Don't Pat the Wombat!

by Elizabeth Honey

  ‘I see you at the dam,’ said Helmut, ‘when I empty this wheelbarrow.’

  We stood on the bank of the dam surveying the squooshy wallow of mud. Jonah scooped up a fistful.

  ‘This is very fine mud,’ said Jonah, looking at it carefully. (Here we go, I thought, facts on mud.) ‘Wear it with pride!’ Quick as a flash, he squooshed it down my face.

  ‘Oh yes! Oh yes! Get the complete mud treatment!’ goes Wormz. ‘Refresh the natural moisture balance of your skin!’

  He whacks a glob behind Mitch’s knee. Mitch crumples against Azza who steps back, slips, and slides on his bum into the mud hole.

  Jonah sprang on him, slapping mud in his hair. ‘Deep revitalising treatment for damaged follicles. It’s gunky! It’s gooey! It’s squooshy and it’s yours for only five billion dollars, or free with every dual flush toilet installed this weekend.’

  ‘Whaleman, you are improving!’ says Mitch, slopping a juicy glob down Jonah’s shorts.

  ‘A combination of delicate oils and fragrances,’ goes Jonah, grabbing Mitch. ‘Deep (sploosh) revitalising (squish) treatment (squidge). This season’s fragrance is dung (squelsh, squish, slosh, skrash!)’

  ‘Hey, Jonah! Slip! Slop! Slup!’ goes Nicko, unloading both hands full.

  ‘Your parents will absolutely lerv it!’ says Jonah, getting him back.

  Jonah was seriously funny. Maybe this was the real Jonah.

  Maybe this was why he liked us.

  There was not a single millimetre of us that wasn’t covered. We were weak with laughing. Wormz was a big grin of white teeth in a totally mud face.

  Then we heard the squeak, squeak of the wheelbarrow.

  ‘Helmut!’

  ‘Will he freak out?’ goes Nicko.

  ‘I think he’s cool, but you never know,’ says Mitch.

  ‘What do we do?’ goes Wormz.

  ‘Act normal,’ goes Azza.

  ‘Not possible!’

  ‘Play dead!’ says Jonah.

  We dived down the bank of the dam and lay there like bodies in the First World War.

  The squeaking stopped, then there was a mighty roar of laughter.

  ‘Oh they’re dead!’ goes Helmut. ‘What a pity, I’d better bury them,’ and he started shovelling mud on us.

  In between filling up the wheelbarrow, and mud sliding, and mud wrestling, we tried to catch yabbies with our bare hands.

  Back at the wall, they were singing songs and swapping jobs, but nobody wanted to swap with the old daub diggers. We were like the drones down the mud mines in an outer galaxy. But we were having the best time! And Jonah wasn’t following along with the fun, he was inventing it.

  When it was time to finish, I got Helmut to take some photos.

  Then he pushed us in the dam.

  ‘Not clean enough!’ goes Helmut. ‘Aussie mud sticks hard.’ He kept pushing us back in. ‘And I have to clean the showers!’

  It was nearly lunchtime. We were starving. It was the best morning of a camp ever.

  As we dashed for the showers, a red car pulled up.

  Mr Murphy and another man got out. Then it hit us like a cannon ball.

  It was CROMWELL!

  NO!!!!! NO!!!!! NO!!!!! NO!!!!! HOW COULD THEY DO THIS TO US?

  I got a pain in the stomach. Honestly! Cromwell at camp was like Darth Vader at your birthday party. How could they send him to us at this perfect place? It was cruel!

  The news flashed around the camp: The BOMB is here!’

  ‘What a BUMMER!

  NO!!!!! NO!!!!! NO!!!!! TOTAL UNBONUS!!!!!’

  But it was true.

  The fun evaporated.

  Jonah went quiet.

  Glumbinya

  ‘Hello, Brian,’ said Miss Cappelli in a bright voice, as if she was making friends for the first time. ‘Welcome to the past!’ She waved her arm at all the old buildings and sheds. If she was acting, it was a good act. You can feel it with some of the teachers. They put on an act with him. Chook, Lisa and Miss Cappelli seemed to be offering friendship, as if they were starting all over again.

  The Bomb carried his bags to the teachers’ hut.

  ‘This’ll be interesting,’ said Mitch.

  But The Bomb didn’t sleep there. He slept in the little hut about a hundred metres from them. All by himself.

  Mary heard the car and came out to meet him. ‘Welcome to Gumbinya.’ Little Petal growled quietly. Mary picked her up.

  The Bomb leant towards them. ‘What a lovely little dog!’ he breathed.

  Little Petal went crazy, snapping, snarling and twisting in Mary’s arms. She wriggled free and raced away down the track with her ears flat and her tail between her legs.

  ‘Little Petal’s had an alcoholic master,’ announced Jonah, then he walked off up the hill with his hands in his pockets, kicking a stone.

  ‘Anyone for fireworks?’ said Mitch.

  We knew there’d be trouble.

  ‘Why would Mrs Furgus send The Bomb to camp?’ Wormz took an angry bite of his second apple.

  ‘Maybe to freshen him up a bit?’ said Azza.

  ‘There’s two people at this camp that don’t fit in,’ said Mitch.

  ‘Shut up. Great friend you are!’ said Nicko.

  ‘Well, he behaves like a saint,’ said Mitch. The Bomb gives him heaps and he just takes it.’

  ‘Do you think he likes copping it?’ said Azza.

  ‘Everyone, shut up!’ I said.

  ‘I bet The Bomb is here so he can get Jonah,’ said Azza.

  Wormz spat out an apple pip. ‘We’ve got to keep Jonah off the target range.’

  ‘Mission Impossible!’ goes Mitch. ‘He’s in the open.’

  Sometimes Mitch says mean things, but he does good things.

  ‘I think we should have a signal,’ said Azza, throwing his apple core an incredible distance, just missing a donkey’s ear.

  ‘What, like a whistle?’ said Nicko.

  ‘I know!’ said Wormz. ‘An owl hoot! Tooowit towoooo! Towit towoooo!’

  We all groaned.

  ‘How about this?’ goes Nicko, and he starts singing Advance Australia Fair, except instead of words he sings, ‘Boom boom boom boom boom boom, boom boom’.

  ‘Good one!’ said Mitch.

  ‘OK, that’s the signal,’ said Nicko. ‘Sing anything you like, in booms.’

  Meatloaf

  There is one thing that is absolutely top priority on camp, even if The Bomb is exploding and the world is ending — FOOD!

  We went to a horse riding camp once and the food was so revolting nobody would eat it. The slops bin was overflowing with grey objects called vegetables.

  This being a pioneer camp, the food was different. The cooking was done on two fires. Helmut carted the wood.

  ‘Bit different from cooking on a stove,’ said Edwina, heaving on another log. You can’t twiddle a knob.’

  Edwina was the cook. She was little, with muscly legs. She came from Manchester and she had four sisters. Nobody else in her family had ever been out of England. She loved rock-climbing and wore fluoro tight clothes. I could just imagine her like a tiny pink spider on a cliff, climbing her way to the top. She did a great imitation of the Beatles talking, and the stud in her nose was a guitar. With Edwina, everybody was ‘Mate’. She loved saying it, and making billy tea.

  Edwina hopped round the fires like a bright little witch, stirring in this pot, sprinkling into that pot, adding and tasting. The cooking groups made fantastic damper with sultanas, and another one with cheese.

  Every day, Edwina put out a huge basket of crisp apples and a plastic tank of cordial that wasn’t too watery. We could help ourselves any time. Sometimes we were really hungry.

  ‘Look for the cook!’ goes Wormz.

  ‘Edwina, we’re starving!’

  Then she would give us a big hunk of damper slathered with butter, or a carrot to gnaw on.

  We knew why the donkeys were always hanging over the fence in our direction!

 
; At supper the hot chocolate had real milk and lots of chocolate, not like the horse camp where it was 99% water, 1/2% milk and 1/2% chocolate.

  Everybody loved the fires. The main campfire had a ring of rocks around it, and behind that a ring of old chairs. You could sit on the chairs with your feet on the rocks. I love watching things burn, and burning things, but I’m never allowed to do it at home.

  Cooking duty group had to report to the cookhouse more than an hour before the meal. There was a lot to do. Actually it was the Explorers’ turn, but Miss Cappelli swapped us.

  ‘She wants us out of the way,’ said Nicko.

  Edwina gave us plastic buckets and ice-cream containers.

  ‘Fill that full of peas, that full of tomatoes, this one full of beans and four lettuces. OK, Mates, let’s go!’

  Down beyond the old buildings there was the lush green vegie patch, standing out vividly against the dull grey bush. Beans, sweet corn, tomatoes, lettuce, onions, carrots, lots of green herbs — everything was growing like mad.

  ‘Hey, Nicko, tried the peas?’ yelled Azza.

  ‘Yeah. They’re delicious!’

  ‘I just ate one without picking it. In the pod. Just bit it off.’

  ‘This is the Garden of Eden,’ said Mitch.

  ‘Try the beans!’ said Wormz. ‘You can eat them straight off the plant, too.’ Wormz was grazing like an animal.

  ‘Hey, Mates, leave some!’ laughed Edwina. ‘Everybody else is hungry, too, you know.’

  ‘Who looks after the vegie garden, Edwina?’ asked Nicko.

  ‘Everyone: students, travellers, Brownies, Cubs, Mary, people who come and stay for a while.’

  ‘Hey, check it out!’ yelled Wormz suddenly. This is a major pumpkin!’

  Growing by the back fence was the most enormous pumpkin we had ever seen — Cinderella’s coach, life-size!

  The pumpkin’s dying leaves covered the fence and trailed over it, back down the hill.

  ‘How did it ever grow so big?’ asked Azza.

  ‘It’s near the drain,’ said Edwina. ‘Good soil, sun.’

  Mary and Naomi came through the garden gate.

  ‘Mary, did you know about the humungous pumpkin?’

  ‘Yes. The last school called him Meatloaf. Is he ripe yet?’

  ‘How do you know when he’s ripe?’ asked Nicko.

  ‘What do you think?’ said Mitch. ‘He says, “I’m ready!”’

  ‘He says, “Excuse me, you can eat me now!”’ said Azza.

  Edwina looked at us. She looked at the pumpkin’s dried-up stem. She looked at Mary, who grinned and nodded. She made a decision. ‘OK, Mates, today’s the day for that big boy.’

  ‘Today is the day of his destiny,’ spouted Naomi. Once she starts you can’t stop her. The fine, proud, golden king burns with colour in the sea of his withering leaves. The tendrils which fed him wither and die while he sits proud and awaits his fate.’

  ‘We need a fork-lift truck, a crane, a tip truck and a chainsaw,’ said Jonah.

  ‘I’ve got a wheelbarrow,’ said Mary.

  We tried to lift him but he wouldn’t budge! There was nothing to grab onto.

  ‘Pick him up by the stem,’ suggested Wormz.

  ‘You pick him up by the stem,’ said Mitch.

  We got Helmut.

  Then, with everyone helping, in one mighty heave, we got Meatloaf into the wheelbarrow.

  ‘Come on, Meatloaf. We’re taking you for a lovely little ride.’

  ‘Make way for the King of Vegetables.’

  ‘Make way for Meatloaf the Big Boy.’

  Helmut walked on one side and two kids on the other, making sure he wouldn’t tip over. We trundled all the way to the cookhouse, then we had to wait while kids got their cameras and took photos of him.

  ‘Smile, Meatloaf.’

  ‘Only one problem with this,’ said Miss Cappelli. ‘They hate pumpkin.’

  ‘Big pumpkins don’t have so much flavour,’ said Mary. ‘The smaller ones with the golden colour have the real sweet pumpkin flavour.’

  ‘Could be good that it doesn’t have the pumpkin flavour,’ said Miss Cappelli.

  ‘How will we cut him up?’ asked Nicko.

  ‘With an axe.’

  ‘Chainsaw.’

  ‘See that stone step by the table?’ said Mary. ‘I suggest we drop him on that.’

  We scrubbed the step, then we heaved Meatloaf up onto the table and pushed him off. He gave a shuddering bounce.

  ‘I can see a crack!’ yelled Wormz. ‘See! On the step!’

  We groaned.

  ‘Again.’

  We heaved Meatloaf up, washed the stone, because we’d stood on it, and dropped him again, just missing Nicko’s foot.

  ‘Careful, Nicko!’ said Edwina. ‘I’d hate to have to ring up your mum and say, “Sorry, Mate, he got squashed by a pumpkin.”’

  Three times we pushed Meatloaf off the table, and the third time he split.

  ‘They fell upon his noble broken body and slashed with swords and zeal,’ spouted Naomi, ‘till naught was left but pyramids of pumpkin skin and a cauldron of chunky gold.’

  ‘And Nicko’s finger with a bandaid!’ added Nicko.

  The pumpkin simmered in the pot. We stirred and stirred. The big golden chunks got soft. Edwina sat by the fire, chopping up onions and clove after clove of garlic and throwing them in. It cooked until at last it was blobbing gold mud. Like porridge boiling, the bubbles slowly plopped.

  We were all sitting round the fire by this time, and Lisa was reading us a story called War Horse, which was terribly sad, and some kids were sniffing. But kids watching the pot were laughing. She stopped before the end of the chapter, closing the book. ‘I can’t compete with Meatloaf.’

  ‘It’s golden sun lava,’ said Naomi.

  ‘It’s a magic brew for naughty children who won’t eat their vegetables,’ said Melanie.

  ‘Volcanoes vomited vitamins,’ spouted Nicko.

  Then The Bomb walked into the firelight and killed the poetry stone dead. Mary, who was over by the ship’s bell, looked up to see why the laughing stopped. She watched The Bomb.

  Actually, a lot of that pumpkin got eaten. Some of it went into the slops. But one thing you know with Mary, eventually everything gets eaten, by the chooks, or Little Petal, or the horse, or the donkeys or Mintie.

  ‘I prefer eggs to pumpkin,’ said Azza. Tm leaving my soup for the chooks.’

  Wormz had three helpings.

  I’ve still got one of Meatloaf’s seeds in my shorts pocket.

  Azza’s Leg

  Sometime in the night, I woke up. One of us was crying.

  ‘Had a nightmare, Azza?’ came a whisper.

  ‘My leg hurts,’ he sniffed in a very un-Azza voice.

  ‘You might have been bitten by a snake and you never knew it!’ said Wormz.

  ‘Shut up, will you,’ goes Azza. ‘It’s not funny. It’s damn hurting. It’s damn, damn hurting!’ (Only he wasn’t saying damn.)

  ‘Maybe it’s a heart attack,’ said Wormz.

  ‘You can’t have a heart attack in your leg, derr-brain,’ said Nicko.

  ‘What about a stroke in your leg? My grandfather died of a stroke,’ said Wormz.

  ‘Cancer of the leg?’

  ‘just shut up, will you. He’s in agony,’ said Mitch.

  Azza isn’t a wimp.

  ‘Let’s have a look at your leg,’ said Jonah.

  Azza undid his sleeping bag and held up the hurting leg. We all inspected it, but it looked fine.

  ‘Can you move it?’ asked Wormz.

  ‘Well he’s holding it up, isn’t he?’ said Mitch.

  ‘Can you move your toes?’ said Nicko.

  ‘Yeah. It’s been damn hurting for damn, damn ages.’

  ‘What? Like all week?’ said Wormz.

  ‘No, for hours.’

  A torch flashed in, blinding us, followed by a whoosh of alcohol vapour like a dragon’s breath. Oh great! Oh wonderful!
>
  Oh blessings! The Good Doctor Cromwell. Now everything will be all right!

  ‘What’s going on here?’ His torch flickered around because he couldn’t keep it steady, flashing full in our faces. When the blinding light fell on Jonah’s face, he grunted.

  ‘Mr Cromwell, Azza’s got a really bad pain in his leg,’ goes Mitch.

  ‘Give me a look,’ says The Bomb.

  ‘There’s nothing you can see,’ sniffs miserable Azza.

  ‘Which leg is it then?’

  The Bomb flashes the light around as he wobbles to stay standing up.

  ‘Not that one,’ says Nicko.

  ‘Well, which leg is it then?’ snaps The Bomb, getting nasty.

  When there are two legs and you’re looking at the wrong one, you don’t have to be a genius to figure out which is the other one. That describes the fat lot of good The Bomb was. Besides, if you’d lit a match when he breathed out the tent would have exploded. I hated him and his stinking alcoholic stupidity.

  ‘Did something bite you?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with that leg. Don’t be such a wimp.

  You must have pulled a muscle or something. Cramp. Go to sleep. Stop disturbing everybody. And the rest of you — ’ he looked around for Jonah, but he wasn’t there, or maybe he couldn’t see him, or he forgot what he was doing. (I was trying to guess how he was going to blame Azza’s leg on Jonah.) ‘I hear one more sound from this tent, you’re in it, deep!’

  The blinding torch went out and we heard him stumping away.

  Azza sniffed quietly. ‘Well at least he didn’t rip Jonah to bits.’

  ‘Where is Jonah?’ goes Wormz.

  ‘Must have gone for a leak,’ said Nicko.

  A couple of minutes later another torch bobbed into the tent. This time a little plastic yellow one. It was Jonah with Chook.

  Chook was in her dressing-gown. Her face looked puffy and wrinkled. She’d just woken up and looked much older. Her smell was nice, like a mum...powder or perfume or something.

  Sitting on the edge of Azza’s bunk she could see how miserable he was. ‘Dear me, you poor old fellow.’

  Chook had a good look at the leg. We were all taking in the events. The rest of you get back to your dreams.’