Once a Pommie Swagman

by Thomas, Nick Arden

  A few evenings after this we were sitting on the veranda when one of the men, drinking beer out of his mug, asked what the crest was, and Pietro and his father chuckled to themselves. “They’re from Cowra prison,” Pietro said. “Dad’s cousin and a few other friends were interned there during the war. The prison shut down in 1945, but before they were released all the internees had to help move and stack the prison equipment into a storeroom. Stretchers, blankets, chairs, plates, all sorts of stuff.” He smiled. “A year or so later, when dad’s cousin was starting up his orchard on the other side of town, he needed equipment for the pickers’ huts so he and some of the other internees went back to the prison. Nothing had been moved. The shed was still stuffed with gear, so they just helped themselves — three truck loads, they took! Even the small stools you have in your huts came from there!’”

  “Only fair payback,” interrupted his father, grinning broadly. “They put us gaol, we take their plates!”

  Halfway through the fourth week, Mr Golambino asked if we’d mind staying on for another week. Due to the large turnover of staff, which was almost entirely of his own doing, picking had not progressed as fast as he’d anticipated, and he told us he didn’t want to lose two such good and experienced workers so close to the end.

  “But we’re supposed to go back to Mr Richards’ orchard tomorrow.”

  “Si, si, but I ring him okay, if okay him, okay you? I pay you bonus maybe,” he added with a wink. Flattery and more money. Once we learned John Richards didn’t mind, we were easy to persuade.

  True to his word there was a two pound bonus in our pay packet at the end of that week, and early the next day we set off back to Young with Dario, who was more or less going via there on his way to Forbes to make a delivery. We left Golambinos with pockets bulging and cheeks covered in lipstick from the two Mrs Golambinos. All the men shook our hands warmly, and Sonia gave us a box of paperback books. Even Giorgina Golambino stopped work for a minute to come out and wave goodbye. Life on Golambino’s orchards might have been strictly regimented, and we’d had to work hard, but it had been the best time of our trip so far in many ways.

  NINETEEN

  The cherry orchard, and Danny and Ronnie

  Dario dropped us off outside the Richards’ farm at about ten o’clock, and after lunch we set off for the orchard; John was anxious we should start our bird-scaring job immediately. We knew from Doctor Richards that we weren’t going to be paid much to do this, so our biggest concern was food and whether we would be entitled to vouchers if we were officially working. We now had a reasonable bankroll behind us, and Glen in particular was anxious to keep it. We needn’t have worried, though; before we set out, John sat us down and made sure we fully understood the financial arrangements. For the first few weeks he could only afford to pay us two pounds a week, as his brother had said, but he would buy our food and he showed us a box he had made up for our first week. It was full of assorted tins, flour, sugar, tea, eggs, bread and various other goodies, the like of which we would never have got with one voucher. “It won’t cost you a penny to live out there. You just tell me what you need each week, and I’ll bring it out,” he smiled. “When we start picking I will guarantee you six pounds a week each, happy with that?”

  “Sure.”

  ”I’ll stay out there with you tonight” he continued, “ just to get you settled and show you a few things.” Then he and Emma kissed and hugged and he ruffled Robbie’s hair, telling him to be a good boy, and we were off, piled into his Dodge pick-up, Morgan barking joyously in the back with our swags. As we clambered in we noticed a special rack on the floor under our seats. Housed in it was one of the tools of the trade we were about to embark on, a shiny double-barrelled shotgun, and on the shelf behind our heads were several boxes of cartridges; Glen and I grinned at each other with boyish delight.

  “Davy. Davy Crockett. King of the wild frontier!”

  Nature is indeed a remarkable thing. The difference in the orchard in just five weeks was amazing. There was not a flower to be seen, all the trees were now covered in dark green leaves, their branches heavy with clusters of fruit. As we pulled up in front of the sheds it was obvious that the trees were not the only things to have changed. In the smaller of the two sheds John had partitioned off a section, laid a rough wooden floor and built three simple wooden bunk beds, each bearing a thin mattress and pillow, two sets of them still wrapped in the paper in which they’d come. The bottom bunk of the third bed had obviously been recently used, and John explained he’d been sleeping at the orchard for the last few days as the crows were becoming a real nuisance. Should we have come back the week before, we wondered, but he waved our concerns away.

  “No, no, it’s fine. They’ve only just started to get bad.”

  “Are we the only pickers, then?” I asked, looking around for more beds.

  “No,” he chuckled. “When we get going there will be thirty or forty, but as this will be one of the first orchards in the area to be harvested there are plenty of local pickers available so I’ve promised them the work. Most of them are friends, really; relatives, neighbours, old school mates, the football team. It’s my first crop, so I reckon a lot of them are just coming to see if I know what I’m doing, although no doubt they’ll want paying too,” he grinned.

  At the end of the shed beside the water tank he’d erected a simple shower system, and out the front, attached to the wall, he’d built a small lean-to under which was half a forty-four gallon drum on bricks that we could use as a fire; he’d even supplied an old camp oven. “Belonged to my grandfather,” John told us, spreading out the triangle of metal legs and hanging the oven from it. “Only thing I haven’t got round to yet is a dunny, but I’m going to dig one out the back before picking starts. Meantime you’ll have to make your own arrangements. All I ask is that you do it a hundred yards away and cover it up.”

  Th

  e larger shed had also been reorganised, with a large sorting and packing area constructed; and in one corner, stacked to the roof, hundreds of open-topped cardboard boxes with Richard’s Cherries Young proudly emblazoned down each side. “Now then,” John clapped his hands together, “let’s get you sorted. First some shotgun lessons, and then I’ll show you how to drive that,” and he pointed at the old Ford tractor parked on the other side of the shed. Our smug looks gave it away, but the impromptu test drive we each made confirmed it and he was truly surprised. “Didn’t know you city blokes could spell tractor, never mind drive one,” he teased. “So!” He held up the shotgun. “Let’s see how good you are with this, then.”

  Fifty yards behind the sheds John’s land ended, and a barbed wire fence marked the border with his neighbour. Over this fence was pasture land, stretching up the hill to several acres of natural bush and gum trees five hundred yards away. “Come on, let’s go and find us a couple of bunnies. Best way to learn to shoot is to shoot something,” he told us. Although it was his neighbour’s land, John said he didn’t mind if we went up there to get firewood. “He won’t mind if we shoot a few rabbits, either, bloody nuisance they are! Pretty good tucker, too, although a shotgun is not the best way to kill them if you’re going to eat them, too many pellets,” he grimaced.

  As we walked up the hill he showed us how to hold the gun safely when it was loaded, and how important it was to carry it correctly. “They can be dangerous things if you’re not careful. You need to treat them with respect. Two pieces of advice: always remember it is a double-barrelled gun, so after you’ve fired one shot there is still another cartridge loaded, unless you pull both triggers at once that is, which isn’t advisable,” he smiled. “Secondly, whenever you are out and about in the orchard, the one carrying the gun needs to know where the other one is at all times! Might sound unnecessary to say, but in the heat of the moment when people are out hunting in groups you’d be surprised how many accidents there are!”

  About ten yards from the bush he knelt down, indicating we should join him, and pointed to th
e dozens of little holes running along the edge of the tree line. “One is bound to come out in a minute if we’re quiet.” Keeping a watchful eye on the holes, he went through the loading and unloading procedure and showed us how to tuck the gun firmly into our shoulders. “Here we go,” he whispered, taking the gun back and pointing to a rabbit cautiously emerging from a hole, nose twitching, ears cocked. Slowly he bought the gun up to his shoulder, and when the rabbit came right out of its hole and was standing erect he calmly blew its head off. Then he handed me the gun and we settled down to wait.

  As we sat there, I was struck by how multi-talented country people were. Carpenter, plumber, mechanic, farmer, hunter, dunny digger and cherry orchardist — the ingenuity and skill of country farmers has to be seen to be appreciated, and they did it all as if it was the most natural thing in the world. When I mentioned this to him, he was very pragmatic.

  “Case of have to,” he shrugged. “If I had to call a tradesman out every time I had a problem, I’d be broke!”

  Despite John’s warning about the ‘kick’, I would have been knocked over with the first shot if I’d been standing up, I’m sure. I thought I must have missed the rabbit by a mile, so violently did the barrel jerk upwards. But when the smoke cleared, there was another dead rabbit, splattered everywhere. In the end we came back down the hill with four of them. Back at the sheds he showed us how easy they were to skin; it just peeled off like a banana. Then he showed us how to cook them over the fire, using one leg of the camp oven tripod as a skewer. He was right, there were so many pellets it took us ages to pick them out, but we weren’t so keen on the taste. It was tender enough, but it was very strong, and by the time we’d finished one both Glen and I had decided we didn’t like rabbit meat much.

  If crows don’t have a sixth, seventh, eighth, even a ninth sense, then I’m a kindergarten teacher! They seem to know exactly what you are going to do seconds before you do it. Just as you pulled the trigger, certain you had the bird plum in the middle of the sights, it would dart off, going in a completely different direction to the pellets, which blew harmlessly away. Even in flocks of nine or ten, as they often were, we still missed; it was as if they could actually see the pellets coming and dodged them in flight. It was several hours the next day before we managed to down the first bird, and even then it was more a glancing blow than a direct kill. It fell to the ground, one wing badly damaged, but it was still alive and we had to break its neck.

  Cunning as they may have been, by the end of the first week we had killed about forty crows and noticeably disrupted their movements. Each day we went out into the orchard at least five or six times, especially just after dawn and an hour before dusk, when they seemed to be most active. And it wasn’t just crows, either; there were flocks of white cockatoos some days, magpies too, but the crows were easily the biggest problem. The more canny they got, the more crafty we got. Sometimes we went out well before dawn so we could be at the bottom end of the orchard to surprise them as they arrived with the sun. Sometimes we walked together, other times we split up, coming from different directions, running and shouting. We took the tractor out most days, taking it in turns to drive while the other one stood on the back, blasting away. We were Hopalong Cassidy and The Lone Ranger chasing the Indians. Boy, did we have fun!

  John came out two or three days a week to do odd jobs about the orchard and we helped him dig the dunny. He was impressed with our growing pile of crow head trophies, but raised his eyebrows a little at the number of cartridges we’d used to get them! Emma, Robbie and Morgan usually came with him, Emma bringing us little home-made goodies, and every Thursday John brought a box of food and paid us our two pounds. Our beds were more comfortable than the Golambino’s stretchers, although we missed their meals and the company, Friday nights and Sunday lunches especially. But John and Emma looked after us royally and our time on the cherry orchard flashed by, and, of course, we stuffed ourselves with cherries! Cherries for breakfast, cherries for lunch, cherry dampers, stewed cherries, cherries fried with tinned corned beef; by the end of the second week our shit was purple. Most nights after dinner we’d sit by the fire going over the day’s events and reading books under the kerosene lamp, sometimes until gone midnight before we fell asleep, excited by the prospect of the next day’s adventures.

  One Friday, after we’d been there about three weeks, John came out accompanied by an older man and together they went out into the orchard, closely examining and tasting the fruit. We learned later that he was one of the most respected and experienced cherry orchardists in the area, and John had asked him to come and advise him about when to start picking. For some time John had been concerned about this as he’d secured two large orders, each of several hundred cases, with the stipulation being the cherries had to be ready to eat then and there. As he would be one of the first orchards harvested that year, he was reasonably confident he could sell most of the crop; early season cherries were much in demand, and besides, the orders were so large he couldn’t afford to lose them so they more or less dictated when he could start. We followed them around the orchard, the old man stopping every now and then to feel and taste the fruit. After only ten minutes he stopped and turned to John. “I reckon these cherries are about as ready to pick as I’ve seen! You could start right now if you wanted, but they should be perfect by Monday. No later than that, though, they’ll be falling off the tree otherwise!” he warned. You could almost see the conflicting emotions of anticipation, excitement and relief ripple through John’s body. At last, all that work, all that loving care, all that worry and debt, at last he could harvest the fruits of his labour, and he and Emma hugged each other with delight as the old man drove off.

  That evening, about an hour after John and Emma left, we were sitting by the fire when a smart 1955 two tone blue FJ Holden special sedan, the one with the horizontal grille, turned into the gates in a cloud of dust. It had Victorian number plates, and the two young blokes in it must have seen us sitting there, but instead of stopping they drove around the back of the sheds, as if they were about to head off over the fields or something. More than a bit surprised, we jumped up and ran round the back just as the two were alighting from the car.

  “Come right in!”

  “Sorry, mate, just thought I might as well park out of the way,” the driver said, smiling. “Hi. I’m Darren. This is me cousin Ronnie. We heard there might be some work here?” And as he moved towards us, hand outstretched, his limp was obvious.

  “Well … I don’t know. Mr Richards is going to start picking on Monday but you’ll have to see him first. You just missed him. If you came from Young you must have passed him on the way — green Dodge pick-up …”

  “No, we came from the other way,” Darren cut in quickly, looking around. “Reckon he’d mind if we stopped here for the night? We got swags and tucker.” There didn’t seem to be any reason why not, and besides, who were we to say yes or no, so they went back to their car and pulled out their gear.

  “Where have you come from?“ Glen asked Ronnie, who so far hadn’t said a word.

  “Mildur …”

  “He means Parkes,” interrupted Darren, smiling. “Today we came from Parkes.”

  “Oh yeah,” agreed Ronnie, “Parkes, today we came from Parkes,” and he burst into a high-pitched sort of giggle, punctuated by little snorts. As we walked back around to the fire Glen and I exchanged quizzical looks.

  And quizzical was the word to describe the cousins. In fact there were three strange things about them. The first and most obvious was that at nineteen, Darren was three years older, yet he was almost half the size; his withered right leg and thick-soled boot causing him not so much to limp as lurch, his foot flicking out sideways with each step he took. The second strange thing, which although just as obvious, took a moment to sink in, was their clothes. Here they were, our age — in fact, Ronnie was younger than Glen — yet they were dressed like middle-aged working men, a sort of cross between Mr Butt and the Bourke Brother
s; thick grey trousers held up with braces, check shirts and heavy boots with string for laces. The third strange thing about them, or at least about Ronnie, became more than apparent over the next few days.

  We’d shown them where they could lay out their swags beside our bunks, and when they opened them we could immediately smell the distinctive odour of stale sweat and filthy clothes. Not only did they dress like middle-aged working men, they smelt like them, too! It was a situation made even more noticeable because they were so young. Did we smell like that? I wondered.

  “You blokes eaten yet?” Darren asked as we went back out to the fire. “We ain’t, we’re starvin’, ain’t we, Ronnie?” and he pulled out two tins of baked beans from his bag, punched a hole in them with his opener and placed them on the metal plate.

  “Yeah,” agreed Ronnie, “We ain’t eaten yet.”

  “Have you ever picked cherries before?” Glen asked him.

  “Dunno,” he grunted, immediately looking at Darren.