Once a Pommie Swagman

by Thomas, Nick Arden

  “It’s gone! The fucking thing’s gone!”

  “What’s gone?”

  “The bag! The bloody bag and all our money!”

  For ten minutes we searched our bags and rifled frantically through each other’s clothes and pockets, unable to believe it had happened.

  “It’s that fucking Jerky bloke! “

  “I reckon it’s more likely the old man,” said Glen.

  “Does it matter? Come on, we might catch up with the bastards!” And quickly we stuffed everything back into our kit bags and retraced our footsteps of the night before, running up lanes and down alleys. Finally we emerged breathless onto the road leading over the bridge and stood for a second contemplating which way to go; then I saw the police car.

  “Hey!” I yelled, and rushed out into the traffic in front of it, waving them down. “We’ve been robbed! We’ve been robbed!”

  Looking anxiously in his mirror, the driver was forced to pull up quickly and angrily he wound down his window. “What the hell are you doing, you stupid bastard! Get off the road and go and stand over there!” And he swung the wheel hard and pulled the car to the side. His mate was getting out and putting on his cap as I got there.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Nick. We’ve been robbed! We were sleeping under the brid …”

  “Full name!”

  “Nick Thomas … what the fuck does that matter! We’ve been robbed!”

  “Yeah, I heard you the first time, son,” the policeman said. “Now just calm down and don’t swear at me again.”

  At this point Glen, who’d been left standing on the other side of the road when I darted out, came running over in time to hear me say, “I’m not bloody well swearing at you, we’ve been robbed!” By now the second policeman was also out of the car, and suddenly I found myself being shoved hard up against the side of it. “You were told not to swear any more. Now you shut your mouth! What happened?” He turned to Glen.

  “He’s right, we were robbed,” said Glen.

  “And what’s your name?”

  “Glen Olsen.”

  “Who robbed you?”

  “We’re not sure but there were some old drunks and some Abos, under the bridge … we were sleeping …”

  “Some old drunks and some Abos! Got any names?”

  “Well … no, they didn’t tell us … but … it couldn’t have been the Abos … your blokes must have seen us when you picked them up!”

  “What did they steal?” asked the first cop, ignoring Glen’s comments.

  “All our money and cigarettes, they were in a little black bag in here.” Glen indicated his kit bag.

  “What time was this?”

  “I don’t know, last night some time, after you picked up the Abos.”

  “How much money?”

  “Six pounds and four packets of cigarettes.”

  “Why were you under the bridge? Where do you live?”

  While Glen explained our circumstances I was left beside the police car, getting more and more exasperated. What did they want to know all this crap for! We’d been robbed!

  “So, let’s get this straight. You were robbed under the bridge some time last night, but you don’t know when, by some drunks whose names you don’t know?”

  “But one of them was really distinctive,” said Glen, getting agitated himself now. “He had a really old Army greatcoat and a beanie with holes in it, and his head jerked a lot … and there was an older man who seemed to be the boss,” he added.

  “So, what do you want us to do about it?” the policeman asked, and I could hardly believe I’d heard him and pushed myself off the police car.

  “What do you mean, what do we want? You’re bloody policemen, aren’t you. We just want our bloody money back!”

  This time I was flung against the side of the car, the policeman’s forearm pressing into my neck, forcing me back. “I told you not to swear any more. Now you listen to me, both of you. We’ll make some enquiries, but … !” And he pressed his arm into my neck again, sensing I was about to say something else, which I was. “The chances of finding your money are about as slim as finding a polite teenager!” And saying that, he grabbed my chin in his hand and vigorously shook my head. “You with me!” Satisfied I was subdued; he eased off the pressure a little but kept his forearm leaning on my chest. “We’ve got a fair idea who it might be, but by now he’ll have got rid of all the money and probably sold the cigarettes to his mates. It will just be your word against theirs, and there’s no way in the world you’ll get any of it back, or even prove it was stolen, so if I were you boys I’d forget it, put it down to experience. You shouldn’t have been sleeping down there anyway.” Again I was about to object, but he simply pressed on my chest. “There is nothing we can do!” That this was the last word on the subject was obvious by the black look on his face, inches from mine, so I slumped back, defeated and dejected. “Now I suggest you go home or find somewhere decent to sleep. Either way, I don’t want to catch you hanging round these parts again, understood?”

  “Piss off, you arseholes!” I yelled at the departing police car; but if I was frustrated and annoyed, Glen was almost in tears. I’d never seen him so angry, and suddenly he exploded.

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!” He kicked his kit bag so hard it flew about ten yards across the pavement, pedestrians having to leap out of its way. “Why are you always so fucking lippy!” he yelled at me. “If you hadn’t mouthed off they might have helped us!”

  “That’s fucking rich! We wouldn’t have needed any bloody help if you hadn’t shown your jerky mate our bag!”

  “He’s not my mate!”

  “Well, it looked like it, giving him cigarettes and money!”

  “Oh! So it’s my fault, is it?”

  “I didn’t say that!”

  “Yes, you did!”

  “No, I didn’t! But you did show him the fucking bag; he could probably see everything that was in it!”

  “Well you can piss off too, if that’s what you think!”

  “Yeah, well I just might!”

  “Good! Tell you what,” he added, glaring at me and delving into his pockets. “Here’s half the money left, now why don’t you just fuck off!”

  “Okay!” I yelled back. “I fucking will!” And I snatched up my kit bag, pausing long enough to pull out the frying pan. “I won’t be needing this fucking thing!” And flinging it down, I marched across to the southbound side of the road and we stood opposite each other shouting obscenities across the traffic.

  “Stupid prick!”

  “Arsehole!”

  Forty minutes later, we were still standing there. It was towards the end of morning rush hour, the hitchhiker’s nightmare time and everybody ignored our outstretched thumbs. After a while we calmed down a bit but continued to glare at each other, neither wanting to be the first either to get a lift or give in. The whole time the frying pan stayed on the ground where I’d flung it, Glen refusing to look at it, much less pick it up, as if somehow even to acknowledge it would be a sign of weakness. Then a semi-trailer pulled up in front of him and all I could see were his feet moving across to the cab door until a tram rattled past in front of me, and for half a minute or so I couldn’t see the other side of the road at all. When the tram went by the truck had gone but Glen was still standing there. “Do you really want to go home?” he shouted.

  Dodging the traffic, I ran back across the road.

  We didn’t speak, there were no apologies or handshakes; Glen just pulled the plates and mugs out of his kit bag and gave them to me, then he bent down and picked up the frying pan. “I’ll carry this for a bit if you like.”

  We walked across Story Bridge in silence, and jumped on the first tram heading north and made it all the way to Chermside before we had to run for it, whooping with glee, the conductor shouting abuse behind us. It was the first time Glen had ever done anything like that and he obviously enjoyed it, quickly mastering the art of constantly but casually mo
ving about the tram to avoid the conductor without drawing attention to himself. When we finally stopped running and sat down on a bench in a park we were breathless and flushed with the excitement that being naughty brings. Bloody cops! We’d show them!

  We were now in the northern outskirts of Brisbane, and getting a good lift was much more likely so we sorted ourselves out a bit and devised a plan of action. Fortunately Glen had kept the change from the meal the previous night and I had a few bob in my pocket, so we still had about eighteen shillings, a fortune a few weeks before, so financially we were okay; as for food, all we had to do was get out of the city to a police station in some country town up ahead and get another voucher. Thinking of food, we both suddenly realised we hadn’t eaten since the previous night so we tucked into mamma’s wonderful sandwiches and cold pizza. As for the plan of action, it was the same plan as before; head for Magnetic Island, only now getting there had suddenly become much more important, a hurdle we were both determined to get over for our own satisfaction and self-esteem; not that we said so to each other.

  Dumping my kit bag down after escaping from the tram, I’d noticed one of the seams was beginning to part and it reminded me of Francesco and Carlo’s plan for us. “I guess we’ve got to forget about rucksacks for a bit,” I said, as much to myself as anything.

  “But mousie, thou art no thy lane

  In proving foresight may be vain.

  The best laid schemes o’mice an’ men

  Gang aft agley

  An’ lea’ us nought but grief a’ pain

  For promised joy!”

  “What!”

  “Me mum’s Scottish,” said Glen, grinning and getting up. “She used to read Robbie Burns to me every night. Come on, let’s go to Magnetic Island!”

  Just when you think you know somebody!

  SEVEN

  Grandfather, mountain retreats,

  Mr Willard and bloody Gympie.

  When my parents first split up, our mother took us to live with her parents who managed a pineapple plantation just outside Nambour. They farmed a dozen or so acres of their own, and ran a few sheep with the help of their lovely kelpie dog, Koorie. There were watermelons, persimmons and mangoes, and sometimes I ate so much pineapple my mouth hurt. There were chickens and geese and an old ram called Henry, whose job it was to keep the grass short around the house. My sister and I often tried to ride him, but like most rams he was erratically bad-tempered which didn’t help but if you’ve ever tried to ride a sheep you will know how difficult it is, even if it’s good-tempered. Their fleece wobbles about so much it is almost impossible to stay on.

  Much of the work around the farm was still done manually and Cobber, my grandfather’s mighty old draft horse, worked tirelessly pulling sled loads of pineapples at harvest time. He was a wonderfully good-natured old horse with big, sad eyes, and I loved him dearly and spent many hours riding on him. When my father first read me Animal Farm a few years later, I imagined Boxer was Cobber’s father. He was so big I had to stand on packing cases if I wanted to get on him. But he just stood there, solid and island-like, patiently waiting for me to clamber up and ignoring the fact that I was almost pulling his mane out.

  My grandfather, although kind enough, was a fairly blunt, uncompromising sort of man. A stickler for protocol and table manners, he always dressed for dinner and shouted at anyone who was late, including our poor grandmother, and woe betide anyone who spoke with their mouth full. A New Zealander, he taught my sister and me to fish and swim in the Maroochy River, which in my case consisted of strapping two sealed-up biscuit tins around my chest and chucking me in. Gruff and stern he may have been, but from him we gained an insight and knowledge of agriculture, animals and nature we might never have got living in the city, even if in my case it was perhaps more a subconscious insight. I was only four and five years old at the time so I don’t remember a lot, but I do remember going into the chicken coop to feed the chickens; I didn’t have a shirt on and suddenly the rooster, for some reason taking a dislike to my presence, came screeching down from his perch, landing on my back. I’ve still got the scars to prove it. I ran screaming from the coop, leaving the gate open and all the chickens got out.

  Another vivid memory is of sitting on the dunny one day, legs swinging freely as I couldn’t touch the floor. Our grandfather had built the entire thing himself, dug the huge hole and made the wooden bench that covered it, and the wooden, hinged toilet seat in the middle that I was sitting on. Above my head was a shelf, and looking up I noticed a large cardboard box; somehow, by standing on the bench and reaching on my tiptoes, I managed to knock the box down and in it discovered three-dozen toilet rolls. Then I had an idea. For half an hour, holding the end of the roll, I let each one spiral down into the smelly depths. When it hit the bottom I tucked the end of it neatly under the toilet seat to hold it in place, and then let down another roll. By the time I’d finished it looked like an inverted white maypole, much prettier than a black hole. I was very proud of it. My grandfather was not amused.

  I remember, too, him plucking chickens and the pungent smell when he dunked them in boiling water first. The most memorable bit, though, was when he chopped their heads off with an axe. My sister and I watched in amazed fascination as they ran about — just like headless chickens! It still amazes me. “Can we do another one, Grandpa! Can we do another one?”

  * * *

  “Bullshit!” said Glen.

  “No it’s not. Fair dinkum, they used to run around with no head!”

  But no matter how hard I tried to convince him, I don’t think Glen ever believed me. City kids rarely see such sights, and it is hard to believe such a thing if you haven’t seen it. It was three nights since we’d left Brisbane, and we were sitting beside our raging campfire on the top of one of the Glasshouse Mountains — those strangely shaped rocky outcrops Captain Cook named as he passed by all those years before. They were more like big rocky hills than mountains, but it was a great place to camp with a fantastic view and we imagined we were there two hundred years earlier and could see his ship passing way out to sea. We could also see the towns of Maroochydore and Mooloolaba in the distance, and the town of Nambour wasn’t far away.

  From Brisbane we’d got a lift with a Buttercup Bread delivery van taking a load of bread to Caboolture. There we’d gone straight to the police station, but found it was shut. In the general store they told us the local cop was off sick, and that if we wanted a policeman we should go to Nambour. Glen thought that’s what we should do to conserve our funds, but I disagreed. I wanted to buy some food now, so we could go and see the Glasshouse Mountains. I was determined we should at least try and see some of the sights Francesca had mentioned. We were discussing it fairly heatedly when the Buttercup man came out of the store. We had already told him of our adventures in Brisbane, and when we mentioned the Glasshouse Mountains he immediately became very animated. “Oh yeah, you’ll like it up there, used to camp up there meself, sausages over the fire, camping under the stars, ya can’t beat it, great views too. Tell you what; I got a delivery to make in Beerwah. I can take you there. Some of the mountains is fairly steep so you might want to stay a few days. I can give you a couple of loaves of bread, buy some sausages and beans and you’ll be laughing.” That settled it, Fires, sausages and camping under stars have always attracted young boys, and by the time the Buttercup man finished talking even Glen was raring to go. We had plenty of tea and sugar left so we bought half a dozen eggs, two pounds of sausages, a few tins of beans and potatoes, four large tins of fruit, a packet of Cornflakes, two tins of condensed milk, some broken biscuits, a few bags of sweets and two packets of cigarettes. The whole lot only cost us about fifteen shillings, which still left us with three or four bob … she’ll be right mate.

  In the end we camped up there for four nights, and only came down because we ran out of food.

  The biggest problem was water, although after Southport, when we’d got so thirsty, we had found a couple of
old screw-cap lemonade bottles and filled them with water, making sure we refilled them at every opportunity. The water didn’t last long with cooking and everything, so we devised a routine where we would go down the hillside early in the morning, have a wash in the creek and fill up the bottles and our billy. The return trip from the top to the bottom took us about two and a half hours, one hour down and an hour and half back up. But we barely noticed it, pretending we were early explorers — Glen was Leichhardt and I was Mitchell. We were back playing cowboys and Indians along the banks of the creek at the bottom of my garden in Epping. Sometimes in the summer holidays we were allowed to camp down there, building a shelter from branches and leaves like Robinson Crusoe. Now we did the same, only this time it was for real.

  There were plenty of signs that others had camped up here before us, and on the first afternoon we discovered the remains of a makeshift shelter, tucked in under an overhanging rock. A few more branches and palm leaves on the roof, some ferns and leaves on the ground to make the bed more comfortable, a roaring fire at the entrance and hey presto, we had a nice, cosy camp. Luckily it only drizzled briefly on a couple of nights, but we liked to think we would have stayed dry even if it had poured. We spent the days exploring and climbing about our mountain retreat, and although we had seen many of the animals before it was the first time either of us had really been close up with them, living in their own environment. Rock wallabies and goannas, carpet snakes and black cockatoos and at night we fed the possums and bandicoots that came to explore our camp. We were two excited boys on holiday discovering something new each day. It was only hunger that drove us down on the fourth day. We hadn’t realised how far it was back to the highway, and it took us most of the day to get there, by which time it was nearly dark and the little village of Beerwah was quiet and deserted with nothing open. Not since the first night had we hitched at night, but now hunger forced the issue and we realised we had to at least try and get to the next town so we wrote ‘Magnetic Island’ on the inside of the Cornflakes packet and stuck it out, stomachs rumbling.