An Alice Girl

by Tanya Heaslip

  Before long, Adam and Sharon were part of our gang, which meant they got roped in to do all sorts of jobs. One of those was taking care of the ‘fairy stone’.

  It was a beautiful old white stone, thick and square, that sat in the fork of the homestead road. Mum said it was the home of the tooth fairies. ‘But the fairies will only come if you keep the stone perfectly clean,’ she warned.

  Every time someone lost a tooth, we would rush down to the fairy stone with buckets of soap and water and brushes, and scrub it from top to bottom. Once that was done, someone would be delegated to go and get Mum.

  ‘Mum, come and look!’ we’d say, pulling her by the hand until she came to inspect our handiwork. Her role was to declare whether or not it reached the Fairy Standard: glowing white. We would huddle around her anxiously as she inspected every part of the stone until she pronounced it fit for the fairies’ visit.

  The next morning we would race back to the stone, where it was always waiting for us, bright in the morning sunshine. The person who’d lost the tooth was allowed to put their finger underneath, while the rest of us crowded around, holding our breath. Lo and behold—there was always a sparkling silver coin underneath.

  Magic!

  Another wonderful thing about that year was that the Gemmells brought the first-ever television to Bond Springs. We could hardly believe our luck.

  It was a small black-and-white box, with a very large aerial that Uncle Pete pushed high up into the sky. The reception was patchy, and it often lost coverage, but we were used to sounds of static, and just thrilled to see flickering, moving images when we could.

  One day, Aunty Jill came down, smiling her beautiful smile. ‘On Sunday nights, there’s going to be an Australian serial starting called A Taste for Blue Ribbons. It’s about horses and children. Would you like to come down and watch it with Adam and Sharon?’

  Would we?!

  ‘Thank you, Aunty Jill!’ M’Lis, Brett and I fell over ourselves to say. We could hardly wait until the following Sunday night.

  Mum made us eat dinner first, and then we rushed down to Aunty Jill’s, where we curled up in front of the screen and waited for the show to begin. There was some lovely music and then a girl and a horse came on. Soon, we were completely lost in its spell. By the end, M’Lis and I were in love with the heroine of the show, who was heartbroken when she learned her father was going to sell her horse to help pay off the family debt. She was very pretty and brave, and a beautiful rider. Brett didn’t care very much about the girl but was impressed by the horses and riding. We spent most of the next week discussing Blue Ribbons and hoped Aunty Jill would let us come back for the next episode.

  Luckily, she did. It was our first television serial and we were hooked.

  Around that time, we also started listening to a wireless serial. It was called Cattleman, and covered the sagas of a brave cattleman from the bush called Dan McCready. It came on at 4.30 in the afternoon, beginning with the crack of stock whips and ‘Har hup there!’ We felt like we knew Cattleman personally and huddled around the wireless in the kitchen to listen breathlessly as he faced his latest dramas and adventures on horseback.

  We were drawn to these stories because they were all about our lives: horses, cattle, the bush, and they inspired us to make up and put on our own plays. Most of ours focused on cattle duffers, Cowboys and Indians, and life out in the stock camp. But after reading some of the Braitlings’ comics, we decided to expand our repertoire. We decided to terrify the grown-ups with masks, ghosts and tragic deaths.

  Our best-ever play was The Deathly Murders.

  Rehearsals were serious business. We dressed up in Mum’s sheets and painted our faces with black texta. We leaped about screaming and thrusting cardboard daggers into each other. With moans and groans we all fell about on the lawn until we were all dead. On the big night, we put chairs on the lawn and made the grown-ups sit and watch. We couldn’t believe it—they collapsed off their chairs laughing.

  We were outraged.

  One Easter, Dad flew us out to Mount Doreen, and we kids decided to hold a church service. We set up chairs on the Braitlings’ lawn and made everyone sit on them, while we all took turns solemnly reading out extracts from Mr Braitling’s school bible.

  ‘Now we will have collection,’ I announced.

  ‘What do you mean, hand over our money?’ asked Mrs Braitling, perplexed, as we went to every adult with a tray we’d borrowed from her kitchen, requesting they put coins on it.

  ‘It’s collection time,’ we declared. ‘It’s church.’

  Surely it was obvious.

  ‘Will we get our money back?’

  ‘No.’

  Of course not. Sometimes grown-ups asked very silly questions.

  Our next idea was to set up a shop.

  On the way out of Alice sat a small enclave of shops called Northside, and our favourite shop tucked away in there was Hoppy’s. It was a tiny store that sold bread, milk, fritz sausages and other essentials—but best of all, lollies. Mum would invariably stop at it on the way out of town to pick up last-minute goods. We would tumble into the shop after our guitar lessons and gaze longingly at the milk bottles, red and yellow snakes, raspberry jubes, white-and-pink teeth and piles of chocolate freckles.

  ‘Please, please, please, Mum, can we have some?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? Please please please!’

  ‘Because they’ll rot your teeth.’

  ‘Pleeeeeease, Mum.’

  ‘No, I said no. Enough, I’m getting cross.’

  So, we had to come up with a better plan. And we did.

  ‘Mum, we’ve got an idea. Can we please set up a shop, just like Hoppy’s? We can buy the things from the shop and sell them to everyone at home.’

  Eventually we wore Mum down. We borrowed the princely sum of five dollars from her and bought enough milk bottles, snakes, teeth and freckles to rot the teeth of everyone on the station. Then we set up a table with a tablecloth on the veranda and made everyone passing buy lollies from us. It was enormously successful.

  We didn’t see the money again. I suspect Mum took it all back from us.

  26

  All the Games That We Could Play

  One of the big events on the station was the monthly outing to get a ‘killer’. Dad would drive out in his Land Rover and shoot one of his cattle to provide meat for the station, and we always went to help.

  Our first job was to pull leaves off the mulga trees and make a ground carpet to place the dead beast on. That way it wouldn’t get dirt and ants on it when it was being carved up (or at least, it minimised the risk). Dad usually brought one of the stockmen to help and they used very sharp knives.

  After doing our bit, we were allowed to blow up the lungs. This was the most fantastic game and we each waited impatiently for our turn. We’d grown up with branding, castrating and seeing dead animals throughout the bush, and were unfazed by a bit of ‘blood and guts’. The lungs were always slippery, covered in gunk and hard to hold onto, and our mouths would be surrounded by a bright red ‘O’. Huge amounts of huffing and puffing were required from our little chests but wow—the result was a miracle! It seemed amazing that we could blow into the lungs of a dead animal and see them rise and fall with our breath. It was like we were bringing it back to life. We laughed hysterically and fell over ourselves to do it again and again.

  We could make a game out of anything, anywhere, with whatever we had. Then Dad would order us to gather more leaves, which meant the fun was over, and we’d be back to work. These leaves would be packed on the floor of the tray of the Land Rover. The men would then heave the lumps of quivering beef into the tray, and we would undertake our final, very important job: sitting on the meat all the way back to the homestead, using extra leaves to brush off flies, and stopping the meat from falling off.

  One of the things we loved most about sitting on the back was the wind in our hair and our faces. We felt so free and alive being on
the back of the vehicles and never sat in the front unless we had to. We were rarely offered a seat anyway, because the men always took them. ‘Kids and dogs on the back,’ was the old bush saying, and we never complained. Clutching the bars of the vehicle, with a 360-degree view around us and the ground hurtling underneath, was almost as good as flying.

  Once we arrived home, the men took the lumps to the meat house, and further dissected it into its various cuts that could be stored. Some larger cuts would be hung up and left in the meat house if they needed to be tenderised over a long time. Cuts that would be eaten immediately—such as steak—were put into the cold room. The whole process was a long and difficult business and required great skill from Dad and whoever was helping him.

  But once it was all over, it was time for a celebration. Rib bones on the barbecue!

  It was the highlight of our month. We would all have a bath and clean up first. Mum would butter lots of bread and bring out tomato sauce. We would all gather around the barbecue, where Dad was in charge of cooking. It was a huge event and everyone on the station looked forward to the monthly feast.

  When the rib bones were crispy and cooked perfectly, we would line up to get a plateful. Then we’d sit cross-legged on the lawn with our heaped plates, chewing and gnawing like happy dogs. Dad’s rules were clear: we couldn’t go back for seconds until we could show that our current bones were completely white. If there was even a tiny bit of meat left visible, Dad would shake his head.

  ‘You can do better than that! Come back when you’ve done a proper job.’

  Adam Gemmell became a pro at getting the rib bones white, and Dad always nodded approvingly at his efforts.

  ‘Good work, Adam! You’re showing ’em how it should be done.’ Dad also cooked what he called curly gut—the inside lining of the beast’s stomach—but we hated it and wouldn’t eat it. It was grey and rubbery and, we thought, tasted disgusting. Dad always told us it was good for us (and he ate it, as did the stockmen) but we knew we’d have fresh steak for the next week and said we’d wait for that. Fresh steak was the treat before we had to resume our usual diet of corned beef and curried beef, each dish created by Mum extending the life of the beef for the rest of the month.

  After we’d stuffed ourselves with rib bones, it was usually time for a concert. We would make up plays with songs to entertain the adults on the lawn. Adam and even Sharon and Benny were dragged into it. Sometimes the Peterkins came out for the celebration, and the three Peterkin boys were forced into our plays whether they liked it or not.

  ‘Does Uncle Grant always carry a stockwhip with him?’ Adam asked me one day.

  I thought about it, but not for long. ‘Yep.’

  Dad usually walked around the station with his stockwhip looped around his shoulder. He would unroll it and give it a crack if anyone or anything was out of line. The sound of that crack would make our knees tremble.

  Stockwhips were also an important part of a cattleman’s set of tools, along with his pocket knife used for cutting micky bulls and cutting out snake venom, a fence strainer to prop up leaning strands of wire, and of course, his saddle and bridle. All bush men had to be able to do whatever was required in the middle of nowhere: fix bores, drive trucks, muster cattle, break in horses, and a stockwhip always came in handy.

  Stockwhips were so important that Slim Dusty sang about them. The incredibly sad ballad ‘The Dying Stockman’ summed it up for us. The young stockman’s last request was to be buried with his stockwhip and blanket, deep below the coolibah tree, safely away from the dingoes and crows. He also wanted a picture of his stockwhip carved onto a sapling to be placed over his grave so other stockmen would know he lay there. That song always brought a terribly big lump to our throats.

  Stockwhips were also dangerous.

  As kids, we’d all tried to crack the stockwhip, and whipped ourselves by mistake. We all knew how much it stung. It bit into our bodies, removed skin in a second, and left us with long red welts that often bled.

  If we did something wrong, Dad would make us all stand before him, and flick it up and down near his own leg. We’d flinch at the likelihood he might use it against us. Not that he ever did, but then again, there was always a first time, depending on how naughty we’d been. We never knew whether one day he might actually change his mind and use it. So, we’d all be white faced and beg forgiveness and say we’d never do it again, whatever ‘it’ was.

  Didn’t matter who’d misbehaved—we’d all be called to account—so Adam had a vested interest in knowing.

  One of the things we were never allowed to do was go anywhere near Dad’s precious, private bar. And that was one thing we never, ever did.

  Not one of us. Ever.

  On winter weekend nights, though, we were all allowed to crowd around the sitting-room fire, which was next door to Dad’s bar. Then we could play our records on our little red record player. We were even allowed to make noise and sing along. We loved those evenings. Adam and Sharon would join in and it was our own special time.

  We always laughed at Slim Dusty’s ‘Pub with No Beer’, because by now we knew how important beer was in the bush. And ‘Cunnamulla Fella’, because we all knew a cheeky stockman like that. We were also wide-eyed at the ‘From the Gulf to Adelaide’ where a bunch of hopeless drovers took on thirty thousand crocodiles. We certainly knew pessimistic bush blokes like ‘Happy Jack’ and felt deeply miserable but deeply connected to songs like ‘How Will I Go With Him, Mate?’ and ‘By a Fire of Gidgee Coal’.

  Charley Pride’s songs ‘Banks of the Ohio’ and ‘Cotton Fields’ weren’t much happier but they didn’t relate to losses in our world. For us they were fun. We would listen to them on the record player and then we’d get out our guitars. We’d strum the first chord of ‘Cotton Fields’, then belt out the song like we were twelve-bar blues professionals.

  Those songs helped M’Lis and me learn to harmonise.

  We did a great take of Charley Pride’s ‘The Snakes Crawl at Night’, because that’s exactly what they did in our part of the world, and ‘Kaw Liga’, which ended with a fantastic opportunity to howl like a dingo. ‘Kaw LigAHHHHHHHHH,’ we’d all howl at the tops of our voices until Mum came rushing in to say, ‘Keep it down, you kids. We can’t hear ourselves think out here!’

  And then there were all the really sad Slim Dusty and Charley Pride songs. Nor could we forget Ted Egan’s unbearably poignant ‘Drover’s Boy’. There were just so many sad songs in the bush. Kids, dogs, horses, people, life … always loss, grief, hardship, because—as Slim Dusty reminded us, and we all agreed—it was a hard, hard country.

  Nostalgia was built into us from an early age.

  Benny and Sharon were both about four years old by now and joined at the hip. Because there were so many people around, they generally ran free and wild, and most of the time nobody really knew what they were up to. But mostly they were up to trouble.

  One day Papa Parnell was visiting and he brought his old, long-haired cat, Sylvester.

  Sharon and Ben thought Sylvester’s grey coat was a boring colour and decided to do something about it. So they found some pink paint in the shed and painted a stripe down Sylvester’s back. By the time Sylvester finally escaped their clutches he was most indignant and marched off with his tail in the air, meowing crossly. Benny and Sharon followed, giggling all the way and admiring their handiwork. At some point, they had the presence of mind to think they should wipe it off before Papa Parnell caught them. So they grabbed the poor old cat again and rubbed and rubbed his back. To their dismay, the very pink paint wouldn’t come off. Sylvester meowed even more crossly. Undeterred, they thought they would clean it off instead. Heading to an outside toilet, they put Sylvester into the toilet, and flushed him. At some point Mum heard the cat’s shrieks and raced out and saved Sylvester’s life.

  ‘I can’t put up with another moment of you kids!’ Mum declared furiously, after she pulled the equally furious cat out of the toilet. Turning to Benny and
Sharon, now twitching before her, she said, ‘Out of my hair. And Sharon, you have to go home to your mum now.’

  Then she marched back to the kitchen to address the never-ending tasks of cooking and cleaning.

  So, Benny and Sharon headed back up to Aunty Jill’s house.

  Benny put his head through the door and said, ‘Aunty Jill, can I please have lunch here? Mum’s a bit cranky today.’

  Benny and Sharon’s next exploit was branding the chooks.

  Adam and Sharon’s grandmother was up from Adelaide, and Mum brought her, and Aunty Jill, out to the west side of the station one day to see us doing the yard work. This involved drafting, branding and castrating (aka cutting) the micky bulls.

  Dad always did the cutting if he was present, because it was a very important job to do well, and he was always careful and protective of his cattle. There were many micky bulls to be cut on that day and subsequently lots of bloodied bits of balls being thrown onto the ground. We started throwing them about and one hit Adam’s grandmother in the face; she was not at all happy.

  There was much apologising, but Benny and Sharon saw it all, as well as the branding, and they thought it was marvellous. When the pair got home, they decided they should brand the chooks. They didn’t have a branding iron, so they came up with another solution. They snuck into the chook yard and grabbed every chook and shoved it into the water trough, head and all.

  Mum rushed out of the house to the hideous shriek of drowning chooks. She managed to save them but they went off laying eggs for over a week after that and she was livid. Eggs were an essential daily ingredient in all her cooking. Steak and eggs for breakfast, and cakes, were staples of the station diet. Unfortunately for an entire week, things were a bit grim on the food front, as was Mum’s ‘health and humour’, as she liked to call it.