Currawong Creek

by Jennifer Scoullar

  The documentary ended, and advertising took over the screen. Clare’s eyes glazed over. Her eyes wandered to the painting on the wall above the television. A pair of harnessed Clydesdales stepped out with power and elegance. The figure of a man wearing overalls, her grandfather, followed behind them, treading the furrows made by the hand-held plough. An old farmhouse, with a wide verandah, stood in the background. Clare had owned the painting for many years, so many years that she’d ceased to really see it. Days of Gold had followed her around all through her student times, from shared houses to cramped flats, to this wall right here. She almost hadn’t hung it. The painting’s warm, earthy tones hardly went with twenty-first century minimalism. Clare looked at it, as if for the first time. Mum wasn’t a bad artist. She’d captured the spirit of the great horses in the angle of their erect ears, in their arching necks and straining shoulders. She’d caught the care in Grandad’s lined face.

  Clare’s phone rang. She retrieved it from the floor and checked the caller ID. Adam. Clare switched it off. If she never heard Adam’s voice again, it would still be too soon. Her afternoon in the country with Jack and Samson, watching the river flats and the horses, had done something towards healing her heart. Some small thing. It was just as well she’d found out about Adam before she got in any deeper. Now, she just wanted to forget about him, to escape the memories, to get away from Brisbane.

  Maybe there was a way. Clare went into the bedroom. After Dad’s funeral, her brother Ryan had helped pack up the house. They’d put most of what was worth keeping into storage, but she had retrieved a few items.

  Clare found the step-ladder and heaved down a crate from the top of the wardrobe. There, beneath Dad’s car manuals – a taped up box marked Currawong Creek. She was almost too scared to open it. Clare fetched herself a glass of wine and perched it on her dressing table. Then she broke the seal and removed the objects from the box one by one. She laid them on the bed. Photos of beautiful Clydesdale horses wearing championship sashes. Some baby clothes tied with lace. Mum’s old school reports. Memories tumbled back thick and fast. A black and white currawong feather. The cracker for a stock whip. Some nuts in a little box. She lifted out two brown paper packages with cancelled stamps. Posted to her father’s address, but both still unopened. One was marked for Ryan Mitchell. The other was for Clare.

  She broke the seal with an unsteady hand. Inside was a letter from her grandfather.

  Dearest Clare,

  I am writing to let you know that Grandma passed away last week. I’m sure your father has told you. It’s been a very sad time, but don’t worry about me. I’m holding up okay. Grandma always loved you and your brother very, very much. Right up until the end, she would talk so proudly of you both. Here are some small things she wanted you to have. If you ever have time, Clare Bear, to come to Currawong, I would be so happy to see you.

  All my love,

  Grandad XXOO

  The letter was dated ten years ago. In a panic Clare leafed through what was left in the box. More unopened mail for her and Ryan. She tore an envelope and pulled out a card. It had a Dalmatian dog on the front and Now You’re 14 in glittery writing. A twenty dollar note fluttered out when she opened it. Happy Birthday Clare it said. From your loving grandparents. There were dozens of letters. Dozens of letters that her father had kept from his children.

  A wave of heartache threatened to drown her. Clare knuckled the tears from her eyes and looked inside the package from her grandfather. A locket with a with a photo of her and grandma inside. An opal ring. A kitchen journal that looked vaguely familiar. It was filled with hand written recipes and pressed flowers. In an instant she was a child again, scouring the paddocks of Currawong Creek with Grandma, searching for pretty leaves and blossoms. Clare gazed at the faded flowers between the pages for salmon bake and savoury mince. Coolabah blossom. She thought of the sad little Coolabah tree growing outside her window at work, and choked back tears.

  Clare scrabbled around in the box until she found what she was looking for. Her father’s small green address book. She flipped through it until she found her grandfather’s number. With trembling fingers she punched it into her phone.

  ‘Grandad? It’s me, Clare.’

  Chapter 8

  Jack hit the little girl sitting next to him on the head with the whip. She burst out crying. ‘Come on, sweetie,’ said Clare, dragging Jack out of the coach by his arm. ‘Sorry,’ she called, as a man holding a camera stormed over. She hurried Jack away. So much for the photo.

  When the department gave her permission to take Jack on a holiday, Kim had asked for a photographic record of the trip. Something Jack could share with Taylor when he saw her. They’d reached Toowoomba, an hour and a half west of Brisbane, and the Cobb & Co Museum had seemed like the perfect stopover. It would set them in the mood for Currawong.

  The museum housed over fifty horse-drawn vehicles, including sturdy drays and farm wagons of the sort pulled by Grandad’s Clydesdales. They told the story of European settlement on the Darling Downs. The original Cobb and Co coaches, including the last coach, which ran from Yuleba to Surat in 1924, were the pride of the collection. Clare had given Samson a quick walk, a drink of water and put him back in the car. Then she’d taken Jack’s hand and headed for the entrance to the museum. The visit had been a disaster from the minute they passed through the gate.

  Jack had made a beeline for a stand, where a wizened old saddler with a bushy white beard was giving a leatherwork demonstration. He was plaiting what looked like the thong of a whip. Jack had clambered up a wall display of belts and bridles, toppling the whole thing to the ground. Then he’d snatched a stock whip and run off.

  The old man barely looked up from his task, but his lips cracked into a thin smile. ‘You need a kelpie, love.’

  Clare stared after Jack. Damn. She’d have a fight getting that whip off him. ‘I’ll buy it,’ she said at last. Thank goodness she could still see Jack in the distance, climbing up onto a dray. No Samson to keep tabs on him now.

  The saddler put down his work, taking his time and extended his arm. ‘I’m Sid.’

  Clare shook his hand impatiently.

  ‘That young feller of yours, he’s picked a good ’un,’ said the man, in a slow drawl. ‘Six-foot, twelve-strand kangaroo. For its weight, roo hide’s the strongest leather in the world.’ He lit a hand-rolled cigarette, and continued. ‘A whip’s like a chain, the more links in a chain, the smoother it runs. Likewise, the more strands a thong has the more supple it moves.’

  ‘That’s very interesting, Sid,’ said Clare, trying to keep one eye on Jack. ‘How much do I owe you?’

  But Sid would not be hurried. He stood up and fished a whip from among the leather goods scattered in the dust. ‘Now this little number,’ he said, shaking it, coiling it and offering it to Clare, ‘is the right size for your boy. Red hide, three-foot, four-plait. It’s cowhide, better for beginners. Heavier than roo, puts more weight into the belly of the whip. Makes it easy to crack.’ The man demonstrated by cracking it loudly, three times in succession. ‘You hear that? That sound’s a mini sonic boom.’ Sid cracked it once more for good measure. Clare saw Jack turn and look in their direction. Then he came pelting back to her. The man waited for him to arrive, then put on a bit of a show. A crowd gathered around. Jack was mesmerised, eyes large as Frisbees.

  Sid held out the smaller whip to the boy. ‘Want to swap, snowy?’ They made the exchange, then Sid gave Jack an impromptu whip cracking lesson.

  After five minutes, Jack made his whip ring out like a rifle shot. Then again, with a grin as wide as his face. Sid was grinning too. He kneeled down, and showed Jack the parts of his whip. ‘You’ve got the handle, and the flick. The flick gives the whip shape and speed. And this long plaited lash part? That’s called the thong.’ He pressed each part as he described it into the palm of Jack’s hand. ‘This slotted leather loop is the fall. It connects to the cracker. That’s the bit at the end that makes it go bang.’<
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  Clare hadn’t seen Jack listen like that before. Afterwards, he set about practising his whip cracking, causing people to give him a wide berth. She gave Sid a grateful smile, and helped him put right the display stand. Then she paid him for the whip. ‘Much obliged,’ he said, and returned to plaiting his leather.

  ‘Come on, Jack,’ she said, hopefully. But the visit was all downhill from there. She tried taking him to the toilet, but instead he pulled down his pants and peed up against a carriage wheel, in front of everybody. He brandished the lash and threw his Coke can at a kid in the café. Clare had hoped for some nice photos of Jack in the charming children’s area, The Coach Stop. Here kids could play in a pint-sized general store or take a ride on a full-size replica horse, or even dress up and pretend to ride a Cobb and Co coach through the outback. But every time she tried to take the shot, Jack was frowning or belting somebody with the stock whip.

  ‘I give up,’ she said, and they headed for the car.

  Jack and Samson greeted each other like long lost friends and chased each other in ever widening circles. Samson bailed up a young couple beside their car, barking and jumping. Oh no, now Jack was barking too. Clare raced off to retrieve them, burning with embarrassment. She apologised and bundled them both back into the car. It seemed like she’d apologised more times in the last month than in her entire life.

  Samson had taken a chunk out of the back seat upholstery. Of course he had. The dog panted and grinned at her, as if to say that’ll teach you to leave me behind. Clare took off down the road, wheels spinning on gravel. Samson laid his head on Jack’s knee and the pair promptly fell asleep as if nothing had happened. She could use a very strong coffee right about now, but she dare not stop at a shop. She dare not leave the car. Whatever had possessed her to embark on a four-hour road trip with those two?

  Clare put her head down and settled in for the drive. It took some time to escape Toowoomba’s sprawling outskirts and catch her first glimpse of Gowrie Mountain. This distinctive, flat-topped hill was a perfectly preserved extinct volcano. She’d explored its lofty slopes with her grandfather as a child. He’d shown her the funnel-shaped opening of the crater. The great hole where molten lava erupted long ago to fill the valley below.

  Childhood memories crowded in, thick and fast, and Clare’s anxiety slipped away, along with the miles. This was easy driving. Up until now, Warrego Highway had required all of her concentration. It had been raining as she approached the eastern face of the Great Dividing Range. Parts of the road had recently been washed away and the crumbling bitumen and potholes had kept her on constant alert. The rich, volcanic farmlands of the Lockyer Valley were known as Brisbane’s salad bowl, its fertile hinterland. But Clare had found it hard to admire the scenery. Some years ago, dozens of people had perished here. A tropical cyclone combined with a deep rain trough had sent a deadly, seven-metre wall of water surging through the valley. An inland tsunami. She’d shivered a little as the windscreen wipers worked harder. The sense of foreboding didn’t lift until they’d left the floor of the basin and started the steep climb up to Toowoomba.

  Now they were waving goodbye to the town, and heading for Dalby, following the railway line. Clare turned on the radio. Static, apart from a country music station. It would do. Simple chords and he done me wrong lyrics suited her mood. Signs warned drivers to beware of road trains: monstrous trucks hauling equally monstrous trailers, some bound for Darwin more than three thousand kilometres away. Paddocks grew bigger, and stretched out into properties.

  The sun came out, to celebrate the first day of spring. Driving to Currawong was like going back in time. Clare hadn’t seen these black soil plains since childhood, but they felt familiar. The landscape was dominated by rolling hills, patchworked with lush green pasture and spring crops. Local dirt roads intersected the highway. They stretched away into the distance, crisscrossing bushy ridges and winding creeks. Roads with evocative names like Jumbuck Way, Stagecoach Track and one with a simple signpost saying Stock Route. Tumbledown wool sheds and rusted machinery laid scattered in paddocks, remnants from a bygone era of exploration and settlement. They passed water tanks and farmhouses and silos, big and small. Proud windmills stood dotted across the farmlands, raising the life-giving waters of the Great Artesian Basin. It comforted Clare to see their silhouettes. She loved the bottle trees too, with their signature swollen trunks, and dense, evergreen crowns. Cattle dozed in their shade. The Downs retained its solid, well-remembered sense of place.

  There was one feature of the landscape, though, that she didn’t remember. In some paddocks, haphazard arrangements of odd machinery squatted on squares of bulldozed ground. They weren’t connected to the iconic windmills and bore heads. In fact, the two never appeared within cooee of each other. Irrigation systems, perhaps? She’d never seen anything like them before, but things must have modernised out of sight in the last sixteen years. Some were no more than ugly collections of pumps and wheels and gauges. Others had storage tanks and tall, thin chimneys like giant flues, with pale flames peeking from the top. Solar panels mounted on stands, seemingly attached to nothing, powering who knew what? Pipes appeared and disappeared into nowhere, and strange dams of dark red water had been scoured into ground, made bare for hundreds of metres around. Stout, steel-panelled fences guarded these installations. More than sufficient to keep out the odd, inquisitive cow or kangaroo who didn’t heed the yellow hazard signs. The occasional outline of taller towers loomed on the horizon, well off the road, like oil rigs in the desert. Except this wasn’t the desert. This was the finest agricultural land in the continent. What was so much industrial equipment doing in this peaceful, rural place?

  A crop-dusting plane flew low overhead. She would have liked to show Jack, but he wasn’t awake. An hour passed. Approaching Dalby now, and still Jack and Samson slept. Clare amused herself by trying to identify crops along the road. She could pick the wheat and corn. The paddocks of baby sunflowers. In summer, their iconic, dinner-plate blooms would stand metres tall, bright faces following the sun across the sky. Fresh shorn sheep and fat cattle grazed beside swathes of sorghum. Or was it barley? Did they even grow sorghum in winter? There was a time when she would have known. Once she could pick them all: chickpeas, mung beans, millet, soy – crops of all kinds. Grandad had taught her and Ryan their various growth habits and seed row widths. If the Lockyer Valley was Brisbane’s salad bowl, the Darling Downs was a prime food bowl for the whole of Australia. It had been great fun, riding in his old truck, trying to pick out all the different crops and types of trees. Clare suddenly missed Ryan. He’d followed in Dad’s footsteps, joined the army straight from school and married young. Their communications had grown less and less personal, their visits farther apart and now she rarely saw him. His fault or hers? She supposed they were equally to blame. After all, she hadn’t told him about Jack, or about this trip to see their grandfather after all these years.

  Clare slowed as she came into Dalby, and glanced into the back seat. Two terrors still asleep. She could have died for a coffee, but stopping might wake them. They passed the racecourse and approached a bridge surrounded by parklands. It all flooded back. A day in Dalby with her mother and grandparents., a picnic in the park. Playing chasey with Ryan round an engraved bluestone pillar. The memory was clear as a Condamine bell. Grandma’s voice, explaining to them about the monument, a tribute to Cactoblastis, the humble caterpillar that eradicated a plague of Prickly Pear in the 1920s.

  Such happy days. Days of sunny summer holidays and intact families. Days of Mum with Dad, with all of them, and no concept of changes that might lurk around corners. Of the gut wrenching gap Mum would soon leave in all their lives. It hit her then, a confusion of past and present loneliness, leaving her close to tears. Her mother was gone, and now her father. Grandma too. Ryan as good as gone . . . and Adam. Now she returned alone to Currawong, to her grandfather. Her family had shrunk, through death and abandonment, to this one old man.

  They cro
ssed the bridge that spanned the swollen waters of Myall Creek, on its collision course with the Condamine River, south-west of town. The Condamine drained the northern Darling Downs into the mighty Murray-Darling basin. The river gave its name to Condamine bells. Or bullfrog bells, as Grandad used to call them. He had quite a collection of the classic, square-mouthed cow bells, all strung up in the cart shed. Clare used to love running beneath them with a big stick, setting them pealing like it was her own, humble cathedral. Would they still be there, she wondered? Would she get to teach Jack that old game?

  Dalby was a thriving country town with wide streets and plenty of pubs. Clare turned right across railway lines on the outskirts of town, leaving the Warrego Highway and heading north on the Bunya Road. An hour’s driving and she’d be at Currawong Creek, turning into its century-old cast-iron gates. Sunshine gates, Grandad called them. Clare had loved to swing on those gates. She could see the word SUNSHINE wrought on the centre strut. And what was written above it? That’s right. H. V. McKay. She’d chanted the name, over and over, as she played a complicated swinging game devised with Ryan. It had involved counting the number of swings you could do in the time it took the windmill blades to turn ten times. It all depended on determination and wind speed. Fancy remembering that. Grandma had said they were only called Sunshine gates because of the McKay machinery company, which had made cultivators and swingle trees and horse yokes in the 1880s. They were famous for their ‘Sunshine’ harvesters and gates. But Grandad always said they were named for the sunshine itself, for the happiness they brought into the lives of people who entered through them. Clare had never doubted him for a minute.