It was sometime in mid '82. I'd come back down from XXXXXXXX (to protect the innocent) to Cairns to see some people. I'd cashed my Sickness Benefits cheque (check for the Americans and others) up at the Lion's Den Hotel a couple days before and after buying tobacco and the little food I needed, I decided I could probably get on in the City.
A grower up North in XXXXXX had been supplying me with unlimited leaf due to the size of the crop he and his associates. We spent days sitting around sucking on pipes, with onion bags full of leaf hanging in the bamboo hut drying. We were less than 10 metres (30 feet) from the sand of the sweeping bay, backed by a horseshoe of mountains draped in dense, wet tropics rainforest. The leaf was better than nothing in those days and the shear amount of it promised that there would be pounds of 'head' once the crop matured. The place where it grew had a reputation for having an ideal climate to grow huge sativas. If you walked into a crop, you'd disappear from view. Imagine a thirteen foot high 'sea of green' that you had to almost wade through. At times, the branches on some plants would droop with the weight of masses of thumb sized buds growing almost the length of the branch. If you could look across the tops of the plants, huge colas would poke their heads up through the canopy.
Anyway, I got into Cairns and went to a communal house that welcomed anyone from the various loosely described 'communes' up North of the city. A free bed and food, but you could contribute food if you could afford to. I got there in the afternoon and there were around fifteen or so people in the high-set Queenslander. A mixture of Rashnishi's (Orange People), freaks (that was term we hippies used to describe each other), local Oeace Love and Brown rice type people and ferals. Ferals were a smallish group of who followed the fruit picking up and down the Queeensland coast, living on whatever was in season. But they rarely worked. Most often they'd raid plantations and orchards at night, stealing from the crops.
Anyway, one of the locals said he could score for me and took a few other orders while he was there. He said he'd be back later with some nice head (it was the early eighties, we used the term head back then, not bud).
By nine o'clock that night I was getting a bit worried, but then it was all good. He rocked in just after nine, full of apologies. He'd had some trouble. He gave me the $25 'stick' I'd asked for and a bit more for the house bowl. The stick was a foil wrapped line of prime buds, about fifteen inches long and an inch in diameter. He might as well have bagged it and called it an ounce. I threw some more in the bowl and slipped the foil up in the roll at the front of my sarong. I did say I was a hippy didn't I? We rolled up a half dozen scoobs and they started getting passed around the lounge and the kitchen were everyone was congregating.
We were all having a good time, getting stoned and having a yarn and telling stories in between tokes and listening to music. I was just starting to toke up on on a half smoked joint, relaxing in a lunge chair, buzzing on the music, when there was some commotion to my left. I looked toward the kitchen and everyone was staring at the front door. The guy who had brought the weed around looked past me to the door, then turned around and in one jump leaped to the bottom of the steps and started to bolt. Then this cop came leaping past me from the front door, an old senior constable type, and took off down the back steps after this guy. A second cop, a plain old junior constable was standing at the front door. I looked at him with the scoob hanging from my mouth. I turned away slowly and then, opened my mouth and rolled the lit joint into my mouth with my tongue. Then I swallowed it... I turned back and he had this confused look on his face. I got out of the chair and was pretty freaked, but just played it like a stoned hippy would.
"How long have you been in the public service Constable?" I asked.
He looked at me nervously and replied. "Er, about eighteen months now."
"Do you always come upstairs without knocking?"
The other cop came back up the front steps after about five minutes. He came inside and said that someone in the neighbourhood had made a complaint that someone was smoking "marijuana" in the house.
"We're going to search everyone."
Before this cop could start searching anyone, I walked over in front of him, lifted my sarong up from the hem and said, "Here, search me!"
I don't wear undies under a sarong. The weed was safely tucked up in the roll and these two cops were staring at this crazy long haired half naked hippy with his dick hanging in front of them.
They gathered their composure and declined my offer. They didn't search anyone after that. They asked a few of us who the bloke was that ran down the back steps, but we told 'em we had no idea. He was new in town and was in the 'drop in house' for a bed. They were looking uncomfortable, but threatened to come back later. All up, the guy had sold about half a pound in the house and had a brown paper bag with another half pound in it when he bolted from the coppers. Nobody in the house got busted and the cops didn't come back.
I headed back up to XXXXXX the next day and 'the grower' and I smoked up the stick that I'd bought. Ah, they were good days.