They're a Weird Mob

by Nino Culotta

  The men washed up, and only broke two glasses and no cups. Whilst the elderly lady was singing a song, ‘Goodbye Dolly’ I think, Kay was having a very intense discussion on politics with Addo and Old Vic, Aub and Tony and I were getting animated over the question of racial intolerance, and Peto and Simmo and Jacko were heatedly helping the women to reorganise the education system. Bertie’s wide grin somehow managed to keep his cigarette holder in place, and Big Jim solemnly strummed his minute ukulele. I realised that it was one o’clock in the morning, and we were having a do. I thought Kay should be in bed, and told her so, and she patted me on the head and said, ‘Thank you darling,’ and went on talking. And it seemed only a few minutes later that Bob entered from the kitchen carrying great stacks of buttered toast, and saying, ‘Breakfast everybody. The sun’s up.’

  It was too. The elderly lady said, ‘My goodness! I haven’t stayed up all night since nineteen eighteen.’ She was still excited, and very proud of herself, and went away to feed her fowls, happily singing a song called ‘Daisy’. Kay wanted to know where Bob had got the bread for all that toast, as she knew we didn’t have that much. He wouldn’t say. His wife wanted to know where he’d been all night, as she hadn’t seen him since about one o’clock, but again he wouldn’t say. Bob is a big cheerful man who can give no information with much charm.

  The toast was all eaten and young Nino came in with much energy, and belligerently demanded his breakfast. He also surveyed our visitors sternly and said, ‘My place. Go home.’ So they went home, and we fed young Nino, and Kay went to bed.

  I am convinced that I am unable to sleep in the daytime, so I sat down to write some more of this story, and immediately went to sleep. I was awakened at three o’clock in the afternoon by Bob. He offered me a cold beer.

  ‘Hair of the dog,’ he said. ‘Do yer good.’

  I said, ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘Just brought the young bloke back. Took him down this morning to play with the kids. He’s had ’is lunch. Feel like comin’ down to the pub?’

  I said, ‘No. I never want to see that place again.’

  He laughed. ‘Cleaned up the house for yer. How does she look?’

  ‘She’ looked clean and tidy, and I said so, and thanked him.

  ‘Nothin’ to ut. How’s the book goin’? Am I in ut?’

  I said it was going well but he was not in it.

  I said, ‘Would you like to be in it?’

  ‘Yeah. Bung me in.’

  So there you are Bob, you are in. And in your own phrase, ‘It couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke.’

  That episode of Friday night and yesterday illustrates the informality of the Australian way of life, and the Australian’s unquenchable energy and thirst. He works hard, with much cursing and swearing, and is most unhappy when he has no work to do. He loves beer and tobacco, and impassioned arguments. He is kind and generous and abusive. He will swear at you, and call you insulting names, and love you like a brother. He is without malice. He will fight you with skill and ferocity, and buy you a beer immediately afterwards. He is a man of many contradictions, but his confidence and self-sufficing are inspiring. If he is beaten in a fight or an argument, he laughs about it the next day, and tells his mates, ‘The bastard was too good fer me.’ He doesn’t resent a defeat, but is queerly proud of the physical or mental ability of ‘that bastard who done me over’. It takes a European a long time to begin to understand him.

  I once heard a Sydney Australian describe the citizens of Melbourne as being ‘a weird mob’. His listeners appeared to be completely satisfied with the description, and to understand immediately all that it implied. At that time I did not understand it at all. Now I think I do. It seems to mean that it is very difficult for a citizen of Sydney to understand the citizens of Melbourne, who appear to be interested in such extraordinary things as Australian Rules football, calm water for swimming, and six o’clock closing. Yet they brew magnificent beer, and like to eat Sydney oysters. Their policemen wear strange uniforms, and their electric trains are queer. I have not seen Melbourne, but have been told these things. They are very disparaging about Sydney’s beautiful harbour, and very proud of a muddy creek called the Yarra. They would probably be decent blokes when you got to know them, but it would take years. Their ways are not our ways, therefore they are a weird mob. Certainly from the point of view of a European migrant, the citizens of Sydney are a weird mob. It takes years to understand them, but the understanding, when it comes, is infinitely rewarding. It is not possible to understand them at all until you have learned their queer, abbreviated language. Joe asked me the other day what I was ‘gunna do with the young bloke when ’e grows up’. I said I did not know, and Joe said, ‘Cut ’s fingers orf before yer make a brickie out of ’im.’ This appears to mean that I should first cut off young Nino’s fingers, and then instruct him in the art of laying bricks. What Joe meant was that cutting off his fingers was the lesser of two evils, and that, if faced with the alternative, I should do this, rather than let him learn to lay bricks. Any Australian would understand immediately all the shades of meaning in such use of the word ‘before’. No New Australian would. The better his knowledge of English, the more puzzled he would be.

  And when Kay says, ‘I thought you were supposed to be minding young Nino,’ and I agree, and she says, ‘He’s only down in the shed with your tins of paint,’ I learn how an Australian can use that little word ‘only’ to convey complex meanings, otherwise needing whole sentences. It gives me a picture of young Nino surrounded by tins of paint with the lids off, with paint all over the floor of the shed and all over himself, and his hair which was brushed and combed this morning, and probably in his mouth also, which will make him sick and we will have to send for the doctor. All this, that one little word tells me, and it also severely rebukes me for neglecting my duty. None of these meanings will be found in a dictionary.

  I praise the dinner that Kay has cooked, and tell her it is the best dinner that I have had for years, and she says, ‘It wasn’t that good,’ and the little word ‘that’ tells me more than you would think any word could.

  Australians are incredibly economical with words, and also with diction and gestures. They open their mouths no more than is absolutely necessary, and rely on emphasis more than on explanatory gestures. Whereas an Italian does not mind what sort of faces he is pulling as long as the sounds he is making are clear, and uses his arms and hands and shoulders to make them clearer still, an Australian will devastate you with a few short words delivered with an expressionless face, and from almost closed lips. These words will not be clearly pronounced, will be given an accent and inflexion unintelligible to a student of English, and will not mean what they appear to mean. So that you will not be devastated until you have learned the language, and then you will be able to devastate him with an appropriate reply delivered the same way, and you will be friends. Until then, you will just be a ‘bloody New Australian’, and regarded as something of a nuisance because things have to be explained to you all the time. And because you don’t understand the explanation either, you will be regarded as a dill, and left alone in your loneliness. Mix with Australians, listen to them, work with them, and practise in secret the sentences you hear, so that you can say them exactly as you heard them. Do much more listening than talking because they will resent having to cease using their own verbal shorthand to explain things to you. When you are working with them, they will ridicule you in hundreds of ways, but never lose your temper because this ridicule is natural to them, and is not hostile. If you lose your temper you will have declared war, and you will certainly lose the war also. By keeping your temper you will win their respect; by learning their language you will win their liking. And when somebody says to you, ‘Yer know wot yer c’n do yer bastard,’ and you say, ‘Yeah, an’ you know wot you c’n do,’ and he says to the barmaid, ‘Give us another one fer this drongo�
�� you know that you have been accepted, and will soon be an Australian and your troubles will be over.

  But if you are ever told that you are a ‘bludger’, go home. A bludger is the worst thing you can be in Australia. It means that you are criminally lazy, that you ‘pole on yer mates’, that you are a ‘piker’—a mean, contemptible, miserable individual who is not fit to associate with human beings. No one will talk to you, or buy you a drink, and you’ve had it. You will be called a bastard because you are a good bloke, but if you are called a bludger you probably are one. You might be called a ‘bludgin’ bastard’ in a rueful sort of way which is half admiring but the word bludger by itself is final condemnation.

  So watch it, Charlie. Return all shouts, pull your weight on the job, if you have cigarettes offer them to others; if a man does you a favour, return it sometime. But don’t overdo the generosity. That will make you a ‘crawler’ which is nearly as bad as being a bludger. And don’t abuse anybody until you have made friends. You may abuse friends as much as you like. You will be expected to. But only in public. With others present, your abuse of your friend is a public declaration of friendship, which is much appreciated. Abuse him in private, when there is no one else present, and you’ve got trouble. You will have lost your friend. Unless you have a fight, and blood is shed. Everything will be all right then.

  There are far too many New Australians in this country who are still mentally living in their homelands, who mix with people of their own nationality, and try to retain their own language and customs. Who even try to persuade Australians to adopt their customs and manners. Cut it out. There is no better way of life in the world than that of the Australian. I firmly believe this. The grumbling, growling, cursing, profane, laughing, beer drinking, abusive, loyal-to-his-mates Australian is one of the few free men left on this earth. He fears no one, crawls to no one, bludges on no one, and acknowledges no master. Learn his way. Learn his language. Get yourself accepted as one of him; and you will enter a world that you never dreamed existed. And once you have entered it, you will never leave it.

  Recently, in the street, I heard a mother chastising her child in voluble Italian. And this small boy said to his mother, ‘Gees mum, I dunno wot yer talkin’ about.’ I was very pleased. I told Kay. She said, ‘It must be hard for the parents.’ Of course it’s hard. But the kids can do it. They do it by mixing with Australian kids, and listening. The adults can do it by mixing with Australian adults. All that is needed is the will to learn. Well, don’t be bludgers. Hop in and learn. I’ve heard parents in shops talking to kids in their homeland language, and the kids translating into English, and making the purchases. This is disgraceful. Those parents should be bloody ashamed of themselves. They came to this country because their own is impossible and by their own laziness make this one impossible for themselves also. It makes me very irritable.

  If I keep on thinking about this I will be irritable at dinner, which smells good, and then Kay will say I am in one of my ‘dirty Italian moods’ again. So I will not think about it any more. I will stop writing now, and count my blessings. They are very numerous. I will stop worrying about these New Australians, and start wondering what I am going to do this afternoon. There are so many things I can do. I can work in my garden, or fix the electric iron which I should have fixed last week and which Kay will need to-morrow. Or I can take her and young Nino into the Domain, and listen to the ratbags making speeches. Or we can all go down to Cronulla for a swim. Or we can visit Bob, and eat some of his oysters. Or go and talk to Joe about building, while Kay and Edie gossip as women do. There are hundreds of ways we could spend this sunny Sunday afternoon. Or we could just stay at home and do nothing, and perhaps that would be best of all. To rest on the seventh day. To thank God for letting us be here. To thank Him for letting me be an Australian. Sometimes I think that if I am ever fortunate enough to reach Heaven, I will know I am there when I hear Him say, ‘Howyergoin’mate orright?’

  For reading group notes visit textclassics.com.au

  The Commandant

  Jessica Anderson

  Introduced by Carmen Callil

  Homesickness

  Murray Bail

  Introduced by Peter Conrad

  Sydney Bridge Upside Down

  David Ballantyne

  Introduced by Kate De Goldi

  A Difficult Young Man

  Martin Boyd

  Introduced by Sonya Hartnett

  The Australian Ugliness

  Robin Boyd

  Introduced by Christos Tsiolkas

  The Even More Complete

  Book of Australian Verse

  John Clarke

  Introduced by John Clarke

  Diary of a Bad Year

  JM Coetzee

  Introduced by Peter Goldsworthy

  Wake in Fright

  Kenneth Cook

  Introduced by Peter Temple

  The Dying Trade

  Peter Corris

  Introduced by Charles Waterstreet

  They’re a Weird Mob

  Nino Culotta

  Introduced by Jacinta Tynan

  Careful, He Might Hear You

  Sumner Locke Elliott

  Introduced by Robyn Nevin

  Terra Australis

  Matthew Flinders

  Introduced by Tim Flannery

  My Brilliant Career

  Miles Franklin

  Introduced by Jennifer Byrne

  Cosmo Cosmolino

  Helen Garner

  Introduced by Ramona Koval

  Dark Places

  Kate Grenville

  Introduced by Louise Adler

  The Watch Tower

  Elizabeth Harrower

  Introduced by Joan London

  The Mystery of

  a Hansom Cab

  Fergus Hume

  Introduced by Simon Caterson

  The Glass Canoe

  David Ireland

  Introduced by Nicolas Rothwell

  The Jerilderie Letter

  Ned Kelly

  Introduced by Alex McDermott

  Bring Larks and Heroes

  Thomas Keneally

  Introduced by Geordie Williamson

  Strine

  Afferbeck Lauder

  Introduced by John Clarke

  Stiff

  Shane Maloney

  Introduced by Lindsay Tanner

  The Middle Parts of Fortune

  Frederic Manning

  Introduced by Simon Caterson

  The Scarecrow

  Ronald Hugh Morrieson

  Introduced by Craig Sherborne

  The Dig Tree

  Sarah Murgatroyd

  Introduced by Geoffrey Blainey

  The Plains

  Gerald Murnane

  Introduced by Wayne Macauley

  The Fortunes of

  Richard Mahony

  Henry Handel Richardson

  Introduced by Peter Craven

  The Women in Black

  Madeleine St John

  Introduced by Bruce Beresford

  An Iron Rose

  Peter Temple

  Introduced by Les Carlyon

  1788

  Watkin Tench

  Introduced by Tim Flannery

 

 

 
scale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share