Once a Pommie Swagman

by Thomas, Nick Arden

  “But don’t be misled. Behind my illustrious name lies a very mediocre human being indeed, I’m afraid. And to think my family had such plans for me.” He sighed heavily.

  “I’m from the Shropshire arm of the Fellows clan, you understand … never did take kindly to failure, that lot. Expensive public school and university educated Fellows are not supposed to end up here.” He waved his arms about in explanation. “Of course, the war sort of upset one’s prospects a little, but in all honesty I have only myself to blame for my circumstances,” and he smiled broadly again, exposing all seven of his black and brown teeth. “So I have no complaints.”

  “How long have you lived here?”

  “You mean Australia, or this barn?

  “Well, both.”

  “I came to Australia in 1947 …”

  “That’s when I came here!” I said.

  “Well, we will at least always have that in common, won’t we,” and it was difficult to tell if he was being sarcastic or friendly.

  “After the war people were sort of wandering aimlessly all over the place in England, across Europe in fact, and the longer one had been in the army the more aimless one’s wanderings seemed to be.” He grimaced. “I suppose after I was discharged I just got caught up in that swirl of humanity. Somehow I ended up in Melbourne working as a bank teller, but I hated it … absolutely hated it. Then one day I read a book called Walden, and I haven’t looked back since. As for this barn, I’ve been coming here now for about eleven years.”

  “Eleven years!”

  “Yes, I can’t believe it myself sometimes”

  “What do you mean, ‘coming here’?” Glen asked

  “Ah, very observant,” he raised his finger in recognition. “This is one of several homes I have dotted about the country. Oh, I don’t own any of them, of course, but the people who do own them are very accommodating and I’ve got to know them over the years, or rather they’ve come to accept me.” He smiled.

  “How do you live? Are you on unemployment benefits?”

  “I most certainly am not!” he said emphatically. “I take nothing from any state, except their air and water, and no nation can claim ownership of those.”

  “But how do you get your food and stuff?”

  “Oh, I do a bit of work here and there for my keep; simple house maintenance, pulling fences, helping at shearing and harvest time and so on. I also have a few traps,” and he pointed to a variety of vicious-looking rabbit traps and crayfish baskets hanging on the wall. “But I’m a bit like a nomadic South American Indian and I try not to denude any one place, leave some goodwill behind to sustain me next time I pass by, if you get me. In fact I’ll be leaving here soon; Hay, I think, will be my next abode. I haven’t been out there for awhile.”

  “How many places do you have?”

  “Oh, about a dozen; three or four in Queensland, five or six more here in New South Wales and a few in Victoria.”

  “But what about all your stuff? Have you got a car?”

  “Good heavens no, dear boy!” he reared back. “Wouldn’t be seen dead in one. I do carry a few bits and pieces with me, mainly my library, but over the years I’ve accumulated sets of furniture in each place, such as it is,” he pointed to the camp oven. “These I leave behind; not that much of it really belongs to me, more they are communal things. This place is often used overnight by drovers and the like, and the few items I do own are usually still here when I return. My belongings are not exactly sought after items.”

  “You have a library!” Glen exclaimed, rather than asked.

  “Find it hard to believe that someone like me might read, do you?” he asked, feigned indignity exposed by the twinkle in his eye.

  “Well … no, I just …”

  “Never assume, boy! Never assume!” Then he chuckled to himself. “But it’s quite understandable. I’m not exactly the image of a well-read, erudite chap, am I?”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean …”

  “Stop apologising, boy. You don’t mean it and I don’t need it. Do you read yourself?”

  “Well, yes,” said Glen. “But not so much lately. It’s hard when you’re always on the …”

  “Rubbish, boy, rubbish! A man should always have a good book by him.” Then he suddenly got up and went and stood outside, staring up at the still overcast black sky for a moment. “Hmm, I’m late for my medicine. I’ll just pop up to the mezzanine lounge and get it,” and he disappeared into the barn and we could hear him climbing the loft steps. “Put another log on the fire, will you,” he called out.

  When he returned he was carrying a bottle Glen and I instantly recognised as port, and a small leather bag, a bit like one of those old doctor’s bags only softer. “My library,” he said, placing the bag down next to Glen. “Have a look through them if you want.”

  “How did you know what time it was? There aren’t any stars or anything tonight.” He touched his nose conspiratorially. “Internal clocks, my boy, very handy things. We’ve all got one. It’s just a matter of learning how to use it. Let me see, I’d say it’s about nine forty-five,” and he looked at Glen as he checked his watch.

  “It’s nine fifty!” said Glen, amazed.

  “Damn, must remember to wind mine up,” he grinned. “Care to join me?” He offered us the bottle. “One of my many weaknesses, I fear.”

  “No thanks. We got really sick drinking some of that a few months ago.”

  “Very wise. Not good for the young liver. Not good at all,” and he held the bottle up to his mouth, swallowing great gulps for what seemed ages. “Ahhhh!” he exclaimed, letting the bottle down. “Very nice, although I suspect it is as bad for the older liver as the young.” He grinned. “See anything you like?”

  Glen had been taking some of the books out of the bag, placing them on a log as he looked at them.

  “I’ve never heard of most of them.”

  “No, I suppose not. They’re not exactly your Roy of the Rovers stuff.”

  “You’ve got a Bible!” said Glen, unable to contain his astonishment as he took it out of the bag, and this time William laughed outright.

  “Ah, the unbridled innocence of youth!” and he took another long swig from his bottle.

  “Do you believe in God, then?” Glen asked, and William put his bottle down and looked him in the eye for a few moments, as if making up his mind whether the question had been asked flippantly or from genuine interest.

  “No,” he said, firmly but calmly. “Perhaps more correctly, I should say I don’t believe in religion, although I do believe in prayer and faith.”

  Our bemused expressions made him smile briefly.

  “Why do I have a Bible then, you want to know; faith in what, you ask?”

  “Well … I just …”

  “That’s okay,” he raised his hand. “It’s a fair enough question. I have the Bible for two reasons. First, because there are some very interesting stories in it, and we all like interesting stories, true or not. But I also have it to remind me how dangerous the church is, and how damaging religion has been for society.”

  Sensing our confusion, he had another quick drink. “It is a bit confusing, isn’t it?” he said. “But God is confusing. Or rather, we have made him confusing.”

  “So, who do you pray to?” Glen asked.

  “I don’t know; and it doesn’t matter. To me, God is who you confide in privately, who you talk to when you’re down or you just want to get something off your chest. It makes no difference if he exists or not. It’s the act of prayer that’s the comfort. He might listen to you or he might not; that’s not the point. The point is that we all need and want to express our troubles from time to time, talking about them out loud in the privacy of our own minds. I believe prayer is essentially that; a personal, private affair between a man and his inner self, his conscience if you like. The trouble is, two thousand years ago the church came along and hijacked that personal, private affair and called it religion. Now religions — all
religions — are nothing more than huge clubs, playing on that human need for a spiritual connection or faith; contact with our inner self, I like to call it; and they have turned what should be a private affair into huge public affairs. Vast, corrupt, undemocratic clubs making up rules and laws as they go along to suit their own agenda, and spouting endless dogma with threats of damnation or worse for those who don’t join them. The churches of religions are like middle men, feeding off our insecurity and fears. It’s in their interest to scare the shit out of us, tell us we’re all sinners and we’ll go to hell if we don’t join the club and repent. Oh, I am quite sure there are many honourable and well-meaning people within churches, but religions don’t care about the spiritual wellbeing of individual men and women. They only care how many members they have.”

  Then, surprising us both, he chuckled to himself and grinned at us. “Of course my views on the subject didn’t exactly endear myself to the family and I was always lumped in with that other black sheep, Uncle Mortimer, who’d seen first hand the carnage and stupidity of mankind during the First World war. Somehow he managed to survive and not long after his return the entire family trooped off to church as usual, sitting in our own special pews. The vicar at the time was fond of giving fire and brimstone sermons. “Repent ye sinners for the devil awaits!” and so on. He used to frighten the life out of me. Anyway on this Sunday the vicar was about half way through his sermon, fist shaking with passion, when Uncle Morty suddenly stood up and shouted “Rubbish! Heaven or hell! To me it doesn’t matter, I’ve got good mates in the former and family in the latter!” and he strode from the church. I was only a very small boy at the time but I thought it was the funniest thing I had ever heard. The rest of family, however, were mortified and I don’t think they ever forgave him!”

  Although we all laughed at this it was difficult to know what to say to this outburst, and after our giggles subsided we were silent for a minute or two, staring into the fire. Neither of us had ever heard anybody talk quite so bluntly against religion before. Of course, like all kids we had heated debates about the subject in the milk bar from time to time, but I think basically most of us just accepted that God existed; after all, he had been around for thousands of years, so who were we to challenge it? Of the two of us, I suppose I was the more ambivalent; my father had not been a religious man, and although I know he did have fairly strong feelings on the subject he never spoke to us either for or against religion. Glen was much more disturbed. His mother was a regular church-goer and he himself had attended Sunday School on a regular basis, and although he didn’t know it, on more than one occasion on our trip I had seen him, or at least heard him, praying. Now I could see him struggling to come to terms with William’s words.

  “But you can’t prove there isn’t a God,” he said.

  “Very true, my boy, I can’t, just like nobody can prove there is. But I don’t know that it’s up to me to prove or disprove anything. I’m not trying to influence others, I don’t have sets of rules how people should live and behave, and more importantly I don’t foist those rules on society, demanding they be obeyed. I don’t lecture people about sex, tell them what to eat or when to pray. Surely it is they; those clubs who put such demands upon us; that have to do the proving. Or do we just blindly accept their laws, their demands?” Saying this, he picked up one of the books. “D. H. Lawrence,” he said and waved it at us before leafing through it. “He knew a thing or two about human nature. Yes, here we are. ‘And people who talk about faith, faith in anything, usually want to convince or force somebody to agree with them, as if there was safety in numbers, even for faith.’ And as he put the book down he smiled at us.

  “Throughout history, mankind has had such a need, such a yearning for belief that we have become suckers for it and can be persuaded to believe almost any nonsense if it makes us feel better, happier, safer. But there is light at the end of the tunnel. Few people today believe in the unbelievable and often violent religions of the past, the Greek goddesses, the Egyptian priests or the countless Norse Gods, seemingly one appointed for every act of nature or human behaviour they couldn’t understand. The current fashion is to have only one God, responsible for everything, and although I don’t believe in it, I have no idea if it is true or not. What I am sure about is that the religions that claim to speak on his behalf and that pressure us through our ignorance, fear or guilt to join their clubs, will eventually become as irrelevant as the God of thunder. Nonsense never lasts.”

  Then he took another drink of port and smiled gently at Glen. “I’m sorry if I’ve shocked or offended you, dear boy. It was not my intention. They are only my opinions, my beliefs, and I can be just as wrong as anybody else, which is why I will not carry on this conversation. If I were to try and persuade you further to accept my views I would be no better than the religions I criticise for doing the same thing. I too have no proof, no evidence to support my assertions, so why should I expect you to believe me. No! Each man must make up his own mind about such things and there I suggest we let the matter lie. Port and religion don’t usually mix.” He smiled as he took another long draught.

  We were all silent for several minutes, and then Glen said, “What I don’t understand,” he shook his head, “is what someone like you … I mean … why … ?”

  “Why is someone like me, so well educated, so well dressed and so well groomed, living out his days like this? Is that what you mean?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Cowardice is the answer, dear boy. Pure, simple cowardice. I can’t face or cope with society, so I hide myself away, sustained in my bitterness by port and Thoreau.”

  “Thoreau?”

  “A nineteenth century American author,” and he picked up another book. “Walden; this is my Bible. It might not be quite your cup of tea just at present, but when you get a bit older you should read him one day. Everybody should read Thoreau one day. In fact, if as many people read Thoreau as read the Bible, the world would be a much nicer place, I fancy.”

  “Do you have any family in Australia?”

  “No.” He shook his head, but didn’t elaborate and just stared into the fire. Whether it was the port or not we couldn’t tell, but his mood seemed to change suddenly and for a moment we thought we might have annoyed him and we looked at each other. “No, no family,” he said flatly, still staring into the fire. “In fact, I’ve never been particularly interested in sex, strangely enough. I think when that part of me was being installed in the womb I must have been asleep. I would have made a good priest I think, not that they would ever have ordained a sacrilegious bastard like myself!” and he laughed uproariously, then just as quickly became very sombre again. “But I mustn’t get started on that again, no, not that again. Now then, boys, I’d like to be alone if you don’t mind. You’re probably tired anyway after your journey, and if you’re heading off early tomorrow you’ll need your sleep. All I ask is that your departure in the morning is not quite as loud as your arrival this evening!” And he took another long swig at the port bottle and didn’t even look at us as we left.

  When we woke in the morning we could hear him snoring in the loft above, and beside us on the straw was the book Walden. On the inside cover, he’d written: “To Glen and Nick, in memory of three ships that passed one night.” And it was signed: “William Forsythe Remington Fellows.”

  Two days later we arrived in Young and went straight to the police station to get the address of John Richards.

  SEVENTEEN

  God Save the Queen! Davey Crockett,

  and John and Emma Richards

  The conflicting attitude of Australians towards Poms in the 1950s was very confusing for a child. Of course sport had always been a source of passionate rivalry; Mr Archer had made sure I was well schooled in that! But there was more to it than just fierce competition. On the one hand was the country’s enthusiastic, almost sycophantic relationship with the King or Queen of England, more fervent than in England itself in many respects. Prim
e Minister Robert Menzies, who seemed to have the job on a permanent basis, was an ardent royalist and every government office, every school hall, every police station, post office, municipal office, community centre, even railway station waiting rooms had a portrait of His Majesty, and woe betide anybody who didn’t show respect to it. When George VI died, the ABC played dirge music on the wireless for hours at a time and the mood was so sombre and heavy it felt like the end of the earth or something. Then in 1954 the country came to virtual standstill for the Royal Tour, and hordes of us school kids were herded into I think it was the Sydney sports ground to see the Queen. It took two hours to get there, two hours to get herded, two hours standing there and two hours to get home, and all I saw was the top of her hat as the Land Rover went past; my vision completely obscured by Mrs Muir’s bum and the little flag on a stick bloody Cynthia Dempsey kept waving in my face.

  On the other hand, in stark contrast to all this dutiful respect, was the seething anger and resentment many Australians had for the English after the war. At school and selling papers in the pub I was frequently abused, called a Pommie bastard and worse, as if I was personally responsible for the disaster of Gallipoli, the fall of Singapore or the collapse of wool prices; yet the Queen, who also just happened to be a Pom, was revered like a God! Of course, other nationalities and migrants, Italians for example, were routinely insulted and abused, far worse than Poms usually. I remember our butcher wouldn’t serve ‘dagos’. He wouldn’t even allow them into the shop! And it really wasn’t very long ago. Then of course there were the poofters; boy! You didn’t want to mention you were one of them in the Epping public bar! Gay Mardi Gras? Forget it; only the very, very brave ‘came out’ in 1961 Australia. Jack Cooper and his ilk positively despised them.

  Despite all that, without doubt those who suffered the worst were Australia’s very own original people. Surely if anybody had the right to call themselves ‘fair dinkum Aussies’, it was them. But ‘abos’ and ‘gins’ were not only cruelly insulted and vilified, but completely dis-enfranchised. They couldn’t vote, couldn’t buy land, couldn’t enter politics or public houses and were hounded out of the centre of towns and cities by the police, often by public demand. In the 1950s, racial intolerance and abuse was almost a way of life; everybody was guilty of it, which wasn’t surprising given it was Australian government policy after all! But few western countries were free of such bigotry in those days, and certainly the Poms had nothing to be self-righteous about.