Arbeit macht frei: - Fredrick Töben

Rules football and soccer matches, which were usually played on Friday
afternoons. The sprinklers, as elsewhere, also came on when it rained (as it
did on a few days during the month).
There were about 112 sets of pine posts, two vertical and one horizontal.
They had not been painted for about 5 years – and it showed. Abdul
ventured off to paint the Stobie poles with a roller while Cliff and I began to
apply our brushes to those dry and cracked posts. I was worried that by
lunchtime I had only done a set of three posts while Cliff completed seven.
To top it Cliff chastised me for using too much paint and said I should go
faster. At lunchtime I reflect on the matter and conclude I would do a
proper job, just as I would do at home. Cliff is at CTC for only a few more
weeks and then he would have paid off his time and had his traffic fines
wiped. He is still annoyed by the magistrate’s decision to send him to
prison. He had the money and could pay the fine but there was a principle,
of justice, involved in the matter and the magistrate played power politics to
the full. Cliff is not interested in getting acclimatised at CTC – he had been
in before a couple of decades ago, and the daily methadone program here
at CTC was what kept him functioning throughout the day, not any kind of
ideal about the hand and mind working as one. That was just my nonsense
idealism, which was good enough for me and most likely not for others.
Cliff gives it away, but I front up at 8 a.m. on most days. Stopping for lunch
around 11 or 11.30 a.m., I would resume at 1 p.m. and end usually around
4 p.m., if not a little later – it all depended on how much paint remained in
the tin – I do not wish to pour paint back into the supply tin. That was the
plan but I had to adjust it to the weather. For example, on Thursday, 10
September I worked only until 2 p.m. because the football match made me
look stupid as the only one working. The next day a dust storm made
painting impossible in the afternoon.
The farm personnel seemed to be doing their best within the bureaucratic
constraints imposed from Adelaide: Bangers in garage/workshop; Dibbo in
olives; Spoggy in irrigation; Renny and Malcolm in citrus; and Wally in
dairy – all watched over by Mr Fairley.
* * * * *
The prison bureaucracy reinforces my belief that Germans never gassed
anyone, that the logistics of it are so absurdly difficult, and hence the abject
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