Wool Away, Boy!

by Alan Blunt

  Doug and I completed Richie’s run. We spent a few days with my family at West End, then drove to Sydney and flew to Auckland. After enjoying a few days with Doug’s parents in Huntly, we shore with a Maori team for a week at Taihape. They were an affable crew, with cheerful girl rousies. But for Australians the tucker, which was mostly mutton and ‘Maori bread’ (damper) and spuds, was below par, and the accommodation was unhygienic. The wages and work hours were also uncivilised: nine hours a day plus Saturday mornings, with overtime at ordinary rates if required. A wool truck rolled up on our second Tuesday and we were on it, bound for the South Island, where the many Aussie shearers who migrated annually had installed Australian hours and pay rates. We shore at a couple of sheds, then caught the train to Invercargill. Doug returned to Huntly, while I travelled to Queenstown to ride the famous paddle wheeler to Glenorchy and hike a couple of trails. I was back in Huntly for Christmas.

  Back in Queensland, we signed on at Booligar, near Dirranbandi, late in January. Doug returned to Hughenden for a crutching run, while I pressed around the south-west. Without Doug’s cheerful presence I was assailed by a touch of the blues for months, and often thought of Birte.

  In May I pulled the pin and retreated to Dingo Dell, a lovely peaceful location south of Prairie, to try writing poetry and short stories. Zulu and I camped in an old boundary rider’s hut not far from Kooroorinya race track. Going into Hughenden for supplies, I ran into Doug who introduced me to his girlfriend, Joy, and her friend, Isabel, a pretty nursing sister. It was June 1963. I was instantly smitten. The four of us attended the Kooroorinya picnic race meeting ball, and within a few months I had forgotten my commitment to stay single until I was thirty, and Isabel and I were engaged.

  Birte and I had continued to exchange fond letters, but when I told her I was committed she replied with four furious pages describing how I’d taken her for granted, and to write no more. I recalled lines from an old folk song:

  When you go a-fishin’, fish with a hook and line,

  But when you go to get married, never look back behind.

  Isabel and I married in Toowoomba in December 1964, and Doug and Joy the following year. They moved to the western districts of Victoria while Isabel and I settled in Longreach. Sadly, Joy died in a car accident a few years later.

  Isabel got a job working at the Longreach local doctor’s clinic and then moved to the Longreach hospital, while I scored a top wool-pressing run with UNGRA. We resolutely paid off a family home – an old Queenslander – within four years, in accordance with our plan to gain financial independence, and we settled into wearing down the edges of single independence to fit into the harmony of a loving marriage.

  19

  THE BROLGA AND SCREWJACK

  On a wintry Monday morning my mate Thommo picked me up about two hours before sunrise. We had to hit the road early to arrive at the shearing shed for breakfast at a quarter to seven, to begin work at half past seven. It was 1967 and I had changed employers to GRAZCOS.

  Thommo drove steadily, on the lookout for panicked roos that would bound out of the fading night at forty miles an hour, on a suicidal course to wreck headlights, grilles and radiators. He was a quiet and thoughtful man who read good fiction and popular history on lonely nights in the shearers’ huts. His favourite hobby, however, was punting; and like all compulsive punters, regardless of their IQ, he believed that he could beat the bookies at their own game despite the mathematical certainty that the odds were stacked in the bookies’ favour.

  Also in the car was Tassie, a quality shearer from Tasmania, who could be relied on to deliver a flow of dry humour with an ever-ready grin.

  After the usual exchanges relating weekend activities and family doings, Thommo commented, ‘I wonder what appetisers Screwjack will rustle up for breakfast.’

  ‘If it’s anything like the last few weeks yer wouldn’t feed it to drovers – or their dogs,’ Tassie replied in his habitual drawl, as Thommo slowed and swerved to avoid several axle-busting potholes.

  Like a lot of Australians of my generation, my natural inclination was to support the underdog. A few blokes were down on the Yugoslav cook because they saw him as an outsider, but most workers believed in a ‘fair go’ while on the job, regardless of a man’s country of origin. I had come to see the babbler as a workmate, bound to his Yugoslavian heritage. He was a lonely outsider striving to fit in and be accepted as one of the boys. He signed on as Doug Grujac, but this had quickly morphed to ‘Screwjack’ on the nimble tongue of a shed wit. Only Thommo and I, dedicated readers, wondered what his role had been in the bloody racial and religious fighting during World War II, as the Nazis and communists fought for control of the Balkans.

  ‘I wonder if he was a freedom fighter with Tito’s partisans,’ I had once suggested hopefully.

  ‘I doubt he was old enough,’ the cynical Thommo retorted. ‘More than likely he was a smart-arse kid working the black market on both sides, a long way out of the firing line.’

  Now and then Screwjack would waltz around the kitchen while whistling melodiously, before striking a pose and exclaiming, ‘Hey, boys! I voz vunce the valtz king of London and gay Paree.’ His capering drew little attention, bar an occasional: ‘It’s a pity you didn’t learn to cook, Screwy, as well as valtzing and vistling.’

  Camouflaged by the grey early dawn a doe and a joey roo bounded across the road from the shadow of a clump of gidyea trees. Thommo jammed on the brakes, and we braced ourselves against the dashboard. As the Holden regained speed I defended the cook. ‘He’s a pretty fair babbler when he’s sober and on the job. And don’t forget what he says: “You boys are lucky to haf the valtzing king to prepare your culinary delights.” You should show some respect and appreciation, Thommo, for a brave and artistic freedom fighter.’

  Facing a hard week’s shearing to recoup his losses at the Barcaldine races, Thommo was in no mood for levity. ‘Come off it, Presser,’ he said, raising his voice above the revving motor and the rattle of gidyea stones striking the chassis. ‘He’s been with us for six weeks. Maybe he came up to scratch for a week, but he’s been pissed every day since – and his tucker isn’t fit for pigs! We’ve had three or four swarms, and you and me have stuck up for him to get a fair go. He hasn’t got the message – and he’s treated us like shit.’

  ‘Yer right and yer wrong, Thommo,’ Tassie drawled. ‘I reckon Screwy is fit to cook for pigs! But not for shearers. I’d have speared him weeks ago if it wasn’t for you blokes insisting we give ’im a go. I’ll stick up for anyone, black, white or brindle if he’ll avago, but if he won’t do his job he’s a goner!’

  ‘Yeah, he’s had more than a fair crack o’ the whip,’ I agreed. The recurring vision of Happy Jack, his body slumped in a chair, his head shattered, haunted my mind’s eye as I continued, ‘He said he was crook last week. Still, if he doesn’t come up to scratch this week I won’t be in his corner. But I won’t speak to sack him – that’s against my religion.’

  ‘That’s a bloody weak attitude, Presser –’ Tassie began, but Thommo cut him short. ‘No need to argue, fellas, because it won’t come to a vote. Percy has got the message.’

  Thommo was referring to Percy Taft, manager of GRAZCOS in the central west. Percy was an ex-gun shearer himself, and though he might have as many as 400 men employed in thirty sheds he remained hands-on with all his operations.

  Thommo continued, ‘I ran into The Brolga at the Barcaldine races. He cuts out a shed on Friday and starts with us next Monday. I reckon we can tolerate Screwy for one more week.’

  ‘Bloody good show! Only one more week to poison us all,’ Tassie declared.

  ‘Bloody good show, alright! I’ve heard The Brolga is a champion, one of the best,’ I commented.

  ‘The creme de la creme, right off the top shelf,’ Tassie concurred. ‘I was with him a few years ago. They say he’s a reformed alky now. He was a pretty good-humoured bloke for a babbler – when he was on the grog.’

  Screwjack’s
tucker didn’t improve over the next three days. He wandered his kitchen sucking stubbies when unobserved, and was full of boisterous bullshit at meal times. Thommo advised dryly, ‘Suffer in silence, boys. Only a few more days and The Brolga will rescue us from Screwjack’s abominable bowel-busters.’

  On Thursday at ten to twelve, following my usual ritual, I swept the wool-room floor, put a new wool-pack in the Koertz wool press, washed my arms and face, collected the smoko tray and tea urn and headed for the kitchen a hundred yards away.

  The six shearers followed a few minutes later tailed by the hurrying rousies, while the overseer and classer chatted in the rear. I was tucking into roast mutton, with spuds, pumpkin and cabbage nearly boiled to slurry, when Alec, the shed rep, swore vehemently and complained, ‘This leg o’ mutton looks as if it’s been carved by a drunk with a tomahawk!’

  ‘You can bet it has. Either that or the presser’s dog has had a go at it,’ Tassie said, as he investigated beneath two grimy tea towels which were covering the trays of prunes and melting jelly.

  ‘Where the hell is Screwjack?’ queried Thommo as he turned the tap on the urn. ‘The bloody tea’s not made. Have you seen him, Presser?’

  ‘No! Maybe he’s flaked in his room. He’s been drinking like a fish since he blued with his missus. He says she drives him to drink. “Bloody vimmen! Drife a man to drink, alvays complaints, complaints …”’

  ‘Come off it,’ Thommo snapped, in no mood for my parody of the babbler’s broken English. Thommo had shorn 102 sheep for the morning. He was looking for a good feed and twenty minutes’ rest on his back on the shearing board to restore some energy for the afternoon’s toil. Opening the back door, he lifted the lid off the tumbling-tommy. ‘More stubby bottles than a Fourex bloody brewery,’ he grumbled.

  While we attempted to appease our appetites with hacked mutton and watery veggies, the overseer’s angry remonstrance rang from the cook’s bedroom. ‘Screwjack, you lazy, drunken fool! Get up! The team wanted to sack you a week ago, but I saved your skin. This time you’ve done it. Get up and get to work or you’re finished!’

  We heard the cook groan and grumble, ‘Sorry, boss. I gotta flu, really bad – sick as da dog. I get up soon and do da vashing ups.’

  Realising that shearing would halt if he sacked the cook, the overseer changed his tone. ‘Okay, Doug. See if you can carry on for the afternoon. Then pack up and get yourself to the doctor. I’ll phone Percy and line up another cook for tomorrow.’

  ‘Sorry, boss. I too crook. Da vashings up, I do. Den I go to town.’

  Earwigging through the wall, Thommo commented, ‘Too crook, be buggered! The lazy bastard has just run out of grog.’

  Given the extraordinary circumstances the team automatically held a swarm on the verandah after dinner. Hickey, an ageing snagger, declared, ‘We can’t shear without a cook. It’s against Union rules.’

  It was said that Hickey had been a respected professional boxer in the hard times of the hungry 1930s, but the team knew him as an obnoxious old nark. He was fastidious in his habits, stood over timid rouseabouts, and kept to himself unless he had something critical to say. Yet, come Saturday he was a natty figure in Panama hat, sports coat and shiny shoes as he moved from pub to pub seeking the best odds from the SP bookies.

  Tassie laughed. ‘Hick, it don’t matter who’s the babbler, you wouldn’t work in an iron lung.’

  ‘Hick hails from the Big Rock Candy Mountains,’ I put in. ‘Where they boiled in oil the inventor of toil, and hung the jerk that invented work.’

  A faint smile flicked across Thommo’s face. ‘I don’t fancy the boiling in oil caper,’ he said, ‘but a swift death by hanging might be better than starving to death on Screwy’s piss-weak stews. Botany Bay stews they used to call ’em in the old days: convict tucker! The lazy bastard dices a spud and a carrot and a shoulder of mutton in two gallons of water to feed twelve men.’

  ‘Be fair to the wog!’ Tassie objected. ‘Yer forgot to mention the onion. There was one in last night’s stew, alright. But it was such a bloody skinny stew Thommo could read the racing form guide through it.’

  ‘Enough talk, you blokes! I’m calling the meeting to order,’ Alec interrupted. ‘The overseer isn’t an AWU member, but it will simplify matters if he listens in.’ There were no objections. ‘He’ll give us a few words to keep the show on the road this arvo – if we agree. As for me, I reckon we’d be better off making a quid than sitting on our arses waiting for a cook.’ Alec was only in the game to save enough money to buy a small property for his family, and keen to get back to work.

  ‘I vote we sit on our arses for the rest of the week,’ said Fred, the seventeen-year-old picker-up. ‘I don’t mind getting paid for sitting on my khyber.’

  Hick agreed. ‘There will be no shearing till we get a cook.’

  The overseer spoke quietly, as was his manner. ‘I just phoned Percy; he’ll send a cook early tomorrow if he can’t get him today.’ As shed overseer it was his business to get the wheels of industry turning with as little delay as possible. He waited for silence. ‘He’s a crackerjack cook. A chap they call The Brolga.’

  ‘That’s bloody good news,’ Thommo said, recalling that on his word they had been prepared to suffer Screwjack’s cooking until the weekend.

  Who hadn’t heard of The Brolga? Throughout the industry a handful of babblers were known far and wide for individual excellence in their profession. Vanity and touchiness invariably accompanied such excellence; thus the gun babblers were all prone to pull the pin at any word or deed they might interpret as insult. As their nicknames attested – ‘The Bird of Passage’, ‘Wood Duck’, ‘Crack a Twig’, ‘The Bald Eagle’, ‘The Brolga’ – they would all ‘take wing’ at the slightest criticism or provocation. Shearers were therefore careful not to upset a good babbler.

  ‘A champion tucker musterer – drunk or sober,’ Tassie drawled. ‘I ran across him a few years ago. He was a mad punter. Used to go to town any Saturday he could score a lift, so we had to fend for ourselves for tucker. But he always came back that night – even if he had to get a taxi and fall out of it.’

  ‘There’s no need to worry about that,’ the overseer assured us. ‘They tell me he’s been in Alcoholics Anonymous for years.’

  ‘Too right,’ young Fred concurred (Fred had been christened William, but had been dubbed ‘Fred’ after Fred Astaire because of the stylish steps he threw in while dancing along the board with a fleece). ‘I done a shed with him last year. Drive yer mad he would, handin’ yer papers about the evils o’ drink an’ bashin yer ear with the Bible.’

  The overseer looked around the expectant faces. ‘Michael, the station manager, has volunteered to put smoko on this afternoon,’ he said. ‘He’ll boil the billy and bring a sponge cake his wife made, and a few sandwiches. I’ll help him to put dinner on tonight if Percy can’t get a cook here on time.’

  ‘We can’t work without a cook; it’s against Union rules,’ Hickey declared.

  ‘Hick,’ I came in, ‘the purpose of that rule is so that cooks will have a job. In this case Screwjack is already entitled to a day’s pay, and we’ll have a cook at sparrow’s fart – so Union rules are covered. We’ll be in breach of the Award if we bail up.’

  The overseer held his hand up for quiet. ‘I think that’s settled to everyone’s satisfaction, so let’s go to work.’

  Hick howled. ‘We can’t work without a cook.’

  ‘Gees! Change the record!’ Alec snapped. ‘You don’t shear enough to make a stew, anyway.’

  The shearers and I – all contract men – voted to return to work for the afternoon on the understanding that a cook would be in place to prepare breakfast. Hickey objected but was overruled, while the rousies were despondently silent. They weren’t entitled to a vote because their wages and tucker were guaranteed, work or no work.

  Late in the afternoon Screwjack’s beat-up blue wagon left a trail of dust as it headed for Longreach. Mike, the station manage
r, who looked like Chips Rafferty and had a sense of humour as dry as a drover’s tonsils on a desolate stretch of the long paddock, brought the afternoon smoko to the shed and sat in to swap yarns with the boys. After draining his pannikin of sweet black tea he hauled his gangling frame off a wool bale and dead-panned: ‘You fellows will be pleased to know that Screwjack was thoughtful enough to leave his recipe book behind so I’ll know what to serve up to keep you happy.’

  ‘Cripes!’ Tassie exclaimed. ‘More stewed tea and skinny stew.’

  Mike produced a satisfying stew and roast mutton and veggies for tea. Percy and the cook hadn’t turned up by breakfast time but, forewarned by an evening phone call, Mike was on the job at sparrow’s fart to present a typical station breakfast of porridge, plus chops and gravy with eggs and bubble-n-squeak.

  The shearing got underway at half past seven. At nine-thirty Michael delivered a tray of sandwiches and cake and an urn of tea. He usually loitered to yarn, but now he hurriedly downed a bite and a pannikin of tea and said, ‘See yer later. I’ve got sheep to take away.’

  ‘What about dinner, Cookie?’ Tassie queried poker-faced. ‘We can’t work on empty bellies. You’ve got bloody good form, mate. I wouldn’t say yer a gun babbler, but yer a sight better than Screwjack.’

  ‘That may be so, Tassie,’ Mike replied. ‘But a man has to maintain some pride! I don’t mind feeding pigs, but feeding shearers is beneath my dignity.’

  At ten o’clock the team finished the smoko break. There was no sign of a cook, and another swarm talked things over while the overseer phoned GRAZCOS in Longreach.

  ‘That’s it!’ Hickey declared. ‘No cook, no work! We can’t work without a cook!’

  ‘It is Friday,’ I said, making a point, and recited a verse I’d written: