The Bastard from the Bush: An Australian Life

by Jarratt, John

  Go to the front of our house and sit on the swing that Dad built (of course). You look down the hill over the rusty tin roofs of the miners cottages, across the Flat, past the gently rolling, emerald-green dairy farms to Dapto, 3 miles away. Beyond that, Lake Illawarra, then the pièce de résistance, the Pacific Ocean. My favourite view on the planet.

  I was born into this little piece of heaven on earth. A wide-eyed cherub, skipping through it literally chasing butterflies and singing back to the myriad birds. I know I was noisy: I loved being loud, I loved to sing, I got upset sometimes, I cried loudly and got angry, I carried on like a two-year-old when I was four. I was a long way from doing a thesis on proper childhood behaviour. The day arrived that I was old enough to be verbally abused and bashed by a 5-foot 8-inch hulk with a baritone voice that erupted like thunder and tasted like lava. I’m pretty sure I suddenly graduated to that when I was four. A degree I never studied for and absolutely didn’t deserve. How can you get burnt in heaven?

  Burnt in heaven

  The only physical contact we had with Dad was a wrestle. Dad would roll off the lounge onto the carpet and announce, ‘Who wants to wrestle?’ Our eyes would light up and Brian and I would launch ourselves onto this hunk on the floor. Dad would immediately have Brian squashed in the scissor-leg hold and have me in a headlock. He’d slowly squeeze each of us until my head ached and Brian stopped breathing.

  ‘Do ya give up?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Do you give up?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Give up.’

  ‘Naaaah.’

  ‘Give up!’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes!!’

  ‘What’s the Jarratt motto?’

  ‘A Jarratt never gives up!’

  ‘Too bloody right.’

  The other one was ‘how to throw a punch’. Dad would get on his knees so that he was our height and hold his hands up, palms towards us. We’d have to punch his hands. ‘Left, left, left…right. Left, left, left…right. Keep your left leg forward, bounce on your knees and throw the punch straight. Lock the elbow, roll the shoulder.’ We could fight and we could take a hit.

  When the old man belted us, he’d always use his hands, nothing else. Callused hands like steel bands from years of hard labour and using heavy machinery in the black holes of black coal. Short, thick fingers like sausages would leave their imprints on the backs of our legs.

  ‘Why are you wearing long pants to school, John?’

  ‘Mum forgot to wash my shorts.’ Mum forgot to wash our shorts a lot.

  I’m not scared of anybody. If someone wanted to fight me at school, I wouldn’t hesitate. Bang, bang, bang, all over. There were two reasons: a puny little kid was nothing compared to my father, and I had a chance to hit back and hurt someone else. So the poor little bastards I hit were Bruce substitutes. And years later, a cop, compared to my old man? Nothing.

  This is how my father prepared me for my first day at school. ‘If anyone frightens you or pushes you around, punch them straight in the nose.’ My father was called out of the pit that day and asked to come down and take control of his son, who was punching kids in the nose. Our teacher, Mr Higgins, never liked me. I wonder why?

  All I remember of Mr Higgins is being rapped across the knuckles a lot with the cane. I was left-handed, and the protocol in those days was to change you over to the right hand. Mr Higgins made me so ashamed of my left hand that I abandoned it. I’ve had to retrain my left hand in adulthood. I had big problems folding my arms because of this. In the afternoons we were asked to sit up straight and fold our arms. For the life of me, I found this very difficult, and he kept caning me for it. My mother became concerned and alarmed with Mr Higgins and finally convinced Dad to get me out of the school. They sent me to Dapto Primary, where I stayed until we left Wongawilli.

  My mother put up with a lot. She was one of the last generation of subservient women in Western society. In 1957, when Mum was twenty-six, Elvis was twenty-two and had already had six number ones including ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, ‘All Shook Up’ and ‘Hound Dog’. The pill was not far away. Mum would finally crawl out of her subservient cocoon twenty-four years later.

  Helen Catherine Cole was born on 12 March 1931. She was the youngest of five: Charlie, Arthur, Jim, Betty and Helen, in that order. Betty was two years older than Mum. Mum was really good-looking, but Betty was amazingly good-looking. Betty’s nickname was Spaghetti, as she was thin, and Mum’s was Scraggy Ag at home and Fly Poop Face at school, because she had freckles. Needless to say, she had a low opinion of herself, which was totally unfounded. (Have a look at the picture of her in the picture section and be amazed.)

  Until she was about thirty, Mum was very shy and very much a victim. Her mother, Emma, whom I knew as Nanna, was one tough bitch, hard as nails, heart of gold. A 5 foot 6, broad-shouldered, big-breasted country girl from Jembaicumbene, near Braidwood, New South Wales. She was in charge of 44 Edward Street, Chippendale. Everybody did what she told them, including Pop, who spent most of his life getting out of her way. Mum used to cop the back of the hairbrush across her back and around her head. When I was about eight, Nanna had an argument with a woman in Edward Street and gave her a belting.

  Like Mum, Nanna looked younger than her age. One night, in the early 1940s, Nanna was walking down a dark lane towards Edward Street. A man was following her. If she upped the pace, he upped the pace; if she slowed down, he slowed down. So she stopped and started talking to him.

  ‘G’day. Would you like to come to my house for a cup of tea?’

  ‘What about your husband?’

  ‘He left me. Just my kids at home, they’ll be upstairs asleep.’

  ‘All right, then.’

  They walked to Nanna’s house. Pop was away in the woolsheds. She invited the man into the kitchen. He sat at the table, she put the kettle on, then walked through to the lounge and yelled up the stairs.

  ‘Arthur, Charlie, get him! Kill the bastard.’ Charlie, twenty-one, and Arthur, nineteen, came roaring out of their bedrooms and down the stairs. The bloke started running for the front door, but Nanna shoved him onto his face in the hall. He scrambled to his feet and crashed out the door, closely followed by the two sons. They caught him halfway down the street, belted the living crap out of him and went back to ask Nanna why.

  Tough times when Mum was a kid: the Depression followed by World War II. By 1944, Mum’s three big brothers were at war, her five-year-old adopted little sister Joan was just starting school, and Nanna, Pop and Betty had jobs. When Mum was thirteen she had to leave school to become the housekeeper and look after Joan, who was actually her cousin. Cinderella of Chippendale.

  Mum’s brother Arthur and Dad met each other at the Air Force base in Dubbo during the war and became lifelong mates. They were mechanics working on fighter-plane engines. Dad was always in trouble: ‘I didn’t join up to call you “Sir”, mate, I joined to fight the fuckin’ Japs.’

  Uncle Arthur took Dad to Edward Street in 1947. He clapped eyes on Mum and it was love at first sight. Mum was sixteen. Nanna clapped eyes on Dad and immediately thought he was ‘a mongrel’. He called her ‘the old battleaxe’ until the day she died. The only distinction between the two of them was their genitalia. She refused to go to their wedding two years later.

  Mum, my brothers and I were all victims. She saw in Bruce what she was used to: a protector and provider like her mother. That, unfortunately, is a clever disguise perfected by people who are actually controllers and insulators.

  You meet someone, they are perfect for you, they have everything you want and need for a contented life. Beside them walks a person who reminds you of your father or mother. You pick that one, throw him or her on your shoulders and carry that around for the next twenty or thirty years.

  And so, Mum graduated from Nanna’s child servant to Dad’s adult servant. Sometimes he listened to her and agreed with her, but only if she was persistent – Dad didn’t discuss, he argued. If you said something
was black he’d argue it was white. If you said it was white the following week, he’d say it was black. He was cerebrally very bright but an emotional infant. You never won an argument with him; he could justify anything or would belt you under the ear for being belligerent.

  I went to Dapto Primary a few months in to my kindergarten year. I established friendships with John Mayberry, Brian Beasley and George Dopper. They remained my friends for the next five years until I left for the Snowy Mountains. Brian became BB and I became J J and I remain so. My ears stuck out at right angles from my head, and so did Brian’s. Brian’s ears were small, so we were also Big Ears and Little Ears to those who wanted to tease us and risk a belt in the nose. Some creative bastard came up with ‘John Jarratt is a parrot sitting on a lump of carrot’, which I hated. I was pleased to get away from that rhyme when I moved to a new school when I was ten. A few weeks after starting there, ‘John Jarratt is a parrot sitting on a piece of carrot.’ Aaaah!

  I caught the bus to and from school. It dropped me at the bottom of the hill and I had to walk to the top of the hill with my schoolbag. It felt like Everest to my little legs. One week the fare went up a halfpenny. I told Dad and he just gave me the extra money. Idea! In one month the fare went up by threepence (a lot of money in 1957). One afternoon I came out of the shop just outside of school with a big bag of lollies and there, sitting on his motorbike, was Dadzilla.

  ‘Gimme them lollies, boy.’ He took them and threw them onto the bitumen and there was a spray of coloured candy all over the road. ‘Get on.’

  I’d never been on a motorbike before, and the old man could ride it. He’d raced a Cammy Norton at Bathurst. In 1947 he had a WLA Harley painted iridescent green, with a chrome engine, luminous skulls on the mudguards and a leather buddy seat. Port and starboard lights illuminated the engine at night. Dad was a lad.

  The exhilaration of the ride made me forget I was in trouble. Ripping around corners and the deep throatiness of the engine added to the excitement. We came along the Flat at a hell of a pace and the dark cloud of dread came over me as we rapidly approached our house.

  ‘Go to your room and wait for me’ is another way of saying to a six-year-old, ‘You are about to be tortured.’

  Sitting in my room, a knot in my guts, both knees shaking up and down like pistons. Hands sweating and clasped in my crutch, squeezing my fingers, letting go, squeezing my fingers, letting go. Staring blankly at the floor, lips squeezed tightly.

  In he comes in his work clothes. He hasn’t washed the coaldust off yet, which makes him look even more horrendous.

  ‘Why did you steal off me, boy?’

  ‘Sorry…’

  ‘Sorry what?’

  ‘Sorry, Dad.’

  ‘I work my guts out five days a week, I dig bloody trenches on the bloody weekend and this is what you do, you dirty little bloody thief!’

  He grabs me by the upper arm, pulls me upright as if I’m weightless and whacks me with his right hand. This man doesn’t have an arm, it’s a club with a hand on it. ‘Well bang you bang won’t bang bloody bang steal bang from me bang a-bloody-bang-gain, willya!’

  BANG.

  ‘No, Daaad.’

  ‘Nah dad nah dad.’

  BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG.

  Generally it would end with him throwing me away. I usually hit the wall. It was a fibro house and once, when he threw me into it, I cracked the wall. He withheld my pocket money until he could pay for a new sheet. He taught me a lot of lessons. I should be the best person in the world from what I learnt from his constant punishments. But he also taught me I was an idiot on a regular basis.

  ‘You’re an idiot! What are ya?’

  ‘I’m an idiot. I’m an idiot.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m an idiot, Dad.’

  ‘You said it.’

  I remember sitting in my room waiting for the belting, sometimes with my brother, and I remember crying on my bed afterwards – not crying, heaving, sometimes with my brother heaving beside me. We usually had to stay in our bedroom until dinnertime, ‘to think about whatcha bloody done’. Brian was eighteen months younger than me. Brian has a softness about him; he was a sweet boy and he’s a sweet man. Not in a gay way, he’s built like Dad and he was runner-up in the Golden Gloves when he was fifteen. He’s all man, but he’s a wonderful man. Plaintively, ‘Yes, Dad, yes, Dad, sorry, Dad, yes, Dad…’, his big sad brown eyes, his quaking chin. Somehow, I didn’t know how Dad could hit him. I’d be sitting there aching all over, I’d look across at my little brother and my heart would ache much more. I wanted to kill my dad. Brian and I would stay awake at night figuring out how to kill him.

  Strange thing, I can remember the lead-up, I can remember afterwards but I can’t remember the beltings very clearly. I’ve blocked it out. Just an overall memory of it, nothing specific. Except once.

  I was in the garage and I’d done something wrong. The old man was about to belt me and something snapped inside me. I suddenly made a run for it and Dad chased me. I could hear him counting, ‘Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen…seventeen!’ He’d counted every step it took to catch me, dragged me back to the garage and whacked me seventeen times. ‘Now I’ll give ya your bloody hiding.’ I never ran away again.

  ‘Always tell the truth and you won’t get hurt.’

  ‘I did it!’…BANG.

  Dad taught me to be the greatest liar on earth. I think on average I’d tell four or five great lies and get out of trouble, then I’d get caught out and cop a hiding. Good odds.

  I didn’t like school, never did. I was constantly told by adults that schooldays were the best years of my life. Probably, but not the days at school. I’ve never been able to sit still, I still can’t. There is nothing more boring than sitting on your arse being told how to conjugate the verb, 7/10 plus 27/64 = who gives a fuck, Pi R squared, Attila the Hun was the ruler of the Hunnic Empire from 434 to 453, remember that for your history exam – why?

  I still don’t read books, it takes hours, I get bored, thank Christ for film and television. Good on you for reading this book, I wouldn’t. I hate maths, I failed it regularly. I love building houses, I’ve built nine of my own. How did I work out measurements and angles? Easy, I loved building houses and the maths made sense. I’m still not good at it, but I get by.

  School is not for daydreamers and life-schemers. Most of the brainy bastards I knew ended up with good jobs in worthy establishments. Most of the tearaways and mad bastards I knew ended up owning the establishments. I was the type of student whose absence meant the teachers would be happy and the students sad. ‘Let me entertain you!’ Causing mayhem in class got me through: I was witty, I was funny, I could impersonate teachers, I went to school every day in search of laughs. Getting laughs is like healthy heroin. I try to get laughs most days, I haven’t changed. Hold your breath: this is what Dad and I and Brian have in common, we’re funny.

  When I was a kid, Dad wasn’t much fun when he was home. Life of the party when he was out, but death of the party at home. That slowly changed in our teenage years until finally we were big enough and ugly enough to tell him to go fuck himself.

  Dapto Primary is a dim, grey, boring memory. It was still an age when you’d get caned for the smallest misdemeanour, so you soon learnt to sit down, shut up, be bored to death until the most magical time on earth, 3 p.m.

  As I look back on my time at Dapto Primary, it seems fairly uneventful. There were a few highlights.

  In First Class there was this plump red-headed girl. One day she forgot to wear her knickers and we got onto it. George and I pulled her dress up around her ears. She started screaming and running around the playground. We followed her wherever she went. We got caned for that.

  A lot of migrant kids, part of the postwar immigration scheme, came to the school. When I was in Second Class a German girl came to the school who couldn’t speak English. We taught her that ‘get fucked’ meant ‘good morn
ing’. We got caned for that.

  Brian and I got into quite a few fights. Dad drilled into us to never start a fight but to make sure you finished it. I never did, but I used to tease and verbally upset other boys until they hit me, then I’d belt them. We had a reputation, and after a while not many kids would fight us. I started Fifth Class in 1962, when my brother Barry started kindergarten. He was six years younger. Typical Jarratt: Barry got into a fight. I knew nothing about it, he was down in the junior school. My teacher was Mr Eades, the headmaster. He called me to his office and said I was going to get six cuts of the cane for inciting my little brother to fight. I had nothing to do with it, but I got six. This wasn’t the first time Mr Eades had treated me badly. I told Dad about it and he shrugged and said I must have deserved it. Two years later I found out that Dad had got into an argument with Mr Eades at a Lions Club meeting. Dad had belted him from the hall into the foyer to the front steps. He’d right-hooked him and Mr Eades had cascaded down half a dozen concrete steps and been laid out at the bottom.

  Sport was a big thing. I played cricket once, got hit in the mouth with a cork ball at silly mid-off and immediately joined the swimming team. I loved Rugby League, still do. Mum was raised in Chippendale, so because of that we’re South Sydney Rabbitohs. Dad was born and raised in Queensland, so it’s Queensland Maroons at Origin level. I played League but I was lousy at it. Too skinny for a forward, too slow for a back. I’m good at balance sports: biking and motorbiking, driving, horseriding, boxing, waterskiing, climbing and – my favourite – snow skiing.

  Dad was a great Rugby League player, born to be a second rower, and he was tough. Loved taking the opponents out. Stiff arm out of the scrum, not a problem. He ran flat out into the steel goalpost once and it didn’t knock him out, he was never knocked out: ‘My mother breastfed me until I was five, the doc reckons the bone in my forehead is much thicker than normal.’ I’ll drink to that.