The Killer Koala (12 page)

The
drover addressed himself to the social decencies.

'G'day.'

'G'day,'
I replied ceremonially.

'Cedric
bloody near made your camel drop his guts,' the old man cackled.

'It's
certainly a remarkable animal.'

'Eh?'

'My
bloody oath.'

'Yeah,
well come on over to the camp and have a drink.'

His
'camp' was a fire and a bedroll.

He
poured me a mug of rum. A full mug. Then he poured himself one. Of
course, rum is what you drink on the Track because there's no way of
keeping beer cold. I hate rum. Still, I took it and sipped it.

The
old man told me his name was Henry Gibbs and he was a neighbour of my
friend Bill's; 'neighbour' out there is anybody who lives less than a
day's hard drive away.

Naturally
the conversation turned to Cedric, who was lying stretched out by the
fire purring like a buzzsaw and eyeing my tethered camel as though he
were considering it for supper.

'Had
Cedric five years,' Henry told me. 'Found him on the track when he
was a kitten. Had a dead dingo pup in his teeth. Don't know where he
came from. His trouble is he's never seen another cat and thinks he's
a dog.' I thought Cedric had more grounds for believing himself to be
a cross between a jackal and a jaguar, which is what he looked like.

'Best
watchdog a man ever had,' continued Henry. 'I can leave me camp for
days on end and know it'll be safe. No one gets past Cedric.'

Cedric
twitched his single ear on hearing his name. He grinned, I swear he
grinned (perhaps it was a snarl), and the firelight glinted on one
long white fang.

'Have
another drink,' said Henry, brandishing the rum.

'Not
yet, thanks.' I still had almost one-third of a bottle in my mug.
Henry refilled his own mug.

'You
know,' said Henry reflectively, 'I've seen that cat run down an old
man kangaroo
—
a real
boomer
—
pull him down by the
neck and tear his throat out.' I didn't doubt it, very much.

'Have
another rum,' said Henry.

I
had tried to choke down as much of the putrid stuff as I could, but I
had made very little impression on the contents of my mug.

'Bit
slow, arncha?' said Henry, a trifle surlily, I thought. I knew Track
people regarded slow drinkers as the social equivalent of cane toads,
but I wasn't prepared to die of alcoholic poisoning to observe a
social convention.

Henry
emptied the bottle into his own mug, then uncorked another
bottle
—
just to have it
ready, I suppose, lest the gap between drinks should induce
withdrawal symptoms.

'You
know,' said Henry, 'that cat saved my life twice.'

'Really?'

'Don't
you believe what I'm saying?' said Henry sharply.

'Yes,
yes, of course I do.' I was beginning to wish my friend Bill would
turn up.

The
bright blue eyes in the old weatherbeaten face stared at me
speculatively, but then he relaxed and went on with his yarn. 'Yeah.
The first time was just outside Birdsville. I'd yarded a bloody great
brumby stallion
—
big black
bastard
—
biggest brumby I've
ever seen, and a vicious brute he was.' I wondered why anybody would
want to yard a brumby stallion, which is about the most dangerous and
domestically useless animal in Australia, but Henry explained.
'Wanted to keep him alive until the pet food truck came through,
y'see. Well, no sooner do I drop the rail on him when this bloody
brumby smashes down the fence and comes charging at me, screamin' his
head off and gnashing 'is teeth.

'I
nearly dropped me guts.' Henry swallowed a lot of rum.

'I
was on foot by then, you see,' he added in explanation.

'Well,
I couldn't run and I didn't have a gun and this bastard brumby was
almost on me and I reckoned I was a dead man.' Henry leaned forward,
eyes glinting in the firelight, waving his mug at me.

'Then
do you know what happened? Cedric comes charging out of nowhere,
throws himself at that brumby's head and sinks his teeth into the
bastard's nose.

'Well,
the brumby went mad. He reared and he backed and he screamed and he
bloody near turned somersaults and there was Cedric, clingin' on to
his nose, being tossed around like a teatowel in a sandstorm, but
still hangin' on like grim death.

'Eventually
the brumby couldn't take it any longer and he lit out into the desert
like a streak of lightnin', with old Cedric still clingin' to his
nose.'

Henry
finished his rum and paused with his hand on the second bottle. 'You
know, I didn't see Cedric for four days, and when he came back he was
as fat and fit as ever. I reckon he might have rode that brumby into
the ground and then et 'im.'

Henry
poured his rum.

'You're
a great old cat, aren't you, Cedric?'

Cedric
stood up and stretched and his great claws stood out for a moment
like rows of knives. He walked around the fire looking at Henry, at
me and then at the camel as though making some inner decision. Then,
looking in the firelight like a strange carnivorous mutant thrown off
by some cataclysmic turn in Australian evolution, he walked over and
stared my camel in the eye.

My
camel shuffled its feet nervously and breathed on Cedric, who took no
notice. Which shows how tough that cat was.

Henry
chuckled. 'Ah, I see he's getting hungry. I'd better feed 'im soon.
Have a drink.'

But
I still had plenty of rum in my mug. 'Draggin' the chain, arncha?'
Henry was distinctly truculent.

'I'll
catch up,' I said placatingly, and took a swig.

'Yeah,
well,' growled Henry, looking as though he were about to be seriously
offended. But he decided against it and filled his own mug again.

'Anyhow,'
said Henry, half emptying his mug, 'I suppose you're wondering how he
lost his ear.'

'Yes,
yes, I was,' I said eagerly.

'Well,
that's part of the story of the second time Cedric saved my life.'

A
strangled belch from my camel brought my head around and I saw Cedric
still staring into the poor brute's eyes. But now Cedric's tail was
up, lashing, his fur erect and spiky and he was growling softly. I
didn't blame my camel for belching.

Henry
saw my worried look. 'Don't worry
—
I'll
feed him in a minute and he'll quieten down.'

On
the edge of the ring of firelight, in the dark, Cedric no longer
looked remotely feline, more like some unlikely creature conceived
for a horror movie. He turned and glanced at me and his eyes flashed
blue and orange.

'Anyhow,'
said Henry, 'I was camped up the Track a bit one night a couple of
years back when this bad bastard comes into me camp.

'I
knew he was a bad bastard because he was black.

'Not
that all blacks are bad bastards,' Henry added fairly, 'but this was
a
bad
black
bastard.

'But
I'll say this for him, he would have a drink with a man.' Henry
looked pointedly at me and refilled his own mug. He didn't offer me a
drink this time.

I
hastily swigged at my rum, but I was already half drunk and I just
couldn't get the stuff down. If only Henry would take his piercing
eyes off me for a second, I thought, I'd pour it out on the sand. Hut
his gaze never left me. I realised for the first time that Henry's
two blue eyes were the same shade as the cat's one blue eye.

'So
we have a few drinks together,' continued Henry, 'quite a few drinks
we had, because he was a good drinker even if he was a bad bastard.'
A few drinks to Henry probably meant a couple of barrels of rum.

'Well,
we got to arguin' a bit about something
—
I
forget what it was, you know how it is when you're having a few
drinks
—
and the argument
gets a bit heated.

'Next
thing I know this black bastard is coming at me with an axe
—
my
own axe,' he added aggrievedly, as if that somehow made things worse.

Henry
finished his rum and poured another, again ostentatiously not
offering me one. 'Well, by now, you see, I know how good Cedric is
and I know all I've got to do is shout and he'll be at this black
bastard in a second.

'So
I shouts, see
—
out comes
Cedric and goes for the bastard's throat.

'Well,
the bastard gets the shock of his life when he sees Cedric comin' at
him and he takes a mighty swipe at him with the axe
—
my
axe
—
and takes his ear clean
off.

'But
that doesn't stop Cedric. No bloody fear. He's into that black
bastard and has 'im by the throat in no time at all.'

Henry
drank some more rum and paused. His eyes left my face but he seemed
to be staring into the region of my navel, so I still couldn't empty
my mug.

The
pause continued. The story seemed to have petered out.

'And
what happened to the . . . er . . . bastard?' I asked.

Henry
raised his head.

'Oh,
he's buried back along the Track there.'

You
don't believe everything you hear along the Birdsville Track, but
you'd be surprised how much of what you don't believe is cold hard
truth.

I
stood up. 'Well, I suppose I'd better be getting back to camp,' I
said.

Henry
stood up. His face was bulging and writhing with fury. 'So you're not
gonna drink with a man, you bastard!'

I've
seen it before, time and time again, and I never learn. Anywhere in
Australia west of the Bogan, you can cheat a man, run off with his
wife, despoil his daughter, debauch his sons, even steal his dog and
it's possible for him to forgive you, but refuse to drink with him
and you're dingo class, outcast forever, beyond redemption, not worth
the bullet he'd cheerfully use on you otherwise.

'Listen,
Henry . . .' I started.

'You
bastard!' he shouted.

And
that, of course, activated Cedric. The great misbegotten cat glared
at me, then at Henry, no doubt, looking for instructions, then back
at the camel.

'You
bastard!' bellowed Henry.

Cedric
sprang. At the camel.

The
camel roared and reared, breaking its tether. Cedric landed on its
rump and dug in.

The
camel took off into the desert with Cedric on its rump, apparently
gnawing it.

Henry
was looking around wildly. Seeking his axe, I supposed. I turned and
ran, making for the distant yellow glow I knew was my friend Bill's
campfire. 'You bastard! You bastard! You bastard!' followed me,
growing blessedly fainter as I sprinted across the sand and stones.

I
arrived gasping at the camp. My friend Bill received me with some
expression of concern and alarm at first, but when I told him what
had happened, he lost interest.

'Oh,
yes,' he said, 'old Henry and his cat. I should have warned you about
him. Don't worry, he'll be all right in the morning.'

'But.
. . but the camel . . .'

'We'll
find it tomorrow.'

We
did, too. It was a bit tattered around the rump, but not seriously
injured.

Bill
was right. The Track is
not
like other places.

The Very Angry Pig

Australian
wild pigs have the ugliest faces in the world. They have characters
to match. I know, because one recently made a very serious attempt to
eat me. It had right on its side because I had been making an equally
serious attempt to shoot it. However, at the time of the encounter I
wasn't interested in the moral issue, merely in surviving.

I
had just written a novel called
Pig
and the firm of C.C. and
P. Pty Ltd, film producers, had taken an option on the film rights.
In researching the material for the book, I had spent a lot of time
hunting pigs in various parts of Australia and considered myself
something of an amateur expert on the subject of feral pigs. They are
very nasty creatures that are destroying much of the wilderness in
Australia. I was expounding my views on the generally pestilential
nature of pigs to the film company's producer, John Crew, when he
asked me whether I would go out west and secure a suitable specimen
of feral pig that the model makers could use as the basis for the
mechanical pig that had to be created for the film. I readily agreed
because the fee he was offering was considerably more than the job
was worth. Or so I thought. I knew where there were plenty of pigs
and I was quite experienced in the technique of shooting them.

I
made plans to drive in my Honda Civic out to the Macquarie Marshes in
central western New South Wales where I knew there were thousands of
feral pigs. Moreover, there have been pigs in the marshes for more
than one hundred years and they have reverted to the classic
ridgebacked, black, huge and vicious creature of porcine legend.