THREE

HOUSE GIRL NEEDED. That’s what it said in big red letters on the piece of card Mum was writing. Underneath, she put: “Job includes: cooking, cleaning, feeding chooks, pigs and calves, and looking after three children aged seven to fourteen on a Tanami Desert Cattle Station. Board and lodging provided. Fair rate of pay. If you’re interested, give us a call.”

Dad had said she should put a position vacant in the backpackers’ hostel at Alice Springs. He said, “One of those young Pommies might just be dumb enough to want to work for us.” There are a lot of Pommies in Australia traveling round, looking for work, and Dad reckoned you could pay them peanuts.

I reckoned it was a dumb idea. If Sissy couldn’t go back to school, I thought she should help out more, then we wouldn’t have to hire a Pommie house girl. I didn’t want some Pommie living at the station, working for us. I didn’t want anyone new there, making everything feel strange. It was bad enough all the baby stuff without someone new as well.

Mum had to take Sissy to the hospital in Alice because of the baby. She said Sissy needed to have a scan, so while she was there, she was going to put the job advert up on the notice board at a couple of backpackers’ hostels—they were the places where the Pommies stayed. She reckoned one of them might read it and phone up.

Because Timber Creek is a fair way from Alice, whenever anyone needs to go into town, they always have a list of things to get, and we always phone the Crofts to see if they need anything too. The list can include just about anything you can think of. There’s always food on it—fresh stuff we run out of first, like fruits and veggies, but there are other things, like spare tires, parts for the generator, feed for the calves, worming tablets, or bullets for the rifles. You name it.

Normally me and Emily wouldn’t have had to go, but this time Mum reckoned we needed new shoes. I didn’t want to go shopping; I wanted to stay at the station with Dad and the fellas. Usually I’d have been given one of Jonny’s old pairs of boots to wear, but I dunno where his last pair went. I didn’t want to ask anyone about that. I told Mum my boots were OK. A shopping trip to Alice with a bunch of girls was the last thing I wanted. I said she could just bring me a pair back, but she reckoned they were too expensive to risk getting the wrong size. The only good thing about it was it meant we’d get a couple of days off school.

While we were away, Bobbie had agreed to look after the house and the animals at the station. We had chooks, so we always had eggs; a few pigs for bacon; and the poddy calves that had been orphaned in the desert, we hand reared. They were all kept in sties, coops, and pens around the edge of the station. The house was in the middle, with the yard at the back. At the front there was Mum’s garden. It was pretty big—you could play cricket in it. It had a lawn, which was a bit bald and burned by the sun and round the edge there were a few plants. Mum was real proud of them. She called them survivors on account of how they were still living despite the drought. We’d had hardly any rain for ages, so we couldn’t afford to use the hose to water the garden any more. Instead Mum tipped the dirty water from the washing-up bowl onto the ground.

Mum had put the trailer on the back because we knew we would get too much stuff to fit it all inside the car. Driving all the way to town with a trailer on the back meant it’d take even longer than normal—at least four hours. Most of the journey was on the desert roads, which were just dirt tracks really. You don’t get onto the Stuart Highway until you’re just a few miles from town.

Sissy was oldest, so she got to ride in the front with Mum. I reckoned we should toss a coin, but before I could even get into an argument about it, Mum shouted at me, “Just be quiet and get in the back, will you?” I tried to explain I hadn’t even done anything wrong, but Mum didn’t let me get my words out. “Didn’t you hear what I said?” she asked.

Mum wasn’t like that before Jonny’s accident. We used to go places and do things. Sometimes we all went to Clear Water Dam to swim, or we all watched the TV together. Mum would wheel the TV into the dining room on a trolley so it sat at the opposite end of the table to Dad, like another person. It was something we always did on Sundays so we could watch this Pommie show called Last of the Summer Wine—it was one of our favorites. But after the accident, that didn’t happen any more. I guess no one wanted to laugh at the TV if Jonny couldn’t join in too.

As we bounced along the dirt roads I watched the desert change from sandy ground, covered in tufts of spinifex grass, to rocky outcrops where everything was brown and orange and dry. After a while it changed again to patches of yellow earth between scruffy-looking witchetty bushes and gum trees. The sun was high as we overtook a big red kangaroo. It was all on its own and I wondered where it was going.

Sissy had hardly said a word for what felt like weeks, but Emily made up for it. As we drove along, she must have asked a million questions about what the doctor would do to Sissy in the hospital, what a scan was, how long it would take, if she’d have to have an operation, and if she’d die. When she asked that, Mum stopped the car and turned round to talk to Emily. I thought about opening the door, jumping out and running away from them all, back to the station. I dunno what stopped me. As I kept my eyes fixed on the desert outside I listened to Mum telling Emily no one was going to die. “Sissy’s having a baby—the doctors just want to have a look and make sure the baby’s growing properly. That’s all.”

I was sat behind Sissy and I watched a tear fall off her cheek and run down the seat belt. Crying again. My heart thumped and I thought my chest was going to explode, but I waited until the car started moving before I took my inhaler out of my pocket and sucked on it.

As we hit the Stuart Highway, the sound of the tires changed. They sounded lighter. I felt my chest loosen—like I could breathe again. As we cruised into Alice, it felt a bit like we were somewhere completely new. I’ve never been overseas, but I reckon it felt a bit like we were in another country. There were tourists everywhere. They were easy to spot with their shiny sunnies. They all seemed to be wearing white shorts, vests, and thongs. There was the odd Blackfella bumming around too, begging or getting into the grog. As we drove out of town, past the creek, where the Blackfellas camped, I felt a bit excited. It’d been a while since we’d seen Aunty Ve—only once or maybe twice since the funeral.

I liked Aunty Ve, but she looked kind of bad. Her head was the only normal bit of her body, it poked out like a cherry on top of the rest of her. Her body made a shape like a big tear. When she opened the door and walked down to the car, it looked like there were parts of her body that had a life of their own. They were moving in a different direction to the one she was going in. The thin dress she had on looked too weak for everything she had underneath it. She had swollen, flabby, scabby ankles, which overflowed from her shoes, as though her legs were melting into them like candle wax. As her breath heaved and sucked at the air, she pulled a hanky out from her dress sleeve and dabbed at the sweat on her face, like it was only in small patches. “Thank God for air con,” she giggled in between gasps. It was like she hadn’t a care in the world.

Aunty Ve reckoned we had perfect timing because she had just taken some cakes out of the oven. It was funny because I don’t think I’d ever arrived at Aunty Ve’s when there wasn’t something real tasty just about to come out of the oven. She smiled and put her hand on Sissy’s face as she asked how she was. I reckoned Sissy would start to blub again, but she didn’t. She just shrugged. That’s when Aunty Ve said, “It’ll all be OK, you know?”

When Mum and Sissy came back from the hospital they had a little black-and-white picture that was meant to be of the baby—but it was rubbish. Sissy showed it to Aunty Ve who said she thought it was marvelous—the first glimpse of the next generation. Mum showed it to me and Emily. She kept pointing to where she said the baby’s head was—but I reckoned she’d got it wrong. It was just a load of black and grey blobs—there was no way that was a picture of a baby. I told her I reckoned there must have been something wrong with the camera or they’d printed it wrong. They all laughed, but I knew Dad would agree with me when he saw it.

After we had dinner, Mum, Sissy, and Emily went to the supermarket to get all the food we needed, while Aunty Ve and me went to the backpackers’ to put the job advert on the notice board.

Inside the backpackers’ there was a big mob of people coming and going with these big bags on their backs. There were some more watching TV in the next room and a few playing cards outside while they drank beer. I reckoned they were the Pommies Dad talked about. He said most of them were lazy bastards. I guess he was right, so it made me wonder why we wanted one to work for us.

Aunty Ve stuck the job advert in the middle of the board, between an advert for a car someone was trying to sell and a notice asking for people to share a trip to Uluru—that’s what the Blackfellas call Ayers Rock.

The next day, after we’d been to buy new shoes and stock up on a load of vehicle parts Dad had ordered, we said good-bye to Aunty Ve. She packed us off with enough cakes and food to keep us going for weeks, which was just as well because Sissy was hungry all the time. Mum reckoned it was because she was eating for two. Two big elephants, I guess.