by Alan Tucker
We pretended we were soldiers and wriggled along the ground, hiding behind salt bushes until we were quite close. The galahs were so noisy that no-one would hear the shot.
Dave fired and hit one. It tried to fly but crashed to the ground. We all cheered as we ran towards it. Dave’s always telling us he’s a ‘crack shot’. I guess this proves it. The bird had been perched on the tank but it wasn’t sitting perfectly still.
When we got to the bird it squawked at us and raised its crest and one good wing. Its other wing was all busted and bloody. Dave clubbed it—BOOF—with the gun butt until it stopped moving. I couldn’t have done that, but he said he was used to killing rabbits and it didn’t worry him. He picked up the battered bird by its good wing and said he’d shot a big one. When he held it upside down you could see its little wing feathers. They were really pretty.
Why do birds need feathers to fly? Rockets don’t.
Monday, 29 June
Something funny happened, but it’s Top Secret so I’m not supposed to know about it. One of those pilotless jets went AWOL (Absent Without Official Leave) last week. Robert told us it took off okay but sometime during the flight the scientists lost it on the radar. It was flying around uncontrolled for about half an hour before they tracked it down again and were able to bring it in for a safe landing.
He says the planes, called Jindiviks, drive his dad nuts. They keep crashing on take-off or on landing. This is the first one that’s escaped though. If they hadn’t found it and controlled its landing, it could have crashed onto the village and killed someone. They’ll have to fix that problem before they put bombs in one.
Wednesday, 1 July
A pinch and a punch for the first day of the month. And no returns. I got Dave before he got me. Dave got Jonathon and nearly made him cry. I told him I know how much it hurts because I’ve been ‘got’ by Dave before.
I showed Jonathon my latest rocket drawing. He says it’s ‘rather brilliant’. He thinks it’s as good as the photograph. He looked at all the details and said I’d drawn it perfectly. He wanted to buy it, but I didn’t want to sell it. I agreed to draw another one for him. He asked if I could draw the rocket after take-off when it’s zooming through space. I agreed.
It’s funny: when Jonathon says something with his accent, it sounds like an order rather than a request. He doesn’t mean to sound bossy, it’s just his way of speaking.
I looked through my Superman comics tonight and got lots of good ideas for Jonathon’s rocket drawing. I’m going to draw it with the tall buildings of a city below, as if it’s about to attack. If that happened in a Superman story he’d stop the rocket somehow. He could either melt it with his X-ray vision or fly up and grab it then shield the city with his body when it explodes—BOOM. Or he’d punch it so hard it would turn back into space or fly straight at the baddies’ hide-out and blow them up, HA HA.
Hey, maybe one day I’ll be a comic book writer and illustrator. That’d be fun.
Australia nearly won the test match. England still needed to score 60 runs when the match ended. They only had their tail-end batsmen left. That’s two draws in two test matches. Three to go. We’ll beat them in the end. We always do.
Saturday, 4 July
It’s American Independence Day. The Americans had a parade with a band followed by a big party. There are not many of them living here, but they made a lot of noise. It’ll be noisier tonight. They’re having fireworks. Everyone’s allowed to join in. Mum said I can go with Dave. She’s staying home. Dad’s away for a week doing a transport run. He never tells us where. That bugs her sometimes.
9.00 pm
I just got home. Mum set an 8.30 pm curfew. She’s strict like that. Dave came home too. He didn’t have to. His parents never tell him what time to be home. We collected a few penny bangers that didn’t explode. Dave’s going to hide them in his bedroom until we decide when to let them off. He thinks it would be fun to hide in the dark then throw them at an enemy. BANG BANG. We’re not sure who our enemy is, but we’ll find one.
We sort of made an enemy this afternoon. We were out hunting with the slug gun and tried to shoot another galah near the water tanks. Dave had three shots—ZING ZING ZING—but missed. Luckily we were lying on the ground to shoot and were hidden because two men suddenly came out from behind the tanks looking really angry. We wouldn’t have fired if we’d known they were there.
I wanted to apologise but Dave told me to ‘freeze’. Good thing I did. The men were furious. They walked quite close to us swearing and saying if they got their hands on the person who’d been shooting they’d skin them alive. We had to lie still for ages until they’d gone back to work behind the tanks. As soon as they were out of sight Dave and I cleared off. Even I ran quite fast.
The men must have been doing maintenance on the water pumps or pipeline. The village water comes all the way from the Murray River. The government had to build the pipeline before they could build Woomera because it hardly ever rains here. Every day is warm and sunny, even in winter time. Mum hates it because nothing will grow. She hasn’t even attempted to plant a garden except for one tiny patch of flowers. The Army’s planted trees around the streets but they’re still small even though they water them regularly from a truck.
Mum loved gardening in Townsville. During the wet season we had really heavy rain, especially if the tail-end of a cyclone was nearby. Plants grew easily and everything was green. It never rains here, so nothing grows.
Sunday, 5 July
I was wrong. It does rain. It poured last night. Mum was so excited when it started that she stood on the front porch and held her hands out in it.
This morning, though, she was annoyed by the rain. Her flowerbed’s been wrecked. The rain was so heavy it washed away nearly all the soil and her flowers with it.
The rain mucked up my day too. It was too muddy to go out of town. Dave came over for a while but he got bored. He hates sitting around doing nothing. After he left I sat and did some drawing.
I finished two rocket drawings. One shows the city below (that’s the one I’m doing for Jonathon) and another shows the rocket just about to crash into a whole fleet of enemy warships. Superman comics show lots of scenes from above because we often see the world through his eyes.
When I was a little kid and stuck in bed with polio I used to love my comic books. Other story books were okay but comics were better. I used to look closely at each of the picture boxes and imagine the story without reading all the words. Using those pictures I could travel everywhere that Superman went. I really wanted to do everything that he did: leap tall buildings, run faster than a locomotive, fly faster than a speeding bullet.
For months I couldn’t go anywhere, except in my imagination. That’s why comic books and the wireless were so important to me. The furthest I moved was if one of the nurses put me in a wheelchair and pushed me down the corridor to the exercise room. I never enjoyed that though, because doing exercise hurt. They used to make me stretch my arms and legs as much as I could, then they’d stretch them even further. I used to cry when I was back in my bed and the nurses couldn’t see me.
I was really happy when Mum took me home from the hospital and helped me do different exercises. She was more gentle than the nurses and gave me hot baths and massages to help relax my tight muscles. She gave up her nursing job to help me get better. She tried different methods to cure me from what the hospital used. She believed in Sister Kenny’s approach to help people recover from polio. Sister Kenny was a legend in Townsville.
Friday, 10 July
It’s raining in England. Isn’t that funny? Some of the cricket was washed out. I wonder if it’s the same rain that was here last weekend. If it is it must have blown from Australia right across the Pacific, America and the Atlantic Ocean. That could happen. The wind used to blow the old sailing ships to England if they sailed in that direction.
Superman once blew away a blizzard to save some people who were lost in Alaska. WHOOOOOOOOSS
SHHHH. If he hadn’t blown it away he could have sucked it inside him. He did that once with fog so a ship didn’t crash onto some rocks. He saved the ship because his girlfriend Lois was having a holiday on it. She sent him a mental message asking for his help. Wouldn’t it be fun if you could receive messages from people just by tuning your brain in to theirs?
I’d love to be able to read people’s minds, especially the maths teacher. I’d know all the answers and get 100% in every test.
I got 59% in this week’s test. Others did worse so I’m not the dumbest in the class. I haven’t told Mum my bad marks yet. I hope she hasn’t paid a spy to observe me or she’ll know the bad news before I’m ready to tell her.
Saturday, 11 July
Dad was supposed to be home tomorrow but he’s stuck out bush. Kenny knocked at the door last night to tell us. He got back because his Land Rover’s only light and was able to drive through the mud, but the trucks are cut off by flood waters. He said that’s typical of this country.
‘A man can be dying of thirst one day and up to his armpits in mud the next.’
Mum invited him to have tea with us. He told us he’s a Range Reconnaissance Officer, which means he surveys and makes tracks. He’s spent the past two years out on ‘the prairie’ west of here. (No-one else calls the desert ‘the prairie’, only Kenny.) He told us there are a million square miles of open country out there and hardly a human being to be seen.
‘Not that I can see very well nowadays. I used to have the eyesight of a wedge-tailed eagle, but the desert glare got to me. I have to wear a hat and dark glasses or I get a booming headache. My head aches from the glare and my body aches from bouncing around in the Land Rover all day. Mind you, I’m not complaining—I’ve got the best job in the world.’
Mum asked him to tell us more about what he does.
‘First I do a solo recce—reconnaissance—to work out where the bloomin’ track needs to go. Then the construction team and I head off scrub bashing and bulldozing. I try to keep the track as straight as possible. That’s the beauty of heavy equipment. You just barge straight through. As long as blokes like your Frank can keep the supplies up to us, nothing stops us. Water gets a bit tricky at times, but after this latest downpour there’ll be good supplies in all the waterholes and soaks.’
He told us how he’s nearly died of thirst a few times. It gets so hot in his Land Rover that the plastic holding the instrument panels in the dashboard perishes and the dials pop out.
‘Not that you need a speed gauge. You can only drive at crawling pace out there. I’ve lost count of the number of branches I’ve had impale my tyres and radiator over the years. Blowing a tyre’s not too bad. There’s air a-plenty out bush. But losing the water out of the radiator stretches precious resources.’
Mum wanted to know where his track went. He said it went gun-barrel straight all the way to Woop Woop.
‘But where? What’s at the end? What’s out there, Kenny?’
All he would say was that it led out onto the rocket range. If Dad had been there he wouldn’t have let Mum ask Kenny the questions she did.
If Dad’s right and Kenny knows more about what the military and scientists are planning, he could become a millionaire selling information to the Russians. Or they could kidnap him and get the information for free.
Dave, Robert and I did some more work on the billycart today. We’ve still only got three wheels but Robert had a good idea. We didn’t worry about a front wheel at all. We simply tied the steering ropes to the carrier on the back of Dave’s bike so we can hook the cart on behind, just like a trailer. It’s great fun to ride on. Dave said we can use it to carry the rabbit traps out to the burrows and bring back the dead bunnies.
Sunday, 12 July
Mum did her block today. I CRASHED off the billycart and took lots of skin off my legs. It hurt like crazy, but I didn’t tell her that. The hurt wasn’t like when I had polio. That was bad pain and it went on for a long time. This was more like a stinging pain because of the gravel rash.
The prang happened just before lunch, so I wasn’t allowed out this arvo. Mum tried to blame Dave for making me take stupid risks, but I told her that wasn’t right. I helped make the cart and I wanted to have a go on it.
She told me to think before I did silly things.
‘Think about your own safety and think about me. I’ve put years of my life, Anthony, into helping you get mobile and I don’t want to see you throw all that away.’ She told me ‘my father’ would speak to me when he gets back. ‘As if I don’t have enough to worry about without you acting irresponsibly.’
I’m not worried about Dad. He wants me to toughen up. I wish Mum would relax. I’m not a baby any more and I’m not crippled with polio. I’m better.
I finished my best-ever rocket drawing tonight. I wonder if anyone at school will buy it. If I knew any spies I could sell it and get rich. (That’s a joke.)
Jonathon’s drawing is finished too.
Monday, 13 July
Good news all round. Dad got back, I sold my drawings and I got an order to do another one.
Dad had a real adventure. He wouldn’t tell us where he’d been but said they got stuck at a place called Tallaringa (he told me how to spell it). That’s way out in the desert. He said on the way out the creek bed had only been dry rocks and sand, but on the way back it was a mile wide with rushing floodwaters.
No-one got bogged but they had to wait for the level to drop before they could get across and drive home. He didn’t mind. He was in a convoy with his mates. They played cards and relaxed.
Dad’s happy to camp out. He loves the bush.
Wednesday, 15 July
The third test match ended in another draw. The rain washed out a lot of play and when they resumed Australia had to bat on a wet wicket. We lost eight wickets for 35 runs! The ball must have been bouncing funny because the pitch was wet.
Mum asked why they don’t cover the wicket when it rains. Dad and I laughed. You’d need to have a giant tent to do that. That wasn’t one of Mum’s best ideas.
‘Maybe they should put a roof over the whole oval then,’ she added. I don’t think Mum realises how big an oval is. You could never cover anything that big, and if you did it would be so dark you couldn’t play the game.
Saturday, 18 July
Dave set traps last night. We went out this morning to check them and found two trapped bunnies. Dave donged them dead. We also saw another rabbit with myxie. I wondered why it didn’t run away. Dave went around downwind and sneaked right up close. He could have touched it, but didn’t because it was diseased. He clapped his hands and it got a massive fright.
We watched it hopping around in circles. Its eyes looked all mucky. I asked Dave what would happen to it. He laughed and asked, ‘What do you think? It’ll die of thirst probably, or a wedgie will swoop down and carry it off for its young to eat.’
I watched it for a while. It looked sick and frightened. It took me a while to make up my mind, but eventually I took Dave’s donger, crept up like I’d seen him do and CLUBBED it on the head. It died instantly.
I felt terrible. I’d never killed anything before. But I have experienced death up close. When I was in the polio ward, two boys died. That made me very sad at the time. One of them was my friend and I had no-one to talk to about it. The nurses carried on as if it didn’t happen.
Robert came around this arvo to ask me to do another drawing. He wanted me to draw a Jindivik jet. He showed me a photo. It was easy. I did a sketch while he was there. If I practise once or twice more I’ll be able to draw one from memory: square-topped tail fins, three wide stripes on the body and a needle-sharp point at the front. If anyone pays me to draw this I won’t be able to charge much. It’s too easy.
Robert said his dad lost another Jindivik this week when it crash-landed. It wasn’t totally wrecked like some of them are. I wonder how much it costs to build a new one. And whether they can re-use parts of the ones that crash.
&n
bsp; They test a Jindivik every two weeks, so the scientists and technicians are always busy. During each flight they take hundreds of photos so they can see where the flight goes wrong, which it often does. If the scientists can find the exact moment a problem occurred they can make modifications before the next test flight.
Robert said his dad won’t miss one photo for a few days.
Wednesday, 22 July
I knew it would happen. Mr Crouch asked me to give a talk to the class about polio. I hate talking about it. I’ve recovered. Besides, I don’t like talking about myself.
I know some of the dumb questions they’ll ask me. People always ask the same things.
How can you walk without callipers?
Did you have to live in an Iron Lung?
How did you know you had polio?
How did I know? I couldn’t get out of bed, that’s how I knew. And I was sweating, my head ached, my body ached, my neck was stiff, my throat was sore and my legs wouldn’t work. I was so sick for a few days I didn’t know I couldn’t walk. I didn’t want to get up. That’s how I knew!
I remember some of what happened when I first became ill and I remember other bits because of what Mum’s told me since. She wanted to stay with me at the hospital, but they wouldn’t let her. She was only allowed to look at me through a glass window—once a week. Visitors weren’t allowed. She visited the hospital every day even though she couldn’t see me. I won’t tell the class that though, or they’ll think I’m a mummy’s boy.