by Alex Nicol
He was a little man. He had wanted to be a jockey, but his parents were strict Presbyterians—no chance. So here he was cutting sleepers for a living. He should have been a clown or an aerialist or a lion tamer or something, because the circus was in town and I’d been sent to line up a story on it.
‘The circus,’ I reported back, ‘is very small-time, and there is no story.’
The response from head office was something like: ‘The camera crew will be there tomorrow.’
The town was Mendooran, on the edge of the Pilliga Scrub, and the local industry depended on the ironbarks that grew there. So now we’d be doing a story on sleeper cutters, and I’d found this marvellous old man as the peg for the story.
We could have slipped back 50 or 60 years. We filmed as he loaded axes, hammer and wedges into the cart. There had to be more to this business than that. It was a relief to see a modern chainsaw, neat in its case, follow them.
All in the camera and all set for the trip to the scrub and ironbarks. Then the old man turned to kiss his wife goodbye. It wasn’t staged for the camera. It was obviously something the old couple did every morning, a moment of tenderness that said: ‘I know where you are going is dangerous. Take care and come home safe tonight.’
The director hadn’t anticipated this. ‘You don’t have to kiss him for the camera,’ he told the wife.
‘I kiss him goodbye every morning.’
Everything had to come out of the cart, and the scene was shot again. The kiss was just as gentle, just as real.
The Pilliga looked then, I guess, as it had looked for centuries. It was quiet and hot. We could have been the first people ever to venture into this little patch in search of a tree suitable to turn into squares and round backs, but a castor oil bottle opalised by years in the sun suggested that we were only the latest in a long, long line.
The old man was neat, methodical and patient. He would walk to what looked to me like an obvious tree and stand studying it. If he liked what he saw, he’d raise his axe over his head and tap the tree over and over again with the back of the axe. No. A steady walk to another black barked giant and the procedure would be repeated.
I sensed our director’s growing frustration. ‘We’re supposed to be making a show for the mums and dads in Sydney. This is television—energy, colour, excitement.’ He wanted to see the chips fly and to record a giant tree crashing to the ground, but we were watching a master practise a craft that in every way was the opposite to the director’s craft. The longer I watched the old man at work, the more I learned that you didn’t need straining muscles to turn a tree into timber. We set up for a chat.
He explained that, when he looked at a tree, he was measuring it. How many squares, how many round backs. These, he explained, were second-grade sleepers, cut from the outer edge of the tree. It took time to get a tree down, to clean it up, to bark it. What he was looking for was value for energy expended.
And what was that tap, tap, tap with the axe?
‘There’s a pipe in this one. The centre of the tree has rotted. Hear it?’
I couldn’t. And that was why I wouldn’t make a sleeper cutter.
Eventually, we watched as he felled a tree, neatly, exactly where he said it would come down. And we watched as he bruised the bark free and began to measure out his sleepers. He put a chalk line down, drove the first wedge in. ‘Some people cut them out with a saw, but sleepers last longer if you split the timber along the natural grain.’
And gradually, what had been a tree was reduced to sleepers.
All the while we chatted. He told of accidents in the scrub, of old cutters and their methods. Of the days when a sleeper was finished with an adze—the broad, razor-sharp axe with a horizontal, rather than vertical, blade. ‘You stand over the sleeper and swing the adze between your legs,’ he explained. ‘It’s a bit like finishing the job with a plane.’ He had an adze at home. ‘Remind me to show it to you.’
He remembered one old bloke who always finished a sleeper by rubbing it down with his hat. ‘In case there were any splinters. Smooth as a dance floor,’ he chuckled. And all the time he worked.
I offered to knock some bark off while he was busy splitting a log he’d already cut free.
‘If you like.’
Was I feeling guilty watching an old man work while I stood idle? Did I just want to speed things up a bit, so we could move on to the next bit of the story? I don’t recall, but I sweated and worked twice, three times as hard as the old man for less than half the result.
By the end of the day there was a small pile of sleepers. I asked how much he’d get for them. I can’t remember the answer, but I know it seemed like a lot of work for little reward.
Then we left them where they lay. He explained that, when there were enough, they’d be carted to the railway yard where, once a month, a railway man would inspect them and buy them.
‘Aren’t you worried that someone else could pick up your sleepers?’
He seemed genuinely surprised by the question. ‘No, everybody knows these are mine.’
We’d spent the day watching a craftsman using tools that, except for the chainsaw, hadn’t changed since the first sleeper slipped from an ironbark
Not everyone treated sleeper cutting as a craft. A young man with a family to support certainly cut his sleepers free with a saw. I asked him what the dimensions of a sleeper were and he rattled off length, breadth and width. I hadn’t seen him measure anything and was halfway through asking how he knew that what he’d just cut was—but he cut me off: ‘You want to measure it?’
He’d cut a lot of sleepers and other things besides. He’d begun making furniture from the ironbarks. Not rough-and-ready bush furniture, but some lovely quality pieces. He had two children at boarding school to support.
Mendooran’s backyards and spare lots had colour in spades. Blokes in blue singlets being very public sleeper cutters for the film crew in town, all willing and wanting to spin yarns and exhibit scars.
One offered a toothless grin to our camera as he peeled off his singlet and turned to display a truly horrible scar down the length of his back. ‘Got a bit pissed and backed into me Hargan.’
His ‘Hargan’ was a notoriously dangerous unguarded portable circular saw, a tool also known throughout the bush as ‘The Widow Maker’. He’d come within millimetres of tearing out his spinal column.
Each timber cutter was a contractor to NSW Railways; a sleeper wasn’t a sleeper until the bloke from the railways said so. Each cutter had his space in the Mendooran railway yard, and in every space grew a pyramid of sleepers, squares and round backs. Once a month the inspector turned up and bought them. We’d struck it lucky—tomorrow was inspection and payday.
But first those piles had to be inspected.
The process came straight out of a Victorian novel. Two men, one on either end of the sleeper, would pick it up and turn it for the inspector’s scrutiny. If he liked what he saw, he struck it with a hammer, leaving a NSW Railways imprint. It was now a sleeper. It belonged to the railway.
And the men who picked up and turned hundreds of sleepers? They were paid by their fellow cutters. The going rate was two cents a sleeper.
Payment was made at the pub. Here was our director’s chance for local colour. We would set up in the bar and chat to the cutters as they celebrated payday with a beer.
The cutters formed a patient line on the footpath outside the pub. Wives and kids joined the throng—they had a particular interest.
A name was called. The cutter walked into a small room, picked up his payment in cash, signed for it and immediately crossed the hallway into the bar. As the line on the footpath shrank, the noise in the bar grew—a hard, solid noise.
On the street there was another sound, sharp and singular: wives calling to husbands, conscious of the housekeeping money slipping across the bar. The sound inside grew, and outside a woman would flip a bar door open and call. Then she’d scurry to the next street door, flip it open, peer inside and c
all again.
We’d set up lights in the bar and they added to the heat. The idea was to single out cutters, grab a yarn, a story, a funny story—‘colour’.
I tried. But nothing made sense. I’d shout—literally shout—and grin at potential storytellers, and get an unintelligible shout in reply. I jammed the sound recordist’s headphones on. It made no difference. I just couldn’t hear anything that the bloke on the other end of my microphone was saying. It wouldn’t have mattered if I could; the sound quality would be terrible. All this ‘colour’ was going to waste.
And then came the party trick.
We’d seen this bloke before. He was big and he was loud and he promised salvation. He announced that he would stand on his head and drink a schooner upside down. At last—colour!
The beer was poured. He climbed onto the bar. The camera rolled. He stood on his head. He was going to pick up the glass with his teeth.
I positioned the mic right beside the glass, and asked a short question: ‘What do you think of these young cutters?’
‘Fucken useless.’
Then he toppled sideways, his boots crashing onto my head. The pair of us slipped ignominiously down among the boots and the bumpers.
TINY’S DEAD!
There was a bit of a sea running. Nothing to worry about, but enough to be careful of. It was coming on dusk, and Tiny and his three mates were looking forward to a beer. They’d sink a few as soon as they got this net sorted, and whatever they’d caught boxed. Two of the quartet were already on the beach; a third was up to his knees in the surf. Tiny was up to his chest in the sea.
They were in a hurry to get finished before dark, when Tiny, as he later told me, ‘committed the cardinal sin’. He turned his back on the sea.
His mates saw it coming and shouted a warning. Tiny didn’t hear it, and couldn’t have done much about it even if he had. A wave picked up the boat and hurled it shoreward. Tiny was in the way. The boat crashed onto his head and neck with terrible force, and then bobbed away in the backwash.
There was a scramble to get Tiny to the beach, where—in police parlance—he was ‘unresponsive’. His mates worked on him frantically.
Forget it. He’d been hit in the back of a head by a boat—his boat, their boat. There was blood everywhere. He was dead.
Shock started to replace panic. No mobile phones then. No instant response. They were alone on a deserted beach. A boat and a net had to be attended to before they both became a menace, and the men had a mate cold and unmoving on the sand.
‘Check him again.’
Nothing.
‘Get on with making the boat safe.’
Tiny’s missus—someone would have to tell her. Tiny’s missus was tiny, with a tongue that could blister fresh paint. They could see it now—she’d turn on the messenger, flay him and then collapse.
Tiny was much loved. This would be terrible. Please God they were wrong about Tiny. They checked him again; nothing.
They thought about loading their mate in with the fish. Well, they thought they did. The truth was they were in shock and weren’t thinking about anything very clearly. They headed back into town, to spread the word and face Tiny’s missus.
Dutch courage at the pub. The publican on the phone to the authorities to report the tragedy, and ‘Poor bloody Tiny’ drinks all around the bar. Then the realisation: ‘We shouldn’t have left him.’
Back to the beach and a terrible sight. Tiny’s body was gone. They of all people should have reckoned on the tide. Now his body was gone, sucked out to sea, and it was dark. They’d never find it.
They could have wept. They did. Tomorrow, first thing, every boat in the area would have to be out looking. They headed back to town to spread the alarm.
The pub was buzzing when they got back. Tiny was sitting in the corner, nursing a drink.
The publican had been a bit surprised when the big man had wandered in, wet and cold and a bit dazed, and ordered a Bonox and rum.
‘Some mates of yours were in a while ago. Something about you being dead?’ the publican offered as he reached for the phone to put things right.
Tiny admitted to a terrible headache. But it was the gash to the back of his head and the blood that persuaded him to take their advice that perhaps he’d better go to the hospital and get checked out.
The X-ray revealed a broken neck.
Tiny had ‘come to’ on the beach, and cursed his mates for deserting him. He’d staggered to his feet and walked into town and to the pub. He had a couple at the pub before they loaded him into a car for that trip to the hospital.
All that time, his big head, with a terrible gash down the back, was perched on top of a broken neck. A sneeze would have done for him.
‘Lucky, eh?’ Tiny grinned as he told me about it.
POONCARIE STOPOVER
I hadn’t got off to a good start in Pooncarie. I booked the film crew into the local pub without, as they say, doing due diligence. The first words our host greeted us with were: ‘Which one of you blokes will be doing the cooking?’
That was a bridge we’d have to cross when we got to it.
These days Pooncarie is promoted as ‘a charming hamlet’ on the Western Tourist Trail, and the pub boasts meals seven days a week. It has four units with en suites and there’s even air conditioning. Tourism has a lot to answer for; booking into a bush pub used to be more of an adventure.
Our ‘rooms’ turned out to be in the backyard of the pub. They were small individual buildings that looked a lot like the meat houses you’d see on a big property: corrugated iron up to waist height, and flywire from there to the roof.
Please God there wouldn’t be a dust storm.
There were two single beds in each room and no electric light. By the time the sound recordist and the cameraman loaded their gear in, things were a bit tight. At least we’d get an early night. It would be a big day tomorrow.
The dog didn’t begin to bark until they turned off the generator. I suppose up till then the noise had kept him company. Now he wouldn’t shut up. Part of my duties as a jackeroo had been to shut the dogs up at night, and I wished now I had the stockwhip I’d used then. One crack of the whip usually ensured silence in the camp.
I groped my way through the pitch dark. If I could find the beast and shake him by the scruff of his neck, that might do it.
Of course he was kennelled in a 44-gallon drum, and of course I kicked it. He was a friendly dog, and I think all he needed to know was that somebody or something was out there. He settled down.
DRIVING WITH MISS MURIEL
2CR broadcast an arts program each week and its presenter was Muriel Steinbeck. That name probably doesn’t mean much now, but let’s just say it was like having a retired Cate Blanchett in the studio. Muriel was special.
Muriel was one of our first movie stars. She starred with people like Peter Finch, and she was a pioneer in Australian television drama in an age in which it was broadcast live. She was the regular star attraction of the Lux Radio Theatre in those years when we sat around the wireless and listened to theatre.
By the mid-1960s Muriel had retired to Orange, and gave her time freely to promote the arts in the area.
She was a beautiful woman who often said that no woman should live past 60; she hated the thought of ‘losing her looks’. She needn’t have worried. Muriel was one of those women who turn a beautiful youth into a handsome older age. She dressed impeccably in the fashion of perhaps twenty years earlier, and never looked anything but glamorous.
Never condescending, she was tireless in encouraging the young people who’d come to be interviewed by Miss Steinbeck about their impending venture into theatre, music or whatever.
Muriel had star quality and she kept it in her retirement. She could make you think that you were terribly clever and witty. She was one of those people who, when they want to make a point in conversation, touch you. She would take your hand and hold it or, if she were sitting opposite you, to make a point
during an interview, she’d reach across, looking you in the eye, and put her hand on your knee. She was completely unconscious of the effect this had, but she did it to me on a number of occasions. Trust me, it made concentrating a wee bit difficult.
Muriel was proud of the fact that she was born in Broken Hill, and perhaps it was the isolation that left her with a charming deficiency. I’d only just arrived at 2CR and was introduced to her. She’d just finished her show, and asked if we could call a taxi to take her home.
‘Miss Steinbeck, I have a car outside. Could I drive you?’ I asked.
‘Thank you, darling.’
I was going to have Miss Steinbeck in my car! I opened the door for her and saw her comfortably settled. I started the engine, and then queried: ‘Which way, Miss Steinbeck?’
‘Darling, I have no idea.’
Muriel had no sense of direction at all. Even in a place like Orange, she had to rely on the kindness of strangers to get her home.
SOMEONE MUST CARE
We were out on the Darling River making a film about the dark days of drought and depression. Things were bad, very bad, and our film’s title pleaded Someone Must Care. I will never forget two of the families we filmed on that trip. Each was doing it tougher than you could imagine, and each for a different reason.
She was what was known locally as an ‘Adelady’. When there were children to be educated, it was not unusual in this part of the world for their mother to take them to Adelaide and set up residence there while they were at school. Dad would stay up bush and work the place, and the family would get together for school holidays.
In this case, Dad had died. It was the middle of a drought: wool prices were disastrously low and there were death duties to be paid and the family had land but no money. The only way to do that was to sell up in a buyer’s market. Mother had come home and brought her teenage daughter with her. Neither had any experience of working a property, but they were trying to make a go of it until a buyer could be found.