|
BARCALDINE, Queensland, Australia - If you can't get a beer in this outback hamlet, it's only because you're a barefoot grammar school kid, or, as Jay says, "You ain't having a fair go, mate."
Beer in the outback means survival, advises Jay, a Queensland native, as we endeavor to have a fair go at surviving - in the bar of (where else?) the Globe Hotel.
There is no noticeable shortage, since the Globe is but one of a half-dozen chummy side-by-side, two-storied, balconied saloons, accompanying the Artesian, Commercial, Railway, Union, and Shakespeare's. They constitute one block of the two-block downtown of Barcaldine, just across the principal thoroughfare, Oak Street, from the railroad station, and the historic "Tree of Knowledge" living monument.
Beneath the pale gum tree, union organizers plotted the sheep shearers' strike of 1891 that became bloody, and led to the formation of the Labor Party. Even though the party was launched way out here in what Aussies call never-never land (almost 1,000 miles northwest of the seaside state capital, Brisbane), it obviously spread throughout the island to become a major force.
You might call this block of friendly (like all outback towns) Barcaldine the quenching quarter. Jay says that to be neighborly and fair-minded, a visitor shouldn't overlook any of the six tin-roofed oases that cater to the 2,000 townies and far-flung inhabitants of this sheep and cattle territory.
"You gotta hit the town for a six," he recommends, neatly making a cricket reference as an American would use baseball terminology. A six is a blast out of the park, a cousin of the home run, but counting for six runs.
"That's a tall order," says my friend Aurelio.
"Ah, yeah, we need another order of tall ones," he replies, nodding to the barmaid. "Then we'll move on to the Artesian Hotel."
Friendly and easygoing, Jay Core is a cowhand - "call me a stockman, please" - we'd met in Winton, the home of the famed song "Waltzing Matilda." When he isn't tending cattle with his good mate, Bill Wilkinson, on one of the area stations (ranches), he tends bar, wherever, to catch up with a scarcer breed, humans. Not too many of them in the mostly arid vastness of the outback.
Wilkinson had showed us the intriguing rock formations outside of Winton, best viewed in early morning before the sun gets really muscular.
Jay says, "It's so hot and dry out here that if we didn't have beer you'd be a human barbie." He means barbecue, as followers of Crocodile Dundee would know.
What about water, abundant in Barcaldine, which sits on artesian wells?
"I never get that thirsty. No, if it wasn't for cold beer the outback would never have been settled," Jay says.
"Of course it isn't very settled now, as I guess your fellow Yanks on that TV program 'Survivor' found out. They were stuck down somewhere remote in Queensland, but it's a pretty big state. You could fit Texas and the British Isles into Queensland and have a lot of room left over.
"Better to be a survivor right here. You'd have to be crazy as a galah (the big pink bird, not strong on IQ, that flies in loopy patterns) to volunteer for that show, no matter what the money is. One bite from any of our renowned poisonous snakes - taipan, tiger, or brown, for instance - and the 'Survivor' volunteer's survivors could cash the check. And those aren't the only antisocial creatures."
Nobody reads the Globe at the Globe Hotel, which is somewhat out of circulation range. Mostly just the bottle labels, not exactly a scholarly exercise since the most popular beer is called XXXX ("4X," if you're in a hurry). Another favorite, Bundaberg rum, is a little more trying.
The Artesian Hotel is next on Jay's cultural tour. After that, the Railway followed by the Commercial.
"Your turn to shout, Yank," Jay says gently. I understand and lay some money on the bar. "Shouting" in Australian means buying a round, and figures in a choice expression applied to a cheapskate: "Wouldn't shout if a shark bit him!" Another is "Deep pockets, short arms."
Out in the Australian countryside a hotel is mainly a pub, but the law requires the publican to maintain a few rooms for transients. Rooms-with-bath somewhere else. Not too far away, if you're lucky.
My most memorable for all the wrong reasons, a few years back, was the Jamberoo Hotel in the rural town of the same name in New South Wales. At least the beer was fine, a given in Australia. However, the bed and the room could be described by the name of the revered country singer, Slim Dusty, whose voice echoed from the barroom jukebox hours deep into the night.
The unscreened windows, nailed open, I suppose to diminish the chances of suffocation in that cramped, grungy abode, were hospitable only to hordes of mosquitoes. When their attentions became unbearable, I switched on the light and began swatting with a rolled-up newspaper. My groggy, hostile - highly inaccurate - banging on the walls in pursuit awakened the house roosters that began crowing.
Assuming that was the daily signal to rouse themselves, cows and dogs joined in the chorus, starting a chain reaction from their peers across the landscape. It died down, and they, at least, went back to sleep. Twice more the mosquitoes goaded me into that noise-provoking routine. Then I checked out sleepless at dawn, leaving the overworked roosters wondering if it really was morning.
That insect experience reminded me of a story related by Barry MacKay, the TV commentator and ex-pro tennis player. He was talking about his days beating the bushes, in the 1960s before the game was saturated with serious money, when the pros would play anywhere for a few hundred bucks.
"We were playing tiny outback towns - Lew Hoad, Kenny Rosewall, Andres Gimeno, and me. Even if the conditions were awful, it was gratifying because of the people. They came from all over, and were so appreciative. The grandstands were flatbed trucks with folding chairs on them. They'd have some weak temporary lights, just bulbs hanging from ropes and set up for two courts. It was too hot to play during the day.
"Well, when the bugs, drawn to the light, got so thick they blacked out the lights, the trucks would move to the other court, and the lights switched on there. Eventually those lights got blacked out, too, and the show was over. That," MacKay said with a laugh, "was the bug curfew.
"One night we played Cloncurry [about 270 miles northwest of Barcaldine], and we got back to the hotel. It was filthy. We were starved and thirsty. Usually the publicans were good guys, but this one - it's over 100 degrees, mind you - says, 'You mugs can't come into my bar without coats and ties.' We couldn't believe it. But what wouldn't we have done for a steak and a few beers? We would have killed - preferably him. But we dressed up."
As we leave the Commercial and take a few steps to the Union, Jay, from beneath his broad-brimmed stockman's hat, says there's no dress code, "Except for shoes. They don't allow any barefoot ankle-biters - that's children - in here."
In this climate the beer goes down quickly, rewardingly. Even so, Aurelio apprehensively inquires, "Are we trying to set a record?"
"Not even close," Jay says, laughing. "We're about as close as we are to Melbourne. More than a thousand miles. Yeah, we're doing some yakka [hard work] here," he says, lifting his glass, "but we won't get elephant's."
"Huh?"
"That's Cockney rhyming slang for drunk," he clarifies. "Elephant has a trunk and that rhymes with drunk. It's like 'titfor' - for this hat I'm wearing. You know, the expression 'tit for tat.' Rhymes with hat, so a titfor.
"I don't know if there's a national record for beer drinking. But they say there's a sheep shearer named Laurie over at Wellshot Station that recently drank 75 cans of Victoria Bitter in eight hours. I also heard of a bloke named David Boon who drank 54 cans of the VB during a Qantas flight from Sydney to London - 22 hours including an hour or so layover in Singapore. That's pretty decent, too, and could be the above-ground record. I'm envious of their genes."
"Sounds like highs, all right," says Aurelio. "But I'm full."
He frowns. "You can't be. We've still got Shakespeare's to go. Very Falstaffian to drink there."
She says no thanks. "Collins and I are striking out. Can't hit a six. As one of that other of Shakespeare's ladies, Desdemona, said: 'I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking.' Thanks, Jay, but we just want to be survivors."
|