Warrigal's Way (17 page)

That was it for the fishing that night. We cleaned the fish we'd caught and went back to camp.

Next morning we drove through town and up to where the boys lived. I was surprised to see another pub up there. Dave said it was the original and had been there for years. We pulled up alongside the shacks, which Dave reckons look even worse in the daylight. But they didn't look too bad to me as I had lived in worse as a kid. Phil told us to pull up a stump and meet the mob. I met old men, old women, boys and girls—too many names to remember. But there were another three blokes about our age who were coming crabbing with us—Paddy, Lionel and Richard. We got a mug of tea, rolled a smoke each and sat down for a yarn.

“Been crabbing before?” asked Paddy, a slim dark bloke about five feet six tall.

“I have, in Queensland,” I told him. “Used to hook ‘em out of the holes with a piece of half-inch rod with a hook on it, and feed them a thong to get them in the bag—big buggers around Bribie Island.”

Richard, a really dark nuggety bloke, laughed. “We do the same. They are really good at the moment—fat, not filled with water.”

Lionel was a coloured bloke, slim and small and good-looking. The boys reckon he's a whizz with the girls. “You blokes from Darwin, eh. I was up there for a while, had a great time too,” he said with a smile.

“You blokes ready?” asked Roy.

“As ready as we'll ever be,” I told him.

We followed the boys, each of us carrying a six foot pole with a hook attached and a sugar bag, through the long grass and into the mangroves and the mud.

“Over here, Ed,” called Paddy. “Biggest mob of holes. Look.”

I slopped my way through blue mud and up to my knees over to where he was, and sure enough, there were holes all over the place. I put the hook down the hole and felt a crab, so I worked the hook under it and jagged it out. Paddy sprang on it as it came out, grabbed it just behind the nippers, turned it over and looked at its tail. It was a Jenny so he let it go. I put the hook down again and hooked out a beaut. This was a buck—it had a square tail. We got about half a dozen good bucks from the spot, and then caught another three as we worked our way back to the bank. Richard joined us about ten minutes later and he had six and Lionel had five really big ones. We smoked and waited for about half an hour before Phil turned up with seven and a couple of minutes later Dave and Roy turned up with eight.

“That's thirty-five,” said Roy after the count-up. “What do you reckon we sell twenty-five and eat the rest?”

We all reckoned that sounded pretty good.

“The Chinaman won't take them all,” said Paddy, “but we can sell the rest to the cook at the Roebuck Pub.”

We took them back to camp and the boys gave the women the ones to be cooked while Paddy, Roy, Dave and I went downtown and sold the rest. The Chinese restaurant took ten. “We always give him first dibs. He pays the best—two dollars fifty. The other buggers only give a dollar a crab, so they get seconds,” Roy told us.

We went back to camp with forty dollars, and Roy gave the money to an old lady. “She holds the bank,” he told me.

The crabs were cooked and ready and after a feed and a cup of tea I told the boys we would shout them a few beers at the pub. As soon as we walked in, the grey-haired feller behind the bar looked at the boys and said, “You buggers can piss off. You know it's the back veranda or nothing.”

He was an ignorant old bugger who needed a kick in the
arse. So I said, “Hey, you old piss ant! These blokes are with us!” The rest of the drongo mob in the bar were giving us vacant looks.

“Well, you can piss off too,” he said.

Dave, like me, was getting a bit warlike, but Roy told us it wasn't worth it. So we got a carton of cans and went back to our camp for a beer and a yarn and took the boys home later.

During the next week Roy and Phil came with us each day and we ranged around the coast. We saw wartime wrecks of the flying boats. I was surprised when the boys told us that Jap aeroplanes shot and killed people in the area, as I didn't know they had got this far down. They showed us the dinosaur tracks in the stone out at Cable Bay, and we saw the caravan park that had just started out there. We had found a heap of really big sea snails out on the point around the dinosaur tracks, so we got the billy out and filled it with half fresh water and half sea water and put the snails on the barbecue to cook. We were just sitting down to hoe in when this big tourist bus pulled in, and caught us with our utensils at the ready. The Yanks thought we were mad, but the Poms joined us with bread, salt and vinegar and we all had a good feed, cooking up another couple of billys full. They reckoned they called them winkles back home, and said this had been the best part of their tour.

We left Broome early one morning, with Dave driving and me sitting in the passenger seat sipping on a can of Emu. We hit a particularly bad bit of road, with pot holes you could hide a truck in. You don't see them until you hit them, because they're full of bulldust and look normal until you go over them. We saw a car and caravan on the side of the road up ahead.

“Someone in trouble. We'd better pull up,” Dave said.

“Yeah, they might need a hand.” The first thing we noticed was a woman holding an umbrella, and then we saw
a pair of feet sticking out from under the caravan. The woman was old and we thought she looked a bit frail. (Man were we wrong! Nell, as we got to know her, was the type of lady who could monster and mother a bunch of Hells Angels in five minutes flat, drive wagons across endless plains, shoot guns, spit on Hitler's boots and look him in the eye.)

Frank, her husband, wriggled out from the under the van. “G'day. Put the jug on, Nell. You blokes have a cuppa?” he said, all in one bellow. It was a bit stunning. “Broken spring. Bloody tandem axle. I been trying to tie it up—no hope,” said Frank.

We said we'd have a look, but Nell had the tea ready so we had a cuppa first and they told us about themselves. They were from New South Wales, had just retired, and had decided to have a look at the rest of Australia. We finished our tea and had a look at the broken spring. It had had it—broken about an inch from the hanger, main leaf too. Sandfire was close, about a hundred and fifty miles, but too far to take it off and weld it and bring it back. Nah, it would have to be a bush remedy. We sat in the sun mulling it over, with a can of beer for inspiration, and suddenly the opposite side of the road came into focus and I saw it I looked at Dave and knew he had twigged to it too.

“Do you reckon it'll work?” he asked me.

“It works on wagons,” I said with a grin.

“Have you got an axe, Frank? We've got one but it's under a ton of junk.”

Nell opened one of her cupboards and presto, one axe. She had a spare opera house in there, Frank reckoned, just in case someone asked.

“You got an idea?” Frank asked us.

“Yeah, we'll make a wooden one,” said Dave.

“Will it work?” he asked, a bit of doubt in his voice.

“We'll find out,” I told him as I followed Dave across the road. Dave started cutting a branch off the only gum tree
for miles. It had a natural curve and being green would also be springy. We chopped and trimmed it to shape, then had to heat the Falcon wheel spanner in an open fire to drill the holes for the bolts. It bolted up a treat and after cutting a couple of grooves for the spring hangers, it looked pretty dinky-di.

So with a final cuppa, we took off for Sandfire Flat, Frank leading the way and us riding shotgun. It worked perfectly all the way to Port Hedland. Frank was really tickled and saved the wooden spring. He later called into Kalgoorlie and told Dave's old man about it. When he got home he took it down to his local paper and they did a story on it with a photo of Dave. It was a good write up—about Australian youth still having the skills of the past. We didn't think what we'd done was any big deal—any bushie would have done it. I was a bit worried that my name had been printed in the article, and I thought the Department might see it. I expected a hand on the shoulder for the next few weeks.

23

Nosing around Port Hedland looking for work, we went to the labour office, where they told us there was nothing doing. So we went to the pub, where we scored a job. We ran into Bob, who was a partner in the biggest engineering shop outside the mines, and he told us we could start at his place tomorrow. Both of us could handle a welder no sweat, and on our first day we welded up stress cracks on a gravel loader.

Dave moved on after a couple of months, but I stayed on as I really liked the job. Bob knew a Justice of the Peace who we had a few drinks with one night and I told him my story. He said he would do some discreet checking, which he did, and told me that as of last March, when I turned twenty-one, I was free to spit in the eye of anyone. My race from the Department was run, and I was free to do whatever I wanted to do.

I learned to scuba dive, as we maintained the buffers for the ore carriers at Finucane Island. They were 988 cat tyres, and sometimes the impact of the berthing would blow them, and we would have to dive to free the shackle that held them on the ocean floor. I also spent time in the drawing office with John, another of the partners, who improved my skills with plans. He taught me how to estimate
a job, how to do cost planning and projections of a job three months, six months and a year ahead. Vern, another of the partners, taught me how to do a petrol-tank installation and how to change the computer in a pump and put in line flow meters. I revelled in it. I had a thirst for knowledge and was keen to learn. I was sent to Goldsworthy, an iron-ore mine, to take charge of a gang up there, renovating Wabco haulpack trucks, P&H power shovels and miles of conveyors. I was there about six months, then came back to Port Hedland to take the job of outside foreman. This entailed meeting engineers and making sure our jobs all over the Pilbara were going smoothly and were on time. I was driving two or three thousand miles a fortnight and a weekend off was rare.

I got back into town one night, booked myself into the Hedland Motor Inn and rang my mate John, who was shop foreman, and bullied him into coming for a beer and a game of pool. We put our names down for the pool table on the way to the bar. There we were served by a small dark-haired girl about five feet tall, with dark tan skin and big black eyes.

“Hello John. Couple of beers?”

“Thanks Jen. Meet Eddie, a mate of mine.”

We got our beer, found a table and I started bending his ear. “Who is she? How do you know her? Is she married? Where does she come from?”

“Hey! Whoa, back up. First, she's a friend of Lyn's. No, she's not married. She's just busted her engagement to a Kiwi bloke. She's a Kiwi too.”

“Come on, my shout, drink up.” I took the pots up to the bar. “Two more please.”

Jenny took the glasses and put them in the tray and got two more out of the cabinet. She looked at me as she was filling them. “Do you know John well?” she asked.

“Yeah, him and I work together. I'm the bush boss. I don't get into town much, but I got this weekend off so I booked
in here. Look Jenny, John, Lyn and I are going to dine here tonight. Would you like to join us?” I asked her.

“I would love to. I get off at seven. I'll meet you in the guest lounge at half past if you like.” She gave me a big smile. Her big black sparkling eyes made her whole face glow. Taking those two beers back to the table was real hard. I would rather have sat and just looked at her. I really had the bug.

“You two looked pretty chummy,” John said, giving me a sly grin. “Yeah, she was telling me she seen your mum on the way to work, drunk as usual, holding up her favourite parking meter.”

“Geez, I hope she hasn't spent all her pension. Never know when I'll need a loan.” He didn't turn a hair. “And you'll have to be a bloody sight nicer than that for me to give you a knock-down to Jenny. What will my missus say if she finds out I introduced her mate to a fortune-hunting rat-bag like you,” he crowed.

“Bugger off, I'm going over your head. I'm gunna ring your lovely wife and invite her to dinner with me and Jenny, and you're gunna have to clean up your act if you want to come, laddie boy. So you can start with this.” I handed him my pot.

“Ha! I knew the first time I seen you—I said, here's trouble.” John laughed as he headed for the bar.

“We can use my expense account, the company can stand it. Give Lyn a ring and tell her Jenny's coming with me.” I grinned. John laughed out loud. He and I were always having verbal shots at each other, and trying to go one up all the time and he thought I was having him on about Jenny.

Dinner that night was great, and after she'd led me a merry dance for the next ten months we decided to get married. I ran headlong into the biggest heap of official bullshit you could imagine. The registrar could not handle the fact that although I was as white as him I had no birth certificate. How could this be? I looked him straight in the
eye and told him. “My mother was an Aboriginal and in 1948 when I was born, officially Aboriginals didn't exist, so there was no way under white law Mum could register me. The old man could have, but he was a hopeless drunk, and it might of upset his wog relations in Denmark if they'd found out he'd had a half-caste kid.”

So Jenny and I just gave the system the big “A” and did the hippie thing and lived together. Married life meant change. I went to work with Goldsworthy mining up at the mine workshops. I didn't want to be floating around the bush with a wife, going off and leaving her on her own. At least in this job we're together.

Jenny got a job in Poons Canteen and we set up house in a sixteen-foot caravan we bought. We also bought a short wheelbase four-by-four Toyota to pull it. Once or twice a month, if we were lucky, our shift change fell on the same weekend and we had three days off, more or less. We knocked off at 8 o'clock on Friday morning and started again at midnight on Sunday. It was great. We spent a lot of time fossicking for gemstones around Marble Bar and Bamboo Creek areas. It got us away from the minesite and was interesting.

One morning when we were out fossicking I caught my Goddess looking wan and throwing up. She was really crook and I broke camp and raced her back to the medical centre, and sat for three lifetimes in the waiting room while she was checked over by the medic.

“How did you go?” I asked her.

She was smiling and gave me smug looks. “How are you at changing nappies and getting out of bed at all hours?”

“You're pregnant?” I said. (It doesn't take
me
too long to catch on!)

“We've wasted our time if I'm not.” She was glowing. I didn't know how I felt about being a dad. My emotions
were a bit scrambled. I really wanted us to have this baby, but I was in a bit of a panic. I might have got out of the clutches of the Department, but I was frightened they would come some day and take our baby. I hid my fears from Jenny, but I couldn't get it out of my mind and I was slowly falling to bits thinking about it. So on the next change of shift we went down to Port Hedland and stayed with John and Lyn. I was hoping to meet Scotty, an Aboriginal man I had worked with at Bob's. I wanted reassurance that the government wouldn't come and take my kid away, with me having to stand like Mum and just watch. I knew I couldn't do that. I would want to kill someone before they took my kid.

John and I went down to the Pier Hotel. I was getting myself into a real state and John was giving me funny looks.

“Geez mate, you got a load on your mind? It's sticking out like the arse end of a semi-trailer. What's wrong?”

I thought about telling him, but didn't know if he would understand. Just then Scotty came in. I called him over to our table and went and got three more beers. Sitting comfortably, I poured out my fears to him. He was about fifty and had a family and was like a dad to me. He picked up his beer, took a sip and looked at me. “You're getting into a state for nothing. They don't do that any more. Too much public outcry. They gave it away a couple of years ago, so rest easy, they not gunna take your kid. You know you're going to have to get Jenny to register the baby. You're like me, you don't exist. Now drink your beer and it's my shout. We'll wet the baby's head a bit before time.”

These were the words I wanted to hear. I felt on top of the world. But I thought I'd still ring Jim, Bob's JP mate, and make sure. Which I did after tea, and he confirmed what Scotty had told me. So now I could really get on with life.

Seven and a half months later our daughter Sharon was born,
in the middle of the night, of course, amid panic, and after what seemed like hours waiting at the hospital. We entered into a strange new world of early morning feeds, blinking your eyes open at two am, warming a bottle and sitting half asleep while she drank it and burping her after it, then settling her down again. We shared the honours, through the gripe, temperatures, teething, nappy rashes and prickly heat. It was real zombie time, as half the time we were on automatic.

When Sharon was about two years old Jenny and I decided to take her down to Moe in Gippsland to show her off to Jenny's parents. They had arrived from Fielding in New Zealand about six months earlier and they hadn't yet met Sharon or me.

Jenny then wanted to show me New Zealand. So we decided to head off to the land of the Kiwi for a working holiday and to meet the rest of Jenny's relations who were still in New Zealand. (That seemed to me to be about half the Maori population.)

We left Sydney on our big adventure amid waves and tears. Actually the more I thought about going to the land of the Kiwi the more I was a fan for it, the biggest bonus was I could live without constantly looking over my shoulder or I was pretty sure I could. I didn't think the Department had any pull in NZ. Jeez eh? Just to strut down the street like you owned it, funny most people don't know what a priceless thing freedom is and simply take it for granted. I listened to the hum of the engines and a feeling of intense excitement hit me, now I understood beyond doubt why this new bloke of Mum's had taken her over there, a complete new life. I hoped I would run into her, that would make my life.