Jimmy ‘Banjo’ MacKenzie sat in his wooden humpy at the back of the hotel in Gwalia. He was proud that in the incredible mess that was his kitchen everything was electric. That meant a lightbulb and a can opener. In another room was a fridge and an air-conditioner. The electricity for the small luxuries was donated by the managers of the local mine, Sons of Gwalia. Even with the air-conditioner on an old thermometer was recording 45°. Crouching as he did on a chair, with his knees under his chin, he proclaimed everything he needed was within easy reach.

When Banjo was 14, in 1932, his family left the Eastern States to travel to Broome where Banjo’s father wanted to continue his involvement in the pearling industry. 

“When we left Sydney the depression was on. My father had brought interests in the pearling fleet up at Broome. In those days we were wealthy people. That depression came, took the lot off everybody.

 “The whole tribe of us … myself, three brothers, three sisters, my mother and father … took off in a Model T Ford truck, all the way from Cronulla, out of Sydney there. There were no bitumen roads or nothing then just a couple of wheel tracks winding across the Nullarbor Plain. It was alright …  it only took us three months.

“I didn’t help things along much. It was my turn to drive. They had ramps over creeks, like camel humps with boards on them. There’s no timber there on that plain and someone must’ve wanted to boil a billy so they pinched the boards off the top of the ramp. I hit with the T model, hit the bend on full lock and turn ’er over. 

“Here we all are, piled up with the spuds and onions and the treacle tin with the lid off!

“Looked round and thought, ‘Well what do we do now?’ Anyway there was a carload of blokes came along. They all line up around us and stuck him back on his wheels again. 

“Picked everything up and away we went.”

© Roger Garwood 2025 (From the original book “Off Like Flies” by Trish Ainslie and Roger Garwood 1990)