Alice to Prague

by Tanya Heaslip

  First published in 2019

  Copyright © Tanya Heaslip 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76052 976 5

  eBook ISBN 978 1 76087 118 5

  Cover design: Nada Backovic

  Cover photos: Arcangel (Prague); Alamy (Trephina Gorge, Northern Territory)

  Contents

  Prologue: The muster

  1 The Berlin Wall

  2 Adventures, ahoy!

  3 Maruška and Zdeněk

  4 First night at boarding school

  5 Gymnázium Sedlčany

  6 Stake in the leg

  7 Lessons in life

  8 Foreign correspondent

  9 You will not die on my watch!

  10 Sex and free will!

  11 Words and music

  12 Benešov

  13 Fairytale Prague

  14 Do I stay or do I go?

  15 Šumava weekend

  16 Last days

  17 Hello Prague!

  18 Velmi starý pes—Grumpy old dog!

  19 Looking for work

  20 English House

  21 Finding the Ministry of Justice

  22 Love is for nothing

  23 Bowing before the High Court

  24 Finding language and music

  25 A-networking we go!

  26 Love is for nothing (part 2)

  27 A toilet in the kitchen

  28 Carp and Christmas

  29 Snow, glorious snow!

  30 Maturitní ples

  31 Petřín Hill

  32 Žofín

  33 Alice Springs

  34 Return to Prague

  35 Loss

  36 Late autumn

  37 Tears

  38 2002

  Epilogue: Czech friendship

  Acknowledgements

  To three generations of wise, wonderful women who believed in me:

  Nana Parnell—who led storytelling by example

  Mum—who bought me an orange typewriter so that I could start

  M’Lis—who loyally read every page that rolled off that orange typewriter

  Prologue

  The muster

  Central Australia, 1972

  Out of the inland sky roared the sun. It flattened the land with its intensity and turned the horizon into lines of mirages that shimmered along the distant foothills. Above those silver illusions a range of hills rose abruptly, curves of purple smudged with dark valleys and rocky outcrops. Below, where the red earth had once cracked and heaved, it now collapsed into ancient and misshapen forms as though exhausted. It was an ancient place woven with Aboriginal stories, hundreds of miles of emptiness, largely untouched by Europeans.

  And in that particular spot of nowhere, on a Tuesday afternoon in November 1972, a group of stockmen, including three children, drove several hundred cattle from the scrublands of the north towards the mirage-dotted hills of the south.

  I was one of those children. My skewbald horse Sandy and I were on the tail of the mob—the lowliest role and the one I hated the most. It meant pushing up the slowest of the cattle, usually cows and their calves, as they called out mournfully to one another in a cacophony of unceasing bellowing. The air was red with thick, choking dust, the smell of sweat and shit, and the powdery taste of dirt. The ochre colours of the hard land underneath billowed as hooves rose and fell, generating waves of crimson and yellow-brown that covered Sandy and me. That was the worst thing about the tail. You were always in line for the bulldust.

  On the western wing of the mob rode my nine-year-old sister M’Lis, her long brown plaits swinging out the back of her hat. We could have passed as twins except I was one year older and my plaits were long and blonde. On the eastern wing rode my younger brother Brett, eight years old, his freckly face dwarfed by a hat pulled low over his ears.

  We three were all small, tough and wiry, with freckles; we were little men among big men, doing big men’s work, and we knew no other way. But there was always a rush of happiness if Dad ever acknowledged we’d done a job as well as any man. Praise from Dad was rare and we gave our all for those tidbits.

  Everyone called Dad ‘The Boss’. Hard, determined and stoic, he walked fast and rode fast, stockwhip looped over his shoulder, boots crunching over the ground, stock hat pushed low over his eyes. Whatever he said went. One of his many mottos was: ‘There is no such word as can’t.’ He and Mum were living proof of that. They’d arrived from the south during the 1960s drought to make a go of this station when everyone had said it was too small and drought-stricken to be viable. They’d put in fencing, they’d increased the herd, and they were still here.

  But Dad wasn’t with us this afternoon. He was at the homestead preparing for the drafting and trucking in the morning. And so in the heat I drifted off . . .

  ‘Tanya! Stop yer daydreamin’, girl, and push up them bloody calves!’ The shout of Head Stockman Mick brought me back with a start.

  A dry, wry bushman, Mick was a natural with horses and stock and kids. He could plait belts and bridles and stockwhips like no one else—and spin a long yarn while doing it—but when he yelled we all jumped. Especially as he was in charge today.

  I looked quickly down at the tail. The cows, calves and I had all slowed down to a crawl, probably because it was so hot. No doubt the cows and calves still wished they were under a tree, as I did. Hours of interminable boredom lay ahead as we faced the long trek through the hot afternoon.

  ‘Sorry!’ I shouted back to Mick, all the while thinking of the word interminable. I quite liked that word. It sounded like it meant ‘forever’, which is how this part of the day—the droving part—felt to me. M’Lis and Brett, on the other hand, relished every part of the day and were ‘born for the saddle’ (a perfectly apt expression I’d read in a pony story recently). Me? I wished I was home curled up under my favourite pepper tree with a book in my hand and the dogs panting happily at my feet.

  It had been a long day.

  As with most musters, this one had begun before daylight, where we’d saddled up in pre-dawn shadows, our horses snorting and fidgety, everyone full of anticipation, edgy. We had swung up into our saddles and ridden to the end of Orange Tree Bore, a misnamed paddock if ever there was one; it was dotted with spinifex and its one gnarled tree rarely bore the sweet bush fruit it was named after. We’d mustered that day because the winter rains had not come. It was dry, feed was short, and the cattle had to be turned off before they lost condition. The Bore was miles from the homestead so we’d camped the night before to get an early start.

  The start of the muster, any muster, was the best bit of the day. As the sun rose, the distant hills would turn to mauve then rose-pink and finally golden brown, and the air would be crisp and our world beautiful. We’d canter along, looking for the first mob, then the second, and then another—and it was on. Shouts would ring through the clear morning air: ‘Bottom of the gorge!’, ‘Down on the creek!’, ‘Up on that hill!’ The ca
ttle were often hiding out in gullies, some cresting the top of rocky ranges, others inside thick mulga scrub, and the minute beast saw man and horse it would break into a run. Then the chase would begin. There was the thrilling sound of stockwhips cracking, the rush of air over hot faces and sweaty heads, the leaning over the necks of trusty steeds as we wheeled the beasts towards one big mob with shouts of: ‘Ha hup there, cattle! Hut hut—walk up!’

  ‘We are adventurers, one and all,’ I’d whistle through my teeth as I crouched low over my saddle and raced towards the flat, although I wasn’t sure where I’d learnt that from. I loved the rush of danger, of being one with my horse as we sprinted across rocky creek beds and up flinty hillsides and into the grey thickets. There was the thrill in my body of being truly alive, the sound of thrumming hooves and thumping hearts, and the drive for a successful outcome. Dad had drilled into us that nothing was more important than getting the mob together and heading home without losing a beast.

  But now the rush had subsided and all I could think about was the dust that lay thickly in my mouth. It coated my throat and made me desperate for water. I wanted a drink so much it hurt like a bellyache. The first drink had been at the dam earlier that morning and I’d taken a swig from my water bag about once every hour since then. The hessian bag hung off my saddle on Sandy’s withers, temptingly close but already half-empty. The rest had to last all day. And I knew the rules: drink as little as possible to train your body to be tough and strong, to go on as long as you can without water. ‘Drinking makes you thirsty—makes you want to drink more,’ Dad had instructed us from as early as I could remember.

  I also knew the rules of nature. We lived on a dried-out former inland sea where you could perish on a summer’s day, especially if you got thrown off your horse or lost during the muster.

  But all I could fantasise about now was wetness in my mouth and the trough I would put my face in tonight, swishing my head from side to side, lapping the water like a dog. I screwed my eyes up under my hat and took in the miles of empty flat that lay ahead, then swivelled in my saddle to look at the mulga scrub I’d left behind.

  The only way to survive the interminable was to escape back into my imagination. Daydreaming got me into a lot of trouble in the schoolroom (and with Mick) but right now it was my saviour. It was the place I hid in to endure the heat, thirst and boredom. It lived inside my head and was drawn from the books I read and the stories I heard.

  My dreams were about a different world, another place, a contrasting landscape.

  I had never seen this other world but it was as bright as day to me. There were rolling meadows of golden daffodils, moonlit lakes, fields of green grasses, shady woods, trees with delicious names like oak and beech; there was softness and coolness and endless water. In those lands there were children who played and had adventures and didn’t have to muster cattle in the stinking heat. Well, Heidi did have to walk with some goats up a snowy mountain, and the children of the Famous Five and the Secret Seven and The Magic Faraway Tree had to do jobs for Mother and Father. But once those children had finished their jobs, they cycled on bikes up gentle hills and down gentle dales—just for fun—and ate delicious-sounding ‘ices’.

  Once I entered those magical places, like one of the children who fell through the wardrobe into Narnia, I could mostly tune out the unrelenting heat that pressed down upon me and forget the hours still to go; I could momentarily forget my cracked and blistered lips, my hunger and my swollen tongue. These fantasy lands pressed themselves upon my heart and I loved them. They were precious to me, my own mysterious hidden treasure.

  Mum knew this. Once a month she drove through boggy creeks and along corrugated dirt roads to Alice Springs to get stores for the station, and always went past the School of the Air to collect a big box of enticingly musty books from their library for me to devour. She understood my hunger to read and lose myself in stories.

  ‘Oi! Tanya! Whaddya think yer doin’, girl? Head in the clouds agin? Move those bloody cattle along!’

  As I pushed my chin up from my chest, to which it had sunk deeply in my trance, Mick’s yells drifted into earshot. To my horror the tail had carried on without me and was now beginning to spread out into two groups, each heading in a different direction. Even worse, during my time away in fairyland all the stockmen, and M’Lis and Brett, had rotated positions. All except for me. I was still stuck with the tail.

  ‘C’mon, Sandy!’ I hissed and broke into a trot, hollering, ‘C’mon there, you mob, move along, get back there, ha hup there!’ But the breakaway group had moved such a distance it took a while to pull them back into the tail. Sandy and I then resumed our weary plodding.

  As I gazed out to the west I saw the sun had moved lower in the big broad sky. I knew the heat would lessen as the afternoon pushed on, lengthening the light and shadows along the plain as we got towards the yards.

  I thought about the ritual that was the second-best part of the day.

  Once we reached the cattle yards, we would herd the mob in through the open gates, always a tricky and tense moment; nobody wanted to lose cattle right before the end, having got them safely there. Next was the job of getting the snorting, thirsty beasts to water. It was important not to let the cattle hurt themselves in their rush for the water. Once the cattle were safely drinking, we would water our own horses, unsaddle them and let them out to graze, loosely hobbled to ensure they were nearby in the morning.

  Finally, the animals cared for, we would fall onto the water ourselves and drink until our bellies were swollen, light the fire as darkness fell, and eat steak cooked on the coals. We’d lean against our swags, numb with tiredness. The dirt and grease and red dust would make grotesque masks of our faces in the firelight. There’d be jokes, maybe a guitar and some Slim Dusty tunes. We kids would beg Irish stockman Ray to play ‘Nobody’s Child,’ and he’d always oblige. My heart would ache for the loss and loneliness of the orphaned boy who nobody wanted, as Ray’s mournful, lilting tones delivered the tragedy of the song across the dying embers of the fire. I’d think about my baby brother Benny, at home alone with Mum; he lived on my hip when I wasn’t on a horse. Ray’s songs always made me miss Benny more.

  Then we’d roll out our swags and crawl in, fully clad, boots tucked carefully at the bottom to keep them away from snakes. The sky would sparkle with stars and we’d fall asleep under a sliver of moon, listening to a dingo howling in the distance and the comforting clink of the hobbles as the horses grazed nearby.

  The next morning Dad and the young stockman would arrive at daybreak in the old Land Rover, bringing branding irons and a fresh tuckerbox packed by Mum. We kids would rush to see if Mum had included the coveted tins of apricot jam and creamed rice, along with the essentials of corned beef, damper, tomato sauce, tea and sugar.

  Then we’d all begin the yard work, with several days of hot, sweaty and equally boring work ahead of us, drafting the entire mob, branding the cleanskins and castrating the young micky bulls. The cows and calves would then be returned to the paddocks through the bush gate, and the weaners and fat bullocks kept aside for market.

  Finally, the huge double-decker road trains from Tanami Transport would emerge like huge prehistoric perenties crawling through the dust. Into these giants the weaners and fat bullocks would be loaded and trucked off to their destination miles away down south.

  That was my life.

  But I knew there was another life. And I’d decided that when I grew up I would go and find it for myself—overseas, in those lands of magic. Until then I would think about it and imagine it and tell myself stories about it.

  And so, once the evening came and the ordeal of the day was over, I knew I’d drift off to sleep, my head filled with dreams of running across a snow-capped mountain, arms outstretched in the joy of the moment, dancing with my prince, our eyes shining, our voices singing, and living happily ever after.

  1

  The Berlin Wall

  Seventeen years later: Nov
ember 1989

  It was six o’clock in London on a cold November evening. The streetlights cast a pallid glow across the street as my friend Michael and I scurried towards the entrance of an old pub. I wrapped my coat more tightly around me, the chill biting my ankles as it seeped up from the flagstones and through my boots.

  ‘Welcome to the local!’ Michael pushed open the door and led me inside to the warmth and chatter and clinking of glasses. I followed him to a table in the corner, a good distance from the throng of people gathered in front of the bar.

  ‘Glass of wine?’ Michael didn’t wait for an answer but pushed his way through the crowd.

  As I watched him go, touched as I always was by his kindness, I had a moment to reflect. My year in Europe was almost at an end.

  Yes, my dream had come true. I had made it come true. I was a bush girl who had finally made it to Europe. I’d backpacked alone and turned twenty-eight along the way. Admittedly, I was a late starter—most of my friends had ‘done Europe’ much earlier—but my life had been a rollercoaster since I’d been dispatched to boarding school at the age of twelve. After that came law school, which led to practising law, and my childish dreams had been put on the backburner while I built a career. In fact, it was a miracle I’d made it to Europe at all, but a love affair gone wrong that left splinters of my heart from one end of the Territory to the other was the motivator I finally needed to shriek, ‘Enough! I’m out of here!’

  Once I’d finally made it, I dived into every experience, longing to recapture those early dreams and recreate the magic of dissolving into another world.

  I had travelled solo, which was lonely, but it had given me time and privacy to nurse my broken heart back to health. I’d also been lucky enough to spend time with my darling friend Michael, who had taken me into his tiny flat every time I passed through London. He’d made me Vegemite on toast and offered much-needed hugs when I was homesick for red earth and blue skies.

  Michael and I had met at law school in Adelaide many years before. He’d moved to London and now worked for Oxfam, and he was very funny. Straight blond strands of hair fell in his eyes; he wore little round glasses and still enjoyed a student’s propensity for beer. ‘The only way to see a city is to walk it,’ he’d told me, and he’d walked the length and breadth of London, and tried many of its pubs, to prove his point.