Jetty Road Weekly Blog 18/08/25

Source: The Nightly

Beef Washington

The Trump’s Dine In

Melania to Don

M: Honey you have been away so often and eating awful food. It’s time we had a meal at home.

D: I can get Big Macs wherever I go. It’s fine.

M: No sweetheart you don’t understand. This about you and me and some time to ourselves.

D: I don’t want to discuss Stormy anymore okay?

M: Forget her. I have. This is me time. This is us time.

D: Okay. What are we having?

M: Well I got some good Aussie beef. As well as a good Aussie recipe. I know you like their beef best.

D: That’s our secret Melly. You won’t tell. So what are we having?

M: Beef Washington. I cooked it myself.

D: (Tucking in) This is great. Hey. How come we have different coloured plates?

Source: The Muppet Mindset

Nightmare on Murray Street

Now is the winter of our discontent

It’s happening again. Dean is tossing and turning. Soon he will be writhing as Cassie in her dominatrix gear disguised as Miss Piggy cracks her whip. His hands are tied to the bed as she channels Gordon Gecko and chants: “Green is Good! Green is Good!”

Now she is playing the harp and singing “The Green, Green Grass of Home” and they are lowering him down into the earth. He feels the sods closing in around him.

Then suddenly he is in a field with horses and pageantry. King Jeremy rides up to him on a magnificent black steed and signals to his henchmen: “Him!”

And they grab him and seat him on a donkey. Now he is facing the King with the tiniest lance you have ever seen. They joust. The King rushes by and gives him a glancing blow to the side of the head and he falls off his mount. Temporarily blinded in one eye he staggers to his feet. Cassie is in the stands in a long green robe and a green veiled head dress. She is cheering. The crowd is cheering – then silence.

Now he is sitting on a lily pad and he is Kermit. From behind there is a hissing sound. He looks around and there is a huge snake with the head of Eric Abetz, fangs bared and chanting like a Dalek, “Exterminate! Exterminate!”

Then Ruth arrives a glowing radiant presence in flowing robes and Blundstones and she steps on Eric and crushes him with her heel. Then she is kissing Dean on the cheek and he wakes.

His pyjamas are soaked in sweat. He staggers to the bathroom and looks in the mirror and he sees no handsome prince. There is a bruise above his eye. There are ligature marks on his wrists. There is a fly on the mirror and his tongue lashes out and snaffles it.

He sighs and says to himself. “It’s going to be another long week.”

Song: Someplace Green - Jimmy Rodgers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHFfjH057TY

Image: Bottom Pub Rosebery 1927 Source: Pubs of the West Coast. Callum Jones

The New Shaft Part One

Dillingham’s and The Bottom Pub

Rosebery is flush with contractors and cashed up single men. It is 1971 and Dillingham’s are sinking a new shaft at the mine. At the weekend a league of nations swarms to the pubs and the RSL Club. The Top Pub and the RSL close at 10pm. The Bottom kicks on to 11.30pm. I am working as a barman at the Bottom. Coffee Brown and Firpo Crawford are my experienced team mates.  Coffee works in the bar serving the Ladies Lounge. He only ever refers to it as ‘The Snake Pit’. In his day job he was once supposedly bitten by a snake. According to legend Coffee survived unscathed but the snake died of alcohol poisoning. Firpo is the same generation as my parents. His nick name comes from either a 1941 movie or an Argentinian wrestler, both with a connection to the epithet ‘The Wild Man of Borneo.’ In a wild  town and himself much more mellowed this is code for – don’t mess with Firpo. We get along well. Every now and then he gives me a nudge and places a four ounce beer on the spill tray. “Have a drink cobby” he says. And I do.

There are fights. Mostly out in the back bar where I serve. They are usually over quickly and if not there are a number of locals on hand to sort things out. The pool table is a magnet for disputes and its nothing to see a happy smiling customer suddenly explode into a rage and crack someone over the head with the pool cue. Once on checking out the back all I see is a customer slumped on the bar and apparently flaked out. In those days no mixer taps.  Portagaffs and such like are served out of bottles that sit bar side just below the counter. My slumbering customer must have raised his head just as I turn my back to re-enter the main bar -  for suddenly a long neck of stout whizzes past my ear to alert me to his thirsty and reanimated presence. No responsible serving of alcohol rules then. Les Wescombe, the publican, is not amused and he is soon on his way – but he will be back. Nothing short of homicide would see anyone permanently barred from drinking in good old Rosebery town.

Tony Williamson works at the mine as a timber man. He gets the bright idea to convert an old bus into a burger van. He sits it opposite the Bottom and at kick out time it is a Mecca for hungry drunks. Nothing fancy here. Fried onions, a burger, tomato sauce and white bread. Mostly it’s a circus starring one Mendo. An Eastern European migrant in his mid-twenties. Cocky in a good way and good natured, but a target for Xenophobic intoxicated bullies of which there are always a few on hand. Mendo is no great pugilist but he can wrestle and he does not give in. Meanwhile Williamson, affectionately known as ‘The Pom’ (something I could never figure out for there were a few Poms in town) is making a killing. Eventually he decides to sell up – to no other than Mendo. And so whilst the shaft sinking lasts a new Rosebery institution is born: ‘Mendo’s Burger Bus.’

With Mendo wielding a large knife to slice his onions and hunger an imperative to be quickly served the fights diminish. The food meanwhile maintains its strictly low bar.

This is as close as Rosebery ever got to the west coast roaring days of the 1890’s.

Song: Roaring days – Weddings, Parties Anything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJbd49DX-xM