Burning Eddy

by Scot Gardner

  Scot Gardner lives near Yinnar, a little town in eastern Victoria, with his wife and three dryads. He works with young people who don’t like school, and expectant fathers. He plays didjeridu, grows vegies and loves Dreamtime stories and pyrotechnics. Burning Eddy is his third novel.

  Also by Scot Gardner

  One Dead Seagull

  White Ute Dreaming

  BURNING EDDY

  SCOT GARDNER

  Visit Scot’s website at www.scotgardner.com,

  or email him at scot@scotgardner.com.

  First published 2003 in Pan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  St Martins Tower, 31 Market Street, Sydney

  Copyright © Karijan Enterprises 2003

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any

  form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

  recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior

  permission in writing from the publisher.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  Gardner, Scot.

  Burning Eddy.

  ISBN 0 330 36401 4.

  1. Boys – Victoria – Fiction. I. Title.

  A823.4

  Typeset in 11.5/15 pt Aldus Roman by Midland Typesetters

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  Internal artwork by Shaun Gardner

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real

  persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  These electronic editions published in 2003 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

  1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

  Copyright © Karijan Enterprises 2003

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  This ebook may not include illustrations and/or photographs that may have been in the print edition.

  Gardner, Scot.

  Burning Eddy.

  Adobe eReader format 978-1-74197-182-8

  ePub format 978-1-74262-542-3

  Mobipocket format 978-1-74197-584-0

  Online format 978-1-74197-785-1

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  For Dinny

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Also by Scot Gardner

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  one: SPIDER

  two: SNAKE

  three: YELLOW ROBIN

  four: WOMBAT

  five: SCORPION

  six: PANTHER

  seven: FOX

  eight: CAT

  nine: POSSUM

  ten: WALLABY

  eleven: PIG

  twelve: ECHIDNA

  thirteen: LIZARD

  fourteen: OWL

  fifteen: FROG

  sixteen: FISH

  seventeen: FAIRY

  eighteen: MAGPIE

  nineteen: EAGLE

  MORE BESTSELLING FICTION AVAILABLE FROM PAN MACMILLAN

  Acknowledgements

  We are not islands. This book holds spirit and stories from the following . . .

  Pauleigh Gardiner, John Nieuwenhuizen, Peter Van Berkel, Shane Cloak, Robyn Gardner, Dinny Slot, Jay and Ag Curry, Liam Gardner, Pam Reynolds, Peter Counsel, Shaun Gardner, Jen, Belle and Bryce, Tony, Janine and Amanda Hanning, Susie Zent, Peter Adams, Vaughan Reimers, Tara Harle and the plants and animals that give meaning to this pantheistic life.

  one

  S P I D E R

  I fell in love with spiders quite young and quite by accident. I was in grade three at Watson Grace Primary School in Sydney’s west. Grey shorts, white socks and runners that were never allowed inside. They lived on the sill outside the kitchen window otherwise they stunk my room out, so Mum said. And a sky-blue T-shirt that Mum had ornamented with my name across the front in sunflower-yellow fabric paint. She’s got a photo of me wearing it somewhere; no doubt she’ll get it out for my twenty-first birthday.

  We lived right opposite the school and somehow I always managed to be the last one across the oval to assembly. My sister was five minutes early and I was five minutes late. Every day.

  I remember hearing the music start — the same Rocking Rex track every morning, ‘Let’s Get Moving’. I heard it so many times I can still remember the words:

  The sun is up and there’s

  Brekky in my tum.

  It’s time to get moving,

  Time to have some fun.

  Get moving, get moving,

  Let’s move it right along.

  Get moving, get moving,

  Come on, sing along!

  I can’t believe someone actually recorded that rubbish. Kat was telling me about an interview with Rocking Rex that she’d heard on the radio. She said Rocking Rex was a multimillionaire. There’s no justice in the world.

  I remember at the end of the song, the bell would chime and Mr Cummings would ask people to shush. He’d say people’s names. Mostly Frank Schott’s name. ‘Frank. In line please.’ ‘Frank Schott, hands to yourself please.’ ‘Mr Schott! Go and wait for me in my office. Now!’

  Frank was a handy distraction. He’d slink up the steps and push through the door behind Mr Cummings. Everyone watched him. They never saw me scurrying across the oval. They never heard my lunchbox — with two sultana sandwiches in it — thumping up and down in the pack on my back.

  One morning I had a grass seed in my left shoe, on the tip of my big toe, but I was running too late to stop and get it out. I started limping. Step plod, step plod, step plod. It didn’t help. I slipped my bag off my back and crouched down behind one of the telephone poles that marked the edge of the oval. I quickly kicked my runner off. No seed. I tapped the heel of my runner on the ground and to my absolute horror, a spider fell out. Not just any spider; a big, hairy, grey huntsman spider that — to me as a third grader — looked bigger than a dinner plate. It was groggy, probably doped up on sock gas, but it was still alive.

  I squealed. I stood up and squealed again. The squeal went on forever and when I ran out of air I just kept squealing but no sound came out. Mrs Davies was walking up the embankment towards me, footfall after heavy footfall. She wouldn’t run for anyone or anything. I turned, still screaming, with tears pouring from my eyes, and bolted for home. Step-plod, step-plod, step-plod.

  ‘Daniel, wait! What’s the matter?’ Mrs Davies panted.

  Then she squealed. I didn’t look back. Step-plod, step-plod, step-plod.

  Mum was finishing the breakfast dishes and saw me from the kitchen window. She slammed open the flywire door and scooped me into her arms.

  ‘What is it, Daniel? What happened?’

  ‘I . . . got . . . BLAAAAAH!’ I wailed, and held my toe.

  She ripped my sock off but couldn’t see any bones poking out. No blood. ‘Where? Where does it hurt? What happened?’

  ‘I . . . got . . . BLAAAAAH!’

  She carried me inside and sat me on the couch. Five minutes later, my wailing had faded to a sob. Mum still couldn’t understand me. She l
ooked at my toe.

  ‘Mrs Fairbrother?’ said someone at the front door.

  ‘Yes? Hello.’

  ‘Oh, you’re here. Thank goodness. Is Daniel okay?’ It was Mrs Davies, puffing and hacking.

  ‘I don’t know. What happened?’

  The teacher came in, her face red and spotted with perspiration, the corners of her mouth white with spittle. She was carrying my bag and had my runner pinched between two fingers. ‘I think Dan had a spider in his shoe. Big grey spider.’

  Mum grabbed my chin with both hands and put her face close to mine, her eyes wide with panic. ‘My lord. Were you bitten by a spider?’

  I sobbed and nodded.

  She looked at my toe again and could at last see marks —a constellation of puncture wounds. She phoned Poisons Information while Mrs Davies sat on the couch beside me. The couch creaked and the springs popped and twanged under the load.

  ‘Are you okay, Daniel?’ she asked with her hand on my shoulder.

  I nodded and at exactly the same time the couch springs broke and Mrs Davies’ bottom thudded to the floorboards. She shrieked and flapped like a walrus but she couldn’t get up. I stood up and tried to help her. She was stuck.

  My body started shaking from the ribs out. When the laugh eventually made it to my mouth, Mrs Davies frowned and struggled even harder, levering herself up on the armrest. The armrest splintered and she crunched heavily back onto the floor. The boards under my feet shook and I squealed with laughter until I had to sit down.

  Poor Mrs Davies. I should have controlled myself — like Mum said later — but the truth is I wasn’t really laughing at her. Well I was, but the reason I couldn’t stop was because I had brushed with the meanest, ugliest, most fearsome creature in my neighborhood and survived. It had bitten me heaps of times and not only had I survived, it hadn’t even hurt. A bee sting hurts more.

  We shifted after that. Dad came home from work one night and instead of having tea, we started packing. We moved to another state, from the city to the bush — to Bellan in eastern Victoria. I moved to Henning Primary and met my best mate of all time, Chris Gemmel. Shifting was the best thing Dad had ever done for me, except maybe giving me the Illustrated Guide to Australian Birds for my eleventh birthday. I don’t think Katrina felt the same way about it. She was in grade six at the time and she had so many friends — boyfriends even — and she was always out playing with them in the street until dark. She left them all behind when we shifted. Not many kids around after dark here. Not many kids around at all. Kat just sort of curled up. Stayed inside and listened to music.

  We live on the Bellan road, which is forty-nine ks long. It weaves through the mountains like a serpent and crosses Ammets Creek twice. I don’t go down the creek much anymore. The water and slippery rocks freak me out. We live in the third house. There are only three houses on the Bellan road. There were more in the olden days but bushfires, plantations and blackberries have swallowed them.

  There are plenty of spiders here — three species of huntsman live on our place. Spiders are my friends. Instead of feeding my fear, being bitten on the toe gave me respect for them. Instead of squashing them, I began to watch them. Have them crawl on me. Keep them as pets. I found a book in the school library about American Indians and there was a cool section about the symbolic meaning of animals. I believe in that sort of stuff. Different animals mean different things. It didn’t say that spiders were horrible and should be killed on sight. It said that the spider is the grandmother weaver; always patient and watchful, responsible for the construction and maintenance of the web of life. It said that we are frightened of spiders because they can bite us and cause paralysis. Understanding and respecting spiders would give us the courage not to be paralysed in frightening situations. Spider medicine.

  Mum’s spider medicine was to spray them with hair spray. When the hair spray set, the spider’s hairy legs couldn’t move. They’d eventually die from starvation. Totally sick. I gave Mum such a hard time about it that she eventually grew to respect my love of spiders. The man at Poisons Information had told her that there are very few Australian spiders that can cause more than discomfort. If it wasn’t a notorious funnel-web — heavyset, black and shiny — or a white-tail or a redback, then she had little to worry about. Keep an eye on him, he said.

  She progressed from spraying them with hair spray to a special sort of shout. ‘Danyellllll!’

  A shout I could recognise from one hundred metres away. A special sort of restrained terror in her voice let me know that there was a spider to be rescued.

  Bellan is where my life really began. Mine began, and life as Katrina knew it ended.

  two

  S N A K E

  I started working when I was ten. The year Toby was born. I’d always worked with Mum in the garden — since I was in her tummy, so she says — but when I was ten I started grubbing thistles for Graham and Tina. They gave me three dollars a feedbag full. On a good day I could earn nine dollars — great money when you’re ten. As I got older they got me going on ragwort, the prettiest weed ever — sometimes taller than I was — with nodding masses of golden flowers. Cows don’t like it and it takes over. Five dollars a bag. I could make twenty dollars a day on ragwort when I was thirteen. Then the thistles and ragwort ran out. It would take me a full day to cover the sixty acres of steep pasture studded with manna gums and I’d only scrounge up two bags of weeds, so they started me on the blackberries behind the house. Twenty dollars a trailer-load. That’s where I met Cain and Abel.

  Blackberry, like ragwort and thistles, is a noxious weed. Some bright spark introduced it from England ages ago and it’s covered almost every unused patch of ground in Bellan. A blackbird poops out a seed it ate that morning and in a week or so the seed puts down roots in the loam. It sends up a shoot as tall as me that eventually falls over and where the tip touches the ground another plant grows. In a few years one little seed becomes a rambling thicket that spreads like cancer.

  Blackberry has thorns. Brutal and remorseless barbs that can tear you to pieces and in the early days I would come home looking like I’d spent the day fighting feral cats. Feral cats often make homes in the blackberry as do rabbits and foxes and wombats and wrens and whipbirds, and the bizarre thing about that is that a fox’s den can be right next to a rabbit-warren but the rabbits are safe because of the thicket. Feral cats can sleep just a few metres from a wren’s nest and the wrens are completely safe. Blackberry fences the predators out.

  Graham shoots rabbits, foxes and snakes. I’ve been out shooting with him heaps of times. He’s a serious marksman. He motions with his hand for me to stop, shakes his long dark hair to one side and takes aim at something on the other side of the gully that I couldn’t see even if I had binoculars. The .222 always makes me jump but Graham stays rock-steady, unlike his prey — a few final kicks and it’s all over. Another head shot. Graham has been deaf since he was born, but my hearing is brilliant.

  Tina doesn’t like snakes. Neither does Graham. That’s why they keep the shotgun. We can hear the retort from our place more than a k away — it echoes through the valley and every time Mum hears it she looks at me and smiles.

  ‘Another snake,’ she says.

  Graham has a thing about hanging them on the front fence until they rot and fall apart. Bit disgusting.

  On the third day of work on the blackberries behind Graham and Tina’s place I had hacked my way into a small rocky clearing and stopped to get my breath, sweat dripping off me. A pair of scrub wrens darted through the thicket twittering and playing chasey — I couldn’t work out if it was kiss chasey or British bulldog — and when their chatter vanished I could hear a dull scraping then a flop. Again, dull scraping then a hollow flop. Moving quietly into the clearing I spotted them — a pair of tiger snakes entwined in a love dance, pushing against each other, heads lifting off the ground, swaying then flopping onto the sunlit rock beneath them. Their movements were liquid and a pleasure to watch. I stood there
mesmerised for half an hour. I named them Dave and Mabel. I wanted to run down the hill and tell someone but I knew Graham would get the shotty and increase his handicap by shooting two snakes with one cartridge. He can’t see the beauty in snakes. Mum and Dad think the only good snake is a dead one. Kat says her skin crawls when I talk about them.

  Later I found a great book about snakes at the school library that says it’s normally two males that dance. They were probably fighting and the girl of their dreams wasn’t far away, so Dave and Mabel became Cain and Abel. I told Kat about it on the bus and she told me to piss off. She’s so rude when Mum’s not around.

  Toby likes snakes. My little brother is five years old. He goes to kinder two days a week. He gets a lift with Penny Lane, the lady from the other house on the Bellan road. She lives on one hundred and sixty wild acres of goats and blackberries. Her husband died three years ago when a tractor rolled on him. She looks at the ground when she talks. Her daughter Peta goes to kinder with Toby. They’re best friends. So Toby pastes and paints for two days, and runs around home with hardly any clothes on the rest of the time. Mum gets paranoid in the spring when he’s tearing around in the long grass, knowing that the Joe Blakes are waking from their winter slumber.

  I found a tiger snake at the back of Dad’s aviaries last summer. Dad keeps caged birds like parrots and doves, and the snake would have been after the mice that live under the feed bin. Kind of handy to have around. It was curled up when I found it, quite content inside a coil of black poly-pipe. The budgies were going berserk. I wanted to open their cage. I wanted to see them fly into the trees. I went back to grab Tobe and gave him a piggyback up to the aviary, then sat him on my knee a safe distance from the snake. It had just shed its skin and it was glossy like wet paint. For the Indians, the shedding of skin symbolises death and rebirth.