Читать книгу Cops, Crocs & Leopard-Skin Jocks - Bob Magor - Страница 8

I sat there about as far out of my comfort zone as I could get. As a sheep and cattle farmer who lives in the picturesque hills below Adelaide, I now found myself on a river in the Gulf of Carpentaria. What a contrast. Things buzzing in the air trying to eat me, things in the water that would love to eat me and two-leged locals who viewed me with indifference – except to make it clear that I should get back to where I belonged and let them get on with whatever legal, or illegal, activity they happened to be involved in at the time.

To be fair, being here wasn’t my idea, it was Allan Sluggett’s. To explain. I have two passions. One is bush poetry. Over a number of years I’ve produced seven best-selling books of my work and enjoy a reputation as an entertainer at bush poetry and country music festivals around Australia. My other passion is fishing. So, when one of my shearers, Allan Sluggett – a fan of my verse – insisted that I catch up with his brother-in-law, a bloke called Roy Wright, in the Northern Territory, my first thought was naturally … barramundI fishing!

Allan’s idea was that I should listen to some of the bizarre incidents of Roy’s colourful life and turn them into bush poems. As I had intended to head up to the Top End during our mongrel southern winter I could tick all the boxes. Put some of this Roy Wright’s life into verse and, as he was a professional mud-crabber and barra fisherman, indulge myself in raping and pillaging the water Territory style at the same time. Beauty!

That’s how I found myself on the bank of the Wearyan River, a hundred corrugated kilometres east of Borroloola where Roy Wright has his camp. I drove in late the afternoon before and met Roy for the first time. As I told him why Allan sent me, his analytical blue eyes looked me over as he muttered in an offhand way, ‘Okay you soft bastard. If you’re here you can bloody work. It’s time to feed the pets.’ Roy invited me into the filleting shed and gave me a bucket filled with barra backbones.

‘There’s two resident groper that live out from the jetty. They were here when I arrived many years ago. It’s a tradition that new chums feed them.’ Roy’s eyes fixed on my face, waiting for a reaction.

‘What do I do?’ I asked, trying to appear casual.

‘They don’t swim on land. Get out in the water, you dickhead!’ he bellowed. So I grabbed the bucket and walked out to my knees in the murky water.

‘Deeper!’ Roy yelled. The bottom dropped away and soon I stood chest deep in the unknown. I couldn’t even see a shadow in the swirling, muddy water. But I swear I could hear the haunting refrain from Jaws wafting across the river. The river must be full of sharks, I thought, if the crocs haven’t eaten them all by now!

‘Slap the barra frames on the water,’ Roy instructed. I hooked the bucket handle over my arm and was standing holding a backbone in each hand when all hell broke loose. The still water parted and this Moby Dick, with a mouth that opened like a roller-door, emerged from two feet away sucking my offering down its cavernous throat. Scared? I was bloody petrified. Even more so when, a second later, his mate attacked from the other side. They were both eight feet long and staring three feet down their throats I knew they could have swallowed me whole if they were really hungry.

The ten yards back to the shore only took one step. I counted my fingers. All present. Toes? All accounted for. I started to breathe again.

‘You’ve lost my bucket, you dickhead!’ came the abuse from high up on the bank. Roy’s body trembled as he tried to hide his mirth. ‘You’ll get better. See you at daylight.’ With that he turned away, leaving me standing on the bank wondering what the hell I’d let myself into.

At the first rays of sunrise next morning I eased myself into a plastic chair next to the boss as he poked the fire into life. It was encased in a steel ring cut from an old 44-gallon drum with a ventilation hole in the front. He fed a couple of lengths of wood in through the hole creating a small burst of sparks.

‘Good morning,’ I offered tentatively.

Roy didn’t answer as he watched the heat funnel up around the handles of a stainless steel beer keg filled with water which was perched on a mesh grill over this bush stove. This was the hot water system for the crabbers’ camp with the mesh doubling as a char grill whenever Roy decided to cook a barbeque.

Fingers of light reached over the scrub from behind the collection of sheds and caravans that made up the camp. The tide had gone out on the Wearyan River, exposing a tangle of mangrove roots on the opposite bank. Shining golden in first glow of the day, their spindly legs differentiated salt water from dry land in the gloom. Although now simply called the Wearyan, this several hundred metre wide expanse of murky water was a product of the Foelsche River and the infant Wearyan River, which merge inland and run through picturesque Manangoora Station before spilling out onto the muddy flats of the Gulf of Carpentaria some six kilometres to the north. Perched up on a sandy bank on a bend, the camp lost sight of the river after about a kilometre in each direction.

Roy leant forward again on his plastic chair that creaked and protested as his ample load shifted. As Roy began to talk I found that this was a ritual he had enjoyed for much of his life. He thrived on the simple outdoor lifestyle. His square, boyish face gave a hint of larrikin and his blue eyes missed nothing as they sparkled from under his cap. He wasn’t a tall man, but the width of his shoulders and forearms gave a hint of immense power. The top five buttons on his short-sleeved shirt covered his ample gut, but from his navel down the shirt hung unbuttoned over his shorts. I found out over time that his dress was the same every day. Formal for town or informal for work, it was always a short-sleeved shirt, shorts, cap and bare feet.

His legs and arms sported amateur tattoos of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse while the angular outline of ‘The Saint’, made from Zebra stove polish and water, adorned both his calves. These were trademark prison decorations.

The land on which the crab camp had grown created a dividing line between two distinct domains. Out behind where we sat grew typical Top End scrub, with its tangle of spear grass trying to choke out the under-storey of bushes and struggling young trees. The tallest of these now threw their shadows out into the water as the sun began to rise. Closer to the river, the area had a tropical look about it, with sleepy-looking pandanus palms hanging from the river banks and a stand of ancient cycad palms giving a snapshot of our past. They provided a tropical backdrop to a corrugated iron long-drop dunny standing a respectable distance from the camp.

Two brown kites hovered overhead. If they happened to spot any pickings in this camp they’d have to be quick, or stand in line behind two dogs of varied parentage that lay on the sandy ground. They showed mostly blue heeler genes, but a bull terrier must have courted their mum one night to give them a squarish and powerful build.

Below us several aluminium boats lay askew at the base of the sandy bank awaiting the return of the tide. A wooden jetty stood peacefully in the river surrounded by schools of long toms, their antics creating ever-increasing rings on the glassy water. Resembling a gallows more than a jetty, it was rigged with large steel hooks, used for hanging the bodies of pigs and horses slaughtered on the station while they were cut up for crab bait.

All around was organised chaos. Roy’s twenty-eight foot caravan rested under its corrugated iron shelter with a kitchen, a bush bathroom and store room attached. On the walls of these fragments of civilisation were crude signs painted with the even cruder message, FUCK OFF. When I questioned Roy about who these signs were directed at, he mumbled, ‘That’s for the camp doggies. Dirty bastards haven’t been house-trained,’ he snarled as he waved to indicate the dark lads who lived in lean-tos and aged caravans that hid under trees along with an assortment of vehicles.

‘Get moving you lazy black bastards!’ he yelled at the top of his baritone voice. ‘If you don’t want to work, piss off,’ he added as a handful of dark heads materialised from the gloom. Not politically correct, but there appeared to be no offence implied and none taken. The lads wandered past grinning, except for Junior, Roy’s son, whose brooding dark eyes flashed under his dark curly hair. He appeared to have taken a lot of offence at his father’s affectionate comments.

‘Ah, you’ve got to be tough with the bastards,’ Roy grinned as he spotted the shocked look on my face. ‘Although he belted me a lot, my old man was weak. I’ve always hated weak people. You’ve got to be tough to get on in this world,’ he growled with feeling.

The workers moved off to the business end of the camp. A shed of mesh and hessian allowed ventilation to keep the trussed-up crabs cool in their crates while they awaited their trip to market. It abutted a covered concrete wash-down area where netted barramundi were filleted and processed.

Behind this lean-to stood a modern structure that seemed strangely out of place. A state-of-the-art freezer-room proudly looked out from an open-fronted shed. Its purpose was to freeze barramundi fillets in stainless steel trays for market and to make and store ice for fishing trips. At first glance, the casual observer would dismiss the camp as crude, but in reality, everything worked and served a purpose.

Roy made his plastic chair complain again as he leaned back and absorbed with satisfaction the serenity of his surroundings. The only sound apart from the workers preparing to head to sea was the guttural rhythm of the generator, which, after a while, tended to blend in with the environment and ceased to be an annoyance.

From his caravan, Roy’s current ‘wife’ descended. Married Northern Territory-style, Lenice was a local girl from Borroloola. A stunning, statuesque lass clad in a neat cotton frock, she made Roy smile with approval as she moved towards him. Her black curly locks, dazzling smile and athletic build reminded me of the stereotypical Aboriginal girls in the Jolliffe’s cartoon series of my youth. From behind her dress stared two shy brown eyes. The eyes belonged to Kimberley, their three-year-old daughter. Clad only in a disposable nappy, her brown curly hair and olive skin showed clear evidence of the mixture of races.

‘Good morning, Kimberley,’ I grinned trying to break the ice.

‘Don’t get upset if she tells you to get fucked,’ Roy grinned. ‘Don’t know where she gets that language from. Come here, little gin,’ Roy called with his arms outstretched. Suddenly becoming brave, she slipped out from behind the protective dress and made a run for dad. Bouncing her on his knee, he beamed at the latest member of his family.

‘You know,’ he grinned, ‘I’m seventy and should be playing with my grandchildren, not my own youngsters. But what the hell. Lenice wanted a family and I’m still worth breeding from so it’s all good.’ Roy’s proud face was almost reflected in Kimberley’s dazzling smile as she squirmed from tickles on her bare skin.

Roy looked at the rising river level.

‘Well, it’s time we got these useless pricks working and pulling some pots. Grab that gear,’ he ordered, throwing his arm out to point. ‘That gear’ consisted of plastic crates, hessian bags, lengths of soft string about eighteen inches long and a box of foul-smelling cubes of horse meat which I guessed would become crab bait. Roy didn’t actually help but supervised from the back of the boat next to the motor. It was quite clear that he was in charge.

‘Any crocs in these waters?’ I inquired, as I stared into the muddy flow coming in from the sea.

‘Nah,’ he said in a nonchalant manner. ‘If they do come in I relocate them,’ he grinned. ‘A shot between the eyes and a tow out to sea. They stop coming after a while.’

With that he hit the starter switch and the outboard motor fired into action. His ear-splitting ‘ Yeehah! ‘ was drowned out by the motor churning the water at full throttle as we took off at maximum revs. Roy couldn’t hide his grin of satisfaction as the force of our departure flipped me backwards from my seat to land in an embarrassed heap at his feet.

Hanging on for dear life as the tinnie hurtled forward, I untangled myself from the floor of the boat and clambered back onto the seat. For the second time in less than a day I thought, “What the hell have I let myself into?”