Wool Away, Boy!

by Alan Blunt

  ‘“Okay? You bloody clown! How would I be okay? You’ve spilt me bottle o’ beer!” I tell him.’

  Mack soon stretched out on my swag, while Boomi and I rested our backs against the VW. The fire faded and we yarned about old mates and past times. Tied to a log, Zulu patiently gnawed a bone and hoped a wild pig would appear, while Mack lifted his head now and then to mention another ‘beautiful cocky’s daughter’ who wanted to marry him, hee-hawed madly, and took a powerful draw on a longneck.

  When Boomi rolled out his swag, Mack said, ‘Make my bed, too, cobber.’ Boomi rolled out Mack’s swag, and I said, ‘Get off my swag, Mack, or I’ll kick yer.’

  ‘Kick away, cobber,’ Mack mumbled. I dropped onto his swag and fell asleep.

  Boomi woke me about 3am to check the fishing lines. We went to the river and landed two fat yellowbelly. A two-and-a-half pounder and a three pounder, the shearer reckoned. We pulled the lines and packed the fish in mud, then buried them in hot ash and went back to our swags.

  Mack splashed his face with river water and greeted sunrise with cooees and yodels before beheading a longneck. He took a long swallow and offered the bottle to me.

  ‘No thank you, Boss, I’d rather not,’ I said and sang:

  You can talk of your whisky, talk of your beer,

  There’s something much nicer that’s waiting us here,

  It sits on the fire beneath the gum tree,

  There’s nothing much nicer than a billy of tea.

  Mack laughed at my rendition of the Australian folk song ‘Billy of Tea’ and guzzled the last half of his longneck. ‘Yer both bloody wowsers,’ he declared. ‘I reckon I might as well give away trying to educate you blokes about the better things in life.’

  I chuckled and improvised:

  And a good yellerbelly baked black fella style

  Is the best feed you’ll find in many a mile.

  So tip out your booze and empty your glass

  And jam that vile bottle right up your … tail pipe.

  Boomi spared a grin. ‘Another couple of summers and if you don’t join AA, Mack, you’ll be camped on the creek with the other deros with the arse out of your strides.’

  ‘At least they’ll have the manners to share a bottle before breakfast,’ Mack quipped, still laughing. ‘Not like you ignorant wowsers.’

  We breakfasted on baked yellowbelly and campfire toast with billy tea. ‘Yer can’t beat the old black fella way for cookin’ fish,’ Mack said. The mud and skin had peeled back and the gut had compressed to a small knot, exposing sweet-smelling delectable white flesh which we sprinkled with salt and pepper.

  We packed up and cleaned up the camp. Mack could have had a pen at Elmina, but he had chosen a few weeks’ horse-breaking up Augathella way. ‘A few busters and kicks don’t hurt nearly as much as shearing them bloody great red-eyed wethers,’ he declared. ‘Boomi loves shearin’ so much he’s got sheep shit on the brain.’

  9

  THE JEWEL AND WALLACE

  Boomi threw his port and swag into my car. ‘I’ll take a chance with that biting blue mongrel,’ he declared, pointing at Zulu, ‘if he stays in the back seat.’ We were waiting outside the UNGRA office, yarning with a small muster of shearers and rousies, when Big Bob opened up at eight o’clock to issue riding instructions. Red-faced and unsmiling, he barked orders and road directions, parting with, ‘No alcohol on the property.’ Experience had taught me that this had become a matter of form: authoritative bluster, unenforceable because good workers wouldn’t wear it and reasonable graziers knew it was unfair and stupid. Even the Union thought courts would find it illegal.

  I bought a carton of VB tinnies, and we ate an early lunch of steak, eggs and chips at the Greek’s cafe then hit the road for Elmina, some eighty miles south of Charleville, via Wyandra.

  A few miles from town the bitumen gave way to gravel road, rough with corrugations and potholes. We travelled steadily, hanging on the edge of the dust fog, until we pulled up at the pub in Wyandra. The Sunday session was closing, but we scored a beer for me and a lemonade for Boomi.

  ‘You going to Elmina?’ the publican queried. ‘Four of your jokers just left. They blued and I sent ’em on their way. You know Bronco Bill? He’s alright, but this other bloke – they called him the “Jewel” – is a nasty bit of work. He was looking for a stoush when he came in. I bombed him earlier for swearing in front of the missus and he shut his trap. When I was outside he started again. Bronco chatted to him and got a smack in the kisser.’

  ‘Sounds like Jimmy the Jewel,’ I said without affection. Jimmy and I had tangled six months earlier in Hughenden at the Grand Hotel. The Jewel, who was drinking with his mate Leo, had crudely rubbished a young barmaid I was keen on. She was a Sydney nurse on the last leg of hitchhiking around Australia before heading overseas. I rightly guessed the Jewel had dropped the weights on her and drawn a caustic knock-back, and his jealousy had turned ugly. Instantly angry, I had snarled, ‘Outside, you bastard!’

  Leo had come between us. Surprised and cowed by the ferocity of my response, the Jewel stuck to his seat as he mumbled, ‘I’m too drunk to fight now, sport, but I’ll loosen you up in the morning.’

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow at eleven o’clock, when you’re sober,’ I promised and turned for the exit.

  ‘Tomorrow never comes!’ the Jewel shouted.

  Aware that Leo was a known king-hit artist, I enlisted Torky, a lightweight with a heavyweight punch, to watch my back the next morning. It wasn’t difficult: a mad punter, Torky would rather have a blue than back a winner.

  My blood was up, and at eleven o’clock sharp an eager Torky followed me through the bat-wing doors into the bar of the Grand Hotel. I had come to knuckle, yet offered a conditional retreat: ‘Say out loud, “I’m sorry for what I said last night; what I said was black lies. I was drunk and I apologise.” Get that off your chest and then we’ll go to the Western so you can tell Faye to her face.’

  The Jewel laughed nervously. ‘Have a drink, sport,’ he said. ‘It was only a joke. Like, yer still a bit wet behind the ears – that’s yer problem. Yer need to grow up a bit before yer play with the men and the ladies.’ Giggling, he turned to his mate. ‘What do you reckon, Leo?’

  Leo glanced warily at Torky, and said amiably, ‘That’s right, Presser. Forget about it and have a drink.’

  I jerked my man off the barstool in a headlock and hauled him the length of the bar in a cross-buttock before slamming him to the floor. The Jewel’s resistance was feeble.

  ‘You want some, too?’ Torky snapped hopefully at Leo.

  ‘It’s not my blue,’ Leo said, and picked up his beer.

  ‘Any old time you want it,’ said Torky. The Jewel remained safely seated on the floor. He shouted at me, ‘I’ll get you! You bloody big-noting standover man. Yer can’t even take a joke!’

  I exited swiftly, while Torky hung back, disappointed he hadn’t been called upon to knuckle.

  Six months on, the memory was fresh in my mind as we downed our drinks and hit the road again. Leaving the highway we saw a Holden ute which had bypassed the pub. ‘That’ll be Yabba’s ute,’ Boomi declared. ‘He takes his time and everyone else’s. We’d better slip around him or we won’t get to Elmina in time for breakfast.’ We went wide on the table-drain and brushed the mulga to get around the dust cloud and the ute.

  A flat back tyre lurched our car off the road a few miles on. Flats and blow-outs were par for the course on bush roads, so bush travellers knew their stuff. We got the spare wheel, wheel-brace and jack from under the bonnet, and while I jacked the rear of the V-Dub Boomi worked on the wheel nuts. Yabba’s ute slowed to offer help, but we waved him on, and a grinning Yabba and his passenger gave us the finger while the ute accelerated, trailing a billowing red dust cloud which swallowed us and painted the leaves of the roadside mulga trees.

  A few miles on we crossed a camel-humped grid and pulled off the road behind a Morris Minor and Yabba’s ute. The Minor was jacke
d up, its wrecked muffler lying beside it. Bronco Bill and the Jewel were trading punches on the road, while Yabba was dancing around, shouting encouragement and refereeing the blue.

  ‘Shut the dog in, Boomi,’ I ordered urgently. I was out of the driver’s seat in a flash, adrenaline pumping. Bronco went down but got straight up and bored in swinging. The Jewel side-stepped professionally, and dropped his man with a three-punch combination. He scowled down at Bronco. ‘Get up! Get up, yer fuckin’ smart alec! I’ll give yer try to stand over me and call me a foul-mouthed ignorant alky.’

  Bronco rolled on to his elbow. His white ironed shirt was smeared ruddy with dust and gore, and blood trickled from his left eye. He spat blood and said, ‘If that was yer best punch yer in more strife than Flash Gordon.’ He struggled to his feet and staggered for balance. The Jewel jigged in to deliver the finisher, but I jumped in his way and shoved him back with a hand to his chest. ‘I’ll take his place!’ I snapped.

  Recognising an old foe, the Jewel snarled, ‘Get out of the road. This isn’t your fight!’

  ‘It is now! Bronco’s had enough,’ I declared, shaping up while the Jewel backed off. ‘No guts, Jewel! C’mon! Have a go! You weak bastard. You reckoned you were too drunk last time, but you look fit enough now … sport.’

  Standing on the road, surrounded by hostile faces, the Jewel dropped his hands and met my eye in defeat. I felt let down; I had been certain the opportunity to settle the Hughenden confrontation had come. ‘C’mon, Jewel. Have a go – or I’ll start without you,’ I threatened. But the Jewel was deflated: the exhilarating adrenaline surge he’d felt during the fight had evaporated and he walked away.

  Having gone through childhood as an undersized asthmatic, I had learnt to box – I believed – to defend against bullying, yet occasionally I caught the breath of the bully in my own actions. There would have been nothing heroic in punishing the Jewel. Such a bout would have been as unequal as the one I had just witnessed. The Jewel was as skilled as me, but I was bigger, fitter, far stronger – and sober. The Jewel knew, and wisely backed off.

  A fair-headed young rousie, a passenger in the Morris Minor, grabbed my hand. ‘Name’s Gordon,’ he said, ‘but they call me Curly. Pleased to meetcha, mate. Yer did the right thing – only yer should of thumped him! That Jewel bloke is the nastiest bit of work I’ve seen in a long time. He’s been tryin’ to pick a blue ever since we left Charleville.’

  Yabba, who had done some real fighting against the warriors of Japan in World War II, hadn’t seen me since I was a stripling learner wool presser three years prior. Since then I had filled out and matured while learning my trade. Yabba’s back was up, but he shook hands before voicing his resentment. ‘There was no need for you to come in! I was going to pull ’em up when you put your bib in.’

  Carl, a tall, fair, balding young shearer from Wagga gently sponged Bill’s battered face with a handkerchief he’d moistened from a waterbag hanging on the side of Yabba’s ute. ‘I’m marrying on Easter Saturday,’ he said, ‘and only took a pen shearing Queensland wethers to build up the marriage money. I couldn’t fight my way out of a wet paper bag – or I would have left the little shithouse in Wyandra.’

  We watched Bronco Bill walk purposefully up to the Jewel, who was standing smoking under a tree some fifty yards away. While Bronco was fair dinkum, fearless and cheerful whatever fate handed out, the Jewel seemed to be forever burdened by a chip on the shoulder. The watchers saw them talk briefly and shake hands before they walked back. The Jewel looked sheepish. Bronco – his eye still oozing blood – laughed as he spoke through split lips, ‘She’s all over, drover! Jimmy only dropped me five times. He knows he was lucky. Everyone knows Bronco don’t warm up till he bites the dust six times.’

  Carl said, ‘It don’t make no difference. He’s not riding with me!’

  Using fencing pliers he wired the exhaust pipe to the chassis of the Morris Minor with a Cobb and Co hitch. The load was too heavy for the low-slung car, so Bronco boarded my Volkswagen while the Jewel and his gear transferred from the Minor to the back of Yabba’s ute. VW Beetles, with their high road clearance, unique suspension and reliability on bush roads, were marvels, so naturally we took the lead on the rugged road to Elmina, leaving the Minor and Yabba to plug along cautiously in our dust.

  After claiming a room and unpacking I went to meet the shed overseer. The staff accommodation was the usual two-bedroom building sheathed in raw galvanised iron lined with masonite, with a small gauzed verandah shaded by box trees.

  The dog sat and waited in the shade while I introduced myself to Brian, the overseer-cum-classer, and chatted to Roy, an old acquaintance and the shed ‘expert’ (the man who sharpened shearers’ combs and cutters, and kept the machinery in repair). Brian, a fair-haired slender bloke of about thirty, stopped prepping the books to stand and shake hands. He would prove to be a capable boss, a staff man who followed the book and kept his distance from the men while remaining approachable.

  I turned to my dog. ‘C’mon, Zulu,’ I said. ‘We’ll say g’day to the babbler.’ It was clear Jack wasn’t a talkative man, yet he welcomed my hand of friendship. We yarned briefly while I watched him busily preparing tea. He disclosed that he hadn’t cooked for shearers for years, but he wanted to get a quid together so he was going to do the full run.

  A little above average height, he was straight-backed and not much more than skin and bone. Slow, methodical movement and a furrowed face gave the impression of a man over sixty, but a full head of grey-streaked, wavy black hair made me guess that he might not be over fifty. Spotting Zulu through the gauze door he said, ‘If you don’t mind I’ll give the dog a few tidbits now and then. I get along well with dogs.’

  ‘He won’t mind, but if he makes a pest of himself let me know and I’ll tie him up.’ Zulu wagged his stumpy tail in agreement, ever hopeful a chop would come his way.

  As the shed got underway it was tacitly agreed Jack was doing a good if not a brilliant job. Inevitably mutton was the staple provider of protein – roasted, boiled, stewed, curried, fried and grilled – accompanied by baked or boiled tinned veggies. At midday dinner this was followed by milk or rice puddings, tarts, jellies or even occasionally homemade ice cream. Eggs, boiled, scrambled, poached, fried and curried were also served with regularity.

  ‘Another egg and I’ll sprout feathers!’ a laughing Bronco cracked, and opined, ‘Happy Jack don’t crack a smile and he don’t laugh – like he’s the Man in the Iron Mask.’ Thereafter the babbler was known as ‘Happy Jack’.

  The full team of twenty-two men – ten shearers, eight rousies, cook, expert, overseer/classer and me – turned out for tea. John Wallace and I greeted each other gladly. We had met the previous year in Richie Sack ’em Jack’s northern run and instantly taken to each other. Wallace was a good-natured, craggy-featured bloke, an inch under six feet, raw-boned, quiet and easygoing. Three years earlier, at the ripe old age of twenty-five, he had taken on the back-breaking task of learning to shear. Now he was getting his ‘average’ and still improving.

  Following breakfast the next morning the team mustered on the hut verandah and elected Yabba shed Union rep and Bronco his committee man. I was appointed second committee man, as this position was by tradition automatically given to the presser. A show of Union tickets was held and the committee checked with the cook to ensure he was satisfied with his set-up, and that the dunnies and the washhouse were in order. A rousie was employed at four bob a man per week to clean the dunnies and washhouse daily and light the coppers for hot showers.

  Yabba, as his appellation implied, felt compelled to give a speech. He pointed out that they had all occasionally felt insulted to arrive at quarters which were dirty, below standard and ‘lousy with mouse shit and redback spiders’. This place, however, was ‘spick and span, and well equipped’. He, and the Union, which had fought hard for better accommodation, expected the members to ‘show respect for owners and workmates by keeping it that way, and leaving it
the same on cut-out day’. We then headed to the big galvanised-iron shearing shed, where a time-honoured traditional scene unfolded under the scrutiny of the boss-of-the-board and the station owner. The team signed individual contracts and hung water-bags and sweat-towels; the shearers loaded their bog-eyes while the rousies busied themselves sweeping up dust and arranging wool-packs. When we were ready to ‘harvest the clip’, Brian rang the bell and ten shearers – all ‘green’ in condition and most short on enthusiasm – tackled 11,000 wethers.

  By afternoon smoko a glaring summer sun had converted the big shed into a giant oven. The mercury in my thermometer climbed to 118 degrees Fahrenheit (nearly forty-eight degrees Celsius) at 1.30pm and hung there till 4.30.

  On the second afternoon two shearers, carrying some flab and short of working condition, went down with nausea and cramp. Even Boomi, his wiry body unsullied by booze and tobacco, felt short of a gallop and restricted himself to 130 a day those first three days. The heatwave carried on. Still shearing well within himself, Boomi shifted up a cog and sat on 160 on the fourth day. There was no one within a cooee of his tally. The shearers, catching and dragging weighty wethers, bending and driving the bog-eye for eight hours, would drink and sweat a couple of gallons of water a day. The old hands, however, were aware of the dangers of heat stroke and cramp so worked rhythmically and regulated their intake of fluid, salt and sugar. Some swore by quinine and calcium tablets.

  The rousies and the classer also streamed sweat and felt the weight of heat oppression, but they weren’t bound to heavy labour and the hot bodies of sheep as the shearers were. For me, six weeks of beer and easy living had loaded a stone of fat on my frame, and though I was taking a pinch of salt with a regular swallow of cold sweet tea, cramps and the dry spews grabbed me. As I was a habitual stirrer, I was now punished for my sins. One of my usual capers – when I was ahead of the wool – was to wander along the board and ‘stir the possum’, as they say. I would pick up a few fleeces and chiack a suffering shearer, saying, ‘Gees, mate, you call yourself a Professional Gentleman of the Long Tube; a Bosca of the Bog-eye! You’re a bloody presser-starver! Me wife and six billy lids [kids] are going hungry ’cause yer can’t undress enough mutton to make an overcoat for Tom Thumb. Avago, mate – ava bloody go! Cripes! I could o’ been sitting beneath the palm trees at the Coolangatta pub freezin’ me fingers around a pot of Fourex, but I come out here to give you blokes a hand – and what do yer do to me? A schoolgirl could keep the wool away for you snaggers.’