How I Became the Mr. Big of People Smuggling (17 page)

You think I'm cruel doing that, particularly as only Cookie and I knew about it, but it's like money. People do anything for money. They'll do anything for another dose, drugs or money, it's the same thing. Wasn't that how Palmenter got me there in the first place? Wasn't that why we were all there? What is the difference between drip-feeding small amounts of cash and small amounts of dope? A wage, enough to get by on, but with the promise of a huge bonus. Money is a drug too. The junkie on the street and the high-flyer on the top floor are not that far apart.

I tried not to eat too much in the evenings but it was too difficult
and eventually I was eating as much as everyone else and getting as stoned. I think Cookie had no idea how much to put in so he overdid it. I could tell you we had some memorable evenings but in truth, we usually fell asleep.

That was before the de-stock. That was before something happened and I decided we needed to change a few things. Up until then we had been always on the brink of leaving and we had been fearful of Palmenter's cowboys arriving unannounced.

We had so much money but the station was going broke. Palmenter had been feeding some of the cash in as cattle sales, faking income from the musters, but we had stopped doing that. I am sure we could have deposited all the money because no one was sitting out there in the scrub counting our cattle, how often we mustered or anything. But I wasn't giving any of my money to him, because once it was in the bank in his name how was I going to get it out? I had forged his signature on a few cheques but mostly I didn't bother to open the mail. You get into serious trouble for forging big cheques.

As so often happens in life the answer came to us. Literally. The bank came to us. Two suited gentlemen who at first I took to be thugs – the heavies we had all along been half expecting, the owners of the money, the cowboys who had come in on occasion with Palmenter. You know how in the movies thugs arrive at some place and they are well dressed and you think it is some legitimate business except that the music gives it away, they are there for something extremely nasty and end up slitting the nostrils of some innocent bystander to prove how tough they are? It's usually in a pizza joint and the other one will be eating pizza just to show how he doesn't care about the screaming and pain and blood over the floor. Well, that's what I thought these guys were when they drove in and if I hadn't been standing under the water tower talking with Sally I would have been out the back door and into my van and outta there.

‘We apologise for dropping in unannounced. Is Alex Palmenter here?'

He apologised! Jeez, this must be serious and these must be
heavy dudes, I thought. We were so far out of the way no one ever simply dropped in.

‘He's not here. I'm Dan Taylor, station manager. Perhaps I can help.' I put on my best voice but Sally was looking at me funny, what with me calling myself Dan.

The two men introduced themselves. Rural Bank of Northern Australia. Concern about the bank accounts and overdrawn amounts, significant arrears, security over the lease, on they went. Unless we can rectify, letters of demand left unanswered, serious breach of blah blah blah. Either the guy was an idiot, a city slicker who knew nothing about the real world, or thugs from some distant associate of Palmenter's here on a pretext, sussing out the situation, sizing us up. While he went on I considered the chance of outrunning them. They were in suits and stupid shoes, it was hot, I knew my way around and was young and fit. Easy. But Sally was still standing with us.

Although I looked older than I was, people probably thought I was too young to be in charge. Dan Taylor, who was that? Nick Smart was the one with the reputation. You have to be hard to survive in the underworld but in my case it was mostly by reputation. I used to yell a bit, get angry, strut around, stuff like that. I used to let people see me angry at Simms or Charles but I only ever hit anybody once, that's all it takes to make a reputation. One time Simms was being stupid as usual and I thought it wouldn't do any harm to make a bit of a point and I made sure Joseph and Chad saw me do it because they were a bit slack a lot of the time.

I thought, these guys must be here to check the lay of the land and then report back to whoever for when the real shit went down. Because of my reputation they were wise to check us out beforehand if there was going to be any rough stuff. But that goes both ways. I wondered who they were, who was the Mr Big I had not yet met? We could do a deal. I wondered how much I would have to pay. Perhaps it was Margaret. Would she want us to supply girls again? A few days ago there had been a husky-voiced phone call and someone had asked to talk to Palmenter. It might have been Margaret. I had never talked to her and for the life of me couldn't remember her voice.

‘Well,' I said, ‘come into the office. Mr Palmenter is away
overseas but I am sure I can sort this out.' I motioned them to the homestead. Two of us could play this game. ‘Sally, can you bring us some tea? Or would you gentlemen prefer a beer?' They accepted tea, and I watched them as they watched Sally leave. I wondered how two thugs in the employ of Margaret would look at a sexy girl as she walked off to get tea. Not like that. Respectful. No, I didn't think they were from Margaret.

Where the hell had they come from? Banks don't do house calls particularly out here where the round trip from Darwin was a four-day minimum. Even if they were legit I had to get rid of them quickly. There was simply too much for them to see.

In the office I sat them to one side of the desk, facing both chairs inwards so that if I was going to abscond they wouldn't see me out of the window running across to where I kept my fuelled-up van hidden behind
Matilda.
One of them opened his briefcase and produced some ledgers and statements of account on bank letterheads. It looked to be legitimate. If this was some sort of scam they were certainly playing the charade out for all it was worth. Might as well play along, I thought, and anyway, if heavy shit was going to go down they would have already started. My mind was racing. I would offer them to stay the night and then sometime during the night, when they were asleep, I would slip out and leave, take the south track and fly standby from Alice.

Mr Serious Breach was rabbiting on about things, about not wanting to take this action and as employees we would be guaranteed our entitlements but that there would have to be someone here to be administrator.

‘Hold on a minute,' I said. ‘Are you saying you are going to take possession of the station?'

He shuffled uncomfortably. That was when I realised this was all legit. Thugs don't do uncomfortable.

‘Of course if there is some other way, if there is a way to settle the outstanding amounts and bring accounts up to date, but if Mr...'

‘Well,' I said, ‘although Mr Palmenter is away overseas, and I do have to admit I haven't had any communication with him for some time, but I am left under strict instructions to take care of all aspects of the business, including to make financial decisions. What I can tell you is that there is no shortage of funds. His international
operations are going exceedingly well. Direct meat sales to Indonesia. Tourism is booming too. But as you will appreciate, living out here without internet and what with the pressure to run the place, we don't get into town too often. We are very busy and banking is not our biggest priority. And Margaret has been away in Melbourne because her mother is dying,' I added. There was no reaction from them at the mention of Margaret's name.

He shuffled even more uncomfortably while the second one remained mute.

‘Unfortunately it might be too late. I have my instructions to either get the funds or serve you with notice. All our correspondence up until now has been ignored.'

Every month I went to Darwin for my MBA course and collected the mail from the post office. I threw most of it out. I only opened letters that might be from someone who was looking for or worried about Palmenter. Bank statements went straight in the bin.

‘How much are we talking about?'

When he told me I nearly burst out laughing. Thirty-seven thousand plus penalties. Total fifty-two thousand. I could piss that on him. These were no thugs. Thugs would be asking for that in millions. Plus penalties. Don't make me laugh.

Banks are funny businesses. They are so keen to get your money they will do almost anything to get it and in the process overlook the obvious fact that our supposed overseas cattle buyers would be transferring money direct into our accounts, not paying cash. Who pays cash for anything nowadays? I gave him ninety-seven thousand two hundred and sixty dollars, an amount I made up to make it seem at least a little legitimate, but I deliberately miscounted it without him seeing so he had about ten grand extra. I also gave him some of the foreign currency and asked him to exchange it and deposit the proceeds. If he had smelled something fishy he didn't say anything and if later when he thought about it and was deciding what to do, when he counted the cash and discovered the extra he would pocket the difference and keep quiet. People are the same everywhere.

‘I just haven't had the opportunity to get into town to deposit this,' I told him. ‘We've had some issues with the bores along the
south boundary and that has occupied our time. That and the general running of the place. What with the mining boom we are very short-staffed. You know how it is.'

I guarantee he had no idea how it was but he accepted the money and wrote out an interim receipt and said he would deposit it and post us the official receipt. I then went on to say if only we could make some sort of other arrangement, that I was investigating satellite systems for internet access, setting up our own internet service all the way out here and that perhaps that would solve our banking as well.

It pays to talk big, because in the end, Mr Serious Breach, Nathan was his name, agreed that the bank would fund half of the cost of a satellite dome that would give us our own internet access. What was so cool about that, apart from the movies we could download and all the other stuff we could now do, was that I could transfer money between linked accounts. Like, for example, between Palmenter Station and Palmenter Wildlife Conservancy and Wayne's Fishing World and a whole series of other accounts I set up at different banks to feed the cash in. I had to go to Darwin if I wanted to deposit any cash but I had been getting a bit sick of the monthly trips to hand in MBA assignments. Now I could do it all online.

They stayed the night and in the morning Charles and I took them for a tour out to Morgan's Well camp. I wanted to see how much a stranger might fall for the tourist venture charade. We had a barbecue down at the creek and Cookie outdid himself. We sat in the shade while Judy and her kid played in the waterhole, and after steaks bigger than the plates Cookie rolled some numbers so strong that soon we were giggling at nothing and then sleeping it off. They left midafternoon with a ‘packed lunch', a half brick of some of Cookie's finest.

‘Everyone likes to be given a prezzie,' said Cookie.

I realised that although a lot of money was coming in we were vulnerable because everyone was only as honest as the cash. If a problem arose we would throw cash at it, bribe people or offer more than the next man, but of course eventually that would catch up with us. We were giving stupid amounts of money for even the simplest things. Charles was buying the vans ‘no questions asked' from a guy in Darwin who rounded them up from genuine backpackers who ended their Aussie adventure there. We were paying twice what they were worth and each month the price went up. There were lots of little deals happening like that, things that I had lost control of. Newman was paying some people up the coast to keep quiet and I'm not sure how Spanner was explaining burning so much fuel for three little fishing camps. If someone did talk it would be like rats deserting a sinking ship and no amount of money would keep everyone quiet. What would happen if business slumped? If the money ran out? Plus, now that most of the money was in the bank I needed to keep the business secure because there is a whole world of difference between having a few million in your backpack and having it in a bank account.

Of course, it wasn't only that. It was the whole thing getting so big and spiralling out of control. We were bringing in more than ever, demand for our products was limitless and so was our demand down the line. Everyone was making good money from it and, that was the thing, perhaps everyone was only in it for the money and no one was really on our side. No one believed in the product, in what we were doing. All they believed in was money. I had to change that. In business, your people have to believe in your product.

After the bank visit I sat everyone down. Spanner knew the truth and I had no choice but to trust in him, but I brought him back from the coast because I wanted him to be a part of it. I was pretty sure Newman was on side too but I didn't know about Rob. Cookie was happy, Judy and her little boy had moved in with him and most days he was wearing a bigger grin than when he'd be doped up and stupid leaning against the back door of the kitchen. Ingrid and Sally had by now well overstayed their visas and anyway I knew I could trust them. I liked Charles. He had plenty of opportunity to leave each time he was in the city but he always came back. Simms was a bit of an unknown, more because he might say or do something unwittingly. The ones I was most unsure of were the mustering mob. We didn't use them for mustering anymore but, after all, this was their land. Sort of. More than it was Palmenter's anyway. I thought that of all the people there, they were probably the least aware of what had been going on.

I needn't have worried. Everyone was on side. Turns out the mustering crew were very aware of what was happening and they were pretty smart about it too. After the main talk I took them aside and told them I needed a bit extra from them. People love to feel special and they love to feel involved, so you tell them you need a little bit more from them than from everyone else.

‘You guys, we need some cultural stuff, tours and shit, places to take people. Forget cattle, we are now in the people business.' They loved that disparaging way of talking, pretending that it didn't matter too much. The funny thing was some of the cultural stuff they set up, the bush tucker and tour of sacred sites and traditional burial grounds, they became our most popular tours. Sometimes stuff you toss up as an afterthought becomes the best thing you ever did. Like the pizza oven. After the bank guys, I remembered about a movie where some thugs were eating pizza and I suggested we add a pizza oven to the barbecue area because woodfired pizza was all the rage in the city.

After the talk I took off by myself for a while, snuck out in the early morning while they were all hungover. I thought it was best if I wasn't around if any of them wanted out; they could quietly
leave while I was gone and not feel any pressure from me watching them. If they stayed, it had to be because they wanted to. Also, if someone did leave and report all our activities I didn't want to be there if we were raided by the police or Immigration. I thought that would be unlikely but you never know. I took three hundred thousand dollars well wrapped in several layers of plastic and some food – tins and stuff that would keep – and I hid this along the way in a place I could hide out if I ever needed to. The other thing I hid with my secret stash was the little gold Buddha. I figured if the shit ever hit the fan I would only need to hide for a few weeks and then I could make my way south. I'd go to Perth where I had never been and no one knew me.

I headed out to the north-east. I hadn't been that way before as there were no bores out there. It was difficult terrain for the vans as the land rises slowly from the river flats and is very sandy. I was surprised to find quite a few tracks and even more surprised when I came to a ridge with a wonderful view to the north. Below me lay another river valley and if I looked long and hard enough into the horizon I could convince myself that was the ocean. It wasn't of course, but it felt like that. It felt as if this was the edge of the continent and the land below ran off into some new place.

This was where I camped. I parked the van where I had a great view as I sat in the back in the late afternoon. I pulled up some sticks and branches and spinifex and placed these over the van to hide it from the air, then threw handfuls of sand over it as well because I knew as the wind blew, a lot of the foliage would simply blow away. How like Palmenter or those five I was now, I thought, burying myself in my van out in the desert.

Only way anyone was going to find me was by walking up the limestone ridge from below, and that was what happened. I had been there five days when some of the muster crew simply walked right up to me as if they had known not only someone, but me, was camped there. Like you walk next door to visit your neighbour to have a chat.

The main man was Jimmy and he spoke in this growly slurred way that made the words difficult to understand but, you know, the funny thing was that unlike Charles, who at first I found difficult to understand, with Jimmy you didn't understand the words he used
but you knew exactly what he meant.

‘You come walk with us. We show you special place like walkabout tour. Like him you said.'

Jimmy led the way down the scree and over loose boulders. At the bottom of the slope there were caves of a sort, more half-caves, overhangs with smooth rock behind and shaded by large but spindly white-trunked trees. A group of women were sitting in the shade of one of these trees mixing some mud of different colours on some flat rocks.

‘Touchup 'em drawings.'

Jimmy pointed to the smooth rocks behind and I saw that it was completely covered in pictures, stylised stick figures of lizards and kangaroos and people between handprints and random lines and dots. It was amazing. Pictures overlapped and the more I looked the more I saw I was seeing back in time, back over generations to a time long ago when the first of these might have been made.

‘How old are these?' I asked Jimmy.

He laughed.

‘Oh, 'em plenty old. Older than going back 'em old people and they old people and more old people after that. Plenty old. But we fixim for the tour. Make 'em plenty good.'

I remembered reading about the age of some of the Aboriginal art, up to thirty thousand years old, and how the people had been keeping the galleries continuously over generations of habitation. I was wondering what they thought of all these refugees, people who fled the place of their birth and abandoned their ancestors. Looking at the art and listening to Jimmy explain it to me I got the sense that they had been watching strangers come and go for all of those thirty thousand years, and that they accepted this in the same way they accepted the inevitability and passing of seasons.

‘We bring people here, Jimmy?'

This was going to be brilliant for our tours, but I'd have to shift my secret stash to a safer place.

‘Oh yes, I think plenty good for tour. You got good camp for 'em up there, we bring walk down here, walk around, sit down for story. This good place. Waterhole 'long there, plenty bird and tucker, bush tucker always plenty. Them tours always popular. Maybe sometime we catch bungarra, take uptop to cook him on fire.'

He took me for a walk along the creek, along a path to a beach and reed-lined pool. On the far side was a steep slope of rocks covered in a tangle of vegetation so the path was the only way in. It was a hidden oasis. Obviously they had known about it forever, but it was new to me. I wondered how many more secret places like this there were. We could open up a whole new part of the station and run a lot more tourists than we were currently. Both types of tourist.

But that was after. Before I talked to the muster crew, I talked to everyone together in the canteen. I had got them all in from the outcamps and the coast and wherever else they had been and in the afternoon we watched a movie in the canteen. I had brought a player and a projector up from Melbourne, and a whole bunch of DVDs, and the one I made them watch was
Blood Diamond.
That's where a group of South African mercenaries are looking for some smuggled diamonds, but it has a great scene in it where the Sierra Leone rebels are chopping off people's arms. ‘Short sleeve or long sleeve?' they asked. Later, Simms killed a bullock and we had a big party. Then the next day I told them how things were.

‘Look,' I said, ‘you all know, to some extent, that Palmenter Station has been doing some stuff, bringing in people from overseas, asylum seekers and such. I am not sure exactly how much each of you knows or is aware of, but I want to be clear about where we all stand.'

Except for Spanner, all of them thought Palmenter was an absentee owner and I was doing his bidding. I wasn't going to change that belief, but I did want them to know I was calling the shots and that things were going to change. I went on.

‘Palmenter is not here now. He's left me in charge and I want to make it a better place. Not just to work, but it includes that. I think we have to start with each and every one of us acknowledging what it is we do, and why we do it, and if you don't agree you should leave. You are free to go. I'll make sure you get all your pay and entitlements and Spanner will set you up a van and off you go. No problems. You won't hear from us again and we don't want to know about you and I know you will not say anything to anybody, ever, because, let's face it, we are all implicated in what we have been doing up to now.'

We were sitting in the canteen. It was morning, a time I figured they would have sobered up from the night before but not yet started for today. This bunch has probably never been in a meeting anything like this ever before and they sat looking at me, not talking, taking in everything I said. I wondered what they thought of me. Palmenter would speak to you alone, in twos or threes. I hoped I was coming across as powerful, competent. We had done some of this sort of motivational stuff in the business unit I was studying. Inside I was shaking. If this didn't work I would have to be the first to leave, faster and further than any of them. But it wasn't over yet. I hadn't finished with them.

‘So that is the first thing. You are free to go, to find something else.'

I looked slowly around the room, at each and every one of them. I could see they were fidgety. I let them stew for a while. Next, I would offer them the freedom to come and go as they pleased and a share of the money if they stayed to help. They would be on easy street, they could never find anything half as good, but I wanted to make them think whether they wanted to be a part of this. For commitment, sometimes you have to push people a little harder than they are prepared to go, and I had deliberately chosen to pressure them while hungover from such a great party the night before.

When the tension in the room was almost unbearable I continued.

‘But at least you have the freedom to do that, to be born into the lucky country and can live pretty well, do pretty much what you want. These people,' and I indicated with a raised arm the faraway coast and the boats coming in, ‘these people have none of that and that is why we do this. To give them a chance at a better life. If you don't agree with that, if you think they are just fodder to fund our money-hungry materialistic lives and it is fair to rip them off and take everything we can from them and then set them free with even less than the nothing they had back home, if you think that, you ought to leave.' I was getting worked up. After the movie yesterday my words were producing the effect I wanted. It was even working on me. I was on a roll.

‘If you think that, I don't want you here,' I said, ‘and we are just
going to trust you not to tell anyone, and off you go to live your quiet meaningful life in some place else.' I paused again, not as long, but long enough.

‘If you don't leave, let's be really clear. You will be a part of it and I want you to stay because you think that what we are doing is good and worthwhile and a better thing to do with your life. It is the moral thing to do.'

I told them they were good at what they did and that my preference was they stayed, and I told them about some of the stories. From Lucy, from her family, and those that I had heard from those four in the van on the drive south. These stories were the reason we had to do this, I told them. I said it would not always be easy and that life on the station would not always be paradise, but if we were all in it together it would be as close to that as it could be. A life of outdoor freedom with trips to the coast as often as you wanted, even trips up to Sumba for surfing, mini-van collection trips to the cities every month if you wanted them, and a place at the homestead that they could always call home.

My guess was that if one left they all would. But they all stayed. Say any old shit often enough and you start to believe it. I was even getting teary myself. I was now the Mr Big of People Smuggling.

I say now, but of course that was back when, and now it is all gone. Closed down. Nothing there except them excavating the pit and uncovering bodies and I'm doing twenty years. But it's better than Spanner got. I don't regret any of what I've done, although I do sometimes think I should've acted sooner. Sometimes I think I'm a little too cautious and in the time it takes to decide things it becomes too late.