Best Australian Yarns

by Haynes, Jim

  Big Billy Bull

  Of Bungendore

  He used to pull

  Our teeth before

  The railway come;

  And strike me dumb

  And dead

  Your head

  ’Ud fairly hum,

  When Billy’s pincers grabbed your gum,

  While ’cross your chest

  His weight he pressed

  And pushed your ’pendix outa plumb.

  But once a bloke

  Named Johnny Jupp

  Came down and broke

  Our blacksmith up.

  It turned him grey.

  He tried all day

  To lift

  And shift

  One tooth away;

  Until, at last, in his dismay,

  What does he do

  But ties it to

  The tailboards of me new spring dray.

  And then we got

  Into the cart

  And at a trot

  We made a start;

  The bloke behind

  He didn’t mind

  Becos

  It was

  Intended kind.

  Though, till he sorta grew resigned,

  He yelled, of course,

  To stop the horse,

  And cursed us black, and blue and blind.

  So by the tooth,

  Along the dust,

  We dragged that youth

  Till something bust;

  And then we swore

  And chucked it, for

  There hung

  And swung

  Our tailboard, or

  The most of it, to Johnny’s jaw

  Which snapped at us

  With vicious cuss,

  And said, ‘You crimson cows, no more!’

  THE BARREL OF BRICKS

  This is one of the oldest tall stories around and has been popular in Australia for at least fifty years. There are many versions, but most concern a migrant worker, a ‘New Australian’, who gets a job working on a building site as a brickie’s labourer. He explains to the boss why he isn’t at work and how he managed to have a broken arm, a fractured skull, a broken nose, cracked ribs and a broken ankle.

  I was a’workin’ on a four-storey buiding anda the brickie he wanna the leftover bricks uppa the top to be bringa down to the bottom, but itsa too far to carry them bricks alla the way down!

  So I getta the bright idea anda I make a pulley and I getta bigga bucket and haul him up to the roof and tie the rope to a railing down on the ground and I climb up and loada the bricks into the bucket. Then I go backa down to the ground, wrappa the rope around my hand a couple times and untie the end of the rope with my other hand.

  Well, them bricks they heavier than me—so I shoot up in the air likea the space ship!

  Halfa the way up, I meeta the barrel as she’s a comin’ down, and thats whena my arm she’s a broke.

  When I reacha the top, I hitta the pulley with my head, and that’sa when I fracture the skull.

  Then the bucket she hit the ground and fall over and alla the bricks they fall on the ground. Now the bucket she’sa lighter than me, so she’sa comin’ up and I’ma going down.

  I hitta the bucket again, and that’s when I breaka the nose.

  I hitta the ground and land on the bricks, and that’s when I cracka the ribs.

  Then I letta go of the rope and the bucket she comin’ back down and that’s when I breaka the ankle.

  And that’s why I no more worka for you today!

  JH

  THE GOAT MACHINE

  My favourite migrant yarn is the story of the poor refugee from Eastern Europe who comes to Australia destitute as a young man with his new wife.

  Although he has an engineering degree from his own country, he has poor English and has to work as a labourer and cab driver to make ends meet.

  Sadly, his wife is poorly and they have trouble having children but finally, after many years of struggle and working long into the night, he succeeds in making a wonderful invention. Then his wife announces she is pregnant at last. Things are looking up!

  The invention the refugee has been working on is an application of a machine to make sausages from goat meat. It does the whole process, from slaughtering to skinning, boning, cutting and making the sausages.

  It’s a marvellous invention and the refugee forms a company to round up feral goats in South Australia, truck them down to Port Augusta where he has his factory, process them using his marvellous machine and sell the sausages in the Adelaide Markets.

  Soon he is exporting and becomes a rich man.

  The child is spoiled and adored and, although he is not the sharpest tool in the shed, his parents lavish upon him every possible thing a child could need or want and pay for extra tuition and, after several attempts and more tuition, he just makes it to university. He doesn’t have the marks needed to get in to study engineering, so he chooses to do a degree in marketing.

  The kid is a spoiled brat and a real smart arse.

  After one year of studying business and marketing, he comes home and says to his father, ‘You are a fool, Pop, you have it all wrong in your business plan!’

  ‘How is that?’ asks his long-suffering and hardworking father.

  ‘Well,’ says the boy, condescendingly, ‘you spent all your life making a machine that is wasteful. You put a goat in one end and a sausage comes out the other. What you should have worked on and invented is a device where you put in a sausage and a goat comes out!’

  The old man looks at him sadly for a moment and then says, ‘I think your mother already has one of those.’

  JH

  THAT CRAMMING FEELING OF SCHOOL DAYS

  LENNIE LOWER

  Lennie Lower was able to take a news item and create a funny yarn out of it—he made a living doing it. His humour was so Australian and his ability to extrapolate word play and mental images out of banal and prosaic everyday events was unsurpassed!

  A terrible thing has happened at East Maitland Boys’ High School.

  The school is so crowded that four classes have been forced to take a week’s holiday. We presume that all the boys’ protests were in vain.

  ‘Just give us a few mathematical problems—a logarithm—anything!’

  ‘No!’ said the headmaster. ‘Here’s your fishing rod. Go!’

  Awful thing to do to a boy just when the locust and beetle season is coming on. That’s what comes of overcrowding.

  Right from a child we were against overcrowding of schools. We always had a feeling that we were one too many.

  Us by ourself, or the teacher by himself—yes. But the pair of us by ourselves—no.

  As a boy, we were brilliant at school. We shone at hi-cockalorum; our locusts squeaked more loudly than any of the other pupils’ locusts. Dunno how it came about; we just seemed to be able to get more out of them.

  At tearing lumps out of our trousers we were absolutely on our own. We can’t claim any credit for it. It was a gift. We held the flyweight record for window-smashing.

  Our teacher got muscle-bound rewarding us for our prowess at hurling the ink-pellet.

  At arithmetic and such we were fair, but uninterested. We knew that two and two made four, and were satisfied with that. If we were told that eight and eight made sixteen we accepted it philosophically.

  But why anyone should need to know the result of buying 11 dozen cabbages at 8d, another 7½ dozen at 6½d, and how much profit would be made if he was 36 years of age and his father didn’t come home till 11 o’clock—this always left us with a deep feeling of contempt.

  We passed through school loaded with information and marbles.

  The fact that Captain Cook won the battle of Trafalgar in 1876 has changed our whole life. This much we can say for the benefits of education.

  But we still think that that school was overcrowded. Sort of crammed in.

  THE WEELABARABAK BUGLE

  JIM HAYNES

  Local n
ewspapers are a great source of hilarity in most small towns. Everything in this yarn comes from things I have read in local newspapers—honest!

  The Weelabarabak Bugle, that’s the paper in our town,

  It’s the method by which all the news is spread around.

  Each Monday and each Thursday the Bugle hits the street

  And if you’ve never read it, you’ve missed out on a treat.

  The editor, Old Jonesy, puts most of it together.

  He does the features, the photos, the farm news and the weather.

  But, as it’s only twice a week, the weather’s yesterday’s.

  Mrs Phillips does fashion news and reviews the local plays.

  On Thursday, it’ll tell you the weekend netball draw,

  And you read it on a Monday if you want to know the score.

  How did footy go on Sunday? What’s news down at the school?

  Call it ‘two minutes silence’ and you’re only being cruel!

  Sure Jonesy sometimes rushes and small mistakes occur.

  The CWA President’s mad at what he did to her!

  It was underneath a photo of her with a champion scone.

  Well, a name like ‘Mrs Tucker’ is a bad one to get wrong!

  Even headline spelling errors are not difficult to find,

  ‘Members Active in the Loins Club’ is one that comes to mind.

  Like, ‘Councillors Pass Motions on Brand New Town Hall Roof’,

  And ‘Surveyor Leaks on Subdivision our Photo Shows the Truth!’

  Though the news that’s in the Bugle is always based on fact,

  The editor’s prejudices—they remain intact.

  And Jonesy was a decent, well-meaning country bloke,

  Who hated unions, Pommies, and all them ‘city folk’.

  One day he had a message, O’Shea’s pig dog had gone wild!

  Broke its chain and tried to maul the O’Sheas’ youngest child,

  Who no doubt had been tormenting it, as he was wont to do,

  But the child had been saved by a stranger passing through.

  He’d pulled up, grabbed a tyre lever, dashed into the fray,

  Took the brunt of the attack, killed the dog and saved the day!

  Jonesy soon was on the scene and the bloke was interviewed,

  (While waiting for the ambulance, ’cos he was badly chewed.)

  He said he lived in Sydney, but he was born in the UK.

  He was a trade union organiser visiting branches up our way.

  And the headline for our hero is Jonesy’s best one yet,

  ‘City-Based Pommy Communist Kills Local Kiddy’s Pet!’

  HOME BEAUTIFUL

  LENNIE LOWER

  Lennie Lower hated pretension. One very Aussie element of his humour was that notion of the battlers acting just like the toffs. Here he is taking the piss out of the middle class magazine articles about stylish living.

  The charming home of Mr and Mrs John Bowyang, tucked away in Pelican Street, Surry Hills, is a revelation in piquancy. From the backyard one has a view of every other backyard in the street, and the tall chimney-stack of Tooth’s Brewery looms majestically in the distance.

  An antique casket, known to connoisseurs as a ‘dirt-tin’, stands by the back entrance. It is one of Mrs Bowyang’s great sorrows that the lid has been pinched.

  Mrs Bowyang has an artistic taste and an eye for effect. Two lines have been stretched between long poles at either end of the yard, and when these lines are full of clothes, the sight is bewitching in the extreme.

  Empty salmon tins, kindly thrown over the fence by the next-door neighbours, and a worn-out bath and a coil of wire netting on top of the washhouse roof complete the picture.

  Fascinating though the yard is, it is not until one enters the house itself that one gets a glimpse of the interior.

  The motif throughout the whole house is one of antiquity. The wallpaper is mellow with age, and the ceilings have not been kalsomined for forty-seven years.

  Hardly any of the doors shut properly, and the windows are held open by bright clean lemonade bottles.

  Mrs Bowyang points with pride to an old meat safe which hangs in the drawing room, where the lodger sleeps.

  There is a history attached to the old safe.

  It was rescued from Mark Foy’s big fire many years ago, and for a long time the parrot lived in it; but as the family grew the parrot had to be given away and the infant Bowyang sleeps in it now.

  The old clock is another interesting relic. It was given to Mrs Bowyang by her mother, who was one of the Maloneys—the Woolloomooloo Maloneys who were so prominent in society a few years ago when the younger set ran a two-up school down at the wharves.

  Though it has been in the family for many years—excepting occasional visits to the pawnshop—the alarm still works.

  The bedroom furnishings are symbolic of that affectionate family life which seems to be fading into oblivion in these modern times. There are two double beds and a stretcher in the room, cleverly arranged so that one may walk from one bed to the other without climbing over.

  Mr and Mrs Bowyang and little Jacky sleep in one double bed, the three youngest girls in the other, and Mr Bowyang’s brother-in-law, who is out of work, sleeps in the stretcher.

  Mrs Bowyang’s hobbies are washing and mending, and some of the mending she does is nothing short of marvellous.

  Business takes Mr Bowyang away every morning at 6.30, he being engaged in the sewer-digging profession; but he still finds time for his diversions, namely, washing up and placing tins where the rain comes in.

  The younger children have a magnificent playground in Pelican Street, where they have a jolly time daubing themselves with mud, eating stray apple cores, and escaping being run over by passing lorries.

  Viewed from the front, Mrs Bowyang’s home is extremely attractive. It seems to attract all the dust in the streets, and although it has never been renovated since it was built, it is remarkably cheap for 25d a week, and the brass doorknob takes an excellent polish.

  The writer was intrigued by the quaint, old world, worn-out, bashed-in atmosphere of the locality, and it was with great reluctance that he left. He lingered for a while, hoping to see the owner of Mrs Bowyang’s residence, with the idea of strangling him when he saw him, but realising the futility of the idea he left.

  SOLACE

  FRANK DANIEL

  Mary Martha Regan held her dying husband’s hand.

  Some forty years her senior, a proud and modest man.

  For twenty years in wedded bliss he loved his Mary so—

  This union saw a family—four sons were seen to grow.

  The first three boys were big and strong, tall, solid and stout.

  The fourth and youngest was a wimp, in looks he had missed out.

  The old man cast a trusting eye towards his loving wife

  And feebly whispered thanks to her for the good times in his life.

  ‘But tell me—darlin’ Mary, —please lay it on the line.

  That skinny little bloke of ours—is he really mine?’

  Mary squeezed his trembling hands then whispered in his ear.

  ‘Yes, my love, he is your son, rest assured and have no fear.’

  Old Regan closed his dimming eyes—life faded from his face,

  Mary took a long deep breath and sighed, ‘Oh, Saving Grace.

  Thank God! He’s gone with peace of mind, still with faith in me

  And thank the Lord he didn’t ask about the other three!’

  DAD AND DAVE

  No discussion of Aussie yarns and humour would be complete without reference to Dad and Dave.

  The iconic country bumpkins began life as much more serious characters in the whimsical yarns about life on a selection on the Darling Downs, written by Steele Rudd. His stories were so popular that he had his own magazine, called simply Steele Rudd.

  As time went by, Dad and Dave became caricatures and the Dad and Dave yarns developed into mor
e coarse and crude schoolyard jokes. The radio program was set in Snake Gully. The southern New South Wales town of Gundagai became associated with Dad and Dave and Mum and Mabel due to the theme tune of the radio show being the very popular song ‘Along the Road to Gundagai’ by Jack O’Hagen.

  The Snake Gully version of Dad and Dave was more broadly humorous than the short stories, though not as crude and vulgar as the Dad and Dave jokes that we loved as kids.

  An example of the middle ground type of Dad and Dave yarn is Dave saying to Dad, ‘I met a beaut little bloke called “Thirty Mile in a Day Mick”, Dad. He’s a bullocky bloke.’

  ‘’Strewth, Dave,’ says Dad, ‘that’s a helluva long name for a little bloke.’

  ‘Well,’ says Dave, ‘they sometimes call him sumthin’ else for short.’

  ‘What do they call Thirty Mile in a Day Mick for short?’ Dad asks.

  Dave replies, ‘They call him “Twenty-nine Mile in a Day Mick”.’

  JH

  REAL BEAUT NEWS

  Here is a Dad and Dave radio script, part of a series that Dennis O’Keefe and I presented at the Port Fairy Folk Festival a few years ago. For some strange reason, Dennis played the part of the stoic and sensible Dad and I played the idiotic Dave!

  DAVE: G’day, Dad, I got some real beaut news.

  DAD: Well, don’t just stand there. What’s the news?

  DAVE: Well—Mabel’s had a baby.

  DAD: Well, stone the crows, Dave! You shoulda told me that straight off!

  DAVE: Yeah, I know, but I was too excited.

  DAD: Well, that’s great news, Dave.

  DAVE: Yeah, Dad, it’s beaut—and ’ave a guess what kind she had.

  DAD: Geez, Dave, I dunno—was it a boy?

  DAVE: No. ’Ave another guess—

  DAD: Strike a light, you’re a fool, Dave! What was it then?

  DAVE: 9 pound 10 ounces.

  DAD: Was she in labour long, Dave?

  DAVE: Aww, geez, Dad, don’t be silly. She’s always voted Country Party!

  DAD: I give up! And, speaking of voting, don’t forget the council elections today. You have to vote.

  DAVE: Do I, Dad?

  DAD: Of course you do, you damn fool. Don’t you know voting’s compulsory in Australia?