Extracts of a novel by M Glenn Taylor.

He let his fingers hover over the chipped keyboard, eyes shut tight. He lit another cigarette. Willie dropped in a slow but catchy bass line. Johnnie came in second, smooth and easy, Chicky waited, then let rip a reed splitter. They had it down. Johnnie kept his eyes shut as he started to sing.

Well, I drown a glass a water

and I’ll hang a rope

The devil he done come to me

Took away my hope

Well, I’ll put that stick a dynamite

Right on under your nose

Cause I done seen the worst a man can see

That’s just how it goes

The voice, the whole sound, was smoke-shot vocal chords and sticky-floor toe-tapping, holes in the soles. Chickey played part of the song with his nose. It was holy hell blues all right, and the only country or gospel to be heard was not a brand greasy Jimmy the disc jockey had ever encountered. This was sin music.

The muffled fiddle squal, the quiet dulcimer, the old five string, they were just discernable enough to calm the excitement. And when the young woman’s voice broke through, it was beautiful. Church solo beautiful. They could make out her words.

Well, boys, you’ve heard that tale

About a Mingo dead-eye shot

Who on that 1920 day couldn’t fail

To give Al Felts what he got

The boy was full of rotten teeth

But his eye was keen and sure

He held the miners’ deep belief

That their lives were surely pure

Out on the hallway stairwell, Chickey’s sight went red. Everything blurred. The howling in his ears commenced and his knees gave. He dropped like a man in the mids of a stroke.

Johnnie and Willie kneeled to him, slapped his face a little. They listened for his breath, found it, and carried him out, just as greasy Jimmy said to the radio-listening public, ‘And that was The Mingo Four with “The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart.”

Uncle Pudding.

Many years ago, at a time when the local garage man would lift the bonnet of the Ford, check the dip stick of the engine, crouch down to pump the tires, we also used to go camping. The camping involved loading tents and kids with a drive of some hours to a spot where there were hardly any others. The last hour covered a mere 15 kilometers. It was a dirt road which after rain would turn into a slippery dip. The trick was to get into the middle and slowly allow the car to roll down the hill, gentle on the accelerator, hoping that the way uphill would be without having to do that in reverse.

After arrival, the kids would be left loose which resulted in their blessed instant disappearance giving us time to erect the two tents and get firewood. Getting firewood wasn’t a big task, usually there was enough kindle from the gum trees within a short walk around the tents. The fire would be started confined between some rocks and a kettle on top would be boiling in no-time at all. Ground coffee in the pot, (never the insult of Nescafe,) and Helvi and I sipping this golden nectar, it was instant heaven for both of us.

 The spot we went to hardly ever varied. It was Bendalong, just after Sussex Inlet and past a spot where a boat loaded with ceramic tiles had come to grief during a storm in 1946.  Bendalong used to mine some minerals which were loaded on ships with a half ‘demolished by storm and tempest’ jetty still poking its nose into the ocean. The best times were had by kids that would scamper down a steep and crumbly escarpment to a rocky plateau. The youngest, when still a baby was carried in a papoose down that hill and many of his first impressions of life must have been the back-side of his father as well as seeing waves and sea creatures. The rewards on that plateau were the oysters. No oyster has ever tasted better.

In the evenings we would have the fire roaring and listen to the gravel laughter coming from behind our camp side. This was Uncle Pudding in full flight. He was a miner with early retirement, “dusty lungs”, it was called. There were a few on that peninsula. The pension would go much further on free-hold council land during the times of tolerance and a society still unworried about some souls living free on camp-sides and in Caravans. Well, free? Perhaps a case or a bit of a case of beer to the person or ranger in charge of the camp side was exchanged. No one cared or was jealous.

His laughter was perhaps anointed by the beers he would be sharing with some relative or other dusty lung miners, some had fishing boats. The huge slabs of tuna he would give us as a matter of course and our kids loved this Uncle Pudding. The origin of that name we never understood nor wanted to. He simply was ‘Pudding’ and ‘uncle Pudding’ he was called by our kids. He lived in a caravan and had a kerosene fridge in which he kept his tuna food and copious amount of beer. Connected to this caravan he had a large canvas annex which was really his lounge room with dilapidated large lounge chairs spread out in front, over which he had spanned another canvas cover. All this held up by ropes, guy wires and posts.

The era of best oysters and Uncle Pudding came to an end when he died and our kids grew up. We went back a couple of years ago. It’s all changed. Hundreds of caravans and aluminum clad annexes. The whole campsite has bitumen Rosella named driveways which at night are lit by garish blue neon lights. Ugly brick toilet blocks. All transformed in a suburb- holiday tangled horror. Stone lions or naked cement ladies with urns placed in front of the caravan. Cement frogs and toad stools. Hellish music and silly flowers in plastic, flickering plasmas and huge heaving guts carried by indefinable sexes stomping about… The whipper snipper brigade now on holidays, no more camp fires.

Uncle pudding died a long time ago.