This is not Fred, but he looks similar. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
It’s a tiny little granny flat, but I call it home. Just me and the occasional friend or two. Plenty of space to chill and listen to music and read and stuff. Recently a baby gecko visited my flat. He started hanging out near my shower. At first he would worry me and startle me and I’d throw my shampoo bottle at him, but he wasn’t going anywhere. Nope, this little fellow had come home. Gradually I found myself enjoying the little dude’s company, and actually found myself chatting to him. I called him Fred.
About eight years ago I set off on an adventure and ended up in Polonius Airport in Medan, on the East Side of Sumatra in the middle of the night. Launching out into the carpark I was hit simultaneously by a blanket of heat and hundreds of screaming Indo taxi drivers, all wanting my dollars. It’s an amazing thing to realize the inadequacy of phrase books and travel guides when the real deal is shoved vociferously into your face. I hacked off with the nearest taxi driver to the nearest hotel.
I was first shown my room. It had an overhead fan and was cool. I was tired. I accepted, and moved in, just wanting to pass out. There was a jug of water next to my bed, and a few cups. As I looked around my room and tried to deal with the bizarre toilet, I heard something moving. I quickly turned around to see the tail of a huge gecko flick one of my cups over. I was bummed. I hated geckos, leaving their disgusting little tails flickering on the floor whenever they’re scared, and dropping their tiny black turds on the tiles. I wasn’t happy. I tried to catch him but he was quick and I soon lost him in the weak electric light.
The next morning I was on a small plane heading for a little island in the middle of nowhere. I was sitting next to an ugly Australian with bad skin who hummed of garlic. He spoke fluent Indonesian to the flight attendants and, curious, I got chatting to him. Turns out that Steve ran a surfcamp in front of a perfect left-hander, one of the best in this island chain, and he invited me to come and stay for a while. He told me during our brief flight all about the island and about the malaria and the animals that live on the island. The crocs that used to live there but were killed for their meat and skin years ago. Things to look out for. How best to treat a coral cut. What to do when the Brazilian hordes arrive and take over the wave (just chill). I, a naive traveler, listened enthralled and absorbed it as best I could. He rambled on about a mysto right-hander on a nearby island that people had seen and talked about for years but that had such a fierce barrel and a death end section on dry coral, that it would probably kill a man if he got caught on it. So far, he reckoned, the only man to seriously consider it had been Tom Curren on one of his earlier trips to the area. He told me about the huge geckos that live on the island and went on to tell me that they are the best thing to have in the room with you because they eat mosquitoes, which carry malaria. The more geckos the better he reckoned because ‘the little critters could save your life, mate.’
My nervous first solo trip to an island riddled with mosquitoes and malaria and perfect lefthanders and killer reefs was made better for me by the knowledge of what geckoes do in our world.
So now, whenever I have my morning shower and notice him it makes me think about co-existence. About my tiny place in this huge world. About wants and needs and fears. About perfect, reeling lefts on the other side of the world. About the few simple things a true surfer really needs to exist.
And I feel better for having him around.
