by Robert Drewe
Christine is still beside him. And their girls and boy. In their joint embrace he smells smoke in his wife’s hair, and her cheeks are flushed and tear-stained under the smudges of ash.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she says.
‘The other ambulance?’ he wonders now. ‘The one speeding to the hospital?’
‘There’s something else I need to tell you,’ Christine says.
19
Of course Sly and I are done for. Fair enough, we were just hanging on by the skin of our teeth in any case. I can’t tell you how pleased and relieved Sly is with the sure knowledge that his long-held belief is finally confirmed.
After this night’s events he can’t be denied any longer. It’s the only time I’ve sensed a smile playing around his face, such as it is. I can feel the relief run through his body to his burned boots and peeling fingertips.
And, oh God, speaking for myself, for Conor alone this time, there’s a huge weight off my mind as well. The decades are whirling, a whole century and more falls away, and all the generations of my people are spinning in my head, Mary and Bridget and the children I lost and I’m free to see again.
Eureka wasn’t a proper stockade. It was no fortress, not even a simple barrier. It was a bloody rickety affair of planks and gum-tree branches and overturned carts jammed together. You could walk right through it, and we did. They were just miners angry with righteousness and we were army detachments from two grim regiments, plus the police. It only took ten minutes. Then the dreadful bayoneting started and the sobbing, shrieking women began running forward and throwing themselves on the wounded to protect them.
But the thing is, there’s a salvation in all this. I feel a redemption tonight. I didn’t run away. And I didn’t kill the Irish boy after all. That young Irish miner with his rusty old rifle that jammed in the fierce commotion, the boy who looked at me and my aimed Enfield and burst into tears while acting brave, is free too. Pale face, a battered felt hat on his ginger head and a possum-skin waistcoat. The young miner defending a circle of sticks and branches and busted pony carts.
He could have been from Templemore, Tipperary, for all I know. Just off the boat. Beside himself, crazy with fear as we attacked. Lines of us in crisp uniforms, two hundred of us following orders, pointing guns and poking bayonets at him.
I worried I’d shot him, but I missed. Missed on purpose. Waved him to lie down and play dead. My heart thudding, the Enfield shaking, as I fired over his head. Willed him to survive the soldiers’ thrusting bayonets. He dropped to the ground as my mind told him to.
Not much of a soldier, me, not ever. More of an ordnance clerk. Maybe even a bit of a coward. But I saved his bacon.
So on the bank of a muddy creek outside Ballarat there we are, Sly and me, one shabby old body and one burned-out brain between us. Thank God our time is up. And all in all, we’re feeling pretty chipper as we fall.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’m immensely grateful to the Literature Program of the Australia Council for the Arts for backing Whipbird, as I am to Julie Gibbs and Robert Sessions for their great encouragement and support over the past sixteen years at Penguin.
For their welcome publishing enthusiasm for this novel I thank Nikki Christer, Fiona Inglis, Rachel Scully, Katie Purvis, Alex Craig, Amanda Martin, Samantha Jayaweera, Anyez Lindop and Louise Ryan.
For their invaluable contributions in many ways, I’m also thankful to my cousin Richard Selleck, Emeritus Professor of Monash University, Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne, and chronicler of the life of our great-grandfather, John Bray; Frank Sheehan, Chaplain and Director of the Centre of Ethics at Christ Church Grammar School, Perth; Martha O’Brien of Limerick; Gerri Sutton; Brent Johnson; my sister Jan Purcell; and my daughter Amy Drewe.
I should add that Terry Reis, in the Autumn 2014 issue of Wildlife Australia, provided a useful insight into the woes of a hardworking outback conservationist.
About the Author
Robert Drewe was born in the Melbourne suburb
of Richmond and grew up on the West Australian coast.
His novels, short stories and memoirs have been widely
translated, won national and international prizes, and
been adapted for film, television, theatre and radio.
ALSO BY ROBERT DREWE
Fiction
The Savage Crows
A Cry in the Jungle Bar
The Bodysurfers
Fortune
The Bay of Contented Men
Our Sunshine
The Drowner
Grace
The Rip
Memoir
The Shark Net
Montebello
Plays
The Bodysurfers: The Play
South American Barbecue
Sketches
Walking Ella
The Local Wildlife
Swimming to the Moon
The Beach: An Australian Passion
Co-Productions
Sand (with John Kinsella)
Perth (with Frances Andrijich)
As Editor
The Penguin Book of the Beach
The Penguin Book of the City
The Best Australian Short Stories 2006
The Best Australian Short Stories 2007
The Best Australian Essays 2010
Whipbird is a work of fiction. All its names, characters, places, events, celebrations, incidents, institutions, businesses, corporations, occupations, appliances, tours, religious views, foodstuffs and wines are products of the author’s imagination. Of course the Eureka Stockade rebellion and the Maori Wars actually occurred, but any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental.
HAMISH HAMILTON
UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia
India | New Zealand | South Africa | China
Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies
whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd, 2017
Text copyright © Robert Drewe 2017.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Cover design by Alex Ross © Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Text design by Samantha Jayaweera © Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Cover photography – whipbird: Gould, John, 1804-1881 The Birds of Australia. National Library
of Australia, RBNef F4773; wine stains: itchySan/Getty Images; background: illolab/Shutterstock.
penguin.com.au
978-1-742-53774-0
THE BEGINNING
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