Once a Pommie Swagman

by Thomas, Nick Arden

  Even in the dark we could see the house had seen better days, but it was still a lovely example of a ‘Queenslander’, up on stilts with shuttered windows and a wide veranda that ran right the way around. The front door was opposite the steps, but instead of going inside Mrs Hayes walked off round the veranda. “I’ll show you your beds first,” she said over her shoulder. Halfway down the side of the house the veranda had been enclosed with a waist-high fibro wall and flyscreen all the way around across the top. Opening the flimsy door, Mrs Hayes went inside and lit a kerosene lamp hanging from a butcher’s hook.

  “Don’t you have electricity?”

  “No!” she said emphatically. “Oh, I could have it,” she went on, waving dismissively outside. “The bloody pole is sitting outside waiting for me to tell them to come and connect it. I just don’t like relying on somebody else. I get by good enough, and the blackouts don’t bother me,” she grinned. “Anyway, make yourselves comfy. Pillows are in the cupboard. I’ll go and rustle up some tucker. Oh, and I’d keep this door closed if I were you. Midges can be bad out here sometimes.” Lying head to foot along the wall of the house were two settees with bright, homemade patchwork quilts, and beyond them a small cupboard and two little cane chairs. Making ourselves comfortable consisted mainly of having a spontaneous wrestling match to decide who got which bed (Glen won), and then bouncing up and down on them for five minutes to test the springs; doesn’t everybody do that? They were nice and soft, though, as were the pillows, even if they did smell of stale mothballs. Then Mrs Hayes called from inside the house. “Come and get it, boys!”

  Her kitchen was as basic as our bedroom. There was a simple pine table and four chairs, a small wood-burning stove, two or three little pine parlour cupboards with flyscreen mesh in the doors, a large concrete sink and an old ‘Silent Night’ kerosene fridge. Mrs Hayes was at the stove filling a big brown teapot from the kettle.

  “Help yourselves,” and she nodded at the table, on which were three enamel plates and three mugs, a loaf of bread, some butter, two opened tins of corned beef, three boiled eggs and a few condiments and sauces. The whole scene, including Mrs Hayes, looked like something out of an old cowboy picture. “Not up to Marge’s standards, I’m afraid,” she smiled, “but I’ve never been one for fancy tucker.” Th is she said with no hint of apology. It was just a statement of fact, and having poured the tea she took out a bottle of whisky from one of the cupboards and sat down, pouring a generous shot into her mug. “Right then! Let’s hear a bit about you two.”

  Marge had obviously filled her in on the trials and tribulations of our journey, but Mrs Hayes seemed more interested in our family life back in Sydney. She was not the slightest bit condescending or judgmental, and her earthiness and simple sincerity somehow made you want to talk to her. For once Glen seemed comfortable and at ease in the presence of an adult, and he babbled away like I’d never heard him. Within an hour she knew just about everything there was to know about us both.

  “Was your dad in the war?” she asked Glen at one stage.

  “Yeah, he was in the British Navy, twice the ship he was on got sunk but he doesn’t talk about it much.”

  “That’s probably the trouble; the war, I mean, and not talking about it.” Mrs Hayes nodded. “Oh, it doesn’t excuse his behaviour. But it might explain it. Wars and women,” she smiled. “They do strange things to men.” And she poured herself another stiff whisky.

  There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment, and then Glen asked, happy to change the subject: “Do you live here on your own, then?”

  “Yes,” she nodded. “Clem, my husband, went seven years ago. No, he didn’t die.” She saw the look on our faces. “He just went, buggered off, or to be truthful I told the bastard to bugger off!”

  “Sorry … I didn’t mean to …”

  “No, that’s okay, everybody knows about it round here. He had an affair with a barmaid from Rockhampton; no asparagus veins and bigger tits,” she shrugged, taking another mouthful of whisky. “’Course it didn’t last long,” she went on, not noticing our reaction, or if she did, ignoring it; adults talking about bums and tits still made us giggle. “It was never going to, but the damage was done. Unbeknown to me he’d mortgaged the property and given her a chunk of money, and we never really recovered. I don’t mean the marriage,” she looked up quickly to make sure we didn’t misunderstand. “That had long been dead in the water; no, I mean the farm never recovered, and after Charlie died I couldn’t manage on my own so I had to sell up. I still own the house, but only just.”

  “Who’s Charlie?”

  “My son,” and she nodded to the photograph of a young man about twenty years old on top of one of the cupboards. “He was killed in a motorcycle accident three years ago. He never got over his dad leaving, and I’ve never got over him dying.” The whisky was now plainly having an effect, and she continued almost as if we weren’t there. “Oh, don’t get me wrong. Clem was a good farmer. He knew what he was doing and God knows he worked hard enough.” Then she sighed heavily. “This used to be such a lovely house, and Hayes Farm was one of the most successful in these parts before the war. We had twelve full-time staff and any number of casual workers, so Clem was exempt from military duty. Not only that, he was also almost forty when the war started but the silly bastard still insisted on joining up. He went out west where nobody knew him and signed on at a mobile recruiting office, told them he was thirty-three; they didn’t ask too many questions in those days. He was sent to North Africa and I didn’t see him again for two and a half years. When his leave was over he wanted to go back, but I went to the authorities and told them who he was and how old he was. They discharged him that day, and I don’t think he ever forgave me.” She paused again and took another sip of whisky, looking reflectively at the photograph of her son. “Clem was a different man after that. I hardly knew him and things were never the same; we were never the same. He couldn’t cope with Charlie as a child, used to get very angry and drank a lot. He never hit us or anything, but we never got back to the days before the war. By the time fancy pants at the pub got her claws into him he was an easy target, and she knew it!” Suddenly Mrs Hayes seemed to realise where she was and what she was saying and she came back to the moment, her moment of reminiscing over. “Not that I expect you two to know much about sheilas yet, do you? Just be warned, some of us can be very cunning. Trouble is you blokes make it so easy for us! As my mother used to say, ‘A man’s principles and his penis are like curtains in the wind. When one gets up, the other goes straight out the window.’

  From somewhere in the house the chimes of ten o’clock rescued us from having to find somewhere to look, and knocking back the remains of her whisky, Mrs Hayes got up, if a little unsteadily. “Past my bed time; and yours,” she added, ruffling my hair and smiling at the looks on our faces. “We’ve got an early start in the morning.”

  When we got to the door Glen stopped and looked back, frowning slightly.

  “What are asparagus veins?”

  Mrs Hayes smiled again, but she didn’t explain, just lifted up her trouser leg and showed us.

  The rooster woke us just before dawn, which was just as well because moments later Mrs Hayes called out that breakfast was ready and by the time we stumbled bleary-eyed into the kitchen she had already eaten her Cornflakes and was putting slices of Kraft cheese on her toast and marmalade.

  “Morning,” she greeted us, getting up to pour the tea.

  In the daylight it was possible to see just how run-down the house had become. Much of the veranda on the opposite side to where we were sleeping had rotted away, and the kitchen ceiling was covered in brown water stains, tell-tale signs of a leaking roof; and many of the floorboards had sprung. As was usual with ‘Queenslanders’, the inside rooms were all quite dark, even in the middle of the day, and not having a reason to go into them, we didn’t see much of the inside except the hall and kitchen. Immediately outside the kitchen and at the side was a bathroom and
laundry — obviously a later extension — and next to it were two huge rainwater tanks. At the back of the house was a small fenced-off area with some flowerbeds and a vegetable patch, both of which were reasonably well tended. Beyond the garden, stepping stones led across the grass to a corrugated iron dunny, and not far from the dunny, under a tree, was a small, well-kept patch of ground surrounded by a foot high picket fence with a simple little sign. ‘JESSIE’ it read, and planted inside were a dozen or more little wooden crosses with nothing on them but a date.

  The main yard was at the front of the house and must have been at least twenty-five acres, a three hundred metre wide, rectangular piece of land, fenced and sloping down to a dam and chicken coop several hundred yards away. The house was at the top of a slope, which meant that from the front veranda we could see the ocean and the hills of Keppel Island in the distance, but we didn’t have long to admire the view.

  “Right, let’s get started!” Mrs Hayes came out, hat and gloves on, and set off down towards the largest of the barns. “We used to own most of what you can see,” she said, waving at the surrounding area of gentle slopes stretching into the distance, the majority, save for one or two paddocks, covered in pineapples. “Sold most of the land a few years back, the bit the bank didn’t own, that is.” She made no attempt to hide her irony. “Now this yard is all that’s left.” A small flock of seven or eight sheep, startled by us, went charging off down the slope, the dogs obviously bursting at the seams to chase them but not game while Mrs Hayes was about. “Don’t own them, either,” she informed us. “Belong to a neighbour; he lets me run them here to keep the grass down.”

  Over breakfast she’d given us a quick run-down of what she wanted done. The job she had originally advertised for, clearing her yard, had been done while we were in gaol by two local men, but now she wanted the largest out-building furthest away from the house cleared out. This she was going to lease to a neighbouring farmer who wanted somewhere to park his tractors and other farm equipment. It was an enormous iron shed, fifteen to twenty feet high and open-fronted like the generator shed but twice the size. Inside it was stacked to the rafters with a mountain of old pallets and packing cases and heavy wooden sleds like my grandfather used to use to pull pineapples from the fields. There were bales of hay and no end of old equipment, empty diesel drums, coils of rusting barbed wire, tractor implements, sheets of roofing iron, dozens of old tyres and the chassis and other bits and pieces of at least two old vehicles. Clearing the place looked a daunting task, and for a few moments we stood contemplating it.

  “Bit of a mess, eh!” Mrs Hayes conceded, coming as close as she would to apologising for anything. “But we won’t get it shifted by lookin’ at it!”

  For seven days solid we worked, not that we could complain; Mrs Hayes worked just as hard right alongside us most of the time, although it was obvious she had to rest a lot and we had plenty of tea breaks. At lunchtimes — corned beef and tomato sandwiches and tinned peaches, every day — we stopped for an hour while Mrs Hayes listened to Blue Hills.

  On the first evening, after a bath and dinner — fried corned beef, boiled potatoes, tomatoes and peas most days, if not it was sausages and the above — Mrs Hayes gave us fifteen shillings each. “Man does a day’s work, he deserves a day’s pay. Besides, you might get sick of it tomorrow and want to bugger off.”

  “Constable Waring told us we had to stay in the area.”

  “I know.” Mrs Hayes nodded.

  “Are we under arrest here, then?” Glen asked.

  “Christ, no! That’s why I’m paying you — if you want to go, you can! But it might not be a bad idea to stay until the constable says you can go.”

  It was only then that we began to understand that our being here had been arranged between the constable and Mrs Hayes.

  By the fourth day the shed was two-thirds cleared and stacked outside were three separate piles: one of usable stuff she was going to keep, the second rubbish to be taken to the tip, and a third mainly of scrap metal, tyres and empty drums that a dealer from Rockhampton was going to come and collect. Then, late in the afternoon, Mrs Hayes went up to the generator shed and started up the 1947 Fordson Stegamajor and we roped up the two vehicle chassis and she towed them out into the yard. She was about to take the tractor back to the shed when she paused and looked at us for a moment, before sliding off the seat.

  “Ever driven one of these?”

  Glen might have beaten me to the best bed, but he wasn’t going to beat me onto that tractor and I was up and sitting in the iron seat before you could blink.

  Not a lot of other work got done after that, as Glen and I took turns to drive the tractor up and down the yard. Having satisfied herself that we knew vaguely what we were doing, Mrs Hayes left us to it and went back to the house, where she sat on the veranda having a cup of tea, getting as much delight and pleasure from watching us whooping with joy as we were getting from driving a vehicle, never mind a tractor, for the first time in our lives. We might not have been allowed to bash into anything, but it was ten times more fun than the dodgems at Luna Park and we didn’t have to pay! The dogs loved it too, although the poor old sheep got seriously confused.

  Each evening, after a bath and dinner, we sat on the veranda for two or three hours, talking and smoking while Mrs Hayes sipped her whisky. One night our run-in with the detective had come up, and both Glen I were still keen to pursue the matter, despite what the constable had said. The threat of a criminal record didn’t really seem all that big a deal to us.

  “So what,” Glen argued. “Small price to pay to get that prick!” But Mrs Hayes, like the constable, urged caution.

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong! If it was me I’d report the bastard straight away. He’s a bad egg, that one, well known round here, he is. Such a pity, too, because most country cops are pretty good blokes. They understand how people live out here. But,” she shrugged “I’m a grumpy old bat, so it wouldn’t hurt me if I got a record. You two, on the other hand, have got your whole lives in front of you. If you’ve been given the chance not to have a criminal record, I’d take it with both hands! Forget the detective. He’ll get his come-uppance one day.”

  So it was that by the time Constable Waring arrived a few days later we had made up our minds and he accepted our decision to let the matter rest without comment, simply nodding his head approvingly. We gave him the money we owed the shop in Gympie, and he told us we were free to go. Then he and Mrs Hayes exchanged a few words before he turned back to us. “Just remember what I told you in the office, boys.” He opened the door of his car, and for the first time since we met him on the beach, which now seemed ages ago, he smiled. “And keep your bloody noses clean!”

  “There goes a good man, and a good cop,” said Mrs Hayes as he drove out of the yard, and she looked at us. “You know he stuck his neck out for you, don’t you?”

  “Well, yeah, he let us off.”

  “That’s not the half of it!” Mrs Hayes said fairly sternly, determined we should fully understand. “Marge letting you out of the cells was a serious breach of police protocol, and he would have been in big trouble himself had you wanted to report the detective. Despite that, he was prepared to give evidence for you. You don’t know how lucky you are that he was the policeman who originally caught you!”

  By the following weekend we’d finished clearing the shed and on Monday morning Mrs Hayes hitched up an old trailer to the Jeep and we took a load of rubbish to the tip. By the time we returned it was too late to make a second trip, so we loaded the trailer ready for the morning. The tip was on the way to Rockhampton, and after dinner Mrs Hayes suddenly had an idea. “I know what we’ll do, boys! Tomorrow after we’ve dumped the rubbish, we’ll leave the trailer at the tip and go on into town for lunch. The baker makes lovely pies, how about it?”

  In Rockhampton Mrs Hayes did a bit of shopping, went to the bank and one or two other offices, with Glen and I feeling a bit like her children tagging along behind. As w
e walked about, virtually every second person stopped to say hello to her, many asking how she was and saying how good it was to see her up and about, and in the baker’s the lady behind the counter positively beamed when we walked in the door. We ate our pies and finger buns sitting on a park bench, with Mrs Hayes obviously happy to sit down for awhile.

  “Have you been sick?”

  “Yeah, I was crook for a bit there, but I’m better now,” and a few moments later she got up, as if to prove the point. “Come on, one last chore.”

  As soon as we walked into the Army Disposals Store we saw the rucksacks hanging up. “This what you were after?” she smiled.

  When we got back from Rockhampton, Mrs Hayes suggested we wash all our clothes. It was a nice warm afternoon and they soon dried, and that evening we packed our new rucksacks and afterwards sat on the veranda, Mrs Hayes sipping her whisky as usual. To our surprise she gave us fifteen shillings each for that day as well.

  “But we hardly did anything today!”

  “Never mind that!” She dismissed our protests, which in truth were not all that vociferous. “You worked hard enough the first few days.”

  In all we’d earned twelve pounds six shillings in the seven days, and Mrs Hayes had paid for the rucksacks. We’d spent about a pound in Rockhampton restocking with food and cigarettes, and we’d paid off our dept in Gympie, so we still had about ten pounds left. It was the richest we’d ever been, and this time we were determined not to part with it so easily or quickly.

  Magnetic Island was still our goal, and despite not feeling quite so confident about what we would find when we got there, both of us still felt that if we didn’t get there the trip would be a failure somehow. Mrs Hayes was her most emphatic self when we mentioned this.

  “Oh, you’ve got to have faith in your dreams, boys. Goals and dreams are important , never mind what the rest of us think of them. They might not always work out, but I reckon if a man goes through life doing what he feels is right, as often as not he will be right. Air and water might keep us alive, but goals and dreams are what get us out of bed in the mornings,” and her parchment-splitting grin lit up the veranda.