Really Fair Dinkum Stuff

Brucie Clermont Forterkew was a very spoilt and protected young bloke before he came to Boney Downs which was out from Aramac, which was out from Longreach as was the norm as most of these places in the Outback were out from somewhere or other.

Even the dunnies were outback in the Outback, thankfully, as it is not a real welcome to arrive at a place out from Winton, say, to find an outback dunny out front.

But I digress, which is rather a unusual matter in so far as story telling on my behalf, and as this story is not on my behalf, but on behalf of the story teller that told me the story - he often digresses.

Fer' instance, this bloke told me that Brucie was that spoilt his mother had a window put in her stomach so that Brucie could have a womb with a view. Of course, I thought that could very well be, as the advances in medical science had gone ahead in leaps and bounds, well, ever since they had been using kangaroos for guinea pigs to experiment with.

And talking about kangaroos, who can hold a new joey in the womb for a few months if a drought was on, or the brother or sister of the new little mite were still in occupation, this bloke told me that Brucie's mum was so frightened to let her babe out into the world, she held him up for several years, and only let him out when he was ready for high school. It was a bit tight, but Brucie wasn't any more than about five stone at that age, or seventy pound ifn' ya' still in the boonies.

When the doctor told her husband that he had to put in twenty-four stitches, he groaned, “Ya' gotta be joking, it only takes nine stitches to sew up a wheat bag.”

T'anyrate, Brucie ended up on Boney Downs, ready to become a big time manager or an overseer or summit. We reckoned that it would be summit that would win the day, as the overseer had to tie Brucie's shoes laces every morning, but, ya' know, I don't really believe that, I know for certain that the overseer couldn't even tie his own shoelaces and wore only riding boots that had no such things, and this was a good reason for thinking that Brucie would only learn summit, but not much, ifn' ya' know wot I mean.

We tried to get Brucie up onto a horse, but the ladder kept falling over, and it was only a Shetland pony anyway, finally, as it was up to the overseer to see that Brucie was properly trained,  he grabbed the lad by the scruff of the neck and flung him into his saddle bag, doing up the flap so the kid wouldn't fall out, and Brucie could tell his mummy, that night, that he had been out mustering with the men, all day. Stupid really, as you couldn't even put the kid down and get him to bark at the sheep.

I've got no reason to think that any of this is not Fair Dinkum, as I have told some stories that were like this, but in my case a lot more Fair Dinkum, that's why they all call me Truthful Pete, amongst other things.

I'm still in touch with this bloke, so if there are any more Fair Dinkum stories, I'll let ya' know, orrite?

[Want more Australian humor? Try Pete's short story, Notty: Targaroo's Disgrace Bar-fly, bludger and sneak-thief turned unlikely hero]