Warrigal's Way (19 page)

“God knows where he keeps his,” I said to Jenny, and she laughed.

“Do you want me to tell you?” She was grinning like a cat with a bowl of cream.

“Go on then, smartie, tell me.”

“It's not hard—a pickle jar, either under the floorboards or by a tree in the garden. My grandad was the same—didn't trust banks because of the Depression. Anyway, come on, let's count what we've got in this tin.”

We tipped it out on the bed and I was quite surprised at the moment.

“Fourteen hundred and forty dollars,” Jenny announced.

I was a bit stunned. That was a small fortune—the price of a new car or a block of land. So I could see her point about keeping it around the place.

So on Friday, dressed in our number one gear, we pointed the Blue Streak at Greymouth, us in front and Bruce behind with a load. The road wound around the coast, and Jen told me I was lucky I was not in the truck with Bruce—the only thing to beat that is a night in a haunted house.

“I was terrified every inch of the way into town with him. He takes his hands off the steering wheel and waves them around when he's talking. Bloody truck clangs and rattles—takes me about ten minutes to stop shakin'.”

Actually the road was not too bad, except for the blind corners and the dips and humps. The scenery was spectacular—craggy cliffs covered in bush and scrub, the roadside dropping down to rocky headlands and sandy coves with the grey-brown trunks and dark green canopy of the Kiwi Christmas tree.

Greymouth was a town of about five thousand, at a real wild guess. Bruce had some shopping he wanted to do and we wanted to find a bank, so we agreed to meet again in an hour. We saw a sign at the Post Office for the Post Office Savings Bank so we asked a lady there about banking our money. She said we could use our Commonwealth Bank
Account from home through the Post Office, but if we were staying in New Zealand for a while she could open a Post Office account for us no problem. So with no fuss and a couple of signatures we became the proud possessors of a savings book for use anywhere in Enzed.

We found a small milk-bar type place where we had a cup of tea and scones and had a good old yarn to Silvi: “Call me Silvi, loveys. Australians eh? Always meant to go over there but never have. You know, got married, then the kids, now the business. I might do it one day though.” She was like all the people we met—open, honest and just West Coasters—about the warmest, friendliest people you could ever meet. South Islanders in general were terrific people.

We strolled back to the car and Bruce was waiting for us, talking to the local cop, Albert. He introduced us and Albert asked us to call in for a beer when we got back from the mill.

The approach to the mill was a dirt road with paddocks full of flax on either side of it. Their cutters were cutting loose—that is, they were not bundling it, but just throwing their leaf straight onto the trailer. Closer to the mill there were wooden fence-like structures and when I asked Bruce about them he told me they were drying racks where they hang the hanks of fibre after they have been washed.

The machinery in the mill scraped the green off the leaf, combed out the fibres, then washed it and hung it out to dry. The mill manager, Max, said that some was used to make rope, hessian bags and scrim, a material that goes on a wooden wall for the wallpaper to stick to.

“All of those things were made in Christchurch, the rope and stuff, but the rest went to Dunedin where there was a factory that made linen bed sheets, shirts, handkerchiefs and ladies blouses. It used to make tropical suits for both males and females but synthetics had shot that to bits.

The mill in Greymouth was not a real big place, just Max, another bloke and four women. He didn't know how long
they'd be able to keep going as they were producing less each year.

“I could be wrong,” said Max, “but I think we're the only flax factory on this side of the world, and the only other country outside Ireland that produces linen.”

Back in town, the first person we ran into was Albert, who promptly threw his hat and tunic in his car and took us to the pub for a beer. Albert knew everyone in there and introduced us round—to too many people for me to remember. Two blokes I remember were Phil, a short skinny bloke—a dairy farmer, he told me—and a Maori bloke called Kahu. (Car-hoo is how you say it.) He worked for the local shire as a grader driver. He and Phil were mates. Everyone wanted to shout me a beer, and like an idiot I drank them. I could feel my legs getting a bit shakey, so I gave the car keys to Jenny—I knew it'd be a fast trip to heaven if I drove home. It had been a long time since I'd had a beer or a session at the pub, and man, I was pretty wobbly.

I don't remember much about the trip home, Jenny putting me on the bed and taking my shoes off. Next morning my mouth felt like chooks had lived in it and the toothpaste tasted awful. My nose told me that the bacon and eggs Jenny was cooking were not going to agree with my belly either.

“Geez, I hope that's not for me, love. All I want is a bit of bread and a cup of tea. Geez, I'm sorry for getting pissed. That wasn't in my plan. I was enjoying it until I realised I couldn't scratch myself. How did Bruce end up?”

“Albert poured him into the backseat of our car—he's still there. I'm just going to wake him for breakfast.”

Just as Jenny said this, Bruce came through the door, pasty-faced and shaking a bit.

“How did I get here? Don't tell me I drove the truck like that,” he said in horror.

Jen laughed. “No, Albert took it down to the station. We
can go and get it after lunch. He put you in the back seat of the car for me.”

I decided to have the day off to recuperate. Jenny took Bruce into town to pick up the truck and I was looking after Sharon. I had a thumping headache and she wanted to play, so I took her to the beach with her bucket and spade, and I did a bit of fishing.

I spent another two months cutting the flax, but eventually it was all done. Jenny wanted to move on and I thought it was time. We had made a nice little nest egg—just over three thousand dollars—that would hold us up for a while. Saying goodbye to Bruce was hard, and he said he was really going to miss us.

We headed north for a place called Motulka where we decided to give the fruit and tobacco picking a go. Getting work wasn't hard. A bloke just pulled up in a Holden ute and offered us a job picking apples and tobacco. He told us that pickers were so scarce that year that if you had two arms and legs, the growers would kidnap you off the streets. His name was Artie Schmitt and his place was about six miles out of town. The accommodation was in a barracks style of building with a recreation room and a great kitchen. He offered us a dollar an hour to pick the tobacco, which we thought was good, and he said we could negotiate another price when we got to the apples.

Tobacco looks like long skinny pawpaw plants with big wide leaves. Some are as tall as Jenny, but Artie said you only pick the bottom leaves that are turning yellow or any above that are on the turn. We had to pick about a dozen leaves, tie the stalks together, and when we had done two stalks, hang them over a pole on a rack on the trailer. From there they went up to the drying shed.

We had Sharon with us and I was moving free and easy, still fit from the flax. But after about an hour Jenny's back
was killing her, so I did the picking and she came behind and tied up the leaves. That worked much better, except that after a couple of days, both Jenny and Sharon broke out in an itchy rash from the juice of the leaf. So Sharon was banned from touching the leaves and Jenny started wearing rubber gloves.

We were his only pickers at the time as he was still trying to get a crew together. My back was sore from bending over for hours and Jenny's was sore as well just from picking up the leaf. Artie told us he was more than happy with our work and told us to pick slower until we get used to it. Like anything, the first week was the worst and after two weeks wasn't so bad.

One day it was stinking hot and the paddock was right alongside a river. So at smoko I ran straight over to the river bank and jumped in. Well! It was bloody freezing. Man, I mean the Arctic. It took my breath away. I must have picked a ton of the stuff after that just to get warm.

During smoko one day Artie turned up with another four pickers, two girls and two blokes. The boys were Don and Tim and the girls were Carol and Leanne. None of them had ever picked tobacco before, so we showed them how we did it and warned them about sore backs. They paired off and tried our way, and soon got used to it. They were good company. The quarters were full of laughing and skylarking. Sharon had a heap of playmates, and a couple of nights a week we would go down to the White Swan Hotel, widely known as the Dirty Duck.

When the tobacco was finished, we took a month to pick the apples. Then it was tears, swap addresses, and back on the road.

During the next month I planted trees, did release cutting (cutting the undergrowth from around the trees planted last year), and did some high pruning. (You use a saw on a long handle to cut all the branches off the trunk as high as
you can. This gives a straight board with no knots, I was told.) I was also press-ganged into playing rugby union football for Canvasstown—a dot on the map half an hour down the road where the football field is and the nearest pub. I had absolutely no idea how to play the game. I was an Australian Rules man, but I found out that rugby union is sort of similar to rugby league.

“What position do you play?” asked Horrie, the coach.

“Back pocket, full-back or half forward line,” I replied.

“Good Christ! What game is that?”

“Aussie Rules,” I told him. He looked puzzled.

“Do you kick, tackle and pass?” he asked.

I said of course we did.

He tossed me the ball. “Show me a kick?”

So I gave him a dropped punt. I got about sixty yards, and he gave me a stunned look.

“Christ, can you place kick that far?” he asked.

“I suppose so. We don't do a lot of place kickin' in my game,” I said, placing the ball. I knew it would be a good kick as I had the wind behind me, but poor old Horrie nearly fainted when I asked him, “Do I kick it over or under that bar across the goal.” It was pretty weird to me—one set of sticks with a bar across it and no behind posts.

“Kick it over,” he told me in a strangled voice.

I aimed the ball just to the right of the post and the wind took it through nicely.

Horrie was jumping up and down. “You bloody beaut! Now we got a kicker, let's see you pass.” He threw me another ball and told Colin, Donny and Barney to run a back line. I didn't have a clue what he was talking about, until Barney explained. So we took off running down the field, the ball came to me and I hand-balled it back to Colin. Horrie went right off. “You can't thump the bloody ball like that. You got to pass or kick it.”

So I stab kicked a pass up to Barney who had run up the field.

“Christ, you can't do that,” raged Horrie. “He's bloody offside.”

I thought we were going to play football, I said to myself.

“Hang on Horrie. Let me have a yarn to him,” said Eddie. He walked over to me. “What team do you barrack for at home? I'm a Saints man myself. How are they doing? On the ladder I mean.”

“They're on the arse end—haven't done much since they won the pennant. I'm a Bombers man myself, right from the heart of Windy Hill. How come you know about Rules anyway?”

He looked at me and laughed. “I'm from Brighton originally. Yeah, Brighton, Melbourne. I been here about six years now. I played Rules for Altona, in the VFA, before I came over here. Come over to the pub and I'll do my best to give you a knockdown on this game.”

I went and got Jenny and Sharon and we walked up the road to the pub. The pub and the town are left-overs from the gold-rush days. You can still pan specks out of the river, but not enough to make a living. Eddie spent about quarter of an hour explaining the rules of rugby to me—like you can't hand-ball, no passing forward, you must be behind the ball in play all the time, no shepharding, no taking high marks or crash tackles and no using your hands in the scrum and after a tackle you have to play the ball with your foot before you can pick it up.

“Christ! Who invented this game? I'll never remember all that.”

“The Pommies invented it, and you'll be surprised how fast you catch on. Only took me a couple of games.”

So I told him I was game to try. Horrie and the rest of the boys came in and in a wink of an eye the jugs of beer were flowing and Peter was playing the guitar and everyone was singing the old songs—even Sharon was having a warble. The publicans said that they would shout a jug of beer for every try we scored on Saturday.

“Christ, we'll be dry. We haven't won a game all season. Been thrashed every time. We got the Airforce next and they gunna murder us. They're big, fit and fast, we got no bloody hope,” said Rob.

So on Saturday there I was, dressed in my blue and white striped guernsey, black shorts, blue-striped socks, and footy boots. Eddie reckoned I looked the part at least. Horrie told me I was a fullback—at least I knew where that was, and had a vague idea what to do.

“None of your bloody fancy Australian tricks, eh!” said Horrie, as we lined up ready to run on to the field.

We won the toss so we got to kick off. Donny tossed the ball to me, saying, “Kick it across the field. For Christ sake don't kick it out. Place kick it. See Trev? See if you can put it about ten feet in front of him, then go back to your position. Right?”

I did exactly as I was told, and they all took off after the ball and I was left standing there watching. Eddie was on my left about ten feet away. “If the ball comes down here, take it, run as far as you can without being tackled, then kick for the sideline as far up field as you can. But don't put it over their line. Right? If you can't kick, pass it to me—I'll be behind you. Got that?” I was a bit worried about what I'd got myself into. Suddenly there was a tremendous fight going on up front. Everyone was in a big huddle, bodies were flying in and coming out and the umpire was blowing his whistle. Then they got into an organised huddle, and the half-back threw the ball in between them and the Airforce got it. One of the blokes in their row kicked it down to us, so I took a flying mark. I was waiting for the whistle and Eddie screamed “Run”. So remembering what he had told me, I set off and ran ten yards and bounced. “Tweet” went the whistle. “Forward pass,” said the umpire. Horrie was jumping about swearing.