by Barry Heard
‘OK.’
I raced home and got changed. I had lectures I had to get to.
NO TIME FOR EXAMS
MY BROTHER JOHN had changed jobs and was to start in the country town of Kilmore, and he wanted to buy the Holden. We came to a satisfactory arrangement, and a very excited brother drove off. I managed to replace the Holden with a much more down-market VW for seventy dollars.
The academic year was ending. I got through my first day of exams with no worries and arrived back at my flat. Uncle Gordon said someone had called for me, and he would call back that evening. I opened the door later that night to Knackers. It was good to see him.
‘Shit, you were hard to find, Turd! What have you been up to? Study? But you’re a dickhead, Turd.’
We laughed, we insulted each other, and we went to the pub across the road and had a couple of quiet beers. Knackers was working seven days a week, sixteen hours a day. He was drinking too much, and was crook as a dog a lot of the time. His guts were giving him a lot of trouble. He hadn’t been in touch with the other blokes.
‘No? So why me, Knackers?’
He paused. ‘I need some money, Turd. I want to buy a truck and go out on my own. I’m sick of dickheads telling me what to do. I’m seeing you first, and then I’ll check the other blokes. How much money have ya got, Turd?’
I showed Knackers my bankbook; it had $2000 in it.
‘That would be bloody perfect, Turd. Do you have any other dough?’
‘Yeah, I keep a separate account for day-to-day living; it’s got $160 in it.’
I gave Knackers the two thousand dollars the next day.
‘I’ll have it back in six months, Turd. Thanks, mate,’ he said eagerly, and left.
Bugger it. I had forgotten to get his phone number.
I was at Peg’s, sitting on her sofa watching the TV. It not only showed the protests; it brought the war into the room. There appeared to be no censorship. I could smell the jungle and the dirty brown mud that pervaded the skin. The commentary bewildered me — it was dramatic, even theatrical, making it all seem sensationalised. Peg would watch avidly. My stomach would churn simply listening to artillery fire; I didn’t need to watch the screen. I was very stressed.
Consequently, I stopped seeing Peg. I gave her no explanations. Who in their right mind would believe a bloke who was scared of a TV screen? She couldn’t really contact me; apart from my name and my being a student, she knew nothing about me. I felt terrible, as it was very confusing. I liked her and the arrangement. Yet I couldn’t justify my reasons for calling it off — even to myself.
Now that the exams were over, I couldn’t help feeling that my studies that year had mostly been a waste of time. Accounting was of some value, but it wasn’t related to farming. Even though I studied hydraulics, I only knew the theory and had little practice. If ever I managed or ran a farm and had a hydraulic problem, I would hire an expert. I had the sinking realisation that I didn’t want to go back to RMIT. I went to see Bill, my favourite lecturer for the year, to ask his advice. We talked for a while.
‘I think you should meet an ex-student of mine. He reminds me of you, Baz.’
His name was Anthony, and we met at Melbourne University in the library. Anthony was only two years older than me, and was doing third-year medicine. His story was amazing. He had lost his pregnant wife in a car accident several years before. At that time, he’d been in full-time work, paying off a mortgage, and living in the suburbs. Now, five years later, he was a full-time student and doing very well, surviving financially by working as a security guard several nights a week.
The longer we talked, the more I could see why Bill wanted me to meet this man. He’d done year twelve as an adult, and had passed well enough to go to university and study medicine. He worked full time throughout the holidays and part time during the semester.
Then he said something that stayed etched in my memory.
‘You don’t have to be smart, Baz. Just be prepared to work hard. Keep that in mind, and you can do whatever studies you want.’
Those words really motivated me. It was time for me to make some big decisions of my own. I would remain in Melbourne, go back to high school, and attempt year twelve. There was no seeking of approval or counsel from my family or professionals. I just believed I had to give it a try. My application to the high school was successful, and I enrolled in maths, physics, and chemistry, English, and English literature. Only five subjects were required, but I thought English literature might improve my writing skills. If my workload became too difficult, I could drop the subject. I felt a new excitement. I purchased all the books I would need the next day. It was late November, and I was in full study-mode for 1969. I worked full time at Ted’s and gave him a good break.
Over the Christmas period, I went to southern New South Wales and learned how to surf. I bought a ‘dork’ board that was taller than me. I loved the surf, the isolation, and the sunrises. I slept in my army hoochie. Finally, I went home for a few days.
I can understand now why a lot of veterans went bush and became loners when they came home. We had little in common with people our age, and being alone took some of the pain of that awareness away. Inside my head and heart, I was lost. I felt bewildered and confused about my time in Vietnam. Because I’d been involved, it was just human nature to want to support the commitment, but I lacked any substantial argument to justify this. My memories of Vietnam were sad, confused, and hollow. But I couldn’t articulate this clearly without remembering faces and scenes that made me guilty if I did speak up against the war.
On returning to Melbourne, I took stock. My results from RMIT were good: one distinction; and the rest, high credits. My work and short holidays were over. My bank account was very healthy. I still had my job with Ted, and the pub job was still there. I could support myself. I was doing OK.
The first day at high school was a shocker. I was a year older, and these kids were up to two years younger than those at RMIT. Fortunately, there were two other blokes just a couple of years younger than me, both looking as miserable as I felt. We were put into classes, told what to bring, given a timetable, shown the ins and outs of the school, and sent home in the early afternoon. My ego may have been dinted when it came to my age, but my confidence was high. I had already read the English requirements during the break, and I’d realised that I’d never read a decent novel before now. I’d loved them. Maybe it wasn’t going to be so daunting.
The maths, physics, and chemistry books were a mystery, though — particularly chemistry. I had no idea what it was about. We’d done nothing like this at school before, or maybe I’d been too busy fooling around to take any notice. Now I was going to change all that.
My first class the next day was a double period of physics. After a bewildering first half, I decided it was now or never. I raised my hand.
‘Excuse me, what is physics?’
The class reaction was as if I’d cracked a bloody good yarn. The room exploded into laughter. It took the teacher a while to settle everyone down as my confidence took a rapid nose-dive. Then the teacher saved me. He turned to one of the smart arses laughing and said: ‘Will you explain it to Barry?’
There was a dead silence. The kid couldn’t explain the concept of physics any more than I could, not even the word derivation. I felt OK again. Not overjoyed; but with this class at least, perhaps we were all on the same level in some things.
By the end of the day, I had covered all the subjects except chemistry and literature. What the hell had I got myself into? I made pages and pages of notes, copying everything that was written down. After each class, I asked the teacher what book I could use to fill in the missing gaps in my knowledge and ability. They were great. Mind you, my enthusiasm set me apart from the others in the class. The teachers appreciated my eagerness. Then came what was almost the final deathblow — the slide rule. I had bought a good one, double sided, and tried to use it without having any idea how. In the end, I’d j
ust admired the precision in its engineering. We were asked to calculate sin, tan, cos, multiply, divide, and look up logs. The only log I’d ever looked up was as a kid, out rabbiting with the ferrets. I went home keen to study, but depressed.
For the first time, I went over the road to the fish-and-chip shop, and bought a big feed. I had promised myself I wouldn’t do that because I worried I would end up living on them. The bloke who owned the shop was Georgie the Greek — or at least that’s what he called himself.
‘G’day, metty. I see you liva across da road. You like fish n’ a chips?’
He chatted on easily. I could only guess what he was saying half of the time, so I smiled a lot. But when he asked what I did, he responded, ‘You a professor or sump ding?’
He looked disappointed when I told him I was doing year twelve.
‘You looka too old to go d’school,’ he said.
Georgie and his wife ran the shop from lunchtime until midnight every day. I warmed to them straight away.
The first term had flown, and now it was time for exams. I was very nervous. I had studied hard and spent long hours revising repeatedly, but nothing seemed to make much sense. My results reflected this confusion: for English, I got 22 per cent; literature, 20 per cent; maths I, 11 per cent; maths II, 14 per cent; chemistry, 9 per cent; and finally physics, 17 per cent.
Should I even bother going on? I knew within myself what I wanted; but, being human, I wanted someone to tell me it was OK. In the end, I solved the problem by studying during the entire break.
In second term, the subjects were starting to make more sense. Most nights I crammed until I was exhausted. Fatigue made me lose concentration, but if I stopped and had a break, sat quietly, and did nothing I would hear the TV in the next room or start to churn things over in my mind. So far, I had managed to put the anti-Vietnam rallies out of my mind by keeping as busy as possible. But, in the quiet of my room, my head would quickly fill with appalling, intrusive scenes. I couldn’t make sense of the powerful public perception that seemed to make us the scapegoats in the whole Vietnam issue. Whether going to or coming home from that country, soldiers had become the target of the protesters’ wrath. Wharfies and posties had joined the throng, stopping mail and supplies of beer. There appeared little support for the soldiers. It was as if we’d gone to that bloody war without permission. No one seemed prepared to take a strong stand and support us.
Witnessing this, I had started having nightmares again, for the first time since August the year before. The nightmares had one central theme: a boot. This had to do with an incident that happened in Vietnam. Strangely, I never saw the boot in real life, and wasn’t involved in the incident itself. But I recall vividly the effect it had on the 5RAR blokes who found it.
When I went with the advance party to Vietnam, one of my first experiences of horror happened when a platoon to which I was attached found an Australian army GP boot. It still had a foot inside. It was part of the remains of an appalling mine explosion that had occurred several days earlier. The last thing I guess these grunts expected to find was this boot. Their reaction was what stunned me. It haunted them. They stopped, refusing to move, and struggled to cope with the find. To date, I had only seen these grunts as hardened men, and I assumed there was a soft side as well. But here was this cast-iron exterior devoid of emotion; they said nothing. It was hard to follow their reactions. Did they know the owner? Or was it just that the find happened so quickly that it took them unawares? I didn’t understand. It was human behaviour the likes of which I had never seen before.
I didn’t realise that the scene would haunt me in years to come. In my nightmares, this grizzly boot appeared in the most bizarre places. I had it served to me as a meal. It sat on the dashboard of my car. It hung with the washing. These nightmares robbed me of precious sleep.
So, instead of sitting having a break during studies of an evening, I looked for and found a new direction. It was a distraction, a big one. I decided to design and then build a house. My parents had given me a block of land at Lake Tyers (a holiday resort in East Gippsland) as a Christmas present. The block was vacant and covered in light ti-tree and shrubs. I went up one weekend and cleared the block, measured it up, and thought about what type of house would suit the location. I hurled myself into local bylaws, building regulations, and construction regulations. I wanted to design my own house in the shape of an equilateral triangle, commonly known as an A-frame. Using the physics I had learned, I calculated the vector forces on the wall/roof, and then the timber size and placement. I had to allow for wind forces and weight in the figures. I studied bending moments, the radius of gyration, and the material science of timbers. I became totally absorbed. Within a month, I had designed the exterior frame, and calculated the timber and iron required, and rang the sawmill at home to cut them to size.
I’d planned the house, and worked to the point of exhaustion every day, but it made little difference to the nightmares. My new routine was steady: wake up, run, shower, eat; go to lectures; go home; help uncle Gordon deliver TV sets; have tea; and then study, take a break, work on the house plans, study, and go to bed. One night, my brother John broke this routine. He drove down from Kilmore to talk me into taking a day off and going for a drive. We went to Ballarat and walked around the city and its beautiful gardens for hours. It was like a health tonic. John had known exactly what I needed. After a nice meal and a few quiet drinks, we headed back to the city. He was special, my brother. This was the third time he had just arrived, taken over my life temporarily, and spoilt me. We never talked about Vietnam, studies, the new house, or heavy stuff. There was only one time that he tried to broach his concern.
‘You look like shit, Baz,’ he said. ‘You OK?’
‘I’m OK, mate,’ I answered. ‘Just a bit busy.’
He returned to Kilmore, and left me feeling good and in the best spirits I had been in for ages.
Then back to work, and another visitor. It was Knackers.
‘Arsehole. What’s your frig’n phone number?’
He was doing it tough. He’d bought the truck, but needed a bit more time to repay the money. He looked terrible, too. He said he was drinking, and cautiously hinted at having sleeping problems.
‘You’ll be right, mate,’ I told him.
‘Yeah, I know.’
We weren’t going to talk about it. We chatted for two hours, had a few beers, and he left. It had been great to see him.
Second-term exams came. This time I passed maths, was borderline in physics and chemistry, and got 42 per cent in English and 48 per cent in English Lit. I felt pleased with myself as I went home for the first week of the holidays to spend some time at the local timber-mill cutting the timbers for my A-frame house. Out in the bush, I split the grey-box stumps for the foundation. Then I returned to Melbourne feeling fit and promising myself to study physics and chemistry. I was going to pass year twelve. English was the only doubtful subject. If I just studied a bit longer and worked hard, I would make it.
With a week of my holidays remaining, I helped my uncle Gordon deliver the TV sets his shop sold. It was my first real foray into the local community, and it was an eye-opener for me. Most deliveries were to Greek families, who were wonderful, intriguing people. Once a new TV was delivered, the money, the paper work, and the instructions were usually negotiated by one of the kids, who’d ask my uncle questions on behalf of the parents. My uncle Gordon was a good man, very honest and obliging, and he got business on his reputation. The kid would solemnly count out the money carefully, hand it over, and then shake my uncle’s hand. There’d be smiles all round, coffee, wine, food, introductions, and then much fiddling and channel changing on the TV, and raucous laughter. It was good fun. They seemed such good people, the Greeks. They are very proud, loving, and talkative. A lot of places had two and three families under the one roof. They worked hard, collectively helped one another, and prospered. Yet still people badmouthed them. Growing up in the bush, I’d learned
that new Australians were Wogs, Ities, and Dings. You know, inferior types.
But now I knew Georgie the Greek, the fish-and-chip man. Slowly, over a few months, I quietly got to know him. He worked very long hours. His wife worked whenever the children didn’t need her, but they came first. Her English was poor; George’s was fair, but his reading skills were appalling. One Friday night, my fish-and-chip night, Georgie politely asked me to explain a bill he had received from an electrician. Between hand waving, pointing, and drawing, I determined that the electrician had done roughly a day’s work for Georgie, but had billed him for twenty-five hours. He’d added surcharges like visiting authorities to gain permission, health regulations, and a work guarantee. All up, the bill was equivalent to a week’s work for a seven-hour visit. After checking the electrician’s figures carefully, I asked Georgie if I could use his phone. The company backtracked, blamed the accounts department, and sent a new, more realistic bill.
No wonder the families were so cautious about the terms of sale on the TVs, and no wonder they were grateful to my uncle for being trustworthy. Over time, I handled over a dozen similar situations to Georgie’s of being exploited and ripped off. It was a Pandora’s box. Soon Georgie wanted me to look at things for his brother, uncle, cousin, and other members of his extended family, many of whom had suffered from the same dishonesty. I introduced Georgie’s brother to the copper I knew from work. I thought he would look after them, and he did.
I turned the calendar: it was August again. Panic set in. My first reaction was to ring Peg. Then I thought Knackers might welcome my company. But how could I tell Knackers I was frightened of a date on a calendar? I thought that he, like most vets, had simply got on with life. I had a problem, or the problem, or some problem. I assumed that nobody else did. Whatever it was, it wasn’t very reassuring. There were times when I felt like going bush, and turning into a recluse: now, that made sense to me. By now I never gave any indication to anyone of being a Vietnam veteran. The powers that be — either politicians or the RSL — never acknowledged or mentioned us. Hence what right did we have to expect to be invited to march on ANZAC Day, have reunions, or remember our own fallen?
