Peter was a belligerent Dutchman.  He was the size and weighed about the same as a year 6 school kid.  He was wiry, tough, tanned and constantly smoking.  He spoke  an interesting variation on English.  I used to ask him questions that required answers with lots of words starting with the letter “J”.  When Peter said the word “just”, it came out like “shoosht”.

I figure he was about forty, but his lifestyle rendered him as about 65.

He was the meanest and most miserable alcoholic bastard I’ve had the displeasure to have worked with in the shed and on the line, but despite this he was a machine that put a lot of the younger fitter and bigger blokes in the shade.  Tubby said that he was such a total bastard because he’d been raised below sea level and he never got a decent night’s sleep living in constant fear that his socks were about to float away into the Zuider Zee.

Peter was so tight with a quid that fish had more problems keeping the water out and the poop in than Peter had exposing his dosh to sunlight.  He used to show up at 7.00am – kick off time with a half-finished can of DA (his second for the day).

Peter invariably bit me for a couple of bucks for morning tea.  I was the only one to not tell him to go and get stuffed.  It wasn’t that I LIKED him.  Everyone hated Peter, but he was part of the actual foundations of the shed, and since I was the new kid, it was my job to do the putting up with.  And I soon learnt to get the two bucks back after we were paid and before Peter had stopped at the TAB or made it back to the Pig’s.

Nobody knew where Peter lived.  Nobody had ever seen him not at either the co-op or the Pig’s Arms, except for brief excursions to the TAB – before Merv had one installed in the pub, but by then Peter had gone – if not exactly to God, it was more likely that he had taken the big subterranean trip.  Most of the blokes were just happy that wherever Peter lived, it wasn’t at their boarding house.

Wal was an unassuming version of Dwayne Eddy who looked like he’d been dressed by his big sister – against his better judgement.

He was slightly built and on the periphery of the real action.  He was the forky, and we were the meat engines who did the heavy lifting and twisting.  Wal took away the pallet after we’d done the real work.  But he was quick, and precise, and unlike Tubby, you could rely on Wal’s stacks not toppling over and killing some hapless bastard.

Wal introduced me to the Pig’s Arms in the first place.  It was my first lunch down at the Co-op and everyone on the line went down to the Pig’s for three or four schooners.  Not really at lunch, more like , FOR lunch.  The beers constituted lunch and lunch was the beer.

So the afternoon shift was not memorable.  It might have been memorable except that after a few minutes, Wal walked me around to a quiet pallet of bagged rice, behind the stacks and that’s where I woke up after the boss had locked up for the night.  That was OK.  There was a shower and a cup of tea for the partaking but the lunch room was now the bedroom.  I don’t recall it ever being used for lunch, but if the weather was wet, it was a steamy and malodorous pit.

Wal was never referred to as “Wal”.

It was a complicated run of nicknames started by Danny.

Wal became Waldo – named after a popular professional wrestler of the time –Waldo Von Erich.  Waldo von Erich was the stage name of Walter Siebel who was billed as the brother of Fritz von Erich when they wrested as a tag team together.  They had a penchant for wearing vaguely Prussian military style togs and received the appropriate level of opprobrium from the audience as a result.

Wado became von Erich.  And when Danny decided he was tired of calling Wal von Erich, he shortened that to V.

Wal was always a bit retiring and to avoid a direct confrontation with Danny, he adopted a low profile.  Danny seized on this and insisted that Wal looked a bit depressed.

So he then referred to Wal as “D” – for depression.  Danny therapy consisted of yelling “here comes our little black cloud” every time Wal emerged out of the shed with another pallet.

Although this was clearly not good therapy, nobody was prepared to point that out to Danny, lest they become the substitute industrial victim.

Shortly after that D (who was our fork lift driver) disappeared.  He never reappeared at the co-op shed, or at the Pig’s Arms.

One of the Leichhardt Wanderers reckoned he saw Wal down at Central, but even Tubby – Wal’s forklift offsider said that he had no idea where Wal went.  Back to the 1950’s I reckon – where he was far less likely to have his flattop recognised.