Best Australian Yarns

by Haynes, Jim

When he told them he could only raise one keg of Queensland rum.

  ’Tisn’t much,’ said Tim O’Leary, but ’twill do to break the drought,

  So I’ll hump it to the shanty and proceed to serve it out.’

  But, as he strode down the plankway with the barrel in his grip,

  The lurching of the lugger caused his hobnail boot to slip.

  Then shouting to McSweeney, ‘Kindly throw a rope to me,’

  O’Leary and the barrel took a header in the sea.

  The water closed above him, but he swiftly rose again,

  Repeating his instructions in a voice imbued with pain.

  They hustled and they bustled as he shouted from below,

  ‘Throw a rope ye lazy beggars, or I’ll let the barrel go!’

  They found a rope and threw, and the end he fastened tight

  In a loop around the barrel, then, exhausted, sank from sight.

  Ships call no more for sandalwood at Dargaminder Bay,

  The jetty piles lie shattered on the coastline grim and grey,

  But they who sought the sandalwood still spread the tale about

  Of how Tim, the blessed martyr, gave his life to break the drought.

  NAME YOUR POISON

  Although Australians were to become known as great beer drinkers in the twentieth century, beer was not the main alcoholic choice until late in the century; ale was merely one form of ‘grog’.

  In 1860, a rather frustrated temperance crusader, Nathaniel Pidgeon, noted that, ‘By a rough calculation, it would appear that one gallon of beer, 1½ pints of brandy, 1¼ pints of gin, and a quart of rum has arrived for every man, woman and child in the colony! It is surely high time for the friends of humanity to bestir themselves!’

  Friends of humanity, however, were not particularly thick upon the ground in most areas of the continent at the time. Indeed, thanks partly to the gold rushes, the kind of friendship that was developing was known as ‘mateship’, and part of mateship was a very strong dependence on drinking alcohol together as a male bonding experience.

  This anonymous rhyme sums up Australian drinking habits of the time:

  Now Louis likes his native wine and Otto likes his beer,

  The Pommy goes for ‘half and half’ because it gives him cheer.

  Angus likes his whisky neat and Paddy likes his tot,

  The Aussie has no drink at all—he likes the bloody lot!

  With widespread refrigeration and ice production in the 1880s and 1890s, beer became the standard drink for most Australian men, which is, I suppose, not surprising given the climate and the general outdoor style of work at the time.

  While twentieth-century Australia remained a basically beer-drinking nation, all the alcoholic trends that developed in other Western nations were also experienced here. Cocktail drinking became trendy and popular in the 1920s and 1930s, and awareness of more sophisticated food and wine consumption developed slowly after World War II. New ‘boutique’ beers and fruit drinks became fads in the 1980s, and their popularity has continued to grow.

  Rum remained a popular drink, perhaps partly because of tradition and partly because of the sugar industry that developed in Queensland from the 1860s. Brandy, whisky and gin were also popular, particularly among the middle classes, and there was sherry for the ladies. While toleration of alcoholic excess was the norm among men, it was, after those early riotous years of the colony, rarely extended to women.

  Wine was one of the first crops grown in the colony and regions like the Hunter Valley in New South Wales have a long and praiseworthy history of producing great wines from the earliest days of settlement. In South Australia, German migrants and other pioneer families had established a tradition of great wine production by the late nineteenth century in areas like the Barossa, Clare Valley, McLaren Vale and Langhorne Creek.

  But general appreciation of wine did not really come to Australia until the 1970s, when the wine industry took off. Its spectacular growth coincided with a changing attitude to drinking generally. Australia has slipped well down the table of beer drinkers, for example, from number one in the world for consumption per head of population in the 1950s to a miserable tenth in 1999.

  Changes in licensing laws greatly affected drinking habits in Australia. Pubs were forced to close at six o’clock during the 1940s and 1950s. The idea was that this would improve family life and encourage temperance. What resulted, of course, was the notorious ‘six o’clock swill’. Early closing simply led to men drinking as much as they could as fast as they could from the time they finished work until six every evening. Even after its demise, early closing had established a tradition of a regular ‘drinking session’ in the evenings after work.

  Today, Australia is a complex society with different drinking cultures. Many changes have occurred in recent times. We tend to drink more often with meals than before or after them, as in the past. We drink more wine and less beer. We are perhaps more temperate due to strict drink-driving laws and a growing awareness of the harmful effects of alcohol on our health and our society. On the other hand, many Australians are drinking at a younger age, and binge drinking and alcohol abuse are more discussed and worried over than ever.

  Attitudes to drinking in our society will naturally vary from total acceptance to extreme intolerance. Opinions about Australian drinking have always differed. Visitors to our shores have had mixed reactions to our drinking habits. In 1873, English author Anthony Trollope found our drunkenness to be a reflection of some of our better characteristics: ‘Australian drunkenness,’ he said, ‘so far as it exists, is not of the English type. It is more reckless, more extravagant, more riotous, to the imagination of man infinitely more magnificent; but it is less enduring, and certainly upon the whole less debasing.’

  A century later, however, in 1975, Danish journalist Poul Nielsen was moved to comment, ‘I have felt scared since I arrived in Sydney, in fact I feel more relaxed in New York than here. There is something desperate about the way people drink here.’ If he thought that of Sydney, I wonder what he would have made of Darwin.

  Perhaps the disparity in opinion here has something to with the nationality of the observer. Or perhaps it has more to do with the company Trollope and Nielsen kept while visiting our shores, or social changes over the intervening century.

  Contradictory opinions exist also on the home front. In the year 1974, for instance, an article appeared in the Australian Church Record describing the evils of drink inflicted on eleven year olds in state schools:

  The girls had their first cooking lesson. The tasty morsel to be cooked was rum balls. Whether rum essence or the real jungle juice scarcely matters. Small girls were to be introduced to this highly desirable alcoholic flavour. Perhaps it is part of the modern approach to cooking, which is to saturate almost everything in some form of alcohol and give it a French name.

  In the same year, advertising agency executive John Singleton commented quite matter-of-factly that, ‘The advertising industry lives a very cyclical sort of life. December is the month for getting pissed.’

  How does the average Australian handle these contradictory views of disapproval and acceptance? How do we cope with attempts to restrict and control our drinking and yet remain true to the Aussie belief in a ‘fair go’?

  Perhaps some insight can be gained from this item which appeared a few years ago in The Sydney Morning Herald’s ‘Column 8’:

  By chance a colleague booked into a north Queensland motel before learning that its dining-room was not licensed. ‘Think nothing of it,’ said the waitress. ‘If you want a bottle of beer with your steak just say Steak and Laundry. It doesn’t show on the records.’

  JH

  McCARTHY’S BREW

  GEORGE ESSEX EVANS

  The team of Black McCarthy crawled down the Norman Road,

  The ground was bare, the bullocks spare, and grievous was the load,

  The brown hawks wheeled above them and the heatwaves throbbed and glowed.
/>   With lolling tongues and bloodshot eyes and sinews all astrain,

  McCarthy’s bullocks staggered on across the sun-cracked plain,

  The wagon lumbered after with the drivers raising Cain.

  Three mournful figures sat around the camp fire’s fitful glare,

  McKinlay Jim and ‘Spotty’ and McCarthy’s self were there,

  But their spirits were so dismal that they couldn’t raise a swear!

  ’Twas not the long, dry stage ahead that made those bold hearts shrink,

  The drought-cursed ground, the dying stock, the water thick as ink,

  But, the drinking curse was on them and they had no grog to drink!

  Then with a bound up from the ground McCarthy jumped and cried:

  ‘’Tis vain! ’Tis vain! I go insane. These pangs in my inside!

  Some sort of grog, for love of God, invent, concoct, provide!’

  McKinlay Jim straight answered him: ‘Those lotions, sauce and things

  Should surely make a brew to slake these thirstful sufferings,

  A brew that slakes, a brew that wakes and burns and bucks and stings.’

  Down came the cases from the load—they wrenched them wide with force.

  They poured and mixed and stirred a brew that would have killed a horse,

  Cayenne, painkiller, pickles, embrocation, Worcester sauce!

  Oh, wild and high and fierce and free the orgy rose that night;

  The songs they sang, the deeds they did, no poet could indite;

  To see them pass that billy round, it was a fearsome sight.

  The dingo heard them and with tail between his legs he fled!

  The curlew saw them and he ceased his wailing for the dead!

  Each frightened bullock on the plain went straightway off his head!

  Alas! and there are those who say that at the dawn of day

  Three perforated carriers round a smouldering camp fire lay:

  They did not think McCarthy’s brew would take them in that way!

  McCarthy’s teams at Normanton no more the Gulf men see.

  McCarthy’s bullocks roam the wilds exuberant and free;

  McCarthy lies, an instance of preserved anatomee!

  Go, take the moral of this rhyme, which in deep grief I write:

  Don’t ever drink McCarthy’s brew. Be warned in case you might—

  Gulf whisky kills at twenty yards, but this stuff kills at sight!

  A BUSH PUBLICAN’S LAMENT

  HENRY LAWSON

  I wish I was spifflicated before I ever seen a pub!

  You see, it’s this way. Suppose a cove comes along on a blazin’ hot day in the drought—an’ you ought to know how hell-hot it can be out here—an’ he dumps his swag in the corner of the bar; an’ he turns round an’ he ses ter me, ‘Look here, boss, I ain’t got a lonely steever on me, an’ God knows when I’ll git one. I’ve tramped ten mile this mornin’, an’ I’ll have ter tramp another ten afore tonight. I’m expectin’ ter git on shearin’ with ol’ Baldy Thompson at West-o’-Sunday nex’ week. I got a thirst on me like a sunstruck bone, an’ for God sake put up a couple o’ beers for me an’ my mate, an’ I’ll fix it up with yer when I come back after shearin’.’

  An’ what’s a feller ter do? I bin there meself, an’, I put it to you! I’ve known what it is to have a thirst on me.

  An’ suppose a poor devil comes along in the jim-jams, with every inch on him jumpin’ an’ a look in his eyes like a man bein’ murdered an’ sent ter hell, an’ a whine in his voice like a whipped cur, an’ the snakes a-chasing of him; an’ he hooks me with his finger ter the far end o’ the bar, as if he was goin’ ter tell me that the world was ended, an’ he hangs over the bar an’ chews me lug, an’ tries to speak, an’ breaks off inter a sort o’ low shriek, like a terrified woman, an’ he says, ‘For Mother o’ Christ’s sake, giv’ me a drink!’ An’ what am I to do? I bin there meself. I knows what the horrors is. He mighter blued his cheque at the last shanty. But what am I ter do? I put it ter you. If I let him go he might hang hisself ter the nex’ leanin’ tree.

  What’s a drink? Yer might arst, I don’t mind a drink or two; but when it comes to half a dozen in a day it mounts up, I can tell yer. Drinks is sixpence here, I have to pay for it, an’ pay carriage on it. It’s all up ter me in the end. I used sometimes ter think it was lucky I wasn’t west o’ the sixpenny line, where I’d lose a shillin’ on every drink I give away.

  An’ a straight chap that knows me gets a job to take a flock o’ sheep or a mob o’ cattle ter the bloomin’ Gulf, or South Australia, or somewheers, an’ loses one of his horses goin’ out ter take charge, an’ borrers eight quid from me ter buy another. He’ll turn up agen in a year or two an’ most likely want ter make me take twenty quid for that eight, an’ make everybody about the place blind drunk, but I’ve got ter wait, an’ the wine an’ sperit merchants an’ the brewery won’t. They know I can’t do without liquor in the place.

  An’ lars’ rain Jimmy Nowlett, the bullick driver, gets bogged over his axle trees back there on the Blacksoil Plains between two flooded billerbongs, an’ prays till the country steams an’ his soul’s busted, an’ his throat like a lime kiln. He taps a keg o’ rum or beer ter keep his throat in workin’ order. I don’t mind that at all, but him an’ his mates git floodbound for near a week, an’ broach more kegs, an’ go on a howlin’ spree in ther mud, an’ spill mor’n they swipe, an’ leave a tarpaulin off a load, an’ the flour gets wet, an’ the sugar runs out of the bags like syrup, an’, what’s a feller ter do? Do yer expect me to set the law onter Jimmy? I’ve knowned him all my life, an’ he knowed my father afore I was born. He’s been on the roads this forty year till he’s as thin as a rat, and as poor as a myall black; an’ he’s got a family ter keep back there in Bourke. No, I have ter pay for it in the end, an’ it all mounts up, I can tell yer.

  An’ suppose some poor devil of a new chum black sheep comes along, staggerin’ from one side of the track to the other, and spoutin’ poetry; dyin’ o’ heat or fever, or heartbreak an’ homesickness, or a life o’ disserpation he’d led in England, an’ without a sprat on him, an’ no claim on the Bush; an’ I ketches him in me arms as he stumbles inter the bar, an’ he wants me ter hold him up while he turns English inter Greek for me.

  An’ I put him ter bed, an’ he gits worse, an’ I have ter send the buggy twenty mile for a doctor—an’ pay him. An’ the jackaroo gits worse, an’ has ter be watched an’ nursed an’ held down sometimes; an’ he raves about his home an’ mother in England, an’ the blarsted university that he was eddicated at, an’ a woman, an’ somethin’ that sounds like poetry in French; an’ he upsets my missus a lot, an’ makes her blubber.

  An’ he dies, an’ I have ter pay a man ter bury him (an’ knock up a sort o’ fence round the grave arterwards ter keep the stock out), an’ send the buggy agen for a parson, an’, well, what’s a man ter do?

  I couldn’t let him wander away an’ die like a dog in the scrub, an’ be shoved underground like a dog, too, if his body was ever found. The government might pay ter bury him, but there ain’t never been a pauper funeral from my house yet, an’ there won’t be one if I can help it, except it be meself.

  An’ then there’s the bother goin’ through his papers to try an’ find out who he was an’ where his friends is. An’ I have ter get the missus to write a letter to his people, an’ we have ter make up lies about how he died ter make it easier for ’em. An’ goin’ through his letters, the missus comes across a portrait an’ a locket of hair, an’ letters from his mother an’ sisters an’ girl; an’ they upset her, an’ she blubbers agin, an’ gits sentimental, like she useter long ago when we was first married.

  There was one bit of poetry, I forgit it now, that that there jackaroo kep’ sayin’ over an’ over agen till it buzzed in me head; an’, weeks after, I’d ketch the missus metterin’ it to herself in the kitchen till I thought she was goin’ ratty.

  An’ we gets a letter from t
he jackaroo’s friends that puts us to a lot more bother. I hate havin’ anythin’ to do with letters. An’ someone’s sure to say he was lambed down an’ cleaned out an’ poisoned with bad bush liquor at my place. It’s almost enough ter make a man wish there was a recordin’ angel.

  An’ what’s the end of it? I got the blazin’ bailiff in the place now! I can’t shot him out because he’s a decent, hard-up, poor devil from Bourke, with consumption or somethin’, an’ he’s been talking to the missus about his missus an’ kids; an’ I see no chance of gittin’ rid of him, unless the shearers come along with their cheques from West-o’-Sunday nex’ week and act straight by me.

  Like as not I’ll have ter roll up me swag an’ take the track meself in the end.

  They say publicans are damned, an’ I think so, too; an’ I wish I’d bin operated on before ever I seen a pub.

  THE GUILE OF DAD McGINNIS

  W.T. GOODGE

  When McGinnis struck the mining camp at Jamberoora Creek

  His behaviour was appreciated highly;

  For, although he was a quiet man, in manner mild and meek,

  Not like ordinary swagmen with a monumental cheek,

  He became the admiration of the camp along the creek

  ’Cause he showed a point to Kangaroobie Riley!

  Both the pubs at Jamberoora had some grog that stood the test

  (Not to speak of what was manufactured slyly!)

  And the hostel of O’Gorman, which was called The Diggers’ Rest,

  Was, O’Gorman said, the finest house of any in the west;

  But it was a burning question if it really was the best,

  Or the Miners’—kept by Kangaroobie Riley.

  Dad McGinnis called at Riley’s. Said he ‘felt a trifle queer’,

  And with something like a wan and weary smile, he

  Said he ‘thought he’d try a whisky’. Pushed it back and said, ‘I fear

  I had better take a brandy.’ Passed that back and said: ‘Look here,

  Take the brandy; after all, I think I’ll have a pint of beer!’