The Tower Mill

by James Moloney

  I expected a smile at this, but Dad’s face was serious again. ‘There’s someone else who should be there tomorrow, Tom. I imagine your mother had something to say about that, back in Sydney.’

  I nodded. Things had been decided in that matter, too, it seemed.

  Neither of us spoke again until the engines lowered their pitch and I felt the aircraft slowing, losing height on the approach into Brisbane. When the first officer took to the microphone he seemed pleased with his news.

  ‘. . . landing on time. We’ll be coming in over the city, where it’s a sunny nineteen degrees.’

  Soon the suburbs were below us and then the cbd, so well defined in the winter sunlight I imagined my hand reaching through the window to touch the buildings.

  ‘Looks different,’ I said, with my nose to the glass.

  ‘Does it?’ Dad shifted in his seat enough to push his face close to mine, and together we watched the high-rise and the twin peaks of the bridge slide under the wing.

  ‘I suppose, to someone who’s been away a while,’ he said, then sank back into place to hitch his belt a little tighter. ‘Certainly a lot different from the city your father knew.’

  Which father did he mean? I grew up knowing of two. But Dad was talking about Terry, who had stopped knowing anything before I was born and tomorrow would go into the Queensland soil, leaving me with only one father, the usual quota, and as the plane sank through a solitary wisp of cloud I felt myself join the ranks of the ordinary, at last.

  The parks of Bulimba stood out among the houses and the river flashed briefly beneath us, the reflected blue of the sky hiding its khaki water. We glided lower and still lower until the blur of green beside the runway became grass growing out of solid earth and then, finally, came the jolt of journey’s end.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank the women who helped me with The Tower Mill: Teresa Carroll, Janet Allison, Mary Nosworthy, Kate Moloney, Moya Hickey, Jane Connolly, Brigid Hickey, Siobhan Zielinski and the publishing team at UQP, Madonna Duffy and Rebecca Roberts.

  First published 2012 by University of Queensland Press

  PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia

  www.uqp.com.au

  © 2012 James Moloney

  This book is copyright. Except for private study, research,

  criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act,

  no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

  or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior

  written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

  Cover design by Christabella Designs

  Cover photographs © Millennium Images; Queensland riot police beside the Tower Mill, Brisbane, 1971 © Newspix

  Author photograph by Jen Willis

  Typeset in Bembo 12/15.5 pt by Post Pre-press group, Brisbane

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  National Library of Australia cataloguing-in-publication data

  is available at http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/

  The Tower Mill / James Moloney

  ISBN: 978 0 7022 4932 7 (pbk)

  ISBN: 978 0 7022 4862 7 (pdf)

  ISBN: 978 0 7022 4863 4 (epub)

  ISBN: 978 0 7022 4864 1 (kindle)

  University of Queensland Press uses papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.