I am Australian. Of Polish Descent.

Part V: Old Pat

(Continued, Part IV)

We arrived at Melbourne wharf about 1 o’clock in the afternoon.  There was a large group of former displaced people waiting for us to disembark from the ship.  Many of them were Polish and there was a lot of shouting going on.  To compensate for the height of the ship and the wharf below, the passengers on board were shouting down to the people waiting, asking them what it was like in Australia.  They were given assurances that conditions here were good and not to worry.

Well, we started to disembark by walking down the ramp straight into the Customs hall.  There were about five Customs officers checking luggage for prohibited items.  Since I was almost the last passenger off the ship, I walked into the Customs Hall and saw piles of wood and coal stacked up against the wall.  A lot of people  had packed wood and coal in their luggage before leaving Europe because they heard rumours that there was nothing in Australia.

There was an old couple standing in front of me waiting to be checked by a Customs officer.  I overheard the woman say in Polish to her husband “Jacek (Jack), they are going to throw away our wood and coal.  How are we going to make a cup of tea?”.  At that point, the Customs Supervisor (who understood Polish) must have overhead her comments too.  He told them not to worry because there was plenty of wood and coal in Australia.

After my luggage was checked, I was told I could go.  I wondered why there was no supervision………… nobody was telling me what to do!.  There was such a layback attitude!  I was accustomed to life in Germany, everyone and everything being strictly controlled.  From past experience, my identification would have been checked and I would be told where to go and what to do next.

I asked some bystanders what is the procedure once we left Customs.  A man answered me.  He was so easygoing and very casually said “Ah, don’t worry…..A man will come soon and tell you where to go to catch a train which will transport you to a migrant camp“.  FOR ME, THIS NEW-FOUND FREEDOM WAS COMPLETELY OVERWHELMING!  I’m sure that many of the other displaced people who had just arrived, felt the same way.

As the man said, one of the officials and his interpreter came around and asked “have all of you come off the ship?” We said yes and then he said “come with me and we’ll all walk to the railway station together”.  He then said “You will be going from Melbourne to Wodonga by train.  At Wodonga Station there will be buses to take you to Bonegilla Migrant Centre.”

Later, I found out that there are two border towns called Albury-Wodonga.  These towns are on the border of two states - New South Wales and Victoria.  The towns are divided by a river and linked by a bridge - Albury is in the state of New South Wales and Wodonga in the state of Victoria.  At that time, Victorian trains terminated at Wodonga Station and New South Wales trains terminated at Albury.  It was all very strange to me!  Later on, I learnt that each state in Australia had a different railway gauge.  But things have changed since then.  Nowadays, the railway gauges throughout Australia are all standardised.

Returning to my life story ……..buses arrived at Wodonga station and took us to Bonegilla camp.  The camp was a former Australian army training camp comprised of rows of barracks with a big recreation hall in the middle.  A supervisor informed us about our quarters - there were “married quarters’’ and “single quarters”.  The kitchen was located in the recreation hall where we received our first meal.

We went to our quarters to get a decent night’s sleep and it felt strange because we didn’t experience the rocking motion of the ship anymore.

Seven-thirty in the morning, the bell rang in the recreation hall announcing that it was breakfast time.  So we sat down and had porridge and a cup of tea.  While we had breakfast we were encouraged to sign up for free classes in English language, and if we were to take up a job, we would be under a two-year contract.  After we completed the two year contract, we could do whatever we liked.

I spent two weeks at Bonegilla Camp and learnt some basic English.  Then came an announcement advising us that there were jobs available for forty single men at Burrinjuck Dam.  So I put me hand up and was accepted.

Burrinjuck Dam is located in the state of New South Wales, near a rural township called Yass.  Since there wasn’t a good connection between trains on the New South Wales and Victoria border, the Dam authorities organised trucks to pick us up from Bonegilla and take us to Burrinjuck Dam.

It was a rough trip to Burrinjuck Dam because we were transported about two hundred kilometres in the back of uncovered dump trucks.  We arrived at our new worksite late in the afternoon and taken to our accommodation.  Our quarters were tin sheds made from corrugated iron, two men to a room.  Each barrack consisted of six rooms plus a common room with basic facilities for making drinks and snacks.

The next morning, we had our orientation and were shown around the camp.  There was a general store, a pub (place to eat and drink, mainly serving alcoholic beverages), an entertainment hall and lastly, the dam itself.  We were shown fifty pound hammers and large boulders on the side of the dam.  The hammers were used to break up the boulders so the material could be loaded onto a skip (heavy metal container with four hooks) and picked up by a flying fox (mechanical winch that ran along a five inch steel cable between two mountains).

There were two groups of labourers.  One group broke up the boulders with hammers.  The other group drilled twelve foot holes into rocks, so they could be charged with dynamite and blown up.

On the same day, following orientation, I was already swinging a hammer.  After a short time, I became so good at it that I knew exactly where to hit the rock so that the granite would fall apart, and the skip was loaded in no time.. To my surprise, when I broke some of the rocks I found tiny flecks of gold but it was just too small an amount to collect.

The construction manager came to me a week later and asked if I would be interested in drilling holes into boulders using a small jackhammer (pneumatic drill).  I jumped at the opportunity and started the next day.  After a while, the manager called me to his office and asked me if I would like to work on the railway.  I asked him “where is the railway?”  He explained to me what he meant by “the railway“.  He meant the tracks that the flying fox ran on, and it was a quarter kilometre long.  The line had to be serviced periodically because sometimes it would run out of alignment.

He told me that I would be working with an old Irishman called Pat (Patrick).  The manager told me that Pat was a very skilful and experienced fettler (worker who straightens railway lines and packs logs underneath the lines), but he had a downfall  …….he liked to drink a lot of grog (alcohol).

He said to me “learn as much as you can from Pat”.  A few minutes later Pat walked into the office and I was introduced to him.  He had a very distinct Irish accent and looked like he was in his fifties.  He was tall and slim.  He asked me what my name was and I said “Ted”.  He smiled and said “I’ll call you Eddy”.  And that was the beginning of a great friendship.

Everyone in the camp called him “OLD PAT”.  He taught me a lot of things about Australian people and their way of life.  He was an old bushie (a person who lives in the country) and knew a great deal about the Australian outback (remote areas of Australia).  He also taught me Aussie slang and other phrases.

The first lesson I learnt from Pat was never to lay any tools on the ground.  He told me to stand them up against a wall and I asked him why.  His answer was “you lay them in the sun and you’ll never pick them up until the sun goes down”.  And one day I found out for myself that Pat was right ………

During a hot summer day, I walked over to pick up a tool lying on the ground.  I picked it up and immediately dropped it.  The tool was so hot I almost burnt my hand!

One day, after work, there were a group of Aussie labourers sitting on a porch and every second word they used was “Bloody” (a swear word).  Bloody this, and Bloody that!  They were swearing a lot and talking about “new Australians”.  I forgot to mention in the beginning that we were told after disembarking from the ship in Melbourne we would be called “new Australians”.

So I asked Old Pat “why are they swearing about “new Australians?”.  And he asked me “did they grin (smile) and laugh when they were swearing?”.  And I said “as a matter of fact, they were”.  Then Old Pat said “so you’ve got nothing to worry about …..THAT’S THE AUSTRALIAN WAY!”

After a couple of hours work, Old Pat announced that we were “going to have a smoko” (take a rest break).  He pulled out a can of Coca Cola and unwrapped his sandwiches.  To my horror, he ripped the bread crust from his sandwich and threw it away.  I said “Pat! I know it’s none of my business but how can you waste bread?”.  Casually he said “Ahh, don’t worry.  It’s a big country - a rich country.  And besides, the wallabies (animals similar to kangaroos) will pick them up and eat them”.  A couple of minutes later a little, timid wallaby appeared, picked up the bread crust and took it away to eat.

After he finished eating his sandwiches, he pulled out a tin of tobacco from his pocket.  He cupped his left hand and put some tobacco into it, then pulled out a cigarette paper.  He stuck the corner of the cigarette paper to his bottom lip and with his right hand started rubbing the tobacco in his hand.  When the tobacco formed the shape of a cocoon, he put the cigarette paper on top, and turned it over into his right hand so that the cigarette paper was lying underneath the tobacco.  He then began rolling his cigarette by hand, licked the edge of the cigarette paper and sealed it.  He finally lit up his cigarette and inhaled.  In Australia, we call a handmade cigarette a “rollie”.

Old Pat started work again and had his “rollie” hanging off his bottom lip and he would occasionally suck on it.  It was very foreign to me as I had never seen this before!

One day, I asked him why is it that when Aussies pass each other, one would twist his head from right to left and wink at the other person.  (I found this very intriguing.)  He told me that it was a very old Australian custom dating back to convict times.  In the early days of the colony, the convicts were forbidden to talk to each other and so they devised a non-verbal way of acknowledging each other.

Today, this custom is slowly disappearing but it is still quite common in bush towns and amongst older people.

So the days passed and we had almost finished all outstanding jobs and I wondered what work they would give us next.  Pat said “don’t worry, there will be work for you”.  The next day, I started work and Pat was nowhere to be seen.  The construction manager came to me and asked if I had seen Pat.  I said I hadn’t and he told me that some men had seen Pat in the pub last night but they don‘t know anything more.  The manager and I drove over to the barracks to look for him.  He wasn’t in his room so we walked over to the recreation room and there he was ……..

There was a fire burning in the open fireplace and a six foot long log with one end stuck in the fire and the rest of it lying on the floor, facing the doorway.  And there’s Old Pat in the middle, lying next to the log and hugging it.  He was sound asleep and as drunk as a skunk!  So the construction manager said to leave him where he was and let him sober up.  He said he would come back later to check on him.

That afternoon, when I went to the pub for my evening meal, everyone had heard about Old Pat hugging the log and they were all killing themselves laughing.

A day or so later, I saw Old Pat and he told me that he was leaving.  I asked him where he was going and he said in his casual style “there are plenty of jobs around and I’m a free spirit!”.

Although I never saw him again I missed him because he was a good bloke (man) and I learnt a lot from him about life in Australia.


Part VI: Burrinjuck Dam Disaster

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