by Kim Kelly
TOOOOOT! The funnel blows and Agnes covers her ears on the step above us, shouting: ‘Oh!’ Then she grabs her brother round the neck in last-moment panic: ‘Will there be trees in New York?’
‘There will be trees, Ag,’ he assures her, gathering her into our arms. ‘Wherever we go, we’ll find them. We’ll always find them trees.’
Yes, we will. We will find everything we need.
‘Those trees, Yoey,’ she corrects him.
As Glor calls: ‘Kiss!’
And we do. We kiss now for all the world to see, how rich we are in love and dreams.
We are streamers on this autumn breeze heading into summer. Wherever we go, there we shall be. New York, Paris, Madrid, Shanghai. Each other’s safe harbour. Each other’s way home. A solid steel rainbow across the sea.
The achievement of this bridge is symbolical of the things Australians strive for but have not yet achieved . . . that bridge of understanding among the Australian people will yet be built, and will carry her on to that glorious destination which every man who loves our native country feels is in store for her. I now officially declare the Sydney Harbour Bridge open for traffic . . .
Right Honourable JT Lang, 19 March 1932
Author Note
A Blue Mile, like its sister novels Black Diamonds and This Red Earth, is a fiction inspired by the history and squiggly contradictions of the land I love – this time Sydney, my old home town. With a pocket full of family lore from my grandparents’ glory days, a long-held political crush on the Big Fella, Jack Lang, and a perennial wonder at our magnificent harbour and its Bridge, I set out to discover my city anew, finding all its beauty and its brashness glimmering as brightly then as now.
It’s well known that the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge took eight years, six million or so rivets, £4.2 million, and sixteen lives to build, and at least eight hundred families lost their homes to make way for it. It was a lifeline in a dark time to the families of those several thousand men fortunate enough to obtain work on it, and brave enough to work on it at height. There were no pesky safety regulations in those days – men still ‘rode the hook’ at the end of crane cables on construction sites into the 1960s, until the Builders Labourers Federation began the fight to outlaw the deadly practice.
It’s less well known that, as the Bridge was being built, the consequences of the Great Depression in New South Wales, especially in terms of unemployment and suspension of credit, seem to have been second in severity only to those in Germany, our enemy in the Great War and a nation subsequently crushed by war reparations. Why the British banks were so miserly towards their Australian cousins and allies over this period, when they reduced interest rates for others, is a question I have not been able to find an answer to. While I’m no perfect student of the past, neither is my country. We continue to struggle with our ever-shifting lines of bigotry, our fearfulness of difference, our terror at dips in the property market, and the sometimes vicious ideological divide between left and right. But there is an indefinable and indefatigable energy about Sydney, some loveliness humming underneath the frenetic pace and ruthlessness of the place, something that has perhaps always helped us resist letting radicalism or hatreds take hold for more than five minutes. Perhaps there’s something in the water that makes us reluctant to spoil the barbie with any serious political engagement, or maybe it’s just the way the sun shines on us here. Whatever it is, I hope the peace it brings continues.
My sun wouldn’t shine at all without those who aid and abet my quests for tales tall and true. Selwa Anthony and Cate Paterson, without whom there is no book, thank you so much and forever for your belief and guidance. Julia Stiles and Emma Rafferty, thank you for sharp minds, kind hearts and all your editorial care. As always, I couldn’t go anywhere much without the National Library of Australia’s Trove newspaper and picture databases for the bulk of my research. And I wouldn’t find the beauty, the terror or inspiration in any of it if it wasn’t for my boys, Tom and Cal, the children who’ve raised me, and my own darling big fella, Dean, whose unwavering faith is my brain glue when nothing else seems to make sense.
A very presumptuous thank you, too, must go to the Langs and the Games and Miss Crowdy for the loan of your characters. Although obviously I have shamelessly invented words and actions for you here, I hope I have captured a little of the essence of the good people you really were, remaining so staunchly decent when all about you went bonkers
Last, but never least, this novel is my small but earnest tribute to all those who get up every day and simply go to work. Whatever it is you do, you make life better, safer, easier, cleaner, brighter or more beautiful. You make the world go round.
About Kim Kelly
Kim Kelly lives in the Central West of New South Wales.
The Blue Mile is her third novel.
Also by Kim Kelly
Black Diamonds
This Red Earth
MORE BEST-SELLING TITLES FROM KIM KELLY
This Red Earth
It’s 1939, another war in Europe. And Bernie Cooper is wondering what’s ahead for her.
She knows Gordon Brock is about to propose. An honest country boy and graduating geologist, he’s a good catch. And she’s going to say no.
But the harsh realities of war have other plans for Bernie, and once her father is commissioned to serve again, she accepts Gordon’s proposal mostly to please her adored dad. And with Gordon off to New Guinea she’ll be glad of the reprieve from walking down the aisle, won’t she?
As Gordon braces for the Japanese invasion of Rabaul, Bernie is in the midst of the battle being fought on home soil – against the worst drought in living memory, the menace of an unseen enemy, and against the unspeakable torment of not knowing if those dear to her are alive or dead.
From the beaches of Sydney to the dusty heart of the continent, This Red Earth is as much a love letter to the country, with all its beauty and terror, as it is an intimate portrait of love itself.
First published 2014 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited
1 Market Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2000
Copyright © Kim Kelly 2014
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.
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available
from the National Library of Australia
http://catalogue.nla.gov.au
EPUB format: 9781743518069
Typeset by Post Pre-press Group
Cover design by Nada Backovic
Cover images: Wojciech Zwolinski/Trevillion Images, State Library of NSW
This is a work of fiction. Characters, institutions and organisations mentioned in this novel
are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously without
any intent to describe actual conduct.
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