“Mad” Mick Muldune

Before Lucy and Mick Muldune were married, Sergeant Andrew (Andy) Miller and other white people in town tried to undermine their relationship and some even went as far as encouraging unattached white women to seduce the Irishman.

“Marry a nice white woman,” they said.

There were few white eligible women to choose from: there were the nurses from the hospital, the local barmaids and a few transients, so the competition amongst the men folk of the town was fierce. The ratio must have been in the vicinity of 80:1. There must have been more unmarried males in Kingsley than anywhere else in Western Australia.

“We used to watch all the young white fullahs, all spruced up, going up the path to the nurses’ quarters to try their luck,” said Jack grinning sardonically.

The Irishman used to tell the others, “Why should I want to marry a white woman when Lucy’s perfect for me. She doesn’t yell or shout and let her tongue run away out of control.

“And further,” he added, “When I go out I know she’ll be waiting for me at home.

“No man, and I mean no man,” getting quite angry now, “will covet my wife. I can trust her not to run away with any oily-tongued, charming hawker.”

Is this what happened to the Irishman back in his homeland? Did a hawker elope with his sweetheart? Perhaps so, or perhaps not. Who knows? He was a very private person, secretive and selective. No one will ever know. He continued expounding Lucy’s attributes with great fervour.

“She’s a good cook, a good housekeeper. She’s not a demanding, domineering woman. She suits me very well, thank you very much.”

To Mick Muldune, Lucy compared with his mother as the embodiment of pure womanhood. A most unusual comparison considering one was an Aborigine and one was Irish. “Me mam was a saint, who struggled all her life without complaining. God bless her.”

Others tried to influence him by attacking Lucy personally, advising him, “You don’t have to marry her. Do what the other white men do.”

“Oh, and what’s that,” snapped Mick, getting angry and annoyed with these so-called well-meaning friends.

“Stay with these gins until a decent white woman comes along,” said another boring condescending man.

“Are you saying that Lucy is not a decent woman?” roared Mick, who was moving menacingly towards him, his large fists clenched ready to strike.

“No! No, I didn’t mean that at all Mick,” said the man backing slowly away from the bar.

“I am making Lucy my wife and that’s that,” said Mick with finality. All discussion on the matter stopped abruptly.

Was my grandfather really mad? I wondered. Because to describe him as “mad” would be to attribute insane qualities such as spontaneous violence, wouldn’t it?

I was reassured by the Donaldsons that although he frequently dished out his own form of Irish deterrent, “he wasn’t mad in the head”.

“And he didn’t always win either,” said Jack passionately as he recalled dimmed memories. “I seen him get flogged a couple of times.”

Sergeant Andy Miller, the sandy haired officer in charge of the Kingsley police station, was a large strong and powerful man.

“He must have been about 24 stone, a real big man,” said Jack.

“In fact, he looked like those policemen in cartoons. You know those big-chested blokes like that,” Jack said, spreading his arms wide.

He didn’t ignore Mick’s behaviour—especially when a pugilist like him metes out his own form of punishment. That’s taking the law into his own bare hands; or rather his large bare knuckles. It was impossible to reassure some that the Irishman wasn’t mad. His fines amounted to a few bob.

Mick Muldune always maintained that he fought to uphold his principles and he was ready to defy the law for them. But he never made moral judgment on any man.

Under normal circumstances he was the most law-abiding citizen, and one of the most civic minded. He was by birth a fervent Catholic, so naturally enough blasphemy against the Pope and the Catholic church, also racism and bigotry, would rile him.

But there were two things he hated with a firmly ingrained vehemence: they were the colonists and the constabulary.

This became apparent one Saturday afternoon when the public bar at the Kingsley Arms Hotel was full to capacity, and the topic was marriage ceremonies. This incident occurred before Mick and Lucy were married.

“The sergeant has powers vested in him to perform marriages, funerals and things, you know, anything legal,” informed a stranger at the other end of the bar.

“What!” roared “Mad” Mick the Irishman, “me get married by the local constabulary!

“Jesus, Mary, Joseph, me mam and da will roll over in their graves. Holy Mother of God. What blasphemy,” he moaned.

He turned to face the unfortunate stranger and continued to bombard him with verbal abuse, pausing only to glare at him with contempt.

“How dare you suggest such a thing,” he said, banging his large fist on the bar top, making the drinkers grab their glasses firmly in their hands. He apparently took a quick sip from his glass of beer and without wiping the froth from his mouth, he continued his verbal attack on the stranger.

“Well,” recalled Jack, “some of the blokes in the pub saw the white froth around his mouth and passed the word around that the Irishman was frothing at the mouth like a mad dog with rabies.”

“I only made a suggestion,” said the stranger meekly. He was visibly agitated and bewildered by my grandfather’s outburst. This surely was a reaction he never expected.

“He was a miner from the Red Hill Mine, southeast of the town, there wasn’t as many slag dumps as there is now. He left quicker than he came in. Poor bugger,” said Jack sardonically.

Someone made a drunken, submissive speech, and thus pacified the Irishman and everything went back to normal, well almost normal. Many were still astonished and confused by Mick’s outburst. They couldn’t understand it at all.

“That’s why they called him ‘Mad’ Mick or the ‘Mad Irishman’—though not to his face, mind you. They wouldn’t be game enough,” said Jack.