Illywhacker

I lost the pair of them in the crowd and then turned to find them both sitting, side by side, in the plane. They were busily arranging rugs around themselves.

"What's this?" I demanded of the old man. "I was only picking up one passenger."

"I'm bringing the boy," Cocky Abbot said, producing a silver brandy flask and taking a swig. He wiped his mouth and passed the flask to his son.

"It's too much weight," I said. The crowd pressed around, eager to hear.

"If you can't carry two men," Cocky Abbot said, "it beats me how you'll ever carry a bale of wool."

When I had envisaged an Australian-made aeroplane it was as a weapon against people like this and I felt an almost overpowering urge to walk away and leave them for the crowd to laugh at. I was so overcome by irritation that I did not know what I was likely to do next. I took the small brass rigging tightener from my pocket and walked around the craft. I tightened several struts which had been stretched by the aerobatics. It was only my desire for Phoebe that brought me back to the cockpit. I seated myself and fussed with the hessian bags to make myself more comfortable.

"I'll need one of you blokes", I called back over my shoulder, "to swing the prop."

"Donaldson will do it," said the Imaginary Englishman, smiling pleasantly at the crowd.

The representative from the Colac Times demanded my attention while Cocky Abbot called out: "Where's Donaldson?"

The Shire Clerk, scanning the dusty road behind the grandstand for sign of his wife and child, was summonsed to the craft where, to general hilarity, he grasped the propeller in this fingernail-bitten hands.

I was too preoccupied with poor Donaldson to give the Colac Times a decent interview. Donaldson was a small man, all bum and pigeon toes, whose beard could not hope to hide the insecurity of his mouth which quailed before authority and cheeky children. He held the propeller and blushed the colour of a nerine plum. He knew that something bad would happen to him.

The crowd gave him no mercy. "Come on, Donno," they yelled. "Show us your stuff."

"Push your pen."

"Swing it."

He pulled on the propeller twice. Nothing happened. The crowd hooted. They were as ignorant as any crowd: I was simply drawing fuel into the engine and the switch was on "off".

I turned to "switch on".

"Contact!" I yelled.

The Shire Clerk did not understand the terminology. He stared at me, bright red with mortification.

"Again," I yelled, "now!"

Donaldson's scream of pain must have been drowned by the engine, and it was only later, clipping my pars from the Colac Times, that I learned of the unfortunate Clerk's broken arm. I dictated a long letter to him, apologizing for the injury and discoursing at length on the ignorance of the townspeople. I hope it gave the man some comfort.

"Mr Badgery", the Colac Times of 25th April 1920 reported, "was anxious to return to the air, explaining the uncertainty of winds and the necessity of landing in Geelong before dark."

For once, I had understated the case.

Due to the weight of the two Cocky Abbots the Morris Farman barely cleared the cypress trees at the end of the racecourse. A second line of eucalypts brushed their sparse umbrellas against the undercarriage.

After twenty miles of labouring hard I could not get the craft above five hundred feet. No tail wind in the world would get us to Barwon Common before nightfall.

I watched the wintry sun as it settled behind a low ribbon of cloud and wondered whether it might not be better to land on a road or in a paddock and ferry the passengers to Geelong by some other method. It was only vanity that kept me going.

I glanced back at them and was pleased to see that they were frightened. They sat in their rugs, staring ahead, not daring to look over the side.

Jack, I reflected, kicking angrily at the rudder bar, had understood nothing. He had gone on in his blundering, amiable way, liking everyone without discrimination, anyone, that is, who was not a Chinaman or a Jew. Jack, who had read aloud the poetry of Henry Lawson, had understood nothing about it. He had let me down.

I flew low across the melancholy landscape of long shadows, stewing in the juices of betrayal.

45

Of course the night landing was my fault and no one else's. If I hadn't hung around Geelong mooning over Phoebe I would have been back in plenty of time.

But when I followed the electric lights down Belmont Hill and found no flares at the Common, all my anger was directed at Jack. There was no moon and the Barwon River was a slick of black beneath the lights of the bridge. I couldn't even find the hangar on the Common.

I banked and brought the craft on a northerly course, flying low over Geelong itself. The squatters, emboldened by brandy, thankful to be alive, were all agog at this display of lights and life. The blustering wind (which had made them huddle into rugs and clutch at the bench seat) no longer troubled them. They leaned out, tapped me on the back, and shouted. They had no idea what I had in store for them.