Freedom's Land

by Anna Jacobs

  Instead he wandered round his farm, then couldn’t resist going over to hers. He had to do something about it, what with the cows and everything, so no one would be surprised to see him there. But it was her he thought of, not the cows.

  It was while he was walking round that the idea came to him. Why shouldn’t Andrew and his family move across to this farm? The soil was much better, there were fewer large trees and a permanent stream ran across one corner of it. It was worth a lot, a stream that ran all through the long dry summer. Many of them didn’t. He’d seen it running when they arrived here. You could make a dam with a stream like that and have water through the worst of the droughts. And there were always drought years here.

  And he knew exactly how to word his letter to the Board about this so that they’d accept his recommendation. Quite a few people had walked off the land already and he’d been instructed to do all he could to retain the best settlers. So he’d tell them he was obeying their instructions, and he’d bet none of them would question that.

  He walked into Irene’s humpy and saw a neat pile of bedding on the stretcher beds, which he’d promised to dispose of. Fool that he was, he should have brought his cart. Well, the stuff wouldn’t run away, would it? They had no more thieves in their group, just ordinary folk, some of whom worked harder than others, all of whom had their dreams. The things would still be here tomorrow and he’d take them over to his own house for the time being.

  He waited for Andrew to pass by on his way home after a day’s timber clearing on a farm at the other end of the group’s land. ‘Got a minute?’

  His friend nodded and changed direction.

  Gil led the way and they walked in silence up the slope to the unoccupied farm. He stopped by the buildings and spread out his arms. ‘It’s about this place.’

  Andrew looked at him in puzzlement.

  ‘It’s much better land than yours. I think you should transfer to this one.’

  ‘Is that allowed?’

  ‘Yes. If you’re agreeable, I’ll write to the Board and fix it up.’

  ‘You’re sure it’d be better.’ Andrew smiled wryly. ‘I’ve not got enough experience to tell if it’ll be worth all the trouble. I’ve made things more comfortable at our place than they are here, built sheds and things.’

  ‘I’m very sure. And I’ll help you move them. They’re easy to pull down, tin sheds are.’

  ‘I’d have to talk to Norah. She’s made a garden, loves working on it.’

  ‘You can make another garden and move some of the plants. She’s not done the main spring planting yet.’

  ‘Can you give me a day to think about it?’

  ‘Yes. One day. But that’s all. I have to let the Board know quickly, before they send someone else.’

  When Andrew got home, he could smell the food from a distance and it made his mouth water. A man got ravenous doing so much physical work. Norah did wonders with the few ingredients they could rely on and usually managed to produce something tasty for them.

  Since it was fine, they sat at the outside table, well wrapped against the cold, because that was pleasanter than squashing inside the congested living area. He looked round and smiled at the three rosy-faced children. Today Janie smiled back at him. She was sitting between her two stepbrothers, not next to her mother and looked happier than he’d seen her for a long time.

  Thank heaven she and Jack had recovered so easily from their chilly adventure!

  Once the meal was over he said, ‘You kids can clear up today. Your mother and I have something to discuss. Jack, you’re in charge of the lanterns. Put them somewhere safe before you start the washing up.’

  The boys pulled a face at this, because neither of them considered washing up men’s work, but Andrew had decided early on that since the chores were done under such difficult conditions, they’d all share them.

  Everyone was looking at him anxiously, so he added, ‘There’s nothing wrong and no one’s in trouble, it’s just something Mr Matthews suggested. We’ll tell you about it later.’

  There was enough moonlight for him and Norah to see their way so he offered her his arm and they strolled round their small domain.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘What has Gil suggested?’

  ‘He thinks now that Irene’s left, we should move to her block.’ He explained the advantages.

  She was silent for so long he stopped walking. ‘Don’t you want to go?’

  ‘Not really. We’ve done so much here, it’s beginning to feel like home.’

  ‘We can move nearly everything to the other block.’

  ‘We can’t move my garden.’ She shrugged. ‘But Gil knows more about farming than we do, so I think we should take his advice.’

  ‘It’s not easy, though, is it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You are happy here, aren’t you?’

  Her smiled was glorious. ‘Oh, yes. Never doubt that, love.’

  So he had to kiss her, a rare treat with the kids always nearby. He took his time over it, leaving her gasping and clinging to him, something which pleased him greatly. ‘I do love you, Norah.’

  ‘And I you.’

  When he told the children, they were much less worried about the move, though Janie needed reassuring that he’d build another chook pen for Fluffy because Mr Dawson’s pen was crooked and the chooks kept getting out of it.

  Irene didn’t reach Pemberton in time for that day’s train, so she had to use up some of her precious money on lodgings. She hated to spend even a penny she didn’t need to and resolved to manage without food on the journey, though she’d take a filled water bottle.

  But without being asked, her landlady made her some sandwiches and when she tried to pay, refused to accept the money. She was warmed by this gesture from a complete stranger. Maybe there would be other kind strangers to help her along the way.

  She arrived in Fremantle two days after leaving the farm, weary now and feeling dishevelled. She found a lad with a handcart who knew where Gil’s cousin lived and walked with him through the streets, tired as she was, because it was cheaper than taking a taxi.

  A plump woman of about Gil’s age opened the door and smiled. ‘You must be Mrs Dawson. My cousin wrote to me about you. Come in, come in! We’ve only got a sleepout, but you’re welcome to stay there.’

  ‘Can I ask how much it is? I’m – a bit short of money.’

  ‘I wouldn’t charge a friend of Gil’s, but I’d appreciate a hand round the house till you find a job. There’s always too much to do.’ She laughed comfortably, then looked at her guest in concern. ‘Are you all right, dear?’

  Irene couldn’t hold back the tears. ‘You’re so kind. Everyone’s been kind to me.’

  ‘Gil looked after me when I was a lass, so if he says you need help, I’m happy to oblige. What sort of world would it be if we thought only of making money?’

  There it was again, Irene thought, someone praising Gil. What a lovely man he was! Her thoughts hovered like butterflies for a moment as she realised that she hated the thought of not seeing him again, but she couldn’t dwell on that, had too much to do.

  With Nelly’s help, she found a job within two days, working as a general help in one of the bigger houses. She could walk there from her lodgings and they treated her kindly enough. The lady of the house even gave her some clothes that would fit round her stomach, which was expanding more rapidly than she’d expected.

  After some argument, Nelly agreed to accept a couple of shillings a week for the room and further money towards food.

  Irene tried to make the best of her new life, but the evenings were lonely, sitting in her little room, staring out at the garden. Nelly invited her to join them, but she didn’t do that every evening. They had a right to their family life.

  To her surprise, she missed the farm more than she had expected, missed the other groupies . . . missed Gil most of all. He had been there, solid as a rock, a true friend, and now she was on her own.

&
nbsp; Oh, she was wanting the moon. You couldn’t have everything, could you? She’d turned down his offer and still felt it had been the right thing to do. There were no jobs in Northcliffe and here she’d found one easily. What if she did have to look out on to the next house’s side wall from her little bedroom instead of at trees and slopes? What if she didn’t hear birdsong when she woke, or smell the tang of eucalyptus leaves crushed underfoot as she walked through the edges of the bush?

  There was one thing that still worried her. How was she to care for the baby after it was born and earn a living for them both? There’d be no Gil to help her solve those problems.

  No use meeting trouble before it met you. There were several months to go. She’d just count her blessings and save her pennies. She was grateful she’d managed so well. Very grateful.

  Thanks to Gil.

  ‘If you move on Sunday,’ Gil told Andrew, ‘I’ll bring my cart and help you.’

  ‘Thank you. I was going to ask if we could borrow it.’

  ‘You can borrow me, too.’

  On the Sunday morning, Gil turned up early and with everyone pitching in, they made short work of clearing out the humpy. Well, they’d not had a chance to accumulate many possessions, just the bits of furniture Andrew had made from the crates food and kerosene arrived in.

  At noon, Norah provided a quick meal, then they set to work again. The men were dismantling the cowshed and dairy, then the other rough shelters for the pigs and hens. She went across to her new home to start unpacking, but found the lean-to and humpy very lacking in shelves and other small conveniences a man’s clever fingers could provide, so she set up the stretcher beds and made them up ready for tonight. Andrew would sort out the other problems over the next few days.

  At the old farm, the children were in charge of catching the hens, and did this with much laughter. Then the three of them walked across to the new farm, each carrying a hen, with Janie crooning to Fluffy and the little hen nestling against her.

  They set the chooks down in their new homes and checked to make sure they couldn’t escape, then watched them exploring, pecking everything in sight.

  ‘Dad’s buildings and fences were much better than these!’ Jack said scornfully. He picked up a stone and hammered one of the fence poles into the ground more securely.

  All the animals seemed mildly indignant at the changes to their lives, even the cows swishing their tails more than usual. They stopped so many times that it took ages to get them into their new enclosure, where they lowed dolefully as if hard done to.

  ‘He didn’t make much cop of this place, did he?’ Gil said to Andrew, looking at the wobbly fences and trying not to think of Irene.

  ‘No. He’d never have made a farmer, poor fellow. He was a townie to the core.’

  Gil insisted on working right through until dark, but refused to join them for the evening meal.

  ‘This place reminds him too much of Irene,’ Norah said to Andrew as they settled down to sleep. ‘He’s missing her.’

  ‘I’d miss you if you went away.’ He reached out and fumbled for her hand, holding it.

  She smiled in the darkness, then her mind turned back to their next tasks.

  ‘Tomorrow Janie and I will move as many of the plants as we dare.’

  ‘Move them all. They might survive. What have we to lose?’

  ‘I’d rather leave them for the next people than destroy them. Some are far too big to move.’ She sighed happily. ‘We’ve been so lucky, haven’t we?’

  But his hand had gone slack in hers and his breathing had deepened. Her bed was close enough for her to tuck his hand under his covers, then she snuggled down. She was longing to share a double bed with him properly, and for them all to have a more normal home life.

  Well, it would come. They were over the worst now, surely?

  22

  The rest of the winter seemed to pass very quickly to the hard-working groupies. Men worked all day for the Board, then all evening for themselves, making furniture from anything to hand ready for the coming move into proper four-roomed houses – even though they’d not yet been given a date for these to be built.

  Women worked at anything needed, whether it was men’s work or not, and in the evenings they sewed or taught their children. Some were determined not to let their education lapse, others weren’t worried about schooling, thinking more of the contribution the children’s work could make to establishing the farm. All the youngsters did their share, willingly or not, working far harder than most of them had ever done in their lives before.

  Each family now had six cows and the Boyds seven, because somehow Gil had managed not to account for the first cow sent to the group. Life centred on getting the cows milked and the cream to the gates for the pickup truck. The few shillings a week the cream brought were very important to everyone.

  Another family walked off their block in August, which made everyone feel let down. Why hadn’t they asked for help? Everyone knew they weren’t happy. They simply didn’t have the right touch with animals or a feeling for the land, and the misery on their faces showed they knew it. But you couldn’t force your help or advice on people, now could you?

  The family didn’t tell anyone what they were planning. One morning before it was light they trekked into Northcliffe and begged a lift into Pemberton, abandoning their furniture – a pitiful collection of oddments – and taking only their clothes and blankets.

  They left debts behind, but they didn’t leave a word of explanation or thanks for the help that had been freely offered to them.

  Gil took charge of those possessions worth salvaging and suggested he sell what they could and put the money towards something the whole group could use. He knew he should have reported these items to the Board and given the meagre proceeds to the bank which was funding the groupies. But he felt the bank had enough money and his groupies were working so hard they deserved what little extra he could squeeze out for them.

  It’d been like that in the Army. You learned what you could and couldn’t do to bend the rules and regulations. He hadn’t done that to be greedy nor had he taken things for his own profit, but to make himself and the lads – all of whom might die the next hour, the next day – happier or more comfortable.

  When he reported the family’s disappearance, the Board sent another family to take the place of those who’d left, just as they had with the Dawsons. The newcomers were a capable couple in their early thirties, with a daughter of Janie’s age and two sons of five and three, hard-working folk, who fitted in straight away. Everyone was pleased to see the two little girls at once become friends because though Janie now got on better with her step-family, she was the sort who couldn’t manage without a friend or two.

  Gil complained to the Board on a monthly basis that they’d not yet built proper four-roomed houses for SG1, as they had for other groups. The reply, if officialdom bothered to send one, was always that the matter was ‘in progress’ and that each group must wait its turn.

  There was much grumbling when they heard that a school was being set up for some of the other Northcliffe groups and that a woman had been appointed as teacher.

  But most of all, life for the settlers was work, family, comradeship, followed by more hard work. And when that work was on land that they would one day own, they didn’t grumble. There was such a freedom to this life, a chance to be your own master.

  As August moved into September, spring brightened the floor of the forest with dozens of different wild flowers, orchids so tiny you had to bend close to see how beautiful they were, so many of these flowers, unknown to the English settlers. Pete taught the groupies their names: donkey orchids, spider orchids. There was one even he didn’t know, pink and smelling like chocolate. Wild flowers of all colours sprang up like delicate frills along the edges of the tracks, and peeped shyly out from under bushes. Then there were kangaroo paws, with leaves like tall grass and long stalks with furry looking green and red flowers on the end that did l
ook a bit like an animal’s paws.

  Northcliffe was expanding rapidly, with more buildings going up, but the town site was a cause for much complaint by everyone. In the wet weather, it was covered in puddles and the stretches of slippery mud were a trap for the unwary that caused quite a few falls. The drains dug to keep the area from flooding were almost as much of a hazard. Even in the hot weather the ground there never completely dried out. You didn’t have to go down far to find dampness.

  Whoever had chosen that site for the town wanted his head examining, in Gil’s opinion.

  There were occasional bouts of upset stomachs in the group, and one of the smaller, weaker children died, after which Gil was even more watchful that everyone set up their lavatories properly. There was a regulation sanitary pan, with lid and ring, sold at the store, but some families tried to economise by using kerosene tins instead. Whatever receptacle they used had to be emptied regularly or he let forth his sergeant’s roar and tore a strip off them, then stood over them till they did the noisome deed.

  He was always busy – but never too busy to think about Irene and wonder how she was. One day, after much thought, he risked writing to her, just a friendly letter asking how she was.

  The following week he received a reply. There was nothing romantic about it, but she said how lovely it was to hear from him and asked after the Boyds and others. That meant he had an excuse for replying and best of all, it gave him a flicker of hope. He reread her letter every night as he sat by his lonely fire, even though he knew it by heart, tracing the lines of her signature with his forefinger.

  It was agony to wait a further week to write again, but he did, composing the letter in his mind, going over it again and again, till he knew by heart what he wanted to say and felt fairly certain it wouldn’t upset her. He wrote it without a single change or hesitation on the day he’d settled on in his mind as ‘right’ and sent it to the post in Pemberton the next day.

  They needed a post office in Northcliffe, needed a lot of things.

  But they were managing, making progress, making farms together.