Illywhacker (6 page)

“Cahstle,” he roared at me, “not kehstle.” He did not like my accent. He did not, I think, like much about me. My brothers were older and they got on with him better. They were useful to him in his business and I was too young to do any more than feed the animals and jump down to apply the brake on hills.

His business was to represent the English firm of Newby whose prime product was the Newby Patented 18 lb. Cannon, and with this machine in tow we covered the rutted, rattling, dusty pot-holed roads of coastal Victoria, six big Walers in front, the cannon at the rear, and that unsprung cart they called a “limber” in the middle.

Always we were in a hurry. There was never a time when we might stop at a pretty spot, or a morning when we could lie late in bed. Always there was some group of squatters who had got
themselves together or—and this must be what really happened–who my father thought could be persuaded to get together to buy a cannon to protect themselves from Russians or Chinese or shearers.

He was a man who saw threat everywhere—thin but very strong, pale-skinned, blue-eyed, black-bearded and as cold to his children as he was charming to his customers. I have seen him at table with fat mayors and muscle-gutted squatters, laughing, telling jokes, playing them as sweetly as if they were his own violin, warming them up, getting their pores wide open before he hit them with the icy blast of fear that was his specialty.

It was from my father that I learned about the Chinese and he painted pictures of such depravity that when I met my first Chinaman I expected him to kill me.

God knows what I learned from my mother. I did not have her for long. I cannot tell you what she looked like, although, of course, I thought her pretty. I can remember sitting beside her on the limber—she is nothing more than a shape, but warm and soft, quite different to my two brothers and father who rode postilion on those huge Walers—they were as hard as the iron leg guards they wore on their right legs.

My father dispensed with my mother when I was still very young and I always assumed that he sent her away, but it is more likely that she died. Only two things are certain. The first is that he would not discuss it. The second is that I blamed him. I was left alone on the bench seat with only the rounds of ammunition to keep me company. The limber was unsprung and iron-wheeled. They steered a course over logs and pot-holes just to jar me. And although I saw a lot of country it was not much of a childhood, moving as we did through threatening visions of Russians, Lascars, Jews, Asiatics, Niggers and other threats to our safety.

My father was always very mean with his ammunition, and it was because of this that we finally parted. There was never a group of men, or an individual man, who did not like to see the cannon fired and there was nothing guaranteed to get him into a fury more than firing off a salvo for someone who did not buy a machine. He never showed his anger to the men who caused it (“A sale,” he said, “is never lost, only temporarily postponed”) but only to his family and we soon learned what to expect.

My brothers seemed to accept their beatings but then they spent their day on horseback and shared their task, their understanding of life, with my father, while I sat alone on the
limber with my thoughts which were only interrupted by my father hollering “brake”. There was such weight in that cannon that the brake must be applied at the top of hills, and I was meant to know without being told, to jump down off the moving limber and turn the big wheel at the back of the cannon; this applied wooden blocks directly to the cannon wheels and, making a God Almighty scream, prevented disaster on steep hills.

My father did not normally beat me badly, but there was an incident during the shearers’ strike that resulted in a bloody beating. It was his fault, not mine. He got carried away with some wool cockies in Terang, and although I was only ten years old at the time, I could see that he wouldn’t get the sale. These were fellows who wanted some fireworks, but my father missed the signs. He drew them pictures of mad-eyed shearers coming down to rape their wives and burn down their sheds. He let off ten shells and demolished a stand of iron-barks, leaving nothing but bleeding sap and torn splinters as soft as flesh. When it was over I could see the look on the men’s faces—you see the same look outside brothels as they put on their hats and hurry away—a flaccid, shamed, satiated look.

These squatters told my father: “We’ll think about it.”

Well, he was nice as pie to them, but I felt the skin around my little testicles go hard and leathery and I sweated around my bum-hole and I will not describe for you the beating he gave me on account of this, but rather paint you the picture of my revenge, for it is this that I count as the day of my birth, just as it is from 1919, from the day I landed at Balliang East, that I count the days of my adult life.

My revenge did not take place immediately, but I did have an idea. I imagined, as I sat alone on the limber with my bruises, that I lacked the courage to carry it out. But the idea would not go away. It grew inside me. At night it comforted me. Soaked to the skin on the road to Melbourne—we were covering about twenty miles a day—the idea made me smile, but I remained dutiful, applying the brake and letting it off as required.

In Melbourne he had some work for a Grand Tattoo. He was paid for releasing showy blasts above the river Yarra; I don’t know the occasion.

But on the 15th June 1895—when the squatters had defeated the shearers without the use of cannon—we came down the Punt Road hill towards the Yarra as part of a procession. My father had a uniform on, and my two brothers were also dressed up with
leggings and hats like officers. My father had promised me a uniform too, but at the last moment he decided it wasn’t worth the money.

I did not honestly think I had the courage, but courage is a funny thing.

“Brake!” called my father. “Brake!”

Well, I jumped out. He turned and saw me. Have you ever seen the Punt Road hill where it comes down past Domain Street towards the Yarra? By God, it’s steep. Well, I put the brake on at the top. The blocks of wood screamed against the steel, but as we came down the hill, I did it. It was such a well—oiled wheel. It moved so swiftly, so easily. Even a boy of ten could make it come whizzing back.

I had not planned to destroy whatever home I had and it only occurred to me in that moment, that moment when I had released the brake, when the screaming wheel suddenly went free and silent, that instant before the other screaming began, it only occurred to me then as my father’s eyes, panicked by the sudden silence, found mine, it only occurred to me then, as I said, that I now had no home. Yet the only thing I regretted afterwards was the damage to the horses. They were gentle creatures. I meant them no harm.

“Poor little fellow,” said drunk and sentimental Jack, releasing a tear or two which he smeared across his furry cheek. “Poor little chap.”

Thus encouraged I could not stop. I spewed out the rest of my story, which is not as harsh as it might sound today. In the Great Depression of the 1890s there were plenty of street urchins and plenty who did it harder than I did, plenty more who worked in factories where the air was so foul it would make your stomach turn just to stand in the doorway.

I do not believe in luck. It was not luck that I was adopted by a Chinaman. I was adopted by a Chinaman because I chose to be. I did it, you might say, to spite my father. I did it because I liked his gravelly voice, because I saw him pat a little Chinese boy on the head, and pet him, and give him something to eat. (This was Goon Tse Ying and there is a whole story concerning him that I will come to later.)

Now if Jack McGrath had been a shrewd man he would have seen the pattern of my life already, i.e., there I was at ten years old telling lies, saying my father was dead, getting myself put up, and giving value to the Chinese by working in the market. But Jack did
not see it. He was full of pity for the little boy who had to be adopted by filthy old John Chinaman and this common prejudice kept him from thinking about anything else. He stood up and stamped his stockinged feet on the ballroom floor. He dug his big hand deep in his pocket.

“Here’s a pound,” he said.

I went to bed at four o’clock in the morning, but I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned, not in misery, but with the sort of uncontrolled excitement of a man who knows he is, at last, where he should be.

I was up at six and strolling in the garden. I wasn’t tired at all. I breathed deep and smelled the salt and seaweed from Corio Bay. I had that loose-muscled feeling of a man on holiday. I strolled across to the beach with my hands deep in my pockets. The peculiar shell-grit sand of Western Beach crunched beneath my brand-new patent leather shoes. The
Casino
, a steamer carrying wool from the Western District, rode at anchor in the bay. The
Blackheath
with ninety thousand bags of wheat was berthed at the Yarra Street pier. The big wool stores rose high above the bandstands, bathing boxes and steep manicured lawns.

Geelong, that clear fresh morning, struck me as a town of wealth and sophistication, a lush green oasis, a natural compensation for the endless plain of wool and wheat behind it. It would be a city of parks, gardens, grand public buildings and elegant private ones.

I did not intend to laze around, bludging on my new friends. I had work to do, making certain unstable parts of my story become strong and clear.

There was, for instance, the snake, about which I had made certain claims. I did not intend to shirk my obligation to care for the snake, although if I could have seen what this would lead to (all this industry on behalf of a casual lie) I would have shipped it off to Mr Chin on the first train.

I strolled along the beach in the direction of that wide-verandaed weatherboard building which in those days housed the Corio Bay Sailing Club. In front of the Sailing Club there was an old man shovelling shell-grit into a hessian bag. I did not need to be told why he was doing it: the shell-grit from Corio Bay
was, and still is, particularly beneficial to hens-it gives an eggshell substance.

I wasn’t normally one for idle chat, but I liked all the world on that morning, and I stopped for a yarn.

“Grit for the chooks?” I said.

“That’s right.”

“Laying well, are they?”

“Not bad.”

The old man did not seem inclined to talk, but I wasn’t offended. It was peaceful standing there with my hands in my pockets watching him work.

“Would you happen to know,” I asked after a while, “a good spot for frogs?” The frogs, of course, were for the snake.

He was a little man, dried up like a walnut. His freckled skin hung on his arms, like the skin on a roast chicken wing.

“Yes,” he said, “I know a good place for frogs.”

“Where’s that?”

He was an old man used to being granted his due of respect and patience. He drove his spade into the sand with a grunt.

“France,” he said.

I could imagine the old bugger sitting at the head of a table and calling his fifty-year-old son “the boy”. He was far too content with himself for my liking.

“You should be on the wireless,” I said, “telling jokes like that.”

“You reckon, do you?” he said, and he made a slow study of me. He did not rush over any of the details. He observed, as I had not, that the trousers of the new suit were an inch too short and the jacket was a fraction too tight. “That’s what you reckon, do you?”

“Yes, I reckon,” I said. “I reckon you’re a bit of a wit.”

He wasn’t frightened. He knew he was too old to be hit. “What do you want the frogs for?”

“I’ll pay sixpence a frog. I’ll be wanting two frogs every day.” This scheme was not what I’d intended, but now I wanted to force him to do something for me.

“You don’t say,” he said without a sign of interest. He went back to his spade and shell-grit.

“That’s a shilling a day, seven shillings a week. It’s good money.”

“Who’d pay money for a frog?” His eyes were half clouded with cataracts but his scorn glowed through them.

“Do you want the seven bloody shillings or not?” I said.

“No,” the old man said with great satisfaction. “I don’t.” He picked up the sack of shell-grit and hoisted it on to his shoulder. I watched him trudge down the beach—a sack-carrying burglar who had stolen my sense of well-being.

I was always up and down in my moods and now I looked around the bay with a jaundiced eye. I saw a broken lemonade bottle in the sand. I began to suspect that Geelong might have the capacity to let me down, to be one more malicious, small-minded provincial city with no vision, no drive, no desire to do anything but send young men off to fight for the British and buy T Model Fords. However, the rest of that December Monday restored my faith in the city which, although it was not quite as grand as my vision of the morning, was still more than receptive to Herbert Badgery, Aviator.

I have had a long and wearing relationship with Henry Ford and it was only weakness that brought me back to him. The first thing I did in Geelong was introduce myself to McGregor, the Ford agent. I showed him my newspaper clippings and he was happy enough to engage me as a commission agent at five pounds a car. So when I arrived at the
Geelong Advertiser
I was able to park outside their window in a brand-new T model. I put my book of newspaper clippings under my arm and went to see the editor.

The suit I was wearing had previously belonged to Mr Harold Oster, and the Osters being the Osters I made no secret of the fact. So although Harold Oster’s arse was built too close to the footpath and although his arms were an inch too short, I made no secret of the fact. I even ventured, as few in Geelong would have done, a few jokes at Mr Oster’s expense. My familiarity with the Osters served as a better introduction to Geelong than any suit I could have had tailor-made in Little Collins Street.

My clothes, I told the editor, were at present in transit to Ballarat where I had been on my way to investigate the establishment of a new aircraft factory. Now, forced to spend the time in Geelong while the craft underwent repairs, I was keen to conduct discussions with local business men. I had already, I was pleased to inform the editor, found a degree of intelligence and enthusiasm in regard to the idea which was quite extraordinary. I would not let myself be drawn on the possibility of switching the site from Ballarat to Geelong but the editor found
himself bold enough to run the following headline which my host, bright red with pleasure, read to me at breakfast: “
AVIATOR’S MISHAP MAY BRING NEW INDUSTRY TO GEELONG.”