Warrigal's Way (2 page)

2

I had never seen so many cars, trucks, buses and people in my life. It beat Melbourne hands down, especially the noise and the stink. There was a blue haze over everything which made my eyes water. I just followed the crowd and crossed the road at the lights, then went for a walk down what I thought was Sydney's main street. The people didn't look much different from those in Melbourne, dressed from real flash to raggedy poor, all lookin' real serious, and all in a hurry—to do what, I never found out. It was a bit overpowering and I felt a bit frightened and ready to run. I couldn't tell you why, but that was the feeling I had or that the place gave me, sort of like you were off balance and you were trying hard not to fall over, sort of scary. Maybe that's why everybody hurried everywhere and looked serious.

I walked along looking in shop windows. I didn't want to get too far away from the station just in case I couldn't find it again. I found a shop selling food and bought a pie, a ham sandwich and a bottle of orange juice and put them in my port. The main street seemed to stretch on for miles. I found a seat overlooking a park, where I sat and ate.

Just as I finished a big kid, old, about sixteen, sat down alongside me and asked, “Where you from, kid?”

I went on the defensive straightaway. When you've been
brought up to distrust, you can sus a pig straight off. “What do you want?” I asked.

“What ya got in the port?” he wanted to know, reaching for it.

“Just gear,” I said, pulling it towards myself.

He grabbed the end of it and pulled it towards himself, leaning towards me, looking me in the eye. So I let it go, and he smiled in my face. “Hard luck, kid,” he was saying as I poked a rigid index finger in his eye. He dropped the bag. I caught it and ran for dear life, him bellowing and roaring behind me. But he had no chance. Roger Bannister couldn't have caught me. That dropkick had no chance and I soon got away from him.

I looked around and realised I was lost. I walked for hours, but I couldn't find that main street again. It started getting dark and I didn't know what to do. I knew if the police got hold of me they would find out about the warrant and give me to the Department. I didn't even bother to reason how the police would find out. I was just convinced they would. So I was feeling a bit panicky. I found a big thick hedge in front of a house and crawled under it. I made a space and tried to sleep. After three lifetimes it was just crackin' daylight, so I crawled out and walked up the road. I didn't know where I was, but I knew it wasn't a working-man's suburb—all the houses were huge with lush trimmed surgical gardens. I came to a small park that looked like a poor relation. I was surprised. I would have thought the people that lived here would have sent their gardener to paint the trees green, and roll out some lawn. But it had a tap, so I had a wash, brushed my teeth and combed my hair with my fingers and felt heaps better.

At a small corner shop I got two luke-warm pies for breakfast, and ate them out on the footpath, then walked till my feet were sore. As I said, I had no clue as to where I was. I couldn't see the sea, so I must have been walking inland, tired, footsore, more than a bit confused. It started
to rain and I got soaked. I walked until I came to a small shopping centre and sheltered there. There was a telephone, so tired, wet and cold I rang Nancy. I had to have three tries, I matched the numbers wrong on the first two tries, and talked to strangers. I had an advanced case of the shivers by this time, so I got in a closed shop doorway and took my shirt off and towelled myself dry. I put my dry shirt on. It was as thin as a boarding house blanket, and you could put your arms through any of the holes. But it was dry—until I had to put my wet jacket on. There was a pretty girl in a uniform waiting for a bus so I asked her if she would ring the number for me, as I keep getting it wrong. She said alright, and I gave her the pennies. She got Nancy first try and I thanked her, and told Nan what happened. She said to get a taxi and show the driver the paper she had given me, and he would bring me to her house.

“I have to get a taxi,” I told Jill, the girl who had rung for me.

“Don't waste money ringing up, they're going past here all the time,” she said. “I'll show you how to get one.” She went and stood at the side of the footpath and waved her arms and yelled, and like magic a cab came to a stop. I thanked her shyly and she squeezed my hand. I thought she was tremendous, beautiful and worldly wise. I didn't find out for years that she was a student in her high school uniform.

It didn't take long to get to Nancy's, and cost seven and six. The driver said two and six flag fall, whatever that is, and five bob fare, so I must have been a fair way away. Five bob was a good amount, even in 1958. Nancy paid the taxi and hustled me upstairs, and to my mortification took off my gear, completely ignoring my howls of protest.

“Get out, I've got a heap of young brothers,” she told me, putting me in the bath. It was warm and tremendous, and to add insult to injury, she got me out of the bath, dried me off, then wrapped me in a warm robe and sat me on the
settee in front of the heater. The front door opened and in came Sue, Nancy's flatmate.

She gave me a big smile and called out, “Nan! There's a man in our flat.”

Nancy came in from the kitchen and introduced us. “This is the boy from the train I was telling you about,” she said.

Sue was a small girl, just a bit taller than me, and had a sort of round narrow face, if you know what I mean, blond corn-coloured hair framing her face and highlighting her china-blue eyes. You couldn't help but notice them. They were the feature that highlighted her face, that and her suntanned honey-coloured complexion. And she was nice, one of those people who seemed to be more alive than it was possible. The world seemed to be a different place in her company. We got on famously, and when she smiled my whole world lit up.

“Are you Nancy's boyfriend?” Sue teased me.

“No! I'm Ed. I'm not the lying pig.”

Nancy had just come back into the room from the kitchen. She looked at Sue and they both broke up laughing.

Sue sat down and gave me a hug. “You and I might be mates then. What do you reckon?”

“Too right, I'd like that,” I told Sue.

“We might go to the pictures after lunch, if it stops raining. Would you like to go?” Sue asked.

I said, “Gee, yeah, thank you,” just as Nancy called us for lunch. A big bowl of beef soup with crusty bread. It was just the ticket on a cold day.

“Fancy getting a rotten day like this in January. What was Melbourne's weather like, Nan? Did you get that dry hot spell, or was Melbourne turning on its usual charming weather for you.” Sue laughed.

“No, Melbourne was great,” Nancy said. “No sign of this
sort of thing until I got home. Look at it. You can't even see down to Elizabeth Bay.”

Sue agreed. “It's that murky, you can't even see the end of Nield Avenue.”

After lunch the girls quizzed me about why I hadn't been met at the station. I told them about the big kid and how I got away, then got lost, that I didn't know Fred's address, but had tried to ring and got no answer.

“Have you got your Uncle Fred's number?” Nancy asked. I searched through my pockets and found it for her.

“This is a Victorian number. Are you sure your mum said Sydney?” asked Nancy as she picked up the phone and dialled information. “Thankyou, that's all I need,” she said, putting down the phone. “It's a Swan Hill number but the operator said it's been disconnected for at least six months,” said Nancy.

“What are you going to do?” asked Sue, looking concerned. “Can you ring or write your mum?”

I knew then I would have to tell the girls about the Department. They were horrified. Like most white Australians outside the government and the churches, they didn't have a clue what was going on.

“I thought they stopped that years ago,” said Nancy.

“What will you do?” Sue wanted to know.

“I don't really know. If I go home, Mum said they will put me in some welfare home and lock me up, so I think I'll go up to the sunshine state. They reckon the sun always shines up there, and I'm sick of the rain and the cold. Anyway, if I stay here too long you girls could get into trouble.”

“Stuff them. You can have a holiday anyway. Stay with us for a while,” Sue said.

I stayed with the girls a week, arid we did all sorts of things. Lunar park—it was fairyland, wonderland, everything I could ever imagine. I walked around with my mouth hanging open for the first half hour. I wasn't too keen on some of the rides. The Ferris wheel had me worried—
I had never been that high in my life, and I hung on for dear life. Sue and I rode around in an aeroplane ride. It went that fast I got sick, and I put my head over the side and let her rip, and people moved back real quick, I felt dizzy and the world was still spinning around when we got off.

“Are you still crook?” asked Nancy. “It wouldn't have anything to do with that rubbish tucker, and the drinks Sue's been filling you up with?”

Nah, it couldn't be that, I thought. That fairy floss is neat, once you learn how to put it in your mouth. And hot dogs—what ace grub. I thought Sue was having a lend of me when she asked me if I wanted a hot dog. “Get out!” I thought. Why would anyone want a hot dog?

She must have sussed what I was thinking by the look on my face. “It's in a bun, you eat it,” she said. But I thought,
who
would want to eat a hairy dog in a bun, hot or not. But I changed my mind when she got it for me. Should have told me it was a snarler in a bun. Comes from America, Nan said. Funny people callin' a sausage in a bun a dog, but that's Yanks for you.

We had a great time in the sideshows, tossing hoops, throwing darts and balls at things, shooting guns, and we won all sorts of treasures, a painted plaster parrot, an ugly little doll on a stick, and an ugly ashtray, made and painted by a lunatic, which we threw in a handy rubbish bin. We agreed at tea that night that a great day was had by all.

Next day was Friday and Sue went to work. She was a receptionist for a denist—I told her I didn't want to meet her boss! Nancy was still on holiday, so she and I got a bus up on the corner and went to town. We went to a big shop, where they had a man and a woman driving the lifts. It was a magic place. It was huge, and had all sorts of different things on each floor that the lift stopped at, even a whole playground, Nan told me, with swings and a see-saw, whatever that is, but we didn't go there. We went to this great big place with lots of chairs and tables, a restaurant, Nan
said, and we got a cup of tea, and I got a pie with sauce. Man, it was good. After we left there we went to the wharf, and Nan said we were going to Manly on the ferry. We got tickets and waited on seats in a building by the water, and I saw the ferry come in, big, white and green, whirring and growling as it bumped into the wharf. A man tied it up with a rope, a set of stair things came from somewhere and people came out of the ferry and down the stair thing like chooks being let out of the hen house. We waited until everyone came out and we went on to it. Nan was pulling my hand as we were walking up these stair things, but I was trying to walk on the boards, and miss the gaps. I could see the water under it and that had me worried, as I thought I might fall through one. They were about two inches wide, and it was scary. It was great once we got on board though. We went and sat right up the front, just back from the sharp bit. The water was shining in the sun, and sort of sparkling, like the waves were dancing. I thought it was wonderful. It was a beautiful sunny day, just the day to be on the harbour. There was nearly too much to see, and my eyes were going twenty to the dozen trying to see everything. We saw this huge war boat with big guns sticking out all over the place. Nan said it was a Navy boat, but she didn't know the name of it. There was a heap of smaller boats around it, some going and some tied up. The houses looked bright and nice—everything looked different from the sea. It was one of the greatest things that had happened to me, the feel of the boat rocking up and down, the fresh clean smell of the wind, sort of laced with the smell of the sea. I can't describe that, except you could nearly taste it. I was sorry when we got back and banged into the Sydney wharf, and I had to walk on that gappy board thing again.

“Did you like that?” asked Nancy. I could only thank her, my eyes still shining. How could you describe something as wonderful as that. So she gave me a hug, and I thought she was one of the most wonderful people in the world.

Sue was home when we got back, and as Nan finished getting tea ready, I bombarded Sue with the tale of our adventure. We had tea and Sue's boyfriend Colin came over and he was a top bloke. He suggested we go to the movies, so we got dolled up a bit and went. The movie was great, a cowboy movie with Gary Cooper, called “High Noon”—about a sheriff and a gunfighter. I was pretty tired when we got back, so I hit the settee and went out to it straightaway. I woke to the smell of bacon and eggs, and Sue singing and laying the table for breakfast.

“Good morning, sleepy. You hungry? Up and at it.” She laughed.

“Turn your back then and let me get up,” I said to her.

“Garn, sweetie, I don't mind. You can get dressed in front of me,” she teased.

“Garn, turn your back and give a bloke a fair go.”

“Alright, if you won't show yourself off to me, I'll go and wake the others,” she said, walking off and laughing.

I flew into my clothes and got into the bathroom before the others, had a quick wash and brushed my teeth, then went for breakfast. It was a happy affair, all of us laughing and joking.

We decided to go to the football in the afternoon, and Colin would get the tickets on his way back from work. “Balmain are playing the Bulldogs,” I was told. This must be that funny Footy or Sydney Footy, the girls called it. I thought it was great—tough and fast. The girls were jumping up and down yelling for Balmain and most of the others around us were yelling for the Dogs. It was a bit too scientific for me. None of them looked like the Bombers but it was fun.