by Alison Booth
‘It was terrific,’ Zidra said. ‘We went out with Jim and Eric in the end.’
‘Yes, Mrs Blunkett told me when she phoned me about the parcel.’
‘Of course she would. Anyway, we had a terrific time on the water. We paddled all the way upriver – it took ages – and back again. A lovely afternoon.’
Ilona waited for more but Zidra had nothing else to say. Eventually Ilona said, ‘And who was paddling your canoe? Was it you or the boy from Walgett?’
‘It was only Jim, Mama. You don’t need to worry,’ Zidra said, grinning.
The boy from Walgett would be returning to Sydney with Jim tomorrow, and Ilona was glad of it. It wasn’t that she disliked Eric, she told herself. Indeed, he was rather charming, but he was clearly too old for Zidra and was probably fast into the bargain. Mothers had a sixth sense for that kind of thing.
Chapter 25
Zidra inspected the brightly coloured postcard with the Gudgiegalah postmark and the cartoon picture of a small child in a stroller. Ever since receiving it weeks before, she’d kept it propped against the lamp on her bedside table. Once more she read the words scrawled in block letters in Lorna’s hand:
IT’S STILL ON. HURRAH FOR ST ANDREWS SUNDAY SCHOOL!
Yet it wasn’t much of a hurrah anymore, she thought. There was less than a week to go until the Jervis Bay trip, and they still hadn’t located the Hunters. While it would be wonderful to see Lorna when she and her mother travelled north, Zidra couldn’t bear to think of her disappointment if they failed to bring Lorna’s mother, and failed even to obtain news of where the family was.
Tomorrow Mama and Peter were going on their expedition to Numbugga Flats, while she would be plodding through her lessons at Burford Girls’ High. Mama wouldn’t think of letting her take a sickie on this day. ‘We shall find them,’ she had exclaimed. ‘And bring you home the good news.’ The only consolation, Zidra thought, was that she would be dropped off at school instead of having to take the school bus.
They’d be at Numbugga Flats in another half hour at most, Peter reckoned. Ilona could barely contain her excitement at the prospect of meeting up with the Hunters again and seeing their expressions when she told them the news of Lorna’s visit to Jervis Bay. Quite how she would get them to the coast next week she hadn’t yet worked out, though Peter had said that there was a bus service between Bogong and Burford, and that it would be easy to collect them from the bus station in Burford.
At the top of the escarpment the terrain changed so dramatically that you might be forgiven for thinking you’d travelled to another country, Ilona thought. A country without rain and with infertile soil. The road wound through paddocks littered with sheep and tussocks, and some isolated stands of eucalyptus trees. The sheep and the tussocks were virtually indistinguishable, each casting shadows in the afternoon sunlight.
Before Bogong, they turned off the highway onto a narrow unpaved road that meandered through an increasingly desolate landscape; no stock, no living trees, and only the weathered ringbarked tree stumps indicating that this area had once been forested. How hard the Hunters would find living here, she thought, after the lushness of the coast. Some miles further on, a sign indicated that Numbugga Flats lay to their right. Peter turned the car onto a rutted track that followed the contours around a hill and terminated in front of a homestead, a low weatherboard building. Beyond this was a large corrugated iron shearing shed that looked to be in poor repair. Apart from this, there were none of the usual outbuildings to be found on country properties, except for an apology for a dunny some way behind the back of the house. And the accumulated detritus of years spent struggling to make a living from this land: discarded tractors, ploughs and a couple of decrepit old utes.
A man and several dogs came out of the house; a tall stringy-looking individual, who shaded his eyes as he watched the car come to a halt. The dogs barked and circled the vehicle, but at a whistle from their owner they slunk behind him and lay down in the dust. The man and the dogs were the only living things in sight, Ilona thought. It was hard to imagine a more austere spot.
After Peter had explained where they were from, the man, Bob Fitzgerald, was welcoming, and would have made them a cup of tea if Ilona had let him. And perhaps she should have, for Peter raised his eyebrows when she refused. As if to compensate for her ungraciousness, he embarked on one of those slow conversations at which he was so practised; about the price of wool and superphosphate, and the problems of rabbits and resistance to myxomatosis, while all she wanted to do was shout, Where are the Hunters?
Only after a good quarter of an hour of yarning did Peter get around to stating the purpose of their visit. They were looking for the Hunter family, he explained, and they’d heard that Tommy Hunter, and maybe his family too, were working at Numbugga Flats.
‘Sorry, mate. Never heard of them,’ Bob said.
‘But are you sure?’ Ilona said. ‘I was told they were here.’ Perhaps Bob didn’t know their names; that must be it. ‘They’re an Aboriginal family,’ she added.
‘Abos, you say? No, not seen any around here for years. Someone was pulling your leg, I reckon.’
She hesitated while a range of emotions competed within her. Disappointment that their quest was in vain. Irritation with the dismissive way he said Abos. And a growing suspicion that perhaps she’d misheard what the Aboriginal man in Burford had told her. ‘I was informed they were at Numbugga Flats near Bogong,’ she said. ‘That’s here, isn’t it?’
‘Spot on,’ he said. ‘Sorry, missus. I’m afraid I can’t help you. I am looking for help, though. If you hear of anyone, let me know.’ He insisted on giving Peter his telephone number. ‘It’s a party line,’ he said. ‘If I don’t pick up, one of my neighbours will. And I do have neighbours here, though it mightn’t look like it. Maybe not as close as yours on the coast, but they’re here all the same. And if the Hunters were with them, I’d have heard.’
‘I didn’t make a mistake,’ Ilona said, as they drove back to the main road. ‘I know I didn’t. The man I spoke to at that meeting was quite clear. Numbugga Flats, back of Bogong.’
‘I believe you, Ilona. Your hearing’s as sharp as anyone’s. Perhaps the chap was trying to put you off. Maybe he thought you had links with Welfare.’
‘I told him I didn’t.’ Hot tears of frustration filled her eyes. It was heartbreaking to have come all this way and end up none the wiser.
‘There’s no reason they should trust the white fellow and every reason why they shouldn’t. Anyway, it’s quite possible he just made a mistake.’After a pause, Peter added, ‘But you can’t go on haring all round southern New South Wales.You’ve done all you can.’
In silence they turned onto the highway. The arid countryside did nothing to cheer her. The desolate plateau with its ringbarked tree stumps was left behind. The paddocks gave way to scrubby bush and soon this metamorphosed into rainforest.
Just before the road commenced its descent of the escarpment, Ilona glanced at Peter. His face was set. This grim expression was due to fatigue, she decided, and they should have accepted Bob Fitzgerald’s offer of a cuppa. Peter had been driving for hours, ever since they’d left Ferndale that morning, apart from a brief picnic before Bogong and later the stop at Numbugga Flats.
In front of them the road narrowed. Peter swung the car around the first of the many hairpin bends. Where the road bent back on itself, the safety barrier was broken. A piece of tape marked the spot where some poor soul had driven over the edge. There was no trace of a car though and the tyre tracks looked a few days old. Averting her eyes, Ilona focused on the tree ferns crowding down the gully as if desperate to reach the bottom. Above them, the eucalypts struggled upwards, straight and tall. Wisps of cloud trailed around the edge of the mountain side and the next ridge appeared veiled in white lace.
Instead of being soothed by this sight, it ma
de her feel apprehensive. At long last she was able to admit to herself that they wouldn’t be able to find the Hunters before the Jervis Bay trip. She wouldn’t stop looking though, right up to the day that she and Zidra were to leave. They would somehow meet up with Lorna at Jervis Bay and tell her they’d tried but hadn’t succeeded. She sighed. The breeze wafting through the open quarterpane window dropped several degrees. Shivering, she shut the window. The sunlight had vanished, hidden by the low cloud.
Something made her look at Peter again. Although the air was cool, sweat now beaded his brow and his hands were tightly clutching the steering wheel. Too tightly; she could see the white bones of his knuckles.
Surely there wasn’t going to be a panic attack, right here on the steepest part of the escarpment. He hadn’t had one for nearly a year, not since that time they’d been driving home from Woodlands and a Tiger Moth had flown low overhead. She peered up at the sky. If there was a plane above the low clouds it would be impossible to see but surely she would be able to hear it. Yet there was no noise at all, apart from the motor ticking over and the swish of the tyres on the bitumen, and from time to time the crack of a whipbird.
The road was narrow; too narrow for Peter to stop, she knew. But he’d have to soon, for the sweat was now pouring down his face and his skin was as white as chalk.
‘Slow down,’ she said. ‘Put on your lights.’
‘I can’t do it, Ilona.’
‘You’re doing fine. We’re not far from the bottom and there’s a place to stop there.’
‘That’s too far,’ he said, his words indistinct.
Unexpectedly he braked and the map on her lap shot forward onto the floor. There was no verge at the edge of the road but only the safety barrier, below which the timbered mountain side fell away steeply. The car came to a halt in the middle of their side of the road. Peter opened the driver’s door and leapt out, a wartime pilot with vertigo that was not dissipating with the passage of years.
Climbing out more slowly, she heard him panting as he paced up and down the edge of the bitumen. ‘You’ll have to drive. I’m sorry, Ilona. I just can’t do it.’
Though this road was little used on a weekday afternoon, they were parked just beyond a bend. Any vehicle coming up behind mightn’t see the parked car before it was too late. ‘I’m happy to,’ she said, ‘but let’s keep going.’ Quickly she got into the driver’s seat and he into the passenger’s. Taking out a handkerchief, he wiped his hands and neck, and continued inhaling deeply. Peering at the rear-vision mirror, she could see that there were no vehicles behind. But she wouldn’t look again. What lay ahead was challenging for the inexperienced driver that she was.
Occasionally she caught glimpses of the undulating hills of that fertile band of country far below them. Lying between the coast and the mountain range, these hills were a vivid green. She’d always known them like this, apart from that terrible summer of four years ago when the countryside was bone dry and the bushfires had raged for days. Slowly she steered the car around the hairpin bends and through the dense forest, and eventually around that last sharp turning before the final descent.
When they’d driven up the escarpment earlier today her hopes had been so high, but not anymore. Not even the sudden shaft of sunlight that at this moment broke through the clouds and illuminated the valley below could lift her spirits.
She had tried to find the Hunters, and had failed. She had dragged Peter with her and reawakened his vertigo. It was as well that he was not coming with her to Jervis Bay. Driving didn’t agree with him anymore.
And for Lorna it would be a double letdown. Her mother wouldn’t be going to Jervis Bay to see her; that would the first disappointment. The second was that they wouldn’t even be able to give her any news about her family. All avenues of investigation were now closed. The Hunters could be dead for all anyone knew.
Gazing intently through the front windscreen, Ilona thought again of those words Lorna had written about Gudgiegalah in her letter to Zidra. IT IS LIKE A PRISON HERE.
She and Peter each knew what that was like. And they would live with this knowledge for the rest of their lives.
The truck felt as if it had no springs but he didn’t really mind. It was such a relief to have finished picking for the day, and to feel the wind in his hair. The clouds had lifted and he watched the blaze of gold as the sun set behind the jagged mountain range, while the sky faded to a washed-out blue.
It wasn’t much further to the turn-off and the pickers’ quarters where they were staying. These were quite decent really. No toilet or washing facilities, but at least there was a watertight roof over their heads and somewhere to cook, as well as a tap next to the rainwater tank where they could get good water for drinking and cooking. And while there wasn’t enough water in the tank for washing, there was always the creek.
He shifted his position. His back was tired and aching, but he and his missus were fortunate to have the cabin to lean against. Most of the others had nothing to support them. As the truck rattled along they were jostled against one another, not that the kids seemed to mind. They were all laughing and chattering, except for the smaller ones who’d fallen asleep. It had been a twelve-hour day, no wonder they were tired.
He might have missed the car altogether if he hadn’t seen the eagle gliding on an updraft not far from the escarpment. His eye followed the bird as it drifted over the valley and then his peripheral vision picked up the grey shape under some trees at the far side of the picnic spot. He craned forward. That car was impossible to mistake. ‘Bugger me,’ he said, nudging his wife. ‘If it isn’t Peter Vincent and his missus. Been wonderin’ what they’ve been up to ever since Jack Wheeler said they were lookin’ for us.’
Seated at a picnic table not far from the car, the Vincents had their backs to the road and wouldn’t have seen the truck if Tommy Hunter hadn’t stood up and started bellowing. At the same time he banged the top of the cabin with the flat of his hand. The driver obligingly swerved off the road, skidding slightly on the loose gravel surface of the parking area and at this diversion some of the children started squealing with delight.
Ilona turned at the sound of the vehicle sliding on the gravel and the shrieking voices of the children. ‘My goodness, just look at this truck,’ she said, her voice breaking. ‘I think we’ve been found!’
‘You’ve got ten minutes, that’s all,’ called the driver, getting out of the cabin and lighting a cigarette.
Although all the pickers climbed down off the back of the truck, only Tommy and Molly Hunter joined Ilona and Peter.
‘I’m so pleased to see you,’ Ilona said. She couldn’t stop smiling and might have hugged Molly if she hadn’t been hiding behind Tommy. ‘We’ve been looking everywhere for you. Where have you been?’
‘Pickin’ for the last week at that new property opposite Sutherlands,’ Tommy said. ‘That’s where that man drivin’ the truck’s from. Decent sort of fella. Before that, at Eden, further down the coast.’
‘I never thought of going to Eden,’ Ilona said. ‘And no one ever suggested it.’ Jack Wheeler, the man she’d met at the housing meeting in Burford, had been almost right, she thought. The Hunters certainly were here, but at the bottom rather than the top of the escarpment.
‘You found us just in time,’ Ilona said, smiling at the Hunters. ‘Sit down, I’ve got some news for you.’ When they were seated at the picnic table, she told Molly and Tommy about the letter Zidra had received from Lorna, and about the visit of the Gudgiegalah girls to Jervis Bay the following weekend. As Ilona spoke, Molly nodded occasionally and, after a while, she began to weep. Lifting up the hem of her frock, she used it to dab at the fat teardrops coursing down her cheeks. At first she cried quietly, but she soon began to sob.
For four years Molly hadn’t seen her daughter, and what that would feel like didn’t bear thinking of. Ilona, sitti
ng by Molly’s side, put her arm around her. This made her weep the more. After pulling a clean handkerchief from her skirt pocket, Ilona gave it to Molly.
‘Gudgiegalah no tellem nothin’,’ Molly said, blowing her nose loudly. ‘Nothin’. Could’ve bin gone fer all we knew.’
Now Ilona told the Hunters about her planned trip to Jervis Bay, and offered to drive them there.
‘No takem kids,’ Molly said quite emphatically.
‘But why not?’
‘Them mob too many,’ Molly said. ‘Makem too much noise.’
‘I suppose they would be hard to conceal. You’ve got four other children, haven’t you?’ After Molly nodded, Ilona continued. ‘It would certainly be hard to get everyone in the car even with just me driving. And I suppose that many children might let the cat out of the bag.’
At this, Molly looked puzzled.
Peter said, ‘She means it would make it hard to hide everyone from the people guarding Lorna.’
But even that wasn’t quite clear enough, Ilona thought. The truth was that the Aborigines had to be hidden but not the whites. And of course there was always the fear that more of their children might be taken.
It was decided that Tommy and Molly would travel with Ilona and Zidra in the car to Jervis Bay, and that the other children would stay with their aunties at Wallaga Lake Reserve. The Hunters would go back to Wallaga before the end of the week and Ilona and Zidra would collect Molly and Tommy from there.
‘Zidra will be over the moon,’ Ilona said when the Hunters had gone off with the others in the truck.
‘Even more so now it’s clear there’ll be space for her too,’ Peter said.
