Clay had provided me with a batch of CDs not to my taste-classical and jazz instrumentals, not even an aria or two. Music needs words to my mind, but I tried a few before switching off and tuning in to Radio National at news time. A congestion tax for the CBD was being debated-okay by me. Anyone who takes a car to within a couple of clicks of the city deserves to pay.
It wasn’t a problem here where we picked up the Great Western Highway and followed it to the Bathurst Road exit. The land rose, the air cooled and I was grateful for the Pajero’s heating system. We ran into a brief but severe rainstorm and the wipers coped welclass="underline" heating and effective wipers both needed urgent attention on my Falcon.
I was impressed by the discipline of my co-drivers. No macho stuff. When cowboys wanted to pass they were permitted, and when the truck laboured a bit on the hills it was allowed to fall behind and then the convoy slowed almost imperceptibly to let it catch up. Give him his due, St James apparently had no need to be at the head of his troops. I was happy to stay more or less in the middle position. I amused myself by memorising the registration plates of the truck and several of the other vehicles-for no good reason, just staying in practice.
After we bypassed Bathurst my Clay-supplied mobile rang. It was St James, who’d evidently been given the number by Clay, something he hadn’t told me.
‘Any bladder pressure, Mr Hardy?’
‘I went before I came.’
He didn’t laugh. ‘Is that a no?’
‘Yes, that’s a no.’
I heard him draw in an exasperated breath, but he maintained control. ‘Good man!’
He rang off. A concerned commander, or testing my mettle? I shouldn’t have needled him but I couldn’t help it. Serious soldiering has my respect; play-actors should have a sense of humour.
We went off the paved road onto gravel and then to a dirt track winding through thick bush. Climbing and getting colder. A brief stop for a gate to be opened, and then it was over a cattle grid and onto a track that was wider than the previous one and had recently been graded. The bush was still thick, but I could see open patches through the trees. A bridge over a moderately large stream appeared to be new and solid. Then the convoy slowed, took a bend, and I came in sight of what St James probably referred to as HQ, or perhaps the operational base, with an electronically operated gate.
The farmhouse in the middle of the enclosed space was sandstone and old with a bullnose verandah running around three sides. It was long and low and three chimneys were smoking. There was a cement parking space for the vehicles to one side and four old-style Nissan huts arranged in a square around a gravel area with a flagpole in its centre. No grass, no garden except a small patch around the base of the flagpole. Nothing frivolous.
Uh-oh, I thought, square bashing and hard beds in unheated huts. Took me back and not to where I wanted to go. I determined to insist on my civilian status. I fancied being inside the house, nestled up to a fire with a drink in hand.
I parked the Pajero as far as I could from the other vehicles, got out and used Clay’s camera to take a few pictures of the scene. All of a sudden the site had assumed a military aspect despite the disparate character of the vehicles-the Australian flag, flying bravely above another carrying a DTS logo, in a light, chilly breeze, and the fatigues and berets being worn by the personnel did the trick.
St James approached me. ‘Should have asked permission, Hardy,’ he said.
He was annoyed enough to drop the Mister. ‘Sorry, Leader,’ I said. ‘I meant no harm.’
‘Hope not. Ask next time. You’ll be quartered in the house. Take your gear in and one of my chaps’ll show you to your room.’
Suited me. I almost saluted. I gathered together the stuff Clay had provided and my own equipment and organised it into a portable load. I spent longer at the task than needed, and used the time to inspect the NCOs and trainees as they got organised. I was more than fifty metres away and couldn’t be quite sure I’d spotted Gary Pearson. The code names were simply colours with a numeral, red 1, blue 2, yellow, etc. Pearson could’ve been one of three big blokes with a similar build.
As expected, the trainees looked young-early twenties or younger-and the NCOs were older. To my surprise, two of them had dark faces. Three or four of the trainees didn’t look like Anglo-Celts either, but they all seemed dead keen. They fell in smartly and were marched off towards the Nissan huts with duffel bags on their square shoulders.
I took my stuff to the house-laptop slung from one shoulder, overnight bag from the other, carrying other items. Just before I mounted the steps to the verandah, I looked around and experienced an odd sensation that stayed with me, although it meant nothing at all-I was the only man in sight not wearing headgear. Seriously undressed in military terms.
The big man who met me on the verandah wore a beret and a buttoned-up white Nehru-type jacket, with black trousers tucked into combat boots. Not quite a steward, not quite a soldier, but not far off either.
Over the next three days I spent some time participating in the trainees’ activities. I had a comfortable bed in a warm room while they slept in bunks in the huts with kerosene heaters that didn’t do much against the cold. I ate the same nutritious food as them but served motel-style in my room. I attended without encouragement one of St James’s lectures on courage and character, and that was enough.
I went on a couple of the route marches and didn’t fall behind, although I was carrying only a light backpack while they were heavily laden. A couple of trainees who finished well behind were given mild kitchen punishment duties. I passed on fording the waist-deep stream with equipment held up high above my head. Two trainees who fell into the water were roundly abused by the NCOs.
On the fourth day the trainees were mustered for shooting practice and I went along. I’d been permitted to take photographs up to then, but St James banned the camera for this exercise.
‘Might give your readers the wrong idea,’ he said. ‘You can write whatever you like, but pictures speak louder and sometimes more ambiguously than words.’
Nicely put. They marched, I walked, to a shooting site that had been constructed by bulldozers. A chute with sides about six metres high had been built with a solid earth wall at least twice that height fifty or sixty metres distant. Targets were arranged on the wall that sloped back slightly so that ricochets and deflections would be directed away from the shooters. There were six shooting stalls, all equipped with benches holding earmuffs, ammunition and semiautomatic rifles.
It had taken a while to identify Gary Pearson. The trainees wore their hats pulled down and seemed to delight in keeping their combat camouflage paint on, but I had him now and watched him closely. He appeared to be one of the keenest and most accomplished of the trainees- smartly turned out at all times, an early finisher in the marches, first or second man across the stream, beating a couple of the NCOs who’d had a head start. Now he was selected as one of the first batch of shooters.
St James took me aside. ‘In case you’re wondering, Hardy, DTS is registered as a gun club. In any case, this is private property.’
‘Really? I meant to ask. How many acres?’
‘About a hundred and fifty hectares.’
One for him.
A volley of shots sounded.
‘I hope you’re not a pacifist.’
‘Not me,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t have the courage.’
One for me, maybe.
The shooting continued and there are few more boring things to watch and listen to-motor racing, perhaps. The targets were human silhouettes of various shapes, sizes and colours. After a while the bullets had shredded them into unrecognisable tatters. One of the dark NCOs, still known to me only as number three, announced that Pearson had scored more direct and well-placed hits than any of the others. He clapped the young man on the back and had to reach up to do it, being ten centimetres shorter.