Wake In Fright Read Online Free PDF

Crawford.‘’Course we do have quite a few suicides…they’re a bit of trouble.’
    Grant remembered having heard something of the suicide rate in Bundanyabba and the local custom of declaring the most blatant acts of self-destruction ‘accidental death’. He asked the policeman why.
    ‘Well,’ said the policeman thoughtfully, ‘I suppose it’s because so many suicides give the place a bad name.’
    Grant had heard another story about Bundanyabba to the effect that the local authorities kept the official thermometer on the lawn in front of the Town Hall. When the temperature rose above one hundred degrees in the shade, the lawn sprinklers were turned on to cool the thermometer down. In this way Bundanyabba’s official maximum temperature seldom rose above one hundred degrees.
    There was, reflected Grant, possibly some connection between the official attitudes towards suicide and high temperatures, although he was inclined to disbelieve the story about the thermometer.
    Anyhow, the whole thing was far too complicated topursue at this stage of the evening.
    ‘I really must go and eat, I’m afraid,’ he said.
    ‘Have another before you go?’
    ‘No. No really, I’ve had enough, thanks; I’ll pass out if I don’t eat soon.’
    ‘Easy seen you’re not a Yabba-man, John,’ said the policeman. ‘Come and I’ll take you round to the School.’ The School, Grant realised, was another name for the Two-up game. More commonly still it was simply referred to as ‘the Game’.
    The noise of the bar dropped away as though they had shed something tangible when they stepped out into the main street. Grant tried to count the number of beers he had drunk, but found he couldn’t. ‘Fresh’ would have been a gross misnomer for the air in the main street, but it was different from the air in the bar and Grant felt its effect.
    He looked affectionately at Crawford. A character, that’s what Crawford was, a fascinating chunk of local colour. He, John Grant, was savouring him to while away the time, making an erudite little study of Bundanyabba man. Grant stumbled slightly stepping from the footpath to the road.
    Crawford led him a couple of blocks down the main street, talking at length on the features of life in Bundanyabba. Grant wondered whether Bundanyabba people talked as muchamong themselves as they did to strangers about the virtues of their city. He had the impression that they did, the city seemed to be an obsession with them. Yabba-Men—wasn’t yabba Aboriginal for talk? That seemed to be the basis for a pun, but he could not tie the threads of the thought together.
    Crawford turned into one of the main cross-streets and a few yards down they entered a long dark lane. The lane ran parallel with the main street, and on one side Grant could see the backs of the business premises and shops silhouetted against the sky. On the other side were the tall paling fences bordering the backyards of people’s homes.
    There were no lights in the lane, and the buildings threw a dark shadow so that up to a foot or so above head level all was complete darkness. Grant became aware of many figures in the darkness.Twenty or so men were standing about in the lane, talking in low voices. Cigarettes glowed orange and then dimmed as men smoked, and often a match would flare briefly yellow. As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, Grant saw that he and Crawford were attracting mild attention.
    ‘How goes it, Jock?’ a voice would drift from knots of men.
    ‘Not bad, Jim, how’s it?’ Crawford would reply, identifying people by their voices as far as Grant could make out, because he could not distinguish the features on a single face.
    They came to a gate where two men were standing withthe nonchalance only adopted by men standing guard.
    ‘G’night, Jock,’ they said, as Crawford and Grant drew near. Grant could see they were looking at him as piercingly as one could look piercing through almost complete