An Aussie Friend

[John Wayne]

Now Micky and I banter a bit about kicking each others ass, and I hope it brings a chuckle because of our if nothing else "Rustic use of the English Langague joking with each other.....

This is the intro of a book entitled...."Tent Boxing, an Australian Adventure"....I am sure it is available......

Wayne McLennan made the NY Times best seller list with his story about "Rowing to Alaska"

We became friends here on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, born the same year, and both of us has had a colorful enough past, as I am sure many of you over 50 have had also......

It was also strange our first and middle names were the same but reversed......

You younger ones, going to have to blaze your own trail....And we are here to listen, comment, and enjoy your adventures as well......

Ya'll don't be bashful....

And if you get picked on....me and Micky, and HT will show nuff have and ass stompin on the cotton Pickers.....Big E is still learnin' but he is quite capable alone, because he can hold out longer than the rest of us in a scrap....


I COULD HEAR THE CALLER throwing out challenges to "any mug brave enough to step into the ring with my fighters" and promising ten dollars if he could last three rounds. I could feel the drum they pounded to get your attention - "Boom, boom, boom" - long before I reached the tent, long before I saw the fighters standing on a raised platform stripped to the waist, arms folded, glaring down at the audience.
Behind the boxers, stretching the length of the tent, hung a two-metre-high canvas mural painted with hard, strong colours. Dave Sands, Les Darcy, Ron Richards, George Barnes, Vic Patrick, Jimmy Carruthers, all the greats of Australian boxing, stared down at you smiling, arms raised in victory or with gloved hands shaped up, ready to fight.

As I reached the tent, I came against a thick crowd of people, mostly men: milling, listening, building up courage. The caller was working hard, introducing his boxers one by one. The heavier men were mostly old fighters, white men with thick middles and faces that had worked often - past their best, but still good enough to take on local boys, the yokels from the bush.

Heavier men always last longer in the boxing game. The strength that comes with their heavy bodies gives them longevity even after their other skills have diminished; speed and technique are less important to a big man, but he still has to have courage.

The lighter fighters were younger, and except for one round-shouldered boy with a long appendix scar running across his belly, all were Aboriginal, coal-black, coffee and bush-honey coloured men with strong thin legs, and noses so broad they spread to the cheekbones.

Cessnock was a coal-mining town, one of the earlier European settlements in Australia. Aborigines had long been hunted out of our area, pushed further into the bush, closer towards oblivion. Our people came out of the deep tunnels of north England and Wales, or the poverty and wretchedness of occupied Ireland.

We didn't travel much. Most coal-miners work hard and stay with their own. We didn't see a lot of Aborigines and we didn't understand them. Few people tried to in those days. These dark men standing on the raised platform, more sinew than muscle and with smiles so large you could easily forget their profession, were stranger to us in our ignorance than any immigrant who had just arrived in our country from a faraway land across the sea.

I moved deeper into the crowd. Men and boys stood staring up at the fighters, feet spread, wondering if it was all worth it. Three rounds against one of these tent fighters to earn ten dollars. But it wasn't about the money.

I stood next to a soldier who seemed like he wanted to go. He was tall and tapered, a middle or light heavy, I thought. His thick, dark hair was worn long enough to cover the top half of his ears and was slicked down on the top and made to shine with a greasy cream, and he wore long straight sideburns. If you looked at him from the side you could see he had bumps along the bridge of his nose, and from the front it was wide and bent.

His eyes were smiling and he was very relaxed as he answered the caller, "I'll have a go, mate. I'll take your bloody money." The crowd roared their approval, "Good on ya, mate, you'll do all right." Cessnock men and boys loved Jimmy Sharman's boxing troupe.

As the caller continued his work, haranguing the locals, matching more men, I took the time to look the soldier up and down again. He looked the part, that was for sure, and then glancing to his feet another time, I knew he must be able to fight - he was already wearing boxing boots.

Our soldier was a ring-in, one of the show fighters playing the part of the local. He was going to fight a stew: a fake fight where both boxers pulled their punches just before impact, or when thrown full-bodied were aimed at the arms, shoulders, chest, or the blocking gloves.

Often blood was drawn but without malice, just an accident, like an actor forgetting his lines because he's trying too hard to remember. It took a lot of skill to box a stew; you had to have two good fighters in the ring.

I should have realised sooner: the long hair and the sideburns were give-aways, the army wouldn't allow that.

I had heard stories about this kind of fight from my family, my coal-mining, boxing family. It happened a lot in the carnival world when good opponents couldn't be found. My uncle, who was the best of all of us, told me once, "You had to know the fight game pretty well to tell it was not a serious fight and most country boys didn't, a little blood and a lot of swinging were enough for them.

People were entertained, money was made, and nobody was hurt. It was all right." This soldier who was not a soldier would be fighting against another member of the troupe and we would cheer for him.

THE DRUM kept beating until three more willing locals raised their hands and yelled, "I'll have a go." Inside the large canvas tent a makeshift ring had been set up: ropes fashioned around a dirt floor. Small wooden stools had been placed in the corners to rest on between rounds, tin buckets filled with water and a large sponge stood beside the stools outside the ropes. Old white towels hung over the ropes. The tent filled with men, so many that they seemed to steal the air. It had become summer again.

The caller appeared. "Let's have the soldier," rose a chorus of shouts from the public, who were pushed together like cattle on a road train. "Patience, in good time," cried the caller to the gathering, most of whom were a little drunk and had no time for patience. The first fight was introduced.

In the left corner, wearing only a pair of jeans and a loose, soiled blue singlet that tightened as it rode over his beer gut looking for his pants, was a man called Bonk. I'd known him most of my life: a drunk, still young but nevertheless a drunk.

I'd never seen him fight, but I knew he was a local roughnut, a pub brawler, and here he stood before us, barefooted, ready to have a go. His opponent was one of the old pugs, a big sandy-haired man with thick, scarred eyebrows and rough jailhouse tattoos on his biceps that were so faded they resembled smudges left when a badly coloured shirt becomes wet and leaves a dye imprint on bare skin.

According to the manager, he had been a top light heavy in Queensland, one of the best produced in the bush, but you never knew.

Like Bonk, the tent fighter chose to fight barefoot to give himself a better grip on the dirt floor. When he came out to meet Bonk in the middle of the ring he moved a little heavily, slower than he must have once been, but his hands were shaped up and his chin was tucked neatly into his chest for protection.

You could see he had done a lot of fighting. Bonk was drunk, not falling-down drunk, just I'm-brave-now drunk. He had a lot of mates in the audience shouting and cheering for him, willing him to fight, and this seemed to give him courage because he came out swinging. His swings unfortunately were all loose, round-armed, and were easily blocked by the tent fighter, who held his gloves high, leaned away from the punches, and at the same time brought up his shoulder to deflect anything the gloves missed.

Bonk's mates in the crowd were going wild, screaming as one, "Bonk, Bonk, Bonk." All they understood was the attack. As far as they were concerned Bonk was murdering the tent man.

Without effort, and almost unnoticed, the big Queenslander bent at the knees, went under a Bonk right-hand round-house, and came back with a short left hook that laid the Cessnock boy on his back.

Thrown sweetly, timed perfectly, it caught Bonk moving forward, and it happened so quickly that Bonk's mates were still cheering for him as he lay, still, on the dirt ring floor. When they realised it was the end, just one punch needed, they started howling like dogs calling in the night, mocking Bonk, laughing at Bonk.

He sat up slowly, leaned to one side and vomited. His cheek had been sliced open, and blood was flowing across his white, white face and dripping into the sick. He was lifted to his feet by the caller, who was also the referee, walked to the fresh air at the back of the tent, and given some water, and had his blood swabbed away. Some of the tent fighters stayed with him until he recovered. Bonk's mates were watching the next stoush.

THE SECOND FIGHT was introduced and began quickly. It was between a local boy who was pro boxing himself but was not considered much good, and an Aboriginal boy who was lighter and much shorter. The Cessnock fighter threw straight lefts and rights continuously from his high altitude for the three rounds and stayed well out of range.

They were not difficult punches to move around, but the tent fighter was content to block and land the occasional counter. In the great heat in the tent the Aboriginal boy didn't break a sweat and never stopped smiling. The management was happy that a local would earn some money, it was good for business. "Let's hear it for the boy from Cessnock," yelled the caller in his voice of gravel and honey, as he paid out the money.

As our soldier climbed through the ropes, the men around me grew agitated, excited. "He'll do all right," I heard the man next to me whisper to his mate, "look at the bloody muscles on him, must be all that soldier training." They expected something from this stranger.

He had been taken as one of ours although no one knew him.

The gloves that were used were old and worn, the type that would cut you easily. They were dark brown and when laced on our soldier's hands looked like the knobbly head of a club used in an ancient hunt for bashing in the brains of animals.

They stood in opposite corners of the ring, our man with his back to the tent fighter, waiting to be called to fight by the clang of the bell.

Without warning, his opponent rushed from his own corner and threw a chopping right hand that caught the soldier on the right ear, dropping him to the ground like a coin falling through a hole in a worn pants pocket.

The crowd howled with honest workingmen's indignation and contempt at the unfairness. They yelled abuse at the tent fighter who stood towering over our man, challenging him to "get up and fight, ya mongrel".

The tent fighter was one of the older pros who had gone a little flabby around the middle, but only a little. It was the type of flab that comes from training between drinking, a controlled belly. His shoulders and chest were huge and knotted, uncorrupted by tattoos.

His head was small, but only by comparison to his shoulders, and cropped with thinning hair bleached white from the sun. The eyebrows, which had also bleached, were almost invisible. Teeth were missing.

The crowd pushed towards the ropes, intent on helping our man, but before all control was lost the soldier stood, steady as an old, strong tree, shaped his hands up and started throwing punches hard, fast and often.

The soldier was smaller but in better shape, his breathing strong, unhindered by fat. A tattoo of a woman with long dark hair that partially hid her beckoning naked body danced on his left breast with each breath that he took, and contorted violently with every left-hand punch he threw.

To the delight of everybody, the tent fighter went down. It was a left rip hook combination, or it may have been something else, they were being thrown so fast and with purpose. But not a killing purpose, if you looked carefully.

Up got the tent fighter, in he came, wild-eyed, mad, down went our man, landing on his back in one motion as if hit full-bodied by a charging bull. Up he got, furious.

The Cessnock crowd loved it. They were breathing as heavily as the fighters, throwing as many punches, knocking down their own phantom opponents. This went on for the entire fight, down, up and down again, neither man getting the better.

By the rules of the contest the soldier had won, he had lasted the three rounds. The tent fighter was cut on the bridge of the nose but this had come from being brushed by the laces of an old glove. Both these men were too good to hurt each other.

PISS OFF, ya black Abo *******." Everybody in the tent heard it. Pat had screamed it in defence of his mate, who was taking a bad beating by one of the Aboriginal boys in the last fight of the night.

Pat knew when he said it that it was a mistake. He knew that now he would have to fight, and not in the ring with a referee. It wasn't the fighter who called him out, he was too busy finishing off Pat's mate in the ring under the roof of the hot tent, it was one of the other Aboriginal fighters who took the insult on behalf of his friend.

That was the way these tent men were, they stood up for each other. You had to when you drifted through redneck towns with a travelling carnival, towns where local boys were tribal. And you had to certainly if you were Aboriginal, we all understood that.

Pat belonged to Bonk's group. He was only about eighteen, probably the same age as the Aborigine he now had to fight. He was not bad, none of the group were real bad, just bad enough to get themselves into problems wherever they went. They were the type of blokes that my mother dreaded I would end up knocking about with, the type who always had run-ins with the police.

We all marched out of the tent to watch. The crowd formed a circle around the two boys and we waited. One of the old professionals had come with the tent fighter, the same man who had fought our soldier.

Fights in the street were pretty fair in those days - if a man was beaten the fight was stopped. Feet, knives or bottles were never used; that was yet to come. But Pat's mob were not entirely to be trusted, so I was happy to see the big old white fighter warning Pat that only fists were to be used, and the rest of us that nobody was to interfere.

The two boys stripped to the waist, shaped up and moved around each other. Pat held his hands low. He wasn't a boxer, didn't even look like a street brawler. He was small, but his size was misleading, he was strong, wiry strong, the type of strength that a lot of people can't see, and he didn't give in easily, I had seen him fight many times. Cessnock was a small town.

The Aboriginal boy crashed a straight left, a bare fist into Pat's face that opened a deep gash inside his mouth, and blood-flecked spit bubbles spurted out with every breath he took. The tent fighter stepped quickly away and then moved back even more quickly throwing a left and a right, another straight left and then a left hook.
The Aboriginal fighter was a rare man who was born to fight. He could take his ring skills and use them effectively in the street, where a mad swinging no-rule contest often left a trained boxer with no great advantage.

The Aboriginal boy's timing never faulted against Pat's mad rushes. His power, speed and delight in fighting left Pat defenceless. Pat was cut high on his forehead, thin streams of blood rushed down his face over the bridge of his nose, and mixed with yet more blood streaming from his nostrils and mouth before cascading onto his bare breast, matting his light covering of hairs.

He had smeared his face crimson by rubbing the back of his hand across his wounds, one eye was closing and his lips had swollen. His face resembled a richly-painted, grotesque Chinese opera mask. And still he would not quit.

It was Pat's gang that stopped the killing. Two of them wrapped him in an embrace of mateship, holding his arms to his side. Pat didn't resist, he could barely stand. The Aboriginal fighter moved back a step. "Do you still think we are just black Abo *******s?" he asked in a high, excited voice. All Pat answered was that he was beaten fairly, before he turned slowly and unsteadily walked away.

Pat was one of us, a Cessnock boy, but I know most of the blokes who had walked out of Sharman's boxing tent were behind the Aboriginal fighter. Probably all of us were guilty of calling an Aboriginal a black Abo ******* at some time, even if it was not to his face, but we also had a pretty fair sense of what was right.

As I wandered back along the alley, dodging the crowd who were not looking where they were walking because the carnival had stolen their hearts, consumed their minds and affected their sense of direction, I came once again to Sharman's boxing tent.

The drums had stopped beating and the tent flap had been closed. All that was left to distinguish it as a house where men worked was the mural of our champions that was now dancing intimately with a breeze that had come suddenly and blew gently.

I stared up at the painted fighters who were the princes of our world, but didn't linger - there was no need, I would see them again next year. I would be sixteen, it would be my turn to have a go.
But 1969 was the last year Jimmy Sharman's boxing troupe travelled the fairs around Australia. Our politicians decided that year to ban tent boxing. They thought it unsafe. They had decided that it was their decision when we, as free men, might take a risk in life.

This is an extract
from Wayne John McLennan's book of recollected
experiences, Tent Boxing and Austrailian Adventure.

Wayne has since been named a "National Treasure" by the Prime Minister of Austrialia......

[Micky10]

JW -

Good story. A thing that may be lost on our "modern" society. When I was a youngster we used to fight a lot. Most of the time it was a form of recreation, nothing more. Just a normal part of the "food chain" activities of the neighborhood. No malice, hatred or a desire to hurt the other. Done with fairness and honor. Now, in these days, it would be "politically incorrect" and I am sure a youth, doing the same thing that many of us did, would be chastised as being a "bad apple and a dick". At one time a "normal" practice of the Warrior Class, to build skills, body, mind and spirit. Frowned upon and scorned by the many, BUT in high demand when the barbarians are coming over YOUR wall. Such is the way of the world, some things never change.

Love - Micky

[John Wayne]

The gloves, and as you say, No malice, hatred or a desire to hurt the other. Done with fairness and honor.

Are very popular here.....That is just one of the reasons I like it here.....