Where Ya Been, Mate?

Where Ya’ Been, Mate?

Herb Wharton, born in Cunnamulla, Queensland, began his working life in his teenage years as a drover. His maternal grandmother was of the Kooma people; his grandfathers were Irish and English. In 1992 with the publication of his first book, Unbranded, he committed to novel form his experiences of people and events from his long years on the stock routes of inland Australia. His next book Cattle Camp, a collection of stories as told by Murri stockmen and women, published in 1994, has also been reprinted.

He has led writing workshops, lectured at university and served as a writer-in-residence in the Northern Territory, Canberra and at various schools. A fulltime writer, he has published essays, poetry and book reviews here and abroad. In 1995 he toured Germany as a member of the Experience Australia delegation of writers.

Also by Herb Wharton

Unbranded

Cattle Camp: Muni Drovers and Their Stories

Yumba Days

Herb Wharton

Where Ya’ Been, Mate?

University of Queensland Press

First published 1996 by University of Queensland Press

Box 42, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia

© Herb Wharton 1996

This book is copyright Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no

part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

Typeset by University of Queensland Press

Sponsored by the Queensland Office of Arts and Cultural Development.

Cataloguing in Publication Data

National Library of Australia

Wharton, Herb, 1936-

Where ya' been mate.

I. Title.

A823.3

ISBN: 0 7022 2803 6 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-7022-3839-0 (epub)

ISBN: 978-0-7022-3837-6 (kindle)

ISBN: 978-0-7022-3836-9 (pdf)

A Few Words on Writing

Why do I write and for what? Well, it seemed for years I wandered around always finding other people somehow more interesting to write about than myself. Yet I could be called an accidental writer, for my first poem or the fourth letter I wrote in about forty years happened by chance after meeting with an old mate at the Mt Isa Rodeo, where he was appearing with his country music band. Over the years we had shared many a bottle and many a yarn. He became a prolific song-writer, possibly the most successful in the land. His name is Stan Coster and he wrote such country and western classics as By a Fire of Gydgea Coals, The Mt Isa Rodeo and The Cunnamulla Fella, to name but a few of the almost two hundred songs he composed over the years.

Whereas Stan would always be scribbling all those years ago, I would always be saying: I'm gonna write a story one day about the things that I see happening around me. This went on for almost forty years and every time I said it my mates would say, Yer, yer, one day.

Well this night in the Isa my old mate asked did I think me and the other stockmen had wasted our lives out in the bush. For once in my life I found I had no answer, yet always being perhaps more argumentative than political I believed it was a question that should be answered. So three days later I sat down and wrote my old mate a letter explaining how we had certainly wasted some hard earned cheques in hotel bars, on not very fast race horses and on women that were perhaps faster than most of them horses. I still have that letter for I never posted it but tossed it into my port, where it stayed for about six months until one day I reread it. Thinking it was a bloody good answer I decided to turn it into a poem and sent it off to my old mate Stan Coster. It is titled A Wasted Life? and appears in this book.

Of course that really set me thinking about the past, present and future. Being more or less pensioned off I thought that perhaps I owed it to this great country and its people to try and tell the untold stories, fact and fiction — to entertain perhaps, but most importantly to enlighten people to some of the realities of life, and to share my faith in people of all races making the future more rewarding for us all.

So I decided to write five poems or prose, whatever, with paper and pencil to be given to whoever wanted to read them. They (I hoped) would tell the real story of the history of Australia, perhaps the world. Well I finished those five pieces and found the stories were still not completely told. For they had raised more questions than they had answered. So I scribbled perhaps a hundred more. By this time I had begun to print my work because I could not always understand my handwriting.

Soon I had an old typewriter and discovered such things as photocopying and continued to write about everything that moved me. To me writing became the ideal way of refining thoughts that for years I had shouted, sometimes in heated debate — words that as soon as spoken were gone like the wind, never to be heard again. Well, as I had threatened for years, one day I decided that, instead of arguing and losing words and thought, I would put it all down on paper. Writing then became a reality.

For those first few years getting published or making money was not important, it was the act of writing that was important. Even when I finally decided to see about publication it was not a matter of if but when I would be published. Somehow I believe I am one of the lucky ones thus far for the benefits that literature has brought me.

It has not been an easy road. I have seen more dinner-times than dinners over the last few years. I had to go out of my way to listen and learn about the publishing industry, the pitfalls and the rewards. Writing to me is the reward. If others read my scribbled words, getting published is icing on the cake. There are other bonuses like being asked to literary festivals, having works studied in schools, giving lectures and, of course, the travel which has always been important to my work for I find people and places fascinating. Great stories happen not only around outback campfires, they happen in city streets, wherever people gather. And the true stories are more incredible than fiction. They supply the ideas for whatever I write, be it fact or fiction.

Although I rarely wrote for years, even a letter, which still today holds some sort of taboo, it's no problem for me to sit for eight or ten hours writing something, anything, and later putting it all together, for I have no secret formulas for writing, no designated hours of work.

Always in my pocket is pen and paper. I am forever taking notes. Sometime in the middle of the night I wake with ideas and sit for hours writing them down. After I collect all these notes I put them together, into verse, short stories or critical comments. Maybe I won't write for weeks or months but always I take notes. In fact for some time now I have threatened to write a book about the excuses I can conjure up on why I should not be sitting down writing. Yet I know the only way to finish something is to start. I waited forty years to start but always realised that things don't just happen, you have to make them happen.

I don't know how people categorise me — poet, novelist, storyteller. What's more I don't care. For I would like to think of myself mainly as a writer who is an entertainer and educator. Who is argumentative rather than political. I work on many stories at once. Sometimes I sit down to write a letter and it turns out to be a good short story by adding some ideas about how things could have been. Sometimes it takes months to complete a story or poem, sometimes hours, even minutes.

I have been working on a novel for about three years and am in no hurry to finish it. I write a few pages whenever I feel inclined then chuck it in the box with my other papers. Yet I have strong feelings that it is a novel that should and will be written and published.

Laughter plays a big part in my writing, as well as what I consider meaningful messages. Wherever I have wandered it has always been the humour that has been a guiding light in the dark days of oppression and inequality, never despair. I have faith in people and in a future of enlightenment. Today people of all races not only ask questions; they want answers. Literature can do this. Like the great Aboriginal educator and poet Oodgeroo said, Writing belongs to the world, it is a gift to all humankind regardless of the colour of the hand that wrote it.

It's strange how writing has changed my life. It's not been easy, yet I would have my life no other way.

Herb Wharton Cunnamulla, 1995

A New Wardrobe for Rainbow Jack

In the harsh glare of summer sunlight, shimmering heat waves rose from the unpainted corrugated tin roof of the outback pub as a battered old Land Rover pulled up. A red-faced old man alighted, his clothes covered in a layer of fine red dust. His face was almost hidden by a green bandanna and his hat was pulled down over his eyes. He looked like some outlaw from the American Wild West, but he had not come to rob the pub. He wore the bandanna for protection against the hot summer wind that peeled his lips and made his red face even redder.

The pub seemed silent and empty, except for the old kangaroo dog that scratched itself as it lay on the warped floorboards of the pub veranda. The old man, who was known as Diamond Jim, gazed back towards the dust cloud made by another car approaching from the north. There was still no sound from inside the pub. The door stood open, the windows on either side were propped open with short pieces of wood. Diamond Jim looked towards the windmill and watering trough a short distance away and saw some goats camped in the shade of a mulga tree. By now the dog had stopped scratching and lay still. Diamond Jim lowered the bandanna from his face. The only things that stirred were the dust from the approaching car and a big willy-willy. Diamond Jim watched as the willy-willy went dancing and whirling across the hot red landscape stirring up the fine red dust. The top went spiralling in the cloudless hazy sky, pieces of paper, grass stalks and roly-poly plants caught up in it. Like devils dancing on their way to hell, thought Diamond Jim.

He was soon brought back to reality as the fast-approaching car came to a halt with a squeal of brakes not half a metre from where he stood. A thick cloud of