Unforgettable Journeys: Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea, Running Wild and Dear Olly

It wasn’t until a few more days had passed that Marty and I could begin to hope that the bushmen weren’t taking us back to Cooper’s Station after all. Neither of us could believe these people were lost. They seemed to know every root, every tree, every gully in this maze of a wilderness. The fruit they found was never a surprise, nor the roots they dug up, nor the pools they led us to. They knew exactly where they were. They belonged in this place.

They found their way through the bush with such obvious ease that it was quite impossible to think they could ever get lost here. So if they were not lost, and we were not being deliberately led around in circles, and if after all this time we had still not yet reached Cooper’s Station, then it stood to reason we weren’t going there. So where were they taking us then? Marty and I asked each other that question more than a few times. But we had no answers.

With every hour that passed, the bush around us looked less and less familiar. We were in much greener country. There were hills about us, and more farms and settlements in the valleys – which the bushmen seemed to want to avoid as much as we did. We knew now, for whatever reason, that they were not taking us back. And the longer we were with them the more sure we became that these people were absolutely no threat to us. They might not talk to us. They might keep their distance. They might still stare at us more than we liked, but there was never the slightest hint of hostility towards us. On the contrary they seemed very protective of us, and as fascinated by us as we were by them. And the children found us endlessly funny, particularly when we smiled, so we smiled a lot. But then we felt like smiling. They shared their food with us: berries, roots, fruit and baked wallaby once. We had all the water we needed.

Marty did try once or twice to ask where we were going, but was simply given more fruit or berries as an answer. So he gave up. But up on Big Black Jack, as we rode through the night, or resting in the shade, the two of us speculated at length. Maybe we weren’t being taken anywhere. I mean, they never looked as if they were going anywhere in particular. They just looked as if they were quite happy simply going, simply being. Or maybe they were adopting us into their tribe and we’d wander the bush with them for the rest of our lives. Maybe they were still making up their minds what to do with us. Perhaps we’d just wake up one day and find them gone. We really didn’t mind. All we could be sure of was that we were a long, long way from Cooper’s Station now, and further every day. Where we were going wasn’t important. Sometimes at night we’d see lights in the distance, more settlements probably, but we never once thought of running off. We were safe with them. We had no reason to leave them.

I can’t say exactly how many days and nights our journey lasted – it could have been five or six days perhaps. I do know that it lasted long enough for Marty and I to begin to believe it might be permanent, that we had indeed been adopted in some way. I certainly was beginning to feel comfortable among them, not because they became any less reserved – they didn’t. Distance seemed to be important to them. The children though were a different story. We very soon got beyond just smiling and laughing. We splashed each other in the pools. We skimmed stones, threw sticks, ambushed one another. One took to riding piggyback on Marty’s back, and the smallest of them would often ride up with us on Big Black Jack loving every moment of it. We were finding our place among them, beginning to feel accepted. That’s why, when our journey finally ended, we felt all the more abandoned, even rejected.

We had been travelling through hilly country for a day or two now, and Big Black Jack was finding it very hard going, and not just because of the hills either. We knew already that kangaroos made him nervous, but there hadn’t been many of them until now. Now they were everywhere, and he was not happy. In the half-dark we could see their shifting shapes, and so could Big Black Jack. We could feel him tensing beneath us. We’d talk to him to try to calm him, smooth his neck, pat him gently, but nothing seemed to work. His ears would be twitching frantically. He’d toss his head and snort at them. Worst of all, he’d just stop without any warning. Falling off was all too easy. It amused the children hugely, but was painful for us. In the end Marty and I decided it would be better altogether, and safer too, to give Big Black Jack a rest, and walk. So during the last couple of nights of our journey we walked with the bushmen, one of us leading Big Black Jack. He seemed happier that way. He puffed less and snorted less. The last night we were with them I felt as if I really was one of them, sharing the silence and the stars.

The next morning at sun-up we were coming to the top of a high hill. It had been a long steep climb. Below us was a wide green valley with a stream running through, and trees, more trees than I’d ever seen in my life. In front of us on the crest of the hill the bushmen had stopped and were talking among themselves. I thought we’d be resting here for a while, and was only too happy about that because my legs were tired, and I was longing for food and for sleep. I sat down to investigate a thorn in my foot which had been troubling me. Beside me Big Black Jack was cropping the grass contentedly.

Suddenly Marty called out. “They’re going! They’re leaving us!” Sure enough, the bushmen were walking away from us back the way we’d come, the children looking over their shoulders at us from time to time as they went. We called after them again and again, but they didn’t stop. Then they rounded the side of the hill and were gone.

“Why?” Marty said. “Why here? Why did they leave us here?”

We stood there in silence, each of us trying to make some sense of what was happening to us, of why they had treated us this way. We felt utterly bewildered. The parting had been so unexpected, so sudden and strange. No goodbyes, not even the wave of a hand.

That was when Big Black Jack began snorting again. I looked around for kangaroos. There were none, not that I could see anyway. But Big Black Jack had stopped eating in mid-chew. He had his head up now and his ears pricked. He whinnied loud and long, so that the valley rang with it. He was lifting his nose, sniffing the air, and listening. We could hear kookaburras and galahs, all the cackle of the bush at daybreak, but certainly nothing out of the ordinary. But then we heard the sound of whistling, of someone singing, a woman singing, and with it the tread of a horse in among the trees below us, of a saddle creaking. Big Black Jack whinnied again.

A great bay horse was coming out of the trees and up the hills towards us, on its back a rider in a wide-brimmed straw hat. But it wasn’t the horse or the rider that we were looking at so much as the cavalcade that was following along behind, a cavalcade of creatures, all of them infants: wombats, wallabies, joeys. And as the rider came closer I could see there was a koala clinging on round her neck, looking at me over her shoulder. She rode right up to us, let the horses touch noses and check each other over. Meanwhile she took off her hat and looked us up and down. I haven’t forgotten the first words she spoke to us:

“Strewth,” she said. “Look what the cat brought in. But maybe it wasn’t the cat, right? How’d you get here?”

“It was the bushmen,” Marty told her.

“I thought as much. Are you waifs and strays then? They only bring me waifs and strays. They know I collect them, see. They don’t eat the little ones, not unless they’ve got to. Good people they are. Just about the best, I’d say. Where are you from?”

“England,” I said. There was a wombat rooting around my feet now.

“S’all right. He won’t bite,” she told me. “You’ve come fair ways then.”

“We were at Cooper’s Station,” Marty said. “We escaped.”

“I know Cooper’s Station. Mr Bacon’s place, right? Where’s he’s got all those orphan kids.” She looked us up and down.

“He used to be the preacher in town before they moved out there,” she continued. “If there’s one thing I can’t abide it’s fanatics of any kind, and religious ones are the worst of all. Running away from that place seems a pretty sensible thing to do. You’ll be looking for somewhere to stay then.”

Marty and I looked at one another. She was turning her horse now and walking away from us, her little animals following her. “Well, are you coming or aren’t you?” she called out. “If you are, then bring the poor old black horse with you. He needs feeding up by the looks of him. Come to that, so do you. Couple of raggedy little scarecrows, that’s what you are. I’ll soon fatten you up. Come along if you’re coming. Don’t spend too long thinking about it. Haven’t got all day.”

Marty and I didn’t need to think twice about it. We followed along behind the cavalcade, and like us Big Black Jack had a new spring in his step. “That lucky key of yours,” said Marty. “You still got it?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Just don’t ever lose it, that’s all,” he said.

Henry’s Horrible Hat Hole (#ulink_bbd6fc68-4a7d-5aa8-a10f-3bf1d8c6a272)

Big Black Jack knew it too, just as we did. We all knew we were coming home. He stepped out with new heart, snorting in his excitement all the while at the procession of creatures in front of him. Clearly size mattered to Big Black Jack when it came to kangaroos – the little joey hopping alongside the lady on the horse wasn’t a worry to him at all. Nothing worried him now, nothing worried any of us. If we had been in hell at Cooper’s Station before, now we were riding into paradise.

We were looking all the while for a house of some kind. But all we could see were trees and green paddocks, and beyond them the winding river, and in the distance the bluest mountains I ever saw. Suddenly there it was, a long low shack of a place, a chimney at one end and a verandah all around. There was a pond nearby which cackled with geese that came out to greet us as we arrived, followed by a flurry of hens and chicks. This was to turn out to be our home for the next seven years, the first real home I ever had, the home of my childhood. And I’ve been grateful all my life ever since, to Ida and to those bushmen who brought us there, who must have sensed all along what we needed.

She called it the Ark, and it didn’t take much to see why. The place was alive with every conceivable domestic animal: goats, sheep, a couple of pigs, a mournful-looking donkey called Barnaby, three milk cows and their calves, and of course, her entire family of wild creatures. The domestic animals all had names, but I only remember Barnaby and a cow called Poogly – not a name you easily forget.

She didn’t give names to the wild ones, she said, because they were just passing through, except for one. Henry was a wombat. Henry, she said, was probably still asleep, and didn’t much like strangers. He’d been with her for seven years. He’d come and just stayed. He lived in a hole under the verandah steps, and collected hats. In fact he stole hats, any hat he could find, which was why she kept her hat on all the time. Henry slept on his hoard of hats down there in his hole and was very happy, probably the happiest wombat in the entire world, she said, which wasn’t difficult, she added, because wombats generally are not the happiest of creatures.

“You can have a look later for yourself,” she told us, “just don’t breathe in while you’re doing it. It’s horrible down there. Stinks to high heaven. Not a great one for personal hygiene, our Henry.”

She introduced her entire menagerie of animals before she even introduced herself. She did that over a glorious breakfast of eggs, and toast and jam, and milk, which we wolfed down, still unable to take in our extraordinary turn of luck. She waited until every last crumb was gone, every last drop. We discovered soon that this was always the thing with her. She could sense intuitively the needs and fears of us all, of all her “children,” which is why, from the very first day, we always felt so at ease with her, why we came to love and trust her as we did, whether we were boys or joeys. She’d saved all of us. We didn’t love her because we owed her, but because of the kind of person she was.

She wanted to hear our story. So Marty told her everything – he was always better at words than me. I watched her as she listened, saw the sadness and anger in her face. I could see she was older under her hat than I’d first imagined. When you’re young you can’t work out the age of an adult – they’re just quite old, old, or very old. She was old, and (I’m guessing now because I never asked her of course) about fifty-five. Her hair was long to the shoulders, and grey, going to white around her temples, and this belied the youth in her face. She was quick to smile, and when she did her whole being seemed to light up. She laughed easily too. I’ve forgotten so much about her, so much about everything, but I can hear her laugh still. It warmed me then. It warms me now when I think of it, because there was love in her laughter, never mockery, unless it was self-mockery. And there was a directness about the way she looked at you, and the way she spoke to you.

“Well, you’ve told me your little tale,” she began, “so I’ll tell you mine. Then we’ll know one another better, won’t we?

And so she told us who she was and what she was doing living there in the Ark with all her creatures around her, and Henry down his hat hole. We listened agog, because she was a wonderful storyteller. She could paint pictures in your head with words, and she could touch the heart of you too.

“Megs Molloy, that’s me – Margaret really – but Aunty Megs will be fine. Just call me that, everyone does. I do a little of everything, a bit of farming, write a bit of poetry – love that – and I make boats too in my shed, because Mick made boats. You’ll see photos of him about the place. He was my husband, but I lost him in the war, which was sad for me, but sadder still for him. His ship was sunk in some convoy, so he’s part of the seabed now. It’s as good a place to end up as any, I reckon. He made model boats all his life, sailed them too, all kinds, a destroyer in the end. Boats were his life, boats and me. So now I make boats because he taught me how to do it, and I love it. But I don’t get all maudlin about Mick, not often anyway. Life’s too short.

“Besides there’s too much needs doing round here. Years ago when Mick and me first came here, he discovered a dead wallaby up on the road – knocked down and killed by some stupid truck. He saw a little head sticking out of her pouch, and alive, alive o! So he brought it home. That was near enough twenty years ago now. That little fellow was the first of hundreds, thousands now maybe. From that day on one of us would check the road every morning at dawn, and whenever we found an orphan, a possum, a joey, a wombat, we’d bring him home. And in time the bushmen must have got to hear about it, because they would bring along little fellows they’d found and leave them with us. They don’t say much, but they’ve got their hearts in the right place.

“But we wouldn’t ever keep them. We wouldn’t cuddle them either. None of that. We’d just feed the little fellows and look after them. Tried never to tame them, never even touch them ‘less we had to. Once you tame them they’ll never go back to the wild. So we just kept them till they were strong enough. Then we’d all take a hike together up into the hills, and if one or two stayed up there, that was fine with us, that was just what we wanted. They were back where they belonged.

“When the war came along and Mick joined the navy, I went on doing it just the same. And when he didn’t come back, I carried on. Seemed the right thing to do. So here I am writing my poetry, making my boats, looking after whoever or whatever I find out there that needs me. Then this morning, I find something I’ve never found before – a couple of raggedy little scarecrows left behind for me by the bushmen. So I said to myself: they’ve done that for a good reason. And now I know the reason. So I know why you were there, and now you know why I was there. Just like all the little fellows out there, you can stay as long as you need to.”

The two of us walked out afterwards to see Big Black Jack in his paddock. He was trying to make friends with Aunty Megs’ horse and with Barnaby. But Barnaby wasn’t having any of it, and he didn’t much like it either when Jack started checking out Aunty Megs’ horse. I could hear Aunty Megs singing from inside the house and I felt I was the luckiest person alive. I didn’t pinch myself, but I wondered more than once that first day whether Marty and I were living inside some wonderful shared dream, that maybe we’d wake up and be back at Cooper’s Station again.

But when I woke up the next morning, I woke up to see Marty still fast asleep in the bed opposite, and high on a shelf all around the room models of sailing boats, and I knew the dream was not a dream at all. I heard a shuffling under my bed then, peered underneath and saw a wombat looking back up at me. He had one of my socks in his mouth. Aunty Megs was at the door then with a glass of milk for each of us. “I see you’ve met Henry then,” she said. “Forgot to tell you. He steals socks too.”

I Must Go Down to the Sea (#ulink_51aef945-c3d1-53ae-8301-46dcde469ce2)

It turned out that Henry didn’t just pinch hats and socks, he’d steal just about anything that he fancied. So we never left our clothes lying around, nor shoes, nor towels. Aunty Megs told us to shoo him out of the house whenever he came in; but somehow, sooner or later, he’d always find a way back in again. And Aunty Megs was right, he did smell. If he was in the house we’d smell him before we saw him, and the stink of him lingered long in the air after we’d put him out. But we loved him all the same, just as Aunty Megs did. I think it was because of the way he looked up at you. His eyes said: “OK, so I stink. OK, so I’m a thief. But nobody’s perfect, are they? So give me a break, will you? Deep down you know you love me, everyone does.”

Feeding Henry his bottle of milk was the chore that was never a chore. Marty and I would often squabble over which of us should do this last task of the day. Whoever won would sit on the verandah steps right above Henry’s hole. He’d climb up on to your lap, roll over on his back and wait for it. Aunty Megs said he’d just never grown up, that she’d tried and tried to break him of the habit, but he’d hang around her feet making her feel so guilty that she couldn’t resist him. So Henry still got his milk, and it had to be out of a bottle.

We did have tasks at the Ark. We milked the cows, and the goats – learned to make butter and cheese too. We chopped wood, we fed the hens, got chased by the geese when we tried to shut them up in case the dingoes came in the night. But now it was work we wanted to do, because we wanted to help out, and because both of us loved being with Aunty Megs. Our hands blistered, our backs ached, but we didn’t mind. Every morning she’d take us down to the main road a mile or so away, and we’d walk along the verges, one of us on the right, one of us on the left, looking for any casualties. Most days we’d find something but more often than not they’d be dead already. But from time to time we’d get lucky.

I remember the first time I discovered a joey crouched trembling by the side of his dead mother. I couldn’t contain my excitement, and yelled for Aunty Megs, who came running over to pick him up. She was very strict about handling them. She never allowed us to feed them or handle them. If they were very small she’d keep them for a while in a box by the stove in the kitchen. We could crouch over them and look, but not touch. But as soon as they were old enough they’d live outside in the compound with the others. Marty and I would spend hours out there watching through the wire, but Aunty Megs was the only one allowed in. And she never talked to them, never stroked them. She just fed them.

She’d never let us come with her either when she went off for her rides into the bush, the orphan animals, her “little fellows,” trailing behind her. If we came, she said, we’d only confuse them. There was no point in saving them at all, she insisted, unless they could be returned back into the wild again successfully. She made it perfectly clear that this wasn’t an exercise in sentimentality, wasn’t just to make herself feel good. It was to give them a second chance of life, a chance they all deserved. It was a chance everyone deserved, she said, animals and people alike.

Aunty Megs had a station wagon she kept in the farm shed, which was half hen-house and half garage. And because the hens liked sitting on the station wagon it was just about the messiest car I’ve ever seen in my life. But we loved it. Going into town, ten or so miles away, was a real treat. She often sang when she was driving. She used to sing a lot – it made her feel happy, she said. She’d teach us all her songs, and we’d sing along, all three of us making a dreadful racket, but we loved it. She knew all the words and all the verses of London Bridge is Falling Down, which was more than I did before I met her.

We didn’t go into town often, just once a week or so. She’d stride down the street in her straw hat, and we’d follow along behind. Everyone knew her and she knew everyone. They were all rather curious about us at first. She didn’t explain who we were or where we’d come from. She just said we were her “boys” and that was that. And it was true. We were her children, and she was our mother – the only mother we’d ever known anyway.

It was on the first of those trips into town that she took us into the police station. She’d been thinking, she told us on the drive in, and it was time someone did something about it. She wouldn’t say anything else. She led us up to the desk and said we had to tell the sergeant right there and then all about Cooper’s Station, everything we’d told her. So we did. The policeman wrote it all down and shook his head a lot while doing it. Aunty Megs told us sometime later that the place had been closed down, that all the children had been found other homes to go to. I was pleased about that, cockahoop that Piggy wouldn’t be beating any more children. But most of all I was very sad for Ida. I remember feeling that I really didn’t want to know anything to do with that place, I wanted to forget all about it. Just the name, Cooper’s Station, was enough to make me think about it, and I didn’t want to have to think about it ever again.

But what you want to think about isn’t necessarily what you do think about. The truth is that the memories of all that happened at Cooper’s Station have come back to haunt me all my life, even during those happy, happy years we spent with Aunty Megs. They were happy because I was as close then as I’ve ever been to carefree. I know when I read what I’ve just written that it sounds as if I’m wallowing in nostalgia, making an idyll of the Ark. It’s difficult not to. After Cooper’s Station anything would have seemed like heaven on earth.