The Cousins

By Will Spokes

Cousins Jordan (Jedda) and Geoff (Goff) rise from the rubble of their lives in a suburb not blessed with wealth or privilege to create mayhem, mystery and intrigue across their neighbourhood and Australian society.

Drugs, booze, gambling and gangsters. What takes them from the dole queue to the English aristocracy and unimagined wealth?

From the mean streets of a working class suburb, to the top end of town, the cousins' journey is filled with tough choices, tough guys and tender women. The hilarious jaunt of two cousins is bent upon survival by any means available.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley
• Release date: Jun 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463523896

Will Spokes

Will Spokes recently retired after a lifetime in the commercial radio and insurance industries. He has a sharp sense of humour and an ever-inquisitive mind. His three grandchildren are his greatest joy in life and his wife his greatest supporter.Will has always enjoyed literature of all genres and some of his happiest memories involve a good book, a glass of wine and a warming fire. Sustained illness and partial loss of mobility gave him the opportunity to take up writing full time and develop some of the stories that had been floating about in his head.Will writes stories that demonstrate his flair for drama, peppered with his laconic humour and extensive research. Will enjoys quality popular writing as well as the classics. Life is too short to drink poor wine and read poor writing.

Book preview

Will Spokes has had a long and successful career in corporate life working for the largest insurance company in Australia before shifting into a very different role marketing radio advertising for some of Melbourne’s iconic radio stations.

A recent change of circumstances provided him with the opportunity to reveal a hidden talent and an appetite for writing.

Will has a sharp sense of the Australian laconic sense of humour and a deep insight into the lives of fellow workers which is on display in his first book.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all those generous-hearted Aussies who can always be counted on in a crisis no matter the problem, no matter who you are and no matter where you are from and the people of Footscray who have made welcome more migrants than any other city in Australia from over one hundred and sixty different nations.

Will Spokes

The Cousins

Copyright © Will Spokes (2018)

The right of Will Spokes to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781788487528 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781788487535 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781788487542 (E-Book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2018)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd™

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

Acknowledgements

Nobody succeeds alone and that includes me. Everyone in every endeavour depends on someone else to help them reach their goals. I have always been a dreamer and a chaser of rainbows, and through the highs and lows, my much-loved wife Lyn has been there uncomplaining as my support and my inspiration. There were many times I would have thrown it in but for her consistent encouragement, advice and direction. This book is for her.

The Cousins

A Story of Survival

Cousins Jordan (Jedda) and Geoff (Goff) rise from the rubble of their lives in a suburb not blessed with wealth or privilege to create mayhem, mystery and intrigue across the whole stratum of Australian society.

Not a failed experiment in genetics just one hundred percent Australian born boys from the burbs.

Drugs, booze, gambling and gangsters, what takes them from the dole queue to the English aristocracy and unimaginable wealth?

From the mean streets of a working-class suburb to the top end of town, the cousins’ journey is filled with tough choices, tough guys and tender women.

Foreword

At a glance, Melbourne presents as a sprawling city of suburbs enveloping a vast shallow Port Phillip Bay and spreading like some gigantic alien amoeba towards the low Mount Dandenong ranges to the northeast. Covering 9,900 square kilometres with a population of 4.5 million, it is, in fact, the lovely laid-back capital city of Victoria.

It is by any definition an attractive city, and it experiences all the problems of overcrowded cities similar to it around the world. Despite these problems, Melbourne has always been considered a beautiful and fortunate place to live. During the gold rush days of the last half of the eighteen hundreds, Melbourne was dubbed Marvellous. Melbourne as the enormous wealth generated by the goldfields washed through its economy generating amazing development. The city centre was built on an efficient grid system that allowed enough room for bullock wagons and horse-drawn carts to negotiate and turn without difficulty. The city elders laid out elegant tree-lined boulevards leading North, South, East and out to the West where the gold diggers headed. Not far along this particular boulevard, very close to where Melbourne zoo was established, the famous doomed expedition of Burke and Wills assembled before their departure to meet with failure and death in the unforgiving outback.

The city streets were lined with glorious Victorian architecture, municipal buildings, theatres, hotels and stores, all benefitted from this wonderful age of ostentation. Large spaces that were allocated to public parks and gardens finished the city and set it in place for its future as the Queen of the South, and set the teeth of Sydneysiders on edge with a jealous rage that has never diminished in over one hundred and fifty years.

As a result of the wealth coming out of the goldfields, Melbourne became the financial centre of Australia and between 1901 and 1927 was the capital of Australia and was the second largest city in the British Empire after London. Australia’s first stock exchange was established in Melbourne in 1861.

The citizens of this community were generally entrepreneurial and hard-working, free or assisted settlers of British stock. Early in their history, some previously unnoticed kink in their genes caused an almost unnatural interest in sport. The eager participation and interest in sport of all sorts such as horse racing (Melbourne Cup), athletics meetings (Stawell Gift) and cricket eventually, and some might say ultimately led to very popular support for the 1956 Olympic Games which received massive support by the populace.

A reason for this may have been Melbourne’s weather which despite the critics who still persist with the ‘four seasons in a day myth’ is largely sublime allowing the populace to enjoy the great outdoors, parks and gardens and sport. Australian rules football was invented in Melbourne, and the first recorded game was played in 1858 at Richmond Paddock beside the now existing MCG.

As this incredible sport took hold, it divided the great city’s denizens into distinct tribes that swore allegiance to their teams that represented their neighbourhood.

In time, the Victorian Football League consisted of twelve ferociously competitive teams contesting the VFL Premiership.

Melbourne thus became a city divided into twelve warring tribes particularly between March when hope sprang eternal for the success in the season ahead and crushing disappointment in September when the tribal team fails to make the finals.

A truce would be expected over the summer months, but nothing is further from the truth as injuries on-field punch-ups, new recruits and club transfers are dissected endlessly occupying by far the greatest radio and television airtime and share of print media then the next three subjects combined.

The competition is now a national one with eighteen teams from all states (except Tasmania sadly) and has been re-labelled Australian Football League.

One such team (tribe) is Footscray (now Western Bulldogs) established in 1877 which was and remains today a club supported mainly by the blue collar workers of the western suburbs. A perennial bottom-dweller on the League’s ladder, it took until 1954 for the Doggies (as they are lovingly called by their fiercely loyal supporters) to win their first Grand Final, and after enduring five hard decades of disappointment finally found relief in an emotional and much-celebrated Premiership Victory in 2016. Now, look out for the Backslappers and Hooray Henry’s jumping on the Doggies’ bandwagon.

This is the team that our heroes Jedda and Goff and their disparate family had followed through thick and mostly thin for several generations. Any thought of supporting another club would be quickly quashed with stern reprimands, and in some cases, a little violence, and the miscreant sent into permanent exile until re-educated. The history of the club and its supporters was metaphorical for the life and times of our boys.

Footscray sadly had an unfortunate reputation at one time and was avoided by the more blessed Melbournians from other suburbs to avoid offending their delicate olfactory senses due to some of its mellifluous industries or a thump on the same part of the anatomy from a testy local.

But those that have lived here for generations could think of nowhere better to live and raise their children and who would dare argue with them. Certainly, not the grateful immigrants who flooded in and grafted their own culture onto Footscray’s cultural profile.

Who can explain why the deprived too often become the depraved preying mercilessly and without conscience on their own kind making tough lives even tougher. Footscray like similar suburbs around Melbourne attracted a fair share of the cruel, the doubtful and the outright dodgy. A kid would quickly learn their place on the street in this mix developing skills to avoid the dealers, the molesters, the thieves and conmen and the dead set thugs that would be out for a bit of a stress relieving punch-up. Like the brave little London sparrows dodging around in the dust at the feet of the Hansom Cabs, the kids survived, and some thrived to become significant contributors not only to their hometown but to the world at large.

Our children today are being raised against this background of drugs and violence such that by the age of ten, they will have been exposed to innumerable violent deaths, drug use, examples of sexual abuse and domestic violence. Somehow, they continue to grow happily in good health (mostly) and thrive.

The cousins were never going to be world beaters, but they managed to survive after a fashion as fate and fortune dealt out the days of their lives.

This was the canvas on which those days were painted. Would they rise above or fall below?

This story is not meant to denigrate the city of Footscray or its incredibly diverse population who have generously welcomed more people of different cultures and countries than anywhere else in Australia.

The aim is to simply spin a yarn about a couple of rough lads and their journey through a life that could have been experienced by anyone born and raised in any of the dozens of similar suburbs in the major cities of Australia. I hope that the reader enjoys a fanciful and unlikely tale about a pair of doubtful Aussie city boys. But a warning! This book contains passages that are not for the faint-hearted.

Chapter One

The Cousins

He was tall and handsome in a frayed unwashed sort of way. His cousin and best mate was short tending to fat and sometimes a little slow on the uptake and equally soiled. They were both about the same age being in their early twenties or thereabouts, Goff was the younger. Birthdays were largely ignored by this mob to avoid the embarrassment of forgetfulness, not to mention the reluctance to part with the readies to honour the occasion with a gift. They were a real odd couple but firm mates. Jedda Jeffreys and Goff had forged a partnership out of adversity when Goff Harris had literally landed on Jedda’s parents’ front porch after his drunken, drug affected father had pushed his luck one time too many and finished up on a slab after trying to steal a slab from a drive-through grog shop. Fleeing the scene of this crime of the century, the knucklehead had run a red and put his stolen getaway car under a truck. When the cops arrived, they found his decapitated head in the back seat. One joker in blue held up the cranium in question and asked, Hey, isn’t this Hardluck Harris?

No, was the hilarious response, He was never that tall! Boom boom!

Well, the dear departed and sadly unlamented Hardluck Harris was Jedda’s mum’s little brother, Jedda’s Uncle Pauly, making poor old Goff an orphan.

Hardluck’s lifelong run of bad luck had extended into the marital arena as well. Goff’s mum Stella the Yeller (don’t ask!) and Hardluck’s old lady was a dedicated heroin junkie who turned out to be a bad shoplifter and an even worse drug dealer. When she wasn’t being done for the old ‘five finger discount’ rap, she was being done up a back alley or on a backseat somewhere by a ’client’ to pay for her next hit. Then she had a brainwave (or brain-fade, whatever; there weren’t many brain cells left to go either way) and entered into a contract to push a job, lot of ‘H’ for her dealer who, God bless him, thought she had the grit to become a small franchisee and help him grow his business.

At least that’s what Stella convinced him while giving him a freebie in his sleazy back street flat. In a haze of post-coital bliss, the blockhead handed over a 2gm baggie of Afghanistan’s finest skag. Well, as purity was concerned anyway, this little parcel of death had been stepped on more times than a boarding house doormat and now a few other toxins designed to boost the profit out of it for each subsequent dealer before it reached Stella. Anyway, Fat Bob decided Stella could move this product and turn a good profit from all her druggie contacts.

What this bonehead had overlooked was the first rule in dealing with junkies. Never trust a junkie. She did a bunk at the first opportunity, of course, and turned up dead in the back of an abandoned shopfront, all trace of Fat Bob’s expansion dreams gone up Stella’s now maggot infested nostrils.

And so it happened that Goff became an orphan and while he wasn’t exactly deposited on his Aunts doorstep in the traditional manner, he did arrive with a considerable thump, tripping on the top step as he approached the front door and added further character to his looks by using his head as a braking apparatus on the timber decking, thus removing his two front teeth in the process. His Aunt swung the security door open suddenly to see what the noise was and caught him on the rise blackening his right eye.

Oh pfhuck, he managed to gasp spattering blood and saliva over his Aunt’s heavily made-up face, Thsorry Auntie Grattthh, he lisped in apology reaching back for his baggage.

Ah Goff ya bloody idiot, swore Auntie G, wiping his bloody snot and gore from her moosh with the back of her hand, if I get HIV out of this, I’ll ring ya neck, ya dozey buggar, get in here and clean-up for Christ’s sake.

Yes, Auntie Grace was an adherent to the virtues of her name in that she would grace any conversation with her highly developed repertoire of obscenities no matter if that was speaking with her now dead and buried slut of a sister or the Archbishop of Canterbury. Grace had been toughened by the travails of life like many around her starting with single motherhood, but she was essentially a kind hearted God fearing Catholic girl.

The Senior Bishop and principle leader of the Church of England was unlikely to have been seen hereabouts in recent times, if ever. But if he did show up, Grace would be more than happy to educate him in the local patois’.

Grace had expected the boy to turn up as soon as she had received news of her sister’s untidy demise. They had organised the cheapest and quickest funeral known and hadn’t bothered with a wake given that there were no mourners apart from themselves and they, in all honesty, weren’t exactly in mourning either.

Despite the fact that Goff was as dense the African jungle, she still had a certain level of affection for the dopy buggar. She knew what a rough life he had endured under the stewardship of two of the world’s worst parents.

Poor old Goff (the name is a childhood corruption of Geoff) had eventually settled down, and after a couple of years, he and his cousin had developed a regular routine that only varied with the seasons.

That is Footy Season, Spring Racing Season and Cricket Season. They both had a preferred outfit for each event as the calendar rolled around. During the Footy Season, they decked out their carcasses with jeans and Doc Martins, maybe an AC/DC tee under a flannelet check shirt (only in inclement weather) over the sleeveless Guernsey of their adored team, the Mighty Doggies, a scarf in team colours and a peaked cap again in team colours.

Spring racing brought out the creativity in our lads. The AC/DC tees were ditched along with the scarves and Guernseys in favour of white tee shirts with a bow tie and ruffles printed on them designed to look like formal attire out of respect for the Sport of Kings.

Cricket Season saw them applying Green and Gold sunblock on their dials, and the Doc Martins ditched for thongs and an Aussie themed tee-shirt. Thus, attired for each of their prime interests, the boys would join the throng of similar types screaming their lungs out at Western Oval (Doggies’ home ground), ogling the fillies (and the horses) at Flemington and kicking back with a few coldies on the long hot summer arvo’s at the MCG.

They were fully rounded specimens of their generation; well, anyway Goff had evolved into an almost perfect spheroid with legs, while through some fluke of genetics, Jedda had retained a pretty svelte body shape. Jedda was also possessed of a rare intelligence considering his bloodlines and had he received the right encouragement may have made something of himself, but if he had, he would have been cast out by the tribe for ‘bein up ’imself’. So he settled into a studied mediocrity that challenged no one and assured him of a wide circle of lowbrow acquaintances who failed to throw up any challenge in return.

Living below the mediocre line was warm and comfortable and life rolled along to the ear-splitting tunes of Barnsey, Acker Dacker, Metallica and strangely Adelle who would have the boys in tears as they downed their tenth bourbon and coke late at night after watching the AFL Footy Show and pissing themselves at Sam’s Street Talk.

Where do they get dickheads like this? queried Goff spitting Cheezels all over his lap.

Try lookin’ in the fuckin’ mirror, muttered Jedda.

Huh, whatcha’ say mate?

Nuthin’, pass me another tinny before you guts ’em all pal.

Aahh, sorry Jedda, we’re all out.

Jesus Christ on crutches, blasphemed the brains trust. Now, I’ll have to run down to the grog shop for replacements.

Jedda was less than happy, they had a dodgy old rust bucket Corolla that attracted cops like flies to fresh road kill, and this had led to Goff doing his brief on a point 05 when he tried to run the gauntlet to pick up a bloody pizza in the shit barge.

You never heard of home delivery ya dickhead?

Jedda was in despair for his cousin who now had to find a grand for the fine as well.

Go in the add break cocker, you won’t miss much if you’re quick.

The quickest thing that heap does is rust, sulked Jedda as he slouched out the door.

The local Bottle O liquor store kept extended hours to service its motley clientele (and a much-valued service to the drug-crazed stickup merchants who robbed the place on a regular basis) and it was a blaze of lights and posters advertising its wares including all manner of alcohol, packaged junk foods and lottery tickets as Jedda clattered to a halt at the kerb. Pulling on the handbrake almost as an afterthought, he was only slightly surprised to find the mechanism come away in his hand with little resistance. He stared at it dumbly for a second or two before hurling it out the window almost beheading a passing late-night cyclist who cursed him over his shoulder as he pedalled off angrily with Jedda’s return expletives chasing him into the night.

Jedda shouldered open the Corolla’s door which gave way with an almighty creaking groan, the rusted hinges protesting their agony to the night and disrupting the plans of a randy alley cat that had just cornered a very nervous kitty. She took advantage of the distraction to skitter up and over the fence startled by the unholy racket leaving the tom glaring hatred at the four-wheeled pile of rust ticking with heat and backfiring as its engine died.

Entering this temple to coronary disease, Jedda was struck by the thought that he would like ten bucks for every liver that had been destroyed by the toxic trash that had issued out of this dump. He wandered over to the fridge cabinet and selected two six packs of their favourite libation and headed back toward the counter.

The current proprietor of this grotty joint was a skinny desultory Indian who appraised every customer with a wary eye that had a pronounced nervous tic, the legacy of more stickups than he would care to remember. His heavily acne scarred visage quivered into a ghastly attempt at a smile, revealing a set of teeth that hadn’t seen a toothbrush this millennium. An outburst of cheeriness such as this was reserved only for the benefit of one of his most valued clients. The poor buggar rejoiced in the name Sachin Tendulkar, the same name as one of India’s most celebrated cricketers, which was displayed on a nametag on his soiled dust coat.

Sadly, this Sachin shared none of his name-sakes athleticism and had never swung a cricket bat out on the green-sward. There was the odd occasion when he was required to send off the local urchins with an ancient cricket bat as they tried to pilfer some carelessly stored stock in the backyard. But he always had to play a straight bat to the jokes that were bowled up to him by the likes of