a fight with a big blackfella in town. He was bigger and older than me. I was about twenty-three and he was about thirty-eight but he’d been drinking so that took the edge off him. We were into it hammer and tongs in the street when this young blackfella ran up. He must have been a relation of my opponent because he threw a fighting stick at me but fortunately it missed and it hit the department store window behind me. It bounced back so I grabbed it and chased the bastard. I was lean in those days and could run like hell.
‘When I caught up to him I ran up alongside and laid it across his head. The force of the blow dropped him but he sprang to his feet and took off. As he ran away, all I could see in the moonlight was a white piece of bone. I’d opened his hair up and exposed a heap of skull. When I saw that I panicked. I ran to the cop shop and told the cop on duty I’d just killed a bloke. I was actually crying telling the cop about it.
‘We went back but there was no-one there. We searched the backstreets for an hour but in the end we gave up. For weeks after that the blackfellas would come around in the dark and rattle their sticks on the corrugated iron fence. It made quite a racket in the humid night. I never had any physical trouble from the nightly visits but I was a bit worried for a while knowing that the gang was out there. Eventually they got sick of it and stopped. I’d seen enough of the lad to recognise him if I ever saw him again but I never set eyes on him. I kept looking for him around the streets and checking for someone with a big bandage around their head but I never saw him. Perhaps he cleared out bush or perhaps he died. All I know was that it was a very traumatic time in my life.
‘I didn’t want to leave Broome but I had to when I eventually caught my usual disease – bloody coppers. I decided that the only cure was to take a holiday. I hadn’t seen anything of the Territory, so I decided to take a drive in my Customline. It was starting to show signs of a hard life but it still ran well. My mate Norman Munro decided to come for some sightseeing, and other friends Theresa Torrence and her boyfriend came along for the ride as well. We motored and camped our way across to Katherine checking out all the sights on the way. We felt like bloody tourists!
‘Instead of staying on the main highway we decided to see some real bush and turned off the Stuart Highway heading for Top Springs. The Buchanan Highway had just been completed so it wasn’t a bad road. We refuelled at Top Springs but between there and Wave Hill the car shit itself. Even though it was a new road there was very little traffic in those days so we were stranded and we didn’t know for how long. We hadn’t passed a car in two days because it was only used for the station people heading into civilisation on their rare breaks. This was before the damn tourists began to rip around every outback track in their big four-wheel drives pretending to be explorers.
‘Looking back we were fairly stupid because we had very little water on board. We all had a little drink and Munro said, “Come on. We’ll walk to a bore and get some more. There must be one around here somewhere because the cattle have to drink and we’ve seen lots of cattle pads.” Like idiots the two of us took the water bag and began to walk. Theresa and her boyfriend decided to stay with the car so if anyone came along they could tell them where to find us.
‘I started to lose interest in sightseeing as Day One came and went. It was bloody hot and we saw nothing that resembled a water hole. Just heat and flies. Millions of bloody flies. There were lots of cattle tracks but they didn’t appear to be going anywhere specific. Usually when tracks get near water they start to join up and become bigger tracks. We had hats on but the heat seemed to have burned through them and dried out our brains. Our meagre supply of water had run out mid-afternoon and we discussed following our tracks back to the car. We decided against it. We had no water to give them when we got back so we’d all just die of thirst together. No. We had to keep searching.
‘It was an uneasy sleep in the dirt but we rested all that night. Rest didn’t help because Day Two began to get painful. That afternoon I said to Munro, “I’m stuffed. I can’t keep going.”
Munro replied, “We have to. There must be water around because we’ve seen cattle and they must be drinking somewhere near.”
But I was rooted. “I can’t go on,” I gasped again. Munro looked around and found a little stone.
‘ “Here. Suck this,” he said as he handed it to me. “It will stop you feeling thirsty. Suck it you weak bastard.”
‘The abuse and the stone certainly did the trick for half an hour or so and then I hit the wall again. “I’m stuffed,” I croaked, “My legs are stuffed and I’m thirsty. I can’t go any further. You go on. I’ll stay here and die.” I still had the stone in my mouth but it wasn’t creating saliva any more. My head throbbed, my whole body had begun to shut down, my legs felt numb and I was dropping backwards and forwards into unconsciousness. I knew my end was near.
‘Munro began to abuse me again but I just didn’t care any more. As he stood there squinting into the sun he said, “Look. I can see the fan of a windmill in the distance.”
‘ “Get stuffed,” I croaked. “I’m not falling for that one.” I dropped into the orange dirt.
‘ “No, it’s true,” he yelled excitedly. “I can see it about two miles away.”
‘He sat me up and I squinted into the distance. It was there all right. I wasn’t sure if it was a mirage or not but it sure got me going again. It seemed to take half a day to get there with Munro half-dragging me along. As we got closer we could see it definitely wasn’t a mirage and it wasn’t a tank. It was just a big hole in the ground that the water pumped into from the windmill. It was pretty grotty from the cattle and animals that had drunk and shat in it over the years but it was the best and sweetest water I’d ever tasted. I drank and drank. Then I spewed and spewed. Then I drank and drank again. Then I spewed again. What a bloody performance! But I didn’t care.
‘While we were lying in the water we heard a noise. We looked up to see a Blitz truck coming in our direction. The windmill was right on the edge of the road so Munro had no trouble flagging it down. Our salvation was complete. We reckoned that only the good die young, so there was the reason we were saved!
‘We filled up the waterbag and they gave us a lift back to our car. The other two weren’t too bad because they hadn’t been walking for two days, but they sure enjoyed a drink of that crappy water. The blokes in the Blitz took us to Top Springs and dropped us off.
‘Old Ma Hawkes was the tough old bird who ran the pub there. I had my swag with my rifle poked through the strap. I’m not sure whether she’d heard of me or just didn’t like the look of me and my rifle because she contacted the Katherine coppers. They turned up later that day and looked us over. They decided to take the other three to Katherine but not me because I was pretty weak and they didn’t think I should travel. They told Ma I should stay there and rest.
‘She wasn’t too impressed with this idea, especially when Munro decided that he’d stay with me. She could see that we were just going to hang around with no money and no nothing so Ma rang Roy Harvey, the Wave Hill copper, and said politely, “I want this arsehole out the way!” She had a way with words, old Ma.
‘Roy Harvey came down to sort things out. He took my gun and threw it on the back seat of the Willys jeep he was driving. We went back into the pub and a couple of hours later a stock inspector called in to wet his throat as he passed. He was heading back to the Stuart Highway and was happy to give us a lift for company. He’d decided to have a couple of drinks with the copper before he went so I sneaked out and got my rifle from the copper’s jeep and rolled it up inside my swag instead of through the strap.
‘The stock inspector gave us lift into Dunmarra, where we hitched a ride to Katherine and eventually back to Broome. It had been a bigger adventure than
