by Bull, Rod;
Somehow, seeing The Wild One in the middle of the Australian craziness, I romanticized the whole situation, which made life seem enjoyable when in reality it was hellish. Why does the mind do this? In the Hollywood movies it all turns out okay in the end, when in fact life is not really like that.
One night I saw flames coming from a neighboring farm. Some of the cutters had set fire to the field. There was a group of cane cutters who would go around at night setting fields alight and then go to the farmer next day to say they would cut the field quickly for thirty dollars a ton, two to three times the going rate. This was so the cane would not lose its quality from standing burnt too long. These guys were the mafia of cane cutters. If the farmers refused to let them cut, they just kept burning his fields and sometimes his house. The gangs made a lot of money in just a few months. They would then go down to Surfer’s Paradise, blowing the lot.
All this time out and swanning around had started me thinking again. What was I doing, trying to find the occasional job that would pay well while giving me plenty of time off? The work did not seem very meaningful, and it was repetitive, which was a problem for me. The gun cutters, the fastest cutters, could do it, earning many thousands, blowing the lot on wine, women, and song. These blokes were animals, but I didn’t have the drive. Life didn’t seem to make a lot of sense. Some people achieve what they want to do with very little effort, while others try and try with great effort and get nowhere.
Jail Birds
Years earlier, my friend Chris had arranged for us to do a Navy Aqua-Lung course over the summer holiday at Dart-mouth Harbour. We rode down on his sky-blue Douglas motorbike, found a wooded area close to the beach, and pitched our tent.
Tired from driving all day, Chris decided to kip down. I was not tired and decided to explore the beach. It was fairly warm for England, so I was just wearing a striped t-shirt. The beach was beautiful, cliffs plunging into the ocean, sandy beaches and caves. The moon was bright. I decided to look in one of the caves. Feeling my way around, as the moonlight did not penetrate the cave, I could hear something like breathing and suddenly a voice.
“Who’s that?” A girl’s voice. “Just me.”
That’s all I could say.
“Who are you? What do you want?” “Nothing,” I said, walking out of the cave.
Two girls appeared, saying, “You are an escaped convict, aren’t you? We know this is where convicts hide when they break out of Dartmoor Prison. Would you like to fuck us?”
Weird, I thought.
Not waiting for an answer, they took off their clothes. Everything was a blur; they were tugging at my jeans, and then we were rolling around on the sand. I have to say I had no idea what I was doing, but they certainly did, taking it in turns on top, underneath, standing up, sitting down. After about an hour, they thanked me, then were gone. Amazing. This was their thing—lying in wait for unsuspecting escaped convicts. It all seemed like a dream. Maybe it was. Nothing made any sense. Passing by a week later, the girls found our tent. Realizing we were not escapees, they lost interest.
Weightlessness . . . the experience of Aqua-Lung diving, the floating, the very deliberate breathing, strange light very much like a dream state, entering an underwater cave…I suddenly felt a sharp prick on my back. Inevitably, shark! entered my mind. Flipping around, only to see that a grinning Chris had poked his spear in my back. After four surreal weeks, we passed our course, were given diving permits, and headed for home.
Back in sunny Worthing, Pierre introduced me to a girl called Anna, a ballet dancer. To impress her, I took her to an underage drink club on my motorbike. This was a brilliant place, run by a Bard. It was an old barge moored amid a number of other old boats, connected by gangplanks. Getting out was okay; getting back after many pints of scrumpy cider was a bit of a worry. The evening would start with dirty ditties from the Bard:
Oh maiden fair
With your luscious looking pair
I vouch you are the fairest
Oh would you lay
Your maidenly head
In the little room
Down below
Little Room down below!
This was one of many.
There was dancing, more dancing, and for a fee small cabins were available for the night. The place filled up fast with kids trying to look cool. Five boys and their girlfriends arrived; two were prefects from my public school about 200 miles away. Being church ministers’ sons, and not wanting the Church to find out they had girlfriends, they decided to come to this discreet place. These prefects were most respected at our school, the pinnacle of learning and sportsmanship. They were embarrassed to see me, of course, and asked me not to tell anyone. This helped me to get away with a lot back at school.
Anna liked sex and knew many places: beach huts, barns, boats, her grandmother’s house. I made the mistake of taking her to my parent’s place. My mother returned early, catching us in bed. “Slut, whore, tart!” she screamed. Anna took it all in stride.
Snake in the Bed
When I signed out from the hospital, I was handed an envelope and thinking it must be the bill, I left in a hurry. It was a check for about three-quarters of my lost earnings. Apparently there was a cane cutter’s union and once you had cut one stick of cane, you were a member. Plus, the hospital was free.
I started looking for another gang to cut with, as the crazy Yugoslav had moved on. The leader of my new gang was a New Zealander who was crazy in a different way. After a day of cutting, he would go to the Crossroads Brothel, the only bar open in town. The rest had been trashed in fights. He would come back every night drunk, strip naked, and pulling back the mosquito net and sheet, fall flat on his back.
One of the cutters had found a dead carpet snake, a bit like a python. Householders often used them to catch rats. The cutter had coiled the snake under the New Zealander’s bed sheet. The cutter who shared his room did not know this, but all the others were ready. Sure enough, around midnight he came in, stripped off, and pulled back the mosquito net and sheet, falling back on the snake! All hell let loose as snake flesh hit his own flesh, and fear and loathing took hold. Realizing what had happened, he grabbed the snake by the tail and started to beat his roommate with it, screaming abuse as bits of snake flew all over the place. We were looking through the only window and by the time it was all over, there was no snake left. It was all over the room. A very scared roommate covered with bits of snake cowered in the corner.
Luckily, the New Zealander was not so crazy in the fields. With the help of the two German boys, I was able to keep up, just about. Soon all the fields were cut and that ended the season. I was not so sorry. I made just enough to take a few weeks off.
Talking in the bar to some Aussies about future fortune hunting, I was told to head west to a place called Mount Isa, a lead and copper mine. “There is good dough to be made there, mate.” Also a uranium mine, Rum Jungle. My imagination took over. Did this mean they drank a lot of rum? Plus making a fortune! It sounded like the job for me. The one problem was how to get to these places. They were way out in the bush. No planes, trains, or buses went there, just a few trucks. The Germans I had been working with had an idea. They knew two Hungarians who were going in that direction and needed people to share gas money.
The Hungarians were a little dodgy. One was very tall, and he was called Long. His friend’s nickname was Short. We all set out in their car, which seemed to use more oil than gas. A few hundred miles down the road, a tire blew and a little later another tire went. Having no more spares, we were lucky to break down near an eating shack. Long and Short started looking around.
The next thing I see is them jacking up one of the parked cars and taking the wheels off. I pretended not to know them, as Aussies get very pissed off at this kind of thing. Somehow, they got the wheels off and onto their car in no time. Something told me that they had done this kind of thing before. Soon we were off again. Long and Short were always arguing, always in Hungarian. Sometime
s it sounded like they would kill each other. I was quite relieved when that car finally blew up. This was a parting of the ways for us, which I was glad of as the outback Aussie was not fond of pommies or wops, especially thieves.
The two Germans and I decided to try hitchhiking, and we got a ride to Mount Isa, but there were no jobs or for-tunes there. We also learned that if you made a fortune you would not live long enough to spend it. There was danger money, a lead bonus, a bonus to die quickly so that you could not get any of the benefits. We never quite made it to Rum Jungle as I heard workers there were going mad from a condition caused by uranium dust. The rum bonus sounded like the British Navy—get them drunk or stoned and they will do anything. Eventually we ended up in a place called Tennan Creek. The only thing there was a bar. After a few drinks, we got talking to the owner. He wanted some work done so the next day we started digging a ditch. The Germans started to sing their song again: “We dig the ditch, to earn the money, to buy the food, to get the energy to dig the ditch…”
This was a wake-up call, something that I was trying to forget. As we sang this song, it became hypnotic. This dulled the pain. Maybe this was the way. It was certainly cheaper than buying beer by the ton.
The Germans were much more efficient workers than I was. So we finished quite quickly. I think the Aussie was surprised so he offered us more work. Maybe we were the only ones stupid enough to do it.
That night a truck pulled in. As soon as it stopped the driver jumped out, grabbed his gun and opened up the back of the truck. Lo and behold, there was Long and Short, the Hungarian duo, hands in the air shouting in about the only English they knew, “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!”
They had somehow gotten into the back of the truck without the driver knowing. Hearing sounds in the back of the truck, he thought he was being robbed so had grabbed his gun and was ready to shoot. I started shouting to him not to shoot, saying they were okay. Mistake. He then turned on me, a fight started, and while rolling around on the ground, I heard some-one shouting, “Stop! Stop!” From out of the bushes appeared a Scottish guy. He was trying to break up the fight. Then out of nowhere appeared a huge cop who picked up the Scot by the scruff of the neck, his legs dangling. He was shouting, “This is victimization!” At that point, the cop threw him into the back of his car and dropped him way out of town. I was feeling badly about this as he had saved my bacon.
The cop came back to warn us that if we were not out by the next day, he would take us and dump us like he had the Scot. This did not sound good at all as it was very hard to get a ride along the track. It was also very hot, well over 100 degrees and no shade. So with this promising thought, we started looking urgently for rides. Luckily a truck pulled in and the driver offered to take us to Darwin.
Notting Hill
Downie and Roger were going to be lawyers. They had their paths carefully mapped. Fathers and uncles were also setting up my other friends. My father tried his best for me, but not being quick on the uptake, or very interested, it was all a bit of a flop. What to do? If I was to stay alive, I must find something to believe in or at least find something interesting to do.
At one stage I lived in Notting Hill Gate at Powis Square, the heart of art, drugs, writers, and rock and roll. Pierre and I had a flat there, next door to two crazy gays, Connor and Silvio Balamacky-Mee, who was some kind of a Brazilian diplomat. It was a wild place in those days—meeting up with the Irish and Jamaicans I had met on the boat to Bombay. You needed a passport if you were English. The people in the flat next door hated me. They would get high from eating the insides of Benzedrine inhalers. Once an ax came through the wall. A large hole appeared and one of my neighbors stuck his head through it. “Now I can watch you! You can’t get away from us!”
I was playing chess with a friend. We just kept playing. This really pissed them off, shouting that they were going to the pub to get a posse to beat the shit out of us. They must have just got drunk because they never came back, thank God!
The people I had met on the boat were getting a film together based on a book called The Rat. They thought I would be perfect for the part, being in touch with the underworld. I was certainly in touch with a whole lot of shit. The film never happened but it was fun imagining. Suddenly I was Jean-Paul Belmondo. Amazing how the mind works.
We stayed up all night, rolling wafer thin roll-ups, drinking endless cups of tea or scrumpy cider. If we were really quids in, we’d have a three-shilling bottle of V.P. There was endless talk on the meaning of life, the repeating factors always coming back to money.
Two tribes ruled this area of Notting Hill, the Jamaicans and the Irish. The Irish hated the Jamaicans, who ruled the drug trade. The Irish, on the other hand, ruled the building trade. Being English didn’t count for shit! In fact, it felt another country. It was a volatile mix, causing many fights. Drinking, fighting, and fucking were the Irish code. Smoking, dancing, and fucking were the Jamaican code.
Amidst all this, art, music, filmmaking, and writing sprang up like the lotus out of the mud. Davy Graham and David Hockney were but a few.
One person who came out of this and who later became a friend was Chris. He was reading the great German philosophers in German, using a dictionary. He had amazing willpower, putting his mind to whatever he did. I admired this—something I admired and needed—but there was something remote there.
Chris epitomized the power of the mind, or pure intellect. On the other hand, there were the fighting Irish all around. This was also something I admired, the courage of the boxer. Could the twain meet? Could Homo sapiens co-exist with Neanderthal? Had there been inbreeding; or was it that some Homo sapiens stayed the same, and would this account for the split between a more peaceful, intellectual type and a more warlike type?
How necessary is it to defend oneself, or is it something left over from the past—a memory of fighting dinosaurs? Are we somehow being tricked into holding onto this idea of defending ourselves at all costs, spending trillions on armaments to protect us? Man has endless potential: surely there must be ways of solving problems without killing each other! Are we prisoners of our instincts, emotions and self-righteousness?
Is our whole existence a gigantic mistake, subatomic particles becoming overheated, fusing into some kind of matter, the big FART! Out of this, creatures appeared. Was this meant to happen, or was it just chance?
Why are humans so critical of one another: the nose too big, the hair too long, too short, the wrong colour, too white, too dark, too fat, too thin . . . endless judgments. But DNA tells us we are about 99.9% the same, so what causes these judgments? Is it our ego? But what is the ego, some kind of self-preservation left over from the Stone Age? Maybe it was needed to fight the massive beasts.
You would think it would be much simpler for people just to get on—also a lot cheaper! Is it nature’s way of keeping the balance, giving us just enough rope? For what are we being kept alive?
Spying had become second nature to me, but was I becoming too critical? Everybody seemed to have a dark side. Chris, it turns out, was gun running for the IRA, using drug money to buy the guns.
Sci-Fi Search
My girlfriend Stella kept saying, “You are looking for someone.” She gave me a science fiction book to read about a space worker searching for clues as to how he has been left for dead on an abandoned spacecraft.
He uses teleporting as his means of transport, but at some point, his coordinates get mixed, so parts of his body are in different places in space. Very tricky. Somehow, he gets all his parts together, only to find he has been set up as some kind of guinea pig on an inter-planetary smuggling ring. The cargo is a highly toxic drug with amazing qualities, which lends the taker the ability to see past and future lives, as well as the past and future lives of others. The drug is also grown and con-trolled by a small elite group. With this power they are able to control vast areas of space and plan hundreds of years ahead. The downside is the high toxicity of the drug, which kills many of this
elite group. So they start to use controlled human guinea pigs, keeping them in cages under tight security. This space worker has been one of these seers, left for dead when their spacecraft malfunctions. These privateers have infiltrated a compound where some of this drug is kept, as well as some of the sick guinea pig seers, our space worker being one of them!
He is left with no memory of his ability to see the past and future, knowing only that he is very sick and alone. This makes him angry. Who has done this to him? This prompts his search, but still being weak, teleporting is dangerous, as he needs all his senses to work very acutely to find the coordinates for his search. During one such attempt, he finds himself fragmented in different parts of space, and only by a random series of events and sudden flash of memory is he able to bring himself back together.
His problem is that he does not know what he is looking for. He only hopes that something somewhere might jog his memory. After many voyages, he finds that he keeps returning to the same place with the same people. Just the sight of one of these people would upset him, making him angry. Every time he tries to approach the being, it disappears in the maze of alleys and streets. At one point, he catches a glimpse of himself and the being in a window, stopping him dead in his tracks. Both images are the same. Is he stalking himself? What is going on? Finding himself in a strange part of the town, he sits down on a nearby bench, trying to piece together the strange events happening to him. Having little or no memory, this is of course difficult. One of the few possessions he had left is a small video camera, which attaches to the wrist like a watch. This camera is able to recall past brain impressions, as well as record surroundings in the present. He starts to use this to track his movements and piece together what happened to him in the spacecraft. All this time, he has not noticed a presence next to him on the bench. Suddenly, he starts to hear sounds. Turning towards the sounds, he is amazed to see different forms appearing: fierce animals, beasts with many heads, arms, legs, and human forms. At this point, he starts to understand the sounds.