Kerenza: A New Australian Read online

  I hold my breath as I strain to hear. I don’t want to go to the Mallee, but I don’t want to stay here without Da either.

  Mam answers. ‘Over my dead body, Clemo. Kerenza and I can help with the work. She’s a resourceful girl.’

  ‘Elowen could stay here with Janna. She can be company for Mary Jane.’

  ‘We go as a family to make a home or not a-tall, and that be the end of it.’

  There is more of Da’s whispering but I relax. Whatever happens, at least we’ll be together.

  3

  I was on the deserted deck of the steamship. The wind whisked me around so I couldn’t remember where the cabin was. ‘Krenza?’ A little form in a nightdress, her hair in curling rags, stumbled on to the deck. ‘Elowen, come back.’ I struggled towards her. I had to keep her safe. Elowen screamed and I looked up. A monstrous wave with snapping jaws like a shark hovered above her. Then it crashed on to the funnel. I couldn’t reach Elowen in time. The steamship disintegrated into floating fragments and all I could see were the waves, with a fin circling closer and closer.

  ‘Oh, my giddy aunt.’ My eyes flap open, my chest heaves as though I’m still in the water. I touch Elowen’s warm back and slide down beside her, but I can’t find sleep again. I slip out to the shed to see the animals Uncle Malachi bought. It’s before dawn, and the cow sees me first. ‘Gertrude’ is written in pink crayon on the wall. She flicks me with her tail. It’s as though she knows she’s going on a long journey and won’t like it. ‘I know how you feel,’ I whisper, but her eyes still look miserable.

  The horses whinny at me. Perhaps they think I have breakfast. There are two of them for each dray. Huge, brown Clydesdales with snowshoes for feet, and white fur-like hair up to their knees. One has ‘Bobbie’ written beside him, and the other ‘Queenie’; both have beautiful white faces and black manes. Queenie is well named – she stands royally and raises her head to look down her nose at me. She shifts her feet and I can tell she’s bossy. She snickers and the other two horses look at me as if they know a secret. Their names are Jess and Drummer. I can’t believe our family owns them! I reach for the curry comb hanging on a nail.

  ‘So, Bobbie.’ I use circular swoops from the top of his neck to his rear like Josiah taught me. ‘What do you think of going so far hitched to a dray?’ Bobbie stares at me with huge glistening eyes and my heart beats slower. He lowers his head and snuffles my hair. I put my arms up around his neck and I feel as if I’m in Mr Polglase’s stable back home.

  ‘Kerenza?’ The voice is tentative but it’s not Elowen’s. I turn and find Harry there with a feedbag in his hands. I wonder if he’s heard me talking to the horses, and I ready myself in case he’s mean. But what he says is surprising.

  ‘I’m sorry about Jacob’s teasing on the dock.’

  I can’t help myself. ‘Is that what you call it?’

  ‘He just gets full of it sometimes.’

  Harry only looks a year older than me. The boys are like the two sides of a dinner plate: Jacob’s colourful and loud while Harry’s like the back side, plain and quiet.

  ‘Harry!’ Uncle Malachi’s voice penetrates the stable. ‘Hurry and feed those horses, boy, and get here to help load the drays.’

  Harry gives me a grin as I help him put chaff and a sprinkle of oats in the nosebags for the horses.

  It takes an hour to get the black cast iron oven on to our dray. There are also our trunks, Mam’s hand sewing machine, six fowls in a coop, plus supplies of flour, tea, sugar, salt and dried fruit, and feed for the animals. Gertrude’s tethered to the back of our dray and bellows her distress. It looks like we’re going to a desert. That thought stirs a nervous flutter in my middle.

  Aunt Janna has her hands on Mary Jane’s shoulders and the twins hang on to her skirt as they watch us leave. Mary Jane stares at Elowen as if she wants to come too. I blow her a kiss. ‘We’ll write.’ Mam waves at her sister-in-law, and that’s when Aunt Janna cries. I wave until we turn the corner.

  Elowen’s too big to sit on Mam’s lap for long, and she complains about her aching legs after a mile of walking. Mine are sore too, but the dray is so full of our supplies there’s hardly a corner for us. I wish we had a sulky to ride in. Da stops the horses to lift both of us on to Bobbie’s back; Elowen won’t be able to hold on by herself. If Kitto gets tired by the afternoon he doesn’t say. I tell Elowen the stories about Cornish piskies and knockers. She shivers with gleeful fear at the nasty antics of the spriggans. ‘You have to be careful,’ I say. ‘If you get lost the spriggans will swap you with one of their horrible little girls.’

  We stop at a hotel in the evening at a little village called Tea Tree Gully. Da takes the horses and Gertrude to the stable while Kitto and I water the fowls (Harry calls them ‘chooks’) from the trough outside the hotel. Then we all go in to have stew and bread.

  Elowen whines on the way to our room, ‘My legs are still sore from riding Bobbie – his back is so wide.’

  ‘Don’t complain,’ I say, even though mine are aching too, ‘or Da will make you walk all the way like Kitto.’

  As we leave the village the next day and travel further into the countryside there are fewer hotels. Some nights we have to camp out under the sky. Even the stars are different here.

  ‘See,’ Harry says one night, ‘there’s our Southern Cross.’ It takes me a while to pick it out.

  The first Sunday we stop during the day in some low hills. Gertrude is happy to graze; she doesn’t seem to mind dry yellow grass. We have a chapel service by ourselves.

  ‘In the Mallee there won’t be a chapel, so we’ll have services in homes like the first Methodists did in Cornwall,’ Uncle Malachi says. Mam seems to enjoy singing hymns in the woods and Da plays his little button accordion, which Jacob calls a squeeze box. Some birds join in with a warble of their own.

  ‘They’re magpies,’ Harry tells me. I look around, and think again what a huge place this is. We are in the middle of nowhere – no small farms or lanes lined with blackberries. The horizon is flat, it’s hot, and the flies stick to my face like glue.

  When it’s lunchtime I help Mam get the bread and cheese from a canvas bag and lay a cloth on the ground. Harry and Jacob give the horses a bucket of water from a barrel on their dray and I take some to the fowls. Kitto and Elowen sit by the tablecloth, waiting like birds in a nest.

  ‘I want to wee,’ Kitto suddenly says as if a lavatory will pop up close by.

  ‘‘Ee can spend a penny behind them bushes.’ Mam points with her chin as she butters the bread. ‘And be coming back dreckly.’

  He groans about peeing behind bushes as he walks off. I watch the knife on the bread. Once the butter is gone it will be dripping we’ll eat until we find the time to make butter. Uncle Malachi says we will have to make everything ourselves in the Mallee. Butter, jam, even bread. It sounds like hard work.

  Mam raises her eyebrows at me. I know that look. If Kitto doesn’t come back soon I have to find him. I sigh. It’s so difficult being the eldest. If Wenna was here, she’d help with Kitto. I think he’s worse than a flea to catch.

  ‘Kerenza!’ Mam nods in the direction Kitto took. I stand up in bad grace and she frowns at me.

  ‘Kitto!’ I call, cross as bees in a jar. ‘You have to come now.’

  There’s no answer. I push past the bush too annoyed to care if his pants are down. But he isn’t there.

  ‘Kitto!’ I turn left, then right. There are woods everywhere, but not the woods I know. These are greenish grey trees, with branches bent as though they are tired of growing. I check all around me, but no Kitto. A twinge of panic blows away my annoyance. ‘Kitto?’ I pick my way through the undergrowth. ‘Where are you?’ I stop to listen.

  Then I see the back of him on a rise, crouching. The way he’s watching makes me walk quietly up towards him. He hears me when I’m close but doesn’t turn.

  ‘Look,’ he whispers.

  In front of him is a wild dog. I put a hand on his shoulder. The
dog is a yellowy tan. It’s so close I can see its amber eyes. I’m about to pull Kitto away when out from between its front paws jumps a pup. Then another. I draw in a sharp breath and Kitto glances at me, his eyes shining. ‘There’s four.’

  The mother scents the air, gives a yip and the pups disappear. She delivers one quivering look in our direction before leaping into the undergrowth.

  ‘Did you see her?’ Kitto shouts. ‘Wasn’t she pretty? I bet it was a dingo.’

  ‘She might have attacked you, with pups to protect.’

  ‘But she didn’t. Wait until I tell Jacob. He always says we know nothing. Well, we won’t know nothing for long.’

  4

  After twelve days we arrive at Sedan. Most of the country is flat like Cornish moors, but this is worse. It’s like a desert. There’s a frost in the night and I even cuddle up to Kitto to keep warm. But when he rolls over and his foot lands in my stomach, I kick him back. There’s not enough room for three of us on this mattress.

  When Elowen wakes she says, ‘I’m as cold as a quilkin.’

  We giggle. Nanny always called frogs quilkins. I wish we were by a warm fire in her house.

  ‘Soon we’ll be at Swan Reach,’ Uncle Malachi says at breakfast. ‘Not long before we’re home.’ He and Da smile at each other and Kitto says, ‘Righto’, but I’m thinking of Camborne and what Maylene is doing at school. It’s April, and everyone will be practising the Maypole dance. I would have been one of the big girls holding a ribbon.

  Swan Reach is a town of windmills. Kitto counts ten before we catch a glimpse of the river. We take the drays down to the water’s edge and I can’t believe what I see. ‘It’s not even blue.’

  Jacob scoffs. ‘It’s beaut.’

  It’s not as big as the River Tamar at home. There’s no bridge, but a wooden punt floats nearby.

  We hear a loud whistle blowing. ‘A paddle steamer, the Tarella,’ Harry says. ‘That’s how our farm machinery will come.’

  ‘Look at her pulling those two barges,’ Kitto shouts. ‘She’s beaut.’ Mam frowns at his Australian word.

  Elowen sees a smaller steamer, the Etona. ‘It’s a floating chapel,’ I say. There’s even a cross on the roof of the cabin.

  That’s when we see the swans.

  ‘How beautiful,’ Elowen whispers in awe.

  They are the wrong colour, and a bubble rises up inside me and pops out like a little sob. I’ve never seen a black swan. One waddles right up to us. Elowen is enthralled, but I think how Australia is so topsy-turvy.

  Da rings a bell and a ferryman comes out of his house.

  We load one dray and two horses on to the punt. The ferryman hauls the punt across the river by pulling on a cable. Harry and Kitto help him but Elowen and Mam feel sick from the rolling.

  When both drays are over we drive into the hotel on the other side.

  Mam and I buy bread, a newspaper and boxes of fruit and vegetables from Swan Reach store. Mr Wurm, the proprietor, welcomes us to the district. He has the post office in his shop and writes down our names. ‘When the railway comes your mail will be delivered to the Mallee,’ he says.

  Elowen nudges me. ‘Look.’ She takes me outside to see a covered wagon. It looks just like a gypsy wagon back home. A man in a turban and strange clothes is feeding the horse.

  Jacob saunters over to us. ‘Just a hawker selling rubbish. Best to keep away from people like that.’

  ‘But he looks nice,’ Elowen says.

  I think Jacob knows nothing, but before we can go closer Uncle Malachi is calling for us to start off.

  ‘You’ll get left behind.’ Jacob says it as if he wishes it would happen. He’s the meanest boy I’ve ever met.

  As Da drives our dray with Harry walking alongside, I hear a strange bird. It sounds as if it’s laughing. Harry laughs too. ‘It’s a kookaburra.’ He knows everything, but he’s not bossy about it like Uncle Malachi and Jacob.

  It takes a fortnight from the day we left Aunt Janna to arrive at Hampton Well in the Mallee. When I wasn’t riding I walked, and it was so exhausting.

  South Australia is huge – the hills were pretty but the rest was flat, hot and boring. We didn’t even see any kangaroos.

  Harry lifts Elowen down from Bobbie and I slip off to look around. Da explained about pioneering, but I thought there would be a shop and a stream. There is nothing at Hampton Well except grey bushes, red dirt and a huge windmill that’s pumping water from the well into a stone tank. It’s even more desolate than the country we’ve travelled through.

  ‘This is where the boys will cart water from until we dig a well,’ Uncle Malachi says.

  Kitto is halfway up the windmill ladder before Mam calls him back.

  Uncle laughs when he sees my face. ‘What did you expect? A castle?’ That sets Jacob laughing. I try to act as if I don’t care but inside I’m devastated. And that isn’t the worst.

  ‘Of course we’re not there yet,’ Uncle Malachi informs us. ‘We have five miles to go.’ He takes his axe from the hook on the outside of his dray. He nods towards the east. ‘We have to travel that way.’

  We all look east, and it’s Kitto who says what I’m thinking. ‘But there’s no road. How will the drays get through the woods?’

  Jacob snorts, and Uncle Malachi runs a finger along the blade of his axe. ‘It’s called scrub, boy, mallee scrub, and we will cut a track through it.’ I see a gleam in Da’s eyes as he gets his axe.

  ‘We’ll camp here until we finish the track,’ Uncle Malachi says. ‘We may as well get started while Tressa makes dinner.’

  Mam bristles at his bossy tone while I think how sick I am of travelling. Then a little hope flickers – maybe our land will be prettier than Hampton Well, maybe the river will flow through it.

  Jacob and Harry have axes in their hands now. Uncle Malachi looks at me and I try not to flinch. I don’t want an axe. ‘Here.’ He hands me a compass. ‘Keep us east. There are boundary survey pegs to follow. Our block is number eighteen, so watch for pegs with that number on and keep us straight.’

  I’m too shocked to refuse. What if I lead them astray?

  ‘I want to help find the way,’ Kitto says.

  For a second I see a sharp look of envy flit across Jacob’s face until he replaces it with a sneer. ‘You two wouldn’t be able to swing an axe anyway.’

  I try to ignore the spite in Jacob’s voice and take Kitto towards the scrub, leaving Elowen to help Mam.

  As the men cut down bushes and small trees I walk ahead with Kitto, my eyes glued to the ground. Kitto holds the compass, and he finds the first wooden ‘peg’. It’s just a little piece of wood with the number painted on it.

  It takes a long time to chop down the trees, as they have lots of trunks. That’s what a mallee tree is, Jacob tells me, a tree with many trunks.

  When the men fell a tree, Jacob and Harry cut and pull the branches off the new track. Kitto and I walk through the undergrowth to lead the way. It’s not soft ferns and bluebells like home – this undergrowth is tough and spiky. Both Kitto and I have scratches from prickly bushes; my legs are aching and my stockings are snagged. Kitto’s bare legs even have blood dribbling down them, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

  It’s almost night, and even Kitto looks tired when Uncle Malachi calls a halt. ‘No need to chop our hands off in the dark.’

  We trudge back to where we left the drays. Mam has one tent up, and Da makes a fire with kindling we’ve picked up on the way. Mam cooks eggs in a frypan over the fire and fries some of the bread we bought in Swan Reach. It’s tasty, and I stare out at the scrub and sigh. It will take a long time to cut the track.

  While Jacob hobbles the horses so they don’t wander off, Da and Uncle put up more tents by kerosene lamplight. Kitto wants to sleep with the boys. Mam doesn’t mind and I certainly don’t. No wonder Aunt Janna stayed behind. The twins would fall into the fire or get lost in the scrub.

  There is no lavatory, so we all do our business in the scrub. ‘
Boys to the south and girls to the north,’ Mam says. Harry laughs as if it’s a joke, but I’m horrified. Everyone will know what I’m doing. I hang on until the others are talking around the fire. At least the scrub is thick enough to hide us, but it doesn’t shield us from the noises in the night. Later we hear a call like an owl’s.

  ‘That sounds like a mopoke,’ Harry says. ‘Listen and perhaps we’ll hear its mate answering.’ Sure enough, I hear a ‘boo boo’. It doesn’t sound real: Cornish owls hoot with ‘hoo hoo’. There’s a howl, not too far away, and Kitto says, ‘There aren’t wolves here, are there?’

  ‘There certainly are,’ Jacob says. ‘Very ferocious ones that attack as soon as the fire dies down.’ Kitto’s mouth is open in horror, and I almost believe Jacob myself until he laughs. Harry glares at Jacob and tells Kitto it’s a dingo. ‘They don’t bark, you see.’ I don’t relax like Kitto – Nanny said dingoes were as bad as wolves.

  When I’m spending a penny behind a bush before I go to bed, I think I hear a noise as if someone is close by. The boys are arguing in their tent, so it’s not them. This scrub is different from the woods – it has different sounds and smells. I quickly finish and creep back to the tent.

  In the morning, after Mam’s milked Gertrude, and the horses, fowls and all of us are fed, Kitto and I run ahead of the others with the compass. We scout for the best path to take.

  Kitto thinks of a riddle when we get ahead of the others. ‘The more you take, the more you leave behind. What’s that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I’m not in the mood for his jokes.

  ‘C’mon, Krenza. Try.’

  ‘Um … crumbs?’

  ‘Nah.’ He sounds like Harry already.

  ‘Tell me then.’