but at that time I was being given the benefit of the doubt. No-one was more surprised than me. It felt good.’
‘Yeah, you were keeping your nose clean all right,’ Allan growled. ‘Wasn’t that about the time you got Anne and me tangled up in one of your “get-rich-quick” schemes you mongrel?’
‘You fly with the crows and you’ll get shot with ‘em!’ Roy laughed out loud.
‘We weren’t flying with anyone,’ Allan growled again. ‘We were just going on a simple fishing trip with our loving in-law, who turned out to be an out-law and could have had us sent us to gaol!’
‘You worry too much,’ Roy grinned.
I realised after a few days’ yarning in the crab camp that for most of his life Roy had been a nomad. He had to be in a place where he could do his own thing well away from the prying eyes of the law, which meant that Roy worked and loved on the fringe of society. These frontier areas were also where large numbers of the Aboriginal population lived so it was only natural that Roy, and others of his ilk, sought companionship with indigenous women. This situation was accepted by both races.
‘Like most young blokes, I had lots of one night stands,’ Roy continued with a grin. ‘I didn’t get serious with the girls until I settled in Broome. I’d shacked up with Joanna Kelly for six months before Angie James and I got together. When I headed for Darwin, Angie had a new boyfriend, so I knew my daughter Josephine would be looked after. I found myself in a sort of a Catch 22 situation. I couldn’t take my daughter with me because Angie was staying, but I couldn’t stay near her either because I’d been run out of Broome.
‘Being the adorable stud that I was, I wasn’t alone for very long! In Darwin I soon won the heart of a local lass in Shirley Shepherd and, over the next few years, we had two kids – Lloyd and Betty. My family was growing but all I could afford to live in was a caravan on a scrubby block. It got stinking hot in the dry season and leaked like a sieve in the wet, but we were fairly happy.
‘I’ve always liked a challenge so I soon had two wives on the go. My fatal charm I guess. It sure kept me fit. While I was living with Shirley I got tangled up with Marjorie Horrell and we had a swag of kids. Junior, Lisa and Sharon all hit the ground over the next few years. We had a few others but Marjorie fostered them out. I was having enough trouble keeping two wives and five kids so fostering seemed to be the best option. Between fishing a few nights a week to feed the tribe and spending time with each wife, it was a busy time in my life. I don’t know how these blokes overseas get on with heaps of wives. Two was enough.
‘Both the girls knew about each other, but as long as I kept them apart and looked after them both well, life was sweet. This took a bit of doing at times in a town where everyone knew each other, but it made my love life fairly exciting. Darwin in those times was a bit of a shanty town so we blended in well.
‘I’d been in town for about a year and had tried working for a living but my record meant that real jobs were never going to last. I loved the town and the lifestyle and all I wanted from the police was a bit of peace and quiet. I knew I wouldn’t get that if I spent all my time in Darwin. I’d talked to the locals and they had stories about the big barramundi that were out in the Mary River. I knew a lot about fishing down south but I knew nothing about Top End fishing. I reasoned that it couldn’t be a lot different and, if nothing else, it would get me out of sight of the coppers.
‘There was no such thing as Kakadu in those days. It was just a big area of scrub and mosquitoes where nobody wanted to go apart from a few diehard fishermen and buffalo shooters. So I started going off fishing with a line. That was legal as long as you fished in saltwater creeks or saltwater arms. Legally you weren’t allowed to drop a line in the freshwater parts of the tidal rivers or in the inland billabongs. I’d take one of my wives and kids with me, or a mate, and we’d travel out one day and camp overnight. We’d fish that night and early the next morning before returning home with our catch. It certainly was a beautiful part of the world and it felt good to be earning a quid legally – well, almost.
‘On our first few trips we got 3/6 for fillets and 2/6 for whole fish. This was just before the dollar changeover in 1966 and it wasn’t bad money. Especially as it was all cash and I’ve always been a lousy book-keeper!
‘With no-one to keep an eye on me I fished the freshwater where all the fish were – which turned me into a poacher. I had plenty of outlets in and around Darwin which would quietly buy my fish but as I didn’t have a fishing licence, the marketing of my illegal fish was illegal as well. This minor detail never worried me because I’ve always reckoned that illegal is only a sick bird.
‘I didn’t really know what I was doing, so my fishing wasn’t very successful. But it used to put a bit of tucker on the table for my families and give me plenty of cash in my pockets. It was a quiet and unobtrusive start but I learnt to find my way around the area and all the tricks to catching barra. Like the fish – I was hooked!
‘At this stage,’ Roy confessed, ‘I was only really poaching part-time. Before I went on to full-time poaching I found myself tangled up in a couple of drug crops. I’ve always hated drugs, it’s never been my thing, not even alcohol, but as I was living outside the law the lure of a quick buck was irresistible.
‘I had a few mates who had dabbled in a few plants here and there. They kept telling me how easy the money was. I reasoned that if I was going to take the risk I might as well take a big risk. The next thing I know I’m tangled up in a huge crop grown on the Robinson River, south of Borroloola. It was in a very isolated area with a plentiful water supply. Because of the humid climate the crop turned out an outstanding success. It made Jack’s beanstalk look like a bonsai!
‘I couldn’t take all the credit though because another bloke grew it and I only worked for him. Once it was planted, a couple of us would sneak out a couple of times a week and give it a good soak. I was really flying blind because I’d never even grown a tomato before so I didn’t know much about cultivating hooch. But this stuff grew like a weed!
‘When the crop was ready we all went out for the harvest. I felt like a naughty schoolboy keeping an ear open for vehicles while working flat out. It was a sticky job due to resin leaking from the heads and it took us days. On the way back to Darwin, my mate Michael Derrick and I pulled into Heartbreak Hotel at Cape Crawford for fuel. We’d been paid in cash for our work but we’d also managed to souvenir a small quantity as a bonus.
The bloke who ran the pub said to me, “You must be the most wanted chap in the Territory.” I asked him why and he told me how two carloads of cops were combing the area. Apparently they didn’t know exactly who they were looking for, but they knew there was a drug crop in the area and they knew about a Roy Wright that spent a lot of time in the bush. He might be able to help them with their investigations.
‘I shit myself. The crop was gone but Michael and I had a spare tyre on the back of the Toyota stuffed full of marijuana. Even though I was only a lackey in the project, with my record they’d throw the book at me.
‘We could feel the cell doors starting to close so, halfway back to the Stuart Highway, we pulled up at a tank and washed everything. The resin got on our boots, our clothes, and eventually got transferred to everything we touched including our vehicle. We scrubbed the Toyota out with buckets of water and changed the back wheels to the front and vice versa. This was so they couldn’t match the Toyota tracks
