The thought of seeing her best friend, Mary Connell, kept her going. ‘You’re doing this for Mary,’ she told herself, over and over. ‘Every step brings you closer to Mary. Never forget it.’
When she had started her journey, she’d been so full of hope. Sure, Adelaide was a long way from the Burra, but she knew she could make it. Back home in Ireland, when she and her family had been homeless and starving, she’d been used to wandering from village to village and sleeping in the open. And even now she hadn’t given up hope – of course she hadn’t. But it did seem as if the long, dusty road to Adelaide would never end, and she’d have given the little finger on her right hand for some cool water to bathe her sore feet. Why was this great big country so dry? You hardly ever saw so much as a duck pond.
For the last three nights Nellie had slept on the hard ground, wrapped only in her old tartan shawl. And it wasn’t even sleeping, was it, when all she did was lie awake in the moon-shadows, shivering with cold and alert for the wild dogs that might tear her to pieces and gobble her up. Dingas, that’s what the man who drove the Burra coach had called them. She imagined their drooling jaws and sharp yellow teeth. They’d eat anything, the man said – even horses.
Nellie hated the countryside after dark. It wasn’t only the padding feet of prowling dingas she feared. There were all sorts of other strange noises too: hissing and hooting, howling and wailing. They weren’t the sounds made by any animal she knew. Every rustle made her sit bolt upright, straining her ears.
Nellie was sure it was the Pookas, the bad fairies, who haunted the scrub and made her life a misery. Mary had once told her they’d all still be in Ireland, but why couldn’t they have hidden themselves on a ship sailing to Australia? It could only be the Pookas who tweaked her hair and put grass-seeds in her boots and sent great big black ants running up her arms and legs and leaving painful red bites on her body. And suppose there might be snakes? Nellie didn’t think she could bear it if she saw a snake.
Tonight she’d very likely have to bed down in the haunted scrub again …
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Published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2012
Text copyright © Penny Matthews, 2012
Illustrations copyright © Lucia Masciullo, 2012
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Image on page 110 courtesy of the State Library of South Australia
SLSA: B 31610 – miners’ dug-outs, Burra, 1975 (photographer Valmai Hankel)
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ISBN: 978-1-74253-569-2
Nellie's Quest Page 6
