Don't Pat the Wombat!

by Elizabeth Honey

  ’...and the wild bees gum from the knotted hum...’

  Plus the whole school was giggling and wriggling in memory of the fart. The Bomb was ready to deep-fry everybody in boiling oil. He wanted to give the whole school detention for the rest of the year. But the Principal got up and ranted about disgusting behaviour, setting an example, rudeness, etc, etc.

  Jonah sat there with a serious face, as if he was agreeing with everything she said. It was the best assembly.

  ‘Hey, Jonah, was that a real fart or a fake?’ said Nicko.

  ‘You were sitting next to him!’ said Wormz. ‘Did you need a gas mask?’

  Maybe it was real. Jonah wasn’t telling, but it was 100% convincing and the timing was perfect. Jonah became a legend.

  Needless to say. The Bomb’s hatred of Jonah heated up to boiling point. He only had to pass him in the corridor and he would find Jonah doing something wrong.

  He’d squash Jonah like he was a beetle, then he’d lift his foot to see if he was dead. The beetle would be still for a moment, then he’d start running again. Then The Bomb would squash him harder, but he’d still keep going. You know what I mean? You think, How can that beetle still be alive?

  It upset other kids to see him picked on so much, but at least The Bomb wasn’t picking on them. Jonah didn’t fight back. He didn’t seem to care.

  One Wednesday night. Mum came home from netball and flopped down on the couch.

  ‘We lost again,’ she said in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘We were faster,’ she stretched her arms above her head and yawned, ‘but they were bigger.’

  Then she sat up, alert. ‘But I found out something about your Mr Cromwell.’

  ‘He’s not mine, he’s Adrian’s.’

  ‘What, Mum? What?’ goes Adrian.

  ‘Well, a woman on the other team used to teach with him years ago. He was a sports master. She said he was keen on the outdoors stuff, rock climbing and canoeing, and a real ace at archery. He was a coach, a bachelor, liked a beer. She said he was bossy, but he was OK.’

  ‘Quite interesting,’ said Nicko, ‘but ask your mum to get some juicier goss.’

  Getting Ready for Camp

  Camp was going to be so so so so cool!!!!!!!!!

  I made a quick trip to Coles to stock up on tooth-rotters.

  For camp you have to label everything.

  I said, The only thing that’s not labelled that’s going on camp is me.’

  ‘With any luck you’ll get lost,’ said my ugly brother Adrian.

  Mum and me crammed all my camp stuff into our big black bag.

  ‘Adrian, leave my Venus Fly Trap alone. And don’t go forcing flies into its mouths, you’ll give it indigestion. Mum, don’t let him touch it.’

  Then |Jude came in. She and Mum had a cup of coffee while I looked for my other thong.

  Jude asked, ‘How’s Jonah?’

  Now both of them are doing research, I thought.

  ‘Well, he says his jacket is made out of sixteen plastic drink bottles,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve got some more on our Brian Cromwell,’ said Jude. (Now he’s our Brian Cromwell!) Jude leaned forward. ‘It’s actually quite shocking. He was teaching archery and a kid shot an arrow into his foot! Can you imagine!’

  ‘Oh, poor man. Wouldn’t you just die!’ said Mum.

  ‘Did he kill the kid?’ asked Adrian.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘but he’s getting back at every kid ever since.’

  ‘We didn’t arrow him in the foot,’ said Adrian.

  ‘We would if we could,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Mum.

  ‘Why didn’t he give up teaching?’ said Adrian.

  ‘Like getting back on your horse after you’ve fallen off. Now we know why he walks funny,’ I said.

  ‘That’s not a strong enough reason for his behaviour,’ said Jude. There’s got to be more to it than that.’

  Jonah Lights a Fire

  Jonah arrived at school very early, on a cold morning. There was nobody else around. He cleared a space, got some paper out of the bin, some sticks from under the trees, and lit a fire.

  The smoke blew over near the school and set off the smoke detector. Along came the fire brigade, red lights flashing, bells ringing, and the police with sirens wailing and guns on hips. We arrived as they were leaving. Once again, in the middle of a terrible fuss, there was Jonah standing with his mouth shut and his eyes open, taking it all in.

  Then an inspector from the Department of Education and Mrs Furgus spent ages with him in the office questioning him closely about his reasons for the fire and didn’t quite believe him when he said ’to get warm’.

  Jonah said that at his old school each family had a key to the door so no one ever had to wait outside in the cold.

  The Big Day — Little Tips to Make Your Departure Easy

  1 Kissing

  Parents actually get very excited about the whole camp deal, and tell you a million times how quiet it’s going to be without you and how much they’ll miss you. It’s a good idea to get the kissing over before you leave home. You don’t want your mother slobbering on you as you’re climbing on the bus. That is so gross.

  2 Hide the tooth-rotters

  If your mother finds them she’ll say, You aren’t supposed to take lollies on this camp. Besides, you can’t possibly eat all those!’ Put them in your gumboots. She won’t look there.

  3 Don’t forgets

  Get all the ’don’t forgets’ at home, too. There will be heaps, especially about being clean, eg: ‘Don’t forget to clean your teeth!’

  Last camp, the same thing happened every night after Lights Out. Lying in bed I’d suddenly remember, ‘I forgot to clean my teeth!’

  Tim Oldfield, he’s got a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste that have been on nine school camps and never been used! Ever. It’s a tradition in their family.

  ‘And change your clothes occasionally!’

  Last year my ugly brother Adrian wore the same clothes all camp. Deciding which clothes to put on was too much for his tiny brain. Actually, I myself have been known to wear the same pair of socks for quite a while. And Kelly had her hair in the same ponytail the whole camp.

  Sandtiger Sharks

  ‘Boy oh boy, have I got news!’ Azza raced up bouncing a basketball, and he was bouncing, too. ‘My auntie Gina cleans houses in St George’s Road, Toorak, which is really posh, and you’ll never guess who lives in one of the houses — The Bomb’s mum!’

  ‘She’s a bossy old stick named Iris Cromwell, and Gina says she dusts lots of photos of two other sons, Taylor and Elliot, but she doesn’t dust any photos of Brian. She says Taylor is an executive in Ford America, and Elliot’s a professor somewhere.

  ‘How does she know it’s really The Bomb’s mum?’ asked Mitch.

  ‘Because Gina cleans the house three doors down, and the lady there told her about this other son who was a teacher at our school and everything, but they never talk about him because they had a big fight.’

  ‘Yay team!’ goes Wormz.

  ‘You can’t imagine The Bomb having a mother, can you?’ said Nicko.

  ‘And listen to this. Mother Bomb always inspects when Gina’s finished cleaning, and gets her to do bits again that she’s not happy with.’

  ‘Very familiar,’ said Mitch.

  ‘What an old shark!’ said Nicko.

  Watts and Tommo were trying to get Jonah into trouble. On Monday morning, seats which were freshly painted by the school working bee on Sunday were smeared with gravel, and the rumour got round the school that Jonah had done it to get back at the school for the fire thing. Some people wanted to believe it. It was all whisperings, but my ugly brother Adrian saw Watts and Tommo near the seats last thing on Sunday.

  ‘Watts and Tommo are sharks, too,’ said Mitch.

  ‘Sandtiger sharks,’ said Jonah. The mother sandtiger has a lot of babies growing inside her, then the strongest babies eat their brothers and sisters before th
ey’re born.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Nicko. They eat their brothers and sisters inside their mother?’

  ‘Yes. The two strongest survive.’

  ‘Eurgggghhh! Gross!’ said Wormz. You mean they actually eat their...oh yuk!.they’re cannibals!’

  THE BUS FOR CAMP WILL BE LEAVING PROMPTLY AT 8 O‘CLOCK. PLEASE BE PUNCTUAL!

  It was so funny last year. Adrian was charging round at four o’clock in the morning yelling, ‘Come on! Hurry up! We’ll be late for the bus!’ He had on his Mambo T-shirt, with his lunch in a paper bag and everything, at four o’clock in the morning! He woke up jude and Bruno!

  At 8.30, the bus is still there, and the engine has been going for fifteen minutes. Mr Murphy, who is driving to camp in his car, so that we have an emergency vehicle, left ten minutes ago. The bus driver is in a grump because Tommo, who was helping to pack the bags, threw a heavy pack onto the driver’s bag which had his thermos in it, and Mitch’s luggage is too heavy to lift.

  The bus is crawling with excited kids. Azza is bouncing a little superball off everything including Lily’s head. Kids wave down from the windows, parents wave up. Wormz is doing a handstand on his seat, waving goodbye to his parents with his feet.

  ‘Hey, Wormz, your parents have gone!’

  ‘I can still wave goodbye to them.’

  From high up in the bus I can see Nicko’s little sister ripping buds off the daisy bush, but Mrs Nicko is chatting so hard she doesn’t notice.

  Renee is flapping around screaming, ‘I’ve totally lost my teddy!’

  ‘Don’t catastrophise!’ goes Miss Cappelli. look for him! I bet I’m hoarse when we get back!’ she says to Lisa. Mrs Somerville is wearing dark glasses. Her dear little Lukie Pukie is going so very very far far away all by himselfie welfie.

  Parents are making signals, miming last instructions, blowing kisses and looking deliriously happy.

  ‘I’ll miss you, darling!’ yells Mrs Mitch to Mitch, then she turns to Mrs Powell and says, ‘Won’t it be lovely to have a bit of peace and quiet?’

  ‘Bliss!’ says Mrs Powell.

  ‘All those who get sick, sit up the front!’ yells Chook.

  ‘Stow your small bags above your head,’ yells Miss Cappelli.

  Mr Holmes counts us for the sixteenth time. He’s still wrong. Suddenly the driver swings into his seat and reaches for the lever. With a chee-oooooooof the bus door folds shut. There’s a flap of pink hands.

  Goodbyegoodbyegoodbyegoodbyegoodbyegoodbye...

  We’re off at last!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  ‘It begins when the bus wheels start rolling,’ says Nicko.

  ‘It begins when the bus driver shuts the door,’ says Azza.

  ‘I reckon it begins when you put your foot on the ground from the bus when you get there,’ says Mitch.

  ‘It’s begun,’ says Jonah as we pass The Bomb’s car.

  ‘Want a lollie?’ says Wormz.

  We look out of the bus window and we’re passing people in the street who are having an ordinary day.

  Are We There Yet? Are We There Yet? Are We There Yet?

  Chook said it was a long drive. She said when we got to the steep hills called the Black Spur we were nearly there. We pulled up at the first traffic lights near a massive red and gold Chinese restaurant.

  ‘Is that Gumbinya Pioneer Camp?’ goes Wormz.

  We sat at the back of the bus and sang:

  ‘Everybody knows that we are the best

  We’re gonna put you to the test

  So fasten your seat belts, step on the gas

  We’re gonna kick you in the...everybody

  We will, we will rock you, drop you, pick you up and sock you

  We will, we will ro.ck you.’

  Matos sang out, ‘Rubber ducky you’re the one...’

  ‘Hail to the bus driver, bus driver, bus driver man.’

  We stopped at a red light beside a bus of old people on an outing. We were yelling and singing and they were sitting like zombies and didn’t want to know about us, except one little old lady who waved and smiled and blew us kisses.

  ‘I bet they won’t have as much fun where they’re going!’ said Nicko.

  Kristelle sings, ‘Can you feel the love tonight...?’

  ‘No I can’t!’ yells Mitch.

  ‘Mary had a little lamb, she also had a duck,

  she took it round a corner to teach it how to

  fry some eggs for breakfast, fry some eggs for tea,

  the more you eat, the more you drink the more you want to

  Peter had a boat, the boat began to rock

  up jumped jaws and bit off his

  cocktails, ginger ale, forty cents a glass

  if you don’t like them shove ’em up your

  ask no questions, tell no lie

  I saw the boogie man doing up his

  flies are bad, mosquitoes are worse

  and this is the end of my silly little verse.’

  Beth the Good had a nosebleed.

  Mrs Pumps-Vital told Chook all about her renovations.

  Lukie Pukie told Mr Murphy all about his new torch, his new sleeping bag, his new slippers, his new toothbrush and his new cake of soap.

  ‘We wanna we wanna we wanna wee.

  If you don’t stop for us, we’ll do it on the bus.’

  We stopped halfway and ate our paper-bag lunch from home.

  By the time we got to the Black Spur we were expecting mountains like the Himalayas. The bus wound up the road through the forest. It rolled around the corners like a boat in a rough swell.

  We swayed, ‘WHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!’

  ‘WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!’

  ‘WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!’

  ‘WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!’

  We were getting close. There were signs like this:

  Mitch kept asking Rebecca, DoubleDeckerBeckerBus, ‘Are you sick yet?’

  ‘I’ll come right up close and tell you when I am,’ said BeckerBus

  Sean was white as a ghost, looking miserable, clutching his sick bag.

  Chook handed out barley sugars to the pale faces, and suddenly there were twenty people feeling sick, including us up the back, and we were still singing our heads off.

  ‘Get away with you,’ goes Chook.

  Gumbinya Pioneer Camp

  The bus lumbered off the highway at a sign saying

  It growled uphill along a country road through an arch of gum trees. We came to a gateway in an old wooden fence with wagon wheels and total bush on both sides. Branches scraped along the top of the bus, which was pretty exciting. We did a Mexican wave. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah! We’re nearly there!’

  Miss Cappelli yelled a quick riot act about representing our school, and remembering our pleases and thankyous, and no scrunching up toilet paper and flicking it onto the ceiling like what happened at last camp.

  Roosters and chooks squawked away as the bus rolled into the middle of a massive collection of old stuff: buildings and carts and wagons and everything old you can think of including a wagon with solid wooden wheels like something from The Flintstones.

  The bus door folded open and there was a lady about Mum’s age. She had Blundstones on her feet and a tatty old blue skirt down to the ground, plus a grey blouse and a dirty worn apron. Her hair was roughly scrunched on top of her head, but a lot of it was straggling round her brown wrinkled face.

  She definitely looked like a pioneer. Her arms and her hands looked like a man’s. Behind her was a little black dog.

  ‘Hop down from the bus.’ She had a nice gravelly Australian voice. We all scraggled out and sat down under a huge gum tree.

  ‘I’m Mary.’ She waved away a fly.

  You could tell by her eyes she liked the look of us. And we liked the look of her.

  ‘Welcome to Gumbinya. We live like the pioneers here. No great comfort, but a lot of fun.’

  Kylie, who’s probably never even done a wee behind a tree, looked very wor
ried. You’ll be fine,’ goes Mary with a smile.

  ‘We’ll have a great time.’

  Then round the corner stroll these two funny-looking people, talking and laughing. There was a huge bloke in a ripped yellow T-shirt and purple overalls, with a round chubby face and a crew cut, and a little lady with straight hair, Mambo shirt, tight pink bike shorts, and a stud in her nose.

  ‘This is Helmut and Edwina.’

  None of us had ever seen a Helmut or an Edwina before. This was going to be so cool.

  ‘Helmut’s from Germany and Edwina’s from England. They’re travelling around the world, and luckily for me they’ve stopped here for a while.’

  Matos, who was sitting near Helmut, asked, ‘Are you a giant?’

  Helmut bent down, grabbed him round the waist and held him upside down.

  ‘What was the question again?’ goes Helmut.

  Suddenly: ‘Aeeeeeeeeh! OOhhhhh! Yeeeaaaaaaaah!’ Wild screeches from the kids at the back. ‘A baby wombat!’

  Mary sighed. ‘I might have known.’

  ‘Oh, he’s so cute! He’s a little block of fur with a leg on each corner.’

  ‘Look at his divine little nose.’

  ‘Oh isn’t he cute. He is so cute!

  ‘QUIET!’ yelled Laserlungs Cappelli. ‘Listen to Mary!!!!!!!!!’

  That’s Bulldozer come out to meet you.’ Mary was serious.

  ‘Now, kids, please don’t pat him. I know it’s the hardest thing in the world, but it’s for his own good. He’s a wild animal, and when he’s older he’s going back to the bush.’

  Bulldozer snuffled around us. Jonah was grinning from ear to ear. Our hands hovered over Bulldozer’s back, but no one touched him.

  ‘Besides being a camp for you kids,’ said Mary,’ this is also an animal refuge. People bring injured animals to me. I’ll tell you Bulldozer’s story later.

  ‘Now a word about lollies.’ (Wormz’s pockets were so full of them his shorts were falling down!) ‘We asked you not to bring lollies because of the animals. Also there’s a wombat here called Thornton Primary. He’s the one to watch out for. He’s older, bigger and stronger than Bulldozer. just leave him alone.’