The Great Orange Caper ... another story from a miss-spent youth

My fellow-forestry student in 1961: George Matthiessen  – the most intelligent and at the same time the most mischievous man I ever knew (photo by Jack Bradshaw).

It was George Matthiessen who suggested the Great Orange Caper, and that should have been enough to make me wary. George had a way of coming up with little schemes and projects that ended badly, and having known him for a year or two, I should have been alert to their dangers by that time.

But he also had a way of putting me at ease with a dreamy look of innocence on his face.  As I listened, the whole idea would appear positively attractive, an amusing or exciting adventure, with nothing to lose .... until later I remembered the mischievous glint in his green eyes.

It was the summer of 1959/60, and there were four of us living in the old departmental house that acted as the Single Officers Quarters in the south-west timber and forestry town of Nannup. The oldest of the occupants was Andy, a fully-fledged forestry officer, several years older than us, but a bachelor and therefore forced to share his accommodation with George, Frank and me, 18-year-old, care-free forestry students posted to Nannup to work in a fire crew over our university summer vacation. Andy was a studious, teetotal, religious man, who liked to keep to himself and spend the evenings studying his bible. George, Frank and I, on the contrary, liked to get up to fun and games. In these George was usually the ringleader.

George was a fine-looking young man with a shock of auburn hair that would have been the envy of most women, and was a brilliant student, having topped the State in various subjects in his university matriculation exams. What is more, he achieved this despite a childhood and early education way out in the bush, growing up in the small, remote mining town of Norseman. He had the sort of charisma that made people want to follow him; unfortunately, he also had within him the sort of devil that ensured, more often than not, he led them into mischief.

A weekend in Busselton

Typical of my experiences as one of George’s mates was the occasion he, Frank and I hitch-hiked from Nannup to the coastal resort of Busselton for the weekend. There we lived on the cheap, bathing in the sea and sleeping rough in the sand dunes or under the jetty. But we needed to freshen up before attending a dance on the Saturday night. George suggested we pop in (by climbing the external fire escape) to the communal bathroom on the upper floor of one of the major hotels in the main street of town. There we could have a nice hot shower, and nobody would be any the wiser. We were well soaped-up and enjoying our ablutions, when the publican (the hotel manager) arrived. He was a cool, muscular chap, with many years of experience dealing with recalcitrant drunks and misbehaving guests. He demanded to know whether we were or were not booked in to his hotel.

George was equal to the occasion. "We always shower first before booking in" he said. The Manager said he would wait for us down at the desk. Moments later we had descended the fire escape, naked and clutching our clothes and disbursed into Busselton’s CBD.  Here we came face-to-face with our fellow forestry student Jack Bradshaw. He was spending his summer in a fire crew at Ludlow and was accompanied on this occasion by a pretty young lady.  Poor Jack, he had been doing quite well up to that point. The look on the young lady’s face when she realised we three reprobates were Jack’s friends made the whole escapade worthwhile … well, it did for us, but it foreshadowed the end of Jack’s chances with  the pretty young lady.

Where it all happened – the main street of Busselton, back in the day

Incidentally, it was on the ride we hitch-hiked from Nannup to Busselton on the Friday evening of that weekend that I learned an entirely new expression. This was used to describe something that is utterly finished, totally kaput.

Just outside of Nannup we had been picked up by a man and his wife, driving a battered old Ford utility with a canvas canopy over the back. When we climbed in, we found the rest of his family: nine ragged kids aged from about 15 downwards. As the Ford picked up speed one of the youngest stood on the tailboard to urinate, swaying out dangerously over the road. It was a miracle that he survived. Nobody took any notice, apart from Frank who was white-faced with apprehension. About half-way to Busselton the ute conked out. Black smoke was coming from beneath the bonnet. George, Frank and I gathered around sympathetically.

 "What do you reckon is the trouble?" I asked.

"She's Donald Ducked" the driver replied.

It was a description to be treasured.

Hearing this, and easily understanding the import, George flagged down a conveniently passing vehicle, one headed in the right direction. We piled in, leaving the poor guy, his smoking Ford and his wife and gaggle of kids behind. I have always felt bad about that.

Hitchhiking on the Nannup-Busselton Road in 1959

A brief attendance at the Balingup Tennis Club Saturday night dance

George also got us into trouble on another occasion that summer. We had driven from Nannup over to the next town up the river, Balingup, (in my old Austin) one Saturday night where we heard there was a dance at the Tennis Club. There was, and it was a great show. Frank and I were thoroughly enjoying the music, the dancing and the lovely young ladies of Balingup when there was a sudden commotion in the supper room. George had wandered in there and seeing the table piled high with sausage rolls, cream scones, lamingtons, cakes and ham sandwiches, decided he would purloin a pocketful for consumption on the way back to Nannup later that evening. He was surprised in the act by two outraged tennis club ladies. Their menfolk arrived in support and George was ejected on the toe of a boot. So were the two innocent bystanders, Frank and me. The tennis club men had apparently been tipped off that we were "part of the gang". It was an ignominious end to a pleasant evening.

Forestry students on the back of a fire truck, circa 1960. L-R George, Frank and Roger (photo by Jack Bradshaw)

Thirty years later I caught an echo of that night out. I was chatting with an old Balingup farmer about bushfires, and we got to reminiscing about our youth in the Blackwood Valley. “You wouldn’t credit it” he said, “but these young bastards from Nannup used to come over to Balingup on Saturday nights and raid the supper room at the Tennis Club dance”.  I kept my mouth shut, but was intrigued by the way in which our sorry little escapade had grown into local legend.

The Great Orange Caper

Knowing all this, it should have been with trepidation that I listened while George outlined his newest scheme one afternoon after work in the Single Officers Quarters at Nannup.  Coming home from the bush that day, the forestry truck on which George was riding had passed the Nannup Police Station. The station was located on a back road on the south bank of the Blackwood River and comprised a single building which housed the station office, the lockup and the living quarters for the Sergeant and his wife. In the garden, George had spotted a magnificent orange tree, and it was loaded with glorious oranges. "I reckon we could sneak in there under cover of darkness and pinch a sackful" George said. "It would be great to have a supply of fresh fruit. All free. Good for our health, too" he added with that look of dreamy innocence that always boded ill.

For reasons that I cannot now comprehend, Frank and I agreed. The idea of pinching a few oranges was one thing - everybody did that - but pinching them from under the arm and eye of the law was another thing altogether. It was this aspect, I think, that appealed most to George's anarchic spirit.

So, plans were laid and, dressed in dark clothes and our faces blackened, we moved off silently through the back streets of Nannup, on foot. Reaching the police station, George ordered us to wait while he reconnoitred. There was a light on in the police living quarters, but otherwise the coast was clear. No dogs had attacked him, George reported.

There was a wire fence around the police station block, and through this we crawled, and then we wormed, commando-like, across the police garden, finally reaching the orange tree. At a signal from George, we began to pick. The oranges turned out to be surprisingly hard to detach from the tree - you really needed secateurs to snip the stalk, and we had not brought a pair. If you pulled, the whole thing came off leaving its innards attached to the tree, but with patience they could be removed by twisting about twenty times. Eventually we had a sack-full, and we stealthily withdrew, across the garden, through the fence, around the back streets, and home. What an adventure! And what a prize those juicy fresh oranges would be!

The denouement of this story was not the arrival of the police (this happened some years later in NSW in another escapade in which George was the ringleader, and in which I was again an innocent participant, and that time we did actually end up getting slightly arrested). Nor were the three of us taken away in manacles to be charged with the astoundingly stupid crime of thieving from a police station. No, we were never caught; indeed, knowing what I now know, I doubt the crime was ever noticed.

We suffered a crueller fate. They were not oranges but tangelos, and so bitter as to be inedible. The next day after work we took them out into the bush and disposed of them in case the police did arrive, and there was a search of the premises.

The tangelo. They look superb but are inedible – or were 50 years ago. A less astringent tangelo may have been bred by horticulturalists since.

An aside

Incidentally, many years later I had a similar disappointment. Ellen and I were travelling “steerage class” by train across southern USA and were suffering severe Vitamin C deficiency. At one point somewhere in the wilds of Arizona or New Mexico, the train drew up (unwontedly) at an obscure railway station (was it Adlestrop?) in the desert. No one left and no one came, on the bare platform … except me. I had spotted a row of what I took to be orange trees. They were loaded with brilliant orange fruit, and I leaped out, salivating, and picked about ten beauties. Of course they were tangelos. Later, having rinsed the hyper-concentrated citric acid from my mouth and tonsils, I remembered George, and the great orange caper at Nannup in 1960, and wondered why I had not learned my lesson.

Back to WA

Over the years, Frank, Jack and I went on to respectable adult lives, but George was always in trouble of some sort or another. He was a gifted artist, was highly intelligent and could do just about anything he put his mind to, from astrophysics to portrait painting, hair dressing, diesel mechanics, lobster fishing and boat-building - but he had a streak of mischief, a disdain for bosses and a disrespect for authority that did not fit him well for life ... especially for life in the public service. I lost touch with him after he had been invited to resign from the Forests Department after a brief but exciting career, and it was another forty years before we met again.

40 years on: reunion of Frank, Roger, George and Jack in 1998

 The occasion was a lunch reunion at the Windsor Hotel in South Perth. George, Frank and I were joined by Jack, our other comrade-in-arms, who was George's closest friend in our student days, and who had always tried to look after him when George was in trouble.

To our surprise, we discovered that George had recently become a new man. He was "born again" and had "found Jesus" and was devoting himself to a life of fellowship, constraint, good works, prayer and worship. No matter what topic of conversation arose over lunch that day, George could work it around to Jesus within seconds.

But as he tried to sign me up to his congregation, I caught a glimpse of the well-remembered mischievous glint in those green eyes.  And a warning bell sounded within me ....