CHAPTER 18
Westward Ho and All Tickets Please
A month before the end of the first term Father O’Long announced he was planning a May Holidays school excursion to Mount Isa. We were to travel by train, he explained, and once there we boys would be billeted with various families of the parish. Among the different outings planned would be a conducted tour of the copper and lead smelters at Mount Isa Mines, though, unfortunately, due to certain restrictions, there’d be no excursion into the underground workings.
A week or so later we were issued with a letter of confirmation for our parents to sign. Besides indicating such things as clothing and pocket money etc required, plus a blanket and pillow for overnight comfort, it stated that no fare payment was necessary. Apparently, in an act of immense generosity, Queensland Railways would be providing us with a carriage free of charge ... for the entire journey.
Both ways.
This came as a shock. Until then I thought I’d had some measure of our parish priest. Now I realised that I’d no understanding whatever of his standing in the social order and the scope of his influence.
And where did one begin? There were no forms for which one might apply, entitled, “Application for the Provision of a Free Passenger Carriage”, and it certainly couldn’t be fixed over a chummy beer with the local Station Master. Nor might one arrange it with some tin-panjandrum in middle management.
No, this would have required the unqualified boon of one of Queensland Railways’ principal gods, enthroned in the more stratospheric levels of their Brisbane Executive Offices.
Our Man of the Cloth moveth amidst the mighty indeed, it would seem; yet keepeth he to himself and employeth he not any herald’s fanfare. Yea, nor bloweth he even his own trumpet.
On the appointed day our parents delivered us to the Ingham Railway Station, all packed, scrubbed and polished and in high spirits.
MOUNT ISA! …Even contemplating it was an adventure – much farther west and you’d come to the edge of the known world. As we waited on the platform the only thing holding our excitement in check was an abundance of parents and their occasional muttered death-threat.
Zack was delighted to be going home for the holidays, of course, and on reaching the station became so super-animated we considered lashing him to the nearest post as a temporary restraint. He seemed to be everywhere at once, chattering away like a runaway gramophone, agonising over irrelevant details and telling us everything about the trip that came into his head.
During the term he’d sort of adopted me as an older brother, something Father O’Long had encouraged. Despite our age differences I found him to be good company. He was a likeable kid, too, and in many ways more knowledgeable and experienced than his tender years might have suggested.
When I first revealed to him the contents of the gun cabinet he knew exactly what he was looking at and could barely contain himself. “A Browning fifty-calibre!” he’d blurted. “I don’t believe it! Gees, Casey! Do the coppers know?
“… and they let you KEEP it?
“But where’dja get it? And will you get it going? Ay; can I help?
“—And what about ammo? Have you got any ammo?!!”
…Looks like you’ve got another budding mercenary-killer on your hands here, Brother SanSistez. Sorry.
No carriage awaited us at the platform, so we assumed it would be arriving with the south-bound express. The only rolling stock there was an ancient looking passenger car and some open freight wagons. All wooden decrepitude and peeling paint they were, mouldering quietly away to themselves on a weedy side track – and so aged that the passenger carriage had windows of the old rattle-up-and-down variety.
What never occurred to us was that this relic of a bygone age could be our actual Palais de Wheels – until the Sunlander arrived, that is. Immediately in front of the guard’s van it was attached – dust, soot, cobwebs, dead beetles and all. It looked like something from a Wild-west picture show.
Levels of expectation were quickly adjusted to fit the new situation, however. All of us knew these old carriages had four-bunk compartments and we’d all assumed we’d be riding in sit-up seats. then suddenly, at the same moment, mass-inspiration hit us. And each had precisely the same thought: we’d bags ourselves a prized upper berth.
Earlier Zack’s mother had insisted I stay with them in Mt Isa, so it was only natural we should work together as a team. Compartments nearest the carriage entrance would be more contested, we realised. Our plan was for Zack to slip through the pack with my overnight bag and race to one farther along the passage, there to occupy a top bunk himself and claim the other with my bag.
He’ be perfect for the job, too, in the same way he nimbled through the bigger boys’ lines during rugby games. And after the Goozie and Sinker incident few were prepared to tackle him with anything more than good-natured vigour.
As a result of all this the leading pretenders had positioned themselves well to the fore. Earlier instructions had been given that we were to act in a civilised manner (a difficult act at the best of times), wait until the guard opened the carriage door and shouted “All aboard” before stepping in.
Too late the poor fellow realised his mistake. At the sound of the word “…aaaaAALL...” he was swept into the carriage by a mass of pent-up boys suddenly released of their pent.
Interestingly, Zack was not among them.
He was master of the situation, however. As the carriage rolled up to the platform he noticed a mid-section window partially open, its glass and wooden shutters up high enough for a skinny kid to wriggle through the gap.
Suddenly his head started jerking, his eyes all wide and rolling about. At first I thought he was having a seizure but then realised: he was signaling me to hang back from the hoi-polloi. “Just chuck me your bag when I sing out and don’t ask no questions,” he muttered from the corner of his mouth.
At the boarding call the competitors all surged forward – except for Zack. He took six paces backward then sprang at the side of the carriage. A moment later his feet disappeared through the narrow opening.
Then his head reappeared. “Quick! Chuck us your bag!” he shouted as he rattled the window full-open. As the bag sailed into the compartment he slammed the window shut again ... and in the general noise and excitement not one of the other boys noticed.
Moments later the melee in the corridor arrived at his compartment. The sliding door slammed open and a mass of wrestling boys tumbled into the room, mostly of the Senior variety. All were struggling enthusiastically in an effort to stake their claim on a top bunk.
Suddenly they stopped wrestling and gaped at Zack in astonishment. He was calmly ignoring them, lounging back perusing the final page of a Phantom comic. In his other hand was an apple core, its stem held delicately by his fingers – a prop he’d arranged quickly to support his picture of long-term occupancy. Its remainder had been quickly bitten off and hidden under the mattress. My overnight bag was in possession of the opposing bunk.
“You little rat!” exclaimed Duffy. “How the hell did you get here?!!”
Zack gestured with the remains of his apple-core. “Phantom move like jungle cat on moonless night,” he said solemnly. “…Watch from high while tribesmen argue.”
There was a sudden rush for the next compartment. “You’ll be watching from on high after I’ve finished with you!” Duffy yelled from the passage.
By the time I’d dragged our bags and blankets through the throng in the corridor Zack was having a lively debate with a new grade nine boy who was trying to refute my claim to the other bunk. He was unhappy about Zack’s tactics, in particular his tactic of using my overnight bag as a proxy but also about his not telling how the coup had been achieved.
Zack was handling it well, explaining to the boy that he was welcome to stay and how we’d be happy to share a top sleeper when not in use during the day. The boy preferred instead to go and find his mates.
Then Sash arrived saying ?
??Didja save us a bunk?” ...closely followed by Doogle who asked the same question. I was able to assure them that, indeed, the bottom beds were vacant and awaiting their presence.
When they left to get the rest of their luggage the grade nine boy returned. His friends’ compartment were full so he’d decided to come back to us.
Discovering we were now full hit a nerve. “Stupid bloody train!” he shouted as he stomped off along the corridor. “Who wants to go on this stupid bloody trip anyway?!”
The fool finished up having to share with three Grade Twelve boys ... all of which left them somewhat less than delighted.
“Hey Casey,” said Sash as he lugged his gear in. “Didja see that drongo stomping up and down the corridor lookin’ for a bunk?”
“Yeah. He tried to get in here earlier, before you came,” I replied.
“But you told him we were full.”
“Course we did,” put in Zack. “Y’ gotta stick up for your mates, ay.” He looked over to me and winked but his expression didn’t change. Sometimes it was impossible to guess what that kid was thinking.
Then Father O’Long and Brother SanSistez arrived. They evicted the boys from the rear compartment and took up residence. Not counting their bunks there was one place to spare, as a number of pupils had been unable to join our expedition. As a result there was no need to impose on our supervisors. The evictees just had to find a vacant bed and accept the company that came with it.
This started a sort of dominoes-effect as firstly the Grade Twelve boys and then other compartments’ roving delegations tried to negotiate more acceptable travelling companions.
“Look, it’s simple,” came Duffy’s voice from the corridor. “Loony shifts to number five and Whacker moves in with you. Then Patterson’s Curse takes Whacker’s bunk and the grade nine kid can have his place.”
“But that means you finish up with the spare bunk.”
“You’d better get used to it,” Duffy replied, using one of Rosie’s stock phrases, “cos that’s the way it’s gunna be.”
(Patterson’s Curse was a grade eight boy. On the second day of school, after addressing the morning assembly, Brother Aufmein had read out each boy’s name and marked the sheet on his clipboard when answered – in case someone had cleared out during the night, I suppose. Anyway, when he came to “Patterson, Kurt”, he read out a typing error which had slightly altered the fellow’s Christian name. The hilarity was eventually brought under control but it left the poor lad branded for life – or that part to be endured at Gower Abbey College, anyway.)
The last few minutes before our departure seemed endless. Numerous return visits to the platform were made to farewell parents and friends again or remind them of something, to visit the toilets or – because of our excitement – to just keep moving.
Eventually the train pulled away from the station, however, and began to gather speed. About then some of the boys decided to explore its length … and were somewhat put out to discover the guard had foreseen this likelihood and had locked the interconnecting door.
“Come on lads,” Father O’Long chided us in a relaxed and good humoured way. “You don’t really imagine the guard would want a horde of over-spirited high school boys running wild up and down the train, do you?”
(—Run wild, Father? ... Us?)
Eventually we settled ourselves and let the earlier excitement give way to the monotony of the trip. Card games were started, books and comics came out and, in the next compartment to ours, a marathon game of Monopoly got under way. To pay “landing-on” debts, Gower Abbey rules allowed either unlimited bank borrowings or credit negotiated with the property owner. The games could go on for weeks.
At Townsville our carriage was shunted aside to await the Mount Isa train, so we went off to trawl the main street for food shops. Back on board our Transport of Delight it was upward into the mountain ramparts and over the Burdekin River; next stop: Charters Towers. There we invaded the platform cafeteria to further provision ourselves against hunger pangs and possible famine. Following this it was onward into the night.
Daylight found us far beyond the Great Dividing Range and trundling across western Queensland’s treeless Mitchell grass plains, so it was back to Page 107 of “The Texas Rangers at the Double A Corral” (or whatever). Options included gazing out the window, lying on the top bunk staring at the paint peeling from the ceiling or watching the Monopoly game next door. All were equally as boring.
After about a thousand years we arrived at the little township of Julia Creek, where we again descended eagerly onto the platform – only to find it lacked a cafeteria. In a bid to prevent wholesale faintings from hunger Father O’Long acquired a key to the train’s connecting doors and allowed us to visit the buffet-car. And then, for some reason, he restricted our delegations by number.
After leaving Julia Creek we came the occasional group of motorists bogged on the dirt road alongside the railway line – the alleged thoroughfare from Mount Isa to Townsville. The area had received recent heavy rains and the town was still playing host to a number of stranded travellers. Some west-bound ones had taken the opportunity to put their cars on the train there and join us for the run through to Mount Isa.
Later in the morning we came to a low-lying area where flooding had completely washed away the rail tracks. Teams of gangers were there in force, urgently re-ballasting and rebuilding the damaged line. We were only the second train to go through since the rain (we learned) and our speed was reduced to a crawl as we negotiated the temporary section.
In due course there came a gradual change to our surroundings, with red gravelly ground replacing the black soil plains. Soon we were travelling through countryside unlike anything I’d seen before: sharp stony hills with reddish wrong-coloured rocks, gaunt little trees with freshly-painted white trunks and hillsides covered with large, round, soft-looking tussocks of grass.
When I commented on them Zack took the trouble to point out, that in no sense whatever should I imagine these so called “tussocks” to be anything approaching what he assumed I meant by the word “soft”.
A short time later we arrived at the Cloncurry railway station, a short distance from town. The train only halted there long enough for passengers to board or disembark, so before long we were moving again – this time in a more south westerly direction.
A couple of hours later we came to a nothingness called Dutchess. After a brief stop the train negotiated a long sweeping turn to the north west, the last leg of our journey to Mount Isa.
Until earlier, when the countryside had changed, the trip had been endured in an atmosphere of resigned boredom. Now, with our destination drawing closer, the air was becoming charged with excitement. All the carriage windows were open as we clattered along, each with a complement of boys looking ahead at the rocky landscape.
On entering the Leichhardt River’s catchment area there came another change. From here to Mount Isa was now pretty much down hill all the way and the train began picking up speed – almost as if sensing the end of its journey.
Then a plume of smoke became visible, far in the distance ahead. It was coming from the Mount Isa smelting works, Zack informed us, though we were still too far from it to see the chimney.
In the Ark of Adventure the excitement heightened.
On approaching the town’s outskirts the train slowed. To our left a low rocky ridge ran parallel with the railway line, on our right lay dusty streets and dusty houses. Some streets had a single lane of bitumen; others were just rutted gravel … more ruts than gravel, too, from what I could see.
Then a giant picture theatre screen drifted by, between us and the ridge. Standing in splendid isolation, it was, like some giant minimalist sculpture, totally without seats or other facilities. The Mines had built it for their workers and families, Zack explained, though anyone could attend without charge. The gravelly red dirt had been covered with clean black sand from the smelting-works, he said, but you had to b
ring your own chairs and blankets to sit on.
Ahead on the same side as the picture screen we could now see the chimney, towering above the mine buildings and the huge steel structures of the copper smelter. Farther off in the distance was a smaller, second chimney belonging to the lead-works.
The Leichhardt River lay out of sight to us from the carriage, its broad dry channel a kilometre or so beyond the houses on the right hand side. This waterway bisects the Mount Isa township, separating (as the locals called the two parts), the town-side from the mine-side.
The last half-kilometre saw us slowing more and more, until the train was just crawling along. On the nearby road some boys on bicycles were taking great delight in speeding past us. We shouted and waved to attract their attention but despite our best efforts none of them fell off.
Onward we crept, over a dry little gully’s minor bridge works, through a level crossing with a line of waiting vehicles each side, past some grimy mine buildings and a string of rail trucks, until, finally, near an open area of ground with a large number of parked cars and people waiting about, we came to a halt.
We had arrived in Mount Isa.
19. The Pink-Cheeked Apparition; and The Cage Full Of Monkeys
There was no actual platform at the station, just a clear area alongside the railway line with a jump of a metre or so to the ground. The guard overcame this inconvenience by lifting a section of floor. Underneath were steps.
We’d earlier agreed that Zack should be the first to alight, so the boys formed a sort of honour guard for him in the corridor. As he made his way to the exit – one bag over his shoulder and lugging the other by its handle – they cheered him on, slapped his back, launched into totally irrelevant congratulatory speeches and blundered about generally, all the while pretending to be helpful but “inadvertently” hindering his passage as much as possible.
I was last in line, at the top of the stairs. When he eventually reached me I gave him a brotherly hug, congratulated him heartily on his triumphant return home and indicated patronizingly the direction he should proceed.
At the bottom step he turned back. I didn’t hear what he said, however, for at that exact moment a stentorian scream rent the air and an instant later he was engulfed by a vast, wandering tropical garden. It filled the doorway briefly then sucked him from the carriage, bags and all.
It was Zack’s mother, a huge woman wearing a brightly coloured floral and foliage cotton-print dress of her own creation. She had a round happy face with a multitude of chins and a retinue of equally happy-looking bare-footed waifs. These ranged in age from the ten year old Jessica, to Cecily, who was three – Zack’s younger brothers and sisters.
In due course I joined them. When Zack introduced us she said in a voice that matched her stature: “Just call me Ma, luvvey. Everyone else does. And it’s wonderful to meet you.” She wobbled with delight as she shook me via my hand.
“Zack has told me so much about you in his letters; how you helped him to settle in and… Cecily, come here! I was really worried about the poor little tyke, too, going all that way by himself, not knowing anyone there or having anyone to turn to and… Get back here, Cecily! …But all along the Good Lord had someone waiting there to take him under his wing and… Cecily, get back here at once. Jessica for goodness sakes go and get Cecily before she…
“No Cecily, that’s the Gent’s, you can’t go in there. Trevor, get Cecily please, there’s a good boy. Brian will you stop putting stones on the railway line before...”
“...I’ll go and get the rest of our things, Mrs Reiff,” I said, and quickly retreated to the carriage. When I returned she was still trying to muster her errant children, while at the same time talking to Father O’Long.
Father was trying desperately to interrupt her and make his own escape. “Please do excuse me, Mrs Reiff,” I heard him say through her happy cascade of words, “I really should go and look for my host. He’s probably at the other end of the train somewhere, looking for me.”
Attendee vehicles seemed to be parked anywhere and everywhere. After collecting our belongings Zack led me through them this way and that until coming to a dusty-looking wrecked Ford Customline sedan – no hubcaps, half-baldy tyres, scarred doors, damaged panels, areas of rust and patches of undercoat showing through what remained of its black paint.
I couldn’t believe it! This … thing … was their car! By comparison our old school bomb seemed a testimonial to regular care and maintenance.
Zack went to the boot and unwound the fencing wire holding it closed, then took a broom handle from inside and propped the door open so we could load our bags. As he wired it shut again his siblings arrived en-mass and scrambled into the rear seats.
Then Ma Reiff swept up and I wondered if I was expected to drive, as she went straight to the front passenger’s-side door. I needn’t have worried, though; on getting in she slid across behind the steering wheel. This set the car rocking vigorously but it quickly settled down – with a pronounced list to starboard.
She started the engine. “Come on, luvvey,” she said to me happily. “Jump in and we’ll get you back to the house.” Zack and I made ourselves comfortable alongside her as she graunched the transmission into gear. “It’s the door lock, luvvey,” she explained. “Jasper hasn’t had time to fix it so he bolted it shut.”
As we drove across a little bridge and made our way through the main part of town I noticed lots of other things Jasper hadn’t had time to fix. A noisy exhaust plus the cacophony of squeaks squawks oinks and rattles issuing from the car’s bodywork was like a travelling orchestral rendition of extremist experimental music.
About then I realised that many of the other vehicles I’d seen appeared in a similar condition to this one, even some of the more recent models. Perhaps Mount Isa was where they brought cars to die, I thought, like a sort of automotive “elephant’s graveyard”.
Suddenly the sealed road became bone pulverizing corrugations, the hammering and shaking so violent that a traumatic reduction of the car to its component parts seemed inevitable – the bodywork and engine noise plus the screams and shouts issuing from the riot in the rear now almost deafening.
Ma Reiff ignored it all. After a half kilometre she turned onto a slightly less corrugated side track, then followed its meanderings across an area of vacant land until coming to the ramshackle remains of a small house.
No street existed here, nor were there any immediate neighbours, though a fence of sorts defined the front limits of the property (…or the impression of a fence, anyway, its sometimes-two, sometimes-three strands of wire drooping from one bent steel picket to another). Alongside it on the bare ground half a dozen weary-looking oleanders clung grimly to life.
The house behind it was unlike anything I had seen before: a tired, weather beaten, timber framed fibro structure with an aging, rust spotted corrugated iron roof. Later observations revealed it had three internal rooms and enclosed verandas front and back. The internal wall-frames were clad one-side-only with fibro sheeting, leaving exposed noggins to become narrow shelves. External walls were also one-sided fibro, with the verandas’ upper halves having wire-screened open windows.
Ma Reiff drove to the rear and parked in the shade of some gum trees. As the car stopped moving its back doors were flung open and three small grubby boys tumbled out and made their escape, followed moments later by the three girls.
“Come on luvvey,” their mother said as she switched off the engine. “Let’s get you inside. We’ll find you a cold drink and get you settled.”
Zack stepped out and went to the car boot, where he began undoing the wire to retrieve our luggage. I followed him out and Ma Reiff slid across behind me to make her own exit. “Don’t you worry about your ports and things,” she added as she closed the door. “I’ll fix all that.”
In the house she directed me to the table. “You just sit down and make yourself comfortable,” she said as she went to the fridge and filled a
large glass with lemonade. She then opened a cake tin and sliced some of its fruit cake, put the slices onto a plate and put the plate and the drink in front of me. “You just help yourself luvvey,” she said. “I’ll go and organise everything.”
Zack arrived as she departed. He sat down and helped himself to a piece of cake. “Our luggage is on the veranda,” he said to her back. Just then his three brothers burst in. They mounted a quick and riotous assault on the cake plate then just as rapidly disappeared with their plunder.
Zack had defended his own portion with practiced skill. “Don’t worry about them,” he said, noting the dazed expression on my face. “They’re always like that. I’ll just get you some more from the tin.”
In addition to her big wood fired stove and the usual fixtures and furnishings, Ma Reiff’s kitchen-cum-dining room had a large, well-worn sofa at the opposite end to the stove. This was liberally sprinkled with dolls, toy trucks and various other children’s playthings, suggesting it served as an indoor playground – and as a trampoline, judging from the state of its remaining covering. A once matching side chair alongside it was half buried in towels, children’s clothing, pyjamas and other items of freshly washed laundry.
On the long wall opposite the back veranda was the door to Ma Reiff’s bedroom and, next to that, another door to a second bedroom. That one was mostly used for storage, I later learned.
The children’s beds occupied the entire front veranda. It also had a hardwood front door which was never used.
The bathroom was at one end of the back veranda. Leaning on its side in a corner was a large portable galvanized-iron bathtub and suspended at door height near the middle of the room was a shower head. Other bathroom furnishings included a wooden chair plus a cupboard and enamel hand-basin.
All of the associated pipeworks were attached to the outside wall. This faced west, which meant they were exposed to the afternoon sun. As a result, depending on the weather, the time of day and the time of year, the shower would either be cold or absolutely scalding.
Hot bath water was produced by a wood fired “chip heater”. This stood immediately outside the bathroom, its product delivered to the tub via a short outlet protruding through a hole in the wall. Both tub and shower drained into the yard through a ground-level hole in the wall.