The Bastard from the Bush: An Australian Life

by Jarratt, John

  If we had visitors from the south, like Larry, we’d invite them to the island and tell them about the accommodation. They thought that sounded great. The Shifting Sands was the beach and Granite Lodge was a culvert up near the hills behind Nial’s place. Granite Lodge was built after too many wet nights on the beach. Max was the brains behind the construction. (Funny thing is, he went on to become a draftsman.) We found the culvert, which had concrete walls about 1500 mm high. It was kind of rectangular, with only three walls. The two side walls were about 2 metres long, coming in at a slight V to a narrow cross-wall with a large concrete water pipe in it. The drain worked fine, and there was plenty of sleeping room either side of it.

  Herb, Max and I went to Maggy to construct Granite Lodge.

  Max brought all these tools in his survival kit, including an axe. The idea was to weave a whole lot of branches together to form a framework for a roof, over which was stretched a canvas sheet. Max was chopping down a heap of nearby saplings. He was the real deal. He spat in both hands, rubbed them together, gripped the axe and sunk it with an almighty swing into the trunk of the sapling. The blow caused the sapling to shake vigorously. A heap of green ants were dislodged from their leafy nest and cascaded over Max’s thick blond hair and all over his shirt. A bite from one of these ants is enough to make Bear Grylls scream. Max was being bitten from arsehole to breakfast. We were about half a kilometre from Arcadia beach. Max started running, and we followed. Max was running, jumping and skipping like Wile E Coyote in a Road Runner cartoon, ripping his clothes off while he ran. Thank Christ he had the decency to at least keep his jocks on until he hit the water. Herb and I couldn’t keep up because we were laughing so much. Max just looked back at us from the water and said one simple word. ‘Cunts.’ The welts on his skin were something to behold.

  We took Max to Geoffrey John’s and applied calamine lotion to his ant-bite welts. Geoffrey John Ferguson also lived full-time on Maggy, within yelling distance from Nial. He gets the full title even today, I dunno why. He was our Fonz. He’s no oil painting, but he always got the hot chicks. Even now, his current partner, Karen, is well above his batting average. He was so smooth. One time we were at the Dalrymple Hotel. It had a big nightclub out the back (we called them dance halls). There was a rock band playing. When we went to a dance, we’d wait for the band to go back on stage after their break before we’d ask a girl to dance. You’d pick a girl and you’d ask her something really romantic: ‘You wanna dance?’ If she said no you’d quickly go to the next available girl and repeat the three words in the hope of a yes. Not Geoffrey John. He’d wait for the band to announce they were having a ten-minute break and then go to a girl. His parting words to us were, ‘I’ve just fallen in love.’ He’d go and sit down for ten minutes and actually have a conversation and buy her a drink, just like a movie star. On this particular night the band had taken a break. Geoffrey John walked up to a beautiful blonde.

  ‘Do you mind if I sit with you?’

  ‘Piss off!’

  Now this is 1969. A good wage was $200 a week. Geoffrey John took two steps back and said in a loud voice for all to hear, ‘What! Twenty dollars!’

  That’s why he was our Fonz.

  Granite Lodge could comfortably house four. On the odd occasion, that would double. Sometimes you’d be sound asleep and you’d have a mate join you via the roof. Drunks had difficulty finding their way into Granite Lodge. The combo of rugged terrain and pitch black wasn’t well suited to drunkenness.

  The main occupants were me, Herbie and Max. The daily routine involved rising from a drunken stupor, staggering down to Alma Bay, falling in the water and staying there until a human being slowly soaked back into your sickened evil soul. Have a shower in the dressing sheds and get a Buddhist chant going: ‘I’ll never drink again’, mumbled over and over. Stagger back to Granite Lodge, where Max would be cooking bacon and eggs over a fire. We couldn’t spend money on food, only beer, even though we’d never drink again. After brekky, we’d go back down for a swim. If there was a cyclone on the way or leaving, Herb and Nial would be beside themselves with joy. Surf at Alma Bay. Herb was out there sitting on his surfboard. Nial was out there sitting, seemingly without the aid of a surfboard as he was so heavy the board was submerged. Herb was a ‘mini me’ Nial. Short, built like a brick shithouse, a fantastic athlete. If you check out the Arcadia Life Saving honour board you’ll read: Junior life saver 1967, Herb Adams. Senior life saver 1969, Herb Adams. Veteran life saver 2014, Herb Adams. Herb and his fab wife, Nell, moved to Maggy Island full-time in 2011.

  Maggy Island madness

  You couldn’t buy a skateboard in those days, you had to make one. You simply removed the wheels from rollerskates, screwed them onto a shaped piece of marine ply and off you went.

  Nial had one of these suicide skateboards and he decided to come down the hill from Horseshoe Bay to Arcadia. (I just Googled it, and it’s about 750 metres, so three-quarters of a kilometre). The hill was steep and quite windy and cars were going up and down it. We suggested to Nial that as he was going to reach incredible speeds he might have trouble manoeuvring his dysfunctional skateboard and crash headlong into an oncoming vehicle and inflict enormous damage to that car and how was he going to pay for it? He usually came back with a profound statement along the lines of, ‘Don’t be bloody silly, get out of the way.’

  I honestly can’t remember how we followed him down. In a car, on bikes? I can’t remember. All I remember is him in front of us, going faster and faster and faster. He stayed on that thing with such grace and composure, almost like a dancer. Nial was a great athlete. For a big man he was very supple, quick and coordinated; it was pretty to watch. His great bulk made him go very fast. He hit the bottom of the hill at a tremendous rate and didn’t even look like falling off.

  Geoffrey John’s family had a small, nipple-pink Fiat on the island. Geoffrey John drove it to the local cinema (lazy bastard). Nial got the bright idea to put the Fiat on the awning of a nearby shop. So we all got around it and somehow put it on the awning. G J came out of the cinema and wondered what everyone was looking at. I think the phrase he used was, ‘How the fuck…? Nial!’

  The main ferry wharf in those days was at Arcadia. We’d often congregate there once the pub was closed. G J drove his Fiat out there one night. He had his gorgeous girlfriend sitting beside him. Nial had had a few, and he leant down and started to have a conversation with the girl, and to her surprise the car started to slowly go up on her side. Nial gripped the underside of the car and lifted it slowly. He gently put the car on its side. The girl slid down to the driver’s side and she was squashing G J. The language! G J couldn’t see the funny side of it. We righted the car, and G J got out and inspected the driver’s side of the car. The language started again. Poor bugger had a bit of explaining to do to his folks about the dents and scratches.

  Another drunken evening out at the ferry wharf, Nial thought it’d be funny to throw me into the sea. Low tides in north Queensland are low. I fell about 3 metres and landed on my guts. I was winded from the fall and I immediately sucked salt water into my lungs. The strangest thing happened: I started to drown. I panicked. The fear of dying was terrifying. I struggled like hell and then I surrendered. I just let go and (as I would find out about four years later) it was like tripping. The feeling was euphoric. I was suddenly ecstatic, I felt like I was 20 or 30 feet under. Suddenly a hand grabbed my shirt and a strong arm dragged me up. I erupted to the surface coughing and spitting. Nial had hold of me. He picked me up like a rag doll, carried me up the steps and put me on the jetty deck. He pumped my chest, turned my head to one side and the water spewed out. I’m pretty sure there was no mouth to mouth; if there was, Nial hasn’t said anything and I’d like it to stay that way. The ordeal felt like ten minutes, but apparently it was more like two.

  One great day was the old bomb clean-up day. Nial’s step-father, Toombie, gave us the job of taking all the rusted wrecks around the island to the Picnic Bay
tip. Most of the cars were already wrecks when they arrived on the island so, as you can imagine, there were plenty to dispose of. We got in the wrecks and Nial towed us to the tip in Toombie’s FJ ute. The tip was a large, flat area of landfill, circular in shape. The garbage was slowly filling what had once been a big hole. The flat area was about 100 metres in circumference. Nial towed the first wreck onto the flat area and drove around and around, almost causing the wreck to flip with about five blokes in it. Finally he stopped. He’d scared the shit out of us, and he was laughing to the point he almost laid an egg. Then we got an idea! With the next wreck, just have one bloke in it and see if you could flip it. With one guy, you had plenty of room to throw yourself on the floor before the car flipped. We did it once and surprise, surprise, the towy got hurt. Not badly, mind you, but the smarter ones among us decided against continuing with that procedure. Instead, we all got out of the wreck and Nial tried to flip the car without a driver. It worked a couple of times, but it almost tore the arse out of Toomie’s FJ. God, that was a good day.

  Saturday nights, women and fights

  The place to go in Townsville on a Saturday night was The Sound Lounge. You entered down a set of stairs, having downed half a dozen stubbies of amber Dutch courage. It was a large rectangular room, dimly lit. One end had tables and chairs, then there was a dance floor split in two by a walkway through the middle. The came another bunch of tables and chairs, beyond which were the toilets and an office. In this office sat the owner, a big woman of spartan appearance. Against the dance floor walls were thick black curtains. Couples used to get behind these curtains and make out. The big woman had a large metal torch, and at regular intervals she’d go up to the curtains and start striking the unsuspecting couples with the torch. The music was loud top forty. I loved the joint.

  The idea was to crack on to a girl, take her to The Golden Room coffee house afterwards, enjoy a few cups of Irish coffee and then head off to Cape Pallarenda in the car for some heavy petting. If you didn’t have a car, you didn’t have much of a chance. So my first six months in Townsville were fairly unproductive, until I got my licence.

  If you didn’t get a girl, the next best thing was a fight. I’d reached a ridiculous time in my life of actually liking fights. I usually won and my ego was fed shovelfuls at school on Monday mornings. I had quite a few fights in the Sound Lounge toilets, and left many a victim groaning in the urinal. The big woman would try to grab you, lock you in her office and get the police. She never got me, I was too fast and too cunning. I was banned plenty of times over those two years. It didn’t matter, there was always the Dalrymple or Maggy Island.

  I got into quite a few fights. Three were memorable.

  Greg Thorne and I were very drunk one Saturday night. Thorny was one hell of a footballer but he wasn’t that big, unlike his best mate Denis Dean, who unfortunately wasn’t with us. Thorny got into an argument and this bloke was going to thump him. I stupidly said that I was more this bloke’s size and we got stuck into it. I was so drunk he beat the crap out of me and dropped me onto my back several times. Backs and bitumen aren’t a good combo. My back was out for weeks.

  One night, Denis and I were heading to my car after a big night out. We got to my VW and I said goodnight to Den and off he went. I was about to get in the car and I saw the bloke who beat me up walking past with a couple of mates. I stormed over to him and asked him if he had enough guts to fight me sober. He didn’t so I got stuck in to him. We ended up on the street. I was giving this bloke a hiding, and suddenly his mate jumped in and king-hit me in the right eye. It split open and ruined my new white shirt. I grabbed this bastard by the arm and smashed him into my Vee Dub. Then there were four blokes giving it to me, punching me all over the place. I grabbed the guy I’d thrown against the car, put my head into his chest for protection and pushed him into the front mudguard. I put one arm under his arse and lifted him slightly, and with my right hand free I just punched him in the balls over and over with a short right. The other three were too busy belting me to notice their mate was passing out and slumping onto me. Luckily Denis heard the commotion and came back. With the aid of another bloke he broke it up, and the guy I was punching collapsed on the ground.

  As you’ve probably noticed, I got drunk every weekend. It was the beginning of a problem. I was always an outrageous drunk, hanging off chandeliers, dancing on tables, punching people.

  One night in 1969 we were bored. We were in the car park at the back of the Sound Lounge and this bloke in a Morris Minor had three girls in his car. We thought that was rather greedy and asked him to share. He wasn’t amused and that just egged us on. He got very stroppy with us, so we started teasing him. I was never a lout or a thug; a larrikin, yes.

  This bloke had old-fashioned roof racks. They were stuck to the roof with massive rubber suckers. We prised the suckers off and placed two suckers on the roof and two suckers down on the bonnet. We thought that was hilarious and went on our way, leaving Cassanova in the car with steam coming out of his ears.

  One year later, I was in the Sound Lounge having a pleasant evening. This guy comes up to me.

  ‘You remember me?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘You and your mates had a go at me and messed with my roof racks.’

  ‘Aw yeah, I remember you.’

  ‘I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life. I’ve been doing karate ever since and I’m now a karate expert. I would like to fight you.’

  I was puzzled. ‘You’ve been doing karate just to get me?’

  ‘Yes…’

  I kind of shrugged with incredulity. ‘Yeah…sure, let’s go.’

  In my day, you brought a mate with you, and if you were giving your opponent a hiding or you were getting one, your mate would drag you away. I took Nial.

  We walked out the back and the guy took his karate suit out of his car and showed me. He said I could pull out now and he would honour my gesture and that would be the end of it. I’d heard about these karate experts: they broke peoples necks in James Bond movies. I whispered to Nial, ‘Don’t let this bastard kill me.’ Now, I’m a street fighter, this guy’s not. He struck a karate pose and left his head wide open. I didn’t muck around, I always got in hard and fast. I just started punching this dude in the face.

  It caught him by surprise and it took him a moment to compose himself. I gotta admit, he knew how to throw. He got hold of me somehow and threw me with ease. I flew across a dirt road. It was the era of long hair and this guy had plenty of it. As he threw me I grabbed his hair. He came with me, I tore a fistful of hair out of his skull and his face skidded along the dirt. He just lay there crestfallen. He finally rolled over and stared up at the sky. I suggested he take up boxing and left him staring at the stars.

  Towards the end of 1969 my parents moved to Townsville. Dad scored a great job overseeing the construction of concrete bridges over the Burdekin on the beef roads inland from Townsville. Dad bought a house out at Cape Pallarenda – paradise. Brian started at Town High in 1970. He was sixteen, weighed the same as me but was five inches shorter, built like Dad. As soon as people found out he was my brother, they wanted to fight him. (I have that effect on people.) Little did they know, he was runner-up in the Golden Gloves.

  We had a fair few Torres Strait Islander kids at our school. Many of them were up to two years older than the other kids in their class. This happened because a lot of them started school late and they were behind. The thing about Torres Strait Islanders is that they’re big. For those of you who follow Rugby League, here are a few Islander players: Mal Meninga, Sam Thaiday, Wendell Sailor, Sam Backo, Gorden Tallis. Arguably the biggest, toughest, hardest men to play the game. Usually a sixteen-year-old Islander boy is a big strong lad. We had an Islander in Year 10 who was eighteen and a semi-professional heavyweight. His nickname was Gingles. Everyone used to wonder about who would win in a fight, Nial or Gingles?

  My brother got in a fight with another Islander boy. He was big enough, but n
ot as big as Gingles. Brian asked me to come down to the basketball courts with him as back-up. We noticed Gingles joining the crowd, so I asked Nial to come along to keep things tidy. The fight started and Brian’s opponent was way out of his league – Brian was all over him. Next thing, Gingles stepped in and punched Brian in the ear, sending him sprawling. Almost at once I stepped in and punched Gingles in the face as hard as I could. I put him on his arse and prayed he’d stay down. He just looked up at me with the look of a killer.

  He got up, shaped up and said, ‘Come on.’ I gingerly brought my hands up and prepared to possibly die. Then the voice of salvation came from behind me.

  ‘I’m more your size.’ Nial stepped in ready to go. Gingles’s dark face went a little white. Nial had never been in a fight, he didn’t have to – who’d be stupid enough to fight him? Gingles, however, had had his fair share.

  Gingles didn’t muck around, he jabbed and got through. Nial was defending, he wasn’t throwing any.

  I’m screaming, ‘Hit him, Nial, hit him.’

  Gingles connected with a right and hit Nial hard. It pissed Nial off and away he went. As I’ve said, Nial was fast and supple, he loved to spar so he knew how to fight. I’d spar with him and he’d slap the shit out of me. He belted poor Gingles up the basketball court, across the next one and down the other side. Gingles was very brave but outclassed. We stepped in and stopped it. By then the teachers had arrived. Five of us went to the office. Brian and his opponent were caned, and Gingles went to the doctor to get his lip stitched. He had a split in it you could fit a fifty-cent piece into.