Tim, one of the guys who has been coming in for Jim’s impromptu shows in our bedroom, tells us that he’s just come over because of the drought on his family property in Victoria and the lure of riches from the Boom. ‘But what they don’t tell you is that it costs around three thousand dollars to get all your licences to even work on a mine these days … I come here with a credit card, thankfully, but you see about fifty guys a week just turning up to the mines getting sent away.’
His story inspires me to compile an article pitch from the bedroom in between visitors, fired up that I finally have a story people in the eastern states would actually need to know. I drive to the only internet café in Kalgoorlie, researching statistics on the dinosaur-slow connection in the stuffy shop, cutting and pasting the word files to editors, only to drive back a few hours later to check if there’s a reply. It’s a slow and expensive process, and driving to Kalgoorlie from Boulder is like basting in an oven for twenty minutes. With sunscreen, a litre of water, and the fan going full in the car, I still arrive home dripping with sweat, sunburnt, parched, ready to pass out.
After three rejections, it gets accepted. I have to provide plenty of statistics and interview some key people interstate for the story. I can’t afford to have a party going on in my ‘office’ every day. Jim, sensing my tension, jumps up from the bed when a young guy wanders in one morning, his day off from work, drinking a can of bourbon and looking for some company. He shuffles him out and follows him into his room, cracking jokes and listening to his story for a few hours while I work on the computer.
When it comes time to eat a meal, because there is no kitchen, Jim has taken to dishing up cans of tuna from the bench next to our bed. Apples, corn crackers and hummus dip are the only other meal options we can come up with that don’t require a fridge or stovetop. This ‘free’ accommodation is really starting to get me down.
‘I need to do a phone interview on Monday, without interruptions. What if someone walks into the room?’
Jim looks up at me, a little concerned. ‘Might be tricky with the mining boom and everything. But we’ll have a look, hey?’
In all our travels I’m always amazed by how after every loud place we seem to fall across a quiet place, how everything hard has its soft counterpart, just a car drive, an experience, a view away. How just when I feel I’ve reached the end of my tether, we come to a place of peace in which to recoup and regather, ready for the next battle. And how evenly the experiences are always distributed.
Because of the interminable forty-plus heat, we’ve taken to doing the majority of our exercise at night. When the sun has gone down, we walk the edges of Boulder, past ghost-empty pubs, clusters of Aboriginal people rocking in the dry heat, houses flickering with TV lights and the sound of fans. Pausing at the edge of town, we come across what looks like a cross between a motel and a school camp facility. Out the front, a silver sign lists ‘accommodation enquiries’ – followed by a phone number. Miracle of miracles, with the mining boom and accommodation at an all-time low, they have one double room left, at the grand sum of $240 for the week. Run by a sprightly looking guy for miners usually arriving in clusters, he asks us a few questions and decides to make an exception to the general rule, that the place be for serious workers sponsored by their employers on The Golden Mile.
‘We’re all workers here. The men who stay here say they like it because it’s like a home. Quiet at night. Respect in the kitchen. That sort of thing.’
What he’s not saying is that you can’t get drunk and make a lot of noise at night, parties aren’t on and simple respect for other people’s space is valued. I could kiss him.
We pay cash and collect a key. A street away from The Rock Inn we not only have a door which we can lock, but a fridge, television, air conditioner and clean sheets on the bed.
It’s at this place, affectionately known as ‘the resting place’, where I see a softer side to Australian male culture, men who cook each other Sunday roasts, trade Robert Ludlum novels for their days off, and eternally discuss exactly how many beers they can drink to still blow ‘zero’ on their alcohol test. ‘And Marijuana? Forget it. Stays in your system for three months!’
Because of the long shifts they work, whispering in the halls is de rigueur. At 5.20 am we hear vans pull up outside our front window and the sound of morning taps on bedroom doors. ‘Scotty, you coming mate? Where’s Scotty?’
It’s an Australian camaraderie, which evens the harsh landscape of Kalgoorlie. And even though I’m female, and not a miner, they let me into their lives, ask me about mine, and seem genuinely interested. Unlike the cliché of bloke culture at The Rock Inn, I eat lunch in the air-conditioned kitchen with a geologist who studies astronomy, get health advice from an ex-SAS soldier from the UK saving for a house for his wife and two kids, and swap copies of The Australian with the only other man who gets up at six on his days off to go and get the paper.
The openness of these men will always touch me. And remind me that whenever you see life is one way, all you need to do is enter a building a block away, and think again.
On our first day, we decide to celebrate Jim’s wet t-shirt windfall by being tourists. But Kalgoorlie isn’t your typical tourist destination. I google ‘Tourism attractions – Kalgoorlie’. A brothel tour and an underground mine come up. That’s it.
‘Well, they’re kinda similar, aren’t they?’ says Jim, when I mention it. Sure are. In, out. Just a patch in time. Over soon. You’ll be grateful when you see your bank account. Ignore your claustrophobia. Just do it.
At Langtrees 181, an unappealing sixty-something lady with a voice like sandpaper leads our group through the most un-erotic rooms I’ve ever visited. Aside from claustrophobically low ceilings, each room is ‘themed’, one with a boxing ring (for those with a penchant for sport), and the worst one – plastic stalactite-like walls, and picks and shovels, for miners!
The décor is pure tack, and our tour guide, in a sweat-stained white shirt with one of the buttons popped, peppers her dialogue with glimpses into the reality of the goings-on in each of the rooms. Aside from taking these tours, she was also the receptionist for ten years, so she’s happy to answer questions from the uninitiated.
‘Yeah, if he gets his rocks off within a few minutes he still has to pay full price if he wants a second go!’ She laughs like a pack-a-day smoker, and there’s a run in her stockings.
Inside the tiny rooms, the smell of the sweaty crowd fights with the aroma of bleach they use for the showers, yet another unlikely mix of the natural with the manufactured. Still, from a historic perspective, it’s fascinating to hear of the Chinese prostitutes, shipped over on a boat, the reason the ceilings are so low. And the beginnings of what became this busy brothel.
‘It started with a tent. The miners had needs, ya know! Ancient as the Gods!’ she cackles.
After the brothel tour, we head down a mine shaft with a stooped old character called Wombat, bearing a cap which advocates gun licences. He calls me ‘lady’ like I’m a strange species of reptile that he is both fascinated by and scared of, as the tiny trolley-lift lowers us creakily into the cave. It’s the same size as the dumb waiter I once used to send meals downstairs from the kitchen at the Italian restaurant. It’s held and lowered by the same, thin cords of string.
Jim holds my hand and I start to cry quietly. It’s so small, so dark on this ancient wooden pulley, creaking down into the black tomb with very dubious sounds. I feel like I’m being lowered into a coffin. ‘You’ll be right, lady,’ says Wombat, who keeps nodding at the space in front of him, instructing Jim to give me some water when we get to the bottom of the shaft. I ask him if I’m normal, to distract myself from my embarrassment.
‘Once got stuck with two claustrophobic ladies in the lift, but they fainted pretty much straight away, which was good.’
Down in the mine, our tour guide is an experienced elderly man with a limp. He talks sentimentally about the days before things went ‘mechanical’,
and they were paid according to how many holes they made in a wall, chipping away silently.
‘You’d get your five hundred a day easy if you blasted three metres or so of rock and twelve dollars per hole on top of that.’
Wow. But in exchange, they couldn’t even go to the toilet while they were down there. For seven hours. I picture them, living in each other’s pockets, day in, day out. Spending more time with other men than they would with their families, crawling out of bed and away from their loved ones to go down a hole and earn enough money to pay for food on the table, a roof over their heads, to ‘set themselves up for life’, as the romantic notion goes.
‘You wouldn’t want to get stuck with a man you didn’t like. Close quarters down here. Your life in their hands,’ he says, as we all stare at the moist, dark walls of the cavern.
We crouch along the torch-lit tour, imagining their lives, played out in the dark to the sound of hammers, seven hours a day, five days a week. But there’s a certain dignity in denying your need for freedom to put a roof over your family’s head. The Australian work ethic. Hard, physical labour. All action, no thought. Kind of like those women up at Langtrees, I muse. Just doing it for the money. Hoping to escape with full pockets and not too many scars.
It’s cool, down in the mine, but so dark and eerily damp. Halfway through the tour, a boy has a very quiet panic attack and has to be taken up. I’m relieved I’m not the only one who thinks this is too dark a place to spend your days.
I continue my daily rally to the internet café, as I still have no coverage on my mobile internet device. The concentrated effort in the searing heat rewards me with two more stories commissioned – a column and a feature, as well as the fashion columns I keep getting asked to do, ‘for one more week’.
‘I’ll cook dinner for the next week,’ Jim says, supportively. ‘I don’t want you to worry about anything. Just focus on your writing.’
He’s steaming vegetables in the kitchen when I catch myself kissing him on the cheek and he bristles. In our room, I ask him if everything’s okay.
‘They haven’t had any female contact for a while, Lou. You’re the only one here aside from the cleaner. I don’t want to shove it in their faces.’
In the mornings, I’m the first in the kitchen. When the men who have their days off come in, they seem startled to see me. One dashes off to return with a photo of his wife, kids and dog. Another says hello and starts talking immediately of his sister. On Sunday nights, the youngest likes to cook for five of the other guys from his particular mine. They helped him get his Marksman licence, and cooking and eating together means their extreme lifestyle becomes slightly more family-like.
I’m in the kitchen, refilling my water bottle, he smiles at me straight away, eager to engage me in conversation.
‘Hey mate, what would you add to mash potato, to make it good?’
I ask him if he has any garlic, and he passes me the bowl while he turns down the oven for the fish. Holding his bowl, next to the oven, he lets out his entire life story like he’s back home on his farm in Victoria, talking to one of his sister’s friends. I wonder if this is what guys in Vietnam were like, so desperate for female company that they spilled everything to the first one who appeared? It can be so overwhelming, being around so many lonely men. I start to physically ache every time they walk into the kitchen and see me. It’s exhausting, being an archetype.
As I’m wiping the sweat from my face, delirious from a short trip to the internet café, I see the man who has been leaving me The Australian, after he’s had his breakfast. He looks up at me, pierces me with his gaze.
I feel guilty, all of a sudden, for wearing my red dress. Making it obvious that I’m from somewhere else. Just for being – me. Female.
He says, like a warning, ‘You better be careful here, love. A girl like you from the eastern states …’ He lets it hang, looks out the back door to the sky.
‘Much better off going somewhere down south. Kal wasn’t made for the sensitive.’ He grabs a long neck from the fridge and pads off up the hall, leaving me to wonder what he means.
Out for my nightly walk that night, Jim calls, to see where I am.
‘Lou, are you okay?’
‘Yeah, of course. How come?’
‘The guy in the kitchen had me worried about you. He said I shouldn’t let you go out walking on your own! It was one of those moments when I felt like a real bastard for bringing you here.’
‘Oh God babe, don’t worry! I’m fine! Really!’
‘Wait there, I’m coming to collect you.’
‘Babe, I’ll be back soon. Truly. I like walking on my own. Please. I need the exercise.’
We have this understanding – that I want to see it all, and he is the perfect person to show me. But when others, like that man in the kitchen, witness what we’re doing, we doubt ourselves, and get all mixed up in the roles of boy and girlfriend, and what you should do when you’re in a relationship.
As I pass another pub, its open doors spilling forth the night’s dramas into the flat, dusty air, I stop for a second, not quite believing my eyes. A man is sinking his steel-capped boot into another man’s skull. The jukebox goes silent and the rest of the bar waits, arms folded over their chests, to pick up where they left off. I tear my eyes away and keep walking, feeling as though I’ve just watched a made-up movie of a place that is too harsh to really exist.
When I get back, Jim is watching the tennis in our room, texting jokes to some friends in Sydney. I slump beside him on the bed.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I guess I was naive. But I always wondered why most girls don’t come to places like this.’
It’s beginning to feel like he’s my tour guide through a carnival of dark and light Australia.
‘Yeah, I know. But it’s the same if you think about it. There’s just as much violence in the cities, like Sydney and Melbourne. They’re just dressed better.’ I didn’t even tell him what I saw. He just knew.
The next morning, we sit out the back with our breakfast next to two of the guys on their rostered day off. We’re getting ready to head further towards Perth, as Jim has the promise of a weekly gig in Fremantle.
‘All the cars got done last night, Abos getting money for booze,’ one of the guys says to me, as he cracks open the first tinny of the day.
‘What do you mean?’
Some Aboriginals who live in the park had smashed windows and stolen tools from each of the cars that were parked out the front. Jim’s Mazda was in between all eight which got robbed, his life spilling out of every spare centimetre. He stands up, to go and check out if it’s okay.
‘Oh, you’ll be fine, mate. Your car’s gold. They won’t touch it. It’s why your missus is always fine when she’s out walking in ’er red dress, too. Very superstitious, the Abos around here. Don’t touch anything red or gold.’
We walk over to Jim’s car, still overflowing with our life and worldly possessions. Four cars either side in the parking lot have been completely looted. And I’ve been wearing this red dress pretty much ever since we got to Kalgoorlie.
19
Fertile soil
‘Congratulations mate, you’ve pulled yourself away from The Simpsons to see what’s going on outside your door!’
THE CAKED, BAKED DROUGHT OF Kalgoorlie had seeped under my skin and made me feel similarly barren and decidedly unfeminine. But as the Mazda rolled up the highway from the red dirt of Kalgoorlie to the distinctly greener plains outside Perth, and the landscape grew visually richer by the hour, I felt something wake within me. Endless travel shows you just how many new beginnings you really have in you. Right now, it feels limitless.
‘I’m excited, babe.’
‘Me too.’ He takes my hand and kisses the top of it.
Yet again, despite our dirt-encrusted hessian sacks and his clown shoes sticking up all over the back seat, I feel I’m being swept away on the wildest honeymoon ever with a man who never tires of new
beginnings and fresh adventures.
‘What town shall we stop in for lunch?’
He looks at me and nods, like, you just leave it to me. I don’t know if that means he’s taking me to visit another bikie pub or a schizophrenic genius who’s going to bake us a cake and make us tea.
‘Cool …’ I drawl, beginning to sound as laid-back as him.
In Brookton, a little dairy-farming town just outside the wheat belt, Jim pulls over, I assume to collect the paper and some bottles of water. I scout out the window to see if there’s anywhere I can buy something fresh, such as an apple. In Kalgoorlie, the only vegetables or fruit we could get was from Safeway, with their inherent taste of plastic and pre-packaged shipping, microwaved on high in the boiling-hot car in the fifteen-minute journey to Boulder. Both our bodies are feeling distinctly parched and undernourished, like the wrinkled apples we ate.
‘Get ready for the best salad roll you’ve ever tasted in your life, Lou. Aww yeah!’
I follow him in to a grocer’s deli. It smells like lemons, juices, fresh air and moist earth. Colourful bunches of herbs and freshly picked flowers are arranged in bouquets propped in wooden boxes along the wall. I’m in visual heaven. Suddenly, a flash of shining silver behind the counter catches my eye. Nooooo – is it –?
‘Is that … er … is that … a … coffee machine?’
Shining behind the counter is a polished silver machine of delights, just waiting to inject some artificial stimulation into my too long numb body. Prepare to be properly caffeinated for the first time since Melbourne, Lou. Oh, yes …
Love and Other U-Turns Page 21