I've just returned from a trip about three hundred kilometers north of my house, to one of Victoria's mountain regions. It takes almost four hours to get to the secluded point on a trout fishing river, flanked by steep, densely vegetated hills and only accessible via four-wheel drive dirt roads. We stay in log cabins which were hand-built over fifty years ago by my friend's great grandfather, who discovered the area and, as all good discoverers do, named it after himself.

Because of the nature of the terrain and purposes of the trip, we generally take a ridiculous amount of food, which is second only to our supply of beer. I don't fish, and there's not much else to do there except eat, drink, and fish, so I feel I can contribute to the activities of any given day by drinking from early morning into the deepest recesses of the night.

We have two major food groups when we are away: meat and fiber. Couple this with a lot of morning coffee, red wine, and beer, and you are beginning to get an insight into what goes on in our digestive systems throughout a four-day period. Generally this is an all-male expedition, which leaves us free to be as filthy and shameless as we like. But being an as-yet Shameful Shitter, the recent trip posed a problem for me: we brought women.

These weren't women I was friends with before he trip, which meant that my overdeveloped libido dictated a polite attitude with questions and comments loaded strictly to make these women think I was honest, forthcoming, and an all-round good prospect for bedroom antics. Unfortunately, as in most cases, these women turned out to be the root of all evil.

After two days of solid eating, drinking, and what we call "Gary Groundwork" on the women, I had yet to experience a bowel movement. This wouldn't have bothered me as much if I had been able to empty my bowels before leaving Melbourne, but -- including time before the trip -- I hadn't crapped in five days. Five days in which I'd eaten a fair bit. I was beginning to sense a nascent blockage which needed to be taken care of.

So I tried a few different techniques in an attempt to loosen my bowels. If I was going to play this right by the new women, then I would need to devise a scheme so perfectly timed that it would make the roulettes jealous. I needed to be able to create a window of opportunity between my groundwork and the impending drunkeness which would render me incapable of discreetly performing my ablutions.

My first option was coffee. Not knowing too much about laxatives, I had taken some advice from this page: drink lots of coffee. I waited two hours. At first, nothing. Then slowly, like a small child blowing up a balloon, my bowel began to pressurize. After another hour or so, I felt that the pressure in my bowel was going to either dislocate my hips or burst out into my intestinal cavity, inflicting on me the biggest case of E. Coli since they built a Cadbury factory next to a sewage plant. This was the time. I was ecstatic. For the first time in a long time, there was no women around and I could rush off to the toilet.

The "toilet" was a big wooden gazebo-like structure built over a dug-out mineshaft, with a raised seat which afforded a perfect view of the serenity of the bush. I dropped trou and sat, ready to unleash what must have been a few solid kilograms of fecal matter. I readied myself and pushed. And then again. A vein stuck out on the side of my neck. Nothing. I tried the old 'rock-side-to-side' method in the hopes of loosening the obstruction. Nothing. Now I was in serious pain.

Almost doubled up with cramps and seriously worried that the blockage may unlodge itself at an inopportune time, I trotted back to the campfire. There were still no women around. One of my mates walked past, and I stopped him to inform him of my predicament. I had meant to say "Dear friend, it seems that I have developed a severe case of constipation which is leading to a dangerous gassy build-up in my bowel. Can you think of any advice to help me in my time of need?" I actually said "Can't shit. Need help. What do? Dying."

My friends are close to useless at the best of times, and this was no exception. Now there was more trouble. One of the women was back, and wanted to talk. I wasn't interested in her, but I knew that if I brushed off her attempt at conversation then I'd have no hope. Then, inspiration struck one of my friends. Without realizing he would be helping me, he decided it was time to do some four-wheeling. And the girls wanted to go, too.

Thanking my lucky stars, I realized I had a limited time in which I could give birth to this large newborn. I considered the accountant-with-broken-calculator approach (work it out with a pencil) but had two problems -- I couldn't find a pencil, and wasn't really up for poking a stick up my own ass. In the absence of any hospital-grade laxatives, I knew that this particular load would have to be dropped the normal way.

The walk back to the toilet was like a death row prisoner trudging to the electric chair. I half expected someone to lean out from behind a tree shouting "dead man walking" -- except I wasn't walking. I was kind of loping, like the way a city-slicker walks when they step off the mechanical bull.

As I walked up the three steps to the top of the toilet gazebo, I tried to stretch my legs as far apart as possible, much as I would had I been pregnant. For that moment I was lost, ready to bear child, feeling the kicking, waiting in hope for an epidural. But there were no drugs to dull the pain, no calm doctor to comfort me, and no chance of a c-section.

I sat again, grim determination on my face. This loaf was baked days ago and now had to be forced out of the oven. I pushed, sweating. Nothing. Another deep breath. I pushed, feeling like I was squashing all of my lower body into a bowling bowl sphere at my sphincter. Nothing. Third time's the charm. Another deep breath. Here we go. My body shakes and I am seeing pin-points of light all around me. Nothing.

The fourth try was going to make or break. If I couldn't squeeze this out, I would surely die by the end of the day with an exploded bowel. I imagined plying my sweet-talking trade to one of the girls, my every word punctuated by rocket-powered spurts of solid and liquid fecal matter from my ruptured organ. Not likely to be successful.

I took a few deep breaths to get myself prepared. I literally stood up off the seat, anticipating that I would need all the excess force I could muster. As I clenched muscles high up in my bowel, I slammed myself down on the seat, my entire head flushed with blood from exertion. Bang! The pain was still there. The gas forced my body cavity still wider.

Then it gave. At first, it was like someone had burst a dyke. There was a small cracking sensation, and a wet burst. Then it was more like a rupture in the earth's crust, as red-hot lava spewed out from between the tectonic plates shifting above my anus. The effect was like an earthquake on my upper body. I shook from the sheer effort of it all, like weightlifters at the Olympics. Then the offending chunk, or at least parts of it, projected like cannon fodder from my rectum, echoing down the mineshaft. It was bowel movement in Dolby Surround Sound.

The surrounding trees rustled in the breeze as the backdraft from the sheer amount of gas I had pumped out exited the mineshaft. The ground seemed to shake, then I realized it was the after-shock from the initial eruption. The pieces were much softer now and I dispatched them with ease.

As the last of those huge, solid, coal-like pieces lurched from my pain-wreaked body, I felt relief and regret. Relief that the situation was over, and I was sitting, albeit soaked in sweat, in a wonderful area blessed with freshening air and serene trees. Regret because the nature of the latrine meant I couldn't see the fruits of my labor. I did return with a torch to see if I could get a glimpse of my baby boy, but to no avail.

As for the women? Well, it turns out my four-wheel-driving friend had told them all of the stories which have made me notorious in my neighborhood. There was no chance one of them would go near my bed.

So here I am, three days later, and it seems like I am still in afterglow. I'd light a cigarette, if I wasn't so worried about the amount of flammable gas still in the air.

-- Tollstrup