( Samuel Beckett's whip-lashed tour of Darwin's bus routes .)
It was the time of the Catholic World Youth Day celebrations in Sydney and a blessed event took place in a Darwin bus . An Aborigine entered, saw a woman , who looked like one of those strange beings , a tourist , and asked , “ Are you seeing the Pope ?” With an accent , she responded by saying she did not understand English. He then announced he was black . “So what ? ” she replied . Resuming his opening religious gambit , the man said , “ I saw the Pope , and I cried .” In a confessional frame of mind , he admitted he had been a police officer in Western Australia and had children who were not black like him , “ half-castes ”, a situation which made him feel sorry .
After almost missing the bus , a gabby geezer about my age , wearing a baseball cap, stumbled down the aisle and sat down, asking me if it was the Number 4 . Waving an envelope , he informed me that he has just taken delivery of a ticket for a trip to Adelaide on the Ghan train , a journey he would make with his repaired bicycle at an extra cost of $40 .
After almost missing the bus , a gabby geezer about my age , wearing a baseball cap, stumbled down the aisle and sat down, asking me if it was the Number 4 . Waving an envelope , he informed me that he has just taken delivery of a ticket for a trip to Adelaide on the Ghan train , a journey he would make with his repaired bicycle at an extra cost of $40 .
Perhaps because I was carrying a cloth bag with a message to save the curlews of Magnetic Island , sported a scruffy beard , wore a floppy hat and suspicious Pommie - looking sandals , giving the impression of a nomadic , visiting , geriatric hippie , he asked me from whence I came. Darwin . When did I first come to Darwin ? 1958 . Oh . He volunteered that when he first came to Darwin , 1997, it was a “ cowboy town ”, everybody wearing cowboy hats. Then he told me that there is so much work available in the Territory that even he had been able to get a job.
The day before had been his birthday , and he was off to the casino to celebrate . On alighting , he made a bee- line for the casino , but stopped to speak to a young bloke sitting on the kerb , a T-shirt worn like a hat on his head, sunning his back . The Ghan ticket was being waved before his face.
