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  I was worried about putting the camel in with the poddies. I didn’t want him to hurt them. But Dad reckoned they’d be fine. Dad said he’d hold the camel while I went to get a bottle of milk to feed him. We gave him the same milk the calves had, except he drank it from an old pop bottle with a rubber teat on the end. It took a few goes to get him used to it, but I guess he was hungry, so he got the hang of it pretty fast.

  The cop stayed for lunch. I didn’t want any food, I just wanted to stay at the calf pen with the camel, but Bobbie said I had to have something. While we ate, the cop told us how a road train had hit the baby-camel’s mother on the Tanami Road. The camel had made a mess of the road train, and was in a pretty bad way. The driver had shot the camel and radioed the cops to report the accident. The cop said that when he got out there a baby camel had come out of the bush and was laid next to its mother’s carcass. The road-train driver said he hadn’t the heart to shoot it. Between them they managed to catch it. The cop thought the camel would have died of fright by the time he’d got it back to the little police station at Marlu Hill, but it didn’t, so he phoned Dad to see if we’d have it.

  All through lunch Emily wanted to know what I was going to call the camel. I said I hadn’t thought of a name yet. She said I should call him Stuart or Christopher. I told her to rack off.

  As soon as I’d finished off the beef sandwich Bobbie had made me, I said thanks to the cop for bringing the camel over and asked if I could get down from the table. Dad nodded and said I had to find a stick that was big enough for flogging a camel with before I went back in the calf pen. I was halfway down the steps into the yard, but I just caught the end of what he said before the fly screen on the back door slapped shut.

  When I got to the calf pen, the poddies were ignoring the camel – like they knew he wasn’t the same as them. The camel was all on his own except for a big mob of flies hovering around his head like a cloud. I decided then his name was Buzz.

  I said it out loud to him that I was going to call him Buzz. He looked me in the eye and bleated before he stretched down to the ground and chewed at a little tuft of grass. I took that as a sign he liked it too and smiled to myself. As he lifted his head back up to look at me, I reached out and scratched his ears. The fur on top of his head was softer than it looked, but his skull felt all hard and bony underneath it. After a minute he got a bit excited and kind of reared up, but I had the stick next to me and all I had to do was show him it and he quietened down again. I was glad about that. I didn’t want to hit him – not unless I had to, anyway.

  Five

  I’d had Buzz for a month or so when we had another phone call, which wasn’t from Aunty Ve. Sissy picked up the phone. She’d stopped puking up by then and had started eating everything in sight. She was getting real fat – not as fat as Aunty Ve, but still pretty big. We’d eaten dinner and were clearing the table when Sissy handed the phone to Mum and said, ‘It’s for you,’ before sulking back into her room. She still hardly spoke to anyone.

  The phone call was from a Pommie wanting to find out about the house-girl job. I reckon Mum was as surprised as the rest of us because she seemed to fall over her words as she tried to answer the Pommie’s questions. ‘We’re in the desert, two-hundred miles from Alice Springs,’ she said. ‘No, no … you’d have your own room in a building on the station. You’d be in the same building as our govvie, Bobbie – the girl who teaches the children … that’s right, three children. Emily’s seven, Danny’s thirteen and Sissy’s fourteen.’ She didn’t tell her Sissy was pregnant.

  When Mum hung up the phone, she looked at Dad, who said, ‘So?’ Mum reckoned the Pommie sounded OK and that she could start work at Timber Creek in a week, if someone could give her a lift to the station from Alice. I felt sick. I hoped every ute on the station would break down so no one could go and get her. Emily’s eyes were wide and I could tell she was excited. ‘What’s she called?’ Emily shouted. Mum told her the Pommie was called Liz, and Dad laughed. He said we should call her HRH – like the Queen.

  A week later, the Pommie house girl arrived. Bobbie brought her back from Alice after she’d been to town to see a bunch of other govvies she was mates with. We all heard Bobbie’s ute pull into the yard, so we went out to meet them. The door of the ute opened and the Pommie climbed out. I couldn’t believe it when I saw her.

  I knew straight away she’d be useless. She was small and skinny, for a start. Her legs were thinner than the calves’ and her arms were like Emily’s. When we saw her we all knew she wouldn’t be able to lift the salt meat out of the brine, or hook the side of a killer to the cool-room ceiling – so what was the point? I dunno why Mum and Dad didn’t fire her there and then. Even Dad said he’d be surprised if the Pommie could carry a bucket of calves’ milk. I don’t think Mum had asked how big she was when she phoned up about the job. I guess she was just glad someone phoned.

  The Pommie looked around her and smiled a little as she glanced at each of us and then at the buildings and the yard. She looked confused, I guess. A bit like she’d just been beamed onto the moon, or something.

  Her hair was the same colour as the spinifex, before it rained. And she smiled a lot; I dunno what at. She didn’t wear normal clothes and her skin was whiter than ours. The fellas were sat outside the old demountable caravan where they lived, drinking beer. As they watched the Pommie, they pretended not to, like the dogs did when they waited under the table, hoping for a scrap of food.

  Mum tried to shake the Pommie’s hand – she was acting real weird. Emily jumped up and down and ran round and round the Pommie, getting in the way. She was behaving like it was Christmas. She kept trying to hold the Pommie’s hand and to help her with her bags while Bobbie was showing her to the room she’d be sleeping in. If I was Bobbie, I’d have told Emily to rack off. The Pommie’s room was in the same building as Bobbie’s. Dad had spent most of the last week fixing it up. It had a bed and a rail for her clothes. He’d even found some carpet for the floor. When they got in there, though, I don’t think the Pommie was too pleased with her new roommate. Emily had left her favourite poddy calf, Charlotte, in there. She reckoned the Pommie could have Charlotte if she wanted her. The Pommie smiled but I could tell she wasn’t too keen. I reckon the amount of shit Charlotte had left all over the floor was what made her mind up. I was killing myself laughing. Emily was in big trouble, especially after Dad had worked so hard to fix the room up. Bobbie told Emily to take the bloody calf back to its bloody pen. It took Bobbie and Mum almost an hour to get the room sorted out. The dumb Pommie kept saying, ‘Please don’t worry about it – really, it’s fine.’ I dunno why she said that – we all knew it wasn’t.

  After Dad met the Pommie, he laughed and said she talked like the bloody Queen. She sounded slow – like she was thick, as well as posh. Each word took ages to come out, like when Aunty Veronica played records on the wrong speed to make us laugh. We hoped the Pommie worked faster than she talked.

  The day the Pommie arrived was a Sunday and our neighbours, the Crofts, were coming over for a barbecue. Mum reckoned it would be nice to get everyone together to say g’day to the new Pommie house girl and make her feel welcome. Mum and Sissy had been busy in the kitchen all day, and Bobbie was helping the Pommie unpack her things. Emily wasn’t allowed out of her room because of what she’d done with Charlotte. Me and the fellas were hanging around the cool room – that’s where the home brew was kept. The grog always smelled bad, like something was off. I didn’t like it, but Dad reckoned I would one day.

  Dad and the fellas had talked about the clean skins that needed castrating. Lloyd said we should get the Pommie to help us. Dad laughed at that. He said, ‘Christ, Lloyd! I reckon you’re the one who needs castrating; your brain’s in your bollocks.’ We all laughed and Lloyd looked at the ground. I said the Pommie couldn’t even castrate a kitten. Dad said I was right about that.

  Mum came over with the Pommie. She said I had to show Liz how to feed the poddies, the pigs and Buzz
. I started to complain – I mean, why did I have to do it? Why couldn’t fat Sissy show her round? Dad gave me a look though, so I knew I’d better just shut up and do it. Emily had been allowed out of her room by then, so she was there too – hanging off us like an itchy scab.

  The Pommie didn’t even know what a poddy was, so I had to explain it was a pet calf – one that had been orphaned, and then hand reared. She’d never even touched a calf before, so she reckoned I was an expert. I didn’t get it – why would we want such a total drongo working for us? Everything took ages because there was a lot to explain. I had to start right at the beginning, with things like how to unhitch the gate and close it again so none of the poddies escaped; how to mix up their milk; how to distract them with the hose so you could get the calf feeder hooked onto the fence without spilling any milk; and how to make sure they all got a fair share.

  When we got to Buzz, the Pommie’s eyes nearly burst out of her head. She said he was handsome, but I could tell she was scared, and so could he. He nearly kicked her, but I pushed him away. I was showing her how to hold the teat onto the bottle while he suckled the milk, when he started to have a piss. It splashed up off the ground and sprayed the Pommie’s bare feet. She only had thongs on and so she screeched like a bloody galah. All the poddies scattered like crows after a gunshot, and Buzz ran off round the pen, bucking and kicking like a rodeo bull. I said to her, ‘What d’you expect? You can’t get him to sit on a dunny each time.’

  She said, ‘His pee was really hot,’ like it was a secret. That made me laugh. What a drongo. She hadn’t a clue.

  I didn’t bother telling her about how I wanted to break him in so I could ride him. I thought I might even race him. Dad said the Arabs did that in Africa. I wanted to take Buzz there and bring the cup back to Australia, but Dad said it would cost too much.

  The Pommie liked Mo’s piglets. I guess they were smaller, so she wasn’t as scared of them – but they’d got fat enough for bacon. I told her how Mo had had three sisters: Eany, Meany and Miny, but we’d eaten them. That’s when the Pommie told me she was vegetarian. I was shocked. Dad always said it was unnatural. She asked me if there was anything I didn’t like – pumpkin, eurgh. She said that was how she felt about meat. I reckoned that was why she was so thin.

  Emily had got bored by then and had gone back to the house, but the Pommie wanted to go to see Buzz again. There was no way I was going to let her anywhere near him on her own – she’d probably leave a gate open or something. When we got there I showed her how to put a rope on him and walk him round the yards. He wasn’t as feral as when I’d first got him, so Dad reckoned I was making progress. When Buzz and me walked together, it was like we were partners. Sometimes he’d test me, and I’d have to get a stick and flog him, but that didn’t happen often.

  The Pommie had a camera and she kept taking pictures of me and Buzz, like we were something special. She asked if she could hold the rope, I didn’t want her to, but I wasn’t sure what to say, so I let her. She put her hand on Buzz’s cheek. She held it there and stroked him, real gently, just with her thumb. His eyes closed a bit and he made this low, growling sound, like he was purring. I told her to pack it in, I didn’t want Buzz going soft on me.

  Later, when the Crofts arrived, Mary and Ron went inside with old Dick, it was too hot outside for him. Penny wasn’t with them, she’d gone into Alice to see her mum. While they all went inside, Greg came to sit with us fellas in the shady bit behind the cool room. When Greg sat down, he took off his hat, like he’d arrived at church. He said he was perishing after the drive over, so the fellas gave him a beer. After Greg tipped the bottle back and swallowed half of it in one go, he burped and the warm smell of rotten sugar wafted over. That was when Elliot asked Greg if he’d come to take a look at the Pommie house girl. They all laughed.

  They carried on drinking the grog and telling stories about mustering. After a while we got interrupted when the Pommie showed up. Mum had asked her to get something from the cool room for the barbie. Everyone went quiet, like we’d been talking about her. Elliot’s chair made a hard, scraping sound against the ground when he got up to let her past. None of the fellas looked at her when she smiled. Eventually Elliot said, ‘This is Greg Croft, he lives next door.’ The Pommie laughed and said she’d been speaking to Dick, who’d told her Gold River was fifty-miles away. She said that in England, fifty miles wasn’t next door – it was a holiday. Greg smiled and said if she wanted to take a holiday to Gold River, she’d be very welcome to stay with him. The others laughed, and the Pommie went red. Greg watched the Pommie walk back to the house, like the Blackfellas did when they were hunting kangaroo and they’d spotted a big red.

  Six

  It was always a late one when the Crofts came over, so we were all tired the next day. While we waited for the Pommie to get us some tucker, no one said much. We all looked a bit like creased-up bits of paper, which someone had chucked away and then tried to straighten out again. The Pommie hadn’t a clue where anything was, or what to make for us.

  She’d asked what we all wanted for brekkie – that was her first mistake. Mum usually made something and we all just ate it. If you didn’t like it, it was tough – you went hungry. But seeing as she’d asked, Dad laughed and said if the Timber Creek café was taking orders, he’d have a bacon sandwich. Mum asked for a poached egg on brown toast, I wanted rice bubbles and milk, followed by a bacon sandwich. The fellas said they wanted bacon and eggs with fried bread. Bobbie reckoned she’d just have toast with Vegemite, and that left Emily. Emily was in the kitchen helping. As we all waited longer and longer for some food to arrive on the table, we got quieter and quieter. Mum started checking her watch every other second – I guess she was worried about being late for work. Dad got real fidgety. He was like a bear with a sore head until he’d had a cup of coffee.

  We knew something had gone wrong when the first lot of toast got burned and the smell wafted through from the kitchen. Dad raised his eyebrows and looked at Mum, who whispered, ‘Do you think I should go in and help?’ Dad shook his head and said the Pommie would never learn if we did everything for her.

  I could hear Emily telling the Pommie where things were kept in the kitchen. We don’t use that pan for eggs, Liz, Mum always uses the other one. Why are you doing the toast in the grill? Mum always uses the toaster … It’s over there, on the side. Why are you holding the tea towel against your face – don’t you like the smell of bacon? Liz, can I have two slices of toast? When I stay at Aunty Ve’s she cuts it into three pieces, with everybody jam on two of them and Vegemite on the middle one, so it’s stripy … I wondered if the Pommie would know what everybody jam was – it’s what the Blackfellas call apricot jam because everybody likes it. As I was thinking that, I reckoned I could smell burning again, so I got up and went to the kitchen door, just to see what was going on. Mum told me to sit back at the table, but I just wanted a quick look. And I’m glad I did.

  I couldn’t see the Pommie anywhere, but Emily was there. The bacon seemed to be smoking in the frying pan. Emily lifted it off the hob and put it down on Mum’s plastic tea tray – the one Grandma bought her. She was too dumb to think that the hot pan would melt the plastic. So, then there was this sickly smell of burning plastic in the air, as well as a smoky smell. The toast under the grill was burning again, and before I could say anything about the tea tray, Emily put the tea towel down on the hob where the bacon had been, while she got the oven glove to pull out the grill and rescue the toast. When she turned away to put the toast onto the tray with the bacon, she saw it had melted. Just as I tried to warn her about the tea towel catching fire on the hob, the tea urn began to boil over. No one had thought to tell the Pommie not to fill it right to the top. Boiling water cascaded down the sides and across the floor, nearly scalding Emily’s feet. I managed to push her out of the way and at the same time I shouted for Mum to come and help us. Mum just made it into the kitchen as flames from the tea towel suddenly licked at the ceiling and
the water from the urn short-circuited the electric so the lights went off.

  The dumb Pommie came back out of the pantry carrying a couple of jars of jam – she was saying something about not being able to find everybody jam, so would plum or apricot do? Her voice kind of trailed off to nothing as she noticed Mum’s kitchen was about to start the biggest bushfire the Territory had ever seen. Luckily Dad was there. He reached over with his long arms and switched the hob off, then grabbed a pair of tongs and threw what was left of the tea towel into the metal sink where Bobbie was waiting to turn on the tap and put out the fire. Elliot had flicked the switch to turn off the urn. We all stood and stared through the smoke at what was left of Mum’s kitchen. The Pommie’s face had gone bright red and she was coughing because of the smoke. Eventually she said, ‘I was looking for everybody jam’ – like that would explain everything.

  I hoped the disaster at brekkie meant Mum would fire the Pommie. We didn’t need a useless Pommie on the station, especially one who nearly burned the place down. I mean, no one else who’d worked for us had ever done anything as dumb as setting fire to the house before. But Mum decided to give her another chance. Seeing as the Pommie was new, and didn’t know much about life on a cattle station, Mum said Sissy would be in charge. She said Sissy could have the day off school to show Liz the ropes. That belly of hers was getting so big, she couldn’t do any work anyway. I guess barking orders at the Pommie was as useful as she was going to get.

  Seven

  Everyone thought that when the Pommie arrived at Timber Creek, Mum’d be happier because she wouldn’t have so much to do in the house, chasing around after us all the time. But it wasn’t like that – not as far as I could tell, anyway. It was like having the Pommie there made it worse. After a few days I tried to tell Dad about it. He was in one of the sheds looking for a drill bit. I went in and said I was sick of the Pommie because she was useless and couldn’t do anything right. But he just said that the house was Mum’s responsibility and that she had a lot on and needed some help.