( With extreme apologies to Samuel Beckett and Darwin’s heterogeneous commuters )
The travails and idiosyncrasies of mankind are revealed by Darwin’s bus service. As I waited at a bus stop for my wife, two middle aged Aboriginal women , smelling slightly of alcohol, arrived and sat down in the shelter. One of them addressed me as a gentleman ( was it my grey beard , wrinkles and glasses ? ) , and proceeded to tell me that we are all born equal , but some people have bad luck and lead difficult, sad lives. Indeed , the slings and arrows of adversity are plain to see, as are the swellings of the heart , not to mention the Temple of Mammon - Wall Street- collapsing like the walls of Jericho.
A young Aborigine ambled up ; the philosophical woman greeted him thus : “ Hello, big boonga (penis ) .” Obviously not expecting this unsolicited testimonial , he giggled and shyly shuffled about , glancing sheepishly at his thongs. I smiled surreptitiously and my sunglasses steamed up due to an instantaneous spike in blood pressure. When asked where he had been all this time , he replied , “In jail.” The lady from the college of hard knocks exclaimed, “ No! - Bloody hell !” They moved outside the shelter and walked about talking , later joined by several others.
Carrying a plastic bag in one hand and a can of alcopop in the other , a tattooed young Caucasian , glassy eyed , arrived at the shelter , sat next to me and immediately struck up a conversation. He had been shopping at Crazy Clark’s, which he called Crazy Cricket’s , where he had put down a can of alcoholic drink and it had disappeared. A search of all the shelves with the staff had failed to find it , an example of that sudden bad luck one encounters in life which is both mystifying and spooky and could lead to dehydration. .
The two aforesaid ladies popped their heads round the shelter and said hello to him. He informed me that he did not want to get involved with that mob outside the bus shelter because when the Woolworths bottle shop closes at night they run up and down the street beating each other over the head with sticks.
From the plastic bag he extracted a Ford car manual , bought in an Op shop for only $15 , saying he has a car which needs some work done on it to get it back on the road . During our conversation about cars he admitted having lost his licence several times in Victoria and that he wants to lay off grog so that he does not lose his Territory licence. In between swigs, he emphatically stated the guys who share his pad would have to get off their bums and help him fix the car if they expected to ride in the vehicle once it was back on the road.
An Aboriginal man accompanied by two teenagers , one a girl, came to the shelter. The tattooed guy warmly welcomed the man , the apparent father of the young ones , and asked him the name of his country. When he said the Arnhem Land settlement of Maningrida , the would be mechanic enthusiastically said he must know Raymond who is from Maningrida and spears stingrays at a nearby beach… No . You must … No. Perhaps due to frequent swearing by the fellow whose can of booze had been beamed up by Scotty without prior notice , the man moved away with the children.
The tattooed man continued his praise for Raymond who , he told me, is so skilful he could throw a spear from the bus shelter, over the busy road , through the parking area and hit the centre of the letter O in the fish shop sign across the way . ( Obviously , Raymond should represent Australia in the javelin event at the Olympics.) Suddenly, he jumped up , had a quick swig, ran onto the road , waved down an oncoming four wheel drive , and clambered aboard the tray .
As my wife was not on the next bus , I walked about the shops and supermarket to kill time until the next bus arrived. During my perambulation an Aboriginal woman gave me a big hello , calling me a young man . Methinks she is in need of attention from the Fred Hollows Foundation. It was indeed an interesting time waiting for the bus that day but there were other memorable caravanserai moments to come .
One day , my wife and I did several laps of the Nightcliff shopping centre in an attempt to hand in a wallet we had found in a street to the police station , which was closed. A short distance from a bus stop, we came across a man, Caucasian, who had no need for a Number 4 bus as he had his own transport : a bicycle on which all his worldly possessions were tied . Wild-eyed , he was sitting on a bench , where he had apparently overnighted, nursing a large plastic container of water. Much to our surprise , he raucously demanded if we had heard what had happened to the Catholic priest in Alice Springs... No . A nude man had run down the aisle and jumped on the altar, he informed us, an event we were later able to confirm.
Then he proceeded to rail about young people who threw stones , caused trouble and had forced him out of his flat. Wound up , he declared law and order was out of control in the Northern Territory . Shouting , he said the then Chief Minister, Clare Martin , and the Commissioner of Police were weak when it came to law and order . They should model themselves on the way things were done in NSW . In Sydney, he had been arrested and placed in a hospital after taking off all his clothes to do some washing on a beach . He had been kept there until the doctor said he was fit to be released back into the community . Territory troublemakers , especially the young ones, should be similarly treated, he said.
It being a pleasant dry season day , I boarded a bus for town. Near the old Fannie Bay Gaol , a passenger reeking of tobacco caused my nostrils to twitch when he plonked himself down next to me, after uttering a big hello . As the bus trundled on he began to mutter in what seemed a Continental accent . I listened more attentively when he suddenly broke out into bursts of La-la-la –la –la- la , punctuated by assorted chuckles . The subject of role models then entered his outpourings. From the corner of my wonky eye , I noticed he was having an energetic one- man debate about the said role models. Abruptly, he swung about as if addressing the jury in the O.J. Simpson trial , glared at a rear corner of the bus, and firmly stated that the best possible role model – before the war - was Germany.
When the bus arrived at the CBD , he bounded up and was the first in line to exit. However, he stepped aside and waved other passengers out , somewhat in the gracious Sir Walter Raleigh style , especially in the case of females . Then, his environmentally friendly green shopping bag thrown over his shoulder, he jumped out and walked jauntily along the footpath .
At the Palmerston interchange, an Aboriginal woman entered and sat up front . An Aboriginal male, a barefoot beanpole, entered and sat on the other side of the bus , engaging in conversation with her . They began to argue , she in her language , he in good English. He told her to keep quiet, that she talked too much and moved his fingers on a hand to imitate a mouth opening and shutting. Undaunted , she continued. He declared he was not stupid and that he used his mind to think. She persisted . Finally, he threw his hands up , hitched his pants up over his snake hips, said he was going bush, and stalked out . When the bus set off, the woman alighted at the first stop , a short distance from the interchange, probably intent on catching up with the man to give him some more tongue.
A mangy, but friendly dog caused people in a bus stop to wince when it bounded across the road in front of traffic, narrowly escaping being run over several times. The animal’s apparent owner yelled at it, brought it to heel, and then began to de-tick the nervous canine . Many ticks were extracted from within its ears and rear end and squashed on brickwork upon which weekend adherents of the Darwin good life sit . It got to the stage where the man caused people to shudder and feel queasy by wetting his tick catching/crushing fingers with his tongue.
( Part 11 of Waiting for Buso will be posted soon -unless the author is run down by a Bondi bus driven by the Grim Reaper .)
