Natural Hazards

Australia has been blessed (or cursed, depending upon your point of view) with a superabundance of dangerous creatures. Even those creatures which are not natively venomous tend to be toxic in some way. Amongst snakes alone, Australia is home to seven of the top ten most dangerous snakes in the world. Thankfully, Australia is free of the menace of rabies which plagues other continents, so at least this is not an issue for travellers to worry about.

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Ants

 

Ants in Australia tend to be large and voracious. In the temperate and dry areas of the continent, they tend to be encountered as ‘meat ants’: these are reddish brown and up to a centimetre in length. They form huge underground colonies, vast nests up to two metres across and a metre deep. They are relatively mild-mannered as ants go and walkers who foolishly stand on the nests can be savagely, although often not dangerously, bitten.

More worrisome are Bull-ants (sometimes called Jumping Jacks) which can grow up to three centimetres in length and which have a vicious pair of pincers with which to deal out damage. Bull-ants tend to roam away from the central nest, scouting the territory for enemies: when they bite they inflict painful stinging welts (2 points of damage, POT 5 Poison) that itch furiously; in cases these have been known to cause anaphylactic shock, or to suppurate and kill through subsequent infection. Small children and babies have been known to die from these effects.

In Queensland, there is a species of ant called the Fire-ant which lives an arboreal existence along the branches of trees and other foliage in the wild forests. These are either red or green (depending on the species) and can inflict a vicious burning sting on the exposed flesh of those who inadvertently brush against them (POT: 4, half damage). Regardless of the type of ant encountered, a successful strike against one will kill it immediately.

 

Cassowaries

Only encountered in the northern wilds of Queensland and in New Guinea, the Cassowary is a seldom-met but dangerous denizen. Smaller than the Emu but more stockily built, this bird has a high, domed crest of bone on top of its head, with which it charges its enemies (usually those who blunder into its well-guarded territory). Occasionally, this crest is used to beat down walls of intervening foliage. Along with a powerful set of clawed feet, the Cassowary is deadly to tangle with. Its brightly-coloured plumage allows it to blend in well with the greens and bluish shadows of its rainforest home, so its standard form of attack is one of ambush, bursting out upon the unwary wanderer with the benefit of surprise.

STR: 11 (2D6+4)

CON: 10-11 (3D6)

SIZ: 11 (2D6+4)

POW: 13 (2D6+6)

DEX: 19 (2D6+12)

Move: 14

HP: 11

Av Damage Bonus: none

Weapon: Peck 20%, 1D4; Kick 50%, 1D8; Head Butt (after a successful Charge) 35%, 1D6; Charge (requires a 3 metre run-up) 50%, +1D8

Armour: 3 points of feathered bulk

Skills: Hide in Trees 80%

Habitat: rainforests of the “Top End” (far North Queensland and the Northern Territory) and New Guinea

 

Crocodiles, Saltwater

 

Saltwater Crocodiles (or ‘Salties’) are the oldest, biggest and deadliest Crocodiles in the world. They live along the Top End of Australia in coastal estuaries and mangrove tidal zones. They tend to be solitary, coming together only briefly to mate: at other times they are fiercely territorial and resent intrusions by all other living creatures.

Salties tend to snatch their prey whenever they wander too close to the edge of the water in which they are hiding, pretending to be logs or other waterway obstructions; however they have also been known to walk a fair distance overland – into campsites for instance – to snatch sleeping prey from burrows or tents. Once they have gained a firm grip, they then adopt a tactic known as the ‘death roll’ whereby they begin to spin longitudinally while plunging under the surface: this has the combined benefits of breaking limbs, disorientating the prey and speeding the drowning process. The Salty’s jaws, while powerful, are not designed for repetitive biting and most damage to the victim is caused by the bludgeoning effect of the beast thrashing about by means of its powerful tail. Once the victim is subdued, the Salty then stores it in a bank side lair where it can rot sufficiently for a few days to allow the victor to easily shear the meat from the bones. Sometimes, the victim is still alive when it first arrives in this ‘larder’...

Finally, as if this gruesome ordeal wasn’t enough, the teeth of the Saltwater Crocodile are alive with bacteria from the rotting refuse of previous meals. Even the lucky few who escape the Salty’s attack can succumb to the effects of massive infections (20% chance, POT: 9).

STR: 26 (4D6+12)

CON: 18-19 (3D6+8)

SIZ: 29-30 (5D6+12)

POW: 10-11 (3D6)

DEX: 7 (2D6)

Move: 6/8 Swimming

HP: 22-23

Av Damage Bonus: +2D6

Weapon: Bite: 50%, 1D10+db

Armour: 6 point hide

Skills: Swim Stealthily 75%; Hide 60%; Sneak 50%

Habitat: Rivers, lakes and the oceans of the Top End

 

Dingoes

 

The Dingo gained itself a lurid notoriety during the 1970s and 80s as a result of the Azaria Chamberlain murder case, in which a baby only a few weeks old was snatched from the campsite of its parents during the dim of sunset at Alice Springs and never found again. Up until this time, Dingoes were seen as relatively benign animals of no danger to human beings; the court case forced the world to reassess the matter.

The Dingo is, strictly-speaking, a native dog which was brought from Indonesia by travellers in distant times. The sandy-coloured breed has a quiet and occasionally playful temperament and lives in small family groups of four or five. Many Aboriginal tribes keep dingoes to aid in hunting. Dingoes are highly intelligent and opportunistic scavengers occasionally known to operate in pairs to achieve their goals. They are efficient thieves when they want to be, able to perform acts of fine manipulation such as opening doors and this was the finding in the case of the Crown vs. Lindy Chamberlain. Like any other dog they can bite savagely when threatened or cornered and travellers should take the standard precautions when dealing with them. Fortunately, the contraction of rabies is not an issue when encountering these canids.

STR: 4-5 (1D6+1)

CON: 10-11 (3D6)

SIZ: 4-5 (1D6+1)

POW: 9-10 (1D6+6)

DEX: 13 (2D6+6)

Move: 15

HP: 7-8

Av Damage Bonus: -1D6

Weapon: Bite: 30%, 1D6

Armour: None

Skills: Listen 40%; Track 80%

Habitat: Throughout Australia, but mainly in the arid or desert areas

 

Emus

 

STR: 11 (2D6+4)

CON: 10-11 (3D6)

SIZ: 13 (2D6+6)

POW: 13 (2D6+6)

DEX: 19 (2D6+12)

Move: 14

HP: 12

Av Damage Bonus: none

Weapon: Peck: 30%, 1D4; Kick: 60%, 1D10

Armour: 3points of feathered bulk

Skills: Locate picnic basket 75%; Kick Dunny Down 95%

Habitat: Throughout Australia

Fans of the Emu are no doubt apt to praise the intelligence of the bird; however the creature is fairly universally reviled for its stupid nature.

Emus live in close packs of up to several dozen. The males care for the young and eggs while the females forage. Male emus are extremely territorial concerning their nest sites and their offspring and become very single-minded in their defence. These birds are flightless but can run very fast for great distances, often running into objects or people which they fail to negotiate or anticipate. Emus often top six feet in height and they are not averse to making stabbing pecks at the eyes of those who annoy them; equally, they can make vicious strikes at objects that they believe might be edible, such as a piece of paper held flapping in an unwary hand or a shiny pocket-watch. The most dangerous threat from an emu however, is its powerful feet, which it uses to kick its foes. These are heavily clawed and inflict punishing damage upon the unwary. It has given rise to the colourful Australian Bush curse which runs “may all your chickens turn into Emus and kick your dunny down”.

 

Feral Creatures

Australia is a closed environment: cut off from the rest of the world, it has evolved its own creatures and flora that exist nowhere else on the planet. In the early days of Settlement, white visitors did their level best to introduce various creatures from their home countries – deer, hares, rabbits, starlings, sparrows - often to simply alleviate the home-sickness they felt. It is singularly fortunate that myriad animal diseases (such as rabies) which plague other countries were not introduced at the same time. The current import/export policies which prevail in Australia serve to maintain the delicate ecological balance and have proven locally effective; that being said, some animals are loose in the wilds of Australia which should never have come here and some of them are notoriously dangerous. Statistics for these creatures can mostly be found in the Call of Cthulhu rulebook.

Buffalo – The Cape Buffalo (not the American Bison) was introduced by visitors from Indonesia and New Guinea. It is found along the Top End and is a relatively benign visitor to our shores. That being said, if angered, it is a surly and savage foe, capable of trampling and butting its opposition. Populations of these creatures are kept largely in check by Saltwater Crocodiles which find them very tasty.

Camels – When the first railway lines were being run across the Australian Continent, the Government of the day employed Afghan workers, reasoning that they would be better suited to the climates with which they would be dealing. Along with the Afghans came camels, again due to their ability to handle hot, dry conditions. This was all very well in theory but the camels were cantankerous and often escaped, disappearing into the Outback to breed prolifically and create a menace to the local wildlife. Unlike cattle, sheep and goats, camels have soft feet which have little impact on the delicate soil structures of the Central Australian environments; unfortunately, they can strip the greenery from the countryside much faster than the indigenous wildlife and this makes them a pest. Like all other camels, they also bite, kick and trample.

Cats – All domestic cats, even the fluffiest and most pampered of them, will, if released into the wild to fend for themselves, become the toughest, angriest, spitting-est Hell-cat in short order. This is a universal truth.

Once free from domesticity, the short under-fur of the precious kitty-cat thickens and becomes darker, allowing the feline to blend into the Bush; even the lightest coloured cat can darken up in no time at all. The predatory musculature of the cat bulks up and the cat can grow from one third up to one half again its normal size. Kittenish behaviours so endearing to an abandoned owner are shed as the business of survival and territoriality comes to the fore. Cats can eliminate birdlife, lizards and small marsupials from a Bushland setting in no time at all; they can also kill newborn lambs.

Cats are seldom met in the Bush: they know enough to stay away from people if they’ve gone wild. They are often found in rabbit or fox traps however and extracting them is fraught with difficulty as they will defend themselves to the uttermost. Tales of exceptionally large feral cats may well have given rise to the legends of Phantom Cats.

Dogs – In the early days of the Sydney Settlement, mobs of wild dogs - escapees from domesticity - roamed freely through the Sydney streets and were capable of bringing down lone stragglers wending their way home after dark. The problem became so dire that the constabulary held shooting days, where they shot any dog seen walking in the street, regardless of the presence of a human attendant. It wasn’t until the early 1910s that organised dog patrols were created to lessen the menace of feral dogs within the city and in due course the problem of ‘killer dog gangs’ became confined to the rural areas of Australia. It’s not that these dogs were driven insane by rabies or any other epidemiological cause; they were simply on the loose and reverting to the typical, instinctual nature of pack hunters.

Donkeys – Explorers and settlers in the early 1800s primarily used horses to push into wilderness areas of Australia. Unfortunately, the local flora proved toxic to most horse breeds and feed had to be carried on extended forays into the Bush. It was later discovered that donkeys were able to browse the local greenery without impairment and they soon took over as the beast of burden of choice in the country. Unfortunately, donkeys are wilful and hard to control and soon they were escaping into the undergrowth to breed and run wild. By the 1920s, massive herds of them were roaming the countryside. Like most non-Australian species, they over-graze areas, destroy delicate soil systems with their hooves and have been known to pollute waterholes and destroy fences.

Goats – Anyone who has worked with goats knows that they are cunning and wilful, determined to do what they want to do regardless of their human attendant’s desires. From the early days of the Sydney Settlement, goats often escaped into the Bush and took up residence there: with their ability to eat practically any kind of greenery, no matter how coarse or unappetizing, they thrived in practically every type of environment that Australia had to offer – at the expense of the local wildlife. Furthermore, goats have tough, hoofed feet which ruin the fine soil structures of the desert and arid areas of the country, causing massive erosion and soil loss.

Pigs – Like goats, pigs have escaped confinement wherever they have been kept throughout Australia’s history. Like goats, they are voracious and their hooves ruin the soil whilst their tusks can denude whole areas of bushland through ringbarking. Worst of all, they can become vicious killers, hiding in dense scrub and attacking from ambush. Like many kinds of feral creatures, once free of the constraints of domesticity, wild pigs can grow to massive size and develop a ferocity to go with it.

Toads, Cane – The Grey-backed Cane Beetle had become a veritable pest in the sugar-cane growing areas of Australia by the early 1930s. As a countermeasure, it was decided that the Cane Toad (Bufo marinus) should be introduced to deal with them. This was a mistake. The introduced pairs of toads generated 60,000 young in their first year and thereafter found that there were loads of far more interesting things to devour in this country. The Toads are viciously poisonous and compete strongly for the territory occupied by their antipodean counterparts. Many Queenslanders have a haphazard cruelty in regard to these amphibians which regularly kill their dogs and cats and destroy chicken colonies. However, the toads are notorious for being well-nigh indestructible, despite being shot, run over, clubbed or stamped on. Within the next five years they will invade the wilderness preservation areas of the Northern Territory and the world will be the poorer for it. By the way, the Grey-backed Cane Beetle was successfully eliminated by pesticide spraying in the two years after the Cane Toads’ release.

 

Goannas

 

‘Goanna’ is often thought to be an Aboriginal term for the family of lizards called monitors; in fact it is a corruption of the word ‘iguana’. Monitors (family: Varanidae) live in the desert and arid areas of Australia; they are large reptiles growing up to six or seven feet in length, with large powerful claws, long flat heads and long necks. They also have deeply forked tongues which restlessly flick out from their jaws. Goannas are highly carnivorous and are adept at scavenging. Unlike other types of lizards, the monitor lizards are able to breathe while they are running and they can keep up a steady pace for quite awhile; other lizards need to stay within short range of a burrow or cleft wherein they can dart and hide. Goannas tend to shy away from confrontation, unless they think they can win a fight; if cornered, they can inflict painful wounds with their curved talons. A goanna fleeing in fright can often mistake a man standing still and upright for a tree and will run up them, raking them terribly as they do so.

STR: 7 (2D6)

CON: 16-17 (3D6+6)

SIZ: 11 (2D6+4)

POW: 10-11 (3D6)

DEX: 19 (2D6+12)

Move: 12

HP: 14

Av Damage Bonus: none

Weapon: Bite 40%, 1D6; Claws 30%, 1D4

Armour: 2 points of scaly leather

Skills: Track Prey 85%; Climb 100%

Habitat: Arid and Desert areas of Australia

 

Jellyfish

 

Australia’s coastline is replete with a wide variety of poisonous life forms (which has to make one wonder why Australians are so fond of swimming!); chief amongst these are the jellyfish, of which the following two species are the most well-known:

Blue-bottles – notorious on Sydney beaches throughout the summer months, the blue-bottle (Physalia utriculus, known elsewhere in the world as the Portuguese Man-o-war) is a bright blue air sac about the size of a champagne cork, with trailing lengths of brilliant blue tentacles up to 50 metres long. They are often deposited upon the shore by rough seas or high winds. Contact with these creatures – specifically with their tentacles, even if the creature is dead and dried on the beach – causes an instant excruciating pain, which can sometimes shock the victim into unconsciousness. Thereafter the victim must endure a burning agony for several hours until the toxin (POT: 20) is processed out of their system. Treatment is to immerse the area of the sting in hot water for at least twenty minutes, denaturing the toxin until the pain begins to decrease.

Box Jellyfish – The Box Jellyfish is usually a resident of the northern waters around Queensland and the Northern Territory, but strong seasonal currents and storms occasionally bring it further south. There are many types of Box Jellyfish but the one for which the term is predominantly used as a nickname is Chironex fleckeri, possibly the most toxic creature on the planet. C. fleckeri is known to actively hunt its prey, travelling through the water at up to 4 knots. Each tentacle of this creature contains on average 500,000 cnidocytes, needle-sharp harpoons, which can inject massive amounts of nematocysts - toxic cells capable of delivering enough neurotoxins to disable the prey in about 600 nanoseconds (POT: 40). The pain of the poison is intense and lasts about twenty minutes, during which time the patient often experiences back and abdominal spasms, headaches, vomiting, sweating, anxiety, nausea and heart failure; if the first twenty minutes is survived, the patient will often endure. It is sometimes possible for the tentacles to leave massive scarring welts on the skin of the victim which can last for life. Vinegar is known to reduce the effects of the poisoning by killing the unfired cnidocytes lodged in the victim’s skin.

Another type of Box Jellyfish is responsible for ‘Irukandji Syndrome’ named in 1952 after an Aboriginal tribe amongst whom its presence was common. This is the sting (POT: 35) of the thumbnail sized Carukia barnesi jellyfish, which begins as a minor irritation akin to the bite of a mosquito. Over time symptoms including severe headache, backache, muscle pains, chest and abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, sweating, anxiety, hypertension, tachycardia and pulmonary edema, accompanied by a morbid pleading to be allowed to die, are experienced. The whole process lasts from about 4 to 30 hours – although some cases have lasted two weeks - and death is rare.

All Jellyfish are easily avoided on land; any successful blow will kill one.

 

Kangaroos

 

While not often thought of as dangerous, a kangaroo is capable of badly hurting a human opponent. A kangaroo (or wallaby, wallaroo, potoroo or quoll) will prefer flight to confrontation wherever the option is available; however, if cornered, a kangaroo – especially one of the Red Kangaroos which can stand up to six feet tall – will bring to bear the sharp claws on its hind feet to counterattack. Often the kangaroo will brace itself against a tree or similar defence and balance itself upon its tail, thus freeing up its powerful hind feet to scratch and kick furiously at its enemy; once kicked by a kangaroo, an opponent will rarely continue the conflict.

STR: 10-11 (3D6)

CON: 13 (2D6+6)

SIZ: 13 (2D6+6)

POW: 7 (2D6)

DEX: 13 (2D6+6)

Move: 12

HP: 13

Av Damage Bonus: none

Weapon: Kick 40%, 1D8; Brace & Rake 20%, 2D8

Armour: none

Skills: Listen 40%; Scent Water 60%

Habitat: Throughout Australia

 

Koalas

 

Deceptively cute and fluffy, these creatures were tagged with the moniker ‘QANTAS Bears’ by Japanese visitors in the ‘80s. Regardless of the promotional hype however, these bad-tempered tree-dwellers are anything but pleasant in close quarters: first-time experiences with koalas usually result in surprise at either the damage they can do with their claws (even while seemingly asleep), or the pungently-tenacious qualities of their urine.

Koalas are not bears per se despite the physical resemblance. They are marsupials and, unusually even for marsupials, have a pouch to carry their young which opens rearward. Their dietary system, like that of the Panda, is incredibly inefficient and they require huge amounts of eucalyptus leaves each day in order to absorb the nutrients which they require. They drink no water, gaining all of their liquid resources from gum leaves and they suffer a narcotic effect from the leaves as well, which means that they sleep most hours in the day. Given their inefficient digestive processes, a koala is quite content to eat its own faeces several times over to more fully digest its meal, if it can’t be bothered to relocate to a tree with more leaves. Land clearances and endemic illnesses (such as a species-particular form of chlamydia) have reduced the habitat of the koala and it is currently endangered.

Despite its disgusting dietary perquisites and docile appearance, the koala can move quickly when required to do so, to avoid fires and attacks from other creatures. For preference, the koala will try to avoid an enemy by hiding, for which it has a great knack; if pressed however, it will rely on its claws which can rake quite fiercely and its offensively-redolent urine, the stench of which can take some scrubbing to remove.

STR: 7 (2D6)

CON: 10-11 (3D6)

SIZ: 2-3 (1D4)

POW: 7 (2D6)

DEX: 10-11 (3D6)

Move: 6

HP: 6-7

Av Damage Bonus: -1D6

Weapon: Claw 40%, 1D4

Armour: 2 points of thick fur

Skills: Hide 85%; Repel with Urine 60%

Habitat: Treetops throughout Australia

 

Octopus, Blue-Ringed

 

Another of the poisonous denizens of the Australian coastline, the Blue-ringed Octopus lurks in tidal pools, rocky inlets and seaweed infested nooks on the shore. It is about the size of a golf ball and generally well-camouflaged; when angered it becomes yellowish-brown and is covered by bright-blue and black circles. The Greater Blue-ringed Octopus ranges throughout the Western Pacific while the Southern Blue-ringed Octopus and the Blue-lined Octopus dwell only in Australian waters. They feed on crabs and small fish, poisoning them and devouring them from the inside by means of their small, tough beaks. The creature is universally acknowledged to be one of the most toxic animals on the planet (POT: 35).

The Blue-ringed Octopus is shy and retiring, like other types of octopi, although, when aroused to anger, it will not hesitate to bite. The bite of the Blue-ringed Octopus contains enough toxins to kill 26 adult human beings. The poison interrupts the transmissive properties of sodium salts within the body, leading to paralysis. Medical care involves constant provision of cardio and respiratory aid until the toxin breaks down within the victim’s system. Horribly, the victim can be conscious and quite lucid during the whole process before succumbing, usually to breathing difficulties, suffocation and cardiac arrest. A victim who survives the first 24 hours usually goes on to make a full recovery

 

Sharks

 

Sharks are often seen as synonymous with Australia. The oceans around the continent are full of many species of shark and they are increasingly seen as necessary inhabitants of an healthy ocean ecosystem. There are many species of shark within Australian waters and a complete run-through of their various foibles and characteristics would exhaust the scope of this work; instead, here are some general points relating to these oceanic predators and their interactions with humans:

Sharks move with the ebb and flow of seasonal oceanic currents. They move to where the water temperature suits their bodily systems. The Great White Sharks, or White Pointers, generally inhabit the colder waters of the Great Australian Bight south of Adelaide in South Australia; seasonal changes see them head north, past Perth in the west and Sydney in the East. They range across the Indian Ocean to the coastal areas of South Africa where they are known as ‘Jumpies’ (YOOM-peez) for the fact that they hurl themselves many tens of metres into the air in an annual hunt for migrating penguins and seals. Other sharks prefer warmer water in which to hunt and breed and the variations in current strengths from year to year have led to the recognition of so-called ‘Shark Years’ wherein sharks are more plentiful and range far more widely. These years are thus more noted for shark attacks on humans.

Sharks are known to not actively seek human beings out for prey: simply stated, we don’t taste nice to them. Most sharks, however, will strike first and make a decision about their meal later. This means that most attacked swimmers have been bitten once and then ignored. Like all creatures though, a cornered or wounded shark, or one that is feeling threatened, will attack repeatedly to end its sense of conflict. The sharks in Australian waters that will need little provocation in these matters are the Tiger Shark, the Bull Shark and the Great White.

Sharks have a magnificent sense of smell and can detect blood in the water from miles distant. They have fine detectors in their snouts that allow them to sense electrical currents, magnetic emissions and temperatures: smacking a shark in this delicate piece of equipment is a sure way to get it to let go of you. Sharks keep growing until they are killed: they never suffer the debilitating effects of ageing that other creatures endure nor do they grow cancers or other tumour-like growths or suffer degeneration of their brain activity.

For a long time it was thought that sharks needed to keep moving or else they would die. This notion has since been laid to rest and it seems that sharks are capable of sleeping in undersea currents that allow their gills to keep moving without direct muscular control.

Interestingly, it has recently been discovered that the Bull Shark contains a special organ known as the Rectal Gland which regulates the flow of salts into and out of the shark’s body. This enables the creature to live in water in which other sharks would perish. This fact has led to these sharks being found living in freshwater lakes up to 80 kilometres from the Queensland coast.

In the many beaches off the coast of Sydney the swimming areas are protected by shark nets. These deep offshore net systems prevent sharks from approaching too closely to the beach and the swimmers there. Oftentimes the sharks become snagged in the nets and are released by trained observers.

Sadly, the sharks which abounded in Australian waters have been decimated by poachers from New Guinea and Indonesia to provide shark fins for the restaurants of Singapore, Malaysia and China. Whole reef systems in Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia risk falling into ruin from the actions of these pirates and their actions are crying out to be checked.

Tiger Shark (Galeocerdo cuvier)

STR: 30-31 (3D6+20)

CON: 25-26 (3D6+15)

SIZ: 25-26 (4D6+15)

POW: 13 (2D6+6)

DEX: 16-17 (3D6+6)

Move: 12

HP: 27-28

Av Damage Bonus: +3D6

Weapon: Bite 80%, 1D8+db

Armour: 3

Skills: Scent Blood 95%

Habitat: Murky coastal waters, from Sydney north around to Perth

Bull Shark (Carcharhinus leucas)

STR: 27 (2D6+20)

CON: 20-21 (3D6+10)

SIZ: 22 (2D6+15)

POW: 13 (2D6+6)

DEX: 13 (2D6+6)

Move: 9

HP: 21-22

Av Damage Bonus: +2D6

Weapon: Bite 65%, 1D8+db

Armour: 4

Skills: Scent Blood 95%

Habitat: Fresh and saltwater coastal shallows, north from Perth around to Melbourne

Great White Shark (Carcharodon carcharias)

STR: 42-43 (5D6+25)

CON: 35-36 (3D6+25)

SIZ: 45 (7D6+20)

POW: 13 (2D6+6)

DEX: 13 (2D6+6)

Move: 11

HP: 40-41

Av Damage Bonus: +4D6

Weapon: Bite 70%, 1D10+db

Armour: 6

Skills: Scent Blood 99%

Habitat: From Cairns south around to Broome, inshore at surface level

 

Snakes

 

As with sharks, there are just too many types of poisonous snakes in Australia to list individually; therefore here is a brief overview of snake activity within this country.

The level of danger presented by snakes is determined by two different factors: toxicity and ferocity. The most dangerous snake in the world, purely on the basis of its venom, is the African Black Mamba which delivers an exorbitant amount of poison in each successful bite; The Australian Taipan however, while only marginally less venomous, is easily angered and will strike repeatedly against an attacker, often pursuing it at length, even after it has opted to flee. This aggressive nature makes it only the second most dangerous (not the most venomous) snake on the planet; first place goes to another Australian snake known by the somewhat prosaic name of ‘Fierce Snake’, less poisonous but far, far more aggressive than even the Taipan.

All snakes in Australia are relatively timid when first encountered; most will simply attempt to get away from potential threats by sliding rapidly into the undergrowth. When cornered, most snake species adopt a threat posture, rearing up or hissing and inflating hoods or thrashing coils to alarm any would-be aggressors. A snake will only choose to bite as a last resort; this is because a single bite cannot be guaranteed to deliver enough poison to eliminate the foe: sometimes it takes two or three bites to deliver enough, or any, poison into the victim. The most commonly encountered poisonous snakes in Australia are the Death Adder, the Brown Snake and the Red-bellied Black Snake.

There are many types of pythons that inhabit Australia also, and these, by their very definition, are not a serious danger to travellers within the country. The Carpet Snake, the Diamond Python, the Children’s Python and The Arafura File Snake (from the Northern Territory) can bite when roughly handled, but the bite is non-venomous; equally, they are none of them as large as the Reticulated Pythons of Asia and therefore are rarely able to constrict creatures as large as human beings.

To confuse matters, Australia is home to many species of legless lizards which can grow to substantial length. Some of these are able to deliver a vicious – though non-venomous – bite and have often been mistaken for snakes. Australians learn very early on to be wary when walking through the Bush and never to pick up any innocuous-looking smooth sticks...

Death Adder (Acanthophis antarcticus)

STR: 5 (2D4)

CON: 7 (2D6)

SIZ: 5 (2D4)

POW: 4-5 (1D8)

DEX: 10-11 (3D6)

Move: 8

HP: 6

Av Damage Bonus: n/a

Weapon: Bite 50%, 1D2 + POT 12 Poison)

Armour: none

Skills: Hide in Cover 80%; Move Quietly 90%

Habitat: Beneath leaf litter and under logs in forests along Australia’s east coast and from there towards the Red Centre.

Red-bellied Black Snake (Pseudechis porphyriacus)

STR: 10 (2D4+3)

CON: 10 (2D4+3)

SIZ: 13 (2D6+6)

POW: 7 (2D6)

DEX: 17 (2D6+10)

Move: 10

HP: 12

Av Damage Bonus: n/a

Weapon: Bite 40%, 1 point damage plus POT 7 Poison

Armour: none

Skills: Hide in Cover 90%; Move Quietly 90%

Habitat: Beneath leaf litter and under logs in forests along Australia’s east coast and from there towards the Red Centre.

Brown Snake (Pseudechis australis)

STR: 11 (2D4+6)

CON: 10 (2D6+3)

SIZ: 13 (2D6+6)

POW: 10-11 (3D6)

DEX: 17 (2D6+10)

Move: 9

HP: 11-12

Av Damage Bonus: n/a

Weapon: Bite 60%, 1 point damage plus POT 16 Poison

Armour: none

Skills: Hide in Cover 80%; Move Quietly 90%

Habitat: within the underbrush, throughout Australia

 

Spiders

Spiders are also an issue in this country. Many common spider species are deadly in the extreme and it is only in relatively recent times that treatments have been developed to counteract their venom. The most common is the Red Back, which, like the American Black Widow, combines a creepily sleek body design with a striking paint job of black with a splash of scarlet on the top of the abdomen. The bite of this arachnid is generally non-fatal to grown humans (POT: 7) but has been known to kill children and babies: most adults will only endure nausea, itchiness and unsteadiness for a day or so.

Another commonly encountered spider is the Huntsman, a non-web-spinning arachnid that prefers to directly encounter its prey under ambush conditions. Huntsmen are often discovered lurking on the ceilings of houses during the warmer months, tracking mosquitoes to devour. If roughly handled a Huntsman can deliver a painful bite (POT: 4) which itches intolerably for a few days; problems can occur when the Huntsman is mistaken for a Mouse Spider, a beast similarly designed but with a more bulbous body: the Mouse Spider’s venom is much more efficacious (POT: 7) and can cause nausea, heart palpitations dizziness and vomiting along with itchiness and topical discomfort in adults. In children it is quite often fatal.

The king, or perhaps queen, of the spider kingdom in Australia however, is the Funnel Web Spider. This arachnid builds large funnel-shaped webs amongst the leaf litter and detritus of forest floors. It enjoys dark, moist conditions in which to hide and is sometimes discovered lurking in gumboots or gardening gloves. It is aggressive and can jump up to three feet vertically to assault its victims. It is able to walk on the meniscus of watery bodies or to crawl along the bottom of lakes or pools using air trapped in the hairs of its body to breathe. Its bite is invariably fatal (POT: 20), especially that of the female of the species, unless treated with an antivenin. Like the Taipan, the Funnel Web is an aggressive opponent and will strike multiple times in a single attack to ensure that the prey is poisoned.

Any successful strike upon a spider will kill it.

 

Tasmanian Devils

 

These tough little brutes are confined to the island state of Tasmania to the south of the main part of Australia. They are about the size of cats, black with white spots and with a stocky, doggish appearance. They have pointed ears, a short tail and pronounced whiskers and a superabundance of teeth. ‘Devils are scavengers and tend to snuffle up only that which has been left behind by other predators; for this reason they are often encountered by roadsides where they sometimes, themselves, come to a grisly end.

Tasmanian Devils are cranky and mean-spirited, able to inflict savage bites on those that they feel mean them no good. A decent snap from a ‘Devil can sever fingers or break bones and a group of these beasts are well able to take down a sick or disorientated creature; Tasmanian Devils tend to be solitary however, so this rarely happens.

Sadly, the species has recently developed a tendency to develop unusual and disfiguring cancers - due to profound pollution of their habitats and an ever-diminishing gene-pool - which may well see them extinct before too much longer.

STR: 7 (2D6)

CON: 10-11 (3D6)

SIZ: 2-3 (1D4)

POW: 7 (2D6)

DEX: 19 (2D6+12)

Move: 9

HP: 6-7

Av Damage Bonus: -1D6

Weapon: Bite 20%, 1D10

Armour: none

Skills: Make Alarming Night-time Noises 80%; Scavenge Predatory Leftovers 75%; Scent Interesting Things 60%

Habitat: Forested environments in Tasmania

 

Wombats

The wombat, like the koala, is a deceptively dozy beast; however, where the koala tends to be sleepy due to its dietary requirements, the wombat is simply solitary, pig-headed and anti-social. A marsupial, the wombat has a pouch in which it carries its young and it grazes widely in the forests which it calls its home.

A non-arboreal lifestyle has meant that the wombat must be ready for encounters with threatening entities and it has evolved significant strategies in this regard: first, it is stocky and muscular, with heavy bones and a thick skull; secondly, it can dig very quickly with its massive claws, disappearing under the earth in a matter of minutes; thirdly, the back end of a wombat, beneath its thick coat, dense hide and tough muscle, is composed of heavy, cartilaginous, overlapping plates, which means that, with its head in the ground, there is very little that a predator can do to dislodge it. A wombat’s usual strategy is to dig a hole and plug the entrance with its bottom; if it can’t do this it will rely on its sharp claws and chisel-like teeth. Many a tourist has fallen for the cute, fluffy appeal of the wombat, only to be rudely disappointed.

STR: 13 (2D6+6)

CON: 14 (4D6)

SIZ: 11 (2D6+4)

POW: 7 (2D6)

DEX: 7 (2D6)

Move: 8

HP: 13

Av Damage Bonus: none

Weapon: Bite 20%, 1D4; Claw 40%, 1D6

Armour: 6-point hide, hair, muscle and cartilaginous plates

Skills: Dig 80%

Habitat: Throughout Australia, but mainly southern and eastern non-desert regions

 

Review: The Black Country

Grecian, Alex, The Black Country – Murder Squad 2, Michael Joseph/Penguin Group, London, 2013

Octavo; paperback, illustrated and embossed wrappers; 385pp. Near fine.

To kick off this review, I have only one piece of advice for those thinking of reading this book: Caveat Emptor!

If that pithy piece of Latin means nothing to you, then by all means go ahead and read Mr Grecian’s work: you probably won’t notice anything wrong with what takes place (although you’ll probably still feel your time has been wasted); all you other potential purchasers out there, consider yourself warned. First, some back-story:

When Alex Grecian’s first book The Yard appeared, I circled around it thinking I might have a go; however, I was going through a recurrent phase of only reading second-hand books at that point, so I didn’t fork out the cash for it. Seeing the sequel to that work in the local bookshop window (and yes, sadly, there is only one new bookshop for us locals) I thought I might give it a try. Unfortunately, the store had no copies of The Yard in stock so I bought The Black Country, thinking that, if it was good, I could always back-track and catch up on the first book when it was next available. That will not be happening.

The blurb and other hype-y advertising on the covers of The Black Country promise early police-procedural excitement and an examination of the roots of forensic inquiry (it also guaranteed that I would not be able to put it down; if, by that, they meant I would throw it across the room in frustration, then maybe there was some credibility in these assertions). Maybe all of this interesting material was used up in the first book because there was nothing to match that description here. At one point in the drama, when a suspect is accused of murder after touching a corpse which proceeds to ‘bleed’ - following the local superstition which says that a murderer faced with his victim will provoke such a reaction - a doctor pronounces that, not blood but the deliquesced organs of the corpse, have been squeezed out of the victim’s nose and mouth by compression activated by the suspect. That’s it; that’s as much forensic detection as takes place in this novel. Blink and you’ll miss it.

Mr Grecian is very good at describing the actions and reactions of bodies in extremis. His conveyance of the bitter cold, the effects of disease and even the simple movement of an individual through an icy and snowy terrain are deftly outlined and transmitted. Unfortunately, he doesn’t personalise those feelings and sensations. His characters are blanks, undelineated and vague, bleeding into each other and overlapping to the point of confusion: too often one character has the same manners and descriptors as another and you’d be forgiven for mixing-up say, Inspector Walter Day and Dr Bernard Kingsley, Virginia and Alice Price, or Henry the man-mountain and the enigmatic Clay. It smacks of trying to do too much. There should be only one kindly authority figure; only one creepily-precocious girl-child; only one bull-necked man-mountain. Anything else is clumsy plotting and cheap misdirection.

Then there are the characters whose sole purpose is simply to show up and demonstrate a certain effect or condition. Sergeant Nevil Hammersmith (“Hammersmith”? They couldn’t find a better English surname for this guy?) serves no real purpose in this plot (not that anyone does) other than to find the poison in the “groaty dick” (don’t ask) and to reveal that typhus stalks the countryside. He shows up: we’re told that he’s irresistible to women, despite a certain slovenliness in his appearance, and then he gets poisoned, stricken with disease, beaten and frozen. He spends the entire novel staunchly propping his stiff upper-lip on the sidelines. Oh, except when he’s required to do something important like restrain a prisoner or manhandle something heavy. Come on: there are cakes and then there’s the eating of them; one or the other. And his so-called friends never insist that he take it easy (although they feign concern for his condition(s) at length)!

Another instance, and it’s a fleeting one, is Walter Day’s wife. About halfway through the novel she shows up to give her husband a peck on the cheek and to cheer him along. The reasons for this are obscure: perhaps she was a fan-favourite from the first book and Grecian felt that her followers should have a glimpse of her to keep them happy? I suspect, personally, that Day’s performance up until this part of the book has been so amateurish and lacklustre that we need a cameo of the pregnant wife to show that something’s weighing on his mind and is distracting him from the better performance of his duties. Because apart from repeatedly stating that the train will be here in two day’s time and by then everything will have been resolved, he does woefully little in terms of detection.

Not that I blame him: like everything else in this book, the crimes are horribly obscure. We know that two adults have gone missing along with their youngest boy child; we know that an eyeball, suspected of being human, has been found in a bird’s nest; we, the readers, are told about a gun-wielding American soldier with a horribly-mutilated face stealthily stalking one of the man-mountains for unspecified revenge; we are shown a motley of filthy village locals acting suspiciously, including the vicar’s wife who drops vague intimations about a women being kept imprisoned beneath a floor somewhere. Are there victims? Is there anything actually to discover? It’s not clear and we, the audience, are expected to quietly absorb the oft-repeated mantra that “everything will be revealed in two-day’s time when the train gets here”, and, like the main players in this story, sit around doing nothing whilst nodding in smug self-satisfaction. If this isn’t an open invitation to skip ahead to the last chapter, I don’t know what is.

The rest is a (somewhat literal) train ride. Things happen – bloodied clothes are found; the local copper is shot in the head while no-one’s around; a body is retrieved from a well – but none of it pursued, explored, taken as relevant to the case, or even fitted together with other events. Meanwhile, there is a plague of typhus, a blizzard descends, the village starts to subside into the coalmines beneath it and the local inn catches fire. All of this mayhem simply bounces the characters around in its wake before the train arrives, at which point the killers are all dead and the case – such as it is – is solved by its own perpetrators and abettors. It begs the question as to why the intrepid Murder Squad even bothered to get involved in the first place?

As a police procedural this book simply doesn’t work; but as a piece of historical fiction it fails utterly as well. Remember Inspector Day’s supportive wife who shows up in typhus-ridden West Bromwich with two weeks left of her pregnancy? In what part of the Victorian era would she have even been allowed out of the house? In what part of the Victorian era do elderly doctors use the word “okay”? Did English governesses ever smite their foreheads in sudden realisation in Victorian times? Where is it recorded that anyone in the Victorian age ever “snuck” into or out of a premises? Anachronism should be absent in this type of writing: when it appears, it pops the balloon of disbelief-suspension which the author should be working hard to maintain.

Interestingly, there are two interludes in the novel, where we flash back in time and space to the American Civil War. These two scenes provide back-story for our mysterious sniper and his target and are set in a Confederate prison camp. It is at these moments where my willingness to believe the events came easily: Mr Grecian is obviously at home writing in this milieu in a way that he certainly isn’t when he’s penning narrative set in 1890s England. His descriptions of the countryside around the dark Midlands village are sketchy and incomplete, like a minimalist stage set for a Japanese play. Oddly enough, his descriptions of the Andersonville prison camp are no more or less lean, but there’s a comfortableness conveyed by the writing which is lacking when he’s on the other side of the Pond. Write about what you know: it’s an old chestnut in the writing game; some of us ignore it to our cost, but it’s valuable advice.

If you’re in the market for a good police procedural set in Victorian England, or a book about the early days of forensic detection, look out for The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale, or grab a copy of “From Hell” by Alan Moore. Go the extra mile and try to find a copy of Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map. Any of these will give you what you’re after. The Black Country isn’t the equal of, or in the same class as, any of these: it is, at worst, God-awful detective fiction; at best, boring Steampunk (without an airship in sight!).

Two Tentacled Horrors.

Boys In Blue...

Frank ‘The Shadow’ Fahy

The planning and invention of Police Commissioner Bill Mackay were innovative to say the least. Having installed Lillian Armfield as the first female police officer in Australia, he went on to build a flying squad and installed radios in their police vehicles. Another of his innovations was the recruitment of Frank Fahy - “The Shadow” - Australia’s first undercover cop.

Mackay’s toughest job in enforcing order in Razorhurst was gaining inside information on the ne’er-do-wells. Most policemen working the razor-gangs’ territories were uniformed men, readily indentifiable, or were plain-clothes men with hard-earned reputations – like ‘Bumper’ Farrell, or ‘Kangaroo’ Jack Campbell – whose fame always preceded them wherever they went. Mackay needed a ghost; someone who was unknown and good at staying that way; who could come and go without being noticed. He found Frank Fahy.

Mackay met Fahy in 1919 and was favourably impressed with him: the previous week, Fahy and another probationary officer had rescued a man from dangerous surf at Bronte Beach; subsequent to this, Fahy had trailed a man unseen through Centennial Park, watched him hold up a kiosk and then had arrested him at gunpoint after a long chase. Fahy was 11 stone when he joined up; the minimum requirement for a police officer in those days was 11 and a half and Fahy had been ordered to correct this before his probation period was ended: Mackay waived the requirement.

To ensure his success, Fahy had to become completely detached from the police community. No other officers apart from Mackay and a few senior policemen knew about him; his funding was kept totally off the books and, after eight years when the NSW Premier discovered that an underground network of policemen existed, their controllers banded together to defy his further investigation into their identities and efforts which, by then had made serious in-roads into organised crime in Razorhurst.

Fahy made his entrée into the underworld wearing ragged clothes and with a bail notice for burglary tucked in his coat pocket, to give him some criminal credentials. From there, he dug himself deeper into the good books of the criminals, occasionally getting cuffed, kicked or locked up by his unwitting colleagues. He often had to fly by the seat of his pants, trusting to luck or agility to get him out of hot water. He had to be ingenious: once working as a ‘cockatoo’, or look out, for a gang on the floor beneath their hideout, he built a 14-foot long periscope from drainage pipes and shaving mirrors to spy on their activities from below.

Perhaps his most innovative piece of apparatus was a souped-up motorcycle, made to look as though it was falling apart, with a trailer attachment which advertised him as a sharpener of knives and scissors: looking like an itinerant worker, he could station himself practically anywhere to keep tabs on the criminals. As well, the trailer was big enough so that he could hide within it, using a camera through a spy-hole to catch the comings and goings of the hoodlums.

Once, on the trail of a murderer who had “gone Bush”, Fahy disguised himself as a swagman and joined the ranks of Australia’s rootless unemployed workers, trailing from town to town. In short order he caught up with and identified his quarry and was able to orchestrate his arrest through third parties. Little-known outside of the criminal community which he blended-in with Frank Fahy, “The Shadow”, was a brilliant innovator in Australia’s early fight against organised crime.

Frank ‘Bumper’ Farrell (1916-1985)

Francis Michael Farrell, footballer and policeman, was born at Surry Hills, the second child of Sydney-born Reginald Farrell, a jeweller, and his Scottish wife Margaret Theresa Wynne. He was educated in the Catholic school system, first at the Patrician Brothers’ school in Redfern, and later at the Marist Brothers’ high school in Kogarah; his nickname, ‘Bumper’, originated there, where he surreptitiously smoked cigarette butts, known as ‘bumpers’. He began his football career by playing junior rugby league for Marrickville, was graded into the premier leagues in 1936, and made his debut for the Newtown Rugby League Football Club’s first-grade team in 1938.

On leaving school, Farrell started as an apprentice boilermaker, working at Garden Island Naval Dockyard, but felt he could better himself by joining the police force. His first post, in 1938, was that of a probationary constable in Darlinghurst – the heart of Razorhurst - where ‘sly grog’, illegal gambling and prostitution were rife. Soon becoming the scourge of crime leaders such as Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh, Farrell joined the vice squad in 1943.

A tough, inspirational front-row forward, Farrell had been appointed captain of Newtown’s first-grade side in 1942. He led Newtown to the semi-finals consecutively from 1943 until 1948; the team won the grand final in 1943 and was runner-up in 1944. Between 1946 and 1951 Farrell served as Newtown’s captain and coach. On his retirement from football in 1951, he had played 250 matches for the club, 205 of them in first grade.

Controversy befell Farrell’s playing career on 28 July 1945. A St George front-row forward, Bill McRitchie, who sustained an ear injury which required extensive skin graft surgery, accused Farrell of biting. Farrell faced an official inquiry before the New South Wales Rugby Football League and also a disciplinary hearing at the Police Department (something that wouldn’t happen today!). He pleaded not guilty, explaining that he wore false teeth and that he had left them in the dressing room in order to play the match. As a consequence, both tribunals exonerated him. Nevertheless, the incident coloured his career, overshadowing even the four Test matches he played for Australia in 1946 and 1948, and his twelve appearances for New South Wales between 1939 and 1950.

Farrell’s toughness was equally apparent in his profession and he developed a reputation as an uncompromising plain-clothes policeman. With the rank of detective sergeant, he was appointed chief of the vice squad in the Darlinghurst division in May 1965. After that squad was disbanded, he moved to suburban uniform duty at Collaroy in October 1966. He then worked at the Eastern Suburbs, Manly and Central police stations. His return to Darlinghurst in January 1973 as inspector third class (second class from August), resulted in more visible policing and fewer violent crimes: in 1976 he was awarded the Queen’s Police Medal for Distinguished Service. His ‘foot to arse’ style of policing meant that few criminals were willing to tangle with him and, significantly, whenever he encountered Tilly Devine she always found her manners and eschewed her harridan ways. He retired in September, an inspector first class in command of 230 officers.

Involved with the Newtown Rugby League Football Club in an administrative capacity since his playing days, Farrell helped to establish the Newtown Leagues Club Ltd. His imposing, bulky frame, cauliflower ears and oversized hands were the delight of Sydney newspaper caricaturists. Survived by his two daughters and two sons, he died of a heart attack in  April 1985 at Warriewood and was buried in Mona Vale cemetery.

Lady Detectives...

Lillian ‘The Rugged Angel’ Armfield

 

Lillian Armfield was the first woman appointed to the NSW police force – effectively the first woman police officer in Australia. Actually, she was one of two women appointed at the same time, but the other woman opted out shortly afterwards. Female officers were an experiment at the time: the NSW police force bent under pressure from various women’s interest groups to allow them amongst their ranks; Commissioner Bill MacKay, typically, saw female officers as a new weapon to throw at the criminal underworld and eagerly implemented the plan.

Lillian had to waive all her entitlements to keep her job: she signed away health benefits, superannuation and her pension to be part of the experiment. She was cautioned not to enter into situations where her life could be placed in jeopardy but, given the reality of the situations in which she found herself, this was not always possible. As a woman she was often granted access to places from which her male associates were barred and she was the instrumental means whereby many criminals were apprehended. Ironically, the more successful she was at her job the more the various women’s interest groups – the same groups that had allowed her to gain her job – demanded that she be removed from her office. Bill MacKay wasn’t the kind of innovator to allow this to happen, however.

Officer Armfield had a very black-and-white worldview and she was always sure of her judgement of right and wrong; nowadays she would be regarded as somewhat of a wowser, but her assessment of individuals and their capacity for good or evil was invariably impeccable. She was one of those rare individuals who could respect a person’s decisions even if she, personally, felt they were wrong. After thirty-four years of tireless service she retired without a pension or any similar gratuity offered to those women who came after her. Her police colleagues rallied around and collected enough funds to allow her to enter an aged person’s hostel and live comfortably the rest of her days.

Phryne Fisher (F)

 

Although normally restricting her activities to the southern city of Melbourne, Miss Phryne Fisher has been known to hit Sydney for the high life every once in awhile. In one of her well-publicised cases (published as Death Before Wicket) she spent time at the University of Sydney investigating a murder amongst that institution’s cricketing fraternity.

Phryne Fisher is the inheritrix of a large British estate and the title that accompanies it although, having grown up in Australia before coming into her fortune, she prefers the social freedom that that emerging country allows her, rather than the hide-bound prurience of England. She has the ‘triple-threat’ advantages of endless money, wide experience and feminine wiles which she brings to bear on her cases, along with her stubborn social conscience and a refusal to take ‘no’ for an answer. She has amassed a cadre of helpers to assist her, including her sometime drivers and stand-over men Bert and Cec’, her household staff – Mr and Mrs Butler – her tomboy ward Jane, all under the management of her strait-laced secretary Dot. Along with this crowd she enlists the help of her lushy woman’s-doctor friend, “Mac”, Detective Jack Robinson and his staunch cohort Sergeant Hugh Collins, as well as her sometime lover and entree into Melbourne’s sinister Chinese underworld, Lin Chung.

The incorrigible Miss Fisher is the creation of Australian author Kerry Greenwood and her novels have recently been made over into a television series by the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) to generally warm acclaim. In the books, Phryne is a bit more sexually-adventurous than she appears in the TV show, but this is no serious setback: the novels are written with the benefit of hindsight and an aim towards highlighting the moral and social inequities of the time, especially as regards women, on the one hand, and immigrants on the other. This revisionist approach is not a bad exemplar for Call of Cthulhu players, although one wishes that Greenwood’s plots –which generally, are a hodge-podge of ideas stolen from the pages of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham – could have been a little more original.

The White Hats...

Bad as the ‘Black Hats’ were in Sydney, and no matter how much the tenor of the times made Chicago of the same period look like a Sunday-school picnic, there were those who stood up against the mayhem and took a stand against evil. In this and the following lists we’ll look at the other side of the equation in Razorhurst.

As usual, or the purposes of this listing, individuals are listed in order according to their surnames; in the case of Chinese, Japanese and some other nationalities, the family name comes first and the individual will be placed according to these names, where known. Fictional characters are designated with an ‘F’.

William ‘Big Bill’ MacKay (1885-1948)

 

Police Commissioner Bill MacKay was born in Glasgow, Scotland, son of Murdoch MacKay, police inspector, and his wife Isabella. He joined the Glasgow police force in 1904 and was promoted to detective constable two years later. On 2 December 1909 he married Jennie Ross Drummond before migrating to Sydney; he joined the New South Wales Police Force in April 1910. His knowledge of shorthand led to his appointment in the administration section as chief clerk.

Early in World War I with Detective Nicholas Moore, MacKay attended meetings in the Domain of the Industrial Workers of the World to make shorthand reports which assisted in the prosecution of speakers. MacKay was made sergeant in 1922 and thereafter gained rapid promotion, partly as a result of the publicity he obtained in being credited with suppressing the Darlinghurst razor-gangs. By 1928 he was detective inspector in charge of the Criminal Investigation Branch and was sent for eight months to Britain to study police methods.

With the onset of the Depression, the police became increasingly involved in political surveillance as unemployment and the ensuing dissent became more widespread. MacKay was often in the forefront of such events as at lock-out of the Rothbury mine in December 1929, when police, guarding the mine, fought against the miners and a young miner was shot dead. By the time the “Old Guard”, the “New Guard” and the “All for Australia League” had become organized to fight against Jack Lang, McKay had inserted policemen into these groups, as well as the Communist Party of Australia. MacKay rejected the claims of the New Guard that its main cause of existence was to aid the police when the trade unionists and communists tried to seize power; he dealt firmly with a New Guard demonstration outside the Liverpool Street Court on 1 April 1932. The New Guard leader Eric Campbell condemned MacKay for not welcoming their proffered assistance and publicly impugned him for not having enlisted during the war.

With the dismissal of Lang and the election of the new premier, Bertram Stevens, MacKay was instructed on 7 June 1932 to increase surveillance on the Communist Party; his officers that year produced much of the material for the Lyons government and its attorney-general John Latham to launch proceedings against the Communists and declared them an unlawful association under the Crimes Act. MacKay was awarded the King's Police Medal in 1932 and appointed Police Commissioner in 1935.

In April 1936 he again left for an eight-month tour of Britain, Germany, Italy and the United States. MacKay was impressed by J. Edgar Hoover and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He was even more impressed by the efficiency of the German police and the discipline of Nazi society, praising their labour youth battalions because, he said, they 'subordinate the individual to the welfare of the nation'. On his return to Sydney, he established the first of the Police Boys' clubs in April 1937 and, in the following year, what was to become the Federation of Police-Citizens Boys' Clubs.

By 1938, under the strain of inquiries and royal commissions into matters involving illegal off-course betting and police officers, MacKay became unwell and was nearly retired due to ill health. The Police Association of New South Wales openly criticized his arbitrary methods of promoting officers in the force and he turned on them in January 1942, posting all seventeen members of its executive to country outposts. The premier, William McKell, took onboard the administration of the Police Department and had the seventeen returned to their original positions. On the 9^th of January 1943, another clash between MacKay and his force occurred over an incident in which two constables arrested a man in a public urinal, who turned out to be the editor of the Daily Telegraph for whom the proprietor, Frank Packer, interceded. The two constables were dismissed from the force because it was alleged they had an extensive record of making these types of arrests; one was later reinstated, but only as a result of active Police Association lobbying and a widespread sense of disgruntlement in the force.

In April 1942 under Curtin’s Federal Government, MacKay was appointed director of the re-organised Security Service, established to work with the army and maintain surveillance of enemy aliens and communists and to issue security clearances; this was as a result of his already having established a combined police and military intelligence unit within the police force in 1938. He sought to expand the Security Service, imagining it as an F.B.I.-style organization; however, he only ended up offending the Intelligence officers, and he returned to the Police Force in September. Nevertheless, he continued to expand the force's work in maintaining surveillance of local communists and other radicals.

During his time as Commissioner, MacKay set up the police cadet system, and established the vice, drug, motor and pawnbrokers squads in line with other international police forces. Known in the force as 'Big Bill' (he was 6 ft / 183 cm tall and weighed 15 stone / 95 kg), he had a reputation when young for smashing down doors. While this pugnacious ability to overcome obstacles was something of a trademark with him, particularly against those who opposed his administrative schemes, he developed with age a more subtle style of using information in his possession to place possible opponents in his debt. He spoke with a strong Scottish accent and was proud of his ancestry: he even converted the police military band into a Scottish pipe band dressed in the MacKay tartan. He also established a police air wing by purchasing an obsolete aeroplane rather than continue the expensive practise of hiring aircraft.

In 1946 MacKay suffered a recurrence of his old infirmity and, on the 22^nd of January 1948, he died suddenly at his Edgecliff home while entertaining senior police colleagues. He was buried in Randwick cemetery.

Napoleon ‘Bony’ Bonaparte (F)

 

“...A man of medium height and build, dressed in a light-grey tweed. His tie matched his shirt, and so did the soft felt hat now resting on the edge of the writing-table. The visitor’s face was turned downward to the busy fingers engaged in making a cigarette, and with no little astonishment the sergeant noted that the man’s hair was fine and straight and black, and that his skin was dark brown. And then he was gazing into a pair of bright-blue eyes regarding him with a smile.”

-Arthur W. Upfield, Wings above the Diamantina, 1936

Bony is a half-caste aboriginal detective, famous in the series of outback-based pot-boilers penned by Arthur W. Upfield in the 20s and 30s, and which sold very well both in Australia and America. Raised by a straight-laced nurse at an outback station, who fondly named him after the French emperor, his skills of observation and logical deduction were honed by both his association with his mother’s tribe and his work as a police tracker for the Brisbane police force. In the later tales he rises to the rank of Detective Inspector and receives nation-wide recognition for his skills as a detective.

Disdaining standard procedure and protocol – “I have always declined to permit red tape to control me” – Bony thinks around obstacles both procedural and legal to ensure that his quarry is brought to justice. He affects an overly-educated verbosity to disarm the usual prejudice with which newcomers generally receive him and he cuts through class divisions by insisting that he be called ‘Bony’ by all comers, regardless of rank. He smokes like a chimney while cogitating and often uses the time taken in questioning witnesses to roll his own cigarettes.

Nowadays, these novels are a little difficult to read as they are bogged down with the stereotyping and sensibilities of a bygone age, much as Dorothy L. Sayers’ or Agatha Christie’s novels sometimes tread a fine line when it comes to discussing Jewish characters. Still, Upfield’s “blacks” are often the most engaging and pro-active characters in the narratives, despite being treated with a tinge of disdain. Readers should tread warily when dipping into these sources – although their observations of the Australian Outback and life there are wonderfully sketched and worthy of investigation – and try to see them as the artefacts of a past age that they are.