My life story, Henry J Macey [books for 20 year olds .TXT] 📗

town I had imagined.  I had seen the film, read the book, but it did not fit the picture I had in my mind.  Looking like any other outback town, with tin-roofed buildings lining the road.  And larger, old colonial-style two-storey building, with overhanging roofs and balconies, stood in the centre of the town.

 

The wide main street with cars and open-backed ute’s, parked noses to the curb mostly outside the hotel.  Parked with them, was a Bells station wagon and Ute.  I found somewhere to park and entered the hotel.  I did not know who I was looking for, but one word shouted had someone waving at me, {BELLS!}.  He asked me where I had parked, I was told to leave it there and go and fetch my overnight things, as they would book me into the hotel.  In the morning we would all go out to the campsite, together.

 

I had left Perth Monday morning; it was now Thursday evening, four long hot days later.  I was ready for a night in a proper bed and a cool air-conditioned room, instead of a sleeping bag on top of the truck roof.  Now don’t get me wrong, I liked to sleep out in the open.  The sky at night in the outback is so clear, you feel as if you can touch the stars.  Normally there are so many stars, you don’t see because of light pollution.  But out there in the bush they are so bright, it is never really dark.

 

All Bells solo drivers were issued with a swag, a seven-foot square of waxed canvas.  With six-foot-long by two and a half foot wide, by two-inch-thick foam mattress.  A sleeping bag, pillow and two leather belts.  There was a rack on the back of the cab, to store it.

 

Early breakfast and I was on my way, on the last leg of this trip.  Just one hundred and forty miles, to just South of Ti-Tree.  Here halfway between Alice and Tennant Creek, was to be the campsite.  I said, was to be, because at the moment there was nothing, just a large front-end loader.  A small hut, a tent and some pegs in the ground.  They had marked out the camp, as to where to put the units.

 

The camp boss told me that the company’s jet would be in on Tuesday with eight men.  I could fly back in it, or there would be trucks arriving from now on.  I could go back with one of the driver’s, and shear the driving. I said the plane if you don’t mine.  He asked, “can you drive that thing?” pointing to the cat 966 loader.  I replied I have never driven one that big, I had driven a JCB when I worked on SWEB but I was no expert.  Near enough he said, play with it for an hour then we will see if we can get some work done, and walked away.

 

The first job he wanted was an unloading ramp, a gentle slope to four feet deep the dirt piled on top at the deep end then graded back.  With no crane, we had to drag the units off of the trailers and pull them into place with the loader.  The units had large skids, attached for this purpose.  Next a deep pit, some distance away from the camp with ramps either end, the dirt to be piled on the side nearest the camp to house the generator unit.  Then there was to be a pit for the fuel tank, which had to be buried to keep it cool.

           

As I was finishing the generator pit, three trucks pulled in each loaded with units.  We backed the first trailer down the ramp.  I hooked the chains onto the first unit and pulled the generator into its pit.  On the same trailer was a twenty-foot chill room, loaded with all types of stores from potatoes to beer, its small engine running to keep the right temperature.  It was dragged into its pegged out position.

 

The second trailer held the dining room, it to was positioned parallel to the chill room some ten feet from it.  Now came the cookhouse or galley, forty feet long, one end was the servery.  Then a large deep-freezer, and at the other end, it's engine also running.  It was pulled across the ends of the dining and chill rooms.  Some side panels were removed from the galley, and then both chill and dining rooms were pushed until they locked into the galley.  Soft rubber buffers on the ends sealed the units.

 

The main part of the camp was now set-up.  There would be thirty living units in all, each with five single rooms.  Also, there would be shower and toilet units.  Two living units had arrived and in the failing light were pulled into their allotted position.  It was now after five, the generator was working and hooked up to the galley.

 

The cooks were busy preparing a meal; John the camp boss was well pleased with the way things had gone.  As we were eating our meal he ordered a carton of beer and put it on Bell’s tab.

 

Saturday we awoke to find three trucks with units that had crept in overnight, we unloaded them before breakfast, as we had been told we were all going to Alice for the festival.  In Alice, I watched camel, and donkey racing.  Also, sheep with rag dolls, tied onto their backs as jockeys, were raced.

 

But the highlight of the day I was told would be the boat race.  I laughed when I heard this.  “Where,” said I “in the swimming pool,” “no,” said they “in the river.”  The river or creek was bone dry, it looked like there had not been water in it, for years.  I got up, and walked away still laughing, and came across a happy bunch of Jackaroos.  (Australian cowboys.)

I got talking to one of them; they had come in from their station a hundred miles away for the day’s festivities.  When I told him that my friends, had tried to tell me there would be a boat race here in the river today.  He smiled and said, “that’s right sport; there are the boats down there.”  I looked to where he was pointing and saw the row of gaily-painted hulls.  I shook my head in disbelief grinning I said, “no water.”  He leaned forward and called out, “Hay Jack’O this bloke reckons there's no water in the creek.”

 

A battered Australian bush hat leaned out of the crowd.  Under it, an ebony face, with a flat nose, and two bloodshot eyes looked at me.  Then the face split into a grin, a grin that would never be used on a toothpaste advert.  “That’s because him white feller, only people in touch with mother earth can see the water.

 

The rainbow serpent, (mythical serpent from the Aborigine Dreamtime) lives upriver he drinks all the water.  When he pees, it becomes Dreamtime water.  You can’t see it but you can feel it, you walk into the creek and see.”  I just sat there, I had fallen for some things in my life, but I was not falling for this.  He got up, picking up the cool box beside him as he did so.

 

Walking into the creek he shivered, saying how cold the water was.  Then tilting the container, he made to force it under the surface to fill it.  He then staggered up to me, straining under its imagery weight.  I sat there with a silly grin, knowing full well that it was empty.  When the deluge came, it took me completely by surprise.  The shock of it left me spluttering and gasping for breath.  The water was so cold it still had ice cubes in it, plus some beer bottle labels.  I had fallen for the, ‘not as empty as you thought trick.’

 

All around me people were standing clapping, and roaring with laughter.  Some, (my new found Bells work-mates,) were rolling on the ground in hysterics.  It seemed I had become part of the day’s entertainment, but I can tell you this.  I bet I was at that moment, the coolest dude in Alice.

 

When the crews for the big race stepped into their hulls, they knelt down and pulled, what looked like braces over their shoulders.  Then holding the framework, which held the two sides together.  They stood as one hoisting the framework, off the ground revealing their legs.  Walking to the start, they formed up in line.  A gun was fired, and off they went.  The crowd went wild, shouting encouragement to their favourite crew.  Don’t ask me the rules; I don’t think there are any.  I don’t know if the winning crew was the one who past the finish line first.  Or the one, who sank the most, boats.  One boat finished in two, the stern twenty feet in front of the bow.  It came in fourth and sixth.

 

By Tuesday morning most of the camp was complete.  I was to drive a Ute to the airstrip, followed by the station wagon.  The men arriving on the plane would use it to carry their gear back to the camp.  As I was tossing my swag into the Ute, John came up to me to say goodbye.  He asked me if I wanted to change my mind, and stay to work with him.  He had said he would give Jane a job in the camp, and the boys could go to school in Alice.  At the interview to Immigrate Jane, she had said she wanted to go to Alice Springs, but I did not think she would like the heat.  I thanked him again, saying I would talk to Jane about it.

I arrived at Bell’s yard that afternoon and reported to Owen that I was back.  He told me to have a couple of days off he would ring me when he needed me.  Getting into my car I drove to Graylands, just in time for tea.  I had been away for eight days it seemed like a month.

 

On the Friday following my return from Alice, I was in the yard helping to load a freezer when I was called to the office.

 

“I need someone to take the beast to Alice Springs, the driver was due to go on Sunday but has rung in sick,” said Owen.  (The Beast was a three-axle drive, R700 long nose Mack low loader unit with a V’IO 600 HP Detroit diesel engine.)

 

“You will be taking the big twin-engine scraper, the operator will drive the service van to act as escort.”  I went to check the truck out; the scraper had already been loaded onto the five-axle sixty-foot trailer.  The wheels of the scraper were on outriggers as the scraper was fourteen feet wide.  A two-axle gooseneck dolly and a two-axle swan neck dolly were between the trailer and the unit.  That made it a fourteen-axle rig.  I had never seen the size of it before let alone driven one.  To say I was apprehensive would be putting it mildly, but one of the low-loader drivers said just steer it the rest will follow.  As I could only drive during daylight hours, we left the yard at sunup on Sunday.  A convoy consisting of three low-loaders was leaving on Monday carrying two D8 Dozers and a grader.  We had full days start on them, but they would catch us up somewhere along the way.

 

There would be no shortcut through the lakes this time and the slower speed meant it would take me longer to get there.  I had crossed into South Australia before I saw the others creeping up on me.  We all parked for the night at Iron Knob, just short of Port Augusta.  In the morning they set off before me, saying they would see me in Coober Pedy.

 

As I pulled into the pub car park I noticed one of the low-loaders was empty.  The grader was missing and there where no drivers to be