Old Days, Old Ways

by Alex Nicol

  ‘Not really’ obviously wasn’t the answer that would unlock the wharf gate. This was where I came in.

  ‘Interview him,’ said John. ‘I’ll set up for the shot, but we won’t put any film in the camera. Give him ten minutes, a quarter of an hour—that should satisfy him.’

  Imagine, if you will, this picture. A group of men stand on the Australian waterfront. Two of them face each other, obviously deep in conversation. Grouped around them are four others, fascinated by what the couple are saying. One holds a reflector to focus the sun’s rays on them. To the side, a camera operator films the scene, and beside him a tall sound-recordist holds a microphone boom carefully out of shot to catch their every word, while the fourth man, the director, ensures the artistic integrity of the moment.

  Each member of the team solemnly goes about his business, knowing that, although the camera turns over and the sound recorder whirrs, there’s neither film in the camera nor tape in the recorder. They’re in search of the Aussie sense of humour.

  We did eventually find the chosen wharfie, and I mentioned how we’d encountered his union rep.

  ‘Yeah, we call him “the Pill”, mate.’

  ‘The Pill?’

  ‘No conception, mate. No conception.’

  This time there was film in the camera.

  THE SEARCH GOES ON …

  Our search for the Great Australian Funny Bone took us all over the Central West of New South Wales in search of one particular tale teller. He was legendary—we heard stories of him in pub after pub—but we could never manage to track him down. At last a group of blokes outside a pub in Nyngan gave us specific directions to his property.

  The mud map they provided was very detailed, and it took a good hour and many gate-openings to get there.

  ‘There’ turned out to be the most run-down place I’ve ever seen. Wrecked cars and rusting, broken farm machinery were scattered everywhere, and a dozen rib-showing dogs barked and howled at us from the end of chains.

  This bloke had better be funny.

  He wasn’t. He did everything but present the shotgun as he ordered us off, but I bet those blokes back at the Nyngan pub were laughing.

  Bush humour safely in the can, it was time to tickle the sophisticated end of the Australian Funny Bone. On Sydney’s North Shore, a select band was gathered around a pool. Now for some witty conversation—or perhaps not.

  Stan Cross—creator of the famous ‘For gorsake stop laughing, this is serious’ cartoon—took one look at my dinner jacket and offered: ‘Flash as a rat with a gold tooth.’

  Ray Barrett, just back in the country and a television star now, reckoned that no one could laugh at themselves quite like an Aussie, and he’d picked up a great yarn from a Japanese POW to prove it.

  Laughter in Changi?

  Oh, yes. This bloke had a routine that turned a sadistic ritual into slapstick comedy.

  Some guards, it seemed, took particular pleasure in humiliating big men. The bigger and stronger the man, the more complete his humiliation when you broke him, and they had a ritual, an irresistible challenge to a man’s self-esteem, that no one could master.

  Pick the biggest and the strongest from the line-up. Kneel him on a bamboo rod in front of his friends, and order him to pick up a rock, a big rock, and hold it arms at full extent right over his head.

  Now wait.

  Watch his arms twitch, sway backwards, forwards.

  Be ready.

  Smack those knuckles with a cane. Bring that rock back above his head.

  What’s worse—the agony in his knees, where the bamboo rod is pressing, the cramping in his arms as they struggle against the weight, or the confusion in his mind, knowing that the rock must fall and with it his manhood?

  Giggle like a child when the rock crashes down.

  Ray’s mate thought this was bullshit. The rock’s gonna fall, isn’t it?

  He marched out. Knelt down. Picked up the rock and held it above his head and immediately dropped the bloody thing. The boys pissed themselves laughing, and even the guards saw the funny side. They didn’t try that one again.

  Ruth Cracknell was a guest. She had the magical ability of exposing the vulnerability of any character she played. She only had to hold her head a certain way to make you smile. She’d give us a little gem of a performance. While the crew set up for an interview, my job was to get an idea of the story she’d spin for us—except she wouldn’t give it up.

  Ruth was taking this search for the Australian Funny Bone seriously. No, she wouldn’t perform, she said, but she would deconstruct this humour business. James Thurber, the man who conjured up ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’, was her hero. She’d explain to us how he built his whimsical stories.

  ‘That’s fascinating … but perhaps a funny story and a dissertation?’ It’s amazing what can finish up lost in the editing booth …

  No, Thurber it would be.

  Good actors don’t like performing off the cuff—they like to have time to craft a performance. I thought that might be influencing Miss Cracknell. ‘Perhaps if you had a little time …?’

  She didn’t need a little time, thank you; she was well versed in Thurber’s work.

  Our star performer wasn’t going to perform on cue. This wasn’t funny.

  ‘So, she won’t tell us a story?’ our director asked me.

  ‘No,’ I had to reply. ‘I’ve tried everything. We’re going to get a lecture on James Thurber.’

  A quick consultation revealed that we had about twelve minutes of film in the camera. If Ruth was going to perform, we’d load a fresh reel, but as it was … well, we’d shoot off the twelve minutes of Thurber and leave it at that.

  The great lady and I settled down opposite each other, my mind racing to think up some halfway intelligent questions to get us through the next twelve minutes.

  The clapper marked the take, and I said something like, ‘Miss Cracknell, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is one of the great short sto—’ that’s about as far as I got.

  Ruth leaned to within a couple of inches of my face, and turned on a howling, tears-streaming-down-your-face performance. Minute by minute she piled laugh on laugh, and all I could think was: There’s only twelve minutes in the camera!

  Ruth Cracknell in full flight. Next question?

  I treasure a still shot from that interview. My face says it all. I quite literally couldn’t speak. Perhaps the secret to this comedy business is the unexpected.

  RUSTY

  We chanced on Rusty—or, I should say, the late Rusty’s owner—in Shindy’s Inn, out on the Darling. In what was evidently a very much extended wake, the old bloke was extolling the virtues of this great dog to anyone who would listen. Rusty, if you believed him, was peerless in working sheep, nosing pigs or just plain fighting.

  ‘Ah, ’e wasn’t big. Was he?’

  The bloke behind the bar nodded agreement. He’d obviously heard all this before.

  ‘But by Christ ’e could fight, couldn’t he?’

  Another nod.

  ‘He’d sit beside me here and you wouldn’t get another dog in the bar. Didn’t matter how big they were, ’e wouldn’t let ’em near me. Game as a pissant.’

  The fact that a television crew was hanging on his every word inspired the old bloke to fresh heights. We were treated to the time when Rusty had single-handedly taken on a huge boar.

  ‘Musta been 200 pounds or more. I tried callin’ ’im off, but there’s no stoppin’ ’im. Rusty’s inta that pig like a chicken into hot mash. Pig slashes ’im right down the side, tore the poor little bugger up something cruel, but he kept comin’. There’s blood everywhere. The pig’s squeal’n and Rusty gets a hold of him by the snout. Well, pig starts throwin’ his head around, see, tryin’ to shake Rusty loose, but he’s got his jaws clamped tight—and once he’s got his jaws set, nothin’s gonna move ’im.

  ‘Yeah, well, I shot the big bastard, and then we had to get a screwdriver between Rusty’s jaws to p
rise ’em loose. He wouldn’t let go.

  ‘Poor little bugger. He’s cut up bad, but this isn’t the first time I seen ’im like this and I know what to do. I cut a bit of wire outa the fence and I twitch them cuts together—you know, stitchin’ ’im up, like. He licks me hand when I’m finished ’cause he knows I’m look’n’ after ’im. Doesn’t ’e?

  ‘Mad little bugger—I miss ’im. Always in a blue. Gawd knows how much wire he had in ’im at the end.’

  He took a long sip of his beer and paused thoughtfully.

  ‘Never really died, y’know. Just rusted from the inside out.’

  MILITARY CONFLICT

  The Army was coming to 2CR country. At least, that was the promise—or the threat, depending on your point of view.

  The proposal was to acquire land in the Orange and Cobar areas. At Orange, land would be compulsorily acquired for a permanent military establishment. At Cobar, the land would be used for occasional military exercises; landholders could stay and work the property and be paid a rent.

  The community split. How would we manage the situation?

  A local journalist’s responsibilities in such a situation are clear. You should provide as much clear and accurate information as is possible, and stay out of the emotive politics. We tried and we failed.

  Arguments pro and con became increasingly emotional. There were those, particularly around Orange, who wanted to argue the benefits that a permanent military establishment would bring. All those guaranteed fortnightly pay cheques would underpin the local economy nicely, and then there would be the effect on land prices, as new families moved in.

  On the other hand, land which had been in the same family for generations would be compulsorily acquired, and those landholders aired increasingly generous estimates of the productive potential of that land. Their claims were backed by those who argued that those fine Australian soldiers, lauded for their exploits at the local war memorial every Anzac Day, would suddenly become a risk to every young woman walking the streets alone at night.

  The local council entered the fray, and the mayor was physically threatened. The situation became nasty, the more so because no one knew exactly what compensation was being proposed.

  As the then local ABC manager, I’d been trying for weeks to gain access to the relevant government minister and get some clarification, but could get no further than his press secretary and the message that ‘the department is in consultation with the community’.

  Each side lobbied the local member and bombarded the station’s newsroom with press releases. The protagonists had learned the value of using the media to influence the community. Surely the local ABC radio, which had always been ‘their’ voice, wouldn’t disappoint them now. But it did. We reported the facts and nothing but the facts as they came to hand, and left it at that.

  Perhaps twenty or even ten years earlier that would have been that, but changing technology brought changing opportunities. There were television current-affairs programs now crying out for good colour stories, and there’s nothing quite like community conflict to sell a show. Heat, not light—that’s what sells a story. City television stations would be interested, and indeed they were. The battle got primetime viewing. The bush had learned how to use the media.

  I eventually made contact with the minister. ‘It was time,’ he said, ‘that the community knew exactly what was proposed.’ I agreed. ‘After consultation with the community, we’ve decided to drop the proposal.’

  OLD MICK

  ‘I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.’

  Now there’s a first for talkback radio. The subject was gambling, and here was someone telling me I didn’t know what I was talking about. Two things my father drummed into me when I was growing up: ‘Never run down stairs carrying a pair of scissors’ and ‘Never bet on an odds-on favourite’.

  The caller’s name was Mick. He invited me to call him ‘Old Mick’. He was of my father’s generation and he had a fund of stories. I couldn’t get to see him quickly enough.

  Mick lived in a tiny town right on the outskirts of 2CR country, and I was surprised he was a listener. He lived alone, and his front room was a cliché: an open fireplace and on the mantlepiece a carton of cigarettes with several packets missing, a half-bottle of Vat 69 whisky, and a photo of Phar Lap with Jim Pike in the saddle.

  My father used to stand in front of that very photograph and tell me earnestly that he’d never seen the great horse gallop: ‘Didn’t have to. He won everything in a canter.’

  Mick was a little man. He’d once been a dapper man, but he obviously wasn’t well and he didn’t belong here in a little country town. Mick was an endangered species. He shouldn’t have existed away from the sights and smells of Randwick or Flemington.

  My credentials established, we set about the business of swapping stories. Of course he’d been an SP bookie; he’d done time for it when the traditional backhander—‘Five quid on the winner of the last’—proved insufficient for the local police sergeant. That had happened more than once, and he was finished with the business now. He was about buggered. He told me he didn’t think he had ‘long to go’.

  Old Mick’s Randwick in the 1930s, when racing was the sport of kings.

  I’d offer one of my father’s old racing stories, and he’d immediately top it with one of his own, and the more he talked the more animated he became. He told me stories of the ‘hoops’ (the jockeys) and the ingenious places they’d concealed batteries to make their whips more effective. And then there was the wonderful story of the Red Cross Sting.

  Back in the 1930s, a well-known racing identity bet one of the biggest bookies of the day that he could pick six out of the seven winners at a Randwick meeting. The bet was for a considerable amount of money; as a sweetener, the punter said that if he won he’d donate half the winnings to the Red Cross. The bookie accepted the bet and replied in kind. If he won, he too would donate half the winnings to the Red Cross.

  Sydney was abuzz. Came the day and a suitably attired Red Cross nurse took station alongside the bookie’s stand. She held a sealed box, into which, before each race, and in front of the assembled crowd, the punter placed his selection. The box would be opened after the running of the last race, and either the punter or the bookie would pay up.

  The punter picked the card: he correctly selected the winner of every race. And he repeated the scam in Melbourne, where he missed by one and only selected the required six out of seven winners.

  Thinking it through, it’s ridiculously easy. Before the first race, the punter simply slipped his selection for the last race into the box. Thereafter, all he had to do was post the winner of each race in turn. Get the Red Cross involved and it had to be on the square, right?

  Old Mick was a great storyteller. I wanted him as a regular contributor, but he lived a long way out from the studio and I couldn’t keep coming back.

  THE AUCTIONEER

  The ABC ‘powers that be’ never could understand the value of livestock market reports, and it was a constant battle to keep them on air in the morning.

  ‘Boring’ and ‘off-putting’ were the popular phrases used to denigrate the service. Mind you, the batting and bowling figures for Sheffield Shield matches or the daily call of the Sydney Stock Exchange were a completely different kettle of fish. They were vital information.

  I have to admit that ‘A slightly increased yarding of plainer types saw values remain firm’ didn’t yield a lot of useful information, but if you got a report from a stock and station agent who had a sense of theatre, the business really came to life.

  I can remember one who’d report along the lines of ‘little droughty lambs … you know the sort, Nic—you could pick up three under each arm. They sold at …’ The same individual could, with perfect logic, equate the rising price of old bulls in the marketplace with the progression of the football season and the consumption of meat pies.

  At Orange we were very lucky when a young stock and stati
on agent, David Williams, started up his own business. He’d report the local stock market ‘live’ in the studio, and he took his responsibilities very seriously.

  In an attempt to make a feature of the market reports, I decided I’d record various auctioneers in action and use these sound effects to introduce the service. Each agent would get a turn, and the listeners could have fun trying to pick whose technique was the best.

  I mentioned to David that I hadn’t recorded him in action yet, and he invited me to the saleyard that very day. ‘I’m going to break the record for the highest price paid for a beast in the yards,’ he claimed with great confidence. ‘Get that on tape.’

  David was in great form. He stood on the rail extolling the virtues of the biggest bullock I’ve ever seen. Four hundred dollars rapidly became $450; then $460, and all the while the excitement grew. Bid after bid he collected from a group of buyers keen to make their mark on saleyard history.

  I forget what the target price was—let’s say $600. As the bids mounted, more and more people crowded the fence. And all of this was on tape.

  The magic figure was reached and passed.

  ‘Are you done? Done? All done? Sold!’

  The exultant buyer collected a round of applause and the congratulations of his colleagues.

  Later, I suggested to David that he’d been a bit cheeky nominating that he would break the saleyard record. He could have finished with egg on his face.

  ‘You don’t know the half of it,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t have a bid until I got to $540.’

  Now, that’s theatre.

  THE MILKY BAR FAIRY

  She dubbed herself ‘the Milky Bar Fairy’, and for a price would visit your newborn in hospital and bless the child with a shower of Milky Bars. You could even have a souvenir photo of the event. She challenged me that I would not have the guts to give her a job as a freelance. Challenge accepted.