None of this deterred Benny or Sharon in the least. They continued causing trouble and having a wonderful time.
At one point, Sharon loved A Taste for Blue Ribbons so much that she decided to become a horse. Every day, she would tie herself up in the stables with bags of chaff to eat, and spent hours there. Aunty Jill would be looking everywhere for her and then they would find her, happily hidden away from everyone. Except for Benny, who was usually there too, before they both went off to cause more mischief elsewhere.
Eventually Benny and Sharon were so naughty together that Aunty Jill decided Sharon should start school early. Most of Sharon’s days were thereafter spent up in the cottage and Benny lost his playmate throughout the day. He still managed to get up to plenty of mischief on his own, but at least the cat and the chooks were reasonably safe.
We were all sad when the Gemmells left Bond Springs. Luckily they didn’t go far: just out to the Braitlings at Mount Doreen. Uncle Pete did a lot of building work for them, and when he finished they moved back to Alice, so we continued to see them all. All the families remained very close.
One day I came into Mum’s room after school to find her crying. She had clothes scattered over the bed and an open suitcase next to her.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked, looking in shock at her red-rimmed eyes.
‘Mr Crowson,’ was all she managed to say.
M’Lis joined me, and we stood there, staring at Mum. Her shoulders heaved. ‘There’s been a terrible accident. Mr Crowson has been killed. In his plane.’
We were open mouthed, not knowing how to take this in. Mum and Dad’s wonderful friend, who lived east of Katherine; husband of the feisty, glamorous Mrs Crowson; father of Billy, whom I intended to marry. Mr Crowson, who was always smiling, always fun, beloved by everyone.
It was impossible. Unthinkable.
Dad walked in, but didn’t speak. Finally, we gathered that Mr Crowson had been flying over Montejinni in his beloved plane when it crashed.
That night Mum and Dad, along with the Braitlings, flew to be with Mrs Crowson, and we were once again left in the care of Miss Thiele and Helen.
The outcome was unbearable. Mrs Crowson had to take her five bush kids several thousand kilometres south and create a new life in suburban Adelaide, far away from Katherine and Montejinni, and the only life they knew.
Mr Crowson was gone. Forever.
Dad and Mr Braitling were bereft. As were Mum and Mrs Braitling. And I was never quite able to look Billy Crowson in the eye again.
The loss of charismatic, handsome Mr Crowson threw a huge pall over all of us and I felt the grief of Mum and Dad for a long time.
27
Eeyore John Wayne
Benny was growing quickly. Whenever Papa Parnell came to stay, Benny became Papa’s little shadow. Papa would spend most of the day pottering in the garden, helping Mum with the endless sweeping of leaves and watering. Wherever Papa went, Benny was two steps behind, dragging a rake or bucket.
At lunchtime, Papa would come in and have his usual: meat and pickled-onion sandwiches. Papa was a man of habit. Benny would have the same. They would sit together: tall, silent Papa at the end of the table, with little Benny sitting by his side, eating meat and pickled onions in rough bread together.
Benny was pretty well behaved with Papa, because Papa was not someone you messed with. But when Benny wasn’t with Papa, he was constantly into mischief and causing trouble. He would mess up our books or toys or little stations in the dirt. In turn we’d yell at him. We loved him but he drove us crazy.
Mum told us off when we complained.
‘Benny’s just lonely. It’s his way of seeking attention,’ she’d say. ‘Go and play with him. Be kind to him. That’s your job.’
I knew it was my job, for sure. I was the eldest. And it was a happy job. I loved looking after him. But M’Lis, Brett and I were growing up and either in school or doing serious stock work during the days. Our lives still overlapped at night, especially with cuddles and stories, but seven years between us made me his little mother, rather than a playmate.
So, during the day, Benny trailed around after the stockmen and bore men. No doubt he was desperate for attention from someone, anyone. For Benny, negative attention was better than no attention.
Mostly the men were patient and good with Benny, but he sorely tested their limits.
One day our Irish stockman Ray was up welding a rail around a trough. It was quite a way up the hill from the house. Dad wanted to ensure the trough was protected when the cattle came for a drink. Ray had his welding glasses and gloves on, and was focused, ensuring he got the sparks of the welding iron in just the right place. It was a hard job and Ray didn’t want to have to go back to Dad until he’d got it right.
Next minute, Ray felt the shock of something ice-cold hitting him. He dropped the welding iron at his feet, yelling in shock. Spinning around, he saw Benny standing there, dangling an empty bucket. Ben had wandered up after him—quite a walk for a small boy—drawn some water out of the trough into the bucket, and thrown it all over Ray. Focused as Ray was, he hadn’t even noticed Benny arrive.
‘You wee leprechaun!’ Ray was red-faced by now. He grabbed Benny by the straps of his jumpsuit and shoved him face first into the trough. Benny shouted and spluttered, and as Ray pulled him back out, Benny stumbled to his feet and hotfooted it back to the house, now soaking wet as well.
When Ray saw Mum at lunchtime, he told her what had happened. He was still shaking with rage.
Mum sighed. ‘Oh well, it serves him right,’ she said, serving cold meat onto plates. ‘He was lucky that’s all you did to him.’
I covered Benny with hugs and kisses whenever something went wrong, to remind him how much I loved him. But he drove even me to distraction with his next escapade, which involved a donkey and cart and a horse breaker called Barry.
Barry had a dark beard and dark eyes and wore a bush hat pulled low over his eyes. He came to work for us for a while and became Benny’s next conquest.
Barry was a fascinating man. He always travelled with a couple of dogs and camels. We learned he’d led a whole train of camels along the railway line through the Heavitree Gap in Alice. We were aghast. What if a train had come along and run them all over? And what about the cars running alongside the railway line; wouldn’t they spook the camels?
We called him a ‘cameleer’. He reminded us of the brave and amazing ‘Afghan’ men who transported goods on camels across the outback in the ‘olden days’, back before even horses or Land Rovers were here. Those camel drivers wore turbans and had long beards, so Barry could have been one of them, except he didn’t wear a turban.
Barry was also the first person we’d ever met who drank proper coffee. He brought ground coffee with him, which he brewed up in a pot. He wouldn’t drink anything else and he certainly wouldn’t drink instant coffee, which was the only type we knew. And there was no animal that Barry couldn’t break in, and train or tame.
Benny was fascinated by Barry. He trailed around after the black-bearded man, watching him in action in the horse yards. Every day a few donkeys in the horse paddock came in for a drink at the house trough. One day Barry and Benny spied a little donkey with them. Benny coveted that donkey, and begged and begged Mum and Dad to let him break him in.
‘Please, Mum, Dad,’ he begged. ‘Then I can have a friend.’ Dad said it was up to Mum.
Normally soft-hearted Mum refused. ‘No, donkeys are a menace.’ The good and kind Barry eventually took pity on Benny. He put a halter on the donkey, brought him into the yards, and said, ‘I’ll break him in for yer.’
The donkey was christened Eeyore John Wayne, and Benny was ecstatic.
But Eeyore became a complete menace, just as Mum had predicted. He galloped everywhere around the house yard. He chased us kids and we’d have to run to escape him. If he caught us, he’d bite us, hard, and we’d howl. He pinched Mum’s towels and clothes off the clothesline and ate them. An
d if we gave him the chance, he’d kick us too.
But Benny loved him.
There was an old cart down in the shed that Barry restored for Benny. It could fit just two people in a squeeze and had two high wheels. Barry harnessed Eeyore so Benny could take him for a ride. My baby brother was in heaven. He’d jump in the cart, stockman’s hat squashed over his ears, shake the reins and drive Eeyore around the horse yard. After a while he became adventurous and started to ride Eeyore around the lawn. Mum was unhappy with this because it roughed up the lawn and made a mess of the dirt, and the donkey also tried to eat all Mum’s precious plants.
So, Benny thought of something else: racing the donkey and cart out on the flat.
‘Come with me, Tanya,’ Benny pleaded one day.
‘No,’ I said firmly. I didn’t like the donkey or the cart.
‘Please, please, please,’ begged Benny.
This went on for several days. Eventually Benny wore me down. So, I hopped up with him and said in my best big-sister voice, ‘Okay, but we’ll just go for a short ride round the yard.’
But Eeyore, sensing a change in the dynamics, took off at a gallop. Benny, delighted he had a conquest, urged Eeyore on. The donkey went flat-out through the yard, past the sheds, out through the gate and headed towards the creek. I screamed and clutched on, while Benny shrieked with laughter, and shook the reins to make Eeyore go faster. As we headed down the rocky flat towards the creek, the inevitable happened. The cart flipped and I fell out and sprained an ankle yet again. Benny was unscathed and thought it was a wonderful adventure.
It was my first and last ride in the cart with Eeyore John Wayne.
I was sure that Mum was right. It wasn’t Benny’s fault he got up to mischief. He was just looking for somebody to notice him. But there was no end to the lengths Benny would go to in that quest.
A wonderful couple, Pat and John Govers, came into our lives and spent years with us, off and on. Pat was an amazing chef and had travelled the world as a photographer, painter, journalist and collector of art. John was a Dutch immigrant and a brilliant carpenter (well, he was brilliant doing almost everything with his hands). He was Pat’s handsome toy boy. They lived in numerous places, stayed with us from time to time, and called each other Mr and Mrs G.
One day Mr Govers was carrying an incredibly heavy load. It was lengths of iron railway track he’d retrieved from the town scrap yard. Each weighed about thirty kilos. He was on his way to make a border for Mum’s garden. As he walked, he balanced the sleepers on his palms above his shoulders, each step slow and deliberate on the way towards his Toyota. He was so focused that he didn’t hear Benny climbing into the old Land Rover nearby. Benny was five by now and learning to ride and drive everything, just as Brett had done when he was the same age.
Benny opened the little chute below the Land Rover window so he could see through to the outside world, and then he kangaroo-hopped forward towards Mr Govers. On the last hop, he hit Mr Govers’ rear end.
Mr Govers reared backwards, screaming as he toppled over. The huge lengths of iron crashed to the ground. When Mr Govers recovered, he chased Benny, shouting in Dutch, and belted him thoroughly.
‘You’re a mongrel kid!’ Mr Govers finally said, in English, and let Benny go.
The object of Mr Govers’ wrath was not seen for hours.
Meanwhile, I was continuing to explore life beyond our boundary fence, mostly through School of the Air, study and books.
Reading and writing consumed me. I constantly wanted to learn and understand more. I was fascinated by the adults’ conversations. They seemed to talk about the important things in life. Dad didn’t talk a lot, but when he did, he only talked about important things, so I thought that’s what I should be aiming for and learning about.
But not everyone agreed. ‘Off you go, flappy ears,’ Mum would say to us if we came too close to the grown-ups when they were talking.
I soon learnt that when Dad started talking, he wouldn’t stop for a long time, so if I sat quietly, Mum would usually forget I was there. What, with all Dad’s table-banging and finger-pointing and thundering about the problems we constantly faced and what needed to be done to fix them, Mum would leave the table before he’d finished, and I could listen without interruption.
I’d go away and think about the many things he talked about, then store them deep inside. Mostly they made me feel anxious all over again, but after a while I realised that there were gifts in Dad’s rants.
Yes, life was risky.
But if we were constantly alert we could be prepared, and preparation was a way to stay in front of the problems.
Dad spoke about it all the time. ‘Always do your homework. Know your numbers.’
Now I realised why.
When the bloody bureaucrats, communists and socialists turned up in their long white socks, holding their clipboards, we would be ready. It didn’t necessarily mean we’d be safe, or saved, but we’d have a better chance if we were prepared, than if they arrived and caught us sleeping, or worse, slacking off.
Dad prepared by being proactive in every possible way he could dream up. He was so passionate about protecting and advancing the interests of cattle people on the land, he not only became the Chairman of the Central Australian Beef Breeders Association and the first Chairman of the Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association, but he also went on to become Vice President of the Cattle Council of Australia and Chairman of the Producers’ Consultative Group, which reported directly to the Australian Meat and Livestock Corporation. He also became the leader of numerous cattle trade delegations throughout the world. He didn’t stop pushing to make things better.
‘You’ve got to be in there, taking charge, making things happen, rather than letting them happen to you,’ he’d say.
Unlike me, he was fearless, and clear about what he wanted to achieve, and he didn’t stop until he made it happen, or had at least given it his best shot.
The trouble was I didn’t know how to apply Dad’s approach to my own life. I didn’t do homework (it wasn’t required for our primary school lessons), and I wasn’t very good at numbers (and probably would never be). I couldn’t be in charge of anything, because I was just a kid under his dominant rule, so thinking about how to use his wisdom to improve myself just made me feel anxious again.
Nor could I talk to anyone about it. I didn’t even have the words to express how I felt. Mum would probably just tell me to stay away from grown-up conversations in future, and there was no way I’d tell Dad anything of my fears. I was too ashamed of having them in the first place. But I knew that as long as Dad was there, I would be safe. If I listened carefully to the advice he gave us, and looked for the reasons behind his instructions, I knew I could work out how to be stronger, clearer, braver myself.
But what about when I went away to boarding school? Dad wouldn’t be there to protect me, nor would Mum. But boarding school was several years away, so every time that scary thought popped up, I squashed it down.
28
Everard Park
I spent a lot of time thinking about my friend Janie Joseland, and how we could meet up again, face-to-face.
School of the Air wasn’t enough for us. While we now knew what each other looked like and got to hear each other’s voices in class each day, we wanted our own conversations. That wasn’t possible in class because Mrs Hodder ran the class and asked questions of us all individually. There wasn’t the chance for chat between students.
So, we tried to wangle moments on the afternoon sked. That wasn’t easy either. There were many determined bush women wanting to talk in that precious allocated time, and they were not amused by two young ‘giggling Gerties’, as Mum called us. But through the giggles, we hatched a plan. The next time Dad flew south, we decided, he would drop me off at Everard Park for a visit.
Eventually we wore Mum down and she agreed to put our idea to Dad (I didn’t have the courage to ask him myself; not for something so personal and friv
olous—no way).
As it happened, Dad was flying south in a month, but the timing didn’t work. But my darling Mum took on my plea and continued to look around for options. Several days later she came to me and said, ‘Rex Lowe from Mount Dare is flying south from Alice in a couple of weeks, and is prepared to go via Everard Park and drop you off on his way home.’
I was thrilled—and then terrified.
‘You know who Mr Lowe is, so you’ll be fine,’ said Mum comfortingly.
Yes, the Lowes held the famous fly-in event. But the thought of spending almost a full day with Mr Lowe—who was a much older man and very quiet—almost paralysed me with anxiety. I’d never travelled alone before, certainly not without Mum. It was a testament to how much I wanted to go that I was prepared to head off into the skies with a strange man, dry throat and no words.
Mum sent a telegram on the RFDS morning session to Mrs Joseland to arrange to talk to her on a sked, so they could make plans. I would take my correspondence work so I could do school with Janie and her governess. Mum was not going to let me miss lessons.
But not everyone was as thrilled. My beloved sister looked at me, her eyes bigger than usual. ‘Are you coming back?’
‘Of course, Lissy!’ I tried to reassure her. A whole week apart was a very long time for us.
But I was drawn to visiting Janie in a way I couldn’t explain. It was a chance to connect with an independent friend, my own age, in another place, and I was longing for the adventure. It was my own new land at the top of my very own Magic Faraway Tree that was calling me. It was such a grown-up and exciting thing to do.
Mum decided that the whole family should go south with Dad, which would give M’Lis a chance to spend time with her beloved Nana Parnell. That made me feel better about abandoning my soulmate sister. It also meant they would come back via Everard Park and get to meet Janie. We would all have a fun time, and no one would miss out on anything, which Mum was always at pains to ensure happened.
An Alice Girl Page 22