Was anybody not moved by those scenes on TV?
Farmers having to walk around paddocks of mud shooting all their stock. Sheep and cattle stuck in mud just waiting to die a cruel, rain-sodden death.
The effort those people in Nyngan put in to try to save their town, packing almost half-a-million sandbags. Women in their 60s working non-stop from seven in the morning till seven at night.
Blokes like Ken Cobcroft, a shearer: ‘I’ve had three hours sleep in three days,’ he said. ‘Then the water backed up two metres on the railway line and flooded the other side of town anyway.’
Four days and four nights these people worked their guts out only to have the flood beat them in the end.
Sure there were some tears as they were being evacuated, but I think one woman summed up their feelings and their bush stoicism. As she got on the helicopter after losing everything she had, and with nothing but the clothes she was wearing, she looked at the TV camera, smiled and said: ‘Oh well. That’s bush life.’
I don’t know what it is they’ve got out in Nyngan but I wish you could bottle it.
So now it looks like the rest of us are being asked to put our hands in our kicks and give a bit of help.
Like Wayne Goss, the Premier of Queensland, said: ‘The government just can’t come up with an open cheque.’
And that’s fair enough. It’s up to the rest of us. And about bloody time too.
We, and the government, give away millions of dollars overseas to trendy causes and charities.
Let’s help our fellow Australians for a change. I reckon charity begins at home.
You People readers please yourself where you send your donations.
You’ll see the government ads in the newspapers and hear them on your local radio station. I gave mine to my building society.
I just couldn’t picture myself leaving a donation with the bank.
All banks seem to specialise in is crippling farmers with interest rates then kick them off their farms.
But, whatever you do, don’t bother sending these people any ticker.
They’ve still got plenty of that.
Oh, by the way. A big cheerio to all the city readers.
I’m sure they must all be very proud of a certain Sydney gent who was arrested for allegedly looting, malicious damage, driving while disqualified and stealing a 4WD belonging to Ray Travern of Nyngan while Ray was helping to build a levee bank.
It’s not easy to write about death. Writing about life is hard enough.
I think it was Joseph Stalin who said: ‘A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.’
But there was a death in our street not so long ago. The doctor across the road’s wife died — she was about 80.
Not that I ever met the doc or his wife. In the eight years I’ve been here I never said a word to either of them.
The only time I ever got to see the good doctor was when he drove into town at a steady, concerned citizen’s pace of 25km/h and I would join a kilometre-long convoy of cursing, screaming drivers trying to get round the old dropkick.
In fact, I haven’t had a great deal to do with my neighbours at all. I was their worst nightmare come true — an under-75 moving into the street.
From the day I bought my block of land I was treated like a cross between Charles Manson and a full-blown AIDS carrier.
I was a battling, out-of-work butcher trying to build a house with the money I got from a compo claim after stuffing my shoulder and almost breaking my back. But you would have thought it was Joseph Mengele who flew in from Paraguay and hung his shingle in the street. It started even before the builders had laid a brick.
I was sitting on my block of land one day, listening to the races on a little transistor radio, when Lucrezia Borgia swooped down and ordered me to take the radio to the other side of my land and ‘TURN THE THING DOWN’.
(On the subject of death: you ought to see this pair living near me. If they were in the funeral business, people would stop dying.)
But I turned the radio down. And the next day I returned with a ghetto blaster and a couple of Rose Tattoo tapes. The first two bars of ‘Bad Boy For Love’ had Lucrezia foaming at the mouth and sent her poor dopey husband’s pacemaker into warp–7. Lucrezia organised the para-military senior citizens and from then it was on. I had an old ute which I left on my land and they put a FOR SALE sign on it and dumped rubbish in it.
When the builders started work they complained to the council about the noise. They complained about the Porta-loo out the front. It stunk. Yet all the builders used it for was storing bags of cement out of the weather.
They complained about the builders listening to a radio while they worked. One old codger even capped his tap so the builders couldn’t get a drink of water in the middle of summer.
They complained about the noise from me feeding parrots. They complained if there was nothing to complain about.
So I thought, well, why not put all their pacemakers into hyper-drive? I had a word with the builders.
One morning the concerned citizens awoke to find a sign on my land saying: ‘Spanish And Colonial Homes. A Block Of Six Home Units To Be Erected On This Site.’
I kept away for a while then one weekend I went to the site with Lee, a barmaid I was going with at the time … a truly lovely girl I promised faithfully to marry if she’d help me move two tonnes of boulders, about the same amount of logs and clear all the lantana off my land. Then change the gearbox and diff in the old ute.
We were walking up from the bottom of my land and there they were. All the concerned citizens, formed into a baying vigilante mob laying in wait for me, hissing. All that was missing was a rope, an old feather mattress and a bucket of hot tar.
‘Are you the owner of this block of land?’ thundered the spokesperson for the concerned citizens.
‘Yes. That’s right,’ I replied.
‘What’s this … this sign? A block of home units to be erected here.’
He could hardly get the words out as the mob pressed closer.
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I’m doing a bit of speculating. Making a few quick dollars.’
‘You can’t build units in this street. Don’t you know about clause splimpty-seven? Bylaw eleventy-two A? The council won’t allow it.’
‘The council? Hah! They’re as good as gold in there, mate.’ Making the appropriate hand gesture, I continued: ‘Just sling them enough and you can do anything you like.’
I had them in and I could have kept it up all day only silly bloody Lee started laughing. And I cracked up too. I had to confess that I’d put it there for a joke: ‘Just to see if I could get any mugs in.’
Somehow, my neighbours failed to see the funny side of it and they never spoke to me again; they hated me and I ignored them — unless ratface and his missus sent the police around to my house for some reason or other.
After about four years I decided to mow the front lawn and the bloke across the road must have figured I’d turned into a solid citizen and informed me of the good doctor’s wife passing away. So what did I do? Kind, caring, compassionate soul that I am, I put a card in his letter-box.
And people read this column and write in and call me a dickhead and a bastard. It was more than my neighbours did for me when my cat Achmet died.
Being involved with Greenpeace can be rewarding; you know you’re helping a good cause and you get to meet some of the nicest people imaginable.
It can also be a complete bummer because you’re supposed to respect the environment no matter what and, above all, you’re not allowed to kill anything.
I was watching TV the other night and a rat ran across my loungeroom.
Now I don’t care if you’re a greenie, a Buddhist monk or St Francis of Assisi. A rat is a rat whether it’s baked, boiled or grilled on a stick in Ethiopia. And this particular rat had to go. So I lay in wait wondering what to do. Trap it, poison it, get a gun and blow the bastard away?
Wh
ile I was figuring the best way to go about it the rat just went about its business, helping itself to the tucker then going back to wherever it was dossing as an uninvited guest in my house.
It certainly didn’t seem worried by me.
Then one night it ambled across the lounge and propped under the TV looking at me. And I thought, Christ, it’s got a funny nose for a rat and it didn’t look at all like those horrible black things I used to see in Bondi, plus its ears seemed rounder.
So I checked it out on my poster from the National Parks and Wildlife Service.
And it wasn’t a rat — it was a dunnart, a protected species in NSW and I couldn’t harm it, let alone kill it.
So it was back to the drawing board.
By now the dunnart had twigged it was on to a pretty good thing and that I was a 24-carat mug. It began to treat me with utter disdain.
I’d be watching TV or something and it would come out, very casually, and head straight for the kitchen.
It kicked off just eating bananas and apples and so on, then soon developed a more exotic taste, gnawing its way through my Kiwi fruit and peaches.
It wouldn’t eat the white bread I fed to the lorikeets, straight into the rye. And what thanks did I get?
The thing crapped everywhere. Hundreds and hundreds of little turds like big, black grape pips.
Not only that, it just came and went with complete impunity. I didn’t expect the thing to get down on its hands and knees and thank me for being a good bloke.
But, after all, it is my bloody house so surely I command a modicum of respect. But no. Kiss my arse. Protected or not, the dunnart had to go.
But what could I do? Imagine if I shot it and Hinch found out?
He’d have a field day. Shame, shame, shame. Drunken, lewd author and convicted drug offender posing as Greenpeace activist slaughters protected species in blood-drenched carnage of wanton wildlife destruction and butchery. Shame R.G. Barrett, shame.
Actually, by now this dunnart with its hairy, rat-like little face began to remind me of Derryn Hinch, which I reckon is a good enough excuse to kill anything.
Then one night I was in my office and Derryn the dunnart came in after a feed and ran into the inbuilt wardrobe.
I jumped up, slammed the doors and stacked books all along the bottom of the wardrobe so it couldn’t get out.
Got the little bastard!
The next morning I tossed in half a Kiwi fruit (one of Derryn’s favourites) with a few downers in it.
I figured that ought to at least knock the little bludger out then I could take it safely to a tranquil, bushland setting and release it to run wild with all its little furry friends once more.
Then I got involved in something or other and completely forgot about Derryn for three days.
Christ! I thought. I’d better get the bloody thing out before it starts to stink the place up.
I opened the wardrobe but no dunnart and no Kiwi fruit.
I don’t now what the tranquillisers did to it, but it ate its way out.
It ate through my $40 hardback edition of Hackworth’s About Face, Le Carré’s The Honourable Schoolboy, Hughes’ The Fatal Shore, two Hustlers and about half a dozen old Phantom comics.
Derryn the dunnart didn’t have a bad taste in literature. And he left about another hundred turds behind.
And now he’s back, terrorising me more than ever. And it looks like he’s brought a sheila with him.
Why wouldn’t he? Can you imagine the line he’s laid on some dunnart out there? ‘Hey baby. Why don’t you shack up with me? I got a pretty neat pad just up from the beach. The music’s good. The tube’s okay. There’s plenty to eat. And, if you play it cool, every now and again you can score some unreal dope.’
I got an invite to the Uki May Ball. ‘Where’s Uki?’ you’re probably wondering.
It’s an old one-pub timber town near Mt Warning on the NSW North Coast.
Uki definitely isn’t the Las Vegas of NSW and the May Ball doesn’t attract the Sunday paper socialites.
But I’d made quite a few friends up that way and the Uki dance featured in my last book so I thought, for the sake of a bit of time and petrol, I ought to go back and have a look.
Plus a young lady in Coffs Harbour who liked my books had been writing nice letters so I thought I’d call in and see her and some other people I knew on the way.
I got in touch and arranged to take her out to dinner.
If nothing else, I am a romantic. I headed off on Friday morning and had a motel room in Coffs in the afternoon.
The young lady in question wasn’t a bad sort, but she’d just turned 18 and was barely five foot tall. I don’t mind cradle-snatching to a certain extent but to me this was making the gravy just a little bit thick. I was old enough to be this girl’s uncle.
But we still went out for dinner and drinks and had a bloody good time. Yes, I did invite her back to my sleazy motel room, where we had a few drinks and a laugh and that was about it. Honest.
I got to Uki the following day but I brought the rain with me and plenty of it.
It had rained all day Friday on the property and it was still coming down on Saturday. But it didn’t dampen the locals’ enthusiasm for the May Ball and it was well away, a-reelin’ and a-rockin’ when I got there on Saturday night.
It was a gangsters-and-molls theme. I didn’t know and didn’t have the appropriate gear, but seeing I was still out on bail I was eligible for a consolation prize.
The turn was a ripper, the band was unreal, there was heaps of good, wholesome food and all proceeds went to the Uki Primary School.
I supplied some books to give away as door prizes and then stayed discreetly drunk in the background and popped off a few photos.
Some sheila with the biggest boobs I’ve ever seen came up and asked me to autograph a book for her.
I tried to be witty and scintillating but all I could put in the front of the book was: ‘Jan. You’ve got the biggest tits I’ve ever seen.’
Then I showed these country hillbillies and young whippersnappers how to dance.
The Big River Boogie Band was belting it out raunchy enough to make your face turn blue.
Real funky, bluesy rock’n’roll. Music for dancing, not posing.
The thing I noticed at the dance again was all the kids running around. Not like those horrible dropkicks you see racing around shopping centres on skateboards smoking cigarettes. But good kids running around making heaps of noise and enjoying themselves.
You’d also think at a rock’n’roll turn there’d be broken glass and stinks everywhere, but it wasn’t like that at all.
There was even a gang of bikers there but, compared to other bikers I’ve seen, I don’t think any of this mob would have up-ended a Sao biscuit.
As for drugs — about two skinny joints went past my nose all night. I don’t know how the politicians and the cops with their helicopters keep coming up with the multi-million-dollar drug raids. The average punter at the ball didn’t look like he or she would have a pot to piss in.
Still, I suppose the government’s got to look like it’s earning its keep. And while the cops are arresting a few hippies they’re not arresting each other.
In my last book, Les Norton gets a young spunk at the dance and ends up in a bubble bath with her back on the farm. All I looked like getting was blind drunk — and a 40-year-old with five kids. It was time for this grasshopper to leave.
I thanked them for the invite, wished everyone well and headed back to the farm in the pouring bloody rain.
I had intended hanging round the farm another day or so getting some photos and taking it easy, but when I got up on Sunday morning ‘the crik had done rizz’. And that meant I had about half an hour to get my gear together or I’d be there for a week.
I packed in about 20 minutes, thanked my host and got going while the getting was good.
Uki’s a nice little place, the people are good and I had a great weekend. But a week?
That is making the gravy just a little bit too thick.
One of my favourite one-liners goes: It was that cold this morning I saw the bank manager with his hands in his own pockets.
Which about sums up the banks very concisely.
There’s hardly a day goes by when some bank heavy isn’t threatening to do this or not do that.
Or they’ve pulled the rug from under some poor fanner and then sent the sheriff in to kick him off his land.
Or some poor punter’s had to sell his house because the bank’s put the interest rates up again.
Personally, I can’t for the life of me see how sending businesses to the wall and squeezing ordinary working people into poverty with absolutely absurd interest rates is good for the economy.
Then, if they lend you $30,000 you pay back $75,000 and they go on as if they’re doing you a big favour.
Their whole attitude in general amazes me.
I was lucky in that I didn’t have to borrow a great deal to build my house and I got in on a supposedly fixed rate of interest — which the bank still managed to bump up an extra 1.5 per cent on the most abstruse technicality I have ever come across.
But I copped it sweet and did my best to keep the payments up.
I even went to gaol for my bank.
When I first moved in and was sent to the cleaners by the local builders, the local wallopers came banging on the door with a heap of parking summonses.
I had enough money to either pay the fines and stay free, or make a payment on the house and go in the pokey for a few days.
I chose the holiday at Gosford police cells resort sleeping on a wrestling mat with a blanket full of lice and my head next to a stainless-steel toilet bowl.
I did this to keep my bank manager happy.
These days it’s hard to keep up the payments on your house.
Try making a living as a writer in Oz and you’ll understand why.
But if you do get a bit behind?
It’s not as though you’re going anywhere. You can’t pick up your house and land and put it on your back and piss off.
So What Do You Reckon? Page 7