Everyone thought that when the Pommie arrived at Timber Creek, Mum’d be happier because she wouldn’t have so much to do in the house, chasing around after us all the time. But it wasn’t like that – not as far as I could tell, anyway. It was like having the Pommie there made it worse. After a few days I tried to tell Dad about it. He was in one of the sheds looking for a drill bit. I went in and said I was sick of the Pommie because she was useless and couldn’t do anything right. But he just said that the house was Mum’s responsibility and that she had a lot on and needed some help.
He nodded when I said the stuff again about the Pommie being useless, like he agreed with me, so I reckoned I was getting somewhere. I said how the Pommie wasn’t much good at anything, which meant Mum spent most of her time checking up on her – like when she put Sissy’s red socks in the washing machine with Mum’s white work shirts by accident. The Pommie said she was real sorry. Mum said she had to pay more attention to what she was doing. Dad reckoned it wasn’t the end of the world. He said we had to give her a chance to settle in. I said he should just fire her, but he held a hand up to me and said, ‘Leave it, Danny – I’ve got enough to think about without you bleating on about the bloody Pommie house girl.’
That night Mum got home from work and found the casserole the Pommie had made for dinner in the oven. That would have been OK, except she’d forgotten to switch the oven on. It took ages for the casserole to cook – it wasn’t ready until real late. That didn’t just annoy Mum – everyone was mad. We were all perishing by the time it was ready. Mum reckoned we were all too tired to eat it. The Pommie was real flustered. She said she was sorry about a hundred times as we ate in silence. No one answered. We were too busy eating. Eventually Mum looked at Dad and said, ‘Well, it’s not the end of the world, I suppose.’ Dad shook his head and said, ‘Not quite.’
I realised living at Timber Creek wasn’t like where the Pommie was from. When she came face-to-face with her first Blackfellas you’d think she’d spotted a spaceship. It was Davy Sugar, with Mick and Gil Smith. They’d called in to see Dad and to pick up a few things from the shop. Mum and Dad run a little shop at the station, just for the Blackfellas to use on their way to and from Marlu Hill and Warlawurru. They sell all kinds of stuff. Dad says it’s just for essentials. They sell cans of Coke, bread, soap, tins of veggies, burgers, ketchup, lollies, cigarettes, bullets, biscuits, toothpaste, toilet paper – just the usual stuff. Anyway, Davy, Mick and Gil were the Pommie’s first customers, and I don’t think they thought the service was that good.
When they all went to the shop, it was locked so they came to the house to find someone to open it. When the Pommie saw them, she didn’t know what to do. I was inside getting a drink of water so I said I’d show her. Mick, Gil and Davy all followed us over to the shop. Gil was a bit like Mick’s shadow. He walked just like his dad and he was about the same size and shape. I guess Mick was a pretty fit, strong fella in his day. Davy looked pretty short and kind of fat next to them.
Mick wore a hat – like a whitefella’s hat, a bit like Dad’s. He had a big, white beard and had a shirt and jeans on. Gil had a hat on too, but not like Mick’s. He was wearing one of those beanies and he had on his usual T-shirt and jeans. It looked like the T-shirt was from an op shop, or something. It was real faded. On the front you could just make out the words Midnight Oil.
Davy was different. He was always scruffy and he smelled funny, kind of like smoke and sweat, or something.
Mick didn’t say much. Dad reckoned Mick was an economical fella. He said Mick didn’t move unless he needed to. I guess he didn’t speak unless he needed to either. Davy was real friendly, but he kind of mumbled, so sometimes it was hard to hear what he said. He always did the talking when they were together. Mick just kept real quiet, except for saying g’day, of course.
Gil nodded at me and asked how it was going. I said I was OK and asked how he was. He walked over to the door and had a look around outside, like he was looking for something. As he walked back to the counter he noticed me watching him and he smiled a real big, toothy grin, so I smiled back. Jonny and Gil had been pretty good mates until Jonny went to boarding school. After that they didn’t see so much of each other – just when it was the school holidays. They’d go off together – I dunno really what they did. Jonny didn’t want me around if Gil was there. I hadn’t seen him for a while. His hair had got long. I could see it poking out from the bottom of the hat, so he looked a bit like a surfer.
Gil nodded at Liz, as if to say who’s the sheila? That reminded me that she was there. I told them Liz was our new Pommie house girl. She held out her hand for them to shake. Mick and Gil didn’t say anything. Davy looked at the Pommie’s hand and then back at her, before he shook it. She said, ‘Pleased to meet you.’ That made me laugh. I dunno why, just that no one else ever spoke like that, I guess. Davy asked if Liz was from London, so she explained she was from somewhere south of London. He didn’t know where that was, so he just got on with asking for what he wanted to buy from the shop.
Davy asked for everybody jam, but he had to say it a couple of times because we couldn’t hear him. The Pommie had found out what everybody jam was after she set fire to the kitchen, so that wasn’t any trouble. Then he asked for four cigarettes. The Pommie gave him four packs because she didn’t know we sold them separately. Davy got scared he was going to have to pay for four packs, but I sorted it out. Then he asked for a tin of mince, but the Pommie thought he said dinner mints – whatever they are. Then he wanted some bread and a kangaroo tail. The Pommie thought that was a joke until I showed her where we keep them in the freezer.
Davy said they’d stop off to see Dad and the fellas at West Rise. That was the water hole they were working at. Gil nodded at me as they left and said, ‘See ya around, Danny.’ They all got back in Mick’s beaten-up, old red saloon, which was covered in dust from the desert. The exhaust threw loads of black smoke out as they drove away, making us cough a bit.
When we walked back to the house the Pommie made such a fuss about them, I asked her, don’t you have Blackfellas in England? She said they did, but not like ours. She said the ones in England originally came from Africa or Jamaica – something to do with slavery. She said in England they had Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Africans, Arabs, Thais, Turks – everything, except Aborigines. I guessed that was what Bobbie meant when she said England was pretty crowded compared to Australia. That must have been why no Aborigines went there.
The Pommie asked me about Mick and Davy, so I told her about when Dad was a kid he used to go off with them, hunting kangaroo. I liked those stories. She was amazed by all that. I told her how Davy and Mick sometimes stayed at Cockatoo Creek Dam when life wasn’t Aboriginal enough in Warlawurru and Marlu Hill. Dad said he didn’t mind because they were decent fellas and the station’s sixteen-hundred square miles of desert, so there was enough room for us all. He put a water tank out there for them once, but one night they got real drunk and shot holes in it, so all the water ran out. The dumb Pommie smiled at that, but no one else thought wasting water was funny. I told her Dad was real angry about it, he didn’t speak to Mick for a while after that. Then one day Mick showed up at the station. He’d been out in the desert, hunting or something, and he’d noticed we had a problem with one of the boreholes. I had to explain to the Pommie how we get water from under the ground by drilling boreholes – we pump it out for the cattle. Anyway, if there’s a problem, it can be real serious. Dad didn’t know anything had gone wrong, so he was glad Mick had called in. Mick reckoned he’d give Dad a hand to fix it and afterwards they had a couple of bottles of the home brew in the garden together. I guess they were mates again after that. I liked Mick.
The Pommie and me were back inside the house then. As she got out the ironing board, she said, ‘So Mick’s a neighbour too?’ I told her the Crofts were our neighbours, not Mick. Mick just hung around in the desert when he got sick of things at home in Warlawurru. He didn’t have a house in the desert, so he wasn’t really a neighbour.
Sometimes Gil came with his dad. When Gil was little, Mick brought him to the station to play with Jonny. Mum reckoned Mick only did it because he wanted someone to baby-sit Gil. She said she felt sorry for Gil, being dragged about the desert with his dad and the other Blackfellas. Gil’s mum wasn’t around. She’d been killed in a car crash when Gil was little. Gil was in the car too – Mum reckoned it was a miracle he wasn’t killed as well. The car hit a tree a few yards off the Tanami Road. No one knows how it happened. Maybe a big red ran out onto the road, or a wild horse, or something. Gil doesn’t remember it – he was too little. Anyway, I reckon that’s why Mum let him come to play.
I tried to remember when I’d last seen Gil. I reckoned it was probably during the Christmas holidays when he called in a few times. Last I heard, he’d got a job at the shop in Warlawurru.
That night, while Mum was in the dining room, looking at the books for the station, I asked her why we needed the Pommie when she didn’t know anything about anything. Mum just said the Pommie would be fine once she’d got the hang of it. I asked how long that would take, but Mum didn’t know. I said I reckoned it would take for ever and that we should just fire her, like when Dad fired Olive Fish. She was the old govvie we’d had before Bobbie came. Miss Fish didn’t last long. She didn’t like us kids one bit – especially Jonny. She said he was a hooligan. We all reckoned she had a few kangaroos loose in the top paddock. I told Mum I reckoned the Pommie was the same. That was when Mum lost her rag and shouted, ‘For God’s sake, Daniel. Enough. Can’t you see I’m busy?’ I went to my room and decided I’d have to teach the Pommie a lesson.