Nobody's Fault by Derek Haines (rm book recommendations txt) 📕

them about how abo’s got called bungs. ‘Because that’s the sound they make when they get hit by the roo bar on the front of a car son!’
It didn’t really matter what you were. An itie or an abo or a fatty or a mummy’s boy. Teacher’s pet, cry baby. Any small difference was going to be targeted by the other kids. Tony soon learned that almost all kids got targeted one way or another. So he just took it as it came, and as he understood how this peer put down worked, he gave as good as he got. He had his share of fights. Won a few, lost a few, same as all the other kids. He also learned by experience a valuable lesson to take through life. If you are going to pick a fight with someone, pick it with someone smaller than yourself. And if it looks like any possibility of a fight with someone bigger than yourself, hit him before the fight has started, and hit him fucking hard because it might be the only punch you get in!
It wasn’t unusual in 1971 for a boy to leave school at fifteen. After three years at high school, and passing the Junior School Certificate, the only point in carrying on for a further two years was to gain university entrance. As Tony wasn’t breaking any scholastic records, and as the cost of a university education was seen as only affordable by the idle rich, Tony’s parents wondered if it might be time for him to find a job. As working was nothing new to Tony, it was a simple and easy choice for him to make.
Fremantle was alive with work for a keen young man. Within two days of leaving school, Tony started work for Simpson’s Transport Company. His job title was storeman, but in practice it was young shitkicker and tea maker. It didn’t matter to Tony. He thrived on working with men. No more schoolyard humour and pranks. The men he now worked with were real Aussie men and punctuated every sentence with the words fuck and cunt at least three times, and it wasn’t to shock, it was just the way they communicated. What wasn’t fucked, or a little cunt of a thing, was bloody good, or not worth a pinch of shit. As with all groups in society there are rules. It took Tony a little while to grasp these rules, but with looking, listening, and the odd clip around the ear from his older workmates he learned quick smart. When Bob the truckie asked Tony to get him a cup of fucking tea, because he was as dry as a nun’s cunt, Tony found out the hard way what not to do. He made the tea just fine, but in delivering it to Bob who was sitting having smoko with a few mates, he handed the cup to Bob and said, ‘Here you are Bob, your cup of fucking tea!’ Within a millisecond of uttering the last word of what Tony thought was what he should say to become one of the boys he was hit across the back of his head with a huge open handed clout by the warehouse foreman. ‘You watch your language you little shit!’ echoed in Tony’s ears as his head recoiled from the blow. Tony discovered by trial and error where he was to fit into this group of men. He knew for sure he was at the bottom of the pecking order. This was easy because he got all the shit jobs, and always made the tea for smoko. But he did gradually find his place, and accepted it without complaint. And it was easier to conform than get clouted by the warehouse foreman.
The work ethic Tony had as habit from all his years in the fish and chip shop did him no harm. After two years with Simpson’s Transport, almost to the day, the warehouse foreman craned his neck out of his office and yelled, ‘Hey Tony, get your arse over here!’. Tony came running over as usual. But this wasn’t usual. Instead of being asked to make tea, sweep the back of a truck that had been loaded with incontinent sheep, or run down the Post Office, he was asked to take a seat. Tony’s pulse raced. He could taste bile in the back of his throat. ‘Shit’, he thought as his mind raced, ‘I am going to get sacked.’
‘Tony,’ started the foreman, ‘you have been with us now two years, and soon you will be turning seventeen. It is time we had a look at what you do here.’
‘Oh no!’ thought Tony, ‘This is it. I am in for the chop.’
‘Tony, I have made arrangements for you to take driving lessons. Normally the company would ask you to do this in your own time and at your own expense, but I have discussed with the manager your future role. You know you can’t be tea maker forever.’ he said with a chuckle. Tony wore a smile, but the shock of just sitting in the foreman’s office hadn’t entirely worn off yet. But it was slowly sinking into his head that he wasn’t getting sacked. The bile started to obey gravity and head back down his throat.
‘We need a driver for small local deliveries. Deliveries too small really for a truck. We believe you have shown a great deal of commitment to your job Tony. Do you realise you have not had one day off sick since you started with us?’
Tony didn’t answer, as he knew somehow that this was a statement and not a question.
‘Tomorrow morning Tony, I will have Bob start giving you driving lessons in the company ute. One hour each morning starting at seven a.m. I have booked you in for a driving test at the police station in Fremantle for tomorrow fortnight. Any questions Tony?’
‘No Sir, thank you very much Sir.’ was all Tony could mutter. His head was spinning.
‘Ok son, get your arse out of here, there’s work to be done.’
This was the first step towards Tony achieving his ultimate qualification. An articulated vehicle licence. Tony didn’t know it then, but his die had been cast. Tony was to be a truck driver.
With Bob’s patience and swearing, Tony learned how to drive. He passed his test first time. Tony didn’t know that the sergeant at the Fremantle police station was a friend of the warehouse foreman, and unless he had run over a pedestrian or side swiped five cars, he was guaranteed to pass anyway. All that mattered was that he could now drive. He could work with and along side the other drivers. To Tony, working for a transport company meant driving. So, he could see his days of sweeping, unloading and making tea were coming to an end.
If there was an official end to being the company shitkicker, it came a few weeks after Tony had gained his driver’s licence. He had just finished a delivery to Kwinana, about ten miles south of Fremantle, and was heading for the tea urn, when he heard a familiar shrill.
‘Hey Tony, get your arse over here!’ came the bellow from the foreman’s office. Tony walked over to the open office door. He had stopped running to this command since a young lad was hired to take over his shitkicker duties ten days before.
‘Tony this is Bill Hodges. He is the local union rep for the Transport Worker’s Union. You will have to join the union now that you are a driver.’
‘Hello Mr Hodges,’ said Tony as he reached out to shake his hand.
‘Nice to meet you Tony. Do you know much about the union Tony?’
‘Yes Sir, some Sir. The other men here have told me a little.’ replied Tony.
‘Well, the union will look after you son. I just need to take a few details from you, and have you sign up, and you will need to come to our next meeting at Trades Hall. Ok with you?’
‘Yes Sir.’ Tony boldly answered. Tony knew that the transport industry was a closed shop, so he simply had to be in the union. He had also gleaned in conversations with his workmates that the Union was there to look after workers. So it must be good. And, there was no choice in the matter. Tony was now a driver and a union man. And bloody proud to be just that.
One of Tony’s regular deliveries was to a ceramic tile wholesaler in Spearwood. An industrial suburb near Fremantle. The shipments of tiles came by ship from overseas, and on semi from the east. Most were small consignments so Tony delivered these in his ute nearly every week. He got to know most of the staff at the warehouse, and one member of the staff really caught his attention. She was a little blonde girl. He thought she was about sixteen, but it is always a difficult task for a seventeen year old boy to know how old a young lady is. He exchanged glances with her for weeks before he finally summoned up the courage to actually say hello.
He finally did, and to his relief she said ‘Hello, how are you?’
‘I am fine.’ he struggled to say in his excitement.
Over the next few weeks, Tony became a little more at ease with this little blonde. At first he had to cut his conversations short, because he was sure she and everyone else within a mile would notice him getting a hard on. It was just as well it was a fifteen minute drive back to the depot. He needed all this time just to be able to stand up straight without embarrassment. It took Tony two months before he summoned up the courage to ask her a question he had been practicing in his mind since he had first seen her.
‘Would you like to go to the drive-in or something on Saturday night?’ he asked with all the surety of someone asking a beggar for a thousand dollars!
She seemed to take a fortnight to answer, and Tony thought he had blown it. But finally she replied in what was really only a second or two, ‘Yeah sure, that would be great. What’s on?’
‘I dunno.’ replied Tony. He realised then that he hadn’t planned this too well.
Tony did not know what this innocent beginning was going to lead to. He had just met his future wife.

IV
Steven

In the middle of a wet winter in 1971, a P&O liner full of ten pound tourists arrived and tied up at the passenger terminal of Fremantle Harbour. They were immigrants from the United Kingdom, and were called this because it only cost them ten pounds for a one way passage to Australia. The Australian government of the day was keen to have white English stock as migrants. In 1971, England was still referred to as the Mother country or simply home by many Australians. Most had never been there. It was just that the ties of a colony had yet to be fully broken. It was still a time when English accents were needed to get a job with the ABC as a newsreader or announcer.
As the gangplank was lowered, a young couple from East London waited to disembark after their long voyage. Six weeks aboard a crowded ocean liner with three young children was not a pleasant experience. They just wanted to get onto dry land. Little were they to know that the next three months in a migrant hostel would be worse.
Nissan huts were used as accommodation for some newly arrived migrants. It was only temporary, but then again, nissan huts were used to house POWs in the second world war,