Illywhacker

A big bushman called Clout was at work with a tomahawk making batons. When he had trimmed a bit of ironbark to size, or knocked the worst splinters of a split fence post, he would swing it around his head a few times before crashing it down on the rails. Yet in spite of Clout's displays of violence, it was a very quiet, pleasant, sunny day, only spoiled by the excess of blowflies which gathered on the bushman's sweat-dark back and hung in clouds around the mouths of those inclined to yarning.

At twenty past the hour we heard a train. It was not the one we wanted. It came around the river flat below at enormous speed, getting up chuff for the slow crawl up the hill on whose crest we sat. This spot, fifteen miles from Bendigo, was known to bagmen all through the country as "Walkers' Hill" because you could – from either side of this crest -jump the rattler at a leisurely walking pace.

O'Dowd now stood and began to stroll towards us and Clout, reckoning the hour had come, began to distribute his batons, the ends of which he had lewdly sharpened "for playin' quoits".

O'Dowd came walking carefully, showing great regard for the welfare of his boots at which he stared with great attention. When, at last, he showed his face, I saw what he'd been hiding-a smirk I could not understand.

"All right, Mr Badgery," he said to me. "You've won."

The men cheered. Someone clapped O'Dowd on the back.

"There's a train coming now," O'Dowd shouted. "Youse can all get on it."

"That's the Ballarat train," the communist said, pushing through. "These men want to go to Shepparton. It's going the wrong way."

O'Dowd could not help himself. He split himself with a grin. "Tough," he said. He could already feel the uncertainty amongst the men as they hovered, lifted a bag or put one down, whispered to a mate or cursed or spat. Their acceptance or rejection of the train was showing in their dusty irritated eyes.

"It's this train or no train," O'Dowd said. He was a clever bastard. He knew they didn't want to go to Ballarat, but he gave them a small victory which was enough to make them go soft and lose their fight. He smiled at me just like I had smiled at him. He wasmaking them do the exact opposite of what they wanted.

"There's no work in Ballarat," I said.

The smile swallowed itself in the cold slit of his mouth. "There's work", he said, "everywhere, for them that want it."

The train engine was in sight now at the bottom of the hill. The men started to check their swags, to arrange a billy, tighten a strap, hoist a bundle, kick a fire apart. They came around and shook my hand. They lifted Sonia and kissed her cheek and hugged her till she grunted. They ruffled Charles's head and we were all, in spite of our defeat, warm – we had won the most important battle, so we thought.

The train drew beside us and we stood in full sight of the driver and the fireman.

There were sheep wagons, not clean, but empty. The men waited for the protection of closed boxcars, rolling back their doors in good leisurely style. It was then, as they boarded the train, I saw Leah. She was running towards me carrying the snake bag in one hand, pulling bawling Charles towards me with the other.

"Come on," she screamed. "Get on the train."

I laughed.

"Get on," she said. "For God's sake, I beg you."

O'Dowd, I found, right behind my shoulder. "Better get on the train, Mr Badgery," he said.

"Hurry," Leah said. She did not wait but helped my son aboard, and then my daughter. She was climbing on, and I was stumbling along the track, tripping on abandoned sleepers, O'Dowd at my side. By the road I saw O'Dowd's bully boys setting to work on the Dodge. They had, at that stage, only slashed the tyres. The brush hook they used was razor sharp. They drew it round the walls "like a hot knife", O'Dowd said, "through lard."

He started laughing. He could not stop. He was hysterical. Tears rolled down his face and he could not speak for a good minute, by which time he was standing still, we were pulling away, and Charles was bawling about his lost rosellas. The train wheels obliterated his last crow of triumph.

And that was how I lost my only asset, for lose it I did, good and proper. When I finally got back there two weeks later I saw the sort of mess the "bhoys" had made of it. They were not so stupid as to steal it. They simply destroyed it. They had been at the body with an axe. They had used no spanners or wrenches on the engine, just the sledge-hammer.

Everything stank of dead rosellas.

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