31. Blind Luck, and The Moneylender’s Convention
The next morning we awoke to find ourselves abandoned at the Hughenden platform, our carriage and the guard’s van having been uncoupled there at about 4.30 a.m. The rest of the train had been shunted away somewhere – probably to coal and water the engine.
Before it returned the station cafeteria opened, so we were able to get some breakfast and replenish our provisions. Back in the compartment we were delighted to find that Duffy had made a sizeable contribution to our larder.
Doubtless he enjoyed the company of his mates in Number Five. However, where essentials such as these were concerned I suspect he regarded us as the more trustworthy.
He’d not spoken again about our open-air excursion, probably being mindful that any leverage he’d had in connection with the affair would have long since evaporated. In point of fact, elapsed time had now rendered him an accessory after the fact.
A couple of hours later we departed fair Hughenden, all watered, coaled and well fed. For about forty-five minutes we steamed along at a reasonable pace, after which the train began slowing. Eventually it came to a halt.
In the distance I saw one of the crew climb down from the engine. It must have been the fireman, because he pulled a points lever then held it while the driver moved the train into an unattended siding. Then, when he and the guard came walking forward past our carriage, we asked what was happening. There’d be a wait of about thirty minutes, they explained, to let an outward freight train go past.
Father gave us permission to go forward with them, so we all trooped off to have a look at the locomotive. We were in luck, too; the engine driver was a friendly sort of bloke who invited us up onto the footplate. This resulted in a good deal of jostling for positions so Duffy organised a queue – the visits to be by twos. Each pair had a yarn with the driver and fireman, took a look in the firebox and, after a demonstration of how the controls worked, climbed down to make way for the next party. Most of them then set off back to our carriage.
We four didn’t join the queue. Instead we inspected the big engine’s wheels and workings. When the last pair came down Sash and I went up, in front of Doogle and Zack.
Just then our driver saw the other train in the distance and gave two quick tutts on his whistle. It was only a preliminary warning, he said, but it caused a stampede among the excursion returnees strung out along the siding.
When I pointed this out he laughed. There was no need to hurry, he explained, because after the other train had gone by he would move out slowly enough for everyone to safely step aboard. Then, when the guard’s van came around to the points and he could see the guard’s signal, he would either stop as instructed or proceed with their journey.
Shortly after this Sash and I climbed down from the engine and began walking back to the carriage. With the other train now so near I thought Doogle and Zack might be going to miss their turn, but the fireman went ahead and invited them up anyway.
And so it came to pass that it was Masters Saddlehead and Cassidy who missed out – a turn of events that came about on Zack’s following Doogle up onto the footplate.
The driver and Zack recognised each other. He was a friend of Zack’s parents and, when he happened to be in Mount Isa, often slept there in the old caravan.
And the manifold advantages which might be nurtured from such a happy coincidence would have come to Doogle no less quickly than the speed of light. He would never have voiced his fancy in the form of a direct request, though. Instead he’d have framed it in the guise of a jest or a witty comment and injected it into the conversation with the precision of a surgical laser.
Whatever the case his ploy was successful, as the driver agreed to let them ride on the engine for nine miles or so to where some gangers were repairing a flood-damaged section of track. A speed restriction was in place there, he explained, so he’d be taking the train through it at a walking pace.
The boys could alight from the loco somewhere there and wait by the line until their carriage came along, he said. He wouldn’t speed up again until the train had cleared the restriction and he’d again observed the guard’s signal.
Sash and I were only about a quarter of the way to our carriage when the other engine came along. We’d heard it approaching and had climbed into an open freight wagon to watch it rumble past. When our own train started to move we looked around for our mates.
Our train was rolling; we expected to see them walking back, yet they were nowhere to be seen.
Eventually we caught sight of them. They were still on the engine! …waving like a couple of maniacs! And all we could do was stand there and watch, as slowly the big loco moved out of the siding and onto the main line.
“Now I know what it bloody means,” Sash said through clenched teeth as he clambered down – with, I thought, more than just a passing touch of venom.
“…What what means?”
“You know. ‘...And the last shall be first’.”
“Yeah? What does it mean?”
“It means, Casey, they’re gunna be The First Ones To Die, because I’m gunna bloody kill ‘em.”
“Hey Sash!” I said. “Why don’t we get into one of the trucks and ride there till Doogle and Zack get off!”
“We can’t,” said Sash, still watching the engine with undisguised envy. “It so happens that we are the only ones who know where they are. If we don’t turn up there’ll be four of us missing from the carriage. Besides starting a panic it’d mean leaving our tucker to the mercy of Duffy and his mates.”
After that we just waited for our carriage to come by and then climbed aboard. In our compartment we found Duffy enjoying a hearty snack, so naturally we decided to help him. A short time later our car turned onto the main line and the train began to accelerate. Then Duffy became curious about our absent associates and the lack of our usual light hearted banter, and so asked the obvious question.
“They’re up the bloody pointy end, aren’t they,” Sash muttered, his jaw clamped tight, “…playing bloody choo-choo trains.”
“What. In the engine?!!”
“In, as you say, ‘The Engine’.”
“Gees, the lucky mongrels. But how come? For how far?”
“Don’t ask me. The next bloody stop is bloody Charters Towers.”
“Nah, the train’ll pull up before then,” I said. “They wouldn’t leave ‘em that long without tucker.”
“Yeah, thanks Casey,” muttered Sash from under his thundercloud. “Excellent observation.”
In the event I was proven right, for about twenty minutes later there was a lengthy whistle blast from the engine and the train began to slow. We hung out the window to check but were on the outside of a long curve and could see nothing, so we moved across to the corridor windows.
Up ahead the engine was nearing a trestle spanning a shallow creek. Groups of gangers could be seen there, working on a major reconstruction of the bridge’s approaches and a newly-ballasted section of line each side of it.
We continued slowing and by the time the engine had drawn abreast of them we were barely crawling along. A loud and vigorous exchange of greetings and friendly obscenities took place as we trundled slowly through their work section, while farther along a couple of strange looking black-faced apparitions could be seen leaning on a two-man trolley and talking to some of the gangers.
“Hey! Any chance of a lift?” the older, more sooty one shouted as the jeering chorus at the windows rolled past. Then one at a time the two stepped onto the rear steps of the slow-moving carriage, following which it took them no little time to push through the enthusiastic throng in the corridor and reach their compartment.
“Gees, you wouldn’t believe it,” Zack said as he flung himself onto a seat near his tuckerbag. “The engine driver’s only a friend of ours called Col Furniss. He stays in the old caravan sometimes when he’s in Mount Isa..
A little while later Doogle arrived – looking the perfect picture of a chim
neysweep. Being very much aware of Sash’s interest in steam locomotives he took care not to ruffle his friend’s feathers any more than could be helped.
“It was just blind luck, ay,” he said almost apologetically as he took a seat by the door. “I couldn’t believe it when Zack climbed up and the two of them recognised each other.”
Sash had largely swallowed the bitterness of his envy by this. “What; did they make you ride in the coal tender?” he asked as he looked over his soot-covered friend.
“Nah,” put in Zack. “The fireman bet ‘im he couldn’t shovel enough coal to keep the train goin’ to where the gangers were workin’, so the flamin’ drongo only takes him on.”
“How much was the bet?” I enquired.
“It wasn’t really a bet,” Doogle explained. “It was more like a dare.”
“What, didn’t you win nothin’?” asked Sash.
“Course I did,” said Doogle. “Just have a look at these!”
And with a larrikin grin on his black-minstrel face he jammed his hands in his pockets, pretended to rummage about for a second, then brought out his closed fists, fingernails up.
Slowly he opened them to show what he’d won. His fists were empty but each of his hands was sporting an enormous, torn-ragged blister across the palm.
“Gees, I betcha they hurt!” exclaimed Sash.
“Course they bloody hurt,” said Doogle, “but I’ll probably live. And a big slab of that fruit cake Zack’s been hoarding will help me survive, too.”
“So why didn’t you tell him? You didn’t have to keep shovelling didja?”
“What? And let him think Gower Abbey kids are pikers? Bugger that!”
Zack retrieved the said fruit cake from his larder and offered slices of it around. Later, after we’d consumed the better part of it, Doogle dragged his overnight bag down from the top sleeper. He grabbed a towel and change of clothes, then headed for the hand basin in the toilet to attempt a clean up.
When he arrived back Zack was ready to go. “How’s the water?” he asked.
“It’s not water, it’s ice,” muttered Doogle. “It only turns to water when it gets on your skin.”
“Oh no, is it that bad?”
“Yeah. But just keep movin’ Zack. You’ll be all right.”
Some time later we crossed the Great Divide and started on the long downhill run to the coast. The train now rolled along easily on a track that traversed hills and valleys but overall had a gentle downward gradient.
Mid afternoon saw us at Charters Towers and once again were able to stock up at the platform cafeteria. A lot of the boys had run out of money by this time and skills learned at our open-ended Monopoly games and Father’s occasional pontoon evenings now became evident. In fact for a while the scene on the platform resembled nothing so much as a moneylender’s convention, except that here the borrowers outnumbered the lenders.
After this it was across the mighty Burdekin River and onward to the serpentine track which winds down the mountains at the edge of the tablelands.
By 6.30 that evening we were in Townsville ... where Li’l Titch and a couple of the other boys were collected by their parents. As for the rest of us … well, it was up the main street for a milkshake and a deener’s worth of chips or a pie. Our carriage would be coupled to a northbound freight at approximately 11.30 p.m., we were told before setting off.
Somewhere around 2.30 the next morning we were abandoned at the Ingham station. We little angels slept on in innocent bliss, however, totally unaware of having arrived there – until being rudely awoken in the pre-dawn half-light by a shunting loco slamming none too gently into the wagon’s buffers and a voice advising us to get ourselves out of there pronto as the carriage was shortly to be shunted away.
Then, around seven o’clock, assorted parents started arriving to collect their precious flowers, and by half past eight Zack and I were wolfing down a hearty breakfast at Hopeless Farm.
The Sandersons arrived at eleven forty. They’d been invited out for a patio lunch but when a windy storm blew up Mum set the dining room table inside. This gave me the perfect opportunity to regale everyone with amazing tales of “Plummeting to the Centre of the Earth”, “Hunting the Wild Kangaroo” and “Bravery in the face of the Giant Queensland practically Man-eating Goanna”.
I’d arranged for Julia to sit beside me, mainly because I liked sitting next to her, but also to avoid facing those disturbing eyes in front of everyone. Yet despite this I still managed to blow it.
Next time would be different, I vowed. Next time they visited she’d be getting dark glasses to wear.
…And I’d been going so well, too – right up to where Nugget gave me the doctored sandwich packs. Then Julia asked me something and I turned to answer without thinking.
Eye contact that close left me sitting there paralysed and mouth agape, my brain totally short-circuited mid-sentence.
I’m sure her father enjoys watching this phenomenon. And Zack had to excuse himself and rush off to the bathroom … from where he could be heard laughing uproariously.
When he returned Mr Sanderson faked an innocent enquiry as to the source of his mirth. Zack just said he’d remembered something incredibly funny.
When pressed to share his joke the stinkin’ little mongrel related with great delight and graphic detail Jessica’s catching me naked in the bathroom. And all I could do was sit there with a big cheesy grin on my stupid dial as the bile built up to my back teeth.
Treachery this vile utterly sealed the little bilge rat’s fate as far as I was concerned. Then I recalled his despatching Goozie and Sinker during their brief and violent encounter at the beginning of the year. Instead it seemed I would have to teach my supposed friend a few things about elementary tactfulness! …the rotten little turncoat.
Unidentified Junior rabble, Townsville Railway Station
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