Long Gone the Corroboree

by Tony Parsons

  Evans nodded, put a piece of chewing gum in his mouth and made a note in his book. When they’d gone right through the building, he looked at his notes and then at Steele. “It’s going to be bloody near a new house anyway, Mr Steele. The only things ya’ll be able to retain are the chimneys and the slab walls. Everything else has gotta go. You’ll need new iron for the roof, new guttering, new tanks and all the internal timber will have to be replaced. I reckon you should line the interior of the slab walls with plaster or such. That way, it’ll be a lot warmer in winter but you’ll maintain your old look on the outside. I take it that you’ll be installing electricity, so you’ll need to upgrade your bathroom or, better still, make it separate from the laundry. The old tub and the bath have had it too so ya’ll need to replace them. What do ya reckon about all that?”

  “Can you do it?” Steele asked.

  “I reckon I can,” Evans said. “There’ll be a lot of messing around before I can make a real start on the actual building. It won’t be a straight-forward job like with a new house.”

  Steele nodded. “I understand. Would you have any idea what it will cost me?”

  “Not at this stage. I’ll have to work out the cost of the materials. I charge by the day plus what it costs when I’ve got my apprentice working here,” Evans said and spat out a gob of gum.

  “How long do you reckon it would take?” Steele asked.

  “Hard to say. I’ve never tackled anything like this. It’ll be a suck-it-and-see job. Everything but the chimneys will have to be pulled down and replaced and that’s all extra work. The slabs are okay but the uprights will have to come out. The chimneys will need re-mortaring. It might take me a couple of months and I might do it sooner,” Evans said.

  “I’d like to help,” Steele said. “I don’t mean from the point of view of saving money but just to be involved.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s okay. You’ll be wanting to get rid of all the old stuff so you can help us load it onto my truck and Deano can take it to the tip. Deano’s my apprentice,” Evans said.

  “When can you start?”

  “Maybe about the end of next week. I’ve got a job to finish off and then, I could come here. I’ll work out what I need to make a start and get it delivered. I can see ten grand’s worth of stuff straight off. Then, there’ll be kitchen, laundry and bathroom stuff and you’ll need a plumber for that. That’s okay ’cos I’ve got a plumber that works with me a lot. I won’t need the electricity the first few days but the sooner it’s on, the better,” Evans said.

  “I’ve already applied for it. They told me they hoped to be here within a fortnight,” Steele said.

  “Bewdy. One more thing. What do I call ya?” Evans asked.

  “You can call me Clay,” Steele told him.

  Evans thrust out his hand, “We’ve got a deal, Clay. Making this old dump liveable again is going to be a real challenge. Oh, one more thing. I reckon, you’ll need to install a septic tank. My plumber could do it for you.”

  Steele looked across to where the old outhouse was situated. It was completely masked by purple and red bougainvillea. Evans looked, too.

  “Ya won’t have to pull that down. I can build a toilet into the bathroom and you won’t have to go outside. Be bloody handy not to need to when it rains and it can rain a lot here. No problem, Clay. You can’t use that old bog hole,” Evans said.

  “I agree. Tell your mate to go ahead and install the tank,” Steele said.

  “Way to go,” Evans said. “You don’t have to worry about tucker for me and Deano. We’ll bring our own. Just need the electricity to boil a jug. I like me drink o’ tea. I’ll see if I can put a bunger under the electricity mob and get ’em here a bit quicker.”

  “So, I’ll expect you when I see you,” Steele said.

  “I’ll be here as soon as I can manage it, Clay. You’ll be pleased to move out of your van and into a house by the time we’re done. I’ll get the timber and other stuff here as soon as I’ve worked out what I need. Big round posts of that length might take a bit of findin’. You’d better get yourself a pair of strong leather gloves if you’re going to be handling that old stuff. Make it a lot easier on your hands. See ya, Clay,” Evans said.

  Evans walked back to the one-tonner, twisted into the cabin and left.

  It was quiet again after the sound of the vehicle receded into the distance. Steele felt a great sense of relief that he was now committed to restoring the old building. He felt that his life now had a direction it had been lacking, even taking into account the best-selling books he’d produced. He’d always been praised for his brilliance and people everywhere expected so much from him that he was under constant pressure to come up with award-winning books and make clever speeches at literary functions. But he was tired of being in the spotlight and wanted no more of it. Never again. No stress and no women to complicate his life. Women were hugely demanding even when they insisted they weren’t. And since his illness, he didn’t feel ready for the demands of any of them, including his mother and sister.

  As he looked around the wildly beautiful property, he knew that Shelley Carruthers could never live at Jerogeree, picturesque and all that it was. It would be far too quiet and far too dull for Shelley. He was well aware when he left Sydney that if he recovered from his illness, there would be no going back to Shelley and the social complications of her celebrity life. She was a sweet, young woman but she was a career woman too, one of the breed of women who wanted everything, and in some cases, had everything. He was in no sense unhappy about her success, but he had no desire to maintain a relationship with a career woman, or any woman for that matter. What he wanted was peace and quiet and anonymity. He wanted to write again and to listen to music and to hear the birds sing.

  Steele knew that he’d been lucky. He could have died. Instead, he’d been given a second chance. And because he’d been given the twin gifts of writing talent and a degree of intelligence, he wanted to utilise them to the best of his ability. He’d recognised that this property, surreal by Sydney standards, was exactly right for him. When he’d purchased the property, he hadn’t been aware of its mythology and he’d never even heard of the Gubbi Gubbi people who once frequented the region. What he did know was that it was the dream of restoring the old building and living in this place that had sustained him through all the many months of treatment. He’d hung on to that dream because, despite what he’d achieved in the past, the property was a lifeline to the future. His relationship with Shelley Carruthers had been real enough at the time, but he’d known when he was diagnosed that his future didn’t lie with her. Shelley had been a delightful interlude. But she didn’t need him and he didn’t need her, desirable as she was. Yes, Shelley would be all right without him. And probably better off.

  Steele had hardly thought of women since he’d left Australia. Everywhere he’d been, he’d seen problems and potential problems, and to write about them would keep him occupied for years. The sight of attractive women – and there’d been a lot of them in America and the places he’d been since – didn’t stir him as it had done before he became ill, so he wondered if the treatment had stilled his desire. He refused to think about that. Right now, this lovely, abandoned property stirred him deeply. In contrast to all the ugliness he’d seen in his travels, this was a place that had grown more beautiful through being neglected. It was as if it might have been at the beginning of the world and before the land and forests were raped and despoiled. He’d found it only just in time, too, before it was ruined by a modern house and a conventional garden.

  Yes, his future was here in this special place, and he was determined to do right by it.

  Chapter Five

  Josh Evans was as good as his word. The building materials arrived early in the following week and a couple of days later, the plumber, Dick Bradley, arrived with a backhoe to dig the hole for the septic tank. Bradley was a stocky, dark-haired fellow with a bush of curly hair bristling above the top button of his fluor
escent striped work shirt. He must’ve been in his mid-thirties and during a break from the work, he asked Steele if he’d ever been a cricketer.

  “I never played much sport,” Steele told him. “The only thing I ever did in that line was lift a few weights. I’m afraid I was more of an academic type. Are you a cricketer?”

  “I still play. Josh and I play for the district side. I bowl spin and Josh is a fast bowler. He might have gone a long way if he hadn’t had to leave school early to start work. He lost his father and had to take over earning a crust. Bloody shame,” Bradley said.

  “I don’t know much about cricket,” Steele said.

  “If you get Josh started on cricket, he’ll talk you blind. Maybe he’ll try and talk you into writing a book on Don Tallon,” Bradley said.

  “Who was Don Tallon?” Steele asked.

  “Only one of the best wicket-keepers this country and the game of cricket has ever seen. Played for Queensland and Australia. Played with Bradman,” Bradley said.

  “I know about Bradman,” Steele said, grinning.

  “Who doesn’t? He was a run machine. Bill Brown said once that you didn’t bat with Bradman, you ran with him. If it hadn’t been for the war, Bradman would have set a heap more records. He lost several years of playing because of that stoush. Bloody wonder he was still so good after a break like that,” Bradley said.

  “I suppose so,” Steele agreed. He’d probably missed something not playing cricket but he’d always felt that you had to have a great desire to do something to be any good at it, and he’d never experienced that desire for any form of team sport. He’d always been interested in writing – compositions and essays before the books – and this occupation had filled his life. He’d discovered girls when he was in high school or, perhaps more accurately, girls had discovered him and they’d been his major diversion from writing. Shelley had been the most passionate of them but he hardly ever thought of her now or of women generally for that matter. He’d had nothing to do with a woman since leaving Shelley.

  Josh Evans didn’t allow the grass to grow under his feet. By midday of his first working day, the builder and his apprentice had removed both lean-to verandas and all the posts from the front portion of the cottage. Steele carried the slabs away, stacked them in one heap and put the discarded material in another. The apprentice, Deano, was a tall, fair-haired youth built along similar lines to Josh but not quite as tall. He seemed to have missed the dreaded pimply stage because his skin was clear and all in all, he appeared to be a picture of health. It transpired that he was also a cricketer and in Josh’s team. Steele conceived the notion that anyone not disposed towards cricket would be at a major disadvantage in this area.

  Deano had a tendency to come and go and when Steele asked about him, Josh told him that he was working on other jobs because he’d reached the stage where he could be entrusted with unsupervised work.

  “A lot of that stuff will burn well if you cut it into short lengths. Ya need a bench saw. Just the shot for that old timber,” Josh suggested.

  The old roof came off the following day and Steele stacked the rusted iron on Josh’s one-tonner. And then, the two men rolled the old water tanks to the vehicle. It took two trips to cart the lot to the tip. Discoloured and pockmarked by a myriad of holes, the old tanks had been real eyesores and their removal elicited a ‘Thank goodness, they’re gone’ from Steele.

  “What do you say we replace them with a couple of coloured plastic tanks, Clay? You can get them in a few colours and a couple of green tanks would look a lot more natural here than the gal ones,” Josh said.

  “I don’t see why not,” Steele agreed.

  “They should last okay and you know the gal tanks are going to rust eventually. You managin’ okay? Job’s not too heavy for you… you havin’ been sick and all?”

  “I’m all right, Josh. I’m not busting myself,” Steele assured him.

  “That’s the shot. Leave those bigger posts to Deano and me,” Evans said.

  It was on the fourth day of work that the boy appeared. It was a little after mid-afternoon and the first day they had electricity. The day before two trucks and a team of men had arrived and within hours, they’d put the pole up and attached a power board to it. A local electrician, another mate of Evans, had installed the power board and wiring that morning and Steele was now able to boil a jug for tea. He was in the process of doing this for the afternoon smoko when he saw the boy. It was almost as if he’d materialised from nowhere. One moment, there was only himself and Josh and in the next, there he was. Steele, making a hasty judgement, imagined that he was perhaps twelve or possibly, thirteen. His skin was a pale caramel colour. His hair was dark, naturally wavy and he had soft brown eyes. ’Lovely eyes for a boy’ was Steele’s first thought. The boy’s left eye was ringed by a purple-black bruise and there was a small tear in the left sleeve of his dark grey shirt, with another in the left leg of his grey shorts. There was something about him that instantly intrigued Steele.

  “Wotcha doin’?” the boy asked.

  “I’m boiling the jug so my builder can have a cup of tea,” Steele answered.

  “Naaaa. Wotcha doin’ there?” the boy asked and pointed to what remained of the old building.

  “We’re pulling things down so I can restore the old cottage,” Steele said.

  “What’s ‘restore’ mean?” the boy asked.

  “I’m going to make the house like it used to be, only better,” Steele explained.

  “Why?”

  “So I can live in it,” Steele said.

  “Did you buy this place?”

  “Of course. Does that worry you?”

  “Naaa. It used to belong to me great great granpa,” the boy said.

  “Is that so? How interesting. Would you like a biscuit?” Steele asked him. The boy took two Anzac biscuits and scrutinised the work in progress. Presently, Josh put down his tools and walked over to the table beside which Steele and the boy were standing.

  “Got yourself a helper, Clay?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far, Josh. I’d say that this young man is very interested in what we’re doing,” Steele said.

  “You’re dead right too. This is Billy Sanders, Clay,” Evans said.

  “You know him?”

  “Sure, I know him. I know most people in these parts. Been here all me life, Clay. But as it happens, I know a fair bit about young Billy. He’s a very good schoolboy cricketer,” Evans said.

  “Ah! So, you would know him,” Steele said. “Where do you live, young fellow?”

  The boy jerked a thumb behind him which didn’t enlighten Steele at all because it might have indicated that he lived anywhere within miles of his property. “Just down the road a bit. I saw ya when I went past on my way home from school. There’s a bus that drops me off at the corner. I saw ya start, I mean.”

  “What happened to your eye?” Steele asked.

  “Dooley hit me,” the boy answered.

  “Who’s Dooley?”

  “Dooley’s me mother’s bloke. He’s not me father. Me father’s in Brisbane,” Billy said.

  Anger stirred in him. “Why did this Dooley fellow hit you, Billy?” Steele asked.

  “He thought I hadn’t penned the calf up. He was so pissed he couldn’t see it in the corner of the pen. It’s a black calf and it was dark when he got back,” Billy said.

  “Does he hit you very often?”

  “Pretty often,” Billy replied with surprising candour.

  “That’s tough. Can’t your mother stop Dooley from hitting you?”

  “Naaa. Dooley hits her, too. I’m clearing out as soon as I’m old enough to leave school. I’ll be sorry to leave me mum but Dooley’s not me father and he’s not much of a bloke,” Billy said.

  “What are you going to do when you clear out?”

  “Play the guitar and sing,” the boy said. “Make some money.”

  “Can you play the guitar?”

  “Yeah, I can play one. M
e mum taught me. I don’t have one now ’cos Dooley smashed it when he was on the piss. The music teacher at school sez I play real good. And she says that if my voice breaks right and I can sing as well as me mum, I could go a long way… be as good as John Denver,” Billy said.

  “John Denver. He was an American, wasn’t he? Why would you like to be like him?” Steele asked.

  “I just like his voice and how he sings. I reckon he’s just great. Do ya need a hand here? I could help for a bit o’ money. I need to save up for another guitar,” Billy said.

  “Wouldn’t Dooley smash it, too?” Steele suggested.

  “I’d have to hide it.”

  Steele looked at Evans and saw his own concern reflected on the face of the builder. “I dare say we could find something for you to do. Does your mother know you’re here?”

  “Yeah. I asked her if it was all right to come. She knows Mr Evans,” Billy said.

  “What about this Dooley fellow?” Steele asked.

  “He’s away at the sheds,” Billy said. “He’s a shearer.”

  “Then you can come here and we’ll find something for you to do. Come tomorrow afternoon after school,” Steele said.

  The first smile lit up the boy’s face. “Bewdy. I better go now. Got some homework and then the calf to get in. See ya,” Billy said.

  He walked away a few paces and then turned back towards the two men. “There’s good fish in that crick,” he said. The way he conveyed this piece of information made it seem a hugely important announcement.

  “Are there, Billy? What kind of fish?” Steele asked. He’d been advised to eat a lot of fish, so he was more than a little interested in Billy’s local knowledge.

  “Mostly perch. There’s craybobs, too. Big bewdies. You can catch the fish with a trap if you don’t have a rod or a handline. And you can catch the craybobs with a hunk o’ meat on a line,” Billy said.

  “Is the fish-trap legal here?” Steele asked.

  “Naaa, but it gets ya fish,” Billy said. And having delivered this seemingly unarguable morsel of logic, Billy left them. He seemed to float away from them, so effortlessly did his legs carry him.