The finalists for our local council My Brother Jack Award for Fiction have been announced – and I wasn’t on the list which in all honesty, I wasn’t expecting to be.

It was the first time since high school that I wrote a piece of fiction and let me say how BLOODY hard it was. It was a completely different way of writing than my usual journal-like, reflective pontifications or non-fiction. I wrote about the experience in this blog post Fiction Writing.

I don’t think I’ll be doing it again any time soon unless I write in the form of Adrian Mole diary writing but in all honesty, if I hadn’t been writing like this for years then now, in my mid 50s, it’s going to be difficult. I like to entertain the idea that I can be someone like Haruki Murakami (whose writing I love) who never wrote anything until he was nearly 30 after running a jazz club in Tokyo.

My limitation?

I realised I can’t put a story together. It comes out….stilted.

As in characters with all their emotions, their situations, their ups and downs. In my head, I can’t make them more than one-dimensional. There’s a strong part of me who wants the story to be metaphor for life and I can’t seem to make it gel – so I give up.

However, I get excited by hearing real life situations and then making up about what may have happened – I just can’t pen them. In my head, I can create the situations but when it comes to writing the evocative images and scenes in my head, what’s in my head doesn’t come out as wondrous as it is in my head.

Well anyway, the inspiration of this short story I submitted was that I went back 80 years ago to my own street (when I stumbled upon its history) pretending that our own house here (which didn’t exist until 1960ish) was actually on the site of market gardens (which it was) and down the street was a new ultra-secret listening station built by the Americans to listen to the Japanese messages that were coming in from the Pacific. (This is a true story that only came out some years ago).

My own story was about that time. 1942. Melbourne is in curfew and there is a brownout for fear of impending Japanese strikes (the only other time Melbourne was in curfew was during COVID). It’s all based on true history – names of roads, Americans in our local suburbs….in some way I wanted to recreate that.

I share that story below of the history of our local area in this book review. I guess you can say that me going down the rabbit warren of learning morse code and about the secret Australian code breakers is what inspired me to write the story for the My Brother Jack Awards.

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Submission: The Despatch Driver

Bentleigh, Melbourne 1942

Edward dug his hands into the sandy soil and let the clumps fall through his fingers. He both loved and hated it.   Loved it for what it had provided him; food on the table but also equally despised it.

He looked up along the rows of lettuce he had planted for the season.  Soon it would be time to harvest and the cycle would begin again.  He wondered how many more insults about lettuce he would take from the other sellers at the market this time. 

He sighed and cursed under his breath.  He didn’t choose this life of a market gardener and yet it was the life he was destined for.  Ever since his father bought the property off the Lees family thirty years ago, he grew up there helping his father grow and sell lettuce at the South Melbourne market, but there was always something unspoken between them.  Edward felt that no matter what he did, no matter what he said, he would never be the perfect son.  He would always be a failure in his father’s eyes.  An imperfect son for an imperfect man.  

“But what does that matter now?”  He mumbled to no one in particular.  “He’s gone now.  It doesn’t matter anymore, nothing matters.”

He picked a caterpillar off a lettuce leaf and flung it over his shoulder.  Why should the caterpillar enjoy the fruits of his labor?  He was answered by a rumble of thunder under a dark threatening sky and the first drop of rain fell on his cheek.  He brushed it away and used his walking stick, to heave himself up and brush the dirt off his knees.  It was time to go inside and make himself a cup of tea.  

Inside his small kitchen, Edward lit the gas stove and placed the pot of water to boil.  He looked outside the window, the sky now black and the rain began to fall in heavy droplets that pounded his tin roof like the sound of rapid machine gun fire.  The same sound his good mate and childhood friend Jack, may have died to earlier this year in the fall of Singapore.  He forced Jack out of his mind. Thinking about the senselessness of his death made him sad. The world had turned into something he didn’t understand and that was all there was to it.  To give it any more thought, to try and explain the actions of man against man would make him go mad. 

So he thought about the rain instead.  

He knew the rain was good for the crop but at the same time, he was annoyed because the road outside his house would turn to mud making it difficult to drive his truck to get to the market tomorrow. He had lost count of the times his truck was bogged on days like this. 

Edward made his cup of tea and hobbled to the small kitchen table set up against the wall cluttered with the plates and cutlery of last night’s meal.  He sat down and held the warm cup in his hand, thinking. How had his life turned out this way? Growing lettuce, selling lettuce. A life of routine when all around him the world, nonsensical and chaotic, was passing him by. He felt useless.  He should have been out there doing his bit. 

“Out there, “ he mumbled again.  He wasn’t sure where “out there” was anymore.  Just not here, he thought wryly.

He tapped his left foot with his walking stick. 

“It’s because of you,” he muttered.

The deformity he was born with where the muscles of his foot were bent inward making his left foot shorter than his right, denied him the opportunity to serve his country in this time of need and to work in a job where his skills were valued. Most of all, it denied him his father’s love and respect.

 He breathed in deeply.  He didn’t like it when he felt sad and sorry for himself and here he was going down the same miserable path again like every other night.  He shook his head to snap out of it.  If there was one thing in the world that gave him meaning, it was sitting there on that kitchen table.  He looked at the home-made contraption of wood and wires and smiled.

His radio receiver kit.  

Ever since he found a copy of Radio News in a discarded wooden crate at the market some years back when he was fifteen, he was intrigued enough to learn the skill of making his own radio from old tin cans and coils.  He wondered who had left this magazine there for him to find. 

He entertained thoughts that the universe left it there for him as a sign that he was destined for bigger things.  He devoured the tattered Radio News and read the articles repeatedly. The magazine fired an obsession in him to learn and build radios in his spare time using anything he could find around the farm.  Bits of coil, pins, wires and plywood.  Materials that seemed useless by themselves but together, created something that opened a whole new world to him. 

No one understood his passion, least of all his father who berated him for wasting his time when he should have been focussed on the crop.   

“At least you’re not reading books!” his father would spit out at him in disgust.

Even his fellow gardeners at the market made fun of him when they learned Edward preferred to tinker on his radio than go out to the Saturday night dances at the local hall in Bentleigh. 

“You’d rather play with your toys than find a sheila!” They teased.

The radio receiver made sense to him in a world that was in the throes of war.  To him, a receiver captured the messages flowing through the air waves from the other side of the world.  What was invisible in the airwaves was revealed by the odd assorted pieces of equipment sitting on his kitchen table.   

You receive the message; you transcribe the message and then you take action from that message.  

If only his radio receiver could transcribe the divine message on what was happening to the world and the purpose of his life. Surely he was destined for more than lettuce.

…..

Edward woke with a start when he heard the loud crash on the street outside his house.  He had dropped off to sleep, his cup of tea now long since cold on the table where he had left it.  He reached for his walking stick from the back of the chair, got up from the table and hobbled to the front door and opened it. 

“Hello out there?” he yelled into the night.

There was no response.

“Hello?” he repeated.

The rain had stopped and the moonlight shone into the front garden.  Through the trees along the fence he made out an overturned motorcycle with one of its tyres spinning.  

“I’m here. Help me!” a voice called out to him.

“Hang on!” he yelled again.  He grabbed his coat from the hook on the back of the door, flung it around his shoulders and limped out to the road.  

Edward searched from where the voice was coming from and saw the motorcycle driver dressed in a khaki uniform, trying to crawl out of the muddy ditch on the side of the road. 

“Steady on there mate, let me help you out.”  

Edward pulled up the stranger by his arm while balancing himself with his walking stick.  The mud made it awkward and slippery to keep the stranger upright.

“What’s your name there mate?” 

“Mike. It’s Mike,” the stranger winced.

Edward noticed the American accent.

“Lean on me mate. It might make it easier for you to stand.”  

Edward put Mike’s arm around his shoulder and then reached around his waist.  He placed his fingers in the loops of the leather belt and hauled the stranger to his feet, flinching when his hand touched Mike’s holstered pistol. 

“There you go.  You’ve had a turn of bad luck mate,” Edward said.  

Edward gathered that this motorcycle driver was one of Australia’s recent overseas visitors. He recalled the gossip from the wives of the market gardeners saying they had seen Americans with their tanned faces in the local area around Bentleigh but no one knew why they were there. The gossip was that they were despatch drivers.  Some of the locals had seen them driving their motorcycles up and down South Road and the Nepean highway at all hours of the night and day.   Maybe this stranger who had crashed his motorcycle outside Edward’s home was one of them.

“You’re not from these parts,” Edward asked in the hope Mike would say more.  Mike took a few steps and groaned in pain. 

“Thank you for your help sir, now if you can help me right my motorcycle, I need to be on my way,” he responded.

“Mate, I don’t think you’ll be going anywhere with a bike in that condition,” Edward nodded towards the bike with the bent tyre. 

The American cursed under his breath.  

“Look, come into the house, I can get you sorted.  I’ll help you get cleaned up and we can figure out what we can do with your bike tomorrow morning.  Leave it there for now as no one comes down this road at this time of the night,” Edward said.

“Is that yours?” asked the American nodding towards the truck parked in the front.

“Sure is.”

“Maybe if I can borrow your truck sir….”

“Edward. You can call me Edward.  None of this sir stuff.  Look, you’re pretty banged up there mate.  Let’s get you cleaned up first and then we can decide what to do.  If you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly fighting fit as they say,” showing him his cane. “Besides, the key to the truck is inside. Come on.” 

Mike nodded and together they hobbled back into the house.

….

Once inside, Edward kicked out the leg of the kitchen chair and placed Mike heavily onto it.   

“I’ll boil you up some tea, and get some bandages for your leg and you’ll be right as rain!”  said Edward who thought that Mike was impatient to be somewhere else. 

Edward found the bandages in a tin on a shelf in the bathroom and placed them in front of Mike.  Mike rolled up his pants to the knee to reveal the wound.  There was a large deep gash on his leg and the blood had congealed around it.  Mike cleared the roadside debris and bits of wool thread from his trousers from the wound and bandaged it roughly.   

“You’ll have to be careful it doesn’t get infected there mate,”  said Edward.

Edward regretted he said something so obvious the moment it left his lips.  This stranger had probably seen his fair share of wounds. 

The American looked up at him briefly before rolling down his pants.  He seemed lost in his own thoughts eager to get out of Edward’s kitchen until he noticed the radio receiver on the table.

Mike looked at it in silence, his eyes taking it in.

“Is this yours?” he asked Edward without looking at him.

“Sure is.”

Edward held back from blurting out anything more about his receiver remembering how bored people looked when he started to talk about his hobby.

“I take it, you know what this is?” asked Edward.

This time Mike looked up and smiled.  

“Guess you can say that I’ve seen plenty of these in my time.”

Edward’s heart gave a little jump for joy.  Here was someone who appreciated his radio. Someone who knew what it was.

“So do you use it much?” asked Mike.

“Yeah, I guess you can say I do.  Well, mainly in the evenings after my work on the farm is done.  For a bit of fun.  I built it myself learning from articles in Radio News.  Do you know Radio News?”  

Edward silently cursed himself for saying too much and letting his eagerness show. 

“No I don’t know Radio News but I can see how you know your stuff Edward.  It’s a great kit you got here,” Mike said.  “I wish we had more time to talk about it but I’ve more than inconvenienced you and it’s best that I be on my way,” he added.  

It was the first time Edward heard the American mention his name and he felt that the ice had broken. 

“Yeah well, anyway, it’s something,” Edward added, throwing his hand up in the air wanting to change the subject.  He was about to ask the stranger another question when suddenly Mike glanced at his watch and was shocked at the time.

“Edward, I have a favour to ask of you and I need you to trust me.   Your truck.  I need it. I have to be somewhere and get there in time.   You’ll be compensated for this inconvenience.  Will you do that for me?” 

Edward was taken aback at Mike’s request. He needed his truck for the market tomorrow but something told him that he needed to help this American first.  

Mike put out his hand for the truck keys and stood up from the table before he winced with pain from his leg and sat down again.   He cursed loudly, closed his eyes and breathed in deeply.

“How about I drive you instead?” Edward asked,  “I know these roads like the back of my hand.  Besides, have you noticed that there’s a brownout? No street lamps, mate. It’ll be dark out there”.

Mike thought about this for a moment and agreed.

“Okay, let’s go. But we need to move right now.   I need you not to ask me too many questions either.  Just take me to Queens Road.  In South Melbourne?  I’ll give you the exact area when we’re on our way,” Mike added.

“Leave it with me mate, trust me I know my way to South Melbourne.  Let’s go. I’ll get you where you need to be. ”  

In that moment, Edward knew his life was to change forever.