Bill ‘Swampy’ Marsh - Great Australian Volunteer Firies Stories

BILL SWAMPY MARSH is an award-winning writer/performer of stories, songs and plays. He spent most of his youth in rural south-western New South Wales. Bill was forced to give up any idea he had of a career as a cricketer when a stint at agricultural college was curtailed due to illness, and so began his hobby of writing. After backpacking through three continents and working in the wine industry, his writing hobby blossomed into a career.

His first collection of short stories, Beckom Pop. 64, was published in 1988, his second, Old Yanconian Daze, in 1995 and his third, Looking for Dad, in 1998. During 1999, Bill released Australia, a CD of his songs and stories. That was followed in 2002 by A Drovers Wife and Glory, Glory: A Tribute to the Royal Flying Doctor Service in 2008 and Open Roads: The Songs and Stories of Bill Swampy Marsh in 2017. He has written soundtrack songs and music for the television documentaries The Last Mail from Birdsville: The Story of Tom Kruse; Source to Sea: The Story of the Murray Riverboats and the German travel documentaries Traumzeit auf dem Stuart Highway, Clinic Flights (Tilpa & Marble Bar), Traumzeit in den Kimberleys and Einsatz von Port Hedland nach Marble Bar.

Bill has won and judged many nationwide short-story and songwriting competitions and short-film awards as well as running writing workshops throughout Australia. He has performed his songs and stories from outback places such as Mount Dare (pop. 10), down the Birdsville Track, as part of the Great Australian Cattle Drive; on the Ghan as part of Great Southern Rails ANZAC Tribute Journey; and at the Transport Hall of Fame gala dinner in Alice Springs as a support act to Slim Dusty.

Great Australian Volunteer Firies Stories is part of Bills very successful series of Great Australian stories, including: Great Australian Outback Trucking Stories (2019), Great Australian Bush Funeral Stories (2018), Great Australian Outback Nurses Stories (2017), Great Australian Outback Teaching Stories (2016), Great Australian Outback Police Stories (2015), Amazing Grace: Stories of Faith and Friendship from Outback Australia (2014), The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories and Great Australian Outback School Stories (2013), Great Australian CWA Stories (2011), New Great Australian Flying Doctor Stories and The ABC Book of Great Aussie Stories for Young People (2010), Great Australian Stories Outback Towns and Pubs (2009), More Great Australian Flying Doctor Stories (2007), Great Australian Railway Stories (2005), Great Australian Droving Stories (2003), Great Australian Shearing Stories (2001) and Great Australian Flying Doctor Stories (1999). Bills biography Goldie: Adventures in a Vanishing Australia was published in 2008 and his semi-autobiographical collection Swampy: Tall Tales and True from Boyhood and Beyond was published in 2012.

More information about the author can be found at

www.billswampymarsh.com

Facebook: Bill Swampy Marsh

Author unknown

When I am called to duty, God

Wherever flames may rage

Give me strength to save some life

Whatever be its age.

Help me embrace a little child

Before it is too late

Or save an older person from

The horror of that fate.

Enable me to be alert

And hear the weakest shout

And quickly and efficiently

To put the fire out.

I want to fill my calling and

To give the best in me

To guard my every neighbour and

Protect their property.

And if according to my fate

I am to lose my life

Please bless with your protecting hand

My children, my partner, my husband or my wife.

I had the feeling that it was going to be a different sort of Christmas when my cousin Esmay and I ran into our lounge room early on Christmas morning to find Esmays dad dressed up as Santa and lying comatose under the Christmas tree while clinging on to the half-emptied flagon of port wed left out specially for Santa. When I asked Esmay what was going on, she told me that her father my Uncle Bob was a bit partial to the occasional drop and that hed probably snuck into the lounge room late that night in the hopes of stealing a few drops for himself before Santa got to it.

We were just checking to see if Uncle Bob was still alive when the rest of the adults arrived on the scene. The adults being my mum and dad and Esmays mother, Aunty Flo. Now, with Uncle Bob being a real lump of a man, it took the whole three of them to drag him out from under the Christmas tree and off to the bedroom, where Aunty Flo suggested itd be best for all concerned to allow him to sleep things off.

With Uncle Bob now indisposed, Mum was keen that we get to it and distribute the presents. When I asked her why we werent going to wait for my sixteen-year-old sister, Jean, to make an appearance, Dad gave a disgruntled nod over his shoulder. And there, out through the missing wooden panel in the lounge room wall that Dad had promised Mum he was going to fix before our guests arrived for Christmas, I could see our old farm ute, stuck on its side in a table drain, just off the track that led from our front gate to our house. What I could gather from the discussion that followed was that Jean had borrowed the ute the previous night to go out and meet up with some of her friends from the various properties around the area and she obviously hadnt quite made it home, which explained why the ute was lying on its side in the table drain.

Anyhow, with Uncle Bob now unavailable, Dad begrudgingly took it upon himself to dish out the presents. And thats where I struck gold. Santa had heard my words and hed got me a brand-spanking-new cricket bat, freshly smelling of willow and linseed. A kid couldnt have wished for more. Though I had an inkling that Dad, in particular, mightve had something to do with it, because when I took the bat out of its newspaper wrapping, scribbled across the face of it were the words To Swampy from Sir Donald Bradman in something that looked a bit like Dads own scrawly handwriting.

As for the other gifts, itd been a pretty lean season on the farm so they werent as special. Mum had bought Dad some Old Spice aftershave and one of those brand-new electric shavers, which was guaranteed not to cut him up as much as the old cutthroat razor hed been struggling with for the past twenty years. In turn Dad had bought Mum a feather duster because shed broken the last one after shed caught me smoking cigarettes down behind Dads personal hideaway, that is, his work shed. Santa had bought Esmay a frilly dress so that she wouldnt look like shed come from such a poor family when she went back to the posh girls-only boarding school up in Darwin that her parents had wrangled a bursary to send her to. The currently waylaid Uncle Bob had bought Aunty Flo a box of his favourite chocolates that had been infused with liqueur, and Aunty Flo had bought Uncle Bob a book that I was told was a three-step instruction manual to try and help him sort out his small drinking problem, as Aunty Flo called it.

After the gifts had been dished out, Esmay and I went off to play our favourite game fly swatting where wed try and swat as many of the bush flies and blowies that had got inside from the various openings in the house that Dad had promised Mum hed fix before our guests arrived for Christmas. While Esmay and I were hell-bent on swatting a hundred before lunch, Dad got the tractor out of its shed and went over to drag the farm ute out of the table drain, and Mum and Aunty Flo got stuck to it in the kitchen to finish off the roast and the special Christmas pudding in the hundred-degree heat.