tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-430794658830022982008-08-10T19:39:04.765-07:00"Two-Up" By Scooter to AustraliaMichael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comBlogger58125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-78600030890426789772008-08-10T19:38:00.000-07:002008-08-10T19:39:04.784-07:00End of the Adventure (Chapter 14 - The End)After the stimulation of the tropical north and the delightful company of the aborigines, the trip south again-despite the distance and the terrain-seemed rather an anticlimax. By now, anyway, we were quite used to making the most extraordinary demands on our Prima scooter, and another thousand-odd miles seemed merely a hop. Half an hour after rejoining our little machine, which had been garaged a stone's throw from Darwin's stockaded civil prison, the gear was packed, Nita was firmly ensconced, and the engine was ticking over erratically, voicing its displeasure at having been laid up.<br /><br />Four days later we reached Alice Springs-more commonly called 'The Alice'-an over-publicized township which proved (save for the Flying Doctor Memorial Church) to be a disappointment. The usual assortment of coffee-bars and chromium-plate seemed strangely out of place in the majestic tranquil desert among the Macdonnell Ranges. The church was the exception: although ultra-modern in design-symbolically incorporating the suggestion of an aircraft wing in the construction-it did not appear misplaced. At the entrance was a lily pool of remembrance, while inside a little museum behind the altar contained some of the early equipment used by John Flynn, including a pedal radio set and the great man's swag and blackened billy. This unique and functional memorial was built entirely by the people of Alice Springs on a voluntary basis. It seemed all the nicer when one heard about that.<br /><br />From one hundred degrees of arid heat we went southwards again aboard the 'Ghan' railway for four hundred miles; then there was another ride through South Australia towards the greatest contrast of the whole trip: a contrast which came as a shock after living for months in the briefest of clothing. For as we re-entered Victoria we were met by a howling snowstorm which lasted for three days and had us shivering constantly and stopping every few miles to make roaring fires at the roadside.<br /><br />We arrived in Melbourne, two very dejected and half-frozen creatures, at eleven o'clock at night. Desperately I searched through our papers and found the scrap which had been given to me by Jack Kelley-the Mobilgas Rally driver-so long ago in far-away Darwin. I huddled in the 'phone booth, glad for a moment to cut off the biting wind.<br /><br />'Marriott! Sure I remember. Come right on out. We'll have bowls of hot soup and a roaring fire to greet you. Sure you can find the way now?' I answered that warm, friendly voice, saying that wild horses couldn't stop us, and rang off.<br /><br />So, fittingly in a country with a reputation for its hospitality, we spent the last six weeks of our Australian venture with two of the most friendly people one could hope to meet, in Australia or anywhere-Jack and Lila Kelley of Preston, Melbourne.<br /><br />Jack's hastily given promise during our brief Darwin encounter was kept to the full. After lavishing their hospitality on us (it was heavenly to sit round a roaring fire in a cosy room, sipping hot soup, after battling in the teeth of a snowstorm for so long) they presented us with the key of Jack and Lila's luxury caravan, with the words, 'It's yours for as long as you want it.' This was, indeed, great generosity.<br /><br />And so the six weeks passed. We wrote a great many notes, organized the processing and packing of our film, spent most week-ends as guests of our wonderful hosts, and toured the Victorian countryside, generally acclimatizing ourselves once again to city life.<br /><br />One night I was dragged hastily from our extremely comfortable quarters to watch the path of the first Russian Sputnik as it raced across the sky; at the time I had been engrossed in studying some of the photographs of our aborigines-the most primitive people on earth. The sudden revelation of the first earth satellite zipping over Melbourne was most disturbing.<br /><br />It also seemed incongruous that, only a few days previously, an expedition a couple of hundred miles from Alice Springs had reported making contact with a tribe of aborigines who had never before seen white men. There were very few details of the discovery at that time, other than that the tribesmen had been almost mesmerized at the sight of the wheels on the expedition trucks. As I watched the fast-travelling light in the sky, I wondered what those primitive men would think (were it possible to explain the technicalities) of their white brothers' latest achievement.<br /><br />Possibly, we are in the last generation of those who will find adventure on this planet, and future exploration will be limitless. But at that moment, puny as our own efforts seemed, our desire to see over the next horizon had been more than fulfilled.<br /><br />As the Southampton-bound liner pulled away from the Melbourne wharf, breaking the brightly coloured streamers, and echoing the cheers of those left behind, the faces of our friends gradually merged with the rest of the crowd. It was with mixed feelings that we prepared for the next six weeks of shipboard tedium.<br /><br />Our adventure was over. The tiny vehicle that had made our journey possible lay once again in the hold beneath us, with nearly thirty thousand miles to its credit. Perhaps not a wise choice for the venture we had undertaken, but with our limited resources, the only possible one.<br /><br />As we watched the nose of the ship ploughing through the choppy sea of the Great Australian Bight, we thought of the many anxious moments we had undergone in remote and outlandish places, and how thinly lined our pockets were. But, as Livingstone declared, 'the mere animal pleasure of travelling in a wild, unexplored country is very great'.Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-84631734791551370662008-08-10T17:58:00.000-07:002008-08-10T18:00:24.043-07:00The Aborigines of Snake Bay (Chapter 13 – Snake Bay Burial Corroboree)During the beginning of the third week we awoke one morning to the sound of most dismal semi-musical cadences. Laurie One-Eye told us that it was his sister-widowed some time previously -trying to 'sing' her husband back to life. Laurie One-Eye intimated that the day was very near when the whole tribe would hold 'Pukamuni' (a burial corroboree) to bury the dead man and cast him out of their memories for ever. Since the poor fellow had died he had been mourned by his wife and a host of near and distant relatives. The 'Pukamuni' would send him finally and irrevocably to the land of his ancestors and his name would be taboo ever after.<br /><br />As the day for the send-off corroboree drew nearer, excitement mounted in the camp and more time was devoted to celebration preparations, and Nita and I waited expectantly.<br /><br />While Joe hunted in a desultory fashion, prior to the 'One-Bloody-Big-Fella Corroboree', his young wife Fillissy, carrying her baby piccaninny, fossicked among the steaming mangrove swamps for giant crabs and oysters. A rewarding pastime, provided a wary eye was kept for marauding shark and crocodile, of which the Melville Island variety are reputed to be the hungriest and most ferocious in the world. Joe himself was nearly taken by a croc and bore some ugly scars on arms, chest, and shoulders that he would carry with him to the grave: 'Him debil-debil a'right dat one.' (Joe's uncle, Larry One-Leg, had acquired his white-fella name from the same source.) These occupational hazards, however, are viewed by the aborigines with the resignation of city-dwellers towards road accidents.<br /><br />By this time, my wife and I were almost two of the tribe. It was no longer quite so astonishing to watch a man make fire with two sticks almost as quickly as I could light a match, and I ceased to gasp with amazement when Joe's throwing stick sped unerringly into a clump of foliage and a dead bird or lizard fell out instantaneously. We knew that when Fillissy suddenly darted at a hollow log, thrust a long stick into the black cavity and pulled, a furry creature-'possum usually-would be brought struggling forth, its fur hopelessly entangled round the end of the stick. We were no longer amazed, but our admiration at the prowess of these hunting nomads increased as the days passed.<br /><br />And sitting round the camp-fire at night under a soft velvet sky, with the water lapping gently against the nearby beach, the contented murmur of gossiping natives, piccaninnies, and dogs became blurred at times as I wondered about the 'advancement' of mankind. Here was life in its simplest form, and I'm not sure that complexity is preferable.<br /><br />The 'Pukamuni' started haphazardly enough. One morning we crawled from our sleeping-bags to find nearly all the tribe assembled in camp. They weren't doing anything much, but no one seemed anxious to pick up hunting spear or throwing stick. Pretty Polly (an effervescent old woman, hideously mutilated by yaws) made the first positive move in the corroboree preparations. Squatting cross-legged she began to mix a number of different make-up paints from ochre, wood ash, and the sap of certain trees. Then, with a line of little clay pots before her, she began to colour her own particular offering to the dead man, a woven bark basket. Soon, most of the other women followed suit and by midday all were industriously weaving, painting, binding, and carving. The pile of 'send-off' presents grew larger each minute. In the nearby bush an unseen mourner began a rhythmic tap-tapping on a hollow-log drum. A feeling of expectancy crept into the air.<br /><br />While the women toiled at an increasing speed to swell the gift pile, the men occupied themselves with more personal adornment. Joe extricated himself from between a couple of his dogs and sparked off the proceedings by casually robbing his wife of some of her coloured paints and, using the lid of a food tin as a mirror, began to decorate his face and neck with a startling and most impressive series of zebra stripes. In his hair were placed the exotic tail plumes of birds he had successfully hunted, and around his neck was placed a gut necklace with a fur bobble attached, which he told us would 'keep debil-debill-o-n-g wayway'.<br /><br />By late afternoon we were surrounded by a ferocious-looking tribe of warriors-only one or two of whom we could still recognize-who looked quite capable of overpowering Nita and me without the slightest qualm and popping us into the ashes for their next meal. Joe now appeared positively frightening, his charcoal-smeared face slashed with vivid white and red ochre streaks. He had added a couple of armbands of sharks' teeth and approached us clutching his ceremonial spear in one hand and a vicious-looking panga in the other. His words, however, were not in keeping with his appearance: 'Gibbit li'l bit 'bacco, Baas.'<br /><br />Gladly I gave him a pinch from my ever-open tin, as I rested for a moment from filming the colourful scenes around me. Even the camp dogs had caught the fever and were chasing each other round and round the camp, livelier than we had yet seen them. One of the bitches pupped in the middle of the proceedings and again Nita and I marvelled at these aborigines, the only primitive people we had ever met who showed kindness to dumb animals. Under the supervision of the dog's owner, a host of naked children dashed around collecting leafy branches, and within minutes the litter and anxious mother were transplanted to their own whirlie to be left in complete peace under the cool shade of the boughs.<br /><br />I felt certain that the actual ceremony would start directly dusk fell, and I cursed our equipment which could not cope with semi-dark conditions. Joe had been trying to tell me something about a special corroboree ground, but it was too much for his limited English. Nita and I watched the restless nomads closely, wondering what form the great occasion would take. We watched, and, with camera poised, we waited.<br /><br />We were still waiting when the warriors had become nothing more than vague silhouettes around the flickering camp-fires. The solitary drummer was still beating out the monotonous dirge and the rest of the tribe were still restlessly milling around between the<br />whirlies. But by nine o'clock there was one different aspect which Nita spotted, and she exclaimed with some amazement, 'All the women are gone.' Somewhat alarmed (for I did not want the men to slip away and hold the corroboree without my getting at least a part of it on film), I approached Joe. He was non-committal, but partly reassuring. 'Alllubra goin' c'rob'ree ground; bye'm bye all men goin' same; makim one bloody-big c'rob'ree true. . . .'<br /><br />'Bye'm bye' turned out to be next morning. Nita and I were awakened by a bustling in the camp and already the men were filing away in ones and twos towards the thick walls of the jungle. We jumped up, grabbed our camera equipment, and fell in behind Joe. Somehow we knew that this time it was no false alarm.<br /><br />As the sun filtered through the last of the dawn mists which rolled in from the sea, our party-strangely silent and reverent, despite their savage adornment-emerged from the dense jungle into a clearing already thick with wood smoke. Nita and I gasped with amazement as we broke through the last barriers of foliage. We were in the burial grounds of our aborigines.<br /><br />All around the clearing stood groups of huge tree-trunks thrusting up like totem poles. Gaudily painted and painstakingly carved, these were the headstones of the tribal dead. Some of the monuments seemed very old, yet still highly impressive like gaunt fire-blackened fingers-many over fifty feet high-pointing nakedly to the sky. Most of them, however, appeared to be recent additions, for the paint was bright and unfaded. In the middle of these commanding pillars the corroboree ground, an area about fifty feet square and inches thick in dust, lay ready.<br /><br />When we arrived there was one figure in the centre of the stamping ground: the grief-stricken widow, who swayed about, wailing a dirge and beating two throwing sticks together in a monotonous rhythm. She had been mourning thus for two days and nights<br />consecutively.<br /><br />Nita and I took up positions as unobtrusively as possible at the edge of the clearing. While my wife made sure that all our available film was ready for immediate use, I took one or two shots of the tribe surrounding the corroboree ground and the mourning widow. Another woman's wail joined that of the chief mourner, and someone else started tapping out a rhythm; then another voice, still female, added to the lament until all the women were wailing in a mournful, strangely rhythmic chorus.<br /><br />Suddenly, Laurie One-Eye leapt from the crowd of men and assumed a commanding stance in the middle of the clearing. He chanted rapidly in a roaring baritone for something like a minute and then ceased abruptly, his spear raised above his woolly head.<br />From the throats of the entire tribe a great crescendo of shouts rent the silence of the jungle. No undisciplined yelling this, but a swelling volume of sound that crashed from an exciting vocal staccato to an ear-splitting roar. The corroboree had begun.<br /><br />After the initial incantations there followed, in symbolic mime, a reconstruction of a burial ceremony that has remained unaltered through the centuries. Indeed, as these whirling, glistening figures were direct descendants from world's most primitive man, certainly much of what we were now witnessing had been enacted long before Australia became peopled with white men.<br /><br />But on Melville Island today, with white man ruling supreme, there have to be modifications to an age-old ritual. No longer is the youngest wife of the deceased burnt alive, and never again will the nearest relatives hurl themselves from nearby treetops to commit suicide in a frenzy of grief. Yet, in spite of the make-believe and the miming, the magnetic pull of ancestral practices is still extremely strong. The warriors had the greatest difficulty in restraining the buxom young widow from throwing herself into the fire. Instead of standing calmly over the token fire, which was merely a handful of twigs giving off a wisp of smoke, she tore herself from the paint-streaked elders and dashed across the clearing straight for the huge cooking fire, which was about two yards in width and crackling merrily. Fortunately some of the old women realized what was happening and intercepted the suicidal widow, who fought like a wildcat in a frantic effort to hurl herself into the flames. For the next hour she remained sobbing-almost in a trance-but now very safe, lashed firmly with twine to four of her compatriots.<br /><br />The potential suicides from the treetops went more smoothly. While twenty or thirty men clung to the topmost branches, poised before crashing to their deaths fifty feet below, the rest of the tribe entreated them not to take the plunge: the tribe would be weakened; the dead elder would not go on his way rejoicing, etc. Without too much difficulty these relatives were persuaded to abandon the death plunge and they climbed carefully down, wailing tenfold in order to disguise their discomfiture; for even though the entire ceremony is only symbolic, it is still very hard for a warrior to appear chicken-hearted.<br /><br />After the initiation ceremony, all the gifts were carried reverently to the newly carved group of totem poles. The body had been buried some time previously and now the hump of earth, surrounded by the ornate tree-trunks, was smothered with the parting gifts. The tribe, about a hundred strong, fell silent and stepped back from the grave.<br />A line of young warriors, heavily armed and formidable in their ceremonial paint, formed up and pointed their spears at the remains of their comrade. There was a moment's pause and another of the tribal elders-white-fella name Death's-Head Leo-incited the younger men to frighten away the evil spirits which lurked in the vicinity ready to capture the dead man's spirit as it left the body.<br /><br />The warriors stamped their feet savagely, once, twice, then twice again, and repeated the pattern at increasing speed, shaking spears and throwing sticks at an imaginary enemy. From the crowd of watchers a ripple of synchronized handclapping arose in an ever-increasing swell, urging the spearmen on to greater effort. Clouds of dust billowed beneath the thudding feet, and a series of blood-curdling yells rent the air.<br /><br />It was a magnificent spectacle and I hoped fervently that our stock of film would last through this fantastic performance. The sight of the young men, pitting themselves against the unknown, was quite terrifying, and many of the young children were crying with fright at the sight of their normally gentle elder brothers transformed into savage, whirling demons. Nita and I thought quite seriously at one point that they might run amok. Surely those demoniac creatures, almost hypnotized in a welter of dust and sweat, with the goading chant ringing loudly in their ears would not be satisfied with lunging savagely at the empty air! I was frankly quite relieved when the tempo slowed down after about twenty minutes and the dancers, utterly exhausted, fell off one by one and collapsed at the edge of the clearing.<br /><br />At the end of the casting out of the evil spirits, as the last man staggered on buckling legs back to the crowd, Joe leapt into the centre to tell the story of the dead man's life in mime. Beside us, Billy Geranium told us in hushed pidgin-English whispers exactly what Joe was portraying. It was the story, in savage primordial ballet, of the life of a man of Snake Bay.<br /><br />Joe danced non-stop for three-quarters of an hour, re-enacting all the major events in the life of his dead brother. The lad at our side pinpointed some of the more intricate phases of the dance, but the verbal assistance was hardly necessary.<br /><br />Nothing of the dead man's life was omitted, from the day he was born (Joe interpreted this with graphic mimicry of a woman in labour), throughout his career as a hunter and fighter (here there were long sequences of deadly battles fought with knife and spear against animal and human adversaries), to the slowing down of the pace representing age, infirmity, and the last struggle of all. The finale showed Joe briefly and magically endowed with the strength of youth to make the final long walk-about, then a sudden collapse in the centre of the dust-filled arena. The chanting died away for a brief space, and there was a strange silence in the fetid jungle clearing.<br /><br />But only for a moment. Joe rose wearily to his feet, made his way back into the crowd, and was hardly swallowed up among the glistening ebony bodies when another member of the tribe sprang out with a blood-curdling whoop to perform his own interpretation of an incident in the life they were mourning.<br /><br />Late in the afternoon we ran out of film. For a while our still-camera was constantly clicking, but even that stock had expired by dusk. We had, however, recorded all that was possible with the very limited means at our disposal, and I was hoping that some highly spectacular ceremony was not being withheld to the last moments of daylight.<br /><br />We need not have worried. The corroboree had hardly started. All through that night the drums barely paused in their frenzied beat. We slept fitfully and were awakened every few minutes-it seemed-by a wild shriek or a wailing lament. They were still hard at it the next morning and all through the second day, but luckily for our recording the ceremonials proved to be fairly repetitive. A full forty-eight hours elapsed before the burial rites showed the first signs of abating. But once into the third day the incredibly overtaxed stamina wilted rapidly. The whole tribe were now afflicted with the equivalent of a gigantic hangover.<br /><br />Nita and I, heavy-eyed through lack of sleep but jubilant at the thought of our rolls of precious film, carrying the unique record of a Snake Bay burial ceremony, made our way slowly back to the aboriginal camp on the jungle headland. The exciting climax to our odyssey was almost at an end.<br /><br />Our whole journey, started more than eighteen months before, had culminated in the moment when we dropped from the tropical skies above the Timor Sea by the most modern method of transport, 'and entered the lives of these primitive people, who were to act as our hosts during one of their rare periods of tribal ritual. I most sincerely hoped that the film we had taken would be as exciting when projected as it was through the viewfinder.<br /><br />We were to catch the mail plane in the morning. Around us the crowds of black tribesmen, faces split in wide grins, jostled each other laughing and chattering to give us a send-off. Comfortably weighed in our arms were the many presents bestowed on us by our new friends. There was the pair of ironwood throwing sticks, presented by Death's-Head Leo: 'You takem Boss sure. Takem longa your country all-a-time white-fella.' There, too, was the beautifully carved spearhead (we just couldn't transport the shaft) which Joe carved specially for us; a debil-debil bobble of tightly woven feathers to ward off evil spirits, and two woven baskets together with a group of little carved figures for Nita.<br /><br />Those Melville Islanders are a wonderful people. Happy, generous, kind to their animals, they were apparently glad to have had us share their company for a while. For my wife and myself, the Melville Island experience had been extremely educational, balancing our sense of values to a great extent. We had found a race of people who could still live a full and satisfying life without any of the amenities of modern civilization. Australia is working on an integrative policy, the plan being to merge the black with the white, rather as New Zealand has done with the Maori. We ourselves hope that for all the full-blooded aborigines, like Warnpiat-L-Miri (alias Black Joe), this will be entirely beneficial.<br /><br />The little speck in the sky grew larger, and soon its snarling aero-engines were shattering the peace of the Snake Bay jungle. Twin puffs of dust rose as its wheels touched down on the dry earth and it taxied along the short narrow strip. A quick turn-round, the mail-bags bustled out, and the plane was ready for the take-off .<br /><br />We shook hands solemnly with Black Joe for the last time and walked across to the waiting aircraft. The Melville Islanders' word for goodbye is 'Nim Bungi'. It sounded very moving when shouted from a hundred throats.Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-18683923028573157162008-08-03T14:35:00.000-07:002008-08-03T14:36:42.800-07:00The Aborigines of Snake Bay (Chapter 13 – Snake Bay)The little aircraft stood on the runway of Darwin Airport, coughing fitfully as the pilot warmed the engine against the cold morning air. Nita and I, carrying our one valise between us, crossed the tarmac strip and stood waiting (somewhat apprehensively, for the plane was shuddering violently and a mechanic was collecting a heap of tools from beneath the fuselage) for the Native Affairs officer. The pilot, a cheerful type (unfortunately looking only about fifteen years old) greeted us.<br /><br />'Not a bad old tub,' he volunteered, interpreting Nita's worried glances. 'We call her Bleriot's Prototype. A bit of historic machinery that, but we should make it with a following wind. If we do get any trouble it won't be in the air, but trying to put it down on dirt strips. Never did like those jungle clearings to put down on. Last bloke over did a ground loop and finished up in the scrub; took a hundred natives three days to fish him out. Still, it is early morning. Gets real turbulent around midday when the temperature climbs a bit.'<br /><br />The sun was already uncomfortably hot and we looked around for our travelling companion. To our relief he appeared on time and we boarded the flimsy aircraft and strapped ourselves in. The Administrator was paying a brief visit to the twin island of Bathurst and the Catholic Mission there. We would go on to Melville as guest passengers in his plane, where we would be deposited and left very much to our own devices for as long as we liked. If the ancient aeroplane held together, fortune was indeed smiling on us.<br /><br />The little plane made a perfect crossing and an equally good landing on the Bathurst strip. It took off again and dropped down finally into the steamy jungle of Snake Bay with equal ease, and my wife and I heaved a sigh of relief, brushed the perspiration from our eyes, and were once again convinced that appearances can be very deceptive. Soon the hum of the aircraft grew fainter. We watched as it circled once and rapidly disappeared into the brazen sky; the roar of petrol engines was replaced by the buzz of insects and the weird, chiming call of the bell-bird. Beneath our feet was the scorched brown earth; on every side the thick emerald green of the jungle. We hitched up the valise and made our way to the warden's lonely bungalow which overlooked the tropical grandeur of Snake Bay, Melville Island.<br /><br />Colin Townsend was a man who had forsaken the city for the bush. He strode out from the bungalow to meet us. From beneath a wide slouch hat, a keen, mahogany-coloured face grinned a greeting.<br /><br />'Good day. Good trip over?'<br /><br />'We have arrived, and that's as good as I want it,' I replied, relief evident in my voice.<br /><br />Col laughed and introduced himself. 'I look after the running of the sawmill. Most of the boys go walk-about from time to time, but we still manage to ship a fair amount of timber to the mainland.'<br /><br />'Sawmill!' we both ejaculated in amazement, gazing round at the seemingly virgin jungle. 'Do you mean to say that the aborigines work here for a living?' I asked.<br /><br />Col laughed again. 'Oh, you needn't get anxious. Some of them hang around the administration building here and do the odd spot of labour; but then again a lot of 'em don't. Guess they're the ones you're after, eh?' We nodded.<br /><br />Inside the bungalow, cool and comfortable, with the roar of the surf breaking only fifty yards away on the golden beach, our host elaborated.<br /><br />'The Australian Government have a sound scheme, under the Native Welfare Department, whereby all these islanders can, if they wish, have a fair share of what our gracious modern living can offer: tucker, clothes, medical treatment, even wages. But of course it's the devil's own job to convince 'em that if they can have everything else for free, why should they have to labour for cash which they can't spend, anyway.'<br /><br />'What do they do with the money, then?' asked Nita.<br /><br />'Oh, they're usually saving up for something. Some of it goes as bride price, perhaps, or for the odd one or two who are ambitious, on a trip to Darwin. Or they swop it for tobacco, or buy bits and pieces from the store. And in return they work the sawmill.' All our visions of truly primitive people began to disappear.<br /><br />Outside, a small knot of islanders had gathered to inspect the new arrivals; and on the surface they looked primitive enough. The men, with tall, well-built figures of glistening ebony, were dressed only in nagas (loin-cloths) and were all carrying long, twin-barbed fishing spears. The women, in Mother Hubbard gowns, clutched blackened billycans and equally black children with both hands. The only thing that marred the picture was a packet of Capstan cigarettes which protruded from the waistband of one hunter.<br /><br />Col, following my gaze, explained. 'There are only one or two of 'em who can afford tailor-made cigarettes, and only then on pay day. They usually smoke Nikki-Nikki-trade tobacco-most of the time. Anyway, you might as well start your visit by having a look at the post. Don't suppose you'll want to spend too much time in the "civilized" part of the island.'<br /><br />The 'sawmill' was something of a relief. Just a clearing in the bush with one circular saw under a corrugated-iron roof, driven by a mobile generator. The store was equally modest, and a hundred yards from the tiny settlement the rest of the island appeared just about as it had been since the beginning of time.<br /><br />Next morning, the formalities completed, we set off, leaving the buildings behind us to search for a family of island nomads who were living their lives independent of the settlement. The authorities had presented to us for the next few weeks an ideal family to study; that of Wampiat-L-Miri (pidgin-English name, Black Joe), his wives and children and, of course, his dogs.<br /><br />We found them about four miles away, camped with two or three other families in a natural amphitheatre, through the middle of which ran a crystal-clear stream. Smoke from the cooking fire curled in and cast a slight haze over the camp area. The whirlies, those merely temporary shelters built by nomadic aborigines, were all but invisible against the rest of the bush and jungle patches, being just discernible as dwellings by the limp leaves of the cut branches.<br /><br />Reclining in the doorway of the biggest, most central whirlie, was Wampiat-L-Miri, tribal elder, battle-scarred and dignified, a full-blooded aboriginal. He was smoking a crab's-claw pipe with obvious relish, and across his knees was a half-finished spear of ornate carving. Our young guide pointed at the lounging elder. 'Dat one fell a him Black Joe,' he announced. Then, with duty done, he turned about and set off back towards civilization and the tailor-made cigarettes which he obviously preferred.<br /><br />Black Joe, we immediately discovered, was not cluttered with any chains of formality. He greeted us with 'Gibbit li'l bit 'bacco,' and held out the enormous crab's claw for replenishment. I had been forewarned and had brought two dozen tins of the precious weed with me. Nita found a tin and opened it; it was returned with a few strands in the bottom. Lesson one, never hand a tin of tobacco to an aboriginal.<br /><br />The man who now puffed so contentedly watched us shrewdly from beneath craggy brows. Confident, without being arrogant, he basked in the comfortable security of his position, that of chief elder.<br /><br />In the grass hut behind him, three wives sat crouched over a smoky cooking fire. Two were wizened crones who muttered to themselves, champing toothless jaws the while, while the third was a lithe girl of some nineteen years, already well initiated into motherhood with four chubby children to her credit. The youngest clung to her, pick-a-back fashion, watching our every movement with doubting, amber eyes. He was very near to tears during the first day after our arrival.<br /><br />For that first week Nita and I did nothing more than camp a little way off from the cluster of whirlies and spend the days winning the confidence of the small tribe, and Black Joe in particular. It was this battle-scarred old warrior and his favourite wife (white-fella name, Fillissy) whose fortunes we wanted to follow in the humid jungle and thick bush of Snake Bay.<br /><br />Gradually the barriers of suspicion were broken and we began to record camp life on film, without being stared out of countenance; and the army of dogs growled and bristled no longer. Indeed, having given scraps to one winsome pooch during the first days, we had great difficulty in eating at all without a vast canine audience, expectant and disconcerting, ringing our camp-fire among the gums.<br /><br />One morning, Nita and I rose very early, at that time of transformation when the first grey streaks tinge the night sky-and tried to capture on film the fascinating sight of an aboriginal family awakening.<br /><br />By the time we had the camera set up I could just get a reading on the exposure meter. A few yards away, Black Joe and his brood were still asleep and, despite the chill air, looked warm and cosy. In the middle of still warm fire ashes, Joe and Fillissy lay huddled back to back. Each had an arm protectively around a soundly sleeping baby. One of the children lay between its parents' legs and the other-the youngest-curled between their shoulder blades. To retain the warmth there were no fewer than five dogs forming a furry wall around the slumbering bunch of humanity. The family had, as always, started as a circle round the fire, gradually contracting as the flames died and the air became colder. They always finished up right in the ashes.<br /><br />Joe awoke first, instantly alert, and grinned when he saw us with the camera turning, but averted his head almost immediately. My repeated requests' not to look-im-in-eye one-fell a camera' had been well absorbed. Fillissy jumped up at the same moment. The piccaninnies and the dogs were the most reluctant risers, rolling instinctively towards the warm space vacated by the adults. Joe and his wife were, of course, smothered in wood ash, but they did nothing to disturb their coating of fine particles.<br /><br />After taking a long draught of water from the nearby stream, Joe sauntered off, armed with his throwing stick, to look for breakfast. He returned an hour or so later with a fat goanna lizard about four feet long dangling limply from his shoulder. He might have stumbled on a 'possum, a snake (nearly all edible), any of a variety of birds, wild yams, or other succulent roots; all manner of fish in the hundreds of creeks that twisted away from the golden beaches; or, had he been very lucky, a wallaby, crouching in the thick bush of the higher level inland. Later we were to see Joe use his throwing stick. His accuracy was uncanny.<br /><br />One might think that to wake in the morning, hungry, with nothing edible to hand would be a source of constant anxiety. But these primitive people know what vast resources are at their fingertips, so well are they versed in bush lore. They can, in fact, live very comfortably in country where a white man would have (and has) starved to death, with the nearby sounds of game mocking him from impenetrable green walls.<br /><br />So the time passed and Nita and I became increasingly fascinated as we watched each day unfold for our primitive family. No longer were they camera conscious, or 'playing to the gallery' ; we were accepted completely-or so it seemed-by these children of Nature, and the ensuing days gave us a vivid picture of the life of the world's earliest men.<br /><br />Joe's command of the English tongue was very shaky, but that didn't matter at all. I was more than content just to tag along with him on hunting expeditions, or to watch him shaping throwing sticks or carving ironwood spears outside his whirlie. He may have been slowing up a bit with the years, but his old cunning and knowledge of the bush stood him in good stead. If he got within striking distance of goanna or bandicoot, that animal was as good as cooked-well, moderately cooked, for Joe's idea of a well-roasted lizard was one that had been rested in hot ashes for about five minutes. The resulting dinner was promptly eaten, skin, innards, hot ashes and all.<br /><br />Although these people are direct descendants from Stone Age Man, they still have something to teach our modern world about harmonious living. Their moral code is of the strictest, and they are true communists. Everything is communal-game, implements, weapons, tobacco, clothing. Their vocabulary does not include the word 'gratitude': no one is beholden to another.<br /><br />Even their peculiar marriage laws have sound reasoning for a basis. The old men marry the young girls, and the youths marry the old women. They are, of course, polygamous, but this custom is an ideal genetic arrangement. It ensures that at least one half of the family is capable of food gathering and that the tribal population is kept up to economic strength. Three or four wives to each elder is not uncommon. Security for all is assured.Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-20603238180568257472008-07-27T14:18:00.000-07:002008-07-27T14:20:21.333-07:00The Aborigines of Snake Bay (Chapter 13 – Darwin)Darwin has the reputation of being the fastest-growing city in Australia. Where, around a natural seaport in the sweltering tropics, barely a decade ago there was nothing but a few tin shacks and a motley, fluctuating population, there is now a thriving, modern city, together with an airport comparable to any in the whole continent. It is a brightly coloured, exotic community of cosmopolitan beings, pleasantly secure in the knowledge that their home is the Government administrative headquarters of the Northern Territory, virtually run by far-off Canberra.<br /><br />The city is small enough to be intimate and cosy-only a city by outback standards, something like, say, Blandford in Dorset but large enough to boast some very attractive clusters of stilted bungalows of ultra-modern design, a couple of cinemas, a beautifully kept tropical garden, and a whole army of Government officials. There is already a firmly established 'Nobs' Hill', radiating an almost American atmosphere. Among the crowds of uniformed officials, looking neatly businesslike in their white shirts and navy blue shorts and immaculate white socks, the rest of the population stroll about at a pace in keeping with the climate. I believe on our first drive up the main street we saw, without undue effort, practically every nationality of the globe, from Chinese and Slavs to Sicilians and half -caste aborigines.<br /><br />By a tremendous stroke of luck the first person to whom we spoke turned out to hold the key to our quest for aborigines. As always, on arriving at a new town, we were pottering slowly along, surveying our surroundings, sniffing up the atmosphere, and marvelling at the sight of the Timor Sea which shimmered, almost a cobalt blue, beyond the wide palm-lined avenue. It was good to see a coastline again.<br /><br />There were some very plush residences along that marine drive, and busily painting the fence of one palatial bungalow was a man of medium build and age, dressed in ragged shorts, who was, I think, only too glad to pause in his labours and watch the approach of our strange-looking outfit. Thus, by the slenderest chance, we met Doug Lockwood, chief reporter in Darwin for the Melbourne Daily Herald, who had only just returned from London after being specially flown over to receive first prize for the London Evening News competition for 'The World's Strangest Story' (a fantastic but true tale of Bas Wie, an island native who had made an incredible illegal entry into Australia after the war -we were to hear all about Bas Wie later that evening). He smiled cheerfully as we approached, and we stopped to ask where the administrative headquarters were. And so an invaluable friendship was formed.<br /><br />Doug Lockwood was one of the very few men in the capital of the Northern Territory who could guide us along the narrow and rocky path of officialdom to our objective-Melville Island. That the people of the island occupied such an isolated wilderness was due almost entirely to the Australian Government Department of Native Affairs, which exercised a justifiably rigid control over all European visitors, allowing only a few entries, and then not without a stiff medical test. For the Snake Bay aborigines are highly susceptible-usually with fatal results-to common ailments of the civilized white which inconvenience us for no more than a few days.<br /><br />So, on that balmy, tropical evening, as we sat under a swishing fan and admired the primitive wall decorations in his cool, spacious bungalow, Doug outlined a plan for Nita and me to follow.<br /><br />First, we would have to go to the Native Affairs Department and get permission to visit the island. This, Doug thought, should not be too difficult as we were writing and film-making. Then we would have to undergo the medical, equip ourselves with supplies, and lastly find some method of crossing the shark-infested stretch of Timor Sea which separated us from our goal.<br /><br />Unfortunately the man we had to see was in Canberra and would not be back for a week. We would just have to wait.<br /><br />Not wishing to encroach too much on Lockwood's hospitality, we declined his 'open house' offer and set up camp on a beautiful stretch of green sward that overlooked the bay. That this particular piece of springy turf was also the pitch of Darwin's cricket club was immaterial; they were not using it, so we could; which was typical of the big-heartedness of Northern Australia. No one objected to our using the changing rooms and showers, either. Indeed, the attendant encouraged us to do so and left all the doors unlocked. We waited six days for the return of the administrator, in complete comfort.<br /><br />During those six days, the hours simply weren't long enough. We explored Darwin from end to end, became regular visitors to the Native Affairs Department, met and made friends with two Latvian crocodile hunters (robust, heavily built characters who had just returned after six months in the bush of Cape York Peninsula and who were enjoying civilization again on the £ 1,000 profit from the sale of skins), had the scooter and sidecar overhauled and a stronger spring fitted to the third wheel-ready for the marathon trip south some time in the hazy future-and lastly, we met Jack Kelley.<br /><br />On the fourth day of our stay there was great excitement in the township. The Mobilgas 'Round Australia Rally' was coming through in the evening. We spent the afternoon getting in necessary supplies-optimistically perhaps-for the forthcoming expedition, and after the standard Australian main meal of steak and eggs, we fastened the tent flap and strolled across the cricket pitch; past the luxurious, brand-new Darwin Hotel (two-roomed suite: £20 per day) to a fenced enclosure already thronged with expectant watchers waiting to greet the first competitors in this, the world's most gruelling motor-sport event.<br /><br />The first car, a Volkswagen, arrived dead on time smothered in bull-dust, the windscreen patterned with spattered insects, to disgorge two weary drivers, red-eyed and very, very tired. They checked in at the control, grinned at the crowd of cheering onlookers by dint of great effort, and left their vehicle impounded to snatch a few hours' sleep before the next lap.<br /><br />During the following two hours the rest of the field arrived. Surprisingly, the majority of the cars were in good shape considering the terrain and the average speed set. Some of them were, of course, very sick mechanically, but the major cause of body damage appeared to be from collisions with kangaroos during the night drives. One such car, a Holden, sponsored by a southern departmental store, had the front offside door tied with string; a door only vaguely resembling its original shape. I was unable to understand why so many drivers could not avoid a glare-blinded animal, and it was not until we started on the return journey south that I discovered why.<br /><br />A little later Nita and I found ourselves talking to one of the crew, a tall, sun-bronzed fellow of large physique and twinkling eyes, who, despite the world's toughest rally in which he now competed, seemed more interested in our own achievements on the scooter. And so we struck up a spontaneous friendship which was strengthened the next morning, when the rested driver had slept off the worst of his fatigue. He knew of our plans and aspirations, and his parting shot as he left again on the next stage to Mount Isa was a good illustration of his warm, generous nature.<br /><br />‘When you get back to Melbourne, come straight along,' he yelled above the revving engines. 'I've got a caravan in the back yard. Built it myself. All mod. cons. It's yours for as long as you want to stay.' He handed me a slip of paper with his address hastily scrawled. 'Look forward to seein' you two in about four months' time. G'bye.'<br /><br />And with a quick wave of the hand the timekeeper signalled, the rear wheels of the Holden span a moment in the dust, the car took off at full bore, went through the compound gates in a controlled slide and was in seconds just a speck at the far end of the palm-lined avenue. Well, whatever might befall us, we knew that if or when we got back to Melbourne we would be sure of a very warm welcome from Jack Kelley, master builder and sometime competitor in the toughest trial of all.Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-21224296394313326772008-07-20T15:05:00.000-07:002008-07-20T15:08:33.490-07:00Mount Isa to Darwin (Chapter 12 - Frewena To Darwin)<a href="http://blogs.internetscooter.com/marriott/uploaded_images/2upaus_nt-774232.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://blogs.internetscooter.com/marriott/uploaded_images/2upaus_nt-774227.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />From Frewena we travelled under a baking sun due west until eventually we came to the road junction of the Alice Springs-Darwin road. The junction was marked with an impressive stone tribute to that great humanitarian of the territory, the Flying Doctor, or Flynn of the Inland.<br /><br />His work has laid the foundations of a life-saving system that reaches even the remotest outback stations. With time concertina'd by radio and aircraft, no one any longer dies for lack of rapid medical attention.<br /><br />The monument cast a finger of precious shade and Nita and I relaxed in the relatively cool patch until the sting went out of the sun. Then the scooter's nose was turned north, to start on the last six hundred and fifty miles to 'The Gateway of Australia'. <br />Six hundred and fifty miles: a distance similar to that between Land's End and John o' Groats, with but one fair-sized township two hundred or so miles from Darwin itself, Katherine.<br /><br />It took us a week to reach the capital. A week of sun-bleached, arid country as wide as the sky itself. One might think that such terrain-sliced through with a bitumen strip-would be boring to drive across; on the contrary, for us it was a week of excitement.<br /><br />First there were the aborigines-our first glimpse, in their own land, of the people we had travelled so far to see. It was, in fact, quite a shock to see in the grey dawn light four dusky figures squatting on their haunches about fifty yards off, regarding us silently and steadily.<br /><br />There were three men, wearing only loin-cloths, and a woman swathed in a Mother Hubbard. The men carried long hunting spears, while the woman was hugging a bark basket which, from the way she held it, probably contained a baby. I was so excited that I forgot the timid nature of these wild people and instead of playing it slowly I jumped up, reaching for my camera as I did so. I hailed them with what I hoped was a very cheerful greeting and started towards them. It was too much for the shy nomads. They rose and started to walk quickly away through the bush. I hastened after them, cursing their shyness and not, at that moment, blaming myself for being a clumsy idiot.<br /><br />'Don't run away,' I pleaded in a loud voice. It must have sounded like a threat, for they broke into a loping run and simply melted into the mulga. I retraced my steps slowly back to the camp, crestfallen and very disappointed. One does not come across aborigine hunting parties in the vicinity of the main road every day. However, I had learnt a lesson and next time would spend all day if necessary in making the initial approaches.<br /><br />Then there were the bush fires: vast areas, charred and blackened, right up to the edge of the road, the air full of smuts and the heavy, acrid smell of burning assailing the nostrils. Frequently it was necessary to run the gauntlet through a veritable sea of smoke and flames. At one point the heat had melted the bitumen into a sticky, slippery mess, and we all but skidded off down a precipitous slope.<br /><br />Those fires were most eerie at night. We did a lot of after-dark driving, as the scooter engine preferred the night air. Sometimes the whole horizon was flickering and dancing with flames, with an occasional vivid flash of light as another resinous gum tree exploded with the intense heat. One night we drove through several herds of kangaroo and a swarm of snakes fleeing the all-consuming flames. During the day squadrons of hawks hovered over the ever-shifting boundary of fire, swooping continually on small game that rushed panic-stricken from cover, escaping one fate only to rush into the waiting jaws of another.<br /><br />And there were always the derelict, abandoned vehicles which told their mute story of disaster. Most of the assortment of trucks and cars we passed had rusted and settled down to blend, not unharmoniously, with the background, but a few were more recent victims of the relentless bush and we even came across one Holden sedan-not more than two years old-complete down to the last nut and bolt; there was still enough life in the battery to turn the engine over. But who would tow such a cripple (the front offside wheel hanging crazily from impact with a tree) three hundred miles to the nearest repair shop? I drove extremely cautiously on that marathon ride to Darwin.<br /><br />For us there was always the infinite pleasure of night in the bush, when our own small fire crackled merrily and the smell of brewing tea mingled with the roasting gum leaves, creating a delightful and unforgettable aroma. Nights of clear air, crisp and invigorating after the heat of the day, when the cicadas shrilled a steady, lulling whirr and a million stars twinkled seemingly just above our heads. These were periods in our lives that were savoured at the time and became, in retrospect, priceless memories.<br /><br />One stifling Saturday afternoon (humid and sticky, for we had now reached the coast), we passed the last of the hastily erected and now overgrown wartime landing strips, driving through the last avenue of dark green, fetid mangrove trees, to arrive safely at our base for the aborigine expedition. The capital of the Northern Territory was drowsy, somnolent, gasping in one hundred and ten degrees. I hoped the authorities would not be too sleepy to attend to us and our needs.Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-89750265139390249602008-07-13T16:04:00.000-07:002008-07-13T16:05:44.879-07:00Mount Isa to Darwin (Chapter 12 - To Frewena)There must be few areas in the world where one can drive along a good-surfaced road all day long without meeting anyone. In fact, I cannot remember ever having done so. One expects and, indeed, provides for lonely travel over bush tracks, but to have a perfectly good tarmacadam road stretching for hundreds of miles all to oneself is rather disconcerting. And that is how it was for hour after hour. No sign of another human being; no sound (save that of the buzz of the scooter), and no habitation. A hundred miles of scorched Australian bush; the only evidence of man to disturb the tranquillity of this 'Dead Heart' country being the black ribbon of the War Road.<br /><br />Suddenly, just before dusk, we were in Camoweal. A dip in the barren hills, up over a rise and there it was-a row of low, sprawling, wooden shacks on either side of a main street which must have been nearly a hundred yards wide. The line of shacks continued for a quarter of a mile, then ended abruptly as the bush began once again. There was not a soul to be seen in this township-the last in Queensland-it was almost a ghost town. There were one or two small signs of life. A prowling dog, a flock of bleating goats, but of humanity, nothing. We drove through the 'High Street' and pitched camp at the far end adjacent to the town's water supply which ran in a thin trickle along the near-dry bed of a creek. Save for silent, deserted-looking shacks behind us, we might almost have been in virgin country.<br /><br />Just before dark, the night of solitude to which we had resigned ourselves was broken by the approach of a travel-stained and somewhat battered Hillman Minx. The occupants (a couple of men) looked hard at our unorthodox transport as they passed, stopped a little way up the road-apparently deciding to investigate further-reversed and came back. We had company for the night.<br /><br />Ross and Harry (no one bothers with surnames in the bush) were travelling the outback, selling lingerie to the station housewives. They were doing very well, too, with their latest' Paris creations', which apparently proved irresistible to women who spent most of their lives in jeans and check shirts. These brawny characters, lustily pulling up tree roots to feed the camp-fire, resembled lumberjacks rather than underwear specialists. Harry, bouncing and effervescent, whirled about performing a one-man mannequin show, looking utterly incongruous as he held a scarlet dress in front of his bearded face and hid his own clothing of dust-covered khaki bush-shirt and shorts.<br /><br />Ross, the quieter of the two, just sat, smiling faintly, while Nita and I laughed uproariously at the burlesque. Ross had obviously seen the display many times before. I should imagine that Harry was an extremely good salesman, being one of those unpredictable people who go through life fully wound, and to whom even a moment of tranquillity is a torment.<br /><br />After an excellent meal, in which we pooled our respective larders and came up with barbecued steaks, Harry kept us amused eating old razor blades, doing a variety of conjuring tricks, and in the interim acting as a most energetic stoker. Our modest campfire reached enormous proportions and would have done credit to any November Fifth. Harry was still working feverishly-and probably unnecessarily-on the underside of the Hillman when the rest of us, rolled in our sleeping-bags, could not keep our eyes open a moment longer.<br /><br />I awoke early the next morning to the accompaniment of a frightened chorus of goat bleats, and I raised my head in time to see Harry haring past about a hundred yards off in hot pursuit of a nanny-goat, with a mug in one hand and clutching his shorts in the other. The pair disappeared in the long spinifex and I knew we would have fresh milk for breakfast.<br /><br />At seven o'clock, with breakfast eaten and goodbyes said, we found ourselves alone again with the bush and the wide blue sky. Two hundred miles to the next dot of habitation, Frewena.<br /><br />Later that same morning we crossed the border beneath a rusty bullet-riddled signboard. At last we were in the Northern Territory.<br /><br />Ahead, straw-coloured plains of waving spinifex, devoid of all visible life, heralded our entry into the northernmost state of the vast Australian continent. The country was desolate, parched, almost painfully silent. But it wasn't unfriendly. The tarmac thread gave us a sense of security. It was impossible to lose our way, so we were able to enjoy the experience of driving across the wilderness without actually being in contact with it. Nita felt it was a civilized way of crossing an uncivilized terrain.<br /><br />For all that, though, the last lap to Darwin was no joy-ride. The heat became intense as the miles mounted and the sparking-plug demanded attention every twenty miles or so. The front tyre, too, was wearing very rapidly since the addition of the sidecar, and I began to be afraid that it would not last the distance.<br /><br />Hot, dust-covered, and parched, we reached Frewena at sundown. It was one solitary shack at the side of the road.<br /><br />Frewena was run by a bearded giant named Arthur. Laconic, with a dry sense of humour, he blended beautifully with the immense surroundings. Clad only in shorts and sandals, he ambled out from the cool veranda to inspect the latest arrival at his staging post. In no hurry to open the conversation, he stood about three paces off and surveyed us and our diminutive outfit, rolling a cigarette unhurriedly and taking us in with a steady glance.<br /><br />'Good day,' I said.<br /><br />He nodded.<br /><br />'I'd like to get hold of a loaf if you can spare it,' I said. <br /><br />'Clean out of bread, sport. But you'll more'n likely get some at the store.' He broke his silence with seeming reluctance.<br /><br />'Good,' I said, 'and where's the store?' I glanced round at the uninterrupted horizon on every side.<br /><br />'Aw, she's about a hundred miles up the road.'<br /><br />Nita and I looked at each other blankly.<br /><br />'Let you have some flour for damper though, if you like.' We heaved a sigh of relief and eased our aching bodies from the machine.<br /><br />'We'll take the flour and a couple of iced beers,' said Nita, parched of throat and momentarily casting economy to the winds. I did nothing to dissuade her from indulging in such luxury. Bottles of iced beer in the middle of the Northern Territory are almost impossible to resist.<br /><br />While we sat luxuriating in the cool store-cum-rest-house, with the glasses in our hands, the storekeeper thawed rapidly.<br /><br />'Name's Arthur. You gonna stop here the night?'<br /><br />I said that two hundred miles in one day had been enough for us.<br /><br />'By God,' said Arthur with feeling, 'I reckon you're a couple of heroes.'<br /><br />We were stiff, certainly, but not unduly so. We had certainly become tougher since those far-off days in France and Germany, when sixty miles per day was an absolute maximum.<br /><br />'We think you're something of a hero yourself,' said I. 'Don't you get desperately lonely here at times?'<br /><br />'Sometimes,' replied our host. 'But when I find myself talking too much to the dog or that pet galah of mine, then I take a run into Tennant Creek to sort of rehabilitate myself. After a few days among those beer-swillin' friends of mine, I'm glad to get back for a rest. 'Course, it's pretty lonely when the wet sets in further up north, then the road's pretty well deserted and I don't see a soul for weeks on end. Gets pretty boring then.'<br /><br />'But you wouldn't swop places, for all that?'<br /><br />'Nope.'<br /><br />We set up camp about a hundred yards from the shack and after eating a very good supper (considering our breadless condition) just spread the sleeping-bags and slept like logs until sunrise.Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-10028307585029537702008-07-06T04:48:00.000-07:002008-07-06T14:26:28.068-07:00Mount Isa to Darwin (Chapter 12 - Mount Isa and onward)On the Monday morning I started with the Queensland Railway as Trainee Shunter, and after three days was pronounced fully fledged and put on to shift work.<br /><br />At the end of ten days I was just beginning to grasp what it was all about. And that first fortnight was the toughest I had ever experienced. For eight hours a day I ran like a scalded cat up and down those dust-choked marshalling yards chasing runaway F wagons, switching Kangaroo points, clinging desperately to a speeding engine as we whooshed round 'the balloon', making up 'strings of hoppers', frantically swapping 'D links' and generally trying to follow, in a dazed, sweat-soaked manner, the mysterious and utterly bewildering 'railway game'.<br /><br />By the end of the first month I became reasonably efficient. That is, I could jump on or off the speeding engine with a sure foot; I could wrestle with the handbrake on a runaway fly-shunted wagon full of copper ingots from the mine, and apply the wretched thing before the truck smashed into the back of a made-up train; I could jump off the engine and race the iron brute to the points and switch them before the twenty tons of metal thundered past. And I mastered the delicate art of 'catching on'.<br /><br />In England, I believe, the shunter uses a long pole to 'catch on'. This is simply the operation of linking a stationary wagon to a moving one. In Queensland they scorn all mechanical aids for this process, preferring to do it by hand. I sweated a good deal before<br />I perfected the operation-and it wasn't all from exertion.<br /><br />The method is to lean the body across the buffer of the stationary wagon, catch hold of the steel link (which weighs about half a hundredweight) and start the thing moving, pendulum fashion. The engine fly-shunts the next wagon and this free-running monster comes charging down the track towards the standing wagon.<br /><br />The object is to swing the link and drop it on the spike of the approaching wagon at the precise moment when the impact compresses the two buffers close enough for the link to stretch over both hooks. If the chance is missed, the stationary wagon goes hurtling down the line, a lot of time is lost, and the engine driver gives vent to his annoyance in no uncertain terms. So, if possible, one does not miss. But it takes a day or two before one can overcome the almost irresistible urge to jump clear at the last moment, for if the buffer were to break while the body was stretched across. . . But one thinks only of making a clean connection.<br /><br />The shunters are the elite of the rail yards. We (after a month I passed my unofficial test with the rest of the team) worked a shorter shift than anyone else, for it was undoubtedly a most strenuous job, holding a strong element of danger and requiring quickness of hand and eye and the agility of an acrobat. Our trade-mark was the horsehide gloves with which we 'caught on', and when the shift was over we would walk into the porter's office, proud of our grease-blackened forearms and wringing wet shirts which clung damply to our backs. We were paid sixpence an hour more than the rest.<br /><br />While I helped make up the long trains of copper ingots which left Mount Isa every day, Nita was tackling the equally strenuous if not harder job of cooking for the hungry patrons at Boyd's Hotel. She started at six in the morning, finished at two p.m., then went back at four o'clock until eight in the evening. Here was no genteel dainty cooking for a select few, for it meant preparing huge steaks, joints, and gigantic puddings for ravenous Queenslanders who (despite the climate) liked their roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. She cooked on a colossal scale in kitchens equipped with six huge coke-burning ovens. Add the heat of these to the outside temperature of a hundred in the shade and it gives some idea of the stamina required. Although only five feet two of slender femininity, my wife is strong and tenacious. She must be, for I could barely stand the tremendous heat of those kitchens for the five minutes' wait each evening when her day was over.<br /><br />We saw very little of each other during the next three months. When we did, it was to smile a weary greeting and collapse on to our beds to sleep like the dead before starting the next stint. We worked every day of each week, Sundays included, accepted all the overtime that came our way, and rarely was our working day shorter than eleven hours. We spent nothing, other than the chalet bill. Nita ate her free meals at the hotel, but missed one in three (two meals a day being ample in that climate) and gave it to me; it was more than enough to keep me going for the following twenty-four hours. And our money mounted.<br /><br />At the end of the third month I had my boots soled and heeled for the third time, and Nita washed her apron for the hundredth. We took stock of our position. We were both very fit, a bit on the lean side perhaps, but healthily skinny; our purse was now bulging with two hundred pounds and our feet were feeling itchy with the call of the north again. After three months, however, there was still no scooter.<br /><br />So another battle to regain possession of our transport began. Telegrams to Townsville, Sydney, Germany. Negative replies and excuses came back in quick time. The variety of reasons which were advanced for our not having the Prima after a three months' wait were quite astonishing. So we battled through the medium of the Post Office, worked like Trojans at our jobs, and waited.<br /><br />With the coming of July, winter came to Mount Isa and we found it necessary to wear pullovers during the early morning. On one never-to-be-forgotten Saturday it rained. The heavens opened and in two minutes the whole area was flooded. With no provision against cold (a fireplace being a rarity) everyone went to bed and lay huddled and miserable under blankets during the two-day deluge. Nita and I loved it. We took our sleeping-bags out of the valise and lay with our faces in the crisp, strange night air, for once able to gaze at the dark sky through the open window without having it filtered by a mosquito-net.<br /><br />So to the beginning of August, and one magic morning our scooter reappeared. The rear end positively gleamed with new parts. The last lap to Darwin was going to be a piece of cake.<br /><br />The arrival of the Prima completely upset our routine. After four months in Mount Isa it was extremely difficult to reconcile ourselves to the fact that we were on an expedition. I almost felt we had grown up with the place. Also the joint wages we were getting made us reluctant to put an end to our security. But the lure of the road soon outweighed the monetary advantages. We spent a week overhauling our gear, getting in supplies to take with us, and handing in our respective notices. Then, with the comforting sum of two hundred and fifty pounds in Nita's purse, we said our goodbyes to all the friends we had made and started for the Northern Territory.<br /><br />We had traversed six hundred miles of the bush by train, now there lay ahead a thousand-odd miles to Darwin to be tackled under our own steam. It is not until one travels leisurely in the north of Australia that one realizes the immense loneliness of the bush. We now faced hundreds of miles across spinifex and mulga country, relieved here and there by the odd ghost gum and tiny outback settlements. Looking at the map, the places named give the impression of townships or at least hamlets. But most of these names symbolize nothing more than a spring of water pumped by a windmill, a stack of petrol drums for the odd traveller, and a general store carrying everything from harnesses to Coca-Cola.<br /><br />On the outskirts of Mount Isa there was a rickety signpost pointing a weather-beaten finger towards Camoweal, 100 miles. The black strip of bitumen, glistening under the fierce sun, stretched straight as a die into infinity. Early one Sunday morning, we swept past the signpost for the last time. I had passed it every day on my way to work and I often used to think what a glorious moment it would be when the beckoning finger was behind us for the last time. When it actually came, however, the moment fell rather flat; we were leaving behind some good friends and an excellent joint income. The tall, silver stack of the mine chimney was belching smoke exactly as it had done on the morning of our arrival: Mount Isa may have had a shifting population, but there was never a break in the extracting of the precious metals from the bowels of the earth. We settled down to cover the hundred barren miles to Camoweal.Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-49485435246037170152008-06-29T14:33:00.000-07:002008-06-29T14:35:19.216-07:00The Going gets Tougher (Chapter 11 - Mount Isa)On the station itself, which was merely a space cleared at the side of the line, with a dilapidated wooden building serving as station offices, were a few men strolling about, dressed mainly in shorts and sandals. It transpired that they were the town's shopkeepers, waiting for the train which was bringing the next week's supply of goods, from foodstuff to newspapers.<br /><br />Nita and I jumped down to the dusty ground, hauled our gear after us, and made our way to the shade of the station. Our bank balance suddenly seemed very small and I was bent on immediate action in order to remedy our sad financial state. While Nita guarded the baggage I set off to walk to the mine offices, which lay near the railway, just a stone's throw from the enormous, glittering silver chimney which belched smoke night and day and was the trade-mark and landmark of Mount .Isa. <br /><br />'Ever worked in a mine before, mate?' asked the bush-shirted clerk behind a tall counter.<br /><br />I had to say no, but I volunteered the information that I would no doubt be a valuable asset to any mechanical device which might lie within the mine. (How I envied that clerk his safe job behind the counter, with his wages assured and his peace of mind untouched by worries such as mine!) At that moment I wanted to be employed more than anything else in the world. I swore a mental oath to work like a slave if I found a job, and not to stir an inch this time until we had plenty of money to complete our travels in comparative comfort.<br /><br />'Well, I'm sorry mate, but there's nothing just at the moment.<br /><br />Leave your name and address with me and if there's a vacancy within the next week or two, I'll let you know.'<br /><br />'The next week or two!' I hid my disappointment and said to the young man who seemed genuinely sorry about it, 'Do you know that ever since we landed in Australia, from Adelaide to Brisbane, we've heard the most glowing reports about this place-about the mine crying out for men and paying them enormous wages? In fact the place is legendary everywhere but here.'<br /><br />'Well, it was, a couple of years ago,' replied the man with the job, 'but things have gotten tougher in the last twelve months or so. As a matter of fact we've been laying men off this last few weeks. The demand for lead and copper has fallen in the world markets apparently, and of course it has affected us here with a vengeance. Even the lead bonus is down to ten pounds a fortnight.'<br /><br />'What was it before?' I asked morosely.<br /><br />'Fifteen a fortnight, cobber, on top of wages and all the overtime. You should have been here a year or so back,' his face grew very wistful. 'Still, even today it's not a bad little number if you can get on it. Anyway, I'll let you know if an opening crops up.' That was the death knell of any aspirations I might have had regarding Mount Isa Mine.<br /><br />Back at the station, Nita greeted me with a prophetic 'They don't want you?' I nodded, crestfallen, but thinking hard about the next move.<br /><br />'While you were over there, I've been talking to a porter,' said my wife. 'He thinks there might be an opening for a shunter right here on the railway.'<br /><br />'What's the good of that?' I grumbled hopelessly. 'I don't know the back of a train from the front. Only those three days of barrow-pushing on Townsville station.'<br /><br />My wife said nothing, and merely glanced at the sun-peeled brown door marked Stationmaster. I shrugged, and ambled towards it. There was nothing to lose. . . .<br /><br />'Course, it's fortunate you've worked on the Queensland Railway before, even if it was only for three days,' said the tall, grizzled man with the Sherlock Holmes pipe. 'It'll make things much easier. I'll send a wire today and with any luck we'll get a reply back tomorrow and you can start Monday.' I nodded eagerly and tried desperately to look like an ace shunter.<br /><br />'Did you have a medical in Townsville'<br /><br />'Yes.'<br /><br />'Pass O.K.?'<br /><br />‘Yes.'<br /> <br />'Right, then it's just a matter of confirmation really. You'll get three days' training, then we'll put you on one of the shifts. It's hard work but lively. You'll soon get used to it.'<br /><br />I walked out of the cool office into the hard sunlight. As I started back along the dusty platform, the porter who had been talking to Nita stopped me.<br /><br />'Did you get it?'<br /><br />'Yes,' I said, 'the old boy must have been in a generous mood.'<br /><br />'Generous mood, nothing. He's been trying to get a shunter for the past two months but none of the other blokes'll take it on. Your predecessor was killed on the job just up by the water tower there; slipped on a beer bottle and went straight under the engine.<br />But you'll be all right so long as you don't try groggin' and shunting at the same time.' He lit a cigarette and strolled off towards the town. 'See yer later.'<br /><br />Well, the tide of misfortune was starting to recede. So the job was risky? But so is living. The next move was to find some sort of living quarters. There was a camping ground about three miles from the town, and a good-hearted chap offered to give us and our gear a lift to the spot. We loaded up the boot of his car and in two minutes were heading away from the station down the narrow strip of bitumen towards the town and the camping ground. It was just noon when we completed the half-mile from the railway and swept into the main street of the township.<br /><br />The shifting population of any boom town work hard and play hard. Mount Isa was no exception. After a five-day week, Saturday mornings (and mainly the rest of the day) were devoted to shaking off the working atmosphere of the week. And the people did it in style.<br /><br />The most dominant buildings in the small community were the pubs, three of them. Gargantuan premises with bars almost fifty yards long and all packed to capacity. The hubbub which burst from this beer-dispensing trio came literally in a roar. I had never heard anything like it; nor, I think, has any English publican for a good many years.<br /><br />The main street was thronged with strollers, most of them men, with only a sprinkling of women. The shopfronts were gay and brightly painted, with the usual canopies offering shade, although in Mount Isa the rear of the business premises jutted directly into the bush. In the hundred yards of main street there were a lot of new cars, chiefly American, and a brand-new Holden was being raffled in front of Boyd's Hotel, the crowd buying tickets at a pound each.<br /><br />The population of Mount Isa must be among the most cosmopolitan in the world. There were aborigines, dinkum Aussies, Swedes, Germans, Italians, Dutchmen, even Chinese, all chattering in quaint, polyglot English. The temperature was around the hundred mark and a huge dust pall, raised by the cars, hung like a fog above our heads. Half a mile away, the great silver chimney plumed its smoke into the brassy sky, evidence of the Saturday shift toiling five hundred feet below the surface of this, the true Australian bush.<br /><br />The camping ground was just a dust bowl. So thick was the choking powder that I had to dig down almost a foot before I could find ground firm enough to take our tent pegs. There was not a blade of grass left in this square half-mile of ground, which had deteriorated into a kind of humpy town. There were all manner of makeshift living quarters: huts built of kerosene cans, a few caravans, tents, and many huts-cum-tents-half corrugated-iron, half canvas structures in which some hundreds of people were living.<br /><br />Accommodation was at a premium in Mount Isa, but still the roving population poured in, most of them emigrants from southern Europe. We had pitched camp in the' initiation ground' as it were. When the newcomer found his feet and progressed a little, he graduated from the dust bowl to something better. I was determined to move out with all haste from this baking, shadeless shanty town.<br /><br />We placed our things inside the tent, fastened the flaps and set off straight away back along the dusty road to the township. While Nita bought a few items of food (at astounding prices, of course, everything having to be freighted overland from the south), I barged my way through the bar crowds of Boyd's Hotel and nailed Mr Boyd himself, who was pulling beer at a very fast rate.<br /><br />'Mr Boyd,' I roared, trying desperately to catch his eyes between a check-shirted shoulder and a Stetson.<br /><br />'Hullo?'<br /><br />'Do you want a good barmaid? Inexperienced, but intelligent and very quick?' I watched the sweat trickling off the end of his nose as he continued pulling the beer without looking up.<br /><br />'No.'<br /><br />'Thanks,' I said, 'I just wondered.' I began to back out between the glasses.<br /><br />'Can she cook?'<br /><br />I was back in a flash and leaning over the bar with all the temptation I could muster.<br /><br />'She can cook anything. She specializes in Continental dishes and she. . .'<br /><br />'Don't want any o' that foreign muck. Jus' good plain English cooking. Roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, plum duff, that sort o' thing.'<br /><br />'She's marvellous with English cooking and she. . .'<br /><br />'Bring her round tonight. Eight o'clock. Can't stop now.' 'Right, Mr Boyd, eight o'clock it is. And I'll have a beer. . . .'<br /><br />Nita got the job, starting at six o'clock on the following morning, Sunday, so our jubilation for the rest of that Saturday evening can well be imagined. We were really riding the crest and I decided to push our luck to the nth degree. 'Let's punt round and find some quarters,' I said. 'The lodging position sounds very black, but you never know.'<br /><br />Nita was game, so we started. We stopped people in the street and asked at the tiny police station and the newly erected fire station: did they know anyone at all who would let a room for a few months? Apparently they didn't. But we kept trying. The pubs had no rooms left at all. We tackled the barmen and people whom the barmen told us to tackle. And somehow nothing could subdue us that evening. I asked an old man who was sitting on a veranda in a cloud of mosquitoes:<br /><br />'You wouldn't like to let a room for a few months, would you, Pop?'<br /><br />'Nope. Got three Eyetalians here now.'<br /><br />'Thanks, anyway.'<br /><br />'Try Bert Hodges, next bungalow along. He might know something .'<br /><br />We made our way over the rocky, corrugated track, across a hundred yards of no-man's-land, till we reached the next bungalow. A neon sign was hanging from the porch-' Store'. Bert Hodges was a huge, blond Bavarian with an English vocabulary comprising about two words. He was packed to capacity (everyone let rooms) but his friend Mr Kristoff might be able to help.<br /><br />Mr Kristoff could help. Regardless of the late hour he was hammering and banging, fitting window panes in a new chalet which he was erecting on his acre of ground. (The noise he was making did not matter in the least, for no one seemed to go to bed in Mount Isa on Saturday nights.) There were already six wooden bungalows in the compound, and lights twinkled in most of them.<br /><br />Mr Kristoff was another giant of a fellow with a dark, swarthy complexion and a mouthful of steel teeth. His English was on a par with Bert Hodges', but the words he spoke were the right ones.<br /><br />The chalet would be completed in three days' time and we could move in at eight pounds a fortnight; which was dirt cheap for Mount Isa, even though it was a one-roomed chalet with only two beds and a table.<br /><br />To Nita and me it was the Dorchester. We paid friend Kristoff four pounds on account and returned, footsore and tired but in the highest of spirits, to our patch of dust in Shanty Town. Our Month of Misery was over.Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-88334106753224871132008-06-22T13:32:00.000-07:002008-06-22T14:40:36.100-07:00The Going gets Tougher (Chapter 11 - To Mount Isa)At six o'clock in the morning, Townsville looked bright, colourful, and full of promise. It had, for me, an atmosphere of mixed attraction. There were the tropical palms and exotic flowers; colourful bungalows, modern and airy; main-street shops that were a mixture of Oxford Street and the village store; traffic that was driven with a Continental gay abandon, and a railway station that was solid and solemnly British. Overlooking this lively little port a solitary hill-rather like that outside Brisbane-dominated the skyline, and from the top we gained a superb bird's-eye view of the township. As we looked down on the shining corrugated roofs, like dolls' houses, I felt very confident that we should be riding forth again soon; which was optimistic but sadly inaccurate. <br /><br />The agents who ran a thriving motor-cycle and scooter business opened at eight o'clock, and at first things looked very bright. We were introduced to Mr Page, the owner, who wore the regulation Townsville business dress of short-sleeved white shirt, blue drill shorts, and white knee-length socks. He had our broken transport picked up from the railway station and while we were waiting for its arrival we were offered iced drinks and shower facilities. There was an air of competence about the workshops and Mr Page's appraisal of the damage to our scooter. Nita and I, in a jovial mood, resigned ourselves to a brief stay.<br /><br />But by five o'clock that evening it was clear that events were not quite going to plan. The rear hub was in a worse mess than had been anticipated. This time the alloy casing itself had been holed, the spline had bent, and one of the bearings had seized solidly upon it. However, they wouldn't give up without trying to find suitable replacements, and in the meantime we were driven out to a nearby camping ground, together with our sidecar full of belongings, to set up camp until repairs could be made. In two or three days they would manage to fix it somehow.<br /><br />For the next fortnight our home was in Townsville's caravan park. A pleasant spot, with shady trees and brick-built shower baths; there was even an ironing room. We could buy our supplies at an adjacent store and the sea was only fifty yards away across the road. We met a number of interesting people who usually stopped for only a night or two, most of whom towed caravans, although second favourite was the utility with sleeping arrangements at the back of the driving seats. It was restful and relaxing, but we were getting nowhere. .<br /><br />Each day I walked the five miles into town to find out how the work on our transport was progressing. It wasn't. Several, indeed many, ingenious theories were put into practice-including a half-hearted attempt to weld the casing-which of course proved a dismal failure. But no one could say the Page emporium did not try. It was a repetition of the old story: the broken rear hub was impossible to repair.<br /><br />Therefore the next move was a cable to Sydney, to our old friend Jack Crawford: 'Send air express complete new rear end unit for Prima.' Somehow the message .became garbled over the two thousand-odd miles, for the reply which came three days later said, in effect, 'What did you say?' I controlled my exasperation and we tried again.<br /><br />All this procedure of course consumed the days alarmingly, and there was the question of our fast-dwindling cash. I scrutinized the local paper for casual work but Townsville, like the rest of Australia, was feeling the beginning of the 'slight recession'. There was precious little demand for labour, except on the railways, whose yearly losses would not be greatly affected by the employment of casual porters. I blessed the State-run White Elephant, and for the next week pushed a trolley up and down a long platform in company with about fifty other men. Sometimes we really did work, unloading vans full of foodstuff and supplies from the south. At other times, when things were slack (more often than not), we trundled slowly from the train to the loading bay carrying nothing more bulky than one packet of soap-flakes, or a small roll of magazines. No one laughed, or thought it ludicrous. So long as there was activity, all was well.<br /><br />I stuck this for a week. Never have hours dragged so wearily. The eight-hour day stretched into eternity and by the evening I was exhausted playing at this mockery of labour. We had reached the stage, however, when there was a real necessity for another working spell.<br /><br />Nita tried very hard to find a job in the town, but most of the businesses were family concerns and tightly sewed up so far as staff were concerned. The only vacancies were for barmaids (experienced) to man the innumerable pubs which the town boasted.<br /><br />We hadn't budgeted for another breakdown and the purse now held only twenty-five pounds. Jack Crawford had finally got the gist of our telegraphic message and replied with the depressing news that he was clean out of stock and had wired to Germany to get another unit flown out from the factory. It was going to be a long business.<br /><br />There was a young married couple who stayed for two nights in the caravan park. They towed their van with an Austin A.go and converted it during the working day into a gown shop. Their customers were the shop-starved women of the outback stations, who apparently fell hungrily on them wherever they went. They had been in the far north for two months and Ron (the husband) painted a glowing picture of Mount Isa, the mining boom town in central Queensland. It was as hot as hell, a mushroom town of choking dust and a shifting population, but it was rich in lead and copper and labour was wanted. If we could put up with the dust and discomfort, we could save a tidy nest-egg in a short time.<br /><br />As far south as Brisbane we had heard whispers of the fabulous Mount Isa, where the lead bonus was as high as fifteen pounds a week, in addition to the regular wages; where the pub customers never asked for change, and where a man could save a thousand pounds in a startlingly short time. This latest first-hand account, coupled with Nita's inability to find a job (and my own time being wasted with a porter's barrow), decided our next move. We returned the sidecar to Page's, packed a few essentials into the valise, and with an arrangement that the scooter would be sent on by rail when it was mobile again, paid the railway ten of our precious notes and boarded the train to make the two days and nights' trek inland to Mount Isa.<br /><br />Rapidly the fertile coastal belt fell away behind us and the tiny engine, pulling the three carriages, settled down to the six-hundred-mile journey westwards, towards the parched interior. Nita and I had the carriage to ourselves and we pulled down the sun-blinds to keep out the worst of the blazing sun, relaxed on our respective seats, crossed our fingers, and hoped our decision had been a wise one. We had ten pounds left and would know not a soul at our destination.<br /><br />Up to this time, all our travel in Australia had been confined to the coastal belt, spacious country true enough, but a land of trees and rainfall with the waters of the sea never far distant. Now, along the twin ribbons of glittering steel rails, we chugged in a straight line over vast, uninhabited plains and prairies towards the centre of the continent-the 'Dead Heart'.<br /><br />The air became noticeably drier and a hot wind fanned through the little steel train until we found ourselves almost gasping for air. I supposed we would become acclimatized in a few days. I filled the glass water bottle which the railway supplied at one of the little whistle-stops-a spark of humanity in the middle of a seemingly dead planet. The sky was no longer blue, but brassy, metallic, reflecting the scorched straw colour of the flat world on every side.<br /><br />Mile after mile the landscape remained unaltered. Spinifex and mulga, stunted grey-green clumps that grew no higher than a man's knee. A tree was an event. We came to regard our little carriage as a haven from a hostile world. It was comforting to look round the man-made box which moved on through a sea of parched desolation. The temperature rose steadily as we ploughed on through the second hot night, and as we tried to sleep away the second period of darkness in the cramped carriage I hoped desperately that St. Nicholas was going to smile on us on the morrow. This time we had really burned our boats.<br /><br />On the strength of a few rumours and glamourized hearsay we had started on what could easily be a wild-goose chase, transport-less and with only ten pounds in our pockets. There was one bright spot in this somewhat doubtful business, we should be at least six hundred miles nearer to our aborigines. I told Nita this, but at that moment she wasn't very enthusiastic.<br /><br />It was a blistering Saturday morning when the train pulled up the last gradient between the scorched sandstone hills and rattled along the straight into the railhead and township of Mount Isa. Through the dust-coated windows we could see rows of hastily erected bungalows: most of them looked sun-baked and temporary. There were a few more permanent buildings, but for the most part the place generated a pioneering atmosphere, with big pay packets as the sole reason for its existence.Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-34640625316867154882008-06-15T02:18:00.000-07:002008-06-15T15:02:53.081-07:00The Going gets Tougher (Chapter 11 - Townsville)Ten miles from the scene of our breakdown I was given a lift by a middle-aged couple in a Holden sedan (Australians never use the word' saloon') and we floated over the craters and dry creek-beds in a manner which I felt to be almost airborne.<br /><br />'Oh, that was a nasty one,' said the wife, as the nose dipped ever so gently into another dust-filled pit. I sat morose and silent in the back seat, perversely grudging this couple their comfortable ride. What a tale they would have to tell when they returned home to Brisbane (or wherever it was), of intrepid adventure in the Mighty Outback. The dash-radio played some tinny drivel and the only sound which rose above it was the clink of bottle on glass, as the lady adventuress poured the iced beer. For them the harsh, relentless bush did not exist, save as a brassy blur that passed their windows between hotels. I cannot recollect a more severe attack of 'sour grapes' than I suffered during those twenty luxurious miles.<br /><br />'Well, we're just about to close down for four days, y'know,' said the tall, grizzled garage proprietor. 'But Cyril here'll get the old jalopy goin' and pull you in, an' we'll have a look at it before we pack up.' Cyril, wiping his hands on a piece of cotton waste, pushed his wide-brimmed hat to the back of his head and nodded a silent greeting. I followed him round the back of the garage and we clambered into an ancient T-model Ford, which was coaxed and cajoled into life after much fiddling under the bonnet. The old pick-up truck wheezed her way down the strip of bitumen that ran the length of the main street and finished abruptly with the last house, and in two minutes we were swallowed by the bush.<br /><br />'You're from England, aren't you?' said my companion, wrestling with the wheel as we crashed into a succession of hollows. 'Yes,' I replied, in no mood to enter into conversation. Another ten minutes passed, during which time the clatter from the engine was undisturbed by the human voice, then, 'So am I,' said the driver. 'Came out from Camberwell in '48.' 'Oh,' I replied, mildly surprised at this admission. I almost added 'why?' but let caution prevail. 'You prefer the bush to the cities then?'<br /><br />'My word,' said the ex-Londoner who had forsaken his native 'not 'arf'. We rode on in silence; it was impossible to talk above the rattle.<br /><br />Five hours of bush solitude had done nothing to improve Nita's spirits either, and her greeting was a trifle disgruntled. 'Thought you'd drowned your troubles in the local pub.' She smiled sweetly at Cyril and threw me a black look at the same time.<br /><br />'Couldn't get the truck started,' I explained, appreciative of the long lonely wait my wife had just had. 'There's a chance that the garage may be able to do something,' I added (by way of consolation for her hours of solitude). 'But we'll have to be quick because they're closing tonight for Easter.'<br /><br />'Naturally,' said Nita. 'Have we ever broken down on a day that wasn't a bank holiday or a week-end?'<br /><br />Cyril regarded our strange-looking vehicle without change of expression and piped up again.<br /><br />'I come from London,' he said, his sad little face wistful for a moment under the huge hat.<br /><br />'Then,' stated Nita, surveying the sea of burnished grass, 'all three of us must be crazy.'<br /><br />Four hours later the future looked a little brighter. We got back to Bowen, the garage mechanics stripped the rear end and pronounced the job as hopeless, but by that time we had at least formulated a plan, and were no longer drifting on a sea of despair. What we had surmised, however, was now certain. Repairs to the broken hub were impossible-even with the necessary parts this tiny garage had no experience of scooters. So we would load the outfit on to the train and make our way to Townsville; we had the address of an agent there on whom to call and he would be able to fix something.<br /><br />But the train did not run during the Easter holiday. We had four days to kill in the tiny township, and thanks once again to Cyril these were made bearable by his invitation to spend the time with him and his wife. We blessed him, disconnected the sidecar body from the chassis, loaded all our belongings into the box and heaved it on to the back of Cyril's own utility.<br /><br />Half an hour later we arrived at Queen's Beach, a long strip of silver sand, deserted save for a few bungalows dotted over the landscape, most of which seemed to be in varying stages of construction.<br /><br />Queen's Beach: it was as though the first arrivals at this barren spot on the Australian coastline had christened the strip of beach in a desperate attempt to give the area a personality; to tame the place, making it synonymous with people and life and all the comforting hubbub of gregariousness which would swamp the wilderness for ever. This was a sad misnomer: Had it been called Desolation Bay one would have been agreeably surprised and felt that perhaps it was not so desolate really, there being quite a few people about. I don't know quite what we had expected to see, for the township was only minute, but here was no tight-knit community but a straggling skein of dwellings-flimsy, temporary, puny efforts of man to stabilize these vast, shifting silver dunes which were being ceaselessly pulled back and devoured by the white-capped tropical sea.<br /><br />Cyril possessed the foundations of a bungalow which he was erecting piecemeal, a sturdy wife who had all the qualities of a pioneer, and a large tent in which they were living with their ten-year-old boy until the bungalow was completed.<br /><br />'He'll never finish it,' said Jessie, with good-humoured disgust. 'All he wants to do is swim and fish when he's not at the garage. A born idler, my husband. If I didn't keep nagging him he'd watch the grass grow over the foundations and be quite content to live in this.' She indicated the canvas walls around us. In the middle of a trestle-table a paraffin lamp burned fitfully, an irresistible magnet for a million insects. Yet in spite of their lack of possessions, Cyril and Jessie were a happy couple, and battlers in the truest Australian sense.<br /><br />Nita and I pitched our own tent a little way off on Cyril's carefully marked-out two acres, and for those four Easter days we sampled the life of those two ex-Londoners who had swopped Camberwell for the bush.<br /><br />The garage which employed Cyril as a general mechanic paid a wage of fifteen pounds per week, which enabled the couple to buy all the necessities for immediate living, run their pick-up truck, and pay for their building programme on the instalment plan. The plot of land had cost them two hundred pounds and they had an arrangement with the builders' merchants whereby they were supplied with material on credit terms. Someone had lent them a cement mixer, with which I became acquainted on the first day of our stay, during which Cyril laid the floor of what was to be the kitchen. On the second day, after about an hour's work, we ran out of cement.<br /><br />'Ah well,' said Cyril with undisguised relief, 'can't do nuffin' else till we get some more. Let's go for a swim.' So we gave up our toiling, walked fifty yards down the beach, and waded in just as we were; we were only wearing shorts anyway.<br />'Course, if my mother knew we were living in a tent she'd have a fit,' said the comfortable-bodied Jessie. 'They'd think you were a freak if you did that at home while you were building your house, but of course out here it's very different. No one takes any notice.' We were sitting round the table again, drowsy with fresh air and the balmy tropical night.<br /><br />'We wouldn't be building our own house at home, anyway,' rejoined Cyril with a tinge of righteousness. 'Leastways, not 'nless I won the pools.'<br /><br />‘And if you won the Casket here you wouldn't be building our house yourself. You'd get someone else to do it for you.'<br /><br />'Course I would,' replied our host, looking dreamily at a couple of mice which cavorted unmolested just underneath the kitchen cabinet in the corner of the tent. For the Londoner had transferred from one nation of gamblers to another. Everyone had their fling on the state lotteries which are the Australian equivalent of our own pools system. The Queensland jackpot was called the Golden Casket and paid out prizes up to the usual dizzy standards.<br /><br />'If we ever land the Casket,' said Jess, 'I want to go and live at Surfers' Paradise.' (This is a glittering chromium-plated mushroom resort south of Brisbane, made fashionable by the Queensland socialites.)<br /><br />'Over my dead body,' replied her husband with some warmth. It was clear that this little man, who had been born and bred in the welter of busy Camberwell, did not intend to have his halcyon days in this little backwater of civilization exchanged for anything remotely connected with a fast pace. Despite Jessie's aspirations, she was obviously extremely adaptable, and devoted to her husband, and he was one of those rare beings who had found complete happiness and contentment.<br /><br />We caught the train on the last evening of the holiday, saw the still-dismembered scooter safely in the guard's van, and settled down in a saloon compartment to chug through the night to Townsville. Our train, whose engine wailed mournfully from time to time in true transatlantic style, paused briefly at tiny whistle-stops, where one or two solitary figures hurried on or off dimly lit platforms. The station names were barely discernible in the flickering gaslight: Guthalungra, Inkerman, Ayr, Brandon, names that stirred the imagination. Why had these places been thus christened? Had a Crimean war veteran, blood-stained bandage at rakish angle across forehead, stood on a wind-swept knoll and proclaimed in ringing tones: 'From this moment I name this area Inkerman?' Had Ayr come into being on a wave of nostalgia, to the skirl of pipes and kilts and sporrans being unpacked from dusty trunks? Somehow Guthalungra was the only station that dropped neatly into place on the railway from Bowen to Townsville.Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-55147874138484943172008-06-08T22:23:00.000-07:002008-06-08T22:25:22.022-07:00The Going gets Tougher (Chapter 11 - Towards Townsville)On the second day out of Brisbane, the tarmac to all intents and purposes ended. There were one or two half-hearted stretches of pitted bitumen, but they were full of craters and petered out after a few miles.<br /><br />Seven hundred miles to Townsville and most of it on the rough. We lashed the equipment down more securely, put a few more pounds pressure into the tyres and settled down (if one can call it that) to a very bumpy interlude. There was no longer a comforting traffic stream passing busily either way, no petrol stations every few miles, and the townships began to string out until it was almost an event to pass through one.<br /><br />Maryborough: with a main street so wide that driving down the middle we could barely see the tin roofs on either side of us in the shimmering midday heat. At every stop now, we found ourselves beating the thick alkali dust from our clothing-quite like old times.<br /><br />But if the route was rugged, the scenery was beautiful. Majestic gum forests, blue mountains, rolling hills and valleys; all of it sparkling in the bright air; one of Australia's finest coastlines. We camped among the gums, entirely alone, just whenever we felt tired. Sometimes we drove all night, or part of the night, sleeping during the heat of the day, or vice versa, depending on our mood. At night the bush was peaceful and fascinating, and at last we began to feel something of the mystery of this timeless continent, where man is but a newcomer. For the first time we watched a timid wallaby, and saw it as the strange marsupial it really is. And watching the wallaby and conjecturing on its unique anatomy I thought of the platypus, the koala, and the wombat, which must have roamed this vast, silent continent in thousands, together with other creatures a million years extinct, about which man has but a glimmering of knowledge.<br /><br />As we progressed farther north, through Bundaberg sugar-cane country where dark-skinned Italian migrants toiled like beavers cutting the cane amid the choking ashes of the clearing fires, we became more and more aware of the great silence-a silence almost tangible, especially during the middle of the day. To shout would be a profanity. Perhaps that is why the true Australian is considered to be taciturn-never chatting-speaking only when there is something of import to say.<br /><br />We arrived in Rockhampton after a night of gruelling driving over tracks which tossed us about like a cork at sea and ripped our rear tyre into shreds on jagged rocks. It was absolutely necessary to get hold of a replacement tyre and tube. Rockhampton, a large community by North Queensland standards, with the status of a city, is the half-way point between Brisbane and Townsville: it must be one of the few cities in the world that has a main-line railway running up the centre of one of the main streets.<br /><br />Here, in this sleepy easy-going place which gives the traveller the impression that the rest of the world has somehow passed it by, we met one of the nicest couples on the whole of our continental journey: Vivian and Joan. Viv, as everyone called him (abbreviations being the rule in the southern hemisphere), had shown enterprise and courage in opening the city's first scooter centre. In Sydney or Melbourne he could not have put a foot wrong commercially, but in Rockhampton I regarded him as something of a hero, for scooters appeared to be about as popular there as roller-skates in Torquay. But he was a typical Aussie battler, and he was going to convert the populace from push-bikes to scooters, whatever happened.<br /><br />He and his wife lived in a charming, spacious bungalow up on stilts, in typical Queensland fashion-a home that boasted every labour-saving device and contemporary comfort-with the exception of television. Somehow, in this Queensland town of perpetual summer, the magic box would seem entirely out of place. Our hosts had not lost the art of conversation, and after an excellent dinner of roast duck (shot by Vivian a day previously on the nearby marshes), we sat on the high veranda discussing the merits and demerits of our contrasting home towns. We discovered that each had something to offer the other, although it took us into the small hours to reach this amicable decision: that, whatever else Londoners may have to endure, they are at least free from white ants, but that well-constructed bungalows look awfully ¬attractive on stilts.<br />Two hundred and fifty miles to Mackay. There were a few stations along the track, but in the main it was deserted bush country; hot, dusty, arid.<br /><br />It was as well we had had a new tyre fitted in Rockhampton, for we needed every ounce of tread between that city arid Darwin. We drove for the whole of the second day without seeing a soul. There was only the track, the dust, and the occasional empty beer bottle lying beside the' highway' -mute evidence of thirsty drivers. Those beer bottles! There must be millions scattered across the continent, tossed with thirst-quenched abandon out of car windows from Darwin to Adelaide and Perth to Brisbane. I am sure that were we to visit the most unfrequented spot in this vast land, a hundred miles from anywhere (and there are plenty like that), before an hour passed the tell-tale glint of the dust-covered brown glass from the centre of a spinifex clump would be seen. All those bottles (terribly dry after roasting for months and years under the fierce sun) tend to aggravate one's own thirst enormously. It is impossible to pass a wayside pub.<br /><br />Mackay is a pretty little town, built with forethought and imagination. Down the centre of the main street is a line of beautifully kept palm trees which are restfully functional, besides being a pleasant adornment. There is a fine swimming beach-Eimeo-¬of which all the inhabitants are rightly proud. Nita and I soaked off two days' dust in the tepid water, luxuriating in the white foam of the breakers, yet keeping a wary eye for the first signs of any curved fish-tails among the waves.<br /><br />There are a great many casualties every year in Australian coastal waters, despite shark nets, warning bells, and volunteer look-outs. Not only does the sea-tiger take his toll; there are creatures far more sinister than the ravenous shark in the tropical sea off North Queensland: the giant jellyfish man-of-war, the little-known sea-wasp, and a variety of vividly coloured coral snakes. All of these creatures are immensely venomous. While we were lazing on the silver sands and drying ourselves under the sun, a fellow swimmer told us that the previous week a man had been bitten by a sea-wasp while standing in only six inches of water. He had died writhing in agony an hour later, with the doctor powerless to ease his suffering. It seemed ironic that nature at its most beautiful could be fraught with such terrible danger.<br /><br />Even some of the shells which can be found on the more deserted beaches, delicately tinted and perfectly shaped, begging to be picked up, can inflict a fatal wound on the unwary. However, discounting the hazards (including those magnified out of all proportion by the Aussie, who loves to exaggerate his country's drawbacks), we continued to swim wherever there was water. Anyone who has spent days on end under the blazing north Australian sun without the protection of a car roof will appreciate that this was not foolhardiness-at least not altogether.<br /><br />Another gruelling stint over a hostile track, thick with bull-dust, and we reached Proserpine. This is an old township with a strong flavour of the Wild West, complete with bat-wing doors on the pubs and, strolling along the main street, a crowd of cattlemen<br />(ringers), wearing high-heeled ringer boots and wide-brimmed hats.<br />We filled the sidecar with stores, stopping only long enough to finish the necessary shopping. I did not like Proserpine; it was decrepit and dying. One old fellow we spoke to said that in a few more years it would be nothing more than a ghost town. It was a mining community, with the seams running dry, and was poor and drab; there were no compensations for its unfortunate geographical position which was low-lying and swampy. The area was infested with snakes and pestiferous insects. I dragged Nita away from the store where she was parleying with the shopgirl who had emigrated from St Albans; we filled the fuel tanks and departed.<br /><br />We drove all that day and most of the night. Now we were back to Middle East road standards. The track fought us like a live thing. Great craters, with a deceptive appearance of smoothness, jarred shatteringly as we broke through the bull-dust to the jagged rocks beneath; our average speed was reduced to something like ten miles an hour.<br /><br />Just before midnight it rained. No gentle patter this, but a full-blooded tropical storm which lashed us furiously, transformed the dust to quagmire, and had us shivering, when a few moments before we had been sweating profusely. The quivering, bouncing beam from our headlamp pierced the sheets of water, lighting up a path ahead which was, to say the least, discouraging. The track had disappeared and in its place was a murky lake. I pulled up at the edge and dismounted to survey the depth. Saturated to the skin as I was, it made little difference to my comfort to wade in, hoping fervently that this product of the storm would not be more than the scooter could cope with. I waded for fifty yards and discovered that on average it was about a foot deep.<br /><br />Slowly, keeping the throttle open all the time, we gurgled across the lake. There was nearly half a mile of it which was not surprising, as we were traversing a valley which had rapidly filled from the overflow of rain rushing down the hills on either side of us. Nita had disappeared wisely under the ground-sheet and was visible as a glistening hump of waterproof sheeting, which remained silent and unmoving during the worst of the storm.<br /><br />The rain passed as quickly as it had arrived and, although it was a wonderful relief to drive again without battling against the icy, stinging lash, there were now other obstacles. Long stretches-anything up to a couple of hundred yards-of gluey mud in which we bogged repeatedly. The only remedy for this was to get off and push, which we did almost continuously for the next two hours, with gradually diminishing enthusiasm. I think there can be few more depressing experiences than pushing a vehicle through patches of mud, soaked to the skin in the middle of the night. . . .<br /><br />There was, however, worse to come, for that ghastly night heralded what I now look back on as a Month of Misery. This was to be one of those fearful black periods which periodically engulf all expeditions-a month when we caught ourselves thinking frequently that we were a couple of blasted idiots. It took a long time to shake ourselves free from the ill-luck which dogged us.<br />The bitterest blow fell suddenly about thirty miles from Bowen, a tiny township growing up around an opencast coal mine. Bowen! Who had even heard of the place? Certainly I hadn't. But I'll never forget that 'Sleepy Hollow' as the residents termed it in a self-deprecating manner.<br /><br />For it was here that the accursed rear wheel gave up the struggle again; only this time there was no warning, no gradual deterioration. As we tore into yet another' jump-up', trying to maintain enough impetus to get out again, the rear end hit the bottom with a sickening thud and that was that. The whole assembly locked solidly, and we were stranded thirty miles from a dot on the map, with a vehicle that was once more utterly useless. In a flash, all our plans for the miles and days ahead evaporated into thin air. We would not be able to reach Townsville for Easter and Nita's birthday; neither would we be in Darwin 'within a couple of weeks' and our money would certainly not now carry us to the capital of the Northern Territory.<br /><br />We hauled the outfit from the chasm and sat down at the side of the track, almost weeping with anger and frustration. Once again I loathed the scooter, the silent, arid landscape of waving spinifex, the monstrous track, the Australian Government for permitting such primitive motor roads to exist, and-during that mood of hopelessness-myself and everything else. Had there been a possibility of being spirited home to comfort and regulated security, I should have gone immediately.<br /><br />Wearily we pushed the scooter into the shade of a nearby gum tree, and leaving Nita busily brewing up-her antidote for all adversity-I grunted a dismal farewell and set off to walk along the scorched track stretching into infinity, with Bowen at the end of a thirty-mile tramp.Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-53947316802063520492008-06-01T21:45:00.000-07:002008-06-01T21:48:08.400-07:00The Going gets Tougher (Chapter 11 - From Brisbane)The plan was to continue up the coast as far as Townsville, then turn westwards inland to strike the road that runs from north to south through the centre. The road that would carry us to Darwin. Our first stop, then, would be Townsville, a mere eight hundred miles north of Brisbane. <br /><br />Our first night stop from Brisbane was just one hundred miles farther on. It seemed a pretty puny effort on the face of things, particularly as the whole hundred miles had been on good bitumen. However, we found a glorious camping spot on the edge of a wood, with a fresh bubbling river which had been half-heartedly dammed for some reason or the other, and which provided a large patch of white clean concrete on which we could spread all our gear, together with the sleeping-bags.<br /><br />There are always incidents on a trip, or situations which remain evergreen in the memory long after the bulk of the journey has been forgotten. And that first night out of Brisbane was perfect. For one thing we were still clean, with all our clothes neatly pressed and ironed; and the scooter was giving me no worry. We were both fresh in body and mind, stimulated by our Brisbane interlude, and our conversation was mainly a post-mortem on the Queensland capital. To blend with this contentment was the warm, balmy, tropical night-beautiful-with a huge full moon and a cloudless, starry sky, velvet and friendly over our heads.<br /><br />Toughened by our ceaseless travelling, we scorned the tent (as we did for the rest of the trip unless there was heavy rain), considering it almost profane to shut out the beauty of the night sky. Our camp-fire crackled merrily, giving off the fragrant aroma of burning gum leaves and billy-brewed tea. And for once the beam from our headlight, which was focused on our supper activities, was free from the myriad insects which usually converged directly I switched it on.<br /><br />But that perfect spot offered something more. The river was teeming with flathead, those succulent fish that are sought after with rod and line every week-end by a million Australians. I caught three huge, healthy specimens in as many minutes with the gut line and hook which had been carried hopefully and, until that night, unsuccessfully among our belongings.<br /><br />Nita discarded the tin of bully-beef and was kept frantically busy frying, to keep pace with my catching, scaling, and gutting. We ate royally. Four huge fishes apiece and as many billycansful of tea. Replete and supremely content, we lay for a long time on top of the sleeping-bags, savouring the glowing warmth of the fIre and the beauty of the night.<br /><br />Just after midnight, when we were drowsily contemplating the exertion of getting into our sleeping-bags, the silence of the bush was shattered by the approach of an unsilenced pick-up truck – a 10 cwt. open-backed vehicle which is one of the most popular forms of transport in the open country-referred to as a 'utility' or, more commonly, a 'ute', which careered down the dusty approach lane, stopped by the weir and deposited a young husband and wife and a brood of jean- and T -shirted offspring. .<br /><br />We watched-as yet unnoticed-while father skinned a rabbit and dissected it for bait in the glare of his headlamps, and the rest of the large family prepared the lines for what was obviously going to be an all-night fishing session. When preparations were completed and the group stood solemnly in line, each peering intently at the dark, shadowy water, we strolled across and bade these nocturnal sports good evening.<br /><br />'Good night,' said the husband cheerfully, evincing, with typical Australian mien, no surprise at our sudden appearance. 'How you goin'?' By now used to Australiana with its rare use of the English' good evening' and automatic enquiry about the state of one's well-being, I replied in kind: 'Good, thanks.'<br /><br />We talked for a few moments about fishing and the fun of night-angling, while the kids-pert and lively without being precocious-were laying bets on who would make the first catch.<br /><br />'You're English, ain't you?' asked father.<br /><br />'Yes,' I replied. 'But don't hold it against me.'<br /><br />'Why should I? So's she.' He nodded in the direction of his wife. The wife, in her middle twenties, slim, fresh-complexioned, and dressed in jeans and sweater, introduced herself in a quaint Yorkshire accent. She looked far too young and petite in the moonlight to have mothered such a large and energetic brood. Nita said in surprised admiration:<br /><br />'Are they all yours?'<br /><br />'Good Lord, no,' the girl answered. 'Only four of 'em are mine. The two others are our neighbour's kids.' The humour was unintentional; four children are commonplace in Australian families, and six, or even eight, create no surprise.<br /><br />The fish were beginning to bite and the catch on the bank was taking on an impressive size. The husband and I talked about Australia and Queensland, while the women chatted reminiscently about England. After about an hour the husband laid down his line. 'Time for smoko, Mary, I'm parched.'<br /><br />We sat round their camp-fire, drinking the billy-tea while the children swarmed over our scooter outfit, and mispronounced the list of names written on the side until the four of us were rocking with laughter.<br /><br />'Y'know,' said the Aussie, 'you're the first two Poms I've met in a long time who really speak English I can understand.' This was not the first time we had heard this remarked upon, and I was interested to find out why.<br /><br />'Well,' said the husband. 'Most of you people pronounce words like my wife used to when I first met her down in Melbourne. Y'know, "reet" instead of right; "coop" and not cup; that sort of thing. And when they're talking quickly I can't understand 'em at all, dinkum.', And you mean that every Englishman you've met had a Yorkshire accent?' I asked.<br /><br />'Oh, I wouldn't say they were all Yorkshire,' said our friend, with a furrowed brow, 'but most have got a burr or a brogue of some sort. Of course, some's worse than others, but you're the first couple I've met who don't have me straining to catch what you're sayin'. Course, even you say "charnce" instead of chance; still, your English is pretty good," he concluded with a twinkle.<br /><br />Can this mean that there is more migration from the provinces than from the London area? Judging by the number of our own countrymen whom we met in our Australian travels this would seem to be the case. A man from Halifax, Jarrow, or Swansea is more likely to adopt Australia as a new home than his compatriot living in the suburbs of London. Perhaps the Londoner is less adventurous than his provincial brother. Or do Londoners lead a fuller and more satisfying life?<br /><br />Despite the ribbing of each other's accents, the young couple seemed to be a perfect blend of northern and southern Anglo-Saxons. This was reflected in the children, who possessed the easy-going, devil-may-care attitude of the Aussie together with the shrewd, cool-blooded temperament of the canny Yorkshireman. These were no crazy, mixed-up, hypersensitive kids!<br /><br />I asked the wife if she ever yearned to return home to England, and got a very emphatic no for an answer. She said that at first she would have given anything to return home to the familiar world of her childhood; but after five years in a sub-tropical climate among people who became increasingly friendly, without most of our worries about international tensions, in their own house (built by themselves on their own land without any petty restrictions), plus all the little things-like being able to fish in the middle of a warm night anywhere she cared to toss her line-how could she go back to a world of concrete and grey skies? She would like to visit, of course, if they ever saved enough money. 'But,' she said, as her ruddy, sun-bronzed arm lifted the billy for the sixth time, 'I'm a Queenslander from now till the day I die.' Which indeed this one-time Yorkshire lass was.Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-22314698984795733602008-05-24T16:27:00.000-07:002008-05-25T19:33:44.040-07:00The Going gets Tougher (Chapter 11 - Brisbane)Roy Markwell was something of a celebrity in Brisbane, particularly in the world of yachting, which enjoys tremendous popularity in this sub-tropical coastal city; he was also the NSU agent for Queensland, having one of the most modern motor-cycle and scooter showrooms and offices I had yet seen.<br /><br />While the Prima was undergoing a routine check-over, Nita and I were given the run of Markwell's luxury sea-going yacht. We lived in it for a week-at least, when we had time, for during those seven days we were indoctrinated-high-pressure transatlantic style-with Brisbane. We saw the city both by daylight and at night from the famous One-Tree Hill, a fantastically high viewpoint, laid out on the summit of this near-mountain with flower gardens, bursting with exotic tropical blooms and built-in palm-studded vantage points, from which visitors could see, on a clear day, almost every building in the city. Queen Elizabeth on her visit had apparently been very impressed with the panorama which is, from One-Tree Hill, virtually an aerial view.<br /><br />Brisbane is really a beautiful city, and if ever Nita and I decided to live permanently in Australia, Brisbane would become our home. It is modern, with a sophistication that is not brittle, and the pace is fast but free and easy. The people are very Anglo-Saxon, but the balmy, sub-tropical warmth has successfully eliminated all the traditional Anglo-Saxon reserve. The inhabitants work hard and play hard under almost continuously blue skies and starry, cloudness nights. People sleep on their verandas, or in the gardens, or on the boat-decks of their launches. There are also a great number of pubs in the city centre, and everyone appreciates the ice-cold beer. My wife and I have visited a good many cities, and we decided that Brisbane offered a little of everything, including one unique feature-trams designed so that they are actually pleasing to the eye. Never before or since have we seen anything to approach the sleek, streamlined public transport of Brisbane.<br /><br />We took a number of pictures: of the University; the gigantic new hospital (almost completed); the daily parade of policemen in their smart uniforms as they marched past a quite historic (for Australia) town hall; the main street of dazzling white and pastel-shaded near-skyscrapers; the modern bridges spanning the river; as well as that little sidecar of ours, which had just had two more names added in gold letters to the rest of the list. I told the manager of Messrs. Wakefield's that perhaps their signwriter had been jeopardizing our good luck in adding Darwin prematurely, but he laughed and replied that so long as I stuck to the right oil, Darwin was a piece of cake!<br /><br />Once again the Press became interested in our venture and we made two radio broadcasts and received several write-ups in the daily and evening newspapers. These were included mainly on account of our unorthodox mode of transport, but one of the newspapers (the reporter who interviewed us having at one time travelled the world on a shoe-string) gave an intelligent and an interesting account of our reasons for travelling as we did, with all its fascination of uncertainty, and an explanatory note on our aspirations. It is extremely difficult for some people to understand the motivating power which drives us and others like us to go voyaging to the ends of the earth, away from the comforts and security of home. It was nice to come across one reporter who did.<br /><br />On the latter part of our journey from Sydney, I realized that there was one modification that simply had to be made to our sidecar, namely, the fitting of a stronger wheel spring. This overloaded part had gradually sagged with the miles and had thrown the steering all out of track, so that it was necessary for me to exert tremendous pressure on the left handlebar, particularly on steep cambers and, in consequence, had made Nita's ride for the last hundred miles or so virtually suspensionless.<br /><br />Roy Markwell went to a great deal of trouble to rectify this uncomfortable fault and, not satisfied with his first efforts, had a special heavyweight spring forged in his modem workshops, where, he told me, they could produce any part of a vehicle except the chromium-plate or the tyres. He certainly proved this with a robust spring for our sidecar.<br />There was also the problem of extra fuel and water supplies which our friends told us would be imperative if we were to reach Darwin safely. That we had traversed the Middle East solo, with less water than we carried in the new water bag, made no difference. The Australian bush, they said, was a lot lonelier than any other part of Asia, including Afghanistan. Two more one-gallon cans, therefore, were fitted into a metal rack which was slung between the sidecar and the scooter in the convenient space behind my legs. We filled one with ready-mixed petrol and the other with fresh water. According to my calculations, we could now say goodbye to civilization for a week and four hundred miles at a time.<br /><br />Our brief stay in Brisbane had been something of a social whirl, with the sight-seeing, broadcasts, lunch-time club talks, and parties. We had also fitted in a prolonged visit to a nearby animal sanctuary, treading in the footsteps of Armand and Michaela Denis and<br />Walt Disney, to take pictures of most of the native fauna of Australia, including some delightful koala bears-one of which rode with obvious pleasure on the back of a long-suffering Alsatian.<br /><br />Nita went into a rhapsody when the owner of the sanctuary permitted her to hold one of these' cuddliest' of all furred animals. In :Melbourne she had raved over a semi-tame platypus-that weird hybrid of the animal world with furred body, duck bill, and webbed feet. She had loved its sleek, velvet-like coat, but was wary of the two dew-claws on the back feet which held poison ducts. But the koalas were totally devoid of any self-defence mechanism and were, in fact, made to be cuddled.<br /><br />When we left Brisbane we said goodbye to what I had come to regard as the Australia of Cities: Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, all lying in that narrow fertile collar which hugged the coast, where there were water and life. Ahead lay the inland, the bush. A few more towns of moderate size, then, at last, the silent empty land of the spinifex and the mulga. At last we were on the doorstep.Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-63184119560655413932008-05-19T14:45:00.000-07:002008-05-19T14:46:26.639-07:00The Going gets Tougher (Chapter 11 - Sydney to Brisbane)At first it was easy: absurdly easy, with our newly fixed sidecar carrying Nita and all our belongings (including the weighty film) with perfect ease. The bitumen was smooth, the weather glorious, and the coastal road north running through green, fertile country: Wyong, Swansea, Newcastle. And we made our first night stop just outside Newcastle under a cluster of friendly gum trees.<br /><br />In the south they had warned us of the mosquitoes, but we had taken the warnings lightly-too lightly-and in consequence were both severely bitten, although we stayed awake most of the night trying to swat the' Giant Greys'. I should think that the mosquitoes around Newcastle, New South \Vales, hold the record for size. Indeed, they are not called' Giant Greys' without good reason, and their intake is proportionate to the large banded body, the size of a house fly's. Voracious hordes invaded our tent ceaselessly throughout the night and we swatted and smote each attacker with vicious satisfaction, and endured streaming eyes from a smoke fire just outside the entrance that seemed to attract rather than discourage our tormentors. And in the chill grey light of dawn, haggard from lack of sleep, we reviewed our tent which almost resembled a battlefield, with dark bodies and blood smears (our blood) liberally spattered over the tent walls and our sleepingbags.<br /><br />With the first warm rays of the sun, the night raiders-more like vampires than mosquitoes-droned away, heavy and replete. Grateful at least that they were not as yet malarial, we drank tea, broke camp and got on to the road again, determined to stop at the first hardware store for a length of netting to sew into the tent opening. There should be no repetition of such torture. For the rest of the seven hundred miles run from Sydney to Brisbane, our nights were blissful and uninterrupted. Indeed, outside the net the angry frustrated whine, which in concert sounded rather like a smooth turbine engine, actually lulled us to sleep.<br /><br />The days were warm and gradually, noticeably, getting hotter. The scooter, with its new lease on life from the hands of Jack Crawford in Sydney, ran perfectly. And the country became more vast. In Australia it is necessary to drive much farther than anywhere else before something happens; before there is a change of scenery and one of those clean, low wooden stereotyped townships appears on the horizon and another fleeting glimpse is seen of canopied shops, angle-parked cars, and glittering silver rainwater butts. As a rule one drives straight through, knowing the sequence will be roughly the same. Farming country to either side, full and blooming, yet rarely does one see signs of human interference. I wondered how or when they tend the vast acres. Then the square signboards: Tarree, Kempsey, Macksville (or whatever the name happens to be), and the highway widens momentarily to become a high street which shimmers in steep perspective as one automatically peers ahead through the heat-haze to see where the straight line of this latest human community ends.<br /><br />In two or three minutes the last weatherboard bungalow is left behind, the reverse side of the name-board is there (as one knows it will be) on the opposite side of the road, and once more the silent pastures take over and the traveller is alone again with the infinite, sweeping arable plains. If the average focal length of an Englishman's view is fifty<br />feet, an Australian's is two hundred yards. In England we speak of 'a mile up the road'. In Australia it is ten miles. Nita and I caught on very quickly and would talk quite seriously of a place being only three hundred and eighty miles up the road.<br /><br />We were following the Pacific Highway and although the sea was only a few miles east of us, we saw nothing of it until we reached a delightful and decidedly unstereotyped township called Coff's Harbour. Here was a town with a difference. The streets twisted a bit, there was variety in the shops, including one or two bookshops, gunsmiths, and an espresso coffee bar, together with throngs of people in holiday mood who had obviously chosen this colourful and pretty harbour as a holiday resort.<br /><br />The sea was only a stone's throwaway and many of the inhabitants and visitors were strolling about in beach-suits or shorts. We met a holiday-maker from Perth who had driven right across the continent just to spend a week in this, his former home. I agreed it was nice, but I didn't think it was that attractive.<br /><br />Another potpourri of nationalities in names: Grafton, Casino, Coolangatta, and we purred on over the border into Queensland. After Brisbane, we were told, the going would get tougher, but it is better on a journey such as ours to live for the day and we did not worry about what might lie ahead, enjoying the quiet, uneventful run from the capital of New South Wales to the capital of Queensland in much of a holiday spirit. For after our working spell in Sydney, those seven hundred miles with good roads and frequent towns through fertile, coastal country were very much in the nature of a holiday. It was therefore in a buoyant mood that we arrived in Brisbane. Buoyant, but without any sense of achievement, because what we had just done was, comparatively, routine. Had we known what lay ahead on the next lap we would have undoubtedly felt more grateful for such a comfortable stretch of our marathon journey.Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-62259048748616632682008-05-11T14:30:00.000-07:002008-05-11T14:31:49.053-07:00Sydney (Chapter 10 - Sydney)Someone who knew Jack Crawford knew someone else who ran a transport business, and who might want a truck driver for a short spell. I hounded after this slender lead and with a great deal of luck ran the boss to ground while he was short-handed. And thus began three months of truck driving, in and around the capital. I learnt more about Sydney in that three months than I ever would have done had we won that £500. It was an education, hard work, but fun, and I was getting paid at the rate of £ I 8 per week. Nita, who industriously read all the small ad. pages in the newspapers, found comfortable lodgings at Brighton-Le Sands, about five miles from the centre of the city, where Kingsford Smith Airport flanked us on one side and Botany Bay on the other. From our window, we could look across the bay to the spot where Captain Cook landed so many years ago.<br /><br />By the end of the first week, Nita had also found a niche in a fruit-canning factory and, apart from having to stand in running water all day long, found the work congenial and the pay very useful. <br /><br />We used to cook in secret in our lodgings. Being frugal for a purpose, we had only arranged for bed and breakfast, and we cooked our evening meal camp style, over a tiny methylated stove. What my wife achieved on that midget was truly remarkable. We had fried meals, roasted meals (with the aid of an empty biscuit tin), toasted and boiled meals, and after the first month we began to wonder whether one ever needed more than a half¬<br />crown stove and a bottle of methylated spirit to produce all but the most complex dishes.<br /><br />Every Friday night we stowed our earnings carefully away in the wardrobe, along with all the illicit cooking utensils and food stores. At week-ends we did nothing more than read books from the public library, write, or spend the day on Bondi or Manly Beach.<br /><br />One gets the finest surf-bathing in the world in Bondi breakers, and provided a sharp ear is kept for the shark-warning bell, and a keen eye for the dangers of a 'rip' (a tremendously strong undertow that defies the strongest swimmers at times), water sport at its finest is there for the asking, in a warm sea of white-crested form, where one can laze all day long without feeling cold.<br /><br />All the citizens of Sydney-Sydneysiders-make a pilgrimage to the coastal bays and inlets during the week-ends. Some to fish (fishing being one of the most popular sports down under; even the women angle); others to race motor-boats or yachts, but most to do the odd bit of surf-riding or simply laze on the golden sands, sun-worshipping. Their evenings are spent energetically on the whole: dancing, playing tennis by floodlight (there are tennis courts in the most lonely corners of the land), barbecueing, or just throwing parties.<br /><br />The open-air cinemas are very popular. One merely drives in, parks the car, selects a microphone which hooks on to the inside of the window, and provided it is not raining one gets a good view of the giant screen with controllable sound inside the car.<br /><br />Although very good for comedy films (the dialogue not being drowned in audience reaction), we found these cinemas to be unsuccessful in putting across a film of any depth; the link between viewer and medium is lost. For the managements, however, they are a gimmick that pays off, being particularly popular with courting couples.<br /><br />About the middle of the second month in Sydney, when we had almost forgotten we were on an expedition, having fallen into the working routine so thoroughly, Jack Crawford 'phoned to say that the Mayor would like to see us. We were given a nice reception, welcomed officially (if somewhat belatedly) to the city and presented with The Book of Sydney, a large imposing volume of high quality which told briefly the life of the city. <br /><br />The book is presented only to non-Australian visitors who, in the opinion of the authorities, might do something, however small, for the good of Australia. We were both pleased and not a little flattered to receive this exceptional gift. The last man associated with two wheels who had been presented with a copy had been Geoff Duke. I told the Mayor I was hardly likely to make a similar impact, but what we lacked in miles per hour we would make up for by distance covered.<br /><br />It was during the second month, too, that Nita raised the subject of a sidecar. At first I was dead against the idea. Our one and a half horses had enough work to do without having to drag a chassis and third wheel. But my wife kept prodding, and eventually I was coaxed to 'just make a few enquiries'. Her argument, a very sound one, was that once more we should have to tackle long stretches of desolation-rather like those of the Middle East -and now we should not be able to carry all our equipment (including a whole new batch of cine-film which we were buying piecemeal), and still stay upright in the rough. But how could the little scooter haul a sidecar? On our arrival Jack Crawford had said bluntly that it wouldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding, but that had all been remedied long since. I decided in the Australian vernacular to 'give it a go'.<br /><br />Jack was receptive to the idea and told us he could fit a chassis and wheel. For the body, which had to be lightweight, yet strong enough to take a constant beating, C. C. Wakefield Ltd. came to our aid and had one hand-built to our specification.<br /><br />They presented it to us with their compliments, complete with a list of gold-lettered names of the cities we had passed through and a big winged Castrol sign on the front. A seat was fashioned for Nita, who wedged herself in and packed all the gear around her.<br /><br />We made several test runs out to the Blue Mountains, climbing some of the steepest gradients we could find in this glorious beauty spot, about forty miles from the capital. Nothing seemed amiss and we found that we could churn over the roughest ground without fear of turning turtle. Our midget machine seemed unperturbed by the extra weight and, if anything, steadier with a third wheel than when grossly overloaded on two. Two wheels or three, New South Wales was perfect for motor-cycling. Good roads, beautiful weather, with a minimum of rain. Despite these attributes, the nucleus of two-wheeled enthusiasts is a very small one. I told Jack Crawford that, given their Australian conditions, our own million-strong army of ardent riders would almost certainly expand, and that in spite of the unfavourable British climate a large percentage of this number would not exchange their two wheels for four-even if motor-bikes were dearer than cars. Why, then, should Australian men-most of whom had the right amount of ginger in their blood-by-pass this zestful, essentially outdoor sport and exhilarating method of personal transport?<br /><br />'The women get at 'em. That's the trouble,' said Jack in reflective mood. 'Just before the war the motor-cycling movement was developing wonderfully. Plenty of road racing, scrambles, trials, and a great deal of men who rode for the pleasure of it. Nowadays the women are all car-minded and they've forced the men to think the same way. But,' qualified Jack, 'things are gradually improving and there are an increasing number of chaps who are rediscovering the thrill of being on a saddle rather than sitting on a car seat. We do have our enthusiasts, y'know, especially on the sporting side, and the ranks aren't getting any smaller. Boundary riders on some of the Outback stations find that the motor-cycle is just about the perfect replacement for the horse; for the modern machine can go anywhere the horse can, and in a fraction of the time. You'll see plenty of riders in the north who'd put some of our expert scramblers in the shade. Fellows who ride on the rough each and every day, sometimes for a month at a time. But,' concluded our host with a smile, 'I don't think the wives get at the cattle men as much as the city women do.'<br /><br />We were almost ready to start for the bush. After three months in Sydney our financial state had become satisfactorily stabilized; three months of the bustle of the city, with its free and easy life, its humour, absence of red-tape, modern outlook, and gay atmosphere. We had stayed long enough to think automatically of Hyde Park, Sydney, when anyone mentioned Hyde Park. We began to call dockers 'wharfies' and Teddy Boys and their feminine counterparts' Bodgies and Widgies'. The bright yellow number plates, prefaced with N.S.W., no longer looked faintly strange; neither did the pubs, filled to overflowing; nor the rattling trams that one had to overtake only on the inside. Nita became used to the bright, almost flamboyant fashions of the women, with their preference for vivid colour and enormous bright hats. At the end of those three months we felt that we knew Sydney pretty well. And, as always, when something has become familiar and cosy at the same time, it was difficult to leave. We did stop and look back at the great bridge on the way out of the city, but with a feeling of sadness rather than elation.<br /><br />Once more we had burnt our boats. There would be no more pay packets for a while, no more comfortable routine. Once again the long black ribbon stretched ahead, and tomorrow we would relish the challenge. On the day we left Sydney we were silent, and just a little depressed.Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-84013426511224399672008-05-04T14:55:00.000-07:002008-05-04T14:59:29.022-07:00Sydney (Chapter 10 - Arriving in Sydney)<a href="http://blogs.internetscooter.com/marriott/uploaded_images/2upaus1syd-742029.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://blogs.internetscooter.com/marriott/uploaded_images/2upaus1syd-742026.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />The pace in Sydney is faster than in Melbourne, or, for that matter, anywhere else in the Commonwealth. The traffic, and there's plenty of it, really moves. Although the city is not new and the streets were initially designed for horse-drawn traffic, there is little of the frustration that confronts the motorist in the centre of London. The pace is fast but not furious as it is, say, in Paris, and in no time at all we had whisked through at a steady forty-five miles an hour, to pull up at our destination, the NSU agents Hazell & Moore, just a stone's throw from the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge. It was a glorious Monday evening, with a cloudless blue sky over the city, and Nita and I, once more carried on the crest of a wave of modest achievement, were in the highest spirits. We had exactly £9 15s. (Australian) left.<br /><br />Jack Crawford, manager of Hazell & Moore Ltd., was a tall, iron-grey-haired man of some sixty years, with an inexhaustible enthusiasm for two-wheeled travel, and, through experience, he knew the first requirements to make two hot, dusty travellers feel right at home. In his modern showrooms, we sat down in the pleasant coolness and just enjoyed the iced beer in the tall glasses, with the condensation running down the sides. No one said much until the glasses were empty. Then, under the shrewd guidance of Jack and his assistant, Arthur Knutt (a one-time Birmingham lad), we formed a battle plan.<br /><br />'I bet,' said Jack, 'you've precious little cash left.'<br /><br />'That's right,' I answered, not surprised; for our host seemed to know all the answers.<br /><br />'Well, that doesn't matter. No man has experienced life until he's been broke in a strange place, but the first thing you'll have to do is to remedy that fault.' I mumbled agreement, regretting that our aboriginal interlude would have to be postponed yet again. 'So it's up to you to find your fortune in this big city of ours. While for our part' (here he glanced at a report on our scooter handed to him by a white-coated mechanic) 'we'll put that Prima of yours into apple-pie order. Not that it isn't basically sound, but from the first report the motor sounds a bit sick.' I said that having lived with it for so long we had not really noticed any deterioration in performance, although she was a bit reluctant on hills and sounded far noisier than we felt she should.<br /><br />For our first night in the big city we were given the address of a cheap and cheerful (and somewhat doubtful) hotel off Pitt Street. It served us well for one night, however, and after a bath we slept like the dead, ready to tackle the job-hunting first thing next morning. It was obvious that at least another two months' stay was ahead of us, although I am glad now that it was-as it happened, we nearly got away with one week's stay and five hundred pounds, nearly, but not quite.<br /><br />Returning to the agents in the morning we found a small Press reception waiting, and the next hour was taken up with interviews and a series of photographs of Nita and me, looking suitably rugged, adorning the scooter. We made the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald and the sequel was an invitation to appear on a television' quiz' programme and be grilled by one of Australia's greatest comedians, Jack Davey. A master of spontaneous wit, he had us and the rest of the audience chuckling over our forerunners' efforts. His humour, though slightly sadistic, was none the less extremely funny. The dialogue, completely unscripted, went something like this.<br /><br />Davey (to intense, humourless rural woman): 'So you work on the farm, huh! Out there in all weathers in gum-boots and things?'<br /><br />'That's right, Jack.'<br /><br />'And you don't mind being out there in all the mud and everything? '<br /><br />'Oh no, I love my work.'<br /><br />'Uh, huh, any children?'<br /><br />Woman (with suitably hushed voice): 'No, Jack, I haven't any children.'<br /><br />'Well, just goes to show, you should never have worn gumboots. . . .'<br /><br />We had a choice of subject and chose Geography, in the desperate hope that we had gleaned something of the subject on our various travels. Between us we managed to scramble through the preliminary questions: where is Mount HekIa, the Midway Islands, and why is the sea salt, etc.-when suddenly the bell rang and we were in line for the jackpot.<br /><br />'How much in the kitty this week?' asked Jack Davey.<br /><br />'Four hundred and eighty-five pounds,' replied a sweet young thing, wreathed in little more than smiles.<br /><br />Nita and I glanced quickly at one another; we were already on our way to the north, and I was visualizing my last glance at Sydney Harbour Bridge.<br /><br />A fanfare of music and the usual build-up. Then, 'Here comes the five~hundred-pound-jackpot question. Which is the nearest foreign capital to London? You have thirty seconds to answer.'<br /><br />Neither of us said Brussels. We went all round from Dublin to The Hague, from Copenhagen to Oslo, and rather hopelessly as a last resort, Paris. Ironically for us at that moment, Brussels was the one European capital to which neither of us had been. So, with hopes of a quick cut to the open road again dashed to the ground, we left the studio in a black mood, with ten pounds consolation and two packets of soap-flakes.<br /><br />There was no alternative, therefore, but another spell of work. We made another television appearance in Sydney's 'In Town Tonight', but there were no get-rich-quick opportunities on that one. Perhaps in the final analysis it had turned out for the best. 'Easy come, etc.', being a hackneyed but profound cliché.Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-44348277863196371642008-04-27T15:04:00.000-07:002008-04-27T15:05:35.178-07:00Sydney (Chapter 10 - Canberra to Sydney)Being water conscious-even in the fertile south--compels nearly all motorists to carry a canvas water bag slung from the front bumper of their vehicles. The water keeps cool by evaporation and the loss is negligible. Heartily sick of drinking tepid water, we threw out our standard water bottles and bought a water bag in Canberra. Of course I should have known that a water bag is no good until it has mellowed. For the first two days the thing leaked like a sieve, and as the only practical place to hang it was from the scooter bulkhead between my knees, I rode the next forty-eight hours with saturated feet. We carried our drinking water in a beer bottle while the canvas bag was being broken in, but after three days the bag magically sealed itself and from then on we had deliciously cool, completely untainted water; and a gallon of it to boot. Thus our water supply was assured when the time came to tackle the vast, arid north.<br /><br />Out of the Federal State and into New South Wales, we ran into another problem: fire. On either side of the road, still-smouldering patches made their grey-black scars on the landscape and filled the air with ash particles and the acrid smell of smoke. We passed not acres of burnt fields but square miles of ruined cattle fodder, gutted gum trees, and burnt fences. Once we ran through a two-mile stretch with flames, dense smoke, and an ominously loud crackling on either side of the bitumen. It wasn't exactly dangerous, but it was almighty hot.<br /><br />I pulled into a little wayside garage to fill up and give our overheated tyres a rest. From the lubritorium (Australian/ American word for grease-bay) ambled a well-built character wearing a huge straw hat, jeans, and a look of mild surprise at his customers.<br /><br />'What'll it be, mate?'<br /><br />We got into the usual confusion regarding the amount of oil to put into the two petrol tanks, which became more complex whenever there was any fuel left in the reserve tank, as there was then.<br /><br />'Just over half a pint of oil in the tank, please, because it holds one and a half gallons of petrol, and just under a pint in the reserve can because it holds two gallons of petrol, but there is still some left in the bottom.'<br /><br />The rural garage owner paused with the oil bottle and turned his head slowly towards me.<br /><br />'Y'mean to say you came all the way from Britain goin' through this palaver every time you wanted to tank up?'<br /><br />'S'right,' I replied, watching anxiously lest he pour too little or too much lubricant into the fuel, 'but I only have to do it once every three hundred miles.'<br /><br />'That's not much mileage here in Aussie though, is it?' he grinned.<br /><br />'No, but at least we speak the same language which makes life easier,' explained Nita.<br /><br />'Well,' said the bronzed garage man, 'you must be a couple of battlers and no mistake.' His gaze wandered incredulously over the travel-stained and somewhat sunbleached Prima. 'You stopping in Sydney?'<br /><br />'No, we're heading for the Northern Territory and the aborigines. '<br /><br />'The Territory! On that! Heck, the bull dust is a foot thick up there, you'll be drowned in dust. And how are you goin' to carry fuel and water supplies? There's hundreds of.miles of nothing but mulga and spinifex.'<br /><br />'It can't be any worse than Persia, or Afghanistan,' I said lightly, 'we'll make out well enough.'<br /><br />'Best of luck, sports, anyway,' said the garage owner, as we pulled out from the shade of a giant Coca-Cola hoarding. And as a parting shot, 'Why don't you put a little sidecar on it? Three wheels'll be better'n two in the bull dust. . . .'<br /><br />We had reason to bless that fellow, later on, for sowing the seeds of an idea.<br /><br />Joining the Hume Highway at a biggish town called Goulburn, we found that, outside the cities, Australia is very much like Britain on Sundays. Everything stops at midnight on Saturday and the only signs of life in the townships were around milk bars and paper shops, most of which were run by enterprising Greeks or Italians, or other European migrants, known throughout the length and breadth of the land as 'New Australians'.<br /><br />But if the town of Goulburn was deserted on that somewhat chilly and overcast Sunday, the highway was teeming with life. All Australians are extremely car conscious. Motoring, in fact, forms one of the major pastimes of the nation, and the Hume Highway between Goulburn and Sydney resembled the Brighton road on August Bank Holiday.<br /><br />The only difference was in the great number of semi-articulated trucks, grinding their way backwards and forwards between capitals. Enormous land trains, crewed by a driver and an 'offsider', they carry all kinds of merchandise from Brisbane to Sydney and from Sydney to Adelaide; some of them even make the marathon journey between Melbourne and Darwin-a journey of something like two months on the road (or track) for the driver and his mate. We gave these monsters-driven hard to keep within time schedules-a wide berth. Long-distance road haulage is one of the most arduous jobs in Australia, and the men who drive along the endless roads are tough; tough, but friendly, devil-may-care fellows, as are lorry drivers the world over.<br /><br />There are frequent accidents, particularly at night, when an overtired' truckie' dosed with' wideawake' pills relaxes vigilance for a moment. Once out of control, the diesel giants can be lethal. We passed a smash-up just outside Goulburn. A sixty-foot trailer hauling refrigerators had taken its double-banked load straight through the side of a house and knocked the brick-and-wood structure down like a pack of cards. Miraculously no one was killed although a whole family had been sleeping in the bungalow.<br /><br />As it was, the police, who swarmed on the scene and kept the usual crowd of onlookers at a respectful distance, told us that the cost of the demolished house and the whole load of refrigerators (not to mention the ten-thousand-pound truck itself) was somewhere in the region of a hundred thousand pounds. One of the police officers said that the Government were trying to enforce compulsory rest stops for drivers on the interstate runs, but of course the sooner they got to their destinations the quicker they could take on another load, and the more money they made. I don't know how true that may be, but it seemed a bitter twist of fate for the driver, who had come from Adelaide and was heading for Sydney, to write off his load-and probably his livelihood-so near home.<br /><br />The last hundred-odd miles into the capital went very quickly, with more and more townships breaking the vast agricultural plains. We saw far less sheep and cattle than we had expected. I had visualized this part of Australia as teeming with sheep. There were flocks grazing here and there, of course, but not on the scale one would expect from the amount of Australian labels one sees in the British butchers' shops.<br /><br />Still there was the mixture of strange and familiar place names: Moss Vale, Mittagong, Camden, Liverpool, Parramatta; all new, clean, and modem, although Parramatta has certain historical connections for it was, at one time in the early days of settlement, a prison town for so-called wrongdoers. Its history (as a prison) is black indeed and sometimes when I read the books of Australia's early life I am almost ashamed of my nationality. The tortures and privations we inflicted on our own people, when Australia was the dumping ground for banished Britons, were almost unbelievable. Britain should be extremely proud of these cousins who could so easily (and at one time almost did) break away into complete independence.Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-61609661271408297202008-04-20T14:56:00.000-07:002008-04-20T14:58:51.409-07:00Sydney (Chapter 10 - Melbourne to Canberra)Two months and one week after arriving in Melbourne, we were ready and eager to leave again on the next lap-the penultimate one-towards that elusive goal, the Northern Territory. For these two months we had lived among the Dandenongs, the blue-black range of hills that encircle the outskirts of the big city, and they welcomed us back after each long day's work in the heart of Melbourne.<br /><br />We had become very attached to the Dandenongs and the people who lived among them-generous, hospitable folk who had made our Christmas such a happy one, and who guided us with advice on some of the pitfalls which might face us on the long haul north. Dick Bush (manager of our publishers' Melbourne office) and his wife, Joan, smiled encouragingly and brushed aside our thanks for their hospitality during our stay. There should, he said, be plenty to write about when we reached the Never-Never Land. But first things first. Sydney was the next stop, just on six hundred miles distant. With a good road ahead, we were not expecting any misadventures on the way.<br /><br />We had accumulated something like fifty Australian pounds to carry us towards the north. Optimistic though we were, it was obvious that this comparatively trifling sum would not take us all the way. We felt, however, that it would be quite enough to get us to Sydney, but after the second day I began to have serious doubts; the cash was disappearing at an alarming rate.<br /><br />The scooter seemed to drink petrol, and food and other provisions we bought at the little townships cost infinitely more than the same commodities in the cities. At one of the roadside stops, we left behind the ground-sheet which had been our camping companion since leaving England, and a new one, smaller and of inferior quality, cost five pounds. Whereas in Melbourne, we had been talking blithely about a couple of days' stay in Sydney before pressing on into the bush, we now began to realize that another working spell was imminent.<br /><br />The recognized route from Melbourne to Sydney is along the Hume Highway, but this trunk road (which has really been outgrown in the last decade by the tremendous volume of freight trucks which ply back and forth between the two state capitals) offers only overcrowding and a surface which has been punished unmercifully by these huge articulated vehicles. So we decided to take the more leisurely and less frequented coastal route and go up the dirt-surfaced Orbost Highway to Canberra, eventually joining the Hume Highway for the last few miles into Sydney. And we chose well.<br /><br />One hundred and sixty miles from the Dandenongs on the south coast is a delightful, expensive resort called Lakes Entrance. Picturesque in a modern manner, with brightly painted ice-cream parlours along the promenade and the natural bay filled with equally colourful little boats bobbing about on their moorings, it is a heavily populated Mecca during the holiday season for the outdoor-loving Australian. Lakes Entrance was the last we saw of such partly Americanized communities until we reached Canberra.<br /><br />Although the Orbost Highway is a dirt road, the scenery is magnificent. For two days we rode through the cathedral-like silence between the forest giants, gums and ghost gums, stretching their smooth trunks for anything up to a hundred and fifty feet into the air. We camped, slightly apprehensive of the almost solid silence of the forest, grateful for the glow of the camp-fire and lulled to sleep by restless kookaburras; their strange, haunting cries are quite startling until one gets used to them.<br /><br />After the cool, dark forest came the cattle country and sheep land, treeless, save for the occasional twisted stump, where the sun blazed and the road always disappeared into infinity. Unbelievably, on the last part of the road to Canberra, we found it almost impossible to locate a camping spot for the night. High wire fences ran flush with the road, discouraging the use of woods and valleys as overnight stopping places.<br /><br />'Wait till you get north,' said the few people to whom we spoke on this lonely highway. 'You'll have all the space you need and then some; and don't forget to watch for the snakes.' Thus we heard our first mention of the enormous reptile population of the north. Not that the south is entirely devoid of natural menaces. Melbourne has her tiger snake; Sydney, her trapdoor and funnel-web spiders; not to mention the sharks in the waters around both capitals. Farther north in Brisbane and beyond there is the dreaded taipan snake and the death adder, together with the equally horrific sea-wasp which leaves its victims to die writhing in agony. The land of Waltzing Matilda may not boast any dangerous big game, but their little pests make up in potency for their lack in size.<br /><br />Fortunately, however, we had no brushes with any of these unpleasant fauna during our journey from Melbourne to Sydney. Our pests were flies; flies, and the gigantic bull ants which bit ferociously whenever they could during our camping spells. The flies were with us all during the day, except in the depths of the forests. We never really became used to them, they were so pestiferous, especially when they tried to crawl into our mouths and noses. The only way to gain relief was to whirl our handkerchiefs constantly around our heads and pray for dusk, when our tormentors would magically disappear. As yet there had been no mosquitoes, but we were positively assured by our casual acquaintances that they would come.<br /><br />Canberra must be the most dispersed city in all Australia; its very modern buildings and groups of buildings are scattered over a wide area. The shopping centre is quite cosmopolitan-for of course Canberra is the home of all the foreign Embassies as well as the seat of Australian Government-and it is quite a separate community from that of the Government offices or the residential area. All parts are connected by wide avenues, where young trees had been planted to bring shade to this originally barren site in the centre of a plain. We spent only one day in the federal capital, being so alarmed at the rapid disappearance of our cash that our only thought was to reach Sydney quickly and put an end to the financial rot.Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-5706830848144479922008-04-06T21:45:00.000-07:002008-04-06T21:46:11.816-07:00Down Under (Chapter 9 - Melbourne, Australia)Publicity can be very deceptive. We had pictured South Australia and Victoria as being sun-drenched states, particularly in November, which of course is almost midsummer. Yet there we were, shivering in the saddle and realizing the folly of jettisoning warm clothes, including a perfectly good pair of gauntlet gloves. Trying to operate the clutch, change gear, and front brake with one's hands swathed in several pairs of spare socks required some effort. But driving without hand covering in that icy, cutting wind, which blew direct from Antarctica, was sheer agony.<br /><br />Fortunately, half-way through the journey, the sun came through the thick cloud and we reached the capital of Victoria only partially frozen. We made straight for the NSU agent in the city centre, determined first to thaw out and then to start the ball rolling in the rather hazy direction of replenishing our slender financial resources.<br /><br />In Melbourne, we hit the jackpot. Within three days, with the kindly assistance of Frank, the agent, I was selling motor-scooters in the city's motoring quarter-another Elizabeth Street. And while I explained how the longest journey could be undertaken quite confidently on one of these little machines, Nita was selling books for Christmas in one of the largest department stores in the world, Myers Emporium.<br /><br />There was a wonderfully festive atmosphere in Melbourne during our two months' stay; partly from the approach of Christmas but due mainly to the Olympic Games which were just finishing when we arrived. The weather was kind, and although Nita and I worked like Trojans we enjoyed every minute of our enforced stay. Another 'dinkum' Aussie befriended us and threw open his house, later finding a vacant bungalow for us about nine miles outside the city in the suburb of Doncaster.<br /><br />For the next two months we settled down into a routine and the scooter was used daily as a work horse. We lived very quietly, spending only what was strictly necessary and saving the rest. Gradually the kitty mounted, mostly from our wages and from payment for articles I wrote for the local papers, and fortune smiled on us once again.<br />Melbourne offers a lot of opportunity for the English migrant. The city is vibrant, young, and fresh. Built symmetrically on a square, all the main roads run directly from north to south or from east to west: within a short time it is quite easy to find one's way around without becoming bogged in a maze of twisting streets.<br /><br />The driving is of a fast and competent standard, and the only hand signal is the abrupt raising of the right hand as a stop sign. There is no (often misleading) arm flapping which we at home delight in using. Parking meters are in evidence everywhere, although of course we never needed them. The two most striking differences in the world of motoring in Melbourne were the use of U-turnings to branch either left or right, and the enormous number of outside sunshades which were fitted to nearly every vehicle, and are extremely restful under the hot Australian sun.<br /><br />Working in a city is the best way to learn about the community and its people, as Nita and I did. The essential problem was how to get along with these near-relations. It was not difficult, but there are a few rules to be observed, minor ones perhaps, which if followed can make one's stay exceedingly happy. Not observing them, in this country of essentially outdoor Anglo-Saxons, can bring about real misery, as many people from Britain-particularly emigrants-have found to their cost.<br /><br />We discussed this problem with both Britons and Australians while we were there, and began to realize the causes of past friction. Ask the average Englishman to name the country with the closest ties with Great Britain and he often replies 'Australia'; he may well have some personal link with Down Under. 'My young brother is in Adelaide-been there since '48-doing very well, too. . . .' Many families in the British Isles seem to have some connection with this twelve-thousand-mile-distant land, and on reflection recall that 'young Johnny is getting on well. . . .' Why, then, are the emigrant ships, when the cost of passage is so attractively assisted, not loaded to capacity with good British stock? And why has it become necessary for an uneasy Australian Government, concerned at the constant influx of southern Europeans, to launch a 'Bring out a Briton' scheme? Why, also, do numbers of emigrants return to Britain every week? To find the answer one must go deeper than the reasons usually given, that 'the cost of living was too high', 'we couldn't find a house', or 'I wouldn't have minded if my mother had come out', etc.<br /><br />Australia resembles England in so many respects that when the new arrival steps off the gang-plank he is almost immediately open to what may possibly be the greatest single cause of ill-feeling between our two countries-comparison. He gazes around at the familiar advertisements of his favourite cigarettes, dodges between the latest-model British cars, and armed with a district map to guide him, gapes with amazement at an Alice-in- Wonderland version of his homeland: Brighton, Preston, Kew, and Derby. Familiar names, yet alien in their jumbled setting. 'Come on, mate-get a move on!' cries a voice almost like his own, and he jumps aside to avoid the hurrying throngs in King's Cross; at every turn he is reminded of his homeland. Maybe their pubs are not so cosy as ours, he thinks, and they have private cars with checkered paint-work and not proper taxies, and they're a bit behind with all these trams. . . . Small enough criticisms in themselves, but if he is foolish enough to voice these thoughts and continue to make unfavourable comparisons it is not long before he is labelling the Australians as dour and unfriendly.<br /><br />He will not lose an opportunity to tell everyone he meets that Sydney Harbour Bridge was designed by an Englishman, that Nevil Shute is not an Australian, and how much better the road surfaces are in England. He doesn't like all the radio advertising, and the boy who throws the daily paper over the garden wall instead of putting it through the letter-box, and so on. But by restraint of speech and a tactful approach at the outset, the newcomer can avoid much unhappiness and frustration that might lead to his joining the crowd disembarking once more at Southampton.<br /><br />All this does not mean that a migrant, or visitor, must necessarily become a mute, spiritless imitation of an Australian in order to enjoy his stay. But it is as well to remember that his colonial brother (although tough on the outside) is sensitive regarding his growing country and does not want to hear anything disparaging about the land under the Southern Cross. My wife and I met a good cross-section in Australia during our year of wandering, and found them to be a proud, commendably nationalistic people. They will not thank you to tell them that their country is a bit of England in another hemisphere. It is not 'just like England' (or Scotland, or Ireland, or W ales), although of course in some respects there has been a very big influence from the' Old Country'; but first and last it is indisputably Australia.<br /><br />The Englishwoman's reactions to the cost of housekeeping in Australia are not always favourable at first. One housewife who worked alongside Nita in the department store, although in a comfortable position, held very strong views on this: 'It's impossible for me to glide over the practical aspects of comparison,' she said. 'Naturally, as a housewife, my chief concern is money and whether there will be enough to keep us reasonably happy. When we first arrived in Melbourne I was shocked at the price of everything-and am still.' The thrifty housewife is baffled to find that the familiar two-shilling pieces (with kangaroo on one side) will only buy half the amount of chocolate it would have in England and, psychologically, would feel better about it if the coins were quite different. On the credit side, however, I was more than happy to pay only 4s. 10d. for two ounces of tobacco and 3s. 10d. for each gallon of petrol; and then remember that those prices were not sterling.<br /><br />Because of Australia's similarities to Britain, people often fail to judge her for herself. They expect too much of her and cannot understand why they should sometimes receive less value for their money than at home. Being a nation of grumblers, and not averse to self-criticism, the Britisher can jeopardize his own position in Australia by a stream of complaints against the system which he would criticize in just the same way in England. Having chosen to try his arm in Australia, the emigrant can find (as one sandy-haired little man from Manchester did) that' the missus and I were miles apart and I had to line up every day for two months before I landed this packing¬department job. And this Melbourne weather! Talk about a land of sunshine. Been colder here than I ever was in Manchester. Four-and-six for a haircut! No National Health here, chum. You could drop dead in the street and no one would worry. . . .' Harmless and humorous, born to grumble, with consequent damage to his own chances, the little man already had visions of returning to Manchester. I remember his parting shot: 'I'm taking the wife and kids back home and you don't find us shifting again, not for atom bombs, credit squeezes, or our lousy weather. At least we'll be looked after.' So much for the product of a welfare state; too much emphasis, perhaps, on welfare and not enough on self-reliance.<br /><br />'As game as Ned Kelly' is one of the highest compliments paid by Australians to a man who won't give up. Ned Kelly was a battler and a notorious bush ranger, but so great is their admiration for the tenacious Ned that he has been forgiven all his crimes (including murder) and as the years have passed and legends grown he has been elevated to a position of first national hero. As I see it the newcomer to Australia has to measure up, in some degree, to the great Ned for tenacity in wresting a living from the land of the gum and the mulga.<br /><br />For the man who is determined, therefore, to overcome many difficulties, and who is constantly on the look-out for somewhere decent to house his family and who is willing to work all day and half through the night, the chances are that soon everything will-in the vernacular-'come good'. He will not mind being called a 'Pommy'. Someone gives him the tip and he discovers that not all the modem bungalows command a fabulous rent. His colleagues begin calling him by his Christian name and he hears offers, casually voiced, to give him a hand with the new house he is building at week-ends. And so the new arrival comes of age. No longer is he a 'Pommy', but 'Out from the Old Country', a Cobber. Once this stage is reached and the images of England have receded a little, then he will probably cease to make those twelve-thousand-mile mental journeys and find that Australian friends are among the most open-hearted and loyal that a man could wish for.<br /><br />The disillusioned man in the packing department had said, 'They don't look after us.' And I think I understand what he meant. In England he had known the social security of feeling that the Welfare State had his life neatly tabulated, and that the machinery behind it would deal with any contingency which might affect him. Perhaps he had just forgotten how to stand on his own feet. This, of course, is not so important in Britain today. A pioneer spirit is not a necessity. But in a young country, gingerly feeling its way to adulthood, self-reliance is essential, even in the cities.<br /><br />One must have the ability to see Australia, not as a replica, but as the home of a proud younger brother, and the capacity to accept an exciting challenge as an independent person. I do not for one moment think these qualities are non-existent in the average Briton. So why, then, are not more of them sailing out there?Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-33023701712923891252008-03-29T21:02:00.001-07:002008-03-30T18:29:25.162-07:00Down Under (Chapter 9 - Adelaide to Melbourne, Australia)Leaving Adelaide with eight pounds in the purse and a full tank of petrol, we found rolling, sheep-and-cattle country on either side of us as we whittled down the mileage to Melbourne. Our first stop was Murray Bridge.<br /><br />Murray Bridge was a nice little town, set in the heart of the 'butter country', and a mixture of old and new wooden buildings, some over a century old with ornate lattice-work round the doors and along the eaves, while other bungalows with butterfly roofs and built-in carports were painted in bright attractive colours.<br /><br />All the shops along the main street were canopied, offering shade from the sun and shelter from the rain, and giving the advantage of being able to shop in comfort for the whole length of the street. Nita and I felt that this protective addition could well be adopted in our own country (particularly for the latter reason). This little town, with its canopies and its fly-screens on nearly every door, is typically Australian, and so are its wide streets where cars are usually angle-parked on the gravel edges each side of the bitumen strip.<br /><br />Most southern Australian towns are like Murray Bridge. The bungalow builders have had the foresight to erect pleasingly individual dwellings, most of them single-storey, taking advantage of all space available.<br /><br />Water is precious, even in the fertile coastal belt, during the long hot summers, and every house in the smaller communities has a conspicuous corrugated rain-butt beside it. But Murray Bridge, when we arrived on a hot November morning, had had its fill of moisture, for it was just recovering from a severe flood which had caused havoc in the vicinity and vast financial loss. Indeed, although the worst of the disaster was over, we could see from the balcony of the small hotel where we spent the night, the forlorn sight of a mill chimney poking up from a veritable lake just a few hundred yards away. But they are a tough breed in the Murray Valley, and the hotel keeper said they had learned to live with floods and the fear of them. And when floods came-as they did every few years-the people just rolled up their sleeves and their trouser legs and pitched into the wreckage. As one old' cocky' (farmer) remarked, 'You gotta pay something for living in the finest valley in Australia.'<br /><br />Certainly the Murray Valley, apart from its tendency to flood periodically, was a dairy farmer's dream: rich, rolling downs, lushly carpeted with fertile grass and blessed with a very high average of sunshine. It was little wonder that the farmers felt it worth while to battle against the floods.<br /><br />On the day we passed through the valley, it was hard to visualize the countryside being lashed with torrential rain. From a clear sky the warm sun penetrated our clothing and made riding on the well-surfaced road extremely pleasant. For a while we almost forgot our poverty.<br /><br />Traffic on the road was not unduly heavy, and what we did see passed at a fair pace, unobstructed by side turnings or other hazards. With Murray Bridge and Tailem Bend behind us, the little townships began to take on aboriginal-sounding names: Coonalpyn, Tintinara, Wirrega.<br /><br />We passed through the 'Sixty-mile Desert', which is now not really a desert at all, for there are several land reclamation schemes in operation, sponsored by the Government, where selected candidates (usually ex-servicemen) are given a liberal plot of land to develop.<br /><br />One such experimental community, Keith, was a new, thriving agricultural centre, where the dust and sand had been replaced with rich, life-giving soil. We talked to the local doctor in Keith, who told us that it was far more satisfying to practise among these modern pioneers than in the centre of Melbourne. Pioneers in a sense they are, but they battle in comfort, for this little town boasts every modern facility, with strong emphasis on sporting amenities, including a floodlit tennis court which would out-rival anything in a city.<br /><br />The probing and diligent fingers of the settlers, with the aid of science, are reaching farther out in every direction from the hub of the experiment at Keith. Within a few years, the doctor said, they would have to start thinking about other townships as the farming spearheads grew away from the base. Looking at the new hotel finished in gay stucco, and the line of new cars parked along the main street, it seemed incredible that, where we now stood, barely ten years before there had been nothing but sand and scrub.<br /><br />After the desert came Bordertown, and, as its name implied, the last of South Australia. A board at the roadside told us 'You are now entering the State of Victoria', and a little farther along came a series of fire-warning boards: 'This is your state; don't burn it!' and 'A match has a head but no heart; watch it!' These were the first pointers to the real danger of bush fires which menace every part of the continent at frequent intervals.<br /><br />Our first stop in Victoria was at Horsham-the name-board a mile outside the town made us feel momentarily homesick. Horsham, probably so named by an early and nostalgic pioneer, was a fairly old township with a dash of modernity. High-eaved wooden buildings, wide, dusty streets and innumerable pubs make up the town centre. We filled up with petrol and oil, bought some frugal provisions and camped just outside the town. Nita calculated that we would just about reach Melbourne on our remaining cash.<br /><br />It rained heavily during the night and, too tired to put up our tent, we awoke to find our sleeping-bags saturated along with the rest of our gear. That day was a miserable one. Nothing went right and the scooter played up by constantly whiskering its plug and generally misbehaving. The temperature had dropped alarmingly and in contrast to the previous day it was decidedly cold. Grey clouds scudded fitfully across a heavy sky and we chugged on in the teeth of a rising wind and icy squalls. The gum trees and the hills darkened, and I thought 'so much for sunny Australia'. A bad day, in which we had spoken to no one and which finished in Ballarat-the one-time gold-rush town-at six o'clock on a dreary Sunday evening.<br /><br />'You look like a couple of well-travelled characters. You want a room for the night, do you?' We wiped the rain from our eyes and told this hotel-keeper to whom we had been recommended that we would try it if it wasn't too dear. The publican's leathery face cracked into a smile. 'Well, it won't be much but it's clean and wholesome. Park that contraption round the back and come on in for a beer. Nothing like good Ballarat bitter to keep out the cold.'<br /><br />It being Sunday, officially all the pubs were closed, but here the back parlour was packed with jovial Sabbath drinkers. As we entered the cosy, fume-laden room there followed a carefully phrased series of door-bell rings, which the innkeeper's wife hastily answered, and another thirsty customer joined the throng. 'Bloody law's ridiculous,' said the host. 'A man's gotta have his beer anyway. Why the hell don't they let him sup it in comfort! It's a<br />good thing they decided to keep the pubs open after six o'clock,' he went on. 'It used to be murder trying to get a drink before. The" six 0' clock swill", we called it. Five-thirty and everyone finished work for the day, six o'clock and all the pubs closed. You can imagine the stampede during that vital half-hour, can't you? Well, so many blokes got killed in the rush, the Government decided it was time to put an end to the slaughter. Now we're almost, 'cepting for Sundays, civilized. Anyway, what'll you have?'<br /><br />The publican introduced us to the rest of the gang. 'This here's -what's your names?-Mike and Nita. They've driven all the way on a scooter from the Old Country just to sample Ballarat bitter.'<br /><br />We acknowledged the sporadic clapping and ribald remarks, retaliating by decrying the quality of the beer (which, incidentally, was ice cold and excellent), and in half an hour might almost have been resident. In the friendly and spontaneous atmosphere our fit of blues began to evaporate. The Australian beer was so good, it was difficult to refuse after the second glass, but I remembered the state of the exchequer and reluctantly declined.<br /><br />We slept in a modest but homely room, listening to the cold wind howling round the inn and began to realize that Australia was certainly not all sunshine. We heard later that Ballarat was just about the coldest place in the whole country. Tucked into a warm bed, however, we didn't mind. We could ill afford the luxury of hotels, but there are times when the heart rules the head.<br /><br />On our way the next morning, we took the full blast of an icy wind which cut at us for the best part of the sixty-odd miles into Melbourne.Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-26277272971638855792008-03-16T14:10:00.000-07:002008-03-16T14:15:12.845-07:00Down Under (Chapter 9 - Adelaide, Australia)<a href="http://blogs.internetscooter.com/marriott/uploaded_images/2upaustralia_map-750088.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://blogs.internetscooter.com/marriott/uploaded_images/2upaustralia_map-750073.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />There she was! Our goal for the past six months. As our boat steamed up the long, narrow channel from the harbour to the wharfside, a thin cheer rose on the early morning air as a sprinkling of Australians burst from the cramped cabins to see their homeland almost within touching distance. We, too, felt as though we were arriving home.<br /><br />The sight of waiting families, crowds of relatives and friends in colourful, informal summer clothing, exchanging affectionate Anglo-Saxon repartee across the quayside created a welcoming atmosphere in which we were included. It was quite stimulating to hear good round oaths again in the English tongue.<br /><br />And what a wonderful experience-as a Britisher-to go through the Australian Customs and Immigration. 'She's right, sport,' drawled a lean, smiling young man, eyeing our scooter and modest baggage. 'Here for the Games, or are you going to stay with us for keeps?'<br /><br />I told him we would certainly like to see something of the Olympics when we reached Melbourne, but that our ultimate destination would be the Northern Territory, after a leap-frog tour from city to city until we finally reached the bush.<br /><br />'Lord, you'll know more about Australia than we do ourselves by the time you've finished!' Then followed the spontaneous invitation which was so typical of Australian generosity. As with everything, they were big-minded with their hospitality, as we were to realize on many future occasions.<br /><br />'When you reach Melbourne, sport, my sister lives out at Moonee Ponds. Call along and she'll fix you up for tucker and that, for all the while you want to stay there. She's a character for throwing the house open.'<br /><br />'It's nice of you to offer,' said Nita, 'but first we have got to reach Melbourne.' (She was obviously thinking of our diminishing bank balance.)<br /><br />'Well, that shouldn't be too difficult, should it?' said this delightfully unofficial officer, glancing at the list of countries painted across the scooter headlamp.<br /><br />Happier than we had been for at least three weeks, we sailed out of the dock gates to the accompanying cheers of bronzed dockers ('wharfies' in Australia) and set off down a long straight road into the city of Adelaide.<br /><br />At last we were there, in Adelaide, our first Australian city, almost twelve thousand miles from London and home. The princely sum of ten pounds lay in Nita's purse and we were faced with the ambitious itinerary of an almost-round-Australia trip. Part two of our scoot to adventure began on that warm, sunny South Australian morning, with the somewhat gigantic query in our minds as to how we would get the money to complete our trip to the Northern Territory and its aborigines.<br /><br />After a couple of hours in the sunshine of sleepy Adelaide we felt that the South Australian capital did not hold the answer. We should stand a much better chance of attaining financial security within the city limits of Melbourne. We decided we would push on directly after we had visited the NSU agents in Adelaide and had the scooter checked over and the battery (which had expired on the voyage) changed for a new one.<br /><br />Adelaide, city of churches, wide streets, and veranda-shaded shops, was filled with alpaca-suited men wearing wide-brimmed hats, and women in colourful summer frocks. A nice, easy-going tempo gave the impression of an overgrown country town rather than a city. It was extremely pleasant. Contemporary buildings-some almost skyscrapers-thrust up from the wooden, shallow-roofed ranch-type houses which were the buildings of yesteryear in this the sheep-farming railhead of the old pioneering Australia. Hitching posts were still prominent and behind them milk and espresso bars, with garish American cars (outnumbering the popular British makes) parked in front.<br /><br />In Adelaide we saw our first Holden, 'Australia's own car', which boasts a high-output engine with a surprisingly light body, half American and half European in style; judging by the number we saw, it must be ideally suited to Australian conditions.<br /><br />Searching for the agent, we spoke to an Australian policeman who stood, peak-capped and smiling benignly, in the centre of a cluster of churches.<br /><br />'Can you direct us to Elizabeth Street, please?'<br /><br />'I can, but first you tell me how long it took you to make the overland trip from the Old Country,' replied the curious cop. <br /><br />'Six months,' we told him.<br /><br />'My word! And did you get tangled up with any wild animals or larrikins during the trip?'<br /><br />'Larrikins?' I asked.<br /><br />'Yeah, larrikins, bludgers, no-hopers, thieves.'<br /><br />'Not once in twelve thousand miles,' I replied, not wishing to become too involved.<br /><br />'My word!' said our inquisitor. 'And you mean to tell me that you and your little lady here travelled all the way on that little motor-bike?'<br /><br />'On that little scooter, yes.'<br /><br />'My word!' This time it was said with an expressive finality which signalled the end of the interview.<br /><br />We received our directions and sailed up the wide traffic-lined avenue in search of our agent.<br /><br />'I hope all the Aussie policemen are like that,' shouted Nita.<br /><br />‘My word!' I replied.<br /><br />We spent half a day, later, going over the Prima with a factory-trained German mechanic, who was obviously settling down nicely as a New Australian. He knew his job and in record time we were out of the shop and looking for the Salvation Army hostel (as recommended) in order to get a good night's sleep before tackling the four-hundred mile run to Melbourne. In a clean, simply furnished room we slept like the dead, and steak and eggs made an excellent change for breakfast after the insipid pasta on which we had been living during the sea voyage.Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-76653059057407858202008-03-09T19:47:00.001-07:002008-03-09T19:49:10.839-07:00From the Khyber to Ceylon (Chapter 8 - Sri Lanka)On the ferry boat which carried us across the straits to Ceylon we met a very interesting French couple, husband and wife, who were travelling through India with only a small rucksack between them. They were really doing things the hard way, even using third-class tickets on the railway, and third-class on an Indian railway is considerably different from travelling this way anywhere else. We had passed one or two trains on our way from the north, and the appalling conditions under which the masses travel, packed into the carriages, filled us with horror. In this manner these two undaunted travellers had covered the country from the Himalayas to Madras. Three days and nights at a time under such conditions was their usual rule, they told us. I admired their spirit tremendously, but much as Nita and I like moving we could not have travelled thus. This French couple, too, had found themselves in trouble but had not escaped as lightly as we.<br /><br />It had happened in Poona, where the young man was teaching languages at Poona University. He and his wife rented a small bungalow and during the first week of their arrival from France they were in the habit of taking an evening stroll. One night, three uniformed thugs ganged up on the couple (there was an Indian military camp near Poona) and attacked without provocation in an attempt to rape the French girl. In the melee that followed the Frenchman was stabbed dangerously close to the heart and for some days his life lay in the balance. The ironical part of the incident was the proximity of other bungalows where lights were twinkling and wirelesses playing; the French girl could speak hardly any English and no one heard their shouts of distress. Apparently the husband had to disperse the three assailants single-handed, which he had managed to do quite effectively by all accounts before he was knifed. Te1ling us about it, he raised his foot from beneath the cabin table and revealed an extremely well-made climbing-boot. He had also gained a lot of useful experience in Indo-China with the French Army and I believe that, had his wife not been in jeopardy, he would really have quite enjoyed the episode.<br /><br />The ferry journey passed quickly and we had made two more firm friends who would welcome us the next time we were in Paris. The Sinhalese customs formalities were carried out slowly and at seven o'clock on a balmy, pitch-black night we stood on the pier at Talaimannar with twenty miles to cover to reach the first village and the haven of a rest-house.<br /><br />All the officials we met insisted on telling us of the herds of wild elephant that roamed the area between the harbour and our destination, Medawachchiya. They seemed delighted to advise us that we would stand no chance at all if we were to stumble into a herd on our scooter. However, hunger pressed us on, and we decided to reach the village, and food, elephants or no.<br /><br />So off we went, peering down the white headlamp beam, and seeing in every tree-trunk and shadowy twisted vine the grey lumbering shape of elephant. There was an almost irresistible temptation to turn round to see if we were being charged from behind. Those twenty miles went very slowly. . . .<br /><br />Eggs and bacon-the first in months-were offered for our delight the morning after our arrival. Pots of marmalade and jam with British household names were on the table and we felt more at home than we had done for a long time. Ceylon was of course independent, but the ties with Britain seemed infinitely stronger than the Anglo-Indian link.<br /><br />Although the island was suffering severely from drought, it was easy to see why it was called 'The Gem of Asia'. The views from the road; the flamboyant clothing of both men and women; the thick jungle which encroached from inland, and the silvery, glittering lagoons, palm-studded and washed by an azure sea, made a tropical paradise hard to surpass. The run to Colombo was pleasant and relaxing, and uneventful.<br /><br />Our arrival in the capital was the signal for the publishers' Colombo agent to lay on a reception. He was a delightful Sinhalese, who arranged for a number of radio broadcasts, newspaper interviews, and an exhibition of the battered scooter in the main window of a large department store in the city centre.<br /><br />After being so long on the road, with little or no city contacts, this reception was quite overwhelming. For a few days we could not pick up an English-language newspaper without seeing our somewhat startled faces staring at us from the pages, captioned as 'The Overlanders', 'Author and wife of "racy" travel books', and 'To Ceylon on one-and-a-half horses'. The text of the accompanying articles gave fantastic distortions of the various interviews, but we didn't mind.<br /><br />While the scooter was on display, we spent the week waiting for our boat and exploring almost every corner of the island in the kindly agent's Morris Oxford. He just filled it with petrol, handed over the keys, and with the smiling injunction to 'go and have a look at Ceylon', left us to our own devices.<br /><br />We threw a few things into the boot and set out hastily for the interior. A week of pure delight followed. We left the steaming coastline and climbed up and up the narrow, twisting road to the cool of the tea plantations, a land of mists and cold nights with rain clouds sweeping across the mountain peaks. We could have been in the Scottish Highlands. The cold rain was a luxurious blessing and we rejoiced in sleeping with blankets over us to keep out the chill air.<br /><br />We saw Kandy and the Temple of the Tooth; Nuwara Eliya, where a very good brew of beer is fermented; then down again to sea-level and the huge game reserve of Yala, right through the remote and wild eastern provinces to the stronghold of the Vedda, the aborigines of Ceylon; and, finally, back again to the hills and the cold nights.<br /><br />The only unpleasant part of the tea plantation country were the leeches. We were savagely bitten on the legs during a short walk from the car, and it was only when Nita saw the dark stain rapidly spreading through my trouser leg that we became aware we were being attacked. At first I didn't realize the cause, and thought I might have banged my leg unconsciously, but as the blood continued to flow at an alarming rate and refused to congeal, it was obvious that here was no mere accident-particularly when Nita discovered her own wounds. The leeches had apparently taken their fill of us and disappeared long since, leaving a blood-flow which saturated one of my socks and half-filled a shoe.<br /><br />There is a legend that in some parts of the island there are giant leeches that fall in armies upon sleeping men during the night and fatally drain them of blood. This may be only a legend, but the tiny punctures in our legs did not completely heal until a year and a half after the attack, when we were home in England. We marvelled how the native women could pick tea leaves from the small stunted bushes without bleeding to death.<br /><br />Someone threw a stone at our borrowed car on the way back to Colombo from the hills. I thought it strange at the time, but dismissed it as some childish prank, and it was not until we reached the capital again that I realized the full significance. The Suez crisis had exploded. A bomb had been thrown at the British Legation and demonstrators were marching up and down, waving banners and performing time-worn rituals.<br /><br />At first the Suez invasion was given prominence in the papers, while the Hungarian uprising rated a couple of lines at the bottom of the back pages. A few days later, when that news began to develop from a trickle to a flood and the pleas went out all over the world, the reports about Hungary were given more space. The demonstrators, however, somewhat bewildered and pausing in their altercations, unanimously decided that these were diverting tactics put out by the' brutish British', and things went on as before.<br /><br />Our ship was at first 'delayed', and finally cancelled. No ships were calling at Ceylon from the British Isles, and a week of utter confusion ensued, resulting in a haggard expression on the face of the booking clerk at the shipping office.<br /><br />We were extremely fortunate, however, in being able to wangle a couple of berths and one for the scooter on a South American tramp steamer, bound for Adelaide. So, hastily assembling our travel-stained possessions, with the word 'aggressors' reaching us from one side, and the apologies of the publishers' agent from the other, we embarked on the second phase of our odyssey.<br /><br />THERE followed a boring interlude. Three weeks aboard a converted tramp steamer, packed to the gunwales with South American tourists on a world cruise, was more than enough to convince me that our usual method of transport held all the advantages. Three tedious weeks were barely relieved by a couple of stops at Singapore and Djakarta, and all the time the ship was a bedlam of ceaseless, excited chatter, screaming children, and brittle personalities straining twenty-four hours a day to convince themselves that they were having a wonderful time.<br /><br />Mealtimes were a stampede, and I failed to understand why these Latins (including a couple of Spanish millionaires and a gaggle of 'famous' film stars) risked life and limb hurtling along the narrow gangways to fill themselves with the 'slosh' that passed as food. I would sooner tackle the Sahara in an old taxi-cab once more than face that ordeal again.<br /><br />Our scooter had the most comfortable quarters, in the peace and comparative quiet of the hold, and though I had cursed the machine on many occasions I yearned for our arrival Down Under, so that we could embark on the second part of our adventure, delightfully and entirely independent. Another disgruntled Englishman who, like us, had been stranded at Colombo, felt that this pleasure cruiser could have been aptly named the Altmark.Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-79629414356081220112008-03-01T20:08:00.000-08:002008-03-02T14:33:03.346-08:00From the Khyber to Ceylon (Chapter 8 - To Sri Lanka)<a href="http://blogs.internetscooter.com/marriott/uploaded_images/2upindiacropped-719084.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://blogs.internetscooter.com/marriott/uploaded_images/2upindiacropped-718474.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />We arrived, two very stiff, battered-looking creatures, in Trichinopoly late that night. The rest-house keeper thought we had been attacked by dacoits. I refrained from answering, 'Not yet'. Despite our aches and pains the historic military graves in a fast-mouldering churchyard in Trichinopoly were very interesting to us. Since the departure of the British, these had been left to deteriorate and were a sad and poignant sight, with pathetic epitaphs of long ago on their mossy headstones, the last earthly reminders of those tenacious British pioneers. Ironically, it was not soldiers' graves which predominated, but those of their families, who appear to have died like flies. Women and children, mostly children, with the dread word cholera still visible on almost every stone. Nearly all the dates were in the first half of the nineteenth century. Even in the bright sunshine, a heavy atmosphere pervaded the churchyard. We gazed silently at those crumbling memorials, calling up half-remembered lessons about Roberts, Kipling, and the Bengal Lancers. I found myself humming' Goodbye, Dolly Gray' and feeling melancholy.<br /><br />An old man, very deaf and suitably faded, appeared to be in charge of the churchyard, and he told us that before the British had left the graves had been carefully tended, with fresh flowers for nearly every grave. Now no one, save the occasional European visitor, came near the place. We took some pictures of a few of the more descriptive tablets, wondering, as the camera turned, if there were any descendants in England of 'Harriet, beloved daughter of Lieutenant Morley and his wife Mary, died of the cholera, September the 2nd, 18 I 3'. Or of all the other names, grown dim with the passing of time, of those who had suffered and died uncomplainingly in the Anglo-Saxon way, their last impression of the world being a glaring, brassy sky and the stench of India in their nostrils. It all seemed so futile, looking at those weathered graves in 1956. . . .<br /><br />One of the great advantages for Europeans travelling in India is the cheapness of everything. Having smashed my sunglasses in the recent accident, it was imperative to replace them quickly as the dust and glare play havoc with unprotected eyes. In Trichinopoly we found a self-styled oculist who offered a first-class service. First, from a tray containing about a hundred varieties I chose the type of lenses I wanted. Then from another tray the frame was selected, hand-carved heavy-weight tortoise-shell; and while we sat in the open doorway watching the parched street scene, where the children played in the dust and the old men were drying cow-dung for fuel, the Indian craftsman at the back of the shop married the frame to the lenses. In half an hour I had a splendid pair of glasses which were exactly what I wanted, at a cost just under ten shillings.<br /><br />Wearing my restful eye protectors, we left Trichinopoly on the afternoon of the second day. We were now feeling a growing impatience on this, the last stage of overland travel before boarding the ship to Australia. Australia, for the first time, really began to take on an air of reality, and we were anxious to get to Colombo. We had not left ourselves too much spare time and our enforced six weeks' stay in Lahore had reduced the safety margin considerably.<br /><br />So we travelled on south, the miles flying by on the smooth, burning tarmac, and the most spectacular and exotic scenery we had yet seen in India on either side of us.<br /><br />We stayed one night with an Indian Forestry Officer, whose training had obviously been completed under British tuition. He was a good host and an interesting companion, dedicated to his work and thankfully not a political fanatic. His modest bungalow, near the town of Salem, was infested with mosquitoes. We were pestered from dusk till dawn, unable to escape the hungry insects. Our dusky host seemed to be immune to the squadrons which buzzed through the stifling bungalow. We left very early, thankful for the relief of moving through the air again, creating our own breeze and foiling the wretched mosquitoes at the same time.<br /><br />About six hours later we stopped for provisions in one of the Tamil villages dotted along the road. These were happy little self-contained communities of handsome people, wide-eyed, with teeth gleaming in ready smiles, who lived their sun-soaked lives in a veritable paradise of waving coconut palms and fertile watered land, so very different from the harsh, arid plains of the north. Everywhere colour abounded and the thatched mud huts, so neat and clean, where children romped in and out, looked so wholesome and inviting that I determined to try and capture some of the atmosphere on film.<br /><br />The sight of the two of us-almost as black as themselves-mounted on an extremely travel-stained scooter, caused excitement enough. When the movie-camera appeared the entire population promptly surrounded us, gazing in frank, Asian curiosity. They were highly photogenic, particularly the women with their jewel-studded noses and erect, loose-limbed carriage, gained from carrying large brass water jugs on their heads, which they did with consummate ease<br />A shuffling in the crowd and a dignified, white-bearded elder stepped forward. He was the headman and spoke a little English. In quaint terms he told us that we were most welcome and free to wander where we liked. An empty hut was at our disposal if we wished it, and he was desirous that we should visit their beautiful temple before leaving. We stopped three days and nights at the village, in spite of our determination to shake India from our heels at an early date. We stayed as honoured guests and every hour was full.<br /><br />Sitting cross-legged, we ate the ferocious curry from large, sweet-smelling platters of interwoven leaves, and watched the expert skill of youngsters preparing coconuts for eating: from shinning to the topmost branches of the swaying palms, to severing the nut from its protective fibre-husk with deft strokes of sharpened steel rods. The palm is life, every by-product being used and nothing wasted. In a benevolent frame of mind I even managed to enjoy looking over the temple, although normally I have a horror of this kind of sight-seeing. For three days life was very good.<br /><br />Unfortunately our stay was marred by a nasty incident. We returned from a stroll, to find our hut as we had left it, save for one suspiciously empty corner: someone had taken my rifle. We searched high and low, but it had disappeared. I stormed off to the headman, furious at the theft of one of my treasured possessions.<br /><br />The old man was as indignant as I. There was a hasty consultation between the elders, who then dispersed to various corners of the village. About half an hour later a crowd of them returned, dragging with them a sullen and reluctant youth who was clinging firmly to my rifle.<br /><br />'Is that it?' asked the headman (or words to that effect).<br /><br />'Of course it is,' I replied, and stepped forward to retrieve my property. But the youth backed away, taking a firmer grip of the stock.<br /><br />'He says it was given to him by a friend,' translated our host, doubt and puzzlement written all over his wizened face. I began to lose my temper.<br /><br />'Look here, that's my rifle. . . .' I advanced again, indignation overriding caution or diplomacy. The youth released my gun with one hand and reached towards the hilt of a dagger in his belt; he didn't unsheath it but just stood there with his hand hovering. I felt, at this point, that perhaps discretion was the better part of valour. I had seen, in Africa, what could be done with one sweeping knife-slash. Nita asked me anxiously not to 'do anything silly'.<br /><br />I didn't know what to do, really. We couldn't just stand glaring at each other, the thief and I. The watching crowd stood staring silently. After what seemed an interminable time, the old headman, bless him, relieved the tension. I think he must have interpreted the reaching for the knife as an admission of guilt. He walked calmly up to the pilferer and took the rifle from his hands. It was relinquished without opposition and the youth turned after a moment and walked swiftly away through the crowd; I got my rifle back in one piece.<br /><br />On that note we felt it was time to leave the village. Another night in the hut, with a brooding, knife-carrying young man hovering in the vicinity, held no appeal for us. We loaded up, said our goodbyes, dismissed the apologies of our host and rode off down the avenue of palms.<br /><br />Our Indian road finished at Madurai, where we caught a train which carried us across barren sand fiats to the ferry at Dhanushkodi. Here we found the most officious and obnoxious bunch of bureaucrats we had ever met. Grinning, insolent groups of so-called customs officials went through our equipment with prying, curious fingers. Not even behind the Iron Curtain were we so deliberately victimized for being British as we were on the southern coast of India. With unconcealed delight our sleeping-bags and spare clothing were scrawled with chalk. Without the slightest pretence of official scrutiny the men bandied our passport about and gaped at our photographs and visas like a gang of backward children playing at administration.Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-7875646030145680202008-02-24T13:27:00.000-08:002008-02-24T13:30:50.705-08:00From the Khyber to Ceylon (Chapter 8 - Across India)Notwithstanding the ten years of independence, a strong English trend still exists in some parts of India. Bangalore, for instance, presents a queer mixture, rather like the town of Winchester in a tropical suit. During a one-day stop we stayed with an intrepid Englishwoman of uncertain age, who, like the hotel proprietor in Lahore, mentally refused to accept a fait accompli. She entertained us, with unconscious humour, by giving us a brief history of the town, which prefaced a fund of stories concerning mainly the military indiscretions in the old days. We were told about the Brigadier and the polo ponies, the young subaltern who had been caught at an embarrassing moment with the Colonel's wife, and the relief of the hill stations during the heat.<br /><br />While the old lady talked, a host of crusty, military gentlemen glowered forbiddingly at us from their smoky canvases on the walls. The whole interlude was a fascinating glimpse into a bygone age, related by this woman who lived-heaven alone knows how in this 'brave new world'-exactly as she had done twenty-five years ago. She lived alone, apart of course from a couple of 'boys', in a bungalow which was very comfortable though not luxurious. England remained for her a nostalgic memory to be cherished, but not to be marred by visiting the land of her birth again. She would, we were told, die in Bangalore. I felt rather sorry for the old lady; she seemed so alone.<br /><br />We left very early the next morning for Trichinopoly. During the night there had been some rain and the air was fresh and invigorating. The tarmac road was also greasy and treacherous, as was the laterite border. We began to sing as the last houses with their still-sleeping occupants fell behind. By six-thirty we were already forty miles south of Bangalore and in the highest of spirits. Everything was so promising that I should have known there would be something unpleasant. It happened just after we had watched with bated breath an extraordinary sight: a snake and a mongoose fighting like fury in the centre of the road.<br /><br />Perhaps it was the early hour, or possibly in the struggle they had over-spilled from the lush jungle edge. But there they were, these two arch-enemies, rolling, spitting, biting, and sliding across the bitumen. I pulled up not ten yards from this deadly battle and we watched, engrossed, as the tide turned first one way and then the other. This was no walkover for the mongoose. We had seen a staged fight in Bombay, where an old man produced both adversaries from a sack to entertain a morbid crowd, who, I suppose, derived some pleasure from seeing the mongoose swoop from the sack and despatch the snake with one bite. But this was the real thing and the snake in this drama was no drowsy, overfed bait.<br /><br />Again and again the mongoose, like a flash of furry quicksilver, darted in to the attack and in return was bitten by the reptile who was a mite quicker. The mongoose was flecked with blood; obviously the snake (about three feet long and russet-hued) was not venomous.<br /><br />Finally, in a last desperate bid to kill, the mongoose flung himself into the striking coils, regardless of the razor-like teeth which we could see quite clearly in the snake's jaws. Somehow, he withstood the onslaught of slashing bites, got a grip on the slippery throat and in less than half a minute it was all over. The victor dragged the corpse back into the undergrowth. For him, breakfast was served.<br /><br />For Nita and me, however, the stop to watch this ferocious battle almost ended in disaster. While I had been poking about in the undergrowth to catch a closer glimpse of the mongoose, a big diesel truck had lumbered past heading for Trichinopoly, and in another twenty minutes we had caught up with the lorry and were being choked with exhaust gas. As Nita said afterwards, we should have stopped for a spell and so let the truck get away; the road was too slippery to play tag. But prudence was a missing quality with me that morning. Repeated blasts on the horn failed to shift the lumbering brute from the centre of the narrow road and the driver could not, or would not, hear my persistent hooting. After enduring five miles of choking fumes and a view restricted to flapping tarpaulin, I had had enough. I pulled out into the rough and opened up. . . .<br /><br />We hit the washout at about forty-five miles an hour. In the last agonizing second I instinctively snatched the front wheel sideways to lessen the impact. It didn't soften the blow much, but probably saved the front forks.<br /><br />The familiar montage quickly followed: a sudden and painful close-up of the ground-a fleeting glimpse of the sky with a big truck tyre flashing past a corner of my vision-a rushing noise and a shower of stars and asterisks as finale to the ghastly sequence.<br /><br />The immediate aftermath, too, followed the time-honoured pattern. A shout to my wife and the agonizing second of silence before she replied in a shaky affirmative, then a hasty scramble to cut the engine which was screaming at a horrible pitch, with the rear wheel spinning wildly; and finally a hasty pat at my own anatomy to see if it was still intact. With the machine upright once more, we leaned upon one another to survey the damage. It could have been much worse.<br /><br />We placed on one side in a neat pile everything that was a write-off, including various items of shredded clothing, a broken pipe, and a pair of sunglasses. Fortunately our camera gear had been well padded. We used up a couple of bandage rolls and a bottle of disinfectant, and then made an exceedingly strong cup of tea. The scooter was still mobile (despite a handlebar which required bashing with a rock to a reasonably horizontal position). Shakily we mounted and started off down the deserted road to complete our journey.<br /><br />For the rest of that day I drove carefully enough to pass any driving test and Nita, never one for recrimination, reminded me that the next time when she yelled into my ear 'Don't overtake' I might do worse than heed her warning. Meekly I agreed. When she decides to become a back-seat driver it is usually with sound reason.Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43079465883002298.post-90472545726395750122008-02-17T13:06:00.000-08:002008-02-17T13:07:58.856-08:00From the Khyber to Ceylon (Chapter 8 - Across India)Night driving began to play an increasing part in our journey through India. Although neither of us had seen the country before we had no regrets that we had to traverse most of it during the hours of darkness. Possibly because we had our own mental picture of India, going back to childhood and associated with Kipling and tales like the Four Feathers, we felt that everything we saw and did and all the situations in which we found ourselves were in some way familiar, and if not actually commonplace they did not possess a novel quality. For instance, quite dispassionately we watched a snake-charmer doing his level best to entertain us. We gazed unmoved at the jaded, weaving snake and listened to the reedy piping, knowing, as everyone knows, that the snake was no more dangerous than an English worm, and we walked away feeling that it was so much nicer in expectation.<br /><br />We gazed, too, at the crowded bazaars, the cows (elevated almost to deity), the stalls, and the dense throngs of slight, dusky figures in their dhotis and saris. These scenes, and the ubiquitous temples, were all (to my eyes) ugly, musty constructions, sticking up like sore thumbs and covered with faded, once-gaudy effigies of fat Buddhas and fatter cows. They seemed to squat in an aura of unwholesomeness, with dank, pungent interiors that never saw the daylight.<br /><br />We inhaled the incense, the aroma of spiced, curried foods We endured the oppressive, damp heat and listened to the reedy music that so well mirrored the thin, reedy people-all familiar and unstimulating. India, in fact, was as I had pictured it, but a black-and-white reality of a coloured imagining. Millions shackled with a fanatical religion strive to grasp the hem of the atom-age nations. Nehru, they said, had an answer to the world's dilemma; India could lead the great military blocs from extinction to salvation. As they spoke, these intense Asiatics hastily stepped aside to avoid an Untouchable, or detoured carefully round a trail of ants.<br /><br />And what, we asked of these supreme pacifists, after Nehru? Who would lead the world to peace and, along with it, perhaps Kashmir to independence? At that they would suddenly show distinctly non-pacifist leanings: 'The Pakistanis are grasping warmongers. The armed might of India will soon put paid to any trouble from that quarter.' Then would follow the time-worn relating of the Amritsar riots and the word 'imperialists' would be liberally scattered throughout the conversation.<br /><br />Perhaps it was only natural, but not once did we hear a word of praise for the superb road, rail, and postal systems which Britain had left behind. Not a mention of the foundations of administrative, economic, and military structure which the now enjoyed. We were told most emphatically that India had progressed only since the British had been' forced back into the sea'. Enlightenment had only come since the bloody partition with Pakistan. Before that, the country had lain under the iron grip of the British and had been dormant for over a hundred years.<br /><br />At every village, what the Australians call 'bush lawyers' were ready to pounce on us and expound the glories of India since independence. No one likes being governed by aliens, they said. No people worth their salt like being dependent on foreign powers, and 'surely the dullest schoolboy realizes that Britain had not ruled India for India's sake'. It was useless for us to point out that, of all the colonizers, Britain replaced pretty evenly all she took in the latter part of her Empire history, that Singapore was built from a swamp, Burma developed into the world's rubber larder, and West Africa put into a position to become self-governing. But in India, where even tiny, second-class roads are as well surfaced as they are here in Britain; where trains run the length of the vast continent, usually on schedule despite the difficulties; where most of the farming, educational, and industrial structure was laid before 1947, the British are considered imperial aggressors.<br /><br />Our mood of disappointment lasted about a thousand miles, from Delhi to Bombay, across the endless flat plains and the patches of semi-jungle around Indore, and on, under skies that became gradually bluer, until at long last we crossed the last range of gentle bills and dropped down to sea-level and the coast.<br /><br />For a week we rested, and explored Bombay, a surprisingly clean city with many light, modem buildings. In contrast there were the slum areas and the prostitutes' quarter, known as 'The Cages'. We drove through this area one evening, to marvel that humanity could exist-let alone practise the oldest profession-under such appalling conditions. There were tiny cramped cubicles, most of them not more than six feet or so in width, with open fronts facing the narrow road. A sleazy, much-thumbed curtain conformed to some sort of modesty and the painted ladies shouted their wares with raucous gusto to all who passed by. Thousands of these creatures were confined in the cramped quarter which is sealed off and locked at twelve o'clock nightly. To drive slowly through this den of iniquity was an enlightening experience. But it was pleasant to return to the city centre.<br /><br />South of Bombay, the cloud of gloom which had hung over us at last began to disperse and it disappeared entirely when we reached Bangalore. The skies were bright and blue, the people not too politically minded and, most delightful of all, hosts of mischievous monkeys swarmed on the road and took every opportunity to tamper with our scooter.<br /><br />The landscape was peaceful and friendly, mercifully not over-populated and blessed with first-class roads and clean dak bungalows. Less than three hundred miles from Ceylon (and our ship to Australia) we really began to appreciate India.<br /><br />In a pleasurable frame of mind we buzzed into the state of Madras. Here, in one of the most picturesque of all the Indian states-save perhaps those in the Himalayan region-we were to tangle with a prospective assassin, witness a fight to the death between a snake and a mongoose, and experience a near-fatal accident. Life is rarely dull on the road to adventure.Michael Marriott (c/o P McIntosh)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12094748437548804032noreply@blogger.com