by Graham Seal
Tom says, ‘Oh, that’s simple, I bet him $2000 that within thirty seconds of getting in here I’d have the shirt off your back.’
Jacky Bindi-i
An Aboriginal stockman or roustabout known as Jacky Bindi-i, Jacky-Jacky or just Jacky, features in a number of bush yarns, and even in song. Jacky is generally distinguished by his sharp retorts, often undercutting the authority of the boss, the policeman or the magistrate. As the folklorist John Meredith points out:
There are literally dozens of these stories, all concerned with situations involving Jacky-Jacky, his lubra Mary, black sheep, white sheep, the white boss and his station-hands and his wife. In this series of folk-tales, ‘Jacky-Jacky’ generally, but not always, comes out on top, scoring a victory over the white boss.
One day Jacky and his boss needed to cross a flooded river but the only boat was on the far bank. The boss told Jacky to swim across and bring the boat back. Jacky protested, saying that there may be crocodiles in the river. The boss said that he need not worry as crocodiles never touch blackfellas. Jacky replied that the crocodiles might be colour-blind and that it would be better to wait until the flood subsided.
On another occasion Jacky was in a distant part of the property minding a mob of sheep and he needed his rations and other necessities delivered to him by the boss each week. One week the boss forgot to bring Jacky’s food. Jacky was not too happy and told the boss that he only had a bone left from last week’s rations and that it would be another week before any more meat came. The boss laughed and told him not to worry, saying ‘The nearer the bone the sweeter the meat.’ When the boss returned the following week the sheep were in a terrible condition as Jacky had kept them where there was no grass to eat. The boss turned on Jacky and angrily asked him what he thought he was doing. Jacky just laughed and said ‘The nearer the ground, the sweeter the grass.’
Jacky Bindi-i’s other main activity is stealing sheep or cows, for which he is frequently brought before the courts. At one of his hearings the judge gave Jacky three years in prison and asked him if he had anything to say. ‘Yes,’ said Jacky angrily, ‘You’re bloody free with other people’s time.’
In another court, this time for being drunk and disorderly, the magistrate fined Jacky and gave him twenty days in prison. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do, boss,’ said Jacky. ‘I’ll toss you—forty days or nothing.’
Jacky is caught red-handed by a trooper one day as he catches him butchering a stolen bullock. He ties Jacky to his horse and leads the way on the lengthy journey back to town. As they ride, Jacky asks the trooper how he had tracked him down. ‘I smelled you out,’ replies the trooper proudly.
They ride on and as darkness falls, so does the rain and it is not too long before the trooper loses his way. ‘Do you know the way to town, Jacky?’ he asks his prisoner at last. Jacky is ready with his answer: ‘Why don’t you smell the way back to town the same as you smelled out Jacky?’
Jacky-Jacky also features in a modern Aboriginal song sung in many versions around the country:
Jacky Jacky was a smart young fellow
Full of fun and energy.
He was thinkin’ of gettin’ married
But the lubra run away you see.
Cricketah boobelah will-de-mah
Billa na ja jingeree wah.
Jacky used to chase the emu
With his spears and his waddy too.
He’s the only man that can tell you
What the emu told a kangaroo.
Cricketah boobelah will-de-mah
Billa na ja jingeree wah.
Hunting food was Jacky’s business
‘Til the white man come along.
Put his fences across the country
Now the hunting days are gone.
Cricketah boobelah will-de-mah
Billa na ja jingeree wah.
White fella he now pay all taxes
Keep Jacky Jacky in clothes and food.
He don’t care what become of the country
White fella tucker him very good.
Cricketah boobelah will-de-mah
Billa na ja jingeree wah.
Now Australia’s short of money
Jacky Jacky sit he laugh all day.
White fella want to give it back to Jacky
No fear Jacky won’t have it that way.
Cricketah boobelah will-de-mah
Billa na ja jingeree wah.
Jimmy Ah Foo
A real-life Chinese counterpart to Jacky Bindi-i was Jimmy Ah Foo, a publican in outback Queensland. His great skill was reputed to lie in making himself as agreeable as possible to his customers. In the process, he always seemed to benefit. During the shearers’ strikes of the 1890s, there were serious outbreaks of anti-Chinese violence, since many shearers feared that Chinese workers would be used as strike breakers. A deputation of local shearers visited Jimmy’s pub and told him to sack his Chinese cook. They would be returning the next day to see that he did so. Next day the shearers showed up again. ‘I’ve done as you asked,’ Jimmy said. ‘I’m the cook now.’
Corny Kenna
An Anglo-Saxon version of the jokester is Victoria’s Cornelius Kenna (pronounced Ken-ah!)
Corny, as he is generally called, is served an under-measure whisky in the pub one day. Seeing his frown, the barmaid defensively says the whisky is thirty years old. ‘Very small for its age,’ says Kenna.
Another time, Corny is taking a lady through the bush in a timber jinker. A storm closes in, and he whips up the horses. Rattling along, the cart hits a tree stump and overturns. Corny’s infuriated passenger says, ‘I knew this would happen!’ Replies Corny: ‘Well, why the devil didn’t you tell me?’
Corny lends a horse to a man who vows to return it next day. Nearly two weeks later, the horse still unreturned, Corny meets the man at a local auction. ‘Oh,’ says the embarrassed horse borrower, ‘I’ve meant to bring it back a dozen times.’ ‘Once will be enough,’ says Corny.
On another occasion a city slicker asks Corny for directions to Yaapeet, calling him ‘Jack’ in the superior manner of many city dwellers when addressing someone from the country. Corny asks the city slicker how he knew that his name was ‘Jack’. ‘I guessed it,’ says the slicker. ‘Well guess how to get to Yaapeet, then,’ replies Corny.
Three blokes at a pub
Many Australian yarns are not about anyone in particular—just ‘a bloke’ or ‘a couple of blokes’, or in this case, three of them.
Three blokes walk into a busy pub. The first one orders a beer, but the barman is too busy to take his money and moves on to serve another customer. Later, he returns to the bloke and asks for the money. ‘But I already paid yer,’ says the bloke. ‘You went and served someone else, came back for my money, took it, and put it in the till with the other money you had.’
The barman, thinking he must have forgotten, says ‘OK.’ The bloke finishes his drink and leaves.
Then the second orders a beer. The barman serves him without taking the money, serves another customer, then comes back and asks him to pay. ‘I already did,’ says the bloke. The barman concedes that he must have forgotten and the second bloke leaves.
The third bloke now comes up to the bar. The wary barman tells him, ‘Look, two blokes have just ordered beers and I’m pretty sure they didn’t pay. Next bloke who tries anything funny like that is going to get it.’ And he reaches under the counter and pulls out an iron bar. ‘Mate,’ says the third bloke, ‘I’m sorry for your troubles. All I want is me change, and I’ll be out of here.’
The smarter soldier
‘Working one’s nut’ was a World War I expression for manipulating the system. Pat, or P.F., of the 3rd Battalion AIF, was especially good at it, as this affectionate trench journal anecdote illustrates.
There are still many old hands
left in the Battalion who remember P.F. It is over three years since he went, but his memory is still green in my mind, and his ingenuity still haunts me.
Early on Anzac, he turned down Sergeant’s stripes (this fact is not in official records!) and became a batman. As such we speak of him here.
At this time our rations were pure, unadulterated bully beef, hard biscuits, tea and rice; but we had P.F. and his wonderful brains.
The proximity of battleships and hospital ships riding outside Anzac Cove instantly fired his genius. On the former he knew there would be poultry pens; on the latter an ample supply of good provisions. The problem was how to procure them.
A sailor’s costume and a few bandages solved the difficulty.
For the rest, he always had plenty of money. Where it came from one cannot say. Perhaps some digger who felt like floating a war loan, ten minutes after pay, can make a shrewd guess.
He has been seen on a lighter in sailor’s clothes—hence eggs; and on two occasions live poultry arrived in the 3rd Battalion trenches.
He was probably evacuated through the Beach Clearing Station more than any other man on Anzac.
It is thought that he rather overdid it the day he was evacuated twice onto the same ship, and was, unfortunately, recognised by the M.O. on the gangway. However, he had the cunning of the Scarlet Pimpernel, and got away—his duty nobly done; hence fresh bread and milk in the mess that night.
He would see a fatigue party unloading flour—off with his coat and to work with them for an hour or so. One bag would, sooner or later, be over-carried, and find its way to our dug-out. One day, not content with the flour, he also ‘lifted’ a mule from a mule train, and arrived at the trenches, mule and flour in good order.
To wait in the queue for water was a waste of time to Pat’s inventive mind. Woe betide the new chum he saw with two full tins of water. A conversation for five minutes or so and Pat had the full tins. ‘So long mate, I had better get my water’—and he was out of sight. The new chum had the two empty tins and another two or three hours’ wait in the queue to fill up again.
Goodness knows what would have become of him had not the General Staff decided Lone Pine. I saw him that day, as full of life as ever—I have not seen him since. Two days later after Lone Pine I saw a neat little bundle marked ‘Killed in action’. Contents: one pay-book, one pocket-book, and photos, and one identity disc marked P.F., D. Coy., 3rd Bn. So poor Pat was dead! I believe I shed a genuine tear. The next I heard that he was inspecting one of the military hospitals as a Padre, and tipping the wink to a 3rd Battalion man who recognised him.
How he got away I never heard definitely, but I can imagine someone with a bloodstained bandage round one arm staggering into the clearing station and handing in the dead body on the way down—and P.F., alias Tom Jones was evacuated to the hospital ship. On arrival there I cannot imagine what he would do, but it is quite likely he became a steward or an A.M.C. orderly, or he even may have thrown the skipper of the boat overboard and taken charge.
If ever I want a ‘tenner’ and P.F. is about, I’ll look him up. I know, even if he has not got it—which is not likely—he will know where it is to be got!
Taken for a ride
An oft-told tale of the turf involves a city bookie taking his horse from the city to a country race meeting.
A bookie decides to get a jockey to run his horse ‘dead’, meaning that it will lose the race even though it is a good horse. He inflates the odds to 2–1.
A punter then approaches the bookie to make a bet on a three-horse race. Depending on which version of the story is being told, either the punter or the bookie pumps up the odds on the favourite to the point where the punter has laid out a lot of money. The race begins and the favourite, despite being held back by the jockey, still somehow wins against the unbelievably slow two local horses. At this point the bookie, facing a very large payout, snarls at the punter and says something like ‘Hey, mate, you think you’re pretty bloody clever, don’t you? But you didn’t know I owned the favourite.’
The punter laughs and says, ‘I know, but I own the other two.’
AUSTRALIANS NOTORIOUS FOR miserliness, bloody-mindedness or a generally contrary nature are often referred to as ‘hard cases’. Quite a few of them—named and unnamed—are celebrated in folk stories.
The cocky
Cocky is slang for a small farmer, the kind who scraped a living from marginal land. Cockies’ miserliness and dourness make them among the hardest of Australian hard cases, as the poem ‘The Cockies of Bungaree’ indicates.
We used to go to bed, you know, a little bit after dark,
The room we used to sleep in was just like Noah’s Ark.
There was mice and rats and dogs and cats and pigs and poulter-ee,
I’ll never forget the work we did down on Bungaree.
A cocky hires a labourer on the basis that work stops at sunset. When the sun goes down, the worker says, ‘Time to call it a day.’ ‘Sun hasn’t set yet,’ says the cocky. ‘You can still see it if you climb up on top of the fence.’
In another, the worker succeeds in getting the upper hand when the farmer wakes up his new labourer well before sunrise and says he needs a hand getting in the oats. ‘Are they wild oats?’ asks the sleepy labourer. ‘No,’ says the cocky, taken aback. ‘Then why do we have to sneak up on ’em in the dark!’
Another cocky’s new labourer asks when he will have a day off. ‘Every fourth Sunday’s free,’ the cocky says. ‘Much to do round here on me day off?’ asks the worker. ‘Plenty,’ says the cocky. ‘There’s cutting the week’s firewood, mending the harnesses, tending the vegetables and washing the horses. After that, you can do whatever you like.’
One night in the pub, a local bloke congratulates a cocky on the coming marriage of his daughter. ‘That’ll be the fourth wedding in your family in the last few years, won’t it?’
‘Yes,’ replies the cocky. ‘And the confetti is starting to get awful dirty.’
Other yarns are a little more forgiving of the cocky, stressing the hardships of his situation.
The drought had lasted so long that when a raindrop fell on the local cocky, he fainted clean away. They had to throw two buckets-full of dust into his face to bring him back to consciousness.
Times were so hard that all the cocky had to eat was rabbits. He had them for every meal, week in, week out. He had them stewed, he had them fried, he had them boiled he had them braised. Feeling rather ill, he decided to give himself a dose of Epsom salts. When that didn’t help, he went to the local doctor, who asked him what he’d been eating. ‘I’ve had nothing but rabbits for months,’ the cocky said. ‘Taken anything for it?’ the doctor asked. ‘Epsom salts,’ said the cocky. ‘You don’t need Epsom salts,’ said the doctor with a laugh, ‘you need ferrets.’
Three cocky farmers were chatting over a beer. The first, who came from the Riverina, said he could run three head to an acre all year long. The second cocky, from central New South Wales said that he could run two head to an acre. The third cocky was from out Bourke way. ‘Well, we run ninety-five head to an acre,’ he says. ‘You’re bloody kidding,’ said the other two. ‘It’s true,’ he insisted, ‘I run one head of sheep and ninety-four rabbits.’
Hungry Tyson
James Tyson (1819–1898) was a highly successful pastoralist, or ‘squatter’, who made a fortune through acquiring rural land during the mid to late nineteenth century. Despite his wealth he lived simply, neither smoking, drinking nor swearing, probably something of a novelty for his time and geography. In folklore, Tyson was renowned for his stinginess and known universally as ‘Hungry’ Tyson. His Scrooge-like character was even memorialised in folk speech through the saying ‘mean as Hungry Tyson’.
Sayings and yarns about Tyson echo his legendary meanness. He is rumoured to have once claimed that he hadn’t got rich by ‘
striking matches when there was a fire to get a light by’.
Once, Hungry Tyson had to cross the Murrumbidgee River. The cost of being ferried across in the punt was one shilling. To save having to pay the money, the tight-fisted grazier swam over.
A rural newspaper of 1891 carried a selection of Tyson yarns in the context of his opposition to the bitter strike of the Queensland shearers:
The name of Mr. James Tyson (or, as he is familiarly called, ‘Old Jimmy’), the Queensland millionaire, is so well known throughout this and the other colonies, says the Narrandera Ensign, and as he is at present making a most determined stand against the Queensland Union shearers, perhaps the following few anecdotes about the old gentleman may be of some interest. That ‘Jimmy’ is a very eccentric fellow no one who has ever come in contact with him will deny, and he has made several attempts to perform big public business; attempts which would have brought a less reserved man into prominent notoriety.
The first of these was to offer to construct a line of railway from Rockhampton to the Gulf of Carpentaria, the farthest coastal point in Queensland. The recompense ‘James’ required from the Government was three miles depth of frontage along the whole route; but the representatives of the people in Bananaland thought the offer was a bit one-sided, and declined to negotiate.
We next find Mr. Tyson in New South Wales, at the recent financial crisis, offering to take up £4,000,000 worth of Government Treasury bills at a moderate rate of interest. As the public well know, this offer was also declined.
A few years back, when the large cathedral that adorns Brisbane was in course of construction, the collector for the building fund called upon a well-known mercantile firm for a subscription, but he was politely told that he should go to the rich people of Queensland, who may be in a better position to ‘help the work along’.