Cops, Crocs & Leopard-Skin Jocks. Bob Magor
had a few mates who had dabbled in a few plants here and there. They kept telling me how easy the money was. I reasoned that if I was going to take the risk I might as well take a big risk. The next thing I know I’m tangled up in a huge crop grown on the Robinson River, south of Borroloola. It was in a very isolated area with a plentiful water supply. Because of the humid climate the crop turned out an outstanding success. It made Jack’s beanstalk look like a bonsai!
‘I couldn’t take all the credit though because another bloke grew it and I only worked for him. Once it was planted, a couple of us would sneak out a couple of times a week and give it a good soak. I was really flying blind because I’d never even grown a tomato before so I didn’t know much about cultivating hooch. But this stuff grew like a weed!
‘When the crop was ready we all went out for the harvest. I felt like a naughty schoolboy keeping an ear open for vehicles while working flat out. It was a sticky job due to resin leaking from the heads and it took us days. On the way back to Darwin, my mate Michael Derrick and I pulled into Heartbreak Hotel at Cape Crawford for fuel. We’d been paid in cash for our work but we’d also managed to souvenir a small quantity as a bonus.
The bloke who ran the pub said to me, “You must be the most wanted chap in the Territory.” I asked him why and he told me how two carloads of cops were combing the area. Apparently they didn’t know exactly who they were looking for, but they knew there was a drug crop in the area and they knew about a Roy Wright that spent a lot of time in the bush. He might be able to help them with their investigations.
‘I shit myself. The crop was gone but Michael and I had a spare tyre on the back of the Toyota stuffed full of marijuana. Even though I was only a lackey in the project, with my record they’d throw the book at me.
‘We could feel the cell doors starting to close so, halfway back to the Stuart Highway, we pulled up at a tank and washed everything. The resin got on our boots, our clothes, and eventually got transferred to everything we touched including our vehicle. We scrubbed the Toyota out with buckets of water and changed the back wheels to the front and vice versa. This was so they couldn’t match the Toyota tracks to any at the crop site.
‘But we were both so nervous as we drove along that we decided that our bonus wasn’t worth the grief. We pulled up and stuffed the tyre and its expensive contents under a culvert. Our shorts were black from wiping our resin caked hands on them during the harvest so we got rid of them. A heap of druggos could have got high just from smoking our shorts! Then, with both ourselves and the vehicle squeaky clean, we headed for Darwin.
‘At Larrimah we were stopped by a couple of detectives. They drew their guns and made us stand aside while they searched the Toyota. I politely asked what they were looking for but they wouldn’t say. They took it in turns holding a pistol on us while the other searched. I was feeling a bit cheeky by now with all the evidence gone so I asked, “Were we speeding Mr Nice Policeman?” My wit didn’t seem to impress them. I guessed that Michael and I were under arrest even though they hadn’t mentioned any charge. The guns trained on us made that seem a fair assumption.
‘Knowing how Northern Territory coppers worked I opened up my shirt and said to the bloke who owned the Larrimah servo where they’d stopped us, “You have a good look. There’s no marks on me at this stage. You follow me around so you can be my witness and say that I didn’t have any bruises when I was arrested. They might set me up and put something on me. I’ve got a feeling I’m going to get a biffing.”
‘The cops weren’t impressed but Lindsay followed us around. They searched the vehicle and our swags and then looked behind the seat. They found a pair of gloves under the seat covered in the hooch resin that I’d forgotten about. I nearly messed myself when I remembered. My hands had really suffered when we stripped the crop so I wore gloves. The coppers looked at them and threw them on top of my clothes. I know coppers aren’t very smart but this was ridiculous.
“You dickheads finished holding law-abiding citizens up?” I asked. They looked really pissed off and said they had. I quickly packed the gloves and my gear away. Phew!
‘They wanted to use Lindsay’s phone to ring Darwin. Lindsay didn’t like coppers either so he told them to use the pay phone down the street. They reported to Darwin that they had searched the vehicle and found nothing. Darwin cops told them to search it again. This time they pulled the floor mats up and found two small seeds.
“What’s this!” they cried out with smug looks on their stupid faces. They reckoned they had us.
“They look like wild pea seeds to me,” I answered – because they were.
‘They rang Darwin again and both were very excited over their find. They were told to seize the vehicle with the evidence. They made me drive my arrested Toyota to Katherine accompanied by a detective. We rattled and shuddered up the bitumen. When we’d swapped the tyres around I’d changed the unbalanced rear tyres to the front and I now had trouble keeping the old Toyota on the road.
‘As soon as we arrived in Katherine I kidded the coppers I was busting to go to the loo. I bolted into the bog with the sticky gloves, quickly pushed them right around the S-bend elbow and flushed the evidence away. I said to Michael that we should hitchhike to Darwin because the coppers didn’t want us. They only wanted the Toyota, and besides, I didn’t like their company.
‘Then I had another fright. When I’d changed my shorts I never changed my shirt. On inspection inside my shirt pocket I found hundreds of dope seeds that had fallen in as we harvested the crop. The coppers had missed them when they picked us up. That was another lucky break. They had only to check my pockets and I would have been gone. I went back into the pub loo and the seeds followed the gloves. There was going to be a hell of a crop later in the year where their septic ran out onto the ground!
‘I was walking around Katherine looking for a lift when I ran into Pat Loftus. He’d put me in boob a few times as a police prosecutor but Pat was a really good bloke. I never held a grudge against the prosecutors and judges. They were only doing their job and I was always in the wrong – well, almost always! He was back being a barrister again and happened to be in town at the time. I told him how these bastards had seized my vehicle on the strength of finding two wild pea seeds. He went and spoke to the coppers. They said they were taking plaster casts of my tyres and I could have the Toyota back tomorrow.
‘This all went to plan and the next day, after I swapped my balanced tyres back to the front, Michael and I headed to Darwin. I never heard any more of the incident but I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when the seeds were identified. It was very close though and, for once I felt as if someone was finally looking after me. It was probably the Devil!
‘But I’ve always been a slow learner because, after the scare had worn off, I found myself tangled up in another crop.
‘I was in Gunn Point Prison in Darwin over a crocodile conviction. The croc happened to be standing where I was shooting and had accidentally got itself shot. It was bad luck it got pinned on me. While I was inside I spent a lot of time talking to a fellow inmate, Gordon Mackie, and we became good mates. We were both released at the same time and he asked me if I’d drive him to Pine Creek.
He said if I chauffeured him he’d give me a thousand dollars. I jumped at the chance because I had no money and a thousand dollars in the early 70s was an awful lot of money. I knew that it had to be shonky, but I was only the driver.
‘I had an old, battered Toyota that he filled up with petrol and off we went. He made me pull up at the end of the street, then he got out and walked down about six houses. I sat there for a couple of hours and I was beginning to think that the old bloke had dudded me. But I had a full tank of petrol so I didn’t really care. Eventually he came out of the house with a smug look on his face. As I drove him back to Darwin there was no mention of the money that he’d promised. He wanted to be dropped at the Nook Caravan Park. As he got out he handed me a thousand dollars cash. Shit, I was a millionaire!
‘He stuck his head back in the Toyota and asked me if I was interested in growing a crop out on Green Ant Creek. I told him that it was too risky and it wasn’t really my scene.