More Spencer stories
Some more stories of our time at our week-ender at Spencer.
One day my eldest brother, Goog, decided to dig a great big dug-out.
Goog was a very strong man and ambitious.
His plan to build an underground room just like the ones on the opal fields, to get relief from the terrible summer heat at Spencer.
It is nice, snug and cool underground, you see.
He dug out the foundations, so to speak, that was the size of a great slit trench.
Out of the blue, bullets started flying overhead and one bullet creased Goog's hair.
He woke up the old man and said, "I've just been sprayed by a bullet."
"Nonsense," said my old man, "Your hair always been parted in the middle."
"Yeah," said Goog dragging my old man outside, "What's that singing around you, bloody bees?"
The old man ducked and looked up.
It did sound like bullets, so he dived into the slit trench.
Our neighbour, Joe came rushing over, brandishing a service revolver.
"Where are they?" he said, peering up the hill.
"Up there somewhere," said Goog.
Joe started blazing away with his revolver, but the bullets kept coming.
Al and Goog crawled carefully up the hill to spot gun flashes for Joe.
Joe was enjoying himself immensely.
"I 've got plenty of ammo," he said.
In about an half-hour we were joined by two coppers.
Someone had rung them, we guessed.
They were soon blazing away at the unseen enemy.
I made a dive for the trench and joined the old man.
He produced a flask of rum and said, philosophically: "They gotta run out of ammunition eventually."
Sure enough, in about 15 minutes the shooting stopped.
We found out later that a couple of young blokes were shooting at tins tied in trees and as they were shooting down at them, the bullets were passing over our shack.
It was a memorable battle and the only casualty was my old man's rum bottle when he inadvertently held it up to make a point in conversation.
***
I must tell you about our dog, Leo.
He was a ferocious looking brute, a sort of a cross between the Hound of the Baskervilles and a Bengal tiger.
Despite this, he was as gentle as a lamb, with a real softies heart.
One day Leo rounded up a band of nanny goats and brought them home.
We fenced them in, till we could find the owner.
Well, unknown to us, Leo had a wild mate a lone Tasmanian Tiger.who came to our place, late at night for free hand-outs, courtesy of his mate, Leo.
Well the tiger came one night and it was love at first sight with the nanny goats.
One night me brother Al, after a night on the turps, came home and caught the tiger having his way with the goats.
Al rushed in and woke us all up.
"We're sitting on a fortune," he said.
"There's a Tasmanian Tiger out there mating with our goats."
"Don't count your chickens," the old man said, "but we'll sit tight."
"What will we call the offspring?" I asked.
"Tigeroats," said the old man, "so let's keep it under our hat for the time being."
We kept a close watch over the goats and they seemed to be pregnant, but at a unguarded moment our soft-hearted Leo let the goats out of the pen and took off with them and the tiger to the lost world way back in the hills.
The old man waxed philosophical: "Ah,well, if it had happened, all that money would have spoilt us, made us greedy and uncaring."
But Goog was made of sterner stuff.
He was ex AIF.
He shouldered his 303 rifle, made up provisions and set off for the lost world.
"I'm gonna shoot Leo and get them goats back," he said.
About a month later he returned, ragged and emaciated.
He never got to the lost world.
A giant kangaroo had knocked him unconscious and when he came to all his food and ammo were gone.
We nursed him back to health and soon he had plans to get his old AIF mates to mount an expedition to rescue the goats.
But so far, his mates don't seem too keen.
Keith Whitfield, Woy Woy