CHAPTER ONE
– THE OUTBACK ITCH –
When Fred Nurk first thought of the idea he was convinced he was on to a winner.
Unlike other ideas he had come up with in the past he was certain this one would run and run.
The thing was that that was exactly what happened – it did run and run, right down the drain.
Flushed away.
But rather than a negative it was a positive.
It was something he not only expected but something he hoped and prayed would happen. If that was not the result then he would have had another bummer to his credit.
Bummer.
He had smiled at the time.
How appropriate.
Fred first had the idea when he had been on one of his exploring holidays, this time when he had decided to see the real Australia, the Outback, and had gone into the bush.
He had been to Sydney and seen the Opera House and to Perth and joined the sailing set for a day and to Brisbane where he just lounged about in the city’s pedestrianised mall in shorts and flip flops and still did not feel out of place or underdressed. He had also been north to the Atherton Tableland and the rain forest and out to a couple of the Barrier Reef islands where the water was so crystal clear you didn’t have to don diving gear to see the multicoloured fish grazing a few meters below the surface.
But he had not been to the Outback, that dry part of the continent where cattle stations were the size of townships in England, parts of which were so remote that cattle called brumbies had never seen a man. Or where rain was a rarity and where flocks of kangaroos were so numerous they could change the colour of the landscape from a distance. Locomotives crossed the country from east to west and back again that were so long three or sometimes four engines were needed to haul the vast number of laden carriages behind.
So Fred looked at the map and poked a pin with one eye shut into it, gently guiding it somewhat towards the centre rather than the coast.
Duaringa. What was Duaringa he wondered? But he didn’t wonder for long and it was only two days later that he had hired a small sedan and from the Central Queensland city of Rockhampton headed west for a bit over a hundred kilometres until the aptly named Capricorn Highway led him to the small town of Duaringa which had a population of five hundred. Five hundred and one now that he had arrived.
Duaringa was reputed in some circles, though it was not accepted as the official derivation, to have got its name from the aboriginal language used in the area. Djiaringe was said to mean turn oneself around and no sooner had Fred turned into what was intended as the main street he reckoned he had a clear understanding of what the aborigines must have meant.
He quickly realised also that the town was not blessed with a plethora of businesses. There was a police station and courthouse, an ambulance station, a hotel, post office and newsagents, one primary school, three churches, a sports complex and a library. It was an eclectic mix to say the least.
Reading his guide book Fred saw that it previously had a general store and a butcher shop but both had closed down, and there was also a railway station but apart from the platform it hadn’t been used for years.
But what Duaringa did have some claim for was that it was a significant centre for aboriginal peoples and there was a reservation at a place called Bundingo a few hours drive further west. It was home to around a thousand people, a very high proportion of them aged under eighteen. Bundingo too had the reputation for being the most violent indigenous community in Queensland with a hospitalisation rate for assault more than forty times the state average.
Fred was excited at the prospects that lay before him and he did not have to think twice about his next move and three hours later as the sun was disappearing over the horizon he turned off the rutted dirt track masquerading as a road onto a narrower dirt track that was intended to be nothing more than that and soon after pulled up in front of one of the numerous wood sheds he saw dotted around the place. He would soon learn that the sheds were in fact houses shared by aborigine families. He could see no-one but he could make out a flickering light coming from around the corner of the shed where he had parked and he could hear what sounded like laughter as well.
When he walked around the corner with his expensive Leica slung over his shoulder he could not at first believe his eyes. About thirty meters ahead of him was a bed sheet mounted on a wooden frame and black and white images flickered and danced across it. For the life of him he could not recall fully the name of the film that was being projected onto the sheet from a whirring open reel in front and to one side of where he was standing, but he thought it was about an absent minded professor because something in the back of his mind helped him recognise that the lead character was a hugely successful but hardly attractive actor at the time called Fred MacMurray. Maybe it was because of the similarity of their names that he thought of it.
But he didn’t dwell on the thought because he noticed almost at once that between him and the sheet was a sea of human backs. There was a mass of people sitting on chairs and benches and on the ground or standing with arms crossed, balancing on one leg with the foot of the other tucked up against the upright knee. There must have been more than a hundred aborigines, out in the open air, watching an American made film being shown on a makeshift screen.
Suddenly the screen went black and there was a flapping as the reel of film rattled around the cylinder. A shout went up and heads turned in his direction. The shouts were followed by just about every one of the people, young and old, in front of him standing as if by a single instruction. They all just stared at him. The flapping of the film did not stop. Round and round it went as two hundred very round white eyes focussed on Fred in the gloom.
“Do you want something?” came a voice from nearby.
Fred saw that it was an old black man who had been running the projector. He still did not stop the film clicking and clicking in monotonous sounds.
“What do you want?” said the man again.
“Um, I just drove in,” answered Fred lamely. “I mean I’m on holiday from England. I just came by.”
“You came here for a holiday?” replied the old man. “You’re mad. What do you want?”
To cut a long explanation short Fred explained his motives and the old man whose name was Benjamin Thompson in turn reported his findings to the crowd that had edged closer. He then casually replaced the reel of film with another one, flicked a switch and again as if by a single hand instruction everyone sat down or stood and watched intently as the whirring started up and images again appeared on the sheet.
Again to cut a long conversation short Benjamin Thompson told Fred he could spend the night in one of the sheds, or houses, but that he would have to leave the next day because the state authorities did not take kindly to strange white visitors from England turning up unannounced in the middle of the night and bedding down among the community, a community that sometimes had a problem with illicit drink and brawling and among whom were a number of nubile young aboriginal girls.
A number of hours later the countryside was quiet. There was not a sound apart from snoring coming from different regions in the shed where Fred was bedded down in his sleeping bag, his Leica tucked down at his feet. He had no option but to leave his car locked with some of his belongings in the trunk but his trusty camera he kept with him at all times because he didn’t want to loose the many visual records of his worldly travels.
It was around midnight that he woke with a start and felt a rumbling in his lower regions. It was a deep rumbling and he knew where it came from and why it was there.
Old Benjamin Thompson had been generous and offered him some dried meat on a skewer as they finished watching the movie. Fred thought it was probably kangaroo meat and happily washed it down with a mug of water. It was only after that the old man told him it was not kangaroo but goanna. Goanna is one of a variety of carnivorous reptiles in Australia and he knew now that while they liked to eat meat they certainly did not like to be eaten by inexperienced white men from across the oceans.
Fred bounded out of bed and headed for the door of the shed. Outside he looked around anxiously for where he might rid himself of the rumbling and the internal avalanche he could feel was about to burst free.
In the near distance he saw a shed about six feet tall and about four feet wide. The outdoor toilet. For sure it had to be what the true Aussie called the dunny. In less than a minute he was perched over, not exactly sitting on, a makeshift circular wooden rim over a large drum while his bowels opened and the entire contents of his stomach gushed forth.
It was relief he had not experienced the likes of before.
When he was done he looked about him. The only paper was a bunched up role of newspaper and he used three whole pages to make himself presentable. He then returned to his sleeping bag and with a huge sigh of relief went back to sleep.
The morning saw the sun rise as it always did in east, the golden rays piercing through the gum trees dotted around the reservation and between the wooden houses. It had been a fresh night but the morning was bright gold and warm.
Not at all like Fred’s bottom which was hot and red. It resembled a baboon in every way except for the itch. For Fred the itch was unbearable. It made him understand more clearly why a dog will sometimes drag its arse along the grass in such a strange and odd fashion. If he had been alone and there had been a grassy patch somewhere he would consider doing likewise.
Instead he tried to rationalise what had caused the problem and it came to him that it had to be a combination of the goanna and the newspaper he had used in the dunny to scrape his bottom clean. The pressure of rough newspaper with cheap ink printing on his tender anus had left it raw and burning.
Fred did not know it at the time but it was a blessing. It would be the beginning of something so wonderful and so rewarding that he would happily go back to Bundingo time and time again and sit in the outdoor dunny and wipe his behind with old newspaper and put up with the incredibly irritating itching and burning.