Cliff Shankey, Narangong’s poet laureate, joins us in the studio to discuss his creative techniques, the groundbreaking poetic style that he pioneered, and his love life. Don’t miss Cliff reading some of his best known works and some new gems that you may not have heard.
Author Archives: Archives
Episode 3: On the Edge of an Existential Cliff
Nara’s poetic spirit blossoms in the heart of Cliff Shankey, but does this flower come with thorns? (Yes. It bloody well does)
Episode 2: Old Man Shankey and the Gambo Mob
The Narangong Fighting Roos take on that mob from Gambo in the semis.
Episode 1: Infinite Monkeys
Nara enters the world of television screenwriting.
Different Horses for Different Folks
She breathed deeply and took in the smell of mahogany and walnut oil and hundreds of years of tradition. Warm light shined across gentle curves. For a long moment, the only sound in the shop was the gentle jingle of the buckle as the girl rubbed the saddle lovingly. Then she let out a slow sigh.
“Dad?” She looked up at her father imploringly, her eyes wide and searching for the answer she wanted to the question she could not bring herself to ask.
The man reached down and turned the price tag over again. He sucked through his teeth.
“That’s the best one you can buy, that one,” said Melinda from behind the counter. “She’ll be able to pass that on to her kids.”
The man looked up. “She’s nine!”
“Never too early to plan for what’s next, I always say,” offered Melinda by way of explanation. “It’s a bloody good saddle, though.”
The man looked down at his daughter again.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered to himself as he reached for his wallet. “We’ll take it.”
“YAY!” shouted the small girl, and hugged her dad’s legs. “Thank you, daddy!”
“You got to promise to take good care of it,” the man cautioned. “You’ve got to clean it and oil the leather to keep it from drying out. Speaking of which,” he turned back to Melinda, “Do you have any oil or polish or anything for that?”
Melinda pointed over her shoulder at the sign behind the counter.
“Saddle World” it said, in big bold letters.
“You see the sign?” She asked, as she ran the man’s credit card.
“Uh.” The man responded. “Yeah? It says ‘Saddle World’.”
“And below that?” She asked pointedly.
The man squinted at the smaller writing.
“We sell saddles,” he read out loud, “and n–”
“And nothing else!” Melinda said. “You want a saddle lotion, saddle cream, or saddle oil, you’ll have to go across the street to Horse World.”
She gestured out the front window and across Nara’s main road. There was a horse shaped sign hanging in front of a small shop. There were bridles in the window, saddle blankets hanging in the sun, and rows of curry combs arranged on a table out front.
“Horse World” it said in large print on the window and, in smaller type below, “Everything for horses–No saddles!”
***
“Mum?” Said Andrew, when the man and his daughter had left, “it doesn’t make any sense to send them across the street for saddle polish. We’re a saddle shop! We should be selling people saddle polish!”
“Now–” Melinda began.
“And saddle oil, come to think of it!” Andrew added. “It’s oil for bloody saddles!”
“Oil for bloody saddles, you reckon?” Melinda shot back. “Oil for bloody saddles, he says to me.” She said to the world at large. “Like I don’t know what bloody saddle oil is!”
She shook her head.
“You see this?” She asked, and reached for the latest issue of the ‘Saddleogue’ sitting behind the counter. She flipped through the first few pages until she reached the saddle lotions, creams, and oils.
“Which one would you have us carry, my boy?”
Andy paused. He could sense a twisty road ahead.
“Go on then!”
He pointed down at the page.
“Sheehan’s Super Liniment Numb–”
“Sheehan’s Super Liniment Number Six?” Melinda cut in. “A saddle oil for the discerning customer, with extra shine?” She asked.
“Uh, yeah,” said Andrew, cautiously now. “It’s meant to work a treat on the darker leathers.”
“On the darker leathers?” Melinda whistled. “And what else does it work on?”
She pointed down at the page.
“Works a treat on the darker leathers,” Andrew read aloud, “and imparts a lasting shine to . . .”
His voice trailed off.
“To bridles, blinders, and even boots.” Melinda finished. Andrew looked down, glumly.
“Even boots,” Melinda repeated. “Does the sign say Boot World? Does it say Bridles and Blinders World?”
“No mum.”
“No. It says Saddle World, my boy. And because we used to have people who suffered from some confusion at that incredibly obvious sign, your dad and I added the tagline. And what’s the tagline say, my son?”
“And nothing else,” Andrew mumbled.
“Too right,” Melinda said. “And nothing bloody else!”
Andrew reached for the scissors and went to work on the catalogue as his mum explained, not for the first time, about the complex market forces of equestrian economics necessary to sustain all purveyors of horse regalia, equipment, and etc.
“. . . this, of course, was back when we were Saddles and More, and that lot across the street were just Horse Land . . .”
Andrew went through, page by page, cutting out each advertisement for hoof polish, mande conditioner, and equine laryngoscopes. This, too, was part of the delicate balance. They kept a stack of back issues of the Saddelogue and other publications specialising in equestrian goods on the counter for customers to browse through or to pick out a saddle for special order.
Ever since Andrew had been a small lad, he’d gone through each issue as it came in and gazed longingly at the ropes and shoes and sacks of feed, scattered among page after page of saddles THen he’d take out the scissors and remove any mention of such things as not to disturb the balance.
“. . . and after he sold that suppository, that was the last we ever saw of your father,” Melinda said, teary eyed.
“And it all could have been prevented with a little more respect for the delicate balance of nature and equine equipment sales. Is that what you want to go back to?”
“No, mum,” Andrew said, shamefaced. He’d heard the same lecture countless time before, but no matter how many times his mum gave it, and no matter how much he wished that he’d grown up with the benefit of a father, he still couldn’t help but think that things would be so much cleaner, so much more efficient, if they could only complement their impressive stock of saddles with some saddle-related items. Not combs! he thought. Not lead ropes or bits, but just a saddle cream or two. Maybe some of the little bells he sometimes saw in the catalogue to decorate a saddle and make it jingle with every horsey-step.
He sighed. No, it was not to be. The sign said “Saddle World” and, as Mum liked to point out, nothing bloody else.
Melinda patted him on the back.
“You just get back to cutting those catalogues, my boy. And cheer up; I’ll be putting you in charge of the shop for a week while I run down to Murray Bridge for the Saddle Show. That’s a big responsibility for a young man.” She beamed at him.
He smiled weakly and nodded.
“Yes, Mum.”
***
Melinda left bright and early the next day for Murray Bridge to take in the extensive collection of Western, English, show, stock, and hybrid saddles on display. Andrew opened the shop at eight and waved at David, the Stockers’ youngest son, as he opened up Horse World across the street. David was setting out a string of bright coloured ribbons across the front of the shop and a young girl and her father were admiring the pretty colours in the sun.
Inside Saddle World, Andrew dusted the display models, wiped down the saddle-fitting station, and opened the till. There was a pile of catalogues that had come in the mail that morning. Andrew pulled them and a pair of scissors towards him.
An ad caught Andrew’s eye as he cut it from the catalogue.
“SUPERIOR SADDLE CREAM.”
The bright red letters jumped out at him from the scrap of paper, a picture of a pale yellow jar beneath them.
“Moisturises, replenishes, protects, and shines!” the advertisement said. Andrew held it up and studied it more closely. It was the kind of thing he’d always yearned to sell in the store–a pretty glass jar covered in tasteful cursive script, the perfect complement to their extensive collection of saddles. But his mum’s words rang in his ears and his dead dad stared down from the wall, a constant reminder of the dangers of product diversification. Andrew was about to throw it in the bin when he noticed a small disclaimer at the bottom of the ad.
“Not suitable for bridles, blinders, or boots,” it said. “For use on saddles only.”
Andrew’s dead dad stared down disapprovingly as Andrew’s trembling hand reached towards the telephone.
***
Four days later, Melinda returned from Murray Bridge with her truck full of new saddle samples. She parked out front of the store and was pleased to see the footpath swept, the display saddles free of dust, shining in the sun, and a customer exiting the shop with a brand new saddle. She smiled at the man.
“Excellent choice,” she said. “You should stop across the road for some polish to keep the leather shining like that for years!”
“No worries,” the man replied. “I picked up a jar of polish inside.”
***
“WHAT IN THE BLOODY HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU!?” Melinda was holding a jar of Superior Saddle Cream and staring at her son in disbelief.
“How many times have we had the same bloody conversation about this?”
She waved at the sign behind the counter.
“Saddle World,” she yelled. “Saddles! AND NOTHING BLOODY ELSE!”
“MUM!” Andrew yelled back, waving a small piece of paper in front of him like some sort of talisman.
“MUM! Look at the bloody ad! It says right here, ‘For use on saddles only.’ It’s not for bridles, or blinders, or even boots, Mum! It’s for use on saddles, AND NOTHING FUCKING ELSE!”
Melinda glared back at him.
“And do you think that’ll stop ‘em?” She asked. “That lot across the street. You think you’ll be able to show ‘em that ad and make it alright?”
She walked behind the counter and pulled the picture of her dead husband from the wall.
“You’re just like your father, you are, Andrew. He’d have some words of wisdom if he was here today. He’d have the lessons of bloody experience in the dangers of product diversification to offer you if he were still alive. Oh no, my son. Those lessons come hard and now you’re all that’s left. You and me and this bloody shop and now you’re doing your bloody best to ruin that!”
Andrew’s face flushed red with shame and anger. He tried to speak but found his tongue stuck in his throat.
“Gather this lot up, Andrew, and you burn it.”
“But Mum–” Andrew started.
“But bloody nothing!” Melinda said, and waved the picture in Andrew’s face.
“Take a good bloody look at your dead dad and then you gather this lot up, put it in the forty gallon drum out back and you burn it. With any luck, the Stockers haven’t caught wind of this yet. How many jars did you sell.”
“Five, Mum. Five jars in two days! It just came in yesterday and everybody who came in was wanting a jar!”
“Bloody hell,” said Melinda. She was still glaring at her son, but he could sense a bit of curiosity in her eyes.
“No,” she said, after a pause. “Gather it up and bloody burn it.”
***
That seemed to be the end of that. Andrew burnt the polished and crushed the jars.
After a day or two, the argument was largely forgotten and they went back to the peaceful and steady business of saddle sales. The new models Melinda had picked up in Murray Bridge proved quite a hit. The whole affair was but a distant memory two weeks later, when Garth Stocker stopped by, David in tow, one sunny morning.
“Morning Mel,” he said mildly as the door bell jingled.
“Morning Garth,” Melinda said pleasantly from behind the counter.
“Lovely new saddles you’ve got in,” he said, running an expert’s hand over the soft curves of a stock saddle on display next to the door. “We don’t sell any like these.”
Melinda gave him a confused smile.
“You don’t sell any saddles, Garth,” she said with a chuckle.
“Yeah!” Garth said, his own bright smile seeming to hide something more sinister, like a pretty shell on the beach might conceal a tiny octopus, “too right. No saddles over at Horse World. I was just explaining that to young David here.” He clapped his son on the back. “Nah, no saddles. We do sell saddle polish, though, as I was telling him.”
There was an awkward silence as Garth rubbed the display saddle with one hand and gripped his David’s shoulder with the other. Melinda cast a quick look over at Andrew, who was smart enough not to meet her eyes, which burned with accusation.
Garth broken the silence.
“You know why I was telling him this, Mel?”
“I couldn’t imagine, Garth, but I guess it’s always good to have a lesson in econo–”
“I was telling him this, Mel,” Garth cut in, “because he was confused. He was confused because this fella came in with a brand new saddle and when young David here offered him some saddle polish, this fella explains that he already had some and that he’d picked it up over here at Saddle World. Can you imagine?”
Melinda paused.
“I can’t, Garth. I can’t imagine. You know we don’t sell any polish.”
“No. I thought not. And that’s the way it’s meant to be,” Garth said. “You’ve got the saddle trade and we’ve got everything else. So I don’t want to hear about you lot selling polish, right?”
“Now hold on a minute, Garth. You’re not going to come into my shop–” Melinda began.
“I won’t bloody stand for it,” Garth continued. “You’re not to sell anything but saddles, you understand?”
Melinda had turned red in the face and was holding tight to the edge of the counter.
“I’m not to?” She asked. “You won’t bloody stand for it?” She released her white-knuckled grip on the counter and walked from behind it towards the Stockers.
“I’ll sell whatever the bloody hell I want, you hear me? You come into my bloody shop in front of my bloody son and tell me what I can’t bloody sell? You’ve got some bloody nerve.” Melinda was in Garth’s face, now, her finger raised and pressed into his chest.
“Mel–” he began, but she cut him off.
“Oh no,” she began. “If I want to sell saddle polish, saddle cream, saddlebags, saddle shoes, or satellites, I’ll bloody sell ‘em, and I won’t hear one bloody word from you about what you won’t have. You hear me?” She thumped her finger into his chest for emphasis.
“Now look here, Mel,” Garth began again.
“NO! You bloody heard what I’ve got to say. Now you can get the fuck out.”
Garth staggered backwards through the door, dragging young David with him.
Once the door had swung closed, Melinda turned, her eyes blazing, to look at Andrew.
“Mum,” he began, “I’m really sorry–”
“Never mind that,” Melinda said. “Do you still have that ad for the polish?”
***
Two weeks later, Saddle World was freshly stocked with two new brands of saddle polish-in addition to the Superior Saddle that Andrew had ordered–and neither of these disclaimed any application to bridles, blinders, or even boots. In fact, Jean Marquis’ creme de selle even had a picture of a boot right on the label, but the rest of it was in French so they couldn’t tell what else it was good for. Andrew even swore he’d caught his mum looking at ads for curry combs in the catalogue. Neither of them had spoken with the Stockers in the intervening time and it even started to seem like that might be the end of that.
Until that Saturday afternoon when Adrew was out for a ride and caught sight of Shane Shankey in the paddock on Penfolds Grange, the deep red thoroughbred his grandpa had bought him for his seventeenth birthday. Shane was a reasonably accomplished rider, but looked a little unsteady in the saddle as he turned his horse around the barrels positioned at either end of the paddock.
“Oi, Shane!” He cried out.
Shane pulled up and cantered over to the fence. It was a little early in the day, but given Shane’s reputation, there was only one reasonable explanation for the way he wobbled.
“You had a few beers, mate?”
Shane’s appetite for intoxication was well known about town and had caused him to ride unsteadily and, at least once, naked, through town on the odd weekend.
“Nah mate. Just trying out this new rig.”
Shane gestured down at the blanket he sat upon.
“Have a go.” Andrew offered. “You trying bareback, mate? Didn’t know you were that type!”
“Nah, not bareback. It’s the new rig I got down at the Stockers’ shop. It’s a . . . Now what’d they call it?”
***
“They fucking didn’t!”
“They fucking did, Mum. I swear!”
“And what did he call it?”
“A minimalist saddle.”
“And what did it look like?”
“It was pretty simple, really . . .” Andrew looked expectantly at his mum for a laugh that, based on her stern expression, was not readily forthcoming and then pressed on.
“ . . . It was white all over with just a black square in the middle where he was sitting. It didn’t have too much else going on. More or less just some padding and a bit of a cushion thing behind his arse, was all.”
“But he said it was a saddle?”
“A minimalist saddle, Mum. Said he bought it last week off the Stockers.”
Melinda stewed on this for a minute. After what seemed like an interminable internal conversation, she looked up at Andrew.
“you cut the ads out of the catalogues yet, my boy?”
“Not yet, Mum,” Andrew waved the stack of magazines and a pair of scissors at her. “I was just about to get started.”
Melinda looked out the window and across the street. The sun reflected off the windows of Horse World but she swore she could see, in the dark interior, a faint outline of a man behind the counter. Melinda knew she couldn’t make out such details at this distance but . . . was that a smirk?
“Put the scissors down, Andy, and set those magazines out on the counter.”
“Uncut, Mum?”
“Too bloody right.”
***
Things only got worse from there. A day or two later, the bright ribbons hanging out front of Horse World were joined by an unimposing display off to the side. Just a small table with a couple of black and white blankets set on it and a small sign:
THESE JUST IN: NOT JUST A SADDLE BLANKET
Melinda responded by displaying a collection of the new oils and creams on a small table out front with her own sign:
SADDLE CREAMS: MANY USES
She smiled inwardly later that day when she looked out the window and caught Garth staring blackly at the display and, if her lip reading could be trusted, swearing up a storm. She decided to press the advantage and made a call by the local hardware shop.
Early the next morning, Andrew banged through the front door of the shop in quite a tizzy.
Melinda looked up in alarm from the counter. She was hammering the lid back onto a small tin of paint.
“What the bloody hell is wrong with you?” She asked.
“Mum!” Andrew blurted out. “Mum! The sign!”
Melinda smiled innocently. “Yes? What about it?”
“It . . . Mum! Come look at it!”
Andrew ran back outside and Melinda followed slowly after him. He was staring and pointing up at the big sign above the shop. Melinda didn’t bother looking up.
“Saddle World.” She said to him.
“Yeah, but below that, Mum!”
“And nothing else?” She said.
“Exactly, Mum! There’s a bloody question mark up there!”
Sure enough, freshly painted after the tag line on the big sign hanging above the shop was a small, shiny question mark. The sign now read:
SADDLE WORLD: SADDLES, AND NOTHING ELSE?
Melinda grinned at Andrew, wiped some paint off her hand, and clapped him on the back.
“Come on, Andy. I reckon we’ve got some saddles to sell. And who knows what else?”
Andrew spent the rest of that day rather tense. He looked out the front window at one point and saw David pointing up at the sign, Garth by his side, red in the face and shaking his head. He leaned down to talk to his son and pressed some money into his hand. David ran off down the street and Garth, with an angry glance over his shoulder, stormed back inside Horse World.
Andrew couldn’t help but feel that some of this was his fault. The sense of accomplishment he felt when he first had sold a customer a tin of Superior Saddle Cream had been replaced completely by a profound sense of fear that he had started racing around a track without knowing exactly what lay at the finish line. He looked up at the picture of his dad on the wall and realised had had a good idea of what it might be.
***
The following morning, Andrew’s worst fears were confirmed. As he opened Saddle World he could see that young David had been busy the night before with his own can of paint. He’d painted over some things and added some others and now the sign read:
HORSE WORLD: SADDLES?
But that wasn’t the worst part.
Melinda didn’t show up until five that night. She’d spent the day driving down to Gambo, of all places, to buy a selection of ribbons and bells purpose built to decorate saddles. She came in from the back, two large bags stuffed under her arms, jingling with each step.
“This’ll show those bastards, she announced as she made her way behind the counter. “Here,” she said, as she noticed Andrew’s despondent demeanour, “what’s got you so glum?”
Andrew made one last ditch effort to stop the course of history in its tracks. He could feel the danger of this new development and wanted nothing more than to go back to the way things had been.
“Mum,” he started, “maybe we shouldn’t set out these new bells and ribbons. Couldn’t we back to just selling saddles, and nothing else?”
“It’s too late for that, my boy. Let’s set these out on the–” Melinda’s mouth hung open as she looked out the front window.
“The sign,” she gasped. “Those bastards!”
“Look, Mum,” Andrew cut in. “Let’s just go over there and explain–“
“But that’s not even the worst part!” She said. “Look at that fucking display!”
Andrew didn’t need to look. He’d seen it earlier that day. The Stocker’s had procured a small saw horse and placed it in in the window. They’d draped the saddle blanket over it, much in the manner that someone would spread a saddle blanket over a regular horse. And on top of that . . .
“Is that . . . Is that a mannequin?” Melinda asked.
Indeed it was. Sitting on top of the saddle blanket on top of the saw horse, much as a real man would sit on a real saddle on top of a real horse, was a mannequin. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a checked shirt and his plastic face smiled out the window. Behind him, in the darkness of the shop, Melinda knew she could see Garth smiling out at her, too.
“Andrew,” Melinda said, her voice strangely calm. “Did those new catalogues come in?”
“Yes, Mum.”
“Good,” she said nodding to herself. “Grab ‘em.”
Andrew reached for the stack of catalogues and the scissors.
“Nah. Not the scissors,” she said. “You won’t need ‘em. Grab the matches, though.”
***
Andrew tore the catalogues into small strips and piled them around the doors to the Stockers’ barn. He’d already let the horses out and set them on their way with a swift slap on the hindquarters. He looked nervously over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching him. He had told his mum that he’d feel more comfortable doing this with an accomplice, but she’d just brandished a hammer and knife and told him she had some business to take care of over at Horse World.
Luckily, the Stockers seemed to be either not at home or unusually sound sleepers, because no one disturbed Andrew as he lit the scraps of paper and admired his handiwork. All the little pictures of saddles curled in the flame and, along with them, the pictures of saddle creams and oils and lotions that Andrew always had longed to sell. Soon, the wood of the door caught and Andrew stepped back from the heat. It was a shame, he thought, as the fire curled up the door frame. He could see a collection of tack hanging on the far wall. He and his mum had sold the Stockers every single one of the saddles that were about to burn. He shook his head and set out for home.
When he was halfway there, he saw an orange glow on the horizon ahead of him and wondered if he’d gotten turned around on the walk. But, no, there at his back was a matching orange glow from the Stockers’ barn. He quickened his pace.
When he got a little closer to home, he realised that the orange glow was rising from behind his house. He began to run.
He found Melinda standing next to the house, staring up at what was left of their barn. It was, by this time, well ablaze. Tongues of yellow and red licked through the walls. The roof collapsed in a shower of orange sparks. Andrew could see the bridles and reins and saddles still hanging on the walls inside begin to smoulder and char in the intense heat.
“Mum . . .” he managed.
“They let the horses out, first,” she said. “We’ll have to round ‘em up.”
She waved the knife at him.
“I cut the shit out of those blankets, but!” She announced with an air of slightly crazed satisfaction. “Found every single one of ‘em and sliced ‘em right up. There’s not a single thing you could sit and ride in that bloody shop.”
Melinda looked down at Andrew’s hands, slightly blackened from the soot of his adventure, and smiled.
“We got ‘em, I reckon. They’ll know not to mess with Saddle World!”
Andrew looked up at the blazing barn, now crumbling into a heap of twisted timbers burning hot enough to redden his face even from this distance, and thought silently to himself that he wasn’t quite so sure.
“I’ll start looking for the horse, Mum.”
Andrew finally caught up with the horses in the bottom of the gully behind Australian Charles Darwin’s Petting Zoo and Centre for Evolutionary Studies. There were rather a lot of them, he thought at first, until he realised that they had mingled with the Stockers’ herd. He parked the Land Rover with the headlights pointed at the horses and wandered down to calm the skittish herd. Before too long, he saw another pair of headlights tracking down the dirt road and jerked to a halt beside the Land Rover. David stepped out and glared down at him.
“You burnt down my bloody barn, you saddle selling cunt!”
In the light from the parked cars, Andrew could make out sooty smears on David’s hands and what appeared to be some scraps of newspaper still tucked into his back pocket. David saw his enquiring stare and quickly tucked the newspaper in deeper.
“Well . . .” David said, “but . . .” and he trailed off. “You just keep your filthy hands off our fucking horses.”
Andrew shrugged and set off to round up their horses. Their horse trailer had burnt up with the barn and his only hope for getting them all back home was an impromptu equine caravan, which he intended to lead on Primus. He’d stopped by the shop on the way out of town and grabbed a couple of saddles to assist in this project but, as he cinched the saddle down on Primus, realised that he had overlooked a rather glaring hole on his plan. Although there were a variety of saddles to choose from in the shop, the only reason he was forced to choose new saddles was that all the saddles at home had gone up in the blaze and, with them, the rest of his family’s riding tack.
Primus now stood looking rather foolish in a brand spanking new leather saddle without a bridle, a bit, or reins. The rest of the horses milled around with nothing tethering them together. Andrew swore under his breath and glanced over at David. He had had considerably more success: the Stockers’ horses were tied in a neat line and he’d slipped a bridle on one of them. David stared proudly back at Andrew and sneared.
“Looks like you’ll have some trouble leading that lot home without a bridle between ‘em,” he said.
Andrew steamed.
“Yeah” Well good fucking luck riding that nag of yours without a fucking saddle!”
Sure enough, David had brought a fancy collection of bridles, bits, and reins from Horse World, but without the the saddles in the family barn, or even the minimalist saddles that were now just scraps on the shop floor, he would find it hard to ride anywhere.
David glared back at him. They stood like that, Andrew sitting atop Primus, with nowhere to go, and David, standing by his horse, with nowhere to sit.
Finally, Andrew shifted in his useless saddle.
“I’ve got a spare saddle in the truck,” he said.
David bit his lip and spat.
“I reckon I might have a bit o’ rope.”
Andrew stared at him and shifted again, more meaningfully this time.
“And a fucking bridle,” David grunted.
Andrew smiled back at him and dismounted Primus.
“Let’s get to it, then,” he replied.
***
She breathed in deeply. The saddle was scuffed on one side and the girl had to blink back tears as her dad explained.
“I bloody told her to take care of it, didn’t I?” He said. “I told her to clean it and keep it dry and remember to oil the leather to keep it from drying out. And here I tell her all that and she goes and falls off her fucking horse.”
The little girl rubbed her plaster cast and sniffled.
“Anyway,” the man said, “can you fix it?”
Melinda pointed up at the sign behind the counter.
“What’s that say?” She asked.
The man sighed. He’d been through this before.
“And nothing bloody else.”
Melinda scowled at him.
“Nah. Not that one! The bloody one below it!”
“Oh. Right.” The man said, his eyes fixing on a smaller, shiny new sign below the large one.
“‘Saddle repair, maintenance, and polishing, all while you wait’.” The man brightened and looked up at her. “You polish saddles now?”
Melinda looked out the window at Horse World. She could see Garth behind the counter and could swear that he was smiling. She smiled back.
“Yeah,” she said. “We polish saddles. Only in house, mind,” she cautioned. “We don’t sell polish.”
“No worries, the man replied. “Only can you polish the bridle, too?”
Melinda looked up at him with a glint in her eye and tapped some fine print on the shiny new sign.
“Saddles,” she said, “AND NOTHING BLOODY ELSE!”
The Proof of the Pudding
“Kylie! Can you spare us two bucks?”
Kylie was preparing roast chicken for Christmas lunch.
“What do you need two bucks for?”
“I want to get an iced coffee. Spare us two bucks, Ky?”
“It’s Christmas day, Matty, the shops are all closed.”
Matthew was Rog Jr.’s youngest by his first wife. Rog and Kylie had been married for three years, during which Kylie had made every unsuccessful attempt to ingratiate herself with Matthew and his brother Shane. Today, however, was not a day for improving familial relations. It was a day for running them through a gauntlet of proximity, gift giving, and alcohol. It was hot as blazes outside and not a great deal cooler in. There was a beef roast in the oven, a ham waiting to go in, and three chooks Kylie still had to stuff. Dough was rising on the table, two dozen potatoes were yet to be peeled for mash and the water for the pudding was just beginning to boil. Add to that the seventeen people currently sitting, standing, or running around the house–not many of them bothering to help with the bloody cooking, Kylie thought–and there wasn’t a whole lot of room left for good will to all men, let alone good will to a stepson begging for change. But Kylie figured she’d give it a try.
“There’s ginger beer in the outside fridge, Matty. Go grab one of those.”
“I told you I want a fucking iced coffee, Ky! Do you have two bucks or not?”
That, thought Kylie, was enough good will for today.
“I’m up to my elbow’s in a chicken’s ass, I’ve got the punch still to make, and a pudding to boil. How about you fuck off with your two bucks, Matty?”
He grumbled and set off for more fertile grounds.
The Christmas pudding was a proud and established tradition in the Shankey home. It wasn’t as if anyone actually liked the thing, of course, it was three kilos of glace cherries and sultanas and not enough sugar and, in the final touches, burning brandy. But buried in that dark, dense mx was a collection of old coins that were the basis for the most beloved Christmas ritual: The Pudding Slicing.
The Pudding Slicing was the grand finale of Christmas Lunch, the coup de grace that pushed everyone from “comfortably full” to “passed out on the couch with a beer and a smile.”
First, Mum doused the pudding in brandy and set it on fire. This may originally have had some symbolic significance, or perhaps was a cautionary measure to kill of any germs on a pudding that might have been stored for months. What began as a protective measure against sanitary threats persisted either as a preventive of culinary ones or because of the simple biological fact that if your eyes are sufficiently entertained, your taste buds will have trouble getting any messages through to your brain.
Once the pudding had burned itself out, the Slicing would begin. Mum would hover the knife, rotating the pudding slowly as she waited to bring it down and slice through the leathery brown exterior.
“STOP!” Natalie would shout, she being the youngest, and Mum would bring the knife down, her sinews straining as she worked the knife through the tough flesh of this strange, festive fruit. Mum would make another cut to slice off an appropriately sized piece.
Natalie, Rog and Kylie’s daughter, was just four and would be taking pole position for the second time this year, three being about the age when a child could be convinced to eat something as horrendous as Christmas pudding on the promise of a cash reward. And that was the economics of the pudding slicing. Baked and boiled into the pudding were a collection of ancient coins. Browned and tarnished by years of pudding abuse, the coins represented a wealth in more modern coinage and could be exchanged with Mum Shankey at an exchange rate determined partly by whether she thought you’d been behaving recently but mostly by how much money she had in her purse at the moment.
The slicing went on in reverse chronological order. After Natalie, it would be Emily, Reg and Michelle’s daughter, then Darren and Debbie’s Georgina and her older brothers David and Dylan, both thirteen. Then Matthew and his brother Shane, Roger Jr.’s eldest, Debbie, Kylie, Darren, Rose, Cliff, Reg, his wife Michelle, Roger Jr., Mum, and Old Man Shankey had the pick of the last piece.
All that was yet to come because the pudding was, for the time being, still a bowl of tar-coloured batter in a large bowl. The historic coins sat next to it in a small and tattered sack.
Mum swept into the kitchen as Matthew made his way out of it
“Nanna,” he ventured, “can you spare us two bucks?”
“I spared you a new bike and a cricket bat this morning, you greedy shit. Plus, it’s Christmas day and the shops are all closed. Now push off and let your Nan cook.”
Matt slouched out of the kitchen as Mum turned her attention on her helpless daughter in law.
“What in the bloody hell are you doing to that chook, Kylie? You’re trying to stuff it, not check it for pyles!”
The sounds of culinary and domestic discord were muted by the time they reached the back lawn, and then they were drowned out by the sounds of good-natured fraternal competition.
“You fucking kicked it, you bastard!”
“I didn’t kick it! I didn’t have to fucking kick it, mine was already closer!”
“It’s fucking closer now because you fucking kicked mine, you cheating bastard!”
Reg and Rog were in each other’s faces at one end of the lawn.
“I had but to bowl the ball
and had but one ball to bowl.
But as I waited for my turn
my stomach did begin to yearn.
I sated it with cereal
that I poured into a bowl.
And when at last it came my turn
I set down my ball
and balled the bowl.”
Rog and Reg turned from where they’d been arguing by the kitty to glare back at their brother.
“What?” Rog asked, nonplussed by this sudden exposition.
Cliff weighed a lawn bowl in one hand and smiled back.
“You like it?” he asked. “Near rhyme, mixed into the middle of a more traditional rhyming structure,” he explained. “”It’s my signature poetic technique.”
Rog and Reg stared back at him.
“I thought it was brilliant, darling,” offered Rosé from the porch.
“Just throw the fucking bowl already, Cliff,” Old Man Shankey demanded. “And you lot stop arguing and get out of the way.”
Matty had made his way outside by this point.
“Dad,” he asked. “Can you spare us two bucks for an iced coffee?”
“What?” Rog Jr. turned from his brother, who wandered off to find a measuring tape.
“An iced coffee, dad! Can you spare us two bucks for an iced coffee?”
“No bloody way you bludger. I told you to get yourself a bloody job. And anyway, it’s Christmas day and the shops are all clo– ARGH! WHAT THE FUCK, DAD?”
Old Man Shankey’s expertly aimed bowl had cracked Rog Jr. in his ankle.
“I told you to get out of the way, din’ I?” he cackled. “Now shove off, Matty. I’m going to teach your dad how to play lawn bowls.”
“Yeah, but, can I have two bucks, Grandpa?”
Matty ducked an airborne lawn bowl and scurried away, not to be seen again for the next three hours.
* * *
He still hadn’t shown up by the time Christmas lunch was on the table.
“I’m not going to wait for him, I’ll tell you that,” said Old Man Shankey as he menaced the Christmas ham with a carving knife.
“Where’s your brother, Shane?” demanded Rog Jr.
Shane was three sheets to the wind on sneaked glasses of sherry, but he stirred himself enough to belch and suggest that Matthew had taken his bike and gone off for an old fashioned Christmas sook.
“Well I’m eating some fucking ham,” Old Man Shankey decided, and began to carve.
He expressed a similar sentiment with regard to the pot roast, mashed potatoes, bread rolls, and roast chicken which, despite Kylie’s purported inexperience with the stuffing end, had come out quite well.
“He’s going to miss his turn at the pudding,” said Kylie.
“Too bloody bad for him, then,” said Mum. “I’ve already poured the brandy on. Plus, you’ve got those dishes to get to Kylie, and if we let them sit they’ll be a right mess for you to clean off the sticky bits.”
She set the pudding alight and reached for the knife.
“Alright, Natalie, my dear.”
Mum turned the plate and held the knife over what looked, for all the world, like a geolological souvenir from Dante’s travels.
“You just say when!”
“WHEN” Natalie shouted, as the knife passed over a shrivelled cherry and gnarled nut cluster.
“Good one, love. I reckon there’s bound to be some coins hiding in this piece.” Mum said as she sliced off a piece of the pudding and handed it across the table.
There wasn’t, though, and Rog Jr. had to comfort little Natalie with the promise of any coins he found in his piece. Emily was next, and Reg found himself in the same position, trading her pudding futures for present smiles when her piece was unavailing.
Debbie and Darren next had to offer to split their two pieces three ways when first Georgina, then David and Dylan found nothing better in their fruitcake than more fruitcake. There are few things more disappointing.
“Kylie,” Mum turned to her. “Did you put the bloody coins in the pudding?”
“. . .” Kylie paused. “I . . . I went to mix them in before I boiled the thing and the sack was empty. I figured you’d put them in!”
Mum glared at her and stormed out to the kitchen. David and Dylan started reducing the remaining fruitcake to a pile of dark crumbs and sticky pieces of dried fruit. There were no coins hiding within it. Mum returned with the little coin sack which was, just as Kylie had said, quite empty.
“It’s bloody empty.” She said. “Where the bloody hell are the coins?”
The room was silent for a brief second.
“Oi! You lot were wrong!” Said Matthew from the doorway. He had gotten over his sook and smiled broadly, although he was sweaty from the heat. He took a refreshing drink from his iced coffee. “The servo was open.”
Local limericks
Here’s a collection of poems paying homage to Australian cities. You’ll see these mix rhyme with near rhyme. I think the contrast is complementary, much like how Australia’s diversity adds to its richness.
Why I don’t visit Melbourne
There was a young lady from Melbourne,
We met at a dance out in Melbourne.
Things got rather sticky when we had a quicky,
Now I’ve got a young daughter in Melbourne.
Brobart
I had a good mate from Hobart,
Who had left his lover in Hobart.
He said he missed her and that she was his sister.
What the fuck are they up to in Hobart?
Perth Perth
I once met a fella from Perth.
He’d come to Australia to see Perth.
He’d flown from the UK, first class on BA.
That’s a bloody long way to see Perth!
New South Women
I once met a sailor in Sydney,
Who was kissing a sheila in Sydney.
She looked great in a dress, but her face was a mess.
And blowed if her name wasn’t Bruce.
Darwin
There was a poor bugger in Darwin
Who’d left Indonesia for Darwin.
He was only in socks when he washed up on the rocks,
But that counts as well dressed up in Darwin!
Brisbane
I was on holiday in Brisbane,
And needed a doctor in Brisbane.
It was just a small cut, I was proper fucked but,
Youse know there’s no doctors in Brisbane!
Adelaide is OK
I once read a guidebook for Adelaide,
Listing things to do in Adelaide.
Page one was the Market, page two just said fark it,
There’s not much to do in Adelaide!
The Christmas Pageant
She was a little flat, but Reg didn’t care. His Emily was practising for the school performance in the upcoming Christmas pageant. She was to be singing a solo in “Christmas in Australia,” right as the choir came through the Welcome Arch in the middle of town, and Reg was pleased as punch. ”. . . cold and frosty’s what it’s not,” she sang, and Reg smiled. “Bloody hell,” Michelle swore from the kitchen table, and both Reg and Emily looked over in alarm, Emily’s eye’s filling with doubt. ”Oh, not you, love,” she said. “It’s this bloody dress.” Michelle had a pile of green and red fabric spilled over the table in front of her, heaped around a dusty and battered sewing machine. She was endeavouring to make Emily a spiffy new Christmas dress to wear in the pageant and finding the task complicated by her impressive lack of skill as a seamstress. So far, she’d managed to turn a perfectly good set of guest room curtains into a pouched and wrinkled Christmas sack, such as might be used by the world’s worst Father Christmas to deliver second hand toys to misbehaved orphans.  The orphans would be going without this year, however, because Michelle had just run a line of stiches across what could generously be called the neckline.  “Faaark,” she yelled. “At this rate, love, you’ll be singing in your bloody knickers.” ”I told you, love, mum can have a dress sewn up . . .” “I’ve had it up to bloody here with your bloody mum can,” Michelle shot back. “I can and I bloody will have this dress ready for the pageant!” “Alright love. Don’t ever say I don’t believe in you.” Michelle’s frown softened. “Only we’re running out of curtains. I’m pretty sure the postie saw me in the loo this morning.” Reg ducked as a pair of scissors sailed towards his head.
* * *
The Nara Christmas pageant is quite a spectacle. It runs its way through the whole of town, passes under Shankey’s Welcome Arch, and ends up in the park, followed by a piss up and sausage sizzle. Of course, by the time the pageant rolls around, the town’s already well into the Christmas spirit. For weeks, shops have been hanging tinsel and painting Santa-in-boardshorts on their windows. Seasonal garden gnomes turn up on the tops of Stobie poles and perched on high hanging signs and Australian Charles Darwin ties Christmas hats to the roos in the enclosure at the edge of town. True enough, Nara did a bloody good Christmas. This year, Rog Jr had stepped up to take charge of organising the pageant. It was no small affair either. First he had to determine the order of the pageant itself: there was the real estate office, which ran a large FOR SALE sign down each side of Pauly’s Commodore every year, the doctor’s office put all the nurses in Santa hats on the back of a truck to demonstrate the benefit of a healthy diet, Ruth’s Bakery with her seasonal pastries, Marshman wanted to get involved this year, and Giorgio’s at the Driving School was planning to sit his lab behind the wheel of a learner car to the cause of great amusement. The only thing more delightful than a dog driving a car, Rog thought, was bunch of little kiddies singing Christmas carols, and he intended to take full advantage of their ability to tug at the heartstrings and loosen the purse-strings. Nara Primary School would be bringing up the end of the pageant, the bigger kids carrying the school banner and waving, and the Mrs. McAffrey’s little Year 4 kids singing carols on a stage pulled behind a tractor. Traditionally, this stage was placed on a large trailer, but Rog Jr., was never one to waste an advertising opportunity and reckoned he could go one better. He had a surprise in store. There were myriad other pageant tasks to take care of. Decorations to be hung and snags to be ordered, not to mention the piece de resistance: a lifelike tableau of Australian Santa aboard his sleigh and pulled by six white boomers, famed in song and legend, all mounted atop the Welcome Arch in the centre of town. Rog Jr. was out to make his dad proud, his brothers look bad, and his first wife regret ever leaving him. To that end, he’d put his second wife to work shimmying to the top of the Welcome Arch to string tinsel. It wrapped around the runners of Santa’s sleigh, through the bridles of the great white kangaroos that pulled it, and down the long curved sides of the Welcome Arch. Kylie looked quite a sight, thighs gripping the arch, orange lycra tights riding up her arse as she slid back down. Rog Jr., though, was focused on Santa’s board shorts at the top. “Are they pink enough, do you reckon?” Kylie dropped the last two metres and landed with a thud. She dusted off her tights and wiped the sweat from her eye. “It looks . . . “ She paused and wriggled her tights back out of her crack. “Looks pretty pink from here,” she said, breathlessly. Rog Jr. squinted and scratched the back of his head. “Nah. I reckon they’ve got to be little more pink. I’ll get the paint, love. You get back up there.”
* * *
The day of the pageant, Reg was up at the crack of dawn. Not so much because of excitement so much as the sunlight streaming through the windows. ”Turn off the farking lights, Reg.” Michelle grumbled. “’snot the farking lights, Mich. It’s the farking sun what with no curtains, love.” Michelle opened eyes wide her enough to glare at him. ”You having a go at me?’ she asked. “You want to sew a bloody Christmas dress you lippy bastard?” ”No fear, love.” Reg said, hurriedly. “I reckon the one you made is just about perfect.”  He was being slightly generous. Michelle had succeeded in creating armholes, certainly, and there was a space for the head. There was even, roughly around the knee region, what could charitably be called a hemline, even if it did start on the right as an A-line and end on the left as mini. But it was green and red and, with little wriggling, jiggling, and some butter, Emily could squeeze into it. Luckily, the kiddies would be set up on stage for the duration of the pageant, because the dress was tight enough that Emily couldn’t really walk. “It’s bloody lovely, dear, said Reg. “I don’t reckon Mum could’ve done any better.” ”Shut your bloody mouth, Reg. It looks like shit and I know it.” ”From a distance, though, I reckon she’ll just look like Christmas cheer.” Michelle glowered at him and set off to ready the esky and lawn chairs for the pageant. After Reg dropped young Emily off at the school, he went and found Michelle by the Welcome Arch. She’d secured a nice spot right by the street, so they’d be able to see all the floats as they came by. Mrs. McAffrey had assured him that Emily would be singing her solo right as the school’s float came by the Arch. He sat down, grabbed a beer, and started to get into the Christmas spirit. Rog Jr. and Kylie were sitting next to them and Rog was explaining the placement of each light on the Arch, each festive gnome on each Stobie pole, and the symbolism of each string of tinsel. “The history, of Christmas, see, is mired in ancient druidic rituals. These druids, them’s the gnomes, you see? They’d take strings of entrails, that’s your tinsel, right? And they’d wind it up around a tree before the village pageant . . .” “Have a beer, Rog, and shut up the decorations, would ya?” Rog started to sook, but found it hard to frown at the sight of a dog driving a car. Con drove his Land Rover by next, wrapped in strings of sausages and tinkling bells. Then Ruth and her husband, throwing green and red festive pies at the bystanders. Samuel P. Marshman, Esq. followed, throwing business cards. In a stroke of prescient genius, each card read: INJURED BY ERRANT PASTRY? MOUTH BURNT BY OVERHEATED FILLING? CALL SAMUEL P. MARSHMAN, ESQ. The pageant continued. A parade of local shop owners chucking lollies and business cards and toothbrushes. Before long, however, Michelle spotted the school kids coming down the road. Reg and Rog were fighting over a lolly that had landed next to their feet. ”Shhhhh!” She hissed at Reg. and Rog. Jr. “Quiet down you bastards. Here they bloody come! I want to hear her solo!” First came the older kids, carrying the school banner and waving pom poms, variously scowling or grinning awkwardly at the fun they weren’t expecting to have. The tractor trundled along behind them, Bill Bunson seated proudly and comfortably at the wheel, pulling Mrs. McAffrey’s Year Four class behind him on an ersatz stage constructed atop . . . “Rog,” Reg said. “What the bloody hell is that stage sitting on?” Rog Jr. had built a stage all right, and he’d taken the opportunity to show off Shankey’s newest development: the Shankey Automated Over-Powered Hay Raking Hay Rake, With Extra Hay Raking Power. The beastly machine had two additional cyclic rakes, a larger bundler with additional gathering hooks, and a dual-strand tie-down system. It also had just enough room on top to fit a stage just large enough for a children’s choir while they caroled their way town. It was glorious sight and an even more impressive sound. The six rakes whirred in unison, the bundler click-clacked across the hopper, and the dual-strand tie-down system whizzed a string of twine across the bundler. As the float clattered down Main Steeet, in fact, the only thing Reg and Michelle couldn’t hear was the school choir. They could see the little kids’ mouths moving and their little hands clapping in time with what they could only assume was a cheery, upbeat Christmas melody. They could see Emily counting verses nervously on one hand as she prepared to step out for her solo. “Rog.” Reg began. ”Bloody beautiful, isn’t it?” Emily smiled at her mum and dad as she sang along with the other kids. At least, Reg figured she was singing along; she could’ve been swearing a blue streak for all he could tell over the clatter. ”Rog,” Reg shouted again. “What the bloody hell is that noise?” ”It’s the newest model! Figured the pageant was the perfect chance to show it off for the crowds. Dad’ll be right pleased.” “ROG!” Michelle was standing up now, too. “Looks bloody beautiful, doesn’t it?” continued Rog, oblivious to the turning tides. “And she sounds a beaut out there, doesn’t she? Listen to her sing!” ”THE RAKE? ROG, YOU DAFT BASTARD, YOU CAN’T HEAR THE KIDS!” ”The what?” Rog asked. “THE BLOODY KIDS, ROG! THE WHOLE BLOODY REASON FOR THE THING!” Rog looked up at the Year 4 choir. “Them?” He asked. “But they always sound like shit. Frankly,” he pushed on, a little put out by Reg’s disparaging comments, “your Emily looks like shit, too. What is that she’s wearing? A bloody Christmas sack?” Michelle’s beer bottle struck him square in the forehead and he staggered back into the street. “It’s not all about your bloody pageantry!” she yelled. ”It’s a bloody pageant, you daft cunt. What else would it be about?” Over the whirring and the click-clacking and the whizzing of the rake could clearly be heard the THUD as Reg connected with Rog’s chin. Rog went down hard as Reg stormed toward the Welcome Arch. He grabbed the strand of tinsel that wound up it and began to pull. ”Reg! What the fuck are you about?” Rog Jr. yelled, climbing to his feet and dodging another hastily thrown bottle. “Leave the bloody tinsel alone.” “Fuck your tinsel!” Reg shouted, and neatly sidestepped Rog’s grasping tackle. ”Give it back, you bastard,” Rog yelled, turning and chasing Reg out into the street. Rog Jr. had always been the bigger of the two, but Reg was quicker, and he ran rings around his brother, trailing a streamer of tinsel. Both men narrowly missed being run down by Bill Bunson’s tractor as it rolled slowly under the Arch, the kids still, apparently, lost in song. Emily looked so serene and festive atop the rake that Reg couldn’t help but smile up at her as he ran by. His momentary lapse of concentration was sufficient to let Rog catch him in an impressive flying tackle. The two men rolled into the gutter and Rog managed to get couple of good shots in before Reg wriggled out from under him and was up again, dancing down the road and taunting his brother.  The streamer of tinsel had disappeared under Bill Bunson’s tractor and reappeared now, swept up by one of six over-powered cyclic hay rakes. As Rog and Reg traded blows under the Arch, the tinsel click-clacked and whizzed its way inside the machinery, coming down in zig-zagging streamers. Rog and Reg, meanwhile, seemed to have stirred up decades long disagreements of the sort that always arise at Christmas time.  “I never even said you could borrow it!” Rog yelled, his voice was muffled by Reg’s thighs, which were clamped around his head and neck. He did his best to land punches on Reg’s arse. “It was my bloody fishing pole and you went and broke it!” “MMMMPH!” came Reg’s reply, muffled by a mouthful of Rog’s moleskin pants and at least some of his calf. He released his grip and spat out a piece of pant leg. “Argh! You punched my bloody bum!” He bit down wildly again and Rog screamed. “It was never even your bloody pole to begin with,” Reg yelled. “Poppa gave it to both of us!” He scrambled to his feet and spat out a piece of pant leg.  “I was the oldest and I used it first. It was mine!” Rog dove for Reg’s knees and the two went down again. By this point, the tinsel had unwound up one leg of the Arch and was beginning to pull the first of Santa’s Christmas kangaroos loose. The Overpowered Hay Rake barely strained and POP the kangaroo came loose, riding the string of tinsel toward the rake’s whizzing, whirring, click- clacking maw. Pieces of grey papier mache and red ribbon flew from the sides of the rake and left a macabre trail on the road. Finally, the kangaroo emerged on the bailing platform as a bale of gray and red, neatly tied in silver tinsel. The kids near the back of the stage began to scream.  The next kangaroo was already on its merry way, jiggling down the tinsel towards its doom. In it went with a crunch and one by one, the other kangaroos jiggled after it. They were ingested, digested, and expelled in festive bundles to the horror of the kids above. By this point, Emily was the only kid not crying. Her classmates shrieked in horror as pieces of kangaroo flew from the sides of the hay rake, a tail here, a paw there, but Emily was counting silently to herself. ”Three, two, one . . . “ She shuffled forward awkwardly in her Christmas sack and began to sing. Her clear, bright, slightly off-key voice rang out over the cacophony of the Hay Rake. Reg paused, one fist full of Rog’s shirtfront, the other cocked, ready to bring down another shot on Rog’s already swollen ear. Santa’s sleigh finally pulled loose from the top of the Arch and the jolly fat man slid down the tinsel towards the rake, seeming to fly over the brothers, shower them in glitter that shook free from his sleigh. ‘Twas a merry sight, indeed. ”That sounds bloody beautiful, that does.” said Reg. “Voice of a bloody angel.” Reg stared up in rapt attention. ”Here,” as the mood of the moment swept over him, he reached a hand behind him and began to turn to help his brother up, “this is no time for figh…” Reg went down pretty hard, but with a smile on his face. Rog rubbed his fist. “It was my rod, you bastard.” The Hay Rake screamed as the metal runners of Santa’s sleigh tested its capacity. Red paint and glitter flew in every direction as the sleigh fell victim. Then jolly old Father Christmas tilted backwards and slid in, feet first, his faced fixed in permanent ”HO,” laughing all the way. Reg gave a groan to match the straining Hay Rake and Rog turned to look at him, just as Santa’s bright pink board shorts were being turned into Christmas confetti. The efficient whirring took on a tortured note, the click-clacking turned into an awful cracking, and the whizz became a high pitched whine. The Hay Rake gave one final metallic scream and a “twang” of mechanical death. Rog stepped toward it in alarm, just as Santa’s still smiling, disembodied head flew out at a festive but dangerous speed and struck him squarely in the forehead. Down he went, too, falling atop his unconscious brother. Devoid of the Hay Rake’s imposing wall of sound, the pageant was deathly silent. “. . . When the bloom of the jacaranda tree is here . . .” Emily’s voice carried clear across Main Street. Little bits of Santa and his reindeer stuck to her dress and clung in her hair, and the rest of her class had long since abandoned the rake and run for their parents, but Emily still stood proudly atop the tiny stage. Perhaps because her dress prevented any real movement. “ . . . Christmas time is near.” A single tear rolled down Michelle’s face. Reg raised his head from the street and smiled a gappy smile at his daughter. Silence fell across the town again. Emily stood quietly atop the Hay Rake. Reg and Rog lay unconscious in the middle of the street, and Santa’s head lolled awfully in the gutter. Old Man Shankey stepped out in the street and surveyed the damage. His newest invention was irreparably damaged, the Welcome Arch listed at an awkward angle and his two oldest were in need of serious dental work. The town waited. Old Man Shankey raised his wrinkled and scarred hands and brought them together with a mighty crack, like thunder in a summer storm. He looked from his bloody, prostrate sons to the smoking hay rake and brought his hands together again. A trail of shredded paper and kangaroo parts trailed down the street, and he clapped again. He looked with pride up at Emily and continued clapping; slowly at first, now faster, his eyes sparkling. Michelle started clapping from the audience, too, and Kylie joined in. One by one, the townspeople started clapping. The noise grew like a wave building up and breaking onto the shore until a chorus of applause filled the streets of Nara. The moment was only slightly spoiled when Emily stepped forward to bow and ripped her dress from hem to neck, but her mum had put her in some Christmas knickers, so no one really cared. Old Man Shankey led the rest of the town to the park for the sausage sizzle and piss up and, when Rog and Reg woke up, they stumbled over to join the festivities. The Hay Rake had to be taken apart for scrap, the trail of Christmas body parts took a couple of days to clean up, and the Welcome Arch had suffered some structural damage that would cost a pretty penny to repair, but most of the town agreed it was the best pageant they’d seen since the race riots of ‘63.
It’s Sharon
Things were not going too bloody well for Sharon. For starters, she was in England. Making matters much worse, she was English. Perhaps because of this sad state of affairs, her boyfriend, Alan, had told her just this morning that he preferred a life of lager, lads, and loose women to the predictable monogamy in which they had been engaged for the past two years and that it was best she start packing her things. She said she’d go stay with Janelle for a while. He promised to bring her mail around in a week or two.
If these burdens were not enough to make a pommy bird turn to Pimms and a weekend of East Enders reruns, she had only this morning learned that cuts to the higher education budget would lead to the consolidation of various university libraries. Library budget concerns do not usually inspire emotional reaction, at least, not among people who infrequently wear tweed and regularly see the sunlight. But Sharon worked as an assistant librarian at the local uni and now would continue to do so for only two more weeks before the library closed its doors.
Sharon sat at home and cried.
She continued to cry, with periodic breaks to walk to the shops for more Pimms and to put the next season’s DVD in the player, until Alan came by a week or two later to deliver her mail. Among the phone bill, second-to-last-paycheck, and assorted junkmail that made up her regular deliveries, there was a letter from one Samuel P. Marshman, Esq. of Number 11, First St. in Nara, South Australia. Her curiosity overcame her misery long enough for her to open the letter, at which point she promptly resumed crying.
Ms. Gardiner,
It began.
I regret to inform you of the death of your great-uncle, Gerald G. Gardiner. Gerry, as he was affectionately known about town, died rather unexpectedly last week while digging an irrigation ditch. He was 97.
She had spent a great deal of her childhood hearing about great-uncle Gerry. He was a great man, by all accounts, and a wealthy landowner in one of the most fertile and productive parts of Australia. His letters described the bustling, cosmopolitan rural utopia in which he lived and Sharon spent much of her dreary English childhood wishing fervently that she would one day visit Nara.
As you may have known, Gerry died childless. Not for want of trying, mind. Every chance he got down Murray Bridge for the Show or with the sheilas passing through town of a Friday night, but to no apparent, or at least no legitimate, avail.
Sharon struggled to fathom the relevance of this disclosure to her, personally.
But I digress, the letter continued. Gerry died childless and unmarried. His brother, Geoffrey, whom Gerry frequently described as a pompous pommy-loving cunt, was his closest relative. As you may know, Geoffrey died some years past.
Sharon recalled the death of her grandfather and permitted herself another small cry.
And I am sure you are aware that Geoffrey’s only child, Gregory, died an untimely and grotesque death some fourteen years past . . .
Sharon was 16 when her parents had died. Half an hour later, half a box of tissues and a few beers deep, she felt strong enough to continue.
. . . leaving you Gerry’s closest living heir.
She paused to take a sip of lager and consider the sentence.
. . . Gerry’s closest living heir.
it continued to say.
The letter continued in other ways. It continued to say that she was to be named the sole beneficiary of Gerry’s estate, that any bequeathment was subject to certain conditions, to be specified at the reading of the will, and that the will would be read seven days hence at the offices of Samuel P. Marshman, Esq., Number 11, First St. in Nara, South Australia. It continued also to say that Mr. Marshman had enclosed an airplane ticket for travel to Adelaide and a bus ticket from Adelaide to Nara. The plane left in two days.
“Well,” she thought. “This is pretty bloody unexpected.”
* * *
Two days later, Sharon spent a third day travelling to Adelaide. She spent the better part of the fourth day travelling by bus from Adelaide up through the hills past Mt. Barker and Murray Bridge and out into the rolling hills that nestled Nara. Rather tired from the journey and ready for a hot shower and a soft bed, Sharon stepped from the bus and made straight for Nara’s preeminent hotel, the Rear Admiral Hindmarsh.
As on any Friday evening, it was crowded. Sharon dragged her rolly suitcase through the doors, past the tables, and up to the bar. She caught the publican’s eye and asked, in her most pleasant manner, if he had a room available. The man squinted back at her.
“How’s that again, love?”
“A room?” she asked again.
“Yeah?”
“The sign said that this was a hotel.” She tried, in exasperation.
“Exactly, love. You want a beer?”
“No,” Sharon responded, although she was beginning to doubt her answer. “I’m looking for a room for a few days.”
“Ohhhh, right. You’ve come to the wrong place, love. This is the hotel. You’ll be wanting to try the motel, but I’m pretty bloody sure Bernie’s all booked up what with the hay-raking convention in town.”
Sharon was crestfallen.
The publican poured her a sympathetic beer as he asked,
“Come on, love. It can’t be that bad. What are you doing in town, anyway?”
“My great uncle died,” she began, staring morosely into her beer. “And I’m to attend the reading of his will in a few days.”
The publican perked up at this.
“What’s your name, love?”
Sharon looked up and gave a small smile.
“It’s Sharon.”
“Shazza!” The publican grinned back at her. “Well it’s a bloody pleasure to meet you, love. ”
“Yes,” Sharon said, “a pleasure, but it’s Sha . . .”
“Bernie!” The publican roared across the pub to a small, round man playing darts.
“Bernie runs the motel,” he explained more quietly to Sharon, before returning to his across-the-pub voice.
“This is Gerry’s grand-niece–Shazza!”
“Actually, it’s Sha. . . ” she began, but stopped as half the pub turned to inspect her.
“Oi Shazza!” Bernie held out a calloused hand. “Nice to meet you, love.”
Sharon took his hand and started in again.
“Nice to meet you, also, but it’s Shar . . .”
“Shazza’s looking for a place to stay until they read Gerry’s will on Monday.”
Bernie inhaled through his teeth.
“Yeah. Tricky thing that. We’ve got the hay-raking convention in town and I’m all booked up. Won’t have any vacancy for a couple of days, really.”
Sharon looked despondent once more.
“Now Shazza, don’t look so bloody sad. You ought to try Australian Charles Darwin out at the petting zoo on Virgo Road. He’s not long ago put in some guest quarters and a flush dunny with that Home and Away money.”
Not one word of this made sense to Sharon. Fours beers later, it made no greater sense, but she felt a lot better about it. And so it was that Sharon found herself standing outside a petting zoo, looking for a place to stay.
* * *
Monkeys are known for many things. They’re mad for bananas, obviously, and they are pretty bloody good at climbing trees. Less well known–known only to Australian Charles Darwin, really, until he’d introduced the Home and Away watching public to the concept–is their ability with the written word. The next morning, Sharon discovered another characteristic: monkeys wake up at the crack of bloody dawn and are excited to do so.
The pillow stuck to the side of Sharon’s face as she sat up. Her eyes weren’t fully opened, yet, but her ears were filled with a terrifying scream. Her bedroom, the Primate Suite, had one large window that looked out into what could have been a peaceful jungle scene, if peaceful jungle scenes contained typewriters, heavy crystal ashtrays, and tall, leather backed chairs. Sharon was in no place to appreciate this curious tableau because, on the other side of the glass, blocking the view and not six inches from her face, an enormous mouth was stretched wide into its best impression of a banana’s nightmare.
Australian Charles Darwin could cheerfully explain the reasons why a chimpanzee’s scream sounds so exactly like a human’s. Shared DNA in the tonsil regions played a role. A common history of being the softer, less toothy options in a voracious jungle history, also. All of which would’ve been lost in Sharon, who was mostly concerned with a sound that six million years of evolution had tuned to the harmony of pure, bowel loosening terror.
Sharon screamed back, rolled away from the terrifying sight, and fell out of the narrow bed with a thump.
“Picture window, that!” said Australian Charles Darwin from the doorway, as the chimp continued screaming. “Just built the accommodations last month,” he explained over the noise, “and I wanted the guests to really experience the creative process.”
The chimp had stopped screaming and begun smearing shit across the window.
Sharon, her mouth agape, stared at the chimp for a moment and then looked back up at Australian Charles Darwin.
“Tea’s on!” He announced happily before turning and leaving the room.
Breakfast was a relatively uneventful affair. Sharon, shell-shocked from her wake up call of the wild, had difficulty drinking her tea without spilling it all over herself and inadvertently threw a slice of vegemite toast across the kitchen when the phone rang, but she began to feel a little better as she got some food in to her. After breakfast, Australian Charles Darwin had promised, he’d take her on a tour of south eastern South Australia’s premier petting zoo and centre for evolutionary studies. Whether because of her curiosity or her hunger, Sharon ate quickly.
* * *
Sharon couldn’t quite tell what she was meant to be looking at. They’d toured about half of petting zoo as Australian Charles Darwin explained the evolutionary heritage of each animal.
“Your bilby,” he explained, “now you go back far enough to when there was the land bridge between Queensland and Papua New Guinea, there was much greater uniformity among the species of South East Asia and Australia. Once that closed off, you had your isolation of Australia from the rest of the world which led to the unencumbered evolution of Australian flora and fauna as they adapted to the unique conditions here. Right before that happened though, right, a wallaby fucked a rat. And that’s your bilby.”
Sharon had been puzzled by this, but before she had an opportunity to inquire into the details of the bilby’s provenance, Australian Charles Darwin whisked her along the path to the next animal display. It was this next display that was causing her confusion. Australian Charles Darwin pointed again and nodded encouragingly. She tilted her head.
Australian Charles Darwin tried to give her a clue.
“It’s a dog,” he announced.
It was a dog. It was a pretty decent sized rottweiler asleep in a ratty dog bed on a porch that looked, for all the world, like Australian Charles Darwin’s back porch. Sharon still looked confused.
“It’s my back porch,” he explained.
Sharon nodded.
“And does the dog play some special role in the evolutionary history of Australia’s unique flora and fauna?”
Her confusion had put her on edge.
“Did this particular dog evolve from the chance encounter between a carnivorous dinosaur and a fleet-footed early hominid? Surely he’s spawned some new genetic hybrid?”
“What!?” Australian Charles Darwin said. “Nah, he’s just a bloody dog. His name’s Phil.” Australian Charles Darwin, unimpressed with this lapse in logic, scratched the back of his head and furrowed his brow in Sharon’s general direction. She blushed a little in embarrassment.
“I had him fixed anyway.”
Australian Charles Darwin took again toward the most popular part of the petting zoo–the kangaroo enclosure. Young kids loved their visit the petting zoo and what they loved more than anything was feeding these kangaroos by hand, rubbing their soft fur, and watching the mums hop around with a humourously oversized joey still insisting on catch a ride in her pouch. Australian Charles Darwin had started with just one roo that he’d picked up off a mate, but he’d added a few more over the years. A while back, when the big bushfires had come through and left most of the land between Nara and the coast looking like a piece of bloody burnt toast, the CFS had picked up four little joeys on the side of the road and brought them by to recuperate.
Australian Charles Darwin had nursed them and bathed them and hung pillowcases for them to sleep in, curled at the bottom like they were safe again in their mum’s pouch. The school’d had a competition for the kids to name the joeys: Tony, Claire, Bronson, and Cornetto. Their four little name plates, hand-painted by the kids, now hung up on the fence alongside the simple stencils for the other three roos.
The roos were lying in the shade of a tall gum, scratching in the dirt and blinking slowly.
“I count six,” she said, “where’s the other one?”
She knew she’d said something wrong. Australian Charles Darwin wiped and eye and reached out slowly to touch Cornett’s name plate on the fence.
“It’s a sad story, Shazza. I don’t . . .”
He seemed to choke back a sob.
Sharon touched his shoulder tenderly.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “We don’t need to talk about it.”
Australian Charles Darwin sniffed and ran his fingers softly across the raised letters on the plate.
“Just so you know, though,” Sharon began again, “it’s Sharo . . .”
“You’re right!” Said Australian Charles Darwin briskly. “There’s no need to dwell on these sorts of things. Life goes on. And so should the tour. Let me take you around to see the bunyip pit. There’s fuck all in there, but it’s a bloody good pit.”
So they walked on, Australian Charles Darwin happily pointing out other parts of the Petting Zoo and Centre for Evolutionary Studies, and pausing only a few times to dab his eyes with a handkerchief.
Sharon spent the rest of the day watching the cricket while Australian Charles Darwin hid himself in the kitchen, whipping up something pungent. It was worth the wait, though, when he ladled a steaming portion of curry into her bowl at dinner.
“It’s delicious,” Sharon gushed over a mouthful of potato and carrot. She took another spoonful and chewed lovingly.
“Is this local beef?” She asked, dipping in for another mouthful.
“Beef?” Australian Charles Darwin laughed. “Nah, love. It’s home grown roo!”
* * *
Sunday began with a salutary primal scream but continued largely without other incident. Sharon didn’t think she’d be able to stomach another visit to the kangaroos in the Petting Zoo and Centre for Evolutionary Studies, having stomached one of them the night before, so she settled for exploring Nara by foot. First to Ruth’s for a kitchener bun and a cappuccino, then around town to admire Nara’s beautiful examples of classic Victorian bungalows and hay-bale-shaped rubbish bins, before a long afternoon of pints and cricket at the Rear Admiral. By the time play ended for the day, Sharon and her four pints felt they could make it through the night that stood between them and a meeting with Samuel P. Marshman, Esq. of Number 11, First St. in Nara, South Australia, first thing tomorrow morning.
Sharon thanked her prescience on Monday morning when the pile of pillows she’d left on the floor the previous night cushioned her fall. She hoped that chimps renowned grasp of sign-language enabled them to understand the gesture she made as she dressed for her much awaited meeting with Mr. Marshman.
Number 11 First Street was a small, pleasant Victorian bungalow with a red brick path, roses by the gate, and a sign on the door that said “CLOSED.” Upon closer inspection, Sharon saw a piece of paper tucked into the jam next to the door handle. The handle jiggled when she reached for the letter, then fell right off the door. Sharon looked around guiltily, but no one was around to witness her act of inadvertent vandalism. After a few unsuccessful tries to reattach the handle, she left it sitting on the nearest window sill and unfolded the note.
“Shaz,” it said.
“It’s Sharon,” she grumbled.
“Will reading had been postponed on account of me not being here. Please return at same time tomorrow.
Samuel P. Marshman, Number 11 First Street, Nara.”
Sharon neatly folded the note and left it under the door knob on the sill.
The next morning, after a customary scream and hot breakfast, Sharon returned to Number 11. A shiny new door knob had been mounted on the door and used to support a note.
“Shazza,”
“It’s fucking Sharon!” she said aloud.
“Will reading had been postponed on account of me not being here. Please return at same time tomorrow.
Samuel P. Marshman, Number 11 First Street, Nara.”
“It… It’s the same fucking note!”
Sharon looked around her in suspicion. Perhaps this was some kind of test. No, she was alone.
She crumpled the note and threw it angrily at the door.
The following day, Sharon made it half way up the path before she noticed a piece of paper tucked into the door jam. It was creased all over, as if someone has crumpled it into a ball and then smoothed it or again. She didn’t bother to read it.
* * *
Australian Charles Darwin took pity on her that night and took her out for dinner at the Rear Admiral.
“Crab?”
“Can’t go wrong,” he said.
“Are you sure?” Sharon had glanced at a map before leaving England and, although I shed found Nara hard to locate, recalled it being hundreds of kilometres from the nearest ocean.
“Fresh!” He said, encouragingly. “I had it last time and it was bloody brilliant.”
Sharon grimaced at the rest of the menu and figured she didn’t have a whole lot to lose.
“Crab then!”
* * *
The chimp was halfway through his scream before he realised Sharon wasn’t in the bed. He squinted through the glass and gave another shriek just to make sure she wasn’t hiding on the far side of the bed.
He nibbled the end of his pipe and leapt to the nearest branch to peer in the bathroom window. There, and by the presence of a pillow next to her, she’d been there most of the night, was Sharon, arms clutching toilet bowl and hair sticking in tendrils to get pallid, sweaty face.
The chimp gave a half hearted hoot and swung away.
“You alright Shazza?” asked Australian Charles Darwin from the bathroom door.
“It’s Sh… ”
Sharon bent over the toilet bowl again.
“I don’t reckon I could pronounce that without a lot of beer and a half full bucket,” Australian Charles Darwin joked from the doorway.
“You, uhh… You going to be alright?”
“I think it’s good poisoning.” Sharon managed, her face pressed against the cool tile floor.
“It must’ve been that crab.”
Australian Charles Darwin nodded.
“Funny that, happened the last time I had it, too.”
* * *
A dry wind whipped wisps of hay around Sharon’s ankles as she waited for the bus out front of the BP.
A few minutes later, she watched the haybale shaped bins whiz by the windows on the way out of town, then give way to haybale shaped haybales on the road to Adelaide. Marshman would call, at some point, but until then, she’d be ensconced in a relatively modern hotel, or a motel perhaps, with food that didn’t threaten to turn her inside out and an alarm that went “beep.” He could bloody well call when he was ready.
Nara’s legendary rolling hills gave way to the plainest plains, devoid of rain and all looking the same. She must’ve regretted her decision to leave behind South Australia’s Tidiest Town, it’s quaint Victorian bungalows and tastefully situated public works, because she closed her eyes and began to doze.
An all too familiar screeching tore Sharon from her slumber. She looked through the window with horror, expecting to see the gaping mouth of an emotionally troubled ape. What she saw, instead was four petrol pumps and a sign for Balfour’s pies as the bus squealed to a halt.
“Ladies and gents,” the driver’s voice crackled over the speakers. “We’ll be stopping for a bit here in Tailem Bend long enough for you to visit the toilet and have a smoke. We’ll be leaving in ten minutes.”
Sharon yawned again and made her way to the front of the bus. She stepped out into crackling, desiccating heat, but it still felt good to stretch her legs.
“Oi!” A voice called out across the carpark.
“Oi. Shazza?”
Sharon squinted in the bright sunlight at a small, bandy legged figure making his way towards her.
“‘Scuse me,” he started, when he got a little closer. “Your name Shazza?”
Sharon closed her eyes against the continuing indignities and opened them to stare down at the petrol station attendant. A badge on his shirt suggested that his name was “Mark” and Sharon decided it was high time he learned.
“No,” she replied archly. “It’s Sharon.”
Mark nodded.
“Alright then. Too bad for you, because I’ve got a message for a sheila named Shazza from some shonky lawyer in Nara.”
He turned to walk away.
“Wait!” Sharon called out. He looked back at her.
“I think that message is for me.”
“Nah love. Message is for Shazza. Bloke on the phone said so himself.”
“Yes yes. But it is for me, my good my man.”
Mark looked back sceptically. “You said your name was Sharon, but.”
“I really do think it is for me.”
“Your name’s not Sharon, then?”
Sharon took a deep breath.
“No.” She began. “No. I’m . . .”
She’d been resisting all this time the mere change in a single syllable in some desperate attempt to retain a sense of self in this foreign land. The locals’ apparent need to alter her name to fit their image had grated against the sharp edges of her conflicted, troubled identity. Now she was forced to choose. She could accept the change, embrace her local identity, and find out why she was in this bloody country in the first place, or she could stand on principle, return to the bus, and, perhaps, to England, ignorant of what might have come. Like the many other creatures who’d washed ashore in Australia and been faced with the same choice, she could adapt or die. This new name was her mammalian pouch. Her poisonous hind claw. It was a bloody monotrematic evolution born of the insurmountable will to live in a harsh bloody country. It was as true blue as Malcolm bloody Fraser eating a lamington at a John Farnham concert. Fucking oath.
“. . . Shazza.”
It was easier than she’d expected. She beamed at him.
“Fucking Shazza,” she said again.
“Yeah, right-o. Suit yourself.” He said. “Follow me, Shaz.”
Next to the phone behind the counter, Mark had written a number on a scrap of paper. Sharon rang it and, to her surprise, her call was answered almost immediately. Mr. Marshman introduced himself and informed her that her great-uncle’s will would be read tomorrow, at 9:00 a.m. sharp, and that her presence was required. Sharon was none-too-pleased about the sudden turn of events, but the thought of finally resolving this drawn out affair and being able to return home filled her with hope. She told Mr. Marshman she had merely to collect her belongings from the bus and she’d take the next one bound for Nara, to arrive that evening.
Sharon set down the phone with a satisfying click. She crumpled the scrap of paper and threw it in the bin behind the counter, then scrounged the last of her change out of her pockets. She had just enough to buy a bag of FruChocs, which she promptly opened as she headed out the door. Just in time to see the bus pull away.
A warm breeze blew across the petrol station, whipping up the red dust.
“Well fuck me.”
Sharon stared down the highway, first at the rapidly shrinking rear end of the bus, then at the empty stretch of road, long enough to finish the bag of FruChocs. She sighed and walked back inside the petrol station.
“Shaz!” The young fella was hanging up the phone as she walked in. “I reckon you’re going to miss your bus if you don’t hurry.”
He gestured out the window at the stretch of empty bitumen where the bus had sat.
“I do believe it’s a bit late for that,” Sharon said, “but I was hoping you could tell me when the next bus to Nara will come through.”
“Should be through in about six hours, love. I can sell you a ticket if you like.”
The thought of spending six hours in the petrol station leapt uncomfortably to the front of Sharon’s mind, only to be knocked suddenly off its feet when Sharon reached for her purse. For where her purse would be if it was in and her handbag was hanging off her shoulder. Her thoughts now ran rapidly backwards through the last fifteen minutes, right back to the point when she placed her purse in her handbag and left her handbag sitting on her seat in the bus. The bus which was now speeding towards Adelaide.
“Well fuck me.”
She smiled at the young man.
“Do you suppose . . .” she began.
“No fear, love,” the man grinned back. “No money, no ticket. No ticket, no bus.”
Her smile tightened.
“Do you think I might use your phone again?” She asked.
The young man waved nonchalantly at the phone and watched as Sharon first sorted through the rubbish bin for a wrinkled scrap of paper, then rang Mr. Marshman. He did not answer. Nor did he answer when she rang again.
Sharon waited ten minutes, tapping her nails against the counter and periodically glancing up at the young man, before ringing again with no greater success.
“Well . . .”
She caught herself this time. Other than the clothes she currently was wearing, two large suitcases and her handbag comprised everything she’d brought to Australia, including her wallet, her phone, and the assorted miscellany that makes up the bulk of a lady’s travelling accoutrements.
Things at that moment could have gone much worse for Sharon had she not spied, in a rack of promotional brochures for the region’s best tourist destinations, a poorly drawn picture of a wallaby fucking a rat.
“The Miracle of Evolution!” The brochure proudly proclaimed. “Now Featuring the Bilby!” A phone number was printed on the back.
* * *
It took four and a half hours for Australian Charles Darwin to arrive. Perhaps due to his extensive study of the preservation habits of Australian wildlife, he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut when he saw Sharon. Back in his ute, he quietly presented her with a sandwich. Her self-interest overcame culinary disquietude and she bit silently into the sandwich without inquiring into the taxonomic classification of its fillings, then fell asleep.
She awoke to the gentle laughter of a kookaburra and the smell of coffee. She lay perfectly still while she waited for her hippocampus to rouse from its own slumber, then held her breath and rolled ever so slowly towards the picture window behind her. Through it she could see a collection of gum trees, bananas, and an anatopistic selection of office furniture, but no shrieking primate mouth. She breathed out slowly.
“I had some kava left over from a research trip to Bali last year. I mixed it into their fruit mash earlier this morning. They’ll be sleeping all day.”
Australian Charles Darwin was standing in the doorway to Sharon’s room, looking a little tired from the drive, but still smiling.
“Coffee’s on. Got some eggs on toast for ya, too.”
Sharon smiled back at him.
“Come on Shazza. Gotta get out to the lawyer’s office this morning. Get your arse out of bed, then.”
Sharon yawned.
* * *
Samuel P. Marshman had the dual distinction of being Nara’s best and only lawyer. He carefully cultivated that reputation by being notoriously inaccessible, but today, he’d carved out exactly one hour to read the will of one Gerald G. Gardiner, a Naranian of some great repute who had almost single-handedly constructed the majority of the irrigation ditches that made the dry dirt of Nara’s native rolling hills into fertile slopes of golden grain. If Rog Shankey had harvested the fields of Nara’s success, and he surely had, Gerry Gardiner had watered them.
With the wealth created from his essential role in Nara’s success, Gerry had amassed a small fortune, and it seemed half the town had crammed into Marshman’s rather cramped offices to hear how it was to be apportioned. Sharon looked around for a place to stand, but quickly was directed to the front of the crowd where a hard wooden seat sat in front of Marshman’s desk. A piece of paper had been left on the seat by way of reservation. In bold letters was one word: “Shazza.”
Marshman himself was a small man, but he made up for by sitting behind a particularly large desk on which he’d spread two pieces of paper.
He cleared his throat and half the town listened.
“I, Gerald Gerald Gardiner . . .”
Half the town scratched half its collective head at this revelation.
“. . . being of sound mind do declare that this last will and testament expressed my clear wishes without any undue influence or distress.”
The formalities apparently completed, Marshman now paused. He looked up at the assembled crowd and seemed to consider the wisdom of what he was about to say.
“Gerry was pretty adamant I just write down what he had to say,” he explained to the expectant audience.
“You know Gerry was pretty, uhh, adamant in his wishes.”
Half the town nodded knowingly.
“And he, well he asked me to write down just what he had to say. Adamantly. So I, uh, I’m just going to go ahead and read what he’s got down here, then.”
Marshman continued with obvious reluctance.
“Marshman, you’re a slimy cunt and no fucking mistake about it. Are you writing this down? I paid you to write every fucking word of this down.”
Sharon seemed to be the only person in the room perturbed by this introduction. Other people in the room nodded and fanned away tears.
“He sounds like himself,” someone murmured.
Marshman continued.
“The Gardiner name is bound to die with me, but blowed if I’ll let my estate die with it. I can’t say a lot of good about that shithole brother of mine, who seemed to think he grew too big for this town. The best thing he ever seemed to do was to inconvenience some poor sheila with nine months of his mistakes. There’s not a lot of good to say to about him, but the best thing he seemed to accomplish with his life was to leave a trail of progeny that led to my grand-niece, Shazza.
And so I leave my entire estate to Shazza, subject to the condition that she live on the land for not less than ten years and that she use the land only for pastoral or agricultural purposes.”
Marshman looked up.
“That’s the bloody lot of it.”
Half the town turned to stare at Sharon.
She stared back at Marshman.
“The estate includes Gerry’s house and all the belongings therein, his deposits at the First Bank of Nara and his holdings in Shankey’s Automated Hay Rakes. All that’s left is to determine the bounds of the land you’ve inherited, Shazza.”
“It’s . . . ”
But she fell into silent shock as Marshman turned from the will to the large piece of paper next to it, on which was platted the land on and surrounding Virgo Road. Marshman drew lines across the page as he described the bounds. Gerry had bought the first parcel some fifty odd years ago with the proceeds from an irrigation ditch that connected most of the major farmers in the area, and he’d added to it over the years. Marshman read the coordinates and marked them out across the map, running first away west away from the road, then turning north and navigating strange twists along dry river beds and ancient walking paths before turning east again and cutting a line straight through a parcel of land marked “ACDPZACFES.”
Half the town gasped, but none so loudly as Australian Charles Darwin, who was sitting at Sharon’s side.
Sharon was perplexed.
“What the bloody hell is Ackduhpuhzackfees?” she asked.
Australian Charles Darwin mumbled something quietly.
“What’s that?” She asked again.
“It’s the Australian Charles Darwin’s Petting Zoo and Centre for bloody Evolutionary Studies,” he said again, somewhat bloody louder.
“As you can see,” Marshman explained, “the Gardiner estate is rather more extensive than prevailing wisdom suggests and it appears to run across some existing . . . uhh . . . structures and developments.”
“I built it a while back on a piece of my granddad’s land that ran up against old Gerry’s place. He was never one for fences, anyway, but I just went ahead and built the place on granddad’s land.”
There was an awkward silence.
“I don’t want it.” Sharon blurted out.
The silence returned, rather more awkwardly.
Marshman broke it with a gentle cough.
“It sounds like I’m being called upon to dispense some legal advice,” he announced, “which is best done with rather more privacy. Perhaps the rest of you would be so good as to give us the room.”
“I don’t want it,” Sharon repeated, when the room had emptied.
Marshman looked at her quizzically.
“I don’t want the house, I don’t want the land, and I sure as hell don’t want to live in bloody Nara.”
Marshman nodded.
“Fair enough,” he said. “There’s always been those who can’t tolerate the pleasures of pastoral life. We can get started on the paperwork for you to renounce your interest immediately, at which point the land will escheat to the crown.”
He removed some papers from his desk drawer.
“I’ll get started on that matter right away, of course, but it will take me some time. Why don’t you enjoy the rest of what might be your last day in Nara, and I’ll have these sent over for your signature in the morning?”
Sharon nodded quietly.
“Yes. I . . . uh . . . yes. I’ll see about finding my bags, I suppose.”
Marshman smiled up at her. “And you’ll be needing you wallet, also, of course.”
Sharon paused. Yes, she thought. She’d need to buy a bus ticket to Adelaide, but Marshman’s simple smile seemed to suggest something more.
Marshman broke the silence.
“Your debts to the estate?” he explained.
Sharon stared at him with no greater comprehension.
“You came here by way of a plane ticket provided to you by your great uncle’s estate, yes?” Marshman asked.
She nodded.
“And a bus ticket, also, for the trip from Adelaide to Nara? Those tickets were paid for by funds from your uncle’s estate. If you renounce your interest in the estate, you will, of course, be required to compensate the estate for the benefits you received therefrom. I will include a more exact total in the materials I send to you tomorrow morning, but I expect it will be in the vicinity of four thousand dollars.”
Sharon sat in stunned silence.
“I’ll also include a bill for my time for the conversation we’re currently having.” He smiled again and checked his watch.
Sharon opened her mouth, but, finding that she had nothing quite appropriate to say under the circumstances, closed it again, stood up from her chair, and left the room rather quickly.
* * *
She walked the whole way back to Australian Charles Darwin’s Petting Zoo, kicking stones and cursing her luck.
As she neared the Zoo, Sharon came across a rather strange sight. A bright yellow line led from just to the left of his letterbox back down past his driveway. It narrowly missed the side of his house and continued all the way up to the new accommodations he’d put in with the Home and Away money. As she got closer, she could see that the line went straight up the wall of the building and over the roof. She wandered around and picked up the line on the other side of the building where it cut through the literary enclosure. Sharon peered inside. The line extended across the floor of the enclosure, up a tree in the middle, and across the sloth, who seemed oblivious to this state of affairs and happily munched a fistful of leaves.
Half the leaves were covered in yellow paint.
Sharon kept following the line across the path and into the herpetarium, where she found Australian Charles Darwin painting a yellow line across a red bellied black snake. She cast a shadow as she entered the dimly lit building and he looked up.
“Hey Shazza,” he said morosely.
“What’s the story with the paint?”
“Well, I know you’re going back to England and everything, so it sounds like Gerry’s land is going to be reverting to the Crown. They’ve already got one or two cutting edge centers for the scientific study of flora and fauna. I don’t reckon they’ll have much use for another.”
He looked up at the sign on the wall next to the snake enclosure.
The Evolution of the Snake: Stumpy Gets Lucky
He sighed.
“I didn’t realise, Shazza!” He protested. “I bought the place a while back and Gerry never was one for fences! He even came around a few times to see the roos and learn about symbiotic evolution. I call it the ‘Wingman Effect.’ He came around to see my lesson on drop bears twice! It’s not even scary the second time around but he still held his fork up and everything!”
Sharon was at a loss.
“I . . .” she began. But she had no idea how to finish. “I . . .”
“It’s not your fault, Shazza.” Australian Charles Darwin said, softly. “But I reckon this painting’s maybe a one man job.”
Sharon nodded, turned away, and walked back into the blinding sunlight.
Sharon didn’t know what to do with herself for the rest of the day. She would normally busy herself packing, but she had nothing to pack except the clothes she was wearing. After three beers and an hour of Neighbours reruns, Australian Charles Darwin was still somewhere out back drawing lines on the ground, and Sharon decided she needed a taste of home.
Janelle’s phone rang long enough that Sharon began to think she’d missed her. It was 8:01 on a Tuesday morning in Surrey, and Sharon reckoned Janelle would just be waking up. She’d decided to give her two more rings when she heard a click.
“Hello?” Said the voice on the other end of the line.
Sharon had opened her mouth to scream a particularly pommy good morning, but her voice caught in her throat.
“Hello?” The voice came across again, and it was much deeper than Sharon had anticipated, although not entirely unknown.
She swallowed hard.
“Alan?”
She heard Janelle’s voice come muffled from the other end of the line.
“Who is it, Al?”
The phone rustled as if hastily pressed against the worn pink terry-cloth fabric of a woman’s dressing gown that had been stretched, somewhat ineffectively, across a man’s frame.
It rustled some more, then Sharon heard Janelle’s voice.
“Sharon?”
Sharon opened her mouth to respond, but for the second time that day found herself lost for any words that would be appropriate for the circumstances.
She hung up the phone.
* * *
True to his word, Marshman had the papers delivered the next morning. He’d helpfully flagged the signature line and had taped a pen to the front of the package. Sharon got the feeling that he wasn’t terribly disappointed in her decision.
Australian Charles Darwin, however, was glum. He had promised to drive her by Marshman’s office on the way to the bus stop, but refused to let her get on her way without a hearty breakfast. Not long after, however, they were pulling out of Australian Charles Darwin’s driveway, past the fresh yellow line and the sign inviting allcomers to learn about the Origin of the Bloody Species. Just a short way down the road, Australian Charles Darwin slowed and turned up a small gravel driveway.
Sharon looked over at him curiously.
“You’ve got to at least take a look at the place before you leave.” He reasoned. “And I reckon there’s at least a couple of photos you might want.”
Sharon looked at his face for any indication of subterfuge, but found none.
A pair of palm trees framed the end of the driveway. Australian Charles Darwin parked in the gravel and Sharon got out to look around at what she was giving up. A corrugated iron roof stretched down over a verandah wrapping around all four sides of the house. Birds of paradise grew around a large rainwater tank set off to the side of the house and yaccas lined a red brick path up the front steps. She felt a cool breeze flowing from the back of the house as she stepped inside. It was a simple house, but not at all short on space. To her right, a large open kitchen with broad windows looking over the scrub towards the petting zoo. To her left, the living room, all wide pine floors and jarrah inlays. The mantel against the far wall was covered in photographs. She spotted a familiar picture of her father when he was just a boy, wearing denim overalls at the river and holding a fish proudly overhead. She walked over and picked up another in which Gerry, almost indistinguishable from her father at the same age, stood in a pair of tiny shorts on the bonnet of an ancient car.
Voices startled her from quiet contemplation and she turned to see Australian Charles Darwin with the television remote in his hand.
“Have a go, Shaz!” he blurted out. “Gerry had bloody cable put in!”
Sharon looked at Australian Charles Darwin’s smiling face and down at the picture in her hands. She looked back through to the kitchen windows at the petting zoo in the distance. She thought about the taste of a cappuccino and a kitchener bun in the morning and roo stew at night and she remembered how frigidly fucking cold Surrey gets in the winter. And she looked with wonder at this strange and wonderful man who’d drugged his monkey so she could get a good night’s sleep.
She smiled back at Australian Charles Darwin.
“Do you think he gets EastEnders?”
The Blood of Chris
They say Adelaide is the City of Churches, but that’s only because it’s got a bloody lot of them. Nara, however, has just two. At the east end of town sits St. Peter’s, Nara’s oldest church. It was founded in May of 1845 by German settlers. The current building was erected in 1885 to accommodate the growing congregation. At the west end of town is St. Andrew’s. It was founded in September of 1845 by German settlers who left St. Peter’s after a disagreement over who was responsible for bringing the biscuits to morning tea. The current building was erected in 1886, because you couldn’t bloody well be the only church in town without one.
Although St. Peter’s maintains the distinction of being Nara’s oldest church, since 1991, St. Andrew’s has been its most popular. That year, two things happened: the church finally got new carpet, and the Stain appeared.
The church had been saving for new carpet for some time, of course. They’d held a silent auction, a curry dinner, and a quiz night and finally saved enough to replace the threadbare red carpet with something new and tasteful in a subtle beige. They’d gotten it laid in time for Christmas mass.
The whole congregation was excited for the big unveiling, to be followed by morning tea. Everyone would bring a cheese pull-apart or scones or one of those awful fruit cakes that would sit, untouched and unsliced, on the table until someone would carve a sympathy slice and endure the aftertaste of regret.
Joan Harry was preparing to bring a delightful selection of brightly coloured iced sugar biscuits.
A jumble of copper biscuit cutters cluttered one end of the counter and the sweet, rich smell of sugar and vanilla competed with a haze of flour to fill the kitchen air. Flour dusted Joan’s hair and her apron, too. Tiny handprints in the floury countertop hinted at the source of the mess. Barefoot prints in flour on the bare wooden floor did, too. The sight of two children standing on chairs by the counter and throwing handfuls of flour at one another really solved the mystery.
“MUM!” Chris, Joan’s youngest, yelled out.
“MUM! Can we make some koalas?”
Joan looked up from the dough and smiled.
“Of course, love. Go find the koala and I’ll roll out the dough.”
Young Chris leaned from his chair down the counter towards the tangled mess of biscuit cutters. The chair tilted up on two legs as he crawled his hands towards them.
THUMP
The chair clunked down onto all four legs as Joan held fast to the back of it.
“Get down, you goose! You’ll crack your head.”
Chris scowled back at her but tucked his arms as he got ready to leap.
THUMP
again as he jumped onto the flour dusted floor.
Joan smiled as the floor shook, but looked up in alarm at when she heard a tiny gasp.
Chris was staring up at her, eyes wide as summer windows. He didn’t look happy. They both looked down where his feet hand landed. He’d found the koala, alright, but he’d found it, cutting edge up on the kitchen floor with the bottom of his foot.
He began to cry.
The cut wasn’t as bad as all that, but it was humourously shaped and unfortunately positioned and seemed to want to bleed rather a lot.
Joan ruled up her floury sleeves and did her best approximation of first aid. Blowed if she was going to miss Christmas mass. Chris, after all, was to walk at the head of the processional. She had to skip the last batch of iced biscuits, but she managed to get two trays of beautiful red and blue and yellow soldiers and green Christmas trees and lovely white angels loaded in the car, sandwiched between the two kids, Chris all sniffling away and two thick socks wrapped around a foot too tender for shoes.
He did a marvellous job in the procession, too. He held the cross high and didn’t limp a bit. He stood still by the altar throughout the welcome prayer. Joan had promised him first dibs on the bikkies if he’d behave himself, but still, what a little trooper.
He was still smiling when he returned to his seat and he gave a great big grin at morning tea after when he picked out a Christmas tree and a slice of chocolate cake and a scone with jam and cream. Joan was pleased despite her ill-conceived act of charitable fruitcake consumption.
It was the cleaning lady who discovered the Stain, actually. Two days after Christmas when she was vacuuming around the altar. She let out a scream and dropped to her knees to pray. Father Bruce heard her cry and came running from the rectory. Word spread quickly, as it often does in small towns, and soon people were coming in to see the Stain. Sunday services were more crowded than ever before and even some of the St. Peter’s crowd started attending services at St. Andrew’s. Before long, the people from Murray Bridge were coming in and Father Bruce had to add a second Sunday service for the crowds. People say that just catching a glimpse of the Stain has the power to heal the infirm and comfort the elderly.
It’ll be at least another ten years before they’ll have to put in new carpet, but until they do, the miraculous Stain can be seen just next to the altar at St. Andrews, shaped, curiously, just like a little koala.
Welcome to Narangong 