Especially when he got past Beaudesert and kept it in third going up Cunningham Gap, duelling with some bloke in a Nissan Pulsar and another on a motorbike. As they zoomed in and out of the trucks they were passing like something out of Smokey and the Bandit. The bloke on the big Bridgestone eventually won the race but the Pulsar soon disappeared in Norton’s rear-vision mirror. Boonah went past; the next stop would be Warwick to top up again; the twelve pounding cylinders didn’t mind a bit of petrol. Yeah, this is grouse thought Les, as he effortlessly hit 170 kilometres per hour going past another truck. In a way I’m glad I’ve got to go and get Murray now. He winked to himself in the mirror. Norton — you’ve done it again, you devil.
Then about fifty kilometres out of Warwick, it suddenly dawned on Les what a dill he was. He had a night lined up with a good-looking girl who he truly fancied. A girl who he could have taken out and had a sensational meal somewhere then gone back to the flat and got into some more sensational porking as well; with them both laughing their heads off while they were at it. Instead, he was driving like a maniac towards the middle of the Queensland outback to pick up his brother, then drive back like a maniac again to get into a monstrous brawl in some bar, where, win, lose or draw, he was still going to cop more damage to his already battered dial. DD would be all frocked up for a big night, looking like a million dollars and he was standing her up to get into a fight. Okay, so he got a bit knocked about. It wasn’t as if they’d killed him. Any normal bloke would have copped his lumps, hit the brakes and turned back. There’d probably be another day, another place. Unfortunately Les Norton definitely wasn’t your normal bloke. He rubbed his jaw and looked at his two black eyes in the rear-vision mirror and the evil gleam emanating from them. No, definitely not. But the night might not turn out a complete disaster with DD. He’d ring her when he got to Dirranbandi and say… well, he’d think of something to say. And there’s a chance he’d be back by twelve. She’d probably be up doing nothing. A bunch of roses, apologies all round. He’d work it out somehow. And there was still tomorrow and Tuesday. And who knows what?
On the other hand, it would be good to see Murray again. Bad luck Les’d miss out on seeing the oldies. But what about Grungle? Norton smiled. Wouldn’t it be good to see that little fat shit again and give him a bit of a rough up? Bad luck they couldn’t take him back with them. But knowing how often Murray washed him, after seven hours in the car it would smell like a dozen Indian fakirs with diarrhoea and shit all through it. But it would be good to see the dog again too. Christ! Grungle was part of the family as much as anyone else.
Norton topped up at Warwick; next stop would be Goondiwindi, 200 kilometres away. As he got out of town, Les slipped in the first tape and the top track was ‘Hope Valley’ — Sugar Ray and the Blue Tones. Shit! How good’s this, thought Les, as it blasted out of the four speakers. ‘Can’t you see I’m bound. To that homestead ground. No matter where I go. No matter where I roam. Hope Valley you’re my home.’ Change that to Dirranbandi, chuckled Les, and we’re laughing. This went into ‘Tyre Trouble’ — Happening Thang, then ‘Go Girl’ — The Tri-Saxual Soul Champs. Christ, Benoit, I don’t know where you found these tracks but they sure move! Driving to the music Les casually looked at the speedo and he was doing 200 kilometres per hour. Yet for all the vibration and noise, he may as well have been in a lounge chair watching TV.
The road was long and straight, hardly another car and not a cop in sight. It was a breeze. All he had to do was brake now and again for some roadworkers or cockies grazing their sheep or cattle along the side of the road. The long paddock as they called it. Then Les began to notice the countryside had changed dramatically since the last time he’d driven through there, moving hot beef or whatever. Where there were once millions of trees, it was now just expanses of nothing. What were left were just dead, grey claws, groping towards the burning blue sky.
He braked for more council workers and not far past them went beneath a railway overpass across which someone had painted STOP POISONING THE TREES. Christ, you’re not wrong! thought Les, as more expanses of bulldozed and dead trees went past on either side of the road. It was truly depressing and such a ridiculous waste of Australia’s dwindling resources. I wonder what it is about trees that politicians and cockies hate so much? mused Les. Christ! Imagine if poor little Reg Campbell in Coffs Harbour saw all this. He’d have a stroke. Still, from what Reg tells me in his letters they’re doing their best to fuck the land round there as well. So he’s probably used to it. Then there was the road kill. Everything from kangaroos to wallabies, goannas to emus. You name it, it was laying poleaxed on either side of the road; along with the rosellas, cockatoos, kookaburras. If there’d been any bunyips around they would have been splattered along the road as well with the crows picking at them. Les shook his head. What a bloody shame.
The tape cut out just as Goondiwindi came into sight. Good old Goondi’ smiled Les, as he cruised through the town centre with its myriad signposts pointing everywhere from Mungilla to Mt Isa. He topped up again, had a snakes, then stretched his legs while he perved on not a bad sort working in the garage. Brown hair, blue eyes and tits shoving out everywhere. Les hit her with a bit of a corny joke as he paid her and loved it as her boobs bounced around when she laughed. Just past the garage was the sign: ‘St George 111 kilometres.’ Les debated about turning off at Talwood then cutting across to Thallon and Woondo. If you were the Leyland Brothers in a four-wheel drive maybe. But in that low-slung Jaguar, going through dry creek beds, over pot holes, logs, boulders and Christ knows what else? He nosed the Jag towards Bungunya and Yeegallon. From there it was more dead trees, dead animals, one or two cars and the odd road-train. Hubert Sumlin’s — ‘Bring Your Love To Me’ cut into ‘I Got The Wheels’ — Paul Norton. Now that has to be a good song, chuckled Les. Then just outside of St George, there it was: ‘Dirranbandi 87 kilometres.’ Les dropped the Jag back into second and put the hammer down.
‘The old home town looks the same. As I step down from the train.’ Norton was laughing to himself as for some reason the words of that corny song drifted through his mind. ‘Down the road I look, and here comes Mary. She’s a dyke. And her brother’s a fairy.’ Isn’t that what the girls at the club used to sing?
But about a hundred dead animals later there was no mistaking beautiful downtown Dirranbandi. The one main street, almost as long as it is wide, the pub on the corner opposite the railway station, the bank, post office, police and ambulance station. A butcher’s shop, a few more shops, a row of trees down the middle with the town garage at the end, and that was about it. Les was going to skirt round Cowildi Street, but thought, bugger it. He had to see the old home town again and he’d only be here a few minutes if that. Nothing had changed. It was just as hot, dry, dusty and deserted as ever. Being a Sunday, what few shops there were were closed, making it even quieter than normal. Even the police and ambulance station were both closed up. Yeah, nothing had changed. But hang on. There were changes. Dirranbandi now had a video store and the old Cafe de Luxe had changed hands and was now the Cafe Costa-del-Sol, with a bull-fighter painted a little amateurishly across the front window. Les was full of mixed feelings as he drove through town. On one hand it was good to see the old home town again with all its memories, plus his family and friends. And don’t they say home is where the heart is? On the other hand, after living in Sydney and all the other places he’d been to, Les realised what a dead, flyblown row of nothing it was, stuck out in the middle of absolutely bloody nowhere. What did that football coach from Chinchilla, that they all hated, used to call the place? Dirranbandi. Land of the four Cs. Cattle, cotton-fields, cane toads and cunts. Bullshit! It was still home, and if possible, he’d be having one beer at the pub before he left. But now it was time to pick up Murray and get going again.
Les turned left past the garage at the end of town and drove to where the Rotary Park sat on the right just before the bridge over the Balonne River with its usual slow-flowing, mur
ky grey-brown water which was fairly high for this time of year. The trees on either side were leafy and green, weeping willows dropped their branches into the water as they vied with the she-oaks, red-gums and whatever for space along the muddy banks, the whole lot sitting quietly and peacefully in the shimmering, outback Australian sun. Les looked around the swings and the hurdy-gurdy and the old painted steamroller, but there was no sign off his brother. He switched off the motor and got out of the car.
After the air-conditioned luxury of the Jaguar, it was almost like jumping into a blast furnace; the heat near enough knocked Les over. ‘Shit!’ he cursed out loud, jamming his cap down further over his eyes and his sunglasses tighter onto his face. Jesus, I hope I’m not getting soft. This never used to bother me once. Les found a seat in the shade, swatted flies and listened to the birds while he waited for Murray. Though knowing his brother, it wouldn’t have surprised him if he jumped down from a tree or came up out of the river for a joke. Two hundred or so dead flies and the last of his fruit later, a brand new two-tone green Holden utility drove into the park. There was no mistaking the grinning square jaw and broken nose, sitting under a battered Akubra hat behind the steering-wheel. The ute pulled up alongside the Jag and out climbed Murray in his familiar moleskins, sleeveless denim shirt and dusty brown R.M. Williams.
‘Hullo, Les,’ he said, the grin on his face spreading wider. ‘How are you, mate?’
‘Muzz. Jesus, it’s good to see you.’
There was the usual bone-crushing handshakes, pushes and shoves and rib-cracking embraces as the two Norton brothers greeted each other.
‘Bloody hell, Muzz,’ said Les, stepping back to take a good look at his brother. ‘You’re lookin’ well, mate. I reckon you’re getting younger if anything.’
‘You don’t look too bad yourself — for a city boy. Dunno about that poofy lookin’ red T-shirt you’ve got on though. What’s fuckin’ Mambo? Ain’t that some wog dance? No wonder those blokes give you them two black eyes.’ Murray nodded towards the Jag. ‘Still, I suppose it goes with your nice pink, yuppy car.’
Les laughed and pulled his brother’s Akubra down over his eyes. ‘You fuckin’ hillbilly.’ Les then nodded towards the Holden utility. ‘Did you manage to borrow a car?’
‘No’ replied Murray casually. ‘That’s mine.’
‘Yours?’ Les screwed up his face. ‘I thought you said you didn’t have a car?’
‘I lied,’ was Murray’s laconic reply.
‘Lied!’ Les couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘What do you fuckin’ mean — you lied?’
‘I lied,’ repeated Murray, just as laconically. ‘I had a second car all the time. Not a bad one either, is it? You like it?’
‘Like it!’ Norton’s face went florid. ‘You fuckin’ moron. I’ve just driven seven hundred fuckin’ kilometres and knocked back a root with a good sort tonight to come out here and get you. And you had a car all the time. You…’ Les cocked back his fist. ‘I oughta.’
‘Now hold on a sec,’ said Murray evenly. ‘Before you go off the deep end, I needed you out here bad.’
‘Bad,’ gritted Les. ‘It’d want to be bad. Real fuckin’ bad.’
Murray looked directly and seriously at his brother. ‘A bunch of wogs tried to kill me on Friday, Les. I’m dead-set lucky to be alive.’
The steely look in Murray’s dark brown eyes told Les something was definitely wrong and he calmed down a little. He wasn’t over rapt in the idea of someone trying to kill his brother either. ‘What happened, Muzz?’
‘I’ll tell you. But before I go on, old Joe Bracken’s dead.’
‘Brumby Bracken. Shit! What happened to him?’
Old Brumby Bracken was the town eccentric; he got his nickname from when he used to break in brumbies in his youth. His wife and family died in a car accident and old Joe just went bush, living out under the stars, coming into town maybe three or four times a year in the last twenty years. He was harmless enough and had been a good friend of the Nortons. It was just that old Brumby’s lift stopped going all the way to the top floor when his family died.
‘Snake bite. But these wogs shot him up with machine-guns thinking he was me.’
‘Wogs? Machine-guns? Out here in Dirranbandi? Murray, you’re getting a bit over my head here, son.’ Then for the first time Les noticed something. ‘Hey, where’s Grungle?’
‘He’s crook.’
‘Crook?’ Norton’s face darkened. ‘Those fuckin’ wogs didn’t…’
‘No. Nothing like that.’ Murray gave a bit of a laugh. ‘Poor old Grungle took the trifecta. Elaine had a lump of cornbeef in the fridge — about a month I reckon. So she ends up giving it to Grungle and he gets food poisoning. He’s laying out the back, moaning and groaning and a branch falls of a tree and splits his eye open. He’s got the shits good and proper, so he chased this rotten big cane toad and gets a squirt of venom in the cuts round his eye.’
‘Bloody hell!’
‘So I left him at home. Just as well. He’s droppin’ farts at the moment’d clear Lang Park if Queensland was leading New South Wales 30-0.’
‘Strewth!’
‘Funny thing,’ chuckled Murray, ‘he kept scratching at his eyes, so I cut the leg off one of the kid’s wet-suits and made a sort of mask for him so he’d stop ripping the scab off all the time. You ought to see him. He looks like a burglar. Elaine calls him Beagle Boy number 700. Like in those Donald Duck comics we used to read when we were kids.’
Even though he was disappointed at not seeing his old mate, Les had to laugh at this description of him. He could just imagine Grungle’s little piggy eyes staring out behind a mask. ‘Ahh shit! that’s bad luck. I was hoping to see him. I do like that horrible fuckin’ dog of yours, you know.’
‘Don’t we all, mate? He’s family. But don’t worry, there’s always next time.’
‘Yeah,’ shrugged Les. ‘Next time. Anyway who are these wogs you reckon tried to kill you? What’s going on?’
‘No reckon a-fuckin-bout it. I should be dead. And I’m fair dinkum.’
‘All right, I believe you. Hey, just one more thing before you start. I noticed on the way in we got a video store and the old milk bar’s now a Spanish restaurant or something.’
‘Ohh that,’ chuckled Murray. ‘The video store’s run by an ex-British Airways pilot. He’s Australian, his name’s Greg McCiver. He’s not a bad bloke and actually his missus comes from out this way. I’ve had a few drinks with him. He’s been hijacked four times and he reckons after flying in and out of airports all over the world, he never wants to see another plane or an airport again. All he wants is peace and quiet.’
‘He’s picked the right place.’
‘And the restaurant. That’s the de Silvas’. They’re good people and they like it out here too. The old man Enrico’s got a property a bit further out towards Whyenbirra where he raises Brahman bulls for the rodeo circuit. He bred Razor Face.’
‘Shit! He’s never been rode.’
‘Ask a few of those boys up at Cloncurry about him. But they’re a good bunch, and if you want a good feed while you’re here hop in there.’
‘What about…?’
‘You needn’t worry about the cops. They’re new blokes now anyway. But they’re all up at Chinchilla. Two tribes of Abos are in town celebrating 40,000 years of culture and tradition. All getting pissed and trying to kill each other. So rather than let them wreck the town, the cops have herded them all into the local football stadium, flagons and everything, and letting them kick the shit out of each other in there. Some TV mob from the city’s videoing it.’
‘Nice to see our indigenous peoples are still maintaining their cultural identity,’ said Les.
‘That’s what we pay ’em for,’winked Murray. ‘So if you want to stroll around town it’s all sweet. But after I tell you what happened and what I got in mind, I reckon the less people know you’ve been in town the better.’
‘Okay, Muzz,’ said Les seriou
sly. ‘What happened, mate?’
‘What happened?’ Murray shook his head slowly. ‘Christ! What didn’t fuckin’ happen.’
The police were away and Murray was left in charge as honorary town sheriff, due to his position in the Parks and Wildlife service. All the Kooris were away watching the fighting, barracking for their tribe or whatever, and cotton harvest was in full swing so there wasn’t a great deal to do. Not that there ever is in Dirranbandi. He was in town Thursday afternoon watching the 2.50 p.m. goods-and-passenger train pull in, when he noticed four serious looking blokes pull up in a green army-style Land Rover. They were all wearing black singlets, shorts and hats, and Murray tipped them to be workers off one of the local cotton farms. The only thing unusual about them was they all had bushy black hair and thick black moustaches and wouldn’t have looked out of place driving taxis or running a restaurant in Beirut. They were all fit and hard and had no trouble lifting up a wooden crate, about the same size as a family refrigerator they collected from the train and gently placing it in the back of the Land Rover. They had a bit of a look around, didn’t notice Murray watching them and drove off out of town towards the Balonne River. Murray didn’t think all that much of it, had a few beers at the pub that night then hit the sack.
Still not having a great deal to do the next day, and with the family away, Murray decided to kill two birds with the one stone. There were four old abandoned opal mines, all next to each other, about five kilometres past and 17 kilometres in from the bridge, which were now a hazard; a couple of horses and some cattle had fallen in there and it was only a matter of time before somebody got killed. It was Murray’s job to blow them up. The council bought the explosives and the idea was to implode it so the whole lot would cave in. Murray drove out and set up all the charges. While he was there, Murray thought he’d call in on old Joe Bracken, make sure he was all right and ask him if he wanted to watch the fireworks. Joe’s camp was about three kilometres away next to the river. Murray left his ute at the mines and walked through the scrub to Joe’s camp.
White Shoes, White Lines and Blackie Page 16