Passing Clouds

by Graeme Leith

  There was plenty of work I could do, however, as long as they kept me away from the really technical stuff, and at the end of the week I had a pay packet containing about five times what I’d received for my weekly efforts at Kew Gardens. I went to the room I shared with Johnno, shut the door, placed all the bank notes on the bed then exultantly threw them up into the air like Scrooge McDuck.

  The hours were long, usually seventy per week, for the owners were keen to get this particular paper-processing machine on which we worked into action and making money. But they didn’t mind paying the overtime required, and we still had time to have a few drinks after dinner. The Isle was more or less a holiday resort for London’s East Enders, but it was winter—which is why we found ourselves in motel-type accommodation at budget rates.

  Some of the people running the local businesses seemed to have a theatrical background; hanging behind the bar were photographs of the hotel manager with Gracie Fields on the island of Capri. It was all rather like a deserted fairground under a mantle of slightly camp melancholy. But on Saturdays some East Enders would come up, we’d have dancing, the manager would sing ‘Give me the moonlight, give me the girl, and leave the rest to me!’ and we’d all have a good time. Particularly if there were some girls from London, usually the daughters of ‘barrow boys’ who didn’t always notice that their daughters were missing, although one did once and came after me with a ‘shooter’, which put some extra pep into the evening’s activities.

  An additional bonus was that you could keep an eye on the poker machines ringing the bar and get a fair idea of which one was ready to pay out. If your timing was right, pumping in some coins inevitably resulted in a jackpot, so that was a bonus. The other bonus was that your bedroom was on the premises. Some of the boys established liaisons with some of the female staff, as did my roommate Johnno with the very large and not particularly attractive cook. He had a little van with a mattress and some blankets in the back—their mobile love nest. With the radio playing and the motor occasionally started to run the heater, it served its purpose well and, being windowless, also preserved the anonymity of the couple on the mattress.

  On the nights of these trysts Johnno usually came home quite late, but once he was particularly late and woke me when he turned on the light. He was ashen faced and looked as if he’d aged considerably since I had last seen him, earlier in the night. I assumed that he’d had a car accident and asked him what had happened. He told me that after their lovemaking they were unable to locate the condom that had been used and searched the van fruitlessly, to conclude that it must be in the one place they were unable to search. It would have to be found by people more qualified than them.

  And so it came to pass that Johnno was forced to sit, late at night, in the hospital waiting room while every nurse in the hospital paired up with a friend and giggled their way through the room while glancing sideways at Johnno. No doubt it haunts him still, if he’s still alive.

  Compromise or cowardice?

  Michael Buck, one of our original Castel Felice adventurers, and I had heard about the Italian language course at Perugia University, the ‘Universita per Stranieri’ and had made enquiries. It transpired that no fees would be charged for foreigners (stranieri), for the Italian government was subsidising them in the interest of promoting an awareness of Italian culture and language. This suited us very well; we found the idea of attending this ancient institution and learning the Italian language in the company of other students from around the world very appealing, so we applied by mail and were accepted.

  Michael was working at a bulb farm on Tresco, one of the Scilly Isles group just west of Cornwall, and the plan was that I would ride my Lambretta to Italy while he would travel by other means and meet me at Perugia. But the best laid plans of mice and men found me in receipt of a telegram informing me that Mike was unable to join me in Italy. It transpired that he had suffered a slight misadventure on the Isle of Tresco. One of his jobs on the island was to perform the mail delivery run on a tractor, for there were no proper roads along the mail route. Now Michael was a very personable young man and very good-looking; in fact he had once been a model for a hairdressing product called Brylcreem back in Melbourne. No doubt the people (mainly women) to whom Mike delivered the mail looked forward to his daily attendance on them and were saddened to learn of his impending departure. On what was to be his last daily delivery they were there, outside their doors, with a small glass of celebratory elderberry wine, a ubiquitous homemade product that is more alcoholic than its appearance suggests. Michael drank several of these toasts along the mail run and the alcohol must have affected his reflexes or his judgement, for he ran the tractor into a substantial stone wall and did it considerable damage, for which the owner insisted he pay, so his Perugia money was gone.

  I’m sure that I would have had an even better time in Perugia with Mike’s company; however, the story had a romantic ending, for an extremely attractive young Rhodesian lady, Jane, had come to work as receptionist at the Tresco hotel. They fell in love, later married, and their three daughters and my two children spent many good times together at Daylesford and later at the vineyard at Kingower. The girls and their children still come to stay; in fact their youngest daughter, Vanessa, has worked with me over many vintages at Kingower.

  With sad goodbyes I finished up at the plant in Kent when the overtime ran out, as I was on a mission to make as much money as possible before going to Perugia in September. A job with lots of overtime had been advertised by a contractor doing electrical work at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire. I had to go to London to apply for the job. I stayed with Lois for a few days and paid her back the money I owed her. I also bought an almost new 175cc Lambretta motor scooter while I waited for my security pass to be granted.

  During the interview I asked if they were sure they had obtained all the information possible on me from Australia; the interviewer detected a note of supercilious sarcasm in my voice and, referring to his file, said, ‘Did you enjoy your time at Sixth Preston Boy Scouts, where after twenty months you were promoted to assistant patrol leader?’ That wiped the smirk from my face.

  I was, however, granted the security pass and soon headed off to Berkshire with all my worldly possessions strapped onto the pack-rack of my Lambretta. I sought board and lodgings at Reading, since it seemed to be the closest large town to Aldermaston, but it wasn’t, and finally I gained lodgings at nearby Thatcham.

  The next morning I was due to start and duly rocked up to the main gate, which anti-nuclear protesters were picketing. There were hundreds of mainly scruffy but obviously sincere people lining the road into the plant and hurling abuse at any vehicle about to enter, their worst excesses censured by police. As I was mounted on my Lambretta, bearded and wearing a corduroy cap, they must have thought I was one of them, for I passed unhindered through the phalanx. But when I produced my papers and handed them to the security guard at the gate, all hell broke loose and I got more of a bollocking than the truck drivers, since in my gear I looked like a traitor. Which I knew I was, having not so long ago in Australia argued that the world was endangered by nuclear activity and that for the first time in human history we were likely to destroy ourselves and the product of millions of years of evolution. Compromise or cowardice?

  The work there suited me well. It was twelve-hour days, seven days a week, in a fascinating windowless building that reminded me of a giant 1940s Australian Arnott’s biscuit tin. All the interior floors were suspended from the roof, and in the event of an explosion the roof was supposed to lift so the sides would not blow out and damage the surrounding buildings—an admirable and arguably slightly eccentric bit of British engineering.

  The object of the exercise was to use an intricate system of conveyor belts to place equipment that had become contaminated with radiation inside various large triple-glazed boxes containing robot-operated workshop machinery, which could work on them.

  It t
aught me much that I was able to draw on many years later, on other jobs involving conveyor systems. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed out of this hermetically sealed prison, and for three weeks I did not see proper daylight, as we went to work and came home in the gloom of morning or evening.

  One day I pleaded a dental appointment, got a pass out and was soon zooming along the country lanes between the hedgerows in the sunshine, seeing and smelling the golden flowers of England’s early spring—I’ve never forgotten that ride! It reminded me of the Oscar Wilde poem ‘Symphony in Yellow’, about the gorgeous yellows and golds of the English countryside and I luxuriated in it before returning to the ‘biscuit tin’.

  When the overtime ran out at Aldermaston, I managed to get a job down the road a bit at Harwell, where they were building some sort of particle accelerator. It was a ‘Euratom’ project, and both the site and the labour were England’s contribution to the scheme. The deadline was quickly drawing near and they were throwing money at it. Those of us chasing overtime would leave our job at an hour’s notice and appear at the next one. So on the day of the Harwell job appearing in the newspaper, three motorcycles and a Lambretta left Aldermaston for Harwell; the four of us started our working day at one place and finished it in another.

  At Harwell I had my first experience with the ‘ghoster’, a shift that required you to start work at 8 a.m. and work right through until 4.30 p.m. the next day—very demanding, but you got triple time for the last eight hours. Apprentices were not supposed to work such shifts and at about 5 a.m. one morning I watched one young lad, carrying a bundle of conduit on his shoulder, simply buckle at the knees and go to sleep on the concrete floor.

  (Many years later when I had a team working under me at the Longford gas plant in Victoria, I was aware of the dramatic loss of efficiency that occurred when people were overtired. I would not let any man in my team work more than a twelve-hour shift. Later still, at the winery at Passing Clouds, I often insisted that people went home for a sleep even if they didn’t want to—cock-ups and accidents happen when people are worn out.)

  One day I was riding to work at Harwell on the Lambretta, having had some performance-enhancing work done, and was keen to see how fast it would go. I was crouched over at full throttle with my eyes about six inches from the speedometer when I felt as if I were being watched. Despite the unlikelihood of that, I looked to my right and observed a police motorcycle alongside; the rider seemed to be looking at me with some amusement. When we stopped he took off his helmet, dismounted and approached.

  ‘Good morning, sir.’

  ‘Good morning, officer.’

  A smile played about his lips as he cast his eye over the bike, obviously observing the AUS plate below the rear numberplate. ‘Didn’t quite get to seventy, did it?’ he said.

  ‘How close, according to your speedo?’

  ‘Sixty-eight, but you’re supposed to be going no faster than fifty.’

  I hung my head in shame while he inspected my licence. He handed it back with the rebuke, ‘Fifty, Aussie.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ I replied, at which he replaced his helmet, remounted, gunned his Triumph 500 Tiger and let me hear what a real motorbike sounded like when it took off.

  Riding to Italy

  My trusty little two-stroke steed had carried me everywhere at a maximum speed of 68 miles per hour, so it seemed logical to take it to Perugia, which didn’t seem far; just across France, through Switzerland, and a little bit of northern Italy. So I put it on the ferry and across the Channel we went.

  One of my workmates had a Swiss wife who suggested a little pensione where I could stay, so I rang them and booked in for a couple of days to rest after finishing work, packing up and so on. Riding through France took me a little longer than I expected but when I arrived I was enthusiastically greeted, given a good meal and shown to my bed on which I had a wonderful sleep. The next morning I awoke, had breakfast in view of the snow-capped mountains and listened to the peaceful chiming of cowbells, knowing I had done the right thing by breaking my journey in this bucolic paradise.

  By evening, however, I was stir-crazy and didn’t want to hear another cowbell or see another snow-capped mountain for the rest of my life, so I told my hostess I was cutting my holiday short and would be leaving the next morning. I aimed the trusty Lambretta towards the St Gothard Pass, beyond which lay Italy—that land of food, wine, romance and all things beautiful to me, and the inspiration for two of my favourite Shakespearean plays, Romeo and Juliet and The Merchant of Venice. It takes quite a while to ride through Switzerland—it has so many winding roads—and I didn’t know as I roared through the bends of the St Gothard Pass that it was usually snow-covered at that time of year and that only an extraordinary dry spell had allowed me to travel it at all on a motorcycle.

  Over the border everything changed; the towns were perfumed with the aromas of food, coffee, wine and tobacco. There was music from the small cafes; the motor cars changed in style, the functional designs of Opel and Mercedes giving way to the cheeky good looks of Fiat 500s, 600s, 1100s, to the sporty elegance of Alfa Romeos, Lancias and the occasional Ferrari and Maserati. Here was a country to love!

  I took a room at Verona for the night, after a near-miss with some Alfas and Ferraris travelling very fast in the opposite direction, their lights so bright that my Lambretta light was no match for them and I had to pull off to the side of the road. Instinctively I chose the left-hand side—the wrong side of the road in Europe—creating such confusion for these rich Italian youths having a ‘burn’ and speeding along nose to tail that one or two of them must have applied the brakes a little too enthusiastically and some of them ran into each other, causing considerable panel damage. I had turned my scooter around and was close enough to hear them yelling at each other when I realised that I could contribute little to the discussion. I turned the Lambretta around again and roared on towards Verona at 68 miles per hour, occasionally looking back over my shoulder. After a good night’s sleep, punctuated by mild nightmares with a soundtrack of torn and rent Ferrari and Alfa Romeo mudguards, I rode on the next day through Emilia Romagna and Umbria to Perugia, where my friend Brian Savron had booked me a room above a bar overlooking the busy piazza.

  From Preston to Perugia

  Although I had no knowledge of the Italian language, I was determined to make a good showing and, while in Switzerland, had learned what seemed an easy phrase. If I were asked what I wanted for breakfast, I thought I would order a glass of milk, ‘Un bicchiere di latte’, and practised the pronunciation with the aid of my Teach Yourself Italian book. In the morning I went down to the cafe and confidently made my request; but any panache I may have had was shattered when the waiter responded, ‘Calda o freddo?’ (‘Hot or cold?’). I had no idea what he meant so I gibbered in English and bad French and had to swallow my embarrassment. I enrolled in my language course that day and began a magical twelve weeks of learning, of new friendships, seeing the treasures of Assisi, Florence, Gubbio, even once as far away as Rome.

  It was a far cry from roo shooting eighteen months before, eating roast mutton and vegetables from the camp oven buried beneath the ashes of the fire and washed down with billy tea. Once a week I would go to the nearest town, Broken Hill, service the jeep and usually get a couple of new tyres, for they were often spiked in that country. I would have a meal at a Greek place where I was introduced to the wonder and delight of stuffed capsicums, cabbage and tomatoes, a little red wine and delicious cakes which had been sent up from Adelaide. The proprietor, his wife and I soon came to an arrangement; they loved to eat rabbit, but only three-quarter grown ones. It was easy to pick up a pair during the night’s roo shooting and exchange them for the full Greek meal, a situation that I found to be entirely in my favour.

  At that time I introduced myself to Wynn’s flagon wine, so the meals became a little more refined and varied, as wine went into the camp oven with the meat and vegetables and a couple of Vegemite jarsfull accompanied the
meal. Sometimes, if we were really hungry when shooting, we’d roast a rabbit skewered on a piece of wire over the fire, and this was good with Bonox or tea. That Greek experience was my first taste of a cultural change, although my friend Brian Savron’s family lived (to us Aussies) an exotic life in Gertrude Street, Fitzroy—a life that included pasta and wine, black coffee and grappa, and the exciting sounds of a foreign tongue.

  Perugia was a very different world indeed. Students of many different nationalities were studying there with different degrees of application. For example, there were Yemenites who, it seemed, were from important families who could have posed a threat to their sheik, so they’d been granted scholarships to Perugia University and not encouraged to return home except for holidays. Basically they were in exile with a lot of disposable income, much of which they used patronising nightclubs. I once watched them play a very unpleasant game that seemed to involve getting the youngest member of their clique drunk, knotting their headdresses, wetting them and then thumping the little guy on the head with them. When I asked them to stop, they did so reluctantly but were not happy with me. That didn’t matter, they didn’t really go to classes anyway and I saw little of them after we stopped nightclubbing.

  There were Americans, some of whom had jobs at the American embassy in Rome. Somebody had decided it would be a good idea if they went to Perugia and learned Italian. They went to Perugia but they did not learn any Italian. However, they were attracted to the nightclub scene and would ‘shout’ the odd impoverished Australian to a night out—specifically in my case because I had an attractive girlfriend. They would drink quite a lot of bourbon, tearfully fish photos of their loved ones out of their wallets, then drive back to town at high speed in the big Buick, leaning on the horn as they approached intersections. On the last trip I chose to take with them the driver exclaimed, ‘That’s diplomatic immunity for ya!’