I met Nick on a seismic crew in Borneo. He was a driller and I was Asst. PM on a Huffco job southwest of Samarinda. It was 1979 I think. Skinny, scruffy looking, with the ability to say things to people, particularly me, that would make them to want to kill him. I had to be satisfied with kicking over the chair he was leaning back in. I did that a couple of times.
When he wasn't needling me, he wrote a number of funny things that he shared with me. At least he was awake part of the time when he was out there in the jungle. It was then that I discovered that Nick was not just another seismic driller, but a guy with a few brains and a talent for translating the things he saw into readable prose.
I haven't seen him since 1980, but we re-connected about 1998, when I got his address from Max Watts. After that we have stayed in touch by email. He sent me the manuscript for of his novel, Bien Hoa and after reading it twice, I was convinced that Nick is a fairdinkum author. The book may be available sometime soon. I'll keep you informed. It's a 415 page full-fledged novel and a good read. Anyway, here is the biographical information he sent me when we were trying to get the book published in the U.S..
Nicholas Arden Thomas
Born June 1944 Watford England.
Father: Welshman. Fifty when I was born. First world war hero, winner of Croix De Guerre. France's highest military award. After war, Playwright, several plays performed in the West End in the thirties. Died in Sydney 1960 after many years in a wheelchair from diseases believed caught in India. Much travelled in his life, lived Australia eight years twixt end 1st war and 1928. met mother in New Zealand
Mother: New Zealander, went to live in England after marriage to father 1929. 1946 marriage dissolved. Self two, sister six. (Sister is now a Supreme Court Judge in the Northern Territory) 1947 Sailed from England with mother who takes us to live with her parents who manage a farm and Pineapple plantation in Queensland. (Grandfather having inherited one of New Zealand's richest and biggest sheep properties prior to the 1st war had pissed it all away by the end of the 2nd, much to the annoyance of my uncle who watched his heritage waste away. Grandfather and grandmother left NZ in disgrace, owing much. Bit of a rogue he was but I loved him dearly. Later that year Mother leaves us with them and goes off to "Find herself" Buying a trade store in the highlands of New Guinea. I am writing a book about her life there now. She died in 1978
1949 Father comes out to Australia with new wife. Despite having been fairly successful as a writer before the war he has very little money, enough to buy a small house in Sydney and after two and a half-happy and exciting years with grandfather. A big, garrulous outdoor man who loved fishing, swimming, boating, camping in the bush, catching poisonous snakes and eating Kangaroo meat. We settle into more mundane family life in Sydney. Two years later I am eight when my Father suddenly develops a serious illness. Stepmother looks after him with great love and devotion. I however am left pretty much to my own devices. 'Wagging' school (truancy to you) petty theft etc. Aged fifteen, 1960, father dies. Serious trouble begins then. Itinerant worker,(Itinerant thief might be a better description) hitch hiking back and forth across Australia for two years or so with a succession of dubious characters. Step- mother can't handle me. Not that I'm often home. Police file growing daily, eventually they nail me in a stolen car after a factory robbery. (I was the get away driver, didn't know much about what was going on just did as the heavies told me) Mother comes down from New Guinea and persuades the Police to drop charges if I join the Army.
Six years Australian Army. Vietnam and Malaysia. After Army (1968) to New Guinea where mother lives with a crocodile hunter and adventurer. Steve Baxter. He has his own sixty foot coastal boat, I learn to run it, get fifty ton ticket, charter work all around New Guinea, Solomon sea and Islands, shoot the odd croc, learn a lot about Island girls. Great time. Steve though is often ill, booze, bad diet, malaria etc have taken its toll. Eventually I run boat alone while he and mother manage a trade store in the gulf. Boat (The MV Possum) chartered by United Geophysical Company. (Bert Cross on that first crew) 1970 possum hits an uncharted reef at night, although towed back to Moresby, damage too much to save her, poor old Possum scrapped. UGC give me a job as a driller. Work several crews in New Guinea thence to Indonesia. UGC thrown out over dynamite incident. To GSI in Nigeria for two years. Met Veronica in London, married.
End of Nigerian crew Back to Indonesia, three more contracts in the seventies, one living in Singapore and two commuting from Australia.
1981 to UK. Veronica starts business. I had already written for Australian Television, sketches etc. Now start to write for the BBC. Again sketches, one liners, jokes, monologues and so on. Have some success in the eighties but not much money in it. Look after children mainly, drive a coach occasionally, help with the business. Have some verse and short stories published but really just dabble at it as time is taken up with kids. As Veronica gets busier, I am involved more and more in the business. Veronica Thomas Curtains In spare time begin Bien Hoa.
Today, not so busy with kids, I am writing most days and after the New Guinea book, which is, entitled Mary Bilong Wau I have one or two other books in mind. Perhaps one about my Hitch-hiking days in Australia. Three Poms in A Campervan.
Two kids. James, twenty-one and recently graduated from Warwick University with a degree in Psychology, and Barnaby, fifteen. Home in Denny Bottom, Tunbridge Wells, Kent.