Wool Away, Boy!

by Alan Blunt

  ‘And I’ve kept you together for over three months, Frank,’ the contractor shouted, his short wick flaring at the whippersnapper’s implication. ‘Don’t tell me my word’s not good!’

  The Old Boss was proud of his reputation for straight talking compared with contractors who stretched the truth to keep men handily on call while work was slack. Such men earned appellatives such as ‘Promise me Perc’, ‘The Liar Bird’, ‘Bullshit Bill’ and the ‘Artful Dodger’.

  The ferocity of the contractor’s bellow knocked the brothers back a step and silenced them, while on the verandah I was awed by the power of his personality. Pushing a thick foolscap ledger and two out-size cheques over the desk, Alex said gruffly, ‘Sign this.’ He watched them sign and carefully fold and pocket their cheques and statements. Then he said with a hint of conciliation, ‘I’ll tell you what I can offer. I can make a switch: send you out together rouseabouting for two weeks; then Frank, you’ll be back shearing. I’ve got four teams starting the first week in July and more work than you can poke a stick at.’

  The young men glanced at each other, and then Frank said, ‘No thanks. While we’re up this way we’ll have a look at the country up north. We’ve got to be home in early October to do Dad’s shearing – he’s got twelve hundred ewes and lambs.’

  Alex looked up. ‘Twelve hundred, huh?! Do you call them by their first names?’

  Ignoring the sarcasm, Frank went on firmly, ‘There’s plenty of work around home then – around Grenfell and Forbes. We’ll leave for Hughenden after lunch.’

  I anticipated another explosion, but the contractor began sorting papers as he harrumphed. ‘Hughenden, huh! See Clever Claude or Bullshit Bill – they’ll fix you up.’

  The brothers hesitated – they were hard-working, respectful lads, products of a conservative home and community, whose experience in the industry was drawn from working for neighbouring sheep cockies. They turned to each other for support before George said, ‘Ah, Mr Meekin, we appreciate what you’ve done for us. Could you write us out a reference please? Just say we’re reliable, good workers – and sober. It might help us get a pen.’

  I could have sworn I saw the flicker of a predatory smile cross the contractor’s craggy visage – like the smirk of a resting cat spying a fat unwary quail.

  ‘A reference!’ he exclaimed, feigning astonishment. ‘You’ve already got one. Look in your pocket!’ The shearer drew the stapled cheque and statement from his pocket while Alex watched him keenly. Fascinated, I followed the proceedings – two or three times I’d heard the tale of Alex and the reference related over a campfire. I’d assumed it was a classic bit of outback folklore inspired by a campfire yarn-spinner. Now I saw it right in front of me, as George, in slow motion it seemed, unfolded his cheque and statement. He examined it and said, ‘I don’t see any reference, Mr Meekin.’

  ‘Take a closer look, boy,’ Alex said gruffly. ‘You see the camel train in the corner? Slow and rough – like your shearing. You’ve got your reference, lad. It’s in your hand.’

  Any argument left in the lads evaporated when Alex Meekin rose to his full height. At six feet two inches and thirteen stone of fatless bone and sinew, he had features as rugged and weathered as a Mount Rushmore president’s stony face. The chastened brothers brushed past me and retreated down the stairs in silence. Reaching their Holden FJ ute, they cast a resentful glance at Alex who had joined me on the verandah. The contractor acknowledged it with a casual salute and a self-satisfied chuckle.

  I followed Alex into his office. He resumed his seat of authority and declared, ‘You’re Jack Blunt’s son. Jack shore with me before the war. Good shearer; good man. Where is he now?’

  ‘Dad’s camp cook for a Regional Electricity Board gang in the south-east. They work close to Brisbane. He’s home with Mum and the family on weekends. He reckons this time he’s given the bog-eye away for good.’

  Alex harrumphed acknowledgement. ‘The classer tells me you’re doing a good job. I like that – a young fella who’s not afraid of hard work. You go to Pinkilla in June. Eight shearers. Can you handle it?’

  ‘Yeah, ’course I can. I pressed for eight at Nerrigundah. On the Koertz,’ I added referring to a common make of wool press which most good pressers rated inferior to the Ferrier. ‘I pressed thirty-eight bales for two days, and then pressed forty-seven on cut-out day. But I had to work a bit of overtime.’

  ‘There’s more wool at Pinkilla. If it’s too much I’ll give you an offsider. You don’t want to bust yourself. A week’s break after Pinkilla, then I can look after you till December. Do you want it?’

  Alex patiently jotted figures while I compared my options. Over the previous two years I had established a pressing run with the United Grazier’s Shearing Co-op in Hughenden, signing on from Torrens Creek to the Georgina. Bill Blackwood, known around the traps as Bullshit Bill, had taken over as manager from Provo Bob and had guaranteed me ‘big mobs of work’ from early July till the end of November. Still, I liked the Charleville situation. I’d made a few friends, and a couple of married shearers had taken me home to ‘meet the wife and kids and have a feed’, divining that I would enjoy the warmth of family. Plus there was fine camping and fishing for Murray cod and yellowbelly along the shady reaches of the Warrego River. The mighty cod weren’t found further north in the Flinders River or the Lake Eyre basin catchment; in fact, bountiful fish holes were few and far between across the north-west.

  The fishing was a big lure, but in truth it was the much larger lure of attractive, lively young women that helped me reach a decision. ‘That sounds good, Alex,’ I said. ‘Thanks. I’m with you.’

  ‘You won’t be sorry, lad. Stick with me. I’ll look after you.’ He waved a gnarly hand to indicate the Holden I had parked in the street and added, ‘That’s old Bill’s car you’ve got there. How is old Bill?’ Old Bill was about fifteen years Alex’s junior, but Alex seemed unaware.

  ‘Pretty crook. His back’s buggered. They carried him into the hospital on a stretcher. He said to leave his car here.’

  The contractor said, ‘You’ll need a lift back to the shed. I’ll pick you up at one o’clock tomorrow.’ It was more of an order than an offer.

  ‘Have we got a cook?’ I asked.

  Alex fixed me with a look that signalled I had asked a silly question, before answering brusquely, ‘Good cook. Bloody good cook! You’ve heard of him: The Bald Eagle. The Eagle is going to the races today. The classer will take him out in the morning.’

  The following morning I was eating breakfast at the Charleville Hotel when a skinny blond bloke of about twenty-five breezed in, grinning. His neatly styled clothes matched his confidence: desert boots and long yellow socks, striped casual shorts and a collared T-shirt. ‘Mind if I join you?’ he opened, removing his panama hat. ‘I’m Jimmy G – from Sydney.’

  ‘They call me Presser, or AJ, or Alan – take yer pick,’ I said. Seeing a chance I couldn’t let slip, I bunged on a Dad and Dave drawl to upstage Jimmy’s clipped Sydney accent. ‘Fair dinkum! Sydney, hey! The old steak and kidney. Been there a few times meself, yer know. Bloody good town, too! I stayed at the pub. By the way, who is running the pub in Sydney now?’

  It was a hoary gambit; every bushie had heard it, but Jimmy G fell for it and, determined not to embarrass his new friend, said, ‘Well, ah, there’s more than one pub in Sydney these days, AJ. It must be quite a while since you were there.’

  ‘Too right, mate,’ I drawled. ‘Now, let me see … I was going to Melbourne to see the Cup, and I dropped into Sydney on the way. But I reckon it was the year that Phar Lap won the Cup, 1930 – or was it Carbine in 1890?’

  Realising he’d been hooked, Jimmy laughed wholeheartedly with me.

  We yarned and joked over breakfast, and discovered we were going to the same shed, before Jimmy became serious. ‘Would you do me a favour, AJ? Could I get my mail addressed to you?’

  ‘Well, sure,’ I replied, ‘but I just get mine sent care of Ale
x Meekin, Shearing Contractor. The mail truck delivers it or someone picks it up.’

  ‘No. I mean, if it’s put inside a large envelope with your name on it?’

  I tried not to show my surprise. ‘Yeah, that’ll be right – but what’s the caper? Did you knock off a bank or get caught with the boss’s missus, or something?’

  ‘No, nothing like that,’ Jimmy protested. ‘I’m not wanted by the cops. There was a big warehouse robbery. I was caretaker, but I had nothing to do with it.’

  The industry hid a few blokes on the run, so I was tempted to say A likely story, old mate! But I bit my tongue.

  Sharp at one o’clock Alex picked Jimmy, Zulu and me up and we loaded the well-type Fargo ute with stores. With Zulu rushing madly around on the covering tarp barking triumphant abuse at the town’s stray mongrels, we headed for Quilpie.

  Around the shearing sheds I had heard firsthand evidence that Alex was the worst driver in the back country. It was said that he put his truck into second gear and kept it there till journey’s end, and he never missed a bump if he could help it. ‘The only time I’ve seen him change gear,’ the red-combed ‘Rooster’ Kelly declared, ‘is when he misses a bump and has to back up to have another crack at it. The fact is he’s punished so many axle-busters over the years that now when they hear Alex comin’ they go bush – but the Old Boss chases them into the mulga and runs them down.’

  I had assumed that most of the yarns about Alex’s awful driving had sprung from the exaggerations of pull-up-a-stump comedians, but after a few miles of bouncing about the cabin, sitting between Alex and Jimmy, I knew that I would swear the tales were gospel – if I survived to bear witness. ‘Fair dinkum, fellas,’ I silently rehearsed to keep my mind off the Grim Reaper’s proximity, ‘old Alex is the best driver I’ve come across. He’s the only bloke I know who can steer a truck through a ten-foot grid sideways at forty miles an hour. But my uncle Kev gives the nod to Jack Williams – he’s the police sergeant at Jundah now. They cut sleepers for the railway around Blackbutt in the thirties. With the dray loaded with sleepers, Jack would gallop Josie, his Clydesdale mare, down the mountain slope shaving bark off the trees on both sides with the wheel hubs.’

  I was jerked back to the here and now by my head banging against the roof, and Jimmy landing on my lap simultaneously. Hunched over the wheel, Alex held forty-five miles an hour in second gear and drove with a grip of steel as the truck slew wildly out of bull-dust holes, through grids, danced across corrugations and charged through dry creek beds where the concrete causeway had long since broken into chunks. Luckily, traffic was rare because vision through the red dust haze was at best 300 yards, and dropped instantly to a frightening zero as we plunged into a pall left by a passing vehicle. Jimmy and I braced ourselves, placing feet on the firewall and palms on the dash. Even so we cannoned into each other, as a cloud of fine dust coated every crevice of our heads and bodies. Even Zulu, the erstwhile King of Utes who was usually so fearless of falling, took refuge deep in the load.

  Miraculously, we arrived at our destination right side up. Early the next morning the weather was chilly, but following my regular practice I warmed up with a mile run before heading for the showers. In the washhouse I witnessed another of the legend’s idiosyncrasies: with his face lathered with a coarse laundry soap we called ‘Kerosene Bouquet’, Alex was using the rear side of a tin dish for a mirror while he shaved with a venerable bone-handled cut-throat razor.

  ‘That sounds like a billy-goat pissing on tin, Alex,’ Les Goodman said, laughing as he swilled his face with warm water from a copper that had been stoked overnight.

  Alex grunted while he scraped. ‘The presser’s mad,’ he muttered as I turned on the tap for a cold shower. ‘Who does he think he is? Herb Elliott?’

  ‘Too right he’s mad! You’re both bloody mad,’ Les replied.

  7

  JIMMY G AND THE BALD EAGLE

  As usual it was lights out and radios off at ten o’clock. But after an exhausting day’s hard work followed by a longneck or two, many would be asleep by eight o’clock. Those who stayed up relaxed with the girly delights of Man Magazine and Carter Brown thrillers, or reading anything from racing form guides to Australasian Post, the Reader’s Digest, and popular novels and comics.

  I had scored a room on my own because I read till late, escaping the confines of the shearers’ huts to be in the company of AJ Cronin, John Cleary, Steinbeck and Tolstoy. Yet I invited Jimmy to share the room, guessing the young Sydneysider would be good company with his laughing, sociable outlook and experience of city life. He didn’t take long to prove himself a trump, telling entertaining stories that didn’t reveal much about himself while disclosing a resume of night work as a taxi driver, night-club waiter, barman and night watchman. He dug into my novels, but passed a lot of time lying on his back lost in thought. Waking in the small hours, I often saw the tip of his cigarette glowing; and sometimes saw him put on a coat, pick up a torch and go walking.

  Jimmy began his apprenticeship on the board learning to pick up fleeces and throw them on the wool roller’s table. He was dubbed Wait-a-While when Les Goodman commanded, ‘Wool away! Liven up, lad! Get this bloody fleece out of my way.’

  ‘Wait a while yourself, will you! Can’t you see I’m busy?’ yelled Jimmy, who was struggling to sort out another fleece and didn’t know that picker-ups were expected to step lively to a shearer’s beck and call. But he had willingness and aptitude and quickly learnt the knack of picking up. He was soon confidently punching above his weight in the rough-and-ready chiacking of the shearing board. In fact, he was so ever-ready with a lively answer that ‘Wide Awake’ quickly replaced ‘Wait-a-While’ as his call sign. Inevitably, this was often shortened to ‘Wider’.

  The Charleville Show was only a couple of weeks away, and Jimmy Sharman’s famous boxing tent would be on hand, challenging the locals to ‘step up and take a glove’. I went into training, running, working out on the floor-to-ceiling bag I’d hung on the hut verandah, and offering anyone a workout with the gloves. Often shearing teams could boast a man or two who could use himself, but here I drew a blank. In jest I looked to Jimmy’s skinny frame. Wide Awake said he was a lover not a fighter; however, when I finished my skipping routine, he took up the rope and gave a crackerjack exhibition of pepper, left and right cross-overs, doubles and even triples, the like of which you wouldn’t see outside a city fighter’s gym – or a schoolgirls’ playground.

  The team watched with renewed interest, but Wide Awake was blown in under two minutes. He folded onto a chair and said, ‘I need a gasper to get the lungs back in order.’ He lit up while I again studied some faint scarring above and below his left eye and a thickening of the left lobe, which might have been a young cauliflower ear, usually a trademark of boxers.

  ‘Where did you learn to skip?’ I asked.

  ‘National service,’ Jimmy shot back without blinking. ‘They put me in the kitchen because I was too skinny to lug a bloody great rifle and tramp around in army boots. But they made me do a couple of hours a day in the gym to build me up. They soon found out I couldn’t lift anything heavier than a packet of smokes, and couldn’t lick my little sister in combat – so they put me on skipping and cleaning up the place.’

  On Saturday morning I handed Jimmy my spare rifle, an ex-army .303. ‘The old digger’s mate,’ he said, fondling the rifle familiarly. We went pig shooting along a bore drain. Stalking through lignum bushes, Wide Awake suddenly took aim and dropped a galloping boar pig that broke cover 150 yards away before I could fire my scoped .243 Mauser.

  ‘You’re faster than Wild Bill Hickok, Wide Awake!’

  ‘Blame it on the Nashos, mate. When I couldn’t keep up marching they put me on target practice. I wound up instructor – musta cost the army thousands of quid in ammo.’

  Jimmy quickly became the life of the camp; a live-wire popular with all hands. All hands, that is, except The Bald Eagle …

  In the culinary department
The Bald Eagle took over where The Honeyeater left off. They were both gun babblers, conscientious and proud of their cooking and cleanliness. Yarning over the washtubs one Sunday morning, Rooster opined, ‘The Eagle is one of the best. I wouldn’t say he’s superior, but so far he’s manufactured a wider menu than The Honeyeater. The only babbler I’ve seen with a bigger range was old Tivoli Jones. He acquired his handle because he had more variety than the Tivoli Theatre. I reckon I saw old Tivoli bung on thirty different mutton recipes in a week: fried chops, grilled chops, braises, fricassees, casseroles, veal and venison cutlets – the last two was chops prepared in his special marinades. And he had stylish names he used to print fancy and put on a blackboard he carried for the purpose. There was Blue Danube Duck, which was cold mutton fried in savoury dough. A plains turkey became Royal Roast Pheasant. Oyster Soup and Turtle Soup were bloody miracles because they tasted like oysters and turtles, but they was concocted from diced mutton with plenty of onions and herbs and a dash of rum or port wine – and God knows what.’

  ‘And you would be a silver-tailed connoisseur of turtle and oyster soup and fine wines?’ Les queried.

  Rooster grinned. ‘Too bloody right, mate! Nothing’s too good for the working class!’

  ‘What about his duffs and puddin’s, Rooster?’

  ‘Too many to recall, Les.’

  I had been earwigging and broke into a traditional shearer’s song ‘The Station Cook’ I had learnt off a record by American folk singer, Burl Ives.

  The song I’m going to sing you will not detain you long;

  It’s all about a station cook we had at old Pinyong.

  His pastry was so beautiful, his cooking was so fine

  It gave us all a stomach ache right through the shearing time.

  ‘That’ll do, Presser,’ Rooster said. ‘Never mind belly ache! You’re giving me bloody ear ache.’