Ron Kousal’s mostly fallacious rabbiter’s guide to Rhyll … Don Giovanni, La Causa Nostril and Spanish Rabbits By Ron Kousal
THE Sicilian mafia, La Cosa Nostra, can be traced back to the mid-19th century when the following peculiar, unlikely and some untrue events transpired that eventually brought the fledgling enterprise to Rhyll. The malevolents, known here as La Causa Nostril, portray a sad tale of underground destruction and unconscious hidden malice.
Mafia men are braggarts and laggards, men of “honour” who intimidate, kill and steal. Like other organised crime groups, they profit from conduct hidden behind closed doors, deeds done in dark. But this model of behaviour was actually one they learnt, by experiment, at their first unlikely Sicilian outpost in Rhyll.
THE Sicilian mafia, La Cosa Nostra, can be traced back to the mid-19th century when the following peculiar, unlikely and some untrue events transpired that eventually brought the fledgling enterprise to Rhyll. The malevolents, known here as La Causa Nostril, portray a sad tale of underground destruction and unconscious hidden malice.
Mafia men are braggarts and laggards, men of “honour” who intimidate, kill and steal. Like other organised crime groups, they profit from conduct hidden behind closed doors, deeds done in dark. But this model of behaviour was actually one they learnt, by experiment, at their first unlikely Sicilian outpost in Rhyll.
According to a very reliable source, a certain Don Giovanni used his extraordinarily handsome features to entrance then bed the beautiful wife of the mayor of Palermo. The mayor was confronted and then enraged by his wife’s pregnancy despite not having visited her bed for a cold three years.
Giovanni wasn’t violent as such, but relied on his charm and beauty to overcome people’s reason. He deceived and profited from widows’ inheritances, extorted philanderers and exacted profits from dealing in stolen livestock. So when he was run out of town, he was shattered. Still attractive, he was now also exposed as evil, pathetic and corrupt, and was pushed out to sea in a leaking wine barrel with only the three litres of grappa that the mayor’s good wife had insisted be stowed on board. He drifted for many days, drunk with indignity and wine, to the ancient Spanish city of Alicante, where his first meal after many days of deprivation, was given him by a compassionate peasant.
That meal, which eventually led to Rhyll’s apocalypse, was Spanish Rabbit on a Shovel. Giovanni felt restored and promised revenge on those who had humiliated him at Palermo. In his vain and greedy mind, he conflated his entrancing good looks and reckless ambition for power and revenge with the lusty appetites and beauty of Spanish rabbits. He knew that Beauty could bypass Reason and render the unwary prey to Evil. And his vehicle of experiment to gain power was the ruthless Spanish rabbit.
Historical records show Don Giovanni travelled with his breeders to England, developed his herd, sold them as game seed to hunters, and in particular fulfilled the order of a certain Angus Illustrious Austin who sought to assist his uncle, Thomas Austin, who had recently travelled to Victoria. Thomas had purchased a farm, Barwon Park, in Winchelsea and wanted it stocked with game. Giovanni secured the sale to Thomas through Angus Illustrious by guaranteeing the fecundity of his Spanish rabbits in exchange for a mere penny for every dozen his breeding pairs would sire.
Such was the fecundity of the Spanish rabbits that in the absence of any notable predator, by 1866 the Geelong Advertiser reported that 50,000 had been killed by hunters which made Giovanni the richest man in the colonies, far surpassing any miners or pastoralists. But back to the Rhyll events.
If I may pause a moment in this chronology and make clear one essential premise – rabbits are known as Giovanni’s Evil because of their Beauty, harmlessness and cute and cuddliness. Their scats are cute, little round balls and absolutely no “yuck” factor to step on. And the bunnies hop here and there and never attack people or show themselves as a threat. Their evil comes from one great observation of Giovanni’s, one which gave rise to the precept all Mafiosi now follow, one which was founded and perfected in the Rhyll “La Causa Nostril” and by his greatest innovative undertaking, La Gran Excavación (in Australian parlance, the Big Dig).
This second genius of criminal thinking is posited on the adage, “Where there is no light, darkness prevails” and why Giovanni’s model of criminal organisation needed to be underground, exactly where the beautiful rabbits live and love. This is why, as his apparatchik Angus Illustrious began the experiment in Rhyll, Angus chanted his benefactor’s instruction to the breeding pair: “In darkness ye shall multiply”. This was the foundation of La Gran Excavación and the very undermining of our community’s foundations!
Giovanni instructed Angus Illustrious to release his favourite breeding pair, which he had named Donna Elvira and Warren4, in the Three Holy Months of Islam, right at the height of rabbit breeding in the southern climates. From his estate in Sussex, Giovanni listened to recountings of their proliferation, their enormous appetite to burrow in the soil, their capacity to forage at night on any native plant, their creation of warrens where they might sleep away the days in between bouts of drinking grappa and inexhaustible hours of congress. Giovanni, later in his establishment of La Causa Nostril in Palermo, concentrated his business and retribution on the mayor of Palermo by means of his two laws: Beauty surpasses Reason; and Evil thrives in the Dark.
If we cut from then to now, in 2095, the Chinese year of the Rabbit, much has changed. La Causa Nostil thrives and our landscape is destroyed. Giovanni could not have foretold changing weather patterns or the dying of a mass of insects on which our plants rely, or the erosion and desertification that the offspring of Warren and Donna Elvira caused, or even that the offspring would grow to such plague proportions that they almost ate themselves and native foragers out of existence. No, all of this can’t be placed at the feet of Don Giovanni alone. But as he knew and we have learnt, Beauty can be a harbinger of Evil.
Rabbits, you beautiful things – you are on notice.
Giovanni wasn’t violent as such, but relied on his charm and beauty to overcome people’s reason. He deceived and profited from widows’ inheritances, extorted philanderers and exacted profits from dealing in stolen livestock. So when he was run out of town, he was shattered. Still attractive, he was now also exposed as evil, pathetic and corrupt, and was pushed out to sea in a leaking wine barrel with only the three litres of grappa that the mayor’s good wife had insisted be stowed on board. He drifted for many days, drunk with indignity and wine, to the ancient Spanish city of Alicante, where his first meal after many days of deprivation, was given him by a compassionate peasant.
That meal, which eventually led to Rhyll’s apocalypse, was Spanish Rabbit on a Shovel. Giovanni felt restored and promised revenge on those who had humiliated him at Palermo. In his vain and greedy mind, he conflated his entrancing good looks and reckless ambition for power and revenge with the lusty appetites and beauty of Spanish rabbits. He knew that Beauty could bypass Reason and render the unwary prey to Evil. And his vehicle of experiment to gain power was the ruthless Spanish rabbit.
Historical records show Don Giovanni travelled with his breeders to England, developed his herd, sold them as game seed to hunters, and in particular fulfilled the order of a certain Angus Illustrious Austin who sought to assist his uncle, Thomas Austin, who had recently travelled to Victoria. Thomas had purchased a farm, Barwon Park, in Winchelsea and wanted it stocked with game. Giovanni secured the sale to Thomas through Angus Illustrious by guaranteeing the fecundity of his Spanish rabbits in exchange for a mere penny for every dozen his breeding pairs would sire.
Such was the fecundity of the Spanish rabbits that in the absence of any notable predator, by 1866 the Geelong Advertiser reported that 50,000 had been killed by hunters which made Giovanni the richest man in the colonies, far surpassing any miners or pastoralists. But back to the Rhyll events.
If I may pause a moment in this chronology and make clear one essential premise – rabbits are known as Giovanni’s Evil because of their Beauty, harmlessness and cute and cuddliness. Their scats are cute, little round balls and absolutely no “yuck” factor to step on. And the bunnies hop here and there and never attack people or show themselves as a threat. Their evil comes from one great observation of Giovanni’s, one which gave rise to the precept all Mafiosi now follow, one which was founded and perfected in the Rhyll “La Causa Nostril” and by his greatest innovative undertaking, La Gran Excavación (in Australian parlance, the Big Dig).
This second genius of criminal thinking is posited on the adage, “Where there is no light, darkness prevails” and why Giovanni’s model of criminal organisation needed to be underground, exactly where the beautiful rabbits live and love. This is why, as his apparatchik Angus Illustrious began the experiment in Rhyll, Angus chanted his benefactor’s instruction to the breeding pair: “In darkness ye shall multiply”. This was the foundation of La Gran Excavación and the very undermining of our community’s foundations!
Giovanni instructed Angus Illustrious to release his favourite breeding pair, which he had named Donna Elvira and Warren4, in the Three Holy Months of Islam, right at the height of rabbit breeding in the southern climates. From his estate in Sussex, Giovanni listened to recountings of their proliferation, their enormous appetite to burrow in the soil, their capacity to forage at night on any native plant, their creation of warrens where they might sleep away the days in between bouts of drinking grappa and inexhaustible hours of congress. Giovanni, later in his establishment of La Causa Nostril in Palermo, concentrated his business and retribution on the mayor of Palermo by means of his two laws: Beauty surpasses Reason; and Evil thrives in the Dark.
If we cut from then to now, in 2095, the Chinese year of the Rabbit, much has changed. La Causa Nostil thrives and our landscape is destroyed. Giovanni could not have foretold changing weather patterns or the dying of a mass of insects on which our plants rely, or the erosion and desertification that the offspring of Warren and Donna Elvira caused, or even that the offspring would grow to such plague proportions that they almost ate themselves and native foragers out of existence. No, all of this can’t be placed at the feet of Don Giovanni alone. But as he knew and we have learnt, Beauty can be a harbinger of Evil.
Rabbits, you beautiful things – you are on notice.