Babies born between November and January might not see rain till August. The sound of it teeming against the tin roofs would see them screaming hysterically at their mothers’ breasts. If it did rain in summer, the smell was so strong and so sweet against the dry that I’d think nothing of flinging myself face down in the dust just to breathe it all in. When big drops pounded on my back I’d emerge, mud-faced and ecstatic, to dance in the rain with my sister.
The farmers, their wives and the townspeople were always amazed and dismayed at the changing of the seasons. Aunty Boo said they were gammon because the country always turns. The seasons turned and turned again as the river swelled and shrank, dictating the course of all life surrounding it.
In the August rains the Murrumbidgee would swell. Sometimes it would devour the trees on the flood plain. As the waters shrank the river gums were adorned for months afterwards with the slender skeletons of the cattle and sheep swept away in flash floods. As the big brown waters receded further through September, the land was bountiful with ducks, fish, goanna, kookaburra, platypus, frogs, snakes, grass and flowers.
Through October the green faded from the tall grass. The river swell subsided to a flow. Grass lilies of red, flame, umber, yellow, blue, pink, purple, mauve, cream and white carpeted the hills. November saw the river flow slow and ebb as the grasses turned from olive to russet. The lilies wilted as the sun burned, drawing the last reserves of water from the earth. The musky, stagnant smell of drying water was pungent. In December the grasses were bone and the lilies became brown bolls that shook in the hot winds. Moths, butterflies and beetles made their way to the hills for some reprieve from the swelter to come.
The January dryness snapped the life and moisture from the grass and leaves. The earth faded from red to brown to beige. Country baked. Creeks became waterholes and the river struggled. Stranded frogs fled stalking snakes. February frazzled. The earth on the hills baked white and the quartz crystal caught in the sun’s rays projected amethyst, rose and blue through the long days.
Through March and April the days eased and the evenings began to bite. Night fires were lit. Grasses and reeds sprouted along the river. In May, cool winds blew in from the south, heralding the winter. June was dry, crisp ice that coated the hills and clung to the naked boughs like beads. Ankle-deep emerald grass was sugar-coated with frost. Intricate, dew-clad spider webs spanned bare branches. By July blankets of fog engulfed the river and roads. Then the rain set in. August saw big swells and deep waters engorge the river again. Country turned and turned again, resilient.
One baking January, Alfi Schutz moved in to the old workers’ hut on Cooper’s farm, down the hill and across the road. Old man Cooper had survived the big drought of ’64 by selling off all his stock, moving his family to town and sacking all his workers. The winter rains had been good the year before and promised to be good again this season, and while he had no intention of moving his missus and kids back to the homestead he had plans to revitalise the farm.
Old man Cooper hired Alfi Schutz to clear his land and shoot out all the kangaroos, stray dogs and feral animals. Aunty Boo said she heard from the Aunties in town that Alfi came out west to avoid some trouble in Sydney. He had a reputation as a deadly shot. He drove an old battered ute with meat hooks hung across the back bars. Pretty soon we saw the ugly evidence of his work. Carcasses of stray dogs, foxes and cats hung putrid and flyblown from Cooper’s fences. Sometimes the stench of rotting flesh travelled all the way to our house on the hot afternoon wind.
‘I’d like to hang that one on a barbed-wire fence by his hind leg,’ Aunty Boo said as she stared out the window at Alfi’s latest victims. ‘Can’t let the bloody dogs outta me sight now.’
‘Must be some woman up there,’ Nan said. ‘Cleaned up the front o’ the house real nice.’
‘Liked it betta when the whole bloody farm was empty,’ Aunty Boo huffed.
That was the summer Milli and Annie came to us.
The boundaries for us kids changed when Alfi moved in. We used to think nothing of playing down at Cooper’s empty place and swinging off the big pepper trees that shaded the workers’ hut. The wild orchards between our place and Cooper’s were something special in summer. Big mulberry trees drooped with purple fruit and apricots shone golden in the sun. My sister and I lolled away long hot afternoons in the boughs. The fallen fruit was so thick on the ground that it squelched orange and purple through our toes.
We weren’t allowed to go to the fruit trees any more, once Alfi moved in. Aunty Boo told us kids she’d kick our arses if she saw us anywhere within cooee of Cooper’s place. We knew she meant it.
Our house was a set of rough timber rooms built around three solid chimneys. It had a wide veranda made of creek stone. When it rained in winter the sound on the tin roof was so deafening we had to shout at each other to be heard as we ran around rescuing animals and putting buckets under leaks.
In winter it was too cold to sleep in the back bedroom. Star and I slept on big chairs by the kitchen fire while the women talked late into the night. In summer it was often too hot and we slept on cane couches by the kitchen screen door to catch the breeze wherever we bedded down.
I always kept one ear open until I fell asleep. I learnt a lot. But when the Aunties talked about the Schutz family, they lowered their voices, and Aunty Boo always snorted and referred to Alfi as ‘him’.
Sometimes when Star and I looked down the hill beyond the ragged curtain of decaying flesh that creaked in the wind, we’d catch glimpses of a small figure in a faded cotton dress. She’d wear her broom straws to the nub sweeping dust and grit from the front of the hut until the ground at Cooper’s glistened blistering red. We suspected that the rammed earth floors inside shone in the same way.
Summer burnt out as it always did. The land looked tired and pale that February, but the sun had lost its bite. It meant the end of our freedom and back to school.
We met Milli on the road that February. She was walking to town. Annie looked like a little monkey as she clung with her legs to the bump on Milli’s stomach. Although summer’s back was broken, the day was hot and dusty. Aunty Boo pulled over.
‘Want a ride to town, darl?’
Milli tilted her hat forward and spoke to the ground. Annie buried her face in her mother’s chest.
‘Um, yes please, if it’s no trouble.’
‘Jump in the front with the little fella.’
Aunty shot us a look that told us to move into the back. Milli climbed in the front.
‘How old is the little one?’ Aunty Boo asked as she pulled away.
‘Not two yet, missus,’ Milli spoke to the dashboard.
Aunty laughed. ‘No “missus”, babe. Jus’ call me Boo.’
‘I’m Milli,’ she said to the floor. ‘Baby’s name is Annie.’
Despite our best efforts my sister and I couldn’t coax Annie to play with us. She was shy and kept to her mother’s chest. My attention turned to the dark ring around Milli’s eye. My sister and I were no strangers to bruises on our legs and arms from all the trees we climbed, but we’d never seen a black eye before.
‘What happened to your eye?’ I called from the back seat.
Aunty Boo gave a loud snort like she always did if I asked the wrong question to the wrong person and I knew I was going to be jarred for it as soon as she got me on my own.
‘I slipped an’ fell when I was workin’ outside,’ Milli muttered to the door.
I didn’t see what Aunty Boo was fussing about.
‘Is that what happened to ya lip as well?’ Star chirped.
Aunty Boo snorted so loudly that Annie gave a little yelp. Star and I knew we were going to get it.
‘Mmmm . . .’ Milli said to the window.
Aunty jarred us up as soon as we dropped Milli at the hospital. She was wild and shook her finger hard
at us.
‘I’ll kick ya little arses if I ever hear youse kids askin’ questions like that an’ shamin’ people – ’specially women an’ kids.’
When I tried to tell her that it wasn’t anything to worry about because Milli just slipped, Aunty Boo got even wilder and shut me up pretty quick.
‘You jus’ talk about somethin’ good on the way home, girl, like the nice bubby she’s got.’
We knew she meant it.
‘He gave that poor little thing a real shiner,’ Aunty Boo told Nan and Aunty Bubby later that night.
I guessed ‘shiner’ was something to do with the eye I wasn’t meant to talk about. I kept one ear open to see if Aunty Boo told Nan and Aunty Bubby about how I shamed Milli with my question. But she didn’t. I reckoned it was because I’d promised to think hard before I asked questions, particularly when it came to strangers.
Milli used to ride to town with us every week after that. She always went on days when Alfi’s ute was nowhere in sight of the hut. Annie got to know us and rode with us in the back seat while we sang songs. Nan and Aunty Bubby met Milli at the roadside mailbox where they collected our weekly mail. Not long afterwards Aunty Bubby told us Milli was going to have another baby. Nan said round the fire that Milli was a dear little thing. Aunty Bubby said it was a damn shame for her. I wasn’t sure what ‘it’ was, but I remembered the questions deal.
One day on the road to Gundagai, Milli told us that Alfi had worked on the railways in Sydney and that he liked dogs and horses. I wondered how this could be since he shot so many, but I didn’t want to get jarred so I held my tongue.
Cooper’s place backed onto big hills that ran all the way to Tumut and on to Canberra. In the years that the place was empty the fences had sagged. The workers’ hut was huddled in the middle of a small valley in between the creek and more hills that shrank as the land flattened to plains. Wild dogs, horses, goats, cats and foxes strayed down from the hills to the fringes of the bush that was the farm that Cooper claimed. Alfi shot them all.
Nan cut up a flannel sheet to make a blanket and clothes for Annie. Milli looked happy when Star and I passed them to her through the fence near the mailbox. Aunty Boo kept a look out with her snake weapon, even though it was now autumn.
Milli never ventured beyond the fence into our paddock, or came to our house. My sister and I wondered why, since she’d gotten so friendly with us in the car and by the mailbox. But I soon learnt.
‘Poor little thing must be real lonely down there all on her own with no company only him,’ Aunty Bubby said late one night as she set the big basket of ironing on the kitchen table.
‘He’d flog her if he knew she was friendly with the likes of us,’ Aunty Boo added.
I’d heard about floggings from the Aunties’ stories. And at school we read about convicts. I shivered under my blanket and wondered why anyone would want to flog Milli just for talking to us.
Light rains fell that autumn and mushrooms sprouted in bucketfuls on the creek flat. Moss like green fur spoored across the shaded granite overhangs on the hill. The reeds by the creek rustled with the sound of wood ducklings hatching and scuttling from their nests. The snakes were sleeping underground now, and my sister and I were free to roam the hill when we weren’t at school.
We picked up Milli one drizzly May morning. The bump on her stomach had grown so big she had to carry Annie on her back like a little possum.
‘Alfi’s takin’ me ta stay in town next week till the baby comes,’ she said.
‘Mmmm . . .’ Aunty Boo considered.
‘He’s organised for me ta stay above the pub with Mrs Slattery till my time comes an’ I can do some cookin’ an’ cleanin’ for her in return.’
‘Sure you’ll be all right, darl?’ Aunty Boo asked gently.
‘Yes thanks,’ Milli said to the floor.
I leaned forward on my seat and craned my neck waiting for Aunty Boo to ask Milli why the hell she wanted to stay at the pub. I heard the women time and time again talking about the evils of drink. Aunty Bubby told us to steer clear of drinking houses at all times. Aunty Boo said if she ever saw Star and me anywhere near a pub she’d kick our arses till our noses bled. It was my lifetime ambition to catch one of my Aunties out doing something that they’d told me not to do. I anticipated that this might be one such occasion. I could jar her for asking questions. But she didn’t. She changed the subject.
‘Soon there’ll be lotsa little winter lambs, hey, girls?’ she called into the back.
On Sundays our cousins from the other side of town came out to the farm. They were our only visitors. Aunty Rose and her big mob of kids always wanted to see Nan. One Sunday Aunty Rose told us that Milli had had a little baby boy.
‘Named ’im Willie,’ Aunty Rose said as she stuffed her mouth with Nan’s boiled pudding. ‘Heard ’e’s a real pretty little fella too, I did!’
Nan cut up another sheet for baby clothes and bedding. Aunty Bubby searched through her big pile of magazines for knitting patterns. I couldn’t wait to see the baby.
Aunty Boo had us stacking the wood shed and wash house with dry logs and kindling for winter when we heard the rattle and jangle of meat hooks on the road below, leading to Cooper’s.
‘Be him with Milli an’ the little fellas,’ Aunty Boo said as she hustled the dogs inside.
A few days later we saw Milli, Annie and the new baby at the mailbox. I was disappointed because he was swaddled up so tight in Nan’s blanket and Aunty Bubby’s bonnet that I could hardly see him. Aunty Bubby said he looked lovely.
After that, the days turned dark and the fog around the river in the mornings was so thick we had to drive all the way to school at a snail’s pace, with the headlights blazing. Milli didn’t come to town with us any more. Mrs Slattery from the pub sent boxes of groceries out with the mailman. Despite the inclement weather Alfi went to town every evening. We’d hear the jangle of meat hooks on the back of his ute as he went.
Country oozed water that winter. It fell from the sky and rose from the ground. Water from the hills met swollen river flats and turned wheat plains to swamplands. Big floods washed away the farmers’ profits and losses in one giant tongue of brown water.
‘Gunna be a wet one this year,’ Nan said as she stepped back and looked with satisfaction at the roof-high pile of wood we’d made on the veranda.
By August the rain had really set in, steady at first but swelling with each day. One dark afternoon Aunty Boo picked us up early from school. The low-hanging clouds were bluish-black, like the bruises we saw on Milli’s face.
‘Won’t stop fer weeks now, girls.’ The old Ford crawled through sheets of water on the road. ‘Come t’night, reckon the road’ll be cut!’
Aunty Bubby had all the baby lambs under the kitchen stove; the sheep were taking refuge on hessian bags by the copper in the wash shed. Nan made us toast and jam and we settled in by the fire with the lambs. The rain was so heavy we didn’t hear the jangle of Alfi’s meat hooks when he set off for town that evening.
The driving rain broke into a wild storm. Thunder bounced between the peaks of the hills and made the plates on the dresser shake. My sister and I wriggled on Aunty Bubby’s lap as she read to us. The dogs couldn’t settle either. Nan paced the kitchen and said she felt a bit like the dogs. The storm howled. Ginger made low growling sounds and Gypsy’s ears twitched and her fur stood on end.
When Aunty Boo checked the window, she saw a dim torchlight making its way to Cooper’s hut. ‘Must be him.’ She jerked her head in the direction of the road. ‘Musta got ’is truck bogged on the dirt road by the turn-off an’ ’ad to walk home.’
The storm roared on. It was an uneasy night. We might have heard something had it not been for the rain on the roof. The thunder was so loud you couldn’t have heard a cannon blast above it. The dogs woke us long before Milli
had made it to the veranda. Aunty Bubby was on her feet with the door open and Aunty Boo was standing right behind the door with her snake stick as Milli came into the light with the baby and Annie under her coat.
I said nothing about the blood on her hands and face. Come to think of it, no one did. Nan just grabbed the baby and Aunty Bubby prised Annie’s little hands from her mother’s skirt and handed her to Star and me before she rushed Milli off to the wash shed with a big steaming kettle of water.
Milli looked like a ghost when she came back wearing one of Nan’s dresses. Nan tucked her up in her big bed with her sleeping babies and some tea and toast.
‘Donchya worry none, Milli-girl,’ Nan said.
But I heard Milli crying.
I was surprised to see Aunty Bubby and Aunty Boo walk back into the kitchen in their gumboots and raincoats. I wondered where they could be going so late, but I knew better than to ask.
Nan didn’t ask either, just shook a gnarled finger. ‘Youse girls be careful.’
The Aunties nodded, and Aunty Boo called, ‘Come on, Gyp! Where are ya, Ginger?’
Gypsy and Ginger bounded to the door and Aunty Boo grabbed her snake stick from the corner and flung the front door open. I saw the wheelbarrow and shovel outside. The women disappeared into the storm.
‘Where d’ya think they’re goin’?’ I whispered to Star while Nan was comforting Milli.
‘Prob’ly goin’ rescuin’. Had the wheelbarra an’ shovel, didn’t they?’ she said.
‘Hmmm . . .’ I thought for a while but something didn’t seem quite right. ‘Why d’ya reckon she took that snake stick with ’er on a wet winter night?’
But Star’s eyes were shut.
I dozed by the fire too. Nan started cleaning the house and making damper. She packed up Milli’s wet bloody clothes and threw them into the copper fire in the wash shed. She finally sat down beside the hearth and took up her knitting. The rain was relentless.
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