My New Year’s resolutions are:
I will write in my diary every day.
I will not stress about going to boarding school next year.
I will not let Wes and Fez annoy me. (The yabby I found in my cornflakes this morning has already tested me on this one!)
I will pray for rain every day until the drought breaks.
No-one else in the family would write down their resolutions—probably scared they won’t be able to keep them—so I am writing them here.
Dad’s resolutions:
I will not arm wrestle with Bert Hartley (Bert dislocated Dad’s shoulder last night at the Hartleys’ New Year’s Eve party).
I will take my boots off before I come into the house. (Actually, I think these might be Mum’s resolutions for him.)
Mum’s resolutions:
I will not nag Robert about cursing and wearing his boots into the house. (Dad made her say this.)
I will take an hour off every Friday night to have a glass of wine out on the veranda and listen to Classic FM.
I will pray for rain every day until the drought breaks.
I will not curse when Mum is nearby.
I will make sure Mum and Dad don’t get any more special repair bills for my room at boarding school.
I will beat Dad at arm wrestling before I turn sixteen.
Sophie’s resolutions:
I will stop eating chocolate, chocolate biscuits, chips, ice cream, cake, puddings and any other foods that give me pimples.
I will file and buff my fingernails every day.
I will not let Justine Martin-Dodsworth pierce my bellybutton—no matter how much she nags me.
I will not stuff any more ball bearings up my nose.
I will brush my hair at least once a week.
Fez’s resolutions:
I will not break any bones this year.
I will not stuff any more ball bearings up Wes’s nose.
I will not call Blue ‘Ranga Girl’.
I will remember to feed the chooks … sometimes.
Smells like it’s time to sign off for today. Mum has just taken a golden syrup pudding out of the steamer and it’s begging to be eaten with bucket loads of cream and custard.
Sophie’s driving me mad. It must be something to do with turning fourteen last week and her new ambition to become a fashion designer. She’s all gushy and girly and has started reading women’s magazines!!!
We were trying to watch the cricket on TV this afternoon, but she kept on tugging at my arm and saying the dumbest things.
‘Oh, Bluuuue! Just look at the fabric this dress is made of! It’s simply gorgeous!’
Wes stuck his finger down his throat behind her back.
‘I’ll die if Mum doesn’t buy herself some new clothes this year,’ Sophie moaned as she shoved a magazine in my face. ‘Her white linen pants are so outdated. It’s such an embarrassment. What she really wants is a nice little pair of Capri pants like this.’
I thought what she really wanted was a new microwave and world peace!!!
‘What a fabulous hairstyle!’ Sophie said, just about dribbling on the page. ‘I’d commit murder to have hair like that!’
‘I’ll commit murder if you don’t shut up,’ Peter grumbled from the beanbag.
Sophie threw the magazine at him and walked off in a huff.
I felt a bit sorry for her, so later on I let her braid my hair and paint my toenails pink. It paid off because Sophie did the sheep run with me before dinner.
Only two sheep got stuck in the dam today and both are still alive.
Mr Ashmore gave us three pigs this afternoon—Bacon, Sausage and Salami. They are the fattest animals in the district. Mr Ashmore said they’re easy to look after because you just feed them scraps and leftovers. And when they’re so fat that they’re about to burst, you eat them.
The Ashmores are moving to Dubbo. They can’t take the pigs with them because they’ll be living in town. They haven’t been able to sell their farm. As Mum says, who’d pay good money for a piece of desert? Mr Ashmore shot all his sheep last week, because no-one else wanted them and he couldn’t just let them starve to death.
Bacon, Sausage and Salami don’t seem to mind the change. They’ve made themselves at home on our veranda—right near the kitchen door. Fluffles looks a bit put out.
Wesley and Finlay, the grossest seven-year-olds on earth, found two dead rats in the shed today. Thankfully, Salami knocked Wes over and ate his rat before he got to the house, but Fez managed to keep the other rat safe.
They came into the lounge room and laid the dead rat on the coffee table right next to my hot chocolate and toast. Yuck!!!
‘We’re gunna do something really cool with it, Blue,’ said Wes.
They sat staring at the rat, scratching their heads. Fez emptied his pockets onto the table, looking for inspiration—he had a broken Life Saver, two copper fencing nails, a bird’s beak (!), a pocket knife, an empty lolly container, seven live Christmas beetles and something brown and slimy.
All Wes had was a big rubber band and a daggy red hanky that Gran gave him for Christmas. He kept looking enviously at the slimy brown thing from Fez’s pocket.
Fez spread the hanky out over the rat and Wes’s eyes lit up.
‘Just a sec!’ he yelled and disappeared into the junk room. He came back with a pair of undies from one of Sophie’s old dolls. He used Fez’s pocket knife to cut a hole in the undies, so that when he put them on the dead rat, its tail could stick out. Then he tied the red hanky around the rat’s neck, held the rat up in the air and ran round and round the lounge room.
‘Look! Up in the sky!’ yelled Wes.
‘It’s a bird!’ cried Fez.
‘No! It’s a plane!’ said Wes, in a girly voice.
‘No! It’s Super Rat!’ they both yelled together.
Wes and Fez think everything they do is so funny. They laughed so hard that Wes snorted three ball bearings out of his nose that Fez had stuck up there on New Year’s Eve.
This is the sort of stuff we have to put up with all the time with Wes and Fez, the moronic twins.
I think Dad likes the pigs.
He doesn’t really take much notice of any of the animals, except when he’s working. He ignores Fluffles completely, even when she rubs up against his legs, and he says the dogs are not to be patted and played with, because they’re working dogs, not pets and we shouldn’t spoil them.
But today I caught him scratching Bacon behind the ear and I’m pretty sure I heard him call her ‘Old Girl’. It’s bad enough that Wes and Fez are insane, without Dad losing it too.
Super Rat made a surprise appearance at lunch time. He was hiding in the pumpkin scones. Mum was furious. Dad says Wes and Fez are high-spirited, but we all know that’s just a nice way of saying they’re complete maniacs.
Won’t be long before the dams are nothing but mud. More and more sheep are getting stuck when they go down to drink and they’re so weak from hunger they can’t pull themselves out again. Had to rescue four today.
We used to pump water up from the well when we didn’t get enough rain, but now the well’s dried up. That’s what happens when you don’t get rain for over three years!
I remember it rained four Christmases ago, because the house dam overflowed and water ran straight down our hallway, taking Wes and all our Christmas presents out the front door and half a kilometre down the driveway. Thankfully, we got most of the presents back. Unfortunately, some idiot (Peter?) rescued Wes and brought him home too. But I really can’t remember a decent downpour since.
Now there’s not a blade of grass to be seen. The paddocks are just bare dirt and even that looks like disappearing in the dust storms. All that the poor sheep get to eat is one lousy bale of hay a day.
Makes me feel guilty about scoffing lamingtons while I write this.
Dad gave Super Rat a serve this afternoon. Super Rat was hiding in his work boot. Dad swore (there goes his first New Year’s resolution!) and threw Super Rat as far as he could.
Super Rat flew heroically through the air, until his undies got snagged on the branch of a peppercorn tree.
‘Cool!’ said Wes.
‘Safety undies!’ said Fez.
Sophie dyed her hair today. It’s bright pink. She’s hysterical because she looks like a character from the Muppets, when she wanted to look like the auburn-haired beauty on page ninety-five of her Beautiful Woman magazine.
That’s what happens when you use red food colouring instead of hair dye.
It’s not easy for Sophie, living two hours away from any decent shops.
Mum was pretty understanding about it. She said she’d take Sophie to town to get it fixed up at the hairdressers before she goes back to boarding school.
Wes and Fez were not so understanding. They rescued Super Rat from the tree, stole the rest of the red food colouring and dyed Super Rat’s mangy hair bright pink.
Wes said, ‘Look, Sophie! You look just like Super Rat!’
Sophie burst into tears and ran into our bedroom, slamming the door behind her.
Fez said, ‘You’d think she’d be pleased, Blue. I’d love to look as cool as Super Rat.’
Mum, Sophie and I pulled five sheep from the dams today. Only two were still alive. Dad also shot two sheep. They were on their sides shaking, too weak from hunger to get up. He had to put the poor things out of their misery.
Dad drove straight back to the house and renamed the pigs—Doris, Mildred and Gertrude. He said he’d be damned if he was going to let anyone eat the only three healthy beasts in the district.
Today we discovered that the walls in Wes and Fez’s bedroom have glass mixed in with the mud.
We knew there was straw, horsehair, old sheep bones, barbed wire and stones in the mud walls, because every now and then a bit of wall crumbles off, leaving stuff sticking out.
I suppose people had to make do with whatever they could find back when Great Great Grandpa Weston built the house over a hundred years ago.
When we were little, we were terrified of going to bed at night because of the bones that would crumble out of the walls.
‘Mummy! Mummy! There’s a dead man hanging out of the wall above my bed!’
‘Daddy! Daddy! Great Uncle Tommy’s toes just fell onto my pillow!’
Peter used to tell us that the bones were the remains of some poor farmhand who Great Great Grandpa Weston murdered and plastered up inside the walls. He said that the mud crumbled off when the farmhand’s ghost tried to escape his mud wall prison.
I still find it a bit creepy sometimes.
Anyway, back to the good bit … Wes and Fez were fighting over whose bed Super Rat was going to sleep in that night, and Fez pushed Wes against their bedroom wall with all his might. Wes cut his bum on a piece of glass that was poking out of the wall and had to get seven stitches. Ha, ha, ha!
Mum got Mr Sweeney, the vet, to stitch him up because the nearest doctor is nearly eighty kilometres away.
Wes was bawling his eyes out the whole time because he was terrified that Mr Sweeney was going to put him down.
If only!
Woke up this morning covered in two centimetres of red dirt.
Sophie said now she knows what it feels like to be dead and buried.
We folded our quilts up carefully to carry the dirt outside, but I don’t know why we bothered. The whole house was covered in dirt anyway—floors, tables, lounges, shelves. Even the pictures on the walls had dirt stuck in the little grooves of the frames. There’d been a dust storm overnight and somebody’s paddock—maybe ours, maybe someone else’s from a hundred kilometres away—ended up in our house. It blew in under the doors and through the cracks around the windows.
Mum was crying when Sophie and I went in to her bedroom. Dad says Mum’s a toughy, but I’ve seen her cry a few times since the drought got really bad.
Even Wes and Fez must have realised how fed up Mum was, because Super Rat delivered a bunch of plastic flowers and tea and toast to her at about eleven o’clock.
It took us until after dark to get the house cleaned. We had a really late supper out on the veranda, but Mum didn’t eat a thing. She just fiddled with a piece of toast and mumbled something about endless dust.
Dad gave Mum a long hug and said, ‘Oh, well … I s’pose it could be worse.’
That’s Dad’s answer to anything bad.
A fire will sweep through the entire wheat crop a week before he’s due to harvest, and he’ll say, ‘Oh, well … I s’pose it could be worse.’
Crows will peck the eyes out of half the newborn lambs, and he’ll say, ‘Oh, well … I s’pose it could be worse.’
If the earth opened up and swallowed the house with Mum and all us kids in it, the sheep turned into maggots and a meteorite was headed straight for him, he’d probably just shrug his shoulders and say, ‘Oh, well … I s’pose it could be worse.’
Mum looked like she was going to cry again, but Doris, Mildred and Gertrude came snuffling around the corner making funny, gentle piggy noises and she began to laugh. Gertrude knocked a plate of crumpets onto the veranda and gobbled them all up.
Wes and Fez got tired of Super Rat’s lack of energy today, so they decided that he needed to learn to fly on his own. They nicked a fan belt from the machinery shed and used it like a slingshot to launch Super Rat from the roof. Sophie, Peter and I were all invited.
Super Rat flew through the air, his cape flapping heroically in the wind, until he splatted into the windscreen of Father O’Malley’s car as he arrived for a visit.
Fez laughed so hard that he fell off the roof and split his head open.
Wes laughed so hard at Fez that he doubled over and split the stitches in his bum.
Mum had to ring Mr Sweeney to come and stitch them both up, so she said he might as well bring Mrs Sweeney and stay for dinner with Father O’Malley.
After dinner, the adults talked for hours about the drought. Father O’Malley asked Mum and Dad and the Sweeneys if they’d thought about moving off the land!!!!
Father O’Malley is a nice bloke, but that was a really dumb question.
Mr Sweeney stared at his hands for a while, then said he’d die first.
BRAVO!
Dad said that his father was born at Hillrose Park, and his grandfather before that. He said the Westons are born with red dirt between their toes.
Mum said that explained the state of the carpet in the lounge room.
Sophie and I opened a packet of chocolate biscuits on the back veranda today, and next thing we knew Doris and Mildred were bolting across the back yard like two greyhounds after a bunny. They must have heard the rustle of the biscuit packet. I didn’t know pigs could run so fast!
Sophie’s hair is fading. Now it’s the colour of fairyfloss and she looks more like a pixie than a Muppet. I told her this, but she didn’t seem too happy. Instead of thanking me for the compliment, she told me she was sure my nose had twice as many freckles as it did this time last year, and no wonder because it’s wide enough to have a whole mural painted on it.
I thought that was a bit mean.
Got a postcard from Mat today. She’s down at the beach with her Gran and Pop, and won’t be back until the end of the holidays. I think all that fresh ocean air is going to her head. This is what she wrote:
Hi Blue,
Having a fab time here – the beach is to die for!
Yesterday I went to one of those fancy little manicure salons. Now my nails are blue with teeny-weeny palm trees on them – so cute!
I’ve become friends with a girl in the caravan next to ours. Her name’s Angelina and guess what? She’ll be going to boarding school in Bathurst with us next year! Isn’t that exciting?
Love,
Mat
Yuck!
There’s absolutely nothing exciting about boarding school.
Just because our school only goes to year six, everyone thinks they have to send their kids away for high school. It’s horrible.
Haven’t they heard of correspondence school? Or hiring a governess?
I never want to leave home. I’m sure I was born with some of that red dirt between my toes.
If I get sent to boarding school, I’m going to run away, like Judy in Seven Little Australians.
She runs away and walks for miles and miles until she makes it back home. Her dad gets really mad, but then she gets a disease called tuberculosis, so he forgives her and lets her stay. They all live happily ever after.
Well, almost. She gets killed by a falling tree in the end.
I want to be just like Judy.
Peter opened a packet of chips near the back door today and Doris and Mildred came sprinting across the yard. They pressed their snouts against the screen door and snorted and drooled.
Wes and Fez thought it was so funny that they grabbed a can of baked beans, walked about 300 metres down the driveway and started opening it. Sure enough, Doris and Mildred came running around the side of the house and galloped down the driveway towards the baked beans.
Wes and Fez had a great day getting the pigs to run from one end of the farm to the other just by shaking a box of cereal, scraping a fork across a plate, opening a jar of jam or cracking a walnut. Doris and Mildred are so greedy.
Gertrude is greedy too, but she’s too lazy to run after food. She just lies at the back door, waiting for someone to throw her some scraps from the kitchen. She even tries to eat Fluffles’ cat food, but Fluffles hisses and scratches until Gerty gives up.
Drove into Hardbake Plains for the monthly church service this morning. Went to put my good sandals on and they wouldn’t fit. My toes were hanging over the end by miles. I must have the biggest feet of any eleven-year-old this side of the black stump.
Gabby Woodhouse was dead jealous of Sophie’s pink hair. Gabby’s mad on hairdressing. She spent the whole church service trying to colour her hair pink with her little sister’s new felt-tip pens instead of listening to Father O’Malley and praying for the drought to end.
Wes and Fez spent the whole church service drawing billycarts on the back page of their hymn book. Mum’ll kill them if she finds out.
Four sheep rescued from the dams today and all still alive. Hooray!
Doris and Mildred have bionic hearing! Sophie peeled a banana near the clothesline this morning and Doris and Mildred appeared from nowhere before she took the first bite. HOW MUCH NOISE DOES PEELING A BANANA MAKE?!?
We got rain today. It clouded over, sprinkled for about ten seconds, the sky cleared and that was the end of that.
44°C today.
I feel so dehydrated. Can people turn to dust?
Mum took me and Sophie over to Dubbo today.
Sophie has blonde hair again. It looks a little bit dull now that we’re all used to it being pink. She wanted the hairdresser to dye it auburn, but Mum said it would look trashy. Like pink hair didn’t!!!
I got new sandals for my giant feet, a book and a pair of shorts. I wanted three books, but Mum didn’t buy a single thing for herself, so I didn’t think it would be fair to ask. Sophie got a pink bikini. Won’t the leeches have a field day on her belly when she wears that into the dam!
We ran into Mrs Ashmore in town. She said she’s going to start working at a solicitor’s office next week and won’t it be a novelty to have money in her purse? She seemed glad to be gone from Hardbake Plains!!! Some people don’t make any sense at all. She said Mr Ashmore misses the farm. Well, DUH!
Mum took us to a café for lunch and to the movies. Afterwards, she said we couldn’t really afford it but there had to be some fun in the middle of this bleeding drought.
I cried all the way home.
Got a whopper dust storm today. We couldn’t play outside and Mum was stomping around the house like a mad woman, plugging newspapers and bits of foil into the gaps around the doors and windows, so we went into the chicken coop to play Truth or Dare.
Sophie dared Fez to kiss Esmeralda on the head. Esmeralda is sitting on her eggs at the moment and has totally lost her sense of humour. Fez got a bloody nose, because Es managed to get her beak right up his nostril and took a chunk out of him.
Wes chose Truth and had to tell us the dumbest thing he’d ever done. It must have been hard for him to decide, because there were just so many things to choose from. Finally he settled on peeing on the electric fence—a SHOCKING experience!
Peter chose Truth too, and had to tell us the naughtiest thing he’d ever done at boarding school. He said it was accidentally setting fire to the dormitory curtains, when he and his mates were lighting their farts in the dark.
Wes and Fez cheered. Sophie tried to look disgusted, but burst out laughing.
Then Peter started to tell us about the time he and his friend Xiu put laxatives in the chocolate custard while the kitchen ladies were having a tea break. I told him to shut up. You’re only meant to give one Truth, not a whole speech. Anyway, I hate it when Sophie and Peter talk about boarding school, especially if it sounds as though they have fun there. How could they possibly like being away from Mum and Dad and the farm?
Wes and Fez were mad at me for stopping Peter’s story, so they dared me to sit out on the veranda until the dust storm was over. I was really mad at Peter and wanted to get away, so I did it. The others went inside the house to watch TV.
It was dreadful. I could barely breathe and I had to keep my eyes clamped shut. By the time the storm had passed, my hair was stiff with dust and my feet were buried in topsoil. When I blew my nose, mud came out!!!
All Mum’s washing had blown over to the shearing shed, where it was half-buried. Sophie’s blue-and-white banana bed hung off the top of the tank, and dirt was banked up against the trees and fence posts. A mob of dusty, skinny ewes wobbled past, bleating stupidly. They weren’t meant to be anywhere near the house.
I called out to Dad and he and Peter came out onto the veranda, pulling on their boots. We jumped in the ute and drove off to check the fences.
Dad sure swore a lot when we found the problem—not a hole or broken piece of wire in sight. The wind had blown dry tumbleweed up against the fence, then blown dust and dirt against the tumbleweed until huge mounds had formed. The sheep had walked up and over the fence on a ramp made out of paddock soil!!!
Don’t know why they bothered really. The grass is hardly greener on the other side of the fence.
This afternoon Sophie covered our bedroom walls with pictures of supermodels and daft blokes. She said they were not daft blokes. They were hunky movie stars and rock singers. I tore the pictures off the wall on my side of the room and stuck up pictures of harvesters, stud bulls and wheat crops from Dad’s calendar and told her to get a grip on herself. We lived on a farm, not in Hollywood, and who the heck did she think she was anyway?
Mum came in and sided with Sophie. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?!?
Mum said that the farm was not everything … that there were indeed other people, places and experiences out there in the world for us to enjoy … that Sophie was just taking an interest in normal things. that this was why it was so important for us to go to boarding school, so we could experience things beyond country life. so we could make healthy choices for our lives.
AAARRGGHH!!!
My own mother, a traitor!
I’ve started reading Seven Little Australians again. I read the first three chapters out loud to Gertrude and she seemed to be quite absorbed in it. Then again, it could have been the ginger-nut biscuits I was sharing with her that kept her interested.
Wes and Fez have pulled their bicycles apart and are making two billycarts. Don’t know how they’ll pick up any speed with them because there are no hills around here.
Sophie and I pulled three sheep out of the muddy dams today and then I got stuck! Sophie waded back in to pull me out and she got stuck too! You’d think the sheep would do something to help after all the times we’ve rescued them, but the stupid things just stood there and stared at us.
We had to wait nearly an hour before Mum realised we were missing. She and Dad rode over on the motorbike and pulled us out.
When I took my gumboots off at home, my feet were covered in leeches.
‘Cool,’ said Wes.
‘Leech Girl!’ said Fez.
If anyone else called me Leech Girl I’d deck them, but with Wes and Fez that sort of thing is a compliment.
I’m halfway through Seven Little Australians.
Helped Dad repaint the sign at our front gate today. He said he was sick to death of shooting sheep and watching things fall apart around here. Today was his day to make something better.
We started by painting the background of the sign a lovely creamy colour, and while that was drying we sat under the peppercorn tree and drank tea and ate ham and relish sandwiches.
My very first memory is of a picnic with Dad. We were in the shearing shed, and Dad sat me up on a bale of wool. I can still remember my little yellow gumboots, the sickly sweet smell of the wool, and the taste of devon sandwiches.
Dad and I got to wondering how the farm got its name. I mean, Hillrose Park is a really dumb name. For starters, there isn’t a hill for hundreds of miles around. Everything is dead flat. There aren’t any roses either. We’ve got geraniums, tumbleweed, thistles and catheads, but no roses.
Dad said that the Park bit actually makes sense, because we do park the car in the carport, we park the tractor and the harvester in the machine shed and we park our backsides at the kitchen table each morning for cereal, sausages and eggs.
Even so, Hillrose Park is not the most sensible name for our farm. I thought we should rename the property Geranium Run or Cathead Flats, but Dad said Hillrose Park was probably the name of Great Great Grandpa Weston’s home in England and we’d better honour tradition.
I got three quarters of the way through painting the letters on the sign, when Super Rat came flying through the air and knocked the paint tin off the top of the sign. It bounced off my hand and made me drop my paintbrush in the dirt.
I thought Super Rat was destroyed when he flew into Father O’Malley’s windscreen, but apparently he wasn’t. I can tell you now, though, that he is well and truly out of action! Dad saw to that.
We don’t have any more brown paint for the letters, so now the sign at our front gate says Hillrose Po (I didn’t even get to put the stick on the ‘a’!) with a blob running down below the ‘o’.
Wes and Fez found some black paint and finished the sign at the front gate. They added an extra ‘o’ and painted an arrow, so now the sign says Hillrose Poo with an arrow pointing to the brown blob of paint, which really does look like a poo.
They are still working on their billy carts and torturing Doris and Mildred, luring them all over the farm by shaking cereal boxes and rustling food wrappers. They said it’s fitness training. Fitness training for what?
You’d think with all that running Doris and Mildred would slim down a bit, but they seem to get fatter every day. I think Dad’s been sneaking them treats from the pantry. Meanwhile, the sheep and Mum seem to get skinnier every day. I’m sure the only thing holding the sheep’s bones together is their fleece. I don’t know what’s holding Mum together.
Got another postcard from Mat. She said she has kissed a boy on the jetty! She could have done the normal thing and kissed him on the lips. Ha! Ha! Ha!
I was about to tear the postcard up in disgust, but decided to give it to Sophie. I said that she should go live at the Sweeneys’ place. She and Mat could talk about boys and leave me in peace.
Finished reading Seven Little Australians. I cried when Judy died. She was so good to save her baby brother. If Wes or Fez were standing under a falling tree, there’s no way I’d risk my life to save them. In fact, I don’t think I’d even bother to yell, ‘Look out!’
It all makes sense now. Well, as much sense as anything Wes and Fez do could possibly make.
The twin tornadoes have been making pig chariots, not billycarts. They have rope harnesses for the pigs and little sticks with chocolate bickies dangling off them that they hover just in front of the pigs’ snouts. The driveway is the racetrack—three kilometres to the front gate and the Hillrose Poo sign.
They had their first races today. Wes raced with Doris. Fez raced with Mildred. Peter stood at the front gate with the finishing flag—a pair of Dad’s boxer shorts tied to a broom handle. Sophie blew an old plastic recorder as the starting signal. I sat on the tractor wreck halfway between the house and the Hillrose Poo sign and laughed my head off.
It’s amazing how fast those pigs will run if you dangle a piece of food in front of them.
It’s also incredible how high into the air a pig chariot flies when it hits a rock at top speed. Fez broke his collarbone, got two black eyes and grazed half his face off. He also won the first four races before he crashed, so he was pretty pleased.
Mr Sweeney said Fez should keep his arm in a sling and lay off pig racing for a few weeks until his collarbone mended.
Wes is really jealous of Fez’s black eyes. He’s been begging Peter to punch him in the eye all night. I offered to do it, but Mum wouldn’t let me.
Dad and Peter shot thirteen sheep today.
They didn’t say a word at dinner time. They didn’t notice all the little Australian flags we had stuck in the mashed potato.
Dad didn’t even say, ‘Oh, well … I s’pose it could be worse.’
I’ve taught Gertrude to carry the peg bucket to the clothesline! It took a loaf of bread, four crumpets and a whole chocolate cake to encourage her, but it was worth it in the end.
Mum was upset about the chocolate cake. We were going to the Sweeneys’ in the afternoon to play tennis, and she’d just baked it to take with us.
It was a bit boring at the Sweeneys’ house without Mat and Lynette there, but their cat had just had kittens, so Sophie and I played with them for a while. We also beat Mum and Mrs Sweeney six–one at tennis. We would have beaten them six–love, but I tripped over my big feet at a crucial moment.
Raced Wes in the pig chariots. Wes and Doris won because I was scared and kept pulling on the reins to slow Mildred down.
Peter was about to challenge Wes, but Doris gobbled up the chocolate biscuit on Mildred’s stick before the race began and Mildred got nasty. She reared up, throwing Peter out of the chariot, then turned around and bit his ear. Peter rolled around on the ground half-laughing, half-moaning with pain.
Fez gave Mildred a bag of chips as a reward.
Mum taught me how to make steamed golden syrup pudding today. I was so proud of it. It looked perfect and smelled delicious as I carried it from the kitchen into the dining room.
Gertrude must have thought it smelled delicious too, because she tore through the flyscreen on the back door, bolted into the dining room and knocked me over. The pudding splattered onto the floor and Gertrude gobbled up every last blob of it.
At least we still had custard.
Sophie, Peter, Fluffles and I went rat hunting in the hayshed this morning. Peter made me this great new slingshot. Didn’t get any rats, but we saw a very big brown snake. Dad always says the snakes are more scared of us than we are of them. All I can say is that there must be one extremely terrified snake out there this afternoon.
Mat comes home on Friday. Can’t wait to see her. She is my best friend after all, and maybe she will go back to normal when she gets back home among decent country folk.
Kissing a boy on the jetty. How could she? YUCK!!!
Wes and Fez have dug a hole right through their bedroom wall. I think they were looking for the murdered farmhand’s skeleton. They got carried away and took to the wall with Dad’s spade drill, and next thing they knew, sunlight was shining in through a hole in the mud wall. The hole is just big enough for Gerty to stick her snout through and beg for food.
Mum was furious and told them to go outside and race their pig chariots.
Don’t suppose she cares about Fez’s broken collarbone as much as she cares about the house. Then again, if she lets Wes and Fez continue their search for skeletons, they may do away with whole walls and then the house will collapse and we’ll all be squished to death. It is better that she sacrifice Fez for the sake of the rest of us!
All the poor suckers in the other half of the state go back to school tomorrow. Here, out west, we may have drought, mouse plagues, heat waves, dust storms and Wes and Fez, but we get an extra week’s summer holiday. Hooray!