear him whistling the 'Ride of the Valkyries'.

"This bloke's weird'. But she kept her thoughts to herself.

She shifted uneasily under the heat of the glaring photographic lamps, trying to loosen the ropes that tied her nakedness to an old velvet studio couch draped with sacking. She was getting hot and had begun to feel a little unsure as to where all this was leading.

"Won't be long" he called - from the other end of the studio this time. Somehow he was behind her now, where she couldn't see him.

Her unease returned.

She took a deep breath. Wriggled. Tried to loosen the knots that scratched and poked the middle of her back. The studio was getting hotter.

"Keep still!". Sternly and quite close this time.

"I thought you said it'd only take a few minutes". No answer. She continued working at the rough cords.

She could still hear him, scratching away somewhere behind her. Then the sound of a cellophane packet being opened. "Won't be long!". Something dropped to the floor with a soft thud. She told herself not to worry - after all, her agent said he was OK - a little eccentric - but fine. If only she hadn't learnt to trust her instincts which, right now, were sending out signals she didn't like. She decided she wasn't very keen on this, overweight German photographer with his greying pony tail and the one blue eye hiding behind the steel half-frames.

Suddenly, he reappeared before her, as naked as the day he was born, except for a pair of brand new pair of shiny Wellington boots with the store tag still swinging from the top. His huge stomach sticking out in front of him, sun-tanned skin stretched taught. So his belly button looked like a chewing-gum nipple stuck on a gas filled balloon. Between his legs hung a marshmallow tied, with an Elastoplast bandage, to a surprisingly insignificant dick.

Her mind flashed back to fifteen years before when she and her small brother Bobby had been dumped on a property of a distant relation in Cootamundra, while her parents headed north to attend a banking seminar in Cairns.

It was the first time they had ever been left on their own.

First time they had been out of Sydney. The first time they had ever seen Sheep Station. First time they had seen a poddy lamb or watched a headless chook run around a back yard towards the kitchen door to end up in the cooking pot. The first time they had ridden a pony. The first time they had learned to 'saddle up'.

'Topsy' was a gentle plodding lump of an animal, almost as wide as she was long. Mr Minter, the toothless the station manager, always used to say that "it's just as quick to jump over her as to walk around her".

On this particular hot, Sunday afternoon the rellies had decided to bury themselves in mud cake, TV cricket and the occasional iced G and T, and the kids were given their marching orders with instructions not to get dirty and be home by tea. So, she and Bobby saddled up the recalcitrant Topsy and rode out to the dam in the southern paddock, with the idea of going for a swim.

They took off their best Sunday clothes, carefully folding them and draping them carefully over a convenient mound of earth - which later turned out to be a bull ants nest (but that's another story altogether ) - and stark naked, waded-in to the creamy coffee coloured water while soft grey mud squished between their toes making satisfying sucking noises.

For a while, there was a whole lot of happy sploshing, and duck-diving, and giggles then her brother suddenly let out an almighty panicky yell and started thrashing about in the water.

He'd been bitten on his Donger by a determined Yabby.

He ran out of the dam clutching the family jewels with the Yabby still clinging on for dear life and the whole 'arrangement' swinging about in the breeze as he ran. For one so small, his yells were huge. So HUGE in fact that for the first time in her patient life the old pony got spooked and took off for home without them.

She tried not to laugh at his pre-dick-ament (as it were) as she removed the unwanted nipper from the nippers nuts and, while he was still nursing his 'old fella', she helped him into his gum boots - after all, there were Bindies in the grass, and enough was enough.

At one end of the dam stood an ancient Willow tree, split in half by a lightning strike, so that one half of the tree trunk now acted as a bridge across the water. Naked, except for his boots, Bobby went to the far end of the bridge and spent some quiet time feeling sorry for himself and nursing his wounded pride.

Not suprisingly, he never did swim in that dam again.

And now, here she was, as naked as that Sunday ten years earlier, confronted by this Germanic twit with his wobbling marshmallow, and all she could remember was her small brother and his yabby. Slowly the laughter welled up in her and found its way out - first in small bubbles, then gradually more and more, until it burst out in great gobs of tear-smacking mirth.

Not suprisingly, the photographer never asked her to pose again.

For more information and further examples of Peter's work, contact him here.