WONDER, THUNDER & BLUNDER DOWN UNDER
Tales of a Ten Pound Pom
The Stories
- This Is Your Captain Speaking
- North, Up the Not So Pacific Highway
- Bacon, Eggs, Lamb &Thyme
- Only a Few Pommies in Town
- St Luke Said No ~ Maggie Almost Said Yes
- Lovely People of the Great South Land
- Lucky to Get Out Alive
- Sydney City……. Here I Come
- Days and Nights in The Cross
- Back to The Battle Of Britain
- Saarfend, Kangaroo Valley and Belfast
- Best Tobacco (And Women) In The World
- Wild Elephants and Even Wilder Aussies
- Never Mind ~ Doesn’t Matter ~ It’s a Mistake
- Fifty Wailing Nuns All Foaming At The Mouth
- Happy Hour with Uncle Sam
- It seems I Caused the Vietnam War
- Ten Bucks on the Red and a Dollar for the Daughter
- Murders, Massacres, Muzorewa & Mr Mandevu
- My Triumphant Return to Oz ~ with Bent Stick
- Always Let a Copper Think You’re Stupid
- Spirit and Soul of the Stickmen of Yore
Extracts from
‘WONDER, THUNDER & BLUNDER DOWN UNDER’
Tales of a Ten Pound Pom
From Story 1 (Arrival in Sydney)
Ten minutes out of ‘Syny’ produced a quite amazing sight. Two hostesses, each holding a raised can, walked the entire length of the passenger cabin spraying something over the heads of every passenger. Not one person said a word.
“What was that for? What did you spray,?” I asked one of the leggy blonde attendants after she’d finished. She told me it was a disinfectant they used on every inbound Qantas flight as a safety precaution against bringing germs or bugs into this isolated country.
I have never been quite sure she was telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I suspect it was an activity reserved solely for Pommies who they, the Aussies correctly perceived, bathed only once a week. Either that or it was some sort of payback for banishing them in 1788 to the harsh Southern Hemisphere wilderness.
From Story 2 (The roadblock)
In my headlights I saw the silhouette of a man limping slowly towards the rear of the station wagon parked ahead of me. Wearing a leather hat and a very long leather-looking coat, the man appeared agitated at being disturbed from whatever he’d been doing before two vehicles disrupted his nightshift and forced him from his hut.
All I could see written on the roadblock gates were the letters ‘…. ck Checkpoint.’ The missing letters of the first word were obscured by the vehicle ahead.
I watched curiously as he rummaged through the back of the wagon, then addressed the driver for a moment.
My mind flashed to a movie I’d once seen….. a World War Two movie with British agents disguised as Nazi soldiers attempting to get home from Vichy France and having to present false papers at a German checkpoint.
My Aussie acquaintances back in England had never warned me about this. In fact they’d told me the war was over and only Darwin had been seriously affected.
“Get out of the car and open your boot,“ were the next words I heard as the irritated man’s nose protruded slightly through my open window and he flashed an intensely bright torchlight around the inside of my car.
With my hands in the air, I walked crab-style to the rear of my car and unlocked the boot. Too scared to speak in case I gave myself away as a British spy, I kept a close watch on the man in leather who turned his head directly at me, stared long and hard into my innocent eyes and asked: “Got any bananas, pears or grapes with yer.”
I’d been expecting ‘your papers please’ or ‘you will be shot’ but nothing about bananas.
“No….why…are you hungry?” I replied.
“Cheeky bleeding Pom….it’s me job,” he replied gruffly, “no fruit or grapes at all then eh?”“No, nothing at all, honestly,” I said nervously, “why do you want to know?”.
“You‘re Poms never know the bleeding rules,” he snapped, “you lot are nothing but bleeding trouble.”
I wasn’t sure if Poms were nothing but bleeding trouble in a general sense, or simply in the middle of the night at roadblocks.
“I don’t mean to cause any trouble,” I reassured him, as I finally caught a glimpse of the missing letters on the gate. ‘What are ticks?“ I asked.
Begrudgingly the old man explained, then opened the ‘Tick’ gates’ for me to pass through. I’d escaped enemy territory; was proud of myself and felt deserving of a medal.
As the Vauxhall spluttered on towards Grafton, I reached beneath my seat and produced the late evening snack I’d purchased at Woolgoolga - the yummiest banana I’d ever eaten. If it had a tick in it, it was a bloody delicious one.
From Story 4 (Death to the ‘orrible flying things)
My first night in my flat was truly an Aussie education when I was confronted with a new Australian insect dilemma. The ‘things’ were each about two and a half inches long and maybe one inch thick. They were dark blacky-brown and had antenna on their faces that wiggled up and down and even sideways.
They moved in lines as if on military patrol and they seemed not afraid of their enemy - me that is!
Half a dozen of them were marching silently on the peeling lino on the floor of my kitchenette. They were horrible and looked as though they could harm me with bacteria or even a direct frontal attack. They had to die.
My weapons were few so improvisation was the key. If I could halt them in their tracks; surround them; I could then work out how to destroy them.
A large packet of OMO was the solution. I poured the entire contents all around the mini monsters so they were encircled. It worked and I could see they were confused as they all stared at each other, scratched their heads; waggled their antenna in wild fashion and searched for a solution of their own.
Weapon number two was the Whittacker’s Almanac that for some bizarre reason came with the flat. Thank Heavens it wasn’t the traditional Gideon’s Bible as it would never have worked.
With the pests walking around in circles within my soap powder circle, I raised the very heavy Almanac high in their air; took aim as if from the bomb bay of a Lancaster; then dropped the deadly weapon.
Mission partly accomplished. Two down and four to go. They were totally flattened and never knew what hit them; a bit like Dresden. I bent down to pick-up the killer book ready for a second assault, but, to my horror, they had their own secret weapon and a strategy.
The little buggers could fly. Why they’d not employed their wings before I’ll never know, but now they were and they had no hesitation in actually flying directly at my head.
They couldn’t or didn’t stay airborne for long, but their retaliatory action had been sufficient to shatter my confidence and have me swirling around and lashing out aimlessly. For all I knew they could kill.
Once out of their powder prison and secure in the knowledge they‘d frightened me off, they made their getaway to wherever they lived - somewhere rent free in my flat.
I then had the grisly task of removing and disposing of the dead and sweeping up a whole packet of OMO, spattered with broken antenna, bits of shattered gossamer wings and other body parts. I didn’t sleep well that night.
From Story 9 (Translating the language)
The Australian vernacular was still troubling me. Just when I thought I’d mastered it, up would pop another poser.
Words like ‘cranky’ and ‘sickie’ were now common to me, mainly because half the nation always appeared to be indulging in one of them - and sometimes both together!
But ‘eggzelerador’ and ‘congradulate’ not only puzzled me but downright irritated me. How could anyone think you eggzeleraded when you went faster and congradulated someone when they’d done well?
Then there was that word that no dinki di Aussie I’ve ever met has been able to pronounce correctly…namely the colour ‘maroon’…which, as we all know, can also be a word used to describe being isolated, especially on an island..
Not too many conversations see the word needed for ‘isolation’ but it does arise quite often in its ‘colour’ context. And when it does, it is always, for some weird reason, mispronounced ‘mar-own.’
I’ve argued ‘til the cows come home that it should be pronounced ‘maroon’ but no-one bloody believes me, despite the fact I have slapped the Concise Oxford Dictionary in front of some sinners and shown them the accents and inflections pertaining to the word. But oh no….mar-own it remains!
I can just about live with the pronounciation ’paddick’ which I felt certain was a place where horses with a haytch were kept.; and I could even vaguely handle the way the natives said any word that ended in the sound ‘tul’ such as….hospitool (with a haytch of course) and ’bottool’ and ‘littool’.
But….and it’s a big but…..the word that riled the hell out of me, and still does, is ….‘alternate‘!
Many Australians believe it is the correct word for ‘another way’ as in: “they took an alternate route to school” .
As some of us know, it should of course be ‘alternative’ and not ‘alternate, which, again as some of us know, means ‘every other one’.
And that brings me to another word that bemused, baffled and bloody well bugged me…the word ‘route.’ (pronounced ‘root’ as in the bit on the bottom of a plant or vegetable).
For a nation that devised and uses the word ‘root’ to replace ‘screw‘ as in to ‘fornicate’; it came as a massive surprise that its people were seemingly too embarrassed to say ‘root’ when referring to a line of road or a way to get somewhere. What did and do they say instead….yes….‘rowt’…I guess because it doesn’t sound dirty or sexy?
When some Aussies - not all - use the f word every sentence and still say ‘rowt’ for fear of using a ‘rude’ word, it’s all a bit incongruous.
It was always a treat to hear someone say…“the road was f’ing blocked so I had to take an alternate f’ing rowt”
From Story 10 (Back to the Battle of Britain)
After less than one day back in the United Kingdom I felt like I’d been shipped to England as a convict, to earn my Ticket-of-Leave after a suitable period of punishment. The second leg of my journey was on an above ground train and I was headed for the semi rural Essex town of Brentwood. My carriage was far more congenial as I was heading out of London and not in. There was ample room to relax on a knife-ripped bench seat while I could leisurely read the prolific graffiti daubed on every single panel of every single train that we passed.
That too became depressing at times so I dared to peek out of a smeared carriage window and watch the slums and filth of post World War Two Essex flash by.
The legacy of Britain’s industrial revolution had left tons and tons of soot from the coal driven steam trains, plastered on each and every grey brick building that overlooked the railway line.
So many of the soot brick buildings were terraced two-up and two-down habitats and all appeared to have retained their original outside latrines, which I hoped were by now redundant.
As you pass through conurbations like Limehouse, you are time-travelled to and through an 19th Century era of Dickens and press gangs on the old docks of London’s Cockney East End, where the remnants and edifices are still very much in evidence.
After about forty minutes of drifting mentally to the 18th and 19th centuries with sail and steam ships plying Old Father Thames, my diesel train hummed to a halt at Brentwood Station, whence I alighted and strode off to the same bus stop I queued at as a schoolboy.
Memories of Iliffe Junior snatching my school cap and hurling it skywards leapt into my mind, which was again jolted to another time and place.
Brentwood was a pleasant busy town, just outside London on the A12.
My bus arrived soon after and took me down that long winding road - and memory lane - to the village of my halycon youth. No-one recognised me and I didn’t see anyone I knew, until I climbed down from the bus and prepared myself for the half mile walk to my house.
Mrs Watson, who had her own shop close to the bus stop, waved, smiled and said hello as if I’d seen her just the day before. Mr Turner, the local representative for the Royal Automobile Club, nodded and grinned without a word at all; and old Mr Everett, the milkman, slowly raised his weary bald head and mumbled: “How are you son?” It was like I’d never left; and in one way I was happy about that.
There it was…Treeside. My old single storey bungalow which shared a common wall with ‘The Parrots’ who kept really smelly oinky pigs.
As a lad I’d always thought the Parrots were Mr and Mrs. But no. They were brother and sister and both were almost round people with little arms and legs dangling down. They were lovely happy little Humpty Dumpty people.
My final steps took me through the open picket garden gate; to be given a hero’s welcome by Sandy, my ever faithful but very aged Golden Labrador. He was tied up and barking frantically. The only sad problem was that no noise was coming out of his throat. Sandy had performed his last bark or yap. Years of obedient loyal guard dog duties had finally destroyed his vocal chords. His fangs were almost all gone too, leaving his bite as futile as his non-existent bark.
At the age of sixteen he was not giving up. It may well have been that he was totally deaf too and had no idea that his bark didn’t work anymore.
From Story 11 (Go the Wallabies)
As much as they adored Great Britain and had no personal issue with Her Majesty, they found it hard to see her as the Queen of Australia who could and did still play a role in the administration of their country so far removed.
One such event saw Steve and I travel to London to watch the Wallabies play England.
With our Southern Cross flags in hand, we joined hundreds of other Australians and pseudo Aussies in the stands and waited for the match to begin. But first there were the obligatory national anthems.
When you have a foot in both camps it can be emotionally conflicting. God Save the Queen set one of my nationalist nerves a’tingling while Waltzing Matilda set my pulse a’racing.
Then, to throw me into total turmoil, the Australian fans had the temerity to let rip an appalling primeval boo as Britain’s great Prime Minister, Mr Edward Heath, was announced over the tannoy and he duly took his bow.
I was disgusted. There was no need for that and it revealed a total lack of respect and culture on the part of the peoples of the former convict colony. Suddenly, not one muscle or cell of me wanted to be Australian. I was once again British to the core.
That was, until Australia started trouncing the pathetic Pommie rugby team on the field. Amazingly, I felt myself mutating yet again into a true blue Australian. I pulled my flag from its hiding place and proudly waved along with my fellow countrymen.
With my head held high, I realised how wonderful it was to be part of a powerful sporting nation that hardly ever lost. Maybe a little booing and belittling of the Brits wasn’t so bad after all!
From Story 12 (Aussies in Africa)
Immigration and Customs formalities were very casual affairs; much like everything turned out to be in the world of the Matabele and Shona Tribes that populated Rhodesia.
“Welcome to Rhodesia. Mangwanani,” said a tall Nubian-looking official with a wispy wiry excuse for a beard and a grandfatherly grin.
“Thanks. What does mangwanee mean,” I asked tucking my British passport into my bag.
“It’s man-gwa-na-nee,“ he replied, proudly emphasising each syllable phonetically so I’d would never forget, “mangwanani means good morning.”
As I was practising it inside my head, my new friend was clearly delighted to find a willing pupil so he followed it up rapidly with: “and if you want to say ‘Good Day’ (which of course all Australians do) then you say “maneru….man-er-roo.”
Not content with that he placed his hand on my arm and said quietly: “To say ‘thank you’ you say ‘zakernaker’ and to say ‘thank you very much’ you say ‘zakernaker quazi…..zaker naker quazi‘,” he let slowly out of his huge mouth.
It was all getting too much for me. One word a day would be ok but one word for every minute I’d been in Africa was overwhelming. I was getting dizzy and terrified of what was to come.
“Thank you very much mate,” I said and tried to move subtly away towards the exit doors, “I’ll try and remember all that.”
With each step I repeated my three Shona language words and their meanings; and as I emerged into Arrivals and saw Bondy Bear gleaming at me from afar, I was exceedingly pleased with my multi-lingual skills.
“You old Pommie Bastard. How are you mate,” said Steve giving me a big ‘bear’ hug and slapping a packet of Madison cigarettes into the palm of my hand, “how was the flight?”
“Mangwanani;. zackernacker quazi and maneru Bondy?” I said as proud as Punch, glancing behind me to see if my private tutor had been listening, “or as we say in Oz…g’day…and yep, I had a great flight actually.”
“You’re a wanker Spence. Been here five minutes and pretending you’re a native. Have a fag and settle down mate,” said Bondy with wry smile.”
A short drive through the clean wide streets brought us to Montague Avenue and Bear’s pleasant third floor flat.
The Avenues were not only lined with glorious ‘Kaffirboom’ trees and tropical shrubs; they were also bedecked with hundreds and hundreds of African men and women stretched out on grass verges.
With every Avenue I ventured into, I also encountered several new exhilarating and often disturbing experiences. Noel Coward’s ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’ song kept stealing into my head as I paced the pavements, peered at from ground level by an ever curious crowd of dark-skinned locals.
No word of a lie; every one of them stared unashamedly at my feet and then glanced up to examine my sun glasses. Before I knew it I realised I was being talked about and being followed. I can’t say I was frightened but I did feel a trifle threatened.
“Baas…help me baas….give me money please….I haven’t eaten for three days,” pleaded a well-built young man who was rubbing his stomach to show me where food would go if he had any.
“Mangwanani. You poor man,” I said thrusting my hand into my pocket and handing him a dollar, “here, have this. Go and get a good meal. Maneru.”
“Thank you baas, thank you baas…you are Mr Mandevu,” he said edging sideways and with a startled expression that I spoke the Shona language, “you are a good baas.”
“Baas, bass…..we haven’t eaten a thing for days,” came the next pitiful sound behind me.
From Story 12 (Elephant Magic)
Our party of four Aussies and one Pom settled into our motel rooms that overlooked pure African jungle. It was a night that will live with me forever because the room was the plushest I’d ever seen and the live Show put on that night was just unbelievable.
From the luxury of an armchair and clasping a beer ready for the First Act, I peered out of my huge window to see the African sky fall dark.
Not long after, external lighting very caringly illuminated the jungle; and as if on cue; two gigantic Nzoe swung their huge torsos from out of the black night and into the filtered spotlight, to display themselves.
For more than an hour I was mesmerised as they twisted their trunks around eachother; rubbed nose against nose like Icelandic lovers; and sidled playfully together.
Not once did they made a noise as they proudly displayed their undying love. They were the Romeo and Juliet of the Elephant Kingdom and I never wanted the show to end.
It was as if they were auditioning for a starring act at a western world circus, yet not once did they blow their own trumpet.
Eventually they turned their huge heads and tiny eyes away and performed a finale of synchronised lumbering, back into their secret world. All our hearts were won.
‘Til my dying day I will never forgive anyone who slaughters these magnificent beasts for their ivory or their feet. When later I saw elephant feet for sale labelled as ‘door stops’ I was sick in the stomach.
I love Pandas, Kangaroos and Koalas too, but the elephant has a mysticism all its own. They know we know that they are so very bright and beautiful. Just like those mammoth majestic beasts of the African veldt, I will never forget my night with the Nzoe. I often wonder if they remember me? They’re supposed to, aren’t they?
From Story 20 (Back to Oz)
It had been six long fabulous years since I’d set foot on Terra Australis, during which time I felt like I’d met half of the entire Aussie population in various other parts of the world; and had regularly displayed severe symptoms of withdrawal.
When I’d been asked what it was about Oz that I missed and loved so much, it was often difficult to express and explain. Much of my love for the sun-drenched nation was intangible, however I knew I adored the vast open spaces; the delicious incongruity of its amiable and oh so laid back people; and its sometimes almost uncouth yet emerging culture.
Since my first day at Botany Bay, I’d admired what the people of Australia had achieved. Born from the rabble of convictry and the rubble of war-torn nations, they had tilled the soil, hewn the timber, shorn the sheep and sewn the seeds that had made their gigantic
land mass the envy of the world.
From boatloads of stinking disease-ridden hulks; in less than 200 years these outcasts from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales had built one of the wealthiest economies on the planet.
From forgers to murderers and from petty thieves to prostitutes, they had been transported from one side of the world to the other and forced to hack and chisel out the foundations of the world’s biggest ever penal colony, in an experiment that almost went wrong.
As the Great British Empire sought to purge itself, its gaols and its courtrooms of the so-called ‘convict class,’ it sent its citizens to a hell hole that they, in short time, turned into a Heaven.
When thousands of those convicts had done their time and hard labour, they could have chosen to return to Britain. Instead they opted to remain in the infant colony because it offered opportunities and a standard of living far better than that back in the Empire.
Their picks and ploughs had carved a nation out of nothing and a future for themselves.
WONDER, THUNDER &
BLUNDER DOWN UNDER
Tales of a Ten Pound Pom
Published by Jayarnda Pty Ltd
Blue Mountains, NSW
Printed by Vivid Publishing
A division of Fontaine Press Pty Ltd
P.O.Box 948 Fremantle
Western Australia 6959
ISBN: 9780980545951
Dewey No: 304.894041
This book can be purchased through PayPal at
www.tenpoundpom.com.au
All material on this website is copyright of Jayarnda Pty Ltd
and may not be reproduced without permission.
We welcome all enquiries via our "Contact Us" tab
This book is dedicated to my three wonderful children, Ryan, Hannah and Hayley
and to two special women in my life ~ my dear mother who struggled
so hard to raise her own children ~ and the late Olga Masters,
a truly special lady, author, journalist and mentor to whom I should
have paid much more attention, much sooner.
Also to my many dear friends mentioned in this book,
some of whom have sadly now passed on
While all the stories in this book are true, the names of many characters have been changed to protect their identity and reputation.
Any similarity between these characters and any real people, alive or otherwise, anywhere in the world, is purely coincidental.
