CHANCE ENCOUNTERS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 14, 8 September 1931, Page 5

CHANCE ENCOUNTERS

"DOWN BUT NOT OUT" # ON THE WALLABY IN SEARCH OF THE DOLE IN NEW SOUTH WALES. POTAI- IN EXILE. . (Specially Written for the "Post" by "Sec.") "Hey! Sec.! Get an eyeful of the raid on the police station.- There must he a couple of hundred of them. I wonder what is the joke?" It certainly looked like a raid. Some two hundred men in various stages of dress and imdress were marching in the street in scraggly column of fours, and turning in at the police station gates. The major portion of the crowd then festooned themselves on the white rail fence and. on the verandah railings while some eight or ten, evidently a deputation, entered the outer office, presumably to interview the sergeant in charge. "Once a journalist — ever afterwards of fsticky-beak.' There must he a story here."

The story was quickly come at. A stoppage of the issue of rations on indiscriminate days of the week and a decision by the powers that be that food relief should be given only, as Mrs. McSweeney says, 'on the first Thursday in every week' had caught the travelling dole seekers where the wopl was short, or rather, where the tucker bags were light. The Bris-bane-bound "goods," pulling in to the little seaside town in the early hours of Monday morning had disgo.rged npwards of one hundred "bagmen" who had jumped the "rattler" from farther down the line. These, joining in with the locals and other itinerants in a protest against the action of the department which would force them to subsist for eleven days on a ration originally ealculated to last one, clamorously invaded the police station and demanded that they be fed. They were not hashful abont it either, and they got what they wanted. While the spokesmen were putting their case before the sergeant, the writer entered into conversation with several of the men. One young chap had been, until a few months ago, "lino" man in a large Newcastle printing' house. "Now's My Chance." "I'd been apprenticed to the cows when I left school," he said, "and hadn't missed a working day ' sin'ce, you might say. I hadn't been out of Newcastle with the exception of a couple of trips to Sydney to the races, and it looked as if I would never get out of the smoky old burg. Then this depression came along, and the ration issue. 'Now's my chance to see something of the country' I thought, so I told the old man to deal with his rnouldy old job as he though.t best, and lit ont. I've been going four ' months now and have covered thousands of miles, and reckon on covering thousands more before it all ends. This'll do me all right." "Don't you reckon you were a bit of an ass," I ventured, "to throw away six pounds a week and upwards for a ration issue worth seven and eleven pence?"

"I suppose I was from one point of view, but think of the fun we are having. At Kempsey the 'bulls' chased me for an-hour. There were only three of us on that train, so they were dead game. A young 'John' squibbed off a couple of shots after me. I'm glad he did. I was just about all in, but when I heard his 'squirt' pop I got my second wind mighty quick, and Charlton couldn't have caught me." Not Yet Submerged." "Hullo! See. At the old game, eh? Digging out a story from the underdog — the submerged tenth — although, by the way, we represent considerably more than that fraction of the ablebodied population, and we are not submerging any, at present, thank you." "For the love of Mike! Ryder?" "Ryder, sure; why not?" Ryder — three years ago senior journalist on a leading Sydney daily, pulling down round about five hundred a year — -then, dapper, spruce, meticulously correct in diction and attire. Ryder, to whom a missed shave spelt a temporary loss of self respect. Like the chap who saw a giraffe for the first time, "I don't believe it." An old pair of dungarees, amateurishly patched north and sonth, a blue shirt innocent of collar or sleeves, snnbrowned hairy arms and chest, and a bronzed face bearing eight or ten days' growth of black stubble, through which his teeth gleamed ivory white. He had not lost pride in his excellent teeth, evidently. "Yes, why not, Sec., you old bounder. I am in excellent company, and a good kind Government headed by 'Bombastes Furioso' Lang sees that I am fed — in a kind of a way — so why worry?" ' "I. know all about the effect — but the cause, Jack, the cause?" "Mergers, Sec. Dead papers. You know all about the mortality among Sydney dailies during the last year. I was a bright and shining light on the staff of a particularly bright morning daily jnst one short year ago, and now, look at me. A sight to make the gods weep, what? It's a great life if you don't weaken. But joking apart, old man, I've had the time of my life during the last six months. I could not see myself walking the ■soles off my boots in the city searehing for a job which did not exist, so I threw in my lot with these great chaps— knights of the open road— my two particular pals I'd like you to meet. One is a Methodist parson who fell from grace some years ago, and the other one, I am assured, is a noted 'Sat' bUrglar, who has done several terms in Long Bay.gaol. He is certainly a marvellous forger and it is not wise to question too closely as to how certain 'eats' which find their way into the common pot, are acquired. There were four of ns, but one, unfortunately, is doing fourteen days at Maitland. But I see that our deputation has been suceessful, and the 'John' is issuing ration tickets. I must hop in for my cut.

l^youcar^cnicTm^ic^WnTT^^^cPHff this afternoon I wil be glad to see you. And so will my mates — if you hring plenty of tobacco. We have taken possessian of the surf club's small shed at the 'jetty' and will be there until we are bumped out." ' Sji * . * | The mail closed at five o'clock and it was now one mintue to. | In my hurry I almost eollided with him. "Excnse me; is this the Grafton Road?" | "Yes — straight on. Follow your nose and you. can't miss it." j I really hadn:'t seen his face, as the setting sun was right behind him, but his voice was familiar. I have a much better memory for voices than for faces. Strolling back from the post office, I wondered where I had heard that voice. He had not gone far and was loqking at a shop window display. His well cut gray suit was well worn and trousers were beginning to fray at the cuffs. Shoes also had seen better days, but although dust covered, one could see that they had been polis:aed that morning. Considering the heat of the day and the time, his collai* was as clean as could be expected. He carried a small fibre case in one hand, and in the other a bundle of rugs folded square. In short, he did not look at all like a "bagman." | "Here is where I get a 'choke'," I

Ai» Invitation. i "Say, friend, you are not starting for Grafton at this time 'of day, are you?" ; "Well, I thought of it. I thought of getting a mile or two along the; road to-night and possibly getting a lift in a car, either to-night or tomorrow morning. I am anxious to make the best possible time." ; "I can put you in the way oi' a lift in the morning if you like, and in the meantime you had better camp in my shack. I am 'batching' and there's lots of room, any way." ! "That is very nice of you, indeed. 1 will be only too happy to take ad- | vantage of your kind offer." He proved excellent cqmpany and we yarned well into the small hours. All the while his voice haunted me. I could not plaee it. Then he mentioned a certain Tablelands town, "Ha ! I've got it," I exclaimed. "Got what?" "Your voice. I heard it at ." "Quite possibly. Although I was not at any time the town crieY" "No. But you had something to do with the municipality, I'll swear." "You are right. I don't remember you, though." "It is hardly to be expected tbat you would. The chaps at the press table do not come in for a great deal of nofice — individually."

The Counfcry Mayor." Three years before my guest had heen Mayor of , a town of some ten thousand inhabitants and had presided at a certain conference on local government matters. He had been in a fairly large way as a general storekeeper, had sold out well and invested the proceeds in a block of flats in a Sydney suburb. Now he was "wangling" his way through Lismore on the very long chance of landing a job as traveller for a manufacturing firm. With not a feather to fly with, but confident of picking up again. "It is a wonderful country, this of ours. The land of opportunity ^ JJ I "And opportunists." "Referring . to our politicians — statesmen we have none — Yes, undoubtedly. . But a man is never down and out here unless he wills it so himself . I am down, Lord knows ! but I am a long way from being 'out'." * * * Camera on' shoulder, I was. strid- I ing along the bush track with the logging boss. We were in one of the largest hoop-pine scrubs on the upper reaches of the Richmon River, beyond Kyogle. The Queensland border was a matter of half a dozen miles away and we could hear the down goods making the grade on the recently completed inter-state railway. "Be-e-e-low." A long drawn ont yell from the hillside above us. Then a crashing in the undergrowth and a long freshly peeled pine log came slithering out of the scrub and nosedived into the soft earth of the newly brushed track. Potai Appears. "That's my boss cntter, Potai. He is a wonderful timber man. The best hand at "'shooting' timber I have ever known." "Potai! That sounds Maori." "Sure. And he is a Maori." "I must see him." "Well, he'll be down here in a minnte to see that this log is O.K. for the bullockies to hook on to." Sure enough out of the scrub he came wallaby jack and axe pver his shoulder. Six feet two of old New Zealand., "Tena koe, Ehoa," I said. He jumped, dropped jack and axe, and in a moment had my hand in a vice-like grip. "By eripes!. That's the bes' word I hear in ten years. Ten years since I hear the Maori talk." "And pretty nearly ten years since I heard it, also, Potai, and I am longing to hear it again. There is no place lilce the old 'Pig Island' is there?" "No place in the whole worl'. I want to go back there all the time." "Well, why don't you. You make plenty of money, I have no doubt." "The money not stop me, but I can't go back. No more I can't go back," and tears were in the big fellow's black eyes. "Why, Potai? You didn't kill a Chinaman over there or anything like that, I hope?" "It's more worse than that: My wife he blackfellow, all the same 'abo." He's the bes' wife, but I can't take him back. My people.no like him at all."