The Raffle Gods: An Aussie bloke goes bush, to shake off the stress of city life.

By Dan Holliday

When Beastly nearly kills a friend, he knows it is time to take a rest from his job, as a Kings Cross night club bouncer, and get out of town for a while. 

Travel with Beastly as he heads out bush to find his sense of self again. 

In a sense, a 'coming of age' story, with a difference, set in Australia

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dreamstone Publishing
• Release date: Aug 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9781925499216

Book preview

The Raffle Gods

An Aussie bloke goes bush,

to shake off the stress of city life.

Dan Holliday

Dreamstone Publishing © 2016

www.dreamstonepublishing.com

Copyright © 2016 Dreamstone Publishing and Dan Holliday

All rights reserved.

No parts of this work may be copied without the author’s permission.

ISBN-13:   978-1-925499-21-6

Disclaimer

Whilst this book is based on real locations, incidents, and characteristics of the personalities that have touched the author in his own journey through life, it is a fictional account of the life of one man, drawing on the essence of the author’s experiences, and any resemblance to individuals, either living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to a few people who have had a significant influence on me getting the bloody thing written and starting the ball rolling.

Firstly, to Mum, for her endless support and faith, through the acting years, for the conversations and the encouragement.

To Dad for his support and that endless need to correct something… bless you.

To Kaye Leigh Green, for her encouragement and faith and the help with connections to others at the right time.

To Colin Emerson, for his belief and mentorship.

And especially to my son, Blaize, my friend and inspiration; in large part the reason I finished the first one.

There are several more books inside me; some may come out gently and with purpose and others like the contents of a stomach after a heavy night. Here’s hoping they will be useful and entertaining.

What Readers Say About This Book

Dan Holliday delights with outrageous yarns of an accidental everyman hero, Beastly. Warm, witty and refreshingly un-PC - and bloody hard to put down.

Natalie Spence - writer, director.

The heart of Australia; his stories unfold to reveal surprisingly human characters. He finds the frailty and the strength in people and delivers with wit, humour and a gentle philosophy.

Colin Emerson  -  author, trainer, speaker.

Table of Contents

Dedication

Preface

1.              Beastly in the Cage

2.              Janine

3.              Both Types of Tomato

4.              Full Moons and Rum Drinkers

5.              New Girl on the Block

6.              Amy

7.              The Buzz Box and the Dirt Road Disaster

8.              Party House, Euphoria and Sensibility

9.              Wake in Darkness

10.              Windrows in the Rainforest.

11.              Life, the Great Salesman

12.              The Big SNAFU

13.              Darkness, Dreams and Deliverance

Glossary of Australian Terms Used in This Book

About the Author

OTHER BOOKS FROM DREAMSTONE PUBLISHING

Preface

This book is, in its way, as idiosyncratic as its main character.  There are things about the way that it is written, which may, at first, seem odd to you – so I thought that I would explain, up front, what to expect.  Let’s start with the fact that I have used Australian spelling in the book - not just because I’m Australian, but because there is a distinct Aussie ‘flavour’ in it, which allows the story to be itself. For the most part, the spelling is the same as ‘Oxford English’; I like writing ‘though’ instead of ‘tho’ and ‘colour’ instead of ‘color’.

Is this petty stubbornness?

No. It goes much deeper than petty. Australians can be an odd mix of invincible traditionalism and casual dismissal of things inconveniently traditional.

Then there is the more colloquial spelling…  Australian colloquialisms have their own flavour and style. I have tried not to go over the top with the local linguistic spice and, where necessary, have added some words and expressions to a glossary at the end of the book. That should help you to understand what’s going on! Please be sure to read the disclaimer at the beginning of the glossary.

Now let me tell you a bit about what this book is about and why it exists….

This book echoes my own journey. Yes, I was a bouncer in a Kings Cross night club. Yes, I nearly killed a friend in what would have been a tragic mishap. And yes, I knew I had to get out of town and clear my head, I was loaded with inner city stress and was losing my ability to make clear, balanced decisions. I packed a bag, made a call to a mate, paid my rent six weeks in advance, jumped in the XA ute* and headed north.

I hope that the moments, the humour and the philosophy in my first book will not just appeal to you, I hope that it will help those who may need help, and I hope it will interest, amuse and entertain every reader.

Enjoy.

* see Glossary                                  .             Dan Holliday 2016

1.                  Beastly in the Cage

Beastly’s hand shot out like a striking viper, fingers formed into a classic ‘knife hand’ and aimed at Rob’s throat, the soft hollow below the Adam’s apple.

It was not pre-meditated, it was pure reaction and, in the splinter of time just before finishing something that he would have a long time to think about, his mind screamed No! an imperative that bypassed his conscious will and shut down this hideous lapse in reason.

Beastly’s ‘emergency stop switch’ had saved a horrible thing from happening.

His hand stopped a whisper from Rob’s throat and, as his eyes returned to focus, they saw that young man looking at him with dread and a growing shock at the realisation that he had narrowly avoided possible death. It was the difference between nothing and a long time to think...

Beastly slowed down.

On two other occasions in this lifetime his ‘emergency stop switch’ had saved him from doing something dreadful, but this was the closest, he knew he was on the razor’s edge.

This was serious and the voices were sounding clearer.

He realised that he had made no conscious decision to protect himself, that mental process was bypassed as his hand shot out, and he thanked the Raffle Gods for his good fortune; somewhere built into him, that instant override had saved him –and someone else - once again.

This thing kept coming back to him, like a slo-mo replay in a TV sports show, again and again as a pair of annoying commentators said:

Yes, Beasley has had a lucky escape here. But what I wanna know is what the hell happened...?

Quite right, Clive. ‘Eddie the Beast’ may be an apt name for this guy. I’ll tell ya, sometimes the beast comes out in a man and I do believe he had a close call here. We’ll be back for the roundup after this short break.

Moments in his life were at times reviewed as a third person dialogue.

Beastly knew what happened. But that didn’t matter, what he did was out of control.

He reacted.

But the situation didn’t warrant that reaction. Rob had been in arms reach in a crowded pub in a friendly conversation.

He was short ten cents for a middy and Beastly had tossed him the necessary, then inexplicably, laughing, he had flung the coin right back at Beastly from less than arm’s reach.

Beastly imagined that Rob must have wondered at what he had done, to fling that coin full force from point blank could have cost someone an eye, and Beastly knew why he had reacted, but it was not sanity, it was not within the ’normal’ range, he had slipped off the ragged edge and only just avoided disaster.

He had felt his eyes come back into focus, but had no recollection of losing focus, and was haunted by the look of fear and relief in Rob’s eyes; those windows to his soul had revealed to Beastly the depth of his own action, and the consequences that had only just slipped past, into the infinity of ‘almost’ and he knew that the Raffle Gods had saved him.

But Beastly could feel himself clinging to the ragged edge, a crumbling cliff, trying to claw himself back to solid ground, and in his sleep he was visited by strange and violent dreams.

Bouncing at the nightclub was a constant build of pressure, with no release.

The intensity fell away each night and in the days between, but there was nowhere for the pressure to go, it had just built to a point of too much...

Stress on stress on stress. Idiots who wanted to pick a blue with the penguin suit... helping people to have a good time and keep out of trouble, yet some fuckwits think you’re there so that they can get pissed and have a blue, because they lack the moxy to buy a pair of boxing gloves and get down to the local Police Boys Club.

And there was that guy in the night club, who punched him in the back of the head when he stepped in to break up a fight. He had wrapped one of the combatants in a bear hug, lifted him off his feet, turned him around and stepped away.

He felt the blow and looked back, it wasn’t the other guy in the fight but someone who had stepped out of the crowd and swung at him, a deliberate, gutless attack; their eyes met, the little weasel shit himself and disappeared back into the crowd.

In retrospect, Beastly wished he had had the presence of mind to call out Hold him., or something, and the crowd would have grabbed the guy and held him, because he really wanted to snot that little prick, but he had his hands full at the time. As security, they had earned the respect of the patrons there, because they kept the peace, they didn’t grab drunks and beat them up and throw them out. They cared for the patrons and, for the most part, this was respected - but there are always some who spit on the good intentions and actions of others.

It only takes one.

Beastly had been lucky and it gnawed at him... luck had a habit of running out. He didn’t deserve that cheap shot... and luck was a pair of tumbling dice and the Raffle Gods were whimsical.

Situations like that were making him think that something needed to change. He was still thinking about it a few days later, learning to listen to the voices in his head; not those violent voices that scream and rage from their cage but the softer voices that calmly advise in oblique ways.

He strode down Abercrombie St, past the brewery towards the corner of Broadway, where he would turn right to make his way toward Wynyard Station. He enjoyed the walk and driving around here was horrible.

When he first moved into the area, the neighbourhood was depressing - there was little greenery and a lot of dirt and soot.

The background noise here wasn’t the shushing of wind in the trees, or the distant boom of surf on the shore, it was the continual hum of traffic and the rumble of trucks.

The black soot of diesel exhaust settled on window sills and ledges, flat surfaces and edges, it settled on anything - trees and plants, wrought iron and cyclone mesh. After a heavy rain the streets were clean for a little while, but the rain never reached some places, it left a tracework pattern, an economic fingerprint in soot.

There was no space.

Everything was close, his front door opened straight onto the footpath, everything was right there in your face.

Before long though, Beastly discovered the charm and the delight found in simple things, in small moments - a great Monsteriosa covered in diesel soot, with designs on world domination, growing, in spite of obvious neglect, in a tiny patch of dirt at the front of a terrace house.

Chippendale, like the surrounding inner city suburbs, was a font of joyful moments to be found in unexpected places; hidden in a back street, a public park, no bigger than half a terrace block, with grass and a frangipani tree, the remnants of an old sandstone wall, and what appeared to be part of an archway that spoke to him of lost secrets, gave joy every time - a tiny patch of green maybe the size of a lounge room with a slippery dip in it for kids (or adults) to play on.

Such character was found in the history of the place, street names like Ivy, Edward and Rose Street spoke of people who lived there once; a personal history not found in a book, but seen every day, that lifted the place out of a bland suburban identity to a home.

The closeness, the flaws, the foibles and the character found their way into Beastly’s heart.

Little things that survived the ravages of progress: a wooden door, greying now, and weathered, but as tough as the day the carpenter built it, tuck-pointing that held its edge after so many years, things that were never removed or replaced - because they came from a time when they were built with pride in the heart, not profit as the motive. There was a sense of determination, adamant to stay and remind the world of what once was, right here in the centre of town, where change was constant, insistent and brutal.

The sense of it was all around him, the feel of those who had lived here before, of the growing layers of personal stories that infused the place.  It was in the old brick walls of the brewery, those dark red bricks the colour of dried blood, which were common here in the original buildings. It was a colour that somehow seemed appropriate, as strong still as when they were born, in tune with the wrought iron fences, set in old Sydney sandstone, that defy time in aging elegance. These, and a thousand other moments that light the heart, were so much a part of this community that he had grown to love.

You could tell when they were brewing the beer - the musty, fruity, yeasty smell dominated the neighbourhood. He didn’t like it when he first moved in - it reminded him of an old blanket smelling of wet dog - but now it was a comfortable, likeable aroma. It smelt like home, like spag boll on a cold day. There was a sense of belonging as he savoured the aromatic waft of brewing beer.

Now, as he walked past the brewery, a gentle smile fell across his face; there was a lingering sense here of ‘the old days’ that hung like mist in a hollow. Practically every corner had once supported a thriving pub, with accommodation upstairs, flanked by the warehouses, from a time when Sydney was much smaller.

They were great, three storey things, with massive wooden beams and rusting iron fittings, still bearing the marks of the hammer and the anvil. Every block had a narrow back street, for deliveries by horse and cart, and for removal by the night soil carters.

This area had boasted a sizeable itinerant, working population, now dissipated to the suburbs, as the value of inner city land climbed in step with the changing world.

Many of the warehouses were being converted to upmarket housing, as the land values in the inner city became too tempting and bleached the blue collars to white and the palate shifted from beer to chardonnay or champers.

Many of the pubs were boarded up long ago, their edges and ledges, dressed in the thick dust of disuse, now oozing memories like a slow, dying breath; the buyers not yet ready to take the risk.

A sense of the past lingered – the old buildings, like something out of a period soapy, voices almost heard, people long gone, now living at the edge of perception, like they were forever just around the next corner, a memory that can’t be caught, mingling with the present, they were spices in the soup of change.

Beastly had come to enjoy this neighbourhood, it had become home and, surprisingly, he fitted in here, there was no judgement, the melting pot had too many ingredients from all over, of all kinds,