30 Days in Sydney (8 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

NOW HERE IS THE thing, said Sheridan as we came down off the wharf in Manly which had been a very pretty village in 1888 but these days has the very democratic odour of tomato sauce about it. Here's the thing, he said, slinging the coil of yellow rope over his broad shoulder as we pushed through the crowd around the sushi bar. I am not actually going home right now. I've come to pick up the Merc and then I'm going up to the Blue Mountains.

Are you climbing?

No, he said, I'm not. Why are you coming to see me this bloody way?

I shrugged. I could not tell him I was not going to see him. I was off to collect that story from Jack Ledoux.

Were you trying to avoid the bridge?

When did I tell you about the bridge?

I always think of Kurt Vonnegut when you call me. How does it go? I'm an old fart now and my breath smells of mustard gas and roses and I like to get drunk and call my old friends in the middle of the night. Last time you called you said you were going to come to the mountains with me, or did you forget that too?

Well I'm writing a book about Sydney.

The Blue Mountains are part of Sydney.

Sherry, it's eighty miles to Katoomba.

Jesus, Peter, the mountains are the jail walls of Sydney. They are connected, physically, geologically, dramatically. You cannot write about Sydney and leave out the Blue Mountains. He put his big arm around my shoulders. In this embrace I detected the musty smell of someone who had been sleeping on sofas, and I remembered what I had heard that morning on Bondi Beach, that Sherry had not only lost his wife but his job. He had written for the soaps for twenty years, but the producers were younger now and they would not tolerate his tirades against them.

You should have called when you arrived, he said. I went out to the airport but I had my information wrong.

I'll come, I said suddenly.

Of course you'll bloody come. He crushed me violently against him and I felt all his need and frailty in his mighty chest.

But first, he said, you're going to meet this amazing man. You cannot write a book about Sydney and leave him out. And then he was off, walking as fast as he was talking, head down, arms flailing, enthusing about the mechanic who kept his 33-year-old 230s running. In 400 yards of pavement he covered a whole life story - the guy had a PhD in philosophy and lost his wife and became an alcoholic and survived for five years collecting empty cans and bottles and then became a car thief until he fell in love with this blonde surfie chick with a rusted-out Merc and now he fixed Mercs.

When I first knew Sheridan he lived with winos and derros on the street in Darlinghurst and he later published a wonderful book of photographs and life stories. When drunk he was inclined to talk of this book bitterly, as the high point of his moral life.

As it turned out the mechanic was not there. The roller door was down and locked, and Sheridan's car was parked out in the lane with the key hidden somewhere in the tangle of the back seat. If the paintwork was chalkier than the last time I saw it, the interior had not changed - Coke cans and cigarette packs on the floor, the back seat filled with ropes, climbing boots, camping equipment and a great assortment of books and papers.

You'll meet him later, said Sheridan as we ground slowly up the hill out of Manly. He grinned at me and showed the big white teeth in the middle of his hairy face.

Fuck it. We'll go along the Parramatta Road.

It's the long way round.

Who gives a fuck? You can't write about Sydney and leave out the Parramatta Road.

This was my first warning that Sheridan's sometimes worrying enthusiasm was being put at the service of my project. He had not only made room for me inside the car, he was now altering his plans to suit what he understood to be the nature of my enquiry.

Parramatta Road is like the city's spine, he said, it was the most important road in the colony. When they couldn't get anything to grow in Sydney Cove they found better ground in Parramatta.

Rose Hill, it was called.

That's right, said Sheridan, raising his eyebrows in delight. Exactly. Rose fucking Hill.

So we drove back into the city, across the bridge, which caused me not the least anxiety when someone else was driving, and in half an hour, having made a stop for the Diet Coke which Sheridan was now drinking in terrifying quantity, we tooled along the charmless de-natured landscape which is the Parramatta Road.

This is Sydney, declared Sheridan, throwing his empty Coke can into the back seat. The harbour is peripheral. The harbour is not a place that anyone can afford to live. Parramatta is the geographic centre of Sydney.

This is not an attractive drive, Sherry.

Did I say it was? The thing is, Pete, it's historic.

Historic? All I could see were car yards and flapping plastic flags and garish sanserif signs CRAZY BARRY'S DISCOUNT PRICES. It was a smaller uglier version of Route 17 in New Jersey.

Look, screamed Sheridan, I can tell you're not looking.

Well there's an old bullnose verandah, I said.

No, fuck the verandah, said Sheridan, ponderously overtaking a marginally slower truck. Just ask yourself why the most important road in the colony would be filled with car yards. Come on, this is your family history, Pete. Didn't your grandfather have a stables? Weren't your family horse traders? Yes? Didn't your granddad go on to taxis and T-model Fords? Well, this is how it was with the Parramatta Road. This is where the stables were, where the horse traders were.

How do you know that?

It's obvious. This was the only fucking road. It led to John Macarthur. All the governors rode this way when they came out to pay their respects to old Captain Rum Corps. When Bligh wanted to inform John Macarthur he was prohibited from building on his allotment, he sent the poor old surveyor general galloping along this road. These car yards are historic markers. I'd put a fucking brass plaque on every one.

Did we actually have to come here so you could tell me that?

Yes, said Sheridan, as we finally turned from the desolation of Parramatta Road on to the freeway, you gotta understand what is hidden.

Ahead of us we could see the Blue Mountains, very low and exceedingly blue with all those millions of drops of eucalyptus oil refracting the sunlight.

Don't look like nothing, do they? It's like the Parramatta Road. You can look at it and never know.

I never liked the drive up here, I said.

Fuck the drive. I'm trying to educate you. You know nothing about these mountains, mate, no offence, except maybe sitting in the Fork 'n' View and getting pissed on a Sunday lunch, so I am attempting, because I like you in spite of the fact that you have come home twice and not called me - I'm over that - but I'm trying to point out how deceptive the mountains are. In fact, I have just been reading Darwin, and he came here, yes, the great bloody Charles Darwin, and you can see the patronising shitbag getting it so wrong - that is until he finally understands what he is messing with. It's there on the back seat. Get it. Read it to me, in that cardboard box with all the paper.

I twisted myself into the back seat and finally discovered, beneath a tangle of plastic bags, a book.

Sheridan, this looks valuable. It's really old.

It's a book. There are Post-its. Read it, Pete, for Christsake.

I obeyed, reading the words Sheridan had underlined in brutal ballpoint pen: From their absolute altitude, Darwin had written, I expected to have seen a bold chain of mountains crossing the country; but instead of this, a sloping plain presents merely an inconsiderable front to the low land near the coast.

Stop, said Sheridan, now skip ahead to where I marked it down there. If you're not going to finish that Coke you can give it to me. There, at the top of the page, that's where Darwin finally realises what he's messing with. Following down a little valley . . . read it.

Following down a little valley and its tiny rill of water, I read, an immense gulf unexpectedly opens through the trees which border the pathway, at a depth of perhaps 1,500 feet. Walking on a few yards, I read, one stands at the brink of a vast precipice, and below one sees a grand bay or gulf, for I know not what other name to give it, thickly covered with forest. The point of view is situated as if at the head of a bay, the line of cliff diverging on each side, and showing headland behind headland, as on a bold sea coast.

Fast forward. I've marked it lower.

Very early in the morning?

Good fellow.

Very early in the morning I walked about three miles to Govett's Leap: a view of similar character with that near the Weatherboard, but perhaps even more stupendous. So early in the day the gulf was filled with a thin blue haze, which although destroying the general effect of the view added to the apparent depth at which the forest was stretched out beneath our feet. These valleys which so long presented an insuperable barrier to the attempts of the most enterprising of the colonists . . .

That's the other thing, cried Sheridan, tearing the book violently from my hand and returning it whence it came, these mountains are a massive fact of life. Darwin could travel here along the road, but for thirty years these mountains had been impassable. The convicts and their jailers were locked up together, chained together on the coast. There were eight fucking expeditions. Eight. They bashed their way up rivers and waterfalls. They had no idea how to live off the land so they carried all this shit with them. Tons of stuff, and they would just give up and turn back. Look at those mountains. They don't look like anything. Nothing is revealed, to quote the song. But they're older than the fucking Himalayas, and they are very fucking deep, mate.

So lunatics like you throw themselves over the edge on ropes.

Sheridan gave me a thoughtful look. Mmmm, he said, and, for the first time in our journey, fell silent.

There are a couple of things I could tell you, he began again, but I wouldn't want certain people to know I was, like, Deep Throat.

I'll change your name?

To what?

How about 'Sheridan'?

You sarcastic bugger, you never did believe I was descended from Sheridan.

I do.

Then call me Sheridan, I don't give a fuck. Now we're coming up on to the mountains. This bit is steep but it gives no idea of the obstacles they had to overcome.

I remember the road now, and I began to recall why I had come here so rarely. It was not that I ever failed to be thrilled and astonished by the extraordinary drama of the Blue Mountains: the sublime vistas, the plunging waterfalls, the teetering stairs, the dizzy ledges, but this road always made me despondent. There was something so melancholy about the rusting electric railway lines running beside the little towns, something so stunted and mediocre in the architecture that I always became depressed on the way there and depressed on the way back.

You don't know what you're looking at, said Sheridan when I had confessed my feelings. You're lucky I'm with you.

I'm looking at ugly houses and a dreary railway line.

Yes, he said, and we came around a corner and he pulled the Merc languidly off the road. A coal truck blasted its horn and buffeted us.

Bring that tape recorder, said Sheridan and climbed out. I followed him a few yards, the tape recorder in my hand. He escorted me to a tall gum.

Everything is hidden, said Sheridan, a mite pompously in my opinion. He gazed up into the umbrella of the tree.

Oh give us a break, I said, I've lived in the bush, Sheridan. This isn't the first gum tree I ever saw. I can recognise a koala's arse as well as anyone.

Where's the koala?

In answer two small droppings fell from the tree, bouncing on the lower branches and landing in the litter of the bush floor.

Sheridan raised his eyebrows at me. I suppose you know what I'm going to say next?

That the koala has even reduced the size of its brain to save on energy?

Will you turn on your tape recorder?

Why?

I heard that's what you were doing with Jack Ledoux.

I was shocked to see his eyes were blazing. He waited, his arms folded across his chest, until I had turned on the tape.

Now you can't write the name of the town, he began, but in one of these towns along here there is a pub where all the young fellows hang out. I like this pub, Pete, but it can be a pretty rough sort of a place and one night there is a brawl and this big raw-boned bastard, let's call him Lurch . . .

Sheridan . . .

This fellow Lurch, said Sheridan firmly, knocks the shit out of one of the young fellows. Now Lurch is not only handy with his fists, he is a great mate of the local cops, so he feels pretty safe, but in his great excitement he forgets that the poor fuck whose jaw he is busy breaking just happens to be the son of the shire president.

So when the kid has to be hospitalised his old man doesn't take it lightly. He lays charges against Lurch and then he fucking sues him, and Lurch is down the gurgler to the sum of sixty fucking thousand dollars.

Sheridan, why don't we do this later?

No, listen, said Sheridan, taking the tape recorder from my hand and speaking so directly into it that the tape still reproduces the sound of his saliva and the slight whistle of his breath. Lurch then goes on to have a very successful earth-moving business. Soon he has ten trucks and front-end loaders and bulldozers and a couple of Bobcats. So the sixty thousand dollars has not crippled him, but he cannot forgive the kid. He hates this kid. Hates him, said Sheridan. And his friend the cop hates him too, see? They don't let him forget it either. They tell him, one day we'll get you, you bastard.

This is nuts. Let's sit in the car.

No. Now it's four years later and the kid who we will call . . .Paul, Paul and his mate go driving in his old man's perfectly restored '57 Chevrolet. This is a very precious piece of car and the boys are by now twenty-two, twenty-three years old and to cut a long story short they get piss-faced drunk and at four in the morning, with Paul at the wheel, the Chev leaves the road at speed . . .