This is a guest post from my centralian mate, Liam Campbell. 

My friend Eric Brown passed away about a week ago. His son found my number in his phone and called me.

I first met Eric and Isobel when they were living at White Gums near Alice Springs about 22 years ago. They would travel between the NT and SA.

I lost count of the number of places they lived in South Australia. It was always somewhere different: Sherlock, Meningie, Port Pirie, Port Lincoln, Port Augusta, Murray Bridge, Victor Harbour… And I randomly bumped into them at Port Wakefield, Port Augusta and Port Pirie on various occasions. I was never allowed to tell anyone where they were living. I would get letters from Isobel with no return address. Although sometimes she would send me postcards (-:

I last saw them in Alice Springs a earlier in the year when they arrived after blowing their motor up at Jim’s Place about 80km to the south. Eric had just got his driver’s license back after 10 years of borrowing one from his mate. He almost got found out one day when he was booked for going too slow on the highway just north of Adelaide (yes you can be booked for going too slow). Otherwise, he stayed pretty much under the radar.

So I loaned him my car for a few weeks. I’d see him driving really slow around town.

I was a bit worried because Eric couldn’t see very well, but Isobel would point things out to him. Neither of them could hear though. I had no idea how he got his license back. Couldn’t be too many 94 year-olds still driving.

I hadn’t heard from Eric for a couple of months so I tried to find him about a week ago when I drove through Port Augusta. I wasn’t able to find him and the hostel where he and Isobel were staying was shut for the day. It was unsettling to not be able to find them. There had always been a bit of magic in the way we could always find each other.

When I heard Eric had passed away I went looking for a photo of him in my old journals I used to write when I first came to Central Australia and was reminded how present he and Isobel were in my life then. I would come into town from Yuendumu and camp with them if they were in Alice. At caravan parks, hostels, out the back of churches, a bush camping spot, a car park. I would just drive around until I found them.

There were no mobile phones then. Most times I’d find them sitting on the town council lawns.

They had a lot of different vehicles over the years. An assortment of trucks with little wooden or canvas houses Eric would build on the back. Mini buses with a mattress inside and the doors secured with sliding latches pot riveted into the body of the vehicle and secured with padlocks. Commodore and Falcon station wagons. When I wanted to buy my first car Eric found me one at a mine site near Marla on one of his trips.

About a year ago Eric had a truck that got stolen and burnt when he and Isobel were in the Flinders Ranges. Eric was most concerned about finding it to retrieve the $4,000 cash he had in a fire proof bag. I can’t remember if he found it or not – you’d think I’d remember that – but I do remember how he had a fight with the local cop about whether he should pay for the truck to be towed to the wreckers or not. He didn’t pay and told the cop he could sue him.

Then the cop called him up again and told him he had to pay for the truck to be destroyed. I don’t imagine Eric had insurance. He only had a bank account to receive his pension. He kind of avoided things like that.

Eric and Isobel travelled up and down the Stuart Highway selling art to tourists. Isobel would paint canvas, and sometimes plastic plates and serving dishes procured from op shops. Eric’s daughter drew pictures of Australian Wildlife with ink dots and Eric would make photocopies of them and cut them out and stick them onto the plates. Isobel would then fill them in with colourful dots and Eric would dip them in an enamel solution. They sold them for $7 each.

Over the years they sold all sorts of stuff. Canvas. Boomerangs. Cups. Boards. Always painted with dots. I remember an electric fan. That was novel. Should have bought that.

Along with their combined veteran and disability pensions, the sales from their art helped fund their trips between SA and the NT.

Isobel would sometimes visit her family in Yuendumu for a week or two then return to SA with a new photo album of pictures.

Isobel is deaf, so we would communicate by passing her writing pad back and forth or using basic sign language. We also enjoyed playing practical jokes on Eric. Sometimes when I was talking to Eric on the phone she would take it off him and try to talk to me and make him laugh.

Eric was stationed in Alice Springs during the Second World War in 1939. He had lied about his age to get into the Army. He was always a bit circumspect about this and wouldn’t say exactly how much younger he was. But I reckon he was about 16 or 17 at the time. His favourite story from this time is about shooting an 8’3″ perentie in the Todd River.

 

After a few years he was sent north to fight. He had lots of stories from that time, often told with some sadness, particularly when speaking about having to kill Japanese soldiers.

He eventually ending up on a boat in the Pacific that got bombed, which turned out not to be a bad thing as it meant he was sent home. One day in the 1990s, he was walking behind a bloke in the Todd Mall and recognised him as a man who had also been on that boat that he hadn’t seen for 50 years or so. He claimed to recognise him only by the way he walked.

Eric was a bit of an old bushman. He grew up in the Mallee of South Australia. His father built boats around Victor Harbour, which is famous for its hand made wooden boats. Eric also built boats now and then. About ten years ago, I visited him in Port Lincoln and he was restoring a boat he built 50 years before. When not building boats, he kept bees.

Years ago, he discovered some caves on his property at Pinnaroo, SA. At the time he was married with several children. He was excited about the caves and invited Parks and Wildlife Officers to come and see them. They decided to compulsory acquire his property and turn it into a conservation park. The ensuing legal battle to save the farm lasted three and a half years, was mentioned in parliament, ended his 23 year marriage and he didn’t see his children again for many years.

Eric left the Mallee and headed to the north of South Australia and worked in Pitjantjatjara communities before eventually ending up in Alice Springs where he lied about his age and got a job with the Town Council. He said he was in his early 70s at the time but told them he was 56. I guess he didn’t have to show ID and made sure he didn’t talk about being in the second world war. It was during this time that he would also drive around the town camps and deliver basic first aid and health treatments. This was when he met Isobel and they became friends. I met them soon after.

Eric would often talk to me about what would happen to Isobel when he passed away. He was worried about how she would survive in the town camps – that people would take advantage of her and take her money. Sometimes Isobel would stay behind in Alice or Yuendumu and Eric would go south for a while, often for a medical appointment. He would call me and remind me to go and see Isobel and report back to him how she was getting on. Sometimes we would call him together so he could hear her voice to cheer him up.

Eric always had lots of medical problems and he enjoyed telling me about how he kept confounding doctors. When told he would likely not walk again without the assistance of a cane or walker, he bought a little circular machine that you place your feet on that is meant to encourage circulation. He swore that using it every day was what allowed him to walk. He had also been told he had a brain tumour and shouldn’t be alive. He claimed that his thrice daily consumption of tomato soup kept it under control.

One day I saw him and he had a huge lump on his elbow. It was like jelly. The next day it was gone. Isobel told me she had prayed for him the night before. Eric couldn’t explain it and laughed about how it was a miracle. He also talked about dying a couple of times and having been revived. That was his favourite medical story. He reckoned he gave those doctors a good work out.

Eric didn’t change much in the 22 years I knew him. He and Isobel were still going up and down from SA and selling their paintings earlier this year. Eric was still on a mission to prove that doctors don’t know what they’re talking about. The last time I saw him he said a doctor had told him if he cut himself, even a little graze, it was likely he would die from blood loss. Apparently his blood number count was at 18 and the average was more like 85. I had no idea what that meant, but it didn’t sound good. But he reckoned he’d be alright for a while. And he was.

But in the end he died of leukemia. They’re going to go out in a boat and spread his ashes in the gulf.

On that last Alice visit he also told me he was planning to buy a block of land and build a house on it. He was thinking of keeping bees again. Maybe he and Isobel would set up a road side stall to sell their artwork. They hadn’t settled on a location, so Eric was unsure whether he would build another boat or not. He was 94. Or 92 or 93.

I’ve realised how important my friendship with Eric was. Particularly in those early years of being in Central Australia. I always looked forward to heading into town hoping to find him and Isobel there.

I would spend the night with them, swapping stories, drinking cups of tea, laughing at Isobel laughing at Eric, looking at Isobel’s latest photos of her standing in front of various roadside landmarks, sitting on the council lawns eating roast chicken, watching Isobel paint… and listening to Eric laugh as he told his stories about the people they had met and the places they had been, his funny way of being in the world, and how he would make the most day-to-day things like a transaction with a bank teller seem so out of the ordinary – both of us laughing at the absurdity of it all.

 

When I was looking for photos of Eric I came across something I had written a couple of years after I met him:

“Eric and Isobel dropped round. Eric is always jovial. I hope he lives a long time yet. The memory of him and Isobel will be with me always.”