I glance over at Wendy seated beside me, she’s got her eyes closed, head resting against the window, having a bit of a kip I hope. She’s lost a fair bit of weight and her jeans don’t fit as snug, the crinkles ‘round her eyes have deepened and there’s a bit of a line starting to pull downwards from either side of her mouth. All these months she’s never complained but I know she’s taken a hiding, there’s been a whole heap of shit she’s never spoke about to anyone, just copped it sweet and said nothing. Being the forward scout in the civilian jungle has taken its toll, that and little Anna.
We’re nearly into town and suddenly I’ve got this heaviness pushing up into my throat, it’s like my heart wants to force its way out or something and then I feel the tears running down me cheeks. Jesus, how I love this little bird! I can hardly see the road for me tears and I hit the air brakes and Wendy jerks awake. ‘What is it, Thommo?’ she asks.
I want to tell her how much I love her, how much she means to me, she and the brat, how without her and the kid my life would be a piece of shit, but I don’t trust myself to say it proper. ‘Griffith’ is all I manage to grunt.
She looks out the side window, ‘Oh look, there’s two helicopters following us,’ she shouts.
The blokes from the regional TV station caught up with us when we stopped for petrol but all we told them was that we were headed for Griffith and then Currawong Creek, just to whet their appetite like, sort of invite them to come along but staying dead casual like it don’t matter to us if they don’t, it’s no big deal. It must have worked because now there’s two media helicopters following us.
‘Channel 7 and Channel 9,’ Wendy shouts. She’s wound down the window and her head is sticking out, the wind sending her blonde hair streaming back, with the sun catching it and the rushing air tearing at her words. I guess the media have got the message all right, another bit of Wendy’s organisational genius falls into place.
In Griffith, except for two sets of traffic lights, we don’t stop. People, hearing the roar of the bikes, are running out of the shops, restaurants and pubs to see what the racket is all about and the helicopters follow us all the way to Currawong Creek, where we finally come to a halt outside Smoky Joe’s Cafe.
The boys disperse on their bikes to hand out leaflets door-to-door. I don’t have to tell you it works a treat, there’s two national TV-station choppers landed on the showground.
The good burghers of Currawong Creek, the lame, the pissed and the sound of mind, to a man and his dog, they’ve all turned up and the queue stretches all the way from the exhibition shed to Willy McGregor’s pub. With the thirsty citizenry and the bikies in town, Willy is doing such a roaring trade that he is reluctantly persuaded to send over a slab of beer for the workers.
Currawong Creek is finally on the map and for once it feels good to be a part of it all. People keep coming up, asking, ‘Have you closed Smoky Joe’s for keeps?’ They seem pleased when we say we’ll be back in a while. One old chook squints up at me, ‘Can’t say you’ve always behaved yerself, Thommo, though you’re not the only one not done that in this town. But you’re one of us, always have been, always will be, welcome home, son.’ That was real nice.
Currawong Creek kind of sets the pattern we learn to use in other places, the Vets from Hell moving their big Harleys from door to door, passing out pamphlets, explaining the cause and inviting people to come on down and have a blood test. Of course there’s the incentive to win the money but most don’t seem to care and say they’d come anyway. Country folk don’t seem to have the hang-ups the city has about Vietnam.
Wendy and me and Shorty and Lawsy are on the box that night on national television. Wendy and Lawsy do most of the talking with her explaining how the Vietnam vets are sick of being pushed around and she tells about what’s happening to our kids, then Anna’s story and the reason for the Anna-mobile and how everyone’s contributed to make it happen and to take responsibility for their own kind and stuff the effing government.
Well, the shit hits the fan big time and the story goes international and is picked up by NBC and CNN, the BBC and the French and German networks. There’s the picture of little Anna in the isolation bubble with no hair from the chemo she’s getting. Her story touches the hearts of people everywhere, particularly the Americans, who’ve got the same Vietnam guilt over the rejection of their vets as we’ve got.
Because Anna has no resistance to infection she has become what the hospital call ’a bubble child’. Which means she is placed in a large sealed and sterile glass enclosure where filtered air is pumped in. The hospital allow the media to photograph her and even for short periods to talk with her. She’s got her mother’s brains and is pretty bright and knows what’s happening and is happy enough to talk to the reporters.
There was one famous occasion when this American female reporter from ‘The Johnny Carson Show’ asked her if she knew what the Anna-mobile was all about.
‘Oh yes,’ she exclaimed, ‘They’re looking for blood to make me better again.’
‘Do you know what type of blood?’ the reporter then asks.
Anna puts her head to one side and thinks for some time. ‘Well, it has to be very red and it’s a secret nobody knows ‘cept the person who’s got it.’
‘And if they find this person, what then?’
Seven-year-old Anna looks at the reporter as though she must be stupid or something. ‘Well, then her and me will share the secret and the person will get a lot of money and be very happy and I’ll come alive again.’ And then she adds the words that ring around the world, ‘But you mustn’t tell the government.’
‘Why mustn’t we?’ the interviewer asks.
‘'Cause they don’t like to help kids whose daddy went to the Vietnam war.’
Anna must have heard Wendy and me talking at some time to have come up with this last bit, because we’d certainly never put it to her like that.
Anyway, this, and the Anna-mobile along with the Harleys and the Vets from Hell, interviews with smalltown people standing patiently in long queues to have a blood test, all makes powerful television.
Wendy and me don’t like exposing Anna to the media but the kid doesn’t seem to mind and tells us she likes the television and people talking to her, though it’s kept to an hour a day. I guess it must be pretty lonely living in a glass case an’ all.
The hospital too is anxious to get the publicity as they are hopelessly underfunded for their leukaemia research and the State government has just cut their research budget in half. Two of their most brilliant young researchers are being forced to go to America to pursue their careers. The brain drain, so common these days, is on again and nobody in government, Federal or State, seems to care. Given the fact that little Anna’s prognosis isn’t real good we can’t really object to the publicity opportunity they see in Anna. After all, they’re doing all they can for our little daughter and the care she’s getting doesn’t come cheap, I guess it’s a matter of you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.
It would be nice to say we were getting somewhere but so far we’ve done several thousand tests on the road without any luck. There’s been nothing even remotely worth sending to Sydney for further analysis, not even a poor match to raise our hopes a little.
The American public goes apeshit about Anna and, of course, the treatment of their own vets and their children is brought up in the hullabaloo. Their veterans are not exactly backwards in coming forward and soon the whole Vietnam catastrophe is back in the news and back on the political agenda.
On the third week after the first exposure Anna receives eight thousand get-well cards from all over the world. The Minister for Health and the Prime Minister make statements, the usual bullshit, but no matter how hard they try to kill it, the story won’t die. The world is looking in on Australia and not liking what they see.
The same is happening in America, we’ve lucked in, they’re in the middle of the Presidential election and both the Republican and Democrat candi
dates make pronouncements, both promise they’ll look into the Agent Orange issue the moment they get to the White House. The President promises he’ll talk to Australia and politicians bring up the issue about Agent Orange in the House of Representatives. This is a festering sore in America’s own backyard and Congress decides it’s time they tackled it once and for all.
Naturally all this takes months and meanwhile we’re out on the road doing blood tests in one small town after another. There is also money being sent from everywhere, particularly from Americans.
During this period a leading Sydney newspaper commissions a survey looking into the poor health of Vietnam veterans and their children in the Sydney area. The preliminary findings of the survey indicate a high incidence of suicide among Vietnam vets, general poor health, psychological disorders and, among their children, a rate of birth defects above the national averages. Though they are only preliminary findings they cannot be easily ignored.
The survey causes a further uproar and again makes the international news and the Americans start to ask the same questions of their own veterans. The Washington Post commissions a project in the District of Columbia with almost identical results.
The story stays alive long after the governments of both countries would have hoped it would die down. Here in Australia the Vietnam Veterans Self-Help Association demands a royal commission. Too many people are asking too many awkward questions and the government is forced to stop back-pedalling and do something constructive.
Meanwhile Shorty and Lawsy have become international spokesmen for our Vietnam vets. Wendy is in a league of her own. American women not only see her as a mother who is fighting for the life of her child, but as a feisty woman and a seeker after justice. She is someone who will fight for her man and all the other warriors who fought in Vietnam and still remain essentially herself. She is huge in America and her face appears on twenty different magazine covers, including Time. She’s invited over to appear on ‘The Johnny Carson Show’ and naturally she won’t leave Anna so they send over a crew to interview her, with Johnny Carson speaking to her on the telephone.
I’m dead worried about her, she’s under a lot of pressure, we both are, but mostly Wendy, and, frankly, I don’t know how she withstands it all. The little blonde is stronger than even I thought she was and that’s saying something.
Okay, enough of that. I’m starting to feel sorry for the Thompsons and that’s just not on. So, accept that when I tell you the whole thing is huge, larger than life, you’ve got to believe me. You may even remember it yourself.
But on the Anna front it’s not the same good news. We keep plugging away day after day in all the little towns and the bigger country centres. Sometimes we stay at the pub, that is if there is one, sometimes we’re invited into people’s homes and sometimes it’s sleeping bags on the side of the road and a cup of coffee brewed for breakfast in the hope that we’ll hit a small town with a cafe for a bit of mid-morning tucker.
Travelling with the Vets from Hell also has its moments, the boys like a drink at the end of the day and with a gutful o’ booze there are the inevitable fights. At first the local cop would be called in by the publican but this didn’t always have the calming effect desired. What’s more, to put thirty bikies in the slammer for the night takes a bit of doing even if there’s more than one cop about. Even though the scrap might be between two blokes with nobody else taking much notice, the moment the fuzz arrive it’s one in all in, the boys in blue have to arrest everyone or nobody and that’s got its complications. There’s not too many country lock-ups can take a big mob, mostly they’re designed to accommodate half a dozen or so Abos drunk and disorderly of a Saturday night. What’s more there’s not too much enthusiasm for the task when it’s all said and done.
Shorty and me soon learn that it’s back to Vietnam with these buggers, they’ll accept discipline from their own but not from outside. First thing we do when we come into a new town is visit the local constabulary and explain the situation and do the same to the local publican. Any fuss in the pub or anywhere else they’re to call Shorty, Bongface or me. Generally speaking it works out okay but occasionally I cop a slap or two I don’t care for and am obliged to settle the matter on the spot. I’m a big bugger and they soon learn I can give as good as I get and Bongface can give a lot better. On the other hand Shorty is still the sergeant and even a drunken bikie knows better than to molest him.
What we can never really get over is the kindness country folk show towards us, the biggest hearts are in the dusty little towns that don’t seem to have a good reason for being where they are. I guess I should expect it, Currawong Creek ain’t exactly a metropolis and there’s a residue of kindness there I know I, for one, don’t rightly deserve.
We’d come into some fleabag town on the Sturt Highway, the temperature in the mid-thirties, and the people would come out and line up and joke about themselves, how they’re nobody from nowhere, and tell you about a kid from the town who went to Vietnam and how they’re dead proud of him. Sooner or later he’d turn up, a vet wanting to talk to his own kind and it wouldn’t be hard to tell that he was doing it rough like so many of us, hitting the booze or the pills or just being a loner. The town never put shit on him. Like the old bird in Currawong Creek said about me, he was one o’ them for better or worse and he’d done his bit. Vietnam was never something to be ashamed about in the boonies. I guess a one-horse country town is no place for a weekend hippy or a protest march. Country folk know what kind of damage a war can do to a son or a father or even a grandfather, country women have been copping the effects of war on their men for three generations, from Gallipoli to Vietnam. It’s not like the city, in the country everyone knows your business and when things get bad and the broken parts in your soul start to play havoc with your head and your heart, you can’t hide the trauma in a suburban backyard shed.
Another thing that opened our eyes a fair bit in the bush was the way the Aboriginals hung out on the outskirts of the town, not really a part of it but the town dependent on their booze money and the shops selling them their tucker. Bongface once said to me, ‘Thommo, they hate us, but they need us real bad, ‘cause if we’re not getting pissed and our gins are not there to show them what happens to a sheila when grog gets a hold of her, they’d have to look at themselves a whole lot closer.’
I guess it’s easy enough to see virtue in country people, thinking they’ve got things in their hearts that city folk have lost, but there’s a lot happening in the bush that’s not good, attitudes and that which you wouldn’t want to teach to your kids. It’s not all sweetness and light by a long shot.
When we get into a town Bongface makes a point of rounding up all the Aboriginal kids and putting on the gloves and having a bit of a spar with the older ones. Then letting them put the gloves on and have a bit of a go at each other, meanwhile coaching them and at the same time laughing a lot and talking to them about being proud to be black. He then brings them into the Anna-mobile for a check-up. Most have something that needs to be done, boils to be lanced and treated, problems with their ears, partial deafness being a big thing with black kids. They’re written up and their card sent to the local health officer so they can receive further treatment.
After the black kids come the adults, lining up, wanting to have a blood test because of Bongface. On more than one occasion this causes a bit of a ruckus among the white folk because there is this notion, not always without reason, that there’s a lot of VD about among the blacks. How they think they’re gunna catch it from standing next to an Aboriginal in a queue Christ only knows. Besides, it’s not all that uncommon to find the same in a white bloke.
Generally speaking we’re doing a fair bit of good. The Anna-mobile is doing a great job flushing out the Vietnam vets and their wives and kids. Mike McGraw is joined by two more doctors who served in Vietnam and, in most towns, the local doctor is grateful for the help and happy to cooperate with us. We’re building a case to take to the govern
ment that can’t be denied.
All this is well and good and a bloke feels a part of something half decent, the international media hasn’t given up on us and most days we’re good for a story, though not all of them are positive. They soon cotton on to the disparity between blacks and whites in the country towns and there’s more than one story went out that wasn’t going to do us any good nor is told with a totally fair perspective.
Racism is one of those things that brings out what Lawsy calls ‘the vicarious instinct’ in reporters which sort of means they try to find the ugly and the unusual and make it seem like it happens every day. Still there’s a fair bit going on that’s far from an exaggeration and we can only hope that things between black and white get a bit better in Australia and particularly in the bush.
After all, they’re a part of us and we of them, no point carrying on like white is right and black is not, that’s all bullshit anyway and don’t do no good. There’s as many white drunks in town as black, only the white blokes are better at hiding it, goin’ home and beating up the missus in private instead of in public outside the pub like the black guy. Anyone with half a mind knows what’s really going on.
Anna’s time is running out. She’s in remission but, with no T-cells to fight infection, the odds are that it’ll be sooner rather than later that, even in the bubble, she’ll catch something that will take her away from us. Even if she doesn’t the doctors say that in the end the leukaemia will get her. Sometimes when we’re camping out and I’m lying on the side of the road looking up at the stars I can’t help thinking that the Big Boss up there doesn’t give a shit.
Wendy now only leaves Anna’s side to take part in media conferences, all of which take place in the hospital so that she’s never far from our daughter. Like I said, I’m with the rig but whenever possible I go down to Sydney on the weekends. With Smoky Joe’s closed for the duration, Lawsy fixed it so that the Vietnam Vets Self-Help Association, which is now a registered charity, supports us. The hundreds of thousands of dollars that have been sent to Anna from all over the world have gone into the charity and Lawsy says, if we’d wanted to, we could have kept it all ourselves, so it’s only fair. Though we’re forced to accept it, Wendy and me don’t like it one bit. No bastard wants to appear to be bludging. But, the truth be known, there’s bugger all we can do, there’s nothing in the bank and Wendy doesn’t want me to sell Smoky Joe’s. Not that a country cafe in a one-horse town would fetch much anyway.
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