the street.
And what a mob they were themselves. A bigger collection of dickheads and drop-kicks you’d have to travel a long way to find: boozers, bruisers and substance-abusers, rockjaw Germans and lockjaw Yorkshiremen, grease monkeys and gamblers, meat-workers, meat-heads, missionaries, maniacs, men on the run, men on the dole, men on the Witness Protection Program. Peddlers, pushers, whores and bores, desperadoes of every denomination. You name it, they were there, drawn to the town like flies to a carcass.
‘Tom, the only way you could get me to go and live in Bluebush would be if you were to knock me out, handcuff me and throw me into the back of your paddy wagon.’
Blue-bloody-bush
Sssskkk@@@###~~rrrxxxttt !
I was floating up from the bottom of a deep blue dream, but the noise ripping in through the open window of my Bluebush apartment sounded like metal on metal, and one of the metals had an ominously familiar crunch to it.
Was this some sort of local initiation ritual: you wake up in the morning to find some bastard’s run into your car?
I checked my watch. Ten to six. Urk. The party in the flat opposite mine had kicked off at about the time most parties were winding down, presumably after they’d been chucked out of the pub. Sounded like one of the revellers was going home via my car.
I stumbled to the door, hesitated, then went back and slipped into a sarong. This was Bluebush, after all: if I went out there in my present state, I’d have some ravenous meatworker devouring me for breakfast.
Bluebush. I still couldn’t quite believe I’d been here for over a week now. Settled in, at least to the extent of picking up some underpaid bar-work at the White Dog and the overpriced abode in which I now found myself.
It wasn’t McGillivray’s admonitions that had brought me here. On the contrary, there was nothing as likely to make me dig my heels in as being told to go. My intention to stay with the community, however, depended upon there being a community with which to stay. At Moonlight Downs there no longer was one.
Before he died Lincoln had voiced his concerns about his people’s willingness to remain on Moonlight, and he’d been proven right. Blackfellers often move away from an area when an important person dies, but they don’t normally move hundreds of kilometres, which was what the Moonlight mob had done. Whether their motivation was fear, thirst or respect for the dead I wasn’t sure, but within a day or two of the funeral the entire community packed up and pissed off.
Hazel and a few of the closer kin were the first to go, disappearing into the desert to complete the mourning rituals. When they’d be back nobody could tell me. Since the death, nobody seemed to be telling me anything.
Then Bindi and a car-load of young men went off to the neighbouring Strangeways station. And finally what little was left of the community simply chucked their gear into the three or four working cars and took the ominous road to town.
I joined them. No way was I up to camping out at Moonlight on my own, not with the Wet on the way and Blakie on the loose. It was only a temporary move, I told myself, a place to stay until something better came along.
From somewhere outside I heard an engine roar, a dog bark and a voice bellow, ‘Shuddup, ya mongrel!’
I opened the door and spotted a monstrous four-wheel-drive ute, obligatory Rottweiler on the back, obligatory moron in the front, negotiating its way out of the opposite flat’s driveway. From the dent in my own Toyota, I figured the driver belonged to the von Ribbentrop school of negotiation.
Surely he wasn’t going to do it again?
‘Oi!!’
He did it again, the bastard. Nonchalantly rammed my car out of the way and gunned the motor for a getaway down the drive.
I raced over and thumped his window. The bloke at the wheel gazed at me, a what-have-I-done-wrong look on his raised palms and curled lip.
Oh Christ, I thought, looking into his
And what a mob they were themselves. A bigger collection of dickheads and drop-kicks you’d have to travel a long way to find: boozers, bruisers and substance-abusers, rockjaw Germans and lockjaw Yorkshiremen, grease monkeys and gamblers, meat-workers, meat-heads, missionaries, maniacs, men on the run, men on the dole, men on the Witness Protection Program. Peddlers, pushers, whores and bores, desperadoes of every denomination. You name it, they were there, drawn to the town like flies to a carcass.
‘Tom, the only way you could get me to go and live in Bluebush would be if you were to knock me out, handcuff me and throw me into the back of your paddy wagon.’
Blue-bloody-bush
Sssskkk@@@###~~rrrxxxttt !
I was floating up from the bottom of a deep blue dream, but the noise ripping in through the open window of my Bluebush apartment sounded like metal on metal, and one of the metals had an ominously familiar crunch to it.
Was this some sort of local initiation ritual: you wake up in the morning to find some bastard’s run into your car?
I checked my watch. Ten to six. Urk. The party in the flat opposite mine had kicked off at about the time most parties were winding down, presumably after they’d been chucked out of the pub. Sounded like one of the revellers was going home via my car.
I stumbled to the door, hesitated, then went back and slipped into a sarong. This was Bluebush, after all: if I went out there in my present state, I’d have some ravenous meatworker devouring me for breakfast.
Bluebush. I still couldn’t quite believe I’d been here for over a week now. Settled in, at least to the extent of picking up some underpaid bar-work at the White Dog and the overpriced abode in which I now found myself.
It wasn’t McGillivray’s admonitions that had brought me here. On the contrary, there was nothing as likely to make me dig my heels in as being told to go. My intention to stay with the community, however, depended upon there being a community with which to stay. At Moonlight Downs there no longer was one.
Before he died Lincoln had voiced his concerns about his people’s willingness to remain on Moonlight, and he’d been proven right. Blackfellers often move away from an area when an important person dies, but they don’t normally move hundreds of kilometres, which was what the Moonlight mob had done. Whether their motivation was fear, thirst or respect for the dead I wasn’t sure, but within a day or two of the funeral the entire community packed up and pissed off.
Hazel and a few of the closer kin were the first to go, disappearing into the desert to complete the mourning rituals. When they’d be back nobody could tell me. Since the death, nobody seemed to be telling me anything.
Then Bindi and a car-load of young men went off to the neighbouring Strangeways station. And finally what little was left of the community simply chucked their gear into the three or four working cars and took the ominous road to town.
I joined them. No way was I up to camping out at Moonlight on my own, not with the Wet on the way and Blakie on the loose. It was only a temporary move, I told myself, a place to stay until something better came along.
From somewhere outside I heard an engine roar, a dog bark and a voice bellow, ‘Shuddup, ya mongrel!’
I opened the door and spotted a monstrous four-wheel-drive ute, obligatory Rottweiler on the back, obligatory moron in the front, negotiating its way out of the opposite flat’s driveway. From the dent in my own Toyota, I figured the driver belonged to the von Ribbentrop school of negotiation.
Surely he wasn’t going to do it again?
‘Oi!!’
He did it again, the bastard. Nonchalantly rammed my car out of the way and gunned the motor for a getaway down the drive.
I raced over and thumped his window. The bloke at the wheel gazed at me, a what-have-I-done-wrong look on his raised palms and curled lip.
Oh Christ, I thought, looking into his
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