Low Life

16 May 2009

Journey’s end

Then he drove me down to the pub in Bright to introduce me to the crew. About halfway through a fantastically convivial evening, this elderly man with a crutch, which seemed to be more of a hindrance than a help, came wobbling violently up to the bar. His face wore the vivid pallor and deadly seriousness of a silent comic. ‘Jim Fraser!’ whispered Terry. ‘The bloke Rob bought the ute off.’ I went right over. Like everyone else around there, I was by now in love with Jim Fraser’s old ute, and by association I was keen to shake Jim Fraser’s hand.

Unfortunately he was in the terminal stage of advanced alcoholism and unable to speak. He tried to speak, but no words came, or maybe there were simply no coherent thoughts to attach words to. But he turned his unnaturally bright eyes on me and looked at me kindly. There was a spiritual, all-bridges-burnt quality about Jim Fraser that I noticed immediately and admired unreservedly. And the exceptional courtesy shown in that rough pub to this frail wreck of a man suggested that everybody else saw it too.

I grabbed his limp hand and shook it anyway. And the smile that gradually replaced his confusion, then lit up his saintly face was one of the highlights of my stay in Australia.

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Old Mart from Sunny Sarfend

May 14th, 2009 1:51pm Report this comment

I am glad that Clarke is spending some of his windfall on climate changing trips around the world but when might he come and throw some of his filthy lucre in my direction?

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