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

Once a week there was a contract with "Avon Calling," to deliver their goods door to door. Starting in the wee small hours we would muster at the railway station to await the train. Then load the boxes of cosmetics for a given area. Then race around trying to get back to the station for another load.

 

That was the hardest part of the job. You had to start with a run that was not too far from the station, but that was controlled by the chap who handed out the jobs so you had to become his friend. The trouble is; everybody was his friend!  So you had to be his dearest friend, and that cost you money.

 

I had a towbar fitted to the truck, so I could pull a box trailer. It doubled my carrying capacity on light loads; the tow bar also brought a new dimension to my work. A friend had a caravan and a boat. He wanted to take both to Albany for a two-week holiday. I said I would tow the caravan if he covered the fuel.

 

To make it pay for the day it took me; I got a load for the truck. As I would be going on Friday morning, I would have the caravan on-site and set up when he got there late Friday night. When I arrived at the caravan site, I booked the caravan in under my friend's name and was directed to his pitch. The owner of the site came over and asked if the caravan was mine.

 

I told him that I was just delivering it from Perth. The owner would be down late tonight. He then asked if I would be returning to Perth. I said yes after I had delivered the load I had on the truck. He asked me to return to the Caravan Park on my way out, as he might have a job for me. I returned to Perth towing a caravan from his park that someone had to leave behind because his car had developed clutch problems. I received quite a number of jobs from him, towing new caravans to his site from Perth.

 

The truck came in handy in another aspect. I had quite an array of thick foam sheets. These were used to protect the goods I carried, from washing machines to three-piece settees and other weird and wonderful things.

 

Roy Bell, his two sons and I plus my three boys liked to fish. We would throw the patio table and chairs in the back of the truck, along with the portable Barbie. The boys and Roy would ride in the back, the wives upfront with me. Then we would drive a hundred miles or so to a place a friend had shown us.

 

It was a lovely spot, miles of empty beach and sand dunes, miles off the main road, along with a bush track that was hardly visible. At times they all had to climb out to push the truck through soft patches. But it was well worth it, to spend a few days out with friends, fishing, eating and sleeping out in the open air. Mind you had to be friendly for we all slept in the back of the truck.      

 

Jane's best fares were Aborigines. She ran a book where they would run up a tab, paying Jane when they got their money on Thursdays. One old Aborigine woman made a regular booking with Jane to run her down to Bunbury once a month to see her grandchildren. It was a round trip of 200 miles. Jane had her share of bad fares too. A drunken Aborigine climbed into her cab and passed out. He did not have the time to tell her where he wanted to go. Jane pulled up at a group of Aborigine men, asked if they knew him so she could take him home.

 

They did not know where he lived, so they pulled in from the cab asking Jane how much he owed her. When they had set him up against the wall, one of them went through his pockets and paid her.

 

One day Jane was sitting on the taxi rank outside the railway station in Armadale. A well-dressed man got into the car, saying he wanted to hire it for the day. He was a politician from Geraldton. He had come down to see some of his constituents that had moved down to Perth. He was the only fare she had that day and he insisted on buying her lunch.

 

 

 

One fare that frightened Jane happened as she was about to go off duty. She was on her way home around five at night, just before the sun was about to set. She was asked if she could do one last job, as there was no one around to do it.

 

There was a fare at the Kelmscott Hotel and it was local. She agreed to do it but it would have to be the last and they had to tell me. I was home with the boys waiting for her to return as I had her dinner ready. About fifteen minutes after they had rung me, I got a second phone call to say Jane had called in with a "code 13". This meant she was in trouble; she had changed her channel to 13 and locked the call button down. Back at taxi control, they could monitor her on another set, but still, co-ordinate the rest of the fleet to get to her.

 

They could hear him swearing at her and threatening to kill her if she tried to take him back there. Where "there" was we did not know or care, Jane's safety was all we had in mind at present. Having got Isabel to look after the boys, I went out in my taxi truck to join in the hunt for Jane. In the meantime, Jane had kept up a running commentary on her whereabouts, by talking to her passenger.

 

She was saying things like "this is the second time we have passed the Kelmscott Hotel" and "we are heading towards Armadale again". When she saw that she was being followed by a line of taxis, she said she was going to pull into Hungry Jacks as she was hungry. He could then make up his mind as to where he wanted to go.

 

As Jane pulled into the car park it was full of taxis; she had just enough room to park. As she stopped she was out of the car and running, she need not have bothered. As she got out, twelve taxi drivers were climbing in to drag him out. They had him by his arms and legs, it was a wonder they did not tear him in half for they were pulling from both sides of the car.

 

It turned out he had been sent to the alcoholic Rehabilitation Centre just outside of Kelmscott to dry out. He had got out and did not want to go back. In his drunken state, he had threatened Jane not to try to take him back there. There was a 14" adjustable spanner in my toolbox, its new home was in the pocket of the driver's door.

 

On one of our rare nights off Jane and I went into Perth for a night out. On the way home, we had called around to Black and White Taxi Control to pay our taxi dues. The taxi firm had contracts with several nightclubs; one called Knight Club had rung for a cab to take one of their entertainers to his hotel in Cannington.

 

It was such a busy night there was not a single taxi free. As we would be going past Cannington on our way home to Kelmscott, we offered to take the fare. It turned out to be Jimmy Edwards.

 

 

HIGH SPEED

 

Perth City is always busy; it is the hub of life for those who live in its outlying suburbs. All roads radiate from its centre like the spokes of a wheel to link the outer rim, of this great City of light the home of the sandgroper.

 

 To the west, the Stirling Hwy links the city with the harbour town of Fremantle. The Great Eastern Hwy runs out though Midland to Southern Cross then onto the gold mining town of Kalgoorlie then on to the eastern states of Australia. At Midland the Great Northern Hwy begins, taking the inland route to Port Headland though gold fields and iron ore mines, it ends in the Northern Territory.

 

Albany Hwy runs south thorough Cannington Maddington Gosnells Kelmscott and Armadale before leaving the outer city limits. The Albany Hwy is a very busy road; it has two lanes in both directions for its entire length from Perth to Armadale. Princess Margaret Hospital for children is in Subiaco just northwest of the city, it is twenty miles from Kelmscott taking over an hour in normal traffic.

 

I did it in twenty minutes with the child of a friend who was going into a diabetic comer. Jane was driving the cab; I was doing a local job in the taxi track. Jane had a call to go to a friends house in a hurry when she got there the child was showing signs of parsing out into a diabetic comer she had to be rushed to Princess Margaret's.

 

They had telephoned for an ambulance but were told it would be sometime before it would be available. Jane called the taxi controller on her radio for me to meet her on the highway to take over. This I did then leave my truck was it was, we headed for the Hospital at high-speed lights flashing. The controller informed me he had contacted the police they would meet me on the route and give me an escort.

 

I had no trouble as I pasted though Gosnells and Maddington, but as I approached Cannington the roads became quite heavy with traffic. By the carousel shopping centre an idiot pulled out in front of me to slow me down, he changed lanes as I tried to pass him on the inside and offside.

 

The lights turned red at the Welshpool road intersection, as we stopped he looked back at me sticking his fingers up in the air. I had no time to bother with him I was to busy blasting my horn and waving at the motorcycle policeman heading the other way lights and siren going. He must have been given the discretion of my cab for as soon as he saw me he turned to come up beside me. Did he ask Princess Margaret's? When I said yes he pulled forward, beside the car that had been blocking me.

 

Telling him to pull the **** out of the way, he gunned his bike and we were off on a high-speed run through the streets of Perth.

 

At the roundabout, to the causeway across Heirisson Island, a bewildered motorist got a kick in his door, from the policeman when he failed to move out of the way fast enough. Every traffic light along Adelaide and St Georges Tec was on the green with a policeman at each intersection, we were doing eighty plus though the heart of the city. Swinging right at the top of St Georges Tec then left into