Doc and I spent more time in Marble Bar. From there we flew further inland to small communities, or sometimes to towns along the coast. We occasionally moved patients to Port Hedland but mostly we slept at Marble Bar. So did Swallow.
Some things were the same at Marble Bar, others were different. There were three women at the hospital: Matron Joan, Bonnie and Doreen. Bonnie called me Florence Nightingale, or Florence for short. She told me it was the name of a long-ago nurse. When Doc was away, Bonnie brushed me in the evenings and gave me dinner. Doreen reckoned Bonnie had a soft spot for me, but when I rested my nose on Bonnie’s arms, legs or belly, I found more than one soft spot.
Bonnie and Doreen were friends. They shared a small room near the kitchen. Most nights they let me sneak in and I slept beneath Bonnie’s bed. On Doreen’s side of the room there were face pictures pinned to the wall. Doreen said they were her family who lived in a place called Adelaide. When she woke, Doreen said, ‘Good morning,’ to each of them in turn. Sometimes I felt the faces smile back at us.
Doreen liked me and was friendly, but Bonnie loved me. There were no face pictures on Bonnie’s side of the room. Her father was an old miner who worked out of town. I’d met him once when he’d cut his foot. Bonnie had no other family and her eyes shone every time she saw me. Bonnie tickled my ears and said I was a welcome tonic for the patients. Her voice made that sound like a very good thing.
Joan was the hospital pack leader and she had a room of her own. Joan was kind but she was too busy to fuss over me.
The air in Marble Bar was so hot that it sometimes hurt to breathe. I spent most of the day lying under the hospital, panting. Then, as the sun set over the spinifex, I came out, shook off the dust and sat with the patients. Although Marble Bar sizzled through the day, as the stars came out and the moon rose, the night air became bitter. I huddled in a corner of the verandah shivering until it was time to sneak under Bonnie’s bed.
Each morning, Doc sat on the verandah steps, watching the clouds as he sipped a cup of tea. Then he stood up and said, ‘I’d better get moving.’ I watched to see whether Doc packed his lunch. If he did, it meant he was flying. I loved escaping into the cool sky with Doc and Swallow, but Doc didn’t always take me.
Some days, he said, ‘I’m sorry, Flynn, I’m heading to the leprosarium in Derby,’ or, ‘You can’t come this time, Flynn, I’ll be in military meetings.’
I snapped at insects all day in Marble Bar. They were everywhere. Flies hummed in a black cloud above the outhouse with its foul-smelling thunderbox. Tiny ants covered the hospital floorboards and when I hid from the mean dogs, I heard the steady nip-nipping mouths of white ants chewing away at the wooden stumps. Then at night, mosquitoes and moths circled the hospital’s flickering lights, and hidden in every crack were spiders, centipedes or scorpions.
All kinds of insects and creatures came to Marble Bar Hospital looking for water. The most frightening was a huge bungarra. I’d seen the tongue-flicking lizards on Elsie’s station, but none as big as this one. Bungarra ate birds and rabbits that weren’t much smaller than me. Whenever I heard the creature rustling about, I hid under the hospital. Bungarra never chased me, but something much smaller almost killed me …
The pain began as an itch on my leg. A biting itch. I rolled in the dirt, trying to scratch. That made it worse. The sun hurt my eyes, so I crawled into the darkest area under the hospital and lay there shivering as the day became cold, then suddenly hot again.
‘Florence, here’s your dinner.’
Bonnie’s voice was kind. My tail gave a lazy thump. I wanted to creep out to Bonnie, but I was too tired to move.
‘Come out for a cuddle,’ she pleaded.
I shifted my swollen leg and panted.
‘Come on, Florence, the patients are waiting for your visit.’
I flopped back into the dust. As my paws twitched, Elsie’s face filled my mind. I could almost smell her soap.
Bonnie used a broom handle to push food and a bowl of water towards me. I lapped the water and licked the meat, but couldn’t eat. My body ached. I drifted into a restless sleep and woke to the scuttle of cockroaches swarming over Bonnie’s meat. One scurried over my belly. My eyes felt blurry. I slept again.
A faraway voice woke me.
‘Flynn,’ Doc coaxed. ‘You need to come out.’
My tail thumped again.
Doc was kneeling beside the hospital. Bonnie crouched beside him. Their faces were worried.
‘Come out and let me take a look at you.’
I rolled onto my belly. My back was so sore …
Doc waited. ‘C’mon, girl, you can do it. Come.’
I took a deep breath and shuffled towards the blinding light.
‘Good girl, Flynn, nearly there …’
As I reached his arms, Doc wrapped me in a fresh-smelling cloth. He carried me into the surgery and lay me on a table. Bonnie wiped away the dirt and I winced as Doc ran his hands over my fur. He stopped at the top of my hind leg and turned to Bonnie.
‘You were right,’ he said. ‘It’s a tick.’
I don’t know what happened next.
When I woke, I was in a box by Bonnie’s bed. I licked my paws and belly. They stank of carbolic and Doc’s medicine bag.
I was hungry. I looked around and wriggled until the box fell over. Bonnie saw me staggering down the hallway.
‘Hello, Florence,’ she said. ‘I’ll bet you’re hungry.’
My tongue drooled as she poured warm broth into my bowl.
The days became hotter and I grew strong again.
After one inland flight, Doc and I returned to Marble Bar and found the humans digging long ditches in the ground. They called them air-raid shelters. I’m good at digging, so I jumped in to help. I snuffled and pawed the cooler earth, but people shooed me away. I slunk behind a tree to watch.
When the long holes were finished, Policeman Gordon drove his car onto the hill behind the hospital. He blasted his siren and everyone in town ran to their shelters. I joined in. It was great fun, better than any hide-and-seek game I’d played before.
A few days later, strangers in Army uniforms came to town on the Spinifex Flyer. Doc and I walked down to meet the train and watch men load crates and odd-shaped things onto trucks. I sniffed the boxes before the men drove out of Marble Bar into the desert. They smelt like Middle brother’s rabbit gun. People whispered that something was happening at a place called Corunna Downs.
‘It’s a secret,’ they said.
More trucks came.
Sometimes the strange men whistled and waved to me. I wagged my tail, watched their dust trails swirl into the air and wondered what they were doing. The strange men also whistled at Bonnie and Doreen. The nurses’ faces went red but they laughed and waved back. The men were strutting about like roosters, puffing out their chests to impress the nurses. I sensed that Bonnie and Doreen liked the attention, so I ran back and forth between the nurses and strange men, doing a few twists and twirls until they all laughed and began talking. The men introduced themselves, then one fellow who was unloading crates of hens looked about quickly before giving Bonnie two scrawny birds.
She made such a fuss of the silly cackling things, making them a special home under the hospital, that I wished I hadn’t brought the men and nurses together. I ran about the crates sniffing and woofing.
‘Stop that, Florence, or they’ll never settle.’
I sulked for a while but Bonnie didn’t notice. She was too busy checking to see whether the hens had laid an egg. I went to lie on a patch of Sturt’s desert peas and imagined the flowers’ weird blood-red eyes glaring at the birds. That made me feel better.
At last Bonnie came to find me.
‘Don’t be jealous,’ she said with a laugh. ‘I love you way more than those hens, but their eggs will be useful.’
I licked her hand and decided that hens weren’t so bad after all.
One morning a truck roared up to the hospital. A woman jumped out. She was trembling and smelt terrified.
‘Where’s the doctor?’ the woman cried as she rushed inside.
‘He’s in Derby today,’ Bonnie answered. ‘Can I help?’
‘Get the police. We need to warn everyone.’
Joan hurried in from the hand-washing room. ‘What’s happened?’
‘The Japanese are coming.’ The woman moaned. ‘One of their pilots swooped me a few hours ago as I was hanging washing.’
Bonnie gasped and I heard her kind heart beat faster.
Joan gave Bonnie a stern look, then asked her to take the truck and find Sergeant Gordon.
‘Quick as you can and don’t speak to anyone else. We don’t want to cause a panic.’
Bonnie ran to the truck. I followed and jumped in beside her. She was trembling. I needed to look after her.
‘Oh, Florence, what if it’s true?’ Bonnie asked as we bumped along the hospital track. ‘I’ve heard such terrible things …’
Sergeant Gordon was at his home. He grabbed his hat and drove us back to the hospital while Bonnie repeated what the woman had said.
‘Is she hurt?’ he asked.
‘I could only see grazes on her legs.’
While the woman told her story to Sergeant Gordon, Bonnie and Doreen were sent outside, but the windows were open. We stood below the shutters and heard every word.
‘I was hanging washing early this morning,’ she began, ‘on our property out on the road to Nullagine. It’s only me home at present with hubby working down at Corunna.’ Her voice sounded anxious.
‘It’s all right, Mrs Monty.’ Joan patted her hand. ‘We know what’s being built at Corunna Downs.’
Bonnie looked at Doreen and raised her eyebrows. Doreen shrugged and they moved their ears closer to the window. I did too.
‘Well, I was hanging my smalls,’ the woman continued, ‘when I heard this droning noise in the sky. It was a plane and I waved, thinking it was Len or perhaps one of the other pilots. But then the plane flew in really low. Something about it felt wrong. What’s Len playing at, I thought, then I saw the red circles under the wings. Oh my lord, I nearly died. The plane was barely thirty feet from me. I could see the whites of the pilot’s eyes. I fell to the ground thinking that’s it, I’m dead, but then, you’ll never believe, at the last minute the pilot smiled. He gave me a wave and a thumbs up, then he flew up and over me.’
‘Which way was he heading?’
‘Back towards the coast.’
‘And you’re sure he was Japanese?’
‘I’m not a fool, Sergeant.’
‘I’ll need to send a report,’ Policeman Gordon said. ‘Stay here and let the nurses check your cuts. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
Bonnie, Doreen and I scurried behind the hospital before he could catch us listening. The girls were shaking as they walked inside. Joan took them aside.
‘I know you were listening,’ she said. ‘And I can’t say I blame you, but not a word to anyone,’ she warned, ‘especially not the patients.’ Bonnie and Doreen nodded. ‘Now quick, back to your jobs while I tend Mrs Monty’s grazed knees.’
When the patients were settled, Bonnie and Doreen sat on the steps outside their room.
‘Will you evacuate south?’ Bonnie asked.
Doreen shook her head. ‘Not unless we all have to. My mother keeps asking me to go back, but I feel as if I’m doing my bit here. What about you?’
‘The Pilbara is my home. If the Japanese invade, I’ll go bush with Dad. We know plenty of old mines to hide in and we can live off the land for as long as it takes.’
I nuzzled Bonnie’s leg. Doc had promised to look after me, but living in the bush with Bonnie and her dad might be all right … until I found my Elsie.
The rumbling-sky season began and heavy air sucked at my chest. Bonnie’s chooks stopped laying. If one did cackle, she ran out to catch the hen’s egg before it hit the ground. Otherwise its runny part cooked. I lay under the Cool gardie safe in the kitchen, panting as water dripped down its side. Bonnie cut my fur short.
‘There you are, Florence,’ she said. ‘That should help keep you cooler.’
The sky rumblings became rain clouds. When at last the first fat drops fell, I ran outside with the humans, laughing and skittering. Heavy rain turned dusty hollows into creeks. I splashed away my fleas and grime and felt lighter.
The rain also brought flooded outhouses and bellyaches. The nurses were busy spooning castor oil into patients’ mouths. One day, Bonnie caught me and held my muzzle while Joan poured some under my tongue too. I licked my muzzle and whiskers but the bitter taste wouldn’t go away.
Doreen and Bonnie found a shiny tree in a cupboard. They decorated it and made paper chains to hang around the hospital. I licked the glue pot and crouched on the verandah, staring across the spinifex. Christmas felt sad without Elsie. Doc put on a strange furry suit and the patients sang. Elsie had taught me the same songs, but I didn’t dance.
More men came on the Spinifex Flyer then left in trucks. Everyone in Marble Bar was whispering about the place called Corunna Downs.
Some nights the men from Corunna came into town to visit the Ironclad Hotel. On those evenings, Bonnie and Doreen brushed their hair and put on fresh dresses. They made cakes and pikelets and took them to the pub. I followed, sniffing for the mean dogs. If it was safe, I sat outside the hotel listening to Big Les playing the piano while the nurses and Corunna men sang.
On the way home, Doreen teased Bonnie.
‘I reckon that Yankee pilot is sweet on you,’ she whispered.
Bonnie laughed. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, and I smelt her happiness.
One morning Joan spoke to Doc in a strange hushed voice. ‘They say operations will start soon,’ she said, ‘and the patients are worried we’ll become a target. What if Japanese fighter planes follow the US Liberators back to their air base?’
Doc sighed. ‘All we can do is hope that they don’t.’
I began hearing the booming sound of another kind of aeroplane. The ones humans called Liberators. They were as big as a house. When the Liberators flew over the hospital, their rumbling engines were louder even than the Lodestar that had carried evacuees to Port Hedland. Then one evening a group of the Liberators flew over Marble Bar, nosing up to the stars together.
‘Quick,’ Bonnie called as she heard the planes. ‘The Liberators are on their way.’
Joan, Doreen and some of the patients hurried outside. I heard Bonnie count the aeroplanes as they flew overhead. There were more than four.
The next morning, as the sky was changing colour, I heard the planes rumbling back. Bonnie was washing her hair at the outside tap. She stopped and I heard her count again.
‘One, two, three, four, five, six …’
She stood up, flicked back her hair and smiled at me.
‘They’ve all returned safely, Florence. Thank goodness.’ After that, Bonnie sat on the verandah steps every evening. She watched the sky as long shadows darkened the spinifex, waiting for the heavy-sounding planes. They always left just after dark and came back in the early morning. When Bonnie counted them returning, she didn’t always smile.