by Alan Blunt
‘That’s me singing,’ Jimmy said, foot tapping and fingers clicking.
‘You? Bullshit! That’s Jimmie Rodgers.’
‘No siree,’ said Jimmy. ‘That’s yours truly, Presser – right up front on the vocals. I recorded a few songs when I was a lad.’ He sang along with the lyrics, and when the song finished pointed to the name on the label. ‘That’s me.’
‘Fair dinkum! I reckoned it was Jimmie Rodgers himself. You’re a bloody wizard, Wider! More tricks than Harry Houdini!’
On the drive back Jimmy revealed that ‘the wife’s English. She came here as a girl, but her family’s gone back to England. She’s leaving the car in Grafton – garaged in my cousin’s back yard. She and the kids will catch the train to Brisbane; I’ll meet her there. You’re the only one who knows, Presser. Keep it that way.’
‘For sure,’ I promised. I reckoned it might be safer to know nothing of Jimmy’s doings, but curiosity got the better of me. ‘Why the hell are you planting the Holden? I thought you were in the clear with the law.’
‘It’s not the cops. But I don’t trust them. They could track Jan’s car and pass the word to other people. My cousin is sweet. He’ll wait a few months and then bodgie the plates and cash the FJ in Sydney.’ I could only guess who ‘them’ referred to and speculate about the substance of Jimmy’s fear. Perhaps it was something to do with the warehouse robbery, and Jimmy, the inside man, had collared more than his share.
‘What about that little parcel, Wide Awake?’ I queried. ‘The one you locked in your port.’
‘Just a birthday present, Presser.’ He laughed. ‘The wife and the kids are flying to England next week. As soon as I can arrange a passport I’ll follow.’
The shed cut-out on Thursday afternoon. Jimmy G and I arrived in Charleville in time for a few beers and the mandatory steak, eggs and chips at the Greek’s.
Alex had arranged to pay us off at nine o’clock on Friday morning. Jimmy walked around early while I delayed, saying I had a few things to do. In fact, I feared the Old Boss would give me another earful – this time in front of my workmates. He might even give me a reference. No doubt they would grin at my embarrassment and give me hell at every chance.
The contractor came down the stairs to meet me. ‘You’re bloody late,’ he said grumpily. I signed for my cheque on the bonnet of my Volkswagen, hoping I was going to get off lightly with a ‘Thanks, Boss’ and a handshake, but Alex had other ideas.
‘I worked you into my top run, son,’ he expostulated. ‘I kept you in good work on the understanding that you would stick with me in the second half of the year. Now you’ve pulled out on me just when I need every man I can get. I looked after you, lad, but you’re not looking after me. You let me down!’
The chastisement might have been well deserved, however I didn’t have time to dwell. The contractor was long in the tooth, but he was also big and active with great bony hands, and had a long reputation as a tough knuckle-man. He advanced aggressively, while I back-pedalled, saying defensively, ‘I didn’t need any help, Alex! I can bloody well press for eight shearers and stand on my head. You put Red on without even asking me!’
I dodged twice around the Volkswagen, finally offsiding Alex to gain the driver’s seat. I found first gear as the Old Boss shouted angry advice through the window. ‘You should smarten up, young fella! You’re working too hard; and you’re too bloody hungry.’
Although I was rattled, I couldn’t help laughing as I revved away. The scene must have looked hilarious to the two rouseabouts watching from the upstairs verandah: the old contractor chasing the young wool roller around the Volkswagen. Men would laugh till they doubled in half when the story went the rounds of the watering holes and shearing sheds. Besides, it could have been worse: if I had jobbed the Old Boss I would be marked for hitting an old man – one of the most respected contractors in Queensland – and men who could fight would line up to avenge Alex. On the other hand if Alex knocked me leg-up I’d be the butt of pub and shearing-shed jokes for years: ‘The boxing bloody wool presser! Old Alex knocked him on his arse and busted his eye. Fight? He couldn’t beat a carpet with Grandma’s broom!’
I thought things over while having a solitary tea and toast at the Greek’s. Perhaps I had been edgy from working too hard, and had let false pride get my back up and dictate my course. I began to feel I had done the wrong thing by Alex; and I had no doubt my dad, who was a stickler for doing the right thing by everyone and fulfilling obligations, would agree. I never met Alex again, but over the years a nibble of regret would eat at my conscience whenever I yarned with blokes who asked, ‘Ever work with Alex Meekin? A champion, the Old Boss, as fair dinkum as sunrise and a heart as big as Phar Lap’s.’ Looking back, I still wonder if it was shame or a lack of courage that prevented me from apologising.
I drove Jimmy and his worn but elegant leather port to the airport. He was sporting a brand new Canadian lumber jacket with several large pockets. I commented, ‘You look mighty spiffy, Wide Awake. Darcy Dugan wears clobber like that when he holds up a bank. No doubt those pockets are just the shot for carrying loot.’
Jimmy smiled enigmatically. ‘The port might get lost or stolen, Presser,’ he said. ‘But I won’t! Anyway, mate, thanks for everything. If I think the coast is clear, I’ll write.’
He never did. Yet I’m sure Jimmy prospered in his natural habitat, somewhere in a city’s concrete canyons. He was a risk taker and a survivor. If Lady Luck gave him a fair throw of the dice, Jimmy would be a winner.
A month or so later I was at the Great Western Hotel in Hughenden with a couple of mates I’d met at Aberfoyle shed: Bob ‘The Plumb’ Macklin and Doug McMillan, a baby-faced Kiwi shearer. I was having a few cut-out beers with them when I was claimed by Harry – better known as ‘Spiv’. I hadn’t run across the Spiv since we had worked together as rousies in 1953, but in the way of the shearing fraternity I asked him to join the shout. Harry, who was half-shot, put his money on the bar. ‘Gotta tell you this one!’ he began enthusiastically. ‘I was at this shed near Charleville. And the cook – The Bald Eagle – he starts in on this little rousie. Wide Awake, they call him. The Eagle, who’s a big standover bastard, won’t lay off; bores it up the rousie all the time! The rousie cops all this shit until one night he leaves the kitchen door open. The Eagle screams at him, “Was yer raised in a tent?”
‘The little bloke pipes up: “Yeah – Jimmy Sharman’s tent!” And then he hooks him and The Eagle folds up like a lady’s fan.’
Young Plumb, who had heard the story from me, looked the Spiv in the eye. ‘Really? I must say a likely story, old chap. And you really witnessed this dramatic altercation, old chap?’
‘Blood oath,’ Harry said indignantly. ‘On the Bible! Sweetest punch I ever saw. Clean broke The Eagle’s jaw in two places, and he broke his leg when he crashed. I was there.’
8
BRONCO AND ZULU
I had crossed paths with Doug McMillan around Goondiwindi in early 1958, when I was twenty and Doug was twenty-two. We met again in July 1960, signing on at Aberfoyle in overseer Richie Jack’s team of eight shearers. Richie must have been impressed with our work: following Aberfoyle he earmarked Doug and me for his hand-picked team, known as ‘guards’, and we worked with him in the second half of the year for the next four years. Regular sheds were Eulolo via Julia Creek, employing ten or twelve shearers, and Barenya and Bogunda, south of Hughenden, with eight shearers each. These sheds engaged us for thirteen or fourteen weeks, shearing some 100,000 sheep; other sheds kept us in work till November’s end. Appreciating Doug’s yarns and laughing banter, barmaids dubbed him the Laughing Kiwi, a soubriquet that stuck and spread.
We soon became best mates. Cashed up after a season’s work cut-out in December, we would enjoy a break. We drove to Sydney a few times, but usually looked for good times and amorous adventure along the Gold Coast, where we enjoyed drinking with holidaying workmates and acquaintances from the west, and avoided mobs of high sc
hool graduates, the forerunners of ‘schoolies’. Doug would shoot through to race meetings or wander the pubs entertaining barmaids while I read and bodysurfed for hours, trying to acquire the skill to ride waves and dodge dumpers. Come nightfall we would check out the floor shows and fair sex at various venues.
Like a lot of Kiwis Doug couldn’t swim a stroke and was frightened of sharks. He considered anything deeper than a bath tub dangerous to his snow-white carcass. ‘Check the tub for Noah’s Arks, mate, before you turn on the shower,’ I’d quip, heading for the beach.
‘I’ll see you tonight, then – if a grey nurse or tiger shark doesn’t convert you into shark shit,’ he would retort.
At that time all sharks were generally considered to be man-eaters, but I never admitted that I was actually scared stiff, and that swimming out beyond the breakers with a handful of swimmers known colloquially as ‘shark-bait’ was a terrifying personal challenge I couldn’t refuse.
An early riser, I delighted in digging my protesting mate out of bed at sun-up. Rolling him onto the floor usually worked. Strolling along the sand while the rising sun dazzled the tireless Pacific tide we chatted up early-bird sheilas; and now and then we joined a game of beach cricket.
‘Courting of the fair sex is the greatest game of all,’ Doug said, but he didn’t allow romance to interfere with his passion for horse racing and cricket. On holidays Doug took in mid-week and Saturday race meetings, and back in the west he was a star batsman in shearing teams versus locals, from claypan wickets on the Diamantina to matting on concrete at Hebel; and we’d always catch a day at a Gabba test if one was on.
In the sheds he had become a keen reader. Speeding through my copy of Dostoyevski’s Crime and Punishment in a day, he commented, ‘It wouldn’t be a bad yarn if he’d get on with it.’ He was kinder to Robert Graves’ classic The Greek Myths. Reckoning the Greek Pantheon’s sexy paganism was more his style than the Presbyterianism of his forebears, he would address ‘straying sheilas’ with, ‘Good morning, goddesses! I’ll bet you’re Athena and you’re Aphrodite.’ The girls might quicken their pace, but more often stopped to discover if Doug was genuinely flattering or happily nuts.
Doug would fly home for Christmas to the Land of the Long Black Shroud, as it was dubbed because of its reputed dullness, while I would enjoy our usual family Christmas gathering, then laze around reading and relaxing.
One afternoon, after I had made my annual pilgrimage to the magnificent red brick Victorian building housing the Queensland Museum and Art Gallery, I came home for a late lunch with Mum and Dad. My older sister was married by now and my five younger siblings were at work or on school holidays.
For a few days I’d been reluctantly contemplating blistering my hands, hardening my body and reviving my bank account with a couple of weeks of hard work on the pick and shovel offsiding for my uncle Kev who was a drainer with Lew Parkin’s plumbing business. As I entered the house I was relieved to hear Dad say, ‘Bob Teitzel rang. He said to ring him as soon as you got back.’
Bob Teitzel had all the humour of a hangman’s knot and was almost as abrupt. ‘I want you at Elmina starting half past seven on Monday. Ten shearers. Given dry weather you’ll cut-out in two weeks. I’m starting six teams straight afterwards. Plenty of work right through.’
Zulu and I left Brisbane at seven o’clock on Saturday morning. We took it easy and cruised in to Charleville about 5.30pm, which allowed me plenty of time to enjoy a quiet couple of beers at the Cattle Camp Hotel. The previous year Zulu had enjoyed lapping a rum and milk in the corner of the bar, but he had forfeited this canine privilege and been barred after biting the legs of a couple of brawling boozers. Confused by the ensuing uproar, Zulu ripped the trousers of two urgers, bit me by mistake, and baled up Bronco the barman – who had jumped the bar to stop the blue – in a corner.
I had appealed the sentence, but Bronco maintained a straight face as he declared, ‘Zulu is an under-age drinker. I could be pinched for supplying him.’ He pinned a typed notice alongside the list of barred violent, alcoholic offenders:
Be it known that to wit, one Zulu, a blue and black cattle dog,
is a proven violent offender under the influence
of intoxicating liquor, and is henceforth barred
for life from licensed premises. By order: Bronco Bill.
The notice was still on the wall but Bronco wasn’t in sight. ‘Where’s Bill?’ I asked Marjorie, a middle-aged local woman, as she pulled a beer.
‘He pulled the pin last October. Took Millie, that cheeky, carrot-topped housemaid, to see the Melbourne Cup. More fool, he! Only seventeen and a real gold-digger, that one. He had to buy her a flash shiner for her finger before she’d go. Brazen hussy fair bewitched him! I reckon he was silly enough to think he was the first one to pluck her cherry. On her back at fifteen, that one, and now she reckons she’s sittin’ on a fortune.’
Marjorie placed the beer on the bar. ‘She’s still away,’ she continued, ‘but Billy came back flat broke. He was in yesterday, lookin’ for a pen. He was barman here for two years, you know. Talk about style! – bow tie an’ all – and saved fifteen hundred quid. He was leg-man for a couple of SP bookies. Fair dinkum, he lived the life of Riley and never raised a sweat, and now the silly bugger’s going shearing in January. I told him what a fool he was. “I warned you, Billy,” I says. “You’re not the first to thatch her cottage and buy her furniture.” Same old Billy! He laughs and says, “But by crikey, I had a good time! Any bloke who won’t spend a thousand smackers on Millie don’t deserve to enjoy life.” And then he puts a fiver on the slate.’
I left the pub and ate a mixed grill and chips at the Greek’s cafe before I drove to a familiar camping spot on the bank of the Warrego River. There I set four lines to catch a yellowbelly or small cod for breakfast, then built a fire and put the billy on and pumped the Aladdin pressure lamp. I was lying on my swag, reading and enjoying solitude beneath the starry dome of the Milky Way when an old ute pulled up twenty yards away. The dog snarled, but I collared him before he could charge.
‘I’d know that bloody dog anywhere,’ a voice called. ‘Don’t shoot! It’s Boomi and his mad cousin. Tie that bloody dog up before I get out of the car!’
Boomi didn’t drink or smoke, but his cousin, Mack, was merrily half-sozzled – his usual state whenever I met him between jobs – and I instantly cottoned on that my plan for a quiet evening was out the window. Mack beheaded a Tooheys longneck with his teeth and handed it to me. He threw tea in the bubbling billy for Boomi.
After we had passed a respectable time yarning and laughing, Boomi broached a subject of deep concern to his cousin. ‘Tell the old mate about that roo that ripped your balls out, Mack,’ he said, his compassion rivalling his sensitivity.
I had heard a colourful version of the encounter from Boomi in Hughenden the previous year, and when he winked at me I cued, ‘Bloody bad luck, Mack. The word on the mulga wire is that an old buck roo punched piss and pick-handles out of you and hopped it with your family jewels.’
Realising that my comment might have been a bit indelicate for the feelings of a young buck who had lost his manhood, I added, ‘I was sorry to hear that. The sheilas all along the Gwydir River must be howling buckets of tears.’
‘That’d be right!’ Boomi confirmed. ‘And their dads and husbands unloaded the old twelve bore and put the cattle dog back on the chain when they heard Mack had shot his last bolt.’
Mack was a happy-go-lucky comedian. Wearing the mournful expression that one would expect of a young man who had lost his reason for living, he stood up and ceremoniously dropped his work-worn shearer’s dungarees to reveal intact equipment that a jack-donkey might be proud of. ‘Have a feel o’ this lot and see if they’re fair dinkum,’ he crowed, and threw his head back to laugh madly at a rising half-moon. ‘I gotcha that time, Presser! Well, check out the scars, anyway. But keep yer fingers off John Thomas, the ladies’ friend.’
The scars were impressi
ve: the longest ran from the brisket to the left groin. ‘Gees, mate, he didn’t miss you! Yer lucky only the good die young.’
‘My colonial oath, mate! They held me guts in with a wet corn bag till they got me to the Moree Hospital. I was there for three weeks; and then it was three months before I could straddle a saddle.’
Mack beheaded another bottle with his teeth and handed it to me. After casually pulling my swag closer to the car to give himself a back rest, he sat down in one smooth motion, brought his knees up, crossed his dilapidated laughing-side boots and rolled a smoke.
‘Why don’t you make yourself at home while you’re in the Southern Cross Motel,’ I said, attempting sarcasm.
Mack opened another longneck with his teeth and then gulped liberally. He then balanced the bottle in his crotch. ‘Too right, mate,’ he drawled. ‘Now I’m comfortable I’ll give you an eye-witness account – none of Boomi’s bullshit. There was three of us, yer see. We put the nets in first, then made camp and cracked a couple o’ bottles. We was havin’ a yarn and a smoke when suddenly this big grey buck comes thumping up and squats about five yards away.
‘Henry yells, “Holy stuffin’ duck shit! Hey! Don’t shoot him – he’s got a collar on. He must be a station pet!” Then the big bastard hops closer – like he’s nearly on top of us – and stands straight up, and growls like a mad dog. I’ve never seen anything like it. This ole-man bloody roo! Must be seven feet tall on his tip-toes, and he’s ready to jump on us. Mick and Henry scramble backwards but I steps up and offers the blighter me bottle. “’Ave a beer, mate,” I says. Next thing the ignorant great bastard’s got me in a bear hug and is rippin’ me guts out with his hoppers. Mick picks up a great tree branch. He yells out, “Duck!” and knocks me cold – and the roo shoots through. I come to and Mick says, “Sorry, mate. Are you okay?”