by Graham Seal
In the late 1880s the bookseller James Tyrrell wrote what may have been the first published account of the legend, recalling that in his boyhood he’d heard Camperdown Lodge was haunted, though it was not until some years later that he heard about its jilted inhabitant.
In my day in Newtown the cemetery was still in use, but it was already a ghostly old graveyard . . . The visitor to the cemetery [today] may see the graves of Judge James Donnithorne and his last surviving daughter, Eliza Emily, who is shown as having died in 1886. In my day the Donnithorne residence, Cambridge Hall [as the house was subsequently renamed], in what is now King Street, came under the wide designation of ‘haunted’, and I was still young enough to keep to the other side of the road in passing it, especially at night. Still, I would glance fearfully over to its front door, which, by night or day, was always partly open, though fastened with a chain.
Eliza Donnithorne’s will included a bequest to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and ‘an annuity of £5 for each of my six animals and £5 for all my birds’. She was buried in St Stephen’s churchyard and her grave is now a popular tourist destination, the story of her unhappy life and its literary associations, true or not, attracting many visitors.
It is likely that this story is a case of retrospective myth making and that Eliza Donnithorne was not the prototype for Dickens’ Miss Havisham. Instead, his story enveloped the Australian tale and partly fused with it. Certainly, although he transported Magwitch to Australia, there is no evidence that Dickens kept up with everyday events in colonial Sydney while he was writing Great Expectations.
Long Jack
Another Jack came into legend on the Western Front in World War I. He was said to have been a member of the 3rd Battalion AIF and to have stood out because of a chronic stutter and the speed with which he responded to any perceived slight. Long Jack’s exploits were recorded by an anonymous contributor to the Third Battalion Magazine some time around 1917:
There are certain characters, which pass through our Battalion life, which are more than worth perpetuating. Such a one was long Jack Dean. In regard to his figure he was an outsider, as he was 6½ feet tall and as slender as a whippet. As a wit he stood alone. A man needed more than ordinary morale to meet him on this ground, and many who purposely or inadvertently engaged him have cause to be sorry for themselves, but glad that they were a party to adding another witty victory to Jack’s account. The quickness and smartness of his retorts took the sting from them, and there was no more popular man in the unit than he. This sketch aims at reproducing some stories which came from him, and through which the man himself may be seen.
At the outbreak of war, or soon afterwards, he presented himself before the Recruiting Officers, but his physique was against him. His keenness, however, was proof against his setback, and he came again and again, only to meet with the same result. At last, he asked with his inimitable stutter; ‘If you c-c-can’t t-take me as a s-s-soldier—s-s-send me-me as a m-m-mascot!’
The Recruiting Officer had become used to his applications, and, recognising the keenness of the man he was dealing with, answered: ‘I’ll tell you what I shall do. Bring me twelve receipts, and I shall accept you.’ ‘Done!’ said Jack. ‘It’s a bargain.’ He turned up with seventeen fit men and was taken on strength. One can imagine him taking his place among the other recruits at the training depot. His ‘length without breadth’ immediately singled him out as a butt [of jokes] and one misguided youth was foolish enough to say as he passed him: ‘Smell the gum-leaves.’ ‘Yes,’ said Jack, ‘feel the branches.’ And his long, wiry right shot out with good effect.
He must have been the despair of all that tried to make a smart soldier out of him. Working on the coalface does not keep a long man supple; but in due time he arrived in France, and joined the Battalion—just in time to face the second time ‘in’ on the Somme. He quickly made himself at home, and in a very short time was known to everybody in the Battalion. It is said that Colonel Howell Price asked him if he had any brothers. ‘Y-yes, sir,’ he answered: ‘one—he’s t-t-taller than me, b-but n-not n-n-nearly so well developed.’
Being thin made him appear taller than he actually was, and his height was always the point in question to those who were not used to it. A Tommy saw him ambling along the road very much the worse for wear as a result of a tour in the line and in the mud. ‘Reach me down a star, choom,’ said the Tommy. ‘Take your pick out of these, sonny,’ was Jack’s answer, together with a very forceful uppercut to the chin. Our late Brigadier never failed to talk to Jack when he met him.
‘Good-day, Jack,’ was his invariable greeting. ‘G-g-g-good day, Brig.,’ was always Jack’s reply, and it never failed to amuse Brigadier Leslie.
There is one other story which illustrates J.D.’ s democratic soul. The Brigadier stopped to have a word with him, and remarked that he wasn’t getting any fatter. ‘How the hell can a man get fat on 8 [men] to a loaf?’ was the response.
Jack’s feet were always his worst enemy, and they were the cause of him falling to the rear on one occasion, during a rather stiff route march. He was getting along as best he could when he came up with the Brigadier. ‘What Jack! You out!’ said the latter. ‘Me blanky p-p-p-paddles h-have gone on me, Brig,’ replied Jack.
It is only possible to write this sketch because the subject is no longer with us. We hope he is now on his way to Australia, as he has done his bit well, and had come to that stage when he could not effectively carry on. While waiting for the Board which was to examine and determine his future, one of the Sisters, like all who saw him for the first time, said; ‘What a lot of disadvantages there must be for such a tall man.’ ‘Yes,’ said Jack. ‘The greatest trouble I have is with the rum issue; it dries up before it hits my stomach.’
Jack will remain in our memories and we are grateful to him for these and many other sayings of his which have amused us at all times when we needed the lift of genuine amusement.
The world’s greatest whinger
Sometimes said to be as old as the Boer War, this elaborate anecdote probably dates only from World War II. This is one of many versions that have appeared in print:
I struck him first on a shearing station in outback Queensland. He was knocking the fleeces from a four-year-old wether when I asked him the innocent question: ‘How are you?’
He didn’t answer immediately, but waited till he had carved the last bit of wool from the sheep, allowing it to regain its feet, kicking it through the door, dropping the shears and spitting a stream of what looked like molten metal about three yards. Then he fixed me with a pair of malevolent eyes in which the fires of a deep hatred seemed to burn, and he pierced me with them as he said:
‘How would I be? How would you bloody well expect me to be? Get a load of me, will you? Dags on every inch of me bloody hide; drinking me own bloody sweat; swallowing dirt with every breath I breathe; shearing sheep which should have been dogs’ meat years ago; working for the lousiest bastard in Australia; and frightened to leave because the old woman has got some bloody hound looking for me with a bloody maintenance order.
‘How would I be? I haven’t tasted a beer for weeks, and the last glass I had was knocked over by some clumsy bastard before I’d finished it.’
The next time I saw him was in Sydney. He had just joined the A.I.F. He was trying to get into a set of webbing and almost ruptured himself in the process. I said to him: ‘How would you be, Dig?’
He almost choked before replying. ‘How would I be? How would I bloody well be? Take a gander at me, will you? Get a load of this bloody outfit—look at me bloody hat, size nine and a half and I take six and a half. Get a bloody eyeful of these strides! Why, you could hide a bloody brewery horse in the seat of them and still have room for me! Get on this shirt—just get on the bloody thing, will you? Get on these bloody boots; why, there’s enough leather in the bastard to make a full set of har
ness. And some know-all bastard told me this was a men’s outfit!
‘How would I be? How would I bloody well be?’
I saw him next in Tobruk. He was seated on an upturned box, tin hat over one eye, cigarette butt hanging from his bottom lip, rifle leaning against one knee, and he was engaged in trying to clean his nails with the tip of his bayonet. I should have known better, but I asked him: ‘How would you be, Dig?’
He swallowed the butt and fixed me with a really mad look. ‘How would I be? How would I bloody well be! How would you expect me to be? Six months in this bloody place; being shot at by every Fritz in Africa; eating bloody sand with every meal; flies in me hair and eyes; frightened to sleep a bloody wink expecting to die in this bloody place; and copping the bloody crow whenever there’s a handout by anybody.
‘How would I be? How would I bloody well be?!’
The last time I saw him was in Paradise, and his answer to my question was: ‘How would I be? How would I bloody well be! Get an eyeful of this bloody nightgown, will you? A man trips over the bloody thing fifty times a day, and it takes a man ten minutes to lift the bloody thing when he wants to scratch his shin! Get a gander at this bloody right wing—feathers missing everywhere. A man must be bloody well moulting! Get an eyeful of this bloody halo! Only me bloody ears keep the rotten thing on me skull—and look at the bloody dents on the bloody thing!
‘How would I be? Cast your eyes on this bloody harp. Five bloody strings missing, and there’s a band practice in five minutes!
‘How would I be? you ask. How would you expect a bloody man to bloody well be?’
TALES ABOUT CO-WORKERS and work-related events are told in most industries, trades and professions—though they seldom travel far beyond them. In-group references and jargon can make such stories all but incomprehensible to outsiders. But many contain enough of the common stuff of working life to be told, or adapted for telling, in practically any workplace—as in the yarn about the boss who scolds an employee for failing to clean up. ‘The dust on that table is so thick I could write my name in it,’ he says. ‘Yes,’ says the worker, ‘but then, you’re an educated man.’
Most tales of working life are humorous, though they often have a point to make about conditions, management or other aspects of the working day. They provide a way to carp and laugh at the same time—a release valve for tensions that might otherwise cause conflict.
Crooked Mick and the Speewah
Crooked Mick is the legendary occupational hero of Australian shearers and other outback workers. He can shear more sheep, fell more trees, and do anything better and faster than anyone else. Julian Stuart, one of the leaders of the 1891 shearers’ strike in Queensland, made the earliest known printed reference to Crooked Mick in The Australian Worker during the 1920s:
I first heard of him on the Barcoo in 1889. We were shearing at Northampton Downs, and we musterers brought in a rosy-gaged disrobing about 150cheeked young English Johnny who, in riding from Jericho, the nearest railway station to Blackall, where he was going to edit the new paper, had got lost and found himself at the station, where we were busily en,000 jumbucks.
He was treated with the hospitality of the sheds, which is traditional, and after tea we gathered in the hut—dining room and sleeping accommodation all in one in those days—and proceeded to entertain him.
Whistling Dick played ‘The British Grenadiers’ on his tin whistle; Bungeye Blake sang ‘Little Dog Ben’; Piebald Moore and Cabbagetree Capstick told a common lie or two, but when Dusty Bob got the flute I sat up on my bunk and listened, for I knew him to be the most fluent liar that ever crossed the Darling.
His anecdotes about Crooked Mick began and ended nowhere, and made C.M. appear a superman—with feet so big that he had to go outside to turn around.
It took a large-sized bullock’s hide to make him a pair of moccasins.
He was a heavy smoker. It took one ‘loppy’ (rouseabout) all his time cutting tobacco and filling his pipe.
He worked at such a clip that his shears ran hot, and sometimes he had a half a dozen pairs in the water pot to cool.
He had his fads, and would not shear in sheds that faced north. When at his top, it took three pressers to handle the wool from his blades, and they had to work overtime to keep the bins clear.
He ate two merino sheep each meal—that is, if they were small merinos—but only one and a half when the ration sheep were Leicester crossbred wethers.
His main tally was generally cut on the breakfast run. Anyone who tried to follow him usually spent the balance of the day in the hut.
Between sheds he did fencing. When cutting brigalow posts he used an axe in each hand to save time, and when digging post holes a crowbar in one hand and a shovel in the other.
This depiction gives a good idea of the context in which Crooked Mick tales were told and of the (equally legendary) ability of the liar Dusty Bob to string otherwise unconnected fictions into a crude but engaging narrative, a talent not uncommon among real-life bush yarn spinners.
How did Mick come to be called Crooked? As Mick tells it (and there are other versions, of course), he was ploughing one very hot day, and it got so hot that the fence-wire melted. When he took the horses to have a drink, he put one leg in the water bucket. The leg was nearly molten, and when he lifted his other leg, putting his weight on the one in the water, it buckled. It’s been that way ever since, which is why Mick walks with a slight limp.
In later life, Mick’s escapades included trying to stone the crows by throwing Ayers Rock (Uluru) at them, harnessing willy willies to improve the flow of a water windmill and becoming the ringer of the Speewah shed. Here he set an unbeaten record of 1,847 wethers and twelve lambs, all shorn in just one day using hand blades.
The Speewah is an outback never-never land where everything is gigantic: the pumpkins so big they can be used as houses, the trees so tall they have to be hinged to let in the sunlight, and the sheep so large they can’t be shorn without climbing a ladder. Many wondrous sights can be witnessed on the Speewah, which is located where the crows fly backwards. The Speewah is so hot in summer that its freezing point is set at 99°F. It is so cold in the winter that the mirages freeze solid and the grasshoppers grow fur coats. Droughts are not over until the people of the Speewah are able to have water in their tea.
The creatures of the Speewah form a weird menagerie that includes the small ker-ker bird, so named from its habit of flying across the Speewah in summer crying ‘ker-ker-kripes, it’s hot!’ Then there is the oozlum bird, which flies tail first in ever-decreasing circles until, moaning, it disappears inside itself head first. Hoop snakes and giant mosquitoes are commonplace on the Speewah, as are giant emus, wombats, crocodiles and boars. The roos are so big they make the emus look like canaries, and the rabbits so thick, large and cunning that Mick had to go off to the war to save himself.
Mick is only one of the Speewah’s larger-than-life characters. These include Prickly Pear Pollie, so plain that a cocky farmer hires her as a scarecrow. She’s so good at scaring the birds that they start returning the corn they stole two seasons ago. Another is Old Harry, the building worker with one wooden leg. One night he came home and his wife noticed that he only had one leg left. Harry looked down and was amazed to discover she was right. He had no idea how he’d lost it, hadn’t even noticed it was gone. Irish Paddy is so good at digging post-holes that he wears his crowbar down to the size of a darning needle. There was Bungeye Bill, the gambler, and Greasy George, the third assistant shearer’s cook, who is so greasy that people’s eyes slide right off him as they look.
The Speewah shearing shed itself is so large it takes two men and a boy standing on each other’s shoulders to see the whole of it, and the boss takes a day or more to ride its length on horseback. Traditions of outsize shearing sheds and stations featuring men of the stamp of Crooked Mick are also found under names like
Big Burrawong and Big Burramugga (Western Australia), suggesting that the tales of Mick’s doings and those of the mythic stations may have been independent.
Crooked Mick tales have been recounted to many folklorists, but collections of shearer anecdotes made in the past fifty years make no reference to them, suggesting that Crooked Mick may be having a tough time surviving change, despite his prowess.
Crooked Mick has an affinity with other folk heroes of labour. The American lumber worker folk hero, Paul Bunyan, is a superman who performs prodigious deeds of strength and occupational skill. Working conditions on the frontiers of the New World produced many such fabulous figures, including the American cowboy known as Pecos Bill. Seamen in the days of sail also had a similar unnaturally strong and bold figure known as ‘Stormalong John’, or just ‘Old Stormy’, who sailed giant ships blown so fiercely onto the Isthmus of Panama that it cleaved out the Panama Canal.
In some Speewah stories Crooked Mick is the cook and is said to have made pastry so light that it floated into the air when the wind blew. These skills link him with another stock character of bush and, later, digger lore.
Bush cooks were the subject of many humorous anecdotes and yarns especially the shearer’s cook, also known as a ‘babbling brook’, or just a ‘babbler’, in rhyming slang. Many well-worn bush cook yarns have been collected from around the country. This is probably the most popular:
As the tale usually goes, the shearers or other station workers are fed a monotonous diet of something indigestible for a number of weeks. At first they bring the matter to the attention of the cook, who either refuses to change his menu or, as in the version given by Bill Wannan, claims he is unable to make the custard requested by the shearers because ‘there ain’t a pound of dripping in the place’. The shearers then begin to abuse the cook on a constant basis until he complains to the boss about the bad language. Fed up with all the irritation, the boss finally calls the shearers together and demands to know ‘Who called the cook a bastard?’ Quick as a flash came the gun shearer’s reply: ‘Who called the bastard a cook?’
