by Paul Carter
Back in Vung Tau after the job the crew amused themselves with a shocking TV show that can best be described as ‘Cambodian Idol’, featuring poor lonely people with no legs singing on stage—all the contestants had some kind of prosthetic appendage. Erwin and I opted to go and visit the Cu Chi Tunnels, 70 miles north in the Tay Ninh Province. There is a visitor centre there where you can see, according to the Vietnamese information posters, why America failed to bring US-style democracy to Vietnam. For five dollars you get a guided tour of the famous tunnels, a subterranean maze of Vietcong guerrilla caves, and for a dollar a round you can shoot a surplus Soviet-made AK-47 or an old M-16 at a paper water buffalo. If you’re a good shot you win a Vietcong hat.
At least some money is coming into the country by turning the remains of war into a tourist attraction. More than half of Vietnam’s current population was born after 1975 so there is little interest in the conflict from locals. We had beers in a bar called ‘Apocalypse Now’. Erwin told me how he got a role as an extra when Michael Cimino shot The Deer Hunter in 1978; later at home I got the digitally remastered DVD and sure enough there was Erwin. We kicked on to a few more bars, having a good time, until a group of drunk American businessmen called us ‘oil trash’ and shoved Erwin. We were not dressed like oil trash, we didn’t draw attention to ourselves, or look for trouble. He ignored them until an olive bounced off his head. I had never seen Erwin really go off before: he waded through them like a Jedi master, and we got arrested.
The Vietnamese police are not to be fucked with. They cuffed us both and took us to the station, where we sat and waited, cuffed again to a huge old wooden bench. Metal loops jutted out of the middle, creating an armrest as well as a solid place to attach the handcuffs. Both your wrists were cuffed with the metal loop running through the chain, so you had to sit with your hands to one side. An hour later the bench was almost full. I had a small local guy sitting next to me on the right, Erwin was next to him, and he was next to a prostitute and two very quiet Europeans. The only vacant seat was on my left. Three police officers crashed through the metal doors, struggling to subdue a massive American. He looked like a biker, with a long greying beard, shaved head and tattoos up and down both of his massive arms. He roared obscenities at the police, who flayed about at the end of his hulk, until finally he got tired and they cuffed him to the seat next to me, but only by one hand.
I tried hard not to make eye contact or even a sound but after a moment the biker grabbed my shoulder in his paw and twisted me around. ‘DID YOU FUCK MY WIFE?’ he spat out through brown teeth, veins bulging on his melon head.
‘No . . . no I didn’t.’
He let me go, leaned forwards and looked down the bench. ‘DID ANY OF YOU MOTHERFUCKERS FUCK MY WIFE?’
Everyone froze. Then Erwin leaned forwards, looked him in the eyes and said,‘What does she look like?’
The biker was on top of me in a second, trying to get to Erwin with his free arm. The whole bench came down, and soon the police who brought the biker came in.
‘He started it,’ I said and nodded towards the biker thrashing about at the end. So they stun-gunned him until he pissed his pants, unconscious.
My flight back to Sydney was just as smooth as the trip in, unusual for me. Pia was going to visit relatives in rural New South Wales and invited me to go with her. We spent two weeks on a fantastic farm located in a picturesque valley; they had motorbikes I could take off on, and rifles to shoot tin cans with. Pia spent the days painting and in the evenings we would go for long walks.
One day a bull arrived in a big truck. He was a prize bull and everyone hoped he would father lots more. After a few days, however, it became apparent that the prize bull was gay, opting to ignore all the best looking cows and bash down a fence made of telegraph poles to try and hump another bull, who ran away, seeking refuge in the paddock where the farmhouse was located. We woke early the next morning, the whole house rocking from side to side. Not another fucking earthquake! I jumped out of bed and ran out the front, grabbing a banana on the way so I could have breakfast and watch the house bounce. Standing on the front porch was the ‘straight’ bull; he was having a scratch against the wall and moving the whole building. He really was a big animal.
‘Where’s your boyfriend?’ I said in his ear. He wandered off unimpressed.
MY PHONE RANG IN the car on the way back to Sydney. There was a job in Papua New Guinea on a land rig in the highlands and my flight departed the following morning. Again it was a cakewalk. I’m on a roll, I thought. But not for long.
The rig was right up in the mountains, deep in the jungle. Locals wandered up every day in grass skirts, carrying muskets, their faces painted. Now and again they would take a pot shot at the rig. The location was still being set up, the area having been cleared using high explosives, otherwise known as ‘instant wood chipping’. In every ancient tree, wise and proud, were generations of evolution buried deep, which is vaporised ’cause it’s fast and cheap. Even though they plant another tree, somewhere else, to make up for the one they destroyed, I feel a twinge of guilt, because essentially I’m a cat-loving pacifist who ought to care deeply about the environment. On the other hand, I represent people who would squeeze schoolchildren to death if they thought some oil would come out.
To summarise my political opinions about oil, greed and the environment, both then and now:
• I firmly believe that when politicians aren’t kissing babies they’re stealing their lollipops.
• There is no oil in schoolchildren.
• Everyone in oil is a lying weasel . . . except me.
Lots of guys in the oil industry have bucked against the system until the system has hardened them into balls of frustration and that’s all they’ve got left. The environmentalists and the oil companies each have their propaganda machines vilifying each other, but inevitably most of the time we fall back reassured that the entire planet is nothing but two feet of top soil surrounding a huge ball of oil. In PNG you can exploit the locals; you can do whatever the hell you want with government backing and your own armed security. Sometimes the oil companies do go into overkill . . . fear of the locals overwhelming the rig has the security personnel asking if they can mine the perimeter, and after compromising decide instead to use two hundred bear traps from Canada. (At the time I wondered if they got the traps from the same company that supplies the clubs for bashing baby seals.) But mostly, we do need the heavy security, as proven not so long ago in Banda Aceh, at the top of Sumatra’s long finger, where the local people tore a rig to pieces.
The first time an attack happened I thought, all these guys with guns is a bit much isn’t it? Like using mercenaries to discipline naughty schoolchildren or hiring Jamie Oliver to help Pol Pot eat people in Cambodia. But I was thankful for their presence on more than one occasion. Most prevalent in my mind is a drill floor in Columbia. At the time Bill Clinton was ‘fighting the drug war’ but using the DEA choppers to ferry men and equipment to and from the rig. So apart from getting its dope from Columbia, America gets quite a bit of oil there as well.
The rig was a bit close to the other major cash crop in the region. As a result some unlucky third-generation farmer got his straw-thatch hut, goat, wife and crop napalmed. Naturally he’s angry and finds the rig, levels his weapon at it and has a go. The alarm went off; a horn and light flash which meant run fast into a safe room, lock the door and wait for the security staff to give you the all-clear. Just before the alarm sounded a thirty-foot mushroom cloud exploded in the jungle near the rig. It turned out another murderous farmer/local gunman had fired a Rocket-Propelled Grenade at the rig and missed, the RPG passing directly between the cross members of the derrick. The security staff took a back bearing and hunted the man down. He was in two body bags in the cool room within the hour. I asked why two bags and was told that they had used hot loaded strung buckshot. This is a solid projectile that’s been cut in two, hollowed out in the centre, with six inches of wire coiled insid
e and the two heavy ends spinning around the wire. It cut trees down; from the top of the rig you could see a cleared tube through the jungle.
On the highlands rig we managed to avoid life-threatening locals, same politics, though, but this time PNG got the last laugh. We had just finished powering up our tools and checking everything when one of the rouseabouts came up carrying a case of bottled water. We all grabbed one each and guzzled it down. Anywhere in this part of the world it’s second nature to be wary of the drinking water: I have even been caught out with bottled water when I put ice in it and fell sick because of the ice.
After only half an hour or so I felt ill. One by one the crew began to disappear, doing that hurried clenched run of a man about to have a rapid bowel movement. My turn came, I took off across the deck, there was no warning, everyone was in the toilet blaming the bottled water. I went to the medic who examined the case of water still sitting out on the deck. He realised what none of us did, the bottles had been filled with God-knows-what and re-sealed. Small beads of superglue had been applied to the ringseal that attaches to the cap, so we got the loud crack as we unscrewed the caps, giving us the okay to gulp down a litre each.
The medic looked worried. He explained that the necessary medication to deal with this was not on the rig yet so he was going to get some immediately from the supply base in Port Moresby by chopper. He was still on the phone organising this when our condition progressed from regular diarrhoea to red hot violent uncontrollable I-can’t-leave-the-toilet diarrhoea.
The medic ditched Plan A and organised an emergency chopper to get us to a hospital, as he feared we had all contracted dysentery. In a situation like this you’re given the choice of going to a local hospital and having the wrong procedure performed by someone who can’t speak English, or flying to the nearest Western hospital, first class if necessary, and having your bits sewn back on or whatever you need, assured in the knowledge that you probably won’t die. I chose the get-out-of-PNG option, thinking stupidly that I could clench all the way to Singapore. Three of the others chose possible death by bowel movement in a local hospital.
We boarded the chopper with our IV drips inserted and towels shoved down the backs of our coveralls. Transferring directly to the first flight to Singapore, I was in business class next to a large happy-faced German man whose expression dissolved into horror when he saw the IV. We took off . . . so far so good. But about halfway through the take-off climb my backside let go. I yelped in complete terror—I’d just lost my arse on a commercial airliner . . . oh my God.
Two scalding squirts of piping-hot poo shot down both trouser legs. I feverishly pulled at my seatbelt and, grabbing the IV in my fist, hurtled down the fuselage towards the virtual heaven of a business-class toilet. The flight attendant looked sympathetic as I shot past and thankful, I’m sure, that my trousers were tucked into my boots. Slamming the door I spun around, gripped the IV bag in my teeth, pulled down my coveralls, disconnecting the IV bag from the needle, and sat down just in time for round two of the most embarrassing experience of my entire life.
I think that over the next hour I must have shat my own bodyweight, and then the projectile vomiting started. I don’t know if you’ve ever been violently sick in an aircraft basin, but in case you haven’t, don’t, because it flies straight back out and all over you.
By this time I didn’t know if I should sit or stand, eventually opting for the more comfortable vomit-on-your-own-genitals-position. I refused to come out, naturally, no matter how much my colleagues begged. ‘Piss off, find your own.’ They had to tag-team it, using the other toilet opposite me all the way.
When we did finally get to Singapore, the aircraft pulled up short of the terminal, a staircase on wheels arrived at the back door and an ambulance was standing-by. We debussed to the appalled looks of our fellow passengers, a few children screamed at me as I made my way down to the back as if walking on hot coals. Inside the ambulance were wheelchairs fixed to the floor with little curtains around them and potties underneath. Everyone hurried to a chair and, not bothering with the curtains, we made a horrid chorus as the driver hurried, windows down, to Changi Hospital.
An Indian doctor was waiting wearing his turban and pleasant bedside manner. We wheeled into his waiting room.
‘Gentlemen, I’ll be needing a stool sample from each of you please.’
‘There’s some on my foot,’ said Jack.
‘There’s some of yours on my foot too,’ I said.
The poor doctor slid the potties out from under our chairs while we sat there, occasionally twitching, one by one going off to get cleaned up. The good doctor was bent over a microscope, then he sat back in his chair, spoke into a nurse’s ear and turned to talk to us.
‘We know what kind of parasite you have all ingested, so now we can administer the right medication.’
‘Can I have a look?’ I asked. I wanted to see what had done this to me. The boys curled upper lips and scowled at me as I wheeled over and craned my neck over the microscope. Swimming about in a frenzy were lots of tiny monsters looking like an underwater scene from Jurassic Park.
‘Oh my God.’ I felt like a victim in an alien movie.
‘Yes . . . that is in your bowel,’ he said, the calm way a doctor does.
‘Give me the fuckin’ shot.’
The upside of having had Amoebic Dysentery, apart from not dehydrating to death on an airliner, is that I haven’t had to run to a toilet in years as the body builds up an immunity to parasites. The downside was, for months afterwards, I would be at a party or just standing around in the workshop, and when someone cracked a joke, everyone else burst out laughing, but I was sprinting to the toilet to check.
And I was scared to fart for a year.
There was a directional driller who I regularly ran into, a New Zealander by the name of Maurice. A good-looking man in his early forties, Maurice was very good at his job and very good at getting in all kinds of shit when he wasn’t drilling. He was well respected by everyone, even when he got loaded and wild at company functions. Maurice needed a warning posted on his forehead, or explicit instructions for party holders to lock up their wives and daughters and organise a team of men with restraints to capture him in case he kicked off, as Maurice had no concept of fear, or of consequences.
Maurice told me about his farm in New Zealand and his dogs that he hunted wild pigs with. The best of the pig dogs were Chaos and Razor and from what I heard they, like their master, knew no fear. Maurice pulled a tattered photo from his wallet one day and showed them to me. I didn’t know what to say. Chaos looked like a Staffy crossed with a rhino, and Razor was basically just a monster. Apparently, Razor, in his youth, got hold of a massive pig in the mountains; the pig mauled him so badly he lost most of his jaw. Had he belonged to anyone else Razor probably wouldn’t have made it out of the woods that day, but Maurice being Maurice carried the big dog home and drove him straight to the vet. The vet recommended Razor be put down, as without teeth he was unable to survive. Maurice, however, wasn’t ready to give up and so had a dentist make, from scratch, a full set of surgical-steel teeth to be placed in the dog’s reconstructed jaw. While Razor was waiting for his new teeth, Maurice had to puree all his food and handfeed him, but the dog sank into a deep depression, kicked to the bottom of the pack in the farm’s canine hierarchy; he was inconsolable. Until he got his new teeth. The result, much to Razor’s delight, was terrifying. And he knew it. You could tell by the way the dog was grinning. He looked like he had a mouth full of chrome crab claws. Razor immediately ascended to the top of the food chain. These days, the wild pigs do a big double-take and run away.
CHRISTMAS WAS ONLY A few weeks away, and my heart was broken. Pia ended it for a reason I had to accept, the oldest one in the book of failed oilfield relationships: I was away too much. I was completely intoxicated with Pia, the sun rose and set with her. When she left I was crushed. I moped around the house for weeks and weeks. The phone and doorbell would ring, I neve
r answered it. Eventually the money started to run low, so I reached out looking for a gig but there was nothing going on.
Walking through town one Saturday night I ran into a friend, and he asked where Pia was, but for some reason, I couldn’t say the words. I just said she was doing her own thing. He offered to buy me a drink so we wandered into a seedy-looking first-floor bar in Kings Cross called Barons. Hearing his news distracted me and I started to relax and enjoy myself. We had a few more drinks and talked about grabbing some dinner when someone dropped a coin into the jukebox and set off all my triggers at once. It was our song. I felt suddenly empty, as though I had just given too much blood.
He was recalling a skiing holiday in Aspen but I was hunched over my beer, unable to stop myself from crying.
He stopped talking. ‘What’s wrong Pauli?’ he leaned in; the bar was getting crowded and noisy.
‘I love Pia,’ I said, speaking into my glass, too embarrassed to look him in the eye.
‘I love beer too, Mate, but I’m not going to cry about it.’
Christmas was only days away when I was approached with an offer to work in Nigeria for six months. I had heard so many bad reports about West Africa over the years that my immediate reaction was ‘No thank you’, but with a depressing Christmas looming and the lack of work in Asia, not to mention my state of mind, I phoned back.
I contacted everyone I knew who had worked in Nigeria and developed a morbid curiosity about the place. Once my gear was packed I was eager to go, and get away from Sydney before Christmas found me bah-humbugging my way through a bottle of scotch. The company emailed asking if I could stop over in Paris to discuss some ‘logistical issues’. This was unusual, but I agreed as Mum and John were only a short train ride from Montparnasse Station and I could stay with them for a night.