Don't Tell Mum I Work on the Rigs

by Paul Carter

  I tried to get to Craig, but the kangaroo’s tail was too strong and likely to thrash me into the broken windscreen. I couldn’t see Craig, only angry kangaroo. So I went for the shotgun in the Hilux, but could only find one rat-shot shell in the glove box.

  My hands were shaking so much I was worried I’d hit Craig so I jammed the end of the barrel up to the roo’s head and shot it point blank. But it was much heavier than me; I couldn’t move it. Craig’s feet were now visible so I sat on the road, one foot either side of the windscreen. With sweat stinging my eyes, the roo’s blood tasting sweet in my mouth, one of Craig’s feet under each of my armpits, and using my legs for leverage, I pulled him through the windscreen and out from under the dead roo. He popped out onto the road, on his back; I had cut him on small bits of glass left in the windscreen frame. Scrambling up, I saw Craig’s face and it filled me with horror, my mouth filled with vomit. The bolts that were around his mouth had caught in the kangaroo’s hide and were now in the middle of his face, with big chunks of bloody fur stuck to them. Once again he was unrecognisable.

  There was a pulse, however, and he was alive so once more I strapped him in and drove back to town. The same doctor who had waved us goodbye was still on duty. He looked whiter than his coat when I came tearing into the hospital’s main entrance covered in blood. Another six weeks later, Craig took the bus back. His good looks were gone but in his ever-positive style, life took on a new precious zest, even when he catches people staring. He just wasn’t supposed to die young.

  I SPENT A LITTLE more than a year working in Western Australia’s goldfields when a friend of John’s rang me out of the blue and offered me a job. The oilfields were booming then, with jobs available just about everywhere. I hopped from one company to another, working mostly in Asia. My twenties went by so fast I got whiplash.

  In that first year working offshore my initial attempts at fitting in were fumbled. Then I got lucky and found myself standing on the drill floor with Erwin Herczeg. Erwin had done it all; run every kind of pipe, on every kind of rig, on three continents, in more than a dozen countries. His reputation was impressive to say the least, but he never bragged about it nor belittled anyone with ‘been there done that’. As luck would have it, he took me under his wing and I learnt from the master. Erwin imparted his knowledge in a steady, patient way and I retained just enough to keep my limbs intact and my sanity preserved. I looked forward to any job that he was on, and I took every opportunity to work with him.

  While my working life was on track, my social life became bizarre. When I got off a rig, I’d stand in front of the big board at Changi International Airport in Singapore and choose a flight to wherever. I had money burning a hole in my pocket and no financial sense, so I’d take off and fuck around in Tunisia for a month, returning broke to a rig with only some obscene Polaroids and one too many drunken stories.

  After a couple of years rig-hopping around South-East Asia with different crews, I landed a job on Erwin’s crew, based at Brunei. By now I had gained more experience and I really wanted to work with Erwin, but before I started in Brunei I took a break at home. Mum and John had some news. After nine years in Australia, they were being transferred to Songkhla, Thailand.

  I dropped my mother at the airport, and Perth became a lonely place. That night I went into a new bar where a friend was working, ordered a beer and pondered. Miles away in my head, I thought about tracking down my father, perhaps spending some time with him because we hardly knew each other, I decided to make some calls the next day. Then I noticed a young woman behind the bar. She was fit looking, about five four, with short cropped black hair, bright red lipstick and a black T-shirt. I could tell straightaway that she was no ordinary woman. She had more attitude than most of the rig crews put together. I asked my friend who she was. Ruby turned her head and I called her over. She had a great walk, purposeful, feminine. I was riveted. Somehow she managed to suggest all at once a mix of sexuality, combustible rage and poetic sensitivity. ‘Hey,’ she said and smiled, then someone else called her, but walking away she looked back just long enough to give me a ‘Hey you . . . kiss my arse’ kind of look.

  I felt like I’d been shot in the heart. Unfortunately I was due to leave Perth in a few days so I promised myself I would get to know Ruby when I came back.

  Brunei is a small sovereign state on the island of Borneo, located pretty much in the middle of the South China Sea. It’s a beautiful place, free of most of the problems that corrupt other South-East Asian countries. The locals on the crew were hospitable beyond belief, hard working and cooperative without the ego-driven hardline attitude of the Western crews I was used to.

  The staff house in Brunei was located in a small village on the coast. I shared with Drew, the base manager, who was a pleasure to live with, and our home life was clean, comfortable and quiet.

  One day our neighbours came back from a trip into the jungle to visit relatives who still lived in an old-style ‘long house’. They had a baby makak monkey with them. Someone had killed his mother with a blow gun and on retrieving the body discovered the infant still clinging to her. He looked pathetic, sitting in a bird cage on their front porch, just skin and bone and so small you could sit him in your hand. When Erwin, who regularly came through and stayed at the house, saw the monkey he took pity on the little creature, and before long the monkey was ours, acquired in exchange for some company caps and T-shirts.

  We named him Joe and he quickly became a very cool pet. By the time he was fully grown, he stood at about one-foot tall, with brown eyes and dark grey hair. For all intents and purposes he thought he was one of us. After his first year he developed a taste for beer, speed-metal music and headbutting the bathroom mirror. Unfortunately Joe also enjoyed the odd cigarette. This wasn’t a worry at first, but then he started turning into a pack-a-day monkey, and, because he couldn’t figure out how to light up, he would steal your lit cigarette, perch on top of a cupboard, coughing and smoking, and then discard the butt rather carelessly. We soon became very concerned about him burning down the house, especially if he’d had a few beers.

  Joe only became a problem when he hit monkey puberty and started masturbating ten times a day. You’d be watching TV, glance over and there he was, on the couch, feverishly batting off through clenched teeth and a menagerie of high-speed facial expressions. He spent most of that time outdoors for obvious reasons. That pissed him off, so he took it out on the postman, and anyone else he didn’t know who came to the house. At one point Joe got pretty bad, everything from verbal abuse up to, and including, throwing shit.

  It was during Joe’s puberty that the Shell drilling manager decided to drop by unannounced; he had never been to the staff house before and took us completely by surprise. A charming character, always keen to have a chat over a beer with anyone from a roughneck to the company owner, the drilling manager was one of those rare people with lots of power who knew how to handle it properly. On this day his wife came along too. She was typically Dutch, tall, blonde and stunning.

  Brunei is a fairly strict Muslim country. Any women you see are always wearing a traditional ‘baju kurung’, and are totally covered up, exposing only their faces. I had been there for over a year, Drew three years, and Erwin had been in and out longer than anyone. We hadn’t seen the female form in some time. Neither had Joe; in fact he had never seen a woman wearing Western clothing.

  We’d been standing at the bar chatting for a while when Joe came in. He jumped up on the bar and stood level with Mrs Drilling Manager’s breasts, his eyes like saucers, mouth open, staring from my chest to hers and then back to mine. In one lightning move he grabbed her right boob, just as she finished saying ‘Ooh what a lovely monkey, what’s his name?’ Then she was screaming. Her wineglass shattered on the floor as Joe deftly made his way up her arm onto her shoulder while she pirouetted around waving her arms as if she was being attacked by an invisible swarm of bees.

  Sufficiently aroused, Joe leapt onto the ceiling
fan and, doing about ten revolutions per minute, commenced masturbating. While Mrs Drilling Manager was readjusting her bra and regaining her composure, we tried everything to get him down—all kinds of tempting treats, Cuban cigars, my best single malt, the only copy of Juggs in circulation in the country. But the little bastard was on a mission. So we did the only thing left to do . . . we turned up the fan.

  This particular fan was huge; it looked like someone had bolted a B-52 propeller to the ceiling. No-one had ever set it higher than five on the dial, which was enough to pin three grown men to the floor, their cheeks rippling like skydivers. It turned into a test of Joe’s determination: he was a tiny masturbating astronaut in a centrifuge, we hit ten on the dial, furniture began rattling across the floor . . .

  ‘Go for it little man,’ cried Drew. Joe was a blur of teeth and fur.

  Finally he flew off, slamming into the far wall, unharmed but dizzy. I watched him really enjoy a smoke. The drilling manager was folded up laughing on the couch, his wife next to him with the molestor’s little hand prints all over her top.

  Joe’s apposing thumbs allowed him to do a lot more than just fiddle with himself. He would regularly stand in front of the stereo, twisting dials and prodding buttons, and every now and again music would blast out sending him wild. He would run off to look for his stick, come back and bash the stereo until the music stopped. Usually the music only stopped because we used the remote to turn off the stereo, but it was still a victory to Joe.

  It took me six months to teach him to pee in the toilet and not hit the rim. This was finally done by getting him to stand on the front rim, facing the upright seat and leaning forwards so his hands rested on the cistern, thereby achieving the right angle, much like a human male does when trying to pee with an erection.

  Joe and I had one of our greatest battles in the toilet. I had returned home from a job offshore to an empty house; Drew was on annual leave, Erwin was off shore. Joe had been home alone, though we had installed a dog door for him to come and go, and three days a week a lady from the village came to clean the house and feed him.

  I was tired and filthy when I walked in. I dumped my bag in the laundry, stripped off and threw all my clothes in the washing machine, and proceeded naked straight to the bathroom. In a slow exhausted trance I closed the door, took a shower, shaved and then sat on the toilet and was thumbing through Sports Illustrated when Joe burst into the house through his dog door. He knew I was home and ran from room to room looking for me. I called out and in the inch gap between the tiled floor and the bottom of the door I could see his little feet standing on the other side. Joe put his head against the floor and stretched out one hand under the door. I dangled some toilet paper just beyond his reach and he tried to grab it. But our little game didn’t last long.

  Joe jumped up onto the door handle. The bathroom door was, I think, someone’s front door at one time and had a big old-style lock and key made of heavy brass. Before I realised what was happening, Joe had turned the key and locked me in.

  I had that same awful feeling you get when you’re about to board a plane and remember you left the iron on. Joe started bashing the key against the door and chattering excitedly to himself. Realising how much trouble I was in I jumped over to the gap at the bottom of the door and tried to coax him into giving me the key. But he wouldn’t.

  The door was made of solid timber and opened towards the inside, so I had no chance of breaking it down. There was no window, and no-one was due to come to the house for another two days. I pulled the shower curtain off the rail and slid it under the door, hoping Joe would get tired of bashing the key against it and drop it on the curtain, then I could pull the curtain back and get the key. But no, he wandered off and left me sitting on the bathroom floor.

  I visualised spending the next forty-eight hours there, crying myself to sleep in the bathtub wrapped in a towel. I could hear the guys saying, ‘Grown man gets locked in the toilet for two days by a monkey, what an idiot.’ I plotted revenge:‘I’m going to skin that little bastard and turn him into a toilet seat cover when I get out of here.’

  After three hours of failed attempts at escape that included taking the heavy porcelain cover off the toilet cistern and bashing it against the door, and pulling a steel downpipe off the ceiling so I could start tunnelling—through the roof if necessary!—I finally figured it out. I straightened a metal shower-curtain ring and used it to knock out the pins in the door hinges. It took ages but eventually I got the pins out, removed the door and staggered into the hall.

  Joe was sitting on the couch with the key next to him. He waited just long enough for me to see him then bolted outside, giving me a week to cool off before returning home, where the bathroom key was now nailed to the door.

  Later that year the village started preparing for the annual ‘Hari Raya’ celebrations, but because it fell on the same day as the Chinese New Year, something that happens only every fifteen years, the party atmosphere was intensified. I decided to go over the border into Malaysia and get some beer, returning with enough alcoholic supplies to keep Erwin and myself amused for the evening, and a big box of firecrackers.

  We sat on the porch, got drunk and lit the firecrackers which went off with a hell of a bang. I decided to blow up a coconut. The whole area around our house was littered with coconuts which fell from the palm trees, and I found that the older ones were perfect because the gap at the top where they had grown on the tree was big enough to push a firecracker inside. The resulting explosion was massive. I would light the fuse with a cigarette and bowl them down the dirt road where they vaporised in huge balls of white shrapnel—great fun.

  Joe had been locked in the house but somehow got out. Just as I let go of a lit coconut, he passed me, running after it down the road. He thought it was a game. I took off after him and the bouncing coconut, but didn’t close the gap in time. Joe jumped on it just as it went off—BANG—he flew off into the jungle. I screamed. We found him straightaway, but his fur was scorched, his body totally limp. I pressed him against my ear, listening for a pulse. He was gone.

  I was devastated. I had stupidly blown up my monkey with a coconut, and we’re supposed to be more advanced than they are? Have you ever tried explaining yourself to one of them?

  The next day I buried him with his favourite toy, a can of his preferred beer, a pack of cigarettes and the bathroom key.

  To get my mind off Joe’s demise I was sent on a HUET (Helicopter Underwater Escape Training) course. Every two years all personnel who work on offshore installations have to go through HUET. It’s a two-day intensive course in how to crash. Supposing you survive the impact, and let’s face it, auto rotation aside, lift versus drag and rotation is all good until the rotors stop turning. If that happens a helicopter will drop like an anvil with a tractor tied to it, HUET is designed to imprint the correct egress method to save your life. It’s also fun, and all done in a fantastic simulated environment.

  There’s a scale copy of a helicopter hanging over a giant pool, with wave machines, smoke machines, powerful fans, fake debris, everything you need for a good crash. The crew is strapped into the chopper with four-point harnesses, wearing inflatable life jackets equipped with lights, whistles, compressed air canisters, and of course your EPLT (Emergency Personal Locator Transmitter). If you’re working in an area where the water temperature is cold, then as well as all the gear you have to wear a survival suit. That’s basically a really thick, all-body condom that reeks of sweat and rubber.

  The EPLT is a wonderful device, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, that transmits your position, accurate to within ten square metres on the global emergency frequency. So, should you find yourself bobbing about alone in the middle of the North Atlantic whistling ‘I am Sailing’ to torchlight, one of the most important bits of kit is your EPLT. I wish I had one for my car keys sometimes! Some years ago, an offshore worker finished a contract drilling job and stole his EPLT, taking it back to the United States as a kee
psake. A few months later his son found it and activated it, and within the hour he had choppers and police cars swarming on his suburban home.

  The compressed air canister, or spare air, is vital too. It gives you time to make your escape from the crashed chopper. Many helicopters are capable of making an emergency landing on water, like the Sikorsky SN series which has an underside that looks just like a boat, and most can inflate big pontoons to float and stabilise the aircraft in the water. However, helicopter engines are on their rooves, and depending on the sea conditions and how badly they crashed, they can overturn easily. And if that happens they sink, rather like an anvil with a tractor tied to it. I know of only three occasions where everyone got out unharmed from a submerged inverted helicopter that was ditched at sea.

  HUET is designed so you can practise escaping from a rapidly submerging upside-down fuselage. They simulate all this very well: first the pilot calls ‘BRACE’ and you adopt the brace position, then you wait for the impact with the water, take a big deep breath as the fuselage fills up with water fast, stay still as it rolls over, and hey presto you’re sitting there strapped in upside-down.

  If you’re next to a window, you pull out the rubber lining from the frame around the perspex window and punch it out with your elbow, then release your four-point harness, climb out the window, being careful not to snag your 200-pound beer gut on the edge, pull the cord on the life jacket, and float leisurely to the surface of the pool. If you are unable to hold your breath any longer, then by all means use the spare air canister. If your life jacket fails to inflate, then just follow your bubbles to the surface. You have to do it three times from different seats in the aircraft, so you get used to opening combinations of different hatches, doors and windows. Oh and all this can happen in the dark.