Читать книгу Cops, Crocs & Leopard-Skin Jocks - Bob Magor - Страница 14

I realised after a few days’ yarning in the crab camp that for most of his life Roy had been a nomad. He had to be in a place where he could do his own thing well away from the prying eyes of the law, which meant that Roy worked and loved on the fringe of society. These frontier areas were also where large numbers of the Aboriginal population lived so it was only natural that Roy, and others of his ilk, sought companionship with indigenous women. This situation was accepted by both races.

‘Like most young blokes, I had lots of one night stands,’ Roy continued with a grin. ‘I didn’t get serious with the girls until I settled in Broome. I’d shacked up with Joanna Kelly for six months before Angie James and I got together. When I headed for Darwin, Angie had a new boyfriend, so I knew my daughter Josephine would be looked after. I found myself in a sort of a Catch 22 situation. I couldn’t take my daughter with me because Angie was staying, but I couldn’t stay near her either because I’d been run out of Broome.

‘Being the adorable stud that I was, I wasn’t alone for very long! In Darwin I soon won the heart of a local lass in Shirley Shepherd and, over the next few years, we had two kids – Lloyd and Betty. My family was growing but all I could afford to live in was a caravan on a scrubby block. It got stinking hot in the dry season and leaked like a sieve in the wet, but we were fairly happy.

‘I’ve always liked a challenge so I soon had two wives on the go. My fatal charm I guess. It sure kept me fit. While I was living with Shirley I got tangled up with Marjorie Horrell and we had a swag of kids. Junior, Lisa and Sharon all hit the ground over the next few years. We had a few others but Marjorie fostered them out. I was having enough trouble keeping two wives and five kids so fostering seemed to be the best option. Between fishing a few nights a week to feed the tribe and spending time with each wife, it was a busy time in my life. I don’t know how these blokes overseas get on with heaps of wives. Two was enough.

‘Both the girls knew about each other, but as long as I kept them apart and looked after them both well, life was sweet. This took a bit of doing at times in a town where everyone knew each other, but it made my love life fairly exciting. Darwin in those times was a bit of a shanty town so we blended in well.

‘I’d been in town for about a year and had tried working for a living but my record meant that real jobs were never going to last. I loved the town and the lifestyle and all I wanted from the police was a bit of peace and quiet. I knew I wouldn’t get that if I spent all my time in Darwin. I’d talked to the locals and they had stories about the big barramundi that were out in the Mary River. I knew a lot about fishing down south but I knew nothing about Top End fishing. I reasoned that it couldn’t be a lot different and, if nothing else, it would get me out of sight of the coppers.

‘There was no such thing as Kakadu in those days. It was just a big area of scrub and mosquitoes where nobody wanted to go apart from a few diehard fishermen and buffalo shooters. So I started going off fishing with a line. That was legal as long as you fished in saltwater creeks or saltwater arms. Legally you weren’t allowed to drop a line in the freshwater parts of the tidal rivers or in the inland billabongs. I’d take one of my wives and kids with me, or a mate, and we’d travel out one day and camp overnight. We’d fish that night and early the next morning before returning home with our catch. It certainly was a beautiful part of the world and it felt good to be earning a quid legally – well, almost.

‘On our first few trips we got 3/6 for fillets and 2/6 for whole fish. This was just before the dollar changeover in 1966 and it wasn’t bad money. Especially as it was all cash and I’ve always been a lousy book-keeper!

‘With no-one to keep an eye on me I fished the freshwater where all the fish were – which turned me into a poacher. I had plenty of outlets in and around Darwin which would quietly buy my fish but as I didn’t have a fishing licence, the marketing of my illegal fish was illegal as well. This minor detail never worried me because I’ve always reckoned that illegal is only a sick bird.

‘I didn’t really know what I was doing, so my fishing wasn’t very successful. But it used to put a bit of tucker on the table for my families and give me plenty of cash in my pockets. It was a quiet and unobtrusive start but I learnt to find my way around the area and all the tricks to catching barra. Like the fish – I was hooked!

‘At this stage,’ Roy confessed, ‘I was only really poaching part-time. Before I went on to full-time poaching I found myself tangled up in a couple of drug crops. I’ve always hated drugs, it’s never been my thing, not even alcohol, but as I was living outside the law the lure of a quick buck was irresistible.

‘I had a few mates who had dabbled in a few plants here and there. They kept telling me how easy the money was. I reasoned that if I was going to take the risk I might as well take a big risk. The next thing I know I’m tangled up in a huge crop grown on the Robinson River, south of Borroloola. It was in a very isolated area with a plentiful water supply. Because of the humid climate the crop turned out an outstanding success. It made Jack’s beanstalk look like a bonsai!

‘I couldn’t take all the credit though because another bloke grew it and I only worked for him. Once it was planted, a couple of us would sneak out a couple of times a week and give it a good soak. I was really flying blind because I’d never even grown a tomato before so I didn’t know much about cultivating hooch. But this stuff grew like a weed!

‘When the crop was ready we all went out for the harvest. I felt like a naughty schoolboy keeping an ear open for vehicles while working flat out. It was a sticky job due to resin leaking from the heads and it took us days. On the way back to Darwin, my mate Michael Derrick and I pulled into Heartbreak Hotel at Cape Crawford for fuel. We’d been paid in cash for our work but we’d also managed to souvenir a small quantity as a bonus.

The bloke who ran the pub said to me, “You must be the most wanted chap in the Territory.” I asked him why and he told me how two carloads of cops were combing the area. Apparently they didn’t know exactly who they were looking for, but they knew there was a drug crop in the area and they knew about a Roy Wright that spent a lot of time in the bush. He might be able to help them with their investigations.

‘I shit myself. The crop was gone but Michael and I had a spare tyre on the back of the Toyota stuffed full of marijuana. Even though I was only a lackey in the project, with my record they’d throw the book at me.

‘We could feel the cell doors starting to close so, halfway back to the Stuart Highway, we pulled up at a tank and washed everything. The resin got on our boots, our clothes, and eventually got transferred to everything we touched including our vehicle. We scrubbed the Toyota out with buckets of water and changed the back wheels to the front and vice versa. This was so they couldn’t match the Toyota tracks to any at the crop site.

‘But we were both so nervous as we drove along that we decided that our bonus wasn’t worth the grief. We pulled up and stuffed the tyre and its expensive contents under a culvert. Our shorts were black from wiping our resin caked hands on them during the harvest so we got rid of them. A heap of druggos could have got high just from smoking our shorts! Then, with both ourselves and the vehicle squeaky clean, we headed for Darwin.

‘At Larrimah we were stopped by a couple of detectives. They drew their guns and made us stand aside while they searched the Toyota. I politely asked what they were looking for but they wouldn’t say. They took it in turns holding a pistol on us while the other searched. I was feeling a bit cheeky by now with all the evidence gone so I asked, “Were we speeding Mr Nice Policeman?” My wit didn’t seem to impress them. I guessed that Michael and I were under arrest even though they hadn’t mentioned any charge. The guns trained on us made that seem a fair assumption.

‘Knowing how Northern Territory coppers worked I opened up my shirt and said to the bloke who owned the Larrimah servo where they’d stopped us, “You have a good look. There’s no marks on me at this stage. You follow me around so you can be my witness and say that I didn’t have any bruises when I was arrested. They might set me up and put something on me. I’ve got a feeling I’m going to get a biffing.”

‘The cops weren’t impressed but Lindsay followed us around. They searched the vehicle and our swags and then looked behind the seat. They found a pair of gloves under the seat covered in the hooch resin that I’d forgotten about. I nearly messed myself when I remembered. My hands had really suffered when we stripped the crop so I wore gloves. The coppers looked at them and threw them on top of my clothes. I know coppers aren’t very smart but this was ridiculous.

“You dickheads finished holding law-abiding citizens up?” I asked. They looked really pissed off and said they had. I quickly packed the gloves and my gear away. Phew!

‘They wanted to use Lindsay’s phone to ring Darwin. Lindsay didn’t like coppers either so he told them to use the pay phone down the street. They reported to Darwin that they had searched the vehicle and found nothing. Darwin cops told them to search it again. This time they pulled the floor mats up and found two small seeds.

“What’s this!” they cried out with smug looks on their stupid faces. They reckoned they had us.

“They look like wild pea seeds to me,” I answered – because they were.

‘They rang Darwin again and both were very excited over their find. They were told to seize the vehicle with the evidence. They made me drive my arrested Toyota to Katherine accompanied by a detective. We rattled and shuddered up the bitumen. When we’d swapped the tyres around I’d changed the unbalanced rear tyres to the front and I now had trouble keeping the old Toyota on the road.

‘As soon as we arrived in Katherine I kidded the coppers I was busting to go to the loo. I bolted into the bog with the sticky gloves, quickly pushed them right around the S-bend elbow and flushed the evidence away. I said to Michael that we should hitchhike to Darwin because the coppers didn’t want us. They only wanted the Toyota, and besides, I didn’t like their company.

‘Then I had another fright. When I’d changed my shorts I never changed my shirt. On inspection inside my shirt pocket I found hundreds of dope seeds that had fallen in as we harvested the crop. The coppers had missed them when they picked us up. That was another lucky break. They had only to check my pockets and I would have been gone. I went back into the pub loo and the seeds followed the gloves. There was going to be a hell of a crop later in the year where their septic ran out onto the ground!

‘I was walking around Katherine looking for a lift when I ran into Pat Loftus. He’d put me in boob a few times as a police prosecutor but Pat was a really good bloke. I never held a grudge against the prosecutors and judges. They were only doing their job and I was always in the wrong – well, almost always! He was back being a barrister again and happened to be in town at the time. I told him how these bastards had seized my vehicle on the strength of finding two wild pea seeds. He went and spoke to the coppers. They said they were taking plaster casts of my tyres and I could have the Toyota back tomorrow.

‘This all went to plan and the next day, after I swapped my balanced tyres back to the front, Michael and I headed to Darwin. I never heard any more of the incident but I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when the seeds were identified. It was very close though and, for once I felt as if someone was finally looking after me. It was probably the Devil!

‘But I’ve always been a slow learner because, after the scare had worn off, I found myself tangled up in another crop.

‘I was in Gunn Point Prison in Darwin over a crocodile conviction. The croc happened to be standing where I was shooting and had accidentally got itself shot. It was bad luck it got pinned on me. While I was inside I spent a lot of time talking to a fellow inmate, Gordon Mackie, and we became good mates. We were both released at the same time and he asked me if I’d drive him to Pine Creek.

He said if I chauffeured him he’d give me a thousand dollars. I jumped at the chance because I had no money and a thousand dollars in the early 70s was an awful lot of money. I knew that it had to be shonky, but I was only the driver.

‘I had an old, battered Toyota that he filled up with petrol and off we went. He made me pull up at the end of the street, then he got out and walked down about six houses. I sat there for a couple of hours and I was beginning to think that the old bloke had dudded me. But I had a full tank of petrol so I didn’t really care. Eventually he came out of the house with a smug look on his face. As I drove him back to Darwin there was no mention of the money that he’d promised. He wanted to be dropped at the Nook Caravan Park. As he got out he handed me a thousand dollars cash. Shit, I was a millionaire!

‘He stuck his head back in the Toyota and asked me if I was interested in growing a crop out on Green Ant Creek. I told him that it was too risky and it wasn’t really my scene. Besides, I had too many responsibilities with two wives and a heap of kids to support. I’d just come out of boob so the cops would be watching me like hawks. But Gordon kept at me. Eventually I changed my mind and went out with him to rotary hoe a patch up. We made a circle with all the rows spreading out like spokes from a wheel and grew watermelons and rockmelons as a cover.

‘When the time was right we planted the real seeds but for some reason they wouldn’t come up. Gordon decided to put in a nursery and we planted the seeds where he could tend to them carefully. I didn’t think he knew what he was doing so I said it wasn’t going to work and headed back to Darwin. But a month later he looked me up very excited. The nursery had worked a treat and the plants were ready to plant out and I should rejoin the partnership.’

‘This is where you conned us, you bastard,’ Allan broke in. ‘Anne and I were travelling around Australia and we’d both got a job stacking shelves in Woolies for a month in Darwin to top up the finances. My favourite brother-in-law found out we had a couple of days off.

‘ “Bring your rod and come for a drive,” he says. “I’ve got a beaut fishing spot.” There wasn’t a fish for twenty miles around where he took us and next thing he’s got us helping him plant these suspicious looking tomato plants. I knew what they were but it was either help or walk thirty miles back home. Anne and I have never been so scared in our lives. You bastard!’

‘You’ve always been a girl,’ Roy laughed. ‘But you should have been there a few days later. I’d come back out to do some watering when I heard this – woof, woof, woof! Bloody hell! It was a blasted chopper. I shit myself and drove my Toyota under the shade-cloth and threw a blanket over the bull-bar so they couldn’t read my numberplate. Old Gordon laughed and said, “The same thing happened to me last year. It’s only a helicopter rounding up station cattle. They get them from the waterholes and send them towards the yards about ten miles to the west.” He could have warned me. I nearly had a heart attack!

‘I decided I’d go back to Darwin while the chopper was in the area. The extra vehicle may look out of place in the middle of nowhere on a regular basis and we didn’t want to attract attention.

‘A fortnight later the old chap contacted me to say it was safe to come back. I took a couple of the kids with me for company. They soon got a job picking the bugs off the maturing plants. The bugs were out of control so we mixed up a weak solution of dieldrin and poured it around the roots with a watering can. We knew that dieldrin was being banned for white ants because it was dangerous to your health but Gordon had used it before. It was absorbed up through the plant and it soon sorted the bugs out. I’m not sure what the effect was on the smokers!

‘With the bugs under control, it grew into a pretty healthy crop. When it was ready he took a heap of it down south but apparently there was plenty around at the time and he could only get rid of half his load. Before the trip he had sold enough locally to pay me off my fifty-two grand share. What he had left was all his. But coming back through Katherine the poor old chap was stopped by the cops for speeding. When they pulled him up they could smell the stuff. He had fourteen plastic bags in the back full of hooch.

‘When I read about it in the paper I began to panic. I imagined he’d point the finger at me when they put the pressure on him, but the old chap never said a word. He confessed and took them out to the camp at Green Ant Creek but he said that he just lived there by himself. When they found lots of little matchbox cars around the camp he said that they were his. He told them how he used to get stoned and make little roads in the dirt around the camp and go “brum, brum” with them. What a great yarn and the dickhead police believed it. They’d actually been left behind by my kids but the old chap never let on. He was a great old bloke.

‘He did leave me with a little gem though. He said, “Roy, out in this country a goat is a man’s best friend.”

‘ “How do you work that out, Gordon?” I asked.

‘ “Well,” he said, looking very serious. “You can milk it. You can talk to it. You can shag it. And if you get hungry you can eat it.” I looked at him for signs of a smile but he was completely serious.

‘ “Gordon,” I responded. “I think you’ve been in the bush too long!” He was a New Zealander though!’

‘I’m glad you didn’t get me involved with that sort of thing as well,’ Allan laughed. ‘Being an accessory to growing hooch was bad enough. I still haven’t forgiven you, you mongrel.’

‘So I was lucky once again,’ Roy went on. ‘But after two close shaves I decided to keep well away from the stuff. I’d made enough to upgrade my outboard motor and my boat with a little left over. From then on I was purely a fisherman.’

At that moment the two dogs charged through the circle of listeners. One hit the tub of almost boiling water on the grill. The container lurched sideways towards Anne’s bare feet but in a flash Allan grabbed it with his bare hands and steadied it. Roy roared at the dogs but I was waiting for a reaction from Allan. He must have burnt his hands.

‘You hurt?’ I asked.

‘Wouldn’t matter if I was,’ he replied. ‘You don’t show pain in this camp.’ He grinned at Roy.

‘Sign of weakness,’ was Roy’s comment. ‘I never showed any pain during my life and nobody gets any sympathy from me!’

Allan grinned again. ‘It’s always a bit of a game. Roy gets a crab on his toe and I stare at him looking for a flinch. Last year I caught a catfish and it fell into the boat. I forgot and later I stepped on it. The spikes went clean through my foot. I could see Roy studying me for a reaction, then while I looked for something to pry the spines out a loose crab latched on as well. I was actually sweating but I wouldn’t give Roy the satisfaction.’

‘I reckon I saw a tear in your eye, you soft prick,’ Roy joked, but added, ‘I reckon that was about as much pain as I’ve seen a man handle. Looks like I’ve taught you something.’

I thought about this as we said our goodnights and I headed for my swag. I was in tough company. I hoped I wouldn’t be put to the test!