HONG KONG, 1977

THE MILE HIGH CLUB

It was early September 1977, and I was settling down into my seat on the British Airways 747-200, watching little rivulets of drizzle stagger and race their way down the window. I wondered what adventures lay ahead. I was 17, it was my first long haul flight, and I had never been on such a huge aircraft, packed with people of all shapes and sizes, all a-chatter with excitement. As we pushed back from the gate at Heathrow and everyone began to settle down, an announcement came over the PA system. “Would passenger Mr. Weston Smith please identify himself to one of the cabin crew.” As a callow youth and inexperienced flyer, I was somewhat taken aback to be suddenly singled out from 375 other passengers. Was this normal? Was I in trouble? As I was A.D.D., highly inquisitive, and fond of experimentation, trouble and I were childhood friends. Rather timidly, I waved my hand in the air, and, after a few moments, a smartly uniformed attendant walked towards me with a scowl of annoyance. 

            “Mr. Weston Smith?” 

            “Er, yes,” I responded, timidly. 

            “You have received a message,” said Ms. Congeniality. “The Captain asked me to give you this.” She reached across two swivelly-eyed spinsters and handed me a folded piece of paper. The Captain? Bloody hell! I opened the note, which read mysteriously: “Don’t eat anything! May cause stomach failure. Ralph.” I looked back at Ms. Congeniality, rather hoping an explanation might be forthcoming, but from her raised eyebrows it was clear she was expecting one from me. We gazed at each other for a moment, as confusion swirled through my head. Getting none, she smiled sarcastically, saying, “I think you will find the food on British Airways to be excellent,” and stomped off to go and tell the man a few rows down that now was not a good time to light a cigarette.

****

I was sitting on this plane because, some months earlier, quite out of the blue, my father had announced that he had successfully arranged for me to spend a year on a cattle station in Australia. He had old Army friends and business colleagues down under who had, unbeknownst to me, been working diligently to find me a suitable position. I was to be a Jackaroo, the lowest form of life on the station, given full board and lodging, and paid a couple of hundred dollars a month. It was presented to me as a fait-accompli, not a choice, as he handed me a ticket and told me how very lucky I was. He correctly saw this as a wonderful opportunity and adventure, for which I should be enthusiastically grateful. I saw it as forcible separation from the love-of-my-life, and presented as much indignant ingratitude and myopic teenage stroppiness as I could muster.  

Eventually resigned to my fate, I had been working up to my departure with some trepidation. There had been discussions and decisions about clothing, correct footwear, suitable hats, sunscreen, and other things it was thought I would need for a year on a cattle station; most of them would turn out to be quite spectacularly wrong. My apprehension was to some extent assuaged by a lot of partying, which I justified because I had just finished school and was going away for a year. My father scowled his disapproval, given my final exams had been the academic equivalent of a multi vehicle pile-up.

Nevertheless, the summer of 1977 turned out to be epic. Presented with a heady cup of new-found freedom, I drank greedily. With my beautiful, charismatic girlfriend Kirstie[1], with whom I was smitten, at my side, it was a bitter-sweet summer of love, laughter and indolence, embellished with long sunny days, and hot, hot nights. The agony of leaving her was made all the more acute by the seemingly eternal flame of young love. 

In between the partying and general summer-of-luvviness, there were riding lessons. My mother had, with exceptional foresight, managed to locate an Australian named Greg, who ran a stable on the Berkshire Downs in Lambourn, close to where we lived. She explained to him that I was going to spend a year on a cattle station in Australia, and she had an inkling some sort of preparation might be helpful; I had barely been astride more than a Labrador in my life. This was despite the fact that both horse breeding and racing were in my blood. My grandfather was an expert horseman who had bred and owned Royal Mail, winner of the 1937 Grand National, the premier racing event of the year in the UK, which is generally regarded as the ultimate test of horse and rider. He died shortly thereafter while training to ride in the 1938 Grand National himself; no mean feat for a man well over six feet tall. He was also the only non-Italian to have ever ridden in Il Palio di Siena, the extraordinary annual horse race held in Siena, Italy, in which ten demonically possessed Italian horsemen gallop bareback, at breakneck speed, around the Piazza del Campo to win honour for their Contrada[2] and the undying admiration of all Sienese women. Not to be outdone, after his death, my grandmother determinedly continued breeding – horses – and eventually produced Well to Do, winner of the 1972 Grand National. This was all the more remarkable an accomplishment because she did not do it from some professional stable, but from two modest little paddocks at her home in Berkshire. So, it could be said that in not being a horseman I broke the mould, although that would shortly change.

             Greg was very polite, in the way that certain Australians can be in female company, but rarely are when not. 

            “If he makes out to the lads on the Station that he can ride, that would probably be unwise,” he told my mother cheerily. “But no worries, Mrs. Weston Smith, I’ll teach him everything he needs to know.” 

            “The very first thing they will ask you is if you can ride,” he told me as soon as she was out of earshot, wagging his finger. “This is a fucking trick, mate. Do not, under any bloody circumstances whatsoever, tell them you can ride, not even a little bit. Do you understand me?” I nodded vigorously. “If you do,” he continued, to underscore the point, “they’ll put you straight on a horse that will fucking kill you.” I became unusually attentive. “When I have finished with you,” he continued, throwing a 30-pound saddle at me, “you still won’t be able to bloody ride – make no mistake about that – but you will be able to do two bloody important things: stay on a fucking horse at high speed, and open and close a fucking gate without getting off it. Right, let’s go.” 

            After a comprehensive, expletive-laden lesson on how to properly attach it to the horse, he heaved me straight into an Australian stock saddle. Considered the Recaro[3] rally seat of saddles, it was designed to allow the rider to stay put over rough terrain. It featured winglets to keep you in position on the downhill, as well as a high cantle and pommel to keep the rider comfortable for many hours of riding. However, on occasions it would not perform quite as intended. If the horse beneath you did something unexpected, such as slam on the brakes when you weren’t paying attention, the pommel became your worst enemy. With the force of a crash-test dummy hitting a wall, it made contact with your testicles, leaving you speechless, gasping for air, and in eye-popping pain. All of this was profoundly unfamiliar and took a bit of getting used to, but Greg was a brilliant, charismatic teacher. True to his word, he showed me how to properly get on and off, stay rooted to the saddle at thundering speed, and smoothly open and close a gate without dismounting. One day I asked, “are you going to teach me the basics of mustering cattle?”

 “Nah” he replied, “The horses‘ll teach you that.” 

He was full of sphincter-clenching stories of the Australian bush, and we spent many happy hours galloping across the Berkshire Downs, in all their glorious, soft, rolling, un-Australian magnificence until he felt confident that I would be able to hold my own for the first few crucial days. I decided I liked Aussies. 

            On our last ride out, Kirstie, who was an accomplished horsewoman, came too. It was a beautiful summer day, the air sticky with humidity as we galloped up onto the Downs. Enjoying distant views to north and south, we had the most exhilarating time, even when the clouds opened and completely drenched us in a thunderous downpour. On returning to the yard and dismounting, Greg stretched out his hand. 

            “What are you going to tell them when they ask if you can ride?” he said. 

            “Never ridden a bloody horse in my life,” I answered. 

            “You’ll be ‘right then, mate,” he said, slapping me on the back. “Now fuck off!” 

            I drove home, rather proud of myself for having graduated with a degree in not riding. Kirstie nonchalantly peeled off her soaking-wet clothes one by one, tossing them into a soggy pile in the footwell. “That’s better,” she said, as several lorry drivers swerved wildly. Life was good; but as we know, all good things come to an end.

            At Heathrow Airport, in the face of my imminent departure, Kirstie looked suitably glum. My mother, always randomly pragmatic, wandered off, returning a few minutes later with two gin and tonics, a Union Jack flag, and a copy of Playboy magazine. “Here you are darling,” she said, “you might need these,” adding, “but not all together” for clarification. Kirstie looked even more despondent. 

Kirstie looking glum at Heathrow Airport, before I left for Australia.

Ralph[DLB1]  was an old school friend of mine who had kindly joined us at Heathrow to see me off. He was a quite wonderfully mad Egyptian, the sort of mad friend who causes me to look back and wonder what a miracle it is that I am still walking around on this planet. We will explore that theme a little more, later on.

****

The engines of the 747 throttled up and, as it lumbered down the runway gathering speed, the drizzly raindrops on the windows slowly rotated from vertical drips to horizontal streaks, the green, green grass of home fell away beneath the aircraft and we rose up through misty clouds, undercarriage clunk-a-thumping as it folded itself back into the fuselage. My mind was in turmoil; I had told Ralph I was going to swallow a small piece of hashish before I boarded, to help me sleep on the flight. The remainder I had given to him, so as not to fall foul of the law. So why had he gone to the presumably considerable effort of getting this message to me? It had to be easier to get a message hand-delivered to the Queen of England than to a passenger on a taxiing 747. 

             Had Ralph also eaten some hash, and was he now writhing in agony somewhere below me in Wimbledon? Was it a joke? He must have known it was too late; that I had eaten it an hour ago. Short of having my stomach pumped by Ms. Congeniality at 30,000 feet, which I did not relish the idea of, there was little I could do about it. Besides, I was feeling just fine. Actually, very fine indeed. The giant plane banked slowly as we emerged from the clouds, and the rays of a magnificent sunset blasted a thousand colours across the sky and through my head. I started to notice that I was feeling pretty high all of a sudden. “Man, this is SO cool,” I giggled loudly. The spinsters next to me shifted a little uncomfortably in their seats, whispering their disapproval of this unconventional utterance. Distant thunderheads erupted upwards, 10,000 -feet high, roiling shades of orange playing over them and shafts of creamy sunlight spearing every breach in their gigantic softness. “Wowwwww!” I exclaimed slowly as we levelled out. It was excellent hashish. Jesus, Ralph, “causes stomach failure”? On the contrary, this was epic! A mile-high high. I was in the moment, oblivious to both what I was leaving behind, and what adventure lay ahead. As we climbed above the clouds and darkness slowly enveloped the aircraft, a deep, peaceful sleep enveloped me.

One can tell there was some tension around my imminent departure.

            I slept like a baby and woke just in time to experience the thrill of an e-ticket landing at Hong Kong’s’ Kai-Tak airport. In the American vernacular, e-ticket is derived from the old ticket system at Disneyland where the e-ticket rides were the fastest, newest, wildest, and most fun. Nowadays in America it is more commonly used to describe other exciting things, like a Himalayan bus ride or terrific sex.

            Known as the “Kai-Tak heart attack,” Hong Kong was, for a long time, one of the most challenging landings in the world for pilots, and either terrifying or exciting for passengers, according to their tolerance for danger. Due to the surrounding peaks, it was impossible for aircraft to do a straight-in approach to Hong Kong. So, in the early 1970s, someone came up with a fiendishly brilliant idea: program the instrument landing system to line up the aircraft to fly into the side of a mountain, then dodge it at the last minute. So, once cleared to land, the pilot headed across Victoria Harbour, until he[4] reached “Checkerboard Hill,” so-called because of its big orange and white checked marker. Flying at 200-miles per hour at only 650 feet, he then had to disengage the autopilot, completely ignore the automatic guidance system, and manually throw the plane into a sharp, visual, right-hand-turn for final approach. This instantly put all the alarms in the cockpit into “you-are-going-to-die!” mode and, banking precipitously, the colossal plane would turn 47 degrees. Coming out of the turn at just 140 feet off the ground, the pilot had mere seconds to line-up to the runway. Skimming hair-raisingly low over the top of apartment blocks and busy streets, the pilot would drop onto the runway, slamming on the reverse-thrusters to bring the aircraft to a juddering halt, before he and 375 passengers ended up in the harbour. This is universally known to be the most fun a pilot could have while fully clothed. What could possibly go wrong?[5]

To the authorities, this seemed like a good reason to classify Kai-Tak as the sixth most dangerous airport approach in the world and require pilots to have practiced the approach numerous times in a simulator before actually landing there. So, they did, and mine had, and it was a great relief to disembark via a jet-bridge, not the emergency slide. Woo-hoo! Hello, Hong Kong!

             I had a fellow Brit on this adventure, who I was meeting in Hong Kong, a solidly built chap with a ruddy complexion and blondish curly hair named Chris. We didn’t know each other at all before this adventure, and, although we weren’t natural friends, we would get on fine. He was more the sporting type, a rugger-bugger, and a bit of a “lad.” If anyone were to have put money on which of us would be more likely to survive a year on an Aussie cattle station, his muscular build, enthusiasm for sport and ruddy countenance would have made him the favourite by a long chalk. If he was, to coin a phrase, built like a brick shithouse, I was the grass hut to his shithouse – a strong wind would have blown me over. Of slight build and with a dislike of athletics, it was evident to any observer that I would not last a week in such a rough, unforgiving environment. He met me at Kai-Tak Airport and took me to his father’s apartment in the Mid-Levels, where we would stay for a few days to break the trip. The days that followed were a neon whirlwind of sightseeing, drinks parties, dinners and late nights at the Godown.

             The Godown was a well-known nightclub off Chatham Road, owned by Bill Nash and run by Carole Allan, its name being a Malaysian word meaning “dockside warehouse”. It was, for decades, a popular hangout of ex-pat bankers, journalists, traders and the rest, with the tables being served by attractive European secretaries earning some extra cash after their office day job. Bill was a former British Army officer and fluent Mandarin speaker; some said he worked for MI6. Chris’s father knew the Godown well, and Chris had obviously made it his local while he was in Hong Kong, so I tagged along, and we instantly became part of the furniture. It was tremendous fun, and Carol took us under her wing, plying us with free drinks and making me feel like a regular. She was very kind, one might even say motherly, in a nightclubby sort of way. We caroused the evening away and stayed late, helping her close the place up most nights. Days inevitably started as late, as only teenagers and rock stars can start them, with a monumental hangover. 

            One night, wisely predicting that a year on a cattle station almost certainly meant no sex, Carol kindly (and in that nightclubby-but-motherly sort of way) set me up with a “hostess” in a bar a few doors along from the Godown. I had absolutely no idea what she was up to when she said, “Come with me,” before grabbing my hand and leading me off down the street. 

            “Where are we going?” I asked.

             “Hong Kong surprise!” she replied mysteriously, weaving in and out of people on the crowded street. We soon arrived at a bar, where Carol was clearly known and welcomed. Some money changed hands, followed by a lot of chat and laughter in Cantonese that I didn’t understand. I started to get the drift when this astonishingly beautiful girl, dressed in a mini skirt that left nothing to the imagination, walked straight up to me and kissed me directly on the lips. 

            “Have a good time sweetie!” said Carol, walking out of the door. I had only an innocent idea of what a “good time” meant, and she clearly didn’t realize I was a simple boy from the home counties. I had exactly as much experience of sex with a hooker as the Archbishop of Canterbury, and chatting up a Chinese hostess in a Hong Kong bar was light years outside of my comfort zone. I immediately sat down, mainly because I needed something more reliable than my legs underneath me.

            So, there she was, with her soft, smiling face and delicate almond eyes framed by midnight black, bobbed hair. Her naked legs were long, erupting from her thighs beneath a ridiculously short skirt that deliberately revealed very much more than was polite. For a country boy all this was, to say the least, rather a lot to take on board, let alone know how to handle. Clearly there were expectations, but I was beginning to feel that I was not up to the challenge. Uncomfortable with an offer that would have left many of my less genteel friends unphased, I really had no clue what to do. Sex was not on my agenda, especially as I was so recently separated from Kirstie that our relationship had been diminished by neither time nor distance. So, much to her amazement, I resorted to the classic British weapon; I decided to have a chat. Had a cup of tea been available, I would probably have ordered one of those too. And a biscuit.

            “Honey, you handsome boy! My name Ling-Ling.”

            “Delighted to meet you… er… my name is Richard, um… and you are very beautiful. Do you live here?”

            “You have nice leg,” she said, sliding her hand very much further up one of them than was normal for a complete stranger.

             “Wowww! Bloody hell, yes… well, er… I have only just arrived, but Hong Kong is a lovely city. I went up the Peak Tram today and…”

            “You like me, honey?” she interrupted, running her perfectly manicured fingers through my hair as she edged closer still.

            “Yes, I do, very much, but I er… am on my way to Australia and…”

            “You want come up stair with me?” she whispered, nibbling lightly on my earlobe. “I have nice bed.”

            “Well, I am sure your bed is very comfortable and that’s extremely kind of you, but I think it’s a bit early for bed right now, er, maybe later?”

            “We have fun time, honey!” she crooned, a hand doing some more rather startling exploration of my nether regions. “Oooo, you big boy!” she giggled.

            She spoke only about 20 words of English, so our conversation was linguistically limited, as each of us attempted to lead it in entirely different directions. Her vocabulary was colourful, to say the least, and punctuated with much suggestive flashing of her underwear. She was indeed phenomenally pretty, but I was far too uncomfortable to take advantage of what she was clearly offering, and simply looked at her like a rabbit in a headlight. 

Eventually, having used up whatever time or favours Carol had purchased on my behalf, she stood up, said, “You nice boy!”, gave me a lingering kiss, and floated off to find a more responsive customer. Well, that was interesting, I thought, unsure if I had just missed a fabulous opportunity, or sensibly walked away from something I would have deeply regretted, both morally, and possibly medically.  “Well, how was that sweetie?” asked Carol in a suggestive tone of voice, when I walked back into the Godown.           

“Extraordinary!” I answered truthfully, and fortunately she was too busy to quiz me in any greater detail. 

            A few days later, bleary-eyed and sleep-deprived, Chris and I stumbled onto a British Airways flight to Melbourne. Hong Kong had been a thrill, and instilled in me a love of the city that has endured for much of my life[6].

            My father, Ian, unable to secure my passage to Australia on a leaking Ukrainian iron-ore carrier, had devised a highly creative alternative. He was a kind and fair father, but strict; one who firmly believed that to become a man, I needed to toughen up. Given that he had gone to fight for his country at the age of 23, and had been injured in battle, captured and imprisoned for several years, I would eventually come to understand his motivation. So, after a few days in Melbourne, we had been instructed to report to the depot of IPEC Tenex, an overnight road-express service that covered most of Australia in the days before airfreight. We would be traveling the 2,200 miles up the east coast of Australia to Tully as passengers. To put this in perspective, as one always should in Australia, that is the same as driving from London to Istanbul. But without crossing a single border, or stopping much. 

            Aussies aren’t especially fond of the British, or Poms, as they call them, unless they are immediate family. Most likely an acronym for Prisoners of Mother England (POME), it is commonly used as a derogatory term. For a trucker to be lumbered with two young Poms was not something he would have been especially happy about, preferring the company of his mates on the CB radio. 

            Greeted therefore with some resignation, we set off into the night with Davey, CB radio chirping away. Leaving the city behind us, we were gradually joined by other trucks, forming a small convoy as we headed north. The road was relentlessly straight. There were no streetlights, no moon, and the night was Vantablack.[7] A puddle of light from our headlights preceded us, but we could see nothing beyond it. Kangaroos occasionally bounded out of the blackness across our path but, as it was equipped with heavy steel “roo-bars”, the truck was immune to a hit from a 200-pound kangaroo. Davey motored on through the night without flinching. He eventually warmed up a bit, but conversation was limited.  Sleep came only fleetingly, and was mostly bouncy. For the first time I was struck by how very far away from home I was, and how strange the circumstances were in which I found myself. It was like a dream, being in the cab of a truck, driving through the Australian night. It made no sense in the context of my life to that point, yet was very real at that moment. 

            Through the huge, flat, bug-splattered windscreen, dawn came and went several times with a spectacular explosion of colour; at sunset, it played in reverse. The persistent roar of the massive diesel engine dulled our senses, ringing in our ears even when we stopped briefly for a burger, fuel, and a piss. Conversation was sporadic; our only entertainment the crackle and squawk of the CB radio and the unrolling landscape before us. We changed drivers in Dubbo (Bruce), and again in Brisbane (Snowy), heading up the coast through Rockhampton, Mackay, Townsville (Jeff), and arriving, finally, at Euramo, a tiny settlement on the main north-south highway, just outside Tully, North Queensland.         

The truck in which I travelled over 2,000 miles.

Euramo consisted of a hotel “pub”, a post-office and a motley collection of simple bungalows. Most had a basic wire mesh fence around them, and dogs running a well-worn path up and down the perimeter, barking furiously as we passed. Some were draped with voluminous passionfruit vines, their incongruously elaborate flowers closing up in the quickly fading light at the end of a dusty day.

            Jeff rocked to a halt outside the hotel with a hiss of compressed air. “There you go, Poms; this is your stop.” He wished us good luck; we thanked him, clambering down from the cab and pulling out our bags. Then, with a rapid ascension of gears, a belch of exhaust and a cloud of dust, the truck growled away into the fading evening light. The air was humid and hot. We were in a strange land, alone, long before the age of mobile phones. Hopefully our rendezvous, arranged by others far away and many months before, would happen as planned. 

            If not, we were fucked.

[1] Not Kirsten, my wife. Yes, weird, I know. 

[2] A district, or a ward, within an Italian city.

[3] Long considered the premier seat for rally cars; once seated you barely move, regardless of how much the car is thrown about.

[4] It was almost always a man in those days, but thankfully we now we have many more female pilots. According to a 2001 study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, male pilots are far more likely to land the plane with the undercarriage retracted, or to take off when they know perfectly well there is something wrong with it. This is known as the Biggles factor, after the fictional pilot and hero of the WWI adventure books.

[5] In November 1993, a China Airlines 747 did end up in the harbour, miraculously with no loss of life.

[6] At least until it was handed back to China and they completely buggered it up.

[7] Vantablack, which was created by Surrey Nano Systems, absorbs up to 99.96 percent of visible light and, until recently, was the blackest known black. 

 [DLB1]Note to setter. I’ll indent paras after photos as you may not be able to place the photo in this exact position, but could you start the para after a photo full out left please.