It was at St. Barnabas’ School at Ravenshoe in North Queensland that I met the boy with the stockwhip. I forget his name but it does not matter. His whip was some ten or twelve feet long, and he demonstrated for me a little trick that he used to do. An assistant, the volunteer from the audience, would stand facing him with arms in front of face in case of accidents, the boy would swing the stockwhip towards his assistant with what in lawn tennis is called a forehand drive, the lash at the end would crack behind the assistant’s back, and then curl painlessly round his waist. Presumably the cracking destroyed a lot of kinetic energy.