Open Writing

It was one of those ‘Would you believe this?’ type of programmes on the telly. The story told us that a one-armed oarsman was training to row across Bass Strait to Tasmania. They didn’t show us any pictures.

As a writer about trivia, this story intrigued me. The fact that he was training in secret at Alice Springs, increased my curiosity. If they said he was going to row round the world I could have believed it. That’s what I thought one-armed oarsmen did: go round and round.

Because I wanted to talk to this unusual oarsman I had found myself sharing a dingy hotel room, in the centre of the country, with cockroaches and no toilet paper.

My first task was to find this clever oarsman. As he had chosen to train in the Alice, I figured he wanted some obscurity. I dunno why. Perhaps he thought some other one-armed rower might beat him to Tassie. I’m still prepared to bet someone will be growing pineapples in the Antarctic before a one-armed man rows across Bass Strait.

Anyhow, I didn’t march into the bar and ask if anyone knew where I could find this bloke. I wandered up to the bar, shooed away a couple of blowies from a wet circle of beer, and ordered myself a glass of Chardonnay. I thought it best to establish, right from the start, that I had some class.

A bloke wearing green shorts and a blue singlet, with an anchor tattooed on his left ear and a mobile phone clipped to his belt, sauntered up and straddled a stool next to me.

‘I like ya jacket’ he grinned, showing only two front teeth, like goal posts in an empty football ground. I mused for a moment about how he’d go eating a pickled onion. Anyone close by could get a vinegar spray, I reckoned.

I was wearing the jacket my niece made for me, from some leftovers, she bought at an Op.Shop. It was colourful. The main colours were blue and yellow with red and white and green sleeves. In some lights, it looked like the flag of the Seychelles. When I wore it with my R.M. Martin boots, I looked as flash as a rat with a gold tooth. It was certainly a conversation starter.

‘You new round here?’ asked my local crony. ‘My mates call me Nerdy. They don’t know my real name is Nigel.’

‘My name’s Randolph. My mates call me Randy. Yeah, I’m on holidays.’

‘I’d stick to Randolph up here, if I were you. They’re a funny mob round these parts.’

‘Thanks for the tip. I’ve had few try to take the mickey when I told them I was Randy. I came here because I saw a telly show about a one-armed oarsman who was training up here to row to Tasmania.’

‘I saw that, too. It was about ‘One-eyed Olsen’. Some of the boys around town reckon they’re gunna clean up when he does it. There are plenty of bookies who reckon he won’t make it.’

‘Hang about,’ I said. ‘The telly story said one-armed not one-eyed.’

‘He’s got both,’ said Nerdy, leaving me more confused.

‘Got both what?’

‘Both one-arm and one-eye.’ Nerdy looked at me as though I was slow on the uptake. ‘Yair, One-eared Richo is training him out at the waterhole behind the two-up school.’

‘Take a lot of training,’ I suggested. ‘What do you do in town, Nerdy?’

‘I make Pak-a-Poos, portable dunnies. They’re popular because they fold down flat and don’t take any room in your boot. There’s a big demand for them out here. Sometimes you can travel for hours and not see a dunny. They’re very comfortable. Some of my clients like to sit on them in the bush and swat dunny budgies.’

I was keen to meet one-eyed Olsen but I didn’t want to appear too anxious to the locals. It was obvious they wanted to spring their boy on an unsuspecting world. I wouldn’t be welcome if they knew I intended to write a magazine article about him.

I said to Nerdy, ‘ I’d like to go to the two-up one night: could you take me?’

Nerdy’s eyes began to twitch and he drained his beer. ‘Not on yer life, mate.’

‘Have another drink.’ I indicated to the barman to fill up both our glasses again.

‘Last time I was out there, I lost me jacket,’ Nerdy volunteered. He seemed to have a thing about jackets.

‘Get a taxi. They all know where the game is.’

I was now getting to the mellow end of my glass of Chardonnay, so this sounded like a good idea. I hailed a cab with its front fender painted with primer. I climbed in beside the driver and asked, with authority, ‘Take me to the game, please.’

The driver stared at me, then at my Seychelles coat, and grunted, ‘You got a yellow card?’

‘No. What’s that?’

‘You can’t get into the game without the yellow card. You gotta get one from two-fingers Munro. He lives in the shed behind the police station. It’s part of the security system,’ the taxi driver informed me.

Without stopping to ponder why so many blokes round these parts were missing necessary body parts, I decided to gamble everything and tell the driver where I really wanted to go. It was a ‘Hail Mary’ shot.

‘It’s not the two-up school I want, actually, but the waterhole behind the gambling joint. I want to meet the bloke who rows with one-arm.’

‘Oh. One-ear Richo doesn’t like onlookers at training. There’s a rumour that a reporter from Sydney finished up as croc bait for trying to talk to one-arm Olsen. Myself, I reckon he just took off after Richo threatened him. Even One-ear’s best mates would never say he was subtle.’

I decided, there and then, I could write the story without talking to one-arm Olsen. My plan had been the ultimate trivial pursuit. It had become plain to me, that stories I’d heard about an ‘Alice Mob’ were probably true, and that I would have had to deal with some characters fairly high on the food chain in that group.

Returning to the hotel room, I stretched out on the bed and began to write the story, in my head. For some reason, my mind kept drifting off to consider the possibility of breeding a racing pigeon with three wings. I felt sure One-ear Richo would be interested in such a unique bird.

Back in Melbourne, even before I had written my expose¢,a small paragraph on the sport pages of the morning paper caught my eyes. Rower Gives Up read the small headline.

The story said that the one-armed rower who intended to tackle Bass Strait had withdrawn from the attempt. He intended to return to his first sporting love...

Archery