Ridin' The Boomerang >

Ridin' The Boomerang

I was cuttin' a line down the Stuart highway, touchin' breakneck speeds, on ma old Beeza..., well, kinda old, enjoying the freedom of open wheels, an Iron Horse, no cages an' traffic, and a few thoughts on what was comin'....

A meeting. Not yer average meeting, but a meeting to end, not all meetings, but to end the bullshit!

Bullshit that has held power over the lot of us Aussies and a major portion of the Rest of Humanity for centuries, if not for thousands of years.

Bullshit that's seen thousands, nay, millions of my own kind - The Warrior - go to their graves early.

Honorably, but early.

Bullshit which took too many women and kids, millions and millions and millions of 'em, into debauched hostels of terror, leaving them but raped and ravaged wrecks. Kids who've had to live-out what might be called “lives” in silence, in silence about the turmoil and the repetitive mental patterns of psychological trauma the terrorists set-up, set-a-goin' in their severely damaged heads and hearts.

Bullshit which the terrorists of “the old country”, that mob from the northern hemisphere, decided was a goldmine for their greed, to capitalize on, to feed, to accentuate in the victims - those their oh-so-fine-fecking magistry called “the GUILTY!” in ways NO Primitive, “backward”, “rural” Tribe would ever have even begun to consider.

“It's quite simple old chum! We inflict gross torture upon them, torture which cannot help but send their 'primitive' minds into a constant frenzy, whence they are left to crave ceaselessly for ANY escape. Then, we provide that escape for them. Alcohol, my man! 'Grog', as they have come to call it. It appears to fit the general plan to provide tobacco as well, for it is known to it's manufacturers to have extremely deleterious effects upon the lungs and heart of the smoker. And one, seems to aid the consumption of the other.

First, we 'give' the grog and tobacco to them, offering it as one of the 'gifts' we bear in recognition of their fine and honorable personages and culture, and in part, as payment for the land we expect to appropriate from them.

Then, before you know it, they are addicted to the stuff, and demand stiffer quality and larger, ever larger quantities. Then we explain that all these gifts cost money. So they will have to learn to 'work' to be able to pay for the grog and tobacco, and the flour and blankets!

Of course, as is usual in business of this supreme era, where we, the white race, rein supreme over the whole of the planet earth, thus are placed to make the demands over all other colors, we 'placidly' go about opening negotiations with them, such that we make the terms and conditions of trade.

Of course, our policy is to exterminate them old chum, but we do not let them know this in such overt terms.”

Bullshit it has been.

One thing which thumps me in the balls every time I mount the steed an' hit the road, is that I ride a British-made motorbike.

A thumping irony, you might say, as, after tooo long scramblin' around in the dust of politics and cult ideology, I finally got off my fat-cells an' built ma own lil' number. With a lot of help from ma friends in th' trade!

And..., Vwa-la! As the frogs say. A neat, oldish, BSA A-10 650, now a twin engine 1300cc, 1961 Road Rocket, with Gold Star fittings and running gear, slightly chopped, not too much so as I can trammel the corrogations out here in the Aussie desert, when I go a visiting ma Bro's an' Sistas.

Ma Aborigine Families. Ma True Fella Peoples.

Yeah! Another irony... I found out too late if y'ask me, that I come from a Fine Mob of “Bleck Fellas” in Victoria, via my mum's line. The Gurnai People.

But I grew into ridin' motorbikes as a teenager, an' fell-in, and out, and in again, with a scurilous mob of ex-Bikers even before I wuz 20.

Impressionable I was, an' in the short version, I didn't 'ave a clue about what was really goin' on in the world.

But even with the occasional beating from a few of these blokes, I knew they were worth Respecting. Not because, if y' didn't, they'd bash ya again, but because they weren't enamoured with the usual mainstream crap of our society, and weren't blind about where Allegiances should lie, when it comes to being that Fella most of us only read about in hero comics and see at the movies.

An' I'm not talkng about “heroes” as it were.

I just talking about being Honorable. About not talking garbage, not surrendering to oppressive BULLSHIT beliefs and regimes, like religions and coppers, and about not being afraid of the unknown, of steppin' out beyond the borders of mainstream closed-minded suburban insecurity, and finding the Brave Heart True Fella in yourself.

O' course, now, that-is these days, when I say “True Fella”, I'm talkin' about the Aborigine True Fellas of their now rare Tradition. Man and Woman, who, as was Standard Procedure in pre-invasion times, were True!

They didn't lie!

“Whah!?” We whiteys say, because “Being True” and NOT lying, like..., EVER..., is something which generally screws yer average white fella's head right around today, even those “good Christians”, what with corruption of every Honorable thing by BAD POLITICS.., bad NORTHERN politrix, bad northern CATHOLIC politrix, forcing us all to have to be liars. Even just to get a job, or a seat at the table...

Sadly for meself..., I'm a liar. Born in white society, but kept away from the FACTS about how to get rich and prosper in a rotten world, and not told nothin' about the Aborigine side of my heritage, I missed-out completely on that True Fella Way, so I've got no Tradition, as-it-were.

My only “Initiation” was getting seriously pissed and staggering off alone to puke and fall unconscious on my twenty-first birthday.

Consequently, as I stumbled through “life”, or a misfitting version of it, full of unanswered nightmares and questions, I developed a manner which tries hard to follow some kind of Honor, instilled, if by anyone, by my step-father, an Honorable Bloke if ever there was one.

Lately I asked meself what I most regret in my life, and I soon answered meself with “regreting that I was deceived into avoiding taking-up Dad's offer, when I was a teenager” - I haven't a clue how old I actually was, because all my childhood and adolescent years were a mash of anachronisms, I don't remember how old I was when most events effected me one way or the other - but on the spur-of-the-moment I answered Dad with “Oh, I couldn't say now, Dad, I'd only know if and when it happened!”

Well..., that's a convoluted version of how I responded to his question.

My childhood it seems, never had one day when mum and Dad weren't arguing with each other. As it goes, I thought that was how life for a kid was, never getting an explanation, just more tension.

Dad on medication for his “epilepsy”, something I figured out later was NOT a disease or psychological disorder in him or in any “epileptic” at all, but more a “possession” by nasty spirits - in Dad's case, by mum, the Catholic witch. Her first name is french, and means “dark one”. Two reasons why.... Mum elusive as ever 'flit-brained' you'd say, brother five years older running amock with what seemed to me as wild, but jolly mates. Sister, seven years older, caring but eager to get out of the mad house we called home. Me..., just scattered and numb, most often, in my reflective opinion.

Dad came to me one day, when I was in my early teens, I reckon, after he'd been having the usual disagreements with mum. He was looking a bit distraught - pissed-off - would be his description I guess, and asked me something along the lines of “Nick, if I left your mother, would you come with me, or stay with her?”

My memories are that I was in a typical mental state of those years, of a sort of numbness, where I myself wasn't really there, but was just this intellectually paralysed observer. As I was saying, my biggest regret, looking back, was that I didn't have the Presence-of-mind, to say “Yeah Dad, lets get outta here!”

Why? Don't matter. But since then I've pieced together the Man He Was, Is and Always will be to myself.

He served in World War Two, became one of Australia's first “Commandos” or what we today call “Special Air Service” men or SAS.

First Australian Parachute Troop, Royal Australian Engineers RAE. Warrant Officer Class II.

A fecking Sargeant Major, no less! Something I think I never got to fully appreciate as a kid. He was a weapons instructor, among other specialties, and showed me well, how to use and respect guns.

After the war, he came back and did what any Honorable ex-serviceman does, sorry to those RSL-ians who didn't, and bought a motorbike. An Ariel 500cc single cylinder “Red Hunter”, and, as a few of his tales went, rode the highways of Western Australia with his mates, playing with the local coppers, who were, in one of his few stories, riding Ariel Square Fours for a time.

“Squaffers”, were a nice piece of iron as it goes, then, but were built for cooler climes, like in England. So it wasn't long before the local outlaws on bikes found-out that if y' fanged passed the Squaffer-riding copper on the highway (I reckon there was only ONE “highway” north of Perth in the 1940s, and it was, as likely, NOT bitumen), they'd have to give chase. But in the west Australian summer heat, the two back cylinders of the copper's Squaffer would soon overheat and cease-up after a few miles at full throttle, so the lads'd get away wiff a laugh and a mighty open-throat thumping! Then..., as the stories went, they'd rub-it-right-in, by roaring back the other way - full throttle o' course, while the frustrated copper had to sit there waiting for the donk, and his temper.., to cool down!

Pissa!

Er..., sorry. As to the Man my Step-Dad Was, Is and Always will be..., this tale of his premarriage days, say to me he was an Outlaw, before they were known as such. Before the Hell's Angels were formed in San Bernadino in California, and before the tyrannical media decided to write-them-down in the 1950s with the great Marlon Brando and his Wild Ones movie.

But plenty of us have outran the law, and followed a path of crime. Most don't go much further in keeping any Honor, other than that which may be found among thieves.

But Allan Meredith, my Dad, my StepDad, was himself born with a long line, as best as I can determine, of Honorable Ancestors to follow.

Recently I traced his surname back to the second century BC, to the Ancient Kings of Wales. We can speculate, if we want, on the fact that somewhere in that line were a couple of Welsh Kings called “Arthur”.

Most of us know of the Tales of King Arthur and Camelot, and most of us place them into the basket of Myths. I do that, just to be safe.

But as the myths go, He and his Knights were in general, when not metaphors for our personal character traits, an Honorable Mob. A Mob who Held High things like “Being True” etc.

Perhaps, just like the Australian Aborigine True Fellas.

Well, going or not with Dad as a kid, I'm not HIS kid, so I don't have King Arthur's blood in my veins. But I do have something of Dad's Noble Character. Jes' a pity I'm the only one who can chat about it.

So....,

Back to the Stuart Highway and my breakneck line to a Meeting.

Being early August, 'twas real nice ridin' weather. There were too many cars and road-trains on the road, but that's always the case for a motorbike rider. Used to be there was no speed limit on the desert sections of NT roads, but as usual, too many didn't know when too fast was too fast, and the law had to slow everyone down a few years ago.

Not that that'd stop the hoons, like the old me. The me who'd pop his head up when the road looked too good to worry about cops. So, I was cutting a fine line southward at about three hundred and fifty zillion miles a second, when I saw a dust cloud off to the west.

Hmmm? Speculate, speculate! That's a BIG Corroberree! Hoho! Road train I guess?

As I watched it, between flashing the eyeballs back to the highway, I noted it wuz movin'. It was coming from a long set of wheels, as the base of the dustcloud was about a mile long, about fifteen, twenty miles off the Stuart highway.

Shee-it?! After a minute, I slowed down to have a better look, being intrigued more each mile.

Somethin' STRA-ANGE about this road train??

Two road trains? Three? Jeezuzz!

I found a hard bit of desert and turned right, toward a little hill a way off the road, got up there and dismounted for a smoke and a ponder.

Breakin' out my binoculars, I had a squwizz, and damn near fell over!

FIVE HUNDRED BLECK FELLAS ON MOTORBIKES, fanned-out like a flock of swans flyin' high and wide in a “V” formation!

Praise BE! And HOOLEEDOOLEE!!!

I must 'a been dreamin'!?

That meeting? No more bullshit!

I got out of bed and lit the fire.....

Argh! That bleck coffee! Right on the mark! Two cups.

I heard on the radio this morning that a Mob of Warriors and Olan's were ridin' outta Darwin for a sortie over to Queensland.

Didn't take long for my venturing mind to be there with them, ridin' the highway passed groups of Aborigine sitting, as they do, by the road, Old Fellas, Women, Kids, Youth, Warriors, spears, boomerangs, didgeridoos and clap-sticks, painted faces and chests, dancing, and waving to the Bikers, who, waved back, opened the iron horses up with the traditional thunderous, groundshaking ROAR, (Traditional Biker Greeting!) and dissappearing down the highway.

Minutes later..., the whole bucking biking Mob were back, pulling off the road next to where the Bleck Fellas were stopped, parking-up, dismounting and walking over to pay their Respects to the Traditional Owners of the “Country”.

Before long they were all gabbling away with each other, laughing and jumping around mimicking each other. Some, off to the side, talking “serious” like.

Old, Fine, Noble Aborigine Women, sharing stories with the Lassies of the Warrior Bikers, sharing drinks - softdrinks o' course - and the occassional spliff being shared amongst all of 'em.

Small groups of Bleck and Biker were raising a bit o' dust on the bikes, having a lesson and a laugh.

More of 'em were futher into the desert, sitting cross-legged under a tree, shirts-off, listenin' to a few Old Fellas impart their Wisdom. Some of the Bikers were so dark with tattoos you couldn't tell 'em from the Aborigine!

Like the Boomerang, The True Fellas from both sides of the world, were Comin' Home, at last!

“When that Bob Brown Greenie True Fella gonna get here?” hollered one of the Women.....

Oh! The Dreaming!