Wool Away, Boy!

by Alan Blunt

  I concluded I was in the clear. I pulled a woollen sock over my cold bottle of Bulimba Gold Top Ale to keep it cool, took a long swallow and laughed a week of apprehension away.

  ‘Cripes!’ Terry said soberly, ‘since you’ve decided to go troppo, have you got a bottle to spare? Watching wedge-tails spiralling and circling is relaxing, but it builds up a thirst.’

  ‘Help yerself, mate. In the fridge.’

  Terry returned with a cold longneck and sent his bottle top flying with a flick of his Log Cabin tobacco tin before sitting down. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘let us in on the joke?’

  ‘No joke, mate. It’s just for a while there I dreamt I was in the Rogue’s Gallery – up there with the big guns like Darcy Dugan. Then I woke up – and I can tell you, it’s a bloody relief!’

  After a thoughtful pause, Terry said, ‘You’re a bit young to be dodging a wife-and-child maintenance order?’

  ‘Too bloody right I am!’ I said, baling up vigorously on the suggestion that I might be one of the irresponsible sires who found refuge in the shearing sheds. But I offered no explanation for my anxiety.

  Changing the subject, Terry said, ‘I shore in New Zealand a couple of years ago. The sheep are straight and cut like butter. Lovely country: cool, snow on the mountain slopes, and green all over. A nice change, but mate, I reckon for natural beauty you can’t beat a Kimberley sunset – although this one goes close. In fact it doesn’t matter if you’re shearing in the Kimberley or Back-o’-Bourke, sunsets are the richest time of day. They’re as old and as glorious as God, yet somehow there’s always sadness as well as beauty, like Keats’ “Ode To a Nightingale”.’

  ‘The only nightingale I’ve heard was on an old Zono-phone record my uncle Gerald has,’ I said. ‘It was pretty scratchy – maybe the bird didn’t get a fair go – but give me a butcher bird’s morning song of praise any day.’

  ‘Or the melody of magpies; and the majesty of a wedge-tail measuring the sky,’ Terry said.

  I was thinking that although the shearing fraternity could boast of mobs of humorists and yarn-spinners and blokes who were wordy about sport and politics, men as sensitive, articulate and widely read as Terry were rare, enriching companions. It was a week of close companionship I would remember. We sat silently, feeling the emerging spirit of night.

  A big sand goanna and a small striped grass snake, tongues darting, stalked the small brown frogs which had emerged for the night’s hunt for insects along the grassy green banks of the bore drain. Flights of colourful crimson wings, Major Mitchells and quarrions wheeled by; noisy happy jacks ceased their squawk and chatter as they settled in the branches of the big pepperina tree.

  Terry pointed to the departing eagles; black specks about to vanish under a darkening brow of cumulus cloud. ‘You’ll note they fly in pairs, unless they’re teaching the young-uns, when it’s a family affair.’ He looked down wistfully. ‘I’ll bet they’re headed to their home roost on the river. Lucky buggers!’ Then he stood up decisively, and sang beneath the starry canopy in a resounding, ringing tenor:

  ’Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,

  Be it ever so humble there’s no place like home.

  The volume and rich tone booming from his great chest astonished me and filled me with sweet melancholy, while it woke the happy jacks to squawking an orchestra of alarm. ‘Bloody terrific, mate,’ I applauded when he finished the song. ‘Where did you learn to sing like that?’

  But Terry was lost in reverie and didn’t hear the question. ‘I sailed on a freighter on the west coast for a few months,’ he said, sitting down. ‘It was no different from the Kimberley sheds: lonely men got pissed and boasted about their conquests while secretly they longed for a home and their own woman. I used to sit on deck and watch the waves and the sky and recall Homer’s Odyssey. Three thousand years later the epic still entrances the mind and shakes the heart: a great adventure story with a theme of longing for home and a faithful woman. Again and again the writings of famous men recorded their devotion and inspiration to lovers and wives.’ He chuckled and added, ‘And it sometimes didn’t much matter whose wife it was.’

  I said, ‘Let’s drink to women.’

  Terry lifted his longneck. ‘I bet you’re thinking of that blonde temptress in Charleville. The one you call Marilyn. You should read Rudyard Kipling’s The Female of the Species, or better still The Second Sex. You’d get a clue to what women are really like.’

  Grinning, I said, ‘Cripes! You sound like a cranky old man.’

  ‘I am – where females are concerned. And I’m only twenty-six, mate – twenty-seven in May.’

  ‘Gees! You look forty! I hope you’re not going to tell me the female of the species turned you grey as a badger before you turned twenty-one.’

  ‘No, mate! Q fever sent me grey in a few months. It was diagnosed as malaria at first. It comes back now and then. In fact I’ve been feeling a bit low these last few days.’ He paused. ‘Listen, I married a blonde … So, you drink to your Marilyn, and I’ll toast the eagles – and my little daughter, Jolly. She’s named for Eric Jolliffe, the painter and cartoonist.’

  ‘To the eagles, the sunset and your daughter,’ I said.

  Over the decades I would treasure that evening, and although we worked together on and off over the next few years I never again heard the shy shearer release his soul in song, or speak of his personal feelings.

  We took a draw on our longnecks, and after a thoughtful silence Terry stood up and made for the kitchen, saying, ‘I’ll crack another bottle while you muster some tucker. What’s for tea?’

  ‘Grilled chops and boiled spuds, and rice custard and peaches.’

  ‘Gees! The same as the last three days. You’re no Tivoli Jones, Presser.’

  ‘And you’re a lazy blighter, Terry. It’s time you polished your skills in the culinary arts.’

  ‘I never did learn to cook, AJ.’

  Fortified by a solid feed and two bottles of beer, I sat outside while Terry cleaned up in the kitchen. Gravely, I addressed the prick-eared dog: ‘Trekking the Congo with HM Stanley or searching South America for lost cities is mighty lonely work, Zulu; and talking to a dog and playing euchre with a sad man doesn’t compare with “A jug of wine, a loaf of bread – and thou”. In the morning, Zulu, we’ll take a run to town to phone a blonde sweetie I call Marilyn. And if the wind blows fair we’ll set sail for Charleville.’

  12

  MARILYN

  ‘Drop me at the doctor’s, mate,’ Terry said, as he threw a battered leather carry-all onto the back seat. ‘After the doc tells me I drink too much I’m going to have a bet or two.’ He was grinning widely – unusual for him. Like a lot of toilers after a spell of hard yakka in the bush, he was cheerful at the prospect of the itinerant shearer’s day out: a few beers with mates, a few quid on the gee-gees and ‘a punt on the pennies’. He might even get lucky with a ‘likely starter’, an adventurous, itinerant barmaid, or nurse, or a grass widow.

  ‘If I don’t see you at the Telegraph Hotel around lunch time, Alan, I’ll know you’ve gone to Charleville chasing a bit of skirt. I’ll stay at the pub overnight. I’ve seen enough eagles and heard enough ghost stories for one week.’ Glancing at me, he raised his eyebrows and inquired, ‘Are you going to invest in the Bill Waterhouse retirement fund?’

  ‘Not any more, mate. I come from a family of mug punters. I quit the gambling caper a couple of years ago, after I dropped twenty quid on King Darius in the Cup. My uncle Gerald explained that there’s thirty-seven mishaps can turn a “sure thing” into an “also ran” between final acceptances and the winning post – and that’s if the jockey is fair dinkum.’

  ‘An honest hoop, AJ? You’ve got to be joking.’ He laughed.

  I phoned Marilyn at the butcher’s shop where she kept the books and worked the till. ‘The girls and Wallace reported Gary,’ she said. ‘No one else fronted – including you.’ She paused to let the insinuation sink in, and I stammered a lie abo
ut having to go to Brisbane.

  ‘Oh yeah! After you dumped poor little me at home and went tomcattin’ out to the river. I missed all the fun! Why didn’t you take me with you?’

  ‘Gees, darling,’ I said, ‘fair crack ’o the whip! Your mum would have disqualified me for life.’

  Having got her bite, Marilyn giggled. ‘Anyway, the story’s all over town,’ she said. ‘And Gary’s new moniker is “Billy the Kid”. They say he’s been sent on sick leave. And Annette reckons you’re a gutless wonder. You promised to front at the cop shop but you dingoed.’

  Although I knew she was stirring the possum my hackles were starting to rise. ‘I can explain – if you’ll just dry up for a mo.’

  ‘Oh yeah, and give you time to think up another porky.’

  I let that pass. I was thankful I hadn’t been mentioned; and the fact that a copper had been king-hit wasn’t on the mulga wire meant Wallace and Annette had sealed their lips.

  Marilyn continued, ‘Anyway, the sergeant listened to what they had to say, and then he said if they signed a false complaint he would haul them into court.’

  ‘Did they sign?’

  ‘’Course not! They’re not silly. You can’t talk, anyway – you’re as weak as water.’

  Picturing her playful grin as she worked the mechanical till and cradled the phone between the sweet curve of her shoulder and neck, I said, ‘How about I hit the track and pick you up at six for dinner and the movies?’

  ‘That’s not on the cards, AJ. I know your form – all you want to do is pluck my cherry, and I’m saving that for my husband.’

  ‘Ain’t life amazing,’ I said in mock falsetto. ‘Drongos collect the cherries while handsome young blokes like me wind up with the sour grapes.’

  ‘That’s all you deserve. Now, if you were romantic like Johnny Wallace …’

  ‘Strike me pink and roan! Wallace romantic? He’s about as romantic as Bob Menzies.’

  ‘Johnny is brave and romantic. He walked barefoot over burning coals for love of Annette. She’s rapt. She calls him her “Fire-Walker”. ’Course, Alan, you could prove your love for me by walking over hot coals – then you could be my sweetheart. Gotta go now … I might just be ready if you’re at my place at half past six.’ She lip-smacked kisses, chuckled amorously and hung up.

  The conversation left me smiling, and full of her devilish fun.

  Les and May were out when I tied Zulu behind their house, so I didn’t have to complicate life with more fibs about a trip to Brisbane. The night at the movies was sweetly frustrating. As usual, Marilyn insisted we park in front of her home; and true to form we had just begun a promising pasho when the verandah lights went on and a voice called – more in command than question: ‘Is that you?’

  Marilyn and I uncoupled our tongues. ‘That’s Mum in the doorway,’ she said. ‘I better go.’ She ruffled my hair as she climbed out, then leant in the window to kiss me. ‘Goodnight, my love,’ she whispered huskily. ‘Next time we’ll park out by the sale yards.’ She gave a honey-sweet, deep chuckle, and I watched her enticing legs run up the stairs.

  13

  A BALMAIN BOY AND A FIGHTING SCOT

  I camped beyond Wyandra, on the same spot I had the previous Sunday, then gave the dog a run and tied him close. It was always wise to secure a four-legged mate. Left loose even the most trusted hound could give way to instinct and take off mustering sheep; and you didn’t know where doggers had set dingo traps and laid baits. Although I unrolled my swag on the sundown side of the Beetle, sunrise brought an early invasion of black bush flies. I pulled the sheet over my head and gained another fitful half hour’s sleep.

  I lazed away the morning and after a feed at a cafe in Cunnamulla, I gave Zulu a pie and browsed around the newsagent’s before buying a Courier Mail, a North Queensland Register, a Sydney Bulletin, a Sporting Life and a Wide World magazine.

  Relaxed and at peace with the world, I took a solitary seat in the Telegraph Hotel, sipped a large orange juice and perused the gripping pages of Wide World.

  The barman chatted as he polished glasses and tidied the bar with a professional touch. ‘A good read,’ he commented, glancing at the white hunter and the leopard in a colourful life struggle on the front cover. ‘But don’t believe too much of it. A mate of mine writes a few of those yarns. He wanders about the public library and Taronga Park Zoo, then him and his missus camp within cooee of a Katoomba pub for a week and, would yer believe, he’s battled a leopard hand to hand, put the kybosh on a mad witch doctor and walked with zombies.’

  The information was a blow to my adventurous heart and my trust in the printed word. But after a few minutes listening I guessed the barman – who introduced himself as Jerry – might be as big a bull artist as his writer mate. He was a chef by trade, he claimed, but only took it on nowadays when he could get a decent contract. After doing construction work for the Snowy Mountains Authority for three years, he had returned to the big smoke to play A-grade rugby league and cricket while earning a crust cooking for pubs and clubs around Sydney, and ‘doing a stint’ as a radio announcer. ‘I’m a Balmain boy at heart,’ he declared. ‘I was born there, and so were the wife and three kids. Wife’s a teacher. We’re caravanning around Australia for a year – before the kids go to secondary school.’

  Jerry stood a good six feet, was a beefy fifteen stone and looked about mid-thirties. His left ear was slightly cauliflowered, his nose was double dented, and his right cheek wore a long thin scar; yet there was something patrician about his face, and his brown eyes twinkled. He was a talker but he wasn’t a skite, and I felt an immediate kinship.

  Three drinkers had breasted the rectangular bar on the opposite side of the bar-room while Jerry and I chatted. The newcomers were alert and spoke confidentially. Two were sharp-featured men in their thirties, a bit above average height, skinny and of olive complexion. They wore navy blue suit trousers and white silk shirts, and might pass for city-based commercial travellers. The third man stood out despite his lack of inches: an out-of-fashion brown bowler hat sat confidently atop a bodgie hairstyle, and he was clean-shaven but for long sideburns and a thick ginger moustache. From behind large dark glasses he seemed to have me under scrutiny. I glanced up but didn’t recognise him so went on reading.

  Other drinkers casually drifted in. One of them was a burly bush worker in worn overalls.

  ‘What’ll it be, Fred?’ Jerry asked politely.

  ‘Three pots,’ Fred said loudly. After skulling the pots of beer, he slapped a ten-pound note on the bar, upended the glass on top of it, and shouted, ‘Who was the best man in the bar before I came in?’ It was a classic bar-room challenge, rarely seen but universally recognised.

  Jerry called, ‘Settle down, Fred. Settle down.’ Fred banged the bar and again shouted the challenge.

  ‘You’re a noisy wee chap,’ the man in the bowler hat called in a sharp Scots burr. ‘Anything to shut your trap, but make it twenty and it’ll be worth my while to take my shirt off.’ He put two ten-pound notes on the bar; then dropped his watch and glasses and wallet into his hat and casually told the barman to ‘look after this, pal’.

  Jerry glared at him. ‘Take your brawl outside … pal. No action inside.’

  Cunnamulla and Winton had earned their reputations as the fighting towns of western Queensland. Most pubs boasted a backyard bull-ring, where the young bucks primed by booze would settle arguments.

  As Jerry shoved the hat under the bar a middle-aged drinker wearing a suit proffered the Scotsman a friendly smile and a handshake. He introduced himself and said, ‘I’d be obliged if you would let it pass. Old Fred here is a client of mine. He gets out of his tree now and then … it’s only grog talk. No one takes any notice. You and your mates have a drink on me. The old mate is hungover and half-shot. Put your money away. He’ll forget about it in a minute.’

  Ignoring the handshake, the Scotsman dismissed him with a glinty eye as he pushed past. ‘Keep your advice, Jacko, I won’t be he
eding it. He’s a big boy with a big mouth.’

  A fight draws spectators like a bush killing block draws flies and meat ants. Smelling blood, the regulars and a dozen drifters pushed through the bat-wing doors, gulped an eye-opener and nodded to Jerry as they left the bar to see the action.

  Although only five-and-a-half feet, stripped to his waist the Scot displayed a barrel torso, and flexed the tattooed muscular biceps of a middleweight. He wore grey slacks and shined Julius Marlow shoes. Fred was fighting in overalls; he looked a bit stunned, as though he was surprised he’d found a taker. He was probably on the wrong side of fifty, but was half a foot taller and a couple of stone heavier; and he looked the part as he shaped up in the old-time grass fighter’s stance – straight-backed, left fist and leg extended. His challenger, meanwhile, danced and shadow-boxed around the circle of watchers. Suddenly Scotty dropped his arms, laughed derisively and addressed the onlookers. ‘Take a gander at him! Who does he think he is? John L Sullivan?’

  His quip drew very few chuckles as he swung around to confront the advancing grass fighter.

  Fred led with a straight left and right. Displaying a pugilist’s deft footwork the Scotsman swayed under and stepped outside, doubled left rips over the heart, and dropped his man with a short right hook to the jaw. The businessman thrust between them as Fred staggered upright. ‘That’ll do,’ he shouted, pushing at the Scotsman – who shouldered him aside before finishing his man with a merciless crushing right. Turning his attention to the businessman, he snapped, ‘You’ll get yours, too, if you don’t shut your trap and get out of my road.’