Don't Pat the Wombat!

by Elizabeth Honey

  ‘And ants!’ added Edwina. ‘In the last school a little laddie had a private White Knight feast in his sleeping bag after lights out. Next morning, he woke up with his pillow and sleeping bag and everything absolutely crawling with ants in >his sticky lolly dribble.’

  ‘Eurrrgggh!!! Yukkkk!!!’ goes everybody.

  ‘Hand your lollies in to me,’ said Miss Cappelli, ‘and we’ll make a time when you can have them.’

  ‘One last thing,’ said Mary. There are animals, tree stumps, tent ropes and pegs around, so please don’t run. You can play footy in that paddock.’ We looked at the paddock. Two dopey donkeys stood at the fence and stared back.

  ‘When you hear the ship’s bell, everybody back here under the tree, pronto. Now unpack and get yourselves settled in.’

  We had already been divided into tent and duty groups in our camp books. There were Squatters, Miners, Bushies, Swaggies, Traders, Troopers, Drovers, Selectors, Explorers and Convicts.

  We were the Convicts: Wormz, Azza, Nicko, Jonah, Mitch and me. Naturally the Convicts were the best.

  Thanks to nifty footwork by Nicko, a near disaster was avoided. When we first got off the bus, Nicko was busting, so he dashed for the toilet, a colonial wooden building with twentieth-century plumbing. As he was coming out he saw Mr Holmes hanging little signs on the tents...Convicts, Settlers, Diggers, etc.

  Nicko sneaked around to find the Convicts. HORROR!!!

  HORROR!!! HORROR!!! The Convicts were in the tent closest to the teachers!

  Without Mr Holmes seeing him, Nicko switched the Convicts with the Settlers, who were furthest from the teachers, back up the hill near the bush.

  ‘Why did you put the Convicts up there?’ said Miss Cappelli. ‘I thought we decided to have them right under our noses?’

  ‘I dunno,’ said Mr Holmes, scratching his leg. ‘I thought I did put...l could have sworn...must have made a mistake. Sorry.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Miss Cappelli. ‘It might be best in the long run.’

  The teachers were in a comfy country cabin, which had an open fire, a lounge and a snazzo new kitchen.

  ‘Miss Cappelli, you’re not pioneers! You’ve got a fridge, a microwave and a TV!’ said Wormz.

  ‘We’re The Future!’ said Miss Cappelli. ‘Now you beetle back to the pioneering days and leave us in peace.’

  So we pioneered our bags out of the bus and lugged them up the hill to our tatty old army tent on a raised-up wooden platform floor. It had been in the wars. It was ripped and patched.

  Bliss! Happiness! Wombats! No homework! No Bomb!

  Camp was like home for Jonah, not that he was jumping round shouting it. His eyes were smiling, and his face was a big wide grin. For the first time we saw him happy.

  ‘Hey, guys, pioneer yourselves over here,’ goes Mitch, waving from the Explorers’ tent. ‘Have a squiz at this.’

  The fearless Explorers were Rebecca, Sarah, Melissa, Alice and Kristelle. Sarah is mad about Winkipinki. In case you don’t know, Winkipinki is this little Japanese girl cat with a tartan dress, and tartan bow, who says things like: ‘I wonder what to say when I meet the flowers.’ ‘I just love days like this.’

  Sarah has a Winkipinki mug, towel, face washer, slippers, lunch box, pencil, eraser, notebook and a zillion other things, which she arranged on her case by her bunk. It looked like an altar in a church for Saint Winkipinki.

  ‘Hey, Mitch!’ goes Wormz, ‘Imagine Sarah on an exploring trek through the bush. Winkipinki is saying, “Hello pretty bush. I love starving to death in you”.’

  ‘Hello pretty snake,’ goes Mitch, ‘enjoy your breakfast of my foot.’

  ‘Hello redback spider. Will you be my friend?’ says Nicko.

  We swarmed all over the camp, checking it out. It was obvious that, if you lived around here, when something conked out or grew old but still might come in handy, you gave it to Mary.

  Nothing was new. The big rec hall was a graveyard of bashed-up couches. In the bathrooms all the taps were different, and there was a patchwork of tiles in the showers. We counted twenty-three different sorts of kitchen chairs in the dining room.

  The showers were very pioneering, with the odd cockroach and spider. The thingie which the water squirts out of was high up, over your head, and most of the squirts missed you completely and squirted the wall.

  Wormz and I followed a little track past the blacksmith’s and through the bush. We came down to a river. Some kids were there, and a wombat eating grass. Watts flicked Thornton Primary’s ear with a stick.

  ‘Leave him alone,’ said Jonah, ‘you’re bothering him.’

  ‘Who gives?’ said Watts.

  ‘If you pester him, he’ll get to hate humans,’ said Jonah.

  Tommo whacked Jonah hard on the back.

  ‘March fly!’ goes Tommo with a grin.

  Jonah just looked at him, straight, until Tommo looked away.

  Bulldozer’s Story

  Mary took us on a tour of the old buildings, carts and wagons. Her dog. Little Petal, and a black sheep called Mintie followed us.

  She told us about the pioneers, but she was having a hard time because Bulldozer got in between her legs and nearly tripped her up.

  ‘Right oh,’ she said. ‘It’s time to feed Bulldozer.’

  She picked up the little wombat and sat on a stump. We sat in a huge ring around her.

  ‘When I got him he was as big and as bald as my thumb.

  I’ll show you a baby wombat later, then you can see for yourself.’ (We saw it, in a bottle of preservative. It was tiny and naked and looked more like a witchetty grub than a wombat.)

  ‘Bulldozer’s mother was hit by a car on the road, but the farmer who knocked her knew that a tiny baby wombat can live inside its dead mother for up to three days. So he found little Bulldozer and brought him to me.’

  ‘Bulldozer sleeps in an old hat, where it’s dark and comfortable and feels like his mum or a wombat hole, so he knows what it’s like to be a wombat. If we don’t pat him, and make a fuss of him, then he won’t seek so much attention.’

  Edwina brought a bucket with a bottle in it.

  ‘This is warm low-fat milk,’ said Mary.

  She put her arm around Bulldozer, like a baby, with his little feet sticking up, and she plugged in the bottle. He sucked immediately.

  ‘Now, this bottle isn’t like his mother, but it’s the best I can do,’ said Mary.

  You could see Bulldozer was drinking too fast. He pulled off the bottle, making a wheezing, rattling noise.

  ‘Ever heard a wombat burp?’ asked Mary.

  She patted him hard, and rolled him. With every hard pat, or you could say soft smack, a cloud of dust rose up from the furry ball. Then he made a funny little milk blurting sound.

  ‘Blup...blerrp!’ But he kept rattling.

  ‘We’re not finished yet,’ said Mary. She rolled him and bumped him again. He nearly fell off her knee, but she hooked him back as if she’d done it a million times before.

  ‘Burrr...blupp!’

  He wanted to drink again.

  Mary sat on the stump, with Little Petal lying behind her, feeding and burping Bulldozer and answering our questions.

  ‘How will you get him back to the bush?’ asked Tak, which was my question, too.

  ‘In the very early morning, when it’s still dark, I take the wombats and the wallaby for a play, up in the bush. They snuffle around and have a lovely time.

  ‘When they get older, like you kids, they change. They grow strong and become independent. They get the urge to go back to the bush. The wombats start to dig. They go looking for a mate. I’ll take Bulldozer out for a little bit longer each night, until finally I leave him and he won’t want to come home with me. Then I’ll know my job is done.’

  We asked Mary dozens of questions, until she held up her hand.

  ‘Seeing as you’re so interested, I’ll show you a couple more of my patients.’

  In a scrumbly little nest in o
ld wardrobe there was a brush-tailed possum. We got a quick peep at a tiny sugar glider in a nesting box in a big aviary. Near Mary’s house we saw a young wallaby with one leg skinned to the bone where he’d been caught in a fence.

  ‘Gee, Mary,’ said Mitch. ‘Add up the wild animals, the donkeys, chooks, horse, Mintie, Little Petal and all us kids, and you’ve got a lot to look after!’

  ‘You’re not wrong!’ said Mary.

  Monday Evening

  Dinner was spag bol followed by banana custard. My fork was like this, which is fine if you’re trying to stab someone round a corner, but if you’re trying to put food in your mouth, forget it.

  Then we had to write our Camp Journal. It was easy because there was so much to write about. Azza, as usual, got stuck. Remember how I said he was slow at some things? If Madonna bungy-jumped out of a helicopter into his school bag, he would still sit there, click, clicking his biro, trying to think of something to write about. He eats slow, too.

  Mitch was smoking his pencil, lighting it with his rubber and writing as if he was signing big business deals.

  Jonah did his journal in five seconds flat, full of things like what sort of pump Mary had on the dam, the hot water service, even the sort of phone Mary had.

  Needless to say, Naomi ran out of space writing a prize-winning story about Mary being a world expert at getting wombats back to the bush.

  I didn’t care much about my journal. I was determined to take some fantastic photos to show Mum. My first film. Thirty-six photos. Thirty-six chances!

  There weren’t any lights to turn out, so Lights Out was all torches. As usual the teachers went into psycho yelling overdrive, eg: ‘Caleb, you’ve been running around with that towel around your waist clutching a toothbrush for half an hour, just do it!’

  ‘Where’s Nicko? Why isn’t he in bed?’

  ‘He’s sitting on the toilet finishing his Garth Nix book.’

  ‘I can’t find my teddy,’ whimpered Renee.

  ‘Santa Cleopatra! Silenzio!’ (That’s Lisa.)

  ‘Fawkner A Mitchell, why aren’t you in your pyjamas? Do you have a death wish?’ said Miss Cappelli.

  ‘Haven’t you heard, the children are the future?’ said Mitch.

  ‘You’ll be the past in a minute! Get on with it.’

  The parents weren’t as hard as the teachers. They hadn’t done a university course in threatening. Mrs Pumps-Vital said, ‘I’ll tell Miss Cappelli and Mrs McDonald if you don’t be quiet.’

  And Mr Murphy had to listen to radiation particles, absolute zero and hyper-acceleration warps trying to get Tak out of the bathroom.

  The beds were squeaky wire bunks with mattresses covered with brown vinyl. When you moved it sounded like you were rolling on a packet of cornflakes.

  My sleeping bag is made of nylon stuff, which is really slippery, and on that mattress it was like trying to sleep on an ice-skating rink.

  Nicko’s bunk sloped downhill. He found a board and stuck it under one end, trying to make it level.

  The teachers threaten you for half an hour before you go to bed, then they threaten you for half an hour after, then they go into berserko overdrive for the next half hour and prowl like guards in a prison camp.

  ‘Turn off that torch!’

  ‘If I hear one more peep you won’t be Convicts, you’ll be Astronauts!’

  ‘Who was that giggling? Explorers, this is my last warning!’

  ‘I didn’t see a torch then, did I, Settlers?’

  We lay in the dark and talked quietly about Mary.

  Mitch said, ‘Do you really believe she gets out of her warm comfy bed at four o’clock in the morning to take the animals to the bush? Do you reckon that’s true?’

  ‘For sure,’ said Nicko.

  ‘I’ll tell you about my uncle’s dog,’ said Jonah quietly. ‘He was a young dog, kelpie-border-collie cross. My uncle was training him with cattle.

  ‘One evening my uncle was looking for a lost cow, when the dog got excited about a wombat hole. He raced down into it. My uncle could hear him barking and snapping down in the ground. He was making a tremendous din. He yelled and yelled to his dog to come out. Then the barking went strange and wild. Then it stopped.’ Jonah paused. ‘The wombat crushed the dog to death. Jammed him against the side of his burrow and broke his ribs.’

  We lay in the dark letting the story sink in. Nobody felt like talking any more.

  Then a couple of minutes later Jonah added. They’re strong, wombats.’

  The Second Day

  Jonah, who was already dressed, stuck his head in the tent.

  ‘The light was on all night in the bathroom of the teachers’ hut.’

  ‘Didn’t you go to bed last night?’ groaned Nicko.

  ‘Got up early. Mr Holmes’s got gastro. He’s been chucking up all night. Mr Murphy is taking him home and they’re sending a replacement teacher.’

  ‘I’m sorry we’re losing old Holmes Sweet Holmes,’ said Mitch.

  ‘You can get away with a lot with him.’

  But camp was so cool we didn’t think much about it.

  At breakfast they had humungous big plastic bottles of milk. I whooshed the milk into the plate and shot half my cornflakes out of the bowl. Edwina didn’t get mad. She just said, ‘Clean it up, mate, and start again.’

  Watts was a garbage guts. For breakfast he had nine Weetbix, four slices of toast and Vegemite, followed by three helpings of scrambled eggs and bacon. Worse than Wormz.

  We Numbered Off to check how many kids had fallen down gold mines or died of snake bite. You have to yell your number loud and fast, and if Number Off gets stuck on you, you’re in trouble. We have to go back to 1 again and waste time.

  This is how we Numbered Off:

  ‘1’

  ‘2’

  ‘Tree’

  ‘4’

  ‘5”

  ‘Sex’

  We always get stuck on 7. Luke!

  ‘Seben’ (Luke has a cold)

  ‘8’

  ‘9’

  ‘Tin’

  ‘Eleventee’

  ‘12’

  ‘Thurdeen’

  ‘Naughty’

  ‘15’

  ‘Sexteen’

  ‘17’

  yells Sam from the boys’ toilets

  ‘19’

  ‘TwenTEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!’ and so on.

  Edwina times us. The fastest time for Number Off was 49 seconds.

  Then we had tent inspection to encourage neatness and tidiness. Unfortunately, I’m not neat, Mitch’s house-keeper cleans his room, Wormz doesn’t care, Nicko is hopeless, Azza was playing football and Jonah was probably watching the wombats or talking to Mary.

  Nicko sat on Jonah’s bed. ‘Hey, what’s this bump in his sleeping bag?’

  He wriggled down to the bottom of Jonah’s bag and fished out a tatty, flattened, weird-looking object with most of the hair worn off.

  ‘What is it?’ says Wormz.

  ‘Weren’t you edumacated at kindermagarten?’ goes Mitch.

  ‘It’s a toy platypus. Well, it was a toy platypus.’

  Mitch wanted to give Jonah heaps. The Tough Nut from Tubbut brought his little platty to camp. We’ll leave him out for some air. It must be awful down there with Jonah’s stinking feet. He wants to meet everybody.’

  ‘No he doesn’t,’ says Wormz. ‘Come on Plat, you’re going back down your burrow where you belong.’

  Mitch pulled a silly face, but he didn’t say anything more.

  Wormz and I invented the Quick Clean-Up. We stuffed everything under Azza’s bunk, then put our bags around the edge so you couldn’t see the mess. But I won’t recommend it because our gear got so muddled up we couldn’t find anything.

  Chook was suspicious and pulled one of the bags away, revealing all.

  I was right. Jonah was sitting near Thornton Primary, watching him eat grass. Then a stack of girls came up. ‘Oh, he’s so cute. He’s so sweet. So adorable!!!!r />
  ‘Don’t feed him bread!’

  ‘He likes it!’

  ‘It’s not good for him. He’s a wild animal and he’s going back to the bush!’ Jonah yelled. He actually yelled!!!

  Wattle and Daub

  Mary turned over a bucket and sat on it. The pioneers had to think for themselves,’ she said. They couldn’t figure it out on the computer, or go to the shops for anything they needed. Nearest shop was sixty miles. They had to make do. One of the improvised ways of building was wattle and daub. This morning you’re going to build like the pioneers.’

  Wattle was thin, bendable, whippy sticks, and daub was mud.

  To get the wattle we trooped up the hill behind camp, then down into a gully. We turned a bend in the track and there was an incredible sight like something out of a violent movie...a stolen burnt-out car! There were bullet holes in the door, and broken glass and beer cans everywhere. The robbers had ripped down a big tree to burn it.

  Mary stood, with her hands on her face, shaking her head. We could see how awful she thought it was, but we thought it was cool. Mitch pretended it was a prize in a TV show.

  Jonah wasn’t laughing. ‘A car got dumped near my uncle’s. He had to drag it away because the place started looking like a tip.’

  Back at camp, Mary showed us how to weave the sticks into a wall. Then you make a mud mixture with straw to hold it together.’

  ‘Like mud bricks?’ said BeckerBus.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Mary. Then you slop it on the wall of sticks and smear it in.’

  Most kids were interested in the wattling, especially using the tomahawk. Edwina had the wattlers. Helmut had the daubers.

  The Convicts volunteered to get the daub.