CBC - Origins

Johnny Ryan  (by: Coffee ©08/2005)

After I got out of the Army, I returned to Condobolin in the hopes that enough time had passed that Meg and I could get back together. We had written to each other while I was in the service and I thought I read a flicker of hope in her letters. When I returned home, Meg was working for Sam’s father and going to school. She told me that she could not see a future with me until she figured out what she wanted to do with her own life.

I moved back with my Mum. She was none too happy that I left the Army and came back home. She wanted me to make a new life for myself away from what happened to Sam and from Meg. The Army had trained me to be a mechanic, so I was able to find a job in a garage not far from home. I started saving my money for the day that Meg and I would get back together and be married. As time passed I would see Meg occasionally and we would go to the movies or dances but I could see she did not feel the same about me as I felt about her. One day she came to the garage and told me she had met someone at school that she was getting pretty serious about. She did not feel it was right to lead me on that there was still hope for us. She could not tell me that there was a future for us to get back together and have a life. After she left I went to the bottle shop and got the largest bottle of cheap whiskey I could buy and went up to the memorial to drink with the flies and figure out what I as going to do now. I could have stayed in the Army if she had not let me think that we had a future. I could have forgotten about her in time and found someone else. I had plenty of sheilas chasing me and I had chased a few. Now I’d left the army and I was back in this town and I got to watch her go off with some other bloke.

I was at the crossing like Sam. He knew what he had to do that night. Now I have to figure out what I have to do with my life without Meg. So I thought the best thing to do right then was to get a gutful of piss then to get rotten on top of that. Maybe that would help me figure out what I was going to do.

I had just started drinking when a car pulled up and a bloke got out and started walking toward me. He looked kind of familiar and my gut was telling me I knew him. He looked a lot older than me so I figured I must have seen him at one of the bases I had been stationed at. I figured he was probably a bloody officer.

“G’day mate! You Johnny Ryan?”

“G’day. Yeah, that’s me. What can I do for ya, mate?”

“I need to talk to ya for a tic. Mind if I sit down?”

“Take a seat.” I gestured to the memorial step beside me. “Ya want a drink?”

I offered him the bottle and he took it and looked at the label.

“Looks like ya planning on getting bloody well plonked. Ya got some real cheap turps here, mate. This stuff will get ya there in a hurry if it don’t kill ya first.”

He laughed as he took a drink and sat down on the steps with me.

“That was my plan when I left the garage today. If I’m lucky maybe it will kill me but my luck hasn’t been that good lately.”

“I’m guessing you’re not celebrating. So, what is it? A sheila?”

“You guessed it mate! A bloody sheila. Came back here thinking we would get back together and get married. Now she doesn’t see a future with me. I leave the army and come back home and live with my Mum to save money thinking she was my future. Bloody Hell!”

“Well mate, I may have another option besides you drinking yourself to death over a sheila.”

“What? Ya looking to sign me back up again in the Army? I thought they had more mechanics than they needed!”

“No, not the Army. But it will get you out of this town and far away from that sheila.”

I nodded my head and took a drink as he started to tell me about how we’re brothers. How he’s been searching half way round the world finding us and taking them back to a place called Central. That Central is located in America. There are 24 of us all together and quite a few are Aussies.

I had to admit this was getting interesting so I passed the bottle to him and he took a drink. He went on to tell me that a sheila had created Central and that she and a few of her sisters lived there. I would be set up with a place to live and that there was a garage there that I could work at along with another Aussie. Before I could ask he tells me that the sheilas that live there are there to take care of all of us and to love us and for us to love them. I started to think that the cheap whiskey had hit me a lot faster than it should and I looked at the bottle and we’d hardly drunk any of it.

“Mate, it sounds a helluva lot better than what I got goin’ for me here. When does the plane leave?”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

He couldn’t have said anything I’d rather have heard. “Well, how about as soon as I pack a bag and talk to my Mum. Is that too soon?”

“Not at all, mate. In fact, pack just what ya need and we can arrange to have anything else picked up and shipped.”

“Fair dinkum, mate! Follow me to my Mum’s and I’ll be ready to go in a tic.”

I told Mum most of what Terry had offered. I left out the part about the sheilas. She was happy and told me not to worry about her and have a go at Central and America. Packed only what I needed and we were off to the airport. I came to the crossing and I made a decision that changed the direction I was headed in. Walking out to Terry’s car with my bag I got a good feeling that I was heading in the right direction.

When we got to Central Terry introduced me to Darrin. My first thought was “I hope all the sheilas look like Darrin.”

Darrin took me over to the garage and showed me the flat where I would live. I was use to living with my Mum then living in a barracks with about 100 other blokes and then back with my Mum. I liked having my own flat right off. She took me downstairs to meet Colin and Dominic both of them were Aussies! They showed me the stall they had set up for me and told me they would help me get anything I needed. Darrin said that Terry was already arranging to have my tools shipped from the garage I worked at back home.

The first few weeks after I arrived were busy. There were a lot of new things to learn computers, cell phones, e-mailing, and the internet! A lot of this technology was still very new in my time. The good thing was that Colin and Dom were still learning too so we experimented and learned together. We explored the local pubs in between learning about the life in the Village.

Now all of that is second nature to me and Colin is my best mate. I don’t think I could have ever found as good a life in Australia as I have here in Central.