The Golden Land

by Di Morrissey

  ‘Yeah you’re right. Are you still thinking of putting a shower beside the pool?’

  ‘Sure am. We don’t really want wet people and children walking through the house. Better if they wash off and dry themselves outside.’

  ‘Don’t get too many other clever ideas or I’ll be stuck out here for another year,’ Mark said. ‘Let me know what the market is like.’

  The children loved the community market in the small village that was tucked in the fertile Gold Coast hinterland. It was unlike the large farmers’ markets Natalie was used to, the ones that attracted interstate tourists. This market was designed more for the locals who came to catch up on news and gossip. There was a craft table and a few stalls selling backyard produce, others sold knick-knacks, homemade cakes and chutneys. Over in one corner was an area containing chickens, ducks, rabbits and even guinea pigs, all of which caught the children’s attention. Charlotte was thrilled when she saw a docile Shetland pony plodding around a grassy area carrying youthful passengers. While Adam was not interested in riding, Charlotte loved the idea, and bubbled with anticipation when the pony’s handler put her onto the back of the little Shetland.

  Natalie noticed a small hall set with tables and chairs where tea and snacks were served. After Charlotte’s ride she suggested that the children might like a drink and something to eat. Sitting at one of the tables, she watched as cheesecakes, homemade pies and quiches, and a selection of delicious Asian specialities emerged from the little kitchen. Natalie ordered a Sri Lankan fish curry and rice with spicy tomato and cucumber in yoghurt on the side. It came in a takeaway container and she was pleased she wouldn’t have to make dinner for herself that evening. The children tucked into sweet potato fries and little flaky pastries stuffed with minced meat and vegetables while she had a coffee and a slice of mango cheesecake.

  ‘Worth coming just for the food,’ declared Natalie. ‘I think we’ll take some of that fresh fruit home, too. What do you both think?’

  The door at the rear of the hall had been left open and she could see that a charming garden was planted outside, filled with fresh greens, tomatoes and other plants that she didn’t recognise. Behind the mulched garden beds were several fruit trees. One of the girls from the kitchen was picking ingredients for a salad.

  Before they left, Charlotte wanted one more pony ride and this time Adam wanted to sit on it with her. Assured by the pony’s owner that they’d be fine riding double, Natalie knew that she had five minutes to look at a stall that she hadn’t had a chance to visit. It was piled with all manner of items – old chairs and pottery, coins and bits of machinery. When she looked more closely, she saw a table covered with ornaments, several paintings, antiquarian books and memorabilia. Beside the table stood a carved wooden screen. The more she looked, the more she was intrigued by the unusual pieces. She couldn’t tell exactly what they were but they looked Asian. It occurred to her that the man who owned the stall might be able to tell her something about the kammavaca. Maybe she should come back here next time the market was held. The kids would like that and Mark might be able to come, too.

  ‘Do you buy old things?’ she asked the stallholder.

  ‘Depends what they are. What do you have?’

  ‘Oh, a souvenir from Burma that belonged to my great-great-uncle.’

  ‘Come back and bring your piece along and I’ll have look. I’ve got a few Thai pieces here. Brass Buddha, and that’s an old native fish trap. I’ve got some antique silk but there’s not a lot of call for pieces like that at the moment. Most people are more interested in books, coins, you know, collectables. Where are you from? Haven’t seen you around before.’

  ‘I live at the Gold Coast. Brought the kids out here for an outing.’

  ‘You’ve picked a pretty spot; nice little community. Bit of a dynamo runs the market. She set up the community garden and other projects. I used to travel round the state. Sometimes I’d go down south to do the big markets. Too much trouble now. I’m just selling off what I have left in my shed. This market is on every two weeks.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll be back.’

  Natalie collected the children from the pony handler, picked up the knitted toys they’d chosen from the craft stall and gave Charlotte and Adam a homemade Anzac biscuit each for the journey home.

  ‘It was a great morning,’ she enthused to Mark that night. ‘Charlotte was crazy about the pony. I’d like to take you to this market when you get home. I want to show Uncle Andrew’s kammavaca to the old chap who has an antique stall.’

  ‘What would a Sunday market stallholder, way out in the boonies, know?’ said Mark. ‘We should take it to a professional dealer and get a proper valuation.’

  ‘No, I told you I’m just interested in knowing more about it.’

  ‘But we already know a lot about its origins from your internet research. What would be really interesting would be getting that funny writing translated,’ said Mark.

  ‘Yeah, although according to Uncle Andrew’s letter, it’s probably just religious stuff.’

  Windemere Preschool was housed in a brightly painted purpose-built building with a fenced play area containing a sandpit, cubby house and climbing apparatus. It was run by Jodie Price, one of Natalie’s oldest friends. Jodie had moved down from Brisbane and worked hard to set up the preschool, and she was proud of her dedicated staff and the knowledge that her establishment provided an excellent service for parents and the young children of the area. Although the facility was not particularly close to Natalie, there was no question that her children would go anywhere else, and she looked forward to the two days a week that Charlotte and Adam went there. It gave her some time to herself but also because she loved the security of knowing there was a place where Charlotte and Adam were not only cared for but were stimulated and could play with other children, learn social skills and adjust to being away from home for a short time. While every cold and sniffle seemed to be passed around among the children, the advantages of attending the centre far outweighed the disadvantages.

  One sunny morning Charlotte danced off with her friend Heidi to play in the cubby house while Adam stayed close to Natalie before a staff member led him away and distracted him by playing with him. Jodie came over to speak to her friend.

  ‘He gets a bit clingy just after Mark leaves for the mine,’ said Natalie.

  ‘He misses his dad but I thought he played well with Aaron last week,’ said Jodie. ‘Though it’s more parallel play at their age.’

  ‘That’s right, sitting side by side, building blocks, playing trains, whatever, but ignoring each other,’ said Natalie.

  ‘Hard, isn’t it, when fathers aren’t around? Heidi’s dad goes overseas every couple of months and it takes a week or more for her to adjust. Must be hard on you with a fly in – fly out hubby. How do you keep the kids entertained all the time?’

  ‘This place is such a godsend, Jodie. I like taking them out. And I like some of the other mothers whose kids come here. We occasionally meet for morning coffee at child-friendly cafés. Pity you can’t join us. Maybe one Saturday? I like to get away from the house and the reno mess when I can. I took the kids to the market in the hinterland on the weekend. When Mark comes home I think I’ll take him back there.’

  ‘That good, huh?’ asked Jodie.

  ‘I like being in the country, so green and lush. Charlotte loved the pony rides. The food was absolutely delicious and there was a great junk stall.’

  ‘There’re plenty of old-wares places around the coast. What are you looking for? I’m amazed at how you pick up old things and transform them for your house.’

  ‘Thanks. I just wish we could get on with the big renos. I’m so sick of all the mess around us. I just want to throw money at it. Get a team in to bash out walls, replace almost all the kitchen and do something with the bathroom. Get it over and done with. I saw a screen at that stall and I’ve worked out what I can do with it. I don’t think it will cost very much, so it would be great if it’
s still there. I also want to show the man running the stall a little knick-knack that belonged to my uncle and see if he knows what it is.’

  ‘You mean, value it?’ asked Jodie. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know if he could value it. I don’t expect it’s worth much anyway. I really just want to know more about it. It’s a sort of cloth manuscript thing that folds up in sections between painted bits of bamboo. It’s covered in illustrations and old writing that we can’t read. It came from Burma.’

  ‘Wow, how cool. I studied a bit about Burma in a unit on South East Asia when I was at uni,’ said Jodie.

  ‘Really? I don’t know a thing about Burma.’

  ‘It’s called Myanmar now. There was a coup and a bunch of generals took over in the 1960s. Was your uncle there then?’

  ‘Actually, he was my great-great-uncle. Mum found a whole box of old photos he’d sent to Great Granny Florence.’

  ‘Gosh, that’s amazing. Are you going to try to find out more? What was he doing out there? Civil service, the army? The twenties, that would’ve still been the raj era. Very pukka,’ said Jodie.

  ‘S’pose he was what we’d call a photojournalist. His photographs are fantastic. I’m going to get some of them blown up and framed.’ Natalie cast an eye over to where Adam was playing with some building blocks. ‘He didn’t have a lot of positive things to say about the British in Burma, though.’

  ‘Colonial days . . . There was a book we read in the course that he would have agreed with – George Orwell’s Burmese Days. It’s about how the colonial Brits behaved, or behaved badly more like.’

  ‘Wow, Jodie, you’re a font of information! Uncle Andrew’s a bit of an unfinished story. He was trying to get a kammavaca back to its rightful owner, but he died before he could.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you be better off going to an Asian art specialist?’ asked Jodie.

  ‘That’s what Mark said. We’ll see. Anyway, I want to go back to the markets and see if the screen is still there.’

  ‘What are you doing with the screen? I assume you’re not going to use it as a room divider or what it’s actually meant for?’

  Natalie laughed. ‘Of course not. It’s in four jointed sections and the top bit of each is all cut-out fretwork in a kind of lacy flower pattern. It looks a bit Indian or Arabian. It has teeny mirrors stuck in the centre of each wooden flower, but the rest of it is just wood. I’m going to try turning it into four white folding doors that can open onto the garden from the playroom.’

  ‘Sounds lovely. You are clever.’

  With the children asleep Natalie reached for her book, Burmese Days. She’d hunted it out at the local library. She studied the cover photograph that showed two languid men, presumably British, relaxing on a verandah somewhere in the tropics. One was stretched out asleep in a planters’ chair, his legs draped over its extended arms, one hand clasping a newspaper, the other flung above his head, his supine pose contrasting with his stiffly waxed moustache. One shoe had fallen to the floor.

  The other man, still dressed in a formal white shirt, sat reading in a rattan chair, chewing on a cigar as a turbaned, dark-skinned boy fanned him. A small table held cigarettes and matches beside two whisky glasses. A couple of chubby terriers looked as languid as their owners. The photo was credited to an A G E Newland and titled The Long, Long Burmese Day. It looked like a pretty privileged life, thought Natalie.

  She was well into the book when Mark came home several days later.

  ‘Listen to this, Mark,’ she said, interrupting his TV program. ‘This character Elizabeth is just vile.’

  ‘Who’s Elizabeth?’ asked Mark, turning down the sound on his movie.

  ‘She’s an English girl who goes out to Burma to live with her relations and is courted by Flory, the so-called hero of the book. He’s an English timber merchant and doesn’t quite fit in with the colonial society in Burma.’

  ‘When is it set?’

  ‘The 1920s, about the time that Uncle Andrew went back to Burma. When you read this, you understand how Andrew must have felt. Those British were awful. But Flory is different, he sympathises with the Burmese and tries to get Elizabeth to like them, too. But this is what she thinks.’

  Natalie lifted the book and read:

  When he spoke of the ‘natives’, he spoke nearly always IN FAVOUR of them. He was forever praising Burmese customs and the Burmese character; he even went so far as to contrast them favourably with the British. It disquieted her. After all, natives were natives – interesting, no doubt, but finally only a ‘subject’ people, an inferior people with black faces.

  ‘Isn’t that appalling?’ said Natalie.

  ‘Yes, but that’s probably the way the British thought in those days. I still hear some pretty racist comments about Asians at the mine,’ said Mark.

  ‘That’s not right, either. You know, I’m really pleased Uncle Andrew was like Flory. He liked the Burmese and he thought that the British were ripping them off. I think that it’s a pity he couldn’t return the kammavaca to the princess to show her that there were some decent Englishmen who weren’t there just to exploit the country and its people.’

  ‘I agree. It’s such a shame but that’s life, I guess.’

  As they drove along the country road to the market the following weekend, Natalie winced when Mark hit a pothole. ‘Can’t you drive more carefully?’ she snapped.

  ‘Can’t do much about these potholes.’ Mark glanced at her. ‘Why are you so cranky this morning?’

  ‘Am I? Sorry. I don’t feel well.’

  ‘Say, that’s a nice-looking little golf course,’ said Mark, changing the subject. ‘Didn’t know that was here. Hmm, eighteen holes, too.’ Mark slowed as he drove past the undulating rich-green course shaded by trees, its neat clubhouse surrounded by cars. ‘Might have to get Tony to come and have a game with me. Haven’t played for ages.’

  ‘Don’t they have a golf course at the mine?’

  Mark looked as though he was about to say something, but changed his mind. ‘Okay, here we are. What’s first?’

  ‘Pony ride, Daddy!’ squealed Charlotte.

  ‘Right. I’ll take them, Nat. Do you want a coffee and some cake first?’ asked Mark.

  Natalie shook her head. ‘No, thanks. My tummy feels a bit wobbly. I’d like to see the man with the collectables and see if he’s still got the screen I saw. If he has, can you throw it into the back of the station wagon?’

  ‘Of course. You go and chase him up. It’s not a huge market, so I’ll find you.’ He took the children by the hand and walked off towards the pony rides.

  Natalie walked past the stalls with their homemade goodies but she couldn’t work up a lot of enthusiasm for them. She headed over to where she could see the collectables spread out on tables under the shade of a tree.

  ‘Hello there! You’ve come back,’ the stall owner greeted her warmly.

  ‘Yes. Oh, good, you’ve still got the screen I saw last time. I was hoping it would still be here. I’ll pay you for it, and my husband will come and get it for me.’ She glanced at the selection on the tables and the larger items standing around. ‘I like that old Singer sewing machine. I have my grandmother’s old one.’

  ‘Do you use it?’

  Natalie laughed. ‘No. I use a modern sewing machine.’

  ‘Did you bring your Burmese souvenir that you were talking about? There’s someone at the markets today who might be able to help you with it.’

  ‘Really? Here it is. Tell me what you think.’ Natalie pulled the kammavaca from her handbag, took off the silk scarf it was wrapped in, opened the box and gently unfurled the scroll of painted images and writing.

  ‘I’ve seen these before. Palm-leaf manuscripts. They’re quite common in South Asia, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, those places. They’re still made, of course. But this one is unusual.’ He fingered it carefully. ‘It’s made of cloth. Different. Illustrations are really beautiful. Could be worth a couple of hundred dollars, maybe. T
hi might have a better idea.’

  ‘Thi? Who’s that?’

  ‘Thi is Burmese. She’s the one who runs the market though she’s been in Australia for yonks. She’s set up a school in a village in Burma and what we raise here at the market she sends over to keep it running.’

  ‘That’s incredible! I mean, to find a Burmese woman here.’ Natalie was a bit lost for words. ‘I’ve just been reading about Burma. In the old days. Is Thi here? I’d love to meet her.’

  ‘She’ll be running around somewhere. You won’t miss her. She’s wearing a T-shirt with “Free Aung San Suu Kyi” printed on it.’

  Natalie found Thi in the community garden energetically picking salad greens and tomatoes while directing another volunteer to add mulch and water to the garden beds. Someone sang out from the kitchen window to say that they needed some spring onions.

  Shyly Natalie approached the small Burmese woman.

  ‘Hello, you must be Thi. I’m Natalie.’

  Thi straightened up and gave Natalie a smile. She was probably in her fifties, her hair flecked with grey, her olive skin sun wrinkled, her eyes a sparkling brown. A large smile split her face. ‘That’s me. How can I help?’

  ‘The man with the collectables and old wares suggested I see you. It’s about something Burmese my great-great-uncle left me. I’m just beginning to learn about Burma.’

  Thi reached out and touched Natalie’s arm. ‘I always like talking about my country.’

  She pointed to the picture on her T-shirt. ‘There’s a lot that needs to change and many people need to help. Go and have a coffee and some cheesecake and I’ll be with you soon.’

  Natalie watched Thi bustle around among the patrons of the café, who mostly seemed to be locals. She was obviously well known as several people stopped her for a chat. She finally sat down opposite Natalie at the little table and looked at the iced water Natalie was drinking.