BOOGEY MAN ERNIE
“ … His three bitzer mongrels were the terror of the Alice … “
Even today, more than 50 years later, the location where this story occurred is still bushland.
It is surrounded by fairly modern houses on three sides, their respectable back fences seeming to ignore the site where an infamous act was once perpetrated.
Old native bushes, taller than a man’s height, cover the sun-baked sand hill – thirsty country, and still strangely isolated, despite the encroaching houses.
A wild bee’s hive buzzes menancingly in the thickest part of the scrub, sounding a warning to all intruders.
It is ignored country. Forgotten. Dreaming, hot and ancient.
Yet over the rim of the nearest sand dune the modern Alice Springs throbs with its busy daily life, cars rushing in all directions, and people hurrying this way and that, with all the nervousness of an ant’s nest under threat.
Below the nearest horizon, nestling in the tranquility of the ageless countryside, sometimes people with bottles lurk in the anonymous shade to drink and squabble, or to sleep and forget.
Their smashed flagons glitter like diamonds on the sand, and their paper and plastic rubbish flutters in the breeze like trapped birds against the prickly branches.
If they knew what had once happened near that lonely place they might not come again.
Many years ago when this area was on the extreme outskirts of the small Alice Springs township, an elderly man of odd behaviour camped
on the site, away from the eyes and sensibilities of respectable citizens.
His “home” was a length of galvanised iron sheeting propped up against a bush, while he slept underneath on a simple swag, using his backbone for a mattress.
We will call him Ernie.
As you might have already imagined, old Ernie was a rather strange character.
Certainly eccentric.
He did not consider himself a part of the world of ordinary men.
He was possibly neither a victim of superiority or inferiority, if the truth was known.
He was, simply, different.
An avowed outcast. A loner. Humanity was not his friend, unfortunately.
As his forlorn figure shuffled about Alice Springs streets and laneways, the dogs followed close behind, waiting for bits and pieces thrown to them from the household bins.
If anyone approached the old man, friend or foe, the dogs growled their displeasure, always adopting a threatening stance, muscles tensed and teeth bared, frightening them off.
Old Ernie rarely encouraged conversation. Few sought it from him.
To most minds, the shabby old fellow was a crank, with a surly disposition, always inclined to be argumentative.
When drunk, as was normally the case, he continually mumbled to himself as he slouched about the streets, murmering angrily over unknown matters.
It was common practise to ignore the grotty old fellow with his ragged trousers and smelly vest, as though he did not exist.
If curious children loitered near him, parents snatched them away.
Some even callously used him as a boogey-man, saying: “If you don’t do what you’re told, old Ernie will come and take you away.”
Thus children learnt to see him as a threat and unconsciously acquired the weird prejudices of their elders.
Grog numbed,the old derelict treated them all with universal distain.
A casual observer might be inclined to believe that Ernie was just an ordinary drunk, another of those legions enslaved by alcohol and always seeking the forgetfulness it brings.
But once, if the truth were sought, he had been more than that: an upright person with potential: a man who, when sozzled, was known to have quoted pages of Shakespeare, Robert Browning, and other obscure poets.
At the same time, a man cursed with sensitivity and an inability to cope with the traumas of life.
The grog, he learnt, conditioned his feelings against all obstacles, so he continued to drink for the benefit of his sensitivities, and it was not too long before the numbness of alcohol became a preferred state.
Food seemed to be unimportant.
He scavenged his meagre needs in other people’s rubbish bins, often scoring pieces of bread, over-ripe fruit or things intentionally left for him by caring residents.
Aboriginal friends sometimes left him kangaroo bones for his ferocious dogs.
His three bitzer mongrels were the terror of the Alice.
If anyone ventured anywhere near Ernie’s camp, the dogs sprung alert, back hairs bristling, as they snarled and dribbled, warning the visitor that to take a closer step was to invite a bloody fate.
There was Darky, an evil-looking slinky cur with ugly yellow eyes.
He had a long hairless scar running from shoulder to rump where a cow had once horned him on Undoolya Station.
Whitey was bred from everything in town. A sly animal, sneaking and treacherous, who was always hungry for meat, and he was not fussy where he found it.
Red was, of course, vaguely dingo, with portions of other breeds mixed in to make him complicated; he despised the species of Mankind and seemed to bear a grudge against anything with two legs that talked the English language.
Ernie’s dogs had an instinctive system of attack which, against a lone target, was flawless.
They surrounded their quarry in a triangle so it was impossible to watch the three animals simultaneously.
While one or two dogs attracted the victim’s attention, the third dog darted in to snap against an ankle or shin-bone, digging in the teeth and shaking its head furiously.
As their quarry tried to fend off his attacker, the other two dogs would rush in to bite.
Their system was quite artful, observers declared.
They could stalk and drag down a kangaroo in minutes.
What they might have done to a man without their owner’s interference was a terrible thought to contemplate.
One time an old drunken dark man lost his way on the path home from the pub and accidentally blundered into Ernie’s camp on a moonless night.
Before Ernie awakened to stop them, the dogs attacked the uninvited visitor, tearing pieces from his legs, hands and arms.
He staggered away, his wounds bleeding profusely, and needed to be admitted to the hospital for stitches and other treatment.
When news of the unprovoked attack reached the police station, two young constables were despatched with rifles to put an end to the terror wreaked by the old man’s dogs.
Some time later the policemen returned to the station, uniforms torn and grubby, full of fear, to report that the dogs were still alive and dangerous, and suggesting a machine-gun might be borrowed from the Army to accomplish the dirty deed.
Any time the police or shire officers attempted to visit Ernie’s bush camp to discuss the problem of his dogs, the old man sooled the mongrels on to them, yelling: “Get him! Kill him! Bite ‘em!”
Consequently, Ernie and his dogs were regarded as immune from the law, the simple reason being that no-one could get close enough to enforce it.
It came to pass that someone reported to the authorities Ernie’s absence; he had not been seen for two weeks pottering around the rubbish bins for a feed, and it was suspected he might be lying ill in his lonely camp and in need of medical attention.
Armed policemen, and others, in a determined effort, launched a massive assault on Ernie’s mad dogs and gradually managed to shoot each animal before they could do too much damage.
That accomplished, the police were then able to learn the reason for Ernie’s unaccustomed absence: the poor old fellow had died in his sleep and his dogs had started to eat him.
The authorities shovelled the mutilated remains on to the sheet of corrugated iron that had once been his roof and gave poor old Ernie a decent Christian burial in a pauper’s grave.
To save money, the bodies of his three shot dogs were interred in the same hole.
this is one strange story i have heard
— norm park · 12 June 2008 · #