“Hard to believe!  Fifty … half a bloody century!”  Matt Gibbons reflected.  He chuckled as he looked around.  

“Not quite where I expected I’d be … or who I’d be toasting this memorable occasion with.” He swivelled the bottle of beer he held in his hand until he could see the label.  “Russian … but you’ll do!”  He leant forward, kissed the label and impulsively raised the bottle in a toast.

“It’s times like this that you can’t beat a Zhigulevskoye!”

Looking across the dowdy, dimly lit room he could see that Aisula, his aged Kazakh landlady was a little confused and hesitant.

“Na zdorovje” she said with an almost toothless grin, raising her mug of kumys, the fermented mare’s milk that was her evening tipple.

Matt thought back to the salubrious venues that had hosted previous decade-beginning celebrations and couldn’t stop himself laughing out loud.

“Earning two hundred kay a year and here I am, alone in Aktau, with not a party balloon in sight.”

Tossing the now empty Zhigulevskoye bottle in the 20 litre plastic paint pail that served as the rubbish bin, the normally abstemious Matt reached for a second beer and reflected on the 30-year journey that had led him from the tiny hamlet of Hikamatua on New Zealand’s West Coast to this grimy oil town on the Caspian Sea coast of Kazakhstan.

With the first generous sup of his second hoppy draft well down past his oesophagus, Matt wound back his thoughts to his earliest memories.  Like an old movie reel being retrieved from some sort of cranial archive, Matt pressed play.  Hesitantly at first but then the images became a steady and seemingly reliable flow as his past was recalled.  He could only remember joy and success.  His childhood had mainly been one of feral freedom.

He’d not been really old enough in January 1967 to understand the Strongman Mine disaster and his mother’s abject sorrow at the loss of her beloved Joe.  Matt vaguely recalled a time of quiet and sombre repression leading on to a future of benign neglect.  With his mother needing a strong support network, Matt was at times handed from family to family when she required a bit of time out.  This gave variety, surrogate siblings and none of the harmful effects so often espoused by the social agencies.

Some of the most vivid recollections being retrieved from his cerebral cortex showed the fun times of the annual Miners’ Christmas Picnics. These brought together the past and present mining families from all over the coast for a daylong, often raucous celebration.  It was here that Matt first met Mary Donovan, almost immediately deciding he liked her best of all the kids who came out of all the coast’s settlements for this event. Matt smiled as he thought back to those memories, amazed that he could recall with such clarity the golden-haired girl with the smiling eyes and friendly ways.  Year after year in December they seamlessly took up their friendship, always eagerly pairing up and winning the three-legged races.  Mary’s mother was friends with Matt’s and their fathers had worked together, Brian Donovan being spared the fate that the mining disaster dealt to the community by the luck of being rostered on another shift that awful day. Matt’s mother had always encouraged Matt to have a respectful engagement with all the groups young and old and also to participate in all that was on offer.  This made him popular with the grannies and wee ones as well as the organisers who he was always willing to lend a hand to.  Widow Gibbons’ boy was universally thought of as a ‘good un’.

As he later matured through adolescence, his genial affability garnered an eclectic mix of friends and family of all ages.  Mary’s family lived out on the coast itself at Runanga and she went to High School in Greymouth whilst Matt headed a little further inland to Reefton for his secondary schooling.  They occasionally saw each other between Christmas picnics, as both were prominent in academic and sporting activities at their respective schools.  Although their friendship was founded on a platonic fondness and admiration for each other, it was evident to all that these two had a special bond and a long future together.  Their friends called them the Golden Couple and as Head Prefects for their schools they led off the first dance at both of their colleges’ Graduation Balls.

Matt fast-forwarded his memory-reel through the post-school years, the internship with the Local Authority’s Works Department, the courtship, the 50 km fortnightly cycle rides from Ikamatua to Rununga, the fun, the laughter, the plans and The Big Escape.  All kids on the Coast have a Big Escape plan but many wither and die because of timidity, lack of clear direction or family ties and perceived responsibilities. Matt and Mary’s Big Escape took them to Western Australia in the late 1980s and up into the Pilbara region. They worked the mining camps and Matt’s engineering background soon had him moving from firstly driving the big dump trucks to managing maintenance on the industrial process machinery.  Mary worked as a domestic in those early months before she too was acknowledged as a reliable hard worker with more than the usual drive and understanding of work rosters.  

With Mary soon looking after the logistics of an entire work camp in South Hedland and Matt making big strides in a burgeoning mining career, a nest egg was quickly built up in their joint bank account.  They were determined to focus on a future for themselves and also to be able to help support their family back home when needed.  Although the work conditions were hot and unpleasant, the remuneration reflected that, and after two and a half years Matt and Mary had consolidated enough funds for a beachside house at Two Rocks, just under an hour north of Perth.

Matt recalled these were good years that seemed to fly by.  Predictably, in time Mary had relocated to Two Rocks. and progressively revelled in the role of being mum to three daughters.  Pearl, Ruby and Amber were Matt’s little princesses, three precious gems.  Now he was a fly-in, fly-out worker away doing 12 hour shifts for 24 days straight but then home full-time for 10 days.  The away times were hard without Mary and the family to share the unimaginably dull down-times between shifts.  Only the images of his adoring family sustained him through these periods.  Not for him the drinking and gambling that most of the miners filled this respite with.  There were friends up there, but not many close soul-mates as generally the workers were short-termers, in for the quick fix … lots of money in a few months. ‘Earn it, spend it’ was the mantra of most.

“Cashed-up bogans, they called them in the west.”  Matt realised that he had spoken out loud to the non-understanding Aisula. They chuckled together amicably, as they often did.  Aisula was the mother-in-law of Dana, a local Kazahk workmate who had encouraged Matt to take her spare room after Matt had moaned about the dire life he was enduring in the workers’ camp.  It had worked well, even if there was little meaningful chit-chat.  Not only did Matt benefit from having home-cooked meals … simple wholesome meals, but he also enjoyed being part of the regular visits from Dana and Kairat and their three pre-teen daughters.  Matt struggled to get his tongue around the long and slightly guttural names of the girls, so called them Bir, Eki, Ush – One, Two Three!  These were times to savour.  Once again after many years, Matt was part of a family.  They were similar but different from his own, far-away kin.  

These respectful, happy interactions filled Matt’s heart with joy. There was always laughter and giggling chatter from the girls.  There seemed to be a blissful naivety that Matt could not recall his brood ever having. The children were never fussy with their food, never demanding of their parents’ attention.  Matt knew they had little, yet they seemed remarkably contented. The girls all had a special treasure and that was what gave Matt particular vicarious enjoyment.  They each loved their own item and seemed not the least bit envious of their siblings.  Matt chuckled as he thought of his own girls and their legendary cat-fights, their mountains of soft toys and the plastic detritus of what seemed like thousands of Kinder Surprises.  The joy they so overtly showed on receipt of these baubles of consumerism, was never long-lasting.

“Perhaps I fed it” thought Matt, knowing he could never resist their imploring requests.  “It is hard not to give, when you can afford it … but it teaches them nothing.”  Only now after all the years of being the soft touch who never said no, could he see that his sharing in their delight, contributed to them having no real ‘special’ things, toys, or even memories in their lives … because there was no responsibility of choice.  They would just ‘want, want, want’ and of course they ‘got, got, got’, then when they bored with that, they just started again. And all these years later, there was no sign of a let-up.

Matt opened a third bottle of beer and grimaced as he thought of the pending fortnight, and how on Saturday-week he would be on the Greek Island of Santorini, giving away Pearl, his first born.  “She really will look like a princess, I am sure … but what a waste!  There’s no connection with Santorini.  She’s just seen it in a brochure – The Island of Romance, and I am funding a whole tribe of impoverished hangers-on to travel the world for a few pretty pictures”

“I hate it when Bloody Ryan Proctor is right!” Matt frowned as he paused and his reflections took another direction.  Leaving the wedding-to-be and Bloody Ryan Proctor, Matt soothed away the concerns of nuptial payments and international travel logistics, forcing his ruminations back to what he thought of as their glory years.  

“Those were the days Aisula! Life was good … we had plans.  We already had a past.  We absolutely owned the present with our house, the pool, the outdoor pizza oven, the balcony looking over the Indian Ocean.”  Matt pictured himself from those days, whipcord-toned, bronzed, usually clad only in a nugget-brown pair of cotton stubbies.  “And we had a future ... we’d always had a future, even when back on The Coast as nine year olds.”

Some of that future flooded back to him as he recalled the thrill of buying his first non-essential purchase.  For eight years they kept the purse strings tighter than tight, then on a whim he let it out a notch.  Donnergrollen came his way via one of the German truck drivers.  After a hard and hot ride up from Perth, Hans had ridden into Port Hedland six months earlier on what Matt was to learn was a 1972 Moto Guzzi V7 Sport.  Hans was itinerant and care-free.  He worked diligently while there but he was never going to stay long.  As soon as he had garnered $20,000, he was making plans to go island hopping onwards from Bali, heading for Goa, the nirvana for many of the young and adventurous.  At the urging of Red Baxter, an old timer who worked as a domestic in the camp, a deal was done.  

“It’ll be your pension one day mate!  It’s a red-framed early one.  They only made 150 of them.  Never come near them again for class.  She may be over twenty years old but they’re fast and strong.  $800 is a bargain.  You’ll never regret it.”

And so it was that Matt had an added dimension to his happiness.  After the first big adventure of riding her back to Two Rocks, Donnergrollen became a central part of his leisure time.  He loved her from one end to the other.  He loved her difference, her lime-green/yellow colour contrasting so dramatically with the red of the chassis.  He loved the big Grimeca drum brake on the front that hauled them up so impressively, and he especially loved the Silentium mufflers with their sharks’ gill sides and seemingly cut off ends … and the mighty sound they bestowed upon the countryside.  No wonder Hans had given her the name Rolling Thunder.  Often when the kids were off at school and kindergarten, Matt and Mary would blissfully have a relaxing sortie out into the fertile hinterland that stretched inland from their home, revelling in the freedom and joy that motorcycling in a warm climate brings.

“I think of the period that followed as the halcyon years,” he said to Aisula as she made her way off to bed. Matt chuckled as he’d never said halcyon out loud before and he had no idea if he had it right.  After a decade of consolidation and frugality, the buying of Donnergrollen seemed to stimulate further dreams.  Work was still going well for Matt and he was beginning to specialise in health and safety planning and how it could be made to dove-tail with successfully operating heavy equipment.  

About a year after falling in love with motorcycling, Matt had the occasion to go several hundred kilometres inland from Port Hedland to the edge of the Simpson Desert to look at some mining equipment. While there he was told of a ‘project’ which sounded interesting. An old car and caravan had been abandoned decades earlier by an eccentric American who became so disheartened by the harsh climate and his inability to get through to Alice Springs from such a remote location, that he just parked up the rig and hitched a ride out with the Flying Doctor who was taking an ailing Jillaroo away for treatment. Rumour has it that a large donation to the service enabled his escape.

The moment that Matt saw the neglected Americana, he was smitten.  He knew he now had another joy in his life.  The car was ungainly-looking but huge and imposing. It had a presence that Matt instantly felt he had to enhance and bring back to life.  The yellowed registration coupon proclaimed it to be a 1941 Lincoln Continental Coupe.  It was dark blue below its waist with a whitey-cream roof.  The bonnet seemingly ran off almost endlessly into the distance and was flanked by curvaceous and generous mudguards.  The rear end had discrete haunches with spats over the wheel openings and an oddly projecting boot and a covered spare wheel was neglectfully tacked on the back.  She was gloriously rubenesque and Matt unselfconsciously ran his hand over the rear flank and gave her a pat.  

“Your splendour will be returned to you babe!  I promise that one day we’ll ride in triumph into Alice Springs … and more.”

Still hitched to the back of the Lincoln was a vision from his Grandfather’s old Popular Mechanics magazines.  An early 1950s Airstream Cruiser!  These streamlined aluminium caravans were rare in Australia and Matt had never seen one before in the flesh.  The style and class was far beyond the boxy ply constructions of the time offered to the locals.  Instantly Matt could envisage this cigar-shaped pod polished till it reflected the world around it.  The retrieval and relocation down to Two Rocks took all of one of Matt’s home leaves.  It was epic.  The family were underwhelmed to say the least, but this did not bother him in the slightest because he knew his vision was true.  He had a plan they would love.  The Airstream was kept at home and the Lincoln was taken across to a restorer at Bullsbrook, 60 kms from Twin Rocks.  

Barry Malneek was a skilled old-school artisan who lived on a five hectare block with a series of sheds and workshops containing all the equipment and tools from a bygone age that enabled him to offer a complete restoration service.  An old mate of Red Baxter’s, he was more than happy to let Matt help out on his time back home.  This became such a ritual of male bonding through the sweat and toil that Mary often referred to Barry  as Matt's boyfriend.  Matt certainly could barely contain himself each time he got home. At the earliest opportunity he would be fanging his way down the black-top on Donnergrollen, revelling in listening to the baritone blast that followed them across the gently rolling countryside.

For two years Matt diverted a financial tithe into his project.  He always said it was a small price to pay for mental wellness.  The satisfaction and pleasure he got was hard to quantify and it wasn’t limited to just down in the ‘south’.  Every return to Port Hedland saw him having to describe almost blow-by-blow the progress on the mighty Lincoln.  Red was his most enthusiastic inquisitor, but there was always a small throng around the smoko-table on the first day back.  It was during this time that the odious toad Ryan Proctor came into his life. A born know-it-all, Proctor was always sniping away at Matt’s progress, opinionated about how and what he was doing with the car.  He did have knowledge as he was an ex-mechanic and part of Matt’s problem was that he found him to be an arrogant, boorish oaf.  Matt would find himself taking an opposing side just because the utterance came from his bête noir.

Matt’s mood darkened just a little as he thought of the fat slob who still enraged him with his pontification and pointed homilies.  

“Bloody bastard!” Matt said aloud to the empty room and snicked the top off a fourth Zhigulevskoye.  He knew he couldn’t blame anyone for the subsequent dulling of the glossy life they’d enjoyed to date.  The tarnish had begun with the sad event that was the passing of Mary’s dad.  Mary and the girls went home to the coast to support her mum and help her establish an independent life.  Matt’s four-weekly furlough periods were spent traveling to New Zealand and being part of this difficult time.  He didn’t begrudge a minute of this, as it was nice to be back in his old stomping grounds, seeing his mum too and helping with Mrs Donovan. Sensing it would take a little while to get her over her loss, Matt agreed that it would be wise to put the girls in school and Mary would help her mum sort out her dad’s possessions.  A hoarding son of a hoarder meant there were literally thousands of items to be sorted and disposed of, many decades old tat, unrecognisable to all but avid historians.

For a further two years Matt crisscrossed the Tasman every time he finished his tour of duty as they called their periods of work.  This was draining and time consuming, often taking two days to get home because of flight scheduling and two days to get back to work, leaving only six days with the family.  Of course this also meant no progress on the Lincoln or the Airstream, as Matt liked to work in tandem with Barry Malneek, sensing that the gruff old bugger liked it too. After a year with no progress, sadly Matt had got Barry to arrange for the Lincoln to go off-site into storage. Of course back at camp, the work crew were initially quite supportive and understanding.  When it became obvious that progress had stalled on the car, they started to occasionally raz him.  Some of the new guys even doubted the existence of what had become a mythical machine.

Increasingly Matt thought of himself as an outsider as the girls grew towards womanhood.  Whenever he was with them in what would never be home, there was often a coterie of Mary, the three girls and both grandmothers with opinions and plans that differed from his.  Their lives were full and busy with the trivia and day-to-day sagas of small-town life.  There seemed to be no time to revel in frivolous long-term dreams.  It wasn’t that he was a persona non grata, it was just that he was never there … and when he was, perceptibly he was becoming an intrusion.

The fourth beer was making Matt a little maudlin and he knew he needed to get to bed, but he knew also that the story was not yet fully told.  There were still ten more years to recall and reflect on.  There was nothing sad or bad about his forties even if he often felt he was no longer at the helm of the wonderful ship called life.  He still loved Mary who was an extremely elegant middle-aged woman with exquisite tastes, high energy levels and an empathy for others that saw her volunteering in hospice shops and caring for both matriarchs of the Donovan and Gibbons families.  

It still shocked Matt to recall that he was not included in the decisions to move from the Coast to Nelson and rent two small cottages for the grannies, or the biggie to buy a house on the hill looking down on the Nelson Harbour and the Boulder Bank.  Of course it had been Matt’s earnings that paid for it, but now for the first time they had a significant mortgage.  What followed was progressive and relentless. First it was a horse for Pearl, which of course needed a paddock to be rented. This was only the beginning and as always, what one wanted, three got.  Then there was a double horse-float and Ford Explorer to tow it.  Lessons and tack were just minor peripheral costs hardly worth recalling, there was a lot more to come.

“It had been just a simple plan!” When the mighty Lincoln was finished and the Airstream adjudged ready after the rejigging Matt envisaged, they would be reunited.  “We weren’t even that far off finishing.  All the hard work was done!”  The Airstream, had had a rack for Donnergrollen added to the tow-bar triangle where the gas bottles had been located.  These were repositioned under the back and although there would now be a greater frontwards weight bias, Matt figured that the slightly front-heavy Lincoln with its V12 engine would handle the change with impunity.  He’d been so excited at the time, knowing that in a short while they’d be doing sea-trials and he’d land the big one on them.

“All the way round girls, all the way round.  The whole of Australia!  You won’t have to go to school.  Your mother will teach you what you need to know.”  

So many times this refrain had replayed in his subconscious.  

“FIFO workers in our company have their flights paid to and from any mainland city in Australia.  We’ll start by driving from Perth across to Adelaide, then I’ll fly back to work while you explore … and do your schooling.  Then I’ll fly in and we’ll drive to Melbourne. We’ll chunk our way completely around this big country! Sydney, Brisbane, Cairns, Alice, Darwin … the whole bloody lot.  It might take us an entire year but it will be the adventure you remember for all of your life.  You’ll be telling your grandkids all about it someday”

“… yeah and someday I’d like to prove Lard-arse Proctor wrong too!”

Some of Proctor’s barbs had been cutting because there was often a certain intuitive insight that hurt because of the truthful validity of the statements.  Matt had not reacted well when it was asserted that he was nothing but a ‘cash cow’ to his family.

“Slave to the Women …“ Proctor had warbled to the Grace Jones tune of “Slave to the Rhythm.”  Of course the other men present had hooted with delight.  Many were misogynistic miss-fits who loved this sort of banter.  

“He’s forgotten there is an ‘i’ in family” he’d continued on to raucous delight.  Now he had an audience, his bating became a sport.  Matt couldn’t laugh it off because of his dislike for the man.  Proctor would rarely pass up an occasion to ask how the Lincoln was getting on, or when was he setting off on his circumambulation of the nation, although usually he called it the ‘circumcision of the nation’.  Another of Proctor’s favourite bawdy taunts was to tell everyone that “Gibbons has lost his way … no more passionate dreams … and the only Double D’s he has thoughts of are the Darling Daughters.”

Proctor wouldn’t have known of the private boarding schools, and university fees that constantly kept Matt from leaving the Pilbara region and trying for lesser-paid jobs in Nelson.  There were indeed times when Matt did feel he was on a treadmill which was connected to a machine which generated money, and that money went straight to the grasping mitts of smiling caricatures of the family … who chanted “faster, faster, more, more!”  Deep down Matt knew that the pain/gain ratio was askew.  He’d even acknowledged that the “If you love them, set them free” maxim should be applied to his princesses.  

“But how and when?” Matt slurred, wondering how five ‘dead marines’ got to be in the recycling pail. Once a precedent was set with one, it meant all three would get the same "and we can afford it" was a refrain oft thrown at him.

“Well the only way we can afford it is by me working harder.”  Every promotion and salary increase was expanded into.  There were no savings, especially after the GFC had brought lay-offs.  The Global Financial Crisis was slow to hit the West Australian mining sector but when it did, 10,000 jobs were lost in three months.  Matt reflected on this grim time, which spelt the ‘end of the summer weather’ for many.  He’d been lucky … or had he?  A subsidiary company had a suitable role training local staff in Kazahkstan to implement the EU Health and Safety standards.  The pay wasn’t as good, the flights were not paid out to the Antipodes, except once a year and of course it was an excruciatingly long journey home. Local time off was expected to be spent locally or in neighbouring countries.

Matt knew his dream was gone forever, that there’d never be a happy family road-trip with bystanders watching in awe as his stately blue, white and polished aluminium cavalcade glided past with three shiny-haired princesses waving to their subjects from the back seats of such a wondrous car. Matt knew also that he couldn’t just jump off the treadmill, as then the money would stop being generated and the family dependents would abandon him and take their love away.  Plan B was needed … an exit strategy.

Matt laughed one last time as he recalled a saying from one of the old Coasters “Moderation in all things, son.  Moderation in all things.”  The old-timer was almost legless at the time and was known to be almost ambition-free, having been nowhere and done nothing.  “Excess or Dearth! They’re both poisonous.”

Matt was unsure if he had enjoyed his reflections … or the realisations they had brought.  Would the joy of seeing his family on Santorini snap him out of his torpidity? Canapes in a tux  … or Aisula’s simple fare in jeans and a teeshirt?  “Unfair”, his befuddled brain told him.  Posing with the Princesses or fun and games with Bir, Eki, and Ush?  

“Doubly unfair, that’s a foul.  One more and you’ll be sent off” murmured the arbiter that was his conscience.  But he had this formidable event to face, plus maybe two more weddings, at least four more years of Uni fees and living costs, possibly a doctorate to fund, a mortgage to feed, cars to replace … and there is still storage to pay for the Lincoln ... and the rates and insurances on the houses.

“Big ask Matt, big ask!  We’ll see”

And with that he went off to his humble lonely bed … yet again desperately hoping to finally find Plan B in his crapulent slumber.

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