N.W.F.

I have often wondered over the years if any of this would have happened if I had not gone out that night for a drink and not gone into that pub. 

But, I did.  

I’d been out working in the bush for three weeks and was home for a couple. It was my usual working pattern, it was bi-centennial year and the whole of Townsville was buzzing.  I had just been diving out on the Yongala Wreck. I’ve been there before and knew it was one of the best dives on the reef.  I saw the usual incredible array of fish, schools of barracuda, turtles and bull sharks, giant groupers and manta rays. It was a treasure chest of marine life as expected. What I didn’t expect was to meet a girl. Her name was Emma and she was a Pome. At the time I didn’t like her much, thought she was a bit snotty. Apparently she didn’t like me much either but when I saw her crying in the corner of the pub that night I took pity on her and ended up taking her back to Merle’s and Merle had a spare room so that’s how she ended up staying.

The reason she was without a roof over her head was that the hostels were all full. She said she could have gone back to see her friends but didn’t want to. Her friends were Australians she had known in England and had been to school with their Daughter, Jools. 10 years later she had made it out here and a lot of water had gone under the bridge. Gone were the carefree school days. Jools was billy no mates other than her boyfriend who called himself Duck. What a stupid name for a bloke is what I thought when I first heard about him. Emma was working as a waitress and in the end Auntie Merle was grateful for the rent and enjoyed Emma’s company whilst I was away. She usually spent most her time with Bloody fool, who was her dog. I know he had another name and now I can’t even remember it. He knew his real name, Bloody fool. He was a sweet mut but as has name suggested was as thick as two short planks and Merle completely adored him. 

My job was working out in remote parts of Queensland. I was working for a geo-physicist. Ummmm, I didn’t know what it was either until I got the job. Basically the federal government were always looking for base metals and flew planes with industrial size magnets all over the outback. If they got a reading they’d chart it and in order to pin point it they used the services of a geo-physicist. As one of a team of field assistants it was my job to map out the co-ordinates to map readings taken from the plane. We used compasses to lay our stakes 500 meters apart over an area usually 5 to 10 miles in size. The next phase was to use field operatives to create an electrical current to pinpoint the exact location of the reading between the 500 meter stakes. They would then send a drilling team in to collect samples to be sent off to the lab. It was backbreaking work but it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack otherwise. All the outback farmers knew of the practice and granted permission for us to work on their land, it was mandatory anyway. What farmer would not have liked the discovery of a gold mine on their land? What I loved was that our food and accommodation was provided and every 6th day we had off and I was paid to get as drunk as I possibly could with the other guys. I got paid $85 a day, which was a fortune for young bloke and I loved it. I’d come home after 3 weeks in the bush and have a load of cash for myself and Auntie Merle. I suppose it really started the day I came back from Cloncurry. It was late when I got in and Bloody fool was out on the veranda howling at the moon. I went in through the side kitchen door and entered backpack first through the fly trap. 

“Jake is that you love?” said Auntie Merle, “Ay, how ya going Auntie Merle?” I said. “Good thanks” we both said at the same time. She liked to have a yak so I just listened and then said, “How’s Emma, I expect she’s still at work?” I said. “Yeah and she’s working real hard. You remember she talked about those friends she knew in England” I nodded. “Well, you’ll never guess what, they own the restaurant she works in.” she said. “Oh and she didn’t know that before? I said. “No” said Auntie Merle adding, “Yeah and my God are they mongrels. That lovely girl is so devastated.” “Yeah, yeah, I know” sighing wearingly, “She hardly ever stops going on about it.”

Emma got in that night at gone midnight and I waited up to see her. She was shattered and in the end I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to her until the following day. Apparently they were asking her to do a load of different jobs from deep cleaning the toilets to double shifts. I was a bit perplexed and wondered why she was even staying on. She said she was saving up and then felt obliged as they were old friends and that Jools had come in to the restaurant and said that Emma owed it to them. I remember contradicting her about that and thinking she was being far too sweet and naïve. Instead I suggested that she could just get another job. She said she had thought about it but just wanted to save up a bit more before she went off on her travels. I asked her if she had any time off and she said a couple of days off during the week. So, by way off distracting her I suggested we could go white water rafting on the Tully. She agreed and we took the train. It was exhilarating and brilliant fun and I could see she was really beginning to relax. I also noticed the outline of her pendulous breasts under her wet T-shirt and a small spark went off in my head.  But I decided to play it cool because after all I was the dude and a real catch. We got back to Townsville and I asked her out for dinner and from there we went on to my favourite pub. All the blokes were in and the beers flowed. Half way through the evening there was the sound of a very throaty engine and she visibly tensed up.

“Oh no, that’s Duck” said Emma. “How do you know?” I said. “Because I have heard him rev up that engine God knows how many times” she said. “Oh Jake, I am really dreading going into work tomorrow.” “What car is it?” I said. “Oh, some American sports car” she said. “It was imported and he really likes to tell everybody how much he paid for it.” 

Emma talked to my friends about her old school friend, we all had a bit too much grog and at chucking out time walked past a flashy red convertible. It was a Ford Mustang and the roof was down, Emma said it was Duck’s car. Before I knew it all of us blokes were pissing on his car, in his car. Everywhere possible. Of course we attracted attention and a bloke came tearing out of a pub opposite.

“You bloody ockers, I’ll kill you for this! Said Duck. He laid into a couple of my mates and we decided to split.    

When we got home Auntie Merle said that Jools had been on the phone asking for Emma and then asked if she could come into work an hour earlier the next day. Of course they’d seen us. Emma got the sack and one of my mates had a broken eye socket as Duck had smashed his head against a lamp post.  

Emma was really upset and this time I said she really shouldn’t be and those people were not her friends. I then suggested that we go walkabout and what about going on a visit to Kakadu? I was due some leave and the following day we were on a coach going into the Northern Territory. It was fabulous, I’d never been there and I was born in Australia. Kakadu was beautiful. We went to Jim Jim Falls and onto Yellow Water. There were some amazing Aboriginal rock paintings too. I particularly remember one was a woman eating spirit figure. There really wasn’t much else to do in Darwin, it was just baking hot and that’s when we got it together, she was hot too.  Of course at the time I remember thinking why has she taken so long to bag this gorgeous Australian male. 

We decided to go down through the red centre to Alice Springs. We did a three day tour of Ayres Rock, The Olgas and Kings Canyon. The bush was as usual, littered with roos, dead and alive and empty stubbies. The red centre was absolutely stunning, our tour guide said that there had been more rainfall that year and as a result the desert had bloomed, not up, but across. The seeds had laid dormant for years waiting for the right conditions. It made me so proud to be Australian, it was beautiful and I just did not want to turn back. I phoned my boss Pete and asked him if he could give me some unpaid leave. Luckily he agreed and then he suggested that we make our way down for the Grand Prix and invited us to stay with him when we got to Adelaide. There was a condition though and that was that we called into Coober Pedy as he had a job for me to do. I did wonder why he had agreed so quickly and easily.  

What a God forsaken place Coober Pedy is. The coach dropped us off at about 3 in the morning. The hostels were used to this and welcomed the back packers in showing them into their underground homes. It was the coolest way to survive in the desert by living in a dugout, they were usually fashioned out of disused former mines. Water was so precious that we fed 20 cent pieces into a meter in the shower. Emma spent $2, twice as much as my shower cost me. I went in search of a miner, Pete had lent some drilling equipment to a bloke who had then disappeared with it and had not been in touch. I walked around the town and asked a lot of people if they knew what had happened to Drongo Dick – nobody had heard of him. 

Emma and I went on a tour, It was interesting and started a life -long passion for Opals that has never diminished. The tour guide said that they first started to be found by the early settlers in the 1850’s and the aboriginals believed that the creator had come down to earth on a rainbow. It was where his foot touched the earth that the opals were created. The mining started seriously in the 1880’s and they were so popular that the diamond industry started an ugly rumour that they bought bad luck. I was so captivated that I bought a few stones before we left.

We got on the coach at 3.00am and made our way down the Stuart Highway. Thank goodness Pete had a bed for us as the city was packed. Emma got a cash in hand job down at the Grand Prix selling ‘Fair Dinkum Aussie Tucker’ on the track side. Pete and I had a really good chat about the business and what his plans were. I was really excited for the future and asked him to give me 3 months off. He said he thought Emma was a lovely girl and he agreed to let me go but part of the deal was that I tracked down Drongo Dick. 

After the grand prix Emma and I went to Melbourne. I really liked Melbourne. The trams and the old and new architecture in the city centre and all the lattice metal work on the old houses. Quaint and distinctive. Apparently the metal work was used as ballast for the inward bound journey as the outward bound ships had sheep on board. How they made a profit from that I don’t know, transporting them all the way back to Pomeland. I also love Aussie rules football and managed to get in a game at Collingwood F.C. The game started in Melbourne and the teams and the best games were there too.  

We stayed in a hostel in St Kilda that had formerly been a knocking shop. When we first arrived at the hostel they were still taking the mirrors off the ceilings. The night life in St Kilda was a hoot. We had a favourite haunt that was on the esplanade that sold very reasonable food and as soon as we got drunk we were up on the tables dancing to the music. The owner had a particular favourite and that was an old Dean Martin song and as soon as it came on we all knew it was chucking out time.  

I soon discovered how Italian Melbourne is and apparently has the largest population of Italians outside Italy. One weekend we went into town for a meal on Lygon Street. We queued up to go into a Sicilian restaurant. My favourite meal at that restaurant was purpetti dolci, beef meatballs flavoured with cinnamon in a thick tomato sauce. It was delicious. I heard a standard expression of why Italy was shaped like a boot, because you can’t get that much shit into a shoe. I don’t know why there was such an aversion to the Italians at all. I love pizza and pasta and the coffee you could buy was really good too. I also found their accent most interesting. The musical Italian accent combined with the very hard ‘A’ of the Australian accent. The other thing was they were all obsessed about was their weather. Four seasons in one day, you could even buy the T-shirt. Well, I didn’t but Emma did. 

To begin with the only work the agency had was working as a car park attendant and my shift started at 6.00am. There is a light railway that runs from St Kilda into the city and my car park was situated next to the Yarra River by the conference centre. The first morning I saw a young girl who was off her head on something. She had layers of smudged make up and ladders in her tights. She was in such a mess the conductor did not even bother to take her fare. I could only presume she was on the game to pay for her habit. I suppose that was the nasty underbelly in St Kilda. The job was a piece of cake, my job that is.  All I had to do was open up the gates and sit in the booth. I did not always give out the ticket when they handed over the cash so that was my breakfast paid for, I was bored and as usual did not like getting up early. 

Emma got a job on the tart line of a pastry factory, I teased her about it mercilessly. The following week I was in a cosmetics factory. The claxton went off every half an hour and then we would shift to an alternative line we were filling up bottles of shampoos and creams. I was working on the brylcreem line putting the empty red pots onto the conveyor belt. The heads would come down and then fill them up for the next line to put the lids on. I decided to put one of the pots upside down. The machine head broke the pot, brylcreem squirted all over the machinery and the conveyor belt and the alarm was sounded to stop the line. The supervisor was apoplectic, I said I had not noticed it was upside down, she did not believe me and once I had cleared the mess up she sent me home. I spent the rest of the afternoon in a milk bar and rang Auntie Merle for a catch up.

I then went to a soap powder factory and did the night shift which paid more. It was a relief when it was over and I was sitting on the tram coming home. One evening, Emma and I had a row and I found the work load really heavy. It wasn’t helped as we were stopped from having a fag break by the supervisor half way through the evening. The conveyor belt came at me so quickly, I saw red and started knocking the boxes onto the floor. Thank bloody god that job didn’t go on for much longer. I wanted my old job back but this girl. 

Eventually it was time for me to board a coach to Sydney. I played it cool with Emma. It went down like a bucket of cold sick. I really hoped she would come back up to Townsville but really didn’t know if she would. I could see the attraction of why she wanted to stay in a large city, there was much more variety and well I hoped that she felt the same way, I mean, I’m gorgeous, come on. It went through my mind not to go but in the end I did. 

I did not like Sydney. I still don’t. I did circular key, enjoyed the buskers, thought the inside of the opera house looked like it was not finished off properly and was told not to swim on Manley beach because of sewage, not that I believed that. 3 days later I hired a car and set out to Thunder Ridge, an opal mining town in New South Wales. There was practically nothing there except a motel but I did find out that Drongo Dick had been there recently and that he said he’d said he was moving onto Queensland. I rang Pete and told him of my progress. What a wild goose chase! I was beginning to wonder if Pete had a lot of money tied up in this and became more intrigued and he had asked me to keep my expenses to a minimum. 

Now I was nearly back to where I started. The Opal mining fields are ѕрrеаd about 1000 km covering a large part of the south- western part of the state and are easy to spot as it is mostly open cut mining. It was a part of Queensland that I didn’t know that well. I was very familiar with the huge farms and the kinds of labourers on the farms as they were the blokes I used to meet in the pubs but the opal miners were another lot entirely and there was tension between the farmers and the miners over the land. There was another element in the mix too and that was gas and oil was being extracted and the pumpjacks operated 24 hours a day.  

I eventually found Drongo Dick’s plot just outside Quilpie, I found Pete’s equipment, but I did not find Dick. Nobody seemed to know what had happened to him. I called Pete.

“I’ve found your kit Pete, it’s in Yowah, I haven’t found him though, there’s no trace of him. What do you want me to do now?” Pete sighed and said “I’ll organise some…… A huge roar of an engine drowned out his voice, “Bloody oath” I said, recognising the car, “Oh, sorry Pete what was that?” “Just send me the details and I’ll organise everything else Jake, cheers mate, you get yourself back to Towsville and I’ll be in touch.”

My head was still reeling when I stepped out of the phone booth. I saw the red Mustang parked outside the local store and a thought ran through my mind. I fetched a bottle of pop I had in my car, forced the Mustang’s petrol cap open and poured it into the tank. I had just emptied the whole bottle when I saw a commotion in the shop. I legged it back to my car and nearly made it back before I felt a huge boot in my back. I swung round and punched him in the guts. He was slightly winded and the look of pure hatred I saw on his face gave me extra energy. After we had exchanged a few more blows I managed to get away, jump into my car and I raced back to my digs. I collected my things and got out of there as fast as I could. See ya sugar tits is what I thought as I drove up the road, then chuckled to myself at my own joke.   

I only stopped once to phone Auntie Merle and tell her of my plans. She said she would have a pot of my favourite stew on for when I got in. It took me just over 12 hours door to door and Bloody fool was also very pleased to see me.  I really enjoyed being at home after my walkabout. 

I said, “You know Auntie Merle, Australia is so beautiful, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else” She said, “I am so proud of you Jake and your Mum and Dad would have been too.” She didn’t dwell on that subject fortunately and then said, “How is Emma?” “Still in Melbourne?” I said. She smiled and then asked me if I wanted another bowl full of stew. My back was killing me and she could see I was bruised and stiff. I managed to get upstairs to bed without her asking too many questions. 

A few days later I decided to ring Emma and tell her I was at home. Auntie Merle spoke to her longer than I did of course. I was trying to play it cool but as soon as I told her what I’d done to the car it was almost world war 3.

“You complete idiot Jake! What will happen?” she said. I said, “Oh, No Wucking Furries sweedie, it will have just written his car off!” She said, “What did you do that for? You know how nasty he is?” “He needed teaching a lesson,” I said. Merle glared at me and she said, “S’truth! You be careful Jackey-boy, those people are rich and they could come looking for compensation.” I clenched my fist and said, “You see this? I’ll stick it so far down his throat he’ll have to clean his teeth by sticking a toothbrush up his a…” “That’s quite enough”, she said. “Why don’t you ring Pete and ask him when he wants you back.”

It was arranged for a week later that I would head off back to four ways and meet him in the café at Devonport. The morning I was due to leave as usual I was not up early. I was half awake, half asleep when I heard the dog barking madly, Auntie Merle was shouting at the top of her voice at him. She sounded sufficiently panicked enough that I made my way downstairs. I thought I heard the sound of a familiar engine but dismissed the thought immediately. When I went into the kitchen there was a huge king brown hissing at Bloody fool.

“No, ya, Bloody fool, get out now!” She screamed at the dog. “Jake quick get him out.” I was more concerned at keeping the reptile away from her and shouted, “Merle, get out of the kitchen” It was too late, in the blink of an eye the snake had bitten both of them. I managed to get her into the loungeroom and called 000, she was much more concerned about the dog.

I can identity the exact moment when I really grew up and that was when I watched my Auntie Merle’s coffin being lowered into the ground. Emma came back from Melbourne and was a great support. In fact I don’t know what I would have done without her.   

In the weeks that followed I spent a lot of time up on Castle Hill. Emma and I would go up there and I found it comforting at dusk as the light faded and Townsville’s night lights emerged. It gave me a chance to think, Merle was a great lady, I thought the world of her and she’d taken me in when I was orphaned at 13. I just didn’t understand how such a large snake had got into the house. Merle knew to keep her doors shut and had lived in the deep north all her life. In the back of my mind I still had a nagging thought about hearing that engine just as the dog was going mad at the snake.  

I eventually went back to work with Pete and Emma got a job in an office in town. We began to settle down and got engaged, I gave her one of the opals I had bought in Coober Pedy. Inevitably she ran into Jools one day and after rather a nasty exchange she learned that Duck’s car had not been written off, it just needed a new fuel tank. Jools had then asked about Auntie Merle. When she told me that I felt so angry and began to wonder if he had had something to do with the snake. I think he did but I couldn’t prove it. My logic was that he had never contacted me about any financial compensation for what I did to his car and surely Jools will have known about Merle’s death. Townsville is a fairly small place. The town was also small enough that I heard rumours. Rumours that Duck was dealing in stolen opals. It made sense as I’d seen him in the outback. Nothing was ever proved with that either. But d’you know what? I also found out that Duck developed a chronic condition with his kidneys. So whether he was or wasn’t involved with any misdemeanours, perhaps life caught up with him in the end.

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