by John Marsden
There was only one thing I wanted, and that was to go in the direction of Holloway, to look for my mother. The others had no particular objection to that. Homer’s parents were thought to be somewhere near Stratton, and we didn’t want to go that way. The country there was too built up, too closely settled. It seemed too dangerous for us. We didn’t have much clue where Kevin’s family was – somewhere to the north apparently. All we knew was that his mother was in the Showground, like my father. We had no hope of getting into the Showground. Anyway, we weren’t keen on going towards Wirrawee or Cobbler’s Bay for a while. We’d made things a bit hot for ourselves in these places. If we went the long way towards Holloway – via the Wirrawee-Holloway road instead of taking the short cut through the mountains – we would then have a choice of going to Goonardoo or Holloway. Goonardoo was on the main north-south railway line, so we might be able to do a bit of damage there, and they were both big towns.
That was as far as our actual plans went. The rest of the time we just threw ideas at each other. Lots of sentences beginning with ‘Maybe we could ...’ or ‘What about if we ...’ It was like playing ‘if only’ with the future, instead of the past.
Fi wanted to call Colonel Finley, to tell him we were leaving Hell. There was no particular objection to that either. That was the trouble. No-one particularly objected to anything, except Kevin, who objected to everything. All we had was this strong feeling that we should get back out there and be useful.
I don’t know about the others but I’d started blocking out fears about danger and death. Seeing so many people die, including some of my own friends, had made me feel weird about my own life. I’d moved gradually into a different state of thinking, where I didn’t dream much about the future. Maybe that had happened to all of us and that’s why we didn’t do a lot of planning.
I think I’d started to believe I wouldn’t survive the war. One of the slogans people chucked around a lot in peacetime was ‘Live for the day’. It’s like in sport, ‘Take it one match at a time’. Unconsciously we’d started doing that now. I’d never lived that way before the war; I hadn’t liked the idea at all. It wasn’t a good way to farm. ‘Live as though you’ll die tomorrow, but farm as though you’ll live forever.’ Everything you planted, everything you built, had to be for the long term. No good sticking up a fence that would fall down in a year or two. We’d dig a hole a metre deep for a corner post but that wouldn’t suit Dad. ‘Better go down another foot. Be on the safe side.’
‘You mean thirty centimetres,’ I’d tease him.
We’d never hold back from planting an oak tree just because it wouldn’t come to maturity for fifty years. ‘I won’t live to see this full-grown,’ Dad would say. Then he’d plant it anyway. He grumbled at the way the nurseries advertised everything as ‘rapid growth’, ‘quick growing’, ‘instant’. He thought that was a bad approach to life.
Now I had to face the possibility that I wouldn’t live to see those oak trees full-grown either. I was living the way we never had, the way I’d been taught from the cradle not to live, the way every instinct in my body told me not to live. But it was hard to stick to my parents’ ideas in the face of the deaths of Robyn and Corrie and Chris. Their deaths, the deaths of all the other people I’d seen or heard about, and the disappearance of the twelve New Zealand soldiers had been working on me slowly and steadily. Eating away like a creek at a gully. Like footrot in sheep. Like cancer.
So I left Hell with the others, feeling pessimistic, wondering if I’d ever see it again. And with no real plans. If I could find Mum, I’d be happy. I didn’t think beyond that. I didn’t know if I’d live beyond that. But at the same time I knew we had to keep fighting. We were well past the point where we sat around debating if it was morally OK to fight and kill. We’d gone so far down that road, there was no turning back. We had to go on to the end, no matter what it might be, trusting it would work out OK. Some of our earlier talks about fighting seemed naive to me now.
On and up we climbed. The storm had come through here with a vengeance. Fallen trees cut the track in three separate places. I had this little game with myself, that the three trees represented Robyn and Corrie and Chris, and that if we found any more it would mean some of us would die.
Well, we didn’t cross any more on the track out of Hell, but on the way up to Wombegonoo we came to two others. As I climbed over the splintered limbs, the broken branches and the crushed leaves – the trees were very close to each other – I couldn’t help wondering if they meant anything. Were they symbolic, or was I just being stupid? In English we’d done so much stuff on symbols. We’d given Ms. Jenkins such a tough time about them. ‘Oh come on Miss,’ we’d say, ‘don’t tell us the author meant it that way! I bet if he were here he’d say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was just writing a story.”’
There was a bit in To Kill a Mockingbird where Jem stops Scout from killing a roly-poly, whatever that is, and Ms. Jenkins said the roly-poly was a symbol of Tom Robinson, but I don’t know, it seemed a bit far-fetched to me.
On the top of Wombegonoo a strong fresh wind was blowing. It had chased away the clouds, and left a sky that glowed. The temperature was cool but not cold. We’d had a lot of rain lately, quite a few storms. They leave the air so clean and clear. They wash the dust away and let the stars shine. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen it as bright as it was that night.
If I were looking for symbols, maybe that was another one. The stars were so many different colours. Mostly shades of white of course, but some tinged with blue, some with red, some with yellow or gold. And others, a few, burning a strong red. When the Slaters had their Japanese friend visit a few years back she told me they were lucky to see a dozen stars at night in Tokyo. Well, I don’t know how many we saw that evening. In places they were so bright they became one shining stream of light.
Radio reception was good at first too. Colonel Finley sounded more relaxed. I guess the war must have been going a bit better. I don’t know, maybe he’d just had a second helping of dessert. Maybe he’d been promoted. Maybe he was happy to hear our friendly voices. He’d probably been sitting around the office saying ‘Gee, can’t wait to hear from my little buddies again. I miss them, you know. Might send a helicopter to pick them up.’
We had to be careful what we said of course. When we were back in New Zealand Colonel Finley told us to assume the enemy was listening whenever we used the radio. He told us to be ‘brief and circumspect’. Col and Ursula said the same thing. I’ve never figured out exactly what circumspect means but it wasn’t hard to guess.
Homer did the talking. He just said we were going out into enemy territory, but not specifically to look for the ‘Dirty Dozen’ – which is what we’d nicknamed the missing New Zealand soldiers. We had no real hope of seeing them again, unless it was by luck. If they were still alive we were sure they wouldn’t be in this area. Stratton maybe, but not around Wirrawee or Holloway. The best we could hope for was that they were prisoners, and of course they’d be in a maximum security prison, not Wirrawee Showground.
The nearest maximum security prison was Stratton, as we well knew, and it mightn’t be open for business any more. It took a hell of a pounding during at least one Kiwi air raid that we’d experienced. The air raids might have meant the end of Stratton as a place to lock up dangerous criminals, like us, or the Kiwi soldiers.
So we told the Colonel we were heading in a different direction, to do whatever damage we could. He didn’t sound quite so relaxed when we told him that. In his usual dry formal way he said: ‘Anything you do will be appreciated. If they have to move one soldier to your district in response to your activities, then that’s one soldier less to fight in the critical areas. Is there anything we can do for you?’
It was a pretty illogical question, as there wasn’t much he could do from way back in Wellington. But Homer grabbed the chance. ‘A lift out of here would be nice.’
Colonel Finley
actually sounded a bit guilty when he answered. ‘Don’t get the wrong idea. We haven’t abandoned you. We will get you out, but we just can’t do it right at this moment. Don’t give up on us though.’
I think we all cheered up a bit when we heard that. But a moment later the reception went crazy: static and whistles and chainsaw noises. Homer started trying to call the Colonel back but I stopped him. The sudden loss of the signal and the weird noises on such a clear night scared me. It made me think that maybe one of our fears was justified: maybe they were monitoring us. I got him to turn the radio off. There wasn’t any point anyway. It was good to hear a friendly adult voice – nice and comfortable – but there was nothing else we could say to him. Not much else he could say to us, either.
We left pretty soon after that. We’d done our packing. Lee took the radio, wrapping it in plastic in the little emergency pack that he carried around his waist. I watched him, half smiling. He was so organised, so thorough. Sometimes it annoyed me, maybe because I knew I wasn’t like that myself. This time I couldn’t help making a comment. ‘You’re like a girl, you’re so neat,’ I said.
Lee shrugged. He didn’t seem upset. ‘You might thank me one day,’ was all he said. I knew he was right, and I knew my comment had been unusually dumb – even for me – so I shut up.
We threaded our way along Tailor’s Stitch. Oh, ‘threaded our way’ – I think I just made a joke. Well, it’s what we did. I mean I exaggerate a bit when I write about Tailor’s Stitch. It’s not like a razor blade, where if one of the boys fell with a leg on either side he’d have a nasty accident. For most of the way you can walk quite easily, sometimes even two people side by side. At other points though it really is narrow and you have to be a bit careful. I mean if you did fall you wouldn’t plunge a thousand metres to your death. You’d just roll down the slope a way. If you fell awkwardly you might break a leg, but you can do that anywhere of course.
There is a track, worn by the boots of bushwalkers over the years. It’s always been quite a popular area for bushwalking. Some weeks we’d get a dozen people coming through our place on their way up to Tailor’s Stitch. Other times, especially in winter, we’d go a couple of months without seeing anybody.
The track wasn’t just made by humans. I was leading, followed by Homer, then Fi, then Lee, with Kevin quite a way back – surprise, surprise. But I had to slow down when I found myself behind the fat backside of a wombat, waddling along at his own pace. Wombats are a law unto themselves. When I was little, I had a friend out from town for the weekend: Annie Abrahams. She’d never been on a farm before, and the first night, just after dark, we were coming back from putting the chooks away – a little later than we should have – and she saw a wombat. Before I could say anything Annie ran up and gave it a hug. I guess she thought it was some kind of cute cuddly bear. Well, the wombat didn’t hesitate. He turned around and buried his teeth in Annie’s leg. She screeched like a cockatoo at twilight. I tried to pull the wombat off, but it was impossible. They’re so strong. I was screaming for Dad, and Annie was screaming non-stop and the wombat was grunting louder than a bulldozer on a slope. It was scary. I didn’t know how much damage it might do to Annie. I thought her leg might be mangled to pieces. Eventually Dad came running out. He tried to pull the wombat off too and failed, and finally he gave it a hell of a kick in the guts. The wombat let go and staggered away into the darkness. Then I didn’t know whether to be more upset about the health of the wombat or the state of Annie’s leg. But her leg wasn’t too bad. Although it was bruised, the skin wasn’t broken – I think it was more the shock and fear that had her screaming her head off.
I never found out what happened to the wombat.
Another time a wombat got trapped in a small toilet at the end of the shearing shed. I don’t know how it got in and I sure as hell don’t know why it got in. Looking for food maybe. Maybe it wanted to use the toilet. Anyway no-one found it till morning. I wasn’t there when they got it out, but I know it took forever. I saw what damage it did though. Unbelievable. If you’d gone in with a sledgie and spent the night swinging it round at full strength you couldn’t have done more damage. It was a wooden dunny lined with fibro, but there was no fibro left intact. It was in fragments all over the floor. The only bits still on the walls were the little pieces nailed to the timber. But much of the timber had been splintered and broken. It was like the wombat spent the whole night headbutting the place. I guess that’s exactly what he had done.
So, when I realised we were following this wombat’s big bum I slowed down. There wasn’t much room on the track, and I wasn’t looking for a fight just yet.
‘Oh look,’ said Fi, from behind me, ‘a wombat. Isn’t it cute.’
I had an immediate fear that this would be a repeat of the Annie Abrahams story.
‘Yeah, real cute,’ I said. ‘Just keep a safe distance.’
Fi paused and we watched the wombat as it waddled on ahead. We were getting close to the turn-off where the four-wheel-drive track went down the mountain to the farm, and the wombat started to veer to the left. I thought I’d grab the chance to show Fi a party trick that I’d never tried myself but had heard Dad talk about. With no knowledge of whether it would work, and not much confidence, I said to Fi: ‘Did you know that they’ll follow a torchlight?’
Fi had been teased by us so often, been the victim of so many practical jokes, that she wouldn’t believe me this time. ‘Oh sure,’ she said doubtfully.
‘No, really, I promise.’
I swung my pack down and opened the side pocket, pulling out my torch. Leaving the pack, I went forward ten metres and flicked on the torch. We were down below the tree line, so there was no danger from enemy soldiers. I focused the beam of light on the ground in front of the wombat and then moved it away to his side. To my surprise he turned as soon as I did it, and followed the light obediently. Of course I didn’t let the others know I was surprised. I just acted cool, like this was exactly what I’d expected.
I took the wombat for a little walk by moving the light around. I felt like a choreographer. The others were all cracking up. ‘Oh my God,’ Fi kept saying, in her light little voice that sounded sometimes as if it’d float away, ‘that’s amazing.’
There still wasn’t much room around me, because Tailor’s Stitch was just behind and we were surrounded by thick bush. So I swung the light one more time and made the wombat come towards me. I felt totally confident, totally in control. I planned to walk backwards slowly as the wombat came in my direction. The wombat hadn’t read my script though. For no apparent reason he started charging, overrunning the spot of light on the ground. Maybe he saw me, but I really don’t think so. Wombats give you the feeling they’re just about blind. But they could be tricking of course.
At first I thought it was a joke, and I started going backwards a bit, getting faster as the wombat accelerated. Then suddenly I decided I was in trouble. It didn’t seem to matter any more what I did with the torch. The wombat had torn up the rule-book. He’d stopped following the rules and he’d definitely stopped following the light. The whole situation was out of control. I forgot about my dignity and began to panic. A wombat at full gallop is surprisingly scary. Considering that they look like stuffed cushions on four little legs they actually get up to quite a speed. So I accelerated a bit myself. Ignoring the wild laughter of the other four, I swung around so I could make a high-speed getaway up the wall of Tailor’s Stitch.
And I fell over my own pack.
I fell quite hard. The others were pissing themselves. I have to admit I was genuinely scared. I thought I was about to get torn apart by a wild wombat. The way he was grunting sounded seriously unfriendly. And I’d landed on my bad knee, which hurt. For a moment I expected the wombat to leap on top of me ard tear my head off.
But he didn’t. He swerved off his line and disappeared deep into the bush, having had enough of humans for one night. I struggled up again, with no help from
anyone. They were still all falling around laughing. They can be pretty stupid and juvenile sometimes. I brushed myself down, put my pack back on, and started walking. I left it to them to decide whether to follow or not.
The weird thing was that Kevin seemed to feel better about me after that. He was laughing more and talking more and including me in his conversation. I don’t know why he apparently decided I was an OK person again, but it seems like he did, and I thought that made the close encounter with the wombat almost worthwhile. Almost, but not quite.
Chapter Three
In the morning Kevin was in a sulk again. We stopped just before 5 am and had a bit of a rest. We didn’t put up tents or flies, but we spread out the bedrolls for a snooze. I think I slept for maybe an hour. I woke just in time to hear the first blowie of the day buzzing around. You know the night’s over when you hear the first blowie. As you get into summer the earlier they come, and the more there are.
So I got up and pulled out a few things for breakfast. Nothing exciting, just dried apricots, fruit roll-ups and scroggin. We’d stopped about three hundred metres from a creek. It was something Ursula taught me: never camp right next to a creek, because the noise of the water will stop you hearing anyone sneaking up on you.
By the time I’d finished fiddling with the food and moving a few more things in my pack – I was always trying for the perfect arrangement of stuff in my pack; it had become a major hobby – the others were up too. None of us was much good in the morning, except Fi. She seemed to wake up and start functioning straight away. Not like a diesel four-wheel drive. She’d get up and immediately be moving and thinking and talking at normal speed. Lee was the next best but he wasn’t in Fi’s class. Kevin and I were the worst.
