Hi Tinny,
I was trying to remember her name, but it's thirty eight years ago and the memory is shedding some unimportant info. Now ask me the name of the chicks I lusted after and I can help ya.
The food at the DCA mess was bloody good as were the inmates.
There were a few non DCA blow ins, as the joint always had a few spare rooms while I was there.
I copped out with the neighbours each side of me in my donga.
One side was a moody slightly built, good Catholic, Italian who was "suffering" from the lack of company of suitable Italian lady friends and having been up there too long was “doing with” second best… Extremely honourably and respectfully I must say.
I think he was a carpenter and he WAS a very accomplished artist ... he showed me portraits he'd painted of a "local lady friend" and they were photographic standard.
He was one of those people who sleep very lightly and can get quite agitated if woken.
I was tryin' me luck with a number of the new Ansett Hosties as they joined the company and my room seemed like the right place after lashin' out, shoutin' 'em to the pictures.
A little bit of romantic music (to mask the moans if I was "lucky") a glass of Buka Meri each and my bed the only place to rest... you know the situation.
Well the donga quivering as we crept up the stairs was probably enough to wake the Catholic.
Whispering and the splosh of rum into glasses indicated what I was up to and would stoke the fires in his belly and stir up resentment.
Lying on his back with his arms crossed on his chest like the good Nuns taught him back in his childhood; he would be subject to excruciating torment of not quite hearing what we were up to, but his sinful little mind envisaged the same debauchery mine was hoping for, and in the end, to save the honour of the young lady AND to keep our souls from the everlasting fires of Hell, he 'd explode from his room and either hammer on my door or jump up and down on the veranda let fly with a torrent of Italian, or, maybe it was English.
This stuffed him right up because it riled "Old Jack " on the other side of me.
Jack was one of those coves who'd come up, not long after the war and knew the value of rum to ward off Malaria.
Jack was unmarried, so lived in the mess.
He'd sit on his bed every evening, wardin' off malaria and havin' conversations with disagreeable people wot wasn't there.
These perpetrators had done nasty things and Jack would tell 'em what he was gonna do to 'em and most of it was violent.
Grey headed old Jack would ramble on for hours, sittin' one leg cocked over the other on the side of his bed, elbow resting on his thigh and the glass listing dangerously, havin' this one sided argument in his shorts, shirt and long white sox which always remained up, until one of his sides gave out and he'd sag over and pass out. There he’d remain till disturbed by daylight, a raging thirst, or, loud noises. (Funnily, when a beaut gourier really shook the joint as I waited on the veranda for my pre-dawn pick up one morning, Jack didn't come out of HIS room... I suppose it was none of the above.
The “Mick”! on evenings of my “at homes” however, did wake old Jack with his jumpin' up and down and God punished him by lettin' old Jack resume his tirade on imaginary blokes wot was goin' ter be bleedin' pretty soon.
This was good for our entertainment as the chicks would start giggling, which would set the migrant off even more. He was silent but you could feel the shaking of his rage through the floor or, was it perhaps his kneeling and "prayin' in front of a holy picture".
He got the sh**s with me big time and "punished" me by “invisiblising” me.
I got ignored.
Bein' sent to Coventry by one bloke in a mess of about thirty who didn't know, was a bit ineffectual.
I retaliated in the silent vendetta by nickin’ into the mess before mealtime and sittin’ in HIS chair.
He was one of those blokes who were punctual and ALWAYS sat in “his chair”… the rest of the inmates just sat anywhere.
Good thing he was a “good Catholic” or I mighta landed up with a paint brush between my ribs.