by Alison Booth
‘Newspaper editors can sway public opinion,’ her mother said. ‘It’s they who decide what gets published. They’ve got incredible power to influence what people think and who they vote for.’
‘I’m sure that newspaper reporters don’t even check the facts a lot of the time,’ Peter said. ‘One paper publishes some gossip and the others pick it up without bothering to verify the source.’
‘At least in a democracy the opposition can establish when the government’s lying and let the media know. Not like in the Soviet Union where no opposition’s brooked.’
‘Journalism’s important in a democracy.’ Zidra knew she sounded pompous but she was getting fed up with all this negative talk about journalism. Something positive had to be said about reporters otherwise she’d never be able to reveal her ambitions. ‘Journalists can present both points of view and afterwards let the public make up its mind about what’s the truth and what’s fiction.’
‘Zidra’s right, that’s what the best investigative journalism should do. Present both points of view, giving all the facts. But as well they should explain why they favour one rather than the other.’
‘That’s what opinion writers might do, but don’t forget that neither point of view might be the truth,’ Peter said. ‘Both might be fiction. Both might be based on misinformation.’
‘Even so, I still want to be a journalist.’ There it was, out in the open at last, and Zidra nervously waited for the reaction. To begin with there was none, unless you counted the prolonged silence.
‘It’s a cut-throat job and all you’d deal in would be lies,’ Peter said at last.
‘Don’t be so negative, Peter. We all need dreams.’
‘It’s not a dream,’ Zidra said irritably. ‘It’s what I’m going to do. I’m good at history and I’m good at English. Mrs Fox said I’d make a good journalist.’
‘You write beautifully, darling. If I could write half as well, maybe more of my letters to the editors might get published.’
After this, there was another long pause, until Peter said, ‘There’s the public service too, Zidra. Or even the diplomatic service. They might be better places to work.’
Before Zidra had a chance to reply, her mother said, ‘Both are even more male-dominated than journalism. Or at least the Commonwealth public service is. They’ve still got a marriage bar.’
At this point Zidra observed the swift exchange of glances between her parents. She hated it when they did this. They had their own private language, or so they thought. She knew how to translate it though. Don’t destroy her illusions, her mother was saying, and willing Peter to go along with this. Suddenly Zidra felt angry with them both; it was as if they were conspiring against her. Yet she knew that all those silly rules of society weren’t their fault, those rules that said women were good at running a home and having kids and nothing much else. Not that there was anything wrong with running a home, it was just that it didn’t pay. No one ever sat down to calculate how much you’d have to pay someone to do what her mother did. Financial independence was everything, and you’d only have that if you could earn your own money. And if you were good at that, no one would want to marry you, or at least that’s what they’d have you believe. But anyway, she wasn’t even sure if she wanted to get married.
What she hated was that, in spite of the fact that she was brighter than most of the boys in her class, many people viewed her achievements as a liability rather than an asset. In case she hadn’t already understood this, only last week when she’d dropped into Sally’s house, Mrs Hargreaves had said, My my, Zidra, you are doing well at school now, but you be careful you don’t go putting the boys’ noses out of joint.
Yet Zidra didn’t care whose nose she put out of joint. She was going to live her life her way.
‘I could write about Lorna,’ she said. ‘I could do a series of articles tracking the lives of half-caste kids who’ve been taken away.’
The words were out before she’d given them any conscious thought. They hung in the air while she and her parents contemplated them. They were good words, she decided. This was a good ambition.
‘That certainly needs public documentation,’ her mother said thoughtfully. ‘And far better than writing letters to newspaper editors.’
‘And then there’s the comparison with apartheid in South Africa,’ Zidra added. ‘You know, we were talking about that and the civil rights movement the other day on the way back from the Reserve.’
‘We were indeed.’ Her mother sighed and began to stack the plates. ‘And that reminds me, I must call into that camp near Burford soon. We’ve got to find out where the Hunters are.’
Chapter 10
For days Zidra had been looking forward to Jim’s return for the Christmas holidays. As always, he’d phoned Ferndale his first night home, and they’d arranged to meet this morning; this beautiful clear morning, when Zidra had been dropped off by her mother in Jingera. Now here she was, at ten o’clock on the dot, standing by the war memorial. Jim hadn’t arrived yet, the lazy thing, when he’d only a couple of hundred yards to walk and she’d come nearly ten miles.
She brushed a smudge of grey dust off her navy blue shorts and picked off a few of Spotless Spot’s hairs that had managed to attach themselves to her white cotton shirt. After taking off her straw sunhat, she sat on the steps on the beach-side of the memorial, so she could keep an eye on the street leading down to the water as well as on the road up which Jim would come. Surreptitiously she inspected her brown leather sandals. They looked almost new, though purchased at the end of last summer, and showed to advantage her toenails that she’d painted the day before with her mother’s pale pink pearlescent nail polish. Soon tiring of this contemplation, she stared down the hill. Though the water was inviting and it might be fun to rent a canoe, there was no sign of Hairy Harry yet. Two summers ago he’d opened his canoe-hire place next to the lagoon. It was just half-a-dozen upside down canoes on the strip of land that the council had started mowing six months before. Soon after the canoes had arrived, a shower had magically appeared, a bit of bent pipe like a gibbet with a shower rose on the end. Only cold water, but at least you could wash the sand off before heading home.
Hairy Harry could spot a business opportunity all right, Mrs Blunkett had said, it was just a shame that he didn’t seem to know how to run it afterwards. The trouble was that if he got the urge for a beer or felt like an afternoon’s fishing or a burn-up on his bike, he’d shut up shop. After the last canoe came back in, he’d run a steel cable through the cleats at the front of each craft and bolt them to the sign saying No Speed Boats on the Lagoon. Then off he’d go. It didn’t matter if there was a queue of kids waiting. It didn’t matter that the holiday brochures stated they were for hire throughout the school holidays. If Hairy Harry felt like it, canoes were off.
‘Zidra!’
She started. ‘Where did you come from?’
‘The headland.’
Jim sat down next to her. She deliberately bumped his arm with her shoulder, the closest they’d ever get to the hug she’d like to give him. The holidays had officially arrived; this was what she always felt when Jim returned to Jingera.
‘I got here a bit early so walked up to the cemetery,’ Jim said. ‘Tried whistling to you but you didn’t hear. You were miles away.’
‘It’s the surf.’ They sat in silence for a few moments, listening to the endless roar of the ocean. She noticed that his legs below the baggy khaki shorts were lightly suntanned, presumably from all the sport he did, and covered with fine dark hair that she’d never really observed before. Glancing at his face, she saw that he was inspecting her legs. Fortunately he was much too well-mannered to comment on the fact that she’d used her mother’s depilatory cream on them yesterday. Feeling self-conscious now about this new hairlessness, she rubbed her hands up and down her calves. He looked away b
ut not quickly enough for her to miss his grin. To hide her discomfort, she leant forward and pulled out a weed that had somehow managed to germinate between the memorial plinth and the bitumen road surface.
‘You’ve changed your hair,’ he said.
‘Yeah. Had a haircut last week and got them to do a fringe too.’
‘It suits you.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Makes you look younger.’
This wasn’t what she wanted to hear at all, and she told him so.
‘Sorry,’ he said, grinning again. ‘It makes you look much older and extremely sophisticated.’
‘That’s more like it.’
‘Only one problem though.’
‘What’s that?’
He leant towards her and plucked some fragments of blossom and twigs out of her hair.
‘Oh, that,’ she said. ‘My hair’s like a mop. It picks up flora and fauna whenever I go into the bush. Spot and I were playing there first thing this morning when I was waiting for Mum. No spiders, I hope?’
‘Not many.’
‘That’s all right then.’ But she ran her fingers through her curls just to check.
‘What would you like to do?’
‘What about the usual? Sit under the fig tree in your back garden. Or maybe we could go for a walk along the lagoon. Ma’s collecting me at one o’clock on her way back from Burford.’
‘We could hire a canoe.’
‘Yeah, but Hairy Harry isn’t there yet and we don’t really want to hang around waiting all morning.’
‘I could get the key to the boathouse and we could borrow Dad’s boat.’
‘Sounds a bit damp if it leaks as much as it used to, and I didn’t bring my swimmers.’ If he’d been a girl that wouldn’t have mattered though. They could have rowed around the bend in the river and swum in their underclothes. Even a year ago she would have been willing to do this, but the Bradley boys had made her self-conscious. That was the trouble with growing up. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’
They strolled in silence down the hill. There was now a slight awkwardness between them that she couldn’t remember ever noticing before. Desperately she struggled to think of something to say. Surely they hadn’t grown apart just in the space of one term. No, that was impossible; they’d known each other far too long for that. They’d always be good friends; it was just an initial shyness. Or maybe he felt embarrassed about walking down to the lagoon with her, now that he looked so adult, and she was two years younger and always would be, the same age as his brother, Andy.
They stopped in the middle of the footbridge and watched the translucent green water rippling under it: the Burford River and all its tributaries, including Stillwater Creek. A black bird swooped under the surface with a splash and a moment later was on its way again.
‘A cormorant,’ Jim said, keen as ever to display his knowledge.
Zidra laughed and resumed her inspection of the straps of yellow weed, anchored firmly to the sandy bottom of the river. They bent with the direction of the tide that was slowly inching in. Somehow staring at the lagoon, in this place where she’d spent so much time with Lorna that first summer in Jingera, made it easy for her to begin telling Jim about Lorna’s letter, and the plan for Jervis Bay in February.
‘I’m sure you’ll find out where the Hunters are before then,’ Jim said. ‘It’s still a long time away. Tommy’s probably taken them off somewhere. It’s the season for fruit picking.’
‘Ma’s going to ask today at that camp.’
‘Which camp?’
‘The one near Burford that the council’s threatening to move on.’
‘I didn’t know there was one there.’
‘You wouldn’t see it unless you went on the back road. It’s quite new. The Aborigines get moved on regularly.’
After this, Zidra found that their conversation began to flow as easily as the water under the footbridge. Once the sun on their backs became too hot, they walked on to the Cadwallader boathouse. There they sat in the shade of a dense stand of she-oaks, and told one another about their lives over the past term.
Afterwards, she thought of how some things would never change; important things like her friendship with Jim. It was almost as if he were her brother. That’s what she felt for him, sisterly love.
After calling into the bank in Burford to deposit some cheques, Ilona drove on for several miles before turning onto the side road that led through the hills towards Swampy Creek. The Aboriginal settlement was next to an old rubbish tip. Not the council one but the other one, the illegal dumping ground where people got rid of stuff that the town tip wouldn’t take, or when they couldn’t be bothered driving the few extra miles into Burford.
Rounding a bend in the road, she mightn’t have noticed the settlement if it hadn’t been for the plume of smoke from a camp fire spiralling up through the still morning air. Beyond the wrecked cars and other detritus flanking the road was a collection of shanties, ringed by trees. For the most part, the shelters were fabricated from packing cases and rusty corrugated iron, and roofed by the same material or by strips of old carpet held in place by stones. She stopped the car at the side of the road, next to the carcass of what had once been a Holden ute. The morning was starting to feel hot; she wiped her brow with a handkerchief before pulling on the old sun hat that she kept in the back of the car.
As she walked along the verge towards a narrow track leading around the wrecked cars, the smell hit her. Old rubbish and latrines, the stench of temporary encampments. No birds called; she heard only the sound of silence. You might think the camp was deserted if it weren’t for that column of smoke signalling otherwise. She rounded the last mound of rubble, a pile of old bricks and concrete bound together with weeds. Only now did she notice the circle of elderly Aborigines sitting cross-legged in the shade of a tree. There were no young people or children around; this had to be the reason that the place was so quiet. She approached, nodding and smiling. Two mongrel dogs growled as she walked towards them but didn’t bother to get to their feet. The hostility of the group was almost palpable.
Beads of moisture that had formed between her shoulder-blades and under her arms, trickled down into the waistband of her skirt. She flinched when a gang-gang cockatoo flew overhead, screeching like a rasping door hinge. Preparing to mouth those words she’d been rehearsing, she took a deep breath.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘My name’s Ilona Vincent. And I’m not from the Aborigines’ Welfare Board.’
There was a brief pause. The elderly woman closest to her spoke first. ‘You from the church?’
‘No, I’m not from the church. I’m from Ferndale. That’s a property a few miles north of Jingera.’
‘I knowem. You missus bossman there.’
Another woman said, ‘You’re not from the trade union?’
At this, Ilona guessed that the camp had been visited recently by the labour alliance investigating Aboriginal poverty. ‘No,’ she said. ‘And I’m not from the Liberal Party or the Communist Party either.’
They all laughed. She squatted on the ground, regretting that her skirt was too tight to allow her to sit cross-legged.
‘Wantem pickers? Young ’uns all gone.’
‘No, we don’t have crops, only sheep and cattle. I’m looking for Tommy and Molly Hunter. They used to be at Wallaga Lake.’
‘I was evicted from Wallaga Lake last year,’ said one old man. ‘Couldn’t pay me rent. No job, no work, no pension, no rent. Them Hunters still there when I left.’
‘You’ve not seen them since?’
‘No.’
‘If you do see them, please tell them I’m looking for them. It’s about their daughter, Lorna.’
At this point the expressions of everyone in the group became guarded.
‘I swe
ar I’m not the Welfare Board,’ she said again. ‘Please tell the Hunters if you see them that I’m trying to organise a meeting with their oldest daughter.’
‘That girl in Gudgiegalah. Never see nobody.’
‘But a meeting might be possible.’ Ilona didn’t want to say anymore than this. She would hate anything to happen to jeopardise Lorna’s trip to Jervis Bay. Yet she could see the scepticism showing on the faces of everyone.
Eventually the woman who’d spoken first said, ‘We’ll tellem if we see ’em. But won’t be here much longer.’
‘They’re trying to move us on,’ said the old man who’d been evicted from Wallaga Lake.
‘Who is?’
‘The council. The boss next door wants to lease this bit of land. Not the rubbish, but the land behind the tip and this bit of Swampy Creek.’
‘Where will they move you?’ She waved away the flies now buzzing around her face.
‘Anywhere but here.’
‘I see.’ Indeed she saw only too clearly. Apart from the dump, this was good land and some farmer was bound to want it, and to get rid of its present occupants. The Aboriginal workers were good for picking. They were cheap and willing to work twelve-hour days in the season. But the season only lasted three months, so they weren’t needed for the rest of the year.
Driving back through Burford, she pulled into the grounds of the district hospital on an impulse. Maybe no one had seen the Hunters because there’d been an accident, or perhaps a family illness. After eventually finding a parking space, she locked the car and headed into the main entrance. The hall was dark after the harsh sunlight, and reeked of floor polish and disinfectant overlaid with a faint odour of cabbage.
The woman at the desk looked up reluctantly from her paperwork. ‘Visiting hours aren’t until two o’clock,’ she said, peering at Ilona over the top of half-moon spectacles.
‘I’m not here to visit anyone. I want to find out if a friend was hospitalised recently.’
