 the quintessential australian
this was in todays paper,,
it shows how australian humour originates
He came, sawed, stonkered
By Tony Barrass
BASTARDS of the BUSH
THEY call him Mad Ted the Postie. For very good reason.
"I just sort of lost me cool - I was full, of course, and I can't really remember much of what had happened, but the name sort of stuck after that," he said as he tried to recall the incident which led to his moniker.
Ted has been a woodcutter, odd-job man and postie around Norseman for 30 years and the story begins with him returning home with a ute full of mallee roots in the early 1970s. Feeling a tad thirsty after a hard day's work, he decided to pull into the Salmon Gums pub for a quencher.
Unfortunately for Ted, a quick few turned into a slow dozen and when word filtered into the main bar that a couple of kids were playing with Ted's chainsaw which had up until then been in the back of his ute, Ted - unlike the chainsaw as it would turn out - was well and truly tanked.
"I think I asked the publican to do something about it and he told me to get stuffed and look after it myself," he said. "So I did."
Ted stumbled outside and disarmed the kids of his favourite instrument. He snapped it into action and stomped back into the bar, drunk and angry, the high-pitched scream of the machine alerting drinkers to an approaching catastrophe.
"One thing I do remember clearly was that the pub emptied within seconds," Ted said. "People were scrambling to get out of the pub any way they could, through the window, out the back, whatever. Those that didn't run off into the bush jumped in their cars and sped off in a bloody great big cloud of dust.
"The bar was the only thing left so I thought, bugger it. I got stuck into the bloody thing. Right down the middle I went. I went back out to the ute and had a crack at an SEC pole along the way but I ran out of fuel.
"I put some more petrol in and went back for the veranda posts of the pub. That'll teach the bastards. I can't remember how it all ended up. The coppers didn't charge me, I do know that."
He's part of the furniture in Norseman and not surprisingly comes under M for Mad Ted in the local phone book, not P for Patterson, his proper name. Along with other locals such as Skinny, Bullfrog, Rag Balls and Big Al, Mad Ted makes Norseman tick and gives it that quintessentially Australian touch.
But it hasn't been all beer and skittles.
Born during World War II in Birmingham, England, a young Edward was sent to Australia after his poor Irish Catholic mother gave him up for adoption. But his memories of the voyage to Australia are crisp and clear.
"It was bloody hard when you look back on it," he said.
"I remember the ship that took us away being called the New Australian. I learnt to swim on that ship. It had a pool on it and in I went. Sink or swim, I'm not joking.
"When the ship docked at Fremantle I remember looking out over this strange land. By the side of the ship was something that I now know to be a cattle truck and when we came down the plank, the gangway, we were loaded into the cattle truck and shipped off to Clontarf like bloody animals."
There, under the uncompromising Christian Brothers, young Edward was taught to do as he was told and not answer back.
"There were about 300 of us, mostly under the care of the child welfare department or whatever it was called, and we copped a fair bit from those bastards. There was no need for them to be as they were, no need at all."
He'd rather forget those times when brutality was the order of the day. When he reached 16, the Brothers gave him "25 bob, a set of clothes and told us that we were on our own. And we were".
He headed bush and picked up work as a farmhand. "You'd work 14-hour days and seven-day weeks," he said. "They'd pay you three pound a fortnight. That was the going rate. The money was shit."
Ted eventually picked up a postie's job with the Postmaster-General's office, the forerunner to Australian Post. He worked at Trayning before being transferred to Norseman where he stayed for many years, specialising in "air mail".
"I used to ride that bloody bike over bloody hill and down bloody dale, for miles and bloody miles so I didn't have time to stick the mail in the letterbox. I used to just hoik it over the fence. Air mail."
He laments the changing face of rural WA.
"When I first came here Norseman was a community," he said. "There was hockey and tennis and people used to go to the pub and socialise. There were genuine people everywhere. The mines used to look after the community and the community used to look after the mines.
"Now this fly-in fly out, or drive-in drive-out has killed everything. It's still a good town, but it's nothing like it used to be."
He might be mad, but according to partner Alma, Ted's also a very kind and loving man.
"A couple of years back, we saw on the news how a little girl with problems lost her walking frame from the back of a stolen car, I think it was. Ted had $500.46 in the bank. The new frame cost $500. It left him with 46¢ in the bank. That's the sort of bloke he is."
Mad Ted goes quite normal when you remind him of the generous act.
"Well, what else can you do? There's not much point in being the richest man in the cemetery. Just bury me with my chainsaws and I'll be a happy man."
© 2004 West Australian Newspapers Limited
All Rights Reserved.
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2004-01-05, 01:32
