There was another football match each week, the Aussie Rules game on Sunday. I went down to one training session for a look at a practice match but the sight of one local, built like a brick outhouse, roaring into one of the pasty white blokes was enough to make me flinch twice, then think. The game seemed to be a mix of rugby and Aussie Rules, some finesse, an occasional high mark, but a lot of punching, kicking, shoving in scrums and bashing, smashing, running as though their lives depended on the ball under their arms. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t like the game I knew and of the codes on offer I preferred the raw and brutal honesty of Rugby League. But when you’re away from home you get all the entertainment you can and so I went to all games.
One Sunday, right after the booze-up in the clubrooms, six of us squeezed ourselves into the Volkswagen of the Bulimbi branch accountant. Jim Jackson was an older man, an alcoholic and, naturally enough, more often than not, pissed. He drove like he was pissed. What did we care? We were members of an expatriate community and expats driving pissed was normal. For most of us there was no other way to drive.
You right there? called a South Australian from the back.
The croweater, Roger, sat in the middle of the back seat. I sat on the outside, the left side, the side facing the bay, and Robbo sat on the right side, looking up the cliff face. In the front were two Victorians and Jackson at the wheel. It was a narrow road around the bay linking Bulimbi with the centre of the capital.
Too bloody right, said Jackson.
The road was wet and the rain hadn’t stopped for two hours. Jackson was taking us back to the old bank quarters. Robbo and I were going out later that night to the Bulimbi Bar. My old school mate Bainers was playing his last gig and he had a hot, new, mixed race drummer in the line-up. This was a good thing and the night might well attract the drummer’s sisters, their friends and their friends.
Jim was driving like a sober man. We were all laughing. All was well with the world.
You all right up front? yelled Robbo.
Too bloody right, yelled Jackson.
Jackson turned his head to show us the laughter on his face, but he turned too far, lost concentration, took a bend a little too tight, tried to correct, overcorrected, just missed an oncoming Volkswagen, overcorrected again and headed for the edge. We might have been pissed but we all knew the edge was not a good place to be. We yelled at Jackson, not so much because of the edge itself, more because after the edge there was nothing for a good twenty feet and at the bottom of the fall, on the bay floor, there was nothing but rock and an incoming tide.
Jim, yelled Robbo, we’re on the fucking edge.
We hung there. No one really thought that we would go over and it looked like we wouldn’t, then it did, then it didn’t and then Jackson made a strange noise from his throat and his hands seemed to leave the wheel, then they took it again but moved in the wrong direction. The car shook. There was uncertainty about how much of us was on the edge, or over it. One wheel? Or two? I was sure the wheel under me was over, had been for a second or two. We seemed to hang for a long time, then a small shift, then, ever so slowly, we fell. The fall was nice. I enjoyed the fall. It was almost like flying. Someone screamed, a woman, and it was then I realised that one of the Victorians in the front was a woman. Lucky for her she was in the middle, over the handbrake. The other Victorian, Nigel, was in front of me and as the car fell I thought, shit, I better put my elbow on the roof or a rock will come in through the window and smash my arm to smithereens, and in just the amount of time it took to think that and do it, a rock appeared at my armpit. Nigel and the Victorian woman next to him screamed, Robbo yelled, the croweater between us screamed and Jackson was silent.
On the bottom of the bay, moving quickly was important because the tide was coming in fast as it always did and lying there in a smashed Volkswagen was not a good idea. Robbo yelled at Jackson to open his door. Jackson sat slumped, gurgling.
Jackson, I yelled. For fuck’s sake move.
Robbo reached over him, opened his door, pushed his seat forward then climbed out over him. Roger the croweater followed. From inside the car I helped them lift, pull and push Jackson out. He was sobbing and blubbering, apologising to everyone and offering to buy us all a drink when we got out and even take us all out for a meal. The Victorians in the front were next out and in no mood for either drink or food. The woman was helping Nigel, who was no longer screaming but moaning.
It’s all right, Jim, said Robbo. Come on, we gotta get out of here because the tide’s coming in and we have to get Nigel to hospital. His arm is cut up pretty bad.
Nigel’s arm was in threads and blood was leaving his body in gallons whichever way he turned. The front passenger door looked like it had aimed itself for the biggest rock and most of his arm must have been on it because there wasn’t much left of it where it used to be.
Here, I said, take my shirt.
The woman took my shirt and I helped her tear off a strip.
Thank you, she said. I’m June, by the way.
Great place to meet people, I thought, climbing out of a drunk Volkswagen crashed on an ocean bed with a tide racing in. I looked at her then and she wasn’t too bad at all.
I’m Jack, I said, from WA.
I know. Here, help me wrap Nigel.
We wrapped the still-moaning Nigel and helped him walk across the rocks towards a place where the road and the bay bed were much closer together and where people had found a way down and were walking towards us. By now vehicles had stopped above us and some were calling out.
My wife has gone to get an ambulance, yelled a man.
Three men who had climbed down into the bay were almost with us. When they reached June and Nigel they took him back the way they had come. June turned back and grabbed at my arm.
You’re hurt, she said.
No, not me.
But look.
I looked down at my arm and saw the blood and the deep cut.
Arrr, it’s nothing.
What, so you West Aussies are tough, are you? Can’t feel a thing, huh?
She poked her finger at the blood and I yelped.
So, you wanna go for a drink later then?
Crikey, she said. What a time to ask a girl out.
When she smiled her entire face moved, her eyebrows lifted almost to her hairline and her upper body rocked. I thought: Maybe. But it never happened. What did happen, of course, was we all went to hospital, got stitched, bandaged, released, all except Nigel, were interviewed by the police, caught a taxi to the Pacific Hotel and got so pissed we had to catch another taxi home, even though we only lived across the road. I didn’t sleep that night, because not long after I went to bed under the aircraft propeller I had to get up and throw everything I had eaten or drunk over the past week into the shower recess. It stank. I stank. When I arrived at work the next morning, I stank still.