‘It’s time to care,
Yes, it’s time.’
— from the 1972 Labor Party commercial
1 DECEMBER 1972
SAM
Sam’s gloved hand lifted another bit of elderly corrugated iron carefully in case a brown snake had taken refuge underneath. They were laying their eggs about now. Brown snakes were never what you’d call laid-back. This time of year they’d have their fangs into you quicker than you could spot them.
Which was why he wore boots, two pairs of socks, jeans and a thick long-sleeved shirt as well as gloves, and kept his face well above striking range as he rummaged through the rubbish dump. Brown snakes loved dumps as much as Sam did. Emptied garbage bins meant a brown snake rat banquet. And for Sam, a good rubbish dump was like Christmas, when you had no idea what Santa would leave in your stocking, or rather pillowslip, because Santa never stinted at Moura.
He’d already found an old chaff-cutter today, with its wheels intact. He could attach that to the cement mixer so they could turn it by hand, with no need to pay for a motor and its fuel. There was an unlimited supply of humans in the world to turn handles, but petrol was a finite resource.
Not that they mixed concrete at Halfway, but that lovely paste of strained cow manure and goat’s-milk yoghurt that became a bright green paint for the cottages’ inside walls was more easily made in a machine than in a bucket.
Eight sheets of galvanised iron, enough for an extension to the chook house. Fifteen wooden fruit boxes. Fruit boxes could be wired together to make shelves for books or crockery, or covered with cushions to make seats, wired horizontally instead of vertically to become a bed, topped with a homemade chook-feather mattress, or given ‘bush legs’ to make a table, covered with a patchwork tablecloth.
He’d also found three hessian sacks of old clothes, worn at the knees and collars, but with acres of good material in them.
And an old wool bale, only stained at one corner! Sam grinned. Wool bales were tough enough to make a front bench for Mr McNeil’s old ute, which Sam only needed another twenty dollars to buy. Of course the ute needed new brake linings, and a rear-vision mirror too, but all except the brake linings came free at the dump too.
Sam had used the richness of the Gibber’s Creek dump to help convince the others to buy land for the commune near his hometown. Not that they needed more reasons, as they all knew they would never get two hundred acres with creek and river frontage as cheaply elsewhere.
If their son wasn’t going to accept a respectable engineering job, Blue and Joseph McAlpine wanted him where they could see him, ponytail and all.
Or so he’d thought. He’d wondered, lately, if his parents’ offer hadn’t been as much to provide for Carol and Leafsong as it had been for him. Mum had needed a home and safety too, once, though her parents had been deeply loving, by all accounts, until their death.
Sam felt bad about Carol. Worse than that, he loved her, and Leafsong too, but as a protective friend, not as a lover, or partner in his life.
But Jed . . .
Sam sat back on a perfectly good though hideous Formica kitchen chair — was that why someone had thrown it and its five pristine companions away? — and thought about Jed Kelly.
He had been smitten by Jed Kelly the first time he’d seen her. Beautiful, vulnerable and fierce, and not remotely aware she was any of those things.
She had also been in love with a man Leonardo would have loved to paint, a romantically wounded handsome hero. Sam was blunt featured, and knew it. Jed hadn’t even noticed him when he’d grabbed the plate of chocolate slices to offer her.
But Matilda had noticed. She’d laid a claw upon his wrist and said quietly, ‘She fancies herself in love with young Nicholas,’ then winked at him and added, ‘for now.’
It was the first time a geriatric woman had ever winked at him. The first time one had given him advice on his love life too.
He hadn’t consciously waited for Jed. He had buried thoughts of Jed Kelly under ideals and plans for self-sufficiency, of using his body as well as his brain each day, and of changing the world by example, not by words.
Then there she’d been, looking beautiful and only slightly lost, getting out of her ridiculously expensive car at the commune, part of the Thompson clan, which was deeply entwined with his own. He had watched her scrutinise the commune; seen the moment she truly looked at it, instead of seeing the clichés. Visitors either saw Halfway to Eternity as the beginnings of an alternative society of peace, universal love and the abandonment of private property, or a refuge for dole bludgers, dropouts and potheads.
Halfway to Eternity was neither. None of its members had achieved peace, universal love or the abandonment of private property; nor were they likely to. Which didn’t bother Sam. The commune’s name was ‘halfway’, after all. As long as they were headed in the right direction — and were prepared to change course now and then — Sam was okay. Halfway to Eternity was just a step in his life, not the end.
But Jed was different these days. The things he’d loved before were still there. But now she seemed to fit the land, despite her clothes and car. Mostly, as they talked, he had sensed integrity, as deeply thought out as his own.
It hadn’t been easy, choosing a commune instead of doing what his university friends had chosen — donning dark suits to become project engineers for developments that ripped out the land’s heart, instead of working with it. But Sam had known not just what he wanted, but also what was right.
Carol believed in what they were doing too. But she hadn’t realised yet that while the commune had given her and her younger sister security and fun, she was not cut out to pick tomatoes and dig dunnies all her life. And yes, Carol had it hard, but Jed had known far worse. Yet there Jed was, hunting for the right life for herself, for those she loved, for Australia and the world, just like he was.
If he and Jed came together, he’d make sure he left her free to keep on doing what she felt was right. Two lives together in joy and commitment, just like his parents’ marriage, except in those bad years, Mum with the factory, Dad with his medical career. Too many people shrank in their marriage, wives making their husband’s careers their own mission, husbands accepting the social and family lives their wives planned for them, from the choice of sofa to choice of friends.
Not him and Jed.
He smiled, remembering her floating in the river, her hair the colour of wattle bark, her skin creamy as a dappled red gum. He took out that memory at least three times a day. They’d be so right together. And Mum and Dad would be delighted.
Very, very delighted. Suddenly he wondered if his parents’ gift of cheap land hadn’t been a ruse to get him together with Jed . . .
No, surely not. They’d thought he was involved with Carol back then, and there were a million other reasons, including the fact that his parents would never play matchmakers.
Matilda, on the other hand, was capable of doing exactly that. He had even overheard her murmuring one night to his mother that Jim’s marriage to Iris ‘. . . had not gone quite as I planned’.
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, except him and Jed. He’d seen the way she’d looked at that Nicholas bloke at the meet-the-candidate night — despite the fact Nicholas was engaged to someone else — and hated it. Jed deserved someone whose feet and heart were firmly planted in Gibber’s Creek earth, and he wasn’t thinking about the poor bloke’s prosthetic legs either. Nicholas Brewster was okay. He had guts. But he was not right for Jed.
So Sam would have to win her. Not with speeches or roses, partly because he wasn’t good at speeches and the only decent roses in Gibber’s Creek grew at Drinkwater. He planned to win her the way he planned to change the world, by doing things. Becoming part of her life, bringing her into his, till one day she actually looked at him without Nicholas-coloured glasses in the way.
And maybe Matilda Thompson might even offer him a few Drinkwater roses to help smooth the way. Whatever it took.
His face slowly slid towards his knees. He stood up, having just discovered why the set of six almost imperceptibly sloping kitchen chairs had never been sat on, and eventually thrown out. The jingle everyone was humming suddenly danced around him.
Sam grinned. He had waited four years for Jed Kelly, without knowing it. But now, it was time.