Whipbird

by Robert Drewe

  Surrounded by the town’s Victorian buildings, Hugh felt they were in a 19th-century time warp. Back in gold-rush days. Maybe a hansom cab would trot by.

  He said to his son, ‘If we keep walking we can phone a taxi from a petrol station.’

  ‘Or phone Mum to come and get us,’ Liam said. ‘Or one of the family. How’s that for a brilliant idea?’

  Hugh ignored the sarcasm. Not Christine, he thought. Or Thea. Or Ryan. The sober ones would be too smugly judgemental to bear, and anyone else remaining at the party would be drunk themselves. In any case, he was in no mood to inform any relatives – especially Christine – of the reason for the BMW’s sudden absence. Or to broadcast the news of Liam’s drug charge, for that matter. How would that go down with the relatives after his rah-rah speech? The pisspot host and his junkie son in double trouble with the law.

  ‘A cab would be best,’ he said.

  Still in silence they kept walking to Bakery Hill and turned into Victoria Street. Heading in the Whipbird direction indeed, but 20 kilometres away from it. Still no cabs passed. Sunday night: no petrol stations were open at this hour, and no businesses at all, but in the distance there were lights glowing at the Eureka Stockade memorial. Hugh headed towards it.

  ‘Where are we going now?’ Liam moaned. ‘Seriously, this is the shittiest weekend of my life. What time is it, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Look at your new watch. The prize for being an upstanding citizen.’

  ‘I left it at home.’

  ‘Then save your complaints, buster. This is all your doing.’

  At the Stockade memorial a bonfire was burning and an amiable, murmuring crowd was gathered around the blaze, some in motorbike leathers and club patches, the rest in a mixed assortment of garments to suit a diverse bunch of citizens. Hippies, students, academics and unionists, Hugh guessed. A couple of big-bellied Aboriginal men in possum-skin cloaks were waving branches of green gumleaves over the fire and dousing themselves in ceremonial smoke.

  As Hugh and Liam approached the fire, a red-bearded man in a poncho stepped forward. ‘Welcome to the vigil,’ he said. ‘We’re waiting for the precise moment when the battle began – 3 a.m. on the third of December. The moment the battle began.’

  ‘We’re just looking for a phone or a cab,’ Hugh said.

  ‘Everyone’s welcome,’ the man said. ‘For three days and nights we’re reclaiming the spirit of rebellion and revolution. The spirit of the 101 miners from 97 countries who protested against injustice, demanded political representation and set Australia on a multinational path.’

  Hugh nodded. ‘Sure.’

  The man’s beard was like Ned Kelly’s, a real bushranger effort reaching halfway down his chest. Hugh wondered if the fellow had his historical characters mixed up.

  ‘You know what it’s all about?’ the man asked. ‘These days the important stuff’s forgotten.’

  ‘Yes, the anniversary of the Stockade. As it happens, my son and I had an ancestor involved in the battle. We’ve been celebrating his role this weekend.’

  ‘No! That’s great. Hey, everyone, these guys are digger-related.’ Someone said, ‘Yeah!’, several people clapped and the bearded fellow shook Hugh’s hand. ‘If you’re Eureka family, man, come and stand by the fire. The fire of national history, the heart of the commemoration. Representing the flames of the diggers’ campfires, the smoke of gunpowder and the flare of the brutal soldiers’ guns at the Stockade. And the massacre of twenty-two or thirty or sixty miners. No one knows exactly. And one woman.’

  He added, ‘That’s a conservative estimate of the slaughter, by the way.’

  Liam muttered, ‘I thought our guy was a soldier. A famous general or something.’

  Hugh was looking into the fire and didn’t answer.

  A big flag embroidered with the Eureka Oath flew on a flagpole near the fire. A woman wearing a Tibetan wool hat with earflaps approached with a video camera. ‘It’s working now. Ready when you are, Clive.’

  ‘Thanks, Denise.’ The man with the Kelly beard whistled for people’s attention. ‘All right everyone, once more for YouTube. Get these guys in it too, Denise. On three. One. Two. Three.

  The woman in the Tibetan hat filmed the crowd intoning, ‘We swear by the Southern Cross/To stand truly by each other/And fight to defend/Our rights and liberties.’

  Liam was surprised to hear his father saying the words as well, in his serious barrister voice, too – with his chin up and his arm around his shoulders. The squeeze became a sort of matey half-hug. He wasn’t normally a hugger.

  ‘So,’ Hugh murmured to him. ‘Something to remember, eh?’

  Clive then declared, ‘We now identify the greatest current oppressors of Australian rights and liberties,’ and he threw on the fire recognisable effigies of the prime minister, the governor-general and Queen Elizabeth.

  As the crowd clapped and whistled, a photographer from the Courier, and Denise and her camera, both captured the moment: bushy-bearded Clive, Hugh and Liam with the burning effigies at the Eureka Stockade.

  The dummy prime minister smouldered at first, then burst into flames. The Queen and the governor-general took a little longer. Beside the burning effigies, the anarchists linked arms with Hugh and Liam, and the Courier photographer, murmuring, ‘Just one more,’ snapped off several more shots before they could pull away.

  As soon as he was able, Hugh yanked his son to the edge of the crowd, which for the photographer’s benefit was now beginning to sing ‘The Ballad of Eureka’ around the ashes of the effigies. Hugh managed to borrow a phone from one of the anarchists and call a cab. The taxi arrived surprisingly quickly.

  16

  A ‘dead’ ex-musician didn’t seem to need much sleep or even to rest. He saw no point. But after two trying days Willow was desperate to have a breather herself before starting for home in the morning. Two-and-a-bit days by road to Mullumbimby, if they took it steadily, with overnight stops on the way.

  The weekend was more of a strain than she’d anticipated, looking after her father away from home and simultaneously answering increasingly patronising questions from drink-emboldened relatives about his weird condition. Questions asked right in front of him! (‘Seriously, dear, Walking Corpse Syndrome? You’re sure you two haven’t been watching too many zombie shows on television?’) And all the while pretending her father was a more or less normal strongly sedated common-or-garden schizophrenic.

  As if held erect by his alligator boots, he stood there now, arms by his sides, like a scarecrow on a parade ground.

  ‘Dad, for Christ’s sake go for a little walk,’ she ordered him. ‘Give me a break. One foot after the other. You can do it. Just into the vineyard and back.’

  He didn’t answer of course. Just stood there for a minute, hands hanging by his sides, his eyes dull, then turned and shuffled off. She collapsed on an Adirondack chair and watched him disappear slowly into the vines. Hardly a man, or a father. Just a head on a stick in a coat.

  17

  Sly is surprisingly willing. I’m quite surprised. Well, he doesn’t refuse the request, which counts as enthusiasm from him. So we’re taking Willow’s orders and toddling around Whipbird, breathing the country air and shambling up and down the rows.

  It’s slow going though. Moonlight shines through the gaps and down the aisles, there’s a rustling noise, a big owl swoops and misses, and a couple of rabbits scamper away.

  I’m admiring the night sky through Sly’s eyes, which considering his condition are surprisingly receptive to the heavens tonight, and recalling my first sight of the Southern Cross when I arrived here as a fearful fifteen-year-old 160 years ago.

  I must say the country sky hasn’t changed. Same upside-down moon. Same sharp strings of stars. Same mysterious inky silhouettes and creature rustlings in the bushes. A single shot rang out that night, from us or them, who knows, and deafening volleys quickly followed. And tonight the heavens suddenly explode as well.

  They were cousins
after all, so Willow had been trying to draw Olivia and Zoe into a sociable conversation on the verandah, edging the twins out of their twinny shyness or youthful awkwardness or whatever it was that these private-school, city teenagers suffered when addressed by an older country hippie chick with gaudy hair. They kept seeking a reassuring glance or touch from each other.

  So Willow began by asking what music they liked, and who were their favourite bands, and received noncommittal shrugs. ‘Having fun this weekend?’ she tried next. ‘I saw you chatting to two young guys yesterday.’

  ‘Epic fail!’ Zoe said, and looked meaningfully at her sister.

  ‘Totally!’ Olivia nodded, and flipped her hair.

  ‘And what’s the story with the crazy dude in the black shirt?’ The girls looked aghast.

  ‘Ugh! Rank! The flasher!’ Olivia exclaimed.

  ‘Mr Boner,’ said Zoe. ‘The kook can’t keep it to himself.’

  Then the barbecue’s propane tanks exploded. They felt the house’s foundations tremble and the floorboards lift for a moment, and they stared in awe at the fireball rising high above the vineyard.

  In shocked silence, drinks still in hand, the remaining family members watched the ball of flame rise as high as the surrounding eucalypts until a second duller blast, this one a scarlet-and-orange blossom like a New Year’s Eve fireworks display, burst into a cascading shower of sparks that lit up the whole span of Whipbird so that individual vine leaves, earth clods, trellis posts and hay-mulch stalks stood out sharply in vivid 3D tones, as if captured on old Kodachrome film.

  Four or five seconds passed before a thick pillar, a tree trunk of smoke, rose in place of the fireball. Encouraged by the gusty wind, small choppy waves of blue flame began to lick and play among the vines.

  Standing by herself on the verandah steps, the pale girl with the indistinct, foggy manner shook her head as if waking from a trance, and stood motionless for a moment watching the sparks drifting and fluttering over the vineyard. Then she swore loudly, cheered, did a little frenetic dance on the spot, and burst into tears.

  The sky’s alight, the air’s on fire, and we/I – Sly and I – aren’t far from the cause of the blast. We’re in the centre of the vineyard being showered with sparks.

  Blowing southwards, the flames sneak down the vineyard corridors. Truly, they look like fingers of fire, witchy fingers from Ma’s Celtic and Gaelic tales. The wind’s twirling some of them in fiery willy-willies. Others gesture upwards to the knotty twig growths and dry-looking branches. They nip and shyly tweak at the vines, dart forward and pull back. Maybe the grape leaves are too green, the vines not mature and dry-barked enough to burn.

  But that’s not so. The fingers are keen to pluck at the vines, to grip and embrace them. They engulf them, and also set alight the dry grass between the rows, and the hay mulch under the vines, and start eagerly on the trellis posts as well. Then the flames amble nonchalantly back and forth in the direction of the unconscious body of the boy in black.

  Blown there by the blast, the boy lies face down in smouldering hay mulch, and his clothes and hair are beginning to smoke and combust. Twenty or so metres from him lies a big lump of molten metal glowing red, with blue aggressive flames lapping over it.

  As the boy’s clothes begin to ignite, I/Sly move towards him. I sense Sly’s imperative, his sudden emotional and physical energy, and I share his compulsion. We act as one of course; we’re one after all.

  As the flames flow in a creek of fire down the row of vines, Sly sheds that long woollen herringbone overcoat for the first time this weekend, and throws it over the boy, and we/I drop on top of him, too.

  The vineyard burns. We flare and burn, too, Sly and I, and I hear a strange high noise come from him and me, and a cruel barbecue smell, and eventually the flames pass on.

  The stayers on the verandah are still gasping and staring, Willow and the twins holding their hands to their mouths in matching gestures of fright and wonder. Then Willow, Thea, Ryan and Christine snap out of it and run down the stairs and into the paddock. Mick limps down the verandah steps behind them.

  Bad leg down to hell.

  ‘The vineyard’s on fire,’ Dick the Odd announces, unnecessarily. Darryl Sheen shouts, ‘Where’s Hugh?’

  And in the off-beam way of someone complaining to a waiter about a mishap on a restaurant tablecloth, Rosie Godber says, ‘Someone better fetch some water.’

  The twins run to calm and move the panicking Arabian; it’s whinnying in fright and galloping wildly around its paddock. Dick L’Estrange phones triple-O while Ryan races to get a spray tank from the equipment shed. Thea and Christine appear with a hose and buckets. Furiously, with the energy of a man much younger, burning ash flying over his body, Mick begins to batter and smother the burning grass with a feed sack.

  From afar there’s a cry and a low keening noise coming from somewhere, and I/Sly rise from the vineyard’s smoking mulch and embers.

  We manage to drag the smouldering boy to Kungadgee Creek, muddied first by goldminers from many nations 160 years ago. We ease him into the watery sludge at the bank, and he’s extinguished. We’ve put him out. Looks like we’ve saved the boy in black.

  And, Jesus, from the sight and sound and smell of Sly we’re now fast becoming what he claims he is already.

  At the homestead flank of the burning vineyard the fire comes up against the water crew of Ryan and Thea – the spray-tank and hose defenders – and old Mick and Willow, who are frantically beating down flames with feedbags.

  On another flank the flames are halted by the trodden-down, grassless dirt of the paddock, by the highway on the vineyard’s border, and the creek on the far side. The flames reach optimistically for the branches of the high manna gums, singe the bark of their trunks, then dwindle and begin to die away.

  At some risk to themselves, Thea and Ryan run across the charred ground to the two visible victims of the vineyard fire, Sly and the boy, both slumped on the creek bank. And they do what doctors and priests do in emergencies – they do what they can.

  Thea washes mud and ash from the boy and pulls him up the bank. Ryan presumes that charred and coatless Sly is still a Catholic and acts accordingly.

  The explosion, the burning metal, the smoke, the panic, the last rites: he could be in Afghanistan.

  18

  Spinning red-and-blue emergency lights, dazed wanderers and clouds of smoke. When Hugh and Liam’s cab arrives back at Whipbird, the vineyard looks like a foreign trouble spot on the news: the Middle East or Europe.

  Three fire trucks and two police cars are standing by the house. Two ambulances are pulling away. One of the ambulances activates its siren and speeds ahead of the other down the highway.

  Firefighters walk the vineyard’s rows with spray packs and rakes, extinguishing embers. The police are interviewing family members. Hugh recognises the older officer from the station, the one who prefers frappé mocha and whose wife paints watercolours of lakes.

  ‘This your place?’ the cop asks Hugh. ‘Hobby farm or permanent residence?’ He’s writing things in a notebook and wants suspected cause of fire, names of casualties, ownership details, a rough estimate of the damage, number of hectares, et cetera.

  Hugh surveys the fire’s aftermath, the breadth of burned vines, the firefighters stomping back and forth, the stunned and ash-smudged faces of his family. Thea looks drained but moves around with a water jug and her doctor’s bag. His father and Ryan have found some whiskey and poured themselves brimming glasses.

  ‘You’re having a bad day then,’ the cop says.

  Hugh looks at him for some time without speaking. Can you report a police officer for laconic understatement? Hugh looks at his number, memorises it and forgets it a second later. The cop is a sergeant, with longish sideburns and a five o’clock shadow. Hugh recalls his practised authority with hamburger-wrapper dispersal: the nonchalant basketball dunk into the bin.

  ‘Do you reckon?’ he says eventually. He’s not thinking
straight. An errant thought comes into his head. He wonders whether his first pinot noir vintage, Conor’s Rebellion, will now be smoke-tainted. If the vines have survived. But how could they?

  Liam and the twins come over to him. Everyone hugs him and each other, even Liam. Christine joins them and squeezes her husband’s arm. ‘Your brother Simon,’ she says, and pulls him close. ‘Sly. Bad news.’

  Her first affectionate touch for months is dramatic enough without the ‘Bad news’. He silently absorbs the coded information. Then she nods, solemnly, and gives a small sob, and hugs him tighter, like the old days, and of course his impression is confirmed.

  In his mind, he instantly, sentimentally, pictures Simon not as an adult but as a small boy, his young brother with invisible friends and an earwax collection. The boy tinkling away at ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’. The keen researcher into the olfactory consequences of asparagus. Not a brain-jangled ex-muso any longer. In his own world even then.

  Ryan brings him a whiskey, too, and pats his shoulder without speaking. He frowns at the drink in his hand as if unsure of it, and stares out over his burned vineyard. Whipbird is a field of black and yellow, of charred earth and high-visibility firefighting suits. The scene is like a Richmond Tigers panorama. Ironic this, seeing that Mick’s sign, The Cleary Family 1854–2014, is now a charred mess of melted vinyl.

  Standing above his smoking vineyard, Hugh thinks he should go to his father now. That’s the proper family thing to do. After all, I’m the host at this big family celebration.

  He looks for Thea to accompany him, but his sister is with Mick already, and so is Willow, their arms all around each other, grand-daughter’s head on one of Mick’s shoulders, his daughter’s on the other. Grandfather is patting granddaughter, daughter is stroking both their backs. He has never seen Thea acting so tenderly. His bossy sister with the high iron levels knows how to act in a crisis.