The sun came out, revealing a neon green plateau. Gently rolling hills appeared between low-hanging rainforest clouds, materializing out of the mist like that other Oz, the one in the book.
Near Boar Pocket Road, a group of steers blocked traffic. Ronnie hit the brakes and slowed to a stop, smiling. Johnson’s beef cattle had escaped again. Several cars in front of her sat parked in the road. Drivers had gotten out of their cars to watch the show.
She looked for and then found the familiar slender cowboy shape and Akubra hat.
Nev whistled, long and sharp. Gaia, a six-year-old collie, flew at the steers, who watched, unperturbed and enormous. Instead of veering off at the last moment, the dog hit the wall of cattle and began snapping and snarling.
“Get down!” Nev said, holding out the shepherd’s cane she used for herding. “Get down, Guy. Get down!”
Gaia was a sledgehammer.
The steers saw that the collie meant business and began to move, slowly at first, then trotting, back up Boar Pocket Road toward home. Turning with a hand in her pocket, Nev finally noticed Ronnie and raised her crook in greeting.
Ronnie waved back, cheeks warm, irrationally happy. Her boss’s attention sparked a warm feeling in her chest. She envied the dog.
She turned the key in the ignition. The bike’s engine roared to life.
In the center of town, Ronnie rode past the ancient Lionheart Hotel with Victorian wooden arches and wraparound second floor balcony, past rows of small, brightly-painted houses, and an athletic field where children in school uniforms played.
Coming back to her childhood home always felt like stepping back in time. The village of Lionheart was hay country, dairy country, and as her dad told fire department recruits when he toured them around, home of the Wadjanbarra Yidi and Bundabarra Yidi Traditional Land Owners.
On the edge of town, the purple Queenslander on Pademelon Road waited for her in run-down Victorian coziness, the nostalgia place that decayed but never fundamentally changed despite a maelstrom battering the outside world—a refuge in more ways than one. An official-looking sign on the wooden railing read, “Licensed Wildlife Rehabilitation Facility.”
Ronnie parked her bike on the lawn beside her dad’s shiny new black Ford F-250, then climbed the staircase two steps at a time up to the wraparound veranda on the second floor and let herself in through the unlocked front door, through the screened-in sunroom with green plastic carpet to the inner front door, which had swollen from the humidity and was always ajar.
The old house smelled like a pet store: wood shavings, grain, and warm milk. Her dogs jumped on her, tails wagging. Matilda, a Jack Russell, snapped at Maya, the Blue Heeler. Ronnie picked Matilda up and carried her into the family room, which was full of wallabies.
Orphaned joeys peered out at her from large, clean cages. The smallest one sat on Ronnie’s dad’s lap, wrapped in a faded Little Mermaid towel.
Reg Madonna, chief of the volunteer fire department, sat in rugby shirt and cargo shorts watching the Matildas play the Black Ferns in soccer. Ronnie collapsed across from him.
“How was surfing with Mikey? Any waves this time?”
“Some cops pulled me over on the Gillies.”
Reg glanced over at her between plays, beneath a framed picture of a man who looked Pacific Islander kneeling in Aussie military uniform on the deck of a battleship in World War Two. A newspaper clipping from nine years ago taped to the picture read, “Lionheart’s Founding Family Bids Adieu to Beloved Patriarch”.
“All right, baby?” He muted the telly. “They did what now?”
She told him.
He swore. “Those bastards… I’d have got you, Brum.”
“Thanks, Da.”
He set the baby joey down next to him and lifted his arms without getting up. “Come ‘ere.” Without fail, he made her feel like he was proud of her. When he hugged her, she felt like a kidwho had won an award. She didn’t know why he was still proud of her now. She hadn’t been that kid in a long time.
He put the wallaby back in its cage and patted the cushion. “Blaise will fix up the guest room.”
“Yeah, nah.” Ronnie had her own temporary modular home in a caravan park in Tinaroo, a working-class tourist town on the west bank of Lake Tinaroo. It was good enough for now—near cousins and safe enough for her daughter to ride a bike around the neighborhood on the odd weekend Ronnie had her.
“I insist.” Reg pressed the remote. The Matildas had won. Commentators reviewed the best plays. Ronnie loved that he was a super fan of women’s soccer. He was a girl dad. She leaned against his side. If anyone had seen her, she would have been embarrassed and denied it.
She hoped telling him wasn’t a mistake.
During the commercial Reg made a phone call, then put his arm around her again. She wanted to say thank you but her tongue was lead. She had won the dad lottery. Reg hadn’t even been a real stepdad, just one of her “van life” mum’s ex-boyfriends, but no one around here cared. He had thrown a bigger party when she was born than he had two years earlier for his biological son, her half-brother.
Maybe that was why when their mum went walkabout, she had taken her dogs but left the kids. No one had batted an eye.
