Wool Away, Boy!

by Alan Blunt

  I’d first run across Doug at a shed I was pressing at in early 1958. He was there with his brother who looked just like him, but while Doug was full of fun Bob was burlier and surlier – at times provocative.

  The two young shearers, from Huntly in the North Island of New Zealand, had ventured to south-west Queensland early in 1957. Unlike most Kiwi shearers of the time, they had persevered with the narrow-gauge combs and cutters and the challenge that tougher Australian merinos presented. With plenty of aptitude and application the boys were ‘getting their average’ within twelve months, and some of the older hands reckoned they had enough sheep-shit on the brain to become guns in a couple of years. With Award rates in Australia far superior to New Zealand’s, as their tallies and earnings went up the boys thought they’d struck gold.

  Cashed up, they bought a new VW, and between sheds and on long weekends they drove 300 miles to rev and rage up and down the Gold Coast. Sand and surf held no attraction; they boozed and partied, and the hunt for exciting, available femmes was the great game.

  On their final excursion Bob and another man’s wife displayed obvious mutual attraction. Instead of opting out when the husband became jealous and intervened, Bob became provocative. In the ensuing all-in brawl the burly shearer was stabbed in the heart by a small knife blade. The jury agreed the husband acted in self-defence – and he walked.

  To outward appearances it seemed that Doug had donned a brave face and moved on. The few who knew him better, however, understood that in his mind justice had not been served and his inability to square things haunted his subconscious. Broken-hearted, depressed and drunk on rum, Doug would begin whimpering, ‘If only I’d been there Bob would be alive. I should have been with him. He didn’t know when to back off, but I could calm him. I could talk sense into him. I promised Mum I’d look after Bob. He was older, but she knew I was the one with common sense. Bob was Dad’s favourite, but he don’t ever mention him. It broke his heart. And I broke their hearts. I let them down …’

  He would curse the killer and swear vengeance, and then sob at his impotence. And on two occasions, after his anger burned out, I held him in my arms in our guest room at the Grand Hotel as he cried like a confused and helpless ten-year-old. Feeling inadequate and embarrassed, I wished Doug’s mother would materialise; or that any motherly woman would walk through the door and succour a child in misery.

  In the pub, my mate was staring sullenly into his third double over-proof rum. I knew from experience that Doug’s doppelganger would not withdraw until he had harrowed his host with hours of remorse and self-degradation; that the Laughing Kiwi would turn to threatening revenge against his brother’s killer before the finger of accusation turned inward, causing him to writhe under the terrible guilt of failing his beloved brother who was almost a god in his young life. I was expecting to give a long counselling session, talking quiet words of support and encouragement, when Harry the Spiv boisterously belted me on the back. ‘Just the pair of suckers I wanted to see!’ he said. ‘You’ll make up the number for a game of poker in room eight.’

  ‘I won’t,’ I said firmly, ‘but Doug will.’

  Doug swallowed his rum and turned around slowly. ‘Too correct he will! Any old time at all I’ll laugh and take your money, Harry.’

  I rolled my eyes upwards to silently thank Fortuna, my favourite Goddess, and said to Doug, ‘Lay off the rum and I’ll stake you twenty quid. My loss, and halves if we win.’ I considered it an investment: Doug rarely lost, and the game would likely get him off the rum and banish the self-loathing that was feeding the blues.

  ‘You’re on,’ Doug said. He collected half a dozen cans of VB, pocketed the two tenners and straightened his shoulders.

  The Spiv fancied himself as a woman-winner. He leant over the bar and confidentially engaged the barmaid. ‘Gloria, darlin’,’ he said, ‘here’s a quid. Be a good girl and fetch a plate of cheese and crackers to room eight when you close up. And give me a kiss in advance and you can keep the change.’ She blew him a raspberry as she snatched the note. ‘Make it a fiver, Spiv, and you can kiss my ring.’

  Confident my mate and my investment were safe, I hit the sack. Hours later I heard Doug crowing, ‘We won sixty smackers, mate.’ He fell into bed, chuckling, but he was feeling seedy when I tried to haul him from the sheets at seven o’clock, and he fired a battery of bad language. I had packed the car, run the dog, eaten a hearty breakfast and read for an hour, when Doug arrived at nine o’clock – his grin restored by a shower and a double brandy reviver. ‘We are a wee bit late,’ he observed. ‘But we can still make it to Brisbane tonight.’

  ‘We would be hours along the track if you’d pulled your arse into gear.’

  ‘Tut-tut, me lad! You’re only crabby on account of I collared sixty smackers for us while you were snoring.’

  I said curtly, ‘There’s not much change in nine hundred and fifty miles from here to the big smoke, so let’s hit the dry and dusty. Starting this late, Roma will do us tonight. The old folks at home will have the midnight horrors if they think we’re flogging down the range in the small hours. I’ll phone Mum when we hit Mitchell.’

  Zulu usually lorded it over the back seat, but Doug was having none of it. ‘Over the front, you biting blue bastard,’ he ordered. He doubled his legs and stretched as far as the confines of a VW back seat allowed and nodded off.

  At Longreach, we downed a few beers and ate meat pies for lunch. Despite Zulu’s grovelling and dribbling he was denied a pie because, as Doug put it, ‘Give that dog a pie and he’ll fart fumes that would stop my grandmother talking – and the old lady can gab under water with a mouthful of cornflour.’

  We pulled in at Tambo for a couple of ‘quick ones for the road’, but were cheerfully delayed by the arrival of two girls who were returning to Brisbane for Christmas holidays after a year teaching in a school at Mount Isa. They had been on the road for eleven hours and had pre-booked a room to overnight in Tambo. Confident the teachers would benefit from our company we bought drinks and offered dinner, and the four of us took seats in the dining room and chatted casually over the menu.

  ‘Looks like a feast fit for a king,’ Doug said. ‘Roast beef or Monterey cutlets, baked veggies and greens.’

  He grinned. ‘Beef and plenty of greens for me! Whether it’s Monterey or Timbuctoo or Sydney, it’s all mutton to me. If I eat another chop I’ll start growing wool.’

  ‘That would be an awful shame,’ said Janice, the shorter, brunette teacher, in mock sympathy. Running her fingers through his black curly locks and smiling archly, she added, ‘With those chubby pink cheeks and lovely curls I’ll bet you were your mother’s favourite, and the teacher’s pet.’

  It was an opening made to order for the Laughing Kiwi. Engaging Janice with his dimpled, cherubic grin while taking her hand, he sang in a soft melodious baritone:

  I must have been a beautiful, baby;

  I must have been a wonderful child.

  When I was only startin’

  To go to kindergarten

  I must have sent the little girls wild.

  I grinned. Doug’s ‘lead-in’ might seem to be as preposterous as it was spontaneous, but I’d seen my baby-faced mate work his combo of charm and song several times – and on occasion it enticed a ‘starter’ to become a ‘sure thing’.

  ‘We shall have to wait a while,’ Marion, the tall fair English teacher, expostulated. ‘The dining room is filling up and there’s only one waitress for all these people.’

  It seemed her words summoned a second waitress. Unnoticed behind Marion and me, she attended patiently as I bandicooted Henry Lawson for an attention-seeking declamation:

  What’s that, waiter? Lamb or mutton! Thank you – mine is beef and greens.

  Bread and butter while I’m waiting. Milk? Oh, yes – a bucketful.

  I’m just in from west the Darling, ‘picking-up’ and ‘rolling wool’.

  …

  All day long with living mutton –
bits and belly-wool and fleece;

  Blinded by the yolk of wool, and shirt and trousers stiff with grease.

  …

  Picking-up for seven devils, seven demons out of Hell!

  Sell their souls to get a bell-sheep – half-a-dozen Christs they’d sell!

  I said beef! You blood-stained villain!

  …

  Beef – moo-cow – Roast Bullock – BEEF!

  Doug and Janice laughed aloud while Marion held a tight rein on an amused smile. Waiting for quiet, she assessed primly, ‘At best a crude piece, reflecting the standard of much of the colonial taste in literature of the period. But timely and well presented, I must admit.’

  An intellectual stuck up snob, trying to put me down, I thought, slipping into defensive silence until a laughing Janice caught on: ‘School’s out, Ma’am,’ she called. ‘Tell that boy he can come out of the corner and write one hundred lines.’

  I joined in the laughter, and Marion jabbed me in the short ribs. ‘School’s out,’ she instructed. ‘You must go and write one hundred times: I must not take everything seriously.’

  The waitress waited for the laughter to subside. ‘Another waitress will be here soon,’ she said. ‘I have telephoned her that the rush is on. I am the cook, but I will help out until she comes.’

  Doug said, ‘It reads here, “Chef’s Special”. If you are the babbling brook – who is the chef?’

  A puckish smile played around her lips and dark eyes twinkled. ‘I am the babbling brook, and also the chef, but I do not have the paper qualification. My mother taught me to cook. It is Hungarian home cooking. No food is tastier or more nutritious. Your orders I will take now, for other folk are waiting.’

  She squeezed my shoulder and bicep and said appreciatively, ‘This poet is not like other poets I have known. They are usually pale and skinny from struggling with the conflicts of conscience and desire. But his young brain and body will benefit by the Halaszle, my own fish soup. Here, I create it from the fresh yellerbelly. I must admit it is the equal of what I made in my home land, but not as spicy. You Aussies do not appreciate the hot stuff.’ Her puckish grin dimpled her face again as she continued, ‘The goulash is beef and paprika, simmered until “the cows come home” – like you Aussies say.’

  We laughed with her before she added, ‘It is served with dumplings and, if you like, baked spuds and greens.’

  ‘You’ve won me, honey!’ Doug exclaimed. The teachers were delighted at the unexpected discovery of continental cuisine in Tambo. The cook took an order for specials all round, and returned to kitchen duty.

  ‘Bloody good ky!’ Doug said, polishing his plate with a hunk of bread.

  ‘What is ky?’ Marion queried.

  ‘A Maori word for tucker,’ Doug replied.

  ‘An articulate example of vulgar terminology,’ Marion declared. ‘But I find myself in absolute agreement: this is bloody good ky.’

  The girls ate sweets and finished their bottle of wine while the boys had another beer; then they caught each other’s eye, and thanked their hosts for ‘a pleasant and entertaining evening’.

  ‘We are the early birds,’ Marion said. ‘It’s after seven-thirty, and we are up and away at four am.’ Janice spun around at the doorway and hit Doug with a wave and a wink. He was on her in a flash, and they engaged in a brief but enthusiastic kissing cuddle, before she pushed him away. ‘You are a naughty boy,’ she said, and fled, giggling, with Marion.

  Back at the table Doug said, ‘Gees! School teachers! They shouldn’t even be allowed inside a classroom! They don’t know the basic rule: a bottle of red and a good feed is worth a root anywhere.’

  I fed Zulu and returned to the bar. The place was buzzing with drinkers: shearers, ringers, truckies, council workers. A loud, beefy foreman put a five-pound note on the bar and challenged all-comers to an arm wrestle. There were no takers as the locals knew the power of his great bicep too well, until Doug stirred the possum by throwing a ten-pound note down. ‘You’re on, bro, best of three, ten quid,’ he challenged.

  Doug was a work-fit, nuggety twelve stoner. The foreman, who was carrying a fair bit of flab, stood up to reveal he was six feet and probably scaled eighteen stone. Looking down, he grinned derisively as they shook hands, clearly thinking this little man would be just ‘meat and drink’. I knew he was in for a shock. I had seen my mate win the championship in his home town of Huntly, New Zealand, by besting a Maori strongman; and I’d seen him outstay all takers from Cunnamulla to the Cloncurry.

  The Kiwi took his time warming up his muscles; then grabbed the attention of the crowd and a round of applause and a few boos with a one-man version of the Haka.

  I worked the punters for side bets. The drum I’d heard circulating was that the local man’s only moral support came from a few of the foreman’s arse-lickers – sycophants who basked in his fat shadow. The punters would like to see him cut down to size, but they didn’t think that the Kiwi had the heft to do it. I had deposited a hundred quid with the barman to cover my losses – insurance the punters would be paid if Doug lost – before I pocketed their bets and wrote the details in my notebook.

  I had laid sixty quid at good odds when a tall, weather-beaten sheep cocky shook my hand. At that time many graziers were still living high on the hog of the 1950s wool boom – you could pick ’em because they had handshakes like bank tellers – but hard muscles and a strong grip verified that this bloke was still on familiar terms with the ‘Spaniard’, also known as ‘Manuel Labour’.

  ‘Look, young fella,’ he said urgently, ‘I’d bet you fifty quid, but I don’t want to take your money. You fellas are shearers, aren’t you? I served my time on the board in the fifty-six strike, and I reckon you blokes get it hard enough without giving it away. I’m no Don Athaldo, but I’m no pushover, and “Big Boof” rolled me as easy as a schoolboy. He beat Cavanagh for a hundred quid. Do you know Cavanagh? He presses my wool every year.’

  Know Cavanagh? Cripes! The giant was a legend; a six foot five inch outback Hercules. I thanked the cocky and immediately closed my ‘book’. I’d already bet half Doug’s poker winnings, and blokes were still lining up to lay odds on what they reckoned was a sure thing.

  The contest took place on a small, round, solid wooden table. I manoeuvred to a position where I could see fair play: the free hand above the table all the time, elbows on opposing sides of a chalk line and a thirty-second break between engagements. The men sat opposite each other, their right hands clasped. The referee saw their grip was exactly above the white chalk line before he ordered, ‘Take the strain … Go!’

  The bar became as quiet as a cathedral as the struggle ensued. In seconds Doug’s knuckles were forced to within six inches of the tabletop – but he held, and held, and slowly returned to seventy degrees. He could not regain the perpendicular and the big man regrouped and took him down in just over five minutes.

  Doug stood up and laughed. He rolled his shoulders and dropped his arms. Big Boof grinned triumphantly and then swallowed a pot of beer, lapping up praise from his circle of cronies. His reddened face and heavy breathing, however, stoked my confidence.

  The ref called, ‘Five seconds!’ and they clasped. This time they locked at the upright for fully a minute before Doug’s forearm swooped backwards. A crony hollered, ‘It’s all over, drover!’ But Doug held at forty-five degrees, before he fought back, ever so slowly, into the champion’s territory. The clink of coins and glasses ceased, and only the odd shout of encouragement for the Kiwi came. Doug sat hunched forward, concentrating quietly. Boof was upright, his face flushed, his breath rasping. He looked desperate, but with his reputation at stake he came back with a grimacing surge that carried his nemesis to within ten inches of defeat. Doug held, and I tried to encourage him telepathically with a Kipling mantra I’d often facetiously quoted to stir him on the shearing board:

  If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

  To serve your turn long after they are gone;

>   And so hold on, when there is nothing in you,

  Except the will which says to them ‘hold on’.

  Inch by inch the Laughing Kiwi fought back, and buzzing murmur circulated as watchers, despite having money at stake, began to murmur encouragement for the underdog.

  Above the chalk line the locked fists halted for a moment – and then Boof’s forearm crashed in defeat, his knuckles banging on the tabletop. Doug rose, laughing, flexing his shoulders, while I admonished the ref: ‘Thirty seconds, Ref – thirty seconds!’

  Big Boof looked buggered. His second snarled into my face, ‘You go and get well f—ed. The champ’s cramped.’ Turning to the ref, he demanded, ‘Five minutes time out, Billy.’

  Picking him for a big mouth – a gutless wonder without Boof’s back-up – I long-armed him out of range with a knuckled left shove in the brisket, and again called on the ref: ‘Thirty seconds, Ref – only ten left.’

  Glaring, the harried ref snapped, ‘I’ll see a fair go – so shut up and back off, son!’

  He ordered, ‘Take the strain’. Boof jumped the gun. It didn’t matter: the shearer was primed – and in half a minute took the big man down. The clink and cacophony of the bar-room resumed, and the sheep cocky emerged and quietly slipped me a tenner. ‘The wife and I are going home. Give that to your mate. That standover bastard king-hit my brother at the Blackall races.’

  There were plenty of back-slappers and well-wishers volunteering to shout the victor, but the Kiwi only had a couple of beers before he slipped away. ‘Early night, mate,’ he advised. ‘You ought to pack it in, too; we’ll hit the track at sparrow.’ I wished him luck. I knew Doug would chance a discreet knock on the teacher’s door before he threw in the towel.

  16

  THE GYPSY COOK

  I wandered into the lounge where a family night was in full swing. Couples and kids were dancing to the lively music of a wholesome ‘Mum’. She was swinging her accordion, while a lean sun-browned singer was hanging ragtime and jazz piano on spirited lines of fiddle music bowed by a fourteen-year-old girl in school uniform. Her dad, a Pommy piano player, called above the music and hubbub, ‘She looks eighteen if she gets her own way – tight jeans an’ ruby lips an’ all. The uniform lets you lads know she’s a school kid – and that Dad’s in the window!’ His laughter failed to mask his pride.