The Red Heart

I lived in Alice Springs for about five years. I liked it. If it wasn't for the fact that it is too far to anywhere else - and I could travel for five or six hours north or south redlining in top gear without scraping the pegs; I'd still live there. It was a very friendly place and you could get pretty much anything done for a carton of VB.

Four eggs ample, the downline from the powerline to my workshop burnt out for some reason. The official cost for replacement was roughly $3000, with a wait of about three weeks, or two days if it was an emergency. A mate of mine was an electrical contractor and he was down the road with a(n?) NTEC crew putting a downline in to a new factory. One carton of beer and two hours later the NTEC crew and mate had supplied, fitted and tested the new downline.

I worked in various industries while I was there; used cars, tourism, foodservice among them. I also ran a small mechanical workshop in a black market sort of way. I specialised in keeping old bombs going. Mainly for backpackers, but I also like to think of myself as something of a pioneer in teaching aboriginal people that motor-cars do not have to be a short-term, disposable item.

Up until the mid to late eighties the majority of vehicles owned by aboriginal people in the Centre were driven 'til they dropped, having only minimal (but sometimes ingenious) repairs or maintenance. When they stopped forever, they were left where they died, all desired personal effects removed and the family wandered into town for another one.

"Here's a market." I thought, and gradually built up quite a large clientele of repeat aboriginal customers. As is natural, a lot of them deserted me for larger, more impressive operations, but I didn't care; I was making a reasonable living, dealing with customers whom I liked. I gave it away when the lease ran out and no other reasonably priced, suitable premises could be found. Also, going 'straight' would have meant too much paperwork.

At this time, I inherited a red cattle dog who was fairly well nutso. He was two years old and had never been off a chain. He stayed on the chain during the day after he came to live with me as I had to leave the gates open, but I let him off at night. As soon as I let him off he would run around the perimeter fence at about 90% of the speed of light. He looked like that bloke on his old Indian doing the wall of death. I'd go inside to watch a bit of telly and let him run around. After about ten minutes he would come barreling through the door and slide to a halt in front of me and put his head in my lap for a bit of a scritch.

Five minutes of scritching and he would take himself outside for guard duty. Best guard dog I ever had. Never barked at passing cars or pedestrians, always barked whenever anybody touched the fence or whenever a group loitered too long.

He was a bugger of a dog to take for a walk, though, I used a choker chain on him and still his front legs didn't touch the ground for the first fifteen minutes.

Every now and then I would grab a mate or two and take the dog camping. We'd go out into the desert somewhere and let the dog out. We'd go home when the dog came back. Sometimes it was overnight, sometimes it was three or four days. Whenever he came back to camp he'd be covered in burrs and dirt and blood, quite often his own blood, and he'd be as happy as a pig in shit.

I was heading back into town after one of those trips when I spotted an old Toyota Landcruiser ute about a hundred metres off the side of the road. It was missing a back wheel and had tarps hanging down from the tray to make a humpy under the back. There was a small fire behind it with an old black man sitting near it. I walked over to him "Ai, Tchilpi."

"Ai." he replied.

"You good?"

"Ai."

"Flat tyre."

"Ai."

"No spare?"

"Him flat, too."

"Somebody come?"

"Ai."

"Got tucker? Water?"

"Ai."

So we left him there and continued towards town. About four kilometres down the road we caught up with a six or seven year old girl wheeling along a Toyota tyre. We piled her in the back and kept going. Two kilometres later we caught up with her nine year old brother and another wheel. Three kilometres later was mum and wheel. We dropped them off at Hermansburg and kept going.

Dunno how they got back.