I didn’t answer and we finished the washing up in silence.
‘Come on, chin up,’ said Gran, pulling out the plug. ‘Tell me about school. What are you working on?’
I swallowed hard and swiped angrily at my nose. ‘We have to do a persuasive PowerPoint,’ I mumbled. ‘It’s due in two weeks.’
‘You haven’t told me about this,’ said Gran. ‘A power what?’
‘It’s a stupid one-minute presentation. One whole minute – in front of the entire class.’
‘On what?’ asked Gran.
‘We have to choose an endangered Australian animal and—’
‘Bah! Rosie Nunn, you could talk about animals till you were blue in the face. What animal have you chosen?’
‘I’m doing a koala. You know, ’cause of Smooch,’ I said. ‘I’ll need heaps of information and loads of pictures too.’
‘Smooch. Great idea,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it, Malcolm?’
Uncle Malcolm had come into the kitchen without me hearing. I didn’t realise he was still here. Now he peered at me over his reading glasses, like I was a pesky toad.
‘Smooch?’ he said, pulling off his glasses and rubbing at his eyes. ‘Who or what is Smooch?’
Gran gave me an encouraging smile and said, ‘Tell him, Rosie.’
I fiddled with the damp tea towel in my hand. ‘It’s . . . about a . . . koala. I—’
‘A koala? You haven’t got a koala in the house, have you?’ Uncle Malcolm looked anxiously over my shoulder. ‘You know how allergic . . .’
‘Oh for goodness sake!’ snapped Gran. ‘She’s talking about the koala down by the creek.’ Her lips were tight. ‘Remember how you and David used to love the creek when you were kids? Rosie saved a koala down there last year. His name is Smooch and she’s going to write about him for her science project.’
Uncle Malcolm snorted. ‘Well, good luck with that,’ he said. ‘You’d better hop to it. The contractors will be here soon. Can’t imagine the bulldozers will care two hoots about your Hooch, or Pooch, or whatever its name is.’
‘Smooch,’ I mumbled. Then a little more loudly, ‘What do you mean bulldozers?’
Uncle Malcolm laughed. ‘Bulldozers. They’ll pull down the lot. No trees will be left standing, koala or no koala.’
My mouth fell open. I stared at Uncle Malcolm in disbelief. ‘They can’t do that,’ I said. ‘Koalas are native Australian animals. We saved Smooch when his mum died. I promised I’d look after him.’ I glanced at Gran. She was clutching the back of a kitchen chair. Her eyes were wide and dark.
‘Surely not?’ she said, pulling out the chair and sinking into it. ‘All the trees?’
‘It’s too late now!’ said Uncle Malcolm, his voice rising. ‘The council’s given the developers the full go-ahead and believe me, judging from the other developments around here, all the trees will go.’
8. Missing
The next morning, I zoomed over to Carol’s place as soon as I was dressed. I had to find out the rules for clearing koala trees. Uncle Malcolm couldn’t possibly be right.
‘Haven’t you got school this morning?’ asked Carol after she opened the door. She was holding a red and green lorikeet wrapped in an old towel, so she beckoned me in with her elbows. ‘What’s up?’
I followed her into the kitchen. ‘You have to help. They’re going to clear all of Smooch’s trees!’
‘Wait,’ said Carol, putting the lorikeet in a small cage perched on the bench. She latched the door shut and turned to give me her full attention. ‘Who’s going to clear all of whose trees?’
‘The developers. The ones who bought our farm. They can’t do that, can they? Isn’t it against the law?’
Carol sat down on one of the kitchen chairs and nodded gravely to the chair beside her. ‘Here’s the thing,’ she said. ‘At the moment, koalas are protected, but not their trees. If the trees at your creek haven’t been noted as “protected”, then the developers can knock them down. It’s not against the law.’
‘But what do you mean by “protected”?’
‘It’s complicated. If there’s a koala in a tree when the council checks on the property, it will be marked “protected”. That means the tree can’t be knocked down. But if there is no koala when they come out to do their inspection, the developers can go ahead.’
I breathed a big sigh of relief. ‘Well, that’s okay then. They’ll see Smooch when they come. The trees will be marked and the developers won’t be able to bulldoze them. Huh! Wait till I tell Uncle Malcolm!’ I stood up to go.
‘Mmm, well, it’s not as simple as that. There’s a lot of rules and . . . ’
‘What rules?’
‘Too many to remember. Hop on my computer and take a look.’
Carol’s computer whizzed and whirred as I typed ‘koala’ into the search engine. There was heaps of information, ranging from furry marsupial fact sheets to a rock band called The Rocking Koalas. My eyes darted to Carol’s clock. It was nearly 8.15.
I scrolled down one of the pages to a heading that said: Is There a Koala in Danger Near You? Three pictures came up across the top of the page. The first showed a bulldozer ramming a tree. A koala clung desperately to a spindly branch as the tree swayed sideways. The second picture showed a block of land totally cleared of trees and bushes. The red soil was jagged with broken branches and roots. The third showed a suburban street not unlike the new streets in our neighbourhood. It was lined with brand-new houses, smart-green lawns and plastic-looking hedges. It was all so neat and tidy. And there was not a gum tree in sight.
Icicles began to shatter inside my ice-cream heart. Was this what Uncle Malcolm meant? Would this be our farm in a few weeks’ time? I scanned down the page. Below the pictures was a heading: What Can You Do? The suggestions included writing letters to your local councillors, to the newspapers, to your local Member of Parliament and to the Minister for the Environment in your state. There was even a sample letter, which I quickly printed.
‘What do you think?’ I asked Carol when I showed it to her.
‘I think you should do it,’ she said, wiping her hands on her jeans to take the letter from me. She gave it a quick once over and handed it back. ‘Stand up for what you believe in and write to everybody, I say. Do you need some addresses?’
I began writing straight after school that afternoon. I wrote and wrote and wrote until my fingers cramped. I wrote a letter to our local councillor, one to our local Member of Parliament, to the Queensland Minister for the Environment and, just to be on the safe side, to Australia’s Environment Minister in Canberra. Carol had also given me the addresses for two local papers as well as the biggest newspaper in Brisbane. I wrote to them all. I told them about Smooch, explaining that the worst thing we could do was let developers bulldoze his trees. I told them it was no good catching Smooch and taking him somewhere else. He’d only try to get back home and end up being killed by a car or a dog along the way. I finished off the letters asking if they wanted to come and see the creek and Smooch for themselves. I knew they’d understand if they saw him. I ended by saying they’d have to hurry. The developers would be here any day. Then I signed each letter: Yours sincerely, Rose Nunn.
I snuck some envelopes and stamps from Gran’s writing bureau and raced to the red postbox at the end of our street. I held my letters up to the slot, took a deep breath and then closed my eyes. ‘Please help Smooch,’ I begged. Then I opened my eyes and shoved in the letters.
It was getting dark by the time I got back home. I threw off my school dress and tugged on my jeans and blue hoodie before racing down to the creek. I wanted to tell Smooch what I’d done. He had to know I wouldn’t let the developers cut down his trees.
My eyes swept the treetops. Smooch wasn’t in his favourite tallowwood. Or the paperbark next to it. Or the scribbly gum two trees over. I brushed past the long grasses wi
th their sticky seed heads and swiped a couple of fallen branches out of my way. I craned my neck. Still nothing. It smelt like a deep dark forest down here. Two black crows cawed at me from the flaking paperbark trees. A noisy miner tweeted from high up in the canopy. Dad had known the call of every single bird at our creek. I bet he would’ve known where Smooch was.
I squinted harder into the canopy. It suddenly seemed eerily quiet. Mysteriously still. My feet squelched in the mud. My breath echoed in my ears.
All the trees were empty.
Smooch wasn’t in any of them.
There was something else though. Something orange – over on the far bank. I scrambled across the creek on a fallen scribbly log. My heart flipped. An ugly orange stake was wedged like a flagpole in the mud. Another one stood a few metres further along. And another. I counted eighteen orange stakes in all. They stood like an intruding army of silent soldiers in the bush.
What were they for? And where was Smooch?
9. Growing Up
I hurried back across the log and ran all the way up to the house. I had to find Gran.
I found her in the kitchen, stirring a pot of soup on the stove.
‘Smooch is gone!’ I spluttered, trying not to cry.
Gran looked small and frail stirring the big pot. She was staring into it, like the swirling soup had hypnotised her.
I tried a little more loudly. ‘Gran!’
She looked up, startled. ‘Rosie! There you are. Sorry love, I was miles away. Ready for dinner?’
‘Gran, Smooch is missing! There are orange stakes down the creek, they’ve scared Smooch off, and—’
‘Slow down, Rosie,’ sighed Gran, setting out the bowls.
‘Smooch is missing. They won’t know that a koala lives at the creek! They’ll chop down all the trees.’
Gran pushed a strand of hair from her eyes. ‘Rosie love,’ she murmured. ‘Smooch is a big boy now, all grown up, just like you. I’m sure he’s not missing. He’s probably just gone for a little explore. Now, do me a favour and lay the table.’
I could hardly eat my soup. Gran wouldn’t hear any more about Smooch. She said she had enough to worry about trying to sell the farm machinery and cleaning out the sheds without adding a missing koala to the list. She didn’t want to hear about koala websites or letters or laws about koala trees. Apparently there was some hiccup with the sale contract that was making Uncle Malcolm extra cranky and Gran drifted off to bed as soon as the dishes were done.
I hoped the hiccup was a big one. A giant one. Perhaps it would mean we wouldn’t have to sell the farm.
On the way to school the next day, I stopped in at Carol’s. I had to tell her that Smooch was missing. I found her in the back garden, feeding the wild rosellas.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said as she dug into the bin of bird feed. ‘He’ll be back.’ Seeds flicked everywhere as about 20 noisy rosellas squawked and flapped over the dish. ‘Maybe he’s just growing up?’
There were those two words again. Growing up. Why did everybody keep talking about growing up? A black and white butterfly flittered past. I frowned. Butterflies. Grown-up caterpillars. I stuck my hands in my pockets. Why was everything growing up?
‘Will he come back?’ I said, my voice growlier than I meant it to be.
‘Course he will,’ said Carol, sealing the lid on the feed bin. ‘Male koalas wander all the time. Smooch isn’t old enough to mate yet, but he’s probably gone off to check out all the pretty girls in the neighbourhood. Don’t worry about it. He won’t be too far away.’
Part of me was cross that Smooch was growing up, but a bigger part of me was relieved that he wasn’t hurt. Maybe, while he was wandering, he’d find a safer place to live.
‘But what about the orange stakes?’ I asked. ‘They’re everywhere at the creek. Does that mean the council’s been? When Smooch wasn’t around? Because then they won’t have marked his trees.’
Carol looked sadly around the garden. ‘Yes. The orange stakes will be surveyor’s pegs, marking out the land for development. Which means the council would definitely have already been through.’ She slapped a mosquito trying to feast on her arm. ‘We could have a problem.’
‘What about my letters?’ I insisted. ‘I mean, they’ll help, won’t they? I wrote to everybody the website suggested. Surely someone will . . .’
‘Maybe not, Rose. People often have bigger things to worry about than koalas. We’ll have to think of something else. Something more convincing. Something impressive. Any ideas?’
I chewed the inside of my cheek. ‘What about a fundraiser?’ I suggested. ‘We have silly socks days and pyjama days at my school. We could have one for Smooch and use the money to buy the creek back.’
Carol shook her head. ‘No, too late for that. And we’d need a lot of socks! We need something to raise awareness about the koalas and their trees.’
‘Like a protest march? We could start at the farm gate and march into town, with banners and loudspeakers and—’
‘Maybe not a protest march. Not yet. There has to be something else we can try first.’
We decided we’d have a better think over the weekend. After saying goodbye to Carol, I ran all the way to school. But it was no use. I was late. The rest of the class was already copying notes from the interactive whiteboard. Mrs Glover didn’t turn around when I walked in.
I squeezed behind my desk and ruled up a new page in my book.
‘Miss Nunn?’ said Mrs Glover in her sharp don’t-mess-with-me voice. ‘You have a note, I presume?’
I sat still, hoping she’d get distracted.
‘Miss Nunn. A late note?’
I shook my head.
‘This is the second time you’ve been late this term. I hope it’s not becoming a habit.’
I wanted to tell her that I was never late on purpose. Only if Mickey twisted his rug, or if Sally got out and I had to chase her back into her yard. It wasn’t my fault if I was worried about Smooch. Surely she’d understand? This was an emergency.
But I kept my mouth shut. I knew there was no point arguing with Mrs Glover.
The morning lesson was about petitions made to the Queensland Parliament. Mrs Glover handed out a pile of examples and asked us to work in groups. She stopped beside me and pointed to Kellee and Tahlia. ‘You can work with the girls at the back today, Rose,’ she said. ‘There are some tricky words to watch out for in this worksheet. Girls, give Rose a hand, please.’
Kellee said, ‘Oh, great!’ And Tahlia groaned.
I stared grimly at my desk. Anybody but them.
Mrs Glover gave a petition to Tahlia, and clicked her fingers impatiently at me. ‘Snap, snap, Rose. We haven’t got all day,’ she said curtly.
I stood and dragged my feet to the back of the room.
‘Snap, snap, bumpkin,’ giggled Kellee. She and Tahlia shuffled their chairs together as I fumbled into my seat. I gripped my pencil and rubber for moral support.
‘What’s the matter, scarecrow? Too much straw for breakfast?’ sniggered Tahlia.
I pretended to study the petition. It didn’t look that different to the letters I’d written to the newspapers and politicians. Only with a heap more signatures.
Tahlia reached over and snatched the petition away. ‘As if you’d know, hay brain,’ she hissed, flicking my pencil to the floor. She and Kellee turned their backs to me and bent over the worksheet. I bit my lip. Like I really cared about some old petition. Especially when koalas were being bulldozed in Redland Bay.
That got me thinking.
‘Mrs Glover,’ I asked when she came over. ‘Could anyone write a petition? I mean, even if they’re not someone important?’
She straightened up and peered at me over her glasses. ‘Yes, of course. Isn’t that what today’s lesson has been all about?’
Kellee and Tahlia curled t
heir lips.
Mrs Glover didn’t notice. ‘These are ordinary people putting forward petitions, trying to make a difference about things that really matter to them.’
‘So, if I sent a petition about something really important, even I could make a difference? The people in Canberra would listen to my petition?’
Mrs Glover tapped her finger thoughtfully against her cheek. ‘Mmm,’ she said. ‘Now that all depends on what the petition is requesting. If it’s asking for a change in things like taxes or employment, then, yes, you’d send it to Canberra. But if it’s to do with the environment or school, then you’d send it to your local State Member of Parliament. They would listen and lodge it, but they wouldn’t necessarily have to agree to do whatever it is you want.’ She folded her arms. ‘Why? What do you want to change, Rose?’
Kellee nudged Tahlia’s leg with her pencil. She did it just under the desk where Mrs Glover couldn’t see. But I saw. I decided not to tell Mrs Glover about my idea.
I would write a petition for Smooch. A petition to save koala trees. I would ask everyone to sign it and I’d send it straight to my local state member. If I made sure it was good enough, they might even show it to the premier.
I ducked into the library at lunchtime and nabbed one of the computers before anyone else. Instead of working on my PowerPoint, I typed up a petition asking for the protection of koala trees and made a whole heap of lines for people to sign their names. I checked the spelling four times and printed it off. For the first time in weeks, I felt a little sparkle of hope. I couldn’t wait to fill the petition with signatures. Surely now Smooch would be saved.
10. Late Again
I filled up five pages of my petition with signatures, including one from Craig the vet, one from the school librarian, one from the lollipop lady, and even one from my principal. I didn’t ask Mrs Glover. She didn’t seem the animal type. When everyone I knew had signed it, I sent it off to the Member for Cleveland and asked him to please show the premier.
Smooch & Rose Page 4