She had been terrified even though it had been their group’s idea. She’d complained to Aimee that no one from the mines had replied to their letter and that she was beginning to feel anxious when people in the street or in the library asked her what was going to happen next.
‘How am I supposed to know?’ she’d said to Aimee. ‘It was only our little group tryin’ to find out what’s going on, to see if we could do somethin’ about it. I dunno what else we’re supposed to do, eh?’
‘What else would you like to do about it?’ Aimee had asked her.
‘Who knows? What have other people done? Did the laws in other places just get written or did someone complain, or what?’
‘Well, often it’s people like you complaining and other people joining in that makes laws change, Kerry,’ Aimee had told her.
‘Really?’ She’d been surprised to hear that. ‘But how do you get other people to join in?’
‘Lots of different ways have worked but maybe you could talk about it with your group and come up with some ideas,’ Aimee had suggested.
And they had talked about it and someone, Holly’s mum, Fiona, it might have been, suggested there were lots of other mothers worried too and maybe they could ask all the parents to meet at school like a Parents and Citizens meeting. Someone else said other people in town were worried so why not put a notice in the paper so they could come too—that was Jenny actually. Then Geraldine, who was on the Parents and Citizens committee, asked the principal if they could use the gym because it might be too big for the school meeting room.
And that’s how it happened.
And now they were having a protest march.
Heaven help us, she thought, tucking her hair behind her ears.
Some people who’d said they would help had met again at the school the next day and they’d agreed on what they wanted to say, and that placards and banners and a peaceful walk along Hannan Street would let the mines, the council and the government know of their concerns. And Dean had written another story about their meeting and when the march would be held.
He’d called around earlier today. She’d thought at first he might be a bit stuck up, being a reporter and from Perth, but he wasn’t. He’d actually helped her, holding onto the sheets of cardboard as she’d cut out several rectangles with the Stanley knife.
‘Here, let me help you,’ he’d said, ‘I can’t cut straight to save myself but I can hold them while you do.’
As they’d leant together over the kitchen table she’d smelt his aftershave. It was musky, different to Paul’s, who always wore Old Spice, like her dad. A heat had risen from her chest to her throat and fluttered over her cheeks. She was grateful he hadn’t noticed, his head bent, concentrating on holding the sheet steady so she wouldn’t cut the wooden table. His russet-coloured hair and freckles reminded her of the lead singer of Creedence Clearwater Revival. Their song, ‘Lookin’ Out My Back Door’ had been one of her and Paul’s favourites. She’d stopped then, made him a cup of tea and when he’d drunk it, she’d hurried him out the door.
She looked around at the mess in her kitchen. God, I hope people turn up.
She finished cutting out several banner shapes from the sheets of calico and as she spread them over the table, she thought she heard a noise out the front. She picked up a marker pen and tried to think of a message. A car door slammed.
‘Amber, can you go see if that’s Lori pulling up and let her in?’
‘Okay, Mum,’ Amber yelled back, running down the passage to open the front door.
‘Mum, can you come here?’ she heard Amber call softly.
‘What is it now?’ she asked, reluctantly putting down the scissors. She was able to resist the urge to count her steps as she walked down the dark passageway towards the light. No time for that, she thought, as she peered through the open door into the night.
But her mind did race, just a little, as she stared wide-eyed at the long line of people trailing up her garden path.
Fight, might, unite. Fight, might, unite.
The rhyming stopped as quickly as it began. Kerry grabbed Amber’s hand and together they stepped through the door.
It’s going to be all right, Paul, she thought, it’s going to be all right.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
There are moments in history when you remember where you were and Aggie knew today would be one of those days. She’d been drifting in and out of awareness all morning.
For what is history, she mused, but personal choices writ large.
‘Aggie, are you ready yet?’
‘Hang on a minute, Jack, I can’t find my keys.’
‘Well, where’d you leave them?’ he asked, opening the back flywire door.
‘Jack, if I knew that I wouldn’t be looking for them, would I?’ Men, she thought, they ask the most obvious questions. She remembered when Frank used to come home from work and ask her where the paper was. ‘Have you looked?’ she’d call out from the kitchen. ‘No, I thought you’d know.’
Now she’d give anything to have him ask her stupid questions.
‘Sorry Aggie, only trying to help.’
She looked at him and laughed. ‘I know, Jack. And you’d think with the way I help people find things I wouldn’t lose my own keys.’
He laughed back.
‘Here they are, Jack, under the paper. It’s your fault, you put the paper on top of them.’
‘Well, I thought you’d want to read the headline. There’s a photo of Donaldson. Parroting on. He’ll be at the march today, you know, arguing the other side.’
She picked up her car keys and looked at the paper.
‘If You Don’t Like It, Leave’ yelled the headline again. Under it trailed a more sedate ‘Mayor Stands Up for the Lifeblood of the Goldfields’. A picture of Donaldson in his mayoral robes, standing outside the Town Hall beside Paddy Hannan’s statue, stared out from the front page. She read the article as they left the house and walked to the car.
‘The headline’s a bit rough but the story’s fairly balanced,’ reported Jack.
‘He means well,’ she conceded, tucking the paper under her arm as she unlocked the side door of her car and held it open for Jack. He lowered himself in, careful not to dislodge his hat—he never went to town without it—and she closed the door, muffling his response. She looked up at the wide blue cloudless sky as she walked around to her side.
‘A good day for it, Jack,’ she said, climbing in beside him. She felt herself drifting again … today would be a day of shifting fortunes. Ah yes, the winter solstice, she remembered, the shortest day of the year. A different energy was afoot today and they would all be touched by it, but for a few there would be a visible change in their fortunes and only in looking back could they say that this was where the axis shifted. Only in hindsight would they see the fate they had set in motion for themselves, for the town, for the future, each one’s action affecting another. Intended and unintended consequences. If we knew, would we do it differently? Could we do it differently?
She didn’t believe so. Some things were fated.
‘He can mean well all he likes, Aggie, but the worst of things have been justified as being well intentioned,’ harrumphed Jack.
‘True,’ she conceded, starting the car. But Donaldson is well intentioned, she thought. He’s a businessman with a focus on development and sees no dilemma in his stand—Kalgoorlie is a mining town, always has been, always will be. What was good for mining, he’d said in today’s article, was good for the town and while he respected the concerns of a few residents about air quality, they needed to realise it was part and parcel of the industry.
She understood but she had a feeling Donaldson didn’t, that he’d failed to gauge community sentiment, and as she parallel-parked a block back from the main street where the march was to be held, she knew she was right. In the centre of town she could see hundreds of people gathered and dozens more striding towards them.
‘Look at that crowd, Jack.
We were lucky to nab this parking space.’
Jack nodded, staring past her. He reached up and firmly positioned his hat.
‘Well, let’s get going. I need to find Lori in amongst all of this. I’ve never seen so many people in Hannan Street.’ She climbed out of the car and locked the door.
‘Oh, I have. A long time ago, though,’ puffed Jack, as he struggled to get out his side.
She watched him lock his door and lean on the roof of the car.
‘When we had the Eight Hour Day marches—and you should’ve seen the banners, Aggie, beautiful they were. Bloody Donaldson never marched though, I can tell you that much.’
‘Well, let’s go and see if they’ve any beautiful banners in this march. Lori told me she was going over to help Kerry make some last night.’ She started walking towards the centre of town, returning nods to familiar faces in the throng. She’d read so many cups over the years she couldn’t always remember how she knew people.
Jack fell in beside her. ‘That young Kerry’s got some gumption, Aggie. You gotta hand it to her. I remember her dad. He was a good bloke, a union man. It was terrible what happened, and then her husband. And here she is standing up like this. They’d be proud of her, Aggie.’
They are, Jack, she thought, they are.
She heard a cheer go up behind her and looked around to see a truck festooned with streamers slowly making its way towards Hannan Street. In the back stood dozens of excited children waving placards. Jack stopped and clapped them as the truck drove by.
‘What a day, Jack,’ she said, taking his arm. ‘Shall we try and catch up with Lori before the march starts then find a spot near the Town Hall? I think that’s where she said the march finishes and I want to hear the speeches.’
‘Good idea. I’m not keen on listening to Donaldson but I hope some of the marchers get up and have a go. If I’d a bit more puff I’d be marching myself.’
She looked at him with concern. He’d been dozing off a lot lately over his cup of tea, and twice in the past month when she’d called over she’d woken him up. Jack never slept in.
She squeezed his arm tight. ‘We can be as much support cheering from the sidelines,’ she comforted him. ‘Oh, look there’s Lori. Lori! Lori!’ she called out, trying to be heard over the increasing noise of the gathering crowd.
Lori pushed her way through the throng of people and hugged her. ‘It’s a huge turnout, eh? Kerry will be so pleased. And last night, at her place, you should have seen the number of people who turned up to help. Oh Aggie, it’s wonderful. Hello, Mr Gray, how are you?’
‘Very well, thank you, Lori. How’s your dad?’
‘Good, thanks, they’re all coming—Mum and Dad are going to march. My nonna’s already here; she’s sitting outside the Town Hall on a fold-up chair, with my sister and her baby,’ said Lori, laughing.
‘We’ll be joining them shortly. Jack and I wanted to wish you luck before we headed down there.’
‘Thanks, Aggie.’
She could barely hear her above the growing noise as Lori leant in and hugged her. Lori’s excitement was tangible.
‘Well, I better go, I want to try and find Dad. I’ll catch up with you later. Bye, Mr Gray.’
They watched her hurry back up towards the top of Hannan Street where the marchers and vehicles were gathering outside the Federal Hotel. The protesters would travel down the three long, wide blocks making up most of the city centre to reach the Town Hall, passing through the intersection cornered by the Exchange and the Palace Hotels. Aggie turned and looked at the intersection, its traffic lights blinking orange for the occasion. It didn’t seem so long ago that she’d run around the intersection with Frank on a New Year’s Eve. Her veins softened with love, and memories played past her eyes—she could smell him. The crowd faded away. She closed her eyes.
‘Are you right there, Aggie?’ Jack asked, patting her gently on the shoulder.
Aggie took a deep breath and returned. The veil was thin today. She turned and linked her arm back through Jack’s.
‘I am, Jack,’ she said smiling. ‘Let’s go and see history made.’
Aimee honked the horn. A startled crow leapt off the top of a wooden power pole across the street and landed on the dusty sidewalk outside Kerry’s front fence. Head cocked, it stared at the car. She looked past it to Kerry, pushing at the closed front door.
‘We’re going to be late, Kerry,’ she called out through the open car window. ‘You’ve already checked the doors.’ She looked at her watch and frowned—quarter-past ten—the march was due to start at eleven: five minutes to get there, ten minutes to unload the car, ten minutes to pass out placards and banners, ten minutes to organise positions, ten minutes to …
‘Kerry, hurry up!’
‘I’m coming,’ Kerry called back, running down the pathway. ‘Sorry,’ she said, hopping into the front seat. ‘I’m a bit nervous. I’ve never done anything like this before.’
‘It’s okay, I don’t want us to be late. You’re one of the main organisers—they’ll all be waiting for you to turn up. And we’ve got all this to unload,’ she said, pointing to the back of the office Land Rover—Paddy had turned a blind eye.
‘Hopefully there’ll be plenty of helpers if last night is anything to go by,’ Kerry said, doing up her seatbelt. ‘Do you know I ran out of cups? I had to give people tea in Amber’s plastic cordial cups, not that they seemed to mind. I think half of Kalgoorlie was in my kitchen,’ she laughed. ‘And you should’ve seen the kids this morning, in the back of the truck. Pam’s husband, Geoff, organised the truck, and she’s covered it in streamers. Amber was that excited when they pulled up out the front.’ Her smile faded a little. ‘I hope Pam keeps on eye on them. They’re all standing up in the back, you know. They haven’t got seatbelts on or anything.’
Aimee looked over at Kerry. This is such a big event in her life, she thought, an event Kerry had made happen, along with the others in her community. It was something Aimee had seen her father do, bringing people together to change things, to make a difference.
And ‘making something good come out of bad’, Kerry had suggested this morning when they were packing the car. ‘You know, even though Paul smoked,’ she’d said, ‘I just know mining damaged his lungs and now I know it’s bad for people above ground too. There was a woman on the radio yesterday who raised money for research after her baby died from cot death and she said, “make something good come out of bad”. I think that’s what I’m tryin’ to do, Aimee,’ she’d said, staring at her.
Aimee had held her gaze and nodded, and they’d kept on packing.
She was about to start the car when she noticed Kerry’s hands shaking. She reached over and grasped them. ‘It’s going to be all right. And Pam will keep a close eye on the children. Now, let’s get moving, we don’t want to be late.’ She started the car, sending the crow scurrying.
Seemingly reassured, Kerry smiled and nodded. On the short drive into town they chattered about last night’s preparations. Kerry was laughing about something Lori had said last night when Aimee exclaimed: ‘Oh my, look at that!’
Ahead of them, over the railway line at the top of Hannan Street, milled hundreds of people. Lined up around the corner of the Federal Hotel were half a dozen trucks with streamers and balloons flapping, and on the side of the road—a television crew.
‘A television crew?’ shrieked Kerry.
She noticed Kerry’s hands shaking. ‘What an amazing turnout, Kerry! Well done.’
Kerry wasn’t listening. Her hands flew up to her mouth. ‘Oh, my God, what were we thinking? I don’t know if I can do this,’ she cried, squirming around in her seat. Her leg started jiggling.
Aimee pulled up opposite the trucks. She turned towards Kerry and grabbed her hands. Kerry looked around wildly, unfocused. She sought Kerry’s eyes and waited until she stilled. ‘Kerry, you are the bravest woman I know. What you’ve done to make today happen is one of the most inspiring things I’ve seen,’ she
said gently, struggling to keep back her own tears as she saw Kerry well up. ‘But if you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to. There are plenty of people involved now. They’ll take this forward.’
Kerry stared at her, unblinking.
‘But if you do want to do this, we’re all here for you. I’m here for you, okay?’
Kerry turned her head towards the crowd, then back at her. Aimee looked out and saw several of the other organisers walking towards the car to help unload. She turned back to Kerry.
Kerry took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘Okay.’
‘Hi, Kerry.’
It was Pam. She was wearing a white T-shirt with Clean Air Be Fair written on it in black ink. Behind her stood Jenny and another woman from Kerry’s group, both wearing black T-shirts with a hand-drawn white stack, circled in red with a line through the middle like the old Ban the Bomb symbols.
‘Geoff’s with the kids. Where do you want us to stand?’ Pam asked. ‘I’ve organised the trucks to follow us in convoy down the street and they’ll pull up down the block from the Town Hall, except for our truck with Geoff and the kids which will go last and pull up opposite the Town Hall.’ She stood with her hands on her hips waiting for Kerry’s response.
Kerry hopped out of the car and Aimee followed her. ‘Well … well, I guess we should spread out amongst the marchers, share out the banners and placards and that,’ she suggested. ‘Do you want to give us a hand to unload them?’
‘We want you up the front, Kerry,’ stressed Jenny, walking with her to the back of the van.
‘Yeh, we want you to lead us off,’ the other woman said firmly, picking a curled-up banner from the boot. ‘What’s on this one?’
She watched Kerry pause momentarily and stare past the woman to the crowd up the street, then past the row of trucks beside them to the kids down the end. Kerry straightened up.
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