Big World by Tim Winton | Essay

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Big World Tim Winton
After five years of high school the final November arrives and leaves as suddenly as a spring
storm. Exams. Graduation. Huge beach parties. Biggie and me, we’re feverish with
anticipation; we steel ourselves for a season of pandemonium. But after the initial
celebrations, nothing really happens, not even summer itself. Week after week and endless
misting drizzle wafts in from the sea. It beads in our hair and hangs from the tip of our noses
while we trudge around town in the vain hope of scaring up some action. The southern sky
presses down and the beaches and bays turn the colour of dirty tin. Somehow our crappy
Saturday job at the meatworks becomes full-time and then Christmas comes as so do the
dreaded exam results. The news is not good. A few of our classmates pack their bags for
university and shoot through. Cheryl Button gets into Medicine. Vic Lang, the copper’s kid,
is dux of the school and doesn’t even stay for graduation. And suddenly there we are, Biggie
and me, heading to work every morning in a frigid wind in the January of our new lives, still
in jeans and boots and flannel shirts, with beanies on our heads and the horizon around our
ears.
The job mostly consists of hosing blood off the floors. Plumes of the stuff go into the harbour
and old men sit in dinghies offshore to catch herring in the slick. Some days I can see me and
Biggie out there as old codgers, anchored to the friggin place, stuck forever. Our time at the
meatworks is supposed to be temporary. We’re saving for a car, the V-8 Sandman we’ve
been promising ourselves since we were fourteen. Mag wheels, a lurid spray job like
something off a Yes album and a filthy great mattress in the back. A chick magnet, that’s
what we want. Until now we’ve had a biscuit tin full of twos and fivers but now we’re
making real money.

Trouble is, I can’t stand it. I just know I won’t last long enough to get that car. There’s
something I’ve never told Biggie in all our years of being mates. That I dream of escaping, of
pissing off north to find some blue sky. Unlike him I’m not really from here. It’s not hosing
blood that shits me off – it’s Angelus itself; I’m going nuts here. Until now, out of loyalty,
I’ve kept it to myself, but by the beginning of February I’m chipping away at our old fantasy,
talking instead about sitting under a mango tree with a cold beer, walking in a shady banana
plantation with a girl in a cheesecloth dress. On our long walks home I bang on about cutting
our own pineapples and climbing for coconuts. Mate, I say, can’t you see yourself rubbing
baby oil into a girl’s strapless back on Cable Beach? Up north, mate, think north! I know
Biggie loves this town and he’s committed to the shared vision of the panel van, but I white-
ant him day after day until it starts to pay off.
By the last weeks of February Biggie’s starting to come around. He’s talking wide open
spaces now, trails to adventure, and I’m like this little urger in his ear. Then one grey day he
crosses the line. We’ve been deputised to help pack skins. For eight hours we stand on the
line fighting slippery chunks of cow hide into boxes so they can be sold as cray bait. Our
arms are slick with gore and pasted with orange and black beef hairs. The smell isn’t good
but that’s nothing compared with the feel of all 1don’t even stop for lunch, can’t think about
it. I’m just glad all those chunks are fresh because at least my hands are warm. Beside me
Biggie’s face gets darker and darker, and when the shift horn sounds he lurches away, his last
carton half-empty. He says we’re outta here. That afternoon we ditch the Sandman idea and
buy a Kombi from a hippy on the wharf. Two hundred bucks each.
We put in two last weeks at the meatworks and collect our pay. We fill the ancient VW with
tinned food and all our camping junk and rack off without telling a soul. Monday morning
everyone thinks we’re off to work as usual, but in ten minutes we’re out past the town limits