The Audrey of the Outback Collection

by Christine Harris

  ‘Do you think a deep well is better than a dry billabong?’

  ‘If you want water.’

  A log slipped from Audrey’s fingers. She felt it falling and jumped back. It missed her feet, hit the floor and rolled to one side. The log didn’t mark the floor. Crushed ants’ nest and mud made a firm surface. The only time the floor cracked was if it dried out in the heat of summer.

  Audrey stooped to pick up the log. ‘What if you were a bunyip, Price?’

  ‘I’m not a bunyip.’

  ‘But what if you were? Do you reckon you’d like wells as much as billabongs?’

  ‘Audrey, these questions are silly.’

  ‘Not if you’re a bunyip.’

  ‘I told you. I’m not a bunyip. I’m a man.’

  ‘You’re a boy. You’re too young to be a man.’

  ‘I’m a young man.’

  Audrey couldn’t quite see how her brother could turn into a man—even a young man—in one night. Last December he’d gone to bed, eleven years old and a boy. Next morning, on his twelfth birthday, he started saying he was a man.

  Audrey picked at a splinter that had speared her right thumb. ‘But do you think a bunyip, even if it wasn’t you, would like a well as much as a billabong?’

  Price shook his head.

  ‘Have you ever seen a bunyip, Price?’

  He gave a little snort.

  ‘Heard a bunyip growl?’

  ‘I’ve heard some strange things in the bush.’

  ‘Were they bunyip strange?’ asked Audrey.

  ‘Bunyips aren’t real.’

  ‘How do you know if you’re not one and you haven’t seen one?’

  He opened his mouth, then closed it again. He’d catch flies if he kept flapping his jaw like that.

  ‘You do know what bunyips look like, though,’ said Audrey.

  ‘I’ve told you before.’

  ‘Tell me again.’

  ‘They’re huge and hairy, with red eyes on the sides of their heads, and fangs. They like water. They bellow at night. And they eat kangaroos and people.’ Price lowered his voice. ‘Especially women and girls.’

  ‘I told you boys and billy goats were tough meat.’ Audrey looked at her brother sideways. ‘You know a lot about bunyips for someone who hasn’t seen one and doesn’t believe in them.’

  Was that thing she’d seen last night a bunyip looking for water? It had been down near the well.

  What if it was looking for something yummy to eat? Something wearing a nightgown and a cardigan. Audrey remembered the howling she’d heard. It had sounded like dingoes. But bunyips made noises too.

  Audrey hadn’t seen red eyes though. And a hungry bunyip would have eaten her right up when she was out there alone.

  No, it couldn’t have been a bunyip. Nor could it have been an angel. An angel would fly, and if Pearl and Esther came back to visit, they’d come inside the house.

  But whatever it was, it was real. And Audrey knew she wouldn’t stop thinking about it until she solved the mystery.

  Had something moved out there?

  Six

  Back in the kitchen, Audrey wiped the last saucepan and hung it on its hook over the kitchen fireplace.

  Next time Dad went south to Beltana, he was picking up a proper stove from Mrs Paterson. That stove would be the sort you put wood inside, behind a metal door. With one of those, Mum could cook bread and scones in the house. Although Dad had done a pretty good job of the bread oven out the back. It was made from crushed ants’ nest and wire, and hardly crooked at all. Maybe his eyes had been better then.

  Audrey glanced out of the window. A pleasant breeze drifted in. Most of last night’s clouds had floated away and the sky was a deep blue.

  Suddenly Audrey stood still and narrowed her eyes. Had something moved out there?

  If so, it wasn’t Stumpy. Today, he was playing out bush. He didn’t like chores. And he wasn’t that good at them either. Four legs weren’t much use if you had to dry dishes or clean lamp glass with salt. You needed hands.

  Audrey stood at the window, staring out.

  When their dog, Grease, was alive, he had barked if a stranger showed up. He’d barked too much, actually, and he used to dig holes all around the house. He died just before the family went to Beltana, and Audrey missed him. Dad probably missed him even more. Grease used to go with him when he went away.

  There! Audrey was certain now. A small black dot moved on the edge of the tree line.

  She ran to the door, wrenched it open and dashed towards the clothes line. ‘Mum! Dad! Someone’s coming.’

  ‘Where?’ Mum spun round, towards the track that led to their house. ‘I can’t see anything.’

  ‘You will in a minute.’

  Price leaned the axe handle against the wall and dusted his hands.

  Douglas forgot the game he was playing in the dirt with two sticks and jumped to his feet. ‘I wannaseetoo.’

  ‘Audrey, this isn’t one of your make-believe stories, is it?’ asked Mum.

  ‘I don’t make-believe things.’

  ‘What about Stumpy?’ Price wiped his forehead with his sleeve. The cuff flapped open. Either the button had gone missing or he hadn’t bothered to do it up.

  ‘He doesn’t make up things neither.’

  ‘No. I mean you made up Stumpy.’

  Audrey felt sorry for her older brother. He couldn’t see things since he’d grown taller and moved into his lean-to room at the side of the house. He was so busy growing that wishing and playing were being left behind.

  ‘Stumpy is real,’ she said in her firm-but-polite voice. The one she’d learnt from Mrs Paterson. ‘I see things that other people don’t.’

  ‘My oath, you do, Two-Bob.’ Dad dropped the stick onto the ground. The kangaroo skins hung straight on the line.

  ‘Wotisit? Wotisit?’ A dirt smear curved from Douglas’s nose across his left cheek. The knees of his trousers had round patches of dirt on them.

  Dad smiled at Douglas. ‘Someone’s coming, all right.’

  ‘I saw him first,’ said Audrey. ‘Cos I used Dad’s wrinkles.’

  ‘You did what?’ Mum frowned and laughed at the same time.

  ‘Like this.’ Audrey squeezed up the skin around her eyes to form a tight squint. ‘Dad does this in the bush so he can see better. That’s how he got his wrinkles. Us Barlows have bush eyes, don’t we, Dad … I mean, Chip?’

  ‘Reckon so.’

  Douglas ran to stand behind Mum’s skirt. He leaned to one side, so he could still see the track.

  The figure on the track seemed to grow larger as he came closer. He was solidly built and wore a broad-brimmed hat. A swag was slung over his back. His steps were slow and plodding. He’d probably walked a long way. If you set out too fast, you didn’t get far because you felt tired before you reached the place you were going. ‘One foot after the other will get you there,’ Dad sometimes said when Audrey was rushing about, knocking into things.

  Excitement gripped Audrey like a giant cramp. Even her fingers tingled. She danced up and down, then ran towards the visitor.

  Seven

  Up close, Audrey saw this was no ordinary swaggie.

  He was a she. But she looked as tough as boots. She wore thick trousers and a baggy grey shirt. Her eyebrows were unusually pale. Much paler than the brown hair that showed beneath her hat. The swaggie was broad as well as tall, and her hands were rough and tanned.

  Audrey had a feeling she’d seen this face and solid shape before.

  The swaggie tilted back her head and grinned at Audrey. Pink gums glistened in the sunlight. ‘What d’ya know?’

  Those bare gums and booming voice could only belong to one person. ‘You’re Bloke!’

  ‘Blow me down. You know who I am?’

  Audrey’s smile was so wide that she felt her ears move. ‘You gave me my other name, Two-Bob. You said I was as crazy as a two-bob watch.’

  ‘Right on the nose.’ Bloke chuckled and her whole
body shook. She slapped Audrey on the back.

  Audrey staggered. A pat like that could knock a person into next week.

  ‘You remember me calling you Two-Bob?’ Bloke’s pale eyebrows danced up and down.

  ‘Sort of. Dad told me about it too. He calls me Two-Bob a lot. I call him Reginald sometimes.’ Audrey fiddled with her plaits. ‘He doesn’t like that name too much.’

  ‘Sounds like a gent who sits straight and folds his hands a lot.’

  Audrey nodded. ‘And a Reginald would always have clean fingernails. Dad doesn’t. His are brown, even after he washes them. And when he’s home, he baths every week. So I reckon his fingernails will be brown forever.’

  She waved to her family, waiting by the clothes line.

  Mum waved back.

  ‘I reckon I saw one of those two-bob watches in Beltana. Actually, it wasn’t a watch. It was a clock, which is bigger. It had dead Rome language numbers on it,’ Audrey told Bloke. ‘You came on a good day. Dad’s going to make one of his rabbit stews in the big pot. We like his stews. Except Dad lets them boil too long and the vegetables get all broken and mash up with each other and you can hardly tell which one you’re eating.’

  Audrey skipped alongside Bloke’s plodding feet. ‘Dad’s giving Mum a rest because she’s got a baby in her tummy. I want a girl. But Dougie, my little brother, wants a horse. Dougie’s only three, so his brain’s not working all that good yet. When he felt the baby kicking in Mum’s tummy, he cried because he thought she’d eaten it.’

  ‘It’s all comin’ back to me now, why I called you Two-Bob.’

  Audrey giggled.

  ‘You’ve gone and grown on me,’ said Bloke. ‘I remember you bein’ knee-high to a grasshopper.’

  If she ever shouted, Bloke could blow kookaburras out of trees. Maybe when people had no teeth, there was nothing to dampen the sound of their voice.

  ‘I got trousers too, like you.’ Audrey plucked at her braces, then let them snap back. ‘I have to roll up the cuffs. They’re too long because they were my brother’s. But girls can wear trousers.’

  ‘Too right we can.’

  ‘We can’t grow beards though.’

  Bloke guffawed. ‘Suits me just fine, I can tell you. Some of them blokes on the track got more wildlife in their beards than there is in the zoo.’

  ‘Is that why men scratch their beards a lot?’

  ‘Could be.’

  As they passed the new dunny with real walls, Audrey called out, ‘Chip! Everhilda! It’s Bloke! The girl swaggie.’

  Bloke stepped forward and offered her hand to Dad. He didn’t often shake hands with girls or women. Bloke squeezed his hand up and down as though it were a pump handle. If Bloke shook hands with the same strength that she slapped backs, then it had to hurt. But Dad didn’t even wince.

  ‘Bwoke,’ called Douglas, from behind Mum’s skirts.

  Bloke didn’t shake Mum’s hand, but she showed her gums in a wide smile. ‘Mrs B,’ said Bloke, and tipped her hat just as a man would do.

  Price said, ‘Hello.’ But he stayed back near the house. Which was good because he was as skinny as a greyhound. If Bloke shook hands with Price, she’d probably lift him right off the ground.

  ‘Did you visit us last night?’ Audrey asked Bloke.

  Bloke shook her head. ‘Been walkin’ since sun-up. I was miles away last night. Couldn’t see the hand in front of me face in that dust storm. I stayed put till it passed.’ She took off her hat and wiped sweat from her face with her left forearm. Her brown hair was flattened and there was a red line across her forehead from her hatband. ‘And there’s not much chance of a cuppa if you turn up at night.’

  The mystery of the moving shape in the darkness was still alive.

  ‘You behave yourself, mate.’

  Eight

  Audrey held out the tin. Bloke carefully placed an egg in it, then added a second and a third.

  Suspicious of the big black rooster, Audrey kept her eyes on him. ‘Watch out for Nimrod. He’s started flying up at people. He doesn’t like anyone taking the eggs.’

  Bloke grunted and kept searching the ground. The hens had little wooden boxes they were supposed to lay eggs in, but sometimes they dropped them in the yard. Audrey wondered why the eggs didn’t break when they fell out. It could be because chook bottoms weren’t that far off the ground.

  ‘It’s a good thing eggs aren’t round like cricket balls,’ said Audrey. ‘Otherwise they’d bounce.’

  ‘You might be right.’ Bloke squatted on her heels and eyeballed the big rooster. ‘You behave yourself, mate.’

  He stared back at her with beady chook eyes. Then he moved his little head backwards and forwards as though he was showing off. Audrey wondered if the girl chooks minded that he was so bossy. But he was looking after them all right. They hadn’t been eaten by foxes or dingoes.

  Bloke dusted her hands and stood up.

  From the back of the house came the steady crack of an axe splitting wood. Without even looking, Audrey could tell it was her dad. When Price was cutting wood it was: chop, chop, stop, chop. Followed by muttering and, sometimes, a yelp.

  Over in the other pen, Sassafras bleated.

  ‘Do you reckon goats sound like babies crying?’ Audrey asked Bloke.

  ‘Haven’t had much to do with babies. But it’s hard to ignore a goat.’

  ‘Do you think they smell funny?’

  ‘I’ve smelled worse things.’ Bloke gave a lopsided grin. ‘Includin’ meself.’

  ‘What’s white and sort of floats in the air?’ asked Audrey.

  Bloke put a fourth egg into the tin. Her lips looked dry and flaky. Audrey guessed she didn’t wear her hat all the time and the sun had dried out her skin.

  ‘Is this a riddle?’

  ‘No. I saw something last night, down by the well.’ Audrey peeked up at Bloke from beneath her eyelashes. She hoped Bloke wouldn’t laugh at her question.

  ‘I’ve seen lots of strange things in the bush.’

  ‘Price says that too. But he never tells me what.’

  ‘That thing you saw,’ said Bloke. ‘Could be a min min light.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A light in the bush. They’re mostly seen at night.’

  Audrey felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. ‘Have you ever seen a min min light?’

  ‘Once. In New South Wales.’

  ‘What did it do?’ whispered Audrey.

  ‘It hovered, like this …’ Bloke held up her left hand and shook it like a leaf in the wind. ‘It circled around and came at me real fast. Then it followed me.’

  ‘What’d you do?’

  ‘Walked a lot faster.’

  ‘Did you try to catch it?’

  Bloke grimaced. ‘No. If you chase a min min and catch it, you disappear.’

  ‘Disappear?’ Audrey’s word ended on a squeak. She looked across at her sisters’ wooden crosses. ‘Do you know anyone who got dead by a min min light?’

  ‘Not anyone I know. But I seen a couple of bodies in the bush, and I don’t know how they ended up that way.’

  ‘What are they really, those min min lights?’

  ‘Can’t be sure. But one old Aborigine bloke told me they were dead men’s camp fires.’

  A shiver ran down Audrey’s spine. ‘Do they get cold?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Dead men.’

  ‘Maybe we shouldn’t be talkin’ about this.’ It was Bloke’s turn to shiver.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Don’t open a door,’ said Bloke, ‘unless you want to see what’s behind it.’

  Nine

  Bloke licked her lips, all round.

  Audrey sneaked a look down the kitchen table at Price. He was staring at Bloke.

  Mum and Dad forked through their rabbit stew without glancing up. That told Audrey that they, too, wanted to stare. But they were trying not to do it. No one liked rabbit stew so much they could forget about watching Bloke eat. No
t even when it was Dad’s stew.

  Douglas tilted his head, his blue eyes wide with curiosity. ‘Wheresyourteef?’

  Mum tapped Douglas’s arm.

  Bloke curled her palms around her teacup, lifted it to her mouth and slurped the tea. Her meaty fingers made the teacup look too small. She certainly couldn’t fit those fingers through the handle. She glanced up and saw everyone looking at her. ‘Is he talkin’ to me?’

  ‘Where’s your teef?’ Douglas asked again, but slower this time.

  Bloke set down her cup and laughed.

  ‘Did the toof faiwy take dem?’

  ‘He means tooth fairy,’ Audrey explained. Her cheeks felt hot, and it wasn’t just from the heat of the kitchen fire.

  Bloke let loose another laugh. ‘I’d be rich if I’d sold all me teeth to the tooth fairy. Anyways, don’t reckon the ol’ tooth fairy comes out this far.’ She looked across the table at Douglas. ‘Me teeth weren’t no good to me. Kept hurting all the time. I pulled out a couple, then thought, heck, why not pull out the whole blinkin’ lot.’

  ‘You pulled them out yourself?’ Price had a pink patch on each cheek that suggested he was also warm.

  ‘Easy with pliers.’ Bloke opened her mouth and put her finger on the lower jaw. ‘Ha … abi … o …’ She pulled out her finger and wiped it on her sleeve. ‘Had a bit of trouble with that back one. Roots were all twisted, see. Like this.’ She curled her two forefingers around each other.

  Mum coughed and stood up. Her face was as green as the cardigan she wore over her floral dress. ‘Excuse me.’ She pushed back her chair and dashed outside.

  ‘Mum’s in the expecting with the baby,’ explained Audrey. ‘So she spits up a lot.’

  ‘Two-Bob.’ Dad frowned. ‘It’s not good manners to talk about that at the table.’

  ‘Sorry, Dad.’

  It didn’t seem nearly as bad as watching Bloke describe pulling out her teeth with pliers. But there were different rules for visitors. Down in Beltana, Mrs Paterson had so many rules about manners that she had lists and made children write them down.

  Dad took a rabbit bone from his mouth with his thumb and forefinger. He looked at it for a moment, then dropped it on his bread-and-butter plate. ‘Staying in these parts long, Bloke?’