The Best Australian Bush Stories

by Jim Haynes

  It was sensible, I thought. I was tired, and I wanted a bath. There was a whole fortnight ahead. We’d collected a good bunch on the way down, and though it was hot in the streets it was cool in the pub. The beer was good, and I was hungry too. The chaps were all laughing and arguing about it, but I was too tired to argue. I just agreed. We had a couple of rounds to celebrate the fact that we were going to stay together for a while.

  That pub was hard to leave. The concrete pavements get your feet when you’re not used to them, and the pub was always cool. Every evening I’d think about getting out to the beach next day, but something would always interfere. On the Tuesday Pat Stanford and Johnny Josephs turned up from the fields, and the mob of us made a day of it. On the Wednesday there were thunderstorms. We trotted around the shops and we bought some stuff, but we always finished up in a pub. Tom was enjoying himself, but I got restless.

  ‘Look here,’ I’d say when we got up in the mornings, ‘we came down here for a change, an’ what are we doing? Roaming from pub to pub just like we would on the fields! We’re shifting today, Tom. We’ll get our things out after breakfast.’

  Tom would grumble a bit, but he’d agree. Then one of the other chaps would roam in, fuzzy-headed and yellow-looking.

  ‘What a night!’ he’d say. ‘Hell! There’s so much fur on me tongue I think I must have a cat in me mouth.’

  ‘We’re skipping after breakfast,’ I’d say. ‘We’re off out to the beach, where they don’t have any cats.’

  The chaps were laughing at me, I knew. Always one of them would dig out the rest and they’d decide that we had to have a drink before Tom and I left. An hour would pass in the bar, where it was quiet and cool, and then there’d be no bus for half an hour and we’d have a few somewhere else to pass the time. Someone from the fields would show up, or some bloke one of us knew at the coast. I’d check the clock and worry while they all talked and drank and made a row, but after a while I’d forget about it. We’d eat wherever we happened to be, and the money would flow out of our pockets fast and easy. And Tom and I would always land back at the pub with the mob about midnight. We made a lot of noise, but nobody minded because we spent plenty.

  Then the weekend came and half our holiday was gone, and I stuck out for going to the beach.

  ‘Christ! Why bust the party up?’ said someone. ‘We’re gettin’ on all right an’ havin’ a good time, aren’t we?’

  ‘This’s the best place in the city on Sunday,’ said another of them. ‘We’re boarders, an’ it’s no trouble to get served.’

  ‘Why don’t you all come out?’ asked Tom. ‘Come out for the day, anyway. It’ll do you good.’

  I didn’t want them all at the beach. I only wanted Tom and me there. But they liked Tom’s suggestion.

  ‘Cripes, yes!’ said someone. ‘We got t’ see the water before we go home. Why not now?’

  We got a taxi and a lot of bottles and we all piled in and went zooming off to the beach. We went through the suburbs, and I got a good look at the gardens for the first time since we’d arrived. When we were a mile from the coast I smelled the sea. Then we dropped over the last sand hills with the sound of the breakers booming away in our ears, and the car pulled up where we could see the whole beach, speckled with people and bright in the sunshine. The sand glared and hurt our eyes, but it did me good to see the beach with brown bodies all over it. There were a lot of improvements, flash pavilions and lookout towers and so on, but it was the same old beach. I remembered the first day I’d spent trying to ride a surfboard, and a lot of other occasions.

  None of the chaps except Tom and I wanted to go in, but they felt they had to, and they pulled each other’s legs about it until we were all in the dressing rooms. We peeled off our clothes, and I wished I’d bought a new swimming suit. Not that I’m fussy about how I look, but most of them were wearing trunks, and my old bathers were baggy as well as out of date. The men in the rooms were as brown as I used to be, and our mob seemed white, even their forearms and faces. You don’t get sunburnt underground, or in pubs either.

  When we went out the glare on the sand seemed worse, and we felt funny with our long white arms and legs and old-fashioned bathers. The sand felt funny between our naked toes, and we thought that everyone was looking at us. We hid ourselves in the water, and the water was good. Most of our mob didn’t know what to do when they got in front of a ‘dumper’, but I could still manage them, though it made me breathless. I played about for a while and then I went out past the breakers for a swim.

  There was a kid with a flash stroke just ahead setting out for a buoy too. I felt good, and decided I’d see how I went against him. I put my head down and started the crawl that used to win races for me. When I looked up he was still ahead. He was looking over his shoulder, laughing. I sucked some air with a bit of unexpected wave mixed up in it, and did everything I could, until my lungs were bursting. I got another glance, and he was further ahead. The buoy was still a long way off, and my heart was hammering. My head was spinning, and I could taste sickness and beer not far from my mouth. I gave up in disgust and paddled back to the shore, where the rest of the bunch were already out and stretched on the sand.

  ‘What a hell of a place to want to live!’ said someone as I flopped down in the middle of them. ‘Golly, I’m thirsty!’

  The glare from the sand was horrible, and I could feel now that there was water in my ears. We all had salt in our mouths. We all felt thirsty. The heels of kids sprinting about the beach spurned sand into our faces. When anyone looked at us we felt silly because we were too white. The water had made us tired and thirsty. We went up and dressed, and after we’d had a drink at the car we went back to town.

  I felt angry with myself and disappointed. The chaps poked mullock at me, but it wasn’t that that hurt. I didn’t want to go near the beach again. I was quite content to be heading for the pub.

  We stayed at the pub near the station with the rest for our remaining week. We saw a couple of picture shows, and every day we tramped about, bowling into a bar whenever the pavements tired our feet. We spent a lot of money, and we all used to get back to our rooms late and make a good deal of noise. It was surprising the number of other fellows from the fields we met, and we had a good time. But I wasn’t sorry when the time arrived for us to get on the train again.

  We took plenty of bottles, and after we’d drunk some and piled into the sleepers I lay wondering again about the length of each section of rail. Every clankety-clank, I thought, was carrying me a little closer to a place where I was some good, a place where there was work to be done, where I could hold my own with other men and where I didn’t look funny and old-fashioned or a colour different from that of my neighbours.

  ‘WESTWARD HO!’

  HARRY ‘BREAKER’ MORANT

  (EXCERPT)

  We may not camp to-morrow, for we’ve many a mile to go,

  Ere we turn our horses’ heads round to make tracks for down below.

  There’s many a water-course to cross, and many a black-soil plain,

  And many a mile of mulga ridge ere we get back again.

  That time five moons shall wax and wane we’ll finish up the work,

  Have the bullocks o’er the border and truck ‘em down from Bourke,

  And when they’re sold at Homebush, and the agents settle up,

  Sing hey! A spell in Sydney town and Melbourne for the ‘Cup’.

  Part 6

  BENEFIT OF

  CLERGY

  The influences of religion on the lives of bush dwellers are many and varied in scope.

  When freely interpreted, the ‘gospel’ can become something quite distant from strict doctrine, as observed in ‘The Reign of Eugene Ham’. On the other hand, the independent attitude and practicality of some bushmen can lead to a whole new, supposedly more relevant, doctrine, as illustrated in ‘Bill’s Religion’.

  Religion is often an odd thing in any social framework, but especially so in a bush town.
Spirituality is of no importance at all to some rural dwellers, as demonstrated in ‘First Confession’ and the story which gives this section its name, ‘Benefit of Clergy’.

  On the other hand, to many living in the bush, especially in times gone by, religion was the very basis of their lives, quite often for all the wrong reasons, as observed in ‘A Sabbath Morn At Waddy’.

  Those bush dwellers without religion, or ‘benefit of clergy’, fall into two categories in these stories, often depending on who is doing the observing and making the judgments.

  There are those, like the characters in ‘Benefit of Clergy’ and ‘The Parson’s Blackboy’, whose lack of religious sensibility leads them into a more practical, brutish and prosaic lifestyle. Then there are those, like Father Connolly, who make a pretty good fist of sound moral judgments based on compassion and common sense, or the protagonist in ‘Bill’s Religion’, who uses ‘bushman’s morality’ rather than deferring to any particular denomination.

  There is a certain ‘bush cynicism’ evident in the tone and theme of the majority of these stories; whether it is a healthy cynicism or not I am really not in a position to say.

  ‘GOD AND POETS’

  JACK SORENSEN

  I think God values spinifex as highly as the rose,

  He even may like poetry that reads like rancid prose.

  The reason I suppose

  Is that He feels responsible for all He sows and grows

  And so gives equal marks for song to nightingales and crows,

  Though why, God only knows.

  I USED TO READ THE

  COMICS FIRST

  JIM HAYNES

  I USED TO READ the comics first, and then go to Sunday school, that was the real cause of the problem.

  I crammed the entire contents of the comic sections of the Sunday papers into my head just before the Anglican Church made its weekly attempt to develop my spirituality.

  I’d pedal down to the newsagent on my bike about 7 a.m. every Sunday and wait for the truck to bring the papers from Cooper’s Junction. Then I’d dash home for breakfast and read all the comics before dressing in my ‘Sunday best’ to go to Sunday school at St Matthew’s Church of England hall at 10 o’clock.

  So, when Miss Everett was attempting to improve my mind and character with Bible stories, my head was already overloaded with the comic sections of the Sunday papers. She thought she was fighting the good fight against the devil in my soul while she was actually up against Ginger Meggs, Fatty Finn and Uncle Joe’s Horse Radish.

  This has had a profound influence on my life. I tend to be a bit vague about the scriptures because Miss Everett’s Bible stories came just after my wide-eyed reading of the adventures of Prince Valiant, Mandrake the Magician and The Phantom.

  Mind you, some of those Old Testament stories were pretty good.

  The pictures that Miss Everett showed us of Noah’s Ark, King David fighting Goliath and Moses coming down the mountain carrying the Ten Commandments were almost as good as Prince Valiant fighting the Black Knight or Mandrake when he ‘gestured hypnotically’ to create an illusion so that he and Lothar and Princess Narda could escape some awful danger.

  Mandrake’s tricks were just like Jesus’ miracles when you thought about it, and Mandrake’s offsider Lothar, in his leopard-skin costume, looked just like Miss Everett’s picture of Samson. No wonder I was confused.

  I had trouble with scripture stories when the plot was a little weak. I didn’t understand that with religion the plot wasn’t as important as the moral of the story. I’d find myself asking Miss Everett, ‘What happened next, Miss?’

  Miss Everett would sigh her special junior Sunday school sigh and reply, ‘Nothing happened next, they gave thanks and followed Moses,’ or ‘Nothing happened next, it just proves that Jesus loves us and forgives our sins.’

  My simple desire for a strong plot line led me into a lot of trouble at Sunday school. Miss Everett didn’t seem to appreciate my suggestions, even when they were made in response to her own enquiries.

  ‘Why did Lazarus rise from the dead?’ she asked.

  ‘Maybe Jesus gestured hypnotically like Mandrake and the crowd were all tricked into believing it,’ I suggested, helpfully.

  ‘Why was David able to slay Goliath?’

  ‘Well Miss, Prince Valiant built a big catapult and beat the Vikings a few weeks ago, maybe David and his brothers had a really big slingshot hidden behind the hill in the picture and . . .’

  I was only trying to help, but she didn’t even let me finish.

  ‘Just be quiet and let me tell you what the Bible says.’

  This was said through gritted teeth, which was not easy for Miss Everett. The poor girl had an undershot lower jaw, which meant that her bottom lip protruded about an inch beyond the top lip. This gave her a rather stern appearance and led to the nickname ‘Ashtray’ being bestowed upon her by my cousin Gerald and myself. She was a local farmer’s daughter who, now that I think about it in retrospect, seemed to find Sunday school teaching quite demanding. She probably thought that teaching junior Sunday school at St Matthew’s was a punishment for her sins.

  Miss Everett’s life was so sheltered she probably had no sins to be punished for, except losing her temper with me in Sunday school. My mother described her as ‘a trifle gormless’. Though that was said in my defence after the trouble I caused at Sunday school.

  Over the years Miss Everett had tolerated many of my attempts to explain the scriptures and improve the plot lines of Bible stories. She had tolerated my theory that the disciples caught no fish on Lake Galilee before the Messiah’s intervention because they used the wrong bait. She lived through my supposition that the Hill of Golgotha and the Phantom’s skull-shaped mountain were one and the same, which explained the miracle on Easter Sunday. She had even managed to deal with my quite valid argument that we could have had a lot more than ten commandments if there had been paper to write them on, instead of that really heavy stone Moses had to carry down the mountain.

  What Miss Everett could not tolerate, apparently, was my disruptive behaviour around the age of ten.

  Until then my disruption of her lessons had mostly been a result of misguided enthusiasm and total ignorance of the whole point of religion, but around the time I turned ten I really did become quite naughty. I put some of the problem down to the fact that Miss Everett wasn’t particularly worldly enough or well trained enough to handle naughty ten-year-old boys.

  Another part of the problem was that I found the Church of England style of religion rather boring. Not that I knew a lot about the others, but they all seemed much more exotic, mysterious and interesting than the Church of England.

  For example, the Salvation Army people all wore uniforms, played instruments and sang in public. This didn’t happen often in our town because there were only two or three families of ‘Salvationists’, as Mum called them, and they mostly went to worship in Cooper’s Junction where there were lots of them. A couple of times a year, however, the ‘Salvos’, as Dad called them, would all come and play and sing in Anzac Park and march down the main street.

  And then there were the Catholics.

  The Catholics were a strange lot. They had lots of names, like ‘tykes’, ‘RCs’ and ‘rock choppers’, and they called themselves ‘Roman Catholics’, even though they lived in Australia.

  My best mate, Brian Stafford, was a Catholic because his mother had been a Hogan. The Hogans had owned the general store for generations and Brian’s mother, Marge Hogan, had married Gill Stafford, whose family owned the hardware and produce store.

  The Staffords were not Catholic, but the Hogans were.

  It caused a ‘bit of a fuss’ at the time, according to Mum. They were married in the Catholic church and the kids were ‘raised as Catholics’. A lot of people in town (by which Mum meant the eighty per cent or so who were Church of England) grumbled that ‘the tykes had got another one’.

  This meant that Brian had to go to Ca
tholic Scripture at school with all the O’Sheas and listen to Father Connolly telling jokes in that strange accent of his. He also got to be confirmed at an early age and eat wafers in church and go to confession in a little booth.

  It all seemed much more exciting to me than listening to Ashtray Everett’s stories with their unsatisfactory endings.

  When we were older Brian had me in stitches telling me that he had finally worked out what Father Connolly was talking about when he took special classes for the boys and told them that their ‘nocturnal emissions’ were not necessarily something they had to confess.

  ‘He’s been telling us this for years, in these special lessons,’ said Brian, ‘and I thought it was something to do with wandering around at night, being a peeping Tom or something. It turns out it’s just having wet dreams and apparently we don’t have to worry, wet dreams are not a mortal sin.’

  Brian was a mine of information about sin and punishment. He seemed to know more about it than Miss Everett. If you asked her if God would make you go to Hell for killing someone in a war she would just mumble about God forgiving everyone, which confused me. I couldn’t see the point in having a terrific place like Hell if everyone was forgiven. The good thing about Hell was that you could imagine your enemies there—that would teach them to make your life miserable!

  Brian had much better answers. According to him, the Catholics had it all figured out. They solved the problem by having a place called Purgatory, which was like detention at school—it was awful but only lasted a certain time, depending on your sin. That was easy for a ten-year-old to understand. Dropping papers in the playground was worth fifteen minutes’ detention. Justifiable homicide might mean fifteen years in Purgatory, but not permanent residence in the fires of Hell.

  It sounded like a good system to me, but when I asked Miss Everett why it wasn’t available to those of us who were C of E, she became quite agitated. Apparently the idea was just ‘superstitious nonsense and mediaeval mumbo-jumbo’ and I was getting ‘more wicked by the day’.