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Another excellent read from Australian author Peter Pinney.
Published in 1966 it tells (non-fiction) stories of his employment and ventures, told as is they run from one to the next. More likely they are a collection over the years with some artistic licence in running them together, but as usual he tells a fantastic yarn.
All of these adventures take place in Queensland or the Northern Territory, are are very Australian. Starting as a prawn fisherman in northern Queensland, where there is a panic on the boat he works on when it hauls up its prawn net to discover a huge UXO aircraft bomb. He moves on to Brisbane where is employed by the Health Department to trap or poison rats - and there are rats aplenty!
Next a stint as a fettler, working on maintaining the train tracks, out in the middle of nowhere, where nobody was warned that the job didn't provide food & bedding, which made for a hard start.
Doing a runner from that employment, Pinney decides on some coastal scenery and finding a wrecked old skiff he sets about repairing it before some solo island living around the Whitsunday passage. After some time alone, he arrives at Hayman Island, a popular tourist island and resort. Here he joins the staff for a period, before hooking up with a visiting film crew making a series of documentaries, and he moves on with them to Darwin, where he works as a props assistant.
After filming in Darwin, Pinney hooks up with another transient with a broken down old car to tackle some crocodile hunting (well, poaching) near Normanton, before being run off by local farmers. Next stop Townsville, and a job in the abattoir, until there is a falling out with the union rep, and to our final stop in Mackay, where Pinney takes a government contact as a shark hunter protecting the beaches over summer with a shark netting and drumlines of baited hooks.
The end of the summer season sees Pinney heading of south, with plenty of ideas on where to head next.
Pinney's writing style is excellent. He knows how to craft a story, holding back information until the right time, and has a knack for descriptive writing and evocative description. Always ready with a laugh, always a positive factor in a situation, I think he would be a person impossible not to like immediately. Definitely one of my favourite authors. Predictably, five stars from me.
One example from when he was a ratter in Brisbane.
P37
On the riverbank there was a tannery, wedged between a bridge and shipping docks. Its foetid stench stained the air for hundreds of yards around. A confusion of rusting iron and ancient stone housed a vast sepulchre of gloomed putrescence; foraging crabs crept among the shadows. Amid a dark and evil-smelling maze of greasy steps and sagging balconies, sudden slanting corridors and places abandoned entirely to the dark, were slippery pits of slimes and liquids, sweating vats of charnel, and goblets of discarded fat in flat slithered heaps. The air was thick with fumes and aggressive odours of spattered flesh and acids, the lines of dripping hides, the congealed accumulation of filth greasing the damp walls and trodden underfoot or lying in rancid pools under boardwalks. The occasional naked light glowed feebly, its radiance dimmed and sucked away, absorbed. The surf from passing vessels hissed beneath the floor, and masonry trembled gently to the thunder of traffic on the nearby bridge.Through this devil's kitchen endless belts whirred and clicked, agitating paddles which stirred roiling scum in the vats. Among the shadows one discerned half-naked men flensing fats and flesh from hides, raking and gouging, bodies glistening with sweat. Other men flopped raw hides into pits of liquid, or dragged them out; some trotted to and fro, barefoot though puddles, bearing dripping burdens to this or other bench.Ron went outside and quietly retched. Merv was pale, and his eyes watered. I held crumpled weeks to my nose.
Restless Men is an appropriate title for this colourful adventure by, in my opinion anyway, one of the world's best travel writers.
Chapter 1. South Coast of Queensland.
Pinney is on a Prawn trawler in Moreton Bay making wages along with other restless men whose work is hard toil for a meagre living while facing the danger of hauling up dumped WW2 ordinance in their nets. Once back in Doboy Creek they spend their times drinking, womanising and complaining about the authorities. Being a resident of Brisbane I learnt a couple of things from our past. Doboy Creek is now Bulimba Creek. I never knew that.
Chapter 2. Brisbane.
We find Pinney catching rats! The sub heading Twenty Thousand Rats seemed a bit over the top to me but after reading this chapter but I researched up with a read of this item.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-11/rat-catching-brisbane-fox-terrier/9245388
On the theme of leaning something new Brisbane had serious plague outbreak in 1921.
https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/black-death-queensland
Chapter 3. Capricorn.
While starting this chapter my wife was chatting to her 89 year old father who was a station master in the Capricorn district of Queensland for an eternity. “Ask him if he knew Jurema Siding” I ask. Sure did and proceeded to name every siding from there out to Emerald. Pinney was now at Jurema Siding doing fettling work, described to me by my father in law as “hard yakka” This chapter certainly explains that. There was many a restless man doing this back breaking work and many a restless man making a break for it after having enough.
Chapter 4. Rockhampton.
Pinney has made a break for it and stays at a “Mecca of vagrants” in this central Queensland city. A place for “the needy and the derelict” to get a good nights feed and sleep and exchange their tales of woe.
Chapter 5. Whitsunday Passage.
Philosophising in said Passage.
“Love thy neighbour” Snow went on thoughtfully. “It's a fine precept, but its not practical. There's still too much primeval slime. Have you ever thought how difficult it would be to love, sincerely and selflessly, the first three strangers you see on a Tuesday afternoon? It'd be a damn site more practical to say, Understand they neighbour”
Chapter 6. Hayman Island.
Boys meet girls in a tropical paradise. Light hearted adventures in a resort as the staff have a great time but the lure of other adventures is too alluring for Pinney and the call of the north beckons.
Chapter 7. Northern Territory.
Pinney is now props assistant on the making of an episode from Adventure Unlimited called in the book The Crocodile Hunter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_Unlimited#Episode_5%E2%80%93%22Crocodile%22
The comment in the wiki by actor Gwen Plumb is interesting in that she says the episode was made in 1961. If this book is in chronological order then according to Pinney the episode was made in 63 as he had earlier discussed a Qld State election that was held 1 June 1963. Pinney writes that there was not a crocodile to be found when they were in Kakadu and that the one flown in as discussed by Gwen Plumb could not be anesthetised as the vet flown in by Darwin had no idea what to do. The crew went onto to record the next episode of the series called The Buffalo Hunter and then when that ended he was offered a free trip back to Sydney as part of the crew. Another (non existent) crew beckoned and he refused.
Chapter 8. Normanton.
Further philosophising but while crocodile hunting.
One evening, as we sat beside a fire, Joe asked, “How did you find London, when you were there?” He had come from London fifteen years before, but gave no hint of wishing to return. “I was disillusioned” “Oh? You didn't like it?”“On the contrary. I went there with the usual Aussie illusions – that Pommies were about as cordial as thorn hedges, sneered at the colonials, lived on crumpets and Kipling, and talked with a sort of effeminate historical nostalgia. And I suddenly found how friendly London was, and loved it”He fiddled with the carbide lamp, causing it to hiss and bubble with escaping gas. “Well, the opposite with me. I'd heard all about the terrific hospitality of Australia's outback. And I've been outback for most of fifteen years, and I'm damned if I found it”
Chapter 9. Townsville.
The brutality of the abattoir exposed and it is not for the faint hearted be that for man or beast.
Chapter 10. Mackay.
Hunting sharks for the good of the surfer and swimmer? “It's a useless waste of time” says the bloke from the government. But hey! a few deaths over a hundred years and the public are worried. When the public are worried what's a few wasted sharks. This discussion/debate still goes on today. Man fears sharks but gives no thought to his own position as the apex predator. Pinney has seen too much blood and decides to head south.
There is a bit of restlessness in all of us at times. I suppose that is the attraction of travel writing and why some such as Peter Pinney, who has the ability to tell a good yarn without literary pretentions, is so attractive. He can tell his tale of restlessness travel in a way that is easy to read, be comprehensible to those that may not know the meaning of the big words. He is also of another era. This is in the early 60's and his telling of his time as a Brisbane rat catcher gives insight into what was a less sophisticated profession than it now is. It also brings back to me that health, safety and hygiene rules and regulations of the past were rather lax. His time in Capricornia had me chatting to my father-in-law. He was a station master in a central Qld cattle siding and the day he retired the Qld railway shut the station down. When my wife took me to see the small town of her youth the railway was something that just passed through without stopping. Back then it was part of the very essence of the community. It is reflections such as these that make this book such a worth while read to anyone from Queensland and knows the areas covered in each chapter.
Recommended to any that think what might have been and wonder where their restlessness would have taken them.
