Ten Pound Pom (5 page)

The boy loves Coochie Mudloe island. He misses it when he’s not on it. He has his photograph taken sitting on the beached treetrunk, big and warty and gnarly chunk of
near-petrified
wood, and when he looks at this image in later life he will recall the sharp tang of the sea and the crash of waves into his body and the happiness and promise of the island, all salty and sunbaked and secret, the constant joy of discovery.

I’m excited, again. I can see Coochie Mudloe getting closer to me, over the waves. Magical land, again, over the blue sea. A leaflet on the boat tells me that the island’s name means ‘red earth’ in the local aboriginal dialect; it was from there that the
aborigines got the clay with which to paint their bodies during their mystical rituals, the equivalent of the Native American ghost-dance. There’s me, Tony, Chris, and Nickie. I feel that pleasant thrill in my chest that I get whenever I travel over water; I’ve had that feeling since I was a child, and it’s never left me. I’ve had that feeling for as long as I can remember.

On the beach, we watch a fish eagle circle high over the breakers. Nickie, a wildife photographer, gets her camera out and snaps away. The bird soars, pivots on a wingtip, turns and circles, its eyes remaining locked to the water, spiralling down lower until it snaps into a dive and snatches its talons in the water and rises clutching a silvery-wriggling, violin-shaped fish. I am amazed. I’m breathless.

I love this island. It’s remained with me for thirty years. The wooden huts on the beaches are no more, replaced by tables under a free-standing roof. We ask a man basking in his garden what happened to them and he tells us they were burnt down, ‘set alight by Briddish soccer hooligans’. We talk to him about the island, about holiday-house rents. He tells us that the water supply comes all the way from the Blackall Mountains, ‘best warda you’ll ever taste’, and he holds up an empty glass which his wife wordlessly takes into the house and comes back out carrying a tray with several glasses of water on it. The average Aussie male needs reconstructing, but the water is wonderful; ice-cold and clean and clear and it makes my head feel full of mint.

The noise of a hairdryer comes up from the dusty street. A full-grown man putters past on a motorcycle the size of a child’s trike, his knees up to his ears. Chris, all six foot eight of him, watches him pass with a slow turning of his head. The confusion of scale here is brilliant. I laugh a lot. An old and
chunky dog befriends us on the beach, follows us everywhere. I don’t recall much of this island – what I remember most vividly are the beach-huts, and they’re gone – but I love being on it, nevertheless. But then we return to the jetty and instead of turning left we turn right towards the Melaleuca Wetlands and it all comes back; the trees flanking and striping the dusty track, the sunken wooden steps down to the beach and the rocks and pools at the tideline and the small waves and, yes, the large piece of driftwood, the tree-trunk, still there, exactly the same, just a bit whiter with the sun and the salt. The me of thirty years ago, he’s everywhere here. I sit next to him on the tree-trunk, I overturn rocks with him and marvel at the scuttling life we reveal. I walk with him along the beach and we throw sticks for the old and friendly dog. I see a bar in the trees with tables outside and I want to take the young me over there and buy him a Coke and myself a beer and tell him what’s going to come, what heartbreaks and wonders and joys and pains to expect. I want to talk with him and be with him but I see the ferry coming in. Fuck it. Don’t want to go back to the mainland, even if it will be my last night in Queensland. Want to stay here, with me.

BETWEEN

The boy’s father is making alterations to the family car, a big, spacious, white Holden station wagon. The boy watches. His dad drills holes in the car’s superstructure, just above the windows, and threads curtain-runners through them then clambers into the car and attaches curtains to the runners. He carefully cuts a large foam mattress to shape, lowers the back seats down, and slides the mattress in. Straps cases to the roof, full of clothes and utensils and personal effects. Stores food and medicines in the car. The effective space-management makes an impression on the boy.

–Is it a long way, Dad?

–A
very
long way. Miles and miles and miles. Across mountains and a great big desert.

–How long will it take us?

–About ten years.

–Honest?

–I’m messing. About ten days.

The car has become a little house that can move. The tailgate is up and the boy can see inside and it looks cosy and secretive and snug with the mattress and the blankets and the toys. He’s excited, the boy, excited about the adventure ahead and the fact that he’s leaving Brisbane. He’s grown to dislike Brisbane. Wants to leave it behind. Maybe Perth will be better. And maybe on the journey between the two cities there’ll be kangaroos and koalas and fun and excitement.

–Can we go to Currumbin before we go, Dad?

–Haven’t got time, son. We’re leaving tomorrow.

–Can we go on the way?

–We’ll see.

–I like Currumbin.

–I know you do. We’ll see.

It’s still dark when the family get up in the bare house. The car, the travelling home, waits outside. It’s very early morning, May 1st, 1976, although by the time the final preparations have been made it’s fifteen minutes past midday when they leave Brisbane. The boy’s in the back with his two siblings although there’s another one on the way, in their mum’s belly, new human growing, unknown at that point to everyone.

It’s a Britz van, distinguishable by the company logo of the colourful lizard stencilled on the side door. And the big ‘BRITZ’ above the side window. We pick it up at the depot outside the
city, by the airport, on 11th June 2007. It’s got a fridge and a stove and a microwave and a sink and a table and two beds and some overhead storage which can be turned into another sleeping space for a child or a very small adult. It’s a bank holiday in Oz, not that that makes any difference to anything, except the machine in the office spits out my credit card.

–Aw Jeez, why? There’s loads of money on that.

–You’ll have to ring their central office.

–Now? Will they be open? It’s a bank holiday.

The guy leads me into an office and shows me the phone. I call the number on the card and press for several options several times and I’m just about to boil over when a human voice asks me if they can help. I explain the problem. Seems the card was refused because it’s a large amount of money to put on it in one go but they’ll clear it and in about ten minutes I can go ahead and make the transaction. I go back to the reception area, explain the situation.

–Righto. We’ll give it another go in a few minutes. In the meantime, what type of insurance are you needing?

–What types are there?

And he lists many. I switch off. I’m bored to tears and restless because I want to be off, on the journey, away from bloody Brisbane. Want the Gold Coast – that Southend in the sun – to be miles behind me. The trip ahead is huge and I want to get it under way but the guy’s going on about various types of cover and telling us that we need bedding and a whole load of other things and I’m feeling slightly sick at the thought of what this is going to cost. Like buying a house, this; all these hidden extras. You need this and this and this and everything costs. Nothing comes free, or even cheap. Even the information pack, which, for some reason, is a compulsory purchase, costs
extra. And you return the bedding at the other end of your journey but what you pay for it isn’t a deposit, it’s rent,
non-refundable
. You get bugger all back.

–And you’re going all the way to Perth?

–Yeh.

–That’s a bladdy long way, boys.

If he thinks he can tempt me with an ‘I Crossed the Nullarbor’ T-shirt for thirty friggin’ dollars he’s sorely mistaken. I pay, wince, go outside to find a bench to smoke on whilst the van is tinkered and dithered with. They’re making an inventory of scratches and nicks and other tiny damages, I think, something like that. Uninteresting, anyway. Much more diverting is the ‘Safe Driving Information for Australian Roads’ leaflet, which is a tad terrifying; it recommends the ‘Outback Safety Kit’, at one hundred dollars rental, again
non-refundable
. A satellite phone at seventeen bucks a day. Truly terrifying. The stuff about animals and dust-storms and the like is quite exciting; it’s the expense that scares me. And should a ’roo dart out of the bush, whack into the side of the van, wreck the door? The insurance doesn’t cover that. You’d have to pay for a new door, a new panel, maybe even an entire new body for the van. So what’s the point of this insurance? Why doesn’t it cover the most obvious and, I’m sure, frequent form of damage?

Nothing for nothing in Oz. But fuck it anyway; I’m off. Across the vast red continent.

–She’s all yours, boys. Enjoy yaselves and be safe.

Tony and I get in. Little house on wheels. Tony circles the
car-park
a few times to get the feel of the vehicle and then we’re off.

–D’you know how many miles are ahead of us?

Shudder to think. That desert. Watched
Wolf Creek
a few
months ago and now wish I hadn’t. Maybe we should try and get hold of a gun or something.

It’s a bright blue day. First stop is Currumbin. I remember lorikeets.

The boy stands in a storm of feathers, a typhoon of noise and thrashing colour, red and green and yellow and blue so bright, eye-rippingly bright, and the frantic cacophony the birds make in their flocks thousands-strong cyclones around him, perched on his head they are and on his shoulders and arms and on the plate of fruit he holds outstretched getting heavier with the massed weight of the birds. There is nothing he knows here, no Liverpool no Brisbane not even any Australia, no long jaunt no family not even any him, lost he is in this mad hurricane of feathers and beaks and chattering. Only pulsing in the many rapidly flapping wings like light is his contentment in which everything, origin and present and future, falls away except for the exactitude and clarity of his need to be nowhere else but here.

Ey, look; it was founded by a feller called Griffiths. Wonder if he was any relation.

Alex Griffiths, the noticeboard tells us, ‘in 1947… began feeding the local lorikeets to protect his colourful gardens. Before long, visitors to Currumbin found out about the birds flocking to the area to feed twice a day and one of
Queensland’s oldest tourist attractions was born.’

Nice feller. There’s a painting of him reproduced in the booklet I buy at the ticket office and he looks like a nice feller; swept-back silver hair, blue shirt, kind of a noble set to his face. I don’t recognise the park itself, so changed is it; then, it was more or less just a small field, but now it’s a small zoo, with walkways through large flowering plants and a small train chugging around with children on it and echidnas and Tasmanian devils and dingoes and wombats in enclosures. The koalas are entrancing; they sit low in trees and eat eucalyptus leaves and when I watch them they do a kind of double-take as if in surprise to find me staring at them. There’s an odd intelligence to them, a peculiar awareness and alertness; I’ve heard that eucalyptus, when eaten in large quantities, has a narcotic effect, and I can easily believe that, watching these animals, but inside their louche stoned-ness there seems to be an active and inquisitive mind at work. Bizarre creatures.

I like Currumbin. All I recall of it is a sort of rapture as I stood in the centre of a mad blizzard of lorikeets. I remember the surprising weight of them on the fruitbowl, how my arms ached for a day. How calm and content I felt as the birds sat on me and shat down my back and screeched in my ear. If we want to feed them today, however, we’ll need to wait for hours, which we can’t do, not with a continent to cross. So we wander round and look at the animals and then sod quite quickly off.

Wonder if he was any relation. Could easily be. One branch sprouted over the Dee into Liverpool, the other over the planet into Oz. And there’s an obvious shared passion for birds, although whether such things are hereditary is of course debatable. But still: I wonder.

We take the Pacific Motorway through Beenleigh and
Coolangatta and Mullumbimby and stop at dusk in Byron Bay, which holds a literary festival to which I was once invited but couldn’t go due to prior commitments and, wandering around the place, am now glad I didn’t. There’s a tree full of lorikeets under which I stand and marvel but the town is all gap-year types in batik trousers and dreadlocks and uniform faux-Celtic or faux-Maori tattoos and the entire place reeks of parental indulgence and superannuated self-satisfaction. Home Counties accents batter my ears in the internet caff and signs lobby for coach-firms, excursions down the nearby valley on which you will see ‘natural wonders’ and ‘authentic aborigines’. Authentic? For fuck’s sake. Enjoy your gawp-year, all you Barnabies and Tristrams and Jacintas. Oh what funny stories you’ll have to tell back in Richmond-upon-Thames.

Ballina, Lismore, Casino on the Bruxner Highway. I’m beginning to get some notion of the vertiginous scale of Australian distances; what looks adjacent on the map takes hours of driving to reach. The place is colossal. Mallanganee, Drake, Sandy Hill, Black Swamp. The incantations in these names. So many histories we’re driving through. Our intention is to reach Armidale because that was where we made our first stop on the journey thirty years ago but we’re deep into night by now and Tony is tired so we park up outside Tenterfield, on the edge of the Blue Mountains. It’s freezing. I wrap my feet in woolly socks and my head in a bandanna and my body in a sleeping-bag and sleep for a few hours then wake and crawl outside for a pee in the before-dawn and I’m shivering so bad my teeth are a-chatter. Dull dawn rising. Frost on the grass and on the reef of McDonald’s wrappers in the ditches. Back in the van, sleep more, wake early. Wash with baby-wipes. Drink water, eat cereal bar. Drive on.

Dundee is four houses on the river Severn, which here is a muddy dribble. A sign welcomes us onto the Bald Knob Road and we laugh. There are a lot of ‘Knobs’ in Oz, I am to discover. Already met several. And we’re evidently in Celtic Australia because there is the Gwydir Highway and Shannon Vale and Glencoe and Stonehenge and Ben Lomond and, look, Glen Innes, which declares itself to be the ‘Celtic Capital of Australia’ on a sign next to another sign that says, on entering the town: ‘Domestic violence is a crime. Please report it’. We stop here, in the car park of a kind of
pan-Celtic
theme park, with rings of stones and a mock-up of Excalibur protruding from another stone and a wall with holes in it containing separate chippings and pebbles brought here from far Celtic parts, including Llantrisant and Caernarfon and Blaenan [sic] Ffestiniog by Mrs Enid
Watkins-Jones
. There are stones from my mountain, Pumlumon. I tell myself that I’m not going to stroke them but my hand reaches up as if of its own volition and gives them a wee caress. All small towns in Oz, as they tend to do in the States, lay some claim to individuality, whatever that might be, but this is important, really, here; as the noticeboard in the car-park says, the town was set up to ‘commemorate those early settlers of Celtic origin who helped to build the Australian nation’. All Celtic languages are represented here, both Brythonic and Goidelic; there’s even a reconstruction of the Tynwald, a small hill surrounded by stone slabs to sit on. Kernow is here. Breizh. Of course there’s also something here of the speciously Romantic and mystic, of Clannad and the kilt and the kindly old mam cooking cawl in the cottage in the cwm, but still there’s a good core to this commemoration. It’s okay. I approve. And Llangothlin, some miles outside, is a
few clapboard houses and bleating sheep and drizzle in a cold wind. Low green hills. Close your eyes.

The New England Highway dominates this Celtic region of Oz. Cuts straight across it, separates Oban from Llangothlin. I wonder if that was deliberate? There’s a hamlet called Wards Mistake which sets me off wondering, intrigued, but it’s miles away down some barely-there road and no doubt when we get there it’d be little more than a shack or two so we continue on through Guyra and Tilbuster and soon, no, not soon, but eventually we reach Armidale.

The Highland Caravan Park. A sign with a piper on it in a kilt.

–Why’s there a Scotchman on the sign, dad?

–Dunno. Maybe the feller who owns it is from Scotland.

–Can you only stay there if you’re Scotch?

–Maybe. You’ll have to say ‘och aye the noo’ and ‘hoots’ and eat neeps.