Perhaps she needed to live the childhood she’d never had, to see what she wanted clearly. Or study engineering . . .
Where had that last whisper come from? Tommy? And would an engineering department even take a girl?
She grinned. If the engineering department refused to enrol her, she could make a large fuss with nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents and a great-grandmother who owned a newspaper. Matter of fact, if she enrolled as ‘Jed’ the engineering department wouldn’t even know that she was a female till she got there. Let them try to kick her out . . . She would enjoy that, even if she didn’t take to engineering. She suspected she only wanted to know enough about it to tell others what to invent, not to invent things herself.
Vet science? Did she like sheep enough to study their innards? Agricultural science? But it was the land itself she wanted to read, not textbooks about how to make it profitable.
Maybe she’d find that she wanted no profession at all. Just help others, like Nancy. To read books and watch the water flow from her house above the river, with Nicholas . . .
No. Not with Nicholas. The pain she’d tried to push away swept back. She wouldn’t let him go. She couldn’t.
She could give him everything he needed! Her house would give him the solitude he longed for so he could write, no need even to worry about money or buying groceries, or how to get from place to place. He wouldn’t have to worry about anything, because she could do it all . . .
The light changed over the billabong. For a moment she thought she might see Fred at last, her ghost, her friend, her protector, the one she knew had called her there today.
But suddenly it was no longer dawn above the billabong, but the faint orange of late afternoon. An orange haze of dust washed the sky. High summer, cicadas shrieking. A summer a long time away.
‘Mummy! We’ve got one. A yabby! We caught a yabby!’ A boy stood by the billabong, pulling up what looked like old pantyhose, a crab-like creature struggling, its claws caught in the fabric. The kid was seven, perhaps, blond hair in curls he’d probably soon demand were cut away, bouncing as if life were too wonderful for him to stand still. ‘Mummy, can we take him home? He can live in the bath!’
‘The general idea is that you catch yabbies to eat them.’ The woman walked into the small frame that held the future. Thirty, even forty perhaps. Short hair, tightly curled, under a straw hat with a silk scarf; a vivid green linen dress and silver sandals, as if like Nancy this woman knew exactly where snakes would be and could keep her ankles safe from snake bite without resorting to clumpy boots.
And she was beautiful. It took Jed long seconds to realise that this was her. Janet. Jed.
She looked at her older self critically. She approved, not just of the appearance. This woman got things done.
The boy looked shocked. ‘We can’t eat him! I want to call him George.’
‘Why George?’
‘Because that’s his name.’ Why else? said his tone, with the irresistible logic of youth.
‘How are you going to have a bath if George is living in it?’
‘We can share. Or I don’t have to have a bath.’
The woman smiled. A woman who had fought her own battles, and won some of them. Had found friends of her own, and known they liked her for herself, not as part of a couple. Had found her own place in the extended Thompson family.
And all at once Jed knew why she had been called to see this, now. She would never become this future Jed if she lived with Nicholas now. If she protected Nicholas, he would protect her too. They were both so bruised they could still retreat into the world of two. She had to let him go.
It was the hardest decision she had ever made, in her lifetime of hard choices, as though every cell in her body had twisted, leaving her a little bit less. Nature abhors a vacuum. She managed to smile as she remembered the words of her much studied physics textbook. The emptiness would be filled. One day she would be this woman, strong, happy, fulfilled.
The woman was speaking again. ‘Actually,’ her tone and expression were so like Tommy’s that Jed felt electricity tingle along her arms, ‘the question might be academic.’
‘What’s “academic” mean, Mum?’
‘George is heading back to the billabong.’ For one long, clear second the older woman’s gaze met Jed’s. She smiled, showing no surprise, then looked back at her child.
‘No!’ The boy made a grab for the scuttling creature. The woman laughed, neither helping nor hindering the escape.
Was the boy her son by blood, or her family of the heart, as she suddenly realised that Scarlett was, and Nancy, and the Dragon?
It didn’t matter. This was her son.
And where was Nicholas in this future world? Because he had been right. Nicholas needed to find his own future before they could share one together. If they ever did.
‘Got him!’ yelled the boy triumphantly. Then, ‘No, he’s gone again. Mummy, can we . . .’
Light, boy, yabby, woman vanished. But the happiness remained.
The scent of sausages was back too.
She hoped George made it back into the billabong. Any creature who fought that hard for life deserved to have it.
‘Well, old ghost? Is that what you wanted me to see?’
Silence. But the sausage smell was stronger. She could almost hear the burning sticks pop and hiss now, feel the flames’ warmth.
If she sat there long enough, would her ghost appear? Would she see herself again, from further in the future, or Nicholas, so she’d know what came next?
She hugged herself, winter’s cold seeping into her bones, as the wind rose and muttered and blew bark around her. No. What she had seen, and understood, was enough. Some parts of the future had to be lived, not watched.
And she must go back to have breakfast with the Dragon at Drinkwater, for the Dragon needed her now too, even if she’d never say so. Or, being the Dragon, perhaps she would. Even when she went to stay with Nancy and the new babies at Overflow she would need to spend time with Matilda.
But she would come back here, many, many times, for this moment was not just a beginning, but one of many in a long, long story.
‘See you later,’ she said softly, to the ghost, to her future self, to whatever else of past or future she might meet here, to the land itself, which she had still to truly meet and understand, with Nancy and the Dragon as her guides.
She stood, pushing at the winter wind, her hands shaking as badly as when she had first sat there.
Sometimes, she thought, happiness is as heavy to bear as pain. But she smiled, despite the tears, walking back up the track. And even when she smelled the sausages again, heard the crackle of the flames more loudly, she didn’t turn back to see her ghost, sitting by his fire.
Not today, she thought. Today had joy enough.
Author’s Notes
This book is mostly fiction. Parts are not.
The history of the Apollo program, and Australia’s part in it, are non-fiction, as are NASA and the astronauts, and the technicians and scientists who worked at the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, guiding men to the moon and back.
My husband, Bryan Sullivan, was one of them, and is the Mr Sullivan referred to in this book. Although, obviously, no one told a Jed Kelly anything at all, nor was one working at the tracking station, I have tried to stay true to the characters as I know them, or as they have been described to me. Tom Reid could well have told a noted inventor and industrialist like Thomas Thompson about the tracking station in the hills. Betty Clissold’s motherliness would probably have extended to a girl like Jed too, as she cosseted those at the station with her home-style food. And those blokes did drive very, very fast each way to the station. As for the cow . . . The details of that are probably best left undisclosed.
For the first time I appear as a character in one of my books. The couple Jed sees on the concrete platform that once held the vast ‘dish’ that
tracked men to the moon and back are my husband and myself, years later at the first Honeysuckle reunion, when Bryan took me up there to tell me the story of the station in the bush that gazed deep into the sky, and around us the bikies listened too, with growing silence and respect for the work that had been done there, and mostly forgotten, as public servants abandoned the station, and its equipment and records were sent to the tip. A movie would even claim that Parkes had been the Australian station that first downloaded those extraordinary images, while other movies made about Apollo 11 and Apollo 13 would not mention the vital and at times dramatic roles played by Australians. You can read more of this in To the Moon and Back, which Bryan and I wrote together, a non-fiction account of the extraordinary work at Honeysuckle Creek, or visit the Honeysuckle Creek website managed with brilliance and dedication by Colin Mackellar.
There are other parts of this book that resemble my own history. These include the inspiration of my teachers at Brisbane State High, the insistence of Miss McCorkindale, our headmistress, that ‘her’ girls would not learn typing and so meet a possible fate as secretaries, in the days when many professions were formally or informally closed to women, thus depriving me of a skill that would have been invaluable professionally in a world Miss McCorkindale did not envisage, where a woman could marry and have a profession and do a lot of typing!
Like Jed, I also knew that once I passed Year 12 well enough to gain a scholarship, I would have a chance at the secure and fulfilled life still denied to so many women in the late 1960s. The rest is, however, fiction, and any supposition that those few similarities mean there are more would be incorrect. And for the record, even though I may say that ‘sometimes it is almost as if I hear a whisper from the past’, I am speaking metaphorically. I do not see, or hear, ghosts, though my concept of time is accurately portrayed in this book — as accurately as you can describe something as complex as this using only a few words in a novel.
This book is the fifth in the Matilda series. There will be one more or, just possibly, two. None of the Gibber’s Creek characters are based on any one person but are, of course, combinations of many whom I admire and love, as is the country of Drinkwater, Overflow and Flinty McAlpine’s mountains. For those who have not read the rest of the series, you will find what happens next to Nicholas in book two, The Girl from Snowy River, where the young Flinty meets a ghost from fifty years in her future, Nicholas, in 1969. And Jed’s story will continue in the next book, If Blood Should Stain the Wattle, and Matilda’s and Nancy’s and Australia’s too.
Acknowledgements
My gratitude to Jenny Stubbs, for the inspirational stories of her mother, crippled by polio but undaunted, that led to the creation of River View in this book; to Lesley Reece, who bundled me up with all her glorious extended family of authors, and supported me during the writing of this book — and so many other times — when it felt impossible to write as well as face a significant threat to the country I love posed by a cyanide-processing proposal just upstream; to Lisa, as always, for opening the gate that lets me wander into the world of the Matilda Saga, and once again, for making me go back and write the pivotal parts of this book that were hard both technically and emotionally to live through with the characters. Lisa will never, ever, let me be less than the writer I can be.
So many, many thanks to Cristina Cappelluto for keeping that publishing gate organised and well maintained, but also for being there as the most extraordinary rock when I or the rest of the team that creates each book need her. To Kate O’Donnell and Kate Burnitt, the most wonderful, insightful editors. To Angela, who takes a mess and sends back a book and more, greater thanks than I can ever say. And to Bryan, who will probably only read the ‘space’ parts of this book to check their total accuracy, but might just take in this sentence, if I read it out to him when he isn’t thinking about something else while pretending to listen to my (often) long harangues about history, philosophy or humanity’s future: thank you for letting me share your part in humankind’s greatest adventure yet, and always, of course, my love.
About the Author
JACKIE FRENCH is an award-winning writer, wombat negotiator, the Australian Children’s Laureate for 2014–2015 and the 2015 Senior Australian of the Year. She is regarded as one of Australia’s most popular children’s authors and writes across all genres — from picture books, history, fantasy, ecology and sci-fi to her much loved historical fiction. ‘Share a Story’ is the primary philosophy behind Jackie’s two-year term as Laureate.
You can visit Jackie’s website at: www.jackiefrench.com
Also by Jackie French
Australian Historical
Somewhere Around the Corner • Dancing with Ben Hall
Daughter of the Regiment • Soldier on the Hill
Tom Appleby, Convict Boy • A Rose for the Anzac Boys
The Night They Stormed Eureka • Nanberry: Black Brother White Pennies for Hitler
General Historical
Hitler’s Daughter • Lady Dance • How the Finnegans Saved the Ship
The White Ship • Valley of Gold • They Came on Viking Ships
Macbeth and Son • Pharaoh • Oracle • I am Juliet
Ophelia: Queen of Denmark
Fiction
Rain Stones • Walking the Boundaries • The Secret Beach
Summerland • A Wombat Named Bosco • Beyond the Boundaries
The Warrior: The Story of a Wombat
The Book of Unicorns • Tajore Arkle
Missing You, Love Sara • Dark Wind Blowing
Ride the Wild Wind: The Golden Pony and Other Stories
Refuge • The Book of Horses and Unicorns
Non-Fiction
Seasons of Content • How the Aliens from Alpha Centauri
Invaded My Maths Class and Turned Me into a Writer
How to Guzzle Your Garden • The Book of Challenges
Stamp, Stomp, Whomp • The Fascinating History of Your Lunch
Big Burps, Bare Bums and Other Bad-Mannered Blunders
To the Moon and Back • Rocket Your Child into Reading
The Secret World of Wombats
How High Can a Kangaroo Hop? • A Year in the Valley
Let the Land Speak: How the Land Created Our Nation
I Spy a Great Reader
The Animal Stars Series
The Goat Who Sailed the World • The Dog Who Loved a Queen
The Camel Who Crossed Australia
The Donkey Who Carried the Wounded
The Horse Who Bit a Bushranger
Dingo: The Dog Who Conquered a Continent
The Matilda Saga
1. A Waltz for Matilda • 2. The Girl from Snowy River
3. The Road to Gundagai • 4. To Love a Sunburnt Country
5. The Ghost by the Billabong
The Secret Histories Series
Birrung the Secret Friend • Barney and the Secret of the Whales
Outlands Trilogy
In the Blood • Blood Moon • Flesh and Blood
School for Heroes Series
Lessons for a Werewolf Warrior • Dance of the Deadly Dinosaurs
Wacky Families Series
1. My Dog the Dinosaur • 2. My Mum the Pirate
3. My Dad the Dragon • 4. My Uncle Gus the Garden Gnome
5. My Uncle Wal the Werewolf • 6. My Gran the Gorilla
7. My Auntie Chook the Vampire Chicken • 8. My Pa the Polar Bear
Phredde Series
1. A Phaery Named Phredde
2. Phredde and a Frog Named Bruce
3. Phredde and the Zombie Librarian
4. Phredde and the Temple of Gloom
5. Phredde and the Leopard-Skin Librarian
6. Phredde and the Purple Pyramid
7. Phredde and the Vampire Footy Team
8. Phredde and the Ghostly Underpants
Picture Books
Diary of a Wombat (with Bruce Whatley)
Pete the Sheep (with Bruce Whatley)
/> Josephine Wants to Dance (with Bruce Whatley)
The Shaggy Gully Times (with Bruce Whatley)
Emily and the Big Bad Bunyip (with Bruce Whatley)
Baby Wombat’s Week (with Bruce Whatley)
The Tomorrow Book (with Sue deGennaro)
Queen Victoria’s Underpants (with Bruce Whatley)
Christmas Wombat (with Bruce Whatley)
A Day to Remember (with Mark Wilson)
Queen Victoria’s Christmas (with Bruce Whatley)
Dinosaurs Love Cheese (with Nina Rycroft)
Wombat Goes to School (with Bruce Whatley)
The Hairy-Nosed Wombats Find a New Home (with Sue deGennaro)
Good Dog Hank (with Nina Rycroft)
The Beach They Called Gallipoli (with Bruce Whatley)
Wombat Wins (with Bruce Whatley)
Also available in the Matilda Saga
In 1894, twelve-year-old Matilda flees the city slums to find her unknown father and his farm. But drought grips the land, and the shearers are on strike. Her father has turned swaggie and he’s wanted by the troopers. In front of his terrified daughter, he makes a stand against them, defiant to the last. ‘You’ll never catch me alive, said he . . .’
Set against a backdrop of bushfire, flood, war and jubilation, this is the story of one girl’s journey towards independence. It is also the story of others who had no vote and very little but their dreams.
Drawing on the well-known poem by A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson and from events rooted in actual history, this is the untold story behind Australia’s early years as an emerging nation.
The year is 1919. Thirty years have passed since the man from Snowy River made his famous ride. But World War I still casts its shadow across a valley in the heart of Australia, particularly for orphaned seventeen-year-old Flinty McAlpine, who lost a brother when the Snowy River men marched away to war.
Why has the man Flinty loves returned from the war so changed and distant? Why has her brother Andy ‘gone with cattle’, leaving Flinty in charge of their younger brother and sister and with the threat of eviction from the farm that is the heart of her life?
The Ghost by the Billabong Page 43