Dusty Gulch Gazette – Special Duck Census Edition

By Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble – Foreign Correspondent, Rodent Division
Filed from beneath the bar at the Dusty Dingo, where the floor is sticky but the truth is clear

Dusty Gulch has survived bushfires, floods, rat plagues, ( yours truly was a survivor of the last one ) locust waves, and a brief but memorable outbreak of interpretive pirate dance in ’92. But nothing -  nothing -  prepared the town for Duck Day.

A new national directive, written somewhere far above sea level by people who panic at the sight of soil, had declared that all future population metrics must be duck-based.

Not Dusty Gulch Day. Not Eureka Day. No, this was the day the bright lights of bureaucracy descended, clipboards quivering, to announce that from now on, only ducks count.

You could hear the silence fall across the Gulch like a dropped stubby.

Even the roos stopped mid-chew. Even the crows paused mid-criticism. Even Trevor the Wallaby -  whose titanium-and-tungsten cyber-knees can hear electromagnetic storms three postcodes away - went very still.

And at Moonlight Manor, the temperature rose six degrees.

A Hot Night at the Manor

Moonlight Manor - Dusty Gulch’s most famous, most notorious, and most heavily perfumed establishment - was in trouble.

Miss Moonlight herself, the elegant emu matron with eyelashes long enough to sweep a verandah clean, had just received the news:

Her dancers. Her girls.The long-legged emu chorus line who had high-kicked their way through droughts, rat plagues, elections, and half a dozen visiting footy teams……were to be replaced by ducks.

Ducks?

Ducks with short legs, no rhythm, no stamina, and a tendency to quack on the off-beat.

“They’ll wreck the joint, Roddy,” Miss Moonlight whispered to me, her feathers trembling. “The Manor is built for height. A duck can’t even reach the top shelf of the costume cupboard.”

Dulcie -  the scarf-wrangler who could lasso a misbehaving emu dancer with a single flick of marmalade - was in tears.

Sheriff Bushie, who had maintained law, order, and scandal balance in the Gulch for 30 years, slammed his hat down so hard it registered on the Richter scale.

“This here is sabotage,” he growled. “Cultural sabotage.”

The Bureaucrats Arrive

Enter: Prentis Penjani and Maurice E. Duck, emissaries from the gleaming glass city where no one ever gets their boots dirty and everyone speaks in committees. An emu who now identified as a duck, accompanied by a duck who identified chiefly with a brown paper bag full of money…

They marched into the Dusty Dingo Pub with forms, folders, flowcharts, and an aura of someone who has never dug a post hole, let alone a long drop toilet.

“New policy,” Maurice quacked. “For inclusion,” Penjani declared. “For standardisation,” Maurice added. “For efficiency,” Penjani finished.

Translation: If you want welfare, work permits, school access, Medicare, the right to buy a sausage roll, or entry to Moonlight Manor, you must be a duck. Otherwise ....

The town stared.

Even the flies stopped.

The Eureka Moment

Now, most towns would have grumbled. Some would have protested. A few might have painted rude signs.

But not Dusty Gulch.

Dusty Gulch is made of sterner stuff. Of shearers and shear-wannabes. Of poets, posties, and pub philosophers. Of the ghosts of Lawson, Paterson, Ned Kelly, and the miners who once stood at Eureka and declared:

“Stuff this.”

And in that hot dusty silence, I'd swear I felt the old Eureka flag flutter - not from any breeze, but from sheer indignation.

The Plan That Saved the Town

The emus gathered at the Manor. The roos gathered at the oval. The echidnas gathered eventually - they’re slow but reliable.

And Mayor Dusty McFookit, a man whose moustache has its own postcode, stepped onto the rotunda and announced:

“Righto. If they want ducks…We’ll GIVE ’em ducks.”

And so began the greatest moment of bureaucratic civil disobedience in the Southern Hemisphere.

At sunrise the next morning:

• The entire town

• Every person

• Every animal

• Every creature with a heartbeat
  lined up to declare themselves ducks.

Row after row of “ducks” marched through the registration tent.

Tall ducks. Short ducks. Spiky ducks. Marsupial ducks. Echidna ducks who waddled in backwards because their spines got caught on the tent flap.

Trevor proudly declared himself a high-performance cybernetic duck, thanks to his upgraded knees.

Miss Moonlight declared herself a heritage emu-duck, classification pending.

Sheriff Bushie declared himself a lawful neutral duck.

Even I - a rat - became a small whiskered night-duck.

Maurice E. Duck fainted.

Prentis Penjani stared at his clipboard as if witnessing a war crime.

The Aftermath

By noon the census results were in:

Dusty Gulch: 100% Ducks.
Zero emus.
Zero roos.
Zero humans.
Zero problems.

Moonlight Manor reopened that evening, the emu girls kicking higher than ever under the new sign:

MOONLIGHT MANOR — NOW DUCK-APPROVED

Roderick’s Final Dispatch

From my vantage point beneath the barstool, nibbling a stray chip and watching the emus rehearse for the evening show, I can report:

Dusty Gulch is safe. Moonlight Manor is booming. Trevor’s knees are humming along nicely. And as for the census?

Well…

And Dusty Gulch has just taught the nation the simplest rule of resistance:

When the powers that be demand absurdity… you give them so much absurdity the whole system falls over.

Filed with affection and a slight smell of spilt beer.

— Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble, Foreign Correspondent, Dusty Gulch Gazette