Buckman and Sandell – Siam and The Naked Queen.

Malcolm Buckman and Owen Sandell. Outward Bound instructors, 1963.  Last seen leaving Brown’s wharf in a fully-laden long bodied Landrover with a six-canoe trailer attached. They drove, I was inserted inside with the baggage.

We were bound for Tallangatta.

On the way, in the night, driving the two lane highway south to Victoria through cold rain Sandell managed to keep the Landrover and trailer on the road as the tray-edge of a parked truck jagged at him out of the darkness. And it ripped its way down the passenger side of the rover. The rest of the trip became an extremely cold experience and Buckman decided a recitation of his yarn about Siam and the Naked Queen might improve the situation.

The first time he gave the recital was at a drunken revel uproarious party massive piss-up convivial gathering of staff and friends at Fisherman’s Bend, in Fuller House – where the fire was always lit and the rooms were home to all manner of hard men. Men of the Antarctic, the Merchant Navy, Army. All of them sailors, all of them teachers. A couple of lads lucky enough to be in their midst.

The Queen had the best 10 athletes laid out before her on the marble forecourt. And she slowly walked all around them as they lay there naked, as she was. Naked. She was a woman of great beauty, this young Queen. {pause}

At this very early stage of the tale Sandell would grasp the pause that Buckman had so handsomely presented him with. The pause after the 2nd naked, and he would duly inform the gathering that they would be required to scarf a full drink for every mention of the word naked – uttered by either himself or Buckman – for the remainder of the tale. Crafty fellows indeed those who drew up this plan for the evening.

– and I hope you’re counting because that’s 3 full cups so far for every one of you.

This is what the Merchant Navy can do for a man.

Slaves passed about carrying golden pots of honey and they dripped a gold spoonful of this nectar into each naked man’s navel. The Queen, no longer unclothed naked, passed her silken robes slowly over their bodies, one by one. Here she paused by a man, and there. Whispered to him. {pause}

Given the second of his pauses, Sandell would re-iterate to the becoming noisy throng that the count must be kept, the drinks must be drunk – and now that’s five and there’s time for plenty more. Always dignified, he would never leave the wall of the room – Buckman was more than enough for the stage. A brown bantam of an Englishman. He bounced around.

The honey ladlers moved away as the Queen disrobed and moved to the first naked man, and took him in her fingers, and slowly drew his unravelled staff upward, exposing the molten pool of honey potted in his navel. A honey-pot now speckled with small black sugar-flies. {pause}

Sandell, ‘ That’s six nakeds please gentlemen, no, I beg your pardon, seven.’

Buckman, now that he had the entire audience exactly at the stage of revelry that was required, dismissed the dignified Sandell from any further duties, left him to seek out the good company of Ed Reid and Geoff Manning where he was obliged to make good any missed nakeds of his own. There was no mercy in this exercise.

The Queen drew the first man back even further, and harder; then as she felt his first massive pulse of unleashed seed surge under her hand she released him. Left the naked man to his writhing, and she slowly walked to the next naked man. The second of ten. {pause} Then the next, the next.

Buckman, brown-bearded big smiling Buckman up in front of the house and the house in an absolute uproar – they wanted twenty-eight more, THIRTY-eight!

As the queen left her tenth man the attendants tendered their scores, these were the women who had followed the Queen as she had traversed the line of naked men. And the man who had scored more dead flies in his pool of navel honey than any other was taken up to the Queen. 

Who then proclaimed him to be The King of Bangkok.

~

Mal Buckman, Owen Sandell and five other young men died on the Hume Weir on the day of August 15, 1963.

Pete Bowes, Mawson FP20. Feb.,1963.

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Header pic Douglas Mawson.