For a fearsome mistress she was to serve,
Because of her father’s blood.
Henry Lawson, ‘Because of Her Father’s Blood’
MATILDA
Matilda sat in her armchair in the corner, the balloons drifting about her feet as the crowd stared almost silently at the new figures on the television screen. I am lost in history, she thought. Tonight is history too.
But not the history that should have been.
She glanced at Nicholas, standing with a plastic cup of wine, watching as his government, his job, the life he had led for the last three years vanished.
My father would be up on a chair rallying them all now, she thought. No, Dad would have led an army as soon as it happened. We’d have stormed parliament behind him.
The words of the poem sang through her memory again. ‘Dad’s Poem’, though Henry Lawson had written it.
We’ll make the tyrants feel the sting
Of those that they would throttle;
They needn’t say the fault is ours
If blood should stain the wattle.
Would blood have stained the wattle across Australia if Gough hadn’t thundered his plea for peace and the ballot box? Would the people have stormed parliament, torn apart the polling booths, insisting that the elected government remain in office?
Gough was good at thundering. Less so at reading the mood of the electorate. Jed was right. He should have given the voters passion, not facts and economics. Dad would have . . .
Dad would have got people killed. Jed could have been killed. Nicholas, who would have been there too, a loyal man even if he was no passionate leader. Dead. Nancy and Michael, because if Jed had fought, they would have been there too. Scarlett, bleeding in her wheelchair . . .
Would it have made a difference if the Australian people had rebelled? For it must always have come to the ballot box, in the end. Australia was a democracy. Should be a democracy, even when the people chose wrong.
If there had been battles fought, perhaps, just perhaps, as emotions ran high in triumph, Whitlam might have taken back his prime ministership. But he would have lost the next election even more surely than he had lost tonight’s.
I am wild, Damned Wild, at the wages paid for fighting with Freedom’s Foes,
And the awful blunders the people made when at last they Woke and Rose.
You were wrong, Dad, she thought silently. Wrong to urge violence in the shearers’ strike. If you have to fight your own people, you have already lost the battle.
Suddenly she was deeply, profoundly proud of her country. Because there hadn’t been blood spilled upon the wattle this last month. Australia had sorted this out, decently. If the opinion polls had been right, most voters thought the dismissal was wrong — Fraser was wrong; Kerr was wrong. But they no longer wanted Gough Whitlam, or his ministers, in charge of their nation. And those who did not agree would accept it.
Tonight was perhaps the proudest moment of her life, and the bitterest.
A new lot of figures appeared on the board. The swing against Labor in Gibber’s Creek was over fifteen per cent now. Even if every single vote yet to be counted was for Nicholas, the Country Party had won there, even more certainly than the Coalition had triumphed in the rest of Australia.
‘Ladies and gentlemen.’ Nicholas’s voice was quiet. It had no need to be louder, in this wreck of a celebration party. ‘The people of Australia have decided. So have the voters of Gibber’s Creek. To everyone here,’ his gaze took in Felicity, Nancy, Michael, Joseph and Blue, Flinty, Jed, standing next to Sam McAlpine, ‘I want to thank you, for three extraordinary years serving you in Canberra. I . . .’
Nicholas looked at Jed again. All at once Matilda realised he gazed at her because he did not have the words. It had always been Jed who had given Nicholas the words, even though it was he who wrote.
‘Three cheers,’ said Jed, not raising her voice either. It seemed to Matilda that the room focused on Jed more deeply than they ever had on Nicholas. The girl was a leader. Like me, thought Matilda. Or like I was. Twenty years ago . . . even five . . . it would have been me they turned to.
‘Nicholas and the Whitlam government have showed us what our nation can be.’ The silence deepened as Jed’s voice rose in passion. ‘We have only lost tonight if we give in! We must keep the candle lit, keep faith with ourselves and each other, and one day we will again have a government that leads this nation to fairness, compassion and a fresh vision for the future. If we keep faith, this election is a hiccup in history. Others will bring vision to Australian politics again, Labor Party members or not. But to the man who has represented Gibber’s Creek in the most tumultuous times in the politics of our nation,’ she turned to Nicholas, ‘thank you! To you, to Gough, to Tom Uren, Rex Connor, to every good person who fought so hard for us. Hip, hip, hurrah . . .’
‘Hurrah!’ the room echoed. ‘Hip, hip, hurrah! Hip, hip, hurrah!’
For a moment the room smiled. Matilda smiled. And then the momentary elation faded.
What about tomorrow, and tomorrow, seeing all that had been achieved nibbled away? Thompson’s Australian workforce discarded . . .
A violin’s scrape broke through the growing mumble of voices. Leafsong. Did the girl expect them to dance tonight?
No. For the music wove a sound that might be trees, led softly into ‘The Ballad of Joe Hill’, then climbed what might be a mountain.
How could you do that with music? Show them the land they loved, and what that land might be? And she realised she was hearing ‘Waltzing Matilda’, played as it never had been before.
A drum rolled. But it was thunder, not a drum. The rain crashed upon the roof, beating time to the girl’s music, or she tuned her song to it. And Matilda was back a thousand years, her ancestors listening to music like this, not in concert halls, but with children wrapped in blankets, the players’ faces black and orange shadows in the firelight, as Leafsong glowed brighter than the lights, the violin part of her, the music twisting and wrapping itself about them all.
This was hope, Matilda’s father’s vision, and hers and Jed’s too.
And all at once Scarlett was singing, the small voice high and true:
‘And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong You’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.’
Then it was over. The rain stopped just as Leafsong put her bow down.
Nearly a hundred years, Dad, thought Matilda. And we did not forget. Nor will the last three years be forgotten.
The music faded. But this time, the smiles stayed, with hugs and tears of hope and friendship.
Her land was safe. So were her people. I could die now, thought Matilda, watching as Nancy headed towards her, another glass of water in her hand. Darling Nancy.
But Jed was her true daughter. Jed, who would take up the weight of love and duty from here.
No, she wouldn’t die now. Because if she died here, she would break the spell that the music held over each person in this room. And people might say, ‘It broke old Matilda’s heart when Whitlam lost.’
No. Her epitaph should read: She kept living, after Tommy died, to see her vision made real. Land rights, women’s rights, children’s rights.
And now, she thought, I have finally earned the right to die.