2. It takes a village.

 When the prawn-fishing boom created the population boom that created the village of Esperance, natural law insisted on the arrangement of hierarchies. It was only natural that certain people would rise to the top, some would sink to the bottom and others would hang uncertainly somewhere between.

Wild Bill Mason became top dog. As skipper of the mother ship and responsible for the hiring of skippers for the fleet trawlers, Wild Bill had the most power and became equivalent to a mayor.

The factory manager (who had the power over the factory hands), and the skippers of the fleet trawlers (who had the power over the deck hands) assumed the status of councillors. They arrayed themselves around Wild Bill to do his bidding and kiss his arse when required. Some got to like it so much they did it whether required or not.

Mister Carter and Mister Martin (who owned the company which built the processing plant and owned the fleet) were akin to a State premier or Prime Minister. They stayed away from the place and issued mysterious directives through intermediaries. On the rare occasions when they did turn up, Wild Bill and the skippers donned their finest clothes (Wild Bill had a suit while the skippers preferred terylene shorts with long white socks) and indulged in even more extravagant ritual arse kissing.

The first class citizenry was made up of the owners of independent but ancillary business – the postmaster, supermarket manager, service station owner, private trawler skippers etc.

The hoi polloi consisted of tradesmen and factory hands at the plant and the deckhands who created their own sub hierarchy with first decky and second decky levels and so on.

Other positions were quickly filled - town-drunk, village-idiot etc. This last title conferred on Wild Bill’s own brother, Neil. Though no one ever mentioned it to Wild Bill he must have had an inkling. Neil was in strong contention for the title wherever he went and was known to everyone as a world-class dunce.

Wild Bill had no idea how he had so easily been catapulted into the highest echelons of fledgling society. It certainly hadn’t been his ambition. As far as he could remember he’d only ever had one ambition in his entire life. All other ambitions had been sub-ambitions to this one super-aim: to piss off his father, Old Bill.

Wild Bill’s dad was a wharfy who’d been just plain Bill Mason until his red-faced and screaming wife fired that fleshy torpedo, Baby Bill from her aching breach into the fan-cooled air of the Cairns Base Hospital. Forget the glory of motherhood. She was pissed off.

She was resentful of her husband for a number of reasons. Not only had he weakened her back and stretched her skin beyond repair, he'd stolen her identity. He vanished her surname on the very day he promised to love, cherish, honour and obey her and soon after that, he changed her Christian name to Mum. 

“What’s for tea Mum?” he’d say.

In Young Bill’s formative years, Mum Mason believed in the educational efficiency of physical pain. Any time Young Bill would scrape his knee (knock some bark off as they used to say) or burn himself while trying to smoke a cane chair or cut through the spokes of Old Bill's bike, she was always there to provide some salutary suffering and the tutorial mantra:

That should teach you a lesson.

Her real name was Alice.

She was so pissed off with Old Bill for planting that huge human (ten pound!) torpedo in her belly that she insisted the boy be named Bill too. Thus, the twenty-two year old waterside worker was converted to Old Bill. All sense of his own ambition withered and died. He’d once dreamed of being an artist but it’s hard to stay ambitious when you’re already old at twenty-two.

That taught him a lesson.

Old Bill was similarly driven by a hefty dose of resentment and a strong belief in the instructive power of a sore arse. After administering corporal punishment to the boy, while the welts were still stinging but the screams had subsided he would console Young Bill with the thought:

It’s for your own good.

Old Bill always used his belt. Mum favoured the razor strop.

It was called getting a hiding and it was a proof of love. It was the thirties version of the parental hug.

Once the crime had been committed and detected the adult would grasp the child’s left arm in his or her left hand. Then the belt or razor strop was swung at the area between the buttocks and the back of the knees. The first smack would cause the child to place his free hand in protection of his bum and begin running to avoid the second. Around in a circle you’d go until the adult was satisfied that an educational number of solid hits had been scored.

It was for your own good.

Had they lived to see it, Old Bill and Mum would’ve been so proud of the heights reached by their firstborn. No doubt they’d have given full credit to the razor strop and belt.

It never did them any harm.

© Ray Lillis 2012