Papua Read Online Free PDF

boys.’
    He finished the tea and excused himself. The short walk to the train station and the trip to Central in Sydney gave Jack more time to think about the future. George Spencer had elected to return with the battalion to Sydney and he had kept in touch with his commanding officer, agreeing to meet in Sydney after they were demobilised.
    The hotel was crowded. Men in uniform jostled with young men in smart suits. It was lunchtime and the weather warm outside. Jack found the tall Englishman easily enough. He stood aloof in a corner of the bar holding a large cold beer in his hand. George looked different in his smart suit and Jack felt just a little shabby in his working man’s open-necked shirt and baggy trousers. They were his from pre-war days and he was relieved the moths hadn’t got to them.
    ‘George, you old bastard,’ Jack greeted his friend. ‘Good to see you again.’
    George Spencer offered out his free hand and the two men shook enthusiastically.
    ‘I’ll get you a beer. Here, hold mine and make sure some son of a convict does not purloin it.’
    Jack grinned and took the beer. The others in the bar were strangers. As a South Australian he could not talk football to those around him. They followed the English code of rugby whereas he was a former Australian Rules football player. His only real links in this city – other than his sister – were with a handful of men he had served with. George returned and both men raised their glasses in a mutual toast.
    ‘The old battalion.’
    For the first hour they exchanged as much news as they could on the whereabouts of the men of the battalion since their arrival home. It was a conversation many around them were having, as the scars of war were not yet a year old. Jack also talked about his son and how he seemed to be settling down in the care of his sister. It was not normally a subject he would discuss but George was a man with whom he had shared three traumatic years of his life.
    ‘When are you going back to Papua?’ George asked across the top of his fourth glass.
    ‘Don’t know if I can,’ Jack reflected. ‘I have responsibilities now and my brother-in-law has offered me a job at his printing business. Besides, I’m broke. Not enough to put together the gear I need to go prospecting again.’
    George gazed across Jack’s head at the open door. Outside the sun shone with the pale but warm blueness that the Englishman had come to appreciate. ‘You are not the kind of man who would be happy working in a factory for the rest of his life,’ he said, as if speaking to the sunlight outside. ‘You would come to resent your son for tying you down to a life that you are not suited to.’
    Jack wanted to protest his friend’s observation but knew that he spoke the truth. ‘I just can’t dump my boy on my sister,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t be right. The boy and I are meant to be together.’
    George looked back at Jack. ‘Might he not be better off with your sister?’ he asked gently. ‘From what you have told me the boy is missing a woman’s touch this early in his life.’
    Jack thought about the Englishman’s statement. What he said made sense. Given the chance to return to Papua he might find enough gold to set himself and his son up for life.
    ‘He is. But why are you so keen on me heading north?’
    George frowned at Jack’s question. ‘Because I want to go with you.’
    ‘To Papua! Why in hell would you want to go to somewhere like Papua after surviving the last few years? It’s no tropical paradise. It’s a place of malaria, swamps, crocs and blackfellas who would just as much eat you as take your head for a trophy.’
    ‘Ah, dear chap,’ George sighed. ‘The answer to that is somewhat complex. But it has its roots in a little boy who once read a book written by a Frenchman almost a half century ago. I vividly remember the title: Adventures in New Guinea: The Narrative of Louis Tregance, a French Sailor. Nine Years in Captivity