Whole Wild World (23 page)

Who were we to argue with his assessment, given he'd know about such things? With due deference for the triumph, a precursor to Hawkey and the America's Cup years later, Brother declared a day off school to celebrate. Like pilgrims gripped by the same idea, half the school turned up to the 11 am session at the new Hoyts in town to watch
Star Wars
, which had opened that week. Just before Christmas the national champions, Coach Fernandes and deputy principal Mick Keeble, along for the ride, set off for mysterious parts of the world, still wild in the mind of a boy fascinated by a slowly spinning globe.

One morning as the MoD was droning on about some serious breach of school rules – boring, hurry up – I glanced at the time on Mop's new watch. One of the brothers had given curly-haired Anthony Khoury that nickname. I never called him anything else after that. Mop had the latest in technology, a digital watch with a red display. With his left arm hanging by his side, I strained to see the time.

The display said LEB. I was startled. LEB. Turning my head 180 degrees I realised the time was 8:37. My Lebanese mates would be 837s from now on, Lebs Downunder. It caught on, perhaps too quickly for Mop, JH, Boots, Kaz, Yaz, Eddy, Chids, Shemoun, Baz and Harpo.

The school split into three broad groups, roughly the same size: Anglo-Irish, Southern Europeans (mainly Italians) and Lebanese, with a few from Egypt and Syria falling into this group. There weren't many Asian kids, one or two scattered in each of the younger years. I felt at ease among all these groups in the playground and classroom. At St John's, affiliations were fluid with overlays of neighbourhood, sporting teams, graded classes and interests.

With no other Croatian in my year, I was a freelance wog. There was little movement in or out of the great mass of my year of a hundred or so students; parents rarely separated, families did not move out of the district. It could have been a stagnant pool, but it wasn't. Lebanese kids brought energy and noise to the school, a lightness and laughter that were infectious. Many of them were related or their parents were from the same villages; they socialised at ‘younger set' gatherings at weekends. No one was excluded from the caravan of fun. They were especially pleased to teach all comers their swear words and pop songs.

Ya habibi! Dang, nana nang nang nang nang nang.

I envied the exuberance, sometimes abandon, they brought to everything. At weekends they occupied a territory of tiered covered seating and standing room behind the goalposts at the southern end of Belmore Sports Ground. It became known as the ‘Wog Stand'. When Canterbury scored the noise in there rattled your ribcage. The view from the Wog Stand was like being a fullback on the field; you saw gaps in defensive patterns, the ball movement across the field, followed the ball tumbling from the sky after a bomb was launched. When a shot for goal was taken from in front, the ball would clear the stand and land in the street or a house behind; sometimes the ball would bobble on the tin roof and roll into the back row of spectators, who'd wrestle for the ball. At the other end of the ground, train drivers slowed to a crawl or stopped to watch the game for a lazy half-minute, part of the service on the Bankstown line.

The club had just taken on the Bulldog insignia. I felt sure it wouldn't hold up after being ‘the Berries' for so long. The Dogs had bite in those years, due to ‘Bullfrog' Moore's canny way of recruiting country talent and building a family culture around the Hughes and Mortimer dynasties. With the Dogs on the rise it meant ‘The Moose' was often at Belmore to call games. Kids hoping to catch a glimpse of him or stir a man famous for temper outbursts would surround his Mazda RX-7 in the carpark.

‘Hey, Mr Mossop, what rhymes with Rex?'

‘Bex, now get lost!'

‘Sex rhymes with Rex!'

‘Hey, Mr Mossop, what rhymes with Moose? Goose!'

‘Get lost, you idiot.'

If you played junior league, a pass got you into the ground for free. Non-wogs sat on the hill or in the reserved seats on the western side. But the Wog Stand was the place to be, vibrant and shape-shifting, a roiling mosh of bodies and emotions. Near the
end of each game we squeezed in with other kids to be close to the fence so that as soon as the hooter sounded we'd be up and over, running to give the players a pat on the back or to get an autograph.

There was a fierce struggle for the four cardboard corner posts – striped black and white, trophies for home – on the try lines. The posts would quickly be in pieces, kids left in tears. Within seconds of the end of a game there were hundreds of children on the field. The first time I saw Wests prop John ‘Dallas' Donnelly up close I was stunned by his physical immensity. In his early twenties, he was coated in cuts and scratches, dirt, white-line powder and sweat, his shorts and jersey torn. There was a dimple on his chin, big as a moon crater. The exposed area between his neck and chest was raw, as if trampled by cattle.

‘Onya Dallas,' I said, patting his soaked number 11 with the faintest of touches. His eyes were groggy, yet fixed forward as if walking the aisle to Communion, inching his way through kids now playing their own games in a festive riot. Footy players didn't hug opponents then; they loved fans and their mates, and we loved them. Later, if I felt crushed after a game or busted in life, I'd think of the battered Dallas, a colossal warship gliding into port between rowboats, edging forward, unbroken, and say to myself, ‘Just keep moving, son', one foot in front of the other.

Kerry Packer tried to buy cricket in 1977 but we broke its spirit in the backyard of the flats. Wally had two younger cousins, Nalitha and Nilunga, still at primary school, but handy cricketers all the same. Skinny Nal's nickname was Larry, after a slippery and lightning-quick Aboriginal winger who played for Balmain. The flats were the first choice ground, fully concreted, a back fence or wooden fruit box serving as the stumps.

We batted youngest to oldest, bowled in the opposite order. This structural defect suited Wally, who dominated with bat and ball. Over time we opted for a Sinhalese solution, courtesy of a stepfather who'd hand-carved a bat an inch wider than regulation. For every new innings one of us would write on the concrete a random sequence, say 2–4–5–1–6–3, covering it with the bat. Players would put their finger or foot on a line that was attached to a hidden number; the bat would be removed and players would take their batting slot, with the number wrangler assigned the remaining position. Scoring was designated off walls: two for a straight drive, four if it was on the full, over any fence was six and out. Players kept their own score and there were no LBWs; run outs were always a source of argument if playing ‘tip and run', as we called it.

‘Not taken! Not taken!' was Larry's signature defence when clearly out, citing an obscure bylaw or indiscretion on the part of the fielder.

His brother Nil, younger but heavier, was a flighty left-hander whose natural hook invited a hit off the hip and over the fence almost every time he batted; some days it was enough to win and the fool who bowled leg side to him then copped an earful.

It was chaotic, but more fun, when we had seven or eight players, enough for a wicket keeper and a slip, and a ring of fielders. Just beyond slips for a right-hander there was an abandoned VW bug, once green, dusty in and out. The car reeked of mildew, oil and decay, not the worst smelling thing in our street. It served as the waiting area for batsmen if the playing conditions required fewer fielders. It was also a cone of silence for Wally and me when the traffic and kid noise was excessive. The car belonged to the boys' stepfather Don, but he was often away. It had been there so long any concept of ownership had been extinguished; it may as well have been dumped in a canal. The VW was used and abused, equally. As a bowler released the
ball, the next man in could pull the car's squeaky hand brake to distract the batsman.

‘Not taken. NOT TAKEN!'

Perhaps it was boredom or the battles in Packer's Super Tests between Australia and the West Indies, who can say for sure. One day we decided to play white guys against black guys. Wally, Larry and Nil versus me, Frank and a younger boy called Tim, the only non-wog in our repertory.

Wally bowled fearsomely. Every dismissal was in dispute. The sledging had a nasty edge. The fun had gone out of the game, replaced by a racial pissing contest. When I was batting Larry got in close, mid-pitch with Wally bowling. Larry spread his legs, stuck his arm under his bony bum, made a fist under his crotch and wiggled his thumb. Wally sent down a Yorker. I was clean bowled.

‘Not taken.' Did I mention I hated getting out?

‘Fuck off.' That I also had a tendency to swear and wave my arms? ‘Larry fucking put me off. Fuck off.'

The end could not come quickly enough. There were many hours left in the day but everyone retreated, head down, to his own home. The flats' backyard returned to the usual occupants, little kids on dinkies who did not go to school.

A few days later I popped my head over the fence at lunch-time, hoping for some cricket. There was preschooler Anesti, a Greek kid, sitting on top of the VW. He could only have been aged three or four and was wearing a white singlet with a dash of embroidery. Anesti was playing not only by – but with – himself. Normally he had a broad smile that lit up the space he was in. Now, his face was intent as he furiously worked at the fleshy stump in his right hand. It was hot and he had attracted the attention of a fly. Anesti worked the control stick like a veteran pilot. This ace was hoping to coordinate a near impossible paradox: a take-off (for him) and a landing (for the insect). He rolled
his stout rod, dribbled more spit onto it to attract the bug and actually succeeded in getting the fly on deck more than once. Entranced, he was a surgeon looking through a microscope, an artist at the easel. Who knew such delight, and all-round dexterity, were possible?

‘Anesti!' It was his older brother, Arthur, shattering the bliss. ‘
Stamatiste tora
.' Stop it now.

Arthur had been sent to fetch him. He used the words
malakas
, Mama and Papa in rapid fire. I got the drift. Anesti pulled up his shorts. He climbed down from the car via the hood, sliding over a wheel arch, and skipped away. Like the cricket, play had been abandoned. The music stopped; it would take a few weeks before we found our rhythm again.

Anesti's radiant face told me he'd never miss a beat. Anesti means risen in Greek. I looked it up.

11

Wombles

Encyclopaedia Britannica
(1768) was too revered for reading in the dunny, too hefty for bed.
Britannica
held the whole wild world in twenty-four volumes (1: A–Anstey, 23: Vietnam– Zworykin, 24: Index & Atlas). But publishers came up with the perfect one-volume compendium for a nosy, fact-hungry fourteen-year-old: the
Book of Lists
. The editors of
Lists
boiled off the nutritional value of knowledge, like Mama did with veggies, and served up the strangeness of the planet as remember-able hors d'oeuvres. The print was smudged, the paper cheap, pictures woefully inadequate. But I spent more time with
Lists
than I did with the Bible – although that's not a fair comparator for someone living through a Catholic school in those days. There were sections on movies, literature, history, nature, sex and many more. This was no nerdy compilation of worthy facts but stuff to propel you through life, around a campfire, for instance, or while sitting in the gutter on a Thursday night.
Lists
marked you as a person of discernment and wit.

We had trudged through sex education (smuggled in under the personal development banner) during evening sessions at St Therese's hall in Lakemba. The MoD – easing off on the discipline and emphasising the master part of his title – had incorporated mechanical sex talk into religion. We asked him questions about the rhythm method of contraception and invented
complicated ‘what if ' scenarios to keep him from straying back to God; to my mind he seemed less an expert than my mate David with the pornographic memory in Year Four, and nowhere near as captivating.