‘It’s Ted’s . . .’ began Martin. Then stopped. How did he know? Maybe the old bloke was crazy. Maybe he’d sold the land years ago, all except the house. Mum wouldn’t know, or Dad. Maybe this was all some great joke, this whole story about him owning the place if he walked the boundaries. Maybe there was nothing to own.
The girl was still looking at him suspiciously. Suddenly her anger seemed to fade.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to yell. Ma says I yell too much, me and the cockatoos. It’s just that you scared me, down there.’ Her face clouded. ‘I’ve seen someone washed away before. My brother, it was. He was only three years old, and he fell . . . It does something to you when you see things like that. Like it’s burnt into your eyes and you can’t seem to let it go.’ She bent down and rummaged in an old blanket, rolled beside the tree. She held something out to him.
‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Eat. You’ll feel better with something in your belly.’
It was a pasty, thick like old white concrete. Martin took it half-heartedly. He couldn’t refuse it. After all, she’d saved his life.
He took a cautious bite. It was as bad as it looked, cold and hard and soggy in the centre. There was meat inside, strong and tough, without a lot of gravy like the pies he bought at school.
‘You like it?’ she asked.
‘It’s good,’ he lied politely. ‘Aren’t you having any?’ Maybe she could finish it.
She nodded. ‘I suppose.’ She rummaged in the blanket roll again before he could offer the pasty back, and she brought out another. She bit into it hungrily.
Martin took another bite. It stuck to his teeth as he forced it down. He thought wistfully of the sandwiches in his pack, swirling out to sea.
A gust of wind shook fat drops of water down his back from the leaves above. Thunder grumbled behind the hills around them. It sounded like his mother before breakfast when she’d had to work late. The bark of the trees was bright with moisture, brown and orange instead of grey. Down below the casuarinas were frosted silver with drops of rain.
The girl looked at the clouds on the horizon. They were swollen and dark, their edges softened by the haze of mist sitting on the hills.
‘The storm’s heading away,’ she said. ‘The creek’ll be down in a few hours. You shouldn’t have been down there in a storm. Haven’t you got eyes about you? Don’t you know how quickly the creek can rise?’
‘It wasn’t raining when I fell asleep,’ explained Martin.
The girl stared at him. ‘You must be a wonderful sound sleeper,’ she said. ‘It’s been raining like rocks falling from the sky all day.’ She chewed at the last of her pasty. Martin looked at his. Three more bites might do it. He took another, swallowed hard, and bit again.
‘Did you make them yourself?’ he asked, taking the final bite.
The girl beamed. ‘I did. Ma says I’ll be a real good cook one day if I go on the way I am. I could get a job in a big house if I wanted, and everything.’ She licked the last crumbs off her fingers. ‘Ma butchered the roo, though, not me,’ she admitted.
Roo meat? Martin’s stomach clenched. That explained the taste. The pasty stayed where it was in his stomach, too heavy to bring up. The girl kept chatting, unconcerned. ‘Not that I want to leave this place. I’ll never leave. Like my ma and gran. I’m going to stay here.’
She looked around at the damp trees, their leaves shiny with the rain, the wet hills gleaming with moist rocks. She glanced up at him. ‘It is mine,’ she said firmly. ‘Mine and Ma’s. If anyone said differently to you they’re lying.’
Martin nodded slowly. ‘Maybe,’ he said, thinking of Old Ted. Maybe the poor old bloke was just confused. Old people got confused sometimes.
The girl stood up, tossing her thick plaits behind her back. Her skirt brushed her ankles. It looked like a 1960s hippy skirt, a dirty brown colour, frayed at the edges. The edges of her sleeves were worn as well. Her feet were even browner than her skirt, part dirt and part thick calluses on the soles of her feet.
She looked him up and down, ending at his feet.
‘What are you staring at?’ demanded Martin.
‘At your boots,’ said the girl frankly. ‘They’re surely the strangest boots I’ve ever seen.’
‘Haven’t you ever seen Reeboks before?’ Martin snorted to himself. This place must be the ends of the earth if she’d never seen Reeboks.
‘I suppose they’re the latest fashion up in town.’ The girl’s voice was half scornful, half envious.
‘Well, yes they are.’ Martin glanced at the girl’s clothes again. Heaven help the kids round here if they all wore clothes like hers.
The girl dragged her gaze away from Martin’s feet. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised. ‘Da was always telling me it’s rude to stare, and here I am like a sheep with its eyes on a pile of hay. Where were you heading, then?’ she asked.
Martin paused. The whole thing was embarrassing, especially if Ted didn’t even own the place anymore. Maybe he should just go home.
Something rustled behind him. He turned. It was a wallaby, its fur dark with moisture. It blinked at them, then hopped away. Somewhere a bird was droning — beep beep beep — a hollow sound that echoed round the hills. The water dripped from sodden leaves.
What was the point in going home? He’d just have to spend the weekend with Old Ted. And if he didn’t make it, Ted could pretend that was the reason he didn’t get the farm.
Martin glanced up at the hills, the misty sky above. ‘Up there,’ he pointed. ‘I was going to walk up to that hill over there, then back down across the top of the gorge and up the other side, then back down into the valley.’ He suddenly remembered his lost pack. ‘I was going to, anyway,’ he said. ‘I suppose I can’t now my pack got washed away. I don’t have any food or anything for tonight and tomorrow.’
The girl stared. ‘That’s where I’m going,’ she said. ‘That’s our boundaries, way up there!’
Martin shrugged. It was easier than explaining. Of course they’d be her boundaries if her mother had bought the place from Ted. Maybe she was going to check the fences or something.
‘You can come with me if you like,’ the girl said slowly. ‘I’ve got a spare blanket.’ She was looking at him with a funny expression.
Martin thought quickly. It was better than going back to Ted for the weekend, and admitting he’d failed.
‘You’re sure?’ Martin paused awkwardly. ‘I haven’t even thanked you for saving me down there.’ He smiled. ‘I haven’t even told you my name.’
The girl smiled back. ‘That makes us equal, doesn’t it then? You don’t know mine either.’
‘I’m Martin.’
‘Margaret Florence Cathleen Bridget O’Halloran.’
‘Crikey!’
‘Except I’m always called Meg.’ Meg thrust her plaits back again. They were thicker than the vine she’d pulled him up with, and hung down past her waist. She picked up the roll of blankets. It was tied with a bit of string. She hitched it over her shoulder. The blankets were as tatty as her skirt. ‘Come on then, Martin. It’ll be dark before we reach the hill.’
Martin glanced around. ‘Aren’t you going to put on your shoes?’
‘My shoes?’
‘Yes. Don’t you have any shoes? You’ll get prickles in your feet.’
Meg’s face was as red as her hair. ‘Of course I have shoes. I have very good shoes.’
‘Where are they then?’
‘They’re at home. Where else should they be? I’m not going to waste my good shoes walking with the likes of you.’
He couldn’t understand it. She was as angry as she’d been when he had said the land belonged to Ted. He shrugged. ‘I guess if you don’t want to wear shoes it’s your business.’
‘It is indeed.’ She glared at him, then as suddenly as it had flared her temper cooled. ‘Come on. I want to get to the hill in daylight.’
‘Why?’
Meg laughed. ‘So I can see the w
orld around, of course. Come on. Lift your heels. You’re as slow as a lizard in the shade!’
FOUR
Walking the Hills with Meg
IT WAS HARD WALKING in wet Reeboks. They squelched with every step. Martin wondered whether he should take them off, and walk barefoot like Meg. But her feet were tougher than his. He looked at the thick brown soles padding in front of him under the tatty brown skirt. It looked like she’d never worn shoes in her life.
Something was wrong. He couldn’t put his finger on it. Something was strange. Something about Meg — the way she talked, the hippy way she dressed, the way she treated him.
Maybe it was just the bush. Maybe he was getting the creeps surrounded by so many trees. It was like the whole world was trees. It was enough to give anyone the willies.
Except it didn’t. It was almost sort of nice. Just the wind pushing at the tree tops and the fat wet drops splattering on the bark, the laughter of the birds now the rain was over, the crimson flash of parrots through the branches or the flicker of a beetle through the air. A flock of wide black birds wheeled across the hills, creaking like a squeaky door. They looked like cockatoos, but much too dark, with yellow pompoms on their ears.
Meg shifted her blanket roll to the other shoulder.
‘Want me to have a go carrying it?’ asked Martin. He hoped she would say no. He was getting puffed already. Meg climbed like her feet had aerojets that pushed her along.
She shook her head. ‘I’m right. It’s no heavier than a sleeping chicken, really. I’ve been dreaming. That’s why I’ve been so quiet. Not for lack of breath.’
Martin tried to puff more softly. ‘What were you dreaming about?’ he panted.
‘About my sheep.’
‘Sheep!’
Meg nodded. ‘When the farm’s mine, that’s what I’m going to do with it — run sheep. Ma says we’ve got enough, all we can ever eat, but I want more. I’m going to be the richest grazier in all the district. I’m raising them already, see. Forty-three we’ve got now, Ma and me. We started with six — they were poddies.’
‘Poddies?’
‘Lambs that have lost their ma. Old Mr Daniels over towards town gave them to us, sent them with the mail cart. He thought we’d raise them up and eat them. But we didn’t, my ma and me. Why waste a sheep when you can trap a roo?’
Martin thought of the pasty. His stomach gave a heave.
‘What did you do with them?’
‘We bred them, of course. There were four ewes and two rams the first year — that gave us ten lambs the next year, one lot of twins. We had twenty-six sheep year before last, forty-three this year, maybe a hundred by next year.’ Meg danced round, and twirled the blanket roll through the air. ‘Two hundred sheep . . . four hundred sheep . . . we’ll be rich . . . They’ll take their hats off to us at all the sheep sales — me and Ma — they’ll call me Miss O’Halloran and bow . . . We’ll build a mansion with a tower and then we’ll buy more land . . . we’ll be gentry, just like my da would want . . .’
‘You could sell the place and make money that way, and move to the city,’ suggested Martin, thinking of his own plans with a pang. Blast Ted! All his hopes, all Mum’s dreams of being rich, the things that he could buy . . .
Meg turned. ‘Why would I want to do that? Move to the city?’
Martin shrugged. ‘There’s more to do there. I mean, shops and places to hang around . . .’
Meg stood quite still. ‘You mean sell our land?’
Martin nodded.
‘Never!’ said Meg fiercely. ‘Do you know what it is to be landless? Do you know?’
Martin thought of his home back in Sydney. It was theirs, even if it was just a tiny flat. He shook his head. Meg didn’t even seem to notice. The strange lilt in her voice was stronger. ‘It means the landlord can throw you out . . . like that . . .’ She flicked her fingers. ‘It means if the crops fail and you have no money so you cannot pay your rent, then he can take everything you have — the blankets on the bed, the children’s toys . . . It means they let you starve there, lying in the gutter . . .’ It was as though she was echoing someone else’s tale. Her voice broke.
‘Did that ever happen to you?’ asked Martin quietly.
Meg shook her head. ‘To my da. He was twelve when they took his farm. It was the famine — not the big one, one of the little ones that came after — every wet year they came, and the ’taties rotted in the ground. You could smell the stink of them, Da said — even in your sleep the stink would never go away. They couldn’t pay the rent, so the landlord took everything they had, all but the clothes they wore, even the blankets he took, and put them out. They slept in the ditches for a month, and under bridges. His sister died, and his ma, but that was the typhus as well as the starvation.’
‘What happened to your dad?’
Meg began to walk again. Her back was very straight. ‘When his ma died he went down to the docks. He lied. He said he was fourteen. He was lucky. They took him on board ship and let him work and gave him food. No money, but, and the flour was crawling with the weevils a few weeks out of port, but better than an empty belly. He jumped ship in Sydney — he thought he might find gold, but the gold was gone, mostly. Then he met Ma, so he stayed here.’
Their steps sounded loud on the wet ground. The bark crackled like cornflakes. Somewhere a kookaburra yodelled, then broke off as though someone had turned the music down.
‘You’re lucky,’ said Martin finally. ‘At least your dad lives with you.’
Meg looked straight in front. ‘He doesn’t,’ she said.
‘But you said . . .’
She turned round to face him. Her face was very white against the red of her hair. ‘Because he died,’ she said. ‘He died last year. He was pushing a plough, he was, to get a crop of corn, and he fell down in the paddock like someone threw a rock. I thought he’d fallen, but he didn’t get up. I ran over to him, but his breath had stopped. I called for Ma, for Nellie, but they couldn’t wake him either . . .’
Martin put a hand on her shoulder. She was crying. ‘It’s okay,’ he said, trying to think of something more to say.
‘Ma said it was the starvation when he was a lad — it left him weak. He didn’t have the strength to work so hard, but he wanted to make a farm for us, a proper farm with fences and ploughed ground. He kept on trying, though she told him no, we had all we’d ever need. That’s why I have to walk the boundaries. Nellie says it’s my turn now. Then the farm will be mine. I’ll turn it into the biggest sheep farm in New South Wales, and Da will look down from heaven and be proud.’
The shock washed over him like cold water. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I have to walk the boundaries.’ Meg wiped her eyes and sniffed. ‘That’s what Nellie says.’
‘Who’s Nellie?’
‘Nellie’s one of the bullong . . . that’s a black woman.’
‘An Aborigine?’
Meg nodded. ‘She’s the only one left now. The magistrates made all the others leave — sent them down the coast. They didn’t want them here.’ She glanced up at him. ‘That’s what happens when you don’t have title to your land. You can’t argue when you don’t have deeds to your land. The blackfellers couldn’t argue. They came with dogs and guns and hunted them away.’
‘Except for Nellie?’
Meg nodded. ‘She hid. No one can find Nellie if she doesn’t want them to. Nellie knows things.’ She bit her lip. ‘Secret things. I’m not allowed to say.’
‘She lives with you?’
‘Sort of. I mean, we sort of live with her.’ She hunted for words to explain. ‘My ma came here with Gran. Ma was only a baby then.’
‘What about her father?’
Meg spoke slowly, as though ashamed. ‘He wouldn’t marry Gran. He said he would. He was a gentleman, a magistrate — Gran worked in the kitchen for his ma. He put her name on this land, and Ma’s, to claim it. He could do that because he was a magistrate — he was in charge of who got land. He
said she could sell it to him later. He’d give her a price for it, and he could add it to his.’
‘What happened then?’
Meg shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Ma never told me. She just said Gran got jack of him, and left.’
‘How did they live? Did she go on the dole?’
‘The what?’ Meg shrugged. ‘She came here. She said this was her land — it had her name on it and the babe’s. I don’t think she was ever meant to have it really. She was meant to sell it back to him. She walked here. It took her three weeks, Ma said. There were no roads — she came from hill to hill. Maybe she thought there’d be a house here. I don’t know.
‘The bullong, the black women, Nellie and the others, found Gran crawling by the creek. She was trying to pull her baby after her — that was Ma — but she was too weak to move. She didn’t know how the bush could feed you in those days. She just knew boiling puddings and things they’d taught her in the house.
‘The bullong wrapped her in dhugguru — in possum skins, I mean — and fed her lily roots and pollen and bits of fat and berries. She said they had the kindest hands she’d ever felt. When she was stronger, she moved in with them.’
Meg sank down onto a log, and wrapped her hands around her knees. Her voice chanted like a story rustling in the wind, as though this was the way that she’d heard stories many times before. Martin sat beside her, glad to rest his legs.
‘They had a camp down in the valley in those days, down by the deep waterhole, where the frogs sing and the fish are fat, where our house is now. There were blackfellers there too, as well as the bullong, but not all the time. They were up at the town mostly, working or drinking or asking for money. Sometimes they came back with a roo, and then they went away again. Some of the bullong went with them.
‘But Nellie staged here. She’s even older than Gran. Nellie’s as old as the rocks, and just as tough. When she laughs it’s like a cicada singing in a tree.
‘Nellie said the blackfellers laughed when my gran wanted to build a house. But they helped her. One of the blackfellers brought her out a saw, and then an axe. They’d swapped it for kavangal — that’s wild honey, sweet as water from the spring — up in town. They’d rather have swapped rum for the honey, but this time they brought tools for her. They helped her build the hut, and Ma helped when she was older. Gran used roo hide wrapped around the beams instead of nails. She and Ma brought up stones from the river for the floor. The blackfellers helped them, even though they laughed. Then the magistrates said the district must be clean. They hunted out the blacks, every one.’
Walking the Boundaries Page 3
