Best Australian Yarns

by Haynes, Jim

  He lay in the hospital, pallid and weak,

  The wreck of a once healthy man;

  His breathing was wheezy, his voice was a squeak,

  As his story of woe he began.

  ‘’Twas Danny O’Hara,’ he murmured in pain,

  ‘Who told me his camel was bad,

  A bulky young bull, with the strength of a crane,

  But a temperament quiet and sad.

  ‘The camel was sick, up at Cassidy’s Hill,

  And he’d think me an angel from heaven

  If I’d help him to give it a “pick-me-up” pill,

  To keep it from “throwing a seven”.

  ‘A pipe was procured, three feet of bamboo,

  Then Danny, myself and the pill,

  Went bravely this medical office to do

  For the patient at Cassidy’s Hill.

  ‘“When the pill’s in the pipe and the pipe’s in his jaws,

  Which I’ll open,” O’Hara observed,

  “You place the free end of the blow-pipe in yours,

  And puff when ’is gullet’s uncurved,

  ‘“I’d blow it myself, but me bellows are weak,

  And I haven’t the strength in my lungs,

  Since I had that bad accident up at The Peak,

  My puffing machinery’s bung.

  ‘“The pill is composed,” he further explained,

  “Of axle-grease, sulphur and tar;

  And a piquant and suitable flavour is gained

  By a dip in the kerosene jar.

  ‘“To aid his digestion there’s gravel and shot,

  And I’ve seasoned it strongly with snuff;

  And I want in his system to scatter the lot,

  So take a deep breath and then puff.”

  ‘With the pipe to my lips a long breath I drew,

  Till my diaphragm threatened to burst,

  Then, bang! Down my gullet the flaming pill flew!

  For the blithering camel blew first!’

  GUILTY AS CHARGED

  During the Great Depression, two mates, Nugget and Blue, decided to quit the big smoke and try their hand at prospecting around some of the old gold mining areas west of Sydney.

  If nothing else, they could live off the land, rabbits and a few rations, maybe do a spot of rabbit trapping and of ’roo shooting to earn a quid and, who knows, poking around the old goldfields, they might get lucky.

  So off they went to Sofala and such like places, trying their luck and living off the land.

  One day, they were tramping over some old diggings near Mile End. They thought some of the old mine shafts might produce a few ounces if they were safe to enter and could be shored up so that a man could work at the bottom safely.

  But they needed to know how deep the shafts were.

  They were walking through the mullock heaps and barren rocky outcrops of that strange, lunar landscape when they came upon a big, seemingly quite sound, but very deep, shaft. It still had a tin and timber entrance with a sort of safety rail about a metre high, which was enclosed in old tin sheets, and it looked quite promising.

  Nugget picked up a rock, tossed it into the hole and stood listening for the rock to hit bottom. Nothing.

  He turned to Blue and said, ‘That must be a deep shaft—let’s throw a bigger rock in there and listen for it to hit bottom.’

  The two men found a bigger rock, picked it up and lugged it to the shaft, balanced it on the old safety fence and then dropped it in.

  They listened for some time—again, nothing.

  It was odd. They discussed the situation and agreed that either there was a very muddy bottom that muffled the sound of the rocks landing, or this must be one very deep shaft, indeed.

  They decided that the only way to find out for sure was to throw something much bigger into the shaft, ideally something with a different shape to a stone.

  They scanned the area around about and saw an old railway sleeper lying not far from the shaft—perfect!

  They took an end each and picked up the sleeper. Grunting and groaning in the heat with their backs bent they struggled the few metres to the shaft and threw it in.

  They were bent over the head of the shaft, listening intently, when they heard a clatter in the distance and a high-pitched squeal behind them. They turned to see a big nanny goat racing towards them from between the mullock heaps.

  Naturally their first thought was that the goat had been stalking them and, seeing her opportunity to attack, had made her charge towards their backsides, as they temptingly bent over the rail of the mineshaft entrance.

  They leapt aside as the goat charged and she came flying towards them flat out, head down, squealing.

  Blue hoped the goat would turn in the direction of Nugget and Nugget hoped the goat would follow Blue.

  Strangely, however, the charging beast flew past both men, hurdled the metre-high fence protecting the mineshaft entrance and dived straight down into the shaft. Then there was silence.

  Puzzled and astounded, and not a little shaken from the experience, Nugget and Blue made their way back towards where they had set up a temporary camp near the road.

  They were walking through the stretch of scrub near the edge of the mullock heaps when they were hailed by a voice cooeeing and saw an old man waving to them from a small hut on the edge of the mullock heaps.

  The old man had a camp fire going and invited the two mates to have a cuppa with him. He said he fossicked the area and made a few bob now and then from the few specks he found. He had a quite comfortable little shack and had a few vegies growing and a few animals and chooks. He wasn’t exactly a hermit but he didn’t see many visitors and was keen for a chat.

  After the usual niceties and chat, the two mates asked the old bloke if he had a goat among his flock.

  ‘Yes, I have as a matter of fact,’ replied the old bloke, ‘why?’

  Blue looked at Nugget and Nugget looked at Blue.

  ‘Errr, is your goat sort of mad and dangerous?’ asked Nugget.

  ‘Not particularly,’ the old bloke replied, ‘ she’s as nasty as any old nanny goat, but she still gives a bit of milk and hasn’t gone mad yet, why?’

  ‘I’m sorry to say she might have gone mad on you,’ said Blue and the two mates told the story of the incredible incident they had just witnessed. How a goat had attacked them as they looked down a shaft, and then dived headlong into oblivion, down the very same shaft.

  ‘That’s quite a story,’ said the old bloke. ‘I never heard the like of that before. Anyway, it couldn’t have been my goat, she’s grazing up in the mullock heaps tied by a really long piece of rope to a big old railway sleeper.’

  JH

  SOMEONE PINCHED OUR FIREWOOD

  JIM HAYNES

  Someone pinched our firewood, what a mongrel act!

  It’s about as low as you can go—but it’s a bloody fact!

  We spent a whole day cutting it—bashing round the scrub,

  I bet the bloke who pinched it spent the whole day in the pub.

  We nearly got the trailer bogged—flat tyre on the ute,

  So when we finally got it home, we thought, ‘You bloody beaut!

  No more cutting firewood, at least until the spring.’

  We unloaded it and split it up to size and everything.

  Stacked it really neatly, a ute and trailer load,

  Trouble was we stacked it too close to the road!

  And some miserable mongrel started sneaking ’cross the park,

  Every night or two, to pinch some—after dark.

  Now, as luck would have it, we’d gunpowder in the shed,

  We hollowed out one log and packed that in instead.

  Then back up on the pile it went—next night he took the bait,

  We’d soon know who the bugger was, we settled back to wait.

  He was a contract shearer, only new in town,

  I never got to meet him ’cos he didn’t stick around.

  The house was
only rented; the whole town heard the pop,

  They say the Aga Cooker split right across the top.

  ’Tho justice is its own reward, I wish I’d heard that cove,

  Explaining to the landlord the condition of his stove.

  Folk in our town mostly are a warm and friendly lot,

  Until you pinch our firewood—and then we’re bloody not!

  THE BIG LOAD

  FRANK DANIEL

  In 1968, I was transporting grain from the Riverina District into Sydney via the Hume Highway. The most popular meal stop on the highway at that time was Bimbo’s Roadhouse at Bargo, midway between Mittagong and Campbelltown.

  I was having breakfast at Bimbo’s Roadhouse one morning with another truck driver, a good mate of mine, when I related a story I’d read in the Daily Telegraph a few days before.

  The story was about the manufacture of a very large vault door, by an engineering firm in Newtown.

  This door was so large that, when finished, it posed a problem in transferring it from the workshop to the semitrailer, which was waiting to carry it to a new bank building in the city.

  A Coles crane was brought in to lift the heavy door and that’s where the trouble started. The crane wouldn’t fit through the door and, to make matters worse, the vault door, inside the factory, was larger than the shed entrance.

  This didn’t pose a problem for the engineers. They simply removed the front wall of the corrugated iron shed and a portion of the gabled roof and one of the roof trusses. This enabled the crane driver to make a direct lift from above the workshop; a few minor adjustments and the door was lifted skyward out of the shed and slewed onto the waiting truck and trailer.

  My mate didn’t appear to have much faith in my story and the harder I tried to convince him that I wasn’t telling him a yarn, the less he believed me.

  I told him that there was an actual photograph in the paper, and that I would prove it to him. I burrowed through a pile of old newspapers in the dining room, but blow me down, there was not a single copy of that particular issue of the Tele to win my argument.

  Three or four days later, I was having a meal at Bimbos when my mate walked in and joined me at the table.

  ‘I saw the biggest load that I’ve ever seen in my life yesterday,’ he began. ‘It was massive.’

  ‘There was two big fat coppers driving two of them new Mini-Cooper S pursuit cars, one on each side of the centre line, with lights flashing on the roof of each car and their hazard lights winking and blinking.

  ‘Coming behind them,’ he went on, ‘was a bloody great big Brambles Mack R-700 carrying a 15 ton concrete block of ballast. It had a stiff-arm hooked to the bullbar of another big Bulldog Mack which was hooked up to a four-axle dolly which in turn was towing an eight-axle wide-spread low-loader.’

  I was more than impressed.

  He went on.

  ‘Another whopping great Mack R-700 with a 15 ton block of ballast was coming behind with a similar stiff-arm set-up and was pushing as hard as it could to help the two prime movers up the front.

  ‘On each side of this big turnout were three more motor cycle cops with lights flashing and keeping the traffic at a safe distance off the road.’

  This yarn was getting the better of me as he continued.

  ‘Now! Coming up behind this whole shebang was two more big fat coppers in Mini-Coopers, with lights flashing, one each side of the centre line.’

  Here he paused for a few seconds and then said, ‘It was the biggest load I ever saw in my life!’

  I was amazed. It didn’t take me too long to bite!

  ‘What were they carrying on the low-loader?’

  He gave me a good hard look and replied slowly, ‘The combination for that safe you saw the other day!’

  MICKETY MULGA

  T. RANKEN

  He worked wid us at Wantigong—

  Old Mickety Mulga Jim.

  We’d all a-gone blue mouldy if

  It ’adn’t bin for him.

  He’d keep us yarnin’ at the fire,

  An’ laughin’ be the hour

  At ’is amusin’ anecdotes,

  Be George, he ’ad a power.

  ’E told us up in Queensland, where

  ’E’d never go again,

  He come to some dry water-’ole

  Upon a ten-mile plain.

  The tank was dry, and Jim was dry,

  But be a ’appy thought,

  He wrung ’is empty water-bag

  An’ got about a quart;

  But couldn’t find a stick o’ wood

  To bile his billy by,

  So stuck a match into the grass,

  Which then was pretty dry.

  He ’eld the billy to the flame

  Wid a bit of fencing-wire,

  But ’ad to go to foller it,

  So rapid run the fire.

  Five miles acrost that flamin’ plain

  He raced that fire, did he,

  But when at last the billy boiled,

  He ’ad forgot the tea!

  DALEY’S DORG WATLE

  W. T. GOODGE

  ‘You can talk about yer sheep dorgs,’ said the man from Allan’s Creek,

  ‘But I know a dorg that simply knocked ’em bandy!—

  Do whatever you would show him, and you’d hardly need to speak;

  Owned by Daley, drover cove in Jackandandy.

  ‘We was talkin’ in the parlour, me and Daley, quiet like,

  When a blowfly starts a-buzzin’ round the ceilin’,

  Up gets Daley, and he says to me, “You wait a minute, Mike,

  And I’ll show you what a dorg he is at heelin’.”

  ‘And an empty pickle bottle was a-standin’ on the shelf,

  Daley takes it down and puts it on the table,

  And he bets me drinks that blinded dorg would do it by himself—

  And I didn’t think as how as he was able!

  ‘Well, he shows the dorg the bottle, and he points up to the fly,

  And he shuts the door, and says to him—“Now, Wattle!”

  And in less than fifteen seconds, spare me days, it ain’t a lie,

  That there dorg had got that insect in the bottle.’

  THE BULLOCKY’S TALE

  ANONYMOUS

  I’ve got the finest bullock team was ever lapped in hide,

  And if you’d care to listen to my tale,

  Of how they broke a record on the Woolumundry side,

  Just light your pipe an climb up on this rail.

  It was back in 1895, when we had heavy rains,

  I was coming down the river with the team,

  There were miles of slush and water on the stock routes and the plains,

  And every little gutter was a stream.

  I had wool from Bogandillon and I piled the load so high

  That the boss and pressers reckoned I was mad;

  It would have been a record pull if roads were hard and dry,

  You can guess what it was like when they were bad.

  Well, we got out to the crossing and the current made me think,

  But I pushed the leaders at it with a rush,

  And the wagon reached the middle, then the wheels began to sink,

  While the bullocks were all scrambling in the slush.

  Yes, she ‘set’ there pretty solid, and the crowd strolled from the shed,

  They were hoping they would have a bit of fun,

  And Paddy Foley barracked me until I punched his head,

  And told the boss I’d kick him off the run.

  Now, I reckoned that the bullocks needed half an hour’s spell,

  So I takes ’em off an drives ’em up the lane,

  And the crowd think that I’m beaten and let out a nasty yell,

  But I tells ’em that we’ll tackle it again.

  Then I hitched the team back on again, the bullocks know my plan,

  They were ready when I swung the whip around,

  I yelled, �
�Gee up! Test the jewellery! Tear a quill out if you can!’

  And they stuck their toes a foot into the ground.

  They were straining ’gainst the yokes and I was chopping chunks of skin,

  And using all the language that I knew,

  And after twenty minutes, when I thought of giving in,

  I saw the wagon started to come through.

  I suppose it was a minute ’fore they’d move a dozen feet,

  But I would that greenhide lash about their flanks,

  And at last the team got going, just to see ’em was a treat,

  And then I said—well—many fervent thanks.

  In a little while I stopped, and I looked behind and saw

  Just what they’d done! It hit me like a shell!

  For they dragged that loaded table-top a hundred yards or more—

  And they’d dragged the bloody creek along as well!

  CRUEL TACTICS OF THE EMU

  LENNIE LOWER

  Sad news comes from Wangrabelle.

  It seems that emus chase the sheep and kill them by repeatedly jumping on their backs. They do the same thing to pigs.

  It is supposed that the emus do this out of a spirit of sportive destructiveness as they do not further mutilate the animals after killing them.

  Anyone who knows anything at all about emus must know that it’s not the fault of the emus. They have nothing else to do. They are merely emusing themselves.

  As an emuologist who has made a close study of emus for many years, we say without fear of contradiction that if the sheep or pig, as the case may be, would only keep steady, the emu would not have to keep jumping on and off.

  Experiments have proved beyond all doubt that a pig or sheep once jumped on begins to wobble.

  The Emu Research Society, of which we are the founder, in combination with the Be-Kind-To-Emus League, has jumped on the backs of 3425 pigs and a similar number of sheep in the course of experiment, the animals being kindly lent by owners of piggeries and sheeperies.

  In every case the result was fatal; this may be accounted for by the fact that there is a total of 132 in the experimental party, and even though the investigators jumped one at a time, the animal selected soon weakened and was ultimately flattened out.

  Emus cannot be curbed. An emu which was born in our own home and fed by our own hand, returned to its wild state at the end, and after laying an egg in the jardiniere, kicked the back out of the fireplace.