An Alice Girl

by Tanya Heaslip

  Our plays and stories would continue until we heard the door open at the other end of the outside veranda next to the kitchen and we knew someone was coming to check on us.

  If it was Mum, we knew she’d be cross, but she would forgive us. If it was Miss Thiele, she’d just be cross. However, if we heard Dad’s boots clomping down the outside veranda, we’d be galvanised into terrified action.

  Brett would flee back to his room, with Benny struggling along in tow, his pilchers squish-squish-squishing all the way until Brett pushed him safely into bed. M’Lis and I would dive under the covers, hearts beating wildly, heroes and heroines of our stories to the last.

  20

  Jane Joseland—My New Friend

  I longed to meet my School of the Air friend, Jane Joseland, in real life. But she lived hundreds of kilometres south of Alice Springs, so it seemed impossible.

  However, when Mum and Dad were invited to the Oodnadatta races to stay with the Greenwoods, I knew I had my chance. Jane would be there—competing in the gymkhana, no less!

  Benny would go with Mum and Dad. So, I begged to go, too.

  ‘But what about M’Lis and Brett?’ asked Mum. We’d never been apart before, except in emergencies.

  ‘Yes, what about us?’ echoed M’Lis, her big eyes wide with dismay.

  I felt a wrench in my stomach. ‘It’s just for a weekend,’ I said, lamely.

  It showed how much I wanted to meet Jane that I was prepared to leave M’Lis. Indeed, I was torn. I couldn’t bear to miss this opportunity, yet I felt bad about M’Lis and Brett. In the end Mum

  made the decision for me. She called Mrs Joseland on the sked, and with me hovering at my end, and Jane at hers, both mothers agreed we could do this.

  Looking back, Mum was incredibly kind to give me this chance, especially because I was receiving an opportunity that M’Lis and Brett weren’t. Mum was always determined that no child should be treated differently to the others, but I think she realised I needed to start meeting people and developing friendships beyond my own home and family. I didn’t realise that, of course. I just knew I wanted to meet Jane.

  The night before we flew to Oodna, I could hardly sleep. The next morning, we took off and the wings of DQG glinted in the sunlight as we soared south. I sat at the front with Dad. I felt so lucky to be up there in the air with him, and to have him all to myself. Mum sat in the back with Benny, no doubt relieved to have most of the back to herself, too. By the time we landed on the gibber stones of Oodna mid-morning and headed to the racecourse, my sense of anticipation was at fever pitch.

  It was bedlam at the racecourse. Hundreds of people gathered around an enormous dirt track. Dust rose in the air, and underfoot. Horses galloped around and around; there were so many kids and adults. The bar was doing a busy trade. I even spied a fairy-floss and toffee-apple stall.

  My heart pounded as we headed towards the stables to meet Jane. I’d never been so nervous in my life. Jane and I had talked every day on School of the Air for several years and we’d declared each other our best friend, but would we know each other in real life? Would I even recognise her?

  Mum said I needn’t worry. She had plaited my hair, and attached red ribbons on the end of each plait, and said I looked smart. Of course, I was wearing my best press-stud shirt and trousers. And I’d polished my riding boots until they shone. Mum held my hand.

  Next minute, a girl with a shock of blonde hair emerged from a mob crowding around the stables. She had a snub nose and freckles scattered across her face, plus the cheekiest grin I’d ever seen. She was wearing riding clothes covered in dust and strode along with complete confidence, leading a bay horse. It had to be Jane! She was followed by a slim, glamorous woman with blonde hair swept back into a French roll, leading a grey horse. Jane’s mum, I was sure of it.

  ‘Jane?’ I squeaked.

  ‘Tanya?’ the girl giggled.

  She giggled some more and we had a quick hug, after which I looked down awkwardly at my embarrassingly overshined boots.

  Jane’s mum smiled at me and said hello to Mum. She was wearing a soft pink blouse with a bright-pink scarf at her neck, moleskins and riding boots. How impressive to have a mother who was competing in the events and still looked so glamorous!

  Jane introduced her bay mare, Lucy, to me. ‘We’ve just won the Bending race!’ she enthused, handing me a blue ribbon to look at. I admired it and patted Lucy’s nose.

  ‘Come on!’ Jane grabbed my hand. ‘I have to get ready for the next event. Let’s go!’

  I looked at Mum, who nodded, smiling, and I trotted after Jane. I still could hardly believe I had finally met my best friend from School of the Air, and how self-assured, brave and successful she was in real life!

  As we reached the rails, two young Aboriginal kids ran past, waving and speaking to Jane in their language. She grinned and spoke back to them.

  I stared at her.

  ‘Yeah, I speak Pitjantjatjara,’ she said, as if it were an everyday thing. ‘Mum said I could speak Pitjantjatjara before I could speak English.’

  ‘Are they your friends?’

  ‘Yeah. Those are the kids who live on Everard Park with us.’

  I took this in. I knew Jane had three older brothers. Two of them were already at boarding school. She was much younger than them all. So, her playmates were the Pitjantjatjara kids? My playmates were M’Lis, Brett and Benny. And I was the eldest, not the youngest. Jane and I were different in so many ways. She seemed so clever, so free-spirited.

  I was star-struck. And it didn’t take long to learn that Jane had stardust in her veins. Her glamorous mother, Helen Grieve, was actually a film star.

  As a young girl, Helen had starred in two iconic Australian movies: The Overlanders and Bush Christmas. The first was with Daphne Calder, a local celebrity in Alice Springs, and the famous Australian actor Chips Rafferty. The Overlanders was partly filmed near Alice, where they drove a huge mob of cattle across the MacDonnell Ranges.

  I longed to see the movie, and Jane promised me that we could some time.

  But even more thrilling was learning about the second movie, Bush Christmas. Helen played the eldest child in a horse-duffing movie set in the Blue Mountains, again with Chips Rafferty. Mrs Joseland, as I called her, later lent me her book of Bush Christmas. It was crammed with photo stills from the movie. There were black-and-white photographs depicting her, the other children and the horse-duffers either galloping across ravines or camping out at night, trying to keep warm and eating cooked snake. Helen was twelve when the movie was made. She had long blonde plaits and an oval-shaped face. Jane looked just like her, only younger, with wilder hair.

  By the end of the Oodna weekend, Jane and I were inseparable. We’d persuaded Mum to let me stay with Jane at her house for the whole weekend. This was a big thing—I’d never spent a night away from Mum, except with family. But I couldn’t get enough of this free-spirited bush girl who spoke two languages and was funny and fearless. Perhaps three older brothers and a stock camp of Aboriginal kids had made her that way.

  She proudly showed me her half finger. ‘It got chopped off by the meat mincer when I was a little girl,’ she explained. ‘Mum was making rissoles and I got too close. Look, it looks like it’s got a little face on it!’ Indeed, the indents of the mincer had created a little smiling face on the stub of her finger.

  Over the weekend Jane rode her way determinedly to ‘Best Girl Rider’ and won blue ribbons in almost every gymkhana event she entered. And if she didn’t come first, she came second or third. She’d come a long way since coming third in her first event!

  As we walked along between events, she held the reins of her horse in one hand, and rested the other elbow on my shoulder. I was so small, it was easy for her to do so, and seemed to me a wondrous display of affection. Every time she mounted her horse with ease and cantered off to her next event, I stood on the rail, gazing in awe. She was a natural rider and gripping to watch.

  Staying at t
he Joselands’ Oodnadatta house was eye-opening. A seemingly endless procession of people stayed or visited and the little weatherboard house overflowed with laughter and parties. Mrs Joseland wore pink lipstick and silver jewellery that jangled in a grown-up way. She seemed equally at ease entertaining guests as riding a horse. I longed to ask her if she missed being in the movies but didn’t dare.

  Mr Joseland was a big, kind man with a great moustache and even greater laugh. Both he and Mrs Joseland seemed like relaxed parents; Jane didn’t have to ask permission for much and never seemed to be in trouble.

  I curled up with Jane in her swag at night, next door to her handsome older brothers. I’d never spent time with older boys and was tongue-tied in their company. Mostly I twiddled my fingers and looked at my boots if they came near. John, the eldest, was kind and serious; Chris, next, was cheeky and charismatic; Tim, handsome and gentle.

  I quickly realised, however, that living with older brothers came with many challenges. Jane had to defend herself against Chinese burns, big brother tricks of all sorts and constant teasing. Perhaps being the youngest was not as easy as it looked.

  On the Saturday night, a family friend turned up. He and Mr Joseland took a bottle of rum up onto the roof, where they sat on the rusted-out corrugated panels in their riding boots, happily drinking and telling stories. After a while they started calling out for everyone to come and join them. Then they started dancing. And finally, they fell through the roof. Luckily, they landed right in the middle of the kitchen table, which broke the fall. They dusted themselves off and kept on dancing.

  I couldn’t imagine anything like that happening at my house.

  By the time we flew back to Bond Springs, I was worn out but elated. For the first time in my life I had connected with a friend outside of my family. Who had three older brothers. And a film-star mother. And a gregarious father who fell through a roof and didn’t miss a beat.

  All the way home I thought of my last conversation with Jane. She had said, ‘You can call me Janie, if you like. That’s what my family calls me.’

  ‘Oh,’ I stuttered as Mum led me away. ‘Okay, thanks—Janie.’

  It felt like a rite of passage.

  As I flew home, all I could think about was my new friend. Janie was a natural extrovert and I was still used to clinging to Mum’s hand or skirt. But neither of us had a friend—who was a girl—our own age, so it was an experience we shared.

  It made me feel grown-up, and enthusiastic at the opportunities ahead. Maybe Jane and I could even ride together one day.

  Jane and Mrs Joseland, between them, had offered me a peek into the outside world, and I wanted more of it.

  21

  Charlie Gorey and Bush Work

  Back home, life continued. School and work, work and school.

  Luckily for us, we had Charlie.

  We often spent days in the stock camp with just Charlie, and from the beginning he was patient and looked out for us.

  Every day, he rose at 5 a.m. to hear the start of 8HA, the Alice Springs radio station. In the stock camp we would roll over in our swags and listen to his little wireless kick off the day. It was a miracle Charlie got his wireless to work in some of the places we camped, but he almost always picked up a signal. We could always rely on 8HA to serve us up a good dose of Slim Dusty and Charley Pride early in the morning, and they were just what we needed to start the day. ‘Ribs Cooked on the Coals’ by Slim Dusty got us out of our swags, wishing and hopeful, and ‘Kiss an Angel Good Morning’ by Charley Pride always got our Charlie whistling.

  When we weren’t in the camp, Brett would often go with Charlie on the back of the motorbike. He was light and could jump off and help with opening gates, fixing fences and dealing with cattle; the kinds of jobs that were so much more difficult for a man on his own.

  One blistering summer’s day—the kind that saw the thermometer reach forty degrees by mid-morning—Brett rode out with Charlie to check a fence. Dad was worried about cattle getting stuck on the fence and perishing, so his instruction was that if they found cattle, they were to move them on towards the bore so they could get water. A routine morning’s job.

  They were about sixteen kilometres from the homestead when they hit a narrow, sandy creek. The wheels of the bike spun, and Brett and Charlie flew in different directions. The bike landed on top of Brett, smashing his leg in numerous places.

  ‘I’ve gotta walk home and get help, eh?’ said Charlie in his slow drawl, when he finally pulled himself out of the dust and the dirt. ‘You stay here. Don’t move, Brett.’

  ‘No, don’t leave me, Charlie,’ pleaded Brett, eyes dazed with pain.

  ‘Gotta go, Brett. I’ll be back, eh,’ said Charlie, limping off into the horizon.

  Brett had to lie in the dirt and the dust for several hours before Dad reached him in the old Land Rover. Mum insisted on going with him, and she recalled finding a bundle of clothes on the red earth, out of which poked a dirty, tear-streaked face and terror-stricken eyes. He was dehydrated and hallucinating about the crows picking out his eyes and the dingoes eating his innards. It was a long drive home over the bumps and dirt and spinifex.

  His leg ended up stuck into a thigh-length cast for six months. Dad built a dam nearby in later years and called it ‘Broken Leg’, so at least Brett got some recognition for his courage. And before long Brett was riding the motorbike with one leg in a cast, much to the doctor’s and Mum’s horror.

  It took Charlie a while to recover as well, and he limped everywhere for quite some time.

  The Land Rover also caused Charlie problems one early December day.

  It was the time of the year when storms started to develop in Central Australia. Dad said that our storms came from monsoons, usually off the coast of Western Australia, and that ‘the sweet spot for us is just under Jakarta’.

  I’d had to rush off and look up that new name in his Maps of the World.

  It was important to nod knowledgeably whenever Dad mentioned these kinds of things. I never wanted him to think I wasn’t as focused and worried as he was, all the time, about the weather. After all, Dad studied the weather every day as though his life depended on it, which it did. If I drifted off, or didn’t make the right kinds of comments, Dad would stare at me as though I were a dumb southerner. That was one of the greatest sins, we knew—to be a dumb southerner who had no idea what ‘life was really like here’. Dad would curtly remind me of the facts underlying his weather-worry-of-the-day, before stomping off.

  Dad’s biggest worry was that the storms wouldn’t come.

  We all longed for storms, for their life-giving, much-needed rain.

  But if a storm was wild, creeks would flood quickly and rise, taking everything with them like a raging bull. If it was big, you couldn’t see where the creek started and ended, what tangled tree limbs and debris lay underneath, what driftwood might suddenly knock you from your horse.

  We had listened to Slim Dusty sing ‘Saddle Boy’ over and over again, and it never failed to bring fear mixed with deep sorrow to the heart. A flash flood of foaming, brown water was the scariest thing in the world, after bushfires, and we feared it with our lives. We had good reason—it had taken Saddle Boy’s life.

  But on that hot December day, Charlie wasn’t thinking about flash floods. He was driving the old Land Rover along the side of the Todd River looking for dingoes. They’d been troublesome around the bore and were killing lots of calves, so Dad instructed Charlie to take his rifle and find the lair. It was always deeply upsetting to see calves with their throats ripped open, and little bodies pulled into parts, and Dad was always looking to protect his herd.

  The four-wheel drive function on the Land Rover had recently broken, and though Charlie was a very good driver, the handicapped Land Rover was no match for the grip of the big, sandy creek. He got bogged and had to walk sixteen kilometres home under an increasingly dark sky. He made it home just before the first large spots of rain started hitting the ground.<
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  When the drops got bigger still, we were torn between a range of emotions: joy at the sweet smell of rain, happiness that Mum and Dad would be happy, relief that Charlie hadn’t got swept away (like Saddle Boy) and concern for his Land Rover and rifle, as he mournfully described their parting.

  Overnight it poured with rain, and the next day it was still bucketing down, which made everyone, particularly Dad, ecstatic. His eyes sparkled. The load of the world temporarily lifted from his shoulders. He marched here and there, checking storm waters, checking the dam, checking the creek. The house creek was ‘running a banker’ by now. Dad then told us, losing his sparkle momentarily, there would be a lot of damage, especially to the floodgates.

  ‘C’mon, we’ve got to go and find my vehicle, eh?’ urged Charlie. He hadn’t slept a wink and there was no time to waste.

  ‘Why didn’t you bring your rifle home with you, anyway?’ asked Brett as we clambered into Dad’s Land Rover.

  Charlie got into the driver’s seat. ‘Too bloody heavy to carry. Thought it would be right overnight. Didn’t know it was going to rain like this, eh?’

  Charlie put the vehicle into gear and we hurtled through the rain back to the creek. It had burst its banks and was now a raging torrent.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Charlie. He even forgot the ‘eh’.

  We looked around in stunned silence. Charlie’s Land Rover was not there.

  ‘Swept away,’ we chorused, helpfully.

  Charlie was beside himself with despair and rage. That day, and for the rest of the week as the rains lessened, he returned to the site and searched for it.

  Eventually the creek went down and Charlie found the Land Rover. It was pushed up against a bank, several kilometres from where he’d left it, covered in soaking leaves, twisted branches and three inches deep in mud. Charlie rushed to it and pulled everything out, swearing in his special Queensland way as he did so. But despite his best efforts, it was clear his precious rifle was not there.