Cold Gold

By Dennis J. McTaggart

Get an inside into Dennis amazing life when you follow Teddy and his gang of abalone poachers on their wild ride.

See what happens when good, honest blokes stray into the murky dark side of life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Jan 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781479766376

Dennis J. McTaggart

Dennis J. McTaggart started life on a farm in the Gippsland Lakes area. He left school at 16 and moved to Traralgon where he worked in electrical retail. His thirst for adventure saw him join the local “skin diving club” where he was offered a job working on an abalone boat out of Mallacoota. Dennis soon took advantage of the affordable abalone licenses in New South Wales and started diving out of Eden. Dennis spent the next years working in under water construction and on building sites all over Australia, eventually ending up in Tasmania diving for abalone. He suffered nitrogen narcosis (the bends) which partly paralysed him. It was during his recovery that Dennis started to recount his adventures. Born in 1950, Dennis has seen it all. In his short stories COLD GOLD, he shares with us intrigue and wonder which formed part of his life. Get an inside into Dennis’ amazing life when you follow Teddy and his gang of abalone poachers on their wild ride. See what happens when good, honest blokes stray into the murky dark side of life. Dennis is a modern, medical miracle. His recovery defied the odds and medical prognosis. He now leads a relatively normal life for a sexagenarian, holed up in the fabled high country in Victoria, Australia. Welcome aboard!

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Contents

The Vagrant

Start of Cold Gold

Dean and Curly

Tom and Sandy

Wallace (Piggy) Trotter

The Processor

The Restaurant owner

The Loan Sharks

The Golden Chalice (The Black Devil)

The Golden Chalice

(The Monumental City)

The Golden Chalice (Present day)

Curly and the Ponzi scheme

Bass Strait Bandits

Pedra Branca

Endnotes

The Vagrant

I had been doing it tough the last couple of years. I used to drive a van and deliver bread for a well-known bakery, to all the supermarkets. There was a dispute with our wages and rate of pay. I dug in and ended up losing my contract and van. My wife and I weren’t doing it that well and the extra pressure of me not working was enough to tip the marriage over and she took the two boys and went to live with her sister. I stayed in the unit and got behind with the rent and got evicted. I sold the furniture and other stuff at a garage sale, took the money, and knocked it off on the ‘punt’.

I moved into a flea pit boarding house and lived in fear of my life for a couple of years and slowly lost contact with the kids. They were better off without me. My friends abandoned me. It was as much my fault as theirs, and so I spiralled down and down until I was homeless and friendless.

I became invisible to 99 per cent of the population. On pension days, I had money and for the rest of the fortnight I was broke and living hand to mouth, day to day.

My general appearance got worse and worse. One pension day, I was refused a hair cut by a barber as I was too dirty. He bluntly told me, ‘Fuck off and don’t come back. If you sit on my chair, I’ll have to get it steam cleaned.’

My beard and hair was long and unkempt. My clothes were dirty and ragged.

It was a surprise when the big bloke with the thickest gold chain I had ever seen walked up to me and said, ‘Gidday, mate, do you want to earn one hundred dollars?’

He didn’t look like a poofter, so I said, ‘What do I have to do? I’m not gay.’

‘Neither am I. Thank fuck,’ he said, ‘all you have to do is go in and buy me a mobile phone, that easy.’

‘I don’t know anything about mobile phones or anything like that,’ I answered.

‘Don’t worry, sport, just give the people in the phone shop this note and the money and get the phone, in your name, and give me the phone and I’ll give you the hundred dollars, that easy. It’s not rocket science,’ he said with a grin.

He gave me the money and the model number of the phone he wanted me to get for him, so I walked into the phone shop and made my way up to the counter. The pretty young girl behind the counter walked away from me and looked at a middle-aged sales man who got to his feet and walked over to me and asked in a questioning voice, ‘Can I help you?’

‘Yes, I want to buy a phone,’ I said handing him the note that bloke had given me.

‘How are you going to pay, credit card or cash?’ he said with a smirk.

‘Cash,’ I said, deciding that one word answers would be enough. I caught sight of myself in the reflection of a display case and realised that I didn’t look the best. My hair was sticking out and matted and my beard was dirty. There was a smear of mud or grease on my forehead. I needed a bath.

The sales assistant went to a display case and selected a phone in a box and said, ‘That will cost you one hundred and fifty dollars. It’s a pay as you go deal. It’s got ten dollars credit and you can top it up anywhere, post offices, service stations, seven elevens, anywhere.’ He put his hand out for the money and took it out of my dirty hand and went to go back to his desk. ‘Got any ID?’ he asked. I gave him my pension card, and he took note of my name and address. He held the money as if there was a distinct possibility that he could catch cancer from contact with it and did the paperwork. He soon came back and gave me the phone and the receipt and said in a loud voice, ‘Thanks for your business. Where did you hear about us? I hope that you recommend us to all your friends.’

I looked at him and said nothing, turned around, and with everyone looking at me, I walked out onto the street and looked to see where the bloke who I bought the phone for was.

He was leaning against a lamppost watching me but out of sight of the shopfront where the phone people where.

‘How did you go, sport?’ he asked. He reached for the phone, and I held it to my chest. ‘Where’s my money?’ I asked. He smiled and said, ‘Let me look at it first, just to make sure that it’s the one that I want.’ He took it and unpacked the phone and said, ‘Yep, that’s what I want. Well done.’ He took out a hundred-dollar note and gave it to me. I looked at it and said, ‘Thanks.’

‘No problem, sport,’ he said and turned and walked away, and I never saw him again.

Start of Cold Gold

Dave’s untraceable phone rang, the one that Teddy got for him. He didn’t know how he did it, but it was a pay as you go that was registered in someone else’s name. ‘It was Teddy, on the line from Melbourne,’ he said, ‘Dave, I’m coming down with a couple of mates to do a bit. What’s happening? What’s the weather like? Does it look all right?’

Dave said, ‘It looks good for the next couple of days. Very light swell and not a lot of bad weather about,’ Teddy said. ‘Yes, the weather maps look good. We should get a couple of days in. I’ll meet you at the normal place.’

‘All right, mate, what’s your ETA? (Estimated time of arrival)’

‘I should be there in about four hours, give or take thirty minutes. If I have a problem, then I’ll give you a ring.’

‘Oakey, Doakey,’ Dave answered and disconnected.

Dave put the phone down and smiled to himself. He hoped that everything went all right, because if they were successful, then there will be a quid in it for him.

Dave used to be an abalone diver. When there wasn’t a lot of money in it, just as things started to improve in the industry, he got a bad case of the bends and that put an end to an otherwise brilliant career. It totally disabled him for about ten years. He was still not over it, but he would get by because he was good at getting by.

Dave waited for a while and then drove into the main street of Bairnsdale and parked in the gardens, across the road from a shop his dad used to run. It was now a book shop, memories flooded back, all good, of the days that he spent working, as a young man selling electrical goods with his dad many years ago.

Dave’s phone rang. It was Teddy. ‘Hey, mate, it’s Teddy. I’m in the red Ford Falcon, hire car, and I’m at the water tower. Where are you?’

‘Mate, I’m just in front of you. In fact, I can see you,’ Dave answered.

‘Right, mate, I’ll do the old loop de loop and see if I’ve got a tail.’

‘Right, mate,’ Dave said, ‘I’m all eyes, do your thing.’ Teddy drove past him and then did a right-hand turn around the gardens in the centre of the main street in Bairnsdale, and then another right-hand turn, and headed back towards Melbourne. Dave watched to see if any other car did the same. None did, and Teddy hung a u-turn and drove back past him. Dave let him go and started up and followed him out of town. They went through this little precaution every time he came down just to make sure that there weren’t any fisheries or undercover police on his tail. When Dave got to the Nicholson Hotel Motel, Teddy was in the bar ordering a couple of pots of beer. He joined him at the bar and said, ‘Good day, Teddy. Mate, it’s good to see you.’ Teddy smiled; the overhead light reflected off the gold chain that hung around his neck. He was a big bloke, ruddy complexion, and always had a smile on his face. He was a very good abalone poacher, and he always ended up with abalone, plenty of them, never took stupid risks, never dived deep, and always paid everybody quickly.

‘Good day, Dave, you have let yourself go a bit, mate. Must be all this hillbilly lifestyle you’re living,’ Teddy said, laughing.

‘Yes, mate, it’s easier to fit in down here if you look a bit rough,’ Dave answered somewhat sheepishly, aware that his appearance differed from Teddy’s.

‘Yeah, I suppose you’re right,’ Teddy said.

We moved out of earshot from the barman, an ex-copper. Those bastards take everything in and will report you to the coppers if they hear anything; ex-coppers are mostly pricks.

‘What’s the plan?’ Dave asked.

‘Well, we are going to put in at Lakes Entrance and head up the coast towards Gabo Island. Depending on conditions, we’ll have a couple of jumps and see what we can find. We’ll be away for a couple of days. We’ll coff up the first day’s fish and then shuck out the rest, bag all the meat, then drop them off to you, and, if the weather holds, we’ll drop them off onto the beach and then come back to Lakes Entrance.’

‘Have you got a driver?’ Dave asked. ‘I don’t want to be seen with you when the boat arrives.’

‘Yes, mate, don’t worry, Tony will bring down the boat, launch it, and then take the trailer away and be where we want him to be when we are ready to go home. That’s all sorted.’

‘OK mate, that sounds good,’ Dave said, ‘you have got it all covered.’

Teddy said, ‘I’ll give you a thousand dollars upfront and you will get a cut out of whatever we end up with, OK?’

‘Yes, mate, that’s perfect. That will do me fine,’ Dave replied.

They walked out of the bar and Teddy gave Dave the thousand dollars. Teddy said, ‘I’ll find somewhere to stay and the boys will come down tomorrow at about noon.’

Dave rang his brother and told him what was going on. He was happy to know that they were going to earn. He had their four-wheel drive and rubber ducky at his farm a few miles out of town.

The next day, Tony arrived. Tony was an Italian and had been around boats and the fishing fleet all his life. He was a doer. He always got the job done; no matter what happened, he always was there. Tony had the boat with and three divers. Dave didn’t know any of them, so there wasn’t a lot of talk. Teddy and the three divers climbed up into the twenty-three foot, half-cabin Shark Cat, and they swiftly got the boat headed out the entrance at Lakes Entrance and headed towards the oil rigs out in Bass Strait as if they were going deep sea fishing or on a tour around the oil rigs. Tony drove the trailer away from the boat ramp and went up to Jemmey’s Point, overlooking the entrance, and watched as the Shark Cat got smaller and smaller as it went into the distance. Tony rang Teddy and asked if everything was OK. ‘Yes, mate, all’s well,’ said Teddy. Tony knew that Teddy would ring him with further instructions when he was ready to come in and wanted to be picked up at the ramp. Tony made his way to a caravan park where he booked an overnight van for a couple of days, telling the park owners that his boat was in the water and he would be doing a bit of fishing. He paid for two nights in advance.

Teddy headed out to sea. The boat was moving smoothly over the water; the two, 200 horsepower motors were running smoothly. The boat sliced through the water, sending two rooster tails twenty foot high into the air behind them. Teddy checked the gauges, everything looked good. The tachometers hands were sitting on 4500. They still had one thousand R.P.M.s to go, but he never pushed the boat to its limit unless he had to. Teddy liked to keep a bit up his sleeve and also it was good to conserve fuel.

Teddy turned to the three other blokes who were sitting and standing beside and behind him and said, ‘It looks all right to me.’ They all nodded. Dean, a giant of a man in his early twenties, said, ‘Let’s hope that we can get some time in the water before the sun goes down.’

Teddy smiled. ‘No worries, Deano, we will get a couple of hours in before the sun goes down.’ Dean wasn’t too happy about diving in the ocean at night. He didn’t mind diving in the Port Phillip Bay at night, but the open-ness of the ocean spooked him a bit.

Dean and Curly

Dean and Curly had been mates forever. Their earliest memories were of their mothers getting together for cups of tea. They lived in the same street in Williamstown, a suburb of Melbourne. There are said to be more millionaires in Williamstown per acre than any other suburb in Melbourne. They were the same age and went to school together, starting on the same day; their mums walked home after delivering the boys on their first day of school and cried together at their little boys’ loss of child hood. Even at that early age, Dean was a big boy, easily the tallest boy in their class, and like most big kids, he had a very gentle nature. The only way to upset him was to pick on Curly. Curly was a little bit effeminate-looking and had longish curly hair that he wore almost down to his shoulders. He was a foot shorter than Dean, and they were always together. They were a formidable duo on the footy field. Curly was quick, and whenever he got the ball, he would always kick it up to Dean. Dean would run through the packs knocking people left and right and usually mark the ball easily. While they were eating their lunches one lunch time, they noticed a wiry little kid eating his lunch on his own. Curly sat beside him and said, ‘My name’s Alex, but everyone calls me Curly, and this is my mate, Dean. What’s your name?’

‘My name’s Tom and we have just shifted here from Broadmeadows. I’ve only been here a couple of weeks.’

They all shook hands and they just clicked. Some time life-long friendships are formed by the first handshake.

From that time on, they were inseparable; they always had their lunches together and walked to and from school with each other. They went through school together and hung around together in their teen years. They all got jobs and ended up doing apprenticeships together and ended up as tradesmen. Tom and Curly worked for the railways and ended up as boilermakers, and Dean ended up as a carpenter. The money that an apprentice made was very poor, and the three decided to supplement their income by poaching abalone. They could make more in a weekend than they could all week. All they had to do was get up early and go for a swim in the bay. It was that easy. It wasn’t hard to dodge the fisheries as they were more concerned about arresting the Greeks or Vietnamese for taking too many ‘Pippies’ or undersize fish, the easy stuff.

When they got their licenses, they all bought cars; ‘shit heaps’ mainly, but they were all good with their hands and they always had one going. They started to go further down the coast and soon added to their wares by grabbing crayfish. They could unload these very easily. Anyone would want to take home a crayfish and the big ones always resulted in the best money. Soon they had people that put in steady orders for the crayfish. The abalone was harder to sell as only the Asian restaurants wanted them and the Asians were very hard to deal with. They would argue over every cent. One day, they were approached by a big red-haired bloke. He had an easy nature and a solid gold chain. He said his name was Teddy and he was always looking to buy cheap abalone. All they had to do was drop it all off at Teddy’s and he would pay them cash and they would be away with money in their pockets. One Sunday night, Teddy suggested that they work in with him. He had a boat and the ready market. Teddy suggested that they work out of the boat for a while until they all get used to each other and then do it a bit more professionally, that meant more money for all of them. They all clicked. There were never any problems. It all worked like a charm and the money flowed in. Soon they were making more money that they ever thought possible. They were diving at night in Port Phillip Bay, using lights that were strapped onto their masks. Being poachers, they took everything that looked like an abalone. Teddy’s boat was fantastic. It was a twenty-three foot ‘Shark Cat’ with two, 200 horsepower Mercury outboard motors. It went like ‘Stink’. Teddy always drove it, and they split the ‘whack’ up evenly. Teddy knew where all the abalone were and they always got plenty.

Teddy decided that things were getting a bit hot in the Bay, so they started going up and down the coast, staying away for a couple of days. It was well worth the trouble. Teddy had everything worked out.

They started calling themselves the ‘Dream Team’, and in fairness, it was a bit like a dream. They knew all there was to know about each other and valued their friendship above all else. They ate together and drank together. They spent most of their time together, and when Tom fell for Sandy, they all welcomed his happiness.

Dean was having trouble at home. His gambling was out of control. He would bet all day on the races and lose, and then get on to the ‘Dish Lickers’ (greyhounds) with much the same result. He even had a go on the ‘Robbers on wheels’ the trots, with the same results. Dean was a ‘dickhead’ when it came to the punt and was always broke. His partner got sick of money problems and took off with an S.P. (illegal) bookie; much to Dean’s disgust, Dean referred to the bookie as the ‘Fucking enemy’. The rest of the boys didn’t say anything. Once when Teddy worked out how much money they were making and how much money Dean had knocked off, he shook his head in disbelief. There was nothing that they could do. It was up to Dean to work his own shit out.

The other two, Tom and Curly, were rocking gently back and forth with the movement of the boat. They didn’t mind diving at night or in the day time, any time was a good time to dive for abalone, especially when the prices were high.

Tom and Sandy

Tom was tough. He had to be. It was that simple. He came to Australia with his parents when he was five years old. His dad was even tougher. He was born and bred into a criminal family in London’s East End, and he came from the square miles of Government tenement buildings that housed the toughest of the tough. Murder wasn’t unknown, and Tom’s father knew that the only way of Tom not ending up living the life that he lived was to move away. The class system being what it is in England meant that no one had a chance of getting ahead, so emigration was the only option, South Africa, America, or Australia. Tom’s father knew that there were heaps of British in Australia, so he thought, ‘Why the fuck not’. They had nothing at all to lose, and they were taking everyone that put their hand in the air. So it was settled. Australia, here we come. They arrived in Melbourne, and everyone was full of hope. They had left their old lives behind and were starting out fresh. Tom remembered walking off the boat and getting into the bus. The Australian bus driver said, ‘Gidday, mate, what’s your name?’

Tom was shy and turned into his mum’s skirt. His dad said, ‘Tell the man, and don’t be a baby.’ Tom looked at the grinning man and said, ‘Tom, sir.’ The driver laughed and said, ‘I am not any sir, Sunny. My name’s Brian. Good to meet you, Tom.’ He put out his hand and shook Tom’s hand, and Tom never hid behind his mother’s skirt again.

Tom loved Australia. His dad got a job and wasn’t sneered at by any boss. He joined the union, and suddenly he had a say in the running of his workplace. Soon he was elected as the union rep. There were plenty of men from England and it was a new start. He made more friends in a month in Australia than he had in a lifetime in England. Sure things were a bit backward and slow in Melbourne, but nobody seemed to care; if something wasn’t done today, then it would be done the next day, but everything got done.

Tom went to school and learnt all about the Australian life and the Australian people; the ones who called themselves Aussies were in fact Pommies that had been here longer than the new arrivals, it was that simple.

When he was going to school, he met a heap of kids and became friendly with two. One was a huge kid called Dean. He was a monster, almost twice Tom’s height and very strong; the other was Alex but everybody called him Curly because he had curly hair and wore it longish. Tom thought Curly looked like a faggot, but when you had Dean as a mate not a lot of people mentioned their opinions. They formed a strong friendship. They all played a bit of footy and cricket, but once the three of them stuck their heads under the water that was it. They couldn’t spent enough time in the ocean. They started poaching abalone and crayfish and selling them wherever they could. It was easy to sell the crayfish, but only the Asians wanted the abalone, so they took to hawking them around the Asian restaurants. The Asians were very tough business men and would fight over the last cent.

They had been doing it for a couple of years when one day a big bloke with a thick gold chain spoke to them about buying some abalone off them. He said his name was Teddy, and he seemed to have plenty of money and was a good bloke with it. Later on, he suggested that they do a bit together, out of his boat. It sounded like a good plan to them.

When they started poaching abalone with Teddy, everything was easy. Ted always had everything worked out, and the abalone was always sold and the money divvied up so that they all got equal shares. They became a team and trusted each other with their lives on a daily basis.

When Tom met Sandy, it was love at first sight. Tom was besotted by her beauty. Sandy was working at a pub that Tom and the boys used to go to once in a while. Tom soon became a regular, and if anybody was rude or back chatted her, Tom was soon on the scene. His temper, which bubbled just below the surface, would erupt and he would leap to her defence. Justice was usually swift and the loud mouth was either knocked to the ground or had Tom’s stiletto at their throat. It was common knowledge that Sandy was taken, and if you were stupid enough or drunk enough to flirt with her, then you got what you deserved. Tom was very jealous and even a sideway glance would have Tom glaring at you. Tom and Sandy moved in together, and she could do no wrong as far as Tom was concerned. He thought she was wonderful, and Sandy soon learnt what the rules were. She was smart enough to make things work. Sandy enjoyed playing the ‘Pokies’, and with the money that Tom made, Sandy really got stuck into them. It was a problem, but Tom overlooked it, nothing took the shine off Sandy.

It was hard to work out who Teddy liked the most out of the three young blokes. Tom was a small wiry Pommie who always had a knife in his socks, a double-edged stiletto, razor sharp, and wasn’t scared to stick it in to someone, if they fucked with him. He had problems at home with his partner, Sandy. There never seemed to be enough money. Sandy had a problem with the poker machines. She was hooked, and more than once she ‘knocked off’ the grocery money looking for that ‘big win,’ but Tom loved her and she had always stuck by him through thick and thin. Dean was mad on the punt, fair dinkum. He would bet on two flies crawling up the wall, footy, dish lickers, horses, Tatts lotto anything that you could bet on he would bet on. He would tell of days when he couldn’t put a foot wrong and end up with plenty, and not to mention the days when he didn’t have a cracker. His