Monday was the day the weekly air-mail went South — Sunday the day it came in. Today’s mail had already left before all that was required for the great story Fay promised Truth for next Sunday’s issue was in hand. Nevertheless she was able to wire Sydney headquarters that she would be delivering the goods on time. She worked on it right through the rest of Monday, into the early hours of Tuesday. Then at dawn that day Fergus Ferris took off with copy, pictures, and phono-records, to fly East and hand the stuff over to another air-mail by which it would go down the East Coast. On Thursday Fay received a telegram from Truth describing the stuff as magnificent, a terrific indictment, assuring publication in next issue, and offering congratulations to all concerned. Fay was thus able, in Friday’s Progressive, to announce a treat in store for Port Palmeston and district next Sunday, being quite frank about it, even to passing on those congratulations literally to all concerned, the sheep with the goats, naming them. There was great activity that afternoon between that department of Government House called The Lion’s Den, meaning the Old Man’s sanctum, and the Crown Law Office. Still The Palmeston Progressive appeared on time and as printed. But the activity of the official libel hunters that day was nothing in comparison with what it was on Sunday afternoon, never had been, and probably never would be again. Bolshies and other low types even congregated about the Anzac Memorial to watch the running to and fro. A couple of policemen were stationed at the gates, as if a riot were expected. Perhaps the Old Man had even ordered his launch to be got ready to get him out by the back way in case of trouble, as had been done by another Administrator at the time of the Bolshie demonstrations over the sudden closure of Lord Vaisey’s meatworks. But there was nothing angry about this mob. In fact they were mostly laughing. Still, laughing at high authority perhaps could constitute riotous behaviour and call for a police charge with batons.
A number of people of the town made a practice of making the run out to the aerodrome by car of Sunday afternoons to see the mail plane come in and to collect the southern papers it always brought. But this Sunday it seemed as if everybody was out there, with the notable exception of those who might be termed the goats in the expected divertissement, or rather the chief goats, since what the thing really was was epitomised in the great banner headlines: TERRIFIC INDICTMENT OF OFFICIAL CALLOUSNESS — which could apply to at least half of those snatching their copies of Truth from old Frobisher, the newsagent, as fast as he could unpack them and take the money. That was how Truth had got away with it. The indictment was not of persons but of persons-in-positions. Names might be named, but the blame put on the job, not on the man who did it. Anyway, there was no legal action. In fact the only apparent repercussion was the reappearance in the community of him over whom it all seemed to have started and whom few were likely to welcome back, that self-confessed public nuisance, Jumbo Delacy. All Jumbo had to say was that Major O’Dowdy had taken him in his utility on Monday morning, merely telling him he was free, and dumping him off at the Coconuts. Jumbo knew nothing about the national stir he had caused, nor cared about it or about anything for the moment but getting some booze to relieve what he called the Dry Horrors, developed during his period of enforced sobriety.
The slightness of the effect of it all caused Alfie, now working at proofreading on the Progressive staff, to complain to Fay about the futility of doing anything to break bureaucracy. She said, ‘They’re even keeping Frank on, although I’m working here, as if out of contempt for anything we can do.’
Fay said, ‘You’ve got to be patient, and keep at ’em and at ’em. How d’you think I feel after fighting ’em for years, exposing one piece of tyranny after another, and still seeing the same old gang in the high places? But I know it’s working slowly. Every time you hit the bastards you put a crack in ’em and their rotten system . . . and eventually they and it are going to fall to pieces.’
Alfie also complained that for all the vast publicity given the matter of Jumbo’s dispossession, the Shell Oil Co. were still laying the foundations for their tanks on the Coconuts Flats and getting nearer and nearer to his house, while their supervising engineer and other officers were attending parties given by Captain Shane. To that Fay replied, ‘Well, why don’t you have a go at causing trouble on the job. Organise something industrial as a protest.’
‘You mean get the men to strike?’
‘You won’t do that. They’re mostly Greeks, newly imported. The union had a tough enough job getting them to take out tickets. But you might try boycotting delivery of stuff to the site through the militants. Go and see the Commo heads, Scotty McClaggity and Geordie Jenks. If you can get them interested, they might get the Waterside Workers’ Branch to declare anything black being unloaded from ships for Shell, and seamen, too . . . they’re all tied up with the Party.
‘Would they listen to me?’
‘Well, they wouldn’t listen to me. They hate me as much as the other side do. But Pat Hannaford, the engine driver, isn’t so bad. Go and see him. He had a halfcaste wife who left him . . . and he’s pretty crooked on halfcastes because of it . . . but he’s not a bad bloke. He’d introduce you to the Kremlin boys. Anyway, if they don’t do anything, you can have a crack at ’em in the paper . . . good practice in your new career.’
Alfie did see Pat, who evidently succumbed to her female charm and started something that ended in a grand row in the offices called the Kremlin. Comrades McClaggity, President of the local Communist Party, and Jenks, Secretary, refused to do anything for Jumbo, because he had worked in a strikebreaking gang during a dispute on the wharf a couple of years back, and berated Pat for taking up the cause of a scab in order to make his alley good with a designing female who was on one side today and any other tomorrow. When Alfie heard of it, she wrote a scathing piece for the Progressive that caused Rollo Ramstones, the Editor, to take her onto the literary staff proper and to say, along with Fay, that undoubtedly her future lay in writing. Alfie confessed that she had long dreamt of being a writer.
The effect of Alfie’s article was to rouse the crew of the night-cart to action that was hardly what might be called direct, or even efficacious, but made itself at least stink strongly. McClaggity and Jenks had declared to Alfie that all halfcastes were born scabs and not worth bothering about. Alfie had quoted them exactly. The night-cart crew, all halfcastes, and all men of pride since having been given the legal right to drink, privily declared the sanitary pans of the Kremlin and the homes of Comrades McClaggity and Jenks black. The Sanitary Contractor had to do the job himself. It made him ill, so that he had to go to hospital. The Comrades complained to their old enemies the Administration, who took so long about it that they, Scotty and Geordie, had to do it themselves. That was too much for them. Apparently blacklegging someone for something by professionals in that way is a very different thing from being blacklegged oneself. They decided on direct action, laid an ambush composed of Comrades on the night the Kremlin’s pan should have been emptied and it was anticipated that the cart would drive past as usual, ‘forgettin’’ as the crew always said when charged with the omission, and sprang out with a prepared barricade and pick-handles to enforce their rights as respectable citizens. The crew could do nothing but stop and pick up the well-filled pan. The barricade was not removed till the pan was tossed up to the men on top who would stow it, and Scotty McClaggity, in his broad accent, with his comrades beside him, standing beside the stinking vehicle, had delivered himself of an oration which amongst much else declared that this same apparatus would be applied every due night until the scabby scabs came round to doing their duty. Then, as the barricade was moved away and the truck started up, the three men on top emptied the contents of not only the proletarians’ own pan onto those below but of two others that could have come from the dunnies of their worst enemies.
Fay wrote that piece up, with such gusto that the Party met and discussed an action for libel. They had already discussed taking legal action against the night-cart crew, but had been overruled
by those who had been out of range that night. Fay mentioned that, adding that the occasion of the discussion was the only one on which laughter had been heard at the Kremlin, but that no one had been inclined to investigate the cause, because of the stink that hung over the place. ‘Will it ever quite fade away?’ asked Fay in her piece. The motion to sue the Progressive was also defeated. As Pat Hannaford, one of those lucky ones that night, said, the less said about it now the better. He reported that Alfie had told him that her husband had spoken to the nightmen and been given an assurance that now they felt their honour vindicated, things would proceed normally.
The official reply to the Truth story was made through the big southern daily newspapers, which traditionally supported conservative Government policy, in the form of a statement by the Minister on the program of works about to be started for the betterment of the lot of Aborigines of the North. While making no specific reference to the Truth publication, the Minister spoke of ‘Sensation-mongers and Subversive Elements, who preferred to capitalise on the mistakes of the past and to ignore the abundant evidence of the better deal the Aborigines were now getting.’ Dr Cobbity was described as a dedicated scientist and humane reformer, who had recently been honoured by the King. To prove that the old system was gone for good, facts and figures were given regarding the work in hand by the Public Works to replace the old Palmeston Compound with a model settlement at Sweet Creek, outside of the town, where there would be every facility for effecting the reforms for which Dr Cobbity had been working for years: good living-quarters, canteens, schools, sanitation. More than that, a world-famous Anthropologist was being appointed to make a survey of the Aboriginal Affairs of Australia generally, with the view to establishing a Commonwealth Department of Aboriginal Welfare, under an expert Director.
His Honour the Administrator received the statement ahead of publication in a telegram sent from his superiors down South, who evidently wanted to cheer him up. It was then his duty to cheer up the smaller flea beneath himself, Dr Cobbity, whom he called to the Lion’s Den. With that grin of his, after reading the telegram, Cobbity commented: ‘The Anthrops are going to push me out all right. Is this to warn me?’
‘Certainly not. The thing has nothing but praise for you.’
‘But there’s going to be an expert Director . . . and that’s not going to be me, is it? I wonder what he’ll be expert in, the bastard . . . the head-shrinkers of the Amazon, or the zombi-dancers of Zamboanga, or some bloody rubbish equally unrealistic as regards this thankless job? After all I’ve given to it, I’ll go out discredited.’
‘Discredited nothing, man! Look what you’re getting with the new Financial Year . . . this settlement, a new lazaret, a new hospital . . .’
‘And an Irishman’s rise, I’ll bet you.’
‘I’ll stand by you, man.’
Cobbity grinned again, and rose to go. The Old Man halted him with a meaningful cough. Cobbity looked at him. Fiddling with things on his desk, His Honour said, ‘You’ve heard, I suppose, that that Mrs Candlemas is working on the Progressive?’
‘Of course.’
His Honour cleared his throat again, looked up: ‘What about her husband, then?’
Cobbity demanded, ‘What about him?’
The Colonel reddened. He was not used to being spoken to without one or other of his titles, or Sir, at least. He snapped, ‘Rather anomalous, isn’t it . . . one of our officers, with a wife like that?’
Cobbity was silent, staring with the glassy eyes, perhaps thinking about having a wife like that. His Honour went on: ‘Have you said anything to him about it?’
‘No.’
‘Don’t you think you ought to?’
‘Why should I? He’s a level-headed fellow. He does a good job.’
‘Well, I can’t say I much like it. If you won’t tackle him, I will . . .’
Now it was Cobbity who went red, and the eyes blazed. From easy insolent leaning with hands on the table he stood erect. He snapped, ‘With all due respect, Sir, if you interfere with an officer of mine, you’ll have my resignation.’
Flaming, the Old Man glared back. Cobbity went on: ‘That man’s first-class at his job. I want him for the drainage lay-out of these places. I want him for a down-country disease survey . . . the things I’ve always wanted done and been deprived of by you or whoever else was sitting behind this desk cheeseparing for the blokes down South who only appointed you because you’re a Yes man . . .’
The Colonel shouted, ‘How dare you, Sir!’
‘Do you want my resignation?’
His Honour struggled with his dignity and the truth of his position, came out with a compromise: ‘I make allowance for what you’ve been through lately, Doctor.’
‘I don’t want any allowances, Your Honour. All I want is for you to keep off my back till I get these things done I’ve tried so long for. You won’t have to kick me out when they’re done. Neither will those bastards with their ape men. I’ll be off under my own steam. I asked you did you want my resignation. Will you kindly answer yes or no?’
His Honour choked over it: ‘No . . . no, Cobbity . . . no.’
Cobbity sighed heavily, said, ‘Well, if you’ll excuse me, Sir . . . I’ve a lot to do.’
‘Certainly, Doctor, certainly . . . Goodday.’
As Dr Cobbity was marching towards the Government Offices, past the Cenotaph, so-called, an old Rolls Royce swung round the corner, slowed to allow him to get across. His long legs hastened their gait. He was across. Then he looked back, met the black eyes staring at him, so intently that the car was swinging to the wrong side. A moment. Then he grinned, waved. Alfie smiled, waved back. He went on his way, loped up the steps of the Offices, disappeared.
7
I
There was no doubting the sincerity of the official statement that the Aborigines were in for a new deal, because even two weeks before the declared date of implementing it, July 1, there was Mr McCusky out at that dirty old dump which had served the purpose of what was called Aboriginal Protection for so long, the Palmeston Compound, making arrangements, in his vigorous fashion for doing anything, for its complete elimination by due date. Poor old Tubby Turkney bore the brunt of it. It was one thing for McCusky to go strutting through the place telling the inmates that the Millennium had come for them and allotting them their several parts thereinafter, but quite another to get the co-operation of people who, along with their forefathers for a hundred years or so, had learnt to expect nothing from the kuttabah, except having to do something you didn’t want to do, without the application, actual or equivalent, of one of those several time-honoured incentives the stockwhip, the hobble-chain, or the dookyangana’s boot.
Tubby was supposed to organise the able-bodied into gangs who would assist with the building of the new place at Sweet Creek, beginning with clearing the site and erecting temporary dwellings and other structures with the material of clearing. The less robust were to be got rid of, temporarily or permanently, by sending them back to where they’d come from, with rail-warrants if they came from down the line, with rations for a month if they could be expected to walk back to their countries, or placed in the care of the missionaries if from distant points along the coast. Their hovels here were to be knocked down and burnt as evacuated. What happened in most cases was that allotments were swapped, the young ones taking the older ones’ rations, and if not going bush for a holiday, joined the smart boys and girls who lived independently if illegally in and around town, while the older ones, no longer fit for the hardships of bush-living, turned up at Sweet Creek, to camp hungry in the surrounding bush watching the halfcastes and the whitemen work. When all was said and done, these latter were being paid. Some of the very old had to be removed forcibly; and a few sneaked back and tried to set up home again down in the Kerosene gully, using the wreckage for building. There were no more of those happy boozy sessions of evenings at the Superintendent’s residence. Poor old Tubby was on the go morning noon and night, with M
cCusky, dashing from one to another of the fronts under his generalship, popping in at all hours to keep him hustling. Dr Cobbity, concerned only with the grand plan, rarely came out of his office.
Amongst those given rail-warrants and told to go home and never come back, on pain of imprisonment if they did, were King George and Queeny Peg-leg. Shrewdies, that they were, anticipating dispossession of their accumulated wealth along with destruction of their dwellings, they joined forces after years of enmity and had their stuff as it were spirited away by night aboard Willy Pak Poy’s launch, taken out of the harbour and round the eastern shore and inland on high tide, well up the tidal reach of Sweet Creek to the Sanitary Depot, not so far from the site of the new Settlement. When they were found to be missing when the roll was called for those booked to board the train, Eddy McCusky only laughed, saying, ‘They’ll show up sometime. Just as we’re building our canteen they’ll open theirs. Let ’em go. I can see ’em somewhere out in the scrub tryin’ to sell their rubbish to one another . . . eeeeeahhh!’
The fact was that George had already sold his stuff to Queeny, because he wanted to go home, but was waiting to pick up Prindy to take him along, too, such being what he was told to do in the last orders received from Bobwirridirridi. The Pookarakka had at last accepted George’s miserable admission that he could not effect his release this time because something contrary was at work, most likely Tarjen Coon-Coon, and that he would have to rely on his own recources. From what George had told Prindy, speaking to him through the Halfcaste Children’s home fence, beyond which they never went now, when next Wet Season came round and conditions were right for it, the Pookarakka would sing a great storm to wreck the jail and would come down on the wind to join them, in the distant Princess Alice country. Prindy was quite agreeable. The fact that he had been told by Mr McCusky that shortly he was to be sent down to the Centre, with Jumbo’s bigger boys and a couple of other yeller kids, to enter the Home for Halfcaste Boys already functioning there, evidently had made no impression on him at all. George also knew what McCusky’s intentions were concerning the boy, but apparently saw no urgency about removing him.
Poor Fellow My Country Page 63
