“All right, Baldy,” they’d say, “git out your blooming swag and come along with us, old man; we’ll stick to you and see you through.”
“I swear I’d show you round first,” he’d reply. “Go up to the store and get what rations you want. You can camp in the huts to-night, and I’ll see you in the morning.”
But most likely he’d find his way over after tea, and sit on his heels in the cool outside the hut, and argue with the swagmen about unionism and politics. And he’d argue all night if he met his match.
The track by Baldy Thompson’s was reckoned as a good tucker track, especially when a dissolution of parliament was threatened. Then the guileless traveller would casually let Baldy know that he’d got his name on the electoral list, and show some interest in Baldy’s political opinions, and oppose them at first, and finally agree with them and see a lot in them—be led round to Baldy’s way of thinking, in fact; and ultimately depart, rejoicing, with a full nose-bag, and a quiet grin for his mate.
There are many camp-fire yarns about old Baldy Thompson.
One New Year the shearers—shearing stragglers—roused him in the dead of night and told him that the shed was on fire. He came out in his shirt and without his wig. He sacked them all there and then, but of course they went to work as usual next morning. There is something sad and pathetic about that old practical joke—as indeed there is with all bush jokes. There seems a quiet sort of sadness always running through outback humour—whether alleged or otherwise.
There’s the usual yarn about a jackaroo mistaking Thompson for a brother rouser, and asking him whether old Baldy was about anywhere, and Baldy said:
“Why, are you looking for a job?”
“Yes, do you think I stand any show? What sort of a boss is Baldy?”
“You’d tramp from here to Adelaide,” said Baldy, “and north to the Gulf country, and wouldn’t find a worse. He’s the meanest squatter in Australia. The damned old crawler! I grafted like a nigger for him for over fifty years”—Baldy was over sixty—“and now the old skunk won’t even pay me the last two cheques he owes me—says the bank has got everything he had—that’s an old cry of his, the damned old sneak; seems to expect me to go short to keep his wife and family and relations in comfort, and by God I’ve done it for the last thirty or forty years, and I might go on the track to-morrow worse off than the meanest old whaler that ever humped bluey. Don’t you have anything to do with Scabby Thompson, or you’ll be sorry for it. Better tramp to hell than take a job from him.”