BORN FREE

As free as the wind blows.......was telling my younger sibling that I had put David's bike on the web....What about me, he said one of the most self contained, and private persons, OK Paul I will get the bl....y camera and put your bike up TOO.


He goes for a ride every now and then with the wind in his hair. I do not share my brothers' passion for fast and mean bikes, I like the air conditioned comfort of my vehicle. With the petrol prices through the roof some months ago I could only afford to drive about two k's a day....ha ha



Note the jar of Vegemite near my father's foot. Goes nowhere without his tea, rum and vegemite and he was saying Crikey a long time before Steve Irwin's fame and wearing kakis.
This is Paul some years ago when he lived and worked on his own, on remote cattle stations as a fencing contractor usually on his own. That is my father visiting with him. My father died not long after this photograph was taken, he had suffered bad burns and shrapnel wounds when Darwin was bombed and apart from that drank rum every day and lived hard and fast. This is a photograph of my father when he was running bush pub at Mt. Surprise in the Gulf country of Queensland. Access to SP bookmakers, and all that alcohol, and his droving mates trucking cattle from there, no one paid for drinks much, did not do wonders for the bank balance, but he sure enjoyed himself.



That is my father, second from the left, who had a rule, he did not drink on the serving side of the bar, so most times the serving side was empty only when he went for refills and he would go with his mates on the "wrong" side. Go figure... Thse fellows were not the drover mates but the railway maintenance gang. Oh yes a typical Sunday, all aboard and a fishing we will go, no trains today, I might add plenty of liquor on the railway maintenance vehicle....sometimes when they had not returned when the trains were due someone had to go out in the "section" car that had to be manually operated, up down up down, like a see saw with one person on a handle either side. Had to get them off the tracks usually all a little worse for wear before the train ran them down. Did have a couple of accidents with the trains resulting in death. I remember one particular man who had been crushed between the wagons while attaching them and the two steel pieces crushed him across the midriff. What stays in my memory is the blanket covering his injuries while waiting for the aerial ambulance, and him smoking, drinking and laughing. I guess it was evident that he would not make it and if he wanted to drink and smoke for the last moments of his life so be it.


My brother's last big fencing job was assisting a friend who had a contract to build yards on Laguna Station, located on the coast near the Northern Territory and West Australia border two years ago. I must share a couple of photographs of territory farming life as depicted by a friend Paul met on the Station and he e-mailed these to my brother a couple of days ago.



This is a little "freshie" as opposed to their mighty savage cousin "Salties" . The differences between the two croc species is that the salties tend to want to eat you where as the freshies at best can give a nasty little bite but in my experience mostly do not bother. This fellow the photographer said was curiously watching activities and wondering how come there is so much water about and where they intending to farm fish when he would definately be interested.


Another ambitious attempt at farming in the north of Australia on the vast marine plains. They come and they go
I have been jumping about like a rabbit with this post...which reminds me


Oh yes and while I am at it do not go out much and did go to a barbecue the other night....eeer eeer....live hard and fast I think is these fellows motto...truckies and bikies...and me so refined......


Not to worry my mother came too... in fact she was invited not I.......