Published: 22 Nov 2021

It was three days before word returned from the Mareeba Hospital on Jack Arnold’s progress and it was all positive. Jack was mending well and complaining often but it would be quite some time before he was released from hospital care.

Some time had passed before anyone at Bullock Creek heard further from Jack. Not being a man for modern convenience he again had the hospital place a call to Bunny with the news he would not be returning. Instead he would stay with his widowed sister in Mareeba, giving instructions for his belongings to be sent on, while stipulating he wished for Travis to take charge of the transfer without conveying any reason for his choice.

As for Jack’s house, it like much of the town was once the property of a defunct mining company but since that company’s demise most probably had returned to the crown, which either didn’t realise the fact, or had little further use for it, so the house was not Jack’s to give but the mountain of accumulated junk within and around the yard was. Seeing he would no longer have necessity for his collection, he suggested that Tom Parkinson the blacktracker and his mob could take what they wanted.

Bunny called up to the house to convey the news on Jack and that he had specially asked for Travis to arrange for his belongings to be sent on. After Bunny left Bradley expressed his curiosity why Jack had especially asked for Travis.

“I don’t rightly know,” Travis answered with a deep shrugging of his shoulders.

“I knew him long before you arrived, why didn’t he ask me to do it?” Bradley announced more rhetorically than as a question, although by his style he retained a measure of hurt.

“Do you want to do it?” Travis suggested.

“No, I was curious that’s all, I don’t want the bloody job; I’ve enough to do around here cleaning up after you.” There was a cheeky bite in Bradley’s response, which drew a measure of anger from Travis.

“Bullshit Bradley,” Travis quickly responded taking the lure then realising his friend’s humour he calmed.

“I get you every time don’t I,” Bradley laughed.

“One day Bradley – one day,” Travis warned.

“One day what?”

“You will find out and you won’t see it coming,” Travis answered.

“You better be able to run fast,” Bradley concluded.

“I’ve never been invited into Jack’s house, what is it like?” Travis asks while formulating the task ahead.

“Much like the yard although I’ve only been inside once. It was long before you arrived he invited me around for a meal and all I got was a warm bottle of beer and a stale half packet of potato crisps.”

Although Travis was asked to arrange Jack’s belongings he did have Bradley help, as he could not see the reasoning for being especially requested, or a problem with Bradley giving a hand. On their arrival the blacks were already scavenging through the yard and becoming raucous with each useless discovery. They had arrived with a rusting wheel-barrow with a wonky iron wheel comically making the barrow go through a bucking motion as it travelled. It was quickly filled and after wheeling the barrow back across the tracks they returned for more.

“You haven’t touched anything inside the house?” Travis asks of Ben Jones who was leading the scavenging.

“No boss,” Ben truthfully answered.

“Okay, when we have collected Jack’s belongings you can have what’s left inside,” Travis says in an unsure tone towards Ben’s assurance.

“No boss we’ve only been in the yard, Ben repeated, while giving that all knowing smile many aborigines produce when supplying a lie.

“What a mess,” Bradley declared on entering the house.

“I thought you had been here before?”

“I only went into the kitchen from the back and never into the rest of the house.”

There were clothes scattered everywhere, piles of news papers and magazines, some dating back before the war as well as cooking utensils in every room, most rusting or holed and useless to anyone or for anything except growing potted plants. Two large iron pots had been utilised as planters and stood on the verandah near the front door, holding very dead geraniums. Yet there was order in Jack’s disorder and although untidy and dusty, the house could not be considered dirty.

“Hey I’ve seen that before,” Bradley pointed into one of the rooms.

“What?”

“That old copper with the hole, it’s from our place. It used to be under the lemon tree at the corner.”

“Do you want it back?”

“Until now I hadn’t noticed it gone.”

“I should think Jack was attempting to corner the marked in copper, there is enough of it around.”

“And everything else, where do we start?” Bradley asks his hands on hips while gazing from one pile to another; one room to its neighbour.

“More to the point what do we pack?” Travis added.

“Probably start in the bedroom,” Bradley suggested poking his nose around the door into a room that most appeared to be Jack’s bedroom. It at least had a wardrobe and a bed with what could be considered to be linen and blankets scattered across an ancient and badly stained mattress.

“Except for the junk he doesn’t have much.” Bradley declared as he went through the old and mostly threadbare clothing hanging in the wardrobe, while Travis reached on top of it bringing down two battered suitcases. Coughing from the dust he placed them on the bed.

“Underwear, Bradley comically suggested while holding up an item with a hole in the arse and aging yellow stain at the crotch.

“Is that what they were?”

“I think so,” Bradley suggests.

“They are beyond use I would say.”

“Pack them anyway, they may be his favourite,” Bradley admits. He laughs.

“What’s got ya’ funny?”

“You should try them on, they may suit you.”

“Haaaaa,”

All of Jack’s clothing fitted into the one suitcase with room to spare. They then searched the house finding more discarded clothing, deciding as they went what was to be packed and what was to go to the tip, or end up on the backs of the natives. Eventually the first suitcase was full and they started on the second.

“Right what else?” Bradley says as they strapped down the first suitcase with Travis placing his weight onto its lid as to tighten the straps.

“Bedding?”

“What do you think?” Travis asks.

“It’s more rags,”

“I agree leave it,”

Bradley looked about; “boots and shoes?”

“They can go in that big box,” Travis decided.

“Magazines?”

“No way they’re full of cockroaches and mouse droppings,” Travis answered his nose turned at the suggestion,

“Look here there is a pile of old playboy magazines;” Bradley picked up the top magazine and found some of the pages were stuck together.

Bradley dropped the magazine releasing a suggestive snigger.

“You really think so?” Travis immediately understood his friend’s inference.

“Na he’d be too old for that kind of caper.”

“I’ve been told there isn’t anything such as too old,” Travis differed.

“Should we send them on or dump them?”

“You have them,” Travis offered.

“I’m not that hard up to need pornography,” Bradley assured.

“So you do admit you give it a nudge now and then.”

“I didn’t say that,”

Travis laughed.

“Get out with ya’,” Bradley gave a friendly shove to the shoulder.

“Well?”

“It is for me to know and you to mind your own business.”

Travis moved on from the conversation,

“Bunny said Jack was stoic about not forgetting the third bedroom and especially its cupboard,” Travis recollected.

“Which would that be?” Bradley departed in search of such a room, returning moments later declaring he had found it.

In all there were three bedrooms, one was stacked with car parts, livery and junk with its bare floor boards badly stained from leaking engine oil, some of the contents neither Bradley nor Travis knew what to do with or describe. The third had a wire bed without bedding or mattress and an old wardrobe with a smashed mirror and broken door, filled with more odds and ends, mostly ancient biscuit tins displaying past monarchs and scenes from countries that Jack had never visited.

“What would Jack want in here?” Bradley asks while searching the room for personal belongings. There didn’t appear to be anything of great value.

“Maybe there are photos or letters in the tins.” Travis suggested and picked the top tin with its Scottish highland scene and a stag in full antler standing proud upon a rise. He opened the lid, discovering it to be filled with letters.

Travis commenced to read the first. “They appear to be love letters,” he declared and quickly folded the letter back into its envelope, “don’t think I should read them it wouldn’t be right.”

“I couldn’t imagine Jack in love,” Bradley admitted.

“It was a long time ago by the postmark Nineteen twenty, Jack would have been in his teens I guess.”

“We better send them on,” Bradley suggested and picked up the second tin from the pile. It held a collection of foreign cons from the middle-east and photographs of Jack in full uniform posing with a group of soldiers, standing in front of the pyramids. Also in the tin was a set of Second World War medals, “He’s not only a lover but a hero,” Bradley added amazed at what they were learning about the man.

“How old is Jack? Bradley asks.

“Dunno’ old I suppose, that is why everyone calls him old Jack; seventy, maybe even older.”

“He can’t be that old,” Bradley discredited.

“Why so?”

“In his army photographs he looks about thirty and the war has been over for about twenty years, so that would make him fifty something, possibly sixty I should think.”

“Too much hard living and wild tobacco is my thought,”

“It does make you think,”

“What does?” Travis asks.

“You believe you know a fellow and judge him while really you know nothing. Bradley closed the tin with the photographs and placed it with the one containing the letters, “better send them on,”

At the bottom of the pile Travis found what appeared to be an old and by its label pickles bottle, wrapped in a rented checked shirt sleeve. It was heavy.

Travis removed the cloth.

“Struth Bradley, it’s full of gold.” Travis gasped amazed at his find.

“So he did strike it rich, he never admitted to finding anything,” Bradley says as Travis handed the bottle of gold to him, “Must be a good half pound weight or more here.”

“At least a pound in my reckoning,” Travis agreed.

There were three more tins and more documents and letters and a discharge from the army but it was the final tin and most battered that brought their biggest surprise. This tin had rusted at its hinges and was held together with a wad of trouser elastic. Travis peeled away the elastic and forced the lid. It was full of ten pound notes neatly bound with a length of string.

“Shit look at this, there must be a thousand pounds in cash in here,” Travis gasped at its sight and passed the tin to Bradley.

“Tell you what; he was lucky the blacks didn’t get in here first,” Bradley admitted.

“I don’t like just sending this stuff without somehow,” Travis paused. His somehow had no suggestion other than he or Bradley could travel with Jack’s belongings to Mareeba and personally deliver them, “possibly we should personally deliver this lot.”

“I can’t at the moment, besides if he knows its coming it should be alright, Mareeba isn’t at the other side of the world,” Bradley recommended.

“Suppose if we bury the lot deep in his suitcase and make sure it’s well strapped down, it should be alright.” Travis added then once again secured the lid of the money tin. “At worse we should telephone Jack and let him know where to find the cash and gold. That way if anything goes wrong, it would prove we didn’t run off with it.”

Sometime after Jack’s Arnold’s belongings had been sent on and the episode of Jack’s accident and the day the ambulance train came to Bullock Creek had become just another pub story. The boys were having a cooling drink at the hotel’s bar during a very hot afternoon when Bunny, in her duties as the town’s postal agent, approached Travis with an envelope heavily marked with red crosses on both sides, suggesting its importance and addressed care of the Bullock Creek Hotel.

“There is a registered letter for you from Jack,”

“What would that be?” Travis had never before received a registered letter. In fact he seldom received mail of any description, except for the occasional, how are you love; from his mother while interned at the hostel, containing, if he were lucky, a crisp ten shilling note.

“Very strange,” he added while Bunny opened a small book and asks for a signature.

“I suppose you are Mr. Travis L. Brown,” Bunny made jest.

“I suppose I am at that.”

“Travis L. Brown, what’s the L for?” Bradley curiously asks.

“It is for that’s my business but I don’t know how Jack would have found out, he may have asked my mother, or Roy.”

“I’ll ask Roy,” Bradley suggests.

“You do that.”

“I should ask for identification,” Bunny holds back the envelope.

“Get away with ya’.”

“Oh well I’ll take your word, sign here Mr. Brown.” Bunny demanded most officiously.

Travis obliged and held the envelope up to the light but couldn’t see the contents through the beige coloured container. “It’s thick to be a letter,” Travis admits.

“Aren’t you going to open it?” Bradley complains as Travis shook the envelope close to his ear. Nothing moved within or gave sounds to suggest its contents.

“Now Travis, why would Jack be sending you a registered letter, he can hardly write his name.” Bunny says as she returned her signature book back into a specially marked drawer with the letters P.M.G. painted on its front in large red lettering. She relocked the drawer but left the key on a hook behind the bar.

“Dunno.”

“Open the bloody thing,” Bradley growled impatiently.

“Suppose I should.”

Travis slowly slit the top of the envelope with a knife Bunny had supplied and peered into the slit. His curiosity turned into a broad grin as he withdrew a number of ten pound notes. He counted the money and declared that there was one hundred pounds in total. There was also a letter, written as if in the hand of a child. Travis read the letter aloud.

Travis,

Thank you for sending my stuff on to me. It all came in good condition and all that I needed but most of all, thank you for your honesty for sending my gold and money. I have enclosed a hundred pounds. Thank you again for your honesty, it is rare these days.

Please come and visit me next time you or Bradley, are in Mareeba.

Jack Arnold

45 Byrne Street

Mareeba

Travis gently shook his head in disbelief.

“Why would Jack Arnold be sending you money?” Bunny asks as the two had never disclosed their finding of Jack’s money or gold to anyone.

Travis related what they had found while collection Jack’s belongings and that they had sent it on.

“Well I’ll be, there he was sitting on a small fortune and he still begged for free meals and drinks,” Bunny huffed.

“Then you have it Bunny, in payment for all his freebies.”

“No love, Jack sent it to you,” Bunny softly declined.

“Then it should go to the blacks, they found him.”

“No, it was for you,” the blacks had already been rewarded with booze and Jack’s yard full of junk.

“Here you go.” Travis says as he handed half the money to Bradley.

“I can’t take it, Jack sent it to you.”

“You did half the work so you should have it,” Travis answered while shoving the notes into Bradley’s shirt pocked.

“I can’t,”

“You will” Travis demanded, “or I’ll put it in the bloody fire.”

“Look you two if you don’t want it put it in the charity tin,” Bunny cut across the boy’s argument and rattled a small tin from the bar for that purpose. The boys discontinued their debate and kept their share deep in pocket.

“So that is the end of another exciting chapter in the life of Bullock Creek,” Bunny says as two station hands from Currawong Creek arrived declaring their unquenchable thirst, taking the crowd excluding Bunny and the boys to seven.

“Come on I’ve work to do,” Bradley commenced to leave.

“Hey you lot, who knew old Jack?”

To a man they all admitted so and complained much on his niggardly attitude.

Travis removed one of Jack’s ten pound notes from his pocket and passed it to Bunny.

“Shout the bar on Jack,”

Gary’s stories are about life in Australia as a gay man. Your emails to him are the only payment he receives. Email Gary to let him know you are reading: Gary dot Conder at CastleRoland dot Net

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