Lindsay said to me once that she would never visit Australia, as she wouldn’t learn anything while she was here. For a long while, I glumly agreed.
Tara, Neutral Junction Station
They still call me Max at Neutral Junction even now. If I’m in polite company I say I named myself after my childhood hero – the protagonist in ‘Where the Wild Things Are,’ but really, Max is short for Maximum Penetration.
I couldn’t call myself Dave you see, because a fella called Dave had just died. Tara is a traditional Aboriginal community, so during the mourning period, you can’t use his name. The house where he died had to be deserted and smoked out, all images of him removed. They’re serious about it too. We blotted out Dave’s name with Nikko pen on all our lists, and I changed my name from Dave to Max, after my childhood hero.
We stayed in workers’ quarters, on the station. John, the ringer, was spending a lot of time in the community store because his mother-in-law was visiting: “She keeps cleaning! She’s vacuuming the fuckin’ nails out of the floorboards ! She walks into the laundry, and the washing machine starts backin’ into the corner.”
A black fulla walked in. John wrinkled his nose: “Did you step in something mate?”
The Countryman shyly shook his head, and John sprayed him down with Glen 20. I couldn’t really argue with John though – he smelt of curdled sweat that stings your eyes. They call soap ‘Sunday’ round here apparently.
Tara is a tiny place of ten or twelve houses, on Neutral Junction Station. Maybe fourteen houses. The last white fellas who came to Tara were kidnapping their children. Like a desert storm is heralded by a massive dust cloud, our arrival was heralded by Aboriginal families fleeing into the desert, or up the secret tracks to Utopia – that heat-blasted area to the north. We had to find these people.
Stage One was clockwork. There’s nothing lures a black fulla out of his home like the smell of sausages and onions. We fired up the barbeque. First came the camp dogs, many of them leatherbacks, hairless and slumped. Those people that hadn’t fled to Utopia, mostly men, soon followed. We had our meeting, and signed the agreements with them, while Nelly, cut-snake, stormed around, lashing at the leatherbacks with a cane.
We discussed with John the problem of the mothers having fled into the desert.
“Haha ! It’s simple. They can live out there, hunting, for weeks on end, shooting wallabies and chasin’ goannas up trees in their four wheel drives. But there’s one thing they can’t go without. Beer.”
So that was that, the three of us, we encamped around the Barrow Creek pub, like lions stalking a waterhole.
And when the 12pm bell rang, the ladies appeared like goannas from their holes, and we pounced on them with our laptops and our agreements.
. . . . . .
The Erldunda Roadhouse
I opened the car door, and a crushed Victoria Bitter can clattered to the ground. There were some emus behind a fence. An aboriginal kid was hittin’ one with a stick, while the parents sat nearby sharing a tin of bully beef. Who’s to say actually if they were the parents – you never can tell with black fullas. I thought Sam was going to say something to the family, but she didn’t. In the pie-warmer in the back of the roadhouse they had a few limp pies that looked like they’d been bashed and robbed. A bit of steak-and-kidney gravy had squirted free from one, and dried to the outside like a scab.
Honest Dave: “I’ll get one o’ these triceratops pies thanks.”
Samantha Yeates: “What do you mean triceratops pies?”
Dave: “Well they look like they’ve been around since back then.”
Sam: “That’s true.”
Dave: “I’ll get a pterodactyl chicken wing as well.”
Sam: “And I’ll get a dodecahedron pasty.”
Girl-behind-counter: “Well listen, if you don’t like them, you can cross the road to the cow paddock, and help yourself to one of Paddy’s Pies – they’re free.”
Dave: “They’re no doubt fresher – That sounds like a well-practised line – not the first time people have complained about your produce?” I handed over the money.
Girl: “You payin’ for all this yourself?”
Dave: “Sure am – no pie is too good for my sheila. What about beers?”
Girl: “The Ringers Bar’s round the back.”
I walked into the cozy little place. Corrugated iron. Crappy aboriginal dot-paintings festooned the walls along with other vital outback commodities like furry kanagaroos and those koalas that clip on the front of your shirt.
“Sixpack a VB thanks.”
“Sure, there you go.”
Sam: “What ‘dja get VB for ? What about Coopers?”
Dave: “Coopers Gay Ale? If you closed your eyes, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”
Sam: “Hundred bucks says I would.”
Dave: “Hundred bucks? That would almost cover the price of this sixer. Fuckin’ Territory.”
Sam: “Yeah, well it’s the…”
Dave: “…I know I know, the freight. If I had a dollar for every time a Territorian told me that, I could almost afford this six-pack.”
Sam bought herself Coopers and we headed back to the car. I made some space for my feet among the ankle-deep jingling carpet of brown stubbies and greencans on the car floor. Sam mentioned that I should be throwing the cans out the window as we drove, in case the cops pull us over. It’s the Territorian way.
Sam: “VB is fuckin’ foul. I won’t drink the shit. Well, not until I’ve finished my Coopers anyway.”
Dave: “Such restraint is an inspiration.”
. . . . . .
Magela Creek, Kakadu
I sat down by the river, and shared my Barbeque Shapes with an Aboriginal woman. She smelled pretty strongly, such that it was making me sneeze, and making my eyes itch. So when I say I was sharing my Shapes, once her hand had penetrated the box, I pretty much left her to the rest. Her family was upstream casting nets and handlines, the children were leaping from the ¬‘DANGER – CROCODILES’ sign, into the water.
The woman laughed, “Crocs don’t have good eyes. They can’t see our black skin. But you white fullas shouldn’t go in the water. You glow like lightbulbs. And we have women’s business where we slap on the water’s surface – this annoys the crocs, and they go away.”
I asked her to show me this dubious science of ‘women’s business’ to which they trusted the connectedness of their limbs, but she looked to the ground and fell silent, and her hand, which up to then had been relentlessly shoveling Shapes into her mouth, dropped to her lap. I apologised, and moved the subject, as always, to fishing.
“Black fullas’ lazy,” she said. “Everyone knows that. If you want to know the easiest way, ask a black fulla. When you are fishing it’s not just you and the fish. The insects and birds can help you fish if you ask. All of the world acts on all other parts of the world, all the time. Always be thinking of how it does.”
A sea eagle alighted on a high branch. “To find a fishing spot, watch for the sea eagle. He sits in the top of the tree, watching the water for fish. Sea eagle, he’s a good fisherman. So we look for the him. When we find him, we sit under his tree. Here, we throw in a handline. No sweat. And when you catch a fish, throw the sea eagle a piece of it, thank him, and he will help you next time.
“That plant there, white fellas call it the billygoat plum – when the flowers blossom, the barramundi and turtles are fat, so we fish for them. In the month when the plum is ripe, we stop fishing, and eat the plum instead – easier. In the Dry, when the creeks stop flowing, we crush the bark of the billygoat plum and soak it in the still pools – it poisons the water a bit, and the barra float to the top. Easy.
“Paperbark tree, best tree in Kakadu. See that bulge at the side, it’s full of clean fresh water, drill a hole, take a sip, and plug it back up with bark. The paperbark tree can help us fish too. Go down the river at evening time, just before the mozzies come, you know? Peel off a bit a bark, and wrap it up into a candle. Stick it by the water’s edge, and light it. Go away for a walk for a while, maybe go check the traps. When you get back, the mozzies and insects, they come for the light and smoke – and they fly round like crazy. Sometimes the insects hit the water and die. So then, the little fish come for them and eat them. Then the big fish come, and they eat the smaller fish. And soon the barra will come. Throw in a line, and haul out one a dem big barras. No sweat.”
The Mackenzie Country, New Zealand
The winds off Antarctica scour the Mackenize Country bare. The high country is primal, spindly, mighty and barren. A tremendous silence echoes from the mountains. Massive hydro plants link the lakes – it seems that New Zealand has learned to harness power from the country’s very stillness, her peace, her eternity.
Stags, and Himalayan thar rove the mountains. American trophy hunters prize them – the stags for their antlers, the thar for their magnificent manes. Sensibly, due to the region’s scorching cold, safari season tends to be in the summer.
What the postcards don’t tell the tourists, though, is that in the mildness of summer, the thar have no need of their precious manes, and shed them.
This is where Spinner comes in. Friends say that Spinner earned his nickname from all the bullshit he spins when he is pissed. Spinner insists it comes from his prowess on the cricket pitch. There’s no denying that he’s a great cricketer, but strangely, he’s a pace bowler. When his parents went back home to England he had to quit school, and joined a shearers’ gang. He did this for decades. The problem was: “It’d happen too often: I’d be shearing, and the fuckin’ sheep would kick me in the shin, or in the balls, or across the jaw when I’m on the long blow. And I would hate that cunt of a sheep. And I’d grab it. And I’d hold shut its nose and mouth and try and suffocate it. But while it’s thrashing round in my grip, I’d kind of… realise it’s my job to get that sheep down that chute, shorn. And while it’d probably take me, I dunno, two or three minutes to suffocate it… well, it’d only take me a minute and a half to shear it. So I would.
“I realised I had to give it away. I started to come to hate the sheep. I hated them for being fucking stupid sheep. The smell of them made me hate. One winter I went up into the mountains – started killing thar. I spend every winter up there now. I shoot ‘em, scalp ‘em, and sell the manes to the taxidermist. Then when those tourists come on safari, when they have the heads of their kills mounted on the wall, they attach my manes to their kill. Cos they always come in the summer when the thar don’t have their manes any more, dickheads.”
In the summertime, when he’s back in town, if you want to kill something, or have something killed, you talk to Spinner. Need to have a lamb slaughtered? Possums in the roof? Neighbour’s dog keeping you up at night? Speak to Spinner.
Well, me and Dad wanted to kill some trout. So we spoke to Spinner. Spinner took us up, high up, through the farms, into that desolate Mackenzie Basin – every stream, every valley, every paddock, held a memory for Spinner of something that he’d killed.
We were bobbing in the tinnie in Lake Benmore, lines cast, the slap of the water the only sound. As always while fishing, the conversation went from espousing the beauty of a sunset, or birdsong, or a river’s bend, to catching fish, to shooting pigs. But I just couldn’t relax – he was wearing the tiniest pair of denim shorts – there seemed the constant danger that one of his testicles was going to sproing out the side, every time he shifted in his seat. I was beset by a teetering worry, like when your kids are playing by the highway, or when you are drunk around your great aunt Madge, and you know at any moment a swear word is going to fall, unsolicited, from your lips.
He was elaborating a story (which was further impressing on me that I want to be on his side when the revolution comes) when a black shag alighted on a branch to clean her feathers. Spinner snatched into a new tale:
“We were fishing for brown trout this day. Nothing. We weren’t getting a bite, nothing. All fuckin’ day we sat there. The sun was setting and we were getting hungry, and it was pissing us off. But those black shags were all around us all day dive-dombing the water and pulling up trout. Those black shags would eat their own weight in trout every day, and they didn’t even have to pay for fishing licenses.
“So, bein’ a bit cheeky, I picked off one a the shags with me rifle. Then me mate did. It was fun, and I reckon we killed about 20 or 25 or something that night. Thing is, after we stopped and that crack of rifle fire stopped echoing off the mountains, we heard this insane squawking coming from everywhere. Yeah we soon realised it was coming from the shags’ nests. It was their babies, their chicks poor buggers. There was nothing for it – they were orphans now, wouldn’t survive, so we took to the nests with shotguns until all the squawking stopped.”
He sat back, one wrinkly bullock about to erupt from his shorts like a spudgun: “Next day but, when we went out in the tinnies, let me tell you, no sweat, we caught some fucking trout.”