Beetle Creek

By Jim Parsons

The Bournleys of Beetle Creek - you'll love 'em, but you'll be so glad they're not your family.

This wildly funny Aussie bush yarn takes a nostalgic look at life in the bush in the 1950s. Seven-year-old Denny blackmails the neighbours, teenagers Marcie and Davo are over-sexed and over-endowed, spooky little Lucy foretells the future, Uncle Wally is fresh out of jail ... and Jack, the budding author, is writing it all down.

Take the grand tour of places of interest in Beetle Creek - the garbage tip, Georgie Chung's grocery store, the primary school, and Bruiser Walton's hotel. Thrill to the excitement of the Grand Benefits Concert for polio victim Patty Sweeney, and the Anglican tennis tournament, where Dad Bournley faces off in the finals against his arch-enemy, Pat O'Brien, the man who accused him of sheep-stealing. Find out whether Lizzie Layton really did poison her husband and why Gordon Woods broke Dad's nose.

In a village where everyone knows everyone else's business, there are still some dark secrets to be uncovered, and Jack is up to the task.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Parsons
• Release date: Dec 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311810397

Jim Parsons

Jim Parsons spent his formative years on a wheat farm in northern NSW, Australia. His first book Beetle Creek reflects that rural background. He subsequently obtained a B.A. majoring in English and German Literature, and a Dip. Ed. and worked in Technical and Further Education, where he taught English and Communication to adults, including Creative Writing modules. On his retirement in 2003, Jim developed his own popular novel-writing course and started a writer mentoring service. He lives at the Gold Coast with his wife Julie, enjoys travel and fishing - and, of course, writing.

Book preview

In loving memory of

Sandra Lynne Parsons

(1947 – 2001)

my late wife and first reader

of the draft manuscript of

‘Beetle Creek’

My sincere thanks:

To my long-suffering children, Renata and Cutha, for being patient when Dad is off with the pixies.

To my talented mate, Bob Ellis, for some great cartoons.

To my dear wife, Julie, for her valuable input, precise editing skills and enthusiastic support.

Prologue

Dad gave me a hearty slap on the back. Well, Jack old lad, he said with a wink, you’re a working man now. What sort of job will you take on?

It was March 12, 1955 – my fifteenth birthday – and I was finally allowed to leave school. Euphoria!

I think I’ll try writin’ a book, Dad.

Pooh! You wouldn’t know a rat’s arse about book-writin’, my brother Denny said. This astute literary critic was all of twelve years old.

Admittedly, my choice of career did break with the Bournley tradition of shearing and I can’t say Mum offered much encouragement, either.

You needn’t think you’re gonna sponge on us, sleepin’ in till midday and tuckin’ yer knees under my table, she said, her jowls wobbling with indignation. You can earn your keep like everyone else. There’s plenty of work around for a young bloke – musterin’, clearin’, fencin’…

Leave the boy alone, Lorna. Writin’s a good thing. Dad was always one to see a positive side. It’s in his blood – it’s hermetic.

Dad was the reader in the family, and had a penchant for big words. I don’t think Mum could read or write at all, so the whole family was doubly impressed with Dad’s literary bent – especially Dad.

I read the Sunday papers from cover to cover every week, whether there’s anything in ’em or not, Dad often boasted, and I can get through a Zane Grey western in a week. Dad had an extensive personal library, acquired in job lots at local farm auctions. He once bid sixpence for an Oxford Dictionary at Maguire’s clearance sale and brought it home proudly.

You never know, Mother. It might come in handy some day. One of the boys might go on to th’ university. He always hoped one of us might ‘gravitate from university.’ Indeed, he often said he might have gravitated himself, but for a lack of education.

Well, what would you write about, Jack? How about somethin’ scientific … you know, like compost? Dad was into compost. He had several bins on the go in the back yard, and was experimenting with various mixtures, some smellier than others.

Compost, Fred! We haven’t sunk that low, surely.

I’ve got it! Dad chortled. Do one of them hexposays on that bloody Pat O’Brien.

Dad hated Pat O’Brien with a passion. O’Brien thinks he’s the flamin’ mayor of Beetle Creek, and he doesn’t even live ’ere, he would say. O’Brien owned a farm on the outskirts, and he relied on villagers like Dad for shearing and casual work.

All us locals are perfeckly happy the way things are, and he wants to bring in the sewerage and get the damned ’lectricity put on, Dad used to rant. Before you know it, we’ll all be payin’ rates like those poor beggars in Moree. And for why? Dad, at this point, would survey his audience grandly. Because he’s too flamin’ lazy to dig a pit toilet like the rest of us, or pump up a Tilley lamp at night.

By hotly opposing every scheme that Pat O’Brien put up, Dad single-handedly set the Beetle Creek Progress Association back twenty years. Of course, had O’Brien not regularly accused Dad of stealing sheep, Dad might have been a little more cooperative.

Beetle Creek had its share of small-town politics, like all the villages scattered around the commercial hub of Moree – villages with personalities as inscrutable as their names: Bellata, Gurley, Garah, Pallamallawa, Gravesend.

I knew I didn’t have much time before Dad climbed onto his soapbox.

No, no, I said hastily. I thought I’d write about us, Dad – the Bournleys of Beetle Creek. It had a ring to it, I thought.

At fifteen, I wanted to write about the Bournleys because there were plenty of funny stories to tell. As well, Beetle Creek was my world – a handful of modest houses clustered around a grey wheat silo, a pub, a shop, a school, a creek for swimming and fishing. What more could a bush kid want?

I was a little slow to realise that what most Beetle Creek residents wanted was to escape the stultification of village life. Of course, some stood still too long, got zapped by the place, and never mustered the energy to prise open the jaws of the trap. To our credit, we Bournleys all found our various means of escape.

As a kid, I found life in Beetle Creek pretty exciting – and I wanted to write it all down. Now, as an old codger, with a wife and children of my own, I look back with a different perspective. I see darker deeds I can recount … well, there’s little point in having family secrets if you can’t tell someone.

What’s more, I now know the outcomes of Lucy’s prophecies. Lucy was my sister – the weird one – there’s no kinder way to put it. Her predictions about the family have haunted me from childhood, and have taken a lifetime to prove or disprove. I’ve ticked them all off over the years.

On that birthday morning, as I rambled on to Mum and Dad about the funny stories I wanted to tell, they began to see my ambition for what it was: a kid’s pipedream. They humoured me.

Mum put her hands on her hips and said, Well, don’t you mention that Uncle Wally was in jail, ’cos it was just a silly misunderstandin’. And make sure you give me good teeth in the story. Poor Mum was always embarrassed about her chipped, discoloured front teeth.

An’ make sure y’ tell ’em I never once come ’ome drunk in forty years, Dad added.

So there you have it. My Mum had sparkling white teeth and my Dad never came home drunk in forty years – and they are the only two lies I intend to tell. I will be completely truthful about Uncle Wally’s deviant behaviour, because he’s long dead. For that matter, so are Mum and Dad. Publication can’t hurt anyone now.

This book has been a long time coming – I’ll be sixty-one in March.

------------

My childhood home still stands in Beetle Creek. We turned our backs on it in 1955 – just abandoned it to the rats and pigeons. The locals will quickly tell you that the old Bournley place is haunted, but I remember it brimming with life. That house was no mere dwelling: it was a member of the family, a character in our lives, loved and loathed in equal measure. As such, I accord it first place in the story of the Bournleys of Beetle Creek.

Part 1 – The House

Chapter One

THE FRONT VERANDA

Houses have personalities – it’s undeniable. I think they must acquire them over time from successive generations of occupants. Our place in Beetle Creek was rented from a landlord in Moree who was content with a minimal rent, provided we didn’t ask for the dilapidated building to be maintained in any way. As far back as I can remember, the house seemed tired and care-worn, like a mother with too many kids.

In truth, by 1950, there was some population pressure. Mum and Dad had the front bedroom; Lucy (12) and Marcie (15) had the middle room; and Davo (16), Denny (7) and myself (10) had the back room. The bedrooms were tiny, as was the lounge room, and the kitchen had to double as the dining space. Our activities always tended to overflow onto the front veranda.

I remember that veranda as if it were yesterday. Houses might have a personality; but our front veranda definitely had a split personality. I could still show you which boards to avoid on a squeaky dinky or trike. Two in particular had a section of plank missing, just wide enough to grip a wheel and send the rider over the handlebars. There were raised nail heads here and there, and splintered cracks, draped with stiffened dirty grey threads from the mop head, where Mum swabbed the boards every week. The veranda smelt of disinfectant and dust. Fluff trapped in the rusty gauze would make you sneeze if someone held your nose against the wire.

I can still hear the wild rumble of a trike at full tilt and Mum shouting, I’ve just washed them boards. Look at the mess! You’ve had that flamin’ trike out in the mud again. I’ll kill you, you little heathen, you mark my words.

On a summer’s night, the front veranda was a cool, peaceful family haven. Mum and Dad would lie on the shearer’s cots and we kids would sprawl on the cool boards in our pyjamas with the old cream and maroon portable wireless between us. It was about the size and shape of a briefcase, and had enough dry cell batteries inside to start a tractor.

What’ll we listen to? Dad would ask courteously, then select for us. There’s that flamin’ smart aleck, Bob Dyer. Can’t stand that Yankee accent. Pick-a Box was a good quiz show but Dad wouldn’t let us hear it because of Bob and his Howdy, Customers, Howdy!

Hows about Amacher Hour? Dad liked Amateur Hour, even if no one else did. A bit of good singin’. You ought to go on that, Lorna. Mum occasionally sang in the kitchen, and Dad clearly approved.

Apart from the radio, the other piece of essential equipment on hot summer evenings was the mosquito coil that sent wisps of scented insect-repellent smoke around our legs. The wire flyscreening tacked to the veranda posts had so many holes and tears that anything smaller than a fruit bat could negotiate it with ease.

They squirt wet cow dung through a tube – that’s how they make these mozzie coils, Dad said. We could save a good bit of money if I just burnt a bit of cow dung in a bucket.

We haven’t sunk that low…yet, Mum said indignantly. Cow dung! Denny did try smoking some once, rolled in newspaper, and proclaimed it ‘good, but a bit mild.’

The sagging iron bed on the veranda was also Dad’s Sunday afternoon retreat. He always had a bottle of beer beside him and spent more time snoozing with the Sunday paper spread over his face than he did actually reading it. At times like this, Dad studied lawn growth patterns:

The more you cut it, y’ know, he would say, The faster it grows. It’s better to leave it alone. Mowing was done with a push-mower. When a push-mower was working well in short grass, it purred – a rapid schnick schnick schnick like a dozen butchers all sharpening their knives. In over-long grass, however, it would tangle, and baulk so abruptly that there was a danger of the pusher being catapulted over the handles. Occasionally, while contemplating these grave horticultural matters, Dad would rise from the daybed to stretch and amble to the waterbag hanging in the paperbark tree; he would tilt it, apply his mouth to the ceramic spout and take several long swigs.

Flamin’ beoo-ti-ful! Nothin’ like it – cool and sweet from the old waterbag. The hairy canvas fabric allowed water to seep through and the bag stayed moist, allowing the breeze and evaporation to cool the contents. To me, it always tasted as if you’d just hauled a muddy sugarbag out of a stagnant creek and wrung it out into a glass.

Of course, as Davo and Marcie got older, the veranda became the local lovers’ lane at night. It was good sport for younger members of the family to crouch under the window in the lounge room and eavesdrop.

Let’s see if we can hear ’em kissin’, Denny would say, and the two of us would huddle under the window, giggling. Sometimes, Denny would make revolting slurping noises on the back of his wrist, and that would usually get us shifted smartly.

Despite these good times, the front veranda put on its sinister face when it became Dad’s ‘consulting room’. Perhaps my most memorable consultation was the day after my tenth birthday.

Dad wants you, Davo said gruffly, and jerked his head. Consultin’ room. Sympathising with the condemned man wasn’t a family trait: after all, there was a good chance he’d dob you in as an accomplice. As I walked mournfully down the hallway, I could hear Denny whispering, What’d he do? and Lucy asking dolefully, Is he gonna get a floggin’? It felt rather like being hissed by the other inmates as I shuffled the long walk to the gallows.

Dad was on his back on the sagging iron bed, the Sunday paper held above him at arm’s length like a canopy. It crackled as he turned the page. I stood and waited; he knew I was there. Eventually, he drawled, Yes?

Davo said you wanted me, Dad. I scuffled my bare feet, picking up a sizeable splinter. Dad heaved his bulk upward and dropped his legs off the bed. The mesh base creaked and groaned. He sat there scowling at me. As a master of suspense, Dad could make Alfred Hitchcock look like an amateur. He got to his feet, strolled out to his waterbag and took a long pull, then walked back, wiping his sleeve across his grim mouth.

Jack, m’ lad, he said in an amiable tone that I knew from experience to be dangerous, What did y’ get for your birthday?

You know, Dad – a Meccano set.

Dad nodded wisely, confirming what he knew well to be true. That wuz yesterday. I haven’t seen y’ playing with it today.

Playin’ with me marbles, Dad, I mumbled. It wasn’t going well.

Haven’t y’ been beggin’ and howlin’ for a Meccano set fer a month?

I s’pose, Dad.

Dad’s voice became a little less amiable and a little more heated as he thought of how much that Meccano set had cost. An’ didn’t I spend bloody good money on it that I earnt with the sweat of me brow?

I guess, Dad.

Dad’s eyes bulged and his face went red. So where the bloody hell is it now? he exploded. I’d been sprung. Yeah, thanks, Denny, I thought.

My mate, Claude Prentiss, had wanted a Meccano set for years, but his parents, for some reason, would never came to the party. Claude, however, had an ancient slug gun that I would have given the crown jewels for. Dad was very much against slug guns and frequently declared that none of his boys would ever have one.

Damn the things! Kids get ’em and they shoot out insoolators, an’ kill little birds. Someone usually ends up losin’ an eye.

I was in no doubt about Dad’s distaste for slug guns: that’s why mine was hidden under the bed. I’d set up a deal with Claude a month before, then agitated strongly for a Meccano set for my birthday, which I duly delivered to Claude late in the afternoon of that very day … and finally got the birthday present I really wanted.

It proved to be Mrs Prentiss who ratted. When Claude turned up with a brand new Meccano set, she thought he must have stolen it. Claude was indignant:

I never pinched it! Jack give it to me an’ I give ’im me slug gun. I swapped it, fair and square.

Mrs Prentiss promptly told Dad about the deal. Parents are not to be trusted.

Dad’s trousers were held up by a broad, cracked leather belt. It didn’t go through the belt loops; it just cinched his girth, leaving a frill of trousers sticking out above. He took the belt off and I knew what was coming. Dad wasn’t shy about administering justice in public: if Mrs Layton from next door had happened to walk by at the time, he’d have just called out a neighbourly ‘hello’.

If I say y’ can’t have a slug gun, that’s an end to it. Do y’ understand? He grabbed me by the collar and delivered three wallops on my backside with the doubled belt. The slapping leather made a lot of noise. Denny said it sounded like a stock whip. I’m sure the noise made it hurt all the more.

Of course, I was required to take the slug gun back and retrieve my Meccano set. Nonetheless, the good thing about Dad was that, once you’d taken your punishment, it was all over; you were mates again. Getting on the wrong side of Mum was another matter: her vendettas would have put the Mafia to shame.

Chapter Two

THE BOYS’ BEDROOM

When I think of the bedroom I shared with Denny and Davo, I still feel a lingering aura of warmth and security – a strange response, considering the room was small, dark and dismal. Like the rest of the house, its walls and ceilings were of tongue and groove pine finished in dark spotty varnish. It was lit by one small louvred window and a single kero lamp on the lowboy.

The three beds were in line, with their heads against the western wall, and about a foot of walking space between each. They were black iron beds with a stretcher frame of wire mesh that creaked as you turned. Their striped kapok mattresses moulded to your shape, so that you ended up looking like a sausage in a hotdog bun. Each bed was finished with a thin grey army blanket with faded red stitching along the edges. Denny’s bed, the middle one, was under the window. The overall effect was institutional.

On one side of the doorway was a chunky lowboy, with a drawer for each of us; on the other side was a wardrobe filled with our particular treasures. The front centre panel of the wardrobe was mirrored. However, as much of the silver backing was discoloured or peeling, it looked more like a paperbark tree than a mirror, and certainly did not encourage you to stand and admire yourself. The top of the lowboy served as a display place for my model aeroplanes, Denny’s Matchbox cars and Davo’s shaving gear.

You’ve been at my razor agin, haven’t ya? Davo fumed. Don’t think I can’t tell, Denny. It’s blunt as buggery. He was right, of course. Denny had been trying to get the hair off a rat skin he’d dried. He was going to make a pair of moccasins, he said.

This room had the musty smell of comfort and mateship. In truth, it smelt of sweat-stiffened wool socks lost under beds, and the stale giggle-farts of little boys – but it was home to me. The image that stays with me is of three boys: each in his bed, each staring at the ceiling in a cocoon of impenetrable darkness, each linked to the others by a chain of soft, desultory conversation, which got sparser and sparser until finally someone would say, Shut up, Denny. It was always Denny who was the last to fall asleep.

Denny was a night owl. He often knelt on his pillow to look out at the stars, or spy on the comings and goings at Mrs Layton’s. He’d shake me awake:

Fella just come on a bicycle. Who would that be?

Shut up, Denny.

To combat boredom at night, Denny had his rats. There were rats in the ceiling; we could hear them skittering and fighting at times. Denny regularly smeared block cheese down the drainpipe and across to the windowsill to encourage the rats to come and join us.

He had a rat trap set on the windowsill just above his head; hours of patient work and experimentation had produced the finest hair-trigger setting. He experimented to find the most productive baits and reckoned pumpkin seeds to be the best.

A punkin seed an’ a good moonlit night, that’s what yer need to catch rats, he claimed. It wuz a bright full moon that time I caught three in one night.

The trap got set off most nights. When it missed, it slammed like a starter’s gun. Davo and I never got used to it: we’d always jump. When the trap caught something, there was a muffled thud, some tormented squeaking and a brief fluttering of legs. We’d hear Denny put his torch on – scritch scritch scritch. It was one of those early square bicycle torches where you wound the knob down on top to make contact and get light. Then we’d hear nick nick as he cut another small notch in the window ledge with his pocketknife.

That one was a foot and a half from nose to tail.

Shut up, Denny. And so it went on most nights. Mum used to complain about the coating of dried blood on the windowsill, but Dad would say:

Leave the boy alone, Lorna. It’s good that he’s got an interest in animals.

If Denny had his rats, Davo had Old Todger for company. Some mornings he would say, Old Todger doesn’t look real well this mornin’. Old Todge would look no different to me at all.

Don’t think he wants to get up this mornin’. Come on, old mate. I think Old Todger was what kept him going at times, got him off to work. There were days I’d think Davo was talking to someone in the bedroom, and it would turn out he was just talking to Old Todge.

Davo had started as a learner shearer and could now shear a modest sixty sheep a day. It was punishing work, according to Davo.

Bloody hard, back-breakin’ yakka, he told us as we lay in bed in the dark. Especially the big wrinkly wethers. Don’t take up shearin’, boys, whatever you do.

When he was working, he’d be away for a few days at a stretch, but then he’d be home for a week or two and Denny and I would anxiously await news of the latest exploits of Davo and Todger. He was a brother to be proud of: knowledgeable, a man of the world, a knight in shining armour.

We would write up a list of the kids who had given us trouble through the week and Davo would pocket it with a scowl.

Don’t worry, I’ll get ’em, he’d mutter. I don’t think he ever did, but it thrilled us all the same to listen to what he was going to do to them. We were already vindicated.

At sixteen, Davo felt comfortable about referring to Dad as ‘the old man’ – not quite comfortable enough to say it to his face, of course.

Don’t worry, boys he would assure us. If the old man was to kick the bucket tomorrow, I could look after the family now. That gloomy little bedroom was a secure fortress with Dad snoring in the next room, Denny keeping guard at the window, and a brother like Davo just across the way.

Chapter Three

MUM AND DAD’S ROOM

You didn’t go into Mum and Dad’s bedroom. No one ever said you couldn’t; it was just understood. There was no mystery about the room; it stood open all day long, and we could see that it was much fancier than ours. Mum and Dad had a pink chenille quilt with swirls on it, and their dressing table sported a good mirror – a round one with scalloped edges.

Another essential furniture item was the broomstick that Mum had placed carefully against the bedhead, in case of ‘burgulars’. Dad, apparently, felt he was adequately equipped to deal with burglars, because he didn’t