“No, we ain’t never done that. Picked asparagus, though,” and he picked up the tins of beans, which could only have been lukewarm, opened them and gave one to Ronnie, who instantly began manically shovelling beans into his mouth, sauce running down his chin and onto his shirt.
“Take it easy, boy! Take it easy!” Darren admonished him gently, and put his hand on his shoulder. “Ain’t nobody gonna’ take it off ya!”
“Haaa, ha, ha, haa,” Ronnie shrieked, spoon suspended in mid-air as he glanced nervously at his cousin for a second, as if to check how seriously he was being told off. Realising it was only a gentle rebuke, he set off spooning in the beans as fast as ever, in between each mouthful somehow managing to snort, “Yeah! Can’t take ’em off me, can’t take ’em off me!”
The looks Glen and I gave each other now were more than quizzical!
For the hour or so we sat by the fire that night, Ronnie hardly said a word unless prompted, and even then Darren nearly always interrupted and answered for him; most of the time he just sat staring into the fire, occasionally giggling to himself. When Glen got up to go to the toilet and kicked over some tins of food we had stacked beside the fire he jumped up, pointing and shouting out. “Yer knocked ’em over! Yer knocked ’em over!”
“Okay, Ronnie. Okay,” Darren put his hand on his shoulder “It ain’t nuthin,” then he smiled at us, shrugging his shoulders. “He gets a bit excited sometimes, don’t you, Ronnie boy?” and he gently pushed him back down.
“Yeah,” Ronnie chortled. “I get ixtited!”
Jesus!
That night, after we’d all settled down, Glen and I got up on the pretext of going to the toilet and once outside we put all our money into an old jam jar and buried it next to the water tank.
The next day was Sunday and John and Emma arrived early in the morning, with half a dozen other vehicles following them over the next few hours. In all about twenty people eventually turned up, friends and old school mates of theirs who were going to help with the picking. Then Emma’s father and uncle arrived mid-morning, in a large truck stacked with twenty or more ten-foot ladders and a similar number of wooden bins and canvas picker’s bags. There were a dozen twelve-foot trestle tables, two large metal drums and various other pieces of equipment necessary for the harvest, and most of the day was spent unloading the truck and organising the packing shed. With some effort, the large metal drums were manhandled into the shed where they were filled with water to wash the cherries, and the trestle tables were set up in rows, empty cartons piled up on each one ready to be filled. By late afternoon all was ready and someone cracked open a few bottles of champagne; toasts and salutations were given all round. The four of us were invited to join them, but after filling our glasses we went back and sat by our fireplace, feeling a bit out of place somehow. John had been a little surprised by the presence of Darren and Ronnie; not that he said anything, but we could tell he was a little annoyed. However, he was not the sort to stay annoyed for long, and the party-like atmosphere and anticipation of the harvest soon overcame any irritation he may have felt.
I suppose it was about 1am when the wind woke us up. John and his friends had left about eight, waving cheerily, horns hooting, the next day’s tasks on everybody’s mind. Because of the early start we’d gone to bed soon after, leaving the shed door open as it was a sticky, humid night. The wind slamming the door shut woke us, but quickly realising what it was we just turned over and went back to sleep. Within an hour we were woken again, this time by the clang of one of our saucepans crashing into the water tank. We got up and went out into the lean to; it was pitch black, the wind now a ferocious gale, and our shed rattled so much we were worried it might get blown away. Then for twenty minutes or so it rained, as hard as it had the day in William Fellow’s barn, if anything it was even harder, stair rods of rain. The noise was incredible and suddenly Ronnie went berserk, running out into the yard in his underpants, yelling and whooping!
“We don’t get much rain where we come from,” Darren explained.
“Where’s that, then,” Glen shouted, smiling at Ronnie’s manic dancing.
“Oh, out west a bit.” He waved.” Ronnie! Ronnie boy! Get back in here, you’ll catch a cold.” Fifteen minutes later the rain had eased and Ronnie was shivering by the fire just as John’s pick-up came splashing into the yard. It was only when he leapt out and ran into the orchard, leaving the engine running, the lights on and the door open, that the seriousness of the situation hit us and we quickly followed him. We didn’t need to go far; the beam of John’s torch told the story. The ground, for as far as we could see, was covered in a carpet of cherries.
An hour after dawn the full impact of the storm became clear, and it was obviously nothing less than a disaster. Tree after tree had been almost completely stripped of fruit, hundreds of thousands of plump ripe cherries lying, at best bruised, on the ground, the crows having a feast. John estimated that over seventy-five percent of the crop had been lost, yet he remained remarkably calm and philosophical, blaming himself. “I guess I waited too long,“ he shrugged. “I should have started picking last week.” But all the calmness in the world couldn’t hide the fact that he was completely shattered. We were never to know the full extent of the financial cost of the storm, but it must have been significant as we overheard a conversation with John and his father-in-law about insurance. It seemed John’s only insurance had been with the Farmer’s Union, enough to cover only about a tenth of the losses. John and Emma were now not only broke, but heavily in debt; there were not two people alive who deserved that less.
The next day more than one hundred people turned up at the orchard unannounced, and for two days they worked from dawn to dusk, helping to salvage as much fruit as possible and refusing any payment. Friends, relatives, John’s entire football team and residents of Young whom he hardly knew but who’d heard what had happened came to help, Constable Tyler among them. It was amazing, and John and Emma were visibly moved and buoyed by the gesture. We stayed at the orchard for two more days, helping where we could, but it was obvious we were no longer needed. John was very apologetic and gave us each five pounds, money he could ill afford we were sure, but he insisted we take it. Apart from Mrs Hayes dying, the day we left Young was probably one of the saddest days of our trip. Both John and Emma put a brave face on things, but as we drove out of the yard they stood rather forlornly, arms around each other, waving farewell, Robbie running around excitedly after Morgan, oblivious of their anguish.
* * *
Over those last two days at the orchard, Darren and Ronnie had kept a very low profile. Early each morning they walked off up the hill at the back and didn’t come back until it was almost dark. I suppose this wasn’t surprising; they didn’t know John and he didn’t know anything about them, nor had he offered them a job. Not that we’d learned much about them ourselves; whenever we tried to find out, Darren was very non-committal, even evasive. Apart from Ronnie’s slip about Mildura, Victoria hadn’t been mentioned again, or anywhere else for that matter. In contrast they knew quite a bit about us, especially about Glen joining the Navy. Since we’d arrived at the orchard, barely a day went by when he didn’t talk about it. In a few more weeks he would turn seventeen, and as the money piled up in our jam jar so joining the Navy became a distinct possibility, not just a dream. We may not have saved quite as much as we’d hoped, but we had over thirty-five pounds each, more than enough, he reasoned.
In contrast, I had no plans at all. It was now mid-November and we’d been on the road for over six months. I suppose I would happily have carried on if he’d wanted to, and I began thinking vaguely about doing so on my own, but on our last night at the orchard Darren and Ronnie sort of made it inevitable that we would head for home. As we settled by the fire, Darren suddenly announced, “Hey, if youse is going back to Sydney, we could give youse a lift! We ain’t never been to Sydney, we ain’t never seen the sea neither, have we, Ronnie? Can you see the sea from Sydney?”
That was about it, really, and as I didn’t have any other plan I joined in the virtually impossible task of trying to answer Ronnie’s simple question: “How big is sea?”
Sydney here we come.
Learning of our plans, John gave us a map, pointing out that the quickest route to Sydney was through Crookwell to Goulburn and up the Hume Highway, but when we mentioned this to Darren he became quite agitated.
“No! No! I don’t want to go that way. We’re going through Forbes and Bathurst!”
As it was no skin off our noses which way we went we didn’t argue the point, not that any amount of arguing would have changed his mind, so adamant was he. Thus it was that we set off for Sydney via Forbes and Bathurst, with Darren driving, me next to him in the front and Glen and Ronnie in the back.
The previous night it had been noticeable that Darren’s limp had suddenly become much worse. “I reckon I walked too far today,” he winced, taking off his thick boot. As a child he’d had polio and his right leg was not much thicker than my arm, the foot bent out at a strange angle. We’d only gone about ten miles when he pulled over, saying he couldn’t drive any more as it hurt. I was behind the wheel like a shot — I’d never driven a car before! I’d also never driven one with a column gear shift, and the first few miles were a bit hairy as I had to look down at the gear lever each time, causing us to swerve about erratically. Eventually I got the hang of things and we sped through the open countryside with what I imagined was casual nonchalance, one hand on the steering wheel, the other arm leaning on the open window, fingers tapping the roof. Fortunately there was hardly any traffic, and although it was a dirt road it was in good condition so we made good time. At one stage I was doing nearly ninety miles an hour, a trail of red dust swirling about behind us. Whoopee!
For some time Ronnie had been getting more and more upset, complaining about the heat and shouting out ever louder, “Too hot! Too hot!” The sun was streaming in his side of the car, so to shut him up Glen offered to swap places with him. In moving across, Ronnie’s foot hit the back of my head and I ducked, quickly glancing back to see what it was. When I looked back at the road we were halfway up the mound of gravel piled up in the middle, suddenly I couldn’t control the steering wheel and Darren was shouting: “Slow down, for fuck’s sake!”
Although it is all a bit of a blur, I remember stabbing on the brakes, far too violently for the situation, no doubt; then the steering wheel was more or less ripped out of my grasp and the car skewed sideways and just took off. The next thing I remember was being upside down, thick dust and the strong smell of petrol wafting through the car. For a few seconds, apart from the ticking sound of a hot engine cooling down, there was a bewildered silence, each of us overwhelmed with relief to discover we were still alive. Then wisps of blue smoke started coming from the engine, and Darren galvanised us all when he yelled out: “Get out, Ronnie boy! Get out! The engine’s on fire!”
Amazingly, apart from a scratch on Darren’s arm and a bump on Glen’s head we were all okay, although I will never know how, and having scrambled out we stood in a dazed confusion in the middle of the road. The car was a complete mess, lying on its roof with the bonnet embedded in the bottom of the ditch, the back high in the air, wheels still turning lazily. Then, at virtually the same moment, Glen and I looked at each other in horror. Our money! Most of it was in Glen’s bag in the boot.
Shit!
With no thought to the smoke now pouring from the engine, we ran together and ripped open the boot lid. Fortunately, because the rear of the car was upside down and sticking up, our bags simply fell out and we dragged them back into the middle of the road, where we sat, catching our breath. It had all happened so fast, it was difficult to grasp that it had happened at all.
For several minutes we watched and waited for the flames to appear, but none came; in fact if anything, the smoke seemed to be getting thinner. Perhaps it wasn’t on fire after all! We got to our feet and began dusting ourselves off when a loud whoosh, and a rush of air almost knocked us over again. In seconds the car was engulfed in flames, the ferocity making us back hastily away, worried the thing might explode. But it didn’t. There were just a few pops and bangs, a pall of thick black smoke billowing into the air. Moments later , to our astonishment, Darren picked up his gear, thrust Ronnie’s bag into his arms and yelled, “Come on, boy! We gotta get outta here!” And together they scrambled over the fence and set off as fast as Darren could hobble, across the field towards thick bush a hundred yards away; they were out of sight almost before we realised they’d gone. “Jesus!” Glen exclaimed. “Where are they going?”
We knew we couldn’t be that far from Forbes, so after recovering from Darren and Ronnie disappearing so abruptly, we set off up the road. Half an hour later the police car came into sight, and never had we been so relieved to see one. We should have known better.
“You two know anything about the vehicle back there?” The constable asked, getting out and putting his hat on, his mate staying inside talking on the radio.
“Yes, it flipped over.”
“So we noticed. Your car, is it?”
“No, it belongs to the two other blokes we were with.”
“Which two other blokes?” He looked around.
“Well … they pissed off as soon as it burst into flames.”
“I see. And where did they go?”
“We don’t know, they just pissed off, into the bush,” I waved. Then the policeman’s mate got out of the car and the two of them conversed briefly.
“Okay, get in the car,” the first one said, his tone setting off alarm bells.
“Why? Where are we going?”
“Never mind that, just get in the car!”
Not again!
At the police station they put us in separate cells, and I sat in mine for over an hour before a plain-clothes policeman with another uniformed officer came into the cell.
“Why am I in here? Where’s my friend?”
“Okay, son. Just calm down,” said plain-clothes.
“But we haven’t done anything!”
“So you think writing off a stolen car and leaving the scene is nothing, do you?”
“Stolen! We didn’t know it was stolen! It was just an accident. We didn’t leave the scene, we just went to get help. We would have reported it!”
“Hmm,” murmured plain-clothes, clearly not impressed. “You said there were two others …”
“Yeah, Darren and Ronnie. They’re cousins. It was their car, we just …”
“Right,” plain-clothes interrupted me. “I want you to give your details to this officer and explain exactly what happened,” and he got up and left the cell.
Shit!
In the end it was fairly easy to prove who we were; a quick phone call to John and Emma confirmed our story and we were released, although we had to remain in the area and I was given a stern warning about driving without a licence and the consequences if I was caught doing so again. Country police were very relaxed about that sort of thing in those days. The worst thing was they’d informed Glen’s mother and my sister of the situation, and as being caught in a stolen car didn’t sound too good, Glen in particular knew he would have some explaining to do. Two days later, just to make sure we went home, the police drove us to Parkes and put us on the first train to Sydney, warning us of dire consequences if we didn’t turn up. The last thing they wanted were two homeless Pommie teenagers hanging around their patch! Not that their desire to see the back of us ran to paying our fare!
As for Darren and Ronnie, we never saw them again. Where they’d gone, even where they’d come from, remained a mystery to us; although they were such a distinctive pair, it was doubtful they would have avoided capture for too long. The police did tell us that the car had been stolen from a caravan park in Goulburn the same day the cousins arrived at the orchard; the perfect place to hide for a few days while the initial hunt for them took place. It also explained why Darren had been so adama
nt he wasn’t going to Sydney in that direction. The long train ride home gave us time to reflect on all this, and both of us knew we had been seriously lucky; one, both or all of us could have been badly injured or killed in that car.
TWENTY
Sons and mothers
"Look back, just don’t stare,” your grandmother will have advised you, and it is strange how odd everything seems when you first get home after a long time away. Structurally, nothing may have altered, yet somehow nothing is familiar. This was especially so in Theo’s milk bar, where a new set of fifteen and sixteen-year-olds had taken up residence, hogging the pinball machine and jukebox; they all seemed so young and silly. Theo himself still ran the place, but Denise Phillips and her lovely legs had moved away; at least she hadn’t gone on a world cruise with him! And remember Cassandra Roberts, she of the Davy Crockett hat? Pregnant with Ronnie Wilson’s child; they were both younger than me! Fancy having a baby at that age. I wouldn’t know what to do with the thing! Predictably perhaps, Barry Wiley was still about, a brand new wide-eyed audience for him to impress with his sexual exploits. And to think I was once in awe of the bloke, dickhead! I went home.
Fortunately, for the first few days after we got back Glen stayed at my place. Had he not been there, I am not sure what I would have done. Nothing is quite as depressing as coming home to an empty house. He’d gone to see his mum the day after we got back while his dad was at work. When he came back it was obvious it had been a fairly emotional visit, but despite his mother’s pleas he was determined never again to sleep under the same roof as his father. A week later, on his seventeenth birthday, he began the process of joining the Navy and within ten days he was gone. I’m sure had we known then that we would never see each other again, our parting would have been far more difficult. As it was, it felt like he was just going out to get the milk. We shook hands, even hugged each other briefly, but a quick handshake and a “See ya mate, take care of yourself,” didn’t really do justice to our relationship, how close we’d become, the people we’d met and the experiences we’d had.
Once a Pommie Swagman Page 27