As a Canadian tourist literally having landed less than an hour previously and driving a rental car solo out of the Sidney Australia airport bound for nowhere it particular, it did not occur to me that I would be pulled over almost immediately by a policeman. Not only that, he was heavily disguised in full on believe it or not, standard mark one bee keeper regalia. Adding insult to injury, his opening pitch after having firmly and I thought rather over enthusiastically flagged me down that very early morning was, have you had anything to drink today sir? 

Tempted to say in a thick ‘stralian ikscent’ (Think phonetically a heavy Australian accent – I am something of a vocals mimic) that I had indeed downed a skin full of beer, I bit my tongue and replied, settling for standard mark one Anglo-Canadian spoken word English, no I had not had anything to drink today, this whilst resisting the temptation to offer him a beer from the cooler in the trunk of the car having just been gifted a cold six pack by an Aussie friend who had greeted me on arrival. I wondered how many Aussies he typically nailed for drinking and driving early on Monday mornings. 

He explained that contrary to his appearance, he wasn’t actually a cop turned bee keeper, but that the myriad Australian bugs being overly fond of biting and stinging ad infinitum, he had no choice but to don a top-of-the-line bee keeping outfit. Without the protection such afforded he said, anyone working almost anywhere outside in Sidney and most of Australia would be bitten to distraction and then some in short order. Curious to know why he thought that anyone would be drinking and driving early on a Monday morning, I posed the question of my would be captor. Establishing that I was a limey turned Canadian and of course not knowing yet that I had just stepped off a plane, he asked if I had been skiing? This 37 degrees Celsius Aussie heat. Yes I said, I ski back home in Vancouver. 

It turned out that one of the very few Australian ski areas was a five hour drive from Sydney. People he said would drive there Friday evenings, night ski on arrival and then party and ski until late Sunday nights. They would then drive the five hours back very early Monday morning going straight to work many of the drivers still half plastered. His job was of course to nail them en-route apparently there being only one way back into Sydney from the distant ski area. Their cars would of course be immediately impounded.  

I had the car window wide open in order to talk and it was at this juncture that I realised that my exposed face, neck, arms and even legs thanks to wearing shorts were bitten to hell and gone focused as I was on conversing with the police officer. If only I’d had the forethought to pack a bee keeper’s outfit. I itched for days afterwards. Far from being used as a disguise as it was in part in the case of the policeman, his cruiser not being visible, a bee keeper outfit was an absolute necessity for anybody working outside for any amount of time most anywhere in Australia short of when it was pouring rain. The cop welcomed me to Australia, thanked me for my time and I was on my way. 

Footnotes:

When I was I think about three, maybe four, I was staying with my maternal grandparents who had two pear trees in the garden. It turned out that bees from a hive a few houses away had elected to swarm in one of the trees. Full on bee keeper outfitted, their owner had arrived to retrieve them. He knocked on our door and I happened to open it. Never before having seen a beekeeper, least of all one in full regalia including of course the full head dress with netting full over the face, I apparently thought I was seeing a ghost and burst into tears along with the requisite ear piercing acoustic hysterics! (Ultimately I would become a lyric tenor. Just saying.) I cannot look at a fully outfitted bee keeper to this day without thinking about that now very distant childhood trauma. It all came flooding back to me courtesy of an Australian policeman. 

Why do bees swarm?

Typically bees swarm when their hive gets too crowded. A group of worker bees, accompanied by a queen, leave the hive in search of a new location. If only human life was so simple! 

NB: i.e. Nota Bene. Not Written by ChatGPT but by Barry H. Devonald.

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