What You've Got Within You

7: Disaster Gorge 1956-7

7Disaster Gorge 1956-7

After he had passed through customs, James found himself with a host of other British migrants on a bus and then a train to Perth. On arrival, he was shunted back on to a train to Fremantle, and then onto a freighter to Port Hedland. He thought it could have been organised better, although he was pleased (initially) to be off a ship. Finally, he rode in a rattling, dirty train to Disaster Gorge. He had a poor recollection of the trip. He lost his bearings in Perth – a glorious, bright town for sure – but he was used to a river being on his right and not on his left when he entered a city. He thought the coast should also be in the opposite direction. He knew Jenny would be happy in Perth even from the abbreviated view he had had of the place from various railway sidings. He got little sleep. Emotions of loss, despair, anger, frustration, and wonder blurred and ran together like paint. And as he stared out of the train’s window on the last part of the tedious journey, his whole world was rubiginous. North West Australia proved to be endless miles of red dirt and rock. There was some breeze through the windows, but James could nevertheless feel the heat. This was a hostile, unwelcoming land. He began to doubt his decision to leave Scotland. When he arrived at the township of Disaster, he was close to collapse. The nervous energy rioting in his brain was the only thing keeping him going.

Disaster was a dusty, dry shithole in the middle of a spectacular, wonderland of red escarpments, wild, ancient mountains and deep, serene gorges. The town lay at the mouth of Disaster Gorge, a short trip by car from V&L’s asbestos mine. It straddled an intersection of two rusty highways – one heading north-south (the one James Henderson travelled on from Port Hedland), and another running east-west, connecting the major iron ore mines of the Hamersley Range.

The town had been built with the customary pizzazz of a government and big business joint venture. It consisted of squat, featureless, corrugated-iron and asbestos cement houses splattered over a rough canvas of red dust. The roads were a grey-red mixture due to the tailings from the asbestos mine being used by the locals to break up the monotony of the endless red. There were two schools – a Catholic school and a state government public school. There were five pubs, a rudimentary grocery store, two churches, a playing field, a small hospital and a cinema. The streets were adventurously named First Avenue, Second Avenue, Third Avenue, Fourth Avenue and Fifth Road. When James Henderson entered the town, it had a population of about twelve hundred. The male:female ratio was 12:1, many of the females being girls under five, the daughters of the few married couples. Virtually all of the remaining women were married or hookers.

James Henderson arrived at Disaster with nine other men. All were immigrants. Six were from Italy, two from Ireland and one from England. James was the only Scotsman among this tranche of workers. There were other Scots already there. The new arrivals were driven by a company foreman in the back of a truck to a corrugated iron house. “This is home, fellas,” he said, and showed them in. “Make yourselves at home. Take whatever bed you like. Get a good night’s sleep. Work starts tomorrow. Somebody’ll be by in the morning to pick you up. See you later.” He left.

James looked around. For a moment, he had a pang of homesickness, a faint desire for the cold, dark squalor of Scotland. He forced those thoughts from his head. The structure was more of a dormitory than a house. It had three rooms. The first room was a new but basic kitchen. The second room was a bathroom with an astonishing blue, swirly-patterned sheeting on its walls. The final room was the bedroom. It had five, narrow beds lined up on either side. They had an unhappy sagging quality about them. James figured this was caused by the weight of the horsehair mattress on the loosely wired base of each bed.

Despite its uninviting nature, James was so exhausted that he lay down on the nearest bed and soon drifted off to sleep. Most of the others did too. It had been a long, draining journey from the other side of the world to get to this place. It had been quite a shock.

When he awoke (the first time), it was early the following morning. It was still dark. The other nine men were sleeping quietly. Their gentle gurgles and swallowing were the only sounds disturbing the peaceful room. James glanced out of the one, curtainless window. A tree with twig fingers moved almost imperceptibly in the moonlight. It made an eerie, squeaking sound as it scraped against the iron roof. James thought of Jenny and whether she was thinking of him. He wondered whether the hospital accommodation would be better than he had here in Disaster. It probably was. Anything was better than this. But there was no point whining about it like that goddamned Welshman, Davies. He had to just grin and bear it. And very soon it would all be over. He drifted back to sleep.

Two hours later, James was awakened by coughing, snorting, and the unzipping of bags, the spring of clasps being released. One of the Italians was n***d next to him, bending over to pick up something laid out on his bed, his heavily carpeted backside destroying all traces of the pleasant dream James had been in.

“Don’t mind old Giuseppe there, Henderson, that thing of his won’t bite,” one of the Irishmen said with a big smirk across his face. “Better get up, boy, we’ll be off to the mine soon.”

Danny Murphy was a squarely built, good-humoured blood nut. He was a labourer and would be working in the mine. James, as a fitter and turner, would be working mainly in the mill.

James got up and went to the bathroom. The door was closed. He went outside to what someone had called “the dunny”. It too was occupied. He pissed on the ground. Light was just starting to roll over the hills to the east. Back to the west, a wedge of sunlight cut into the mouth of Disaster Gorge, opening up its red mucosa, displaying the tongue of water at the base.

James went back inside and put on some clothes for work. These had been allocated to him at Port Hedland. He had a white singlet, a khaki, buttoned-up shirt and khaki-brown cotton trousers. He had tough, leather work boots. There was nothing to eat for breakfast. There was no food in the house. When dressed, he shared a pot of black tea with the other men. The tannin puckered his mouth, making him feel dry. He moved his tongue around the inside of his cheeks, producing saliva to moisten his mouth.

After the tea, James went outside and sat with two of the Italians, Francesco and Mario, on the front porch. The sun had risen above the hills. The day was going to be hot. Its rays were already potent. The two Italians nodded to him as they smoked their roll-your-own cigarettes. They offered James the pouch of tobacco. He declined. He was one of the few non-smokers in the town.

Very soon, a beaten-up, black truck chuffed and blurted into Fifth Road (where they lived) and pulled up with a rising curtain of red and grey dust. A big, red-faced man leaned his head partly out of the window and yelled, “Come on, you loafers, stop slacking and get your arses into the truck. You’ve got work to do!” He laughed as the ten newcomers poured out the door and climbed into the back, open tray of the vehicle. They all seemed overdressed for the jobs they were about to start.

The ten men sat on wooden benches, five each side at the back of the truck. They looked at each other and out over the opposite heads to their surroundings. The town itself was cheerless and repetitive. The streets were dotted with corrugated iron dwellings similar to that which they had slept in the previous night. Dirty-clothed, dirty men were hopping into trucks and cars and heading along the road in the same direction. Fifth Road ran into First Avenue, which intersected with Mine Road. They were now heading along Mine Road. A huge, cloud of red dust spiralled into the air behind them. In front, lay the orange-red-brown walls of Disaster Gorge.

The gorge had a flat floor with an extended, obsidian pool in the centre. Eucalypts lined the water. The cliffs were made up of thousands of red, brown, orange and yellow pancakes of rock piled one on top of the other. There were occasional thin streaks of blue-grey rock in the walls. Some stacks were broken, with the red scree fanning out from the sheer face like an apron. The scree slope was wide and generous in many parts of the gorge. The sides and tops were sparsely covered by scrubby brush and dwarfed, mangy trees.

The gorge had an undeniable grandeur. As the bouncing truck drove into the heart of the gorge, it was impossible not to feel the antiquity of the place, or to marvel at its rugged beauty. It had an ageless, haunting, menacing, life force all of its own. This was a dangerous place. A place you had to respect and treat with caution.

Further in, the blue-grey veins coursing through the red walls became more obvious. The iron riebeckite and fibrous crocidolite bands were all through the gorge. Up ahead, the mine and mill appeared. A ramshackle series of buildings erected on steps up the hill. Its appearance belied its position as the biggest asbestos mine in the country and the source of a booming asbestos products industry in the eastern states.

The truck lurched to a halt at the base of a scree slope climbing 70° from the bottom. At the top of the scree, the escarpment stood perpendicular, capped by a red-brown and yellow layer of earth. The surrounding slopes were blue-grey from the tailings. The mine itself was dug into a craggy-faced, blue-stained mesa.

The workers’ vehicles were parked higgledy-piddledy in the dust at the base of the mine. There were also some trucks at the top of the mine where a switchback road was carved into the contour of the slope. Looking up from there, James could see a distant long building just beneath the vertical side of the escarpment. Below this, other buildings had been erected in a stepped fashion. James looked at a corrugated iron shed jutting out from the steep slope. Its head was buried deep into the rock. From the end of the building that was visible a smaller, enclosed construction protruded. This projected almost into thin air before bending at right angles and dropping into a large corrugated cave of a building near the bottom of the cliff. This was joined to a row of saw-toothed buildings at the bottom. This must be the mill. It was evident that the asbestos was mined in steps high up the slope and moved by conveyor belt down to the mill. In time, James would learn all about the operations of the mine and mill. For now, he simply had a crude idea of its machinations.

“Okay, you new boys, over here!” shouted the foreman from the night before. “I hope you all had a good night’s sleep like I told you to have. After I’ve shown you the ropes, you’ll be doing a hard day’s work. For some of you blokes, this will be the first time. Hah! Hah! Hah!” He laughed, eyeballing the Italians.

The foreman was dressed in shorts and a blue singlet covered with streaks of salty crystals from his sweat. There were heavy work boots on his feet, with scraps of red wool poking over the edges as his socks. He had a grimy hard hat on his tanned, ruddy head. It was obvious James and his mates were seriously over-dressed. They would learn.

It was only 8.00am, but already the gorge was like an oven. The heat was so bad James could almost smell it. A dry searing heat that made breathing difficult. It was not the only thing in the gorge with that ability.

“Righto, come on, over here. I’ll give you a bit of a tour and then I’ll introduce you to your sub-foremen and leading hands to show you the ropes. My name is Bert Bertwhistle. I’m the mine foreman. You got any problems; you come and see me. Right, let’s get cracking.”

Bertwhistle marched up a well-worn path to the first of the mill buildings. It had a large opening and loading dock. Bulging, brown, hessian sacks were stacked on the dock, almost up to the roof. Each bag had “Disaster Blue” stencilled in black lettering on its front. A few workers, wearing only shorts and boots, were shifting some of the bags onto the tray of a truck. They grinned at the new workers as they lugged the big sacks about. Some of the bags were torn or poorly stitched at the top. With each movement, plumes of blue-grey dust lifted into the air. On closer inspection, one could just make out a blue haze in the air of the shed.

“This is the loading area, as you can see. The bags of Disaster Blue asbestos are loaded onto the trucks and taken to the railway where they will be freighted up to Port Hedland and shipped around the country,” Bertwhistle explained. “Let’s take a look at the mill and see where these bags come from.” James felt like a schoolboy on an excursion.

They walked behind Bertwhistle into the saw-toothed-roofed mill. The first thing that struck James was the dust. A blizzard of blue filled the space. Filtered light sparkled and dodged its way through the clouds. Men were shovelling piles of asbestos into the bags. Through an opening in the roof, chunks of blue-grey rock were emptied into a whirling machine. Its paddles revolved in raucous, deafening cycles, crushing and teasing the fibrous crocidolite from its mother ore.

They walked over to the machine. Bertwhistle stooped and picked up a fist-sized hunk of the stuff. He handed it to James, shouting, “This is what this is all about! Blue asbestos!”

Like anyone who sees crocidolite for the first time, James was amazed at its other-worldly appearance. The rock was steel, blue-grey in colour, with a sheen like slate. It comprised vertical fibrous tendrils. If you pulled a band of the fibres out, they divided into thinner and thinner needles. Some parts of the rock had been teased out already, and had the appearance of strands of matted, blue-rinsed hair. It was spellbinding. James had to be nudged by Bertwhistle to pass it on.

They were then led up a ladder to the chute. It was at the end of a long conveyor belt, which emerged from a dark, receding hole. A stream of blue ore jiggled and jostled its way to the drop to the mill.

Up they went further into the mine. They donned headlamps and crabbed their way behind Bertwhistle into the stopes. Miners chiselled and picked at the veins of crocidolite deep into the heart of the cliff. There was little air in the dark, cramped tunnels. And what there was contained a suspension of blue-grey dust, occasionally glittering when struck by a beam of light from a torch. James was glad that he did not have to work in these dirty holes. He pitied the Italians. He was relieved when he returned to the mill, met his leading hand and began work on the various machines. He had a maintenance role. As it turned out, there was a lot to do to keep the mill operating.

Bertwhistle had certainly been right about one thing: it was hard work. Hot, dirty, physical work. James Henderson did not shy away from it. Over the year he was there, however, he saw many of his co-workers buckle under the strain, particularly the miners, spending hours cramped in the lightless tunnels. Each day it took a bit longer for their joints to unlock and their limbs to move freely after something akin to rigor mortis had set in. James Henderson did not have to worry about that although he did spend many days working on the conveyor belt.

The six Italians he lived with all worked in the mine. Danny Murphy also worked up the slope. The other Irishman, Rory O’Connor, and the Englishman, Peter Ogden, worked in the mill. James Henderson was part of a g**g of fitters, turners and machinists who kept the plant operative. O’Connor and Ogden bagged the asbestos after the milling had been completed. On some days, James Henderson and the other fitters would help out shovelling the fibre into hessian bags.

James had worked in the Clyde shipyards. He knew all about dust. The mill, however, was something different. There was simply no way one could escape it. On the ships, the asbestos was only present when the laggers and sprayers came on board. Here, in Disaster Gorge, the blue haze hung permanently in the sweltering air. On some, still, roasting days, the air was so thick with asbestos that you spent most of the time eating it. Even when the mill stopped for maintenance, the needle-like fibres remained airborne for hours, gliding about in the hot eddies of the shed.

Early in the first week, the leading hand, a swart Sicilian called Dom, showed the mill workers where they could find masks if they were bothered by the dust. They were flimsy paper masks that fit poorly, particularly for the men who had beards or moustaches. It was impossible to breathe with them on. The majority of the workers discarded them, wore them dangling by elastic straps around their necks, or used handkerchiefs on the bad days.

The dust was a perpetual nuisance. That’s how James and the other men viewed it. It got on their nerves. The sharp spikes gave them a rash as it moved across their sweaty skin. The spicules got in their eyes, making them bloodshot and itchy. The men’s work clothes were covered by the particles by the end of the day, giving them the look of big, blue, spiky anteaters. Even James’s usually smooth skin succumbed to rashes and irritations.

When at their house, James noticed that everyone coughed. It could not have been just the smoking. James did not smoke, and he was coughing as much as the others. There was something always catching in his throat. During the long, summer months, before he took to the drink, James lay awake, baking under the tin roof, listening to his room mates’ hacking coughs and exhausted moans. He hoped Jenny was fairing better.

The men worked five days per week, eight hours per day. When they unloaded themselves from a company truck at the end of a shift, they showered, then sat about wondering what to do with themselves. Boredom hit them flush on the jaw, knocking them senseless, compelling them into the town’s pubs. There, the workers guzzled beer until the emptiness was drowned, and the pain of the long, hot, filthy days was numbed. James Henderson considered himself a temperate man, but the harsh life regularly drove him to drink like the rest of them. Drunk and tired, he would stagger into bed, and wake in the morning, parched with a massive head, almost too big to lift from his bed. He would resolve never to do it again, but as the day worked the poison out of his body, and the lather of sweat cleared his head, he would do it all again.

The men saw few women, other than the buxom old matron at the hospital who administered first aid as required or the poxy hookers who drifted into town from time to time. With so much frustration in the brutalising environment, fights were inevitable. The patrons at the hotels were routinely treated to the sad sport. The fiery Italians had no understanding of English puns; rough, dirty, men swinging big haymakers; stumbling, falling; punches hitting temples; glasses smashed and thrust angrily forward; faces cut.

Dignity was lost in that northern hell. The Sunday ministrations of the priest and ministers were impotent salves to those that tried them. They could not stop the ceaseless degradation of these humans. They were not bad men. They may have been simple, uncomplicated, but they were fundamentally good. Even the strongest could not survive in that place unscathed.

Some of the workers were lucky enough to be indentured and looked forward to the end of their service. Others knew nothing else and would remain. James Henderson longed for release so that he could find Jenny. It was not possible to travel to Perth, and he would never allow her to visit this Godforsaken place. He had written a few, terse letters telling her about Disaster Gorge, trying to sound optimistic. But he was no wordsmith and the atmosphere of his quarters was hardly conducive to romantic writing. Jenny was diligent and regular with her correspondence. She said she was working long hours and enjoying Perth. She was doing midwifery. She hoped James was keeping well. She assured him she was counting the days until they could be united again. She ended each letter with her love. This always lifted James’s spirits. He cherished her words, her humble sentiments. He tried to picture her in his mind. He could still do it. He held thoughts of her as close to his heart as he could. On some days, it was all he had to keep him going.

As the twelve months came to a close, James became increasingly determined to put as much distance between Disaster Gorge and himself as possible. When the paymaster gave him his last wad of notes, he was going to get out of there in a hurry. He was not going to stop running until he had Jenny in his arms, and they were across the breadth of the continent. He had overheard many of the men talking about opportunities in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. There were more people over there. More jobs. It was worth the effort. Western Australia was a backwater, a b****y great backwater. There was no future there. James could afford the move. He still had his savings from Scotland and the money from his mother’s house. It was a plan. He was up for it. He hoped Jenny would be too.