Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 1 December 1943
School Bonfire Success
By Elaine Sampson, aged eleven and a third
Last night our school had a bonfire night. We made a big scarecrow called Hitler from Joey Marshall’s dad’s old trousers and shirt and lots of straw. We used black paper for the moustache and hair and flour-paste glue. We all brought sticks from home.
We each paid a penny to take a ticket to see who would light the fire and Sharon Adams won but made a mess of it so Billy Bloggs did it for her. It took half an hour for Hitler to burn and we all cheered and roasted potatoes. Today anyone who gets kept in after school has to rake away the mess.
We raised two shillings and ninepence for the war effort, and Councillor Bullant said, ‘Well done, Gibber’s Creek Central School.’
DRINKWATER, 24 DECEMBER 1943
MICHAEL
Santa arrived in a dusty ute and with three days’ dark stubble below his white beard. He’d been dagging sheep for the past week, and still smelt slightly of sheep bums and lanolin.
Kids and their parents gathered in the shade of the oak trees as Santa handed out the gifts, one to each child, not just for those whose fathers were overseas or serving elsewhere, but a special hug for them. Good gifts too. Toys were as scarce as zippers and knicker elastic, but his mother had hired old Stumpy Farrel to make wooden rocking horses, cricket bats, tricycles and wagons for the children to pull. Anything that could be made of wood, cut from the farm, mostly she-oak with its red-gold sheen from up the gullies, soft enough to work with, hard enough to take rough use. The curtains from the spare bedrooms had been sacrificed to make dresses for the older girls, created by Mrs Barrington on her treadle sewing machine, inspired by the latest photos in The Sydney Morning Herald.
There would be no party tonight. No dancing. His mother had made the excuse that it was too hard for many of the families to get to Drinkwater and back at night, with petrol rationing, too late for kids to ride ponies or bicycles. Which was true, but Michael suspected the heart of her decision was the deepening grief and worry of their family and friends. It was easier to turn the annual Christmas party into a children’s afternoon tea than smile and dance.
But the trestles were still covered with the Christmas cloths, the silver still shone, the punch bowl was full. The plates were filled with afternoon tea: scones and pikelets, with sugarless jam from home-grown strawberries and peaches, cakes sweet with fruit too, fairy cakes with home-churned cream under their wings, thick-cut mutton and chutney sandwiches, corned mutton sandwiches, chicken and lettuce, and mock chicken, the egg and tomato and onion mix that didn’t taste like chicken at all, and that the fellows at school called ‘train smash’. The big CWA teapots were kept filled beside the rows of teacups — his parents and Mah and Blue had saved their tea rations for months.
Michael sat on the veranda. Around him, men talked stock prices or how to keep pumps going when there were no spare parts, comparing rainfalls, pitifully small. Michael glanced up at the sky, hoping, yet again, to see thunder clouds climbing over themselves on the horizon. It was bare of all but the silhouette of cliffs and trees.
But a prickle between his shoulder blades still said a storm might be building. He peered down at the ants that usually scurried between the veranda pot plants. None to be seen. Which meant they might, hopefully, be barricading their holes against the water to come …
‘Looking for the ants?’ Mr Clancy sat heavily in the squatter’s chair next to him.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘No need to “sir” me, son.’
‘Thank you.’ What was he to call him then? Mr Clancy didn’t say. Instead he moved restlessly in his chair.
‘Feel like a walk?’
Michael nodded. He followed the small dark man down the steps and around the Santa-less side of the house. For a moment he wondered if Mr Clancy would head down to the river, to check perhaps if the swan was there. It was, along with some of its offspring from the year before too. Michael suspected that with inland lakes drying up, the swan preferred the security of the backwaters of the river. Which did not affect its link with Nancy. Or that was what he told himself.
Instead Mr Clancy strode past the shearing shed, over to the horse paddock. He leant on the gate, watching Snow King’s great-great-grandson canter along the fence line, excited by the scents and sounds of other horses and strangers.
Michael leant next to him. Surprisingly the silence was companionable. Mr Clancy yawned. ‘Sorry. Long days. Too much to do and not enough hands to do it. You know how it is.’
Michael nodded, aware as he did so that he did not really know, but only guessed at the edges of the reality, insulated as he was at school for so much of the year.
‘You don’t have any Land Girls?’
‘No.’
The word was curt. Of course not, thought Michael, feeling he had put a size-fourteen boot in his mouth. Young women about the farm would only remind you all too much of Nancy.
‘We’re only staying for tomorrow, then I’d better get back to it. Need to lay pipe down from the creek up in the hills. The windmill shaft broke in the wind a fortnight ago and I can’t get the necessary parts.’
‘Would you like me to come over for a few days to give you a hand?’
The look on Mr Clancy’s face told him the answer, despite his careful, ‘You’re not needed here?’
They manage without me during term time, thought Michael. ‘They can spare me for a week or so. That’d be enough time to get the pipe laid?’
‘I reckon. Thanks.’
‘Maybe Dad could have a look at your windmill too.’
‘Your father?’
Michael laughed. ‘Dad was a pretty good bush mechanic before he became the industrialist, Mr Thomas Thompson. He fixed Mah’s washing machine last week.’ Someone at the factory could probably either fix or replace the shaft too, he thought. But what went on at the factory was classified, not even to be mentioned to Mr Clancy.
‘Thanks,’ said Mr Clancy again, still looking at the horse, not at Michael.
I’m doing it for Nancy, thought Michael. Then, no, not for Nancy. Even if he’d never met Nancy, he’d have made the offer. The man was a neighbour. He liked him. You stood by your own or laid pipe with them. This was simply what you did, as Mr Clancy would help in his turn, if he could.
‘Look.’ The older man pointed at the ground, at an ant’s nest, now covered with shreds of bark. ‘Thunderstorm’s coming. And rain with it. Hope we get it down our way too. Come on, the wife’ll be wondering where I’ve got to.’
They turned back. We haven’t mentioned Nancy, thought Michael, unsure whether to be relieved or saddened. But we have spoken of Overflow and ants. In a way he could not explain, that felt like they had talked about Nancy too.