Warrigal's Way

by Warrigal Anderson

  “Ve ze ver luck peoples. Ve vill paying ze zeventeen zenzes a kilo. Ziz make you ver ze rich manzes. Achtung!! Nine old beanzes, nine ze kinder beanzes, chust goot beanzes.”

  So off we went on the trail of the dastardly beanzes.

  The others took off like a mob of wounded roos, bobbing and dipping. We dragged our buckets along, gaily chucking whatever looked like a bean into it. Every half hour or so Eva would turn up and do a perfect one and a half with a twist, and dive into our buckets.

  “Ach. Got in himmel! Nooo. Nine ziz, nine ziz,” she said, chucking our hard-earned beanzes all over the joint. We reckoned nine was her lucky number. We didn’t realise her “nines” were “neins”, until her “nein” started melting our ears in the late afternoon. We would just wait until she shot through and toss the discarded beans bag again and sew it up. If it was too bad we would put Stumpy’s number on it. She scared the crap out of him, and better she went up to him than us. He could hardly understand her anyway, but he threatened to kill us about three times an hour. We clued up Tex, who was picking up and weighing the bags, and he would change the number on Stumpy’s good bags to one of our numbers. We really had him going until he sprung us, and he wouldn’t talk to us for a couple of days until he saw the funny side of it.

  After about three days we ran out of tucker, so since we had to go to town anyway, we decided to harvest our riches and make a bid for freedom. So that night, bent out of shape, battle weary and near deaf from getting yelled at, we crept up to the house and pulled the pin. God! I could-hardly lift my nine dollar fifty cheque. I think between the four of us we might have made enough for a carton of cans. It took a while for the nerves to settle each time someone said beans after that.

  “Rockhampton?” said Mick, and we all nodded agreement. “Getting away from Eel Creek must be like getting out of jail, eh.”

  “Stump! Take that paper off that Warrigal bastard before we find ourselves on a suicide mission!” said Tex.

  Mick agreed. “We don’t want another yob wiz the rich manzes.”

  “Achtung,” roared Tex. “Ve vill unt ze beanzes and be many ritches.” We were still laughing about it a hundred miles up the road.

  “Ungrateful bastards. I find you a nice relaxing job and you bludgers can’t handle it.”

  Other than stopping for tucker and petrol we went straight through to Rocky. It was a fair size town, fifteen or twenty thousand people. It had grown a bit since I had seen it last. We looked into the Club Hotel in North Rocky, over the river, and went and sussed out the meatworks at Lakes Creek (Angliss) and the Bremmer River (T.A. Fields). They both had cattle in the holding paddocks so we reckoned we’d front in the morning.

  I decided it was time. I got my driver’s licence. I could drive quite well now, thanks to June. I asked Mick if I could use his car, and he took me to the Department of motor transport. I passed with flying colours, but I must admit I was as nervous as hell.

  We were only getting a day or two’s work a week, as the works hadn’t really kicked in, but we decided to hang around until they really got going.

  Rocky always means snakes to me. We ran into a heap of Kiwi butchers at the Anchor. They were all staying upstairs with us, and were not bad blokes but long on the bull, always skiting and one-upping. Stumpy used to call them “Back homers” because every time they wanted to get one over us, they would start with “Back home in God’s own...” The Anchor was a classic old-fashioned pub, two-storeyed, with french doors opening from the rooms on to the veranda. One night Stumpy and Ted had a poker game going. Mick didn’t gamble and I didn’t know enough, so we were spectators. The talk at the table ranged over all sorts of subjects until it eventually got to snakes. The boys told their yarns and the New Zealanders told theirs (even though there are no snakes in New Zealand). The yarns got wilder and wilder, until they’d make even Harry Butler take a step back.

  Mike and I got a bit bored with all this and we went out to Emu Park and had a few beers. On the way home, as we were going past the Bremmer River yards, I spied a green tree snake, about two foot long.

  “Whoa, pull up,” I said to Mick, filling him in on what I had seen. It didn’t take long to nip back and grab it off the branch and put it in my pocket. “Now we’ll show how brave these boogers are.”

  Mick gave me an evil grin then burst out laughing.

  We got back and the game was still going and the bull was still flying.

  “Hey, you blokes! Look what the Warrigal’s found,” said Mick with a straight face.

  “What?” said Tex, coming to the party.

  I took my hand out of my pocket and dropped the snake in the middle of the table. It uncoiled and started moving across it. The Kiwis sat frozen, their eyes bulging.

  “Ahh! you mad bastard,” someone yelled, and that broke the spell. One called Rangi went straight up on the wardrobe, in one bound, looking three shades of pale, and chairs went flying. Have you ever seen five blokes trying to get through one door, all at once? It doesn’t work! Four fell down the back stairs, one went up the veranda post, and one who shall forever remain nameless (eh, Dennis) took a running leap over the veranda rail, flying about fifteen feet before landing and breaking an ankle. Mick and I were hanging on to each other, crying with laughter. They all gathered in the bar and reckoned I was a rotten bugger, and got ready to run every time I put my hand in my pocket. They didn’t know I had let Sam Snake go out at the back of the pub. I told the bunch of heroes that the family cat was more dangerous than that poor old python, but no way would they believe me. They reckoned it was my evil black side coming out and kept their distance after that. The regulars thought they were touched. Only a bloody Kiwi would be mad enough to jump off a veranda, they said.

  The chain in the boning room stopped one morning just before smoko, and the union delegate and a company man announced an all up, stand to your lockers. Two coppers joined them in the locker room. Evidently the company had bought a special line of beef for a customer, and some Herbert had knocked off a full rump. Hence the locker search. The union bloke, the company man and the two cops went along the line while we had an unexpected smoke. Eureka! The skinny cop nearly fainted with joy. “Who owns this locker?” he asked officiously. He must have been having visions of stripes on his sleeve.

  “I do,” said Proff, stepping forward. He was about five six, skinny, with a big mop of ratty hair and a beard, and very thick glasses.

  “What’s in the bag?” demanded the cop, pointing at the bag in question. It was an ordinary hessian sugar bag, tied at the top.

  “This one?” asked Proff.

  “Don’t be a smartarse. What’s in it?” roared the cop, the stripes in his mind, getting closer.

  “Snakes,” said Proff.

  “Bullshit!” said the cop. “Open it, or I do you right now!”

  We all became decidedly uneasy, as we knew Proff was a mad bastard who used to catch taipans and milk them. He took the bag out of his locker and put in the middle of the floor, then looked at the two policemen.

  “Bloody open it,” insisted the fuzz.

  Proff did the tie, the bag dropped open, and four of the biggest, mean snakes you ever saw slithered out onto the floor.

  There was instant bedlam. Eight blokes, one door! Some of us went up on the ladders with all the fitness of Olympic high-jumpers. The rest looked like a rush for the last pie on the Randwick race course. The skinny cop jumped into a locker and bloody near suffocated before he was found. The fat sergeant was one of the first out the door, followed closely the union delegate. The company man got trapped at the back of the pack and jumped up and down in about three-foot hops, forever earning his nickname of Roo. We sat on top of those lockers for hours until Proff caught his snakes. They never found that stolen meat. Proff got the bullet and cops were thin on the ground around the Creek that year. I’d loved to have known what the sergeant said to his offsider!

  19

  Going further north

  Eventua
lly we decided we couldn’t handle all the excitement, so it was time to head for Bowen. Ah, Bowen. Swaying palm trees, beaut beaches, and the best looking women in the whole world, so the boys told me. We meandered up the coast, taking our time, having a drink, stopping for a day when the fishing was calling. (Have you ever tasted a reef fish laid on a bed of coals and eaten off a banana leaf? If you have, you’ve dined in the company of angels. Have you known the thrill of feeding a thong to a huge mud crab, so it can’t remove your finger with its huge claw? If you’ve eaten the cooked claw and with a cold tinnie, you wouldn’t change places with the Queen.)

  We pulled into a little village just outside Mackay. I was perched on a stool at a bar, watching the boys play a game with wooden mushrooms and billiard balls, when I started having a yarn with “Dad Rudd”. You know Dad! Him and his son Dave had a radio show on the ABC for years. If it wasn’t him, it sure looked and sounded like him. You know, “Youngsters of today ... not like they were in my day ... Bloody empty-headed Yank clones now, hanging around milkbars.”

  “Yeah,” chipped in his old mate, Bill. “Mention work and they either faint or run for their lives.”

  Old Dad was moaning in my ear that he had twenty acres of sugar-cane to cut and he couldn’t get anyone to cut it. Well, I thought, we’ve been getting a bit slack, with all the time off we’ve been having. So I told him in my real serious voice, “No worries. Me and the boys will fix it up for you.” We negotiated a price, twenty-five bob a ton—Dad hadn’t caught up with dollars yet. “Cut in the paddock, you pick up,” I said.

  “Done,” he said happily and we shook hands.

  I knew the boys would be thrilled at the chance to cut some cane so I rushed out and hid the car keys so they couldn’t shoot through.

  “Oh no, not again,” moaned Stumpy. “Tex, you bugger, you were supposed to keep an eye on that bloody Warrigal—for that, you’re the cook!”

  Dad Rudd told us his name was Jim Edwards and he would give us a knock-down to his mate at the store. We got enough to keep us in the lap of luxury for about the next two weeks. If we were going to work hard, we were going to eat well. The bloke in the shop nearly broke an ankle opening the door for us when we paid cash for the groceries. With a big, beaming smile he threw in a bag of boiled lollies, for the kids. If you were under eighty you were a kid around here.

  We followed Dad Rudd up into the mountains. I think he forgot he had a Land Rover and we had a Holden. Just before we got to the bridge where the troll of the mountains lived, we turned off into a giant cane patch.

  “Hope that’s it,” said Stumpy.

  “No way they can get the harvester in there. It’s going to be rough and steep for sure,” Mick stated morosely.

  The quarters were excellent—good beds, electric stove and plenty of hot water. No woodstove, thank goodness, so no cutting wood. The rest of the day we used to sharpen up the cane knives with the oilstones. The cane knife is like a big broad butcher’s chopper with a hooked bit on the end, a thicker handle, and it is a bit lighter and better balanced.

  Next morning at cock crow Dad was outside the quarters with the tractor and trailer. We jumped aboard and he drove us up to the patch. It wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be. The slope was too steep for the harvester, but good for us, as the cane would fall behind us. It had been recently burned so we got covered in black soot but it washed off. We grabbed our knives, took a line, and started.

  Tex took off, going like the clappers, with Stumpy close behind. Mick and I were just pacing ourselves, reserving our strength. By about nine thirty Tex was half a row ahead and still going like the clappers, when suddenly there was a scream, a cane knife flew up in the air, and Tex came flying down the row bellowing. We thought he’d seen a snake.

  “Hey, you mad bastard, come here. What’s up?” Mick asked.

  “I just seen the biggest frog I ever seen in my life,” Tex gulped. “And the dirty bugger spat at me. Stuff that, I’m finished. I can’t handle those bastards.”

  No matter what we said, Tex wouldn’t budge. The rest of us were enjoying it and didn’t want to just up and leave. Mick drove Tex into Mackay to catch the bus up to Merinda, and we arranged to meet him there later.

  We finished the cane in three weeks. It was hard work but we had enjoyed it. Each evening we’d have a hot shower, then a beer on the front step, and we all took turns at the cooking. We were all fair hands at preparing a plain meal, but we weren’t in Tex’s class—he was a chef without peer. On the last night Dad Rudd came down to the pub and paid us up. We had a few beers, got a carton of cans and headed for Bowen.

  Back on the road again, I was driving and Mick was alongside in the passenger seat. Stumpy as usual was flat out asleep in the back. He was not talking to us again. We had filled up with petrol at the Tannum Sands garage and got some takeaway—Mike and I got fish and chips and Stumpy got a chicko roll. Stumpy was wandering around the road-house looking at the wildlife when this big ugly emu stuck its head over his shoulder and gobbled his chicko roll. He let out a yell and bolted. When he came back and calmed down a bit, we got the blame. Mick told him it was probably an Italian emu, because they like Chicko Rolls. Well, that set him off again.

  “You buggers probably put that ugly bird up to it,” he said.

  He wouldn’t tell us just how we were supposed to have done it. I asked him, all innocence, whether he wanted to take a photo of it to go with the owl.

  For some reason Stumpy and animals didn’t get along. The owl incident happened on the way up. We saw this real ugly owl sitting on a fence post and Stumpy went into raptures.

  “A tawny frogmouth! Stop the car! Where’s my camera?” His camera was a flash thing with knobs and dials all over it. “Hang on,” he said, running back down the road. “I want a shot of this.”

  Christ knows why. It had to be the ugliest bird that ever lived. He was crouching down, lining it up, when it gave a bloodcurdling screech and flew straight off the fence and landed on his woolly head. It latched on with its claws and, adding insult to injury, pooped right in the middle of his hair.

  Poor old Stumpy jumped up and down and ran around in circles yelling at the top of his voice, “Get it off, get it off. Get the bugger off.”

  Well, all Mick and I could do was hang on to each other and laugh till our ribs were sore. We were so weak that we had to hold each other up. Stumpy said that we were rotten bastards who wouldn’t give a mate a hand, and he wouldn’t talk to us for about an hour.

  The tomato-picking season went well—good money and beaut beaches. The fishing was unreal. Once I caught a prize coral trout which was delicious barbecued.

  We partied a bit but still saved a good quid, or dollar now. I had got to know a couple of butchers who had been working in Darwin and that fired my interest in having a look at the Northern Territory. As Jim had said, it was my country. The boys were going back to Victoria so we had a few beers and said our goodbyes. I went into Bowen and bought a five-year-old Ford Falcon and headed for Darwin.

  20

  Back to the Territory

  I got into Darwin at about six o’clock on a Friday night. I was quite surprised at the size of the place. I had expected something smaller and older, but the town was quite modern. I got some takeaway food and drove around in the Falcon feeling a bit lost. I finally found Mindal beach and the council caravan park. The bloke at the park told me that the police and the council would turn a blind eye at people sleeping in their car on the beach front road for a couple of days. The police were Commonwealth police and they just checked you out and let you be. I got a bit shaky when they pulled up, and I was so nervous that I don’t know how I talked to them.

  But these were the days of hippies, drugs and bulldozers. Darwin in the late 1960s was a big melting pot. There was no such thing as colour or race. If a man was good enough to work with, he was good enough to drink with. My mates in Darwin were Aboriginals, Thursday Islanders, Chinese, white Aussies, Poles, Germans, Yugoslavs and
White Russians. We had no hassles about race because we never went anywhere where it mattered. We all lived in caravan parks or boarding houses. A large part of the population were transients. There were hippies from all over Australia and the world living in shacks or sleeping out on the beach or among the rocks along the beach front. They grew and smoked dope and were driving the council off its head. The police would go in with a bulldozer and clear them out of an area, but in no time they’d be back, worse than ever.

  I camped in the car till Monday, then went looking for the Labour Department. The woman there told me there wasn’t much going, so I went out to the meatworks next morning and sat on the gate. I got a pick-up on the beef-chain trimming forequarters and was told to front-up again tomorrow.

  I met this bloke Kevin at work and he gave me a knockdown to his landlady at the boarding house in Stuart Park. She was a funny old duck, Greek, I think and her name was Rosa. She showed me a double room, charged me eight dollars for a week and left me to it. It was a big room, with an overhead fan, and a fridge in the corner. I had the use of the kitchen downstairs, and there were toilets and showers at each end of the block. I was quite happy with it and shifted my gear in.

  Kevin asked me if I wanted to go down to the Buffalo Club with him and Little Roy, another of the blokes that stayed there. “We’ll sign you in,” he told me, so I thought, why not. It was about two blocks from the boarding house on the Stuart Highway. There was a fair crowd and the boys seemed to know them all. We got a beer, ordered steak and chips, then found a table.

  “We usually come up here for tea,” said Roy. About five one, Roy was a small bloke with sun-bleached brown hair, a nice little pot belly, and he was wiry tough. He worked for a construction company building houses. He made good money and was trying to get Kevin a job with him.