Hard Times for Hardgrove's
Edith Hardgrove walked barefoot along the main street of Wee Waa. She had wanted to wear shoes but was outvoted by older sisters Coral and Dorothy, being Coral's turn to wear them. In any case, the scuffed slippers were four sizes too big for Edith.
They passed the majestic Imperial Hotel, and glanced in cautiously, in cast their father, William Hardgrove, was inside. He was due home any day from his droving work, which often meant a drunken whipping for any of the eleven Hardgrove children. The hotel loomed above them, shadow offering relief on the parched gravel footpath. Edith noticed decorative cast iron lacework, sweeping balconies, and a small tower three stories above.
Drinking establishments had replaced churches for preferential location in small country towns. Inside, wealthy landholders drank in the comfortable gentlemen's bar, while the workers jostled noisily in the main bar. Aboriginals sprawled from the far doors and onto the sidewalk, from where they could be conveniently escorted to the police station lockup across the road. A light breeze billowed against the girl's summer dresses, which although hanging chastely below knee length, was enough to spur a drunken patron into song:
'Half an inch, half an inch, half an inch shorter
The skirts are the same for mother and daughter
When the wind blows each of them shows
Half an inch, half an inch more than they outer.'
"Vulgar man," Coral muttered, holding tight to Edith's arm and leading her past the rowdy mob.
"it's 1931 for goodness sake," said Dorothy, looking back at the drunken man. "When will country New South Wales move with the times."
Eight-year-old Edith fingered thin cotton. "it's the only dress I own," she said, almost teary eyed. "It was either this or a sugar sack."
The girls entered a sturdy shed, timber beams supporting galvanized iron roofing; the movie theatre.
"I hope it's not Rudolph Valentino again," said Dorothy, while filing through a pocket in search of pennies and pence.
Coral remained silent. She had been devastated a few years earlier, when Valentino died. Young women the world over committed suicide in separation from their beloved screen idol. The sisters confronted a poster near the ticket booth.
"Who is Al Jolsen?" Edith remarked. "Is he Aboriginal?"
"Aboriginals don't make movies,"said Coral. "They only play didgeridoo and do the dance of the Emu."
Dorothy read the poster, "The Jazz Singer. Do we really want to see a movie starring a blackfella? Times sure are changing fast in Hollywood."
"I don't mind," said Edith. "I might even run away with a blackfella when I grow up. They live better than us farmers these days."
Her sisters scowled, but it was true. Farm life hat gotten so bad that Aboriginals found solace in traditional ways, hunting and gathering, roasting kangaroo and snake, while the white settlers got by on bread and dripping, supplemented occasionally by rabbit or parrot stew. They paid the ticked boy and were ushered inside the dark theater
"What's Jazz?" Edith asked, as they sat down on hard wooden seats.
William Hardgrove danced a happy jig at the Cuttabri Wine Shanty, thirty miles away. The shanty has attained the first liquor license in the region, and Hardgrove looked like he had been there from day one. Hardgrove wore his beard long, pioneer fashion, in defiance of the popular new clean-shaven look. As a child, Hardgrove had heard tales of Fred Ward, aka Captain Thunderbolt, who Hardgrove wished to emulate.
Thunderbolt was a horse thief, hold up artist, and fugitive in the region in the 1800's. He never used a gun or physically harmed his victims. Hardgrove looked like Thunderbolt, and relayed stories of meeting him as a child. Thunderbolt had an eye for the fastest and most spirited racehorses, enabling him to outrun any policeman giving chase. Hardgrove's horse on the other hand, had abandoned him in search of feed and water during extended drunken neglect. Resemblance between Thunderbolt and Hardgrove ended at the bottom of his beard.
Swaying and dancing in abandon, Hardgrove stumbled, treading heavily on the foot of a local farmer, resulting in a stern push in the back. Hardgrove, always ready for pugalistic action, swung around, arm flailing an already clenched fist, missing his target, but punching a mounted boar head clean off the wall.
"Your head is next!" he hissed at the farmer, before being grabbed by strong hands of the men, jostled out the door, and unceremoniously flung down the steps. He staggered then tumbled, before regaining his feet and lurching away to sleep off his stupor in the old Cobb and Co changing stables.
The Hardgrove clan were some of the original settlers in Wee Waa. Grandfather Vincent, along with his wife Susan and seven children arrived in Australia in 1844. Three of those children, the older boys, were transported as convicts, punishment for a string of petty thefts in Lancashire, England. They sailed to Australia on The Neptune, an under-stocked and over-populated journey, but arrived safely in Sydney two months later.
The lure of land for re-settlement found the family making an arduous trek across the Great Dividing Range and on to Tamworth. A generation later, the inland rivers traversed by solid iron bridges, the family moved to the fertile if inconsistent floodplains of the Namoi River at Wee Waa. Good years were followed by many bad, as is life on the flat plain of North Western New South Wales, but the Hardgroves, a hardy lot, scraped together a living. Now, in 1931, an ever-deepening depression scraped whatever they had saved back into the hands of bankers and government.
The Hardgrove farm went belly-up, over mortgaged and under productive. Droving kept creditors temporarily at bay, but didn't put food on the table. Drink was William Hardgrove's escape, and anger the result, most of it festering until his return home a few times a year, when he would take it out on his wife and children. Usually the only gift they received was the welt from a new whipping stick. Hardgrove meanwhile slept, happily dreaming of Captain Thunderbolt, rebellion, and adventure.
Edith's twin brother Bob sat watchfully under the mottled shade of a gum tree, the rocky ground tempered at rivers edge by tufts of soft grass. The Namoi River flowed serenely past, accasionally granting a catch of yellowbelly, silver perch, or catfish. Sometimes a lucky fisherman would catch an eighty pound Murray cod, a cause for the whole family to celebrate.
Bob had never caught a Murray Cod, and today had only managed to net a few stringy crawbobs lurking in the shallows.
Many people lined the shore either side of him, times being tough and fish free. Together the fishermen swatted at flies, scratched ant bites, and waited out their elusive quarry.
Eloise, the matriarch of the Hardgrove family, kneaded wet dough with firm hands. The wood stove belched smoke into the already overheated two-bedroom cottage, home for thirteen persons. Eloise accepted her fate in good Catholic spirit, and wondered if her husband would come home today, tomorrow, or the day after. She had constructed a new bed for him just in case; two wheat bags sewn together and supported by a couple of poles.
Little five year old Delma and youngest Valerie doled out scarce water to tomato plants, carrying a bucket made from a kerosene tin. Edith sat in a corner fashioning a new set of cutlery from remnants of another old tin.
"Are we poor, mother?"she asked.
Eloise didn't slow from her kneading, "No...we are rich Edith. We have each other, we have God, and we have love."
"That's what I thought," said Edith, while filing sharp edges off a new spoon. Edith, like her mother, never complained about anything, going as far as accepting the love of her mother and whippings of her father with equal fortitude.
Bob burst in through the broken door, panting, a swollen bruise under his eye.
"My yellowbelly got stolen by the Johnson brothers!" he cried to all in earshot. Apparently someone had caught a large fish, which floundered vainly while swimming downstream, causing several lines to become tangled.
"I felt the nibble and the pull as I hooked it," Bob had protested.
"It's my catch," Billy Johnston argued. "It's on my line."
"How can you even tell? The lines are tangled."
"How can you tell?"
There was a scuffle, and amidst the chaos, the yellowbelly slipped from Billy Johnston's hand, plunged back into the river, and darted away. As retribution, he punched Bob hard in the face.
Eloise knelt down, floury hands examining Bob's bruised eye.
"No time for that now," Bod cried. "Father is coming home. I just saw him up the end of the road."
The call echoed throughout all corners of the small farmlet. "Fathers coming. Fathers coming!"
All the children stopped whatever they were doing and ran. They didn't run to greet their father, but ran to hide anywhere they could, knowing that if he was angry, the beatings would diminish as his energy waned. Bob hid under a broken cart in the stable, where some of the girls had already wedged themselves in amongst hay bales. Little Valerie held close to Eloise, ready to dive under the pleats of her mother's long dress. Edith ran out the back door toward the outhouse. She knocked frantically, and when the door opened, revealed three other girls already inside. The outhouse was the safest place, at least for the moment. It was the only door that could be locked from the inside.
The battered Model T came sputtering along, fumes belching, as wheels spun loose gravel and bulldust from soft hollows. Bart Cummings from the produce store sat bolt upright in the drivers seat, goggles speckled with dust. He bounced rigidly as the car traversed a paddock of cattle hoof indentations. The passenger slouched, oblivious to motion, body flung involuntarily from side to side, hat fallen off, coat dishevelled. Father was home at last, and fortunately for the kids, sound asleep.
Bart Cummings helped Eloise drag William Hardgrove inside and onto his new bed, where he continued his unconscious reverie.
"I bumped into him at Cuttabri," Bart mentioned. "Couldn't see his horse anywhere so thought I would do the favor and bring William home."
"Thanks Bart. Sorry to trouble you so much. And don't worry about the nag, she knows how to find her own way home."
"No trouble at all, Mrs. Hardgrove. William is a good customer of mine. He means well. It's a big job raising a family during these tough times. Where are the kids anyway?"
Eloise smiled mildly. "They are out and about doing chores," then called out, "children, we have a visitor. You can come out now." She re-arranged the furniture. "please sit down Mr. Cummings. Would you like to stay for a bite to eat? It won't be far away."
"Thanks for the kind offer, but I best push on," Bart replied. He had already noticed the bare pantry and meat safe. "Oh, and I found this in William's coat pocket." He handed Eloise a ten-pound note fetched from his own pocket. Eloise knew that William never returned home with more than they needed to keep the bank at bay. Bart caught her expression.
"Hold on to it. Buy the kids some nice lollies from my store. I'll be on my way Mrs. Hardgroves, before Old Grumbles wakes up."
Eloise saw Mr. Cummings off before venturing to the bedside to inspect her dishevelled husband. She kissed him softly on ragged cheek. "Sleep tight my love. See you in the morning,"
she spoke softly, pulling a curtain across for William's privacy.
"We're moving to Sydney," William Hardgrove announced the next morning at breakfast, a bearded grin from ear to ear.
"Sydney!" the children gasped. "Really...truly...we're moving to sydney?"
"Do they really have electric irons?"
"And refrigeration?"
"And fancy streetlights?"
"Can we visit the zoo...and Bondi Beach?" laughed Valerie.
"And meet cultured gentlemen...ride around in fancy cars?" chimed in Coral and Dorothy.
"We can do all that," beamed their father. "I've been speaking to a man from the government. They build houses for people like us, as a reward for our hard work. It's called the housing commission."
The children huddled around their father, hugging, smiling...jumping up and down..."Sydney...Sydney," they laughed over and over.
Eloise didn't turn to join the festivities, instead stirring porridge with renewed vigor. She spoke softly, a twitch in her otherwise calm voice, "What about the land William? You said we might try cotton next year. It might save the farm."
"Cotton will never work around here Eloise. Not enough water. Too hot.They would need to build a mighty dam upstream. It will never happen."
"But Sydney...how will we survive there? What will we do? We are country people."
"We are Hardgroves," William stared down Eloise through his bushy eyebrows."And the Housing Commission will give us a big house, two stories high. They call it a terrace house."
"Wow! Two stories high," shouted Bob. "That's almost as big as the Imperial Hotel."
"almost, Bob me boy. And you are going to be an educated city gentleman. Maybe even learn to read and write. Something I never got to do. What happened to your eye by the way?"
"Got into a fight with the Johnson brothers."
"Well, I hope you gave as good as you got."
"I sure did, father. They are probably still in hospital now."
Only Edith hung back with her mother, gazing forlornly out the window at the hazy, parched landscape.
"I don't want to go," said Edith. "I won't go."
"We will all be going," laughed her father. "One month from today, end of story."
"But William,"Eloise chimed in. "This is our home. This is our land. We don't belong in the city. City women smoke and work in men's jobs. They argue and swear like men, and ride around all footloose and fancy free."
Coral looked at her threateningly. "Don't be a wowser mother."
"Don't speak to your mother like that, girl, or it will be a whipping for you. I don't care if you are seventeen years old."
William continued, "It isn't really our land anymore anyway. I have to sell it to the bank. The debt is too big. Eleven children to feed. You understand don't you Eloise?"
"Yes William, I understand," Eloise resigned to their fate, gave up a losing battle.
"I feel sick," cried Edith, before rushing out the door.
"It's breakfast time," her mother called after her.
"I'm not hungry," Edith called back. She ran...and she ran.
"Well I'm starving," said William, pulling back a rickety chair. "What's to eat?"
"Porridge."
"No rabbit?"
"Maybe just a little for you, dear," Eloise spoke softly.
Edith continued to run, hurdling broken down fences, bare feet floating above broken earth, legs powering across the flat pasture. 'It's our land," she called to the heavens, and detoured toward the river, running like the wind. She followed the old logging trail, past stringy bark and willow, the rugged outcrop of the Nandewar Range in the distance. The logging track petered out into a single trail, as she jumped over broken stumps, brushing spiky foliage aside in her loping stride. "Our land, my home, never going to leave." She ran for hours, alone in the wilderness, skitterish animals dashing away into the undergrowth, her dress torn by barb and branch.
She stopped only to gulp water from a muddy rivulet before continuing, sometimes walking, then running again as she entered into a clearing. All day she traveled, powered by anger and sadness, into the foothills of the range. Tiredness and hunger finally began to take their toll, and as shadows lengthened, a weary Edith laid down, cradled her head in her arms, and slept.
The days are hot on the desert fringe, but nights cool down quickly. Edith though, dreamt of warmth as Mother Earth held her in embrace.
"The child is waking," a voice spoke in Edith's far away dream. She rolled over and noticed a fire glowing warm. Dark faces sihouetted by night, stared at her, eyes bright and teeth shining. Edith pulled back.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"Don't worry, little girl. We are your friends," the Aboriginal spoke with reassurance.
"Hungry?" He held out a stick draped with roasted kangaroo flesh.
"Thank you," Edith replied, the smell of the cooked meat sparking her appetite.
"What are you doing out here?" the elder asked.
"I ran away," Edith replied. "They are taking our land."
The Aboriginal looked forlorn. "Yes...they will take the land. They took our land too. And they took our children. Maybe you are one of the kids come back to us."
"Father says we have to go to Sydney because the bank owns the land now."
"Sydney was the first place the whitefellas took from us," said the man. "They put fences around everything and say they own it."
"I don't want to go to Sydney," Edith pleaded. "Mother says that this is God's country, and I even read in a school book, a man named Twain said that Sydney Harbor was made by God but Sydney is made by the Devil."
"Your mother is a smart lady."
"I can bring her here," Edith said. "We can stay here with you and learn how to live a natural way."
The elder smiled. "Natural is different for you whitefella. Our natural is outside, under the sky, the touch of the ground."
"But I don't want to go."
"See us here," the elder said, waving his hand over the dozen or so Aborigines. "We are all that's left of the Kamiloroi people. In some time we all have to go. But in another way we never go."
"What do you mean?"
"You are a smart little girl, and you can read. So try to read this." He picked up a palm full of dark ochre, and deftly sprinkled it into a small pool of water. The ochre took shape, forming the image of a group of people huddled around a fire, illuminated by the moonlight from above. Momentarily bold, the ephemeral vision vanished as ochre sand beneath the water.
"The people were there, and now they are gone," said Edith.
"Almost right," smiled the man. "The people are still there. We just can't see them anymore. We Kamiloroi will soon all be gone. But our spirit will stay here."
The elder looked up at the stars and pointed to one directly above. "Can you read that little girl?"
Edith noticed the sky above, the Milky Way trailing from horizon to horizon. "They will not disappear so fast," she said.
"Yes, they will last as long as the great spirit wishes. When you go to Sydney, you will see that brightest star, and if you follow the path of that star to the ground, you will reach here in your spirit. And we will be here too."
"Thank you sir. Thank you all." Edith smiled at her new friends.
An old Aboriginal woman spoke through tears in her red eyes, "You sleep here tonight, little girl. Tomorrow, you go home to your family. Don't ever let me see any more kids get taken away." She ran her fingers through Edith's curly dark locks. "For a moment, I thought you were my little one returned to me. From now on you can tell anyone that you are a member of the Kamiloroi Tribe. At least we have the same hair. She laughed, then cried, while hugging Edith to her bosom.
END
They passed the majestic Imperial Hotel, and glanced in cautiously, in cast their father, William Hardgrove, was inside. He was due home any day from his droving work, which often meant a drunken whipping for any of the eleven Hardgrove children. The hotel loomed above them, shadow offering relief on the parched gravel footpath. Edith noticed decorative cast iron lacework, sweeping balconies, and a small tower three stories above.
Drinking establishments had replaced churches for preferential location in small country towns. Inside, wealthy landholders drank in the comfortable gentlemen's bar, while the workers jostled noisily in the main bar. Aboriginals sprawled from the far doors and onto the sidewalk, from where they could be conveniently escorted to the police station lockup across the road. A light breeze billowed against the girl's summer dresses, which although hanging chastely below knee length, was enough to spur a drunken patron into song:
'Half an inch, half an inch, half an inch shorter
The skirts are the same for mother and daughter
When the wind blows each of them shows
Half an inch, half an inch more than they outer.'
"Vulgar man," Coral muttered, holding tight to Edith's arm and leading her past the rowdy mob.
"it's 1931 for goodness sake," said Dorothy, looking back at the drunken man. "When will country New South Wales move with the times."
Eight-year-old Edith fingered thin cotton. "it's the only dress I own," she said, almost teary eyed. "It was either this or a sugar sack."
The girls entered a sturdy shed, timber beams supporting galvanized iron roofing; the movie theatre.
"I hope it's not Rudolph Valentino again," said Dorothy, while filing through a pocket in search of pennies and pence.
Coral remained silent. She had been devastated a few years earlier, when Valentino died. Young women the world over committed suicide in separation from their beloved screen idol. The sisters confronted a poster near the ticket booth.
"Who is Al Jolsen?" Edith remarked. "Is he Aboriginal?"
"Aboriginals don't make movies,"said Coral. "They only play didgeridoo and do the dance of the Emu."
Dorothy read the poster, "The Jazz Singer. Do we really want to see a movie starring a blackfella? Times sure are changing fast in Hollywood."
"I don't mind," said Edith. "I might even run away with a blackfella when I grow up. They live better than us farmers these days."
Her sisters scowled, but it was true. Farm life hat gotten so bad that Aboriginals found solace in traditional ways, hunting and gathering, roasting kangaroo and snake, while the white settlers got by on bread and dripping, supplemented occasionally by rabbit or parrot stew. They paid the ticked boy and were ushered inside the dark theater
"What's Jazz?" Edith asked, as they sat down on hard wooden seats.
William Hardgrove danced a happy jig at the Cuttabri Wine Shanty, thirty miles away. The shanty has attained the first liquor license in the region, and Hardgrove looked like he had been there from day one. Hardgrove wore his beard long, pioneer fashion, in defiance of the popular new clean-shaven look. As a child, Hardgrove had heard tales of Fred Ward, aka Captain Thunderbolt, who Hardgrove wished to emulate.
Thunderbolt was a horse thief, hold up artist, and fugitive in the region in the 1800's. He never used a gun or physically harmed his victims. Hardgrove looked like Thunderbolt, and relayed stories of meeting him as a child. Thunderbolt had an eye for the fastest and most spirited racehorses, enabling him to outrun any policeman giving chase. Hardgrove's horse on the other hand, had abandoned him in search of feed and water during extended drunken neglect. Resemblance between Thunderbolt and Hardgrove ended at the bottom of his beard.
Swaying and dancing in abandon, Hardgrove stumbled, treading heavily on the foot of a local farmer, resulting in a stern push in the back. Hardgrove, always ready for pugalistic action, swung around, arm flailing an already clenched fist, missing his target, but punching a mounted boar head clean off the wall.
"Your head is next!" he hissed at the farmer, before being grabbed by strong hands of the men, jostled out the door, and unceremoniously flung down the steps. He staggered then tumbled, before regaining his feet and lurching away to sleep off his stupor in the old Cobb and Co changing stables.
The Hardgrove clan were some of the original settlers in Wee Waa. Grandfather Vincent, along with his wife Susan and seven children arrived in Australia in 1844. Three of those children, the older boys, were transported as convicts, punishment for a string of petty thefts in Lancashire, England. They sailed to Australia on The Neptune, an under-stocked and over-populated journey, but arrived safely in Sydney two months later.
The lure of land for re-settlement found the family making an arduous trek across the Great Dividing Range and on to Tamworth. A generation later, the inland rivers traversed by solid iron bridges, the family moved to the fertile if inconsistent floodplains of the Namoi River at Wee Waa. Good years were followed by many bad, as is life on the flat plain of North Western New South Wales, but the Hardgroves, a hardy lot, scraped together a living. Now, in 1931, an ever-deepening depression scraped whatever they had saved back into the hands of bankers and government.
The Hardgrove farm went belly-up, over mortgaged and under productive. Droving kept creditors temporarily at bay, but didn't put food on the table. Drink was William Hardgrove's escape, and anger the result, most of it festering until his return home a few times a year, when he would take it out on his wife and children. Usually the only gift they received was the welt from a new whipping stick. Hardgrove meanwhile slept, happily dreaming of Captain Thunderbolt, rebellion, and adventure.
Edith's twin brother Bob sat watchfully under the mottled shade of a gum tree, the rocky ground tempered at rivers edge by tufts of soft grass. The Namoi River flowed serenely past, accasionally granting a catch of yellowbelly, silver perch, or catfish. Sometimes a lucky fisherman would catch an eighty pound Murray cod, a cause for the whole family to celebrate.
Bob had never caught a Murray Cod, and today had only managed to net a few stringy crawbobs lurking in the shallows.
Many people lined the shore either side of him, times being tough and fish free. Together the fishermen swatted at flies, scratched ant bites, and waited out their elusive quarry.
Eloise, the matriarch of the Hardgrove family, kneaded wet dough with firm hands. The wood stove belched smoke into the already overheated two-bedroom cottage, home for thirteen persons. Eloise accepted her fate in good Catholic spirit, and wondered if her husband would come home today, tomorrow, or the day after. She had constructed a new bed for him just in case; two wheat bags sewn together and supported by a couple of poles.
Little five year old Delma and youngest Valerie doled out scarce water to tomato plants, carrying a bucket made from a kerosene tin. Edith sat in a corner fashioning a new set of cutlery from remnants of another old tin.
"Are we poor, mother?"she asked.
Eloise didn't slow from her kneading, "No...we are rich Edith. We have each other, we have God, and we have love."
"That's what I thought," said Edith, while filing sharp edges off a new spoon. Edith, like her mother, never complained about anything, going as far as accepting the love of her mother and whippings of her father with equal fortitude.
Bob burst in through the broken door, panting, a swollen bruise under his eye.
"My yellowbelly got stolen by the Johnson brothers!" he cried to all in earshot. Apparently someone had caught a large fish, which floundered vainly while swimming downstream, causing several lines to become tangled.
"I felt the nibble and the pull as I hooked it," Bob had protested.
"It's my catch," Billy Johnston argued. "It's on my line."
"How can you even tell? The lines are tangled."
"How can you tell?"
There was a scuffle, and amidst the chaos, the yellowbelly slipped from Billy Johnston's hand, plunged back into the river, and darted away. As retribution, he punched Bob hard in the face.
Eloise knelt down, floury hands examining Bob's bruised eye.
"No time for that now," Bod cried. "Father is coming home. I just saw him up the end of the road."
The call echoed throughout all corners of the small farmlet. "Fathers coming. Fathers coming!"
All the children stopped whatever they were doing and ran. They didn't run to greet their father, but ran to hide anywhere they could, knowing that if he was angry, the beatings would diminish as his energy waned. Bob hid under a broken cart in the stable, where some of the girls had already wedged themselves in amongst hay bales. Little Valerie held close to Eloise, ready to dive under the pleats of her mother's long dress. Edith ran out the back door toward the outhouse. She knocked frantically, and when the door opened, revealed three other girls already inside. The outhouse was the safest place, at least for the moment. It was the only door that could be locked from the inside.
The battered Model T came sputtering along, fumes belching, as wheels spun loose gravel and bulldust from soft hollows. Bart Cummings from the produce store sat bolt upright in the drivers seat, goggles speckled with dust. He bounced rigidly as the car traversed a paddock of cattle hoof indentations. The passenger slouched, oblivious to motion, body flung involuntarily from side to side, hat fallen off, coat dishevelled. Father was home at last, and fortunately for the kids, sound asleep.
Bart Cummings helped Eloise drag William Hardgrove inside and onto his new bed, where he continued his unconscious reverie.
"I bumped into him at Cuttabri," Bart mentioned. "Couldn't see his horse anywhere so thought I would do the favor and bring William home."
"Thanks Bart. Sorry to trouble you so much. And don't worry about the nag, she knows how to find her own way home."
"No trouble at all, Mrs. Hardgrove. William is a good customer of mine. He means well. It's a big job raising a family during these tough times. Where are the kids anyway?"
Eloise smiled mildly. "They are out and about doing chores," then called out, "children, we have a visitor. You can come out now." She re-arranged the furniture. "please sit down Mr. Cummings. Would you like to stay for a bite to eat? It won't be far away."
"Thanks for the kind offer, but I best push on," Bart replied. He had already noticed the bare pantry and meat safe. "Oh, and I found this in William's coat pocket." He handed Eloise a ten-pound note fetched from his own pocket. Eloise knew that William never returned home with more than they needed to keep the bank at bay. Bart caught her expression.
"Hold on to it. Buy the kids some nice lollies from my store. I'll be on my way Mrs. Hardgroves, before Old Grumbles wakes up."
Eloise saw Mr. Cummings off before venturing to the bedside to inspect her dishevelled husband. She kissed him softly on ragged cheek. "Sleep tight my love. See you in the morning,"
she spoke softly, pulling a curtain across for William's privacy.
"We're moving to Sydney," William Hardgrove announced the next morning at breakfast, a bearded grin from ear to ear.
"Sydney!" the children gasped. "Really...truly...we're moving to sydney?"
"Do they really have electric irons?"
"And refrigeration?"
"And fancy streetlights?"
"Can we visit the zoo...and Bondi Beach?" laughed Valerie.
"And meet cultured gentlemen...ride around in fancy cars?" chimed in Coral and Dorothy.
"We can do all that," beamed their father. "I've been speaking to a man from the government. They build houses for people like us, as a reward for our hard work. It's called the housing commission."
The children huddled around their father, hugging, smiling...jumping up and down..."Sydney...Sydney," they laughed over and over.
Eloise didn't turn to join the festivities, instead stirring porridge with renewed vigor. She spoke softly, a twitch in her otherwise calm voice, "What about the land William? You said we might try cotton next year. It might save the farm."
"Cotton will never work around here Eloise. Not enough water. Too hot.They would need to build a mighty dam upstream. It will never happen."
"But Sydney...how will we survive there? What will we do? We are country people."
"We are Hardgroves," William stared down Eloise through his bushy eyebrows."And the Housing Commission will give us a big house, two stories high. They call it a terrace house."
"Wow! Two stories high," shouted Bob. "That's almost as big as the Imperial Hotel."
"almost, Bob me boy. And you are going to be an educated city gentleman. Maybe even learn to read and write. Something I never got to do. What happened to your eye by the way?"
"Got into a fight with the Johnson brothers."
"Well, I hope you gave as good as you got."
"I sure did, father. They are probably still in hospital now."
Only Edith hung back with her mother, gazing forlornly out the window at the hazy, parched landscape.
"I don't want to go," said Edith. "I won't go."
"We will all be going," laughed her father. "One month from today, end of story."
"But William,"Eloise chimed in. "This is our home. This is our land. We don't belong in the city. City women smoke and work in men's jobs. They argue and swear like men, and ride around all footloose and fancy free."
Coral looked at her threateningly. "Don't be a wowser mother."
"Don't speak to your mother like that, girl, or it will be a whipping for you. I don't care if you are seventeen years old."
William continued, "It isn't really our land anymore anyway. I have to sell it to the bank. The debt is too big. Eleven children to feed. You understand don't you Eloise?"
"Yes William, I understand," Eloise resigned to their fate, gave up a losing battle.
"I feel sick," cried Edith, before rushing out the door.
"It's breakfast time," her mother called after her.
"I'm not hungry," Edith called back. She ran...and she ran.
"Well I'm starving," said William, pulling back a rickety chair. "What's to eat?"
"Porridge."
"No rabbit?"
"Maybe just a little for you, dear," Eloise spoke softly.
Edith continued to run, hurdling broken down fences, bare feet floating above broken earth, legs powering across the flat pasture. 'It's our land," she called to the heavens, and detoured toward the river, running like the wind. She followed the old logging trail, past stringy bark and willow, the rugged outcrop of the Nandewar Range in the distance. The logging track petered out into a single trail, as she jumped over broken stumps, brushing spiky foliage aside in her loping stride. "Our land, my home, never going to leave." She ran for hours, alone in the wilderness, skitterish animals dashing away into the undergrowth, her dress torn by barb and branch.
She stopped only to gulp water from a muddy rivulet before continuing, sometimes walking, then running again as she entered into a clearing. All day she traveled, powered by anger and sadness, into the foothills of the range. Tiredness and hunger finally began to take their toll, and as shadows lengthened, a weary Edith laid down, cradled her head in her arms, and slept.
The days are hot on the desert fringe, but nights cool down quickly. Edith though, dreamt of warmth as Mother Earth held her in embrace.
"The child is waking," a voice spoke in Edith's far away dream. She rolled over and noticed a fire glowing warm. Dark faces sihouetted by night, stared at her, eyes bright and teeth shining. Edith pulled back.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"Don't worry, little girl. We are your friends," the Aboriginal spoke with reassurance.
"Hungry?" He held out a stick draped with roasted kangaroo flesh.
"Thank you," Edith replied, the smell of the cooked meat sparking her appetite.
"What are you doing out here?" the elder asked.
"I ran away," Edith replied. "They are taking our land."
The Aboriginal looked forlorn. "Yes...they will take the land. They took our land too. And they took our children. Maybe you are one of the kids come back to us."
"Father says we have to go to Sydney because the bank owns the land now."
"Sydney was the first place the whitefellas took from us," said the man. "They put fences around everything and say they own it."
"I don't want to go to Sydney," Edith pleaded. "Mother says that this is God's country, and I even read in a school book, a man named Twain said that Sydney Harbor was made by God but Sydney is made by the Devil."
"Your mother is a smart lady."
"I can bring her here," Edith said. "We can stay here with you and learn how to live a natural way."
The elder smiled. "Natural is different for you whitefella. Our natural is outside, under the sky, the touch of the ground."
"But I don't want to go."
"See us here," the elder said, waving his hand over the dozen or so Aborigines. "We are all that's left of the Kamiloroi people. In some time we all have to go. But in another way we never go."
"What do you mean?"
"You are a smart little girl, and you can read. So try to read this." He picked up a palm full of dark ochre, and deftly sprinkled it into a small pool of water. The ochre took shape, forming the image of a group of people huddled around a fire, illuminated by the moonlight from above. Momentarily bold, the ephemeral vision vanished as ochre sand beneath the water.
"The people were there, and now they are gone," said Edith.
"Almost right," smiled the man. "The people are still there. We just can't see them anymore. We Kamiloroi will soon all be gone. But our spirit will stay here."
The elder looked up at the stars and pointed to one directly above. "Can you read that little girl?"
Edith noticed the sky above, the Milky Way trailing from horizon to horizon. "They will not disappear so fast," she said.
"Yes, they will last as long as the great spirit wishes. When you go to Sydney, you will see that brightest star, and if you follow the path of that star to the ground, you will reach here in your spirit. And we will be here too."
"Thank you sir. Thank you all." Edith smiled at her new friends.
An old Aboriginal woman spoke through tears in her red eyes, "You sleep here tonight, little girl. Tomorrow, you go home to your family. Don't ever let me see any more kids get taken away." She ran her fingers through Edith's curly dark locks. "For a moment, I thought you were my little one returned to me. From now on you can tell anyone that you are a member of the Kamiloroi Tribe. At least we have the same hair. She laughed, then cried, while hugging Edith to her bosom.
END
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