Nial and I went into the office. Nial was school captain in 1969 and he repeated senior in 1970, so he had respect.
The headmaster said, ‘Well, Nial, I can’t treat you differently to the other boys. Put out your hand.’ He went to cane Nial. Nial caught the cane, took it out of the headmaster’s hand, snapped it in half, placed it on the desk and walked out. I gave the headmaster an ‘I’m with him’ look and walked out too.
In my two years in Townsville I didn’t have too many girlfriends – I preferred to play the field. I did okay for a young bloke, occasionally I got lucky, especially when I got my car licence. At the beginning of 1970, I went steady with Colleen for a couple of months and at the end of 1970, I went with Fred, real name Jane. They had things in common: they were fun-loving, easygoing and gorgeous. I didn’t take it too seriously, because I was so hurt when my girl from Aramac dumped me that I didn’t want to revisit the pain. As it turned out, Geoffrey John, of course, ended up going out with Colleen.
Having a car made the world of difference. The drive-in was a great place to take a girl; it’s amazing how gymnastic two eighteen-year-olds can be in the confines of a car. My best drive-in night, I didn’t get to see the movie at all. I drove in with my girl, unwound my window and hooked the speaker to it. I turned back and my girl had undone her top and revealed her very ample breasts. I replaced the speaker, wound the window up and drove down to Cape Pallarenda to have my way with her.
I went into a chemist in about March 1970 and discovered a girl who used to live in Aramac working there. She was my age with a beautiful figure and I’d been attracted to her in Aramac, but she hadn’t been interested in me. It was nearly lunchtime so I invited her to share a sandwich, which she accepted. I waited in my car for her. She jumped into the car and suggested we go for a drive. We went down to the weir, found a private place to park and suddenly she was all over me. I drove her back and suggested we go out. She said to just come up every so often and ‘take her to lunch’. I did that for a few months, it was all she wanted and I was very happy to accommodate her.
Licence to liberation
I went back to Aramac for the May 1969 school holidays. I took my friend Max with me. Brian was really snarly with me and I couldn’t understand why. He’d just come runner-up in the Golden Gloves and he was pretty damned proud and it entered his head that he could take me. The hundreds of times he’d come second best were feeding a resentment that was becoming a volcano.
Brian got a hammock for his birthday and he’d hung it up under the house. The Aramac house was a Queenslander on stilts. Under the house were Dad’s workshop/garage and storage space. Brian had his chrome 28-inch push bike upside down, repairing a tyre. I was on his hammock, which he didn’t like. He abused me for swaying on it a few times, and ended up yelling at me about it. So I just lay there and kept still.
A breeze came through and made the hammock sway ever so slightly. That was enough for Brian to lose it. He walked up, unhooked the metal ring from a picket and dropped the hammock. I landed on the concrete. I leapt up and it was on.
Max was witness to it, and just couldn’t believe the violence. Welcome to the Jarratt family, Max. Brian and I were savagely belting each other in the head. Brian was getting through much better than I was, so I grabbed him and jammed his arse into the triangular frame of his upturned bike. He was wedged in there, so I stood back and tried to punch his lights out. Next thing I knew, grizzly hands had hold of my head and Brian’s head. Dad banged our heads together and nearly knocked us out.
Thankfully, that is the last time Brian and I fought each other. Brian was so crestfallen that he didn’t beat me that when he told others about the fight, over the years, that he was the one who shoved me into the bike and belted me. About twelve years ago, he told that story in front of me. He’s told it for so long that he now believes it. I don’t mind and I’ve never corrected him, as I understand why. I know for sure that Brian could beat me easily and could have from about eighteen onwards. He’s built like Dad and can box like Uncle Arthur, so you’d have to be nuts to take him on. So, my darlin’ brother Brian, if you’re reading this and you don’t believe it, give Max a ring before you take me to task.
Back to Aramac for the August holidays. I’d just turned seventeen, so I drove my Prefect down to the cop shop. Sergeant Dudley Ruddle (great name) asked me what I wanted, I told him and he suggested we drive out to the tip. We threw a couple of garbage tins into my boot and off we went. We had a great yarn about everything and anything. We were in the main drag, just about back to the cop shop, when Dud asked me a question.
‘When don’t you make a U-turn, John?’
‘Buggered if I know, Dud.’
‘Well, if you’re ever in a big town, don’t do it at intersections or traffic lights.’
‘Righto, Dud.’
Back at the cop shop, Dud gave me my licence! This was before P plates, that’s how bloody old I am.
The Jarratts hit the big smoke
Dad got his job on the beef roads so we headed to Townsville after the holidays. Brian came with me in the Prefect and somehow ended back in Aramac for the last term to finish his Junior. I can’t remember how he got back. To get to Townsville, you travelled along a dirt track for 300 k’s through about thirty gates. It was a single track. Sometimes it was hard to see the road, especially on rocky terrain. The Prefect wasn’t built for it.
That drive made me realise what a big, dry, tough continent we live on. How we got through with a Prefect is thanks to Dad’s driving tuition. Sometimes the country turned rocky and you’d lose sight of the road (well, track). I can’t remember passing another car on that track, and we went through about three or four jerry cans of fuel before we got to bitumen. We hit the Flinders Highway, which runs from Townsville to Mount Isa, and we turned right towards Townsville. I’d only just got my licence, so I hadn’t driven on many major roads. I remember saying to Brian, ‘How the bloody hell do they have accidents on those things?’
We arrived in Townsville well ahead of Mum and Dad. They’d had a minor catastrophe. Dad was towing the famous wooden caravan along the same motherless track we’d travelled earlier. It must have had some dried grass tussock stuck between the tyre and the wheel well, and the tyre rubbing against it started a fire in the wheel well. By the time the old man had noticed it, the caravan was well and truly on fire. He got Mum and Barry to stand aside and he bravely unhooked the car from the caravan. Mum said she couldn’t see him for smoke. He ran to the car coughing like hell and drove the car away. They sat and watched the caravan burn to the ground with the old man coughing and Mum feeding him water. He’d suffered smoke inhalation. The caravan was chocka with family goods. Mum’s worst loss was that all the family photos were destroyed. Thankfully we’ve got a large family and Mum gathered a reasonable selection of photos from them over the years, a few of which are in this book.
Within a month of my parents’ arrival in Townsville, they’d bought a fantastic little house in Cape Pallarenda, a beautiful little suburb as far north as you can go along the coast from town. There was about 6 k’s between us and Rose Bay. They had a big shark-proof pool coming off the beach. A sweeping sandy beach about 10 k’s long, looking out at the majesty of Magnetic Island off the coast.
Class of 1970, the best
Life was idyllic. I had so much fun, especially in 1970. I had my licence, I had a great bunch of mates, male and female, we were one hell of a group and I had a great car.
My dad was overseeing the construction of a bridge over the Burdekin River. He got Brian and me a job on jackhammers making massive holes into sheer rock for the bridge footings. It was the hardest work we’d ever done. Brian was only fifteen but he was built like the old man. The boss was away when we turned up and the other workers kept warning us how shithouse life would be when Curly got back.
Curly arrived a couple of days later. We were in this bloody big hole jackhammering when suddenly the compressor was turned off. We looked
up at this bloke built like Dad with absolutely no hair on his head or body. He looked down with his mean eyes and said, ‘Name’s Curly, I’m the boss and you’re the bastards.’ What an arsehole. The job became a nightmare, but the pay was good. It all ended sadly when Brian and I had the job of pouring petrol onto these huge mounds of trees pushed up by bulldozers doing the clearing. A heavy rain storm had put the fires out overnight so the trees were very wet. We poured petrol on them then stood back and threw a flame at it. It was working well, until I managed to pour petrol on a hot coal not quite doused by the storm. The flame shot back to the petrol can in my hand and it blew up the can, singeing my face, and my right arm was on fire. Luckily I immediately started banging my arm into the dirt and put it out. If I hadn’t done that, I would have suffered major burns. The downside was that the burnt skin was full of dirt.
Dad drove me to Charters Towers, a two-hour drive. The longest two hours of my life. I can’t tell you how painful a burn is; when I see someone badly burnt on TV my heart goes out, because that pain must be unbearable.
When we got to the hospital, they had to clean every tiny bit of the very dirty burnt arm, as burns are highly susceptible to infection. More unbearable pain. It was 1970 and they’d just invented spray-on plastic skin, lucky me. The arm was covered in zinc and then bandaged. That was the end of the job, so Brian and I returned to Pallarenda.
Luckily I’d saved enough money to buy my first decent car. I bought a light-green 1958 FC Holden panel van, and I called it the Wasp. Mum very kindly made up a special mattress to go around the wheel wells. ‘I just wanna go camping in it, Mum…’ Yeah, sure you do.
I went out the next Saturday night to get laid. I had the perfect vehicle for sex, booze (no drugs…yet) and rock ’n’ roll. Pick up a coupla mates, grab a few beers, off to the Sound Lounge, pull a chick. Nial did, so I had to go for a long drunken walk along the Strand to give Nial enough time to christen my fucking fuck truck! Fuck!
I was drunk from about Christmas Eve to New Year’s Eve. By the time New Year’s Eve came around I was far too sick to get drunk again, so I offered to be the designated driver. I brought my dad’s klaxon horn with me to blast away at midnight. You wound a handle on the back of this thing and one hell of a noise came out of the horn shape at the front.
The handle was broken and I was trying to fix it. I was sitting in the front seat working on it when these cops came up to the car.
‘What are you doing, Jarratt?’ (They knew me by name, ’nough said.)
‘I’m fixing this klaxton horn to give it a burst at midnight.’
‘Intending to disturb the peace, Jarratt? Get in the car.’
‘Bullshit.’
Whack!
‘Watch your language. Get in the car.
They threw me and the horn into the back seat of a Cortina. A cop sat on either side of me, the sarge sat in the passenger seat and another cop drove. The car smelt like a brewery.
Sarge said, ‘You’ve been drinking, Jarratt. You’re under twenty-one.’
‘No I haven’t!’
The Sarge slugged me with a backhander to the side of my face, the cop beside me elbowed me in the ribs, and this continued every time the Sarge finished a sentence.
‘You’ve been fuckin’ drinking.’
‘There’s blokes been drinkin’ in this car but I’m not one of them.’
Whack…
‘We’re gonna take you home to your father.’
‘Twelve Bay Street, Pallarenda. Take me home, my old man hates coppers, he’ll take all of you out…’ whack…‘Hey, you’re going the wrong way, take me to the old man, I want you to.’
‘Shut ya fuckin mouth’…whack…
‘Too gutless to take me home, huh?’…whack. All this time the jerk beside me keeps elbowing me in the ribs, so I memorised the number on the badge on his sleeve.
They threw me out of the car about 10 k’s north of Townsville. The sarge got out and started kicking me. He landed a severe kick behind my knee and I could feel it bleeding through my pants.
He said, ‘Fuck off, go on, get goin’.’
I’d lost it by then. I looked the fucker in the eye. ‘I’m not fuckin’ movin’, mate, even if you kick me to death.’ I must have made an impact. He just silently got in the car and drove off. It took me over an hour to hobble back, but I got a lift partway.
The old man was livid. He took me to the cop shop and cleverly asked for the klaxon horn first. They gave it to him and he gave it to them. He told the chief copper the story and we ended up getting the sarge demoted.
Six months later, I was in the Golden Room coffee lounge. A couple of coppers came in to do the rounds. I recognised the number on the cop’s sleeve: it’s the prick who elbowed me in the ribs. I went out to their cop car in the back lane. There was a 1.8-metre paling fence bordering the property and another fronting the street. I hid on the corner of the two fencelines, hidden by the street fence. I saw their heads bobbing along as they approached the car, my man conveniently in the front. As soon as he broached the street I king-hit him. I can still feel his nose squishing on my fist to this day. I took off and the arsehole’s mate went down to see if he was all right, giving me a head start. They never caught me and they had no idea who’d thumped him.
I often think to myself that bloke could be sitting in front of the TV with his busted nose watching me: ‘Jesus, I like that John Jarratt, the bastard makes me laugh!’
In January I got into more trouble. I decided to go for a drive north in my new car. Up to Cairns and back in four days. Me, Max, Brian and twelve-year-old Barry. We had a great time, the car went well and Cairns was beautiful, much greener than Townsville, surrounded by rainforest mountains, still a sleepy Queensland town back then, weatherboard everything and everything on stilts. I love Queensland, pity it’s too far from everything.
We ended up heading to the Atherton Tablelands, rope-swinging at the crater lake, Lake Eacham. I wasn’t supposed to swim with my burnt arm, but I did. I hit the water and a sheet of skin came off. To this day, if you look closely, the skin on my arm is a bit speckled and you can see scarring on the back of my right hand.
We were broke by the third day and hungry, too. I had to keep the last few bucks for petrol. We drove past about ten clumps of jungle bamboo. As we passed the last clump, I noticed it was full of pheasants. I hit the brakes. I had an idea – we had a slug gun.
We shot at a pheasant in the first clump but didn’t kill it, just hurt it. The whole flock scrambled and half flew into the second clump. This continued until we ended up in the tenth clump about 400 metres from the car.
Suddenly from a house across the road sprang a fucking ranger, shaking his fist and yelling. We took off for the car. He chased us screaming, ‘Come back here!’ What is it with these officious red-necked bastards in the world yelling ‘Come back here!’? Do they really expect you to stop and come back? Dickheads.
The back of my panel van was open. I grabbed Barry by the back of the neck and threw him in from about 4 metres away. We all clambered in and took off. The ranger had raced back and jumped into his four-wheel drive. I pulled onto the road as he pulled out of his driveway. I had half a k on him but he was gaining. I could only get 120 kilometres per hour out of my heavily laden car. Maxy’s screaming out, ‘He’s gonna catch us, he’s gonna catch us, we’re fucked!’
Luckily we hit the town of Herberton. (I can drive, I’m good at it – I did all the driving stunts in Wolf Creek, bar one.) You come to the bridge across the river at Herberton from a sweeping corner, suggested speed 70 k. I hit it at 120. Bend out at the other end, also at 120 k. Hit the T-section and turned right on the highway to Cairns in a four-wheel drift. Straight back up to 120 k. Looked in the rear-vision, no ranger four-wheel drive, I’d lost him. I headed out of town, turned left off the highway and drove up a street. We sat there for a minute and the ranger roared past towards Cairns. We went back down the hill and headed west to Ravenshoe. We filled up with petr
ol and Max was freaking.
‘You can go to jail for shooting natives, ya know. I’m throwing my red board shorts away, they’ll recognise them.’
He threw them in the bin. Whatever rocks ya boat, Max. We all love Maxy.
I still wasn’t taking school or myself seriously. I got along with most teachers who understood I was there for the good times and the laughs, and that getting anything else out of me was a waste of time. I was honestly there because I’d met the best bunch of people, so great that they still feature in my life every day. The other reason was because I wanted to be part of winning the Rugby League inter-high-school comp. Speaking of Rubin, he fucked that up and he’s spent a lifetime being reminded, especially from my old man.
We were undefeated. The grand final was between Town High and Pimlico. It was a tough game, we were neck and neck and in danger of a draw. With five minutes to go, we threw the ball out along the line, there was an overlap, Nial flipped a beautiful pass to Rubin on the wing, the line was wide open, he fumbled the ball forward, knock on.
Dad was there. ‘Jesus H Christ, Rubin, do you need a bloody bucket?’
The grand final was a draw. Rubin Doube became Buckets Doube until the day Dad died. ‘At least I won’t be called Buckets any more,’ said Rub. Bullshit, Buckets, we’re putting it on your gravestone. Rubs, one of the greatest, nicest, most generous bastards I’ve ever met.
There were a couple of teachers who hated my guts, most prominent being my form teacher and my biology teacher.
I only ever did one thing for Miss Biol and I made a mess of that. We used to dissect live animals in those days, usually mice, but we used cane toads. As I’d been in trouble before for chasing girls around and attacking them with cane toads, she got me to collect about twenty-odd toads to dissect.
The Bastard from the Bush: An Australian Life Page 11
