I headed south on the motorway, bypassing Wollongong and Kiama and picking up the Princes Highway through Nowra. It was early in the week and early in the good weather season so traffic was light. I calculated I could make Ulladulla for the night and get into Bingara the next morning. Nowra had expanded since I’d last been there some years back and I suspected that the story would be same all the way down the coast. Why not? These days, with the cars and roads the way they are, you can live in Sydney and have a weekender at Jervis Bay. I wouldn’t mind.
I reached Ulladulla soon after nine and checked into a Flag motel. I like motels and fancy the idea of managing one in the right spot, on the North Coast or in Queensland, say, when I get too old for the game I’m in now. With proper organisation, I reckon that could give me plenty of time for swimming, reading, fishing, drinking wine and observing human nature. For now, this was just another motel night the way I’ve spent too many, alone. I bought a hamburger in a cafe across the road and ate it with a can of light beer from the minibar. I watched a documentary on TV about the connection between heart transplants and retirement. That kind of took the gloss off the Queensland motel idea.
I made Bingara by mid-morning on a day that started out mild but was going to warm up fast. In the bad old days when you wanted to find the Aborigines in a country town, you located the camp on the river or creek or, in the worst cases, out by the town rubbish dump. Things have changed for the better and the Aborigines live in the towns and not always clustered together. I drove around the place for a few minutes, just enjoying the view out over the estuary to the sea and the way the town settled in between some low hills and the sand dunes.
The local phone book in the post office-cum-general store gave me the number of the Bingara Aboriginal Progressive Association. I rang it on my mobile and a woman answered in the distinctive tones of Aboriginal speech. I identified myself and said I was trying to get in touch with the Roberts family.
‘Are you a Koori, Mr Hardy?’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Can you tell me the reason for your enquiry?’
‘I’m looking for a young man named Clinton Scott. He was close to Angela Cousins who died recently. I believe he came down here to make contact with Angela’s mother’s family. That’s Mrs Julie Cousins whose maiden name was Roberts. I was told by someone else who came down to talk to the Roberts family that a family member met Clinton Scott here. That’s the last reported sighting of this young man and I want to follow it up.’
‘Have you spoken to Mrs Cousins?’
‘No, but I met Mr Cousins a couple of months ago. He told me about his wife’s connection with Bingara. If you were to ring him in Parramatta I think he’d vouch for me.’
‘Hold on, please.’
I sat in the car with the windows down, hoping to catch some breeze. I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and linen trousers, but a T-shirt and shorts would have been more appropriate. I wondered who she was talking to and about what and was getting impatient when she came back on the line.
‘This someone else you’re referring to, would that be Mark Alessio?’
‘Yes.’
‘I believe he had a conversation with Daniel Roberts in the Fisherman’s Rest hotel.’
That’s how it is in these small places. You can’t scratch yourself without someone noticing and passing the information on to somebody else. ‘Thank you. Where would I find Mr Roberts?’
‘You’ll find him in the Fisherman’s Rest hotel.’ Her voice was full of regret and disapproval.
I thanked her and rang off. Bingara town centre essentially consisted of a street running north-south crossed by two running east-west. I got out of the car, looked east and saw the hotel on the corner a block away. It was 11 a.m. on a hot day and the Fisherman’s Rest hotel didn’t sound like a bad port of call. I drove the block, parked in a skerrick of shade, and crossed the street to the pub. Its design was classical-two-storeyed with a wide balcony on the top level supported by skinny uprights. On a busy hot night the drinkers would spill out onto the tiled area under the balcony, lean on the posts and shoot the shit. But there was no-one out there now. The drinkers were all inside, sensibly sheltering from the midday sun.
I went in, took off my sunglasses and let my eyes adjust to the light. There’s something harmonious about an Australian country pub if the licensee gets it right. The parts all fit together- the tin and wood on the bar, the mottled mirror behind the spirits bottles, the blackboard with the counter lunch menu chalked up. There were four men in the bar lined up on stools with beers in front of them. Two were Aborigines, two were white men. The barmaid was middle-aged, fat, blonde and looked ready to cope with anything that came at her from the other side of the bar. She had an unlit cigarette in her mouth that jiggled when she spoke.
‘Morning. What can I do you for?’
One of the drinkers snorted his amusement at a greeting he must have heard a thousand times before.
‘Middy of Reschs, thanks. No, make it a schooner. She’s warm outside.’
She drew the beer expertly. ‘You’re a bit early for the holiday season. Mind you, we can get some lovely weather this time of year.’
I sipped the beer, the best drink on earth on a hot day and not so bad on a cold one. ‘I believe you. It’s a great spot. But I’m working.’
It suited me to bait her a little. In places like this the ice needed breaking and it was better that you answered questions rather than volunteer information. I was betting that the barmaid had had all the conversations she’d ever need to have with the four men present. I shot them a quick look as I worked on the schooner. They wore the air of absolutely comfortable regulars whose every word and gesture would be familiar and hold no surprises. The barmaid was a talker and needed stimulation. She reached under the counter, found two saucers, gave them a wipe with her cloth and took a couple of packets of beer nuts from the rack near the cigarettes. The drinkers watched her with interest. This was evidently something unusual. She spilled nuts into the saucers, placed the fullest one for the four locals to share and put the other in front of me.
‘Help yourself.’
‘Thanks.’ I took a few nuts and chewed them. They were stale but I didn’t let on.
‘You going to want lunch? We’ve got good fish, steak if you prefer.’
‘Yes, maybe.’ A noisy truck went by outside and I dropped my voice. ‘Would one of these blokes be Daniel Roberts?’
She looked at me closely, taking in the broken nose and other signs. ‘I should’ve known. Bloody boxing. Danny! Bloke here wants to talk to you.’
My face might bear the marks of a few fists and beatings with other objects, but the face that turned towards us was one sculptured by pugilism. His nose was a flattened ruin, the heavy eyebrow ridges were a mass of scar tissue and his mouth and ears had been pulped into shapelessness. He stood. I was expecting a drunken lurch but he advanced steadily and stuck out his hand. He was sober or very nearly so.
‘Gidday,’ he said. ‘I’m Danny Roberts. Journalist are you, mate?’
The name clicked then. Danny Roberts had been a journeyman welterweight in those years Joe Cousins had described as the doldrums. The fighters made lousy money, endured bad managers, mismatches and crooked promoters and were lucky to come out of it with their health. Whether Roberts had or not I couldn’t be sure. His speech was clear and he didn’t have any of the tics that afflict brain-damaged fighters.
I stuck out my hand and we shook. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not a journalist. I’m a private detective.’
‘Yeah? Never met one of them before. I’ve met a few of the public ones.’
I grinned with him and felt at ease. I began to tell him what I was about but he stopped me and suggested that we go over to a table where we could talk in private.
‘Buy you a drink?’ I said.
‘Sure. Middy of light.’
I’d made a fair impact on the schooner. I tossed it down, got two middies of light and joined Roberts at a table. ‘Have to be careful talking Koori business in public,’ he said. ‘That bloke at the bar’d be all ears and probably get it wrong when he blabbed to the nutters.’
‘Nutters?’
‘There’s people around here, blackfellers, who reckon we should kick all the whitefellers out and take the country back.’
‘Big ask.’
