Die, Skippy, Die

So I went to see about the new job. It wasn't a done deal like I thought it was - when the fella asked if I was interested, I didn't realise that he was interviewing a few blokes. Oops. So anyway, the place is right next door to Cubbie Station (of Tony Eastley stupid story fame), right up the road from Hebel. Haven't been to Hebel in about fifteen years or so. Today kiddies, I'm going to tell you about something that happened to me the other side of Hebel, in 1987. It was known as The Great Crash...

 

Back then, I was living in Lightning Ridge, opal mining and losing the arse out of my pants. In true opal miner tradition I was living in a tin shed with a dirt floor, no water, no electricity, no nothin'. Every now and then I would get a call for help from somebody who was having a spot of mechanical trouble or who just needed a hand. One of these calls came from a bloke who had a dirt-bike which was playing up on him. It was a minor problem and didn't take long to repair, but while I was in the process of fixing it, another fella asked if I would give him a hand to muster some sheep.

Use of the dirt bike was approved, so I gave it a go. Big paddocks (5000 acres+ per paddock) +  big mob of sheep = big fun. It only took a day to clear the paddock and put the mob two paddocks over so we had beers after. Riding home again late that night, at about 100kph on the Castlereagh Highway, I was hit by a kangaroo. Only a little one, the bugger jumped over the table drain straight into my front wheel, knocking it out from underneath me. Bear in mind I was wearing the approved sheep mustering wear: shorts, work shirt and boots. You will note that there is no helmet in that inventory. It took me years to replicate the sound my head made when it hit the bitumen, but in 1996, at the Calliope folk museum I managed it when I hit a blacksmith's anvil with a block of red-gum.

I must have blacked out for a second as the next thing I can remember is laying face down, watching the trees slide up-wards, out of my vision. Didn't take too long to work out that I was still sliding, feet first, down the road.  I looked up and the bike was sliding as well, faster than I was. I raised myself up on my right arm and fended the bike off. I was nearly stopped by then anyway.

 I got up and caught my breath, seeing which bits I could move and which bits were out of action. Surprisingly enough, I guess, everything seemed to do what I wanted it to. I had a look at Skippy; he wasn't going to be rescuing Sonny any time soon. I had a look at the bike, it seemed to be in one piece, so I stood it up. That was a lot harder than it normally was. I sat on it and had a rest for a while. I had blood running down my face and dripping off my nose. Actually, dripping isn't the right word; it was streaming off, not breaking up into drops before it hit the tank of the bike.

This was a bit disconcerting when it sank in through the fog. "I'd better get back to town." I thought, so I gave the bike a kick. Big mistake. I've had my legs held by two blokes while a third one kicked me in the nuts (long story) and it didn't hurt as bad as kicking that bike did. I dropped the bike again as I fell over and didn't do much but whimper and feel sorry for myself for a while. When I was able, I stood up and hobbled around for a while; my leg was hurting like a bitch by then, similar quantities of blood spurting out of my knee as my scone. I went over for another look at Skippy, then kicked him a few times (left foot). He was already dead, but I felt a little better afterward.

I went back over to the bike, picked it up and had another rest on it. When I got my breath back, I had a go at roll-starting it, using the camber of the road as a slope. I tried about fifty-five thousand times - she no go. In the end I pushed the bike off the road and hid it behind some bushes and started to walk back to town. I was pretty tired by then, operating on auto-pilot. I kept dozing off as I was walking, whenever I woke up I had to open my eyes with my fingers as the blood started to dry over them. When I did get them open, each time I looked around to find myself off in the scrub on the right-hand side of the road. I really just wanted to lay down and go to sleep, but I was scared that if I did a) I wouldn't wake up and b) nobody would ever find me. So I kept walking.

After a while I felt somebody putting me in their car. I don't know if I was still walking by this stage or not. The local copper had picked me up, at first he assumed I was a drunk, until he got closer. He asked me where I was headed. I told him I was going back to the Ridge. "Not that way, you're not. Another few hours and you could have made Goodooga, I s'pose."

He thought it was funny, anyway. He took me back to the Bush Nursing Hospital for a bit of a check-up. There was no doctor resident in the Ridge in those days, so one of the nurses had a look at me. She wanted to get the helicopter to airlift me to Dubbo or Sydney, but there was some reason why that couldn't happen, don't have any idea what it is, though. By this stage I had a hangover that would kill a drover's dog on top of the other, comparatively minor problems. They couldn't give me any drugs or anything to drink because of my head injuries so I just had to put up with it. Eventually they got a conventional ambulance to take me to Walgett, where I was changed over to another ambulance - apparently I was injured severely enough to be airlifted, but not so severely that the ambulance was allowed to stray too far from home. Same again at Coonamble, except that I had whinged enough all the way from Walgett that they radioed ahead and arranged for me to have a cup of ice-cubes, which I enjoyed immensely. (Do you know hard it was to avoid saying "cool" then?)

I was starting to cramp up by then, too; I had gravel rash up both my arms and legs as well as the head injuries, so I was laying on my back with my arms and legs in the air like somebody doing a 'dead-dog' impression in an attempt to avoid touching anything.When we did get to Dubbo they took me to Intensive care where they cut my clothes off me, washed me down a bit, then shipped me off to X=ray. They took a couple of shots of my arms and legs ans a side shot of my head before they moved the machine to take a front on shot of my head. I could see my head in the reflection on the front of the machine. I shit myself. I couldn't see my right eye as a big chunk of my forehead was hanging down over it. I could, however, see about six square inches of my skull.

To cut a long story short, I ended up with about forty stitches to my right ankle, about sixty to my right knee (plus some sort of tricko internal stitch job to the tendons or something. I was full of pethidine at the time and wasn't paying much attention), about fifty stitches to my right elbow, a couple of broken fingers (one with the nail ripped off) and about a hundred and fifty stitches to my face.

You will note that I use the word 'about' quite frequently. That's because the doctor who put them in didn't keep a count and they left them in a day too long, plus I had been too active in the meantime which caused them to bleed - and scab over, so the nurses didn't keep a count when they took them out either. It took them four hours in the morning to take them out of my leg and arm, plus about four hours in the afternoon to take them out of my face. Can't complain about the quality of the sewing on my scone, though, I'm not much uglier than I was before. I've got a little bump on my brow, right between my eyes, which wasn't there. Most people don't notice any scarring which remains these days, unless I've been exerting myself on a hot day.

So now I don't exert myself.