Author's Note: This story continues the saga from Mellow Yellow 20.
When the Crown Colony of Hong Kong reverted to the Peoples' Republic of China in 1998, Syd Poole lost his job as the Reunified Hong Kong Administrative District Office Vehicle Supervisor. The new masters of Hong Kong were reluctant to employ someone identified so closely with the hated former colonial regime. It didn't matter to the new regime that Syd had reasonable skills in Cantonese and a Chinese wife. He just wasn't wanted. As for Syd, he considered the Hong Qi limousines favoured by the Communist bureaucrats to be a bigger pile of junk than the Daimlers he fussed over while at the Colonial Office. Syd may have been a mechanic by trade but he had pride.
Syd's wife, Lily Poon, retained her job as manager of the restaurant at the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club (subsequently renamed the People's No. 2 Recreation and Navigation Society after Reunification). Lily's dissatisfaction began when her salary was "harmonized" downwards to the level of her waitresses. Her job title was also downgraded from Catering Manager to Worker Co-ordinator but her working hours were upgraded to 60 hours per week. As Worker Co-ordinator No. 6, she had to field her staff's complaints that the new Communist apparatchiks were lousy tippers in addition to being high-functioning alcoholics. When the new bureaucrats ordered Lily to remove the Yacht Club's Cantonese specialties and replace them with Szechuan and Beijing dishes, her cultural resentment of all things Northern came to the surface.
So, Lily and Syd turned their backs on Hong Kong and emigrated to Australia with Lily's two teenaged children, Pamela and Patrick. Determined never to depend on others for their jobs, the Poon-Pooles bought a dilapidated "Chew and Spew" on the Coastal Highway just outside Bummkrak, Qnsld. Lily and Syd worked hard on the renovations. Lily tore down the wall, behind which the former owners had hidden while making egg sandwiches and soggy chips, and created the first open kitchen in Queensland. Lily replaced the deep fryer and filthy grill with woks, dumpling steamers and commercial rice makers. Within a year, "Lily's Guangdong Oasis" established its reputation as the best Chinese restaurant between Brisbane and Cairns. Motorists flocked to the outskirts of Bummkrak to watch Lily make each of the 100 dishes on the menu and inhale the blended scents of ginger, garlic and peanut oil wafting from the open kitchen.
Sid Poole cleaned up the garage and replaced all the antiquated tools with their metric equivalents, liberated surplus from the old Colonial Office Motor Pool. He became equally famous as his wife as the only honest car mechanic in all of Queensland. Truckers and tourists alike lined up for Lily's Chinese cooking whilst Syd filled the trucks with diesel and repaired the Holdens and Fairlanes of Queensland.
Unfortunately, Pamela and Patrick had far less social success than their mother and stepfather's economic success. Having grown up in the competitive environment of the Hong Kong, they were accustomed to completing all their assigned homework on time. How could a Chinese child bring shame on the family by not achieving to their full potential? Of course, the white students disapproved of "the Chink kids messing up the curve." Their immediate response was to attempt bullying and intimidating the new arrivals from Hong Kong. Scratch a white Queenslander and you'll find a racist lurking below the skin. In response, both Patrick and Pamela demonstrated to the white students that Asian martial arts movies were more than mere fantasy.
Unable to physically bully the two teenagers, the white teens shunned Pamela and Patrick socially. The two Chinese teenagers went dateless from their first day in Bummkrak, becoming that rare commodity in Oz, 16-year old virgins. This was even odder considering that both teenagers were quite striking in appearance. Patrick had rugged features that were more northern Chinese than Cantonese. Pamela's slim waist and smooth, well-shaped legs spoke of movie star quality. Although they kept it well hidden behind inscrutable Chinese faces, Pamela and Patrick were as lustful as any two white teenagers.
The two teenagers managed to turn their sexual energies to sports. Pamela took up volleyball where she earned extra respect by spiking the ball in the face of any girl who attempted intimidation off court. Patrick accomplished the same by a few well-aimed elbows to white groins on the football pitch. In "footie", there are advantages to being short, stocky and well muscled. Patrick became a valued member of the Bummkrak All Blacks, the closest thing to a living black player the team had. However, when it came to the party after the game, Patrick was conspicuously dropped from the guest list.
The final character in this drama is Allison Koowootha, known to her few friends outside the Aboriginal community as "Koo". Allison lived in a collection of corrugated roof shanties on the other side of the Coastal Highway, designated on roadmaps as West Bummkrak but known to white Bummkrakers as Jackytown. Despite her humble origins, Allison was intelligent as well as quite attractive. In almost any other environment, she would have attracted a coterie of male admirers, but this was Bummkrak, Qnsld.
It was not surprising that Allison and Pamela became the best of friends, both outcasts to their cliquish white classmates. The odd tall/petite couple enjoyed each other's company for more reasons than to enjoy some intelligent conversation. Allison and Pamela shared a curiosity about their bodies just like any other sixteen year old girl. Pamela may have been better read on the subject of the female body but Allison had more "hands-on" experience. When they weren't talking about sex, their conversation turned to their future, which consisted of careers and marriage.
"I don't even want to think about getting married until I've finished my university. I'll become a psychiatrist like my Auntie Susan. I'll marry a doctor and we'll be rich but happy. My only problem is that my marks aren't quite good enough to get accepted to medical college. When you're a visible minority in Oz, you need to be twice as good as a white kid to get into University. So, maybe my dreams will never come to anything and I'll be an old maid."
"I'm not sure if I ever want to get married. Especially not to any of this lot in Bummkrak. Not that the black guys in Jackytown are that much better. Ozzie guys, black and white alike just want to drink until they chunder. If they ever get around to thinking about women, we're just Shielas to fetch their next beer."
"I agree. There's not a guy in all of Queensland that I'd ever date. That's why I've applied to the University of New South Wales for the next semester. How are you going to get out of Bummkrak, Koo?"
"I want to become an artist, the best Aboriginal artist in Oz. My only problem is that I can't afford the supplies so I can develop my style. But artists never get rich so no guy will ever look at a poor black girl, no matter how pretty she might be. That's my problem, Pam."
"I may have a solution to both our problems, Koo. I've wanted to work fewer hours in my mother's restaurant for the past year and get my marks up so I can get into University. Mum says that there aren't any girls in Bummkrak she can rely on, especially not those white bitches. Why don't you talk to my Mum about replacing me? The Oasis is right between school and your house."
As Allison and Pamela entered the Oasis Restaurant, Lily was in the process of firing the latest in a series of disastrous part-time hirings from among the white population of Bummkrak.