Woody Creek had a few minor roads leading out from town but none that would loosely qualify as main roads. If you took the road alongside the railway line and followed it east for fifteen miles, you hit the road to Melbourne. A left-hand turn away from Melbourne took you northeast, and twenty-odd miles further on you came to Willama, a good-sized inland town.
Eighty-odd years ago, old man Monk had claimed land out the other side of town and named his property Three Pines, for the three big Murray pines growing alongside his gate. Two of those trees were dead and Monk’s property annexed now to Hooper’s land, but the road leading out there had retained the name. Three Pines Road started at the hotel corner, curved down past Hoopers’, past Macdonald’s mill, around McPherson’s bend, over the bridge and out to the better farming land in the district. Bryants were out that way, Don Davis, Hooper and a dozen more.
There was the stock route road, which cut a diagonal out to the Aboriginal mission and continued on into the back end of Willama — a more direct route if you had hooves. Then there was Cemetery Road, which started on the town hall corner, went out past the showground and cemetery, out past Duffy’s acre, past a handful of dirt farms and eventually on to some place.
The forest road, Gertrude’s road, forked off from the Three Pines Road a few hundred yards east of the bridge, promptly disappearing into the wall of trees that followed the creek, twisting and turning like a snake with a chronic bellyache. That road led out to where most of the logging was done. The bush beyond Gertrude’s land was honeycombed by timber tracks.
Charlie White, determined to die and go to where Jean was, had pumped up his bike tyres and pushed off that sunny afternoon, planning to take one of those tracks. They all led to the creek. His aim was to ride until he was too tired to ride any longer, then end his ride in the creek, clinging to his bike, the weight of which should hold him down. He couldn’t live without Jean, couldn’t grow old without her at his side.
‘Think about that poor Abbot family,’ his daughter said.
And he’d tried to think about them, but ended up feeling more sorry for himself. Jean’s death was yesterday’s news, sidelined now by murder.
‘Life goes on, Charlie,’ his son-in-law said. ‘People die, and those left behind just have to make the best of it.’
His bloody son-in-law giving him advice. His bloody son-in-law not taking a scrap of notice of him when he told him to let the shop rot. His bloody son-in-law, who had refused to get in behind that counter these past six years, now suddenly taking a liking to Charlie’s white aprons.
So let him have those aprons. Let him have that shop. Charlie wanted to die. For years folk had been telling him he rode that bike like a madman, that he’d come to grief one day. Today was that day.
As he made his right-hand turn off Three Pines Road, Harry Hall, transporting a load of railway sleepers, was making a left-hand turn out of the forest road. They hit head-on and Charlie and his bike took wing.
If there was a thought in Charlie’s mind, it was of Jean, waiting out there somewhere to catch him as he flew by. Another man would have died. Another man would have flown headfirst into a tree and knocked his brains out. Fate is a bastard. Charlie landed on his scrawny backside between two trees and slid into a blackberry bush.
Harry expected to find a dead man. He jumped from the truck and ran in the direction he’d seen Charlie fly — and was greeted by accusation.
‘You can’t do anything properly, can you, you useless yard of pump water?’
Harry untangled him from the blackberry brambles. He got him into the truck, tossed his buckled bike on the back, turned the truck around and drove down to Gertrude, who stopped collecting her eggs and helped get Charlie indoors.
Most of his injuries had been caused by thorns. He’d twisted his ankle, ripped the backside out of his riding shorts, but she could find no broken bones. She bound his ankle, removed a few thorns with her needle, dotted his scratches with iodine, then made him a cup of tea while Harry delivered his load to the station yard, delivered Charlie’s bike to the local garage, delivered the news to Charlie’s daughter that her father could be a bit late home tonight, then drove again down Gertrude’s track.
Charlie was talking, talking and blubbering, Gertrude sitting at his side, holding his hand. Harry sat outside talking to Joey, until Charlie was all talked out. Then he drove him home.
Elsie saw Harry Hall up at the boundary gate mid-week. ‘That kid is up to something, Mum,’ she said.
Then on the Friday, Joey saw that elongated form back at the gate.
‘Go up and see what he wants, Joey,’ Elsie said.
‘Stay away from him, love,’ Gertrude said.
On the Sunday morning, when Gertrude went out early to milk her goats, George Macdonald’s truck was backed up to her gate.
‘What’s he up to?’ Elsie said.
There was a good hundred and fifty yards between Gertrude’s house and her western boundary, and that gate shielded by a clump of saplings she hadn’t got onto cutting down.
‘Maybe he’s got his eye on one of us,’ she said.
She left Elsie giggling and walked up to see what that boy was doing. He was rolling a post off the truck’s tray. She watched it drop down, then saw him struggling to drag a rough construction off the tray and not speaking kindly to it while he struggled. His back to her, she crept close before announcing her presence.
‘Oh, you’re about already, Mrs Foote. I thought I might get it done while you had a bit of a sleep-in and you’d think the elves had been busy in the night.’
He’d made her a gate from timber off-cuts.
‘Whatever possessed you?’ she said.
‘I couldn’t get the flaming thing open when I brought Charlie down here. I thought I’d have to lift the old coot over it and carry him down.’
‘There’s a knack to it,’ she said.
‘Face it, Mrs Foote. It’s knackered.’
She laughed. It was well and truly knackered, and had been so these past ten years. She’d been meaning to do something about it. She had the money; it was just a case of finding the time. And now he’d done it. And he’d cut her two new gateposts, thicker through than he.
‘They’re beauties,’ she said, rolled one with her foot. ‘They’ll see me out, love.’
‘You’re only a chicken, Mrs Foote. I might need a bit of a hand getting them in, though. I think I gave myself a hernia getting them on the truck.’
She lent him a hand. It took longer to get the old gateposts out than it might take to get the new posts in, but they got them out with crowbar and shovel, making the post holes deeper, wider, as they worked. Elsie brought up mugs of tea and toasted egg sandwiches for breakfast. She stayed to watch that first gatepost dropped in, stayed on to watch the dirt rammed down with the back end of the crowbar.
He’d spent his own money on hinges and a latch for the gate, and Gertrude wasn’t standing for that.
‘I’m paying you for those and for your time, Harry.’
‘You’ll insult me, Mrs Foote.’
‘You’ll insult me if you won’t let me pay.’
‘Righto. Then I’m paying you for my breakfast.’
‘I’m paying for those hinges and latch, lad.’
‘Righto. Then I’m paying for dinner the other night — and for those eggs.’
Like a pair of two year olds arguing, but working like a pair of men while they argued, and Joey laughing at both of them and Elsie laughing too — and making a joke later.
‘Are we going to add lunch onto his bill, Mum?’
They ate greens and corned beef at two, ate a fresh baked loaf of bread between them, then at five that afternoon, they lifted and hung the gate, all four testing its swing, its latch.
‘You came down here and measured up for that,’ Elsie accused. ‘We saw you.’
‘I saw you too,’ he said and grinned.
Pale blue eyes, stubby red lashes, but something about the way those eyes looked at Elsie. Maybe Gertrude hadn’t been too far wrong when she’d said that boy had his eye on one of them.
He ate with them that night then stayed on for a hand of cards. He was telling them how he’d asked Moe Kelly about gate-building when Vern drove in.
‘You’ve got a new gate while I’ve been gone,’ he said.
They laughed and introduced their gate builder.
Vern had travelled home with his family and their guest, but apart from time spent on the train, he’d seen little of them. He’d dropped them off at a rough little weatherboard house bought, sight unseen, at Frankston, where he’d left them to fend for themselves, hoping a bit of discomfort might give them an inkling of what this depression was about, hoping it might be character-building. His character already well built, Vern holed up in a city hotel for those same two weeks, where he’d spent his days talking up Woody Creek timber to whomever he could.
‘I’ve got orders, promises of orders. With a bit of luck I should have the mill back in full production a month from now.’
Irene Palmer, Hooper’s maid, took the news of Vern’s city trip home to her mother.
‘Go around and see him, Tom,’ Mrs Palmer said. ‘He said he’d keep you in mind when he started hiring again. First in, best dressed.’
Vern took on Tom Palmer, and told him to keep his eye out for four more good men. Word got around fast in Woody Creek. Twenty turned up for those four jobs. Vern took on six.
Then Walter Davies, a Willama mill man from way back, came to town and took a room at the hotel. On his third night in town, he knocked on George Macdonald’s door. Some men were down and out; some were down but climbing.
‘I’ve been poking around out at your bush mill, mate. I lost the shirt off my back in ’31, but I’d like to have a go at getting that old mill back into business. I’m in touch with a timber yard in Melbourne I used to supply. They’re willing to put the money up, take a chance on me. If you’re willing to take the same chance, you’ve got my guarantee that you won’t lose on the deal.’
That mill had been rusting, rotting, for five years.
‘Go for your life,’ George said.
Six more men got work with Davies. It could be a month or more before they started cutting, but until they could, George would fill the timber yard’s orders. He took on a couple of extra men.
A few kids returned to school wearing new shoes, a few had a new frock or shorts. Nelly wasn’t with them. An inseparable foursome of little girls had become a threesome, and threesomes are uncomfortable when a school desk only holds two. But Nancy Bryant’s daughter had come home from Sydney, and Nancy’s granddaughter rode her bike into school each day. Mr Curry sat her with Gloria. He sat Jenny with Dora, and not once did he confuse their names.
The city police came and went, and came again, until one day they came no more. Nelly’s oldest brother left town. He should have watched his little sister. Ian, the second boy, refused to return to school. Grace Abbot had a nervous breakdown and spent three weeks away at a city hospital, but life went on.
Charlie White hadn’t developed a taste for living, but as the alternative meant dying, and he’d found he had no taste for that either, he reclaimed his grocer’s aprons and took back his shop. There was little pleasure in living without Jean, but he took what pleasure he could in baiting his son-in-law.
‘You gave old Betty Duffy credit! Any bloody fool in town knows not to give a Duffy credit, you one-handed mug of a man!’
At eight o’clock on the third Monday in February of 1935, the town lifted its collective head and turned to the near forgotten howls of George’s and Vern’s competing mill hooters. They kept it up for half an hour, neither one prepared to allow the other the final hoot, and women who had once complained of the noise walked out of doors to listen to the fine music, and men who hadn’t got lucky with work got up from the breakfast table, stopped milking cows, feeding chooks, to walk down to the corner, hands rubbing unshaven faces, tongues licking dry lips, hope in their eyes, though shading that hope with hands gone soft from lack of labour.
‘Unemployment is falling in the cities, falling slow but steady.’
‘The building trade is getting things moving.’
‘That Davies bloke from Willama has got some big orders they say.’
‘I wonder when Mick Boyle will start up.’
‘Old Mick is past it and young Mick never was a mill man’s bootlace.’