Joining the pack

Then Bernie’s wife, Jayne, has her say, elbows on the table. A poncho flares over her arms like dark wings and I notice, not for the first time, her robust beauty; she’s a clear-eyed, straight-talking earth mother. “I’m sure we’ve answered all these questions before, Bernie. Just keep talking about BackTrack exactly as you have. It’s fairly definable – it’s us here, in this room. It has been since the beginning.”

Bernie stands, stretches, and goes out to the cold night air, ducking his head as he walks through the back door for a smoke.

The Iron Man Welders meet on Sundays in an old council depot on the edge of Armidale, a university town on the northern tablelands of New South Wales. About a year ago, Bernie had a vision of a welding project that would build on the strengths of a group of young men who had dropped out of high school but weren’t ready for work. He asked the Armidale community to help out. The local council offered him the depot, which was once a welding workshop and was lying empty, as if waiting for Bernie and the boys to come along and claim it.

There was nothing in the huge shed, not even a power lead. The boys, recruited from a school welding program that Bernie ran the previous year, turned up each weekend and worked hard to clean and create their own workplace. They borrowed nearly everything, from brooms to welding equipment, and started collecting recycled steel for the first batch of products they planned to make and then sell at the monthly markets. Local businesses gave scrap metal; people lent grinders, extension cords and old work boots.

Then the money started coming in. A local builder forked out the first five hundred dollars. The bowling club gave a thousand and a steel-manufacturing business donated a MIG welder. The credit union offered to draw up a business and marketing plan, organised insurance, and contributed a thousand dollars for equipment. Armidale Family Support agreed to keep track of the finances. Hillgrove Mine donated a thousand and raised the possibility of apprenticeships, and the NSW Premier’s Department handed over a grant worth five thousand dollars. It seemed like every week Bernie and the boys were in the local paper, celebrating some new success.
 
A few months ago, I saw a photo of Bernie in the newspaper, surrounded by a group of teenage boys, faces beaming with happiness and pride, and something stirred inside me. I wanted to be part of it: the Iron Man Welders.

The next day I heard Bernie on the radio, seeking community support for the project. “We’ll take any positive contribution”, he said. His words sounded clipped and tight, like he wasn’t one for mucking around. “Whether you’ve got a pile of old steel or timber in your backyard, or if you’ve got an idea, or if you like working with young people and you’re prepared to come down to the shed and work one-on-one with some of these kids…”

On impulse I rang. I’d never used power tools, let alone done any welding. I liked bushwalking, baking cakes. I enjoyed order, cleanliness, silence. What was I thinking?

Over the past months, though, I’ve come to feel at home in the shed. Right from the start the boys were gracious in accepting a 42-year-old woman into their grimy world. They find easy jobs for me to do – like filing washers for candleholders or scrubbing rust off horseshoes. I sweep the floor, watch what’s going on, listen to what they want to tell me. The fellas who come along are the sort of misfits you see wandering the streets of any country town with nothing to do, nowhere to go. Once, I might have crossed the street to avoid them.

Most of the Iron Man Welders didn’t “engage positively” with the education system. None has finished Year 12; some barely made it through Year 10. One was expelled in Year 11 for ‘kissing his missus’ in the schoolyard, another told a teacher to ‘fuck off’ on a ski trip because the teacher wouldn’t stop hassling him, and another finished Year 10 at TAFE because he was about to be kicked out of school and reckoned the teachers didn’t like him anyway. The welding shed is a different story. They love it. Bernie gives them the chance to take responsibility for their life, to engage on their own terms with the community.

The first Sunday I joined them it was the middle of winter. I walked in carrying a tray of freshly baked brownies. Conspicuous in my new blue King Gee work clothes, I huddled from the cold in the open-sided tin shed. Music blared from an old radio, and thumping and grinding noises came from the machines. Sparks flashed; everyone dragged on rollies, littering every sentence with ‘shit’ and ‘fuck’. Taking a deep breath, I forced myself not to panic.

Thommo, a stocky bloke in his late teens, took me on a tour. His voice rumbled softly, and I could barely hear what he was saying as he showed me the kitchen area, the main workspace and a forge he’d built in a dark side room that brought to mind a scene from the Middle Ages: flickering fire, hammers and anvil, dirt floor, open drain, a rusty tap jutting out from the wall.

He led me towards a shelf at one end of the shed to show me the objects on display, things they were hoping to sell at the markets: a range of candleholders, nutcrackers, penholders, ashtrays and coat hooks made from horseshoes. There was a smartly presented copy of the Iron Man Welders’ business plan, and several glass-framed photos: Thommo bent over the anvil, hammering a piece of glowing-red metal; three boys dressed in work gear, looking into the distance like soldiers on the hill at Gallipoli; Bernie and about eight boys slouched in front of his yellow ute; and a young bloke with curly hair using a grinder, a halo of sparks around his head.