The Big Wet, 1990

Artwork by Joshua Beaton

I don’t know what Rusty loved more: Jack, his cockatoo, or the shiny Pontiac parked in the garage of his two storey riverfront house. But both were going to go under if I didn’t do something. The Wyong River was rising fast.

He and Joan were away in Sydney. Rusty’s arteries needed more work and I was minding their place. I had keys to the downstairs section of their house, but no keys to the Pontiac. The water down there was ankle deep already. I managed to get into the car only to find that there was no way I could move the old Yank Tank without a key.

I jumped back over the fence to my place. It was a 1920s weatherboard cottage and I knew from the silt I discovered on the top of the hardwood bearers under the house just how far the river had risen before. I had a phone number for Joan, in case of an emergency.

‘I’ll call my daughter in Newcastle. She has a key for the Pontiac. You just save Jack. Rusty loves that silly bird.’

By the time I got back down to the bird cage, which was this tall tower of weldmesh fencing, crafted by Rusty himself, the water in that part of their yard was testicle deep. Out in the middle of the river, whole trees and dead cows floated up and down over huge brown standing waves. They would end up in Tuggerah Lake and eventually out to sea via the channel at The Entrance.

The cage wouldn’t budge, Rusty had sunk it deep into the ground. I valued my fingers and knew Jack would go crazy if I dared to grab him. There was no option but to dive down and dig away at the ground into which the cage had been buried.

I saved the bird, cage and all, and Joan’s daughter arrived just in time to drive the Pontiac to higher ground.

Rusty was ever grateful for my actions that day. He let me drive him in his Pontiac to Doyalson RSL for lunch, over which he shared some stories from the war that he had never told anyone, not even Joan.