Restless Men

Another excellent read from Australian author Peter Pinney.
Published in 1966 it tells (non-fiction) stories of his employment and ventures, told as is they run from one to the next. More likely they are a collection over the years with some artistic licence in running them together, but as usual he tells a fantastic yarn.

All of these adventures take place in Queensland or the Northern Territory, are are very Australian. Starting as a prawn fisherman in northern Queensland, where there is a panic on the boat he works on when it hauls up its prawn net to discover a huge UXO aircraft bomb. He moves on to Brisbane where is employed by the Health Department to trap or poison rats - and there are rats aplenty!
Next a stint as a fettler, working on maintaining the train tracks, out in the middle of nowhere, where nobody was warned that the job didn't provide food & bedding, which made for a hard start.

Doing a runner from that employment, Pinney decides on some coastal scenery and finding a wrecked old skiff he sets about repairing it before some solo island living around the Whitsunday passage. After some time alone, he arrives at Hayman Island, a popular tourist island and resort. Here he joins the staff for a period, before hooking up with a visiting film crew making a series of documentaries, and he moves on with them to Darwin, where he works as a props assistant.

After filming in Darwin, Pinney hooks up with another transient with a broken down old car to tackle some crocodile hunting (well, poaching) near Normanton, before being run off by local farmers. Next stop Townsville, and a job in the abattoir, until there is a falling out with the union rep, and to our final stop in Mackay, where Pinney takes a government contact as a shark hunter protecting the beaches over summer with a shark netting and drumlines of baited hooks.

The end of the summer season sees Pinney heading of south, with plenty of ideas on where to head next.

Pinney's writing style is excellent. He knows how to craft a story, holding back information until the right time, and has a knack for descriptive writing and evocative description. Always ready with a laugh, always a positive factor in a situation, I think he would be a person impossible not to like immediately. Definitely one of my favourite authors. Predictably, five stars from me.

One example from when he was a ratter in Brisbane.
P37
On the riverbank there was a tannery, wedged between a bridge and shipping docks. Its foetid stench stained the air for hundreds of yards around. A confusion of rusting iron and ancient stone housed a vast sepulchre of gloomed putrescence; foraging crabs crept among the shadows. Amid a dark and evil-smelling maze of greasy steps and sagging balconies, sudden slanting corridors and places abandoned entirely to the dark, were slippery pits of slimes and liquids, sweating vats of charnel, and goblets of discarded fat in flat slithered heaps. The air was thick with fumes and aggressive odours of spattered flesh and acids, the lines of dripping hides, the congealed accumulation of filth greasing the damp walls and trodden underfoot or lying in rancid pools under boardwalks. The occasional naked light glowed feebly, its radiance dimmed and sucked away, absorbed. The surf from passing vessels hissed beneath the floor, and masonry trembled gently to the thunder of traffic on the nearby bridge.Through this devil's kitchen endless belts whirred and clicked, agitating paddles which stirred roiling scum in the vats. Among the shadows one discerned half-naked men flensing fats and flesh from hides, raking and gouging, bodies glistening with sweat. Other men flopped raw hides into pits of liquid, or dragged them out; some trotted to and fro, barefoot though puddles, bearing dripping burdens to this or other bench.Ron went outside and quietly retched. Merv was pale, and his eyes watered. I held crumpled weeks to my nose.