Da’s still reading. ‘Apparently we have Kerenza to thank for Wenna and Josiah emigrating.’
‘Me? How?’
‘All those things you wrote to Wenna got Josiah interested in this new world.’
‘What things?’ I was just complaining.
Da shrugs. ‘The horses, the land, the work. Josiah says it’s an adventure we’re having in this untamed land and we’re lucky. He can’t wait to help.’
‘Truly?’ I can’t believe it. A sob rises up, but it’s a happy one.
Da hands me the letter and hugs me.
When the jobs are done and Elowen’s in bed, Harry and I sit outside watching for stars to appear. ‘You know I got worried when I heard you liked Valmai.’
Harry chuckles. ‘You’re my cousin. I’ll always have you as a friend even when I’m old and married. Besides, Jacob likes her too.’
‘Is that what you were really fighting about at school?’
‘Maybe.’ Then he says, ‘What was it like out in the scrub by yourself at night? Did you feel a part of it?’
I shake my head. ‘I was too scared about Kitto to feel anything else. Then there was a dingo. She almost attacked me.’
‘There must have been pups.’
‘Now that it’s over, I feel different. Perhaps like Prancer does when he wakes up to the day, his tail rotating like a windmill. Or one of Granda’s horseshoes plunging through the fire and coming out shiny and new again.’
Harry smiles at me and I don’t even have to explain what I’m trying to say. ‘Are you glad to be here yet?’
I answer slowly. ‘I think so. There’s so much happening now – Mam coming home with the new baby, Wenna and Josiah, and Da’s going to start the house. Next year the crop should grow.’
‘Dad said they’ll use superphosphate and we’ll plough differently – not so deep. We’ll have a bore for water too.’ He pauses. ‘Clarrie was telling me some things. I think we should leave some scrub growing.’
‘Then there’s Prancer and Pockets,’ I add. ‘I’d never see them grow up if I hadn’t come. And all of you.’ As I say ‘you’ I look at him and he grins. ‘When I’m older I might go to boarding school.’
‘Me too. I might be a teacher or a botanist. You could be a nurse or a singer.’
‘We’ll see.’
We fall quiet watching a young magpie with grey feathers on its back begging food from its parent. Then it tries to warble. In a tall tree a mopoke gives its haunting call and I hear an answer from further away. It’s almost dusk, and I think of the card I’ll make for Mam.
Acknowledgments
I gained information and inspiration for Kerenza from the memoirs of Lloyd Wormald, Maysie Rundle, Jim Rundle, Lorna Wormald (nee Nietschke) and my late father Len Trevilyan, who told me stories of his life growing up in the Mallee. I owe thanks to my cousin Margaret Wormald for extensive help with locating resources, memoirs, ideas (like children dig ging a well) and checking the manuscript for inconsistencies. Thank you to Neil Wormald for checking farming practice, and Makayla and Amelia Penner for your ideas as I read you drafts. Thank you to the staff at the community libraries of Kapunda, Loxton and Swan Reach for all your research help, sending books and photographs. Also, the Loxton Historical Village was inspiring.
Thank you also to Janeen Brian for providing research and finding the music that Kerenza liked; Phil Cummings for Pockets; Ross Vogt for the stories of snakes and horses; Peter Jeffs for horse lore; Ralph and Tim Prior for farming detail; Lynn Dettloff; Aunt Maysie for remembering names of horses; Jennette Mickan for the antics of your chooks; Milton Edwards for the black umbrella to frighten magpies and Ben and Emma Johnston for showing me the last standing dead pine tree and giving me a 1911 penny found in the old farmhouse cellar.
Thank you to Jeanette Wormald for the use of your traditional owners’ acknowledgment, and for inspiring me many years ago to write a story like this and thank you, Dyan Blacklock, for asking me to. Celia Jellett, thank you for loving the story and for your helpful editing.
Some facts have been changed to serve the story. Pyap West Primary School wasn’t opened until 1913. The black and white fantails are Willie Wagtails, but they weren’t called this until after 1916. Ribbon Singh is inspired by a hawker called Button Singh who visited the area in the 1930s and 1940s. The mission station at Swan Reach wasn’t established until 1926.
After the drought of 1911 in which the crops failed, the government sank bores in the area and provided superphosphate for the next year’s crops. Farming practices gradually changed to make the area the more sustainable and thriving wheat-producing area that it is today.
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First edition published by Omnibus Books in in 2015.
This electronic edition published by Scholastic Australia Pty Limited, 2016.
E-PUB/MOBI eISBN: 978-1-760276-03-9
Text copyright © Rosanne Hawke, 2015.
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Kerenza: A New Australian Page 12