The Firefighter Blues. Alan Bruce
but my mother was a very resourceful woman. She had worked for years in childcare centres and children’s hospitals so her craftwork skills were finely honed.
My parents never really spoke about why they packed up everything they owned into three kists and set sail for the other side of the globe. Years later, whenever I quizzed them their stock standard answer was, ‘To give you bairns a better life.’
I was way too young to know what was wrong with my old life but I didn’t care at the time, we were off on a great adventure.
I had lost track of how long we had been at sea when Mum woke us up one morning.
‘Wake up. We’re in Fremantle, it’s in Western Australia,’ she whispered.
It meant nothing to me; the only recognisable word that jumped out was ‘Australia’. I’m sure I cheered;
‘Yes, we’ve made it – Australia!’
It wasn’t until breakfast that I was told we were visiting Fremantle only for the day and would be heading off to our final destination, Sydney, that night.
Dad had made prior arrangements to meet an old friend from Scotland who had settled in Perth a year earlier. There had been some miscommunication along the way as his friend thought we were settling in Western Australia and had arranged work for my father as well as temporary accommodation with his family. He may have been disappointed when he realised we were travelling on to Sydney but he certainly didn’t show it.
He had a small van and we all piled in for a tour of Fremantle and Perth. It was an open van, or as we Australians now call it, a ute. It was one of the most pleasant experiences of my young life. Dad and his friend were in the front of the van and Jenny and I piled in the back with Mum. For some reason, the sky seemed larger and brighter than the Scottish sky I had once lived under. I still remember how the warmth of the sun made me feel. It was uplifting and I could sense that our entire family felt the same. Maybe we were just glad to get off the ship.
I was hypnotised by the sky; how could it be so blue? There was not a dab of grey or a blob of beige anywhere. Like the base coat of an artist’s canvas, the heavens were painted in nothing but glorious, rich, beautiful blue. Not only did Australia look and smell different, it sounded different. My ears were tantalised by some of the most beautiful sounds I’d ever heard. It was probably just a magpie or currawong mixed with the echoing tones of the local bellbirds but they seemed to form a harmonious soundscape that none of us had ever experienced. I knew we weren’t listening to the jackdaw or robin; this was a foreign song that sounded warm and welcoming.
The old van chugged slowly to the top of a hill where we parked next to a garden clock made from flowers and other plants. It was an actual working clock and Dad seemed fascinated by it, as he was by all clocks, large and small.
He shouted, ‘Hey, get a load o’ this clock, Betty, it’s made oot o’ floowers.’
I was more interested in the rustling noises from tiny lizards darting in and out of the leafy undergrowth, although the strange flowers did fill the air with beautiful intoxicating aromas. We may have been visiting the local botanical gardens but I couldn’t be sure. The stillness of the sweet-smelling air was a welcome contrast to the constant and annoying wind that dried lips, ruined women’s hairdos and sent untethered hats skywards aboard our rolling rust bucket of a ship.
The day ended way too soon and, before I knew it, we were back on board, once again surrounded by drab grey and white, with the songbird’s chorus replaced by the dull drone of the ship’s engines. As the old tugs pushed, pulled and nudged us away from our berth there was a sense of excitement among those left on board.
We were Sydney-bound and it wouldn’t be long before we reached our new home, where our lives would change forever.
TANKER 8, ASSISTANCE REQUIRED, TRUCK MVA, LIVERPOOL
Murray Kear and I are driving Liverpool’s water tanker when we are called to assist at a truck accident. The water tanker is an off-road vehicle designed for bushfires and wouldn’t normally be called to a motor vehicle accident (MVA), but our rescue truck is on scene and requires the assistance of Murray, our Senior Rescue Firefighter.
When we arrive at the address, we’re surprised to find that the incident is located in a suburban back yard.
It’s complete chaos. A guy around twenty years old is yelling and cursing while punching palings off the side fence. An elderly woman screams at the top of her voice – in Italian. Two younger women are hugging each other while sobbing uncontrollably. Murray and I side step our way through the bedlam and meet up with the rescue crew, who are crouched over a man’s body while administering CPR. He is lying between two huge Mack trucks. It’s immediately obvious that the poor bloke is dead. His skull is disfigured, his face, purple and swollen; cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) is oozing from both ears.
We’re told this is a family transport business and the father and son were working on the trucks. One was parked directly behind the other. The father had stuck his head between the front of one truck and the rear of the other and yelled to the son, who was in the cab:
‘Okay, start her up!’
The son turned the key, not realising the vehicle was in gear. The huge Mack truck lunged forward and crushed the father’s head between the two vehicles. The son quickly shoved it in reverse but it was too late. His father dropped to the ground and died where he fell. The neighbour tells us that the poor old bugger has just come out of hospital after surviving a major heart attack. This was his first day back on the job.
The mother grabs me from behind, screaming:
‘Is he dead? Is he dead?’
I have no idea what I said to the poor woman. What could I say? I was never trained to counsel grieving family members at an accident scene. None of us were
CHAPTER THREE
Tin Huts
Norman Nissen was a World War I British Army Engineer who will always be remembered for one thing. A semicircular corrugated iron hut that was bitterly cold in the winter and unbearably hot in the summer: the Nissen hut.
The cheap prefabricated buildings were first used as army barracks and ancillary military buildings but, by the time my family had moved to Australia, they had become the standard temporary homes built for the huge influx of migrants landing on Australian shores. One such hut, erected on the hardened clay and ants’ nests of South Western Sydney, was to become my home for the next three years.
The bus trip from the docks in Sydney to our new home, East Hills Migrant Hostel, seemed to take forever. I’m not sure if I was just eager to get there and explore my new surroundings or I was finally getting a little travel weary. We had been on the move for nearly seven weeks and I think we were all starting to fray at the edges. We were knackered and just wanted a place to call home, if only for a few months. Little did I know that the months would turn into years.
East Hills Hostel was situated in bushland just outside of Liverpool, south-west of Sydney. It was administered by Commonwealth Hostels Ltd, and housed migrants from all over the world, although at that time, it was mainly families from England, Ireland and Scotland that filled the huts. The hostel was built on the opposite side of the Georges River from the small village of East Hills. For those using the train system to get to work, the quickest way to the railway station was to walk up a narrow potholed road that cut through a scrubby forest of eucalyptus, bottle brush and melaleuca trees towards the river, passing a few rustic homes along the way, then cross a rickety old timber footbridge to access the last stop on the South West Rail line – East Hills. It wasn't the end of the earth - but you could see it from there. The footbridge still stands today although it has been upgraded many times. If you didn’t want to walk and you were lucky enough to have a car, then it was a forty five-minute trip by road to East