Roundabout at Bangalow (8 page)

One year later he has borrowed enough money to buy a hire car, and gone to Tweed Heads, leaving her, once again, with her mother. The car is old and always being repaired. Even though he sleeps in it to save accommodation, he can't get ahead. Being his own boss is just as bad as being ground down by someone else. It is now November 1926.

It costs a terrible lot to put a car on the service here. Apart from the drivers license I had to get a Coolangatta town license also a platform license for both there and Tweed Heads. I have to get a Tweed Shire license and a Murwillumbah Municipal license. All these cost 22/- each
…
It is bloody lonely up here, the only one I know is Tom Tranter and he goes out with a different tart every night. He is out with a grass widow tonight. I dont know how he will get on but he expects great things of her. In case you dont know what a grass widow is you are one yourself
…

A
grass widow
is a woman whose husband is
away,
either working or absconded. It's not surprising then that by 10 December she is demanding to join him. He attempts to put her off until after the Christmas season when accommodation will be much cheaper. There are hints that the trouble between them is not all his fault. It seems that she is never contented, and he doesn't expect things to be any better this time.

I have tried everywhere and it is impossible to get board under £3 a week each during the holidays. As for coming up here just at present, well its madness because at Xmas time I will never be at home and I know that that wont suit you but for goodness sake dont come up here till I get some money to pay for our board … If you would wait until a week after Xmas we could get a furnished flat for next to nothing but just now the prices are out of the question
…
if you are going to persist in rushing up here just when I cant fix up things for you I might as well go back to old Bulgies and work my bloody guts out all day and night. I wouldnt mind near so much if I knew you would be willing to stop but I know very well that as soon as the novelty wears off everything you will get dissatisfied and want to go home again. In the meantime as soon as I get any money I will send you some if it is only a quid
…

The last letter in this series is dated 16 December 1926, her twentieth birthday, but he forgets it, concentrating on his own bad luck:

Just a line to let you know how unlucky I am. On Thursday I got a ring up to go to Piggabeen and pick a bloke up there. It was a 30/- job so off I went in the rain and just as I got there my engine went bung and that is 9 miles from town. I had to ring another car and give him the 30/- to come out and get the bloke then I went back in with him and got a bloke in a motor lorry to go out and tow my car in and when we got there we couldnt pull it in. That cost me 30/- and I got it in yesterday with another lorry for 25/-. At present I am waiting for my car to get fixed and I have in wealth exactly 2
¹
/
₂
d and no chance of making any until the car is right. It has been raining like hell here since Monday and if my bloody car was right it is just the weather to make money because people cant walk about in it. I inquired about furnished rooms and I can get them in a couple of different places but the prices are right out of the question and it seems silly to think that you cant wait for another week or two and then we will be able to get fixed up cheap. Dont think that I dont want you up here because I do but I havent the money to fetch you up yet and you cant put it on the slate here the same as in Mullum
…

As there are no more letters in this series, she obviously joins him at Coolangatta, but they remain together only until late April, by which time she is nearly seven months pregnant. She attributes my weak constitution as a child to the fact that she was starved at this time; there was never enough to eat, and the evening's food couldn't be bought until he returned home with the day's takings. Things are bad for everyone at this time and there are whispered stories of my father using his hire car to help shopkeepers shift their stock in the middle of the night so that they can burn their premises for the insurance.

Letters from Charleville

They have been married almost two years when he leaves for Charleville, looking for
the big money
in the shearing sheds. She's convinced that he's on the run, trying to get away from her. When he gets to Charleville, almost broke, work is hard to find, particularly for an outsider. He tries truck driving, fencing and shearing but, just as he seems to be about to earn
the big money,
he contracts a virulent 'flu, is dropped from the shearing team and is barely able to earn his fare home.

Because of his experiences at Charleville and later at The Chan-non, he is one of the few members of his family to belong to the Labor Party, and is a dedicated unionist all his life. Meanwhile during his absence she is left with one child who is almost two years old and she is expecting another, dependent on the hospitality of his family (the many different addresses on the envelopes belong to his mother and brothers). There is evidence from the letters that two of his older brothers at different times demand his return. They are apparently outraged by his absence and neglect of his family, as shown by a cryptic comment in his letter of 13 July —
I didn't know whether they would give you a letter.
It's also apparent that she doesn't always believe his hard luck stories, and has continually accused him of being a
bloody liar.
These letters are interesting for my father's impressions of Charleville, and for his struggle to get work, but the question for me is whether he really
did
desert my mother before I was born, and I read them carefully, alert to their tone as well as the actual words. It certainly appears from the first letter, dated 26 April 1927, about nine weeks before I'm born, that they part amiably, so I don't know what to think about her story that
he tried to kill us both
.

I got in the train at Brisbane at 10 to 3 yesterday and stopped there until half past 2 today. I couldnt afford a sleeper so I put in the night sitting up in a seat & I never felt anything so cold in my life as it was. I think this is the worst looking country I have ever seen in my life. I suppose we went 300 miles and never saw a hill, all level country and in places you strike perhaps 50 miles with nothing but a thick bank of prickly pear on both sides of the line as far back as you can see. Then again you will go for miles upon miles and never see a blade of grass. The whole country is under a very severe drought out this way and everybody reckons that I have struck it at the worst possible time. It is very lonely up here not knowing a soul. I am stopping at the Tattersalls Hotel. It is a little low one-storied place and when you are having your meals the cats and dogs are fighting under the table. When I went into my room and struck a match about 500 of those great big cockroaches raced for the cracks in the wall
.

In a letter a few days later he describes Charleville as
the queerest place you ever struck,
and writes out for her a rude rhyme he's found on an outhouse door and committed to memory, confident of their shared sense of humour:

On Sunday afternoons half of the town goes to the football matches and the more religious ones go to the two-up school. They play two-up just at the back of the town on the river bank and hundreds of pounds change hands every Sunday … people never talk about how many acres of land they have, they measure it here by the square mile. One bloke told me he was working on a station, he said it was only a little place about 200 square miles and it is nothing to see a mob of 20,000 sheep travelling at once. I saw a good piece on a shit house door about the squatters and I will tell it to you as near as I can remember.

The Western squatters queer birds they are
They catch their sheep and brand them with tar
They work the niggers with all their might
And ride the gins while young and tight.
They ought to have, God strike them dead
The skin of their arse pulled over their head.

The only water we get here comes from artesian bores 1,000 feet below the surface and it is nearly boiling. You can get a hot bath here any time of the day
…
A bloke here told me today that I am not a bushman until I can eat a frill lizard between two pieces of bark for a sandwich and I told him I would never be a bloody bushman at that rate
.

Within days of his arrival he talks his way into one of the local football teams, scores two spectacular tries and is picked in the team to play Cunnamulla, 120 miles to the west, a fortnight later. The next week his team wins again, 36–13, and he is an instant celebrity. They will do anything to keep him in Charleville, at least until the big match —
a bloke came up and gave me £2. He said it was to pay a weeks board with and in the meantime they are going to get me a good job
.

The team and most of the population of Charleville go to Cunnamulla on a special excursion train. Matches like this, often grudge matches, engender high excitement. It's easy to imagine the drunken and riotous behaviour on the return trip, but he's careful to reassure her about his own sober habits.

[The train] was packed that way that you could hardly get a seat. We left here early in the morning and all along the line it was nothing to see 8 or 10 kangaroos going for their lives across the plains and there were emus going all roads when they heard the train coming. When a mob of roos would start across the plain everybody would lean out the window and start to barrack the same as if it was a football match. I think for every man in the train there were about 2 bottles of whiskey so you can imagine what it was like coming home, but I kept strictly sober all through the piece
.

Charleville is badly beaten (23–8) but he scores one of the tries, so is still in favour. How much is obvious in an incident later in the year when a police constable back home sends a tip-off that the police there are looking for him (probably for debt). He takes his problem to a Charleville policeman who is also on the football team, and is instantly reassured:
if anything came through to them he would let me know in time to get away.
Meanwhile the Christian Brothers pay his board while he is out of work —
and so they should because we won the Charity Shield yesterday by 11 to 6 and I scored 2 of the tries for the Brothers
— and when he does finally get fencing work out in the bush, they send a car to bring him in each weekend
(so you see I am of some importance out here)
.

It's not clear whether he is pursuing the pleasures of a young man, a sporting hero living as a bachelor in this free and easy frontier town, or whether he is, as he maintains, doggedly looking for work. At one stage his arm is almost broken by a back-firing truck that he is trying to start with a crank-handle —
Bugger me if the old thing didnt backfire when I was cranking it up and nearly broke my arm. I went to the ambulance and got it bandaged up but it is still very sore. I played football again today.
He says he can't work, therefore there is no money, but he still plays football, scores the winning try and sends the newspaper cuttings to his mother. Meanwhile every letter looks forward to a job and
the big money
, but by the following letter he's chasing a different dream:

There is a big job of bridge-building starting in about six weeks time at a little place called Yulo [Eulo]. It is about 180 miles west of here and I have got my name on the list to start on it … The wages run out at about £5.10 a week and they pay £1.1 a week extra for camping allowance
.

There is 12,000 head of bullocks leaving Charters Towers and going right down over the border to Bourke and there is a good chance of me being with them. I came out here intending to get a cheque and I will get one if I have to rob the bank for it
…

Things are bloody bad here and a man cant buy a job at any price. But it is raining here now and there should be plenty of work soon
.

I am not working and havent done more than a weeks work since I came here. It is no good me telling you this because I know you wont believe it
.

He sends her money in dribs and drabs, with promises which often don't eventuate.

If I only send a pound I know it will be acceptable until I get some more … perhaps I will be able to send you a few quid next weekend
…
I am sending you a pound today and may be able to do some more by next mail
.

When I am born on 2 July 1927, he is obviously pleased and doesn't mention the fact that he would have preferred a boy. As well as his two older brothers his mother is now urging his return and she wields great influence. He's on the defensive:

I would love to see you and the kiddy but I hate coming back again broke and this is the place to make money fast if you can only get into the shearing sheds. The reason why I never wrote before was because I had no idea where you were and another thing I didn't know whether they would give you a letter. However all is well that ends well and with regards to the babys name I dont care what you call her so long as it suits you because you had all the trouble of bringing her to light. There are some great people here and if ever I get enough cash I am going to fetch you out here to live. There is no bloody backbiting bastards out here like there is down there. The idea of coming back there broke seems silly because the best a man can get down there is £5 a week whereas out here hundreds of men are getting up to £30 a week shearing and fencing. Anyhow I am going to have a crack at it before I come home. I dont think there is any need for you to start walking up to Charleville with a revolver yet
…

Buoyed up by their apparent reconciliation and his new status as the father of two he at last gets a job fencing. It is forty-two miles out in the bush and, perhaps on purpose, far removed from the temptations of the town. While he is there he has his twenty-first birthday but doesn't consider it worth mentioning: