A HOME-BREW PARTY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 261, 3 November 1932, Page 20

A HOME-BREW PARTY.

scene; in navvyland. «HABII WOltSKfc, HARD DRINKER.' SPATE OF ABGUMHNT..;,.. SgS '•■ -■■ ! |By : .■ %t Although the ' area: -was enjoying the benefits; of- prohibition, or, "rather, "of being' a. Pr jhibited area, there w.as a gentleman of most unsteady gait prop: ping himself up against the -verandah po;ete'of,.; ramshackle shops that ornamented the; main "street" of the canip where lived the men "who were making the bush ways smooth for the long-delayed railway. He wasrin the middle' of one of those debauches the hard-working navvy allows himself: at intervals. "Hard worker, hard.drinker,*' is a provert* in bush-and construction camps, and cef taintly it of ten -appliee.; The unsteady person lurched; about, making irrelevant remarks 'to the' world lin general. He was quite harmless, not "fighting drunk," and the sober part of the • community treated' him with the fine toleration one meets in these rough places. ' '; . << VHbpßeer.": , An obliging'; carpenter who was /dt work on a contract job, and was stopping at the "bunk-house," informed me that ■the "hop be:r" had flowed the previous night, much to the inconvenience of the few sober boarders, and.he expected the coming night would.be even more volcanic, as th e. day was a holiday. and there was sure to be" a wind-up of the "drunk." Sure enough, after the sports gathering, tl.e little nomad town setfout to enjoy itsielf. A dance in the hall attracted 'ths majority, of the revellers, and the unsteady gentleman and his pale started to make mysterious journeys between the . bunk-house and a neighbouring shaok—-ostensibly a. shop, but for the time being a pretty good imitation of a "pub." ..',.'. .■ ' . The Carouse. . Parties gathered in the various cubicles of the hunk-house, and there • was a spate of argument, vehement enough, but singularly devoid of coherence. Two revellers in particular got snarled up in a terrific dispute. Bill, the less sober of the two, got it into his head that Dick (usually hie bosom pal) was several sorts of a poor fish, and told him so in language that was frequent and free, "You're a dirty dog, Dick; you're a Bolshevik; you're an agitator; you've done more harm en the job than any man in the camp; and you and your mates are rotters! I've no time for any of you, and will say so to your faces." All this was unloadei in an even, unemotional tone, and all it lacked was sobriety. Dick stood the harangue with drunken gravity. "I'll bash you, Dick," said Bill, in a matter of fact voice, but even offers of a straight-out :Ight were ignored by Dick, whose only c utburst occurred when Bill insisted in libelling Dick's mates, who, according to him, were the scum of the camp, wrong-'uns, loafers, and incapable of handling 8. dust-pan, let alone a pick or a "banjo." Dick did occasionally resent that part of Bill's recitative. Three or four other voices burbled out comments from time to time. I happened to be trying to get to eleep in a bunk two cubiclea further along, within hearing but out o E eight. The task was hopeless in that vinous altercation, and I tried to fit charactere 'to the voices; it was like listening to the wireless and trying to figure out what the invisible announcer is like. Next morning when I met the party at the breakfast table, I verified my *<J eductions, and found them remarkably near the mark—in vino veritas. . ' • The Bushman's Chorus.. One of the chorus had an impediment! in his speech. Him I could not follow at all, except ;hat at regular recurrent points he chanted bibulously in his thick tones, "There was rhimu, there wae mhatai, there was akhe-akh," but what the rest of the forest contained I could not identify. It wae apparently the etory of some bush job he, and.his mates had be ;n on, and the rimu, matai, ake-ake kept cropping up with, what Shakespeare :alls "damnable iteration." The result or one was almost hypnotic. And all the uime the drunken squabble Bill was having with himself—for Dick seemed impossible to lure to anything overt in the way of violence—went on and on, over a nd over again, and was only interrupted v 'hen someone lurched out into the-niglit for another bottle of home-brew, it seemed impossible that such bemused mortals could be human, but in daylight, when the fumes of the home-brew had'evaporated, they were all tip-top hands with the pick and shovel, and the best of friends apparently. Out in the Rain.

The last '1 remember before sleep mercifully closed my ears was a struggle, apparently between Bill and Dick, a collision with partitions as they made for tho door, and outside there was a collapse against the frail walk of the bunk-house. It was raining steadily and .1 was unfeeling!enough to hope that" tl ie two drunken revellers would get as wet outside as they were inside. . At breakfitst a bottle of wine was passed ■ round, as a deoch and doria, apparently, and the much-chastened topers swallosyed the potent stuff between the porridge and the steak and eggs. They :nust have had ■ digestions like ostriches. They were shaky, and one did ■ not ■• onvy them their recovery, hoeing into a stiff railway cutting with pick and shovel. But it would not do for'all of us to seek.our recreation in the same way; after all, they were the descendants of the-Vikings, who used-to consider the evening carouse the-custom-ary wind up to the strenuous day's work. ■