how good is this? blokes who can talk about Billy now without restraint. who in fact knew the old curmudgeon far better than those such as i whose only personal reminisce can be of a few chance encounters over a dinner here or a fuel stop there, and maybe a few drinks (actually, I can't t recall that Bill was a drinker at all) . We shared a table one night in a marque at a big two day airshow the air force put on at RAAF Richmond. Airlines of Tas ran a Heron up there with father (KS) and son (DS) in the wheelhouse . . (What a merry throng we were. I have a bunch of photos taken in that packed Heron going up and coming back) Bill was in full flight that night as far as wanting a ready ear to hear of his many run ins with the despised traps, as he called them. His story about flying his fourteen year old daughter to the mainland for medical treatment , picking up a few sacks of MB on the way back, then being pulled over at Smithton , having his cargo tipped out, torn apart, searched on suspicion of drugs , then strip searching both he and daughter, had me, to put it mildly, slack-jawed in disbelief. . (When Bill launched into a long involved story you knew you were in the company of an inveterate yarn spinner, one who could warm to his tale like a Henry Lawson character steeped in bush lore) .
One thing I do remember clearly. He said that he was writing it all down. He said that when the time came, maybe he'd be dead, but when the time came , one person in particular who had been the instigator of much of his grief , would finally be brought to brook.. A bearer of false witness, is what he said. His quiet, bitter, smouldering angst was almost palpable,. .
On the strength of what he recounted that night, I could name names. I could be party to a campaign to clear formally the name and reputation of the man. Would he want that ? Would he like the muck-raking that would ensue were people required to speak under oath? Bush- lawyer that he was, maybe so. What a can of worms, you can be sure, would be opened. The depth of bitter hatreds, and rancour, that seem to be a feature of much of Tasmanian life, to generalise , is something more extreme than perhaps is the case more broadly throughout Australia . The late Margaret Scott, such an astute observer of people and society , characterised it as an extreme polarisation. I got to know Margaret pretty well in the years I was based at Port Arthur on the Maules of the late T.M. (of whom I can only speak with some bitterness , I have to say. The planes were not his anyway, They were paid for by his brother-in-law, IW, in Sydney.
Getting back to the dear Margaret though. She had a beautiful analogy for Tasmanian life , in that when she was making jam, the little muslin bag through which the fruit would slowly strain into the bowl beneath , reminded her of the mainland and the island state beneath , , that is the bottle containing the fruit was the mainland, and the bag beneath being vaguely in the shape of Tasmania, meant for her that all the essence was concentrated in this bag . I got it pretty quickly. She did not have to elaborate this time for Mister Slow , on her analogy.
When I asked Bill at that dinner what he would do with the book he was writing he said something to the effect that one or two persons he had put in there would one day want to turn in their graves. He also said it could not be published during his lifetime.
Last edited by Fantome; 30th Jul 2016 at 21:31.