How I Became the Mr. Big of People Smuggling

by Martin Chambers

  Spanner would often get me to help him salvage stuff from the gene pool. I discovered that all of the roadworthy vans were called Betsy and in Spanner’s mind this was because by now, after years of transplant surgery, they were all of the same genetic makeup. The original Betsy was a Toyota Commuter bus at the centre of the heap; virtually nothing on it was transferable to the smaller campervans. When I pointed this out to him he laughed.

  ‘It spreads out through all of them while they are waiting.’ He waved his arms at the pile, mimicking the DNA flowing from the centre to the edge like he was smoothing out sand in the creekbed. Or mixing colour into paint.

  ‘She’s the grand old dame. Plus, don’t bet on it. I can make any bit fit onto anything. Lots of her making trips to and from Melbourne each month. Ain’t that so, honey?’ He looked up at the central wreck as if addressing a matriarch.

  ‘But why call all of them Betsy? Children have different names to their parents.’

  ‘It’s just easier that way. Plus, they are not children. They are...?’

  ‘Clones?’

  ‘No, not that. Donors. It’s transplants. She lives on in them all.’

  ‘Like Frankenstein?’

  ‘Hey, don’t be rude. They can hear you, might go into a sulk, refuse to go for no other reason than they don’t like you. They have feelings you know.’

  He was underneath and I was on the top, holding the bolthead as he tried to turn it. We had to speak between efforts and between his cajoling.

  ‘Come on ya bastard.’

  ‘So you call them all Betsy.’

  ‘Sometimes this is how I feel. That we’re all on some rubbish heap. Parked out here, someplace, waiting for the chance to be useful.’

  I thought about that. I had only come out here for the year then intended to go back to Melbourne. Would that make me more useful? Certainly, stuck out on a marginal station helping to unbolt a seat from a van on top of a rubbish pile was not too useful. But what was useful?

  ‘What does it mean to be useful?’ I asked. He didn’t answer for a while.

  ‘Do your bit. Contribute to the good of humanity. Fucked if I know. If you knew, you could set off to do it.’ He made some banging noises and swore some more.

  ‘Sounds like that bolt doesn’t know how to be useful.’

  ‘Oh, he’s bein’ useful all right. Sometimes, resistance is put there to test you. Check ya resolve.’ Some gentler tapping sounds. ‘Might need to get the grinder onto this one.’ He made a long hard grunting noise. ‘Arrrgh, got you! See. They always give up as soon as they know you’re serious.’

  ‘You should write your thoughts down. Collected wisdom from the gene pool.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘No, I’m serious. Write it down before you forget stuff.’

  But he had laughed at the idea that anything he thought about would be part of his way of being useful to anyone.

  ‘Nah. I’m a mechanic.’

  It took us three hours to get the six vans ready. By then it was late afternoon and I was hungry. In the canteen Cookie was angry, and he took it out on us. The stockhands sat at one of the tables talking and joking loudly and already there was a crowd of empty beer cans littered about. There was nothing Cookie could do about the stockhands so he ignored them. It was Spanner and I who copped it.

  ‘Lunch! Nearly dinnertime. You come back then. I’m not here now. Afternoons is my time.’

  ‘Why are you here then?’ I asked. We knew he wasn’t going to leave the canteen unattended.

  ‘C’mon. Let us go make a sandwich,’ Spanner said. ‘You can stay out here keep an eye on them.’ He pointed to the drunken muster crew who were racking up for pool and a long session.

  Very clever, Spanner, I thought.

  ‘You tidy up,’ Cookie said. ‘Then I might. You’re not setting foot in my kitchen without me.’

  Cookie didn’t like muster time. When it was only the few of us on-site he could smoke until he was off his face and still cook wonderful food but when the crews were all crowding around and drinking he had to remain sober. It was the only way to deal with the influx of hungry workers, who insulted him by insulting his food. They made a mess and raided his ‘herb’ garden and argued about the girls. But to Cookie, who daily made fresh bread and rolls, the highlight of civilisation was the sandwich. To him, anyone who knew how to load fresh ingredients in the correct manner onto a crusty roll was okay, and the chance to have us there with him while the crew drank themselves stupid in the dining hall was too good to pass.

  ‘Where’s Palmenter? I thought he was here. S’pose he wants one too?’

  ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘Took off.’

  We spoke at the same time.

  Unlikely. Palmenter would never have left without eating. Cookie raised his eyes.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘New plan,’ I said before Spanner could speak. ‘Whole new way of doing business. We’re going back to the old way, the vans, small groups driving to the city. He had some urgent things to organise. He’s left me in charge. He’s on his way back to Sydney to run that end, needs to get some things set up before the imports start arriving.’

  Cookie was looking at me. I could see he was trying to figure out whether to believe the rubbish I had just garbled. I kept talking.

  ‘Six vans, so you’ll need to make up six food packs. Like before, we’ll send them off a day apart, four or five in each van. Sorry about missing lunch, but as you know, when Palmenter is here, well, what can you do?’

  Cookie continued to look but not speak. Spanner backed me up.

  ‘Go on, make us a sandwich, Cookie, I’ve got a hunger now. We’ve still got to write up all the paperwork, too. Be well into the night, just be thankful all you have to deal with is a few empty cans on the floor.’

  ‘Well, okay,’ he grumbled. If he didn’t agree he would have just said no, or asked for more details, but he said, ‘You want herbs on your sandwiches?’

  ‘No way!’

  ‘Gives you energy.’

  ‘Gives you wings,’ I said. Wouldn’t I have liked to fly away.

  Spanner and I sat in the kitchen with Cookie while he made sandwiches. He heated us one of his beef pies too. I liked Cookie, although he and I had rarely had a chance to talk alone. Partly I guess that is the nature of running a station kitchen. Up early, sleep afternoons. As I watched him work I thought he seemed happy with what we had told him, and that perhaps, if he ever learned the truth, he would not be too quick to condemn me.

  4

  Spanner, Cookie and I had been here the longest. We were the old hands and knew a few things we preferred not to but it was Cookie who seemed best able to ignore it all.

  A couple of years before the shooting, it was morning, just after breakfast. A muster and import had finished a few days ago and we were all relaxing. Arif and I were in the canteen, him talking at me and me pretending to listen. Charles and Simms were there too. Spanner was down in his shed and Palmenter was in the office. We heard the rumble of a car approaching on the gravel. That in itself was unusual and I stood to look out the window.

  A police car drove up to the canteen building and stopped. No one got out and in each of the buildings curious eyes must have been watching for what would happen next. The police never came out here. For them to do so now, something must be serious.

  ‘Better hide the harvest,’ called Arif to Cookie who was chopping leaf in the kitchen. Arif was serious, but the joke was that an entire plantation thrived immediately out the back door.

  ‘Someone must have been caught,’ Cookie said as he came from the kitchen casually wiping his hands on his apron. He peered out the window.

  Perhaps he was right: one of the previous imports had been picked up and then said something, given up the station and Palmenter and all of us. Unlikely, but I was wondering what this would mean for me, if I’d be charged, if we’d all be charged, with people smuggling.

  Palmenter admitting anythin
g? Ha! We’d all be for it. He’d find some way of pinning it on us and getting off scot-free. I wondered what the penalty for people smuggling was. A few years jail? And here was Cookie calmly packaging up serious quantities of dope, a crime I suspected carried a far more severe penalty, again, a crime for which Palmenter would deny all knowledge and for which I could not claim innocence.

  Hopefully the police had come about something else entirely but I realised suddenly how things were. The truth was I was working on a station that routinely broke the law and each day, by my silence or inaction, I became more complicit. And there was no way out, I was trapped. I should go and get in the police car, lock myself in it and tell them to take me away.

  But life is not that simple. Palmenter was a bully, an arrogant bastard, he was a ruthless money-hungry opportunist preying on the weak and dispossessed. Yet these people had no choice and at least they now had a chance at a new life, a better life, and I wasn’t going to be the one to end that hope. I wanted to get away, but I had to do it on my own terms.

  Palmenter strolled over to the car and two policemen got out and I could hear friendly deep voices, laughter, howdyados, as Palmenter led them towards us. We drifted like ghosts back into the kitchen as they came in the canteen door. Palmenter opened beers for them at the bar while we listened from behind the swing doors.

  ‘We hardly ever see you out this way. Don’t be strangers, always a meal or a beer here for you. Anytime.’

  I couldn’t make out the reply because just then the freezer motor started up. Cookie scurried out to turn it off. Last thing Palmenter wanted was cops dropping by unannounced, so him telling them not to be strangers, to drop by for a feed and a drink anytime, that was plain bullshit. I wondered if there was more going on here. It was a bit much to believe that boats could land and helicopters fly between the coast and here and not be seen. At some time someone must have reported something and Palmenter was most likely paying off the cops to keep them quiet. Probably only as a precaution. It wouldn’t be too hard to turn a blind eye when your patch is one hundred thousand square kilometres.

  We had crowded closer to hear better when Cookie came in from killing the freezer motor, slamming the door. We all jumped and he laughed and instead of joining us he continued to chop and wrap the crop. He neatened it into piles that he wrapped in alfoil the size of a half brick and then put all but two of them into the freezer.

  ‘Youse lot, garn, get outta here. See my illegal activity.’ But he didn’t mean it. He laughed then stood at the swing doors with the rest of us, weighing the packets in his hands in a way that made it obvious that this was for the coppers.

  ‘I’ll sort it, Trent. Be gone by morning. It’s all over, no problems.’ Palmenter stood, dragging his chair noisily. ‘You want some steaks. We just finished the muster, killed a couple.’ I didn’t hear an answer. ‘Plenty there, I’ll get you both a package,’ and before any of us could move he was in the kitchen, glaring at us.

  ‘Get some fucking steaks for these boys. Where’s Spanner. Shit, he’s going to pay for this. This will cost us, boys.’ No one had moved. ‘Fucking steaks, NOW.’ Not loud. Meaningful. Cookie handed him the package and sprinted into the freezer. Palmenter pointed to me and Simms.

  ‘You two, soon as they’ve gone, at the machine shed. And get fucking Spanner. Sober. The rest of you, get outta here. Go find something useful to do.’

  I found Spanner in the generator shed where he was changing the oil in the second generator. He had earmuffs on and so I signalled him to come outside. He shook his head and pointed at the machine, but I insisted. He followed me out.

  ‘What?’

  I told him about the police car and what we had seen, and that Palmenter wanted us all right away. We walked around to the shed where Palmenter was already waiting with Simms. Spanner was muttering under his breath, ‘This is not gunna be good.’

  The van was lying on its side by the edge of the track. It was one of the seven-seaters. They are more difficult to control on the softer tracks, but what had caused them to leave the highway and venture out here we would never know. What made them crash? Could have been a roo, suddenly jumping out. They had no experience of Australian wildlife. It wasn’t a blowout.

  Spanner swore nothing was wrong with the van. Steering, brakes were perfect. He serviced each of the vans thoroughly before each trip. He might not have been one hundred per cent behind the operation but he knew as well as all of us that if the van broke down on its way to the city, if the people got into trouble, most likely someone would start asking questions. Spanner had built a nice little retreat for himself here at the station. Why, I didn’t know. An ex-wife? On the run? In any case Spanner seemed happy to spend his days alone in the shed and drinking a steady supply of free beer, sleeping it off from early evening and then doing it all again the next day.

  They must have survived for some time. They had propped the rear door open and set up the mattresses inside. One body lay in there, shiny plastic-looking and bloated. A tarpaulin was tied between the wheels and angled with string to some shrubs. The cooker, boxes and suitcases were arranged in the lean-to and two people were leaning against the van, looking as if they were resting, except for the flies around their faces. Empty water containers were scattered around and we could imagine the slow-rising dread and the increasing thirst. The desert heat. Flies buzzed around the bodies and the open tins of food. We followed a network of footprints to another body that lay under a shrub a short distance away. Maggots crawled in open wounds. A few metres further a shallow grave had been dug up by dingoes. Half-eaten bits of body and clothing protruded. Must have been the first to die. A frypan and a pot lay nearby and I could see them weakly trying to dig a hole with the utensils, to bury their friend with the dignity he deserved. The first one to succumb to the heat and thirst. Was he their friend? I knew that many of them ended up travelling together with nothing in common but the desire to move to a new country. Thrown together by circumstance, by a small boat and even smaller van, now burying someone they might not even know the name of, but knowing that all too soon it might be them.

  ‘How many in this van?’ asked Palmenter.

  ‘Dunno,’ said Simms.

  Palmenter hit him. He swung his arm full-length and caught Simms on the jaw. Not hard, but deliberate.

  ‘What the fuck, don’t know,’ he yelled. ‘It’s your job to know.’

  ‘You said not to write anything down.’

  Palmenter hit him again, this time hard enough to knock Simms to the ground. ‘You remember. Don’t write it down. How hard is it to remember?’ He looked around at the scrub. ‘We got to know if this is all of them.’

  ‘Five, boss,’ I said. I had no idea, but then neither did he. He looked at me. Spanner had moved away when Palmenter hit Simms but I stood my ground. ‘Five. This was the last van to leave, I remember it had five.’

  No such thing, I made it up but it must have sounded believable. I had counted five bodies and I did not want to spend any longer here scouting around for more. Palmenter grunted.

  ‘Well done, at least someone’s got a brain. All right then. Spanner, get a rope on it to pull it back up. You two,’ Simms and me, ‘put the bodies in the back. Quick smart. Lucky for us no one is ever going to miss these blokes.’

  We dragged the bodies into the van. We had to climb inside, then back over them to get out, but it would have seemed disrespectful to just shove them in. We wanted to lay them out carefully but it was difficult as the bodies were putrid and flyblown. Simms began retching when we dragged the maggoty body from under the shrub. It had been eaten, an arm came off and although I tried to avoid looking it was impossible not to look at the face that was half-chewed and crawling. Simms was vomiting but something in me allowed me to hold my breath and keep going. I was thinking how unpredictable Palmenter might be, what he might do if we both stopped working and knelt in the sand with spit dribble, dry-retching. Spanner rigged the 4WD and pulled the van upright, then hitc
hed up a towline.

  Simms was quick to volunteer when we needed someone in the van to steer it. It might have been an attempt to redeem himself or perhaps it was to avoid being in the car with Palmenter. I couldn’t tell. He kept touching his jaw and it looked more like the pathetic subservient gesture of a minion than for the soreness he might have felt. Anyway, I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t want to be in with those five stinking bodies that, despite our reverently laying them out, had all tumbled to a mess on the floor as we righted the van.

  At the pit Palmenter instructed us to unhitch the van and push it over the edge and torch it. It rolled to the bottom and parked itself remarkably, as if someone had driven it there. Palmenter stood at the top of the pit watching while we gathered a few clumps of dried spinifex and climbed down to stick them under the wheels. Spanner took off the fuel cap and drained some fuel into a tin. He splashed this around inside the van and onto the bodies, then he flipped the seat and pulled the fuel line from the motor and let it fall to the ground. Petrol began to leak out and soak into the ground.

  ‘Stand back!’ he called.

  He dribbled a line of fuel and lit it. The flame marched slowly across the sand towards the van and almost went out. Simms was halfway up the slope but Spanner and I stood together watching, only metres from the flame that seemed in no hurry to arrive. I thought Spanner was going to say something about the bomb about to go off but he didn’t.

  ‘Farewell, you unlucky buggers,’ he said.