Pop was shaking his head in wonderment as he took some tobacco from a pouch, spread it on cigarette paper, rolled it up and lit it. ‘In all me years as a lifesaver, I never seen anything like it.’
He closed his eyes and inhaled, and as the smell of tobacco filled the room, he said, ‘Funny, the things you remember. Whenever I think about that day, I still see dozens of straw hats floating on the waves and disappearing over the horizon.’
Ted looked at his neighbour with new interest. ‘You must miss your lifesaving days.’
‘Yeah, well, you miss a lot of things when you get older.’ He sighed. ‘A lot of things and a lot of people. But I’ll tell you one thing. The sea plays silly buggers with you — you never know what’s going on under those smooth-lookin’ waves. Like people, I suppose.’
Ted suddenly remembered why he’d come. ‘Will you be needing your tool bag over the next few days?’ he asked.
Pop chuckled. ‘Don’t tell me you’re changing jobs?’
‘I just need to borrow it for a couple of days. And do you think you could give me an idea how to use the tools?’
Pop disappeared into another room, and returned a moment later with his tool bag. He took out the wrench, screwdrivers and pliers, and ran through some of the things that could go wrong with plumbing, explaining which tools a plumber would use to check water pressure, unclog drains and change washers. Ted tried to remember everything. He couldn’t afford to make a mistake.
On Monday morning Ted spent half an hour trying to convince Gus Thornton to let him follow up the story about Bonegilla.
‘Don’t tell me you’re planning to waste two days chasing some cock-and-bull story in Albury?’ Gus shouted, his jowls wobbling like a Christmas turkey.
Ted stood his ground. ‘I don’t think it will be a waste of time. I reckon I’ll be able to file a good story about conditions in the camps. Especially now they’re in the news.’
His luck was in. The Sydney Morning Herald had just run a short news item about the death of two babies at another migrant camp, and one of the weeping mothers had blamed the government for not providing adequate medical facilities for the migrants.
‘Of course the medical facilities are inadequate,’ Gus scoffed, pushing his cigarette into his cigarette-holder with such force that it broke in half. With a curse he tossed the two pieces into the ashtray. ‘There aren’t enough medical facilities anywhere, so why would it be any different in the camps?’
But he acknowledged that with the right kind of reporting, dead babies at a migrant camp could be a big story. Nothing got readers worked up as much as medical negligence, especially when children were involved. It might even lead to a series on infant deaths all over the country for which doctors and hospitals could be blamed.
Ted didn’t bother to explain that investigating medical mistakes wasn’t his reason for going to Bonegilla. He reckoned that if his story turned out to be as big as he hoped, Gus would forget all about sick children.
But as he walked out of his boss’s office he wondered what his father would have thought if he’d known that his work involved so much manipulation and deceit. It was the only way to find out what was going on, but Ted had a nagging feeling that his father wouldn’t have approved.
Chapter 19
Three days later Ted was sitting in the Parthenon Café in Albury’s main street, about to tuck into a big plate of steak, eggs and chips. When he asked the dark-eyed young waitress for the tomato sauce, she shook her head and said something in Greek to the man behind the counter, who came over to ask what he wanted.
‘She no speak English,’ he said.
Until recently Ted hadn’t taken much interest in newcomers, but now as he looked at the timid waitress he wondered if she’d just stepped off a migrant ship and landed in a strange city where she couldn’t understand what anyone said.
He opened the Albury Banner and saw that it was full of ads for sheep and stock sales. Farmers’ and graziers’ co-ops were selling Herefords, Shorthorns, Romney and Merino sheep. There were even notices that promised to teach wool-classing by mail. Australia was certainly riding on the sheep’s back, but even here, in the heart of rural Australia, with all those cows grazing in the meadows, butter was still rationed. It made Ted angry that in this land of plenty, more than three years after the war had ended, they still had rationing, but he knew it was because Australia’s butter was being exported to Britain. ‘They’re milking us dry,’ Gus often said, and for once Ted agreed with him.
He looked at his watch, put down the paper, grabbed the tool bag and hurried from the café. He reached the bus stop just as the bus for Bonegilla was about to pull out. ‘Come on, mate, get a move on, we can’t wait all day,’ the driver growled good-naturedly as he jumped on.
The only other passengers were two elderly women who had been shopping in Albury. As the bus jolted past the outskirts of the town, one of them began complaining. ‘It’s not right having a migrant camp in the town, putting all of us in danger,’ she said. ‘I reckon some of those foreigners would stick a knife in you as soon as look at you.’
Her companion was nodding. ‘And they don’t even speak English.’
Looking through the streaked bus window, Ted saw the landscape as the girl in the café, or Lilija, or any of the new migrants might have done. He noticed that the grass on the pastures was sparse, and the leaves on the trees were grey rather than green. In spring, the fine-leafed acacias would dazzle with a froth of yellow flowers, but now the winter foliage was bare and brittle, and the ground was parched and brown.
To people coming from the lush meadows and dense forests of Europe, it must appear as though the pitiless sun had sucked all the juice from the land. Ted loved the vast horizons and harsh colours of this country, but it was the possessive feeling of a parent who loves a child without understanding it.
‘Bonegilla!’ the bus driver called out.
As soon as Ted got off the bus, he took off his jacket and put on a pair of overalls and a tradesman’s cloth cap. The gum trees by the side of the road smelled dry and sweet, but as he walked up to the camp he saw a sandy wasteland where army huts with corrugated-iron roofs were surrounded by cyclone fencing. It looked like a prison, and he could imagine the despair that former internees of concentration camps and DP camps must feel on arriving here, and what impressions they would form of their new country in this desolate place.
There was a sentry on duty at the gate and Ted sauntered up in his workman’s gear as though this was just another routine job. When the guard asked to see his permit, he nonchalantly raised the tool bag to show why he’d come, and mumbled something about the drain blocking up again in the washroom. The man on duty had his eye on a pretty brunette swinging her hips as she strolled towards the gate, and he waved Ted through without checking his credentials.
Ted wandered around the camp and peered inside the dormitory-style huts, counting the number of beds. Twenty-five per hut. Accommodation was segregated, and in one of the huts four men were leaning over a card table, puffing away at cigarettes. He watched them for a while through the open door, and when one of them looked up and caught his eye, he called out, ‘Does anyone here speak English?’
They glanced at him, moved closer together and spoke volubly in their own language. An unshaven fellow in a baggy woollen sweater threw down his cards and shambled towards Ted. He was a big man with dark stubble, and as he leaned against the door he folded his beefy arms and gave Ted a suspicious look.
‘Vat you vant?’ he asked.
‘I’m looking for the communal bathroom,’ Ted said, then added with an air of bonhomie, ‘How are they treating you in here, mate?’
The man studied him for a moment, then, without a word, spat into the dirt and turned his back on him.
Outside the women’s huts some of the mothers were chatting as their tow-haired children played in the dirt. Some of them looked up when they saw him, and smiled back, but no one seemed to speak English. If he did
n’t find some way of communicating with these people very soon, he’d end up with no story and a furious editor on his back. He needed to find someone like the migrant who’d written to Mr Addison.
Finally someone pointed to the washroom, down the main path past the mess building. It was late afternoon and he saw a few men going in with towels around their necks.
Whistling ‘Rum and Coca-Cola’ to sound nonchalant, he went inside.
‘Been told the plumbing’s crook,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘I reckon I’ll get it going in no time.’
He took a plunger from his bag, ran some water into one of the large metal sinks and pushed down on it several times, shaking his head and muttering about the poor water pressure. He took apart a few taps, replaced them and then knelt down beside the drain and poked around as Pop Wilson had shown him, hoping that none of the men in there were plumbers.
Men came and went, all speaking different languages. Some showered in the open cubicles while others pulled their shirts down to their waists and leaned over the sinks as they washed their hands and faces and splashed water over their heads. Every few minutes Ted looked up, and then put his head down again. He had already been there close to an hour without finding any evidence that might substantiate the story Mr Addison had told him, and he knew he couldn’t hang around much longer.
He was putting the tools back in the bag when a man at one of the sinks stripped to the waist and started soaping himself. He raised his left arm and there it was. A red scar raised in the middle, with lumpy edges. Ted looked away quickly so that the man wouldn’t realise he’d seen it. He kept his head down to conceal his excitement. Finally he’d seen something that substantiated Mr Addison’s allegation about removed SS tattoos.
As he snapped the tool bag shut he sensed that someone was watching him. He looked up; at the far end of the washroom a young man with a shock of fair hair was looking at him with a sardonic smile. There was something familiar about him, but Ted decided he must have imagined it.
The young bloke kept his gaze on Ted’s face. ‘Yesterday you journalist, and today you fix pipes?’
Ted spun around, hoping no one had overheard the comment. He looked at the fellow more closely and knew he was in luck. It was Peter Czerny from the SS Napoli, who had told him about the fascists on board.
Glancing around to make sure they weren’t being watched, Peter took Ted’s arm and propelled him along a path behind the toilet block. They sat on a bench in a secluded corner of the camp, facing beds of spindly stocks and wilting marigolds that some of the migrants had planted in the sandy soil. The sun was going down and long shadows fell across the ground.
‘The man you saw in washroom,’ Peter said. ‘American doctor in DP camp in Germany did skin graft.’
Ted felt a quiver of excitement. ‘Can I quote you?’
Peter shrugged. ‘Why not? Tomorrow I go from here. To job.’
Ted whipped out his notebook and fountain pen and started jotting down what Peter had said.
‘I will be happy to go from here,’ continued Peter. ‘They beat Polish man yesterday because he try to defend Jewish man they beat up. Not only Waffen SS are here. Hungarian man in kitchen, he say he was Arrow Cross. He talk how he and friends round up Jews in Budapest and shoot them, then they throw bodies in Danube River. He is proud of that.’
‘Arrow Cross? Who are they?’
Ted listened while Peter listed extremist groups that had willingly collaborated with the Nazis in murdering hundreds of thousands of defenceless men, women and children with machine guns, bayonets and axes, in camps, forests and prison camps all over Europe. He mentioned groups Ted had never heard of: Croatian Ustashe, Hungarian Arrow Cross, Slovenian Domobran, Latvian Arajs Kommando, Carpathian Hlinka Guard, and the Brotherhood of Ukrainian Nationalists.
By the time Peter had finished, Ted’s jaw was clenched so tight that it ached. He could see now why it had been easy to pull the wool over the eyes of so many Australian screening officers. It wasn’t just that they couldn’t speak the languages of the people whose applications they were processing. Like him, most of them didn’t even know about these fascist militias and thought that the only war criminals were Germans.
‘The Ustashe did things that shocked even the Germans,’ Peter was saying. As he described some of their atrocities, using gestures when he couldn’t find the words, Ted’s stomach rose into his throat, and he held up his hand for Peter to stop.
‘Two Ustashe men in my hut,’ Peter said. ‘They keep photograph of Ante Paveli, Ustashe leader. He is hero for them. They say one day they get weapons and train. Then they go back to Yugoslavia and kill Communists.’
Ted stopped writing. ‘Get weapons and train where?’
‘In Australia. They want to have Ustashe militia again. They want to kill more peoples.’
Ted let out a breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding. How much of this incredible story was true? His instinct told him that Peter knew what he was talking about, but without any proof it was just another unsubstantiated account that could easily be refuted.
Seeing Ted’s expression, Peter shrugged. ‘My friend, I see you do not believe.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Now is dinner. Come. You will see.’
As they walked along the dirt path towards the huts, ducking several times behind some bushes to avoid being seen, they heard the clatter of cutlery, the clink of glasses on wooden tables and a hubbub of voices coming from the mess hall. ‘Now they eat,’ Peter said. ‘We have time.’
Peter’s hut stood at the far end of a row of identical army-style barracks with corrugated roofs. They peered through the window to make sure there was no one inside, and opened the door. Inside, Peter pointed to a small brown suitcase with the corners bashed in, which lay on the grey blanket on his narrow bunk. ‘Tomorrow morning I go to job in Griffith.’
He walked along the row of bunks, motioning for Ted to follow him, and stopped at the last bed on the right. Glancing around, Peter opened a drawer in the small wooden bedside table and took out a small figurine. It was a crudely made likeness of Hitler with the swastika armband, the hair plastered over the forehead and the clipped black moustache.
‘Look,’ Peter whispered. He pressed a button at the base and the right arm began to swing up and down in the Nazi salute.
Ted was shocked, angry and excited all at once. If only he had a photographer with him.
‘Look, here is more,’ Peter said. He replaced the figurine, walked over to the next bedside table and pulled out the drawer so that Ted could see an armband with a swastika. He opened another drawer, took out a Bible and turned it upside down until a photograph fell out.
‘Ante Paveli, Butcher of Croatia,’ Peter said, and added, ‘Some of them keep German bayonets in suitcases.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘We go now.’
He was closing the drawer when the door opened and a bald man with broad shoulders came into the hut. From his expression Ted could tell that he knew what they’d been looking at. The man let loose a barrage of what sounded like abuse. Shaking his head, Peter pointed at Ted’s tool bag and at a loose piece of galvanised iron hanging from the roof, as though to explain their presence. As they left the hut, the man gave Peter a look that made the hairs at the back of Ted’s neck stand up.
They were walking towards the camp gate when Peter turned to Ted. ‘Tell me, my friend, what will happen when you write about this?’ he asked.
‘I hope it will cause an outcry, embarrass the immigration department and make them realise they have to smarten up. They’ve got to stop these fascists from coming here.’
At the gate Ted shook Peter’s hand and wished him luck in his new life in Griffith.
‘And I wish you good luck also,’ Peter replied, and Ted thought he detected irony in his voice.
Back in Albury Ted returned to the Parthenon Café. As he watched the shy young waitress carefully placing his fish and chips in front of him, he remembered reading that thousands of young Greeks wer
e being kidnapped by guerrillas and sent to youth camps in Communist countries. In spite of all the jubilation about Allied victory, the war still wasn’t over for some nations.
He would have liked to ask the girl whether she had migrated here to escape being abducted and forced to become a fighter in a foreign country for a cause she didn’t believe in, but he smiled at her instead.
In his small room at the Albury Hotel, he lay on the hard bed with his arms clasped behind his neck. It was a typical room in an old country pub: poorly lit, with heavy old-fashioned furniture stained with a dark varnish, ill-fitting curtains which didn’t keep out the light, and a monastic bathroom down the hall with toilet cubicles and cracked sinks on wobbly stands.
He opened the novel he’d brought with him, but the weak electric bulb in the bedside lamp gave very little light and he put the book aside. His mind kept wandering back to what he’d seen and heard at Bonegilla. As he turned off the lamp, it struck him that the lives of perpetrators and victims were closely intertwined in their new country.
Two days later Ted’s article, FASCISTS FIND SANCTUARY ON OUR SHORES, appeared in the Daily Standard, and for once Gus Thornton didn’t blast him for being wishy-washy. The article described what he’d seen in the hut, quoted what George Addison had observed and what Peter Czerny had told him. He criticised the ignorance and naivety of the screening officers, and the smug attitude of the immigration department, whose officers denied the defects of a system that enabled perpetrators of atrocities to enter Australia. He’d intended to include an account of the Ustashe atrocity Peter had described, but Gus decided it was too shocking to print.
Ted was disappointed by the response to his article. There were a few sympathetic letters calling for an overhaul of the screening system to exclude the very people Australia had gone to war against, but it seemed as though his exposé had played into the hands of the xenophobes. Most of the letter writers praised him for revealing that the current immigration policy was a failure, and urged the government to restrict immigration to British citizens, while some writers dismissed his claims and accused him of being a Communist sympathiser.
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