Short stories from My Red Book - Henry Macey (good books for 8th graders txt) 📗

Who Was Crocodile Dundee?

I ask this question because I think he was me. Now let me tell you why I think, I am the hero of the film. Back in the early 1970’s I lived in Western Australia and worked for a large trucking firm called Bell Brothers. My mate Don and I were one of the two-man driving teams that drove road trains delivering food to the town’s, plus cattle/sheep stations and mines in the outback of Western Australia.

All the roads in the outback were dirt, and with temperatures of a hundred plus, it was hot and dusty work. Nine hundred miles up the coastal highway, was a popular stopping place for us. Here there was a swimming hole, in what was a normally dry creek bed. The creek was almost a quarter of a mile wide, and had a thick concrete causeway across it, to give a solid base for traffic to cross.

This creek is one of the main water runoff arteries for the high country inland, which is called the Pilbara-Hamersley range. The creek is called Wimm Creek, and in the wet seasons, can within hours change from a dry river bed to a raging torrent. Not only does the creek change in appearance, but also the outback changes in the ‘wet’. As the rains come down, the miracle of nature takes over, and the red dust landscape becomes a carpet of flowers.

There was a large, flat parking bay on the south bank of the creek, which had been rolled hard by the continual use of the trucks parking there. Here you could safely park to bathe in the pool the raging water had eroded from the creek bed. As the water rushed over the concrete causeway, it had made a large swimming hole at least a hundred feet long by fifty feet wide. The depth of the water and the clarity of it would vary throughout the year. But it never became stagnant, because rainwater would percolate down from the high country just below the surface of the gravel, to gently trickle over the concrete.

This creek was two hours from our final destination at Port Headland, and as this was a weekly run for us we passed over it twice. Once on our way north, and again going south on our way home empty. Although it was only nine hundred miles from Perth, we had driven well over fourteen hundred miles to get there. We would get to the creek at about four in the afternoon but were not due in Port Headland until four the next morning. So we would spend some time swimming and bathing before we cooked a meal and bedded down for the night.

On this particular day, it was obvious there had been raining in the high country since we were here last, as the creek had a good deal of water running through it. And the water almost covered the two boulders that were in the pool, but it was not a torrent that was dangerous to swim in. So in underpants, we entered the water to cool off and wash ourselves of the sweat and dust of our three-day journey. Don sat in the shallow water at the edge of the pool to wash, as I swam towards the boulders.

As I neared them I swam into the quiet water behind the rocks, and the eddy they coursed saved me swimming ageist the current. In the gently swirling water, I turned my back to the boulders and propelled myself backwards to lean against them. Suddenly I felt a searing pain in my right buttock.

As I recoiled in shock I felt my underpants and skin ripping from me. I quickly looked over my shoulder and saw a long grey shape. Now I was swimming as hard as I could towards Don shouting croc, he backed out off the water and jumped up and down shouting back at me. I could not hear what he said, because my heart was beating so loud, and the blood pumping in my ears drowned out all sound. As soon as my hand touched the ground in shallow water, I was up and running onto the dry land. Then came to a panting standstill beside Don, who was asking me what all the panic was about.

I pointed to the water and said, “There’s a croc in there it took a bite at my backside.” Then turning around, I showed him my torn underpants and bleeding bum. We both scanned the water looking for it, and then Don pointed to the rocks twenty feet from us saying. “What’s that between the boulders, there’s something moving there.” We got as close as we could, without going too far into the water to look at it.

There gently swaying in the current, were the torn remnants of my underpants. They were firmly impaled, on the sharply jagged splinters of a ghost gum tree branch. This, in turn, was firmly wedged between the boulders, just three feet below the surface. It must have been swept down the creek in the torrent of water and became wedged, and just waited there for me to back onto it.

Don and I looked at each other and burst out laughing, and as the tension eased, the pain in my bum reminded me I was still bleeding. Don patched me up with plasters from the first aid box but said we had better get to Port Headland to get it looked at. As the port worked twenty-four hours a day, it had around the clock nursing station.

We had started our trip with a three trailer road train; we had dropped one empty trailer at Carnarvon. The second empty had been left at Dampier; we would pick them up as we returned south. The one we had with us was almost half empty, so we would be able to push the truck to higher speeds. We should make the hundred miles to Headland in less than two hours, so we could get there before six.

With the sun nudging the horizon it would be dark pretty soon. But with the array of lights on our bull bar, we could turn night into day, and frighten any kangaroo’s, or nocturnal animals off the road. You could do a lot of damage to your truck, by hitting something like a kangaroo or steer. We didn’t like hitting anything, but out here you had suicidal pea-brained emus to watch out for.

As we drove we reflected on what had happened at the creek, and both of us agreed we should have known better. It was far too south for freshwater crocodile’s to be, and they needed permanent rivers and wetlands to generate the food they eat.

Don drove straight to the port area and dropped me off at the first aid station, then went back a half mile to Bell’s camp and compound, to see if they would unload us. The duty nurse cleaned my wound and removed a splinter of wood, then put several stitches in the gash to close it up. By the time I got back to Don they had already unloaded the trailer, and I had my leg pulled by the chef as he tossed two steaks on the grill.

I was to have my leg pulled many times in the months to follow, as Don made it his mission in life to tell all we delivered too, the story of my run-in with the wooden crocodile. And Don being Don, every time he told it, the more colourful it became. Then many months later, we were in the Nanutarra roadhouse having a cup of tea with the owner after delivering his supplies.

I finished drinking and turned to Don saying, “Let’s punch it up to Damper then on to Wimm creek for a good swim.” As I stopped talking a chap on a table near us said, “You should be careful swimming in that creek, six months ago someone had their leg ripped off by a croc in that pool.” Don and the owner of the roadhouse both roared with laughter, as I walked to the door shaking my head.

When the Dundee film was released I was back in England, still punching trucks up and down the roads. One day I was in the Fleet services on the M3 motorway, I was waiting in line to pay for four hundred litres of fuel. The door opened and a chap came in and eyed the queue with disbelief. He approached a young lady that was in front of me and then asked if he could push in front of her.

I leaned over and tapped him on the shoulder saying. “The lady might be too polite to tell you where to go, but if you push in front of her you push in front of me. And I for one would like to see you at the back of the queue, which is where you should have gone in the first place.” “But you don’t understand,” he said, “I have someone famous in the car. If he is recognized we could be held up by autograph hunters, and we have to get to the studio for a take.”

“Famous is he, would he be as famous as let's say; Crocodile Dundee?” I asked. The lad looked at me with a frown and said, “I’m not sure I know what you mean.” “Well,” I answered, “you know the hero of the Crocodile Dundee film was based on a real live person! But his name was not Dundee, and the croc did not bite his leg, it sank its teeth into his backside.”

“The crocodile was killed, by thrusting a hunting knife through its eye, and into its brain. Then the jaws had to be prized open, to get my bum out of its mouth. When the doctor was treating the wound, he found a tooth wedged in it. I haven’t got the crocs tooth with me, but I can show you the scars.”

The lad just shook his head, as I went to unbuckle my belt. Then he passed a row of smiling faces, as he moved to the end of the queue. By now the young lady had been served, as she turned from the counter she looked at me and said. “That story was most convincing, and I’m inclined to believe that it’s true.” “Well,” I said, “It just goes to show, you never know who you could be standing beside.”

Then I just smiled at her then gave her a wink, and she walked from the shop with a wide grin on her face.

But what about you, do you think I am the inspiration for the character in the film? Or is there someone else out there, who can really claim to be; the real Crocodile Dundee?

One car delivery was to Geraldton, three hundred miles away. A car transporter was going up with six cars, and I had to drive number seven. I had to drive it with the speedometer disconnected. The car transporter