Working Class Boy by Jimmy Barnes Page A

going, John?’ I asked him, hoping I wasn’t going to end up getting tied up or something.
    But John was the head cowboy – he always was and still is – so I would go wherever he wanted to go. I don’t think we had guns or cowboy hats or anything like that. We were just going to be cowboys I guess. I thought we would run around and pretend we had horses but no, John had a better idea.
    â€˜Just shut it and follow me,’ he said as he ran across the paddock.
    Over the other side of the black forest, across the Main North Road, was the abattoir. It seemed like we walked for miles to get there, but once again I have driven past there recently and it’s not that far. I guess with smaller legs we had to take more steps. There were acres and acres of fenced-off paddocks full of animals standing around eating. I didn’t really understand what an abattoir was, so I didn’t realise they were waiting to be killed.
    We didn’t know a lot about anything really. Being cowboys was new to us, so we did things a little differently. Instead ofjumping on the backs of horses or bulls, which were way too big for kids our size, we rode on the back of sheep. We were only small and the sheep still looked huge to us. We would get thrown into fences and trampled by the stampeding flock, which doesn’t sound that scary now but then it was terrifying. So in our minds, we thought we were daredevils, risking our lives every time we stepped into the ring to take on one of these monsters.
    It was only once I looked more carefully at the place that I worked out what happened there. Maybe I knew all along but never really wanted to think about it. You could smell death and fear in the air around there. But I had smelled fear everywhere I had been in my life and learned to ignore it unless it was affecting me. We stopped going to play at the abattoir, at least I did anyway.
    When we worked out what the abattoir was, and what happened there, we realised why the area smelled so bad. Up until then we thought that when it got hot, the Australian bush smelled bad.
    Music seems to add markers to my life and certain songs remind me of particular times. The song I remember most from those days was ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ by The Tokens. I used to walk around singing something I’d made up that sounded remotely African, pretending I was in the jungle hunting wild, dangerous animals. I loved Tarzan as well so I would be yelling out at the top of my voice doing my best Tarzan impersonation, calling out, ‘Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah,’ to all the wild beasts in the paddocks around the hostel to come to me. Luckily they never heard me.
    One day there was a lot of excitement among all the kids at the hostel. A circus had come to our town and set up in the paddocks near the hostel, probably thinking they would clean up with all the immigrant families living there. I’d never seen a circus before; I don’t think they came to Cowcaddens. I had seena few clowns walking around after closing time, but no circus. Anyway, unfortunately for the circus owners, no one had any money to spend on circuses; they had drinking habits they had to support.
    But we kids would walk to the circus site and ask, ‘Can we look at the animals, mister? We just want to see what goes on when there’s no show. Please, mister, we’ll be good.’
    I think most of us secretly thought about running away and joining them but that changed when we saw how life in the circus really was. For a very short while they were nice to us but as soon as the carnie folk realised we had no money one of them yelled, ‘Piss off, you brats, or we’ll set the dogs on you!’ So we ran as fast as we could. The evil carnie side had come out. They can be very nasty when they want to be, those carnies. One minute they’re playing violins and reading your Tarot cards, next minute they’re taking your passport and drinking your