Blokeland - Twelve Journeys in the Minds of Men

By John Toohey

A boy faces the randomness of life, a soldier makes a difficult choice, a migrant seeks new chances, an academic loses something precious, an ageing monk can't escape his past. These are some of the stories of the boys and men of Blokeland. From their first decade to their eighties, these males chart passages through this land of curiosity and hope and loss and sometimes death. Blokeland needs no passport. Vaccination is unnecessary. You map your journey in your mind.

 

At his first offence hearing, the Childrens' Court magistrate gave him a pep talk and a warning. Staffy told his foster mother he'd been 'abolished and discharged'. The social worker later explained the legal difference between 'admonition' and 'abolition'. He'd not be executed ... well, not yet.

— A Bloody Good Job

 

A monastery can spurn you like a heretic. It can scrub you from its story and cut you from its body of believers. It can be unforgiving. A monastery seeks no self-reflection. It demands no soul-searching. A monastery is right and infallible. 

— Into the Breeze

 

Ian winced at the trigger words, 'structure', 'loads' and 'plans' and especially at the phrase, 'research opportunities'. He knew the university code words for work-harder-for-less and understood the three Rs of chaos – reorganisation, relocation and redundancies. 

— Parking Problems

 

The letter arrived two days earlier, and, although somewhat anticipated, it had upset him greatly. He'd read it a dozen times, each time putting it back in its envelope to restrain its spite. He picked it up and sliding it slowly between fingers and thumb, marvelled at the malevolent power of a few leaves of paper. 

— Nec Redemptio

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stringybark Publishing
• Release date: Oct 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223043157

John Toohey

John Toohey began writing fiction while transitioning as a recovering academic. His stories are influenced by an Irish Lebanese upbringing and experiences in boarding schools, monasteries, universities, and various places where uniforms are worn. Being born in the wrong century, he missed his true calling as a Gothic plainsong choralist, and instead performed a Doctor of Philosophy degree, messing around with stress hormones. His later life as a business school professor morphed into a reasonable back-up gig. He believes Irish whisky is one of the five proofs for the existence of God.

Book preview

Introduction

Aboy faces the randomness of life, a soldier makes a difficult choice, a migrant seeks new chances, an academic loses something precious, an ageing monk can’t escape his past. These are some of the stories of the boys and men of Blokeland . From their first decade to their eighties, the characters chart passages through this land of curiosity and hope and loss and sometimes death. Blokeland needs no passport. Vaccination is unnecessary. You map your journey in your mind.

Life is a string of encounters where we shape our own story through the cries and whispers others allow us to hear and the pain and joy they allow us to see. The stories in this book formed out of fragmentary hints and tales from family, friends, and strangers over many years. These remnants are blended with my own experience and imagination to make Blokeland.

The stories scan life’s challenges and chances and explore what it means to be a bloke. Men remain an abstract gender defined by social roles and clichéd attributes. Blokes are their vulnerable shadows, layered in a netherworld challenging these traits. Blokes in these stories are smart and dim, good and bad, cherished, and worthless. Blokes are moved by simple inspiration, sometimes driven by design and sometimes by chance.

I want to explore their beliefs and biases and how they make their decisions. Blokes sometimes control their destinies, but sometimes mismanage them, trade them cheaply and occasionally just throw them to chance. The blokes in Blokeland do all this and sometimes a little more. I am sure you will recognise someone in this collection.

John Toohey

Sydney 2023

The Man in White Overalls

Long before he’d pass our house, we’d hear the metallic grate of his spiked broom handle lancing dirt from the tram tracks. We’d quit our games and rush to the front fence to see him. He dressed like no one else and did a curious job like no one we knew. We never waved or spoke to him and he never acknowledged us.

He followed the number 77 West End tram track from New Farm to Orleigh Park straddling the tramlines, his right arm rhythmically stabbing and sliding along the grooves like the pulse of a steam train. His six-hour return walk included a short lunch and two ten-minute tea breaks. The 1950 Brisbane City Council industrial award was not generous to a ‘Labourer’; a man scraping dirt with a sharp stick was cheaper than any machine.

The man’s white overalls, hat and black broom were the basic tools for the lowliest task. When the car hit and killed him, our mother read us a small piece from The Courier Mail reporting the tragic death of a sixty-something year old council worker, a migrant and a man alone. These were the days before breath testing when the hand of God, fate, luck or even predestination explained things. The man in white overalls lived among us in South Brisbane with the Greeks, Yugoslavs, Germans, Italians, Russians and others Aussies called ‘refos’ and ‘DPs’ – refugees and displaced persons. The tag ‘wog’ was less common but the short-hand collective noun ‘dagoes’ covered most nationalities. ‘New Australians’ was the sanitised label.

The war in Europe made emigration a necessity. The man in white overalls and his neighbours did not choose to leave their countries, their homes and families and their identities. But choice, like democracy and silk stockings, was a luxury few could afford in post-war Europe. Nations were in ruin and while enmity still smouldered in sideways glances and muted curses, it was more important to feed one’s family, to find a job, to rent a house and to survive. Enmity, like choice, could wait.

On arrival, most immigrants were sent to Wacol Migrant Centre, forty minutes southwest of Brisbane. The camp bordered a military barracks and was a few train stations from Queensland’s biggest mental hospital at Goodna. The district was flat and hot and dull and forgotten. It was a no man’s land where few chose to live but many stayed by necessity. The boiled mutton and blanched vegetables, the tasteless blocks of Velveeta cheese, the lumpy custard and weak tea turned alien stomachs. The absence of coffee was perplexing.

The camp was run by fat, blotched men in bulging khaki shirts. They spoke an unintelligible South Queensland dialect, their speech rising in volume equal to their level of frustration at misunderstanding. For most, Wacol was a staging point until a job and a housing commission home near Ipswich or a rental in South Brisbane could be found.

Wacol paid no respect to Europe’s ancient enmities nor recognised the discordant racial histories of its inhabitants. The tribes of Europe cohabitated by necessity. Wacol families remained in the same poorer suburbs, living together as closely as the borders of their abandoned homelands.

But kids were comfortable with one another. For us, nationality remained cryptic and identity fluid. Common interest was the currency of friendship.

Shimon was a Jew whose father survived a vague persecution our parents would not discuss. We knew little of persecution but when Shimon’s dad welded large metal Stars of David into his front fence, we knew he was proclaiming ‘I’m still here’. Enmity could be passive and patient.

The metal stars may have been aimed at Carl’s father, a neighbour, who’d served in the German army. Both fathers worked at the Queensland Can Company, but we never saw them speak nor, like other fathers, drink together in the front bar at the Boundary Hotel in West End.

Stefan’s Polish mother cleaned houses and his father worked at Milton Brewery. Like most former Wacol fathers, Stefan’s dad had no name, rarely smiled, spoke little and never to kids. He’d allow us to witness his execution of angry white feathered chickens, cutting their throats and allowing them to run madly around the yard not knowing they were dead. His chicken plucking and gutting was a dark art to be feared and admired. He was kind to Stefan and his brother, occasionally pushing a sixpence into their hands without eye contact or comment.

Alek was the exception amongst these men. We knew his name and called him ‘Alex the Russian’. Years later, reading his funeral notice, I realised we’d mispronounced his name, but he’d never corrected us and seemed quite comfortable with the ‘Russian’ tag. Nowadays he’d be described as a Stalinist, his Soviet apologetics often leading to tensions with neighbours. He was an incorrigible atheist baiting believers with theological conundrums and contradictions.

Alek was divorced and non-committal about any children. But as the best car mechanic in South Brisbane, he was welcome in most places. His English vocabulary was richer than most Aussies and his aptitude for metaphysical debate matched his capacity for vodka. In another life, Alek could have been Patriarch of Moscow or head of the KGB.

There were also Aussies like the Casey family whose team of kids attended the local Catholic school. The Caseys were tough and standing together in a fight were invincible. Their milk was delivered in large aluminium cans, not in bottles like the rest of us. Their mother was large and invariably kind, feeding hefty jam sandwiches to any kids hanging around their backyard at lunchtime. The Casey father was a wharfie who drank too much and was talked about in mumbled tones by other fathers. He’d played football for South’s Magpies and in my father’s words, ‘knocked his missus about.’ We knew what that meant.

Each family had different foods and strange kitchen smells with bubbling pots and glass jars arrayed on shelves like displays at the Queensland Museum. We mainly stuck to our own food, but most mothers offered sugary sweets, cakes or biscuits to kids playing in their yards. Dimitri’s mother seemed to have an unending supply of our favourite Greek biscuits topped with white sugary powder. She’d never ask if we wanted one but would appear with a large cake tin during a lull in a cowboys and Indians game, demanding a queue for distribution.

Occasionally my family would mix socially with the Talmans, who were Jews and the Hassans, who were Muslim as we were all in the rag trade. The Talmans had a small uniform shop and Mr Hassan was a men’s tailor; my Lebanese grandfather made wedding dresses. The men discussed the price of cloth and government regulations but as talk of Middle Eastern politics or Ottoman grievances did not feed children or pay bills, these also remained luxuries to be avoided.

My father would slip Mr Hassan a cold beer poured into a teacup complete with fancy saucer to disguise the forbidden drop from watchful eyes. They developed the art of delicately blowing the surface of the ‘tea’ while making eye contact with the suspicious Mrs Hassan, smiling, and slightly nodding their heads.

But socialising, while usually pleasant, was transactional and reciprocal. Excess spinach, radish and eggplant from backyard gardens would appear on doorsteps without comment or formality. It was a silent message, a code — maybe sometime you’ll have an excess to share or maybe if my family is away for a few days, you’ll watch my house – as I would yours.

Each tribe mixed and married their own although this was to change with the next generation. While the fathers and mothers might constrain themselves with the mores of the old country, those heuristics could not last. Love and hormones would cross cultures and borders and show no respect for nationality or history or convention or even parental wisdom.

Almost a year after the death of the man in white overalls, he was back in The Courier Mail. More had been learned about him and an article, now much bigger than the first, named him as Jannis Vaher. He’d been