The Last Swagman's Son

Chapter 1 :- The Long Road To Hell

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13 years earlier

Patrick Duggan was a part time prospector for gold in the remote north west of Western Australia. For years he camped in the bush, scraping a minimum wage from the harsh land while gaining an intimate knowledge and grudging respect of nature. He wore around his neck a lucky charm, a small gold nugget he liked to call "Old Betsy" after his doting grandmother.

Patrick scoured the unexplored Pilbara region during the hottest time of the year, and found Old Betsy after a cyclone had ravaged the land. The cyclone had eroded the hills around Chichester ranges, the sand collecting into the spinifex plains and thus providing him new opportunities for discovery.

Him, his rusted metal detector, his dog and his battered ford ute. And sometimes his son would follow him on his wanderings, young Jimmy, eager to learn and impress his dad, the tough old bushman, whom his son considered as the last swagman. Indeed to those who knew Patrick; pastoralists and miners, they sometimes gave him the last swagman motto when they met up with him in the pubs, and often in jest.

But for most of the year Jimmy lived with his mother, Nancy, on Mullangabara Station on the Pilbara coast. Jimmy was the apple of his mothers eye. Indeed he was considered by all the ladies and girls in Port Hedland and Karratha as a future catch.

It was his brooding eyes that stood out. An intense thoughtfulness and intelligence that cast far beyond his basic education in the bush schools he attended via telegraph. A dark haired, blue eyed kid who revelled in his simple life in the outback.

When he was younger some of the girls even followed him where ever he went in town, sometimes standing on the corner of his aunt's house in Port Hedland as though they were excitedly waiting to just catch a glimpse of him. The Last Swagmans Son needed only be uttered for young girls to fall into a swooning chatter of giggles and sense of longing of which they could barely understand let alone act upon.

"I'll be going down south for the winter this year son. You want to come?"

It was music to Jimmy's ears to be even acknowledged by his dad. "For sure!"

They had been out bush for a week now, and it irked his mother to ever have her son spend time with his dad, because it meant weeks on end on "walkabout". Not that she was worried about it. She had become used to Jimmy running off for the weekend out bush, not even telling her anything.

The first time he ran off into the bush he was three years old. He was found naked a day later walking down an old bush track. When he was six he ran away off the station again, and his mother went into hysterics. For three days he lived off the land, returning each night to ask the station manager Freddie if his mom was calmed down yet.

"No mate, she is still angry. Come back tomorrow."

Patrick had instilled in Jimmy a deep respect for nature and taught him all about survival in the bush since he was only a toddler.

"What are we going to do down there?" Jimmy said after a moment of hesitation. He valued his fathers words, even moreso as he hardly spoke much to anyone but his mum.

"Got to do some work to stop the loggers."

More tree spiking he thought. His dad was strange like that. He'd kill and skin feral animals and eat roadkill without a second thought, but when it came to saving the land or rescuing native animals, he was often the one who would be quietly doing the groundwork, often illegally if thats what it took.

"Sure dad. No worries."

That night when he returned to his mother, Patrick and Nancy had a vicious arguement and his father had attacked his mother again in a drunken rage.

"You can't encourage your son to do criminal acts!"

"You mother the boy too much! He'll grow up weak and end up like them emo kids from the city!"

Eventually Patrick burst into Jimmy's room at the pastoral station and dragged him out and into his car with his bleeding mother protesting all the way.

"Don't worry mum," Jimmy had said. "I'll be back."

And two weeks later Jimmy was back. But that voyage had changed him forever.

Going through the forest. Spiking as many trees with iron lengths as the wheelbarrow could carry, to prevent them being chainsawed by the loggers.

Patrick was caught by the loggers. A fight ensued. Broken but not detered by the loggers, his father went out the next day and never came back.

They never did find his dad's murderers.

When the police eventually found the nine year old boy at his camp, he was covered in blood and crying over his fathers body. The young boy had found his dad and wheelbarrowed him over ten kilometres through rugged forest country in a desperate failed attempt to save his old man.

The Last Swagman.

The shocking episode was splashed over the news but soon the public interest in his story faded away. His mother tried for weeks to get her son to talk, but he remained a ghost of his former self.

When he did finally speak, his mother cried in despair.

"Mom. I want to be like dad."

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Hi there everyone :) a litle story I have been thinking of doing about a crazy eco terrorist!!!

Its only a story which I will be jumping around abit with in terms of a timeline. He will do some crazy eco terrorist act, then it will prolly flashback to his past for abit to show why he is like he is. So yer its about a guy who hates humanity for its sins against the earth and is a greenie, but a radical greenie with a gun :0 hope you enjoy reading it lol! Please don't expect me to be punctuation perfect or to dilly dally with the words too much or anything lol it is really a story I want to finish and if I can get all of my ideas on paper maybe later I will edit it properly and make better sense of the tale! So forgive me for any errors, I will just be writing and posting with little thought about fixing it all up until later! Cheers!