The Firefighter Blues. Alan Bruce
A few days passed and nothing was said until one night we heard Mum and Dad in fits of laughter talking about our peach regeneration program.
‘Can ye believe what they bairns did? What were they thinking aboot?’ Dad chuckled.
Nothing was ever said to us at the time. It was never spoken about until years later when we all had a good belly laugh about it.
And, no, they didn’t grow back.
~
The year was 1966 and the Bruce family were going on their first road trip/holiday since arriving in Australia. Now, my parents were both clever people in their own right; Mum was quite well educated and Dad was worldly and experienced, so for the life of me I can’t comprehend why they didn’t realise that a mile is the same length in Scotland as it is in Australia.
We were about to drive to the centre of Queensland to a place called Anakie and go fossicking for sapphires. A friend of Mum’s had recently returned from a similar trip with a bunch of stories and a pocketful of sapphires. The plan was to travel north up the east coast of NSW and Queensland to Rockhampton then head west through the town of Emerald until we reached the gem fields, where we would all have a great time scratching around in the dirt like silly Scottish chooks. Who knows, maybe we would find our fortune and live happily ever after. This was all to happen in two and a half weeks during the heat of an Australian summer. Mad Dogs and Englishmen had nothing on the Bruce family.
Oh, one other point that my parents didn’t think through: our car was way too small for our Leyland Brotherish adventure. Months earlier, Dad had purchased a shiny new Morris 1100. No doubt a terrific car but it wasn’t much bigger than a Mini Minor, had no off-road capabilities, and a family of four leprechauns would struggle to squeeze into it with all the camping gear we were to carry. The sticker on the rear window said, ‘It floats on fluid’ (which meant, it was equipped with the latest hydraulic suspension). I think Dad was floating on fluid when he decided it would be suitable for our long trek north. Nonetheless, I remember how excited I was that we, the Bruce family, working-class migrants from Letham, were actually having a real vacation. I thought, wow, how good is Australia?
A few weeks before our departure, my parents were busy buying, borrowing or, in Dad’s case, ‘acquiring’, any camping gear they could get their hands on. Now this was 1966, so everything was made from timber, steel and canvas. Pop-up nylon tents and reinforced plastic camp beds were years away. We ended up with a twelve-by-twelve canvas tent and its associated timber tent poles, steel pegs, guy lines, ropes and springs. A twelve-by-twelve canvas ground sheet. Four canvas and timber camp beds, a couple of tilley lamps, a portable gas stove, a folding table and chair set, a steel esky and enough plates, cutlery and pots for the four of us. On top of this, we needed to find room for the collapsible army shovel, small spade and two sieves for sapphire fossicking. We also needed enough clothing and personal items for two and a half weeks. Now, if you’re not familiar with the Morris 1100, it was a very small vehicle with a very small (1100cc) engine. To be able to squeeze all this equipment and a family of four into its tiny interior was next to impossible. The obvious solution? Fit some roof racks. Dad obtained a second-hand set and modified them to fit our pocket rocket.
We were good to go; time for the practice pack. We spent hours (or at least Dad did) finding the quickest and easiest way to pack the car and still be able to squeeze the four of us into the seats. It was done, there was a place for everything. Jenny and I shared the back seat with the esky, the sieves, tent pegs, ropes and some clothing bags. Jenny and I chuckled, ‘Leg room is overrated anyway.’
Everything else went up on the roof or into the tiny rear boot. The final chore was to get the maps from the local NRMA and we were ready for our first real Australian adventure.
Finally, the time had arrived and, after a very early start, we managed to make Port Macquarie on our first day. Then a strange thing happened; as we pulled into the camping area we were given a sign from God. I’m sure it was a warning to turn back to Sydney, unpack and spend the rest of our holiday at the local public swimming pool at Bankstown. Within seconds of pulling up, an almighty gale came from nowhere. It blew off the water like the exhaust from a jumbo jet. Now, in practice, the four of us were each allocated a job to do and, like a well-oiled machine, we could erect the old canvas tent in about twenty minutes. On our first night, in the howling wind, adjacent to the break wall at Port Macquarie, I’m sure we would’ve broken the record and for the slowest time. I can’t be sure of the actual figures; possibly an hour or more. As Mum, Jenny and I were constantly letting the side down by dropping our tent corner, losing a rope or chasing seagulls, we were all introduced to some brand-new Scottish swear words. Mum may have been familiar with Dad’s colourful brogue but to Jenny and I, it was an ear bashing that we never wanted to hear again. From that day on we never deserted our post when it came to camp duties. We were so exhausted by the time our monstrosity was up, we all just fell into our camp beds for a ‘wee lie doon’.
The trip North to Queensland went fairly smoothly, although setting up the tent and campsite every night, just to pull it all down again in the morning, was nothing but damn hard work. I felt like we were working on the Burma Railway, not taking the holiday of a lifetime. The grumblings from the troops finally filtered up to Sergeant Bruce and he decided we would spend a little less time at the sapphire fields. This would allow us to at least spend two days at some of the towns along the way.
Dad didn’t know it at the time but that decision was a life changer for him and Mum. We spent a night at the coastal town of Ballina on our way north and Mum and Dad really liked the look of the place so they planned to spend two days around Ballina and Lennox Head on our way home. We did stay the two days and that region became our go-to holiday destination for years to come. My parents eventually retired to Lennox Head and lived out their lives in and around the north coast of New South Wales.
Inching a little further north each day also meant that the temperature was creeping up, not to mention the humidity. Sadly, the brand-new Morris was equipped with old-fashioned air conditioning – four windows that you could wind up or down as you pleased.
I still remember Dad’s cheeky comment about the heat: ‘Ahh luxury,’ he’d say as he wound the window down.
We finally made it to Rockhampton, Queensland, the town where our route would change to a westerly direction as we headed out along the Capricorn Highway, through Blackwater and Emerald towards our destination, the gem fields of Anakie.
After an overnighter in Rockhampton, we stopped for lunch in a bush clearing, somewhere near Blackwater. Mum was making a‘cuppa’ on the gas stove while Jenny and I were trying to follow a huge goanna, which had just scurried up a nearby tree. It was a beautiful day, cotton-ball clouds hung motionless in the Queensland air while the midday sun flickered like disco strobes through the leaves and branches of the eucalyptus trees that surrounded our campsite. Surprisingly, I don’t remember the heat or humidity being too oppressive. The chirping of invisible bird life echoed through the tree tops and, apart from the occasional smack from Mum swatting blowies, it seemed like a serene, peaceful spot for lunch.
Suddenly the serenity was shattered by the loudest ‘bang’ I had ever heard – it boomed through the nearby hills and seemed to reverberate for ages before it eventually petered out.
‘What was that,’ I screamed; Jenny and I were startled.
We turned to see our Dad reloading what was obviously a rifle. He had just fired a shot, apparently, at a tin can he had set up on a tree branch. His aim was true and he was setting up for another. He was wearing the same cheeky smirk he always had when up to no good. Not a 'Wolf Creek' smirk, just an everyday mischievous Dad smirk. The rifle, an old 303, with a worn grainy stock and blackened barrel, was the best kept secret of our trip. Not even Mum knew he had packed it in the car. Dad had wrapped it in a small blanket and buried it deep in the boot, underneath our clothing. The story goes that one of his workmates told him, ‘You’re crazy if you head off into central Queensland without a gun.’
Dad knew that Mum would object, so he had hidden the weapon and only