After sitting idling at the railway crossing, I gave my Harley-Davidson a handful in the crisp early morning air. Clicking up through the gears, the rumble of my bike soon drowned out the train. I could see the sun just starting to peek over the hills, the sky was a beautiful shade of pink. Another great Summer day on its way I thought. Startled by my rumbling pipes, a scrawny looking fox dashed across the deserted road in front of me. I was just as surprised as him. I’d seen plenty on the farm as a kid. I’d been the chief spotlight holder on many an occasion for dad when we’d gone shooting foxes for killing the newborn lambs.
I rode my old shovelhead Sporty heading up into the hills above Adelaide. I could feel the air on my face begin to warm the higher I rode and the higher the sun became. Arriving at the bedsit we’d rented twenty minutes later, I throttled back, not wanting to wake the elderly people who lived in the units nearby. A 1000 cc’s and my new 2 into 1 exhaust made that quite impossible. “Oh well”, I thought as I heard another train making its way up the tracks to Coromandel Station, less than 100m away through the trees. I pulled the bike to a stop under the sprawling branches of the claret ash outside our unit. I kicked the side stand down, took off my helmet and clear black sunnies and stepped through the front door.
Finchy had not long been back from the Blackwood servo. Most weekends he’d walk up to get a Farmers Union Iced Coffee and Saturday’s Advertiser. Chucking my gun-metal grey open face helmet on the couch, I bent to kiss him good morning on my way past and headed to the laundry that pretended to be a kitchen to put the kettle on. Never knowing what day it was when I worked nightshift, I checked the newspaper on the table, December 17th 1994.
I had a whole two weeks off, no more making Mills and Boon books in the middle of the night until New Years. No more work until 1995, that was a nice thought.
“Can you see the little blue boat alongside that paddle steamer?” Finchy asked. I stuck my head around the corner. Clearing my throat, aggravated from the paper dust at the mill, I said, “So that’s the sort of boat you’ve been talking about”.
Finchy was laying on the worn out velvet lounge watching a program on television about the history of the river town of Morgan. The presenter chatted about how it’s wharf had been the busiest inland port in Australia in the late 1880’s and that one of the last paddle steamers to work out of it was the PS Marion in the early 1950’s.
The phone rang. I heard Finchy walk across the wooden floor, sink himself into the single sofa and pick up the receiver. Coming out of the laundry-come-kitchen with my first morning coffee hot in my hands, I sat at the dining table. I could see him grinning. He said, “Ok mate, thanks” and let the phone clunk down in its cradle where it lived on the coffee table beside him.
“Who was that?” I asked, knowing full well it was SAFM calling him into work on his day off, but why the grin?
“I’ve gotta go into the station, I won’t be long, one of the wrong radio promos is on air”, he said, “But”, he added with slow excitement, “Pig said there’s a boat advertised on page 42 in the ’tiser today.”
I grabbed the red texta from the fruit bowl and circled the ad. I crawled into bed and looked at the window hoping no trains would be squealing up the heavily wooded hills not far away. I watched prisms of light flicker around our small bedroom made possible from the summer sun now higher through the trees. The crimson reflections sparkled off of the handmade pendant hanging in the window that my girlfriend Vicky had posted from Western Australia for my 30th birthday a few weeks ago.
With my head already on my pillows, I reached across and took the bedside phone off the hook and fumbled one handed in the drawer for my earplugs. As I rolled the little cylinders of foam tightly between my fingers, I heard Finchy lift up the garage door. The familiar sound of him starting his 1961 EK Holden and the obligatory grinding of the ‘three on the tree’ gear selector to reverse out of the driveway.
Sliding about on the sweaty vinyl seat of the EK in my shorts, we drove from the Adelaide Hills out onto the freeway turning off to Murray Bridge. Today was humid. A bit unexpected a couple of days before Christmas but we both love the sultry weather. We continued onto Mannum, then followed the river until we reached the small settlement of Young Husband.
Young Husband is 150km upstream from the Murray River mouth where Australia’s longest river flows through Lake Alexandrina and then out to the Southern Ocean.
Finchy is my best friend who I fondly call “mate”. This boat buying business is a bucket list dream of his. We both have big lists. Between us, we make them as fast as we tick them off. Suffering incurable itchy feet, we both have barely stopped travelling since we met in Perth in the late 80’s. In May 1991 we moved to Darwin for work. Finchy was transferred up there as Production Engineer for the opening of Darwin’s first FM Radio Station, Hot 100 in July that same year. We drove my SL Torana, aptly named ‘Muddy’, ‘up the guts’ with our dog Tara, or TD as we fondly called her.
She was a great travelling companion and had done many miles with us over in WA.
She’d ridden across the Nullarbor on the tank of Finchys motorbike with her mocked up swimming goggles to protect her eyes. So, moving to Darwin propped up in the back seat of the Holden was no problem. We towed his Harley in an enclosed trailer behind Muddy so he’d have transport to get to work once we arrived in the Northern Territory. I’d rang and tee’d up a job in a nursing home in Palmerston. I’d worked there before so I just slotted back into my old routine doing the afternoon shift which I preferred.
Finchy didn’t always take the big jobs or promotions that were offered to him. He’d recently replied to a terrific career advancement offer in radio with, “No sorry, I really appreciate the offer but I think I’ll go and travel on the river for a while”.
“ How long will that take?” they asked, to which he replied, “As long as it takes”.
Last week had been busy with phone calls. We had confirmed the directions, had many discussions about the condition of the boat and the asking price, before we headed out to see the old river boat for the first time.
Meeting the current owner of Huck Finn even before we saw the boat itself, we knew it was something special.
Finding Huck
Huck had stolen Fred’s heart the same as it was to do to ours. Fred spoke about the boat with a fondness. Like it was a true friend. Like it was an old Labrador he’d had since she was a pup and he was handing her over to new owners for the last years of her life. Fred knew in his heart that the new owners had to have that unspoken something he was looking for before he’d let her go. Lucky for us, whatever that was, we had it.
Fred was a local identity and well known on the river both with the old blokes and the young fellas. He was reluctant to sell us the boat at first but soon realised that although we didn’t know much about ‘Mucking About in Boats’, we were honest in our endeavour to treat her well and put her back on top of the water where she belonged. Fred told us that he had raised the boat from off of the bottom of the river when he’d bought it. He had spent many hours on restoration work but due to failing health was unable to continue the project.
“Huck Finn” is a 23ft wooden riverboat, powered by a 7.5 two-stroke inboard Blaxland engine. A 1958 10ply Bluebird Series riverboat and one of the first ‘for hire’ pleasure boats on the Murray. It was basically the first houseboat Fred told us,
“Three of em had been built for that purpose in 1958 as the Blue Bird Series.”
In the classic novel “Treasure Island,” Long John Silver says, “What a ship was christened, so let her stay.”
With encouragement from Fred, we decided to keep our new, old wooden river boat known as ‘Huck Finn’. As legend has it, when every ship is christened, its name goes into a “Ledger of the Deep” maintained by Neptune himself.
Fred’s superstition was, “Never take bananas on board, it’ll bring you bad luck”. We heeded this ancient mariner’s superstition on Fred’s say so and the third one, don’t whistle on board. Well, Finchy whistles. He is certainly happy heading off into the unknown, so as far as superstitions go, two out of three ain’t bad. We’re adventurous and love the thrill of the unknown. But the river demands respect Finchy had said, echoing the wise words of his dad, Wally. So, we were cautious. We certainly didn’t want to bring about any unnecessary bad luck.
The drive home was just as warm as the drive out. We talked about all the things we wanted to do with Huck Finn, and we laughed and joked as the old EK Holden rolled through the Adelaide hills before stopping at our local, the Belair Hotel. We couldn’t believe that the old river boat Huck Finn was ours.
It was like a dream come true.
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