Working Class Boy by Jimmy Barnes Page B

blood. Or is that vampires? I get them confused sometimes. Anyway, when they got nasty we all decided we hated them and their circus and wanted nothing to do with them.
    After a few days we sort of forgot that they were there and were back to playing in the paddocks, doing whatever kids do in paddocks. I remember looking up one day and seeing people waving frantically at us. We thought they were just giving us the usual message to get home, and we ignored them. Next thing I knew there were police with guns running through the paddocks yelling, ‘Stand perfectly still. Do not move. I repeat: stand perfectly still.’
    Now this was exciting. What could be going on? Was it a man-hunt like I’d seen on television? Before I knew it, I was being bundled into a car and taken back to our hut. I thought that we must have done something really wrong. It was possible – my mum said we were always doing things wrong. So it seemed this time we got caught doing whatever it was we couldn’t remember.
    But we weren’t in trouble at all. We were being rescued from wild beasts. The lions had escaped from the circus. Now I’ve heard since that the trainer didn’t treat the lions very well; in fact, he beat them. All the poor animals in this circus were badly treated and malnourished. I found this out many years later when my band Cold Chisel did some Circus Animal shows. The circus working on the shows with us was the very circus that had set up in our paddock thirty-odd years earlier. I asked them about the lions escaping and they told me the truth about it.
    It appears that the lion trainer was a bit of a drunk and to stop anyone else from getting to his booze, he had taken to hiding his bottle in the lions’ cage. You would have to be really desperate to try to get it out of there. Well, he was really desperate it seems. One day, after a particularly heavy few days drinking, he went to get his secret bottle from the cage.
    So the lions not only escaped; they seized the opportunity to rip him apart and eat him. Then they escaped and were, for the first time in many years, running free, through the paddock. It wasn’t Africa but they were free. It must have felt great for them to stretch their legs after being caged up in those appalling conditions. Having the wind blow through their manes not to mention getting a bit of revenge on the man who beat them every day. But all good things come to an end. The police shot them dead. At least they were free again, even if just for a short time, and they died like lions, with a full stomach and with the blood of their tormentor on their lips. They were, for a moment, happy again.
    I started school in Australia and had to repeat a year because I hadn’t finished the year in Scotland, which meant I was a little bit older than the other kids in my year. Not a lot older, just half a year, but it was enough to help me later on. At the time, though,I wanted to be in the class above and I was worried about being the oldest in my class for years after that. Like most kids, I wanted school to finish as soon as possible.
    I heard all Australian kids were Vegemite kids and I wanted to be an Australian kid so bad. One day when Mum went shopping I asked her to buy some of this stuff, which really was a super food before super foods were even thought of. Mum was worried but got it anyway and put it high in the cupboard where her Scottish friends would not spot it. Then, one day while she was busy visiting one of the other families who were caged up in the hostel, I snuck in and grabbed the Vegemite and a spoon. All the kids who went to school seemed to love this stuff so I wanted to find out why. I didn’t know you were supposed to spread this treat thinly onto freshly buttered, toasted bread. We didn’t have bread or butter and we certainly didn’t have a toaster.
    So I ran out into the paddock and began to eat it by the spoonful straight out of the jar. Well,