The Story of Danny Dunn

Chapter One

Danny Dunn returned to Balmain from the war understanding that he was no longer indestructible. When he'd joined up to fight at twenty, he'd been bulletproof. But coming home five years later, his childhood nickname – Dunny – seemed wholly appropriate. His life, almost since leaving the peninsula, had been shithouse, and it frightened him to think how he would cope as a civilian.

Back then, it hadn't taken long for some smart-arse kid in primary school to realise that by adding a 'y' to Danny's surname, in time-honoured Australian fashion, he could change it to the name for the toilet at the end of every backyard path. But a scattering of broken teeth, a few bloody noses and black eyes soon persuaded them that it was a cheap crack made at great personal risk to the joker.

By the age of fifteen, Danny was already a big bloke, a pound or two off fourteen stone. With feet as big as flippers, he swam like a fish and played in the Balmain first-grade water-polo team. On Saturday mornings he laced up his size-twelve football boots and played rugby union as a second-row forward for Fort Street Boys High, then in the afternoon he fronted in junior league for the mighty Balmain Tigers at Birchgrove Oval.

The old-timers at Balmain Leagues Club had been keeping an eye on him ever since he'd been in the nippers, and forecast big things for his football career. That he also played water polo as his summer sport was a matter of great concern to them. Everyone knew that water-polo players were a bunch of yobbos who played dirty and that severe or permanent injury in the pool was not unusual. In fact there was some truth in this. A game of water polo generally consisted of punches, kicks and scratches, resulting in bloody noses, bruises and torn ligaments that sometimes led to permanent injury. In an average game a player swam more than two miles and had three times as much hard body contact as a rugby-league player.

Furthermore, the Balmain polo boys and their followers richly deserved their dubious reputation for dirty tricks beneath the surface. As a venue, the Balmain Baths possessed an unenviable reputation. There was decking on only one side of the pool, which limited the referees' range, and the green murky water washing in from the harbour limited their vision, therefore a great deal of illegitimate underwater activity went undetected. Balmain polo players seldom lost a home game. They were renowned for their dirty tactics and considered to be the roughest players in the grade, a reputation in which their fans took considerable pride.

On several occasions Danny had been approached by a Tiger football coach who suggested that he take up a less dangerous summer sport than water polo; competition swimming was the one most often suggested. They pointed out that a truly special athlete comes along once in a generation and a Danny Dunn playing for a future Tiger's first-grade team was the kind of talent that could win premierships.

In football-mad Balmain it was advice a young bloke would be expected to follow, but Danny proved surprisingly stubborn and it was clear he had a mind of his own. He'd pointed out that he greatly enjoyed playing water polo, which kept him fit all summer for the winter football season, and that, unlike swimming, for which he had to be up early four mornings a week for two hours of intensive training, polo practice was in the evening and so met with his mother's approval. He could do his homework in the afternoon, practise in the evening, then get a good night's sleep and be ready for school in the morning. While he agreed he'd copped the odd bruise and bloody nose playing polo, even on one occasion a pair of black eyes, this was no different from playing football. Finally, he pointed out, if he were to maintain race fitness for swimming it would need to be his preferred sport summer and winter, and rugby league would of necessity become his second choice. This ended the discussion.

However, it had all come to a head when the Daily Telegraph did a feature in its sports pages on water polo and noted that it was one of the oldest team sports, along with rowing, in the Olympics and that water-polo was first played in Australia at Balmain. The article went on to say that, despite Australia's long history in the game and the genuine and enthusiastic support for it, we had never played at Olympic standard. The upcoming Berlin Games were an ideal opportunity for Australia to test its mettle in the water.

As further proof that we were ready for international competition, the newspaper cited as its authority György Nagy, the Hungarian Olympic coach at present visiting the country. Nagy had announced that he was greatly impressed with the standard of the local game and that, in his opinion, an Australian team could hold its own against any European team. He strongly recommended that Australia attempt to qualify for the Berlin Olympics.

The Daily Telegraph then picked a tentative Australian team from the various polo clubs, justifying their choice. For Danny Dunn, the singular selection from Balmain, they'd added a note of caution:

While his brilliance as a centre back is unquestioned, it is to be hoped that such a young player will not be injured or permanently incapacitated in the rough and tumble of international competition. Young Dunn will be sixteen when the games are being held, and therefore eligible, but his progress at any future Olympic trial should be carefully monitored.

All this was pure speculation on the part of the newspaper, and what followed was at best a storm in a teacup, but, in Balmain, a small, close-knit and mainly working-class community, any contention involving sport and one of their own had the potential to roar out of the teacup and develop into a gale-force storm. Like a quarrel between a father and son that starts as a conniption and erupts to involve the entire family, the future of Danny Dunn, included in the speculative water-polo team going nowhere, soon involved the entire peninsula.

There wasn't much joy during those dark post-depression years, so pride in the sporting achievements of Balmain's sons and daughters often sustained the entire community. Danny, barely sixteen when he would supposedly represent his country, was big news regardless of the sport involved. So the argument was infinitely more complex than simply football versus water polo. For a poor Balmain kid, top-level sporting prowess of any kind was a way out. It meant a future, ensured a job and, providing you didn't hit the grog or go off the rails in some other way, earned you respect for life. It also brought high regard and honour to your family. So while most folk were Tiger fans, regardless of their loyalty to the rugby-league team, they found themselves ambivalent, thus effectively removing themselves from the front line of battle.

This left only the diehard football fanatics opposing the water-polo fans, the latter seeing Danny's selection as the ultimate vindication of their sport. The numbers were roughly equal, which always makes for a good stoush, and that afternoon in the pubs it was on for one and all. Moreover, everyone involved had long since forgotten that the selected team was no more than the informed musings of a bored sports writer searching for a different topic to write about.

The football mob finally had all the ammunition they needed: the danger to Danny wasn't only their considered and long-held opinion but also that of the Daily Telegraph – the authority on racing at Randwick, the dogs at Harold Park and the trots at Wentworth Park, and therefore expert in all things. Danny Dunn's carefully nurtured rugby-league career was about to be placed in jeopardy by a bunch of thugs in swimming trunks.

The new thrust of the footballers' argument was that, if local games were clearly dangerous, any mug could see what it would be like when your country's honour was at stake. If Danny was to play against those dirty, filthy, no-holds-barred wog and dago teams it would almost certainly greatly endanger his career as a footballer. In their minds they had him returning from the games a permanent cripple in a wheelchair.

The vernacular, liberally punctuated with invective, flowed like wine at an Italian wedding.

'Mark my words, that kid belongs on the football field. He's a Tiger to his bootstraps. And one day he'll be a Kangaroo – nothing more certain – he'll play for Australia!'

The reply from the polo mob was just as insistent. 'Mate, he's a fucking porpoise! Six foot two and built like a brick shithouse. He's the best centre forward in the country and he's not even sixteen!'

'Yeah, and that's the flamin' problem, ain't it? Why do you think we're keeping him in mothballs, in the juniors away from the big blokes? The lad's still growin', that's why!'

'Growin'? Ferchrissake, he's fourteen stone! He is a big bloke! Mate, yiz don't play centre forward if you're not as strong as a bloody Mallee bull!'

'You water-polo bastards don't give a fuck, do yiz? Use him up, spit him out . . . plenty more where he come from! Well, there ain't, see! Danny Dunn's a fucking one-off, a sporting fucking genius! Youse could bugger him forever!'

'How's that?'

'Mate, in rugby league it's all out in the open. You biff someone. He biffs you back. A bit of claret, fair enough. The ref blows his pea and blame is duly apportioned, a warnin' or even an occasional penalty gets handed out. Open, fair, decent – handbags at five paces – all out in the open. Nobody gets hurt. Not like your mob. The ref can't see underwater, and soon as blink you'll knee a bloke in the balls or worse, tear his bloody arm off!'

'Bullshit! Danny can take good care of himself. Just you watch, mate, the kid takes no prisoners. Them wog players will jump into the pool baritones and come out fucking sopranos!'

By six o'clock closing on the night of the announcement of the hypothetical Olympic water-polo squad, several fights had broken out on the pavement outside various Balmain pubs, and a fair amount of claret was spilt. However, all blood was spilt in vain. The following morning, just after ten o'clock opening time, the argument was settled by Brenda, Danny's mother, in the front bar. 'I'm not taking sides. Danny's still at school and won't be playing in any Olympic team. That's all I've got to say!'

The water-polo supporters on the peninsula had gone from ecstasy to agony in twenty-four hours. At the soap and chemical factories, the ferry workshops, the foundry, coal loader, power station and wharves, there was little else discussed all day. In fact, the water-polo supporters grabbed anyone who was prepared to listen. 'The first water-polo game played in Australia was right bloody here! Here in the Balmain Baths! We was the first swimming club in Australia. Started in eighteen fucking eighty-three! Jesus! Yer don't go abusin' stuff like that! Lissen, mate, we was playing water polo before fucking rugby league was invented. We're the bastards with the tradition. Compared to us, them in league are still wet behind the bloody ears!'

By three-thirty knock-off time, it had been decided by the polo mob that a delegation would be led by Tommy O'Hearn, the union shop steward at the Olive, as the Palmolive soap factory was known to the locals. An ex-player and now assistant coach for first grade, he was ideally equipped to persuade Brenda Dunn to change her mind. The O'Hearn family had been polo boys for three generations; the game was in their blood.

Changing Brenda's mind was a task nobody took lightly; every attempt to persuade her to let an SP bookmaker to take bets in the pub had failed – her pub was the only one in Balmain that wouldn't allow gambling on the premises. 'Silly bitch . . . who does she think brings in the drinkers? They come in to have a beer and a bet; ya don't have one without t'other.' They didn't add that the SP bookmaker bought a lot of grog for his clients and also paid rent for the privilege of operating illegally on the premises. Nor did they reflect that the Hero never had any trouble with the police. And it wasn't because of bribery. Like every other publican, Brenda'd buy a cop a beer or two or serve him a free counter lunch, but that was it. The truth is there were no SP bookmakers, no stolen goods sold on pub premises and no other scams.

But Tommy O'Hearn was a smooth talker, a clever, persistent and patient bloke who had a fair idea what he was up against when it came to Danny's mum. He knew she was stubborn, and that approaching her directly would be pointless. The key was her husband, Half Dunn. 'Useless prick – all piss and wind. But maybe he has some influence, yer know, behind the scenes?' O'Hearn suggested.

Mick Dunn, six foot one inch and twenty stone, could drink twelve schooners of Reschs Draught and still appear reasonably sober as he sat propped on a reinforced bar stool at the main bar in the Hero from ten o'clock opening to six o'clock closing. He always wore exactly the same clobber, a white shirt and a humungous pair of grey tailor-made pants, the waistband of which reached almost to his armpits. From each knife-edged trouser leg protruded a pair of pointy-toed black and white, pattern-punched, patent-leather shoes, the instep and ankle of which were covered by carefully blancoed spats. Above them were grey silk socks held taut by suspenders. His open-neck shirt was collarless to accommodate the several chins that scalloped downwards to his chest, and he wore a solid-gold collar stud in the top left-hand buttonhole, to show that the omission of a starched detachable collar was deliberate, a matter of style. Finally, Half Dunn added a pair of crimson American barbershop braces with four square chrome clips. He was, he believed, a natty dresser, in the Runyonesque style he imagined Nicely-Nicely Johnson sported in Guys and Dolls, a book he tucked under his pillow each night before falling asleep.

It was often said of Half Dunn that he possessed an opinion on everything. There was no subject too obscure or trivial that he couldn't mature into a conversation. To give an example, on one occasion a punter came into the pub carrying a bag of corn on the cob he'd no doubt nicked from a produce boat he'd been unloading on the wharves. He ordered a seven, which indicated he was skint, and walked over for a chat with Half Dunn.

'What you got there, mate?' Half Dunn asked, pointing to the hessian bag.

'Yeah, mate, corn; fresh, straight off the boat. Let you have half a dozen for sixpence.'

'Nah, don't eat corn. No good fer ya,' Half Dunn replied.

'How's that, mate? Corn's good tucker,' the bloke said, taking the knockback in his stride.

'It don't digest,' Half Dunn volunteered.

'Digest? What d'yer mean by that?'

'You know, it gets into yer stomach, all them acids and stuff, fermentation, taking out the nourishment . . . it don't happen with corn.'

'Fermentation? Yer mean like grog . . . beer?'

'Yeah, gettin' the good out've the corn.'

The man looked quizzically at Half Dunn. 'How d'ya know all this shit?'

Half Dunn never missed a chance. He could pick up a double entendre in a flash.

'That's it precisely! Shit!'

'What's that suppose'ta mean?'

'You eat corn. Next mornin' you go for a shit. What do you see?'

'Eh?'

'Nothin's happened to the corn, mate. Them kernels are still in their little polished yellow jackets, same as when you swallowed them, digestion juices can't penetrate, see. No fermentation.'

The corn man took a sip from his seven and shook his head. 'Crikey! Ya learn somethin' every day, don't ya?'

'Stick around, son,' Half Dunn said, pleased with his erudition.

While Half Dunn could be described as a useless bastard, with no authority to do anything whatsoever except talk crap, like many seemingly unthinking people he possessed the capacity to talk to anyone on any subject, mining clues from their inanities and developing these to advance the conversation. Pubs by their very nature attract misfits and lonely men, and Half Dunn could talk to them all, adding to the pub's air of congeniality and increasing its appeal.

While Half Dunn drank more than his fair share of the profits and dispensed bonhomie and mindless opinions on everything from the perfidy of politicians to the training of ferrets, his wife, Brenda, put in a fifteen-hour day ending at 8 p.m. when she'd finally balanced the day's receipts, checked the cellar ...