A Corner full of Characters,Love of Mallacoota
BRUCE PASCOE
The enclosed stories and sketches are a collection of material, most of which has been printed in Australian newspapers and magazines over the last two years.
The people and places are real and these are their stories as they told them to me. The three short stories are based on real incidents, but names and facts have been substantially altered.
I thank my various editors for allowing me to reproduce this material and full acknowledgement is printed at the back of this book.
—Bruce Pascoe
The blind window eyes of sleeping, sea salt homes guard the stillness of a night, where the moon s pale light chills the bitter gall waves of the ceaseless sea.
Innocent on pillows lie the heads of the sailors, fish scalers, water bailiffs; snoring quietly humped in quilts, are the noses of the landlords,
Overlords, Mothers-in-law;
curled in a foetal sleep so still and warm
are the forms of the cash dealers,
potato peelers, fish reelers;
smoking a last cigarette and gazing
towards the moort-streamed, light beamed sea
are the pale artists, the faint hearted,
the new lovers and old losers.
Houses sleep, boats bob in the bay,
but at high windows when the eyes of the town
are shut,
some see the gentle sun make a new day of an old deep night.
The dogs of that night pad a silent street, furtive eyed cats stare at quailing meat, dew drops bless the bike slumped against the fence, and make tears on the lashes of the sleeper beneath a tree.
The sun, risen wan from the edge of the ocean s rim blooms with rose red the guilty and the glad, the insane and the in love the good and the bad;
each dawn gilds the old streets with new gold,
guttered cans and sodden paper
blush with a new days bloom
and each pillowed face
glows shell pink, honey warm.
every morning, each heart has a chance.
Bruce Pascoe
Charlie Peel and Jack Helmore run the Eden Shipyards. Charlie is small and shy, wears a woollen beanie and silently works wonders on sweet-smelling wood to build and repair ships to go to sea.
Charlie is a master shipwright and has no time for journalists, while his partner, Jack Helmore, organises the business and works on the diesel engines. Jack is large and voluble, a wizard on metal and machines and can talk the deck off an iron yacht. These two opposites keep an industry afloat.
Two ships are on the slips being repaired and refitted after a burst of heavy weather which caused many of the boats to be damaged at the wharf. The fishermen cry out for a safer mooring as many boats have sunk at their ropes after heavy seas have burst into the harbour, snatch ing boats of all sizes from their berth.
Charlie saws and hammers away aboard the slipped boats and inside the workshop Jack and his engineer are turning steel into drive shafts and couplings. The shop is hung with belts and pulleys, miles of chain and rope, buckets of nuts and bolts and a wall full of 12 volt globes of various wattage and size. There’s not much you can ask for that isn’t there. Not much that you would need at sea anyway.
The fishermen of Eden fish the southern waters for gemfish, mor- wong, mackerell and tuna. The fishing has developed from line fishing in the early days to seine net fishing to the very modern Otto trawling which enables the boats to fish for more hours at a time. Almost nonstop fishing.
At present there are 100 boats working out of Eden, valued at over $20 million and some of the fishermen like Freddy Woods and Owen Allan have been fishing from Eden for over 40 years.
With the advent of the increased territorial limit of Australian waters to 200 miles, Jack Helmore believes that the boats of 30’—40’ will be swallowed up by larger syndicate-owned ships of 70’—100’. These ships will fish the deeper water and stay out for weeks at a time.
Jack says the Aussie fishermen will need government help to tool up to the larger scale fishing and if they don’t help them the Japanese, Yugoslavs and Russians will walk in, perhaps that should be wade in, and utilize another Australian resource. All nationalities have to eat, says Jack, and if we don’t use our fish someone else will.
Johnny Breardon, master of the ‘Kendon’, says you’ve “gotta be mad to be in the game” and believes fuel prices could cripple the industry in the future. Boats have 6 hrs steam to the continental shelf before they even look like catching a fish. The future will be in the equation between the relative price of fish and fuel.
Watching the blokes repairing the nets and the shipwrights repairing the boats on a sunny day beside the sapphire waters of Twofold Bay, it is hard to imagine Eden without a fishing fleet. Regardless of economics, there are too many families dependant on the industry.
Eric Fletcher has been building fishing boats and pleasure cruisers for 28 years at Eden and he points out that most of the boats bear the names of women in the fishermen s families. ‘Melissa Kelly’ for instance, is his own grand-daughter’s name.
The future of fishing at Eden will be a barometer of the industry throughout Australia. Some of the fishermen look up from the wharf at the forested hills and point out that the woodchip industry employs many people in Eden but most of the profits go to Japan. They hope the same won’t happen in their industry.
Boydtown, the monument a man erected to himself is as full of contradiction as the great Ben Boyd himself.
Built by Boyd as a port for his whalers and for the export of his millions of sheep, the village once supported 500 people. All but two of the buildings have since been razed by fire or looting since the death of one of Australia’s most influential colonists.
Boyd’s empire began to crumble and he took to the Californian goldfields to repair his fortune but on his return journey he was killed by South Sea natives or in the opinion of some historians took flight under a different name to avoid his creditors.
With the disappearance of Boyd, Boydtown gradually began to fold up and with the demise of whaling collapsed entirely. The buildings, church and land have had a succession of owners who have sought to develop the tourist potential of one of Australia’s most historic areas — the town which almost became Australia’s capital.
Boydtown is now owned by a group of Sydney businessmen who sought to develop the caravan park and introduce a housing estate over looking one of the most beautiful bays in Australia. Troubled economic times have prevented the promised developments and a restless shire council is making noises about forcing an upgrade of the camp park while a yellow blanket has been put on the historic buildings by the New South Wales government preventing any further work to be done.
The Sea Horse Inn is a Tudor style inn which was built to quench the thirsts and appetites of Ben Boyd’s whaling crews and although the pxie.rior retains much of its charm and the museum is of interest, much of the interior has been desecrated with laminex,plastic and cheap tourist nick nacks.
The bar of the hotel is covered in gaudy lino offcuts, many of the chairs slashed and the walls slapped with the kind of bawdy yellow stickers usually seen on interstate trucks. Boydtown has come on hard times.
The manager, Keith Masman tries to keep up a cheery bravado but it is clear that the memorial in his charge is wilting through lack of funds or direction from its owners. Perhaps the state is ready to step in, but one wonders if there is enough left to preserve.
Keith stands on the steps and muses about Boyd “the wealthiest man in Australia” concluding that Boyd was just one of those blokes who started things and never finished them!
Well, Boydtown is very nearly finished now and the church he built on the hill is gutted and crumbling and surrounded by a cyclone wire fence to prevent looters pinching the bricks.
One of the follies of mankind or perhaps one of the most adventurous dreams it is hard to say. Boyd, perhaps was possessed by both spirits.
His dream is now invaded by lesser spirits and reading the bawdy verse in the bar it is hard to imagine that you are standing in the inn of a man of great vision. The sound of surf on a beach of perfect sand is perhaps closer to Boyd’s spirit than the vestige of his empire that remains.
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Pirates with head scarves and knives between their teeth disappeared from the seas long ago, hut it hasn’t stopped some modern men of the sea from firing the odd angry shot at each other.
The abalone is quite an unprepossessing shellfish, a realist would say it was ugly. But then a lark’s tongue is not a thing of beauty either, but like the abalone it is considered a delicacy despite its appearance.
People, especially the Japanese, pay highly for the shellfish and when you have fishermen frantic to make a quid and two states with dif ferent legislation on bag and size limits, then you have an explosive situa tion where the two borders meet.
At the sea border of New South Wales and Victoria, shots have been exchanged as Victorians have pursued poachers who race for their border line and safety. In this game the shots and volleys are not just a friendly game of tennis.
Apart from the border sea battles, the industry is leant an aura of excitement and romance by its very nature. At Mallacoota the divers gun their high powered shark cats across the surf of the treacherous entrance to the harbour. The boats leap across the waves, often metres clear of the water and then they continue to pound their way down the coast to the abalone beds.
The divers fish amongst the weed of the reefs and are linked to their boat by a line which delivers air under pressure from a small motor on board. The abalone are hauled aboard by the sheller who grades, cleans and packs the abalone as the small boats are tossed about in the swell close to the rocky reefs.
These reefs have claimed many ships since navigation of the area began and New South Wales’ divers found pottery with Portugese inscriptions in the aquamarine waters of Bittangabee Bay. Most divers have their own private trophies claimed from wrecks old and new. Some of the wrecks that the divers have stumbled across could not even be named, their destination and the fates of the crew and passengers remain unknown.
A few divers are able to make in excess of $100,000 a year and although the tax man cuts that figure rather drastically, it still means a lot of money. But, jumping into Bass Strait at eight o’clock on a wintry morning is not everyone’s idea of a way to earn their bread.
Spending all day under deep and swelly water has its problems. Fatigue is automatic, but the bends is a problem and divers have to be careful to decompress carefully in order to get rid of the nitrogen bubbles from their blood which can block off the arteries in the bone, which kills the joint, and virtually eats the joint away.
Badly bent divers have to spend time in the decompression chamber which is a claustrophobic steel cylinder and the word is that if you don’t like confined spaces then don’t get bent. In the past nine years, 90 cases of decompression sickness have been treated with four deaths and many permanent injuries.
Sharks are another problem. The sight of half a seal floating past in the water is a bad sign and a very sobering sight. The seals themselves are a problem because of their inquisitiveness. When traveling flat out they look discomfortingly like a shark and have the habit of belting up to the diver like a Bondi tram and stopping dead with their snouts pressing against the diver’s goggles. Divers say that this makes the heart beat just a little above normal.
There might be a lot of money in fishing for the humble abalone but it’s a hell of a way to make it.
Old Soldiers Never Die, They Merely Get Away
In an era when R.S.L. groups are becoming smaller due to the ravages of time it is surprising to find a club which opened only in 1978.
The Mallacoota R.S.L. was made official only recently, but in its informal mode has been together for almost twenty years.
The atmosphere of this branch is distinctive and this is probably influenced by the environment of the town and the character of the old soldiers who came to live here.
There were local ex-servicemen, like the late Frank Buckland who served in a Light Horse Regiment, and they came from amongst the handful of fishing families who made up the population of Mallacoota at that time.
After the war, this town on the far eastern corner of Victoria, became attractive to many Melbourne people who wanted to get away from it all. Amongst them were many ex-servicemen and they created a distinctive group of their own.
Alan Triggs perhaps epitomises the philosophy of the group best. Alan was a distinguished pilot in the Second World War and his statue in bronze now stands proudly in Canberra. Despite this mark of his service and books which have spoken of his deeds, Alan refuses to discuss his part in the war. After the war he became a successful businessman and later retired to a house fronting an isolated beach tucked away in the folded hills which surround the lake.
The spirit is typical of the Mallacoota branch. All members served their country at a desperate period of world history. They fought for one thing, peace, and they achieved it. The Mallacoota branch is full of |>co pie who revere peace and are determined to enjoy it. They scorn war mongering and their Anzac Day service is conducted in order to remem ber lost friends and to hope that their deaths were not in vain.
The services are held in private homes and have a special flavour of comradeship. The men have formed their own band and on this day they join together to sing the songs which were sung in more anguished times and now remain as poignant reminders of that sacrifice. The music forms a bond between the men which they say is indescribable, a bond of comradeship tempered by time and trauma.
After the service, the men play their songs, have a few quiet beers and engage in that traditional game peculiar to Australian soldiers, a game where two coins are spun in the air.
Mallacoota played its own part in the war effort as a reconnaissance Air Force base. One of the communications’ officers has returned to the town where he served during the war and he is a proud member of the branch. Rex Corthorn is still a radio fanatic and a room of his home, which overlooks the Mallacoota base, is a fully equipped radio station. Rex remembers the war years at Mallacoota as serving a major part in the protection of Australia’s large coastline.
Amongst his reminiscences, his favourite, is an air force memo issued from the Mallacoota base which declared the Mallacoota cafe out of bounds. Some of the servicemen had apparently become a little too vigilant.
At a time when the Returned Servicemen’s League is losing branches and members each year, it is surprising to find the Mallacoota branch active and growing. All funds raised are contributed to Legacy in the hope that the new generation will live in a time of peace and savour it with the same delight as those who gave their youth and life, believing fervently in peace.
For those who sacrificed so much for peace, the quiet estuary of Mallacoota is a fitting repose.
Bert Egan walks down the main street of Eden underneath the ver andahs of butchers and drapers’ shops. He is an old man, bespectacled and red faced. He wears a gaberdine overcoat, a straw hat and carries a shooting stick.
Bert runs the Eden museum which houses the relics of the whaling and fishing industry of Eden’s early years. He has been here 86 years and worked in the bush breaking horses and carting fence posts and sleepers
out u! (he forest, lie is a big man with huge knotty hands and looks slightly incongrous as he stands in front of his gathering of history buffs dtitpcd in cameras and guide books, hand bags and sun glasses.
Each day, Bert opens the doors to the museum, collects the money and assembles his flock to hear his message. The yarn he tells is invariably the same but he loves it. He is telling a yarn that came to him from his lather, I he tales he remembers from when he was a boy. Some of the characters he speaks of were his mates. Most of them have gone.
Bert lectures his group and emphasises important points by prodding his stick at a tourist. He is wary of smart alec tourists but loves children and always has a joke for them. With his group of captive tourists in front of him he begins like this: “If you have a look here, see this here” pointing with his stick at a huge skeleton, “this is not a whale this thing you’re looking at here, no fear, this is Grampus Orca this is, the most feared thing in the sea. Everything gets out of his way, lovely little fish isn’t he madam”, and he prods at a startled lady tourist’s handbag.
“And here yev got the original harpoons used by the whalers and over here see, not that one, this one here see, this is an anchor off Ben Boyd’s ship. Yev all heard of Ben Boyd of course, eh? Ye have haven’t ye, well just in case you haven’t I’ll tell you the story. Now Ben Boyd see, he comes out here to make his fortune.” And so it goes on, a lecture, a dissertation, almost an intimidation but I’ve heard it many times and I can’t take my eyes off his face or prevent myself from laughing at his incredibly dry jokes.
Kids seem unafraid of the proddings of his stick and he jokes with them about having killer whales in the bath and kitchen sink. “That’d give mum a fright, eh.” There aren’t many, but there’s usually one impossibly knowledgeable tourist. Bert told of the biggest whale caught at Eden, a 97 tonner and a lady claimed that such whales only grew to slightly over sixty ton. “That so”, says Bert, “anyway he was big enough to play tennis on his back, so what are ye worried about, eh?” His stick stamped on the ground and she queried him no more.
His story centres around the killer whales and how whaling began in Eden in 1828 with the Imlay brothers, Davidsons and later Ben Boyd. Bert refers to the whaling as one of the unsolved mysteries of the world. Never before have sea monsters co-operated with man to seek the same prize. The killers would chase deep sea whales into Twofold Bay and herd them into a corner and then splash around on the surface in order to indicate the position of the prey to the fisherman. The killers would then eat the cheek and tongue of the whale and leave the rest for the whalers. Not quite the same order as the drover and his dog, but the co- operation and mutual respect was the same.
Each of the killer whales was familiar to the whalers and each of them was given a name. Old Tom was a particularly intelligent beast and he was the last of the bunch to die. Deep sea whalers shot the rest because of the chaos they caused in a pack of whales. The killers’ co-operation was only appreciated by the men of Eden. A tourist asks at this point how old Tom died and Bert halts for the first time and looks slowly around. There is a strange light in his eye as he replies “old age and hunger. You’get too old and too slow and everything gets away from you. You don’t eat and then you die. Tom was 140 years’ old. It was his time to die”.
Bert goes on to point out, with his stick of course, how Old Tom’s teeth are worn down and he explains how if a harpooned whale looked like sounding and getting away, Old Tom would grab hold of the rope and try to stop him. Trying to hold onto ninety ton of whale with a bit of four centimetre rope doesn’t do your dental gear much good.
Newspaper cuttings telling stories of piracy, mutiny and shipwrecks adorn the walls; there are displays of shells and antiques, ships’ bells and skeletons, and Bert can tell you a yarn about each one of them. He can also tell you about the aborigines and how this place must have truly been a garden of Eden. Shellfish abounded and the aborigines could sit on the back of a dead whale and spear the fish and sharks that came to feed on the blubber. Bert’s eyes become wistful as he describes the life of the natives and he looks through the window at the incredible sapphire blue of what is one of the world’s most beautiful harbours.
The flanks of this harbour are scarred with a badly planned town, bulk oil terminals and a woodchip mill, but these are the things which provide men with work today. The whales are gone but somehow when listening to Bert you get the feeling that there is a kind of crassness about the way we do things today. He admires the life of the blackfellow and as he lets his gaze rest on the stone axes and the spears he says: “Ye know we’re the most dangerous animal on earth, we’re the destroyers, these black people ruined nothing, they lived in Eden and would have lived there forever if we hadn’t come”.
And of course whaling is now a dirty word and the romance of the era is scorned by us conservationists, but it’s no use blubbering over split sparmacetti, the whales have gone and so have the men who took them. In Bert Egan’s story there is something larger than the facts themselves. He remembers the grandeur and the meanness of the men of the past. He paints his picture on a broad canvas and history is made up, not of times and places, but of people who were there when those times and places happened, so the Eden Museum is not just a yarn about relics, but a story about the courage, spirit, folly and ridiculousness of human cn deavour and told by a man who has seen all of it.
I Green Cape Lighthouse
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There is something about lighthouses. They are always bleak and forbidding places as a result of their placement upon the edge of lands thrust into the brunt of the wild oceans.
Yet they hold a romantic thrall. Their feet are littered by the wrecks of craft which caused these huge monoliths to be placed where they are.
Gabo Island is a rather bleak and tussocky place, battered by the worst of bad Bass Strait weather. At one time this island was linked to the mainland by a thin strip of sand, and one of the workmen who lived on the mainland, but worked on the island, at times had to keep repairing the sand bridge so that he could get to work.
Rumour has it that some of the Mallacoota locals used to ride along the beach to Gabo Island every Sunday to drink their supply of bottled beer. Although this delighted one light keeper, the other keeper was a teetotaller and couldn’t bear the carousing party and so, prior to one of their binges, he dug a channel through the sand which immediately widened and subsequent heavy seas separated Gabo from the mainland. Ga Ik) became an island, alone and aloof like the great actress.
How did Gabo get its name? White pioneers asked the aborigines what they called the lonely outcrop of land and the obliging natives gave
it the name that they had heard the local sealers and whalers call it, that is Cape Howe. The pioneers interpreted this as Gabo. So there you are.
As with its sister lighthouse, Green Cape, the builders who under took the building of the lighthouse went broke and eventually it was built out of magnificent granite blocks cut from quarries on the island. The houses on the island are also made from granite blocks and give the whole edifice and attendant building an indomitable appearance despite the blast of southern winds.
Before the light was built, the sleek barque, the Monumental City, ran aground and she was followed by other ships plying the Sydney to Melbourne run. The Cann River Hotel still boasts the staircase from the beautiful ship, the Riverina, whose boiler can still be seen on the beach opposite Gabo. Many homes in the area hold trophies from one or other of the wrecks and the local abalone divers often find clues to craft that were lost in these treacherous seas.
Despite the presence of this huge lighthouse, heavy seas, poor navigation and a combination of both, have brought many ships to grief. If men will go down to the sea in ships then some are bound to get wet.
Green Cape lighthouse, to the north of Gabo, is a sturdy structure thrust out on a rocky neck of land gnawed by a ceaseless sea. Huge rocks lay strewn at the foot of the cliffs, silent reminders of power beyond us all.
The homes of the keepers are swart, verandahed structures set amidst a heathland smitten constantly by the driving salty winds. It is usually lifeless as anyone with any brains is inside. The fishermen on the rocks, fishing for tuna and maybe one day a marlin dream, don’t count, fishermen don’t have brains, just tackle boxes tangled with one thought — the big one.
It is hard to imagine human life existing here and yet a succession of light keepers have raised their families on this rocky bluff.
In fact, last century a very beautiful woman resided within these walls. Henry Lawson, Australia’s great poet and story teller, was ‘drying out’ in Mallacoota at the time, and on one of his journeys he met this young woman and although they only passed the normal greetings, he wrote to her several times and as is the susceptibility of great hearts, fell in love.
One day Lawson and a local fisherman from Mallacoota sailed a small ketch from Mallacoota to Eden and Lawson stood up on the bow and waved as they passed the Green Cape light. He wrote a poem called “Did You See Us Sailing Past?” which was dedicated to that radiant female who lived on that bleak and desolate finger of stone in the sea.
The poem, which does not appear in any of the collections of Lawson’s work, was printed in the Twofold Times on 19th December, 1910
and the lines:
Did you see us flying all too fast from the grave of the Ly-ee-Moon. ” refer to a ship which was wrecked on the rocks of Green Cape with the loss of seventy six lives. Lawson and Syd. Allan were on board the S I A.’ and suffered at the hands of a gale and had to run before the storm, a rather perilous exercise. The poem ends with the wish that Lawson and his lady of the light will meet again at Eden. They never did.
And still the two lights stand guardian on the treacherous waters of our southern seas and too often their light has flashed across the bows of ships disintergrating in devilish seas.
Books write of the romance attached to lighthouses but I can’t get too romantic standing amidst the seventy-six painted stones marking the graves of the Ly-ee-Moon.
The wind moaning in the wires of the signal tower and the bitter crouched heath trees leaning away from the wind, are a better reflection of the mood and tell a far more realistic story of the anguished cries of lives surrendering to thrashing foam.
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At Bittangabee Bay, on the far south coast, there are the remains of an unfinished stone building. The stone was taken from around the site and the mortar comprised sand and a lime created from crushed sea shells.
Historians, anxious to pre date the discovery of Australia, have argued that these remains are those of a variety of ancient peoples.
An Egyptian dhow, found at Woollongong, provided some historians with a clue that these Bittangabee ruins might have been an attempt at providing a wintering station for Egyptians who were looking for Antarctica.
The discovery of Portugese pottery in the bay gave rise to the suggestion by some historians that’it was an outpost of Spanish-Portugese origin, when these two nations sought to divide the southern world between them.
Most historians agree that Egyptians, Spanish and Portugese and perhaps others, visited Australia long before the seventeenth century. To try and fit the Bittangabee ruins into that jigsaw is clearly wrong.
Several trees grow within the shattered walls of the Bittangabee site and some said that such huge trees could not be under 200 years’ old, thus dating the building some time before 1770, however, tests by foresters have proven that the trees are no more than 30-80 years of age.
The fact that the measurement of the rooms are exactly in feet and inches also discounts Egyptian or Portugese origin, despite the fact that Portugese inscriptions on pottery found in the bay almost certainly prove that the south coast was visited by Portugese much earlier than the 1700s.
The ruins themselves are quite un prepossessing and closely resemble the foundations of buildings built during the brief but booming years of Ben Boyd’s grazing and whaling enterprises around the south coast area.
Diaries by Boyd’s manager, Brierly, recall that building materials were transported by wagons southwards along the coast from Boydtown, Boyd’s burgeoning township close to the present township of Eden. This information and the style and measurements of the building indicates that it was the beginning of an outpost begun by Boyd prior to the collapse of his empire in 1849. The age of the trees inside the walls also suggest that they began to grow not long after Boyd’s bankruptcy and subsequent flight from Australia.
So, what could have been a romantic notion of the beginnings of Egyptian or Portugese civilisation on Australian soil is probably just that — a romantic notion.
Egyptians and Portugese probably did shelter in the beautiful bays ol the south coast but left no more permanent marks on the land than their own sunken ships and pottery, not even a small treasure.
My diving in the bay brought up only a few oysters, which I immediately ate, a can of KB, empty and probably dated around the early 1980s and a lead sinker, my own, which I had lost the day before. Journalism isn’t just hard work you know.
There is another old ruin on the shores of the aquamarine water of Bittangabee Bay. It is an old boat shed made from ancient concrete and is dated at around 1940. Inside and out there are strange legends which look like “Bill from Wagga was here in 1969” and “Michelle loves Craig – True”, surrounded by a pierced heart. These make one wonder even more about the Australian heritage.
Fortunately, the old stone walls of what was probably a Boyd outpost have not been damaged in the same way as the old boat shed and if it wasn’t for the historical rumour that they pre dated Cook’s ‘discovery’ of Australia, they would be quite ordinary stone ruins.
In the light of the evidence available, it is clearly a waste of time to ask yourself the Norman Gunston question “Was God an Egyptian sailor?”
The most enjoyable aspects of Bittangabee are the peace and quiet, the beautiful sandy beach, the clear water and the oysters. It’s certainly worth a trip for those reasons and camp bookings can be made through the National Parks’ officer at Eden.
How To Relax And Live Without The Tube
If you live in the deep east of Victoria where the mountains and miles prevent television and radio signals reaching all but the biggest aerials, then you have to entertain yourself. At Mallacoota, on Victoria’s eastern seaside border, that’s just what they have done.
Five years ago some locals formed their own band so that the town could have something to dance and listen to. This was all terribly normal except that they became very, very good. They also became very, very flexible.
At full strength they form a classic rocky jazz group with flutes, piano, guitars, upright bass, saxaphone, trumpet and drums. This combination is called Mama Hot And The Facts Of Life. When they play at( dances they play as Mama Hot, but in the restaurants of the town (all three of them) the group can break into two smaller parts. A guitar and upright bass play the original tunes of Gary Proctor while the piano, upright bass and drums can provide dinner music as ‘Driftwood’.
The depth of talent in the group has resulted from an influx of talented refugees from Melbourne and Sydney. Ken Hutton studied at the Conservatorium before packing up his collection of wind instruments and heading for the bush while the others sought refuge from the impersonality of city life.
Mama Hot began what has become an entertainment factory. A drama group and Arts Council has sprung from the centre of the group and recently part of Mama Hot became Lionel Driftwood and Piledriv- ers for the local production of Dimboola by M.A.D. or Mallacoota Music and Drama. The whole group accompanied earlier productions of The Incredible Adventures of Ernie and the A.A. Milne play, The Man In The Bowler Hat.
Last year a musical show produced by the group performed 35 items from fifty musicians and jn a town of 500 people that’s not too bad.
A junior version of the group began recently, nurtured by members of Mama Hot and this group of school kids call themselves Coloured Chalk And The Dusters and have already performed at a number of town functions including incidental music for a school production of a play called Bex And Abalone.
Bex and Abalone was written by John Wood-Ingram who is one of the three song writers for Mama Hot. John is probably the catalyst behind the success of the group although he prefers to suggest that it has developed out of the need for entertainment in the town and the abundance of local talent.
John’s play revolved around the local abalone fishing industry and most of his songs are gentle satires on town affairs. It’s hard to describe the style of music produced by John and his group. Some of their songs are heavy rock while others have a regae flavour and others are refreshingly original in style.
It’s hard to imagine a more diverse group of musicians. John Grun- den, who plays the upright bass and writes some of the instrumental tunes, also doubles as the Pythonesque commentator for the local juggling duet who go by the quaint name of The Amazing Balls Up. John also sings that favourite boy scout tune of Be Prepared.
On the same programme as the jugglers and the bizarre humour of Sue Chapman, who dresses up as the deserted bride from H.G. Wells’ “Great Expectations”, you can hear an original flute composition and the best arrangement of Broadway and Killing Me Softly With His Song that you will ever hear, Miles Davis and Earl Hines included.
And what can you expect to pay for four hours of non-stop entertainment of that quality? Three dollars is the sum of their demands and cheese and biscuits are included. Three dollars in Melbourne gets you about hall way to Elizabeth Street in a cold tram and no biscuits.
Edrom — A Scotsman s Dream
History is made up of the stories of men and women of great vision. One of the lesser known visionaries in this country was J.R. Logan.
Logan was a member of an aristocratic Scottish family who established vast grazing runs in the Bombala area. John Logan sold all of these holdings and shifted to Twofold Bay on the New South Wales’ south coast in 1908.
Despite the fact that he left school at 14, he was a man of great intelligence and ingenuity and after purchasing 500 acres of land that was formerly held by Benjamin Boyd, the wealthy colonial Australian pastor – alist and whaler, he set to building a replica of his family’s ancestral home, “Edrom”, in Scotland.
With no formal building experience he drew up his own plans and began constructions with the aid of a couple of technical manuals on architecture.
The building which still stands on the shores of Twofold Bay, the deepest natural harbour in the southern hemisphere, was a lavish affair. The panelling was imported oak and the construction timbers were locally sawn Woolly Butt.
A huge conservatorium was located in the centre of the home and featured a lavish fountain surrounded by exotic vines and plants from all over the world.
The library which overlooks the sapphire waters of the bay was filled with leatherbound books, some of which Logan had written himself. After finishing the house, this man turned his mind to other things.
He envisaged the Eden area and its hinterland as one of the richest areas of Australia in much the same way as Boyd had done seventy years earlier.
He studied the Snowy Mountains area and drew up a plan to generate hydro-electric power to help the development of the region. When these plans and feasibility studies were presented to the parliamentarians, they were met with prejudice, as the politicians were involved in other similar schemes which would have been disadvantaged by growth in the south.
Logan than attempted, and nearly succeeded, in creating a separate state bounded by the Cann River in the south, the Bega River in the north and the junction of the Murray and Murrumbidgee in the west.
The Depression of the 1930s put a stop to all plans for this develop mcnt but in the late 1940s, ten years after Logan’s death, the Snowy scheme commenced, based on the original plans drawn up by this canny Scot. Logan provided a separate power station for the township of Eden and was generous in his help for local groups, providing hall for guides and other groups and founding the Eden Museum.
After his death the great homestead of Edrom became a Lodge for they very wealthy and very powerful who liked a remote where they could remain incognito. There were some of them arrived with a new wife every few weeks and paid handsomely for proprietor’s discretion. .
In the lounge area of Edrom, a small panelled room surrounds the huge fire place and the conversations of the rich and powerful as they smoking and drinking the world’s finest ports and liqueurs must have been heady stuff indeed.
When the Chip Mill began operation in 1971, the noise and ugly port facilities reduced the attraction of the guest house and after a protracted squabble between the proprietor and the government, it was resumed by the state.
In 1974 it was used as a prison farm and in this period the beautiful fountain was removed to make room for the morning parade ot prisoners. Greater ironies are hard to find.
In 1977 the place was taken over by the Forestry Commission as an Environmental Training School. Edrom is now used y and study groups and other recognised organisations such as Rotary.
You can arrange a booking for your party of up to 40 by writing to the Resident Foresty Officer, Brian Squires at P.O. Box 273, Eden, N.S.W. 2551. Phone [0649] 51500. At $3.00 a night you can’t go wrong. Preference, however, is given to educational groups, so book early.
Brian Squires is a lively character who can make your stay enjoyable with his yarns about Edrom’s history and he is trying,with limited funds , to re furbish the home in traditional style. Historic homes are many and most are furnished better than Edrom, but few have such a stirring atmosphere. I>
There is something about the place which captures your heart, perhaps it is the remaining vibrancy of J R. Loga spirit. Perhaps it is the fact that this magnificent home over the world’s most beautiful beaches.
After his death Logan continued to surface,so to speak. His final whim was to be buried at sea in a lead-lined coffin. Fishermen “buried” the coffin twelve miles off the coast, but periodically it would come back to the surface. The local fishermen would weight it down and bury old Logan again.
This went on for some time and some say that when he was dredged up several times in fishing nets, the fishermen decided it was time Logan stoppdying to rise from the dead and buried the coffin in the grounds of his magnificent home. A local rumor has it that a ghost lurks in the old Edrom homestead, presumably the ghost of Logan.
Some blokes just don’t know when to call it quits.
| Photo to follow |
Booraby walked along the beach holding his spear, which he struck with a palm leaf every once in a while. On his feet he wore large feathered shoes like snow shoes. His feet left no mark upon the sand. He looked straight ahead and struck the spear with the palm leaf.
Genoa Jack was yarding cattle with his vibrant roan mare. The boss was leaning over the rails counting his brands. “O.K. Jack that’ll do. Now go and get the house cows and mind you don’t lather the mare.” “O.K. boss.” Jack watched the boss walk off to the homestead. Birra- wong was coming from the shack beside the house with a billy of tea for Jack, and as she passed the boss, she east her eyes down and tried to cov- ei her breasts with her arms. I he slack paunched white man muttered something as he went passed and when the girl looked up her eyes were full of fear.
Jack watched the girl as he drank the tea and ate the chunk of cold damper. A baby cried and they both looked towards their shack. The girl silently went to the lean-to and brought out a squalling black child. “Bin da binda, Nargalilly”, crooned the mother as she returned to her man, who watched both carefully. He finished the tea and looked back beyond the farm to the blue ranges which sloped down into the sea. Birrawong followed his gaze and said quietly, “Murrang man cornin’ Jack”.
Booraby walked along the beach with his feet and eyes straight ahead and now he was chanting his tptem songs. “Murra Murra Murra, Labilla Labilla, Murra Murra, Labilla Labilla.” The hoarse guttural chanting of the palm totem man was heard by the dingoes who watched from the vales of the sand dunes and the emus who stalked through the marram grass, but to the sea eagle circling overhead, the black man walking along the beach was nothing.
Jack rode off to bring up the cows, glancing up at the ranges every few minutes. On his way back he saw a Koala with a young one clinging to its back in the crook of a gum by the creek. “Kayala Kayala….” Jack involuntarily began to chant. He was shaken by the sight of his woman’s totem so far from its usual home. “Kayala Kayala Boondella Dirill Diril- la”, his mind sang and he spurred his horse to rid himself of the old thoughts. As he neared camp, he began to sing a white man’s song to chase away black singing. “Send her victorious, habby and glorious, long ray-a-ane overus, God save em Gween.” “Shut up Jack, ya black bastard.” One of the other stockmen shouted from the yard. Jack laughed but Birrawong was standing beside the bark hut with the picaninny. She didn’t speak, but through her dark eyes he could see her mind chanting “Murra man coming, Murra man coming.” His laugh faded and he walked across and struck her face. “Bugger that Murrang man. He’s not going to walk up here and take ya back. Let ’em chant by them bloody fires. I’m not scared ’a black songs. Them all shit, see.”
He unbuckled the girths and as he bent behind the horses out of sight of his wife, he looked at the blue ranges and sang the anthem at the same time in a ribald and careless voice. “God save ’em grayous Gween, God save ’em grayous Gween ”
“Shut that shit, bloody Jack” shouted a voice from the stables. The white men found it offensive to hear Jack sing the anthem and church hymns, but they couldn’t deny that he was about the only decent black man in these parts. He washed, he shaved, he wore clean shirts and worked harder and better than any man and never went walk about like so many of the coons. “Murra, Murra Murra, Labilla Labilla” chanted Booraby as he moved through the tea tree groves at the edge of the
I reach 11 is black liand touched the top rail of the fence and his drugged black eyes watched the sun setting as his lips still moved to the hypnotic rhythm of the blood chant. He watched the cows and the kangaroos in the paddock and in his feathered shoes he made his way to the trees behind the homestead.
“Get that Birrawong gin in here to iron these clothes Arthur, I’ll have to look after baby.” The white woman mopped up the baby’s vomit as she spoke. “And tell her to sleep by the stove in here to-night, in case
the baby wakes, and tell her to wear a clean frock.” She yelled as her husband went on to the verandah.
Birrawong came when she was called and tried to cover herself from the boss’s gaze as she walked past him into the house. Genoa Jack rolled himself in his blanket and his black eyes stared into the darkness.
Booraby’s lips moved silently and he struck the spear with the palm leaf and rubbed it across his brow and over his groin, again across his brow and then the tip of the spear and at the last plaited the palm to the end of the shaft.
“Aya Aya Aya Aya Murrang gidoon. Aya Aya.” The white people heard the high pitched moaning and came to the opening of the hut, some with soap on their faces, others rubbing sleep from their eyes. Jack lay staring at the roof of the humpy the spear through his breast pinning him to the soil. The crumpled palm leaf barely stirred at the end of the shaft. The white people could make no sense of the black girl’s words as she now slumped, keening beside the body.
All that day the stockman and the boss stood in knots beside the yards talking of the heathen blacks and preparing the white revenge of law. The boss had lost his best workman and they had heard stories of rogue black men who started on killing farm animals and even white people. No black bastard was going to do that here. The women stood on the verandah watching the men and listening to the gin keening for her lost lover. The picaninny Nargalilly howled out of misery because of the dark feelings all around her.
The white men knew that Genoa Jack had been killed because he had taken a woman from a tribe with a totem unmatched to his. They also knew that the black would return for the girl and in fact would probably still be watching the camp. The white men were uneasy with the wild black presence If the white child had not been ill last night, Birrawong would already be heading to the ranges with her true totem man. Ilimiwong like Jack had seen the white life and wanted more and so she had gone with Jack, but the black spirits still made her afraid. She knew Itooinhy would come for her.
At last the white boss came over. “Stop all that bawling, gin.” He said as his eyes gorged on her black breasts. He stepped inside the humpy
‘ We’ve decided to look after the picaninny here until this black man is found. We don’t know where he is, there’s no tracks, but he’ll come back for you.” The boss bent down and picked up the black child. Birra wong reached up for the picaninny but was scalded by the hot eyes of the white man. The white man knelt on one knee and with his teeth set rubbed and palmed at the girls breasts and ground at her mouth with his hard mouth. Tears flooded her face and like a soft eyed rabbit in a trap, waited in terror for the huge man to do what he would do. But instead he struck her violently and she sank crumpled to the floor and her swollen lips trembled over the words of her totem song. “Murrang Murrang Bin- dalla Bindalla.” She keened softly with the tide of her breath, her whole life lost and gone.
The picaninny was kept in the black room of the homestead. The plan was to camp the lubra out in the bush a small way from the farm and for the white men to wait for the black man to come.
In the bush, Booraby crouched on his heels watching the farm and licked at the paste on the stone, which he took from a bag on his string of hair around his waist. His eyes were frenzied and dulled from the paste which was mixed by the magic man of the Murrang tribe to keep up a warrior’s courage.
As dusk began to draw out the shadows from the bush, Birrawong suckled her child at the homestead door. Then she walked past the white men and walked to the edge of the farm and her lips moved as she trembled in all her body. All evening she sat cross legged by the fire and on the verandah the white men watched the smoke rise in the whiteness of the moonlight.
Booraby, crouched by the clearing, watched the girl by the fire as she swayed and sang her totem and keened intermittently in no more than a whisper. He began to murmur his own totem and she shuddered and swayed the more at the sound. “Aya Aya Murrang gidoon”, her breath whispered on (he night. Booraby with his wild and staring eyes began beating his foot in the sand and his hands moved. The moon’s light cast its trellices of luminescence through the leaves and limbs of trees and onto the sticks and plants of the clearing floor. Booraby’s black hands moved in a patch of brilliant light, like a pair of moths caught in a jar, fluttering in jerky palsy as he murmured his song and beat at the sand with his foot. A boobook owl mourned in the bush. Boo Book, Boo Book, Boo Book. So slow and tired and alone.
At last he walked into the clearing and took off his belt made from his own hair. He wiped the belt across the shoulders of the girl and pushed her gently on her side and trailed the belt across her belly as tears shook with starlight on her face.
He took her then in the sand by (the fire, white moonlight trellicing his rippling back.
A shot cracked open the starlight, moonlight, white night. The boo book stopped instantly. The white men stepped into the clearing and looked down. The black man twitched as he lay above the girl. She looked up at them and then turned away and closed her eyes. One black leg still twitched as blood brimmed from both their chests.
“Jesus, you’ve hit the girl too”, said one voice.
One white man, his eyes wide, tried to make a lewd joke. The others tried to laugh but couldn’t take their eyes from the bodies. It wasn’t until they left the clearing that the joke really took form and the laughter really began to shake the moonlight.
Beside the clearing, the boo book again began to call — boo book, boo book. So tired, so alone. Far away in the stillness of this white night, a child cried. So tired, so alone…………………
To the magpie at the top of a dead tree, he was a man slumped awkwardly over a freshly fallen tree with his pack and dog beside him. As the man woke slowly, rubbing his cheek against the sweetly smelling trunk of the tree, the magpie cocked his head the other way, looked for a moment and then carolled the warbling, rolling, sun bursting song of the morning to the dew jewels held close cupped in the fronds of ferns and to the yellow and pink glow of the sunrise through the trees.
To the man, as he awoke, the song of the magpie reminded him of the morning just out of Melbourne on the road to Berwick, where he awoke beneath some trees in the corner of a paddock with black-eyed, long lashed jerseys blinking slowly at him and rolling cud between their jaws. This was the morning after he had left his wife and daughter in their Port Melbourne terrace. What had she thought when she woke on that morning and found him gone? Had she been relieved or just more bitter? Certainly there would have been no less money coming in. Then it was 1939 and he had been out of work for nearly a year. The privations of this period had ruined a marriage based on the occurrence of a child and a drunken promise.
The morning before he left, the Salvos had given him a bowl of soup while he waited in the dole queue and he had listened as the other men talked of jobs that might come up or places where you could get a feed. Other men said nothing at all but tried to hide the soles of their shoes or the seats of their pants. Two men were talking about cutting sleepers for the railways out of timber in the hills around Erica and Orbost.
This memory brought the man slowly awake and he saw the magpie at (he top of the dead tree looking down at him, head cocked. Yes how
many years was it after that day in the dole queue and the morning waking in the cow paddock. Seven, eight years maybe, since he had come to Cabbage Tree and moved out to a hut in the bush where he made forays into the forest to cut sleepers , and now he was fully, bare daylight awake and Te looked down at his left arm where it disappeared into the side of the log. He had hoped that when he woke he might find that it had all been a dream.
He looked up slowly at his dog who was now sitting and slowly beating his tail in the forest litter and whining gently. The man turned his eyes to the axe ten feet away and the signs of six days’ struggle in trying to reach it. His tongue ran across his lips and he looked at the sky where the best of the sunrise yellow was being blanched from the horizon by a furnacing summer’s day. Slowly, he dropped his face to the log and licked at the wood alcohol mixed with the dew and once more sank into unconsciousness.
A blurred image appeared to him of a suburban back garden rampant with honeysuckle and a huge peach tree. A young girl was under the tree playing jacks with knuckle bones saved from the Sunday roasts of more affluent times. From this scene, his mind wandered inside and a brawny woman was elbow deep in soap suds, tangled hair falling about her face — a hard chiselled, tight lipped face. And then a dog appeared, a pup, a black and white kelpie border collie cross. The pup was growlirrg and chewing a stick.
Once again the man blinked his eyes into consciousness and the image of the pup faded away with the brightness of the midday sun and not far away was a black and white dog whining gently and beating the dust and twigs with his slowly wagging tail. As he saw the man’s eyes open, he clawed at the ground in front of him and made as if to rush towards his master, but sat up and continued his tail beating and whining. The man stared at the dog as reality smote him with a cruel blow — like the back of an axe. Ahh, the axe, and his eyes wandered once again to his axe. He pushed his boot a few inches towards the axe but stopped. These last six days it hadn’t reached, why should it reach this morning? He pushed at his leg anyway but the boot seemed heavier and he didn’t seem to be able to bend his knee. He gave up and slowly turned his eyes to his arm. He ran his black swollen tongue across his lips and bent t<> lick at the log, but its dew had long since dried and the taste of sap naus eated him still further and his stomach felt like a split pea cringing in i\\v huge cave of his chest.
He pulled his arm but of course it wouldn’t move and he could \t,|| feel the steel wedge beneath his crushed hand. His head lolled back an(| tears would have rolled from his eyes, but whether from the hopclcwmei^ of the position or the lack of moisture, no tears came.
I le opened his mouth to call the dog over, but the dog just clawed level ishly at I he ground and his mouth could utter no sound. The fingers ul Ins Iree hand searched beneath the log for leaves he had missed or perhaps a worm or beetle which had strayed there since his last search. Nothing edible was found.
The dog scratched and clawed, whining miserably and burrowing deeper into the hard flinty ground. The dog stopped and sat whining, whining between his teeth, and watched as the man’s mouth opened to call him, but then shut. How many times had he called the dog to fetch the axe and how many times had the dog brought back sticks only to be sent away — and the dog in his frustration and misery bit at the trees and clawed at the ground but could not understand.
The free hand slowly crept up to the tear in the shirt and resumed a clawing at the shoulder of the trapped arm. His fingers clawed at his own flesh but the wound was changing to a deathly colour and the clawing only brought the relief of unconsciousness as the pain beat behind his eyes and jaw, and drummed in every joint. Blackness slugged his mind and his forehead fell with a crack against the log and the hand dropped away from his shoulder and his nails were clogged with his own flesh and blood. From the black abyss of unconsciousness arose an image of his own hand reaching into the split log to retrieve his wedge and then — the first wedge shot out and slithered through the dead leaves and his inward eye watched aghast as a split second telescoped into forever and the log slowly closed upon his arm even while he began to snatch it out.
When O’Byrne no longer came to pick up tea and sugar at the Cabbage Tree store, and when timber fellers no longer saw smoke rising from his chimney and when his pile of box sleepers did not increase it was no surprise to anyone. Splitters were in the bush for weeks at a time on their own and O’Byrne was a queer sort at the best of times and in these restless times men would often up and leave and never be seen again. That summer, O’Byrne was not a topic of conversation at all. A few farmers in the hills talked of a wild black dog raiding the chicken pens, but it was desultory talk. There were many such dogs in the bush and besides the heat of this incredible summer and the threat of fire were on every man’s mind.
Years later, a cutter clambered up from the fern gully and came to a pile of sleepers and a billy can by an old fire. He walked further into the clearing and a black dog rushed at him from behind a log and stood snarling, his yellow teeth bared beneath quivering lips. The cutter then saw a pile of bones beside the dog and the forearm stuck portentously from the split log. With one eye on the dog, the man saw the wedge on the ground where it had sprung from the log and he guessed that the hand which belonged to this bleached bone probably gripped a second wedge. The tree had closed on the man who would have split it, and the dog who would have saved him had watched him die and now desperately tried to pro tect an ever decreasing pile of bones from the ravages of fire, goannas and eventually another man.
The dog watched this man walk from the clearing with the axe and the wedge and then turned his eyes to the pile of bones and struggled in his canine brain to regainthe fading significance of this pitiful pile.
There was no hint in the dust on the track. The runes left by snakes and lizards and smaller aimless beetles held messages for the boy, but nothing to make him aware of what he was to find at the end of his mission. There was nothing in the magpie’s song, or the steady gaze of kangaroos to tell him that anything more unusual was happening than the ponderous progress of a globe’s track in endless space. To the boy it was hot because it was summer and summer meant cicadas, of which he now held the transparent amber case of one that had crawled from the earth, cast off its shell, sung its song and died. Enough awe for a boy in one day.
In his other hand he held a bundle of letters for a man his father said was crazy, and if his father said a man was crazy then that man was. In the boy’s mind, any man who could fix tractors also had the authority to summate the life of another man. Still, it was the boy’s job to carry the mail from his father’s farm the two miles along the track to old Joe Freeman’s hut. His father said that Joe might be crazy, bush crazy, but he was still a good bloke, who did no harm, worked hard and had to be treated with respect.
The boy cared nothing for the letters, even the stamps he gave only a glance and then his mind wandered as he poked amongst a pile of old cans and bottles he had poked amongst every time he had walked this track. He opened the door of the old rusty oven as he had done every other time and inspected it for funnel webs or bush mice, but there was nothing. He slammed the door and it did not occur to him that he trampled amongst the rusting and shattered dreams of a man’s misguided passion.
At last he came upon the wattle clearing where old Joe’s hut stood and the goanna near the door meant nothing except the almost irresistible urge to throw a stone at the ugly hissing monster — but this was another man’s property and his father said throwing stones on another man’s land was not to be done.
The door of the hut was open and old Joe was sitting in his chair cleaning his rifle and the boy’s foot was on the step and his mouth already open to greet the man until he smelt it and saw it in the eye and llmi hr noticed the patch under the chin and his gaze travelled in an rirmit v ol cicada shrilled time away from the face and down to the hand which wasn’t quite holding the barrel.
I ach night after that his mind would re play the vision of his slow ga/c and it took an agonising eternity for the slow motion film clip to travel down the length of the barrel to the other hand locked in a claw on the trigger and then he would be flung sweating into consciousness by a single blast. Boyhood was invaded by the troubles which cause all the bland and freckled foreheads to corrugate and the corners of vacant eyes to develop a permanent squint of suspicion as boys turn to men and regard the sun with wonder, awe and a dark riding hint of dread.
A man sat at a plain table with his back to the door. A woman holding a teapot regarded the man in silence, a hesitant, appealing look which struggled with exasperation. She stirred at last and poured tea for Joe Freeman. Could any man be so silent, could any man sit so stiffly in new ill-fitting clothes, could any man look up into a woman’s eyes with so much love? She glanced at him across her cup but snatched her eyes away and bit her lip and would have bitten it through, such was her anger that he should cause her to feel this way. She struggled hugely to control a shudder at the look of dog devotion in those eyes.
Their cups rattled portentously in the silence and being deaf he didn’t hear the imperceptible tremble of her indrawn breath, but he saw the tremulous rise of her chest and knew she would speak.
“Tell me Joe, why is it that you travel for two days by horse and train to sit here and say nothing?” He drank before he spoke, his cracked and timber stained hands clasping the cup. His eyes full of a dark consuming flame, fixed hers.
“Because I love you”, and he held her eyes with his gaze, he wouldn’t blink lest she get the chance to look away. His hand tightened around the cup, “because I’d do anything for you, because the only thing I care about is you, always have done and always will, and you know it”. His hand plunged forward, released by a gush of words, and grasped hers. Their eyes struggled and at last her arms were around him, her breasts pressed against him, a surge of warmth around him and he felt sure he heard his name expelled in a sweet flume against his neck, where her lips trembled for a moment and then were gone, gone like a moth which flutters against a lamp-lit window for a second and then is gone on powdery wings seeking another light in all that billowing pitch of night.
Her face was against his shoulder and he breathed in the sweet liquor of her hair and his head swam in that vapour of warm woman flesh, but he could feel her woodenness in his arms. They were standing on her balcony which looked down into the creek and across the hills to the sea which surged in the night like a muffled heart. At last she turned from him to look out across the creek and he too turned stiffly and clutched the balcony rail, looking at the lights of Sydney winking through the trees on the edge of the harbour; looking through eyes misted with a passion that threatened to split his heart and strangle him with the cords of his own neck.
“Joe”, she said, “I can’t give what you ask”. She looked into his face beseeching his eyes to understand that she didn’t want to hurt or be hurt, meant no harm to him. “Joe, I’m just not ready for that, perhaps never will be, every time you come I feel dread, because you ask me for something I’m not willing to give, perhaps not even able to give.” There was a silence in the night and she found more words. “I know you say nothing but all the time you put a weight on my heart, I don’t want to be held down, I want ” her clenched eyes stared into the night but couldn’t find what she wanted.
His hand went to her shoulder and he allowed himself the luxury of slipping his fingers inside the fall of her hair to caress the soft skin behind her ear and he knew that his fingers would feel it forever and his neck would never cease to cringe with sudden desire each time he remembered her breath against him.
“I’m going back in the morning, but you must know I want no other woman”, and he looked at where he had drawn back her hair from her neck. “No-one will ever mean what you mean to me”, and he bent down and placed his lips gently upon hers, fully aware that she struggled not to turn away. The night enfolded them, the surf beat in them, her shuddering heart was the shore trembling to the great pounding of a wave overpeaked with its own power, crashing like a huge tree to the ground.
At last she said in a voice edged with exasperation, “You can sleep in my bed, there’s no other except the couch but that’s hard and there’s no need”. She kissed him quickly on the cheek and was gone. He stood for a long time on the balcony and at last turned into the house, undressed and lay down beside her. Both lay rigidly, he aching to let his hand caress the curve of breast and hip, she gritting her teeth, hoping he wouldn’t.
The silence surged on and at last he felt that she relaxed at the threshold of sleep and his face was inches from the lush mesh of her hair. His hand was upon her arm and slid to her waist, cradled the hip and at last felt the warmth of her belly and his eyes swam, the world overheeled as his hand cupped her breast. He lay with his head thrown back, a huge surf beating behind his eyes, across his chest, swamping his loins. She held his hand to her breast for a moment and then gently took it and placed it on her waist. She was soon asleep and all night he listened to her breathing and his breathing and towards morning she turned in her sleep towards him and he shifted his face into the path of her breath and as dawn came, he sucked in her breath and watched her face, her eyes like a child’s, the mouth open, the freckles around her neck, vulnerable in their childishness.
When she opened her eyes, they met his and she felt her hand holding his arm. The planet turned on its axis a moment before she groaned and stretched in the langour of warm sleep. Nothing in the world would have prevented him from taking her in his arms and loving her, feeling himself in herself; nothing at all, except that she didn’t want it and he couldn’t bear the look of reproach he imagined she would give. For all the huge force of blood that was in him, it could be quelled by one look of her eyes. She was not a cold woman, had he not slept by her side and felt the unbearable lushness and richness of her; it was just that she was her own woman.
With thick fingers he prepared a pot of tea while she made toast and these preparations seemed to consume their entire attention, until at last they sat opposite each other at a table and he smiled. He remembered the girlishness of her body and smiled with love, he knew he would soon be on his way back to the forests of the mountains, but his soul for a moment blazed with love and shone in his face and she looked full into his eyes and let her eyes search his eyes, but neither could prevent the gargantuan motion of the sphere and the moment passed.
As he stood at her door, case in hand, the moment for the inevitable parting kiss came and in their clumsiness their faces clashed and their lips might have touched but it was sudden, and they drew apart. He was about to say something and she could tell by the suddenness of the indrawn breath that it would be a farewell false with heartiness and she said instead, “Joe, don’t rush me, give me time”, and once again she pecked at his cheek and drew back to tuck the hair away from her face. He said nothing and she could see the spanielness looming in his eyes, but he gave a quick nod and turned and as he swung the gate she said, “Write to me”, and she could tell by his back that he heard.
He wrote long letters of his love and she wrote back brief notes, mostly about her job and house and these were carried endless miles by trains through a blur of eucalypt forests, but after a time the letters to Sydney took longer to be answered and the silences in midnight forests became longer and the agony of sensation on his neck and palm more unbearable and finally one morning young Bill Peterson stood in the doorway grasping the mail from Sydney and he had stared into the hut until at last he rushed from the doorstep and it wasn’t until half-way home that he felt the letters still in his hand and he flung them far into the ferns and wattles and ran in a wild-eyed rush to his father.
The letters fell among the bracken and settled with the passage of sun and rains. The rubber band blistered in the heat and a possum flipped them over with his paw, but they smelt of nothing and he went on. The two bills rejoined the earth after a succession of rains and suns and the ink of the other gradually ran and bleached and finally was frittered by the passage of ants until no single word could be made out, but any way nobody passed that way.
Bill Peterson’s dreams were haunted by the same ghostly newsreel track down the rifle barrel and his eyes screwed tight during the dream and never lost the look of surprise that life should turn out like this. The boy had gone, the man had come but he was not quieted by the inevitable transition. Whenever he found the frail vacated shells of cicadas he would still turn them over in his hand but now the bulging eyes made him shudder, the transparent claws clutched his fingers. The cicada had emerged from the chrysalis to sing its song.
It would probably be a rude shock for many conservationists to see Lyrebirds and Wonga Pigeons, walking calmly across what is probably Australia’s-toughest moto-cross track.
Despite the noise from Larry Gray’s throaty Kawasaki, eagles, robins, tree creepers and goannas go about their lives as if he isn’t there.
At Mallacoota, on the extreme eastern corner of Victoria, Larry Gray, one of Australia’s most promising young riders has designed a track along European lines which he believes is the toughest in Australia.
Mark Bennet, Larry’s timekeeper, training partner and No. 1 supporter, helped Larry design the track in steep bushland which has been set aside by local, Dick York, at no charge.
But that’s where Larry’s help stops. Despite winning the Australian title in the Grand National C Grade over 300cc event at Broadford in 1979 and the National Classic for all sizes at the same meeting, Larry is still unsponsored.
Living in the remote seaside town of Mallacoota prevents Larry from receiving the same attention as metropolitan riders. Larry, an abalone fisherman’s sheller, has turned to building to help support his habit. Although working on fishing boats gave him plenty of time to practice, it didn’t give him enough money to maintain his bike. Mark Bennet came to the rescue with a job as a builder and Larry now has to train in failing light after work, but at least he has been able to buy a new bike.
Larry’s tired old Suzuki 400, on which he won all his events, has been put out to pasture and its replacement is a Kawasaki 380 Works Machine. The Kawasaki has incredible performance and Larry is still getting used to the bike, but when he does, there will be a lot of riders choking on his dust.
Being a quiet boy from the bush, Larry has often been forgotten by moto-cross organisers, but at last he is starting to get invitations to compete, although the Mallacoota mail sometimes brings these applications a week after the event. He’s not that fast that he can afford a seven day handicap.
What makes a young man pour every cent and spare minute into the sport where the winning prize money barely pays for the fuel? Well, Larry says, he’s always loved bikes and introduced himself to trail riding in order to see the wildly beautiful coastline around the Mallacoota area.
Later, he entered some competitions and the competitive adrenalin began to flow and now he likes to win. He’ll throw his bike flat into a cloud of dust just hoping that corner is where he thinks it is. That’s what separates a good rider from a champion and Larry is going to be a champion. Already an Australian Grade title holder, Larry now has his eyes set on the “A” grade title.
As Mark Bennet and I time Larry as he completes lap after lap of the track, I wonder how he isn’t killed. Mark explains that although the bike looks like it is flying, its average speed on this track is probably around 30 m.p.h. Mark says that although it’s the most physically demanding sport, try hanging onto 100 kg of leaping metal for an hour and you’ll believe it, but about one of the safest. After years of attending moto-cross, Mark can’t remember a serious injury and yet he’s been to only two rodeos in his life and he’s seen a fatality already.
Safety is probably what makes it a family sport. Although spectators don’t flock to moto-cross, it is a popular family event. The rug is spread out under the trees, the ham sangas are unwrapped, the thermos hooked out and everyone has a good time.
Mum urges her son on to go even faster in the knowledge that there’s little chance of him being hurt. The mums watching sons chasing that oval leather ball don’t have such pleasant week-ends.
As darkness makes riding impossible, Larry then starts on his daily bike maintenance and has a sleep in preparation for a hard day on the building site. Larry is extremely strong and fit and consumes copious amounts of Ginseng and always eats good food.
In his spare time, and I still can’t work out where he finds it, Larry goes surfing, kayaking and spearfishing.
Watch out for Larry Gray, I think Australia will see a lot more of him in the next few years.
Driving a car into tenth place in last year’s Repco Reliability trial and many other successes in motor sport has earnt Phil Eather of Mallacoota, Victoria, a great deal of respect in the motoring community.
Gil. Davies’ little Datsun 180B, which Phil co-drove, was a David against the Goliaths. Amateur back-up crew, zero sponsorship and no aerial or four-wheel assistance made their tenth position as commendable as anything the Commodores achieved.
But this story is more concerned with the motivation behind Phil’s involvement in motor sport.
Phil was an apprentice motor mechanic who had a passion for spearfishing. Such was his passion, that he took off so many days to go fishing, that he had to work an extra eighteen months to finish his apprenticeship.
During his early years in the industry, Phil worked on one of the early Redex cars and at that time made up his mind to one day enter a Round Australia rally himself. He’d ride a bike if they were the best wheels he could afford.
This makes Phil, like many other motor men, seem like just one of the mob obessed by pistons and power to weight ratios, but there’s more to this man than that.
Any man who dives beneath the sea does so because of a basic sense of wonder and love of beauty, a desire to enter another world.
Most week-ends Phil took his MG TF along the New South Wales’ coast bristling with spear guns and loaded with gas tanks like a B52.
Spearfishing provided some pocket money, but fifteen years ago Phil Eather went to Mallacoota and entered the fledgling (small fry) aba- lone fishing industry. This not only provided Phil with money to live comfortably, but also a chance to indulge his passion to be beneath the sea, ride in super fast boats and in a small way pay for his motor sport.
Phil’s Haines Hunter is one of the fastest boats in the fleet and the Datsun 180B which he prepared for the recent Bega rally, where he finished nineth, is a beautifully prepared car and credit to the spirit of the unsponsored Australian sportsman. Phil’s car was one of the first private entries to finish behind the works machines of Bond, Fury, Ferguson and company.
While all this was going on Phil found enough time to build his own unique home, made from the bridge timbers of the old bridge on the Bet- ka River. This house which he shares with Sue Chapman (a rather extraordinary and bizarre lady who deserves a separate story) contains many of the oddities and things of rare beauty that Phil collects from the bottom of the Tasman sea while he’s gathering his quota of abalone.
Rebuilding an old American World War 11 army jeep to mint condition, caring for an extensive vegetable garden, nurturing a native for est around his house and his dingo dog (Bruce) absorb any time that’s left over.
So I asked Phil what made a man of such diverse and paradoxically passive interests enter the highly competitive and demanding Repco rally at huge personal cost.
“Well, 1 like seeing different countryside and it’s just one of those things I made up my mind to do — and I did it.”
Not only did he do it, but he did it better than nearly all the rest and still had time to point out to his rally passengers the wild flowers, the beauty of hills, the animals and trees. As well as loving these things, he knows what most of them are called.
While his fellow rallyists concentrated their gaze 20 feet in front of their front wheels, Phil was able to appreciate the sunsets on the red ochre mountains of the outback. The others thought he was a bit strange but more so for his eating habits than his zoological dialogues.
Other drivers lived on a diet of black coffee and cartons of Marlboro, while Phil ate five dollars of fruit and drank a bottle of ginseng at every stop. It is worth noting that Phil was amongst the fittest and most alert drivers at the end of the trek.
He commented on the general lack of press coverage in consideration of the overwhelming interest and support of the people all around Australia. He was amazed at the amount of fruit that would be returned to him after he’d pushed $5.00 into the hands of some bush store keeper and he couldn’t get over the support of people who sat out on their verandahs in the middle of the Nullabor at three o’clock in the morning to watch cars whip by in a cloud of dust.
Although Phil’s discourse on things of our natural heritage may have made him rather unique amongst the other single minded and bitterly competitive drivers, he remembers that after driving across the South Australian Salt Pans one night, every driver leapt out of their cars at the next check point exclaiming at the beauty and weirdness of a moon which remained on the horizon all night as a result of the incredible speed at which the drivers stormed west.
For all drivers it was as much an adventure as a sport. Peter Brock announced it to be the best motor event he’d been in and everyone had anecdotes to tell which had very little to do with pistons and fuel pumps.
All of us who read this magazine have a fair idea what drives machines on, but it is a far more difficult study to find what drives a man on.
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Ever since I had read reports of the Genoa River Gorge by the late Norman Wakefield, I had wanted to visit the gorge myself. Norman Wakefield, naturalist, archeaologist and plain adventurer had walked the Genoa River and it was here that he had found the footprints of a prehistoric animal. These prints were later cut from the river bed and carried out by helicopter. It’s uncertain how far Wakefield came down the river, but we decided to come in from Yambulla Creek and walk down to Wangarabelle, a distance of 25 kilometres in a straight line and God knows how long as the river winds its way through the gorge. Unsaid in everyone’s mind was the hope that we might find some perhistoric prints in some remote part of the gorge.
Five of us prepared for the trip. Three of us played soccer the previous day against Merimbula and got absolutely whipped. We were a sorry bunch as we fronted up for the walk. If we had been horses we would have been shot, scratched or swabbed. I would have said sent to the knackers, but Stan was 60 years old and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
The walking wounded arrived at Nungatta South Community farm just in time for a cup of tea from the Nungatta people’s big brown tea pot. We left Nungatta and headed through the bush to the Yambulla Creek. It was beautiful country and our packs were settling nicely, although a few of the legs were suffering from the mis-kicks of Merim- bula’s 6’6” thug centreman. It was all up and down over the tributaries of the Yambulla Creek, but at last we came out onto the Genoa River on a great sandy beach backed by a huge vertical rock face. The water was a deep green and we boiled our first billy and got stuck into the scroggin.
As we walked down the river, the old legs started to feel good as we were walking mainly over sand and flat sedimentary rocks. We were looking at the rocks for prints and the rocky valley walls for the rare brush tailed wallaby. This wallaby is found in the Snowy gorge, but has not been seen on the Genoa and it seemed that as the habitat was the same it should be seen in the area. I was compiling a list of birds for the Bird Atlasing group of the Royal Australian Ornitholigists Union, Graeme was looking out for rare trees and plants and all of us were look ing out for good bass holes.
We camped on a sandy beach in one of the most beautiful camp sites imaginable. We cooked good old sausages eggs and onions and Tim dished out the Vintage Club’s Cabernet Sauvignon. In the morning I got up with the kookaburras and the whole valley was white with a gently shifting mist and I searched the rocky walls for wallabies but saw not a one. A dingo had passed, however, and 1 followed his prints along the
sand in order to see what he had been eating. At the edge of the river my knees disappeared in quicksand and I was able to add to the scientific knowledge about dingoes which says that they don’t bark — they don’t sink either.
That day we had a taste of how inaccessible, remote and tough the Genoa River can be. The river twisted and turned through the most incredibly sharp rock walls and we had to cross and recross the river to find a path. At times we had to actually wade along the river between towering rock precipices. Graeme was good at this and seemed to have an inbuilt affinity with quick sand. He could find even the smallest patch. At one stage as the rest of us struggled through dense scrub on the bank, Graeme strode into mid-stream and promptly sank up to the waist. His pack was gently pushing him further into the mire and the only way he could stay up was to lay his walking staff flat on the sand and crawl out. It was obvious that he needed help, but at this stage the remote Genoa valley was filled with the hysterical sobbing laughter of four hikers as one of their number struggled from clinging sand like the monster from the lagoon. Graeme took this injustice to heart and not long after found an incredibly clear fossil of a palm or fern. Unfortunately it was on a rock that weighed about eight pounds and he made us take turns in carrying the thing. He who laughs last gets stoned.
The day seemed to be going forever. Most of the time we spent hopping from rock to rock along the bank or worse still in the water. Our feet were saturated and our toes began to resemble wrinkled prunes and were being tenderised by the horrible concussion of man and pack slam ming down on one foot at a time. We travelled for about six miles like this without our feet touching ground. We began to look on the rock- hopper penguin as the most beleaguered animal on earth and determined to set up a fund to care for foot sore penguins if we ever got out.
At the end of this body numbing section, we came to a shelf of rock which stretched across the river, between two sheer walls. The water cascaded over this wall in silver veils and in the caves beneath, beautiful ferns and mosses grew. We sat in the sun, listening to the falls and eating dried fruit in the heart of the Genoa Gorge. We wondered how many people, if any, had ever been here before. There is a tremendous satisfaction in being somewhere that very few people have ever been. Our dingo’s tracks were still in front of us and we learnt to follow his tracks as he picked the easiest path. We left the falls and continued our bone jarring hoppings and camped as the evening star began to shine. All the stars shone above the valley that night and the huge rim of the milky way arched above us, as a frost began to clutch the night in its grasp. It was a cold night and breakfast that morning was a silent affair as we clutched our mugs of tea and slowly thawed.
We had found no wallabiles, no prehistoric footprints, but we were travelling through some of the most beautiful and isolated country on this globe. The pools beneath the steep valley walls were a deep green and edged by beautiful sandy beaches. Native mint, hakea, grevillea and heath grew along the banks and high up on the rock cliffs a plant with a beautiful pale blue flower grew in the rock crevices. From where we sat drinking tea on the beach, these bushes with their clusters of flowers appeared a brilliant, almost iridescent white.
On a perfect crescent of sandy beach we found a pied cormorant with its breast torn out. From the prints we could see that the dingo had passed it and come close for a look but apparently not touched it. The bird’s prints showed that it had walked forward, probably trying to take flight in that awkward cormorant way. By the manner of its death and the fact that only the breast had been eaten, it is probable that a peregrine falcon had stooped on the bird, stood on its corpse and then flown off, a metallic blue-black death machine.
On a similar beach later in the morning we were treated to the songs of two lyrebirds high up in some trees. Gradually they cam lower and lower, occasionally giving their clucking alarm call. The male was a magnificent bird with a beautiful tail and equally beautiful song. Across the river, in the biggest white gum I’ve ever seen, an eagle had built its huge two metre platform nest with a commanding view of the river and the hills. Some people confer a regality upon Wedge Tails and from that height they must gain a sense of their own superiority.
We came out of the gorge onto a straight section of river and had to scramble through bottle brush scrub on the bank and periodically hop across granite and slate sections as well as the usual river crossings. Graeme’s good old staff came in handy many times as we helped each other across particularly fast rapids. As we lunged from rock to rock the thought crossed our minds of what could happen if one of us was to break an ankle or even suffer a bad strain. You had to be perfectly fit to get over this country. No man with a crook leg could carry a pack and Graeme’s fossil through this country. An injury would mean a long and lonely wait while others went for help. But if I ever break a leg, that’s where I want to do it; in the middle of the Genoa Gorge on a sandy beach beside a green pond quietly fishing for bass and with plenty of sunshine, tucker and tea.
The boots were beginning to suffer a bit. Stan had lost part of his sole and it flopped like the mouth of a politician at election time. Steve’s sturdy boots began to give way and the old Blundstones were beginning to look like something you give to teething dogs.
A( last, we saw a pine tree in amongst the forest and we knew we were near Wangarabelle. Underneath the pine were the relics of one man’s broken dream. A fallen post and rail fence, a patch of cacti, broken stone pots, old rusting butter churns and his pastures which once ran down to the river’s edge, all covered in kunzia tea tree scrub. All that effort to come to nought except one pine tree gradually being besieged by rot. The forest recovers its own. How men’s dreams fade.
We walked up out of the river at last and surprised hell out of Jack Temple’s cows which ran bellowing from five sodden humpy backed creatures rising up out of the river.
We didn’t make any great discoveries, but we had been somewhere where perhaps no-one else had ever been and what is more important, spent three days surrounded by perfect beauty and no sign of any other man.
We boiled our last billy and the smoke gently wreathed up into the blue sky as we lay back in the sand. Late that afternoon a ragged and pungent bunch fronted the bar at the Genoa pub and enjoyed the best beer in Australia.
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While abalone fishing is the glamour fishing enterprise at Mallacoota, with its flash, high-powered boats and rich rewards, and while it is ‘developing about it some of the romance which is inevitable every time men go to sea, there is nothing quite as beautiful or romantic as one of the traditional fishing ketches.
The rigging and the smell develop the aura which has inspired all young people to dream of running away to sea.
Once out on the water, however, it’s not at all romantic, just wet and cold. Bill Brown and brothers, George and Dave Casement, own the three boats which fish the lakes of Mallacoota and the sea around Gabo and beyond.
When the salmon are running, the three boats often co-operate to shoot a school of salmon. This involves the use of sein boats, small net. carrying clinker craft, and if the salmon are unco operative enough to feed close to shore, the surf can often upset these boats and this is where the quaint seaman’s expression, ‘all wet arse and no fish’, really applies.
The fishing has its quieter moments in the lake itself and Kitch Allan who fishes for bream from a couple of clinkers, piled high with net and cork, can often be seen at dawn sailing across the lake against the backdrop of dawn light appearing over the Howe Range.
Kitch, with a carefully made smoke clinging to his lips and his cocker spaniel navigating from the bow, goes about his business thoroughly and with a quiet dignity uncommon in a world where the dollar is king.
Kitch’s boats are berthed in the quiet idyllic waters around Coull’s Point and the bigger boats, Bill Brown’s beautiful Nan-Sea, George Casement’s Gip-Sea and Dave Casement’s ‘Kay Sea’, are usually tied up at one of the jetties close to town.
Mallacoota used to be a fishing village and nowadays it is many things with many more people and many more septic tanks, and it will never again be the same as it was twenty or thirty years ago.
Times change and Mallacoota is lucky in that it has been able to experience an incredible surge of development and still keep its links with the past and its true links with the sea.
We might be pumping our local and tourist effluent into the lake, and out into the sea, but there are indications that the town realises that everyone in it depends for their living or their life on the lake and the sea, and to despoil that asset would damage us all.
It’s a long time since dragons brooded over heaps of jewels and aspirant knights took up the lance and strode into battle, and people will tell you that the dragons of the fairy stories are mere myths. Don’t believe them.
The shaded gullies of East Gippsland streams are haunted by a creature whose lineage is as ancient as the land itself. We have our own dragon. He’s not very big and he doesn’t breathe fire, but in his miniature world he is as fearsome to look at as any picture book dragon.
Physignattus Lowittii, the East Gippsland Water Dragon, grows to about half a metre in length but he has heavy dorsal scales and a vertebrae crest which makes him look like a miniature version of the pre-his- toric reptiles which hunted the jungle forests of the early world.
This lizard is mostly a grey-brown colour, but his throat is strikingly blotched with orange, red, blue, green and yellow around the throat. The spines along the back and around the face certainly give it a dragonish appearance.
Although the lizard is shy, he can often be seen on logs and branches overhanging the water and many fishermen have been startled by the creatures dropping into the water from considerable heights. The lizards swim well and use this skill to avoid predators and also to catch their diet of frogs, smaller reptiles and yabbies. They also eat fruits and berries.
The lizards will usually attempt to escape detection but are really quite inquisitive and will often come up quite close to gaze at fishermen or quiet bushwalkers, They lift their heads up in a shuddering motion, very reminiscent of dinosaurs and tend to cock their head to one side to gaze at humans conducting their strange human activities. You have to admit, fishermen must look a little peculiar to the uninitiated.
Keep an eye out for our own very special local dragon. The first sign of its presence is often a loud splash in the water. If you sit quietly you will most likely be rewarded by the appearance of this frightening little dragon. He may not scare you much but the sight of him must be enough to make most small frogs croak.
In an age when the cries of ‘Back to the Bush’ or ‘Let’s Get Away From It All’ are heard more and more frequently, what does it mean to those who have answered that call?
If the pressures of modern living and business operation are becoming unbearable for many middle class workers, then it is just as great or
So what do the Princes of Capital do when they have retired from (he boardroom chairs and headed for the bush?
()n the border of New South Wales and Victoria the lake and river system of Mallacoota offers the perfect retreat. The rivers are quiet and shrouded by brooding sub tropical jungles and the lakes are enclosed by forested hills and trimmed with the white crescents of sand.
In these idyllic surroundings several powerful businessmen have chosen to retire.
Neil was the Australian manager for a big insurance firm and worked enormously hard to establish his firm in the Australian business community. Although he enjoyed his job, from the very early years of his career he harboured a dream. His vision was to have a house overlooking rivers and lakes with a private jetty at the bottom of his garden.
He found his dream at Gipsy Point and on most days of the year Neil can be found, not without some difficulty, fishing one of Australia’s most famous bream streams, the Wallagaraugh River. There’s not much Neil doesn’t know about his river or how to lure the bream and flathead from it.
Neil’s life is a quiet one now and after a day of fishing he retires to his corner of the Gipsy Point Hotel where he yarns with the locals, and even there he commands a view of the lake where sea eagles swoop across the water plucking silver fish from the glassy surface, and the grassy verge of the lake where kangaroos graze calmly in the fading evening light. In this setting one man has realised his dream.
Not far from this point in an even more remote location, Alan has reached his Utopia. Alan distinguished himself as a pilot in the Second World War and although books have been written about his deeds and a bronze statuette of himself can be found in Canberra, he refuses to discuss that topic and prefers to suck on his pipe as answer to such questions. Alan is a man of peace and at peace he wishes to remain.
After the war, Alan established his career in banking and for many years was the manager of a large city bank. When he retired, he and his wife looked for the point on earth closest to heaven. They found it, ironically enough, as a place called Dead Finish on a remote corner of the lake system at Mallacoota.
At Dead Finish there are only two homes. The first was occupied, until his death, by George Dukes who operated the Melbourne shipyard of Orr and Duke until he too moved to a quieter more pacific life. Now George’s house is empty and close by Alan and Barbara’s wide-verandah- ed home looks across the lake which mirrors the warm forested hills.
Most mornings, Barbara and Alan walk along the quiet beach in front of their home, examining the marks made by the birds, snakes, dingoes and other native animals. Barbara is at present compiling a book of animal tracks and has for years researched the habits of native animals, and her laboratory is perhaps the most beautiful in the world.
I talked with Alan as he was painting his old clinker yacht. He painted without haste, sucking his pipe and gazing out over the islands and the blue lake^vhich is an indescribable beautiful blue. He was bemused to think that his life would be of interest to anyone. He shrugged his shoulders and applied paint to his craft with loving care, the craft he sails around the myriad islands, rivers and quiet corners of the Mallacoota waterway.
The remote and majestic charm of the estuary has been the succour of writers such as Henry Lawson, E.J. Brady and Edward Harrington and now businessmen are joining the artists and fishermen for whom this corner of Australia has been paradise.
Alan and Neil are staunchly conservative and their eyes take on a special gleam when they discuss politics. They remain unabashedly proud of their hard work and ambition. They have turned from the demands of that life to the tranquillity of their present environment, but still believe firmly in the individual person’s right to be enterprising. They profess this belief with enthusiasm, but a good humoured serenity which has been nurtured by a geography which precludes tension and aggression.
That is the story of the “Ones Who Got Away”.
At the heart of Mallacoota there is a big tree, a Eucalyptus Maideni var Williamsonii, one of only three of that species.
This huge tree stands by the oval at Mallacoota and has watched over all the town’s football, cricket and tennis sides.
Kids climb in the branches while the spectators shelter from the sun or rain under its huge canopy.
Sport has a lot to do with the spirit and pride of a town. The way the players conduct themselves on the field is a reflection of the town and players tend to respond to the aspirations of the crowd.
Mallacoota has been successful in sport for a long time and it is due, not just to the standard of the teams, but the support given to them.
In the last half of a close soccer game, the Mallacoota crowd can lift its players to that little-bit-extra level of desperation and skill.
Everyone cheers and shouts when you’re in front or close to the opposition, but Mallacoota has got a few supporters who are there every week, in all weathers, no matter how the team is going. Dutch Marty and Podge are the old stayers of the cheer squad and when a visiting i* mu is handing out a hiding to us, the most inspiring thing of all is to hem INulge yell out, “come on, get in to ’em”.
You suddenly remember that people are watching this debacle and then pride is at stake as well as your own. Its surprising the number of tunes Mallacoota has risen like the Phoenix from its own ashes to snatch victory under seemingly impossible circumstances.
To run out in the colours of any town is a tremendously adrenalis- mg thing. In the country it is mighty important. You are playing under the town’s name, in its colours, against some neighbouring town and the pride and integrity of the district is at stake.
But when it is over, it’s over, win or lose, and its back to the big tree to enjoy a hamburger and a beer and trade stories with the opposing team and their townspeople. The desperation and frustration which might have been felt on the field is forgotten off it, and the teams from all the towns from this corner of Australia have yarned away many a summer or winter evening under the Big Tree.
One of the most enjoyable sporting trips away from Mallacoota is up to Towamba in the hills. Until recently, access to this remote valley was via the Snake track, one of the world’s most serpentine roads.
But once there you stand on a beautiful field on top of a small hill, surrounded by rows of mountains on all sides. It’s a perfect amphitheatre.
At the conclusion of a decorous game of cricket we all head for the pavilion and sit in the the old plush theatre seats outside or get into the food inside. Those Towamba women can really cook and the spread they put on is rather awe-inspiring for some of our lads whose feeds are rather irregular.
They’ve got at least six Silent Night Kero fridges in that pavilion and we haven’t yet figured out if they’re ALL full of beer, but if we ever do, it’ll take us a couple of extra days to get down the Snake track.
But under the Big Tree is surely the most pleasant grandstand of all. You can look out across the Tasman sea or over to the brooding blue Howe Ranges. A town has to have a heart and it is never a public building, although a pub often goes close, it is usually a natural feature and to me Mallacoota’s heart is under the Big Tree.
The sketch on the front cover is by Gary Proctor.
Killers of Eden, Boydtown, Shots Across the Bow, The Ones Who Got Away, Who Discovered Australia, Edrom, Southern Lights and Fishers of Eden all appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Doing it on his Own will appear in Two Wheels shortly; The Man and the Machine will soon appear in Overlander and Genoa Gorge was published in Outdoors.
Learning to Live Without the Tube was published in The Age and Black Velvet Night won an award in the 1979 Fellowship of Australian Writers’ Moomba competition.
Many thanks to all the people who helped with the typing and preparation of these stories, especially Alison who made the work a pleasure.
Bruce Pascoe has lived in the area for seven years and has worked as a secondary school teacher and abalone sheller.
He has had a number of short stories and poems published throughout Australia and is a regular contributor for several Australian newspapers and magazines.
Printed by “Snowy River Mail”, Orbost.