THE COUNT AND NUTTY
Some of Jack Brown’s most popular stories have been his reminiscences of those two Aussie eccentrics Harold Lawson and John Tiedemann, better known as The Count and Nutty. Here again is one of their adventures.
How we got two lots of caretakers
A place like Treachery was always likely to attract “characters”. By that I mean people who have views on how the world should be and not necessarily how the world is. Leading amongst these would have to be Harold Lawson, also known as “The Count” or “Farmer Brown “ or just “the old bloke on the gate”, and his coal mining mate John Tiedemann, also known as “Nutty”. This story tells how we came to get them.
When we bought Treachery we arranged for John and Judith Walker to come and live in the house and manage the Camp. Frequent visitors were a couple of old coalminers, Harold and John, who camped and fished the headland rocks. They came from around the Cessnock area, I think Greta, and lived the lives of itinerant miners of that era, taking jobs wherever they were on offer. They went by the nicknames of “The Count” and “Nutty”.
By law coalminers had to retire at sixty and Harold and John reached that age whilst working at a mine near Bulli, south of Sydney. Their retirement plan was to go travelling around Australia, and to that end they bought an old Ford Thames panel van and fitted the back out with two stretcher beds, a primus stove, a kerosene Tilly lamp, and a Foxie dog called “Cocker”.
On the day they retired, they worked their last shift, a day shift, and then retired to the pub with their mates to say farewell. They got thrown out at closing time and drove up the Bulli Pass and camped in the bush for the night. The next day they set off around Australia and arrived at the Raymond Terrace pub at opening time. There they stayed till closing time when Harold, always the leader, decided to push on a bit towards Seal Rocks.
According to Harold, while crossing the Myall River at Bulahdelah, “the bridge moved over and hit the Thames”. Harold reckoned that he was not in a fit state to talk to the police about the accident so he drove on to Seal Rocks and Treachery where he implored Johnny Walker (Johnny was always called “Whisky” for some reason!!) to let them camp in the bush and if the police came Whisky was to say that they were not there. Whisky put them to bed in a corrugated iron cabin called “The Cookhouse” which was a primitive cabin with a huge open fireplace along one wall.
Well, to shorten this episode, they never did go on around Australia, but after a series of moves from “The Cookhouse” to the side veranda of the main house, to their own little house that I built for them down at the camping ground on the property, they became the minders of the camping ground part of the operation and they collected the camping and parking fees down there under the supervision of Whisky. They were known universally as “the two old blokes” and Harold was called “Farmer Brown” by all the “surfies” because they all knew that some bloke named Brown owned the place and the way Harold “took charge” they all assumed that it was him.
Harold, who was a “bush engineer”, roughly panel beat the mudguard and the door which was damaged in the bridge collision and filled the cavities between the panels with concrete! The Thames lasted for a few more years!
That is how we got two lots of caretakers at Treachery.
Jack Brown