Wool Away, Boy!

by Alan Blunt

  Earlier visitors had ‘bower-birded’ the lighter brass and copper fittings. Now the brothers smashed old batteries and extracted the lead and zinc content for sale as scrap metal, and we loaded their booty aboard their Austin Champ four-wheel drive.

  On Sunday morning Zulu let it be known he expected to go pig hunting, so we set off with Carl, Curly and the brothers. We followed a creek until Zulu, scouting ahead, put up a big black-and-white spotted boar. While the battle-scarred tusker sprinted towards the cover of dense lignum scrub the dog closed and ‘lugged’ (seized the pig’s ear), and 250 pounds of wild boar and forty pounds of furious dog disappeared into the lignum, making a fearful hullabaloo of squeals, grunts and growls. The boar charged along the pig tunnels, swinging his huge tusked head from side to side and viciously thrashing the dog against the wiry branches and stalks of lignum bush to throw him. With the blood of battle in his nostrils, however, only disablement or death could dislodge Zulu. The shoulder-high lignum tore at my clothes and skin as I followed the sound of struggle, sometimes dropping to all fours and scrambling along the pig tunnels. The brothers followed me, but the men from Walgett – wild boar hunters from way back – sprinted around the perimeter of the thicket and met the emerging life-and-death struggle head on as the combatants burst into the open.

  I crashed out of the lignum as Curly dashed in and seized a back leg. Carl threw the boar with a front-leg heave and pinned him with his knee, swiftly unsheathed his hunting knife and thrust the blade into the heart as hunters have done since stone-age men fixed flint to wooden shafts. The great beast let out a dreadful death squeal as bubbling blood gushed out of him and his life force was extinguished in seconds.

  Carl cuffed the dog off and wiped gore from his blade on the coarse hair of the boar. ‘That’ll do, boy. You did well.’

  Zulu flopped, panting beside his kill, and lapped bright-red blood. The rank smell of wild boar dominated the sweaty stench of men and the mingling aromas of the bush.

  Yabba stayed in the huts over the weekend, while the wool rollers joined Scrubber, Frankie and Les in town, pub-crawling, punting with the SP bookies, and playing poker. They returned to the huts only occasionally to sleep and eat.

  After stumbling through a heavy weekend, topped off with a return to the pub for the Sunday arvo session, Frankie, Les and Scrubber were as enthusiastic as Aussie batsmen facing bodyline when the bell rang on Monday morning. They shore along with the learners on about twenty-three a run, while Terry tallied forty and Carl and Yabba ‘undressed’ thirty-three.

  The going got tougher when they cut-out the last of the ewes, and began shearing the two-tooth (a sheep’s first adult teeth) wethers. ‘They’re tough little blighters,’ Yabba said at smoko, as he yabbered on about the varying cutting qualities of the different mobs of sheep he had shorn from Tassie to north-west Queensland. ‘I’ve shore plum jams [lambs] and stud rams at Wollogorang and Willandra in New South Wales; signed on at Mt Poole in the Corner Country and Mt Marlow on the Barcoo. Eulolo out of Julia Creek was good sheep, but they’re not all sweet up north. Dagworth, west of Winton, was a tough cut.’

  Having been ear-bashed by Yabba’s repetitive personal shearing history for weeks, I interrupted flippantly, ‘I reckon you must have been rep at Dagworth in 1895, Yabba, and given Banjo a hand to write “Waltzing Matilda”.’

  Yabba didn’t miss a beat. ‘Too correct, mate! And I was the picker-up when Jackie Howe tallied three hundred and twenty-one at Alice Downs in 1892. There were a hundred shearers on the board, and Big Jack was on the last stand, two hundred yards from the wool tables. I was pickin’ up two thousand fleeces and wearin’ out a pair o’ boots every day. The pitch-n-toss [boss] patrolled the board in a horse and sulky, and the babbler paddled around the stew in a canoe to stir it. Now, as I was sayin’ before you interrupted …’

  Although we had showered, we workers were still sweating when we gathered along the big mess table that night an hour and a half after work ceased. We ate a bowl of nutritious mutton and veggie soup, and were busy on the main course of grilled chops and salad, or chops and gravy with mashed spuds and boiled pumpkin and cabbage, when Frankie advised slyly, ‘Look out for the chops, boys – they’re off.’

  The advice put the brakes on appetites just warming to the task. Most ceased chewing and used fingers or forks to sniff the suspect meat, while Les shoved his plate aside. ‘Yeah, yer right, Frankie,’ he agreed. More plates were pushed aside before Scrubber woke up to what was going on. He spat a gob of half-masticated mutton on to his plate, shoved it to the middle of the table and stood up. ‘The meat is rotten and this shed is up to shit,’ he proclaimed. The vehemence of his outburst surprised everyone. He stood alone, dumbly looking around for support. Yabba hadn’t stopped chewing. He swallowed, before bellowing in his sergeant’s voice, ‘Sit down, Scrubber! Quick and lively!’ Scrubber dropped, and Yabba declared, ‘Nothing wrong with my chops. Sweet as a nut.’

  Curly gingerly recovered a mouthful of chewed mutton with his fingers and placed it on the edge of his plate. ‘I reckon it’s a bit off!’ Curly warned.

  Yabba reached for the remainder of the lad’s loin chop and gnawed the meat off the bone. ‘Yer dunno what yer talkin’ about, boy,’ he said gruffly. ‘This meat is as sweet as mother’s milk.’

  I had resumed eating. ‘You’re right, Yabba,’ I said, enunciating deliberately. ‘I don’t know about anyone else’s mutton, but mine’s okay. Bloody good juicy loin chops, if you ask me – just needs a bit of black horse and salt.’ I reached for the mandatory Holbrooks sauce bottle and the Cerebos salt shaker.

  Happy Jack heard the commotion. He stood listening for a few seconds, and then exited without a word as Frankie declared officiously, ‘This is not good enough, Rep. I won’t wear stinking meat. We’ll have to have a meeting, quick smart.’

  The overseer and the expert were dining in the staff room, separated from the ‘men’. They weren’t AWU members, so were excluded from the meeting, while cooks usually didn’t attend meetings that concerned them personally.

  The team assembled on the hut verandah, sitting on stretchers which had been moved out of the sweltering rooms. Yabba sat at a small table and opened the meeting in his official voice. ‘As a member of the Union the babbler is entitled to attend this meeting. I’ve just had a word with him, and he says he has work to do. I hereby extend Jack’s apology.’

  Frankie said, ‘Well, let’s get down to it. I want to go to bed. The fact is the chops were off. It means the cook is not doing his job.’

  Les was a born ‘pointer’ and whinger – small in character and low on courage. He was a back-stabber who wouldn’t speak out unless he had a charge of Dutch courage and plenty of back-up. ‘Yer right, Frankie,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to pay good money for a man who’s not doin’ his job. Blind Freddie knows it’s no good bombin’ a cook. Bomb a cook and they’ll get square – like piss in the tea urn or put Epsom salts in the curry. How would we know? I say we spear him.’

  Yabba jumped to his feet and whacked the tabletop an open-hander. ‘What the bloody hell are yer bitching about, Les?’ he bellowed. ‘If you can’t talk sense, shut yer bloody trap. I called this swarm to find out why the meat is off – that’s if it is off. We’re not here to spear Jack.’

  Terry defined firmly, ‘I ate two chops, and the third one was just on the turn – so I left it. It might not be that the cook is at fault: this hot, muggy weather turns meat quickly. The presser said he saw a station hand hang a sheep in the meat-house about sundown on Friday. I reckon Jack cut him up at dawn bust on Saturday morning and put the mutton in the fridge. If the fridge is working okay the meat should be right as rain on Monday.’

  ‘That’s right!’ Scrubber snapped. Belittled by Yabba’s chastisement, he bounced to his feet, keen to regain self-esteem. ‘If the f—in’ fridge was okay the meat would be as sweet as virgin’s piss,’ he stormed. ‘It ain’t. The chops are f—in’ rotten. I move we sack the cook and get an ext
ra fridge.’ Looking around for support, he added, ‘Anyway, where I come from the contractor always carries a beer fridge for his men.’

  Yabba’s day had been hard, and his wick was burning short. A stickler for rules and respect, he said authoritatively, ‘I’ll tell you this: I measured the fridge before we signed on; there’s not much room to spare, but it does comply with Award conditions. But it won’t freeze if some of you coves keep putting beer in it. Give the cook a fair go! Keep your beer out of the fridge.’ He glared at Scrubber. ‘Yeah, I’ve shorn for contractors who carry a beer fridge. Good on ’em – but it’s not in the Award.’

  Scrubber stepped up and tried to eyeball Yabba. He whacked the suffering tabletop and declared, ‘I say we sit down till we get a beer fridge.’

  I laughed. ‘Sit down yerself, shorty! Do you have to jump up like a jack-in-a-box every time you want to say something silly?’

  Scrubber snarled at me, ‘Yer wanna make me sit down?!’

  ‘Nah! You’ve got duck’s disease, mate: your tail is so close to the grass nobody knows if you’re sitting or standing, anyway.’

  Everyone laughed except Scrubber, who glared at me and swore. The tension eased, and Yabba took advantage. ‘Righto! I’ll see Brian and tell him we want an extra fridge early in the morning. Now, let’s go and get some shut-eye.’

  ‘Hold it!’ Frankie snapped. ‘It’s a waste of time asking for anything without some industrial muscle. Scrubber’s got some guts – and I’m with him. I second his move that we go on strike till we get another fridge.’

  Yabba roared, ‘That motion is out of order and you know it! You’ve been in the game long enough to know the Union will only support the Award; and if yer want to get down to tin tacks the Award says we can’t even bring grog on to a property.’

  ‘The Award is up to shit – the same as the Union,’ Frankie said vehemently. ‘The Award should have gone out with the blades. It also says we can’t bring bull camels or stallions on to a property; and it also says black fellas and Chinamen can’t hold tickets, but I’ve shore with both chinks and coons, and the organisers have sold ’em tickets. AWU stands for Australia’s Weakest Union; it’s as weak as piss and it’s only there to sell tickets to give cushy jobs to bludging officials.’

  The Union rep ordered, ‘Wake up to yer bloody self, Frankie. I was in this game before the war. If it wasn’t for the Union you’d be slaving for a handful of silver and you’d still be sleeping on straw. Instead of bitching about a beer fridge you’d be eating salt meat out of a barrel and spreading mutton fat on a hunk of damper.’

  All around argument broke out. Yabba shouted that the meeting was closed. He took his committee men and we went to discuss matters with Brian.

  As the team made for the shed on Tuesday morning two station hands unloaded a second fridge and carried it in to the kitchen. They filled the tank with kerosene and trimmed and lit the wick. A sheep had been killed the previous evening, the meat had been hung overnight and Jack had cut it up before sun-up. Before midday the new fridge was beginning to freeze, and Jack packed it with fresh mutton from the overloaded first fridge.

  During the afternoon smoko break the rep and his committee went with the overseer to check that the fridges were operating to the cook’s satisfaction. Bottles of beer occupied the coldest section beside the freezing chamber in the new fridge. ‘Who put this beer in here, Jack?’ Brian demanded.

  ‘They left them on the table; I put them in the fridge,’ Jack said diffidently. He didn’t mention names as he went on, ‘Last week the fridge wouldn’t freeze with beer in it. It might be alright now we’ve got two fridges.’ It seemed he didn’t want to disappoint anyone, and avoided confrontation.

  ‘It won’t be alright,’ Brian snapped, quickly removing six bottles and standing them on the floor. ‘This fridge is hardly cool; it’s overloaded – no wonder the meat won’t keep. There’s to be no beer in the fridge, Jack. Understand! Make it clear to anyone who brings beer in to the kitchen.’ He turned to Yabba. ‘You tell the men, Yabba!’

  ‘Too bloody right, I will!’ Yabba wasn’t the man to avoid confrontation.

  It was a hot afternoon – about 115 degrees Fahrenheit (forty-six degrees Celsius) in the kitchen. Jack had draped both fridges in hessian which he wet every so often from a bucket of water. It was all extra work. He sat down heavily and put his head in his hands; he looked old and grey and sweat trickled down his face.

  ‘Take it easy, Jack,’ Terry said softly. ‘Just tell those toe-rags what the boss said. It’s nothing to do with you.’

  Yabba called a stop-work swarm on the board. ‘The overseer just took six bottles of beer out of the fridge,’ he reported. ‘The fridge wasn’t freezing. I dunno why the babbler allowed anyone to put beer in it. Last night we agreed to give the cook a fair go! Loading his meat fridge up with grog is not a fair crack o’ the whip. If the fridges aren’t freezing you’ll be bitching about the meat going off – so wake up to yer bloody selves!’

  Scrubber jumped out of the locks-butt he’d been reclining in, and yelled, ‘How about you wake up to yerself, Yabba. They treat us like shit! There are two fridges now. Why can’t we use one for beer?’

  ‘You’re way out of order, Scrubber,’ I said crossly. ‘Anyway, why don’t you cool yer beer in Terry’s ice chest, like most of us?’ Terry’s ice chest was a frame covered in hessian, cooled by water dripping in a shady, breezy spot.

  Turning his back, Scrubber walked towards the wool room and shouted, ‘You’ll keep, yer smart alec.’

  Yabba declared the meeting closed, and Brian rang the bell.

  Frankie, Les and Scrubber knocked off twenty minutes early that afternoon, quickly unloaded their bog-eyes and scurried for the exit. Brian pulled Frankie up and warned that knocking off early without consent of the employer was a breach of the Award.

  Donning a half-smart grin, Frankie explained, ‘Les and Scrubber are suffering heat stroke; and I’m travelling with my mates to see they’re alright. They need to cool off in air conditioning.’

  They returned in time for tea with half a dozen cold bottles of beer.

  The following arvo they did the same. The main course for tea was cold roast leg of mutton with lettuce, tomato, tinned peas and hot mashed spuds. Frankie had eaten a bowl of soup and started on the main fare before he asked pointedly, ‘When was this mutton killed?’

  Working in the kitchen, Jack didn’t reply, so I said deliberately, ‘It’s Monday’s kill. Jack threw out what was left of Friday’s mutton. I saw one of the station hands hang another sheep in the meat-house tonight.’

  ‘He can throw this one out, too,’ Les said, shoving his plate away. ‘It’s bloody rotten. The mess will cost a fortune; the cook’s chucking out more meat than we’re eating.’

  ‘Les is right,’ Frankie backed up. ‘We’ll have to sack this bait-layer and get a cook who can put on a decent feed. I can’t shear on soup and bloody salad.’

  Jack had heard enough, and again he retreated from the kitchen. I resumed eating, while Scrubber, his appetite primed by a day’s work and his wits dimmed by two bottles of beer and a couple of shots of over-proof rum, hadn’t stopped. Suddenly getting the gist of things, he shoved his plate away. ‘The meat’s crook again,’ he declared.

  Yabba glared around the table. ‘Jack has put on a bloody good feed. What do youse blokes want – another bloody swarm?’

  ‘Nah! What’s the use?’ Frankie grumbled. ‘You fellas cop shit and like it.’

  ‘That’ll be enough of that kind of talk,’ Yabba warned, barely keeping a lid on his anger. ‘I’ll get Jack and we’ll check the meat in the fridge tonight. You better have a gander, too, Frank.’

  Frankie laughed sardonically. ‘No thanks, Rep. You can eat yer stinkin’ chops for breakfast. I’ll shear on a plate o’ cornflakes. We’ll go to town and get a feed at the Greek’s tonight.’ He left with Les and Scrubber in tow.

  Under the Award cooks were not required to prepare morning smoko b
eyond an urn of tea, and men took their own smoko to the shed, however Jack, in the manner of many babblers, made up a nourishing smoko tray of sandwiches, brownie, left-over chops and half oranges.

  The following morning, as I trotted to the kitchen at twenty past nine to pick up the smoko, I saw the cook standing in the friendly shade of a tree, apparently inspecting the Austin Champ and its cargo of camping gear. The previous afternoon, after knocking off work a little after five o’clock, I had noticed him in the same spot. ‘Hi-ho, Jack,’ I had called, but Jack was too preoccupied to respond. Now I called, ‘Hey, Jack! Is the tea made yet?’

  Jack looked startled. He followed me into the kitchen and made the tea. ‘Do you need a hand to carry the smoko?’ he asked. It was his usual offer, and I made my usual reply: ‘Nope, I can handle her.’ And I set off, cheerfully singing ‘Pretty Redwing’, two smoko trays under my left arm and the urn swinging from my right hand. Zulu stayed behind, trusting the cook would coddle him with a few tidbits. Besides, it was a lot cooler relaxing under the huts than in the shed.

  Around eleven o’clock I was glistening sweat as I swung the lever, when the dog raced into the wool room, agitated, whimpering, demanding attention. ‘What’s a matter, boy? What’s a matter?’ I asked, trying to console him. Settled by my touch and voice, Zulu found refuge in a recess among the stacked wool bales while I worked on. At a quarter to twelve I washed up, pulled a shirt on, picked up the smoko gear and strode for the mess. Nearing the kitchen I noticed the dog had stopped halfway. I called and whistled, but Zulu lagged warily. I carried the urn and tray into the kitchen.

  As ever, Jack’s kitchen looked spick and span, ready for the lunch-time rush. Two legs of roast mutton and a tray of baked veggies retained warmth in the half-opened oven, the big iron kettle was steaming, and a saucepan had hot water simmering in it, ready for the unopened cans of peas on the table. I called and cooeed for Jack, but got no answer.