Sydney/Taree Australia
Part 27

"Got any plans for today?" I asked B as we headed to the kitchen to wash the coffee mugs. "Maybe we could check out some of the local scenery. Whaddaya say?"

"It would need to be pretty local. The buses don't run here on Sundays unless they're chartered."

"That's why you need a caaaaar, Beeeee! How the hell you gonna get to see stuff? I'll bet there are some totally cool places to see around here."

"Cars are too damn expensive. How about we take a walk around town? It's healthier."

"Is it OK if I just wear boardies and no shirt?"

"Sounds a little safer than a shirt and no boardies, I suppose," he shrugged.

It was in Victoria Street, that ran parallel to the Manning River just to our right, where we stopped to check out a bicycle shop. It was closed, but we could see a bunch of stuff through the windows.

"How about that one?" B asked, pointing to a silver Tarini mountain bike. "18-speed Shimano gears, big knobbly tires, and the price is very reasonable."

 

Yeah, right. The fucking price was about the only thing that was reasonable. "You serious, B? You're gonna buy a bike?"

"Why not? What would you suggest? A wheelchair?"

"Jeez! I hope I'm here long enough to see you ride it... or try to," I cracked. "That'd be soooo cool!"

"It's only been a few years since I last rode one. I left it at a friend's house and it's still there. She was always promising to deliver it but never did."

"Why didn't you collect it?"

"No car. I'd already sold my old VW camper."

"See? That's what I'm tellin' ya! Ya gotta have a car, B!"

As we walked further along Victoria Street, B explained how it used to be part of the main northern route to the Gold Coast in Queensland. "It's still the old Pacific Highway, but since the Taree bypass was opened a few years ago, this section is only used by local traffic. It's also been altered to accept nose-to-kerb parking, outdoor restaurants, paved pedestrian areas, and streetscaping... it's improved a helluva lot since I was last here about 25 years ago. And it's certainly far more pleasant and less stressful than Petersham. No flight path, no pollution, no peak hour traffic, no congestion, no rush... utter bliss."

"How come there's an ambulance parked outside the bicycle shop? Huh? Doesn't look to blissful to me, B. Maybe you shouldn't buy a bike."

"Why not?"

"'Cause you might fall off it or something. I figure that ambulance is a bad omen. In fact, I'm certain of it."

"Oh, rubbish, Daniel! You're allowing superstition to run away with your teenage imagination. I can ride a bike perfectly well, and have done for decades."

"That's exactly my point, B. Decades. Like D-E-C-A-D-E-S! You can only do those kinda things for so long ya know."

"True. And 'so long' is still a long way off. Now stop behaving like a drama queen."

"Oh?" I asked as we arrived a bit further up the road outside a couple of surf shops. "Who's behaving like a drama queen? You see what I see?"

"So?"

"So it's another fucking ambulance, B. That's two in the space of a few minutes for fuck sake. It's an omen!"

"Omen schmomen." Then B pointed to something else across the road. "Now that's an omen."

"What is it?"

"Not sure, but it's got something to do with Aboriginality. Maybe they know your friend Bobby."

"'Cause of that mural outside?"

"You wanna check it out?"

We crossed the road and discovered that it was a radio station. Ngarralinyi. 2TLP, "The listenin place". A notice on the front door said Please Enter, so we did. The broadcast booth with its big glass, soundproof windows was in the center of the foyer, and there was a young guy inside sitting behind a desk and speaking into a microphone. Coolio! I'd never been inside a real radio station before.

After the guy had stopped talking, he played a track from a CD, then opened the booth door and approached us. "G'day," he grinned, showing a stack of awesome pearlies. "Anything I can do for you?"

"Uh... we're just visiting," B said. "Doing a little research."

Then a white woman approached us and introduced herself, explaining that she was an advisor to the station's staff - a person employed by the government to assist with the running of community radio stations such as 2TLP.

"I've worked in radio for many years," B began, before proceeding to earbash the poor chick practically senseless.

"How wonderful! We can use all the volunteers we can get, especially those with experience!"

We were taken on a brief tour of the station's facilities, which included computers with internet access. "You're welcome to come here any time and use the computers." We also met a couple of staff. But B was more interested in finding out about the local indigenous culture. "There have been a couple of books published. You could try the local library."

"I was hoping to speak to some people personally. I write stories."

"Oh? What kind of stories?"

"Well... mainly stories about teens and their problems."

She balked at the word 'teens' for some reason. "Who?"

"Teens."

The woman seemed kinda surprised at B's remark, then gave me the hairy eyeball. "What kind of problems?"

"He's a totally cool writer, ma'am," I offered in B's defense. "He's written a whole bunch of totally wicked stuff about me and my buds. I'm from Florida in the good ol' U. S. of A. But I met this Bobby dude here in Taree 'cause I'm visiting Oz for a week. He's one of your local Aboriginal guys and B was wondering if he could research stuff about dudes like Bobby to write a story."

"You'd have to speak to Bobby himself about that, but I doubt that he would say very much. He's probably like most of the Aborigines around here. They're not very talkative when it comes to their personal lives. The best I can do is offer you a photocopy of an article called A Murri Perspective. We keep copies here for people who are interested in reading a bit of background about the Murri culture. Other than that, you could try the local library."

Once we'd returned to the street, B mimicked the woman's words in falsetto. 'Other than that, you could try the local library'. "What's the matter with people, Daniel? You and Cody are happy to tell me your stories. So what's wrong with Bobby and people like him?"

"Don't ask me, B. Anyway, don't worry about it. You've got enough on your plate as it is."

"I don't want library books, I want to talk to real people. I'm not an historian, I'm a story teller!"

"Don't get yourself all bent outa damn shape, B, or you'll have a fucking heart attack."

"Not a problem according to you... there are plenty of ambulances about."

"Har-de-fucking-har. Hey, I'm being serious here, B. We've seen two ambulances in the space of about five minutes, so that's gotta be a bad omen. Right?"

"Maybe it would have been a worse omen if we hadn't seen any at all."

"Huh?" What the hell was he talking about? "Anyway, are you gonna do some voluntary work at the radio station? That would be cool."

"Nah. Too time consuming. Besides, my main focus is writing. And I can't shake the feeling that if I were to poke around in Aboriginal affairs at that level I'd be seen as some kinda do-gooder or meddler. I didn't go through bureaucrats or organizations to find you or Cody or any of the other characters I write about. I went straight to the source of the story. Either that, or the source came directly to me."

While we were talking, we found ourselves in another street, where some of the shops were like totally ancient. "They're almost as old as you, B," I cracked.

"Shuddup, you cheeky little bugger or I'll... whatever. Those old, abandoned shops are likely to soon disappear, making way for so-called 'progress'. They look like they date from the late 1800s or early 1900s when Taree was a small pioneering town. My guess is that they'll be sold and demolished. What a shame. I wish I had a camera... a digital one. At least that would be one way to preserve the memory of those historic buildings, and the way things used to be before those telecommunications dishes were even thought of. Let's go around the back and take a look there."

Wow! Those old joints were nearly falling apart, and it was really weird to see a sign from one of the previous tenants, a computer store talking about modern technology. "Jeez, B, check out the parking area! It's a wonder it's still standing!"

"Actually, speaking of still standing, the house we're renting is not the original. The original was demolished to make way for the present house, which was built in the 1920s by the same family. From what I've heard, the husband was the captain of the local fire brigade that used an old Dennis truck, and he ran the punt that ferried traffic across the Manning River before the bridge was built."

In a nearby street, we spotted an old building that used to house a business selling water tanks. "What a dump!"

"Yep," the old dude chuckled, "there's not a lot of historical significance in that old ramshackle shed, but the facade is interesting. Even fascinating. Check it out. Another reminder of Taree in the old days when town water was a luxury. It's curious to me that old places such as we've seen today can bring the past forward into the present, but we can't take the present back to the past."

"Like you're here with me now, but I can't go back to when you were my age."

"Thanks for reminding me."

"I hope you do get a digital camera, B, 'cause then you'll be able to take pics and email them to me in the States. Hey, just imagine pics of Col and Jeff! Woohoo!"

"That's precisely what you'll be doing, Daniel... imagining. There's absolutely no way..."

"Yeah, right," I interrupted. "If you got the chance to take pics of those guys naked, you'd be snapping away like you were in seventh heaven, B. Don't bullshit me." Then I sprinted a few paces ahead of the old dude, turned on my heels to face him, and pretended to be taking pics of him with an imaginary camera. "Ha, ha!"

"Stop drawing attention to us, Daniel! There are people wondering what the hell you're doing."

"I'm taking pics of an Awesome Old Dude," I laughed. "Click, click, click!"

"You're embarrassing the hell outa me, that's what you're doing. Now stop it!"

Whoa! There was a pretty serious expression on B's face, and it wasn't what I'd expected. "Embarrassing you?" I asked as I resumed walking beside him. "You serious?"

"Think about it, Daniel. You're not my son or my grandson; you're not my nephew; you're not my... you're not my anything!"

"I'm your friend. What the fuck do you mean I'm not your anything?"

"Other people don't know that. They see a shirtless teen prancing about all over the place, making a fuss of an old bloke like me, and it looks... well, it doesn't look right."

"Who gives a fuck whether or not it looks right?"

"I'm living in a small town now, Daniel. People talk."

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