Travelling, travelling ‘cross the plains, bud,
Now the rain is pissing down (pissing down)
Yeah, and I’ve got those sorry old railway platform blues.
Thought I would meet you, kiss you or shake your hand
Thought I would meet you, kiss you, shake your hand
Smile into your face and dream awhile in glee (grin)
Oh ain’t it lonely, oh so lonely no one here to greet me
I’ve got those sad old railway platform blues today
The sad old railway platform blues all day today
No one to meet me, no one to greet me,
Smoke in my eyes hiding the tears,
Yeah, hiding the tears, oh ain’t it lonely,
Oh so bloody lonely, so lonely, awful lonely.
I’ve got the sad old railway platform blues, oh yeah,
I’ve got the sad old railway platform blues, (yeah, sadness).
The train pulled into a sooty station. Balga read Spencer Street and guessed it was the end of their journey.
‘Well, this is it,’ he said to Revel. ‘Do you think we’ll need our overcoats?’
‘Yep, Bud, for we ain’t got a sweater between us and there’s a little nip in the air.’
‘I’ve got a sports coat, but it’s in the suit case. Anyway it wouldn’t go with these black shirt and jeans.’
‘Hey, Bud, we gotta stick together in this town. It ain’t our country,’ Revel said almost in a whisper as he pulled on his long coat.
Balga followed suit. The thing hung on him like a shroud. He was feeling down in the dumps again and he knew Revel was too, Balga glanced at this fellow Noongar suddenly wishing it was his mate, Fast Eddy who knew his way around this burg. But only Revel was here and he was even hesitating about getting out onto the platform. Well, what the heck Fast Eddy most likely was home in St. Kilda and he would look him up when he had settled in and had some new clothes to sport so that he wouldn’t appear a complete square just in from the West.
Balga pushed past Revel and got out onto the platform with the suitcase. They stood there not knowing what to do in the rush and crush of people. What to do, and just as they were thinking this a small dark intense man with a shock of white hair rushed up and thrust out a hand.
‘Doug Nicolls, Pastor Doug, the field officer of the Aboriginal Advancement League. Welcome to Melbourne. How was the sunny West? Sunny I expect it was as it wouldn’t be called that if it wasn’t. Too many “its”, eh? Like your coats, there’s a bit of a cold breeze blowing. Got your cases there too, I see. Come on, we’ll catch a tram to the office. You got them rattlers in Perth too, haven’t you?’
Pastor Doug hurried them out of the station and onto a dirty street that was chock a block with cars huddled up against a red light. ‘Bud, it’s big and noisy,’ Revel whispered.
‘And a bit dirty too,’ whispered back Balga.
Pastor Doug was charging ahead of them and they had to trot to keep closely behind him. It wouldn’t do to lose him in the crowd. The little bloke reached the head of a street, hesitated then leapt across to the middle where a tram waited. The two Noongars came after him. They jumped aboard as the tram rattled off.
“Bit bigger than our Perth ones,’ whispered Revel.
‘And a real rattler too,’ agreed Balga.
The tram trundled along and began wheeling through the centre of the city filled with tall buildings and shops and bustling with well-dressed people. Real city people, thought Balga in awe.
The vehicle stopped all along the street to let people off and take them on in a steady stream. The two Noongars eyeballed everything and hardly felt Paster Doug digging them in the ribs. They saw him hopping off at a street labeled Exhibition. Clutching their suit cases they hopped down and had to wait for the light to change before crossing over Collins Street and going down towards the sound of trains rushing along. Pastor Doug stopped, checked that they were behind him then ducked through a door into a weary looking building. They went down a short darkish corridor and entered a small office. A white man sat behind a desk facing the door and at a side desk sat a taller dark-haired woman.
‘I’m Stan Davies,’ the man said jumping to his feet. He was as speedy as Pastor Doug and just as short. Balga supposed that they bred them small in the city as there were so many people crammed up together; but when the woman got to her feet and he saw that she was just a shade shorter than Revel all of six feet. They shook hands all around and exchanged names. With this out of the way Revel was taken off by Pastor Doug to be settled in some hostel or other, while Balga had to wait and have a cup of tea as he was the one with the education and thus could be found a job. He asked for a mechanic’s work, but Stan Davies, another Christian minister, shrugged and got onto the phone. Balga listened in. Yes, he was in good shape and not at all rough. He had passed the Junior Certificate with distinction and there was no doubt that because he had spent much of his life in a home he had fallen into trouble when he found himself adrift in the wider world. Yes, he could come in tomorrow and fill in the forms… The lad shrugged and sipped on his tea and chewed on a biscuit, the woman (the rev’s wife) gave him. Now his accommodation was firmed up in a suburb called Hawthorn.
‘Yes,’ Stan Davies (call me “Stan” so Balga nicknamed him Stand the Man) said: ‘you’ll, be staying in Hawthorn. It’s a nice quiet suburb with a tram route straight to the city along Victoria Street. I have a car and I’ll take you there in a while. Tomorrow, you are to go to the Public Service employment section in the Treasury Building at the top of Collins Street. I’ll show you that on the way. Now as to clothing — what have you in the way of work gear?’
Balga thought a moment and replied: ‘It depends on the work, I guess.’
‘It’ll be an office job in the Public Service and you’ll be expected to dress neatly, that means a suit and tie. Have you got these?
Balga grinned: ‘I have the tie, but I lost the suit as it had a habit of picking up everything.’
‘Oh,’ he exclaimed not getting the lad’s meaning that it had been a prison suit made out of shoddy material. ‘Well, you can have your pick of what’s here. Clothing is donated to us and there’s a few suits, shirts and ties and just about everything else. When folks pass on, often there is a problem of what to do with the clothes of the dear departed and some of the grieving people think of us. We’ll look through them and see what will fit you.’
The Noongar felt a bit queasy about wearing dead man’s clothing; but he followed Stan (as he wished to be called, though he was another pastor of the Baptist heresy) into another room with any number of cardboard cartons as well as racks with suits hanging on them. Balga checked the gear over. Square; but he could get the trousers pegged when he found a tailor. He selected a couple of the larger suits that were less ancient and then looked about for shoes. He found a pair of brogues which seemed “hep” in an odd way and they fitted nicely enough for him to keep. There were any number of socks, none of them clocked, but he took about six pairs. He selected half a dozen white shirts on Stan’s suggestion, one for each work day, and then a cardigan which Stan assured him public servants wore. After that, the Rev decided that Balga was well equipped for an office job and they were packed into his suitcase which now bulged as though it had eaten a good meal.
‘Now we have to get you to your digs,’ Stand the Man said.
Balga looked blank and he explained the word meant board and lodging, though why a room was called “digs” he never elaborated on. Balga didn’t ask and followed him out to a car and got in. He drove down to Flinders Street where Balga added the sight of railway lines to the sounds he had heard. The car turned left and then made another which took them along the side of a park. Next to it loomed the gray bulk of a building which Stand the Man told him was where he had to present his self the next day. ‘You should find the office easily,’ he informed Balga. ‘Just ask anyone for the Public Service Commission. You are to see a Mr. Rogers there. He’ll help you with the paper work. Just ask anyone there,’ he reiterated, anxious to see that Balga had taken in the information.
‘I will, I will, sure I will,’ the Noongar replied with a bit of iteration of his own to put the Rev at his ease. Indeed, the man had nervous mannerisms that jerked him this way and that and telegraphed to his driving. Stand the Man proceeded in fits and starts and almost missed making a right into a broad avenue which he identified as Victoria Parade. It was a strange double street with hedges separating a space in the middle along which the trams ran.
Now the Rev took his hands off the steering wheel to wave them about as he began to acquire a stutter: ‘This this g-g-goes straight to Hawthorn where your lodgings are so it’ll be easy for you to get on a tram and run straight into the city.’ As he said this, his hands fell onto the wheel and he managed to stop at a traffic light.
Balga had become a little nervous at the driving, but Stan settled down as they left the double avenue to enter an ordinary street lined with shops. The man began repeating his instructions on what Balga should do on the morrow and the Noongar kept nodding his head while wondering if Revel had settled in and then of how he might find him. Stand the Man went on repeating his instructions and Balga looked out of the window. They were crossing a narrow stream.
‘The Yarra,’ Stand The Man said curtly.
‘Oh,’ Balga exclaimed. A conversation he had had with a con came into his mind, ‘the river that flows upside down,’ he added.
‘It has that reputation,’ Davies agreed as he went wide and did a right into Hawthorn.
He ensconced Balga in his “digs” and left his phone number in case there were any problems. Now Balga had a room and with it came breakfast and dinner with lunch on the week end if he wanted it. An ordinary house in an ordinary suburb with an ordinary elderly woman in charge and he was the only boarder. The quietness chilled him, but he knew he had to doss there for at least a while.