Soon tiny bubbles rise and dissipate. “Oxygen, mate – that’s a good sign,” says Milo, “but hold on a bit.” At the exact moment when the water surges to the boil Milo shovels in three heaped spoons of tea, stirs it around just once, then shouting “Keep back” grasps the billy by its wire handle and rushes outside.
The startled Brandt stays on the veranda as Milo starts swinging the lidless billy around like a windmill without spilling a steaming drop. After a dozen rotations he deposits it on a veranda step with the delicacy of putting down a sleeping baby. “We need a couple of gum leaves,” he says.
Brandt goes off with him to a low branch and picks two round, blue leaves on a single stem. “No mate, they’re no bloody good, too young,” says Milo. “They’ll poison us. Now these are what we’re after.” Milo’s leaves are green, long, pointed, cratered, brittle and well-chomped by tiny jaws. He drops the gum leaves into the tea, stirs them with a stick and counts to twenty. “She’ll be right,” he says.
Straight away, he goes back into the house, rifles through Brandt’s kitchen cabinet, and finds two tin mugs and an English porcelain jug decorated with glazed forget-me-nots, which he rinses at the sink. “You take your tea with milk, Otto?” Brandt nods. “Wise man. You take sugar too, I hope.”
“Yes, thank you.” Brandt is totally bemused as Milo mixes three teaspoons full of dried milk with cold water in the jug, gives it a firm stir then pours it into the mugs. “I’ve heard that some city people put the milk in last,” says Milo. “Well, they’re wrong. Queen Victoria used to put the milk in first, my own grandmother told me that she saw Her Majesty do it herself. So you see, those city people are wrong.”
“Yes, those people are wrong,” mumbles Brandt mechanically. The conversation is getting away from him.
“They’d be the same Melbourne mob who won’t take sugar,” says Milo. He adds two heaped spoonfuls to Brandt’s mug and waits for him to stir it. Brandt takes a tentative sip and is pleasantly surprised.
“I suppose I could get used to this,” he says but he still prefers his coffee.
Over the mugs of tea, Milo tells him something of his past. “I was what they called a primary producer, so I didn’t have to go to war, but I wanted to join the [Royal Australian Air Force] just like Brian, my younger brother. I was already a qualified pilot, but instead of fighting Jap Zeroes and your Mr Göring’s Messerschmitts, they had me up in Canberra training young recruits to do bumps and circuits. They said I was too old to fight myself, and you know what? It still gets to me, Otto. Too right it does, and that year, 1943, was the worst in my life. That was the year Brian was shot down and killed over Malaya. I never knew for sure what happened until May, and no sooner I got the news than Pixie left me.”
There’s no bitterness in his voice. Brandt thinks of that year too and briefly closes his eyes.
“Pixie was a society girl, brought up in Sydney,” says Milo. “She hated Tumbledown; she said she couldn’t stand the isolation. No, I haven’t heard from Pixie since I asked her for a divorce three months ago. ‘I’m a Catholic’, she wrote back. ‘I’m a Catholic’ – nothing else, that was it.” He pauses, then drops his voice. “I suppose her leaving was for the best, at least from her point of view.” That’s when he lights his third cigarette. “Bit hard on Peggy, though; Pixie refusing the divorce, I mean.”
“Peggy?” Brandt recalls Henty saying something about an English woman.
“Peggy’s in Tumut, but she comes over to Tumbledown sometimes. I’m actually going to collect her tonight.” Milo steers the conversation towards Brandt. “So how do you like working on the Snowy?”
“It’s the best job in the world, but I’m tired of the camp. I’m sure I’ll be much happier when I’m living here.”
“Well, as I see it, you’ll need to get that bush saw, otherwise you won’t have enough wood to keep you going for the winter.”
“But it’s still only spring.”
“True, but look over there.” He points to the barn. “By May at the latest, you need to have enough stacked logs to reach halfway to the roof. Take my word for it, only a fool learns from his own experience. A wise bloke learns from the experience of some other poor cobber and, in your case, that happens to be me. The first year after Dad died I forgot to tell the men to build up the log pile. I may employ a lot of men, Otto, but there are some things I now do myself. One of them is to always get in my own firewood. I won’t ever again live in a freezing house. And you need a proper bush saw, a giant two-handled device with razor-sharp teeth.”
“I don’t think I have never even seen one,” says Brandt. “I wouldn’t know how to use it properly.” Brandt is out of his depth. Some ‘two-handled device with razor-sharp teeth’ capable of sawing through a whole tree doesn’t bear thinking about.
“You’ll be right, mate,” says Milo. “I’ll show you. When’s your next day off?”
“Wednesday week.”
“OK, then we’ll shoot over to see Gunna. He’ll fix you up with a decent saw and give you a bit of advice. I’ll get you started when we get back.”
“Gunner? Did he serve in the artillery or in the air force?”
“No, he’s not Gunner, he’s just ‘Gunna’ – it’s his nickname. Gunna and his wife, Connie, own the store just up the road. We’ll get you a bush saw, and I’ll vouch for you as a new landowner, so you’ll be able to open an account.”
“Thank you very much, Milo, but is it OK for you take time off just like that? What about your own place?”
“As I told you, I employ a lot of men, Otto. Most of them have been with me a long time, some even worked for my father. Tumbledown runs itself, like a Rolls- Royce engine. Mind you, I know how to roll up my sleeves when I’m needed, and I can muster cattle with the best of them. They’ve seen me do it many times and they respect me for it.”
*
Brandt watches him drive off. “Tumbledown,” he says to himself. He recalls seeing the name embossed in brass on decorated wrought-iron gates with brick pillars. Milo might be his next-door neighbour, but to walk to that gate from here would take him an hour.
It’s nearly evening and the sun’s rays cut through the trees like knives. There is an all-pervasive stillness in the bush, a silent presence, which puts Brandt on edge.
*
The T and C General Store is only a mile away from Garigo on the old Diss turn-off. Milo strides in, and Brandt follows him into a cavern of over-packed shelves of tinned corned beef, dried milk powder, Bushell’s tea, ready rub tobacco, matches, Bex pills, stationery, toothpaste, packets of SAO biscuits, petroleum jelly, cockroach powder, purple bottles of rat poison and a long row of dusty tin cans. In the poor light, Brandt nearly trips over a sack of saltpetre, and bangs his head on a heavy cast-iron kettle suspended, like all the other kitchen utensils, from the rafters. A ceiling fan misses this collection by barely an inch as it whirrs around redistributing the dust and blending the aromas of old linoleum, mothballs, desiccated coconut, overripe bananas, tubs of grease, graphite, sewing-machine oil, kerosene, leather hats, inner tubes, red carbolic soap, sawdust, blood and bone fertiliser, chicken food, pollard for ducks, and seed for canaries.
The counter is barricaded with a row of eight large glass jars of boiled lollies, two-day old Sydney newspapers, the Australian Women’s Weekly, a portable gramophone, an electric iron, two mantel wirelesses with valves guaranteed for three years and an array of torches with Eveready batteries in cardboard boxes.
Behind all this is a very thin, hollow-chested man with a prison-pale complexion and who is probably in his late forties, spooning quick lime into empty Johnson’s Baby Powder tins.
“G’day, Gunna,” says Milo.
“G’day, Milo. Who’ve we’ve got here?”
“Gunna, I want you to meet Otto. He’s our new neighbour.”
Brandt shakes his hand and the residue of quick lime
makes his palms sting. “Very pleased to meet you,” says Brandt.
“What are you up to with the baby powder tins?” asks Milo.
“Fishing bombs. See all those little holes around the lids? When you roll them into the river nothing happens at first, then the trout get curious and come in to have a decko. By that time the water has leaked into the lime through the holes, then, boom, she goes off like a depth charge, the fish are stunned and then all you have to do is to rake them in with a net. I reckon I can sell each one of these beauties for five bob.”
“It’s not fishing, it’s cheating,” says Milo. “Where’s the sport in that?”
“It’s legal,” says Gunna.
“Shouldn’t be,” says Milo. “Where’s Connie today?”
“Gone up to Canberra to see Genevieve.”
Gunna turns to Brandt, “She’s our daughter – just started nursing training.”
Brandt uses a corner of the blotting paper to clean the edge of Gunna’s nib, which he dips into the glutinous blue/black ink to complete and sign an ostentatiously complicated farmer’s account form. To make matters worse, one of Gunna’s hairs has somehow got into the ink well and is now caught up the nib with the result that Brandt’s handwriting swirls with unwanted embellishments.
As soon as Gunna countersigns and Milo witnesses the signature, all three men go out to a back shed where the larger tools are stored and Gunna takes down a saw that reminds Brandt of an English longbow. He stares at the array of shining teeth with trepidation. “How do you sharpen it?” he asks.
Gunna glances first at Milo, then turns once more to Brandt. “Mate, you never ever sharpen a bush saw. You just, well, keep it sharp… with this!” He shows him a file so thin and small it might be part of a lady’s manicure set.
Milo starts laughing. “Otto, what he means is every time you use the saw, you give each tooth just a touch with the file.”
“I see,” says Brandt.
“I don’t think you do, Otto,” says Gunna.” He tilts the six-foot saw like a harp and taking the tiny file barely brushes each tooth in turn. “Just give ’em a kiss, mate. That’s all they need.”
As they drive back, Milo becomes reflective. “I suppose, when you come to think of it,” he says, “that’s the way a man ought to live his life. You shouldn’t have to sharpen it, you’ve just got to keep it sharp.” Brandt sees why Henty referred to Milo a bush philosopher.
“Are you going to tell me why you call him ‘Gunna’?”
“It’s not just me, everyone around here calls him Gunna. It’s because, since he was just a kid at school, he was always bragging he was ‘gunna’ do this or that – go to university, join the navy, grow Turkish tobacco or, like today, make a fortune out of selling bombs for fishing. By the way, they are illegal; if our local inspector catches him, he’ll do three months. Anyway, all the things Gunna was ‘gunna’ do, he never did. He’s what we call in Australia a no-hoper, but a nice enough bloke for all that. Anyway, he never complains about his nickname – takes it in good part.”
“I think a man should be called by his proper name – unless he chooses something else,” says the German, his voice dropping as he reminds himself that he wasn’t always called Otto Brandt.
10
The new saw is designed to be used by two men at a time, one at each end, and Brandt and Milo come to a good working arrangement. Milo needs to build up his own woodpile, so on Brandt’s days off they meet at each other’s properties in turn. First, they fell the dead trees, afterwards saw the trunks and thickest branches into two-foot logs, and, finally, split them with wedges and blockbusters. The smaller branches they chop up for kindling.
Today, they are at Tumbledown. Milo lives in a stone-built homestead with a surrounding veranda that is wide enough to drive a car around and decorated with Victorian cast-iron filigree. A mountainous corrugated-iron roof collects enough rain to replenish the six round concrete tanks huddled behind clematis, bottlebrush and giant ferns.
For the past hour, the two men have been splitting the sawn logs with blockbusters and wedges. Brandt feels a healthy tightness in his biceps and stomach muscles, but he doubts that Milo feels the same; the man is already as tough as a Königstiger tank.
“Smoko time,” Milo says, laying down his blockbuster and getting out his tobacco pouch. As he heads towards the house, he looks appreciatively at his log pile, which is already four feet high and twenty feet long. Brandt’s own wood supply would be about the same.
“Why did they name my place Garigo?” he asks Milo.
“The Aboriginal people here were called the Ngarigo. The Fullers must have been too lazy to pronounce the ‘N’ so I suppose it became Garigo.”
“Were? So, the Aboriginals are all gone.”
“I didn’t say that.”
They take their break on Milo’s veranda. A honey-brown woman of around forty brings out two bottles of Toohey’s Ale running with condensation, which form little puddles on the table. She goes off again and fetches two cold schooner glasses from the fridge.
“Thanks, Aubergine,” says Milo. “We’re right now.” The woman smiles and goes back inside. Milo lowers his voice. “That’s Aubergine; she’s my stolen treasure from Africa.”
The woman brings up a welter of conflicting emotions in Brandt. The SS would have relegated Aubergine to the near bottom of the racial scale. Nevertheless, his voice is matter of fact. “Aubergine doesn’t sound like an African name,” he says.
Milo sips his beer and the foam makes a white line across his moustache. “Back in 1939,” he says, “my parents were touring in South Africa, and my mother became hysterical when her English maid shot through on us and took a passage to Southampton. Anyway, they came across Aubergine picking grapes on a Cape vineyard. She had been beaten up by her husband, and was treated like a slave by her employers – I think one of the mongrels raped her. So, my mother rescued her, not my father – he didn’t want a bar of Aubergine; it was my mother who had to fight with him to take the girl to Australia. That’s because Aubergine is of mixed race and was abandoned when she was a baby. The orphanage christened her Charity, a name that she detested, so when she grew up she called herself ‘Aubergine’. I think it was just because she liked the sound of the word. Anyway, despite my father, Aubergine came back on the boat with them.”
“But what about the White Australia policy?” asks Brandt.
“Yes, well that’s another story. Anyway, the war was upon us then. It was too late to ship her back to Cape Town, and, apart from my father, none of us wanted her to go. As I said, Aubergine’s a treasure.”
“But what happened when the war was over?”
“Well, by that time, my parents had died, and the authorities didn’t bother to follow it up with me; to be honest, it helps when you’re a Hudson-Beck. Hence, I gave Aubergine a little bungalow, so she could live her own life and continue with her studies. She desperately wants to improve her education. Out of her wages, she bought an old Model T Ford and one of my roustabouts maintains it for her. As you can see, she helps around the house, but she’s still setting her sights on education and there’s one hell of shortage of teachers in New South Wales. Next year, Aubergine gets her Emergency Teacher’s Certificate. She’s already passed her final teaching practice at the primary school in Berridale, so she’ll be looking around soon for a job – hopefully, around these parts so she can live at home. She’s scared to move away too far from here because she thinks people will stare at her. In this country, you hardly ever see a face that isn’t white. If the Education Department wants to send her to Sydney, she’ll probably give up the idea of teaching altogether. That would be a tragedy – I won’t let it happen.”
He tops up Brandt’s glass. “So, how’s that for a cold beer, Otto? You should get yourself a kero fridge, my new one is a real humdinger.”
“Can’t afford it – I’ve put
all my money in Garigo and I don’t want to take out a mortgage.”
“So you could do with a bit of extra money to tide you over?”
“Probably. I’ll be selling off some soft wood timber, but that won’t be until after the winter.”
“Let me show you something.” Milo gets up and disappears into the house, returning with a small coinage bag. “Feel the weight of that.”
Brandt takes the bag and its weight surprises him. “What is this?”
“Gold, Otto – alluvial gold. Have a decko.” Milo opens the bag and pours some of the contents into Brandt’s palm. The gold has a slightly reddish look. There are pieces the size of a grain of rice and some bright dust, but most of it takes the form of mica-like leaves, thin and translucent. “That’s from just a bit of part-time fossicking, but what you’re holding in your hand is probably enough to run your Land Rover for a year.”
As Brandt holds the lustrous mix in the palm of his hand, he experiences an atavistic longing, which has nothing to do with its commercial value. Gold. And for the first time in his life he comprehends why just the word itself is the king of superlatives. The yellow grit is irresistible.
Brandt returns the gold to the bag and checks his hands for dust residue. “But the estate agent told me that all the gold here is worked out,” he says.
“Don’t you believe it. When they had the big gold rush in the last century, the white prospectors used the old extraction methods – pick and shovel, pans, sluices, and mercury and cyanide. Finally, they thought they’d taken out all gold, but then the Chinese took over – and guess what? They made themselves fortunes and went back to China, but that gold came from Kiandra and the upper Snowy River, not around here. The Chinese never touched these parts. I tell you what, when we’ve got enough wood, we’ll try a bit of fossicking over at your place. I’ll show you the Chinese technique.
Orphaned Leaves Page 10
