This story has mixed origins. I think the first version happened in the mid 1980’s when my daughter and friends used to challenge me to tell a story – prompted by just one or two words. In this case ‘Gum tree’. (The ‘Tapestry’ story also had it’s origins at that time), It hadn’t been written down, and was almost forgotten, when someone asked me if I remembered any of my fathers yarns. I didn’t remember much at all, but I decided to write ‘The Outdoors Bloke’ as close as possible to the way he would have told it if he’d thought of it first. A further link with Dad is the reference to ‘McNamara’s place’ as it was on a property owned by McNamaras at Merriwa in NSW that I regularly saw dad hold an audience entranced for hours listening to his yarns. Most related to his own life and experiences which seemed to come alive as he talked of them – and if the yarns stretched credibility a bit….well, dad probably believed them, and the listeners never seemed to mind. The Outdoors Bloke You blokes must’ve been through the scrub out back o’ McNamara’s place? Just a cart track squeezed between those big old ghost gums? Well, did’ya see that big old gum between the track and Murphy’s creek? Big branch hangs out over the creek and it’s got an old rope hangin’ from it with one elastic sided boot? Yer did? Well, yer prob’ly not going to believe what I tell yer, but that’s a grave! An honest to god Aussie grave of one of the best mates a bloke ever shared his bracken bed and billy tea with. Charlie was still a youngish bloke when I first met him and I was even younger. He was a good strong honest wiry type, always had his swag on his back, and I never saw ‘im in a bar. Mind you, he enjoyed ‘is swig, but didn’t like ‘the crowds’ as ‘e called em, so e’ had a cobber or the maid bring a beer out to him. Well, that’s how he met young Ethel – and before you knew it, he’d popped the question and she says yes right away. “Only thing is”, says Charlie, “I likes the outdoors – I’m not one of them city fellas used ta beds and chairs and all them airs and graces” Ethel was besotted. Loved the bloke and thought her wifely ways would change the man but change he never did. Not ever. He tried, mind you. He built her a small hut close to the river, and got work with a bullock team dragging out the grand old red cedars from the bush. But still he couldn’t stand to be inside. She’d bring his meals outside where he’d sit on his heels under the old gum – the big one by the river I talked about before – and at night he’d settle down with his swag, or on some hessian wool sacks stuffed with bracken fern, and watch the stars. The years went by and Ethel and Charlie continued to live ‘together’ but her inside and him outside – I got older too, and sometimes when I was passing that way I’d call in and have a smoke and billy tea with Charlie, and Ethel would bring us out some fresh baked scones or a jam tart. But the time came when Charlie got crook – he knew his time ‘ad come and didn’t want to make a fuss, so ‘e says to Ethel “Ethel, when I’m gone, I don’t want no fancy city funeral, with them long faced vultures in their sissy black frocks”. “Just make sure I’m strung up in the gum tree here, where me ghost can keep an eye on ya, and the crows can pick me bones til they’re clean and dry”. So that’s the way it happened. Charlie died, and his missus did what he asked and hung him up by his heels under that old gum tree. In time the crows picked his bones dry, and they all fell into the river and were washed away. The missus’s passed on too now, and the shack all fallen down, but if yer passes that way again, doff your hat to Charlies ghost. His boot swinging under that old gumtree is the best memorial a feller could have – a memorial to Charlie ‘The Outdoors Bloke’ Copyright Lynda Cracknell 2006 In memory of my father Frederick Charles Stevens, cattle drover and dealer and one of Australia’s great yarn spinners |