Big Momma Bertha
When I was a young minister freshly graduated and ordained, my first ministry in the 1960’s, after seven years of the slums of Newmarket, was in a small country church, in the small country town of Ararat, gateway to the Wimmera in Western Victoria. There I learnt the difficult art faced by all city bred ministers, of becoming a country parson.
The township of Ararat was situated on the Great Western Highway. The highway ran right through the centre of Ararat and through the heart of our one street shopping centre all the great semi trailers drove on the road between Melbourne and Adelaide. It meant that night and day there was always fair risk to life and limb if a person tried to cross the Great Western Highway in order to go to the shops on the other side.
So the Ararat City Council, with the support of the Ararat Shire Council decided to make a heavy truck detour on a parallel road one block away from the Great Western Highway past the shopping centre.
This parallel heavy truck detour ran right between the railway line and the Great Western Highway, and it ran right past our front door at 90 High Street, Ararat. It meant that now we had the heavy trucks and transports day and night rumbling past our front door. There was always a lot of noise in our house anyway from the railway trucks in the main shunting yards just opposite our manse front door. The long rows of wheat trucks would pull in during harvesting time and the steam engines, one in the front pulling and one at the back pushing would signal each other, one toot meaning “I am about to go forward”, two toots meaning “I hear you and I am about to start pushing”. There were other signals between the engines as they signalled for reverse or trucks uncoupled and the like. And whenever there were fifty trucks in a long line and the one at the rear started pushing there would be fifty lots of buffers clanging together as each truck banged into the truck in front. In the middle of wheat harvest perhaps 30 to 40 steam engines and shunting trains would be working all night as well as all day.
The only house that was close to us and the source of the noise from both the railway trucks and the transports, was the large two storey property facing the railways entrance way and our manse. It was the old grey “Ararat Mansions”. It had previously been built as a guest house for people from country areas to stay overnight when they came in from outlying farms in order to catch an early morning train to either Adelaide or Melbourne. It had been rented out over the years to large numbers of railway workers, itinerant farm labourers, shearers, and so on who had reason to come to Ararat by train. As the years went by it had degenerated in its clientele and now was a run down, seedy guest house inhabited by a few single men, mainly shearers in between job assignments around the farms, a few old alcoholics and one or two long term residents who soon got sick of the noise from the transports which was now added to the noise of the railway trucks and who promptly left.
Not long after we shifted into the manse at 90 High Street another woman shifted into one of the recently vacated flats in the Ararat Mansions. She was soon to have a big impact on the life of the town.
She had with her three or four other women and very soon the Ararat Mansions had become known by the name “The Ararat Passion Pit”. “Big Momma Bertha” and her three girls ran a brothel. Momma Bertha was an over coloured, over painted and over dressed woman. Her three girls were nondescript, thin with lank hair, short skirts, leather boots and some shawls against Ararat’s night air.
They stood outside the Ararat Passion Pit hoping to attract custom when the trains came in. But very soon they had another source of clientele the truck drivers who were driving past on the heavy truck detour outside our front door.
Now instead of the trucks driving past, we had trucks pulling up with screech of brakes, or starting off with changing down of gears, the revving of engines and the tooting of horns. Sometimes the blast on the horn meant “You better get ready, Rubber Ducky from Adelaide has arrived.” On other occasions ad series of blasts would mean: “Look out girls. Heavy Harry from Albury has hit town.”
The noise was terrible and the shouting and laughter of the girls and the stopping of the transports and starting again disturbed the sleep of anybody within a radius of half a mile or so.
Some complaints were made to the police, but for some reason or other the sergeant of police could never find out where the Ararat Passion Pit happened to be, and on those occasions when various citizens directed his attention to the Ararat Mansions, he found on his arrival that there was nothing amiss. Consequently the might of the Victoria police force was unable to do anything about the goings on at the Passion Pit.
Complaints to the Ararat City Council Health Inspectors about the condition of the rather decrepit buildings of the Ararat Mansions brought the Health Inspectors out but they did not seem to be able to find possible reason why they should interfere with the private dwelling places of our citizens.
After a number of citizens had complained the Mayor came down one sunny afternoon and could not find anything wrong. Consequently the complaints to the Police, the Council Health Inspectors and the Council itself seemed to have fallen upon deaf ears.
So one of the residents decided to take action himself.
Eugene Horton was a delightful chap. He was the drama critic for the “Ararat Advertiser” and the producer of musicals for the Ararat Musical Society. Eugene was the founding member of the Ararat Thespian Players. They were a group of ladies and gentlemen dedicated to bring culture to Ararat with high drama, an occasional Shakespeare production, and occasionally joining with the Musical Society to produce a Rogers and Hammerstein musical in the Ararat Town Hall.
He wrote regularly for the “Ararat Advertiser” about the musicals and dramas produced in town and about the excellence of the actors and actresses, of the fine production and presentation, all of which made very interesting reading as he was inevitably the producer himself.
Everybody knew Eugene in town.
I think he liked winter most of all, because that was the season when he could go up the street in his beautiful cape of black velvet like material, with red satin lining. When Eugene turned round in a pirouette the cape flowed out revealing the beautiful colours of its scarlet lining.
Eugene was a very honest, well educated and finely adjusted citizen. There was some suggestion that he drank a little too much, but for most people he was a bachelor gay who devoted his life to lifting the moral and cultural tone of our rather sadly neglected country town.
The arrival of “Big Momma Bertha” and her girls was bad enough, but to have them living in the “Ararat Mansions” which he had so proudly had engraved on his personal greeting cards, was a shock to his system.
Furthermore his complaints to the authorities in the town brought no response so Eugene Horton decided to take events into his own hands.
What happened next I discovered in almost opposite sequence to the events as I now tell you, for the very first thing that alerted me to what Eugene had done was the very last thing to have happened, I was aroused from a late night cup of coffee in our kitchen sitting around the burnt out wood fire stove where Beverley and I were trying to keep warm while she fed our newly born son, by a terrible noise. It was repeated several times and I instantly recognised rifle shots outside our front door. We both ran to the door and very cautiously opened it with the lights off to see what was happening immediately outside.
Eugene had been rehearsing with the Ararat Musical Society the beautiful musical “Annie Get Your Gun”. It was a great hit every time it was produced in Ararat and the Ararat Town Hall would be packed out for five nights. The part of Annie was played by one of our local farmers wives who normally sang around the youth groups of the churches with her guitar. But Margie had the lead role every time “Annie Get Your Gun” came in any of the local Wimmera towns. She was a marvellous natural markswoman and a great character actress. Her voice was not the most wonderful but then again did any one really think that Annie Oakley had originally been trained as an opera singer. She was trained for her ability to shoot and Margie took the part of Annie so well that the people in the area, when they saw her up the street on shopping day, inevitably called her Annie.
What had happened on this night concerned Annie.
Eugene had brought together a number of members of his cast, only they were not wearing the costumes from “Annie Get Your Gun”, but costumes that made them appear like girls from the Ararat Passion Pit, and some fairly drunk truck drivers. The truck drivers were played perfectly by some members of the Ararat Thespian Players. From one of our Ararat firms they had borrowed a couple of transports and had driven the trucks up and parked them outside the Ararat Mansions. There they waited in darkness, the single red light burning in it socket outside Big Momma Bertha’s flat.
About 10.30 or so on this night, three heavily laden transports arrived together from Melbourne. They pulled up in front with a squeal of brakes sending stones and gravel from the unmade sides of the road in all directions with dust clouds enveloping the backs of their trucks. Each of the drivers played the signature tune on his powerful air horn to let the girls know that he had arrived and jumped out excited at the thought of meeting Big Momma Bertha’s girls.
They were big, heavily built men, dressed in jeans and checked shirts which was the uniform of interstate truck drivers of those days. As they pulled up one behind the other they met together with some rowdy shouts of expectation and headed off towards the Ararat Passion Pit.
At that moment, two truck drivers suddenly ran out of the front of the Ararat Mansions shouting at the top of their voice “No, no! Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot.” They were closely followed by a girl looking indistinguishable from one of Big Momma Bertha’s girls, but she had a rifle. Standing under the light where she was clearly seen she screamed at the men never to come back there again and, taking careful aim, fired shot after shot from the rifle. A milk bottle exploded on the front fence of the Mansions. One of the parked transport’s headlights shattered with glass all over the road, then the street light shattered and the running truck drivers ran towards their trucks. Then one man was hit and fell to the ground grasping a leg. In agonising actions he grasped his leg and crawled to his knees, jumping into the truck and both trucks started their engines, went through the gears quickly crashing through the gears as the big rigs started and roared up High Street on towards Melbourne.
If those two men including the poor wounded man were moving quickly you should have seen the three truck drivers from Melbourne! They stood in their tracks, eyes wide apart at this scene of the wildly firing girl. They instantly ran back to their rigs, started the engines, went through the gears and drove those big rigs at maximum revs up High Street towards Adelaide. Soon they were on their CB radios warning other truck drivers to avoid the Ararat Passion Pit. The news spread like wild fire throughout the truck driving fraternity. One of Big Momma Bertha’s girls had gone berserk and shot a driver, the tales of how she had shot up the rigs of the men concerned were exaggerated. Soon not only a headlight but the windscreen and the two side windows were shot out. The word spread among the truck drivers. At all costs avoid Ararat.
Further reports were quickly spread that the police were interested in the identity of truck drivers and were stopping all trucks that slowed down in the vicinity of High Street.
Soon all the trucks were re routing themselves down the Great Western Highway right through the shopping centre rather than take the detour up High Street. And High Street became a centre of peace. The story of the murdering woman who shot a driver spread around the town and yet the police took no action. Apparently Eugene Horton called into the Police Station and deeply apologised for his Thespian Players. He explained that on that certain night they were having a rehearsal out of doors for “Annie Get Your Gun”. Annie had fired some blanks from her rifle and carefully hidden members of the Ararat Thespian Players had let off small electrical charges which had exploded a bottle, a light and a headlamp which had in turn been carefully prepared for the action in the same way as the targets were prepared on the stage of the Ararat Town Hall. There was some report that a man had been injured but Eugene pointed out it was only one of his actors who in “Annie Get Your Gun” becomes wounded by Annie as an example of her marksmanship. It had all been part of the careful rehearsal for the forthcoming musical and he was sorry that apparently someone or other had been upset by the blanks being fired.
Of course the sergeant of police understood and dutifully accepted a couple of free tickets to the following week’s performance of “Annie Get Your Gun”.
As for Big Momma Bertha and her girls, by the time they had reached the streets all the trucks had disappeared, and there were only a couple of members of the Ararat Thespian Players who were replacing a light bulb in the socket of the street lamp, a milk bottle on the side of the fence and sweeping up some glass from where a truck had stood.
Big Momma Bertha could not understand what had happened to custom because from that night forth not one truck pulled up outside the Ararat Mansions. After three or four weeks without trade suddenly Big Momma Bertha and the girls were gone, off to some other country town beside another highway. And the township of Ararat settled back into the noise of just the shunting train engines and the wheat trucks, except by now the harvest was over and the wheat trucks had all be pushed to sidings and the great autumn stillness settled upon High Street.
Of course the trucks eventually came to re use the detour road, but never again was the Ararat Mansion referred to as the Ararat Passion Pit. As I told you, I only learnt the first part of the story after I had heard the last part, the shots that rang out in the night air and the sight of five big transports roaring off in two different directions and a group of laughing happy Thespian Players coming out of hiding places to clean up some broken glass and a rather smug Eugene Horton, swirling his cape around his shoulders in the chill night air and declaring that the entire production had been an absolute success.
So we closed the door and went back into our home at 90 High Street, opposite the Railway Station, having learnt another lesson in the difficult art of becoming a country parson.
GORDON MOYES
