Hear the Train Blow

by Patsy Adam-Smith

  Rain came grudgingly here. Out on the sand where the construction navvies worked boys were employed to run water to the parched men when they called: a sort of Australian version of Gunga Din.

  At our railway house at the siding the contents of our two galvanised iron tanks were of such concern and the word ‘tank’ used so often that babies used the word at an early age. All through summer the clok-clok of knuckles rapping the rims of the tanks could be heard. Dad said that if ever we Smiths had a coat of arms it would be a closed fist raised to rap an iron tank. Everyone as they passed would rap the tanks to see how they were holding. As the dry months rolled by, lower and lower sank the rings that echoed hollowly until there were only a few at the bottom of the tanks that echoed with the weight of water. When we got to this stage we would apply to the Railways Department to send us up a tanker. At times we were down to the last rim before this arrived. Every drop other than for drinking purposes had to be agreed to by Mum. The tap was turned off so tightly that we children couldn’t move it, sometimes a padlock was placed on it, and always a tin dish was left on the ground beneath the tap to catch any errant drop that might fall. For ordinary daily ablutions we washed in the tin dish on the tank-stand made of sleepers. In summer we never threw this dish of water out after use in case someone else might want to wash in it. We used fresh water only to wash our faces. On Saturdays we all bathed in the tin bath in the wash-house, heating the water in the wood-fire copper and carrying it in a kerosene tin past the two wash-troughs to the bath. When our tanks were low we all used the same water, Mum first, then we two girls, then Dad. Even then the plug wasn’t pulled out. After it had cooled Dad carried the water round to the ‘hot-house’ under the tank-stand where Mum’s plants sulked in this arid air.

  But often we were too low in water for the luxury of a bath. Things were like this the day Mum shot at the camel.

  Far from shops, we were on the trade route of the Afghan-Indian hawkers, those turbaned traders who brought a colour and exotique along with the calico aprons, print dresses, cotton ‘bodies’, dungaree trousers and ‘stuff’ for dresses. This was the late 1920s and cars hadn’t yet come to the bush in numbers. A moving ball of dust on the horizon announced the coming of the ’Ghan in his horse-drawn wagon. Further out the hawkers used camels, but they only came to our place this once.

  Dad was away and Mum was alone. When she saw them coming, the turbaned hawker and his three camels, she knew intuitively what had driven him from his habitual route into strange territory. The drought was everywhere. The railways were so pressed by their commitments to their outback workers that their few tankers could hardly cope with the calls for water. We had waited four weeks. Further west in the wasteland near the South Australian border the position must be desperate.

  ‘Stay inside,’ Mum ordered Mick and me. ‘Lock the door when I go out.’ She took Dad’s rifle down from behind the door and loaded it.

  The hawker didn’t ask for water. He led his animals directly to the tank and put our wash dish under the tap. Inside the house, we girls pressed our faces to the window. Mum rested the rifle across the top of the empty tank. It was a low tank and she stood on the wooden sleepers on which it rested on the ground.

  ‘If you touch that tap,’ Mum said, ‘I’ll shoot your camel.’ She sighted along the barrel. I once saw her bring down a crow on the wing. The hawker didn’t know this. To him she was a gentle little woman with her protecting man far away.

  ‘My camels must drink, missus,’ he said, and turned the tap. As he did, Mum fired. There was the most awesome, reverberating explosion and the leading camel fell to the ground. The empty tank had magnified the sound many times and sent it ricocheting round and round the iron cylinder.

  ‘You shoot my camel!’ the man screamed.

  ‘I’ll shoot you if you don’t turn that tap off,’ she said, facing the Indian. He turned the tap off.

  ‘I didn’t shoot your camel. I fired in front of its nose. A good inch in front.’ She was right. The camel had fallen from fright. Weakness had prevented it from bolting. It now lay sulking on the ground, its nose-peg pulled taut by its mates, who desired the wide open spaces, but were held by the leather thongs passed through their nose-pegs.

  ‘I know your animals need water,’ Mum said. ‘But my children also need water. I will give you water for yourself and tell you where you can get some for your animals.’ To the west were Government bores spaced twenty miles or so apart. To the east only twelve miles away was Kulkyne bore.

  As they left, swaying slowly in a lumpy line over the plain, Mum stoked the kitchen fire and made herself a cup of tea. Then she began to laugh.

  ‘That jolly tank frightened me nearly as much as it did the camel! I had no idea it would do that. I nearly fell over backwards when it went bang!’

  Things were bad that year. One day I saw something strange out on the plain and called, ‘Mum, there’s something running all over the land.’ I thought it was little horses. It was emus, hundreds of them. As though smitten by some agitating disease the usually solitary birds were ranging in a herd. First they would veer one way, then, as a flock of budgerigars do in the air, they would turn and flee in another. The sun burnished their copper-coloured feathers as they ran one way, then as they ran another the sheen dulled. It was egg-laying time and they were looking for the long grasses and scrub patches in which to lay their huge, heavy eggs. During the next few days emu eggs were gathered from a wide area by rabbit-trappers and fettlers and sent down south in boxes. The blacks at Kulkyne ranged widely and brought in enough to keep the station homestead in eggs for the next six months. Mary Woollong, who later died holding the sad title of ‘the last of the Kulkyne tribe’, turned us from sampling them when she declared, ‘I bin eatem six emu egg this breakfast.’ Mum knew how to cook with emu eggs by diluting them with water, but she denies ever having used them. Many outback women feared the ridicule of sophisticates over their adaptation and use of natural foods and materials.

  Rabbits were easy to catch in the drought. Scratching in the barren, hard-baked earth for roots of grasses no longer growing they became reckless with hunger, and our big wolfhound would be in a quandary which one to grab. Sometimes she’d drop the one she had in her mouth to chase another.

  Rabbiting days were usually picnicking days, sometimes with the other fettler and his wife joining us. Mum’s food was always the best; Dad was always the most successful rabbiter whether he used traps, gun or dogs. I suppose other children thought the same of their parents, and I suppose we were all right.

  ON YOUR BLOCKS

  When the rains came they made up for the long dry spell in volume and spontaneity. Shortly before we left Nowingi we were caught in one of these downpours coming home from a sports meeting. Dad was a runner, footballer and axeman. He followed sports meetings around the bush in the way a city man might follow horseraces. This Saturday he had gone up to Carwarp on the goods train in the morning. Mum was to follow in the jinker with us two children after she had attended to the ‘down’ train.

  By the time we trotted into the paddock that had become a sports ground for the day, the Married Ladies’ Race was being announced.

  ‘Hold the reins,’ Mum told Mick, and she sprang to the ground. In a few minutes she was racing down the unmarked track, her shoes in one hand, the other holding her hat on her head. Sixteen women were in the race. The men came over from the wood-chopping arena to watch. We could hear Dad shouting, ‘Come on, Birdie! You little beauty!’ And Mum had won. Then she came back to the jinker, took up the reins and drove over to the post-and-rail enclosure where harness horses could be rested.

  ‘Put your hat straight,’ she reprimanded me. ‘Wherever will people think we’ve come from!’

  I was very small so I was placed up near the finishing line in the girls’ race. That day I laid the pattern I was to follow the rest of my life in such events. Running as I believed with the speed of an arrow I nevertheless watched every other girl in the
field pass me, with my sister Mickie’s long legs out in front of them all. Some day, I vowed as I wobbled in, last, holding my big hat down with both hands, some day I will win a race.

  The big event of the day was the final of the twelve-inch standing block. Dad was there in the arena, spitting on his hands and rubbing them together, gripping his axe handle, balancing it, chalk-marking his log on the places where he would put in strategic blows. There were ten finalists, all well-known axemen of the district. Some had heard the starter count to twenty in their heats before they could put their first blow in. Dad had seen one man get his ‘front’ in before his own number was called.

  Ganger Kelly was there, very much to the fore. He set the logs up on their blocks for the choppers. Now he was talking louder and more Irish than ever he did on weekdays (as Mum said, there wasn’t a booth out on the railway track).

  ‘Albert Smith,’ he claimed, ‘will have turned before half of them have got their first blow in.’ We were very proud as we waited on the outskirts of the crowd. Now the starter called for everyone except the choppers to stand away from the blocks.

  ‘Now you choppers listen to me. Face your timber. Listen for your count. If any of you jump the gun you’re out. All right! Step up to your blocks.’ One of the choppers began, at the last moment, to dig a foothold in the ground with the heel of his boot. ‘You should have thought of that before this, Jack,’ the starter called. ‘I’ve got my money on you and by God this isn’t good enough!’ In time Jack was settled ready so that the starter began again. ‘Step up to your wood. Steady. I’m going to begin counting, lads. One . . .’ The men looked uninterested, relaxed. ‘Two . . .’ A man swung his axe back and on the count of three dug it deep into the wood. ‘Four . . . five . . .’ And as each axeman heard his handicap called, he swung his axe and the blade bit a gash from the log. On droned the starter’s voice. ‘Six . . . seven . . . eight . . .’ and by then eight of the ten men were chopping. ‘Nine . . . ten . . . eleven . . . twelve . . . thirteen . . .’ Still he counted steadily on while Dad stood waiting to hear his handicap called, cool and unflustered among the volley of sounds from flailing axes and the shouting of the crowd. Slowly he stretched his arm away back and as the starter called ‘fifteen’ down flashed the blade. The one man left came in on the next count. Now the starter, freed to become a commentator, began describing the event, shouting to make himself heard over the babble of voices and the ringing of the axes. ‘And there goes Albert Smith and there goes Dave Harris. There they go! Just watch those boys chop! Champions the ten of them. May the best man win . . . and it better be you, Jack.’ Two of the lightly handicapped men had their ‘front’ in and had turned. Now Dad and the other man off scratch were cutting blow for deep blow. Dave Harris the sleeper-cutter from near the Murray River was first of the scratch-men to turn and Dad was hard on his heels. Kelly was getting more Irish every minute.

  ‘There’s me bhoy-o! Cuttin’ like the champeen he is an’ all. Give it to her, Albert! Hit loike an Irishman!’ Mick and I pushed our way to the front of the crowd. The chips were flying. Excited now, the other axemen squatting in the sawdust awaiting the next event were encouraging their mates. Some were calling Dad’s name, then more, until it seemed all the world we knew was shouting ‘Albert, Albert! Give it to her, Smithy!’ Near us squatted a solid man in a singlet with PLUMB AXE branded on it. Through his closed teeth he was rating the blows as they fell, SSSsssSSSsssSSSsss, a sibilant timing that increased evenly, always a little ahead of Dad’s blade, SSSsssSSSsssSSSsss, in a contrapuntal beat inciting the axe to pursue, overtake and join the rhythm. But the two wouldn’t meet until that mad music was ended – as we watched, the air full of sawdust, dust of the plains, chips and the roar of the tight-packed crowd, we saw Dad’s blade slope down almost vertically through the two wedge-shaped cuts on either side of his log and the top rolled slowly off and fell to the ground while the long-drawn-out sigh of the man with PLUMB AXE across his chest fell all the way with it.

  Mick and I were pushed aside. Kelly, drunk with pride and a little whisky, charged down through the choppers oblivious of slashing axes whirling round his head. Waving his high black hat over his head he plunged over to Dad and threw his big arms round him. ‘I’m proud of you, me bhoy. Have a drink!’ He pulled a whisky flask from his pocket, took a swig from it and replaced the bottle unthinkingly.

  Dad had won, among other things, a beautiful silver teapot; Mum’s prize for the Married Ladies’ Race was a silver salt, pepper and mustard set, and my sister had a cake dish. I had, as Dad said, ‘what Paddy shot at – nothing.’

  That night a cloudburst spilled down on us as we trotted home. Mum put Mick and me on the floor of the jinker and covered us with the ‘buggy rug’ we always carried. The poor horse, with the drive up in the heat and now the hurrying home because of the rain, broke down and could go no further. Dad had to climb down and lead him home, walking beside him for ten miles in the rain. Up in the jinker Mum held the rug down over us two. Soon we were asleep to the constant jog-jog-jog of the wheels below and the gentle swish of the weather around us. When we reached home Dad lifted us down. Mick and I were bone dry, but poor Mum was wet and cramped in pain from being bent over us so long, and Dad’s good navy blue suit was a soggy rag. Next day Mum washed and pressed it and Dad proclaimed that it was as good as new. As for the weather, it was forgotten. All we remembered was the great day we’d had at the sports.

  ‘We Smiths certainly scooped the pool!’ Dad crowed.

  ON THE WALLABY

  By the time I was five years old we began moving in earnest. For the rest of our childhood we were never in one place longer than two years. Often our stay was only for a few months.

  ‘We mightn’t have much money but we can have a lot of fun,’ Dad contended.

  Moving was fun. There was the packing, the arrival at the siding of the trucks that would take our goods, the preparation of cages for our chooks to travel in, coaxing the cow into the cattle truck, and Billy our white horse into the loose-box truck and lashing the jinker onto a flat-top, locking the white cockatoo into a cage where he protested non-stop at the indignity, getting the Major Mitchell cockatoo into a box so we could carry her with us – ‘Poor little Chew-Chew can’t travel alone’ – and then getting the dog to the guard’s van, where she lay with her head on her paws and moaned with loneliness until we released her at the end of the journey. Mum would be days getting ready. When we left Nowingi her great difficulty was to keep things clean as she packed them. As fast as she washed the glass of picture frames and the ‘good’ crockery the dust would swirl in and film it over again.

  She packed well. She was a great knick-knack collector and our lounge had up to seventy bits of knick-knackery on the mantelpiece, sideboard and wherever else it could be crowded. Thirty-five pictures in glass-fronted frames hung on the walls. Her great boast in later years was that on all her many moves she never broke one article.

  On the day we were to move from Nowingi the ganger and the fettlers came to help pack the furniture and boxes of small things on the railway trucks. Mick and I watched our chance, and when their backs were turned we pushed our own valuables in where they wouldn’t be noticed until the truck was unpacked at the other end – ‘spare’ dolls’ legs, bits of broken toys, wheels off old prams; almost everything Mum sent us to convey to the rubbish tip we managed to get unnoticed into the truck.

  Then the house was empty. We walked forlornly round the box-like rooms. Suddenly the adventure was spiritless, dead, undesired. We were leaving this place that had sheltered us. Of a sudden we were without a home, bereft of friends; these people we had known were already left vaguely behind us. We knew no one where we were going. The windows were bare and I could see out across the plains where the emus had run like little horses, and the tanks where the camels had come in to drink in the drought. Far up the Mallee the engine whistled to warn of its approach.

  ‘Well,’ said Kelly the ganger, ‘you haven’t left anyth
ing you value, have you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the usually undemonstrative Mum. ‘We are leaving a friend.’ The old man was embarrassed and took his hat off and turned it over in his hands. Mickie spoke up as only a child can.

  ‘Is that the same hat? Dad says it is.’

  ‘It is, Kathleen Mavourneen. I’ve never had another. It’s a good hat.’

  ‘It is a good hat,’ said Mum. ‘A shady hat.’ And we all went out to meet the train.

  Ours was a second-class pass, but we travelled like aristocrats because everyone knew we were railway people. Sometimes on the long journey down to Spencer Street, which was the end of the line for most country trains, the guard would sit with us in between stations, and everyone else in the carriage was an outsider as we talked of stations and lines and fettlers and Casey Joneses and told jokes about the ‘heads’. Once the engine-driver in his faded blue cloth cap and overalls with a sweat-rag round his neck came in to say good day to Dad while the engine was taking on water. There wasn’t a child on the train that didn’t envy us then. One little boy wearing Police and Firemen braces over his shirt stood at our door and gaped and didn’t move until the driver left.

  Swiftly we got to know Victoria. It seemed we chose all the places with the most outlandish names: Quambatook, Warragul, Drouin, Bunyip, Briagalong, Wingeel, Minyip.

  ‘Where are you going?’ friends would ask us. When we’d tell them they’d reply, ‘Never heard of it.’ We wouldn’t be surprised. We usually hadn’t heard of it either until Mum and Dad would see it in the Railway Gazette as COMING VACANT. Our Gazette was always well handled. In these circulars were advertised transfers as well as vacancies for fettlers, station-masters and station-mistresses, gangers, etc. What we looked for were those which advertised for fettler and wife, the woman to be caretaker at the station. Mum had passed the necessary examinations for this position. When they saw a place advertised the school atlas was brought out and we’d try to run it to earth. More often than not the town itself would not be marked, being, as Dad described such towns, ‘a one-horse outfit’, but some large town nearby would give a rough clue as to its whereabouts.