Once a Pommie Swagman

by Thomas, Nick Arden

  Stoop, slash, stand, swivel, lop, drop. Stoop, slash, stand, swivel, lop, drop.

  Good teams could cut between five and ten ton a day. I don’t think Glen and I cut a ton between us in three.

  No more than four members of the team were cutting at any one time, mainly because the stackers following couldn’t keep up and everybody would eventually get in each other’s way. Working in staggered rows — the second cutter not beginning his row until the first was a few yards into his — the quickest cutters went first and at the end of their row they rested, sharpened their machetes and had a mug of tea until the last cutter arrived. Then they would set off back up the field in a similar way. If you were the last cutter in a fast cutting team, it was relentless torture. The quicker men raced ahead, getting a much longer break and setting off as soon as you arrived, often not leaving enough time even for a swig of tea.

  It was indescribably hard work, and within minutes we were covered head to foot in black soot that became sticky and glue-like when mixed with sweat. Blisters the size of marbles appeared on our palms, and even more painfully in the crevices of our thumbs. Each time we looked up the Hungarian seemed to be another twenty yards in front of us, and he didn’t stop once going down his row. By the time we reached him for our first gulp of tea, we felt like we’d been working for a week. By the afternoon break on the second day, both of us, and worse, the Hungarian and the rest of the team, knew we were hopelessly out of our depth.

  Each day started at six and finished at six, with only three forty-minute breaks, sometimes less, breaks during which we dared not let go of our machetes for fear of not being able to grasp them again. At each break we were fed massive chunks of bread covered in fresh honey, brought out to the fields by the ogre’s wife and their three daughters, all of whom, much to the amusement of the men, looked like they’d spent time in the same boxing ring as the ogre, although we didn’t see if they had hairy shoulders. By the last break of the day, we could barely pick the bread up. The only light relief came on our second morning, when Glen trod on a dozing carpet snake and came running out of the field, face ashen despite the soot. Even the ogre was amused. The blisters on our hands throbbed continuously, despite urinating on them several times a day as recommended by the others in the team. Not that we ever saw any of them doing it, and despite the grins it wasn’t until the third day that we got the joke.

  Dinner was served in a shed behind the main house, and each team of cutters not only had its own rough hewn wooden table and benches, but team members sat in the same position every night. Promptly at six thirty Mrs Ogre and her daughters would appear carrying plates of food and these they would plonk down, one in front of each position, senior cutters first, along with a knife and fork, returning to the kitchens and repeating the process until everyone had been served. If anybody was late their food would just sit there getting cold, and if they hadn’t turned up by seven o’clock, when the four women emerged to clean up, the plate was simply picked up and the food dumped into the pig swill bucket along with the other scraps. The meals were always the same, meat of some sort with gravy, cabbage, carrots and potatoes and a chunk of bread, and for pudding there was jelly and custard. Breakfast was at five thirty sharp, two fried eggs, bacon, sausage, tomato and toast, similarly dispensed.

  At the time there were five teams working on the farm, and every night the main focus of interest was the notice board at the end of the mess shed. Pinned there was a list of the tonnage cut that day by each team and their position in the ‘Team Bonus Scheme’. Glen and I were in team three, and while we were there team three remained firmly in fifth and last position. That this was a situation he and I were entirely responsible for was all too obvious. Nobody said anything outright, and being sent to Coventry by men who barely said a word anyway may not sound much of a punishment, but the dark glares were more frightening than any curse.

  Back in the bunkhouse at night, this silent treatment turned to real abuse from a few of the men when they came stumbling back from the hotel bars that we were too young to enter. For three nights we barely slept, in fear not only of the men but of snakes; on the first night a man calmly removed a huge king brown snake that had curled up in his dirty clothes under his bunk. On the third night it poured with rain, the noise was deafening and within minutes it was almost as wet inside the shed as it was out.

  The men were taken to and from the pub sitting on one of the trailers towed by Charlie so, on their return this night, they were drenched which didn’t help their mood. One of them came staggering over to our bunk and started shaking it violently, shouting his head off. We couldn’t hear a word he said, never mind understand him, but that wasn’t necessary; we knew what he was on about. Glen was in the top bunk and, not getting the response he wanted from either of us, the man suddenly grabbed Glen by the throat and started shaking his head. Fortunately the Hungarian was close by and came running over, dragging the enraged man away.

  Back-breaking work, violent, surly and resentful co-workers, lumpy straw mattresses, pillows that smelt of other men’s sweat and a leaking shed full of angry drunks, farting and snoring their heads off in unison with the croaking toads — so, we only lasted four days. The Hungarian spared us the ignominy of having to quit when he came to us at the end of the fourth day and said bluntly, “Tomorrow you go, here you money,” and he gave us each two pounds. Small fortune as it was to us, it was probably much less than we should have received but we were too exhausted and too scared to complain. We couldn’t get away quickly enough and left Butt’s farm immediately, despite the descending gloom. We settled for the night under the bridge on the banks of the Richmond River and in the dark we ate the baked beans and sausages we’d got with our food voucher, spilling less of it down our shirts than we might have had it not been for Alf ’s spoons. It was cold, the ground was damp and smelt of urine and we got covered in ants, but it still beat the cutter’s shed.

  The next morning, it was time to assess the situation. Going home wasn’t an option; Glen’s dad would be on the warpath. Besides, how could we face the others if we went back now? There was only one thing for it; keep heading north.

  One of the older men in our team who’d been slightly more hospitable towards us, in that he at least spoke to us occasionally, told us about a place Glen and I had never heard of called Magnetic Island. “Spent a few months up there a couple of years ago, paradise on earth,” he assured us. The nights were always warm and balmy, so sleeping on the beaches was no problem. There wereplenty of fish to be caught in the coral lagoons, and easy money could be made scaling palm trees and picking coconuts for the holidaymakers, a task for which my smaller frame was ideally suited, apparently. If not, there were several smallholdings on the island that always wanted casual labour. It sounded a magical place, the name alone being enough to draw us to it. Magnetic Island, here we come! Th is settled, and being flush with funds, we decided to kit ourselves out a bit better. We bought a frying pan and a billy, tin plates and knives and forks; eating cold beans out of the tin in the dark was for amateurs!

  Morale restored for having so brilliantly sorted out our domestic situation and formulating a plan of action, we walked back out to the surf club again, washed our filthy clothes under the tap and spent the day drying them. The next morning, after demolishing a huge breakfast at a cafe in Ballina, we also tried to wangle another food voucher, but despite our protestations that we’d been sacked from Butt’s Farm and were therefore entitled, Sergeant Pearce was having none of it. It was move on or go hungry time, not that we were too bothered; we still had several tins of food, plenty of tea, sugar and biscuits, and a few bob in our pockets — enough to get to Magnetic Island and back probably so who needed a hand out? With the confidence of the well organised and the contentment of the well fed, we strolled a mile or so out of town and stuck out our thumbs. It did cross my mind to ask Sergeant Pearce for a lift out there, but I thought better of it.

  THREE

  Meanderings, mem
ories and mateship

  Only when you begin to travel do you start to understand ignorance and insularity. Growing up in 1950s Sydney, I had no real idea of the size of Australia, or of Sydney itself. This was despite the fact that up until the age of eight I had travelled quite a bit. When aged two I’d sailed to Australia from England, and when I was four my mother had taken us to live with her parents in Queensland for a year. For a few years in the early fifties my sister and I had gone to New Guinea during the school holidays to visit our mother.

  Of New Guinea I have many memories, but as with all young childhood holidays and travel they are fleeting and were mostly disjointed. From the age of eight until Glen and I set off, my entire world had centred around Epping; the creek at the bottom of our garden, school, trains to Circular Quay and ferries to Manly at the weekends. Epping in those days was virtually out in the country, twelve miles from the centre of Sydney. We were surrounded by bush. On hot days in the summer my stepmother would take a few of us to Balmoral for a swim, and a couple of times a year we might go shopping in Sydney or my father would take me to the cricket ground or the Royal Easter Show. In the season on Sundays, a couple of mates and I would ride our push bikes out to Parramatta speed-way and for several years we went to every home game played by Eastwood Rugby Union club at Eastwood Oval, perennial wooden-spooners in those days. “Go you Woodies!” we’d chant deliriously as they ran onto the field. “Useless bunch of fat-heads!” we’d cry when they trudged from it eighty minutes later. Fanatical and fickle in one afternoon, the hallmark of many a football supporter I reckon.

  As for the western and southern suburbs, we never ventured there and places like Bankstown and Cronulla were as foreign and distant to us as Cloncurry and Oodnadatta. I had never seen a full-blooded Aborigine, or a dingo. I thought Ayers Rock was in Alice Springs, and even if I had heard of it I would have said Marble Bar was a chocolate. By far my longest journey had been on our annual holidays to Avoca Beach for two weeks. After the excitement of making the sandwiches, packing up the car, squeezing in my father’s crutches and stopping for a picnic beside Brisbane Waters, it took us most of the day to get there, trundling along the winding Gosford road, my stepmother driving our top-heavy little Austin A40 at twenty-five miles an hour.

  “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”

  “No!”

  “Well, when are we going to be there, for poop’s sake?”

  “Don’t talk like that, Nicholas!”

  Of course I knew the shape of Australia and all about Captain Cook and Matthew Flinders, Bourke and Wills and Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson. But if someone had asked me to describe the Gold Coast, I would have said it was like Manly and Queenscliff beaches only with Coolangatta at one end and Surfers Paradise at the other. So when you get there and find instead of being only one or two miles apart it is more than twenty miles, it comes as a bit of a shock, especially if you have to hump an unwieldy kit bag! We also hadn’t reckoned on hitchhiking being so difficult and frustrating in urban areas. As often as not the lifts were only for a mile or so, and in busy, built-up areas they were few and far between. Three or four days of this, and the novelty of hitchhiking can quickly disappear. Stomachs apart, all that really concerned us was the next bloody lift. If someone stopped, anyone at all, we just got in and worried about where we were going afterwards. Half a mile in the right direction was a result, even if it meant going forty miles sideways to gain it.

  Consequently, had our route over the next few days been plotted on a map it would have looked like the gormless meanderings it was. From Ballina we’d got a lift to Bangalow, from Bangalow to Murwullimbah and from Murwullimbah to Coolangatta. It then took us three days just to get to Southport via Mudgeeraba, and we walked most of the way. Eventually we got out of the congestion of the Gold Coast — not as bad as today, perhaps, but it was still pretty bad, with far fewer roads — and made it to Nerang, then to Beaudesert, only to find we had to more or less retrace our steps back to Beenleigh, where we should have gone to from Nerang in the first place.

  Fortunately the average teenage boy’s mind is just another stunning example of how amazing nature is. Blissfully unaware and wildly optimistic, it is not bogged down with the concerns and worries that so complicate and inhibit the adult mind; things like organisation, patience, forward planning, thinking before they leap and having an awareness of time and distance. With great foresight, the teenage boy’s mind has been left completely blank, enabling it to concentrate solely on the important, immediate matters of the day; things like hamburgers, milkshakes, music, cigarettes, sleeping, and what to do with their erection every morning.

  Oh, we knew where Magnetic Island was alright. It was off the coast of Townsville, which was north of Mackay, which in turn was north of Rockhampton, which was north of Bundaberg, which was north of Brisbane; what else was there to know? If the sun was more or less on our right in the mornings as we set off , we knew we were more or less heading more or less in the right direction.

  The worst day was the fifth after leaving Ballina, or was it the sixth? It felt like the tenth! Although it was late May, at midday it was quite hot and we trudged along, thirsty and increasingly irritable, thumbs ignored by all. Our duffle coats, so comforting and necessary at night, were cumbersome and annoying in the heat of the day.

  “Do you have to walk so fast?”

  “Do you have to be so slow?”

  “I’m not slow.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “No I’m not. Besides, it’s hot and I want a drink.”

  “Well, there isn’t any bloody water here, is there!”

  “Shit, this bloody frying pan is heavy. Why can’t you carry it?”

  “Because I’m carrying everything else!”

  “Yeah, but it’s not as heavy as this frying pan!”

  “Will you shut up!”

  “No, you shut up!”

  “Quick! She’s stopping! She’s stopping!”

  It was midday and we’d left Southport Beach at six o’clock that morning and not had one lift since, so when the Morris Minor pulled up ahead of us we rushed over to it with great excitement and relief.

  “Hello, boys,” said the elderly lady. “Where are you off to?”

  “Magnetic Island.”

  “Magnetic Island? Good heavens! Th

  at’s miles away!”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m going to Acacia Gardens, if that’s any help.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Well, you go up there to the lights and turn left, then …”

  Shit!

  The next day outside Nerang was similar. “Jump in boys, goin’ to Beaudesert,” the driver and his mate grinned down at us. We needed no second bidding. The back of the small truck was empty save for a couple of bales of straw and a lovely black and white sheepdog that got so excited as we clambered over the tailgate that its tail nearly fell off. We stood up behind the cab and hung onto the railings, the dog barking with joy. “Okay?” the driver yelled. “Okay!” we yelled back, and we lurched off. “Where’s Beaudesert?” Glen shouted as we picked up speed, his blond hair blowing in the wind.

  Shit!

  If we weren’t near a beach or a river, we discovered the best place to sleep was in parks or local ovals. There we could usually find enough wood to light a fire, make a billy of tea and heat a few tins of food. If it rained there were always the stands, toilet blocks and picnic shelters. A few times our fire attracted the attention of the local police patrol, leading to confrontations that were always a little nerve-racking because we were never too sure what they wanted to talk to us about. To supplement our diet I had begun stealing little items from shops while Glen distracted the shopkeeper, not that he was all that keen. A Kit-Kat here, a Mars bar there, a tin of beans, a pocketful of oranges, a packet of cigarettes, and in one shop in Surfers Paradise I managed to walk out with a loaf of bread and a tin of IXL strawberry jam under my duffle coat. We ate the lot in one sitt
ing. But the police only seemed interested in how old we were, where we’d come from and, more particularly, how long we were staying; on each occasion warning us not to be in the area the following night or they would “Do you for vagrancy.” Exactly what happened when you were ‘done’ for vagrancy, they didn’t explain.

  So it was that more than a week after leaving Ballina, we were taking cover from the pouring rain on a bench under a picnic shelter in the outer Brisbane suburb of Mt Gravatt. We were here because the previous day in Beaudesert we’d bumped into Ralph, who told us that we could link up with Brisbane’s tram service there. He was a soldier going home on leave, and, we discovered, was something of an expert on hitchhiking, having travelled back and forth like that on leave for several years. He was heading in the opposite direction to us, but caught our attention because he had a hand-written sign he held out saying simply ‘Newcastle.’

  “Does that work, then?” Glen shouted across the road, pointing at the sign.

  “Sometimes,” said Ralph, and he came across and had a cigarette with us.

  “I don’t use it in built up areas, puts the locals off stopping. In fact I don’t hitch in cities at all if I can help it … just a pain in the arse.” Don’t we know it, mate! And then we saw he had another piece of equipment that really interested us. As he shrugged his old Army rucksack easily off his shoulders and sat down, we were green with envy. Spacious, comfortable to carry and with various straps to tie up bed rolls, billies and things, and several little pockets to house small items, it was perfect for hitching. “You can get them at the disposal store in Brisbane,” Ralph assured us and we knew, somehow or other, we just had to get ourselves one of those packs and get rid of the cumbersome kit bags. Just how we were going to pay for them didn’t enter our heads, or at least it didn’t enter mine; such things don’t when you’re permanently locked into ‘something will turn up’ mode.