Reaching for the Stars

by Lucy Walker

  ‘Not the big one,’ said Claire, but she was too thankful for water to drink at the moment to be really worried.

  ‘Well, a small creek always leads into a bigger creek. And a bigger one into a river.’

  Claire was kneeling in the reeds and ferns beside a very tiny stream indeed. It wasn’t a foot wide. It ran like a runnel through a miniature rock channel, down from a watershed of granite on the hill above. She cupped up the water until she had had enough, for the time being at all events.

  ‘Go on,’ she said crossly. ‘Finish the story. And the river finally leads to the lake and the lake to the sea.

  ‘Quite,’ said Ann. ‘So the sensible thing to do is follow this till it comes to our creek ‒ the one where we swam.’

  ‘And end up taking a ship back to England once we’ve reached the Indian Ocean? If you ask me, Ann, I don’t believe you know where we are.’

  Claire was only working out her impatience on Ann. She went white again when Ann said:

  ‘I don’t. We’re lost, Claire; but not to panic. We’ve water here and we’re likely to be found ‒’

  ‘Not to panic!’ Claire was so furious she could hardly get the words out. ‘So that is what you were up to, is it, dear Ann? You wanted to be found too? You weren’t going to be out of it when Lang Franklin came wandering through the woods ‒’

  ‘Not woods. Bush is the right word, Claire. You can think that ‒ about Lang ‒ if you like, but we’d save a lot of time if we thought about what to do next instead of arguing.’

  They had a bad five minutes of it before Ann persuaded Claire that the sensible thing to do was follow the stream.

  ‘Downstream,’ Ann said. ‘It has to lead into a bigger one surely. And the picnic creek was a big one.’

  The girls walked a long time, sometimes having to skirt wide swampy areas of paperbarks and reeds, but always coming back to the running water ‒ a wider, more important stream now. They had gone a mile when they came to a wire fence.

  ‘A fence means somebody’s property,’ Ann said. ‘Somewhere, not so far away, there must be a homestead. That means people.’

  ‘We didn’t pass any homesteads driving to the picnic,’ Claire said pointedly.

  ‘I know. So we’re going in another direction. By the sun I would say we’re going east. Do you remember what the direction was when we left The Orchard?’

  ‘No. Why should I look at directions? I’ve never looked at directions in my life. Why didn’t you tell me when you wrote that the Australian bush was like this? I would never have come.’

  ‘Not even with the prospect of Lang Franklin finding you in the middle of it?’ Ann asked lightly.

  ‘He’d better hurry up and find me. As for you, Ann ‒ you deserve to stay out in it all night.’

  We might do that, too, Ann thought.

  They followed the wire fence through the scrub and trees. It led them gently up another rise and then down again into a long trough of grey low-growth bush.

  A dreadful thought suddenly frightened Claire. ‘Supposing it is taking us away from the homestead.’

  Ann had been thinking this quite a while, but she had said nothing. ‘Supposing it does,’ she said as if it didn’t really matter very much. ‘Water is not far away so we can’t possibly die. Someone will find us sooner than later.’

  The sun was really westering in the trees now. Long shadows stretched through the bush. The million tiny things that crept and crawled had quietened and gone away for the coming night. The leaves, hanging down ‒ subtly pointed as they grew on all the gum trees ‒ were so still they might have been painted on a forest frieze.

  The shadows in the bush were dark grey and purple. It was hushed … waiting … very peaceful.

  But Claire was frightened of it. ‘It’s eerie,’ she said. She stopped and clung to a straining post of the wire fence. ‘Ann, I’m frightened …’

  Ann was a little frightened too, but she knew that now was not the time to say so.

  ‘Let’s stop and listen, in case someone is calling. They might be following us.’

  ‘Let’s turn back, Ann.’

  Ann stood irresolute. Claire leaned her head on the straining post and began to cry.

  For a brief moment Ann knew there was something odd, something foreign, about the bush. She bent her head to listen the better. It was a rumbling! Faint, and over the next rise, there came the sound of rumbling.

  ‘Claire! Listen!’

  Claire lifted her head.

  ‘What is it?’ she said petulantly. ‘I don’t hear anything.’

  ‘It’s a train, or a diesel, or something. No, a lot of things ‒ on wheels. Listen! There’s one. There is another ‒ and another. It’s trucks! Lots of them. It’s like the army when it’s out on exercises at Salisbury. Remember the day we ‒’

  ‘I don’t remember anything,’ Claire said wearily. ‘But if it’s an army, for heaven’s sake let us go and be rescued by it.’

  ‘Up the rise ‒ through the trees,’ Ann said quickly. ‘We’ll see what it is from there.’

  The girls ran. They were tired, very leg-scratched and bedraggled now, but they did not care. Somewhere, not far away, there were human beings ‒ not bush bunyips. The human beings were on wheels, too.

  They broke through the last of the bush on top of the rise to find that below and all around them were the treed valleys of the eastern flanks of the range. Through the valley, along a bitumen winding road, coming in from the open pastoral land ‒ a vast plain beyond the range ‒ was an endless stream of cabin-trucks with trailers behind. They moved, almost as one, climbing out of the agricultural country and in from the distant reaches of the outback: truck after truck after truck ‒ each with its trailers ‒ laden with great hessian sewn bales, taking the snake-route through the valleys to the coast.

  Ann’s heart leapt. Something shone like a light in her face.

  ‘Oh Claire!’ she said. ‘I wanted to see it so badly. There it is!’

  ‘What is? For heaven’s sake, Ann …’

  ‘The river of wool,’ Ann said simply. There was a hush in her voice. ‘All the time they talk about it in Franklin’s. Sometimes I see some wool coming in, but the wool-river really flows at night. All across the outback roads ‒ from strange places like Meekatharra and Yalgoo and You-and-me. From Yundatharra, Minderoo, Wagin and Narrogin and Southern Cross. I almost know the names by heart because of the catalogues. Now ‒ there it is!’

  ‘What is?’ said Claire again, exasperated, as if she had not heard the first time.

  ‘The river of wool! It comes in from thousands of miles around. It’s stored, and prices are called and I mark them in a tiny square on a catalogue. Then it’s sold and shipped away and goes thousands of miles across the sea to a hundred different countries …’

  ‘Are you mad?’

  Ann took her eyes away from the wool flowing in trucks and trailers along the road up and around the hills and valleys and by-passes of the break in the range in front of them.

  ‘If you want Lang Franklin to fall in love with you, Claire,’ she said quietly, ‘then you’d better think about wool that way too. Because that is how he thinks. It’s his own particular kind of heaven, and you’d better learn to understand it ‒ if you want him.’

  Claire looked at Ann with considering eyes.

  ‘It seems as if you haven’t been remiss about your homework yourself,’ she said. ‘Quite a student of Lang Franklin’s quirks, aren’t you? Dear Ann!’

  Chapter Thirteen

  The girls wove their way down the hillside to the grey ribbon of road that wound itself in and around the buttressed valley of the range. Half-way down Ann turned on her ankle as she slipped on a slide of pebbly laterite. It felt wrenched and hurt badly for a moment. Now was not the time to be a heroine with a sprained ankle, so she pulled herself together and limped on.

  Claire was exhausted when they reached the road so she sat down and let Ann do the hailing of the first truck. It came to
a halt with a fearful grinding of brakes. It was an enormous thing. Chiefly it was a diesel driving-cabin with trailer-truck after trailer-truck coupled on behind, each loaded with the great bales of wool. The driving-cabin was full of three men. It had to be full because the men were so big. They were dark and saturnine-looking in their drab grey work clothes.

  The driver leaned forward on his steering wheel, peered past his two passengers at the girls by the side of the road. ‘Whada-you-know, chaps!’ he said. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Girls,’ one of them replied. ‘Two of ’em.’

  Ann was an ant beside the huge truck. She had to look up a long long way.

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘We’re lost. Can you tell us where we are, and if there is any way of getting a lift?’

  The men laughed, but in a kindly way.

  ‘We can take you plenty places, lady,’ the man nearest the window said. ‘Would you like to go now? Ceylon, Bangkok, Old Blighty, or just straight through the ranges to the coast? Wool ship’s sailing any time.’

  ‘Well … to the coast, I expect,’ Ann said doubtfully. ‘Actually we were picnicking at a place called Patty’s Point. Then we went for a walk ‒’

  ‘By the look of you I’d say you went for a long walk. Patty’s Point? Well now, let’s think. Say, Bill ‒ where’s this place Patty’s Point? I reckon it’s on a bit, round the spur if you go up Wallaston way.’

  ‘Not me,’ said the driver whose name was undoubtedly Bill. ‘This here road-train wouldn’t fit on the roads to Wallaston.’ He leaned forward and spoke across his companions. ‘There’s wool trains behind us, miss, and they can’t pass while we stop here on this narrow road. Some of them’s got space in the cabin. They aren’t carrying a couple of joeys the way I am. I’ll get on the talk-a-two, and see who’s got a berth for a couple of larklets. Just hold on a minute.’

  While Bill unhooked his talk-a-two, which was in other parlance a walkie-talkie two-way radio, his passengers took out cigarettes and handed the packets down to Ann.

  ‘Give one to the pretty-pretty over there by the fence,’ the window man said. ‘She looks all in and there’s nothing like a good fag to put the world to rights. Tell her not to worry. There’s wool trains from here to Coolgardie and Esperance coming through. A whole river of ’em, Somebody’ll give you a lift.’

  The driver on the walkie-talkie was getting through to his mates in other wool trains.

  ‘Okay, Sandy-boy,’ he was saying. ‘You’ll pick ’em up at the white spur about two miles up the Weir Road. You can’t miss ’em. Under the fire stick they’re quite a couple of lookers. I’ll get on to Base and tell ’em the lost is found in case they got relatives, or something. Sign off, boy.’

  He leaned across his mates again. His broad grin was comforting to Ann, who had just returned from giving Claire a cigarette. She handed up the packet and matches and thanked the man for his kind thought.

  ‘Who’s yer people, girlie?’ the driver said. ‘I’ll just give Base a call to round up your relatives. Maybe they’re out looking for you.’

  ‘We were with Mr. Franklin’s picnic party,’ Ann said. ‘Mr. Lang Franklin of The Orchard. It’s about ten miles out of Kalamunda.’

  All three men in the truck whistled.

  ‘Hear that, mate?’ one of them said. ‘She’s one of Franklin’s Wool Exporters crowd. Better get on the air smart-like.’

  The driver did get on the air.

  ‘Ninety-seven to Base. Ninety-seven to Base. Are you getting me, Dave? Okay. Well listen. A couple of sweet girls are stranded on the Weir Road ‒ round about the white spur. Sandy’s going to pick ’em up in one-four-one when he comes along. It’ll be any minute now. I’ve got two wool trains behind me waiting to pass and boy, is there a road block here ‒ so I’ll be getting on. But noise it about will you, mate? That Franklin bloke’ll have a two-way in his car and one in his breast pocket too if I know him. None of those land-jokers goes about without being able to give and take on the air these days. You got it? Right. Well, I’ll move. So long, mate.’

  The men handed down the news to Ann. Then with much waving of hands, some good-hearted chipping, they prepared to move on up the incline. The noise of gears and the thunder of huge trailers coupled on behind drowned all Ann’s attempts at ‘Thank you’.

  Two more wool-trains passed with men waving hands, cat-calling, and a brand new packet of cigarettes and a box of matches thrown out before one-four-one came along. Clearly they all had two-way radios and had picked up the first truck-driver’s conversation. The two trucks passing the girls were loaded with men. One-four-one came along with seemingly no one but the driver in the cabin.

  He pulled up at the edge of the road, dropped down the cliff side of the cabin and came over to the girls.

  ‘You okay?’ he asked amiably. ‘I have instructions to pick you up and keep driving you till someone tells me different. Any questions?’

  Ann shook her head.

  ‘None at all, only grateful thanks.’

  He was a short stocky man with powerful muscles in his legs. His shoulders looked as if they would hold back mountains. The nicest part about him was his dusty face and his grin.

  ‘Right. All aboard, ladies, else I’ll have a traffic block a thousand yards behind me. This hour of the day the wool’s coming in by the mile.’

  Now that Claire knew they were safe she was no longer afraid; but she was indignant at the spectacle she cut. Her dress was torn, the blackened fire sticks had streaked it; her face and arms as well. Ann looked no better, but for some silly reason Ann didn’t seem to mind.

  ‘Guess I’ll have to give you a lift up,’ the obliging truck-driver said. ‘That cabin takes a climb-up even for me.’ He helped the girls up, one after the other, then walked round the front of the truck and did a monkey climb into the driving seat himself. He picked up the two-way radio and spoke into it.

  ‘One-four-one to Base. You getting me, boss? I’ve picked ’em up. Any news where to drop ’em? What’s that? You contacted Franklin? Well, I guess he’ll be along some time. He’s going to have a job if he thinks he can pass this truck on the road, or make a U-turn back for that matter. The wheels of the wool-trailers behind just about cover the whole track, and there’s granite cut-away on either side. Okay, I’ll keep ’em for good in that case.’

  He hung the mouthpiece of the walkie-talkie to a hook on the front panel and grinned at the girls.

  ‘The boss is out after you, girls. Any minute now you might be rescued. Too bad, isn’t it? We could have had a nice ride back to the coast. Me and two girls! Guess this’ll make history down at the wool-stores.’

  He moved gears; there seemed a dozen of them but he explained there were only eight.

  ‘Quite a job,’ he said. ‘You need pretty powerful arms. The trailer-trucks behind are mighty heavy and there’s plenty of wool on top of that.’

  ‘Are you taking this wool to Franklin’s stores?’ Ann asked. She was sitting next to the driver as Claire had insisted on having the window seat.

  ‘Nope. This lot goes to Elder’s-GM ‒ the big show. But I know Franklin’s all right. Everyone does. Nice guy is Mr. Franklin. If ever I dice out of a job bringing wool in for Elder’s I’ll go over to Franklin’s and get me one. It ’ud suit me.’

  The truck jolted badly as it ran over a rough piece of road. Claire gave a barely-suppressed scream. Ann’s ankle hurt badly for a minute, then settled back into numbness again.

  ‘Not so loud, lady,’ the driver said to Claire. ‘You’ll wake my mate.’

  ‘Your mate?’ Ann asked.

  ‘Yep. Take a look over your shoulder. It’s his off period and he likes to sleep.’

  The back seat of the cabin was high so Ann had to lever herself up to look over her shoulder. Behind the seat was a small cabin fitted with a narrow bed. On it was another man ‒ fast asleep.

  ‘Heavens!’ said Ann. ‘Who’d have thought it?’

  ‘Well, you ought to have thought it, l
ady. You can’t drive trailer-trains like this hour after hour for more’n eight of ’em anyway. It’s wearing. One drives and one lays off. That’s the way of it. It’s why I’ve got spare room in the cabin.’

  Claire wasn’t interested in the man sleeping behind so she did not look. She was worrying about her appearance and doing the best she could to her hair with a pocket-comb which she always carried. She wished, with a considerable degree of irritation, that she had taken her handbag with her on that walk through the bush. Powder-compact, lipstick and even cold cream in a tube with tissue papers were safely cached in that handbag. Alas, it was on the rug at the picnic ground where she had lain down to have that rest hours and hours ago now.

  ‘Sun going down pretty soon, lady,’ the driver said to Ann. ‘You watch when we come to the brow of this hill. You’ll see it strike the top of the trees. You ever noticed the crown leaves of gum trees are always red and gold? You watch when the sun catches in them. Is as pretty a sight as you’ll ever see ‒’

  He broke off, peered through the cabin window, then pulled on the brakes of the truck. Ann noticed, as she had noticed with the first truck that had stopped, that the driver had to brake slowly, inch by inch, and crawl to a stop. She guessed why. The trailers behind had to come to a halt in their own speed, not suddenly, otherwise they would overturn.

  ‘Someone’s standing at the side of the road. Guess he might be someone asking after you two. He’s signalling,’ the driver said.

  Slowly, slowly the truck came to a rest a few yards farther up the road from where the man stood.

  The sun was behind the tall trees ranging along the top of the hills, casting a purple shadow on this face of the valley. The man came under the bodywork of the huge train.

  ‘You truck one-four-one?’ It was Lang’s voice. It struck a chord in Ann’s reluctant heart so unexpectedly she could not control the sudden race of her pulse.

  He clambered up the side of the cabin and saw Claire’s honey-coloured hair with the sun shining through the windscreen on to it.