Dirty Work

AN INVITE TO AN NT WEDDING SPARKS A CROSS-COUNTRY TRIP.

- John Rooth

LAST month I had a good old rattle catching up on the progress we made with Milo2. But how come not much happened in the months before that? Right, here goes. It all started with an invitation to a wedding. Mark and Shay, friends of ours through the off-roading fraternity, were getting married after 25 years of thinking about it – at least I know I’m not the only one who can dodge a deadline...

Naturally, my wife Karen was hanging out to go. Girls love weddings and, to be honest, I figured this one would be a beauty from a bloke’s point of view. Anything that sounds like a party in Darwin is always going to be good!

Mark is known to most people as eMDee, the didgeridoo player who’s wowed audiences around the world. He’s an interesting bloke and his travels within the Aboriginal communities up north always fascinate me. I’ve got a lot of mates there, too, so every way we looked at it, we were going to go.

But there were other demands – as always, work was getting in the way of life. After almost 18 months of not shooting any fresh DVDs, there was a whole lot of pent-up demand. I’d spent a good part of that break catching up on Milo maintenance – after 20 years of constant abuse with a string of patch-ups, there’s still a truckload to go – but the business side of things demanded something be shot pretty soon.