Charlie - Down South

Old Bill

By Bill Gill

POOR old Charlie was breasting the human maelstrom on Wynyard ramp when I glimpsed him. “Why,” I cried, de lighted to see him after all these years, “how are you, < you old hyena?”

“I’m all right,” said Charlie in his aloof, confident way. “Why?”

“Oh, just wanted to know. I ”

“Did you ever see me any other way than all right?” he interrupted.

“Remember that time when we couldn’t give copra away? You plunged for rubber, in spite of me saying that copra would come again.

Right that time too, wasn’t I?”

I ruefully admitted that he had been right that time, but privately remembered other prognostications of his which were not so accurate— notably his conviction that the old time cylindrical gramophone records and the tin horn models (even with the spring broken) would return to oust the ridiculous flat discs.

“I’m camping out at King’s Cross,” he informed me with a sweeping eastwards gesture which drew black looks from the hurrying crowd.

“You climb that ridge, down the gully and up the other side. You'll find me there most any time.”

“We must have a long yarn to gether,” I said. “How about coming out to my place for the day next Sunday?” And I gave him my ad dress.

“All right” he agreed, “why not?

I know that suburb; take a train to Strathfield, don’t you, then hire a camel or something?”

I told him things were not quite that bad and, after directing him by a simpler route, we parted. * * * THE following Sunday he arrived on time and soon afterwards MacDougall pulled up at the front gate in his brand spanking new, model sedan.

“You remember Mac.?” I said to Charlie, re-introducing them.

“Why, yes, a General or a Colonel or something in ANGAU wasn’t he?”

“Oh, no,” laughed Mac, “not that bad! Same as everyone else, a WO two.”

“There certainly were plenty woes of all ranks in those days,”

said Charlie re flectively. “T h e worst infestation we ever had. The rhinoceros beetle was a gentleman compared with some of them.”

After a few more pleasantries, Mac invited us out to admire his new car.

“Don’t look so good to me,” said Charlie, flatly, “where’s the run ning board, for instance? And if that cap on the

after mudguard is where you fill the petrol tank, how’re you going to get a stick in to measure the juice in her?”

“Hey, wait a minute,” cried Mac.

“What d’you mean, running board?”

“It’s a kind of sponson,” Charlie explained patiently, “where the ace tylene tank goes for the lamps.

Where the tool box sits. Where the spare tyre is strapped. Where the kids stand to ride holding on to the awning. Where ”

“Okay,” said Mac, “I remember now. We don’t have ’em any more.

You haven’t had much to do with recent models, have you?”

“And where’s the little red ther mometer thing that screws atop of the radiator to tell you when she’s boiling? And ”

Mac gave him a sour look. “If you mean the temperature gauge,” he said, “it’s inside on the instrument panel.”

“You mean beside the magneto switch on the dashboard, I expect.

That’s a rum place to have it if you like!”

Mac pulled the door open, “Hop in,” he directed. “Pipe that up holstery. See that rug? Get a load of these foam-rubber cushions. Ever see anything like that before?”

“No,” Charlie admitted. “And I’ve never seen a motor without a horn before, either. How can you get past anybody without a horn to toot?”

“The horn is on the steering wheel,” said Mac savagely.

Charley craned his tortoise-like neck. “The horn may be,” he said, “but the spark and fuel levers aren’t, and where’s the bracket for the windshield to swing open on?

And look at this rug,” he continued, tugging at the floor covering, “glued fast, as I’m alive! How do you get

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-Even with the spring broken . . .

“- and where’s that little, red ther mometer thing?”

the floor boards up if you want to put water' in the battery?”

Mac didn’t answer him. He sprang into his car, stamped on the starter md disappeared in a cloud of dust.

It was then Charlie noticed that there was no starting crank. “You’d :hink a motor costing that much would have been fitted with a crank :o wind her up,” he observed. “Yes, md a yellow leather sling to keep it n place.”

He shook his head sadly as we •eturned to the house. “I never did jo much on motors, anyway,” he ;aid.“Here I’ve been down to Sydney lalf-a-dozen times, almost, this last sixty years and it took old Bill, the lorse that hauls the milk cart round Strawberry Hills, to run me down.”

M. Georges Barral, Lieutenant de faisseau, of the Naval Reserve, a esident of Tahiti, has been de orated with the Cross of the Jhevalier of the Legion of Honour, lilitary division. He joined the 'ree French naval forces in mid -940. After doing convoy duty in lie North Atlantic he came to the 'acific in Chevreuil, late in 1941, nd served there throughout the emaining war years.