Homelands

By Garry Shuttleworth

Home is the place in which you grew up, always determined to escape from. Then finally at journey's end, this same homeland is the safe place you instinctively ache to return to. Homelands is an old man's compilation of short stories sourced from the rich folklore of his hometown, the colonial village

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barking Books
• Release date: Feb 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9780648642503

Book preview

Copyright © 2024 Garry Shuttleworth

ISBN: 978-0-6486425-0-3 eBook

ISBN: 978-0-6486425-1-0 Paperback

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of research, private study, criticism or review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

img.jpg

This book is dedicated to all the world’s scatterlings who’d like to turn back time, turn back and go home.

CONTENTS

Part One: Down and out on Southbank

Part Two: 2,000 Light Years from Home

Part Three: Revolving Doors and Corner Stores

Part Four: The Dreaded Dompas

Part Five: Devilish Documents and Walking Sticks

Part Six: Sacred Sites, Sights and Insights

Part Seven: Inner Dwaal, Caught Short and the Plague of Warts

Part Eight: Incarcerated Nation

Part Nine: The Devil in Him

Part Ten: A Day-Tripping Folly

Part Eleven: Town Halls Ablaze

Part Twelve: A Saracen at the Christmas Tree

Part Thirteen: Tricks, Treats and the Sad Tale Of Aunty Nora’s Macaw

Part Fourteen: Blots on a Landscape

Part Fifteen: Interactive Water Features?

Part Sixteen: Old Phil’s Thingamajigs

Part Seventeen: The Little Old Lady Who Lived In The Dip

Part Eighteen: Home At Last?

Part Nineteen: Down in the Poplars # 2

Part Twenty: Epilogue: Journey’s End

The Bicycle Wheel

About The Author

PART ONE

Down and out on Southbank

THE OLD MAN with the greying ponytail, walking stick and the well-worn canvas bag slung about his shoulder emerges blinking from the subdued lighting of Flinders Street station, the central hub of the city’s rail network. Keeping as close as he can to the brass handrails and trying not to hamper the bustling passage of hurried commuters behind him, he makes his way carefully down the steps that lead towards the pavement. There he pauses to catch his breath and glances about the busy intersection before edging into the mid-morning crush of pedestrian shoppers who are all studying the screens of their tiny mobile telephones. It has constantly impressed him that humans have, in reasonably short time, developed the capacity to do this without tripping or bumping into things as they go.

The obsessive attachment to these gadgets was once starkly exposed during a Jethro Tull gig at that magnificent concert venue in the Arts Centre just up the road. To his amazement, it seemed a sizeable number of punters in the audience ignored the band on stage, preferring to watch the filmed performance on their so-called devices, which they held aloft before their eyes. He shakes his head at the memory of that bizarre musical absurdity and gazes briefly into the distance, wondering what it was all coming to, these days. Imagine, if you can, the surreal images of half-a-million devotees at Woodstock, or perhaps the Isle of Wight, each armed with a mobile phone held on high and glinting in the bright shafts of sunlight. He suppresses a giggle. It’d be a bit like a vast assembly of cultists gathered to usher-in the Second Coming.

Having a smartphone also means never having to read a book, engage in conversation with questionable strangers or look anyone else in the eye. It is a handy, heads-down way of retreating from the world, keeping humanity at bay and guaranteeing your solitude. As something of a reluctant hermit and recluse, he decides he really should consider getting one of these portable telephones to hide behind.

He glances around the busy intersection. It seems nothing has changed, yet somehow everything looks different. Another tram rattles past. An earnest-looking busker wearing traditional coat of gothic black and with tethered dog at his side, performs a discordant version of Simon and Garfunkel’s iconic standard, Homeward Bound to an audience of three.

I’m sittin’ in the railway station

Got a ticket to my destination…

Homeward bound

I wish I was

Homeward bound

Home where my thought’s escapin’

Home where my music’s playin’

Home where my love lies waitin’

Silently for me…

Simon and Garfunkel

The old man with the grey whisp of what was once a full-blown ponytail draws up, fumbles in his bag and tosses a coin or two into the guitar case. The busker nods, the dog whines and wags. The bottom has fallen out of the busking industry in recent times. People don’t carry money around in their pockets anymore. They only deal in plastic cards and there’s something sad in that, especially for buskers who haven’t yet graduated to these things they call eftpos machines.

It’s been years since he’d ventured into the city from his modest mudbrick cottage in the distant outer-suburbs. Back then, he’d make the train journey to the stadium in the sporting precinct almost every fortnight to watch rugby league games (a poor substitute for rugby union but hell, it’s as close as it gets) with a workmate and fellow expat, one of those way-back boykies from the Bluff. Filled with beer, bonhomie, home-made bunnychow and white line fever, it was jolly-ho fun, right through to the final whistle of the last train home at midnight. There were times he’d fall asleep on the seat in the carriage, overshoot his suburban station and eventually be rudely roused by unsympathetic railway staff at the train’s termination point, a distant siding somewhere in a foreign veld of a frosty moonlit nowhere. It was like stepping out into a parallel universe, a similar realm, a different reality. He smiles wanly. These days, he tries to remember to watch the games on television.

It’s a light, easy stroll from the station, across Prince’s Bridge to Southbank, but he makes heavy going of it, just as he suspected. He engages the shuffling, nonchalant gait that partly disguises the embarrassing limp, a painful legacy of hip-replacement surgery gone wrong. His left leg is now half-an-inch shorter than its counterpart, which doesn’t sound like much, but it makes telling hindrance to the gift of comfortable walking. He edges into a viewing recess half way across the bridge and feigns an interest in the slow river below. There are cruise boats in the distance and the futuristic towers of Crown Casino dominate the city skyline to his right. Apart from being lauded as the largest and most luxurious gambling complex in the southern hemisphere, it is also found to be awash with illegal activities, a hotbed of money laundering, with ties to international criminal cartel networks. Corporate crookery and corruption are as rife here as it is anywhere. Australians are the biggest bunch of gambling addicts in the world, spending a massive $20 billion every year. The country is home to 20 percent of all electronic gaming machines on the planet.

The old man mutters to himself and adjusts his cap to suit the strong breezes that gust in from Port Phillip Bay, which is not actually a single bay at all. It’s a busy port area comprised of over a dozen different bays, spanning an area of almost 2,000 sq kilometres. More than 3.2 million people live around its shore, making it the country’s most densely populated catchment. The multi-cultural metropolis of Melbourne or Naarm as it was once called, is said to be the world’s most liveable city and, after living here for 30 years, it has to be called home, the old man constantly reminds himself. Because you live here it’s home, but it’s not home. It’s worlds away from what was once the homeland. And while he’s put down roots, he sometimes still feels displaced, out of place and all over the place. His heart just isn’t in it.

Southbank promenade meanwhile, is a vast, multi-level complex of exotic retail outlets, galleries, bars, eateries and entertainment venues that overlook the Yarra River. Settling himself on a bench hastily vacated by two young ladies who’d sensed his approach and unanimously opted to move on, he rummages in the old canvas haversack and produces a flask of coffee prepared by his partner Liz (who insists she’s not ‘his wife’) before he left the cottage earlier that morning.

It’s starting to feel like a long time gone since he boarded the train, after she’d dropped him at the station. With a slight twinge of alarm, it occurs to him that he has quite forgotten why he is here. There had to be good reason to travel into the city on his own, but buggered if he can remember. His mind’s a blank. But, he assures himself, it’ll all come back to him in a while, just as soon as he stops agonizing about it. These frustrating and embarrassing memory lapses or fugue states, as some people call them, take hold far too frequently nowadays. The old man thinks of them as his brain farts and keeps the problem to himself.

He pulls down his mask, tucks it under his chin and grins sheepishly as he relishes the first sip. Liz will never suspect that the flask has been topped up with a few good shots of whisky, just to keep him going for the day. Passers-by glance in his direction then quickly look away with thinning lips. He chuckles to himself. Eccentric old buggers on the loose always provoke that sort of reaction.

There is a wry irony and a certain satisfaction, he has to say, drinking one’s own laced coffee from an old tin mug at a ritzy venue hosting internationally acclaimed corporate coffee shops that serve choice ristrettos, exotic macchiatos and a range of lattes reputed to be the best in the world. Not at those prices, he mutters, squinting at the display boards. Bugger that.

The old man on the bench stretches and swivels slowly, taking stock. A handful of people clamber aboard a river cruise boat. Well-groomed ladies of the posh parts of town gather to catch up, do brunch alfresco and giggle over the choices of champagne. They’re here to celebrate the end of Covid restrictions. Few people bother to wear the surgical masks on their faces these days, because, after two long years, the conservative federal government, backed by its formidable right-wing media, has with a sweeping evangelical flourish, declared the pandemic over. This divine decree is supported and reinforced by the corporate oligarchs and the general business community, always determined to put profits before the welfare of people.

We have to learn to live with Covid is the current catch-cry. Which is all very well, unless of course, we happen to die of it. And to the despair of the medical profession, the authorities have also caved in to the shrill protests, street marches and delirious demands of anti-lockdown demonstrators and an American-style conspiracy theorist minority group known as the anti-vaxxers. They tell us it is their democratic right to refuse vaccinations, masks and all the other mandated requirements. The old man wonders how it is that a tiny, vocal minority can hold sway over the rights of everyone else. This is not the world he thought he understood. Are they simply afraid of jorvas, vaccinations, or is there something more to it?

He sighs, shakes his head and relives the horrifying television news footage that shocked the nation. As if well-ordered street rallies weren’t enough to appease them, these snarling, heavily-tattooed weekend warriors and obese foot-soldiers of the dark side took their riotous assembly to one of the town’s most sacred sites, the Shrine of Remembrance, not far from where he sits right now on Southbank. The shrine was established as a national memorial to honour those who served in times of war.

Joined by a handful of boy-Nazis dressed in black and dutifully throwing that salute, the rabble drop their pants and piss on its walls. And, determined to demonstrate further unwavering commitment to the principles of democracy, free speech and freedom of expression, the ersatz insurrectionists and neo-fascists leave empty beer bottles, broken glass, McDonald’s detritus and land-mines of vomit and shit strewn about the site.

A mounted police officer and her horse are attacked with a heavy traffic bollard and both seriously injured. Even fine, noble animals aren’t safe from the incomprehensible wrath of this blinkered horde of self-absorbed mohawked misfits. Is nothing sacred? Just thinking about it, the old man is outraged all over again. As far as he’s concerned, they’ve well and truly crossed the picket line.

They have won their misguided campaign for this elusive, intangible thing they call freedom, which apparently allows them to freely spread the deadly virus throughout a tense and still-jittery society. While it is no longer reported in mainstream media, infections are at an all-time high and scores of people still die of the dreaded lurgy and its killer variants in this town every day.

The old man is not altogether unfamiliar with protest marches and political rallies. He still has memories of tagging along (intrigued and faintly amused) in a number of those distant anti-apartheid gatherings around Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square in London in the early seventies. They were orderly and disciplined affairs, staged by earnest, naive young people who seriously believed they had the power to change the world for the better. Or save it at least.

These were the starry-eyed activists who petitioned tirelessly for the release of political prisoners, disrupted sports events and campaigned for the imposition of a range of boycotts, which included, bizarrely, a successful ban on the importation of South African Outspan oranges to the United Kingdom. English housewives, however, protested angrily at the sudden absence of their favourite fruit from the greengrocers’ shelves. A cunning marketing plan was therefore hatched to ship the citrus via Israel, where they were rebranded before being distributed across the British Isles.

But the early sanctions-busting plot failed miserably. As discerning consumers were unfamiliar with the brand-new Yiddish name given to the oranges, sales of the popular fruit withered sharply, then died. They wanted Outspan. The real thing.

Back home in Durban, the old-man-as-a-young-man and his mixed bag of comrades attend a mixed-race protest meeting in the City Hall following the suspicious death in custody of an activist called Ahmed Timol, who it must be said, was but one of a legion suffering similar fate. He died from injuries sustained after ‘falling’ from a top-floor window of a police station. The authorities claimed he’d committed suicide, but all evidence showed he’d been tortured then shoved from the building.

The town hall protest meeting is interrupted by reports that a bomb has been planted by right-wing terrorists somewhere in the building. It is panic and pandemonium as hundreds of solemn attendees bolt for the main exit and surge onto the pavement outside, only to tumble into the welcoming arms of a contingent of police officers brandishing the dreaded sjamboks and with handcuffs at the ready.

The old man chortles. He closes his eyes and sees it all play out like an old 8mm film, flickering, whirring and shuddering, locked in fast-forward mode. He cherishes the memory. He was young, fit and agile then, in those days. He and his mates dummy, sidestep and jink their way through the police blockade and into the sultry night, copping a few lashes as they zig-zag through the traffic mayhem in West Street. They sprint for refuge in the shadows of the town gardens and watch the street show play out from behind the hydrangeas before sauntering across to the Royal for a few cold ones. Life was fun for some, back then in the homeland.

He takes another gulp from the mug, savouring the familiar warmth of the whisky as it spreads lovingly through his body and takes the edge off his arthritic twinges. From somewhere further up St Kilda Road he hears the muffled sounds of a street parade over the hum of traffic and the clatter of the trams. It must be part of the gay pride celebration week, he reckons. They too want their freedom and when do they want it? Like everyone, they want it now. As bizarre and confronting as they are, at least their marches are joyous, colorful pageants with manic music and care-free bare-bum dancing in the streets. Dancing in the street? Hell, yes, this takes him back. Way back.

All we need is music, sweet music,

There’ll be music everywhere,

There’ll be swingin’ and swayin’ and records playing

Dancing in the street…

The old man would have been about six years old and halfway through his first year of primary school when those uppity womenfolk of the Maci tribe with bare breasts a-jiggle, took to dancing and making merry in Harding’s main shopping street. Whether they were protesting something or just out for a good time, we’ll never know for sure. But they were arrested for creating a disturbance and bundled off to prison. This sparked what became known as The Night of the Riots, which caused quite a to-do, back then in the homelands.

The Night of the Riots

We had just settled down to our early family supper of boerewors and phutu, (no-one could make phutu as good as Old Skopiaan, the kitchen boy) when Uncle John burst in with a clatter, hat askew, his shotgun under his arm and a bandolier of cartridges slung over his shoulder. Clearly, something was up. ‘You better leave all that,’ he said, nodding at the dinner table. ‘We Europeans got to get to the hospital, right now.’ The hospital? Why? Had John finally taken leave of his senses?

‘And bring your guns,’ he said, panicked and sweating. ‘Whatever firearms you got and all the ammunition. We under attack. The natives are coming.’ Things looked grim. The grownups scrambled for the guns, producing another 12-bore, a .22 rifle and a badly corroded Smith & Wesson revolver. Not to be outdone, I buckled on my belt holster, grabbed my Kid Colt cap gun and pocketed my prized penknife with the tartan-coloured handle, just to be on the safe side. The natives, as black folk were referred to, were massing for an attack.

This wild mlungu frenzy of arming-up seemed to amuse Old Skopiaan. He shook his head and chuckled as he padded about, clearing the table of the untouched meal. As Ma used to always say, he was more aware of what was cooking in Harding and around Alfred County than a man half his age. He was in his eighties then but everyone still knew him as Old Skopiaan the kitchen boy.

That was the night of 14 August, 1959 – the first and only time, as far as we know, that the tranquil village of Harding came under siege and St Andrew’s Hospital became a heavily armed fortress. The event was later dubbed The Night of the Riots and forms part of Alfred County history and folklore. But no matter how hard you google or scratch, you’ll never uncover much detail. Maybe the townsfolk have always preferred to keep it that way.

It is recorded however, that the good Catholic Sisters of Mercy threw open the hospital’s front doors to provide refuge for 600 terrified village people who found themselves under threat from a large contingent of heavily armed and angry warriors of the Maci clan who had already set ablaze parts of the surrounding countryside along with several farm buildings and were marching to invade the town itself. Whether the kindly nuns of St Andrew’s ever anticipated that their usually serene hospital would be transformed into a heavily fortified fortress-of-sorts, we will never know. There were guns everywhere.

Meanwhile, some farmers and local residents remained agog at the frenzied migration to seek safety at the hospital. The whole idea was cowardly, hilarious and gloriously stupid. They simply locked their doors, stayed home, and listened in to the wireless, just as they did every week. It was the Surf Show Pick-a-Box on Springbok Radio and you wouldn’t want to miss that, hell no.

Others remained blissfully oblivious to the state of emergency and were genuinely surprised and amused to hear all about it the following day.

Marshalled by several decorated war veterans eager to relive past battles, the Harding chaps, touting firearms of every type and vintage, took up posts at the windows overlooking the valley and main road below. Some were understandably nervous and edgy; others relished the excitement as they waited for the imminent attack. The town’s lady folk, under instruction of the good nuns, busied themselves with the preparation and distribution of hot drinks and sandwiches. Us kids were directed to mattresses that lined the hospital corridors and told to be quiet or go to sleep. This was, the adults warned, no time for playing around and making a noise. My Colt 45 replica cap gun did, however, provide some light amusement for the anxious grownups in an otherwise very tense and sober evening.

My good friend Graham and I had always been nervous of the giant, sorrowful statue of the Virgin Mary residing in the hospital’s foyer. It was the stuff of our nightmares. On the night of the riots, we dared each other to sneak downstairs and take a look at the sombre effigy in the dark, just to terrify ourselves further. ‘I don’t like the way its eyes sort of watch you all the time,’ Graham said. I agreed, noting that it was also difficult to keep your own eyes elsewhere. You were sort of drawn to look at the damn thing.

Those who were there on the Night of the Riots will remember it clearly. At about midnight a gunshot rang out, followed by the sound of smashing glass. Times like that things happen fast, things happen slowly. A momentary silence was broken by the echoes of the gunshot whirling down the corridors. Panicked screams and shouts followed as the good village folk scurried for cover. A faint whiff of cordite filled the corridors and a spectral swish of nuns hurried to their posts. ‘Chaps, stand to!’ is a gruff command bellowed from the main ward which now served as operational headquarters at the far end of the passageway. One of the decorated war veterans had assumed military control. A chorus of metallic clicks were heard as his men flicked off the safety catches; the attack was imminent and the bloody defence of the hospital fortress was about to begin.

An overly-vigilant (for that one could read overly-edgy) young man of the greater Shuttleworth clan, fondly known as Shorty, had spotted a ‘movement’ in the bushes across the road. He’d assumed the worst, lost his nerve and in a momentary lapse of reason, opened fire, disregarding all instruction from his superior officer down the passageway. In the heat of the moment, he’d forgotten to open the window and unleashed his buckshot through the glass. The threatening ‘movement’ turned out to be a stray dog of indeterminate breed that was foraging around the paddock. The animal, as the legend goes, remained mercifully unscathed.

On a trying and stressful night like that, you’d wonder why any local blokes would be driving around Harding streets, seemingly unaware of the impending invasion by the riotous tribesmen of the Maci. But, in pondering this behaviour, you’d have to consider the fact that Dhorrie’s Bar up at the Southern Cross Hotel stayed open for business throughout the crisis, as did the town’s night soil operations, centred around what we called the Night Cart. It was a smallish wagon drawn by two (or maybe four) oxen and manned by three (or maybe four) of the sampungane, otherwise known as the Night Boys. Never seen during daylight hours, these were the silent, brooding fellows whose job it was to collect the overflowing, creosoted buckets of poo from all the ‘outside lavvies’ in the village. They wore coveralls fashioned from old hessian sacks and carried ancient paraffin lanterns that cast a ghostly glow as they went about their business in the dead of night. And the Night of the Riots was no exception for the sampungane. It was business as usual.

We’ll never know where the larrikin lads in the old Studebaker were headed, or who they were. But we can say with some certainty that after a few pleasant hours chatting with Dhorrie the barman and slaking their thirsts in the pub, their driving style was a bit hit-and-miss at best. They collided with the Night Cart at some speed as they careered and swerved their way down the dip, just past the bicycle shop and Samuel’s Upholstery Works, not far from where most other people were holed up behind barricades at St Andrew’s Hospital. Legend has it that the lads were half way through ‘How Much is that Doggy in the Window?’ woofing and howling like wolves, when they spotted the spooky lantern lights, the red reflections of the oxen’s eyes and the alien figures clad in brown.

Understandably, they’d taken fright. The driver panicked, hit brakes and skidded, narrowly missing the in-spanned oxen, and clipped the Night Cart, sending the overflowing buckets spewing and bouncing about the main road. The Night Boys bolted for cover and disappeared into the night. The wide-eyed oxen also took off for pastures new, dragging the disabled wagon with them.

Hearing the commotion and seeing the mysterious lights bobbing off into the dark, several well-armed sentries patrolling the outer precincts of the hospital broke ranks to investigate. Feeling a little queasy, they reported back to their commanding officer shortly after. Jeez, there was loads of shit spread everywhere, up and down the main road. The stench was overwhelming.

By daybreak however, the Night of the Riot seemed well and truly over. The natives were not going to turn up after all. Guns were unloaded and put away in safe places so the children wouldn’t play with them. Many of the farming chaps were more concerned about getting back to supervise the milking, rather than fretting any further over the invasion of the protesting Machi tribesmen. It had all turned out to be a bit of a damp squib really, everyone admitted sheepishly. But a bit of fun anyway, what? And by gum, what fool was that who went and fired a shot through the bloody window? All hell could have broken loose.

The only casualty as a result of the overnight drama was the Virgin Mary and her boy-child in the foyer of St Andrew’s Hospital. One of the chaps assigned to the task of taking down the barricades at the main entrance had inadvertently smashed off one of Our Lady’s praying hands with a star picket. He’d also managed, in the same destructive motion, to put out one of Baby Jesus’ eyes.

It was said that the nuns accepted it all in typically agreeable spirit, especially since the culprit eventually owned up and acknowledged responsibility.

So, what was the rioting all about? In his publication, A History of the District of Alfred, noted magistrate Mr B.E. Camp explains: ‘…after a period of tension, on the 14th August 1959, a body of armed Maci tribesmen entered the town of Harding at