The Biggest Croc I Ever Saw Part 2-- The Letter

To get this story going properly, I’d have to fill you in on a whole marble bag full of cat eyes. Like all of life’s occurrences, there is always a back story that helps one understand the circumstances in which a person finds him or herself.

I was thinking about how to do that here, and to be honest with you, “oh lordy am I feeling way too lazy to bring you all up to speed!”

I rode a bicycle from Sydney to Cairns, once, back in about 1985. I had a girlfriend who was Japanese waiting for me when I got there. I was young and full of adventure, and I did my best to make sure she knew I was young and full of adventure.

I was also broke.

And after three weeks of hanging out on a beach just north of Cairns, living with Hiroko and sharing a house with a friend of mine I met in Tokyo- an Australian architect who owned the beach house and was kind enough to rent us a room- I got antsy and knew I needed to go find a job.

I was on a tourist visa, which meant “construction” was the place for me to look, and I hopped on my bike and rode north all the way up to Cooketown, and then turned around and made a stop in Port Douglas on the way back where I knew a five-star Sheraton Hotel was slated to begin construction. I rode my bicycle up to the office that had been set up to begin the work, and pulled the bicycle shorts out of the crack of my ass as I clacked into the office in my bicycle shoes, and came face to face with a woman who seemed intrigued by my spandex shorts.

“I was wondering if you were hiring yet for the hotel?”

“Not yet. We don’t start for another four months. Come back then.”

“Rightio.”

And that was that.

I had pinned a lot of hope on getting work on this hotel project, and did not have a plan B. My girlfriend was working as a waitress in a Japanese Sushi restaurant in downtown Cairns, but, you know... a guy has to make his own hay and I was not about to lay on the beach and make her feed me.

So I got back on my bike and started back to Cairns.

Now if you don’t know me, you need to know one thing. I have always been a lucky bastard. I call it Pure Dumb Luck (something my father coined) and label it “PDL”. I trust in it, to this day, to make sure I am always comfortable and have plenty of beer when I want/need it.

I was broke. I needed a construction job. I was heading back down south to Cairns and a station wagon pulled over and a young bloke asked me if I felt like riding in a car for a bit.

He seemed just honestly kind and friendly so I accepted the ride, and within ten minutes of conversing he had adopted my plight as his and he started thinking.

“You know, there is a bloke I know who is looking for guys up in the gulf. His last name is Spencer. You can probably look up his wife’s number in the book. She still lives in Port Douglas.”

I wrote down “Spencer” on my hand in ink and when we were back along the northern beaches of Cairns, the young man dropped me off.

The next day, I had located Mrs. Spencer’s number and had given her a call. She was polite but stand-offish, and not very helpful on the phone.

“Yeah, he’s up there alright. You can mail him if you’d like, but I won’t give out his phone number.”

I thanked her and sat down with a pen and paper, and wrote out the first, last, and best introductory/job-seeking letter I have ever written. I mailed it off and went back out to wind surf on the beach. Little did I know the tumultuous imposition that letter caused our Dear Mr. Spencer,

I wish I had a copy of that letter to this day.

I don’t.

I wish I could reread what it was that I had written that had been so damaging to poor Mr. Spencer’s happiness. because it was such a good letter. It was so good, in fact, that it kept a man from getting any goods and services from his girlfriend for over three weeks, with nightly pleading going on deaf ears and tempers starting to rise. Yes. It was that good of a letter, apparently. I wish I could remember what I said.

I DO remember it mentioned that I was a Yank, that I was tall and very fit and a good worker with lots of construction skills under my belt at an early age. I remember saying something about having just come from Japan, and a bit about South East Asia and riding a bicycle from Sydney up the coast. I remember being very cordial and as articulate as I was able. I remember sending the letter off not being very hopeful, and waiting over three weeks for a response.

The phone call I got was from Rosco Spencer himself. He was gruff on the phone, like his wife. He told me little. He said if I wanted a job, I had to be at the airport at 7 am the next morning, and I was to meet a man named Jeffry who was to fly me and some equipment up to Weipa. He asked if I knew where the hell Weipa was. I said “no”, but that it didn’t matter. I was ready to work and if he needed me, I would come and do my best.

I Told Hiroko I got a job and she was excited until I told her where. We looked up Weipa on a map. Holy Crap! It was in the middle of nowhere.

The next morning found me sitting in a six-seater over-loaded with bolts and hangers and brackets and all sorts of construction fasteners. The pilot seemed unworried so I didn’t worry, and we were soon flying north- just the two of us and a bunch of rattling metal- over the Daintree area where we had to circle to gain altitude, avoiding the controlled air space marked boldly on the aviation map. I can’t remember now, but for some reason, there was a circled area over nothing in particular the Australian government didn’t want civilian planes to fly over. Something military, if I remember right. We flew around it.

We flew at about 4,000 feet, following a road that apparently went to Weipa. There was virtually nothing between civilization and Weipa along that road, except for a few huge cattle stations and a pub. It was almost all scrub and scrub trees and orange dirt and no place to land except for the road itself. I hoped we didn't have to land on the road itself. I remember thinking that.

I flew some as a kid. Pops was a pilot, and kept a small plane license current by taking us up every now and then and doing touch and goes at our local airport. I talked about flying with Jeffrey as he flew, and we became reasonable friends in the almost three hour period we flew together.

When we landed, it was a different ordeal. Rosco met us at the airport and was short and punchy and mean to me straight off. I had done nothing to him but to simply ask for a job, but he treated me like dirt and I found myself in a small, faraway town in the middle of nowhere trying to deflect angry asperity and barked orders while I tried to find my bearings. Weipa was a mining town in the middle of nowhere. It was hot, humid, dusty, and had the feeling of the old west (the one I imagined). Rosco was a big man- too big to stand nose to nose with unless backed into an absolute corner- and I was a Yank. I did what he asked of me without complaining, and he drove me to the jobsite and told me to clean it all up, basically tossing me and my bag out of the car and then driving off in a huff with Jeffrey sort of open-mouthed about the whole ordeal.

The boys were building three, two-story duplexes for teachers that came up and taught in the Weipa schools, and they were two-thirds done. The lots around the houses were littered with construction scraps- a lot of scraps-and I was asked to clean it all up.

After I was dumped off, I walked into one of the units and introduced myself. I was treated curiously but indifferently. Everybody was working, and I was the new guy and nobody wanted to be in charge of the new guy.

“Just tell me where the fuck you want all the scraps put, and I’ll keep myself busy for the rest of the day.” I told them.

One of the boys (a man in his early forties) approached me with some keys. “Here”, he said, “see that truck? Fill it up and we’ll take it to the town landfill.”

I went out and got in the Toyota Dyna flatbed you see here, and started picking up scraps like an obsessed wild man. I was in one of my head down manic grooves. Get the fuck out of my way. Holy mercy and all of that. I was cleaning the jobsites up like a Tasmanian Devil.

One of the carpenters came out after a couple of hours and slowed me down.

“Hey Yank,” he said. “We don’t work that hard around here. Slow down, man. You’re making us all look bad.”

It was, after all, my first day.

I slowed down.

Rosco showed up at quitting time with Jeffrey. The jobsite was immaculate. You could tell he was impressed, but he said nothing. He told me I didn’t have a room yet in the “dongas” (where the workers were quartered), and would have to come bed down in the house he had with his girlfriend Penny.

Girlfriend? I remembered talking to his wife. I nodded and went with the gruff old bastard and wondered what his problem was and how long I was going to last.

When we got to his “house”, Penny came out and hugged me with long skinny arms and soft breasts that she rubbed against me way too friendly for this type of first meeting.

“Well, hello!” is what I said and thought.

Penny turned out to be an ex go-go dancer out of Sydney. She was actually a Kiwi who migrated as a teen, and she was a cage dancer and a bar top dancer and a “dancer” dancer for many years. She married Australia’s hang-gliding champ for a short flight. She married a famous Australian drummer for a short drum solo. She was married to some other well known Australian celebrity for a time as well, and then she had been absorbed into Rosco’s mid-life fantasies along with her 13 year old daughter who was pretty except for monstrous ears. Penny looked rode hard and put away wet, but she was still pretty. Think pretty in a late thirties kind of way coupled with too much sun. That was Penny. Plus she smoked heavily, giving her a pale green hue underneath everything else...

We had dinner. Jeffrey turned out to be a friend of Rosco’s who was also a pilot. You got the feeling he worshipped Rosco, and was a doting friend. They were partners in the airplane we had flown up in, with Rosco being the dominant partner. Jeffrey drank wine and listened to Rosco tell him funny stories.

Rosco lightened up on me once we got home. But only just a little. Penny had a ton of questions for me, and I answered them as best as I could.

Rosco was a broad shouldered man, and I mean excessively so. He was tall. He was square. And he had little dots all over his balding scalp, where a first-run transplant had taken root. I remember looking at these little dots and thinking “this is not a man I want to poke fun at over his little dots.”

I never did.

My first evening in Weipa ended with my happily hitting head to pillow, but the house was alive with the noises of animalistic sex for a few hours after that.

Holy crap, I thought. WHO ARE these people?

The rest of the week had me up and off to work, getting to know the boys who had all come up to work and put away some good money. Nights were spent back with Rosco and Penny.

We ate gourmet “middle of nowhere” food and drank beer and I tried to swap stories with the broad shouldered and long-lived Rosco.

After each meal, Rosco would lean back in his chair, pat his round belly, and utter these immortal words--

“Mighty fine.... Mighty fine... Mighty fine... Top job! Penny!”

After about four days, I was Rosco’s right hand Friday, and Penny told me the reason for Rosco’s initial attitude problem toward me.

“I told Rosco no sex until he brought you up.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Oh no Scotty. I’m not. He threw your letter in the trash and I dug it out. I read it and wanted to meet you.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Oh no, Scotty, I’m not. There’s no one to talk to up here. I told Rosco you seemed smart and interesting, and if he didn’t bring you up here, he wasn’t getting any...”

“You’re kidding.”

“Oh no, Scotty. I’m not.”