The Audrey of the Outback Collection

by Christine Harris

  For Jo, my fair-dinkum sister—CH

  For the kids at Timber Creek and Bulla—AJ

  Little Hare Books

  an imprint of

  Hardie Grant Egmont

  Ground Floor, Building 1, 658 Church Street

  Richmond, Victoria, 3121, Australia

  www.littleharebooks.com

  Text copyright © Christine Harris 2008, 2009

  Illustrations copyright © Ann James 2008, 2009

  Cover illustration copyright © Ann James 2009

  Audrey of the Outback first published 2008

  Audrey Goes to Town first published 2008

  Audrey’s Big Secret first published 2009

  This edition published 2011

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any

  means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,

  without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the

  National Library of Australia

  ISBN 978 1 742736 49 5 (epub)

  Cover design by Natalie Winter

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Audrey of the Outback

  Audrey Goes to Town

  Audrey’s Big Secret

  Interesting Words

  Audrey of the Outback

  Audrey leaned further out.

  One

  Audrey Barlow parted the hessian curtains and leaned out of her bedroom window. Her fair plaits swung forward like heavy ropes.

  ‘Stumpy,’ she whispered. ‘Quick, come here.’

  She checked back over her shoulder. Douglas, her three-year-old brother, had ‘sneaky feet’. At least, he did when he wore his kangaroo-skin slippers. When he walked over the skins spread across the mud floor he didn’t make a sound. But he wasn’t in the room.

  Audrey leaned further out. When she was in a hurry, she was glad her parents couldn’t afford glass. She could stick her head through the window quickly.

  ‘This is our chance, Stumpy. We’re going to find out the swagman’s secret …’ She tilted her head, straining to hear Stumpy’s soft words. ‘What was that? Yes, it is a secret.’

  The swagman had arrived the previous evening, just before the sun set. Swaggies turned up from time to time, hoping Mrs Barlow would give them flour or sugar. They didn’t have houses of their own and slept outside under the stars. Most swaggies offered to work in exchange for food. But some arrived as the sun was going down and left early in the morning so they didn’t have to do chores. Dad called those sort ‘sundowners’.

  This swaggie arrived just as the family was sitting down to kangaroo stew. The sudden knock on the door made Audrey squeal. Lightning, the blue heeler dog, used to announce visitors with his bark. But a month ago a snake bit him and now he was buried out the back.

  Price leapt up to open the door to a swagman who was taller and more solid than anyone Audrey had ever seen. He blocked the doorway with his large body. His dark beard was bushy enough to make an eagle’s nest. Years in the sun had pouched his eyes with wrinkles. His scuffed boots were dusty. Audrey noticed a split in the side seam of his brown jacket. He probably didn’t have anyone to sew for him, and his own fingers looked too thick to hold a needle.

  But it was not his size or his thick beard that made Audrey stare. It was the bulging chaff bag he carried. Swaggies always had their bedrolls strapped to their backs with a tea billy or saucepan hanging from it. But this bag was different. It bulged unevenly, with bits sticking out as though it was packed with fingers. And it rattled.

  Audrey itched to know what was inside.

  Now Audrey pleaded with Stumpy. ‘You have to come with me to the swaggie’s camp. Or I’ll never sleep again. Last night my eyes kept popping open all by themselves.’

  She couldn’t get the rattle of that chaff bag out of her head. It made her shiver.

  Two

  Audrey skipped into the kitchen. A large yellow bowl on the bench hinted there might be cake later on. Sometimes Audrey was allowed to help by rubbing goat butter and flour together between her fingers. The goat butter smelt sour on its own, but not after it was cooked in a cake. Especially if her mum added spices from the little tins.

  Mrs Barlow wiped her hands on her apron, leaving a smudge of flour. The flowery apron had faded patches and was darned with thread that did not match. But Audrey thought the apron made her mum look pretty. The leaves around the little flowers brought out the green in her eyes.

  Audrey’s mum once told her, ‘You’ve got my eyes.’

  It made Audrey laugh. ‘No, I haven’t. You’ve still got your eyes. I can see them stuck in your head.’

  Mrs Barlow handed Audrey a tin. ‘Tell the man these are all the eggs we can spare for now.’

  Audrey peeked inside. There were four eggs, nestled in bran to stop them rolling against each other.

  ‘He said his name is Toothless,’ Audrey reminded her mum.

  Most swagmen were known by their nicknames. But Audrey couldn’t work this one out. Yesterday, she had seen lots of teeth gleaming through the man’s bushy beard. His teeth were as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, but they were all there. The swagman was a mystery, all right.

  Douglas ran into the kitchen and jumped into the air, fingers outstretched, trying to touch the dried apricots that hung on strings from the ceiling. But he had a lot of growing to do before he would reach them. Hanging dried fruit kept it away from ants. Flour and sugar bags were on big hooks for the same reason.

  Mrs Barlow limped to a chair and sat down.

  ‘Is your leg whingeing today, Mum?’ asked Audrey.

  Mrs Barlow shrugged. Douglas flung himself over her knees and she winced. ‘Audrey, please don’t earbash that poor swagman,’ she said. ‘You could talk the hind leg off a donkey.’

  Audrey nodded and straightened her back so she would look taller. ‘I’m nearly growed up.’

  ‘Grown, with an “n”.’

  ‘Gwow-dup,’ said Douglas, in a muffled voice, as though it was one long word. With his head dangling on one side of his mother’s knees and his feet on the other, he was a talking seesaw.

  ‘When you get back you can clean out the chookyard, Audrey,’ said Mrs Barlow. ‘It’s your turn.’

  Audrey frowned. The chooks were all right. And she liked eating their eggs. But she hated cleaning out the yard. It was smelly. And the manure had to be bucketed all the way to the vegetable patch. It was enough to put people off vegetables.

  ‘I’ll take Stumpy with me,’ said Audrey.

  ‘I thought you might.’

  Carefully cradling the tin of eggs, Audrey stepped out of the kitchen into dazzling sunlight. She blinked as her eyes adjusted.

  Her older brother, Price, still wasn’t back from checking his traps. He must have caught lots of rabbits.

  Stumpy was waiting at the back door. He looked as though he was sulking, but Audrey knew he didn’t mean it. Stumpy hated waiting around for her to come outside. She smiled to show she was glad he was coming along too.

  Buttons, one of the goats, bleated. Audrey had named her Buttons because she had been ‘cute as a button’ when she was small. Now she had the same wobbly ears and knobby knees as Sassafras, the mother goat.

  ‘You can’t be hungry again, Buttons,’ said Audrey. ‘All you do is eat.’

  Audrey walked between the chookyard and the long-drop dunny. She crossed the red sandy clearing that separated the house from the scrub. Her dad had insisted on a wide clearing for a fir
ebreak.

  ‘Hello, Pearl. Hello, Esther,’ she called out as she passed the wooden crosses that marked her sisters’ graves.

  Stumpy never spoke to them. He hadn’t known Pearl and Esther.

  There was a path, worn by camels and the occasional horse and cart. But it was quicker to cut through the scrub to the swaggie’s camp. There was a permanent clearing near a dry creek bed, where swag men usually stayed. A pile of grey ashes marked where they built their camp fires. It was a nice shady spot to camp.

  Audrey had secret cubbyhouses nearby, but there was no time to play. She had to deliver the eggs without breaking them. And then she was going to find out what that swagman had in his chaff bag.

  Three

  The day was quickly warming up.

  ‘By this afternoon it’ll be hot enough to fry an egg in the sand,’ Audrey told Stumpy.

  He made a face. Stumpy didn’t like eggs, whether they were fried or not.

  Overhead a wedge-tailed eagle circled. Brown, with white markings, the eagle seemed to drift lazily on the wind. But Audrey knew that eagles had keen eyes. They could see the smallest mouse or skink running through the grass.

  Audrey balanced the tin of eggs on one hand and curled the other around her mouth. ‘Cooee!’

  Her call resounded through the trees. She imagined the sound shaking birds from their nests, disturbing leaves and jostling clouds. She looked up. Actually, there were no clouds. But it was fun pretending.

  ‘Cooee,’ came an answering call.

  A thin trail of smoke coiled above the trees.

  ‘Stumpy,’ Audrey said, ‘you’d better stay here. You don’t always behave.’

  She took two steps, then hesitated. Again, she remembered the strange rattling that had come from the swagman’s chaff bag. A tingle ran down her spine. ‘Stumpy, if I call out, run in and get me, all right?’

  Stumpy nodded.

  Toothless sat on the ground beside a small fire. There was a lump of cooked damper in his hand. It was flatter than the damper Audrey’s dad made. Dad added a pinch of carb soda to puff up the flour, which made the damper lighter, more like a scone.

  Carefully, Audrey stepped over a line of ash from the fire. Putting hot ash around the camp was supposed to keep ants away. The idea was that they wouldn’t want to burn their little anty feet. It didn’t work for long, though. Ash soon cooled.

  Dad sometimes said, ‘You kill a hundred ants, and another five hundred come to the funeral.’

  The swagman’s cheeks bulged with damper. His dark beard bounced up and down as he chewed. He nodded a greeting.

  ‘I’ve brought your eggs, Mister Toothless,’ said Audrey. ‘Mum can only spare four. The chooks aren’t laying properly since a fox got under the wire and ate some of them. They got a fright.’

  The man swallowed. ‘Just got one name. Toothless. There’s no Mister.’ He held up his damper. ‘Eggs will make a nice change from this rock.’

  Audrey smiled. So he wasn’t much of a cook, then.

  His nails were grubby. Out here, with little water and too much sand, it was impossible to keep clean.

  She sat down, facing him. ‘Do you reckon chooks just stop making eggs? Or do you think they’re still in there and the chooks are holding on tight so they don’t drop out?’

  ‘Don’t know the answer to that one,’ said Toothless. ‘But thank your mother for the eggs. Be down later to see if I can help her any.’

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Damper crumbs fell from his beard. ‘There’s tea left in the billy. Want some?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ Audrey could stay longer if she had a drink, and it would be rude to say no.

  Toothless reached over to search among his things.

  The large chaff bag Audrey remembered from the night before rested beside his rolled blanket. Yesterday he had gripped the top of that bag as though he never wanted to let it go. Now, his elbow bumped against the bag and it rattled.

  Audrey’s stomach fluttered. She couldn’t drag her eyes away from that bag. What was in there?

  Her eyes slid again to the chaff bag.

  Four

  Toothless found a spare tin pannikin. He filled it with tea from his battered billy. Then he sat the billy back down on the coals.

  The tea was black because the leaves had been brewing for some time. It would be strong and probably bitter. But Audrey took the pannikin with a smile of thanks.

  Gingerly, she took a sip. The tea was strong, all right. But it had the smoky aroma of eucalyptus leaves that she liked. The metal pannikin was warm against her fingers.

  ‘My dad’s a dogger,’ she told Toothless. ‘He’s away. Last trip, he sold five hundred dingo scalps to the government. So Mum says she wants real glass in the windows.’

  Audrey liked dogs, but dingoes were different. They didn’t bark, just howled. It was a sound that made you shudder at night. Dingoes attacked sheep and cows. Audrey’s dad had once seen a mob of dingoes chase an emu into a fence, where it died of exhaustion. Sometimes, when Dad was camping out, he had to hang his food bag high up in a tree so the dingoes wouldn’t tear it apart.

  ‘Just you kids and your mother home, then?’ asked Toothless.

  ‘Yes. My little brother, Douglas, is three. And Price is twelve. He’s out rabbiting today. Mr Akbar, the mailman, pays him for the skins. Price reckons he’s head of the house when Dad’s gone. But I don’t.’ She sighed. ‘And we’ve got two sisters, Pearl and Esther, buried out the back. Mum says they weren’t strong enough to grow big. Mum cries about my sisters sometimes. But I pretend not to notice. Mum says Pearl and Esther have gone to a better place. Price says she means heaven. I reckon she means Adelaide. It’s got beaches with real water.’ She paused to take a breath and her eyes slid again to the chaff bag. ‘You’ve got a lot to carry. Is it heavy?’

  ‘Used to it. Been on the road since I was thirteen.’

  ‘That’s about the biggest bag I’ve ever seen.’

  Toothless slurped his tea like an animal that had found water in a drought. He spat a tea-leaf onto the ground.

  Audrey copied by spitting a leaf of her own. Then she spat another through the gap where a tooth had fallen out. She liked the gap and hoped her new tooth wouldn’t grow down too quickly. At home she would never be allowed to spit. Suddenly she felt more grown-up.

  The breeze ruffled the trees and scattered dry leaves. Audrey looked down at the hot coals under the billy. Toothless had built a small sand wall around the camp fire so the wind couldn’t blow coals and soot into the dry grass. Dad would like that. Toothless had been careful.

  A sudden snap from the dense twiggy bushes behind Toothless made Audrey jump. Tea slopped from the pannikin onto her hand.

  Toothless grunted. ‘Caught something.’

  Five

  Toothless walked quietly for a large man. As though his feet didn’t know the weight of his body. The bushes in this spot were the same height as the swagman and quite thick, so he vanished the moment he stepped through them. Audrey could tell which way he was heading by the cracking of twigs and rustle of leaves. Then the sound stopped.

  Audrey’s eyes were drawn to the chaff bag. Maybe she could take one little peek. The top of the bag was fastened with string and only loosely tied. It would be easy to undo.

  She looked around, wishing she hadn’t made Stumpy wait so far away from the camp. Audrey gave a low whistle that sounded like a bird call. If Stumpy heard it he would know she wanted him. That was their special signal. Stumpy was smart. He would tell her if it was all right to look in the bag. Silently, she urged him to hurry. Toothless could return at any moment.

  Too impatient to wait for Stumpy, she put her pannikin down on the ground. Still seated with her legs crossed, she edged sideways, closer to the swagman’s bag.

  It wasn’t stealing, because she wasn’t going to take anything. She was only going to look.

  The breeze freshened to tease the trees and bushes again.

  Audrey
froze. Was the swagman coming back?

  But it was only Stumpy. He stood back, partly concealed by the bushes. She saw his eyes staring at her through a gap in the leaves.

  Unsure what to do, she pointed to the swagman’s mysterious bag.

  Stumpy nodded. Audrey’s heart beat faster. Nervously, she danced her fingers in the red sand, closer to the bag.

  Then she stopped.

  It didn’t feel right. The bag belonged to Toothless.

  Audrey erased her fingermarks in the sand with a sweep of her hand just as Toothless strode back into the clearing, growling under his breath.

  Audrey jumped guiltily. Relief flooded through her at the same time. If she hadn’t changed her mind about snooping, Toothless would have caught her with her hand in his bag.

  The swagman sat down. He didn’t seem to notice that Audrey had moved. ‘Set some rabbit traps out back, but the spring’s too light. Wind blew a twig into it and set it off. Have to fix it later. Can’t muck about with machinery when there’s a lady visiting.’

  Audrey was pleased to be called a lady, but also slightly embarrassed. She wasn’t sure a lady would peek into other people’s bags. But it didn’t dampen her curiosity. ‘Do you carry your own firewood?’

  It might be a silly question, but she couldn’t think of another. Soon she would have to ask straight out—or else forget all about the bag. But she wasn’t sure she could forget. Whenever she tried to stop thinking about something, it always came back, bigger and louder, refusing to be ignored. Sometimes her thoughts shouted at her.

  Toothless threw the dregs of his tea into a clump of spiky spinifex grass. ‘Want to know what’s in the bag, do you?’

  Audrey shrugged as if she didn’t really care.

  Toothless sniffed. ‘Heads.’

  Six

  Audrey gasped.

  Toothless leaned over to drag the chaff bag closer. It rattled again.

  He pulled the string at the top of the bag and the knot fell undone.

  Perspiration broke out on Audrey’s back.