This morning, in order to reach the place where I am now, I went a little out of my way. I took the shortest route from my house to the place that you people probably know as SOUTH ENTRY. That is to say, I walked from the front gate of my house due west and downhill to Salt Creek then uphill and still due west from Salt Creek to the watershed between Salt Creek and a nameless creek that runs into Darebin Creek. When I reached the high ground that drains into the nameless creek, I walked north-west until I was standing about thirty metres south-east of the place that is denoted on Page 66A of Edition 18 of the Melway Street Directory of Greater Melbourne by the words STREAM SYSTEM.
I could hardly doubt that I was looking at the place that was denoted in my map by the words STREAM SYSTEM. Yet I was looking at two bodies of yellow-brown water, each of which seemed roughly oval. When I had looked a few days before at the words STREAM SYSTEM, each of those words had been printed on one of two bodies of pale blue, each with a distinctive outline.
The body of pale blue on which the word STREAM had been printed had the outline of a human heart that had been twisted slightly from its usual shape. When I had first noticed this outline on the map, I asked myself why I had thought of a human heart twisted slightly when I ought to have been thinking of a body of yellow-brown water of a roughly oval shape. I recalled that I had never seen a human heart either twisted slightly or occupying its usual shape. The thing that I had seen that was nearest in shape to the slightly twisted heart was a certain tapering outline that was part of a line drawing of an item of gold jewellery in a catalogue issued by the Direct Supply Jewellery Company Pty Ltd in about the year 1946.
My father had five sisters. Of those five women, only one married. The other four women lived for most of their lives in the house where they had been children. In the years when I first knew my father’s unmarried sisters, who were, of course, my aunts, they kept mostly to their house. However, my aunts subscribed to many newspapers and periodicals and they wrote away, as they called it, for many mail order catalogues. During one of the summer holidays that I spent during the 1940s in the house where my aunts lived, I used to sit for perhaps a half-hour every day in the bed-sitting room of one of my aunts, looking through the hundred and more pages of the catalogue of the Direct Supply Jewellery Company.
The only gold object that I had seen before when I first looked through the catalogue had been the thin wedding ring that my mother wore, but I did not consider my mother’s ring the equal of any of the items in the pages that I looked at. I questioned my aunt about the many jewels that I had never seen: the gentlemen’s cufflinks and signet rings. I asked especially about the ladies’ rings and bracelets and pendants.
When I wanted to see in my mind the men and women who wore the jewels that I had never seen, I thought of the illustrations in the Saturday Evening Post, which my aunts subscribed to. The men and women in those illustrations were the men and women of America: the men and women that I saw going about their business whenever I looked away from the main characters in the foreground of an American film.
When I asked myself whether I would one day handle or even wear on my own body the jewels that I had never seen, I seemed to be asking myself whether I would one day live among the men and women of America in places far back from the main characters in American films. When I asked myself this question I seemed to be trying to see America from where I sat. When I tried to see America from where I sat, I seemed to be looking across seemingly endless grasslands.
When I sat in the cane chair in my aunt’s room, I faced north. By turning my body a little in the chair I was able to face north-east, which seemed to me the direction of America. If the stone walls of the house around me had been lifted away, I could have looked north-east for half a mile across yellow-brown grass towards a slight ridge known as Lawlers’ Hill. I could have seen beyond Lawlers’ Hill only pale-blue sky, but if, while I sat in my chair, I could have thought of myself as standing on Lawlers’ Hill and looking north-east, I would have seen in my mind yellow-brown grass reaching a mile and more north-east towards the next slight hill.
If I had wanted to think of myself as standing at the highest point that I could have reached if I had walked in any direction from my aunts’ house, I would have thought of what lay behind me while I sat in my aunt’s chair.
Behind the stone walls of the house was a paddock known as the Rye Paddock, which was about a quarter of a mile across. The fence at the far side of the Rye Paddock was a barbed-wire fence looking no different from the hundreds of barbed-wire fences in the district around. But that fence was a notable fence; that fence was part of the southern boundary of all the farms on the mainland of Australia.
On the far side of that fence the land rose. The land rose more steeply as it reached further south. The more steeply the land rose and the further south it reached, the less the land was covered by yellow-brown grass, but whenever I had walked on the rising land I had noticed yellow-brown grass still growing in tussocks, and I understood that I was still standing on a grassland.
About three hundred yards south of the southern boundary of the farm where I sat often with my face to the north or the north-east, the land rose to the highest point that I could have reached if I had walked in any direction from my aunts’ house. At that point the land ended. Whenever I looked at that point I saw that the land had a mind to go on rising and to go on reaching south. I saw too that the grass had a mind to grow on the land for as far as the land might rise and for as far as the land might reach to the south. But at that point the land ended. Beyond that point was only pale-blue sky, and beneath the pale-blue sky was only water – the dark-blue water of the Southern Ocean.
If, while I was sitting in my aunt’s room, I had thought of myself as standing at the high point where the land ended and as looking towards America, even then I would have thought of myself as seeing to the north-east only seemingly endless yellow-brown grass. If, while I was sitting in my aunt’s room, I had wanted to think of myself as seeing more than seemingly endless grass, I would have had to think of myself as standing at some impossible vantage point. If I could have thought of myself as standing at such a vantage point, I would have thought of myself as seeing not only seemingly endless yellow-brown grass and seemingly pale-blue sky but dark-blue water on the other side of the yellow-brown grass and, on the far side of the dark-blue water, the yellow-brown and endless grasslands under the pale-blue and endless sky of America.
When I asked my aunt where I might see some of the pieces of jewellery illustrated in the catalogue, she told me that her married sister was the owner of a pendant. The pendant had been a wedding present to my one married aunt from her husband.
My married aunt and her husband lived at that time about four miles north-east across the yellow-brown grass. My aunt and her husband sometimes visited the four unmarried sisters. After I had heard about the pendant, I tried often to see in my mind what I expected to see one day below the throat of my father’s sister in the same house where I had sat turning pages of illustrations of jewellery. I saw in my mind a gold chain and hanging from the gold chain a gold heart.
As a child I tried often to see myself as a man and to see the place where I would live after I had become a man. Often while I looked into the jewellery catalogue I would try to see myself as a man wearing cuff links and signet rings. Often while I turned the pages of the Saturday Evening Post I would try to see myself as a man living in a place that was like a landscape in America.
I was never able to see myself as a man, but I was sometimes able to hear in my mind some of the words that I would speak as a man. I was sometimes able to hear in my mind the words that I would speak as a man to the young woman who was about to become my wife. And sometimes I was able even to hear what the young woman would speak to me from close beside me.
After I had been told about my aunt’s pendant, I sometimes heard the following words as though they were spoken by myself as a man. Here is your wedding present, darling. And I sometimes heard the following words as though they were spoken by the young woman who was about to become my wife. Oh! A pendant with a gold heart. Thank you, darling.
When I had looked at the body of pale blue on which the word SYSTEM had been printed, I had seen in my mind the outline of a pair of female lips boldly marked with lipstick.
When I first saw such an outline of lips I was sitting in a dark cinema with my mother and my only brother, who was younger than myself. The cinema may have been the Circle in Preston or it may have been the Lyric or the Plaza or the Princess in Bendigo. The lips were on the face of a young woman who was about to kiss the man who was about to become her husband.
When I first saw such an outline of lips I had been watching the young woman so that I could afterwards see her in my mind. I wanted to think of her as the young woman who would become my wife when I had become a man. But when I had seen from the shape of her lips that the young woman was about to be kissed, then I had turned my head and had looked away from the main characters in the foreground. I had looked away because I remembered that I was sitting beside my mother and my brother.
In my aunt’s room, trying to see in my mind myself as a man giving a pendant as a wedding present, I sometimes saw in my mind the outline of the lips of the young woman who was about to become my wife. But as soon as I saw from the shape of the lips that the young woman was about to be kissed, I looked away from the foreground of my mind. I looked away because I remembered that I was sitting near my aunt and that the other three of my aunts were in their rooms nearby.
When I had looked at the outline of the body of pale blue that consisted of the body labelled STREAM and the body labelled SYSTEM and the narrow body of pale blue connecting the two – that is to say, when I had looked at the two larger bodies and the one smaller body that together comprised the body of pale blue labelled STREAM SYSTEM, I had noticed that the outline of the whole body brought to my mind a drooping moustache.
The first drooping moustache that I saw was the moustache of the man who was the father of my father and also of my father’s five sisters, four of whom remained unmarried. My father’s father was born in 1870 near the southern boundary of all the farms on the mainland of Australia. He was the son of an English mother and an Irish father. His Irish father had come to Australia from Ireland in about 1850. My father’s father died in 1949, about three years after I had looked at the jewellery catalogue in his house. He would have been in the house while I turned the pages of the catalogue and while I thought of myself as a man giving a wedding present to a young woman, but he would not have seen me where I sat. He might have walked past the door of the room, but even then he would not have seen me turning the pages of the catalogue, because my chair would have been to one side of the doorway. I preferred to sit in places where my father’s father was not likely to see me.
Whenever I have wondered why four of my father’s five sisters remained unmarried, I have seen in my mind one or another of the four women sitting in her room and turning the pages of a jewellery catalogue or of a copy of the Saturday Evening Post. I have then seen in my mind my father’s father walking to the door of the woman’s room and the woman turning her head and looking away from what she had been about to look at.
But the drooping moustache of my father’s father is not the only drooping moustache that I see in my mind when I look at the body of pale blue with STREAM printed on it and at the body of pale blue with SYSTEM printed on it and at the narrow body of pale blue connecting the two. I see in my mind also the drooping moustache of a man that I saw only once in my life, in about the year 1943. If the man had been still standing this morning where I saw him one afternoon in about the year 1943, I would have seen him this morning when I stood south-east of the yellow-brown water that was denoted by the body of pale blue and by the words STREAM SYSTEM in my map. I would have seen the man this morning because he would have been standing on the opposite side of the yellow-brown water from where I stood.
When I last saw the man with the drooping moustache, which was about forty-five years ago and near the place where I stood this morning, neither the man nor I nor any of the male persons around us saw a body of water either yellow-brown or pale blue in the place denoted by the words STREAM SYSTEM in the map of 1988. What we saw in that place was swampy ground overgrown by black-berries and with muddy drains leading into it. The drains ran downhill into the swampy ground from a shabby building of timber.
When I last saw the man with the drooping moustache in about the year 1943, he was standing near the shabby building of timber. The man was giving orders to a group of black and white fox terrier dogs and also to a group of men. Of the group of men receiving orders, three men were known to me by name. One was my father, one was a man known to me as Fat Collins, and the third was a young man known to me as Boy Webster.
I was allowed to watch the man giving orders to the dogs and the men, but I had been warned by my father to stand at a distance. Some of the men held in their hands hoses spouting water and some men held sticks for killing rats. The men with the hoses sent the water into holes under the shabby building. The men with sticks and the fox terrier dogs stood waiting for the rats to stagger out of their holes under the shabby building. Then the men with sticks would beat the rats, and the fox terrier dogs would fasten their teeth in the necks of the rats. The man with the drooping moustache, who was the owner of the fox terrier dogs, shouted often at the men with the sticks to warn them against beating the dogs instead of the rats. The man had to shout often at the men with sticks because Fat Collins and Boy Webster and others of the men were by legal definition not in full possession of their minds.
The shabby building with rats living in holes beneath it was a pigsty where about fifty pigs lived in small muddy pens. The liquids that drained from the pigsty downhill into the swampy ground that lay in 1943 in the place denoted by the words STREAM SYSTEM were partly composed of leavings from the troughs where the pigs ate. The food that was put into the troughs for the pigs to eat was partly composed of leavings from the tables where the hundreds of men and women ate in the wards of Mont Park Hospital on the high ground north-east of the swamp and the pigsty. Of the men who stood around the pigsty on the day that I remember, all except my father and the man with the drooping moustache lived at Mont Park Hospital. My father spoke of the men as patients and warned me to speak of them only by that name. My mother sometimes called the men, out of my father’s hearing, loonies.
The man with the drooping moustache gave orders to the patients only on that one day when he came to drive the rats from the pigsty. My father gave orders to the patients every day from mid-1941 to the end of 1943. During those years my father was the assistant manager of the farm that was part of the Mont Park Hospital for forty years until the cowyards and the haysheds and the pigsty and all the other shabby buildings were knocked down and a university was built in their place.
When no more rats seemed likely to come out from under the pigsty, Fat Collins and Boy Webster and the other patients began to aim the jets of water from their hoses at the dead rats lying on the grass. The patients seemed to want to send the dead rats sliding over the wet grass and downhill into the swampy ground. My father ordered the patients to turn off their hoses. I thought that he did this because he did not want the bodies of the rats to reach the swampy ground, but in fact my father only wanted to keep the men from wasting time. When the hoses had been turned off, my father ordered the patients to collect the dead rats in kerosene tins. The patients picked up the dead rats in their hands and carried the rats in kerosene tins down the slope that leads today to the yellow-brown water denoted by the pale blue in my map.
The outline of the bodies of pale blue resembles not only the moustache of my father’s father and the moustache of the owner of the fox terrier dogs. Sometimes when I look at the outline of the body of pale blue that comprises the bodies labelled STREAM and SYSTEM and the narrow body connecting them and also the two small bodies at either side, I see in my mind the item of women’s under-clothing which is called by many people nowadays a bra but which I called during the 1940s and for some years afterwards a brassiere.
On my way this morning from my front gate to the place where I am now, I went, as I said before, a little out of my way. I followed a roundabout route.
After I had stood for a few moments south-east of the place that I am going to call from now on STREAM SYSTEM, I walked across the bridge between the two largest bodies of water. I walked, that is, between STREAM and SYSTEM. Or I walked, if you like, across the narrow connecting part between the two cup-shaped parts of a pale-blue (or yellow-brown) brassiere (or bra).
I kept on walking roughly north-west up the sloping land that had been forty-five years ago the wet grass where Fat Collins and Boy Webster and the other men had aimed their jets of water at the dead rats. I walked across yards where rows of motor cars stood and past the place that you people know as NORTH ENTRY.
Just short of Plenty Road I stopped. I turned and faced roughly south-west. I looked across what is now Kingsbury Drive at the house of red bricks on the south- eastern corner of the intersection of Kingsbury Drive and Plenty Road. I looked at the first window east of the north-eastern corner of the house, and I remembered a night in about 1943 when I had sat in the room behind that window. I remembered a night when I had sat with my arm around the shoulders of my brother while I tried to teach him what a brassiere was used for.
The building that I was looking at is no longer used as a house, but that building is the first house that I remember having lived in. I lived in that building of red bricks with my parents and my brother from mid-1941 until the end of 1943, when I was aged between two and four years.
On the night in about 1943 that I remembered this morning, I had found on a page of a newspaper a photograph of a young woman wearing what I thought was a brassiere. I had sat beside my young brother and put my arm around his shoulders. I had pointed to what I thought was the brassiere and then to the bare chest of the young woman.
I believe today, and I may even have believed in 1943, that my brother understood very little of what I told him. But I believed I had seen for the first time an illustration of a brassiere, and my brother was the only person I could talk to at that time.
I was talking to my brother about the brassiere when my father came into my room. My father had heard from outside the room what I had been saying to my brother and he had seen from the doorway of the room the illustration that I had been showing to my brother.
My father sat in the chair where I had been sitting with my brother. My father lifted me onto one of his knees and my brother onto his other knee. My father talked for what I remember as a long time. He spoke to me rather than my brother, and when my brother became restless my father let him down from his knee and went on speaking only to me. Of all that my father said I remember only his telling me that the young woman in the illustration was wearing not a brassiere but an evening dress, and that a young woman would sometimes wear an evening dress because she wanted people to admire some precious piece of jewellery hanging from her neck.
When my father told me this he picked up the page of the newspaper and tapped at a place on the bare chest of the young woman, a little distance above the top of her evening dress. He tapped with his knuckle in the way that he might have tapped at a door that stood closed in front of him.
This morning when I remembered my father’s tapping with his knuckle at the bare chest of the young woman, I thought of the top part of the evening dress as being the body of pale blue labelled STREAM SYSTEM. I then saw in my mind my father tapping with his knuckle at the face of his father and also tapping at the yellow-brown grass where the dead rats had once lain before my father had ordered the patients to collect them in kerosene tins and to dump them in the swampy ground that was denoted, many years afterwards, by the words STREAM SYSTEM.
After I had looked at the building that was once the first house that I remember having lived in, I walked back to the slope of grass that had once been the place where the dead rats had lain but was now, according to my map, the bare chest of a young woman wearing an evening dress, the place where my father had tapped with his knuckle, the place where the young woman might have displayed a precious jewel, the face of my father’s father.
While I stood in all those places, I understood that I was standing in still another place.
As a child I could never be contented in a place unless I knew the names of the places surrounding that place. As a child living in the house of red bricks, I knew that the place to one side of me was Preston, where I sometimes sat with my mother and my brother in the Circle cinema. I had been told by my father that another of the places surrounding me was Coburg, which was the place where I had been born and where I had first lived although I had never remembered it afterwards.
Whenever I stood at the front gate of the house of red bricks and looked around me, I seemed to be surrounded by grasslands. I understood that I was surrounded finally by places, but grasslands, so I saw, lay between me and the places. No matter what place I heard of as being in this or that direction away from me, that place was on the far side of a grassland.
If I looked in the direction of Coburg I looked across the grassland that lay, during the 1940s, on the western side of Plenty Road. Where the suburb of Kingsbury is today, an empty grassland once reached for as far as I could see to the west from Plenty Road.
If I looked in the direction of Preston I saw the grassland sloping past the cemetery and towards the Darebin Creek.
If I looked in the opposite direction from the direction of Preston, I saw only the farm buildings where my father worked each day with the patients, but I had travelled once with my father past the farm buildings and the hospital buildings to a place where the land rose, and from there I had seen more grasslands and on the far side of the grasslands dark-blue mountains. I had asked my father what places were among those mountains and he had said the one word Kinglake.
After I had heard the word Kinglake I was able to stand at my front gate and to see in my mind the places on the far sides of three of the grasslands around me. I was able to see in my mind the main street of Preston and the darkness inside the Circle cinema. When I looked in the direction of Coburg I saw the dark-blue wall of the gaol and the yellow-brown water of Coburg Lake in the park beside the gaol. My father had once walked with me between the dark-blue wall and the yellow-brown lake and had told me that he had worked as a warder for ten years on the far side of the dark-blue wall.
When I looked in the direction of Kinglake I saw a lake among the mountains. The mountains around the lake were dark blue and the water in the lake was bright blue like the glass in a church window. At the bottom of the lake, surrounded by the bright-blue water, a man sat on a gold throne. The man wore a gold crown and pieces of gold jewellery on his chest and his wrists and gold signet rings on his fingers.
I have mentioned just now three directions that I looked in while I stood at the front gate of the first house that I remember having lived in. I have mentioned the direction in front of me, which was the direction of the place where I had been born, and I have mentioned the directions to either side of me. I have not mentioned the direction behind me.
Behind me while I stood at the front gate of the first house that I remember having lived in was the place where I described myself as standing on the first of these pages. Behind me was the place where I stood this morning looking at a body of yellow-brown water that had been denoted by a body of pale blue in my map, according to what I have written on these pages. Behind me was the place that was the slope of grass where the dead rats once lay; the place that was also the bare chest of a young woman who might have worn an evening dress so that she could display some precious jewel; the place that was also part of the face of a man with a drooping moustache; the place that was also a place just in front of the lips of a young woman who was about to be kissed. Behind me was still another place apart from those places. Behind me was the place that I came from this morning when I set out for the place where I am now. Behind me was the place where I have lived for the past twenty years – where I have lived since the year when I wrote my first book of fiction.
One day while I lived in the house of red bricks, I asked my father what place was in the direction that I have been calling just now the direction behind me. When I asked my father that question he and I were standing near the slope of grass that seemed to us then only a slope of grass that drained the water and other things from the pigsty into the swampy ground. Neither my father nor I would have seen in either of our minds bodies of yellow-brown or of pale blue.
My father told me that the place in the direction that I had asked about was a place called Macleod.
When my father had told me this, I looked in the direction that I had asked about, which was the direction ahead of me at that moment but which was the direction behind me when I looked in the direction of the place where I had been born, and which was also the direction behind me when I stood as I described myself standing on the first of these pages. When I looked in that direction I saw first grasslands and then pale blue sky and white clouds. On the far side of the swampy ground the grasslands rose gently until they seemed to stop just short of the sky and the clouds.
When I heard my father say the word Macleod, I believed he was naming a place that had taken its name from what I saw in the direction of the place. I saw in my mind no place such as Preston or Coburg or Kinglake on the far side of the grasslands in the direction that was in front of me on that day. I saw in my mind only a man standing on a grassland that had risen towards the sky. The man stood on a yellow-brown grassland that had risen towards the pale-blue sky and had come to an end just short of the sky. The grassland had come to an end but the man wanted to go where the grassland would have gone if it had not come to an end. The man stood on the farthest point of the grassland just beneath the white clouds that were passing in the pale-blue sky. The man uttered a short sound and then a word.
The man uttered first a short sound like a grunt. He made this sound while he sprang upwards from the edge of the grassland. He sprang upwards and gripped the edge of a white cloud and then he dragged himself onto the cloud. His gripping and his dragging himself onto the cloud took only a moment. Then, when the man knew that he was safely on the white cloud that was travelling past the edge of the grassland and away out of sight of the man and the boy on the slope of grass below, the man uttered a word. This word together with the short sound made, so I thought, the name of the place that my father had named. The man uttered the word cloud.
During the years when I lived with my parents and my brother in the house of red bricks between Coburg and Macleod and between Preston and Kinglake, I often watched the men that my father called patients. The only patient that I spoke to was the young man known as Boy Webster. My mother told me not to speak to the other men that I saw around the place because they were loonies. But she told me I was free to talk to Boy Webster because he was not a loony; he was only backward.
I spoke sometimes to Boy Webster and he spoke often to me. Boy Webster spoke to my brother also, but my brother did not speak to Boy Webster. My brother spoke to nobody.
My brother spoke to nobody but he often looked into the face of a person and made strange sounds. My mother said that the strange sounds were my brother’s way of learning to speak and that she understood the meaning of the sounds. But no one else understood that my brother’s strange sounds had a meaning. Two years after my parents and my brother and I had left the house of red bricks my brother began to speak, but his speech sounded strange.
When my brother first went to school I used to hide from him in the schoolground. I did not want my brother to speak to me in his strange speech. I did not want my friends to hear my brother and then to ask me why he spoke strangely. During the rest of my childhood and until I left my parents’ house, I tried never to be seen with my brother. If I could not avoid travelling on the same train with my brother I would order him to sit in a different compartment from mine. If I could not avoid walking in the street with my brother I would order him not to look in my direction and not to speak to me.
When my brother first went to school my mother said that he was no different from any other boy, but in later years my mother would admit that my brother was a little backward.
My brother died when he was forty-three years old and I was forty-six. My brother never married. Many people came to my brother’s funeral, but none of those people had ever been a friend to my brother. I was certainly never a friend to my brother. On the day before my brother died I understood for the first time that no one had ever been a friend to my brother.
During the years when Boy Webster spoke often to me he spoke mostly about firecarts and firemen. Whenever he heard a motor vehicle approaching our house along Plenty Road from the direction of either Preston or Kinglake, Boy Webster would tell me that the motor vehicle would be a firecart. When the vehicle proved to be not a firecart, Boy Webster would tell me that the next vehicle would be a firecart. He would say that a firecart would soon arrive and that the firecart would stop and he would climb into it.
In the year when my brother died, which was forty-one years after my family had left the house of red bricks, a man was painting the inside of my house in Macleod. The man had been born in Diamond Creek and was living in Lower Plenty, which means that he had been moving roughly west from his birthplace towards my birthplace while I had been moving roughly east from my birthplace towards his. The man told me that he had painted during the previous year the insides of buildings in Mont Park Hospital.
I told the man that I had lived forty-one years before near Mont Park Hospital. I told him about the farm that was now a university and about the patients who had worked with my father. I told the man about Boy Webster and his talking mostly about firecarts and firemen.
While I was talking about Boy Webster the man put down his brush and looked at me. He asked me how old Boy Webster had been when I had known him.
I tried to see Boy Webster in my mind. I could not see him but I could hear in my mind his strange voice telling me that a firecart was coming and that he was going to get into the firecart.
I told the painter that Boy Webster might have been between twenty and thirty years old when I had known him.
Then the painter told me that when he had been painting one of the wards of Mont Park Hospital an old man had followed him around, talking to him. The painter had talked to the old man, who said his name was Webster. He told the painter no other name. He seemed to know himself only as Webster.
Webster had talked about firecarts and firemen. He told the painter that a firecart would soon arrive on the road outside the hospital building. He told the painter about the firecart every few minutes and he told the painter that he, Boy Webster, was going to climb into the firecart when it arrived.
The painter’s father had been a tramways inspector until he had retired. The painter’s father had since died, but the long green overcoat and the black hat with the glossy peak that the painter’s father had worn as a tramways inspector still hung in a shed behind the house where the painter’s mother lived.
The painter took the long green coat and the hat with the glossy peak to Mont Park Hospital and presented them to the old man known as Webster. He did not tell Webster that the coat and the hat were any sort of uniform. The painter simply presented the coat and the hat to Webster and Webster put them on at once over the clothes he was wearing. The old man known as Webster then told the painter that he was a fireman. On the day before my brother died, I visited him in his hospital ward. I was his only visitor during that day.
A doctor in the hospital had told me that he was not prepared to say what particular illness had affected my brother, but the doctor believed that my brother was in danger of dying. After I had seen my brother I too believed this.
My brother was able to sit in the chair beside his bed and to walk a few steps and to sip from a glass, but he would not speak to anyone. His eyes were open, but he would not turn his eyes in the direction of anyone who looked at him or spoke to him.
I sat beside my brother for most of the day. I spoke to him and I looked at his face, but he would not speak to me and he would not look in my direction.
For much of the day I sat with my arm around my brother’s shoulders. I believe today that before that day in the hospital I had not put my arm around my brother’s shoulders since the evening in the house of red bricks when I had tried to teach my brother what a brassiere was used for.
From time to time while I sat with my brother, a woman in one or another uniform would come into the room. The uniform would be white or yellow-brown or one or another shade of blue. Whenever one of these women would come into the room I would wait for her to notice that I had my arm around the shoulders of the patient. I wanted to tell the woman in a loud voice that the patient was my brother. But none of the women seemed to notice where my arm was resting while I sat beside the patient.
Late on that day I left my brother and returned to my house in Macleod, which is nearly two hundred kilometres north-east from the hospital where my brother was a patient. My brother was alone when I left him.
On the following night I was told by telephone that my brother had died. My brother had been alone when he died.
At the funeral service for my brother, the priest said that my brother was now content because he had now become what he had been waiting for more than forty years to become.
On the Sunday after I had first thought of giving a pendant as a present to the young woman who was about to become my wife, the married sister of my father arrived at the house where I had sat looking at the jewellery catalogue.
One of my unmarried aunts asked my married aunt to show me her pendant. At that moment I looked at the part of my married aunt’s body that lay between her throat and the place where the top of her evening dress would have been if she had been wearing an evening dress.
My married aunt was wearing not an evening dress but what I would have called an ordinary dress with buttons at the front. Only the top button of the dress was undone, so that I saw when I looked at my married aunt only a small triangle of yellow-brown skin. I saw no part of a pendant anywhere in the yellow-brown triangle.
When my unmarried aunt had told my married aunt that I had been admiring the pictures of pendants in the jewellery catalogue and that I had never seen a pendant, my married aunt moved one of her hands to the lowest part of the triangle of yellow-brown skin below her throat. She rested her hand in that place, and with the ends of her fingers she unfastened the second-top button at the front of her dress.
From the time when I had first heard that my married aunt was the owner of a pendant, I had supposed that the main part of the pendant was of the shape of a heart. When my aunt undid the second-top button of her dress I expected to see, somewhere on the skin between her throat and the place where the top of her evening dress would have been if she had been wearing an evening dress, a tapering golden heart.
When my married aunt had unfastened the second-top button at the front of her dress, she pushed apart with her fingers the two parts of the front of her dress and she found with her fingers two sections of fine golden chain that had been lying out of sight behind the front of her dress. With her fingers my aunt lifted the sections of chain upwards a little and then she scooped into the hollow of her hand the object that had been dangling at the end of the sections of chain. My aunt then lifted her hand out from between the two parts of the front of her dress and turned the hand towards me so that the object at the end of the sections of chain lay in the hollow of her hand where I could see it.
I understand today that the object in the hand of my married aunt was a piece of polished opal whose shape was roughly oval and that the object would have been of several shades of blue and other colours as well. But my aunt showed me for only a few moments what lay in her hand, and while she showed me the object she turned her hand a little so that I saw first what I thought was an object all of pale blue, then what I thought was an object all of dark blue, and then, after my aunt had slipped the object down again behind her dress, only the yellow-brown of part of the skin between my aunt’s throat and the place where the top of her evening dress would have been if she had been wearing an evening dress.
Just before I began to walk this morning from Macleod towards the first house that I remember having lived in and the first view of grasslands that I remember having seen, I read something that brought to my mind the first body of blue water that I remember having seen in my mind.
I read in the pages of a newspaper that a famous stallion will soon arrive in this district. The stallion will arrive, according to what I read, from a famous breeding stud in the Vale of Tipperary, which is the part of Ireland where the father of my father’s father arrived from when he arrived in this country.
The famous stallion will be used for serving more than fifty mares at the Moornmoot Stud, which is at Whittlesea, on the road between Preston and Kinglake. The name of the famous stallion is Kings Lake.
The only married woman from among my father’s five sisters was the wife of a primary teacher. As a married woman she lived in many districts of Victoria. At the time when my aunt showed me her piece of polished opal of roughly oval shape, she and her husband were living about four miles inland from the place where I often sat with my back to the Southern Ocean and looked at the pages of a jewellery catalogue or of the Saturday Evening Post. The name of the place where my aunt and her husband lived is Mepunga East. In the same district is a place named Mepunga West. In maps of that district the word Mepunga appears only in the names of those two places.
Much of the text of The Plains was formerly part of the text of a much larger book. The larger book was the story of a man who had lived as a child in a place named Sedgewick North. If any map had been drawn of the district around that place, the map would have shown a place named Sedgewick East a few miles south-east of Sedgewick North. The word Sedgewick would have appeared only in the names of those two places.
The man who had lived as a child in the place named Sedgewick North had believed as a child that his district lacked what he called a true centre. Sometimes he used instead of the words true centre the word heart.
For some of the time while I was writing about the district around Sedgewick North, I saw in my mind some of the places around Mepunga East.
For most of his life my brother was said to be backward, but he was able to do some things that I have never been able to do.
Many times during his life my brother was able to travel in an aeroplane, which is something that I have never been able to do. My brother was able to travel in aeroplanes of different sizes. The smallest aeroplane that my brother travelled in contained only my brother and the pilot. My brother paid the pilot to take him through the air above part of the southern boundary of the mainland of Australia. While my brother was in the air he recorded by means of a camera and a roll of colour film some of what he saw around him. I did not know that my brother had been in that air until after he had died. After my brother had died, the prints from that roll of colour film were given to me.
Whenever I look nowadays at those prints I wonder whether my brother had become confused while he was in the air above the southern boundary of the grasslands of Australia, or whether the pilot of the aeroplane had tried to amuse or to frighten my brother by causing the aeroplane to travel sideways or even upside down through the air, or whether my brother had simply pointed his camera at what any man would see if he stood at the place in the air where the grasslands of Australia obviously have a mind to go.
When I look at those prints I seem sometimes to be looking at a place all of pale blue and sometimes to be looking at a place all of dark blue and sometimes to be looking at a place all of yellow-brown. But sometimes I seem to be looking from an impossible vantage point at dark-blue water and, on the far side of the dark-blue water, the endless yellow-brown grasslands and the endless pale-blue sky of America.
I have been reading to you from a draft of a piece of fiction. Every sentence that I read from the draft is a sentence of fiction. For example, I did not stand in front of any body of yellow-brown water this morning. I wrote one day last week the words that would cause you to believe, when I read them to you a week later, that I had stood a few hours earlier in front of a body of water in the grounds of this university.
I read these pages to you today as one way of explaining how most of my fiction is written. If anyone were to ask me today what method I use for writing my fiction, I would answer with a sentence whose last two words are the title of the piece of fiction that I have just read. I would say that I write fiction by following the stream system.
(Edited version of a presentation to staff and students of the English Department, La Trobe University, 1 July 1988; published in Age Monthly Review, December 1988/January 1989; reprinted in Velvet Waters, Melbourne, McPhee Gribble, 1990)