We bumped along in the buckboard buggy, crammed in with our luggage and all manner of goods that had been ordered by people who live further out beyond York. The road was narrow, the countryside flat and dry with just a few clumps of trees here and there. The buckboard buggy had no roof or sides and the road was very dusty. Whenever we stopped, the cloud of red dust that the horses stirred up swirled all around us. By the end of the day our hair, our clothes, even our eyes and mouths, were full of it.
When the sun started to set we stopped beside the road for the night. Our driver unharnessed the horses and hobbled their front legs together, so that they could eat any grass they could find, but not go too far away.
The camp fire was soon blazing and our driver made tea with pungent leaves and water he carried in a drum specially fitted to the back of the buggy. He took a bucket of water to the horses and hung small bags of hay from each of their bridles.
During the night I woke with a start. I could hear chains clanking and feet scuffling in the dark and imagined a prisoner, escaped from Fremantle, come to rob us of all we had. Then I remembered the horses and laughed silently at myself.
I was just dozing off again when I felt warm breath on my face. I sat up quickly. It was only Susan. Her bed-roll was spread out on the ground next to mine and she had rolled over in her sleep. She was breathing in my ear. The stars were very bright in the dark sky and I was thinking we were lucky it wasn’t raining. In the morning I said this to the driver. He smiled.
‘No danger of that, miss,’ he said, offering me some of the damper he had cooked in the coals of last night’s fire. ‘Dry as a chip out here.’
By the time we reached the new wayside inn, all my bones were aching. We had bounced over rocks and ruts, twisted and turned to avoid fallen trees and been shaken about till my brains felt loose in my head. When I finally got down from the buggy, my legs were more wobbly than they had been after seven weeks at sea.
Mary had written about the inn and told us to stay there. Although it was only partially built it would save us going off the main track to the tiny settlement of Doodlakine with its five houses and one water tank.
Mother had arranged for us to spend the night with Mr and Mrs Fred Wilkins, who were building the inn. They had already finished some of the bedrooms and were very pleased to see us.
‘Do come in,’ Mrs Wilkins said. ‘It’s lovely to have some female company for once.’
‘Thank you,’ Mother said.
‘We heard that you had passed the crossing. The grapevine is very active out here,’ she told us.
I had not seen any grapevines and, in fact, couldn’t imagine that anything would grow in the dry, rocky country we had travelled through. Mrs Wilkins took us into an empty room.
‘I’m sorry it’s so basic,’ she apologised.
The walls were made with saplings, obviously cut from the straggly trees nearby. They were roped together and mud was slapped all over the outside to fill the gaps. Part of a corrugated iron roof had been added. The dirt floors had been swept until they were hard and clean.
‘It’s a struggle to get building materials this far out,’ Mrs Wilkins said. ‘But we think it will be a good place for an inn. Come and join us when you are settled.’
Once we had spread our bed-rolls on the floor of the room I asked Mother about the grapevines.
‘It’s just a saying, Clara,’ she said. ‘In Queensland we called it the bush telegraph.’
I knew about the bush telegraph, of course, but in Queensland people lived closer together and passed on any news or gossip whenever they met. We had just travelled for two days without seeing anyone else on the road, although I did see a cloud of dust away on the horizon. They must have seen our dust behind them and told the Wilkinses.
Mrs Wilkins cooked a meal for us and afterwards there was lots of singing and laughing. She played her piano accordion and Mr Wilkins started us off by singing ‘The Ship that Never Returned’. We all joined in for the chorus. Susan, who has a sweet voice, sang ‘I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen’ and Mother sang ‘Good Old Jeff’. The driver had lots of jokes and tall tales to tell. I laughed so much I forgot about my aches and pains. It was midnight before anyone even thought of going to bed.