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CHAPTER
45
At five forty-five in the morning,The Northern Star’s Saturday edition dropped onto the beige nylon doormat outside Room 16 of the Clarence Hotel Motel.
Well. Dropped wasn’t quite the word. Really, the paper thunked against the ply veneer of the doorway loud enough to wake the dead, and a thunderous whisper accompanied it: ‘Kirsty? Are you awake, love?’
She sprang from the twin bed in the hotel-motel room she was sharing with her mother and ripped open the door in time to see Ken disappearing into the grey of dawn.
‘Hey,’ she hissed.
He turned around. ‘Sorry, love, early start, but you’re gonna wanna read that paper,’ he shout-whispered. ‘I’ve got muster duty; see you there later.’
She blew him a kiss, then hurried back to bed to dive under the doona. She unfolded the paper … and there it was.
CLARENCE’SWARHEROHASHISPLACE INHISTORYASSURED.
By Eric Middleton and Carol Wallace
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to inherit a suitcase and uncover a secret family history? That’s what happened earlier this year when Kirsty Fox, of Port Augusta, travelled to Clarence to receive her late grandmother’s bequest.
The suitcase, however, was only one part of her inheritance.
The other part was a World War II plane, which saw action against the Japanese in New Guinea, before being painstakingly restored and yet somehow forgotten and abandoned in an old cowshed of Clarence local, the late William (Bill) Bluett.
‘My great-grandfather’s Wirraway belongs in a museum,’ said Kirsty. ‘And with the help of the Clarence Historical Society, it is my intention to collate his story, and then donate the plane and Bill’s personal effects to the Wacol Military Museum, where New Guinea war history is on display to the public.’
She grinned. Oh, Carol, she thought. You have outdone yourself. No-one was locking her out of that shed now.
Joey’s Saturday alarm had gone off at the brutal hour of four o’clock, which would have been a pisser if he’d actually been asleep.
He’d been scrolling the weather app on his phone for what seemed like hours.
By five o’clock, the sky had lightened a smidge, but only a smidge, because the outlook wasn’t good. He frowned through the kitchen window and the sky scowled back at him, as heavy and mud-coloured as an old cowpat. Rain imminent, of course, whichwas excellent for the farm but problematic for the muster just five hours away and … what in heck was Gus doing?
The groodle was capering about up and down the fence line, and a series of uprooted agapanthus dotted the grass like dead green octopi. He sighed. Perhaps a sausage would distract his idiot dog from destroying any more of the garden beds.
He showered and dressed flat strap, then loaded the ute with the last of the muster stuff stowed in his stable. He took a minute to lean his head against the warm forehead of the miniature horse.
‘Rise and shine, Dobbin,’ he said. ‘Big day of community bonding for me. Big day pooping out cobbler’s pegs for you.’
The horse snuffled at the neck of his paisley shirt, then turned to hide his face in the corner of the stable once more.
Joey got the hint, grabbed the bucket of lanyards and marker pens and calculator and gaffer tape—his emergency ‘deal with whatever’ bucket—and flicked the lights off.
Gus, of course, objected to being abandoned at dawn.
‘Not today, young man,’ he said, and the dog answered by resting a paw on his boot.
‘It’s pointless acting cute. The Bush Poetry Muster will be chaos enough without you gnawing through electrical cables.’
Gus heaved a sigh, then trotted mournfully into his dog run.
‘I know, mate. Now, be a good boy and don’t harass the farmstay guests.’ Mount Barney was two days into a three-day booking. The Station Cottage had so many bookings stretching out to the end of January, he’d taken the plunge and ordered a commercial washing machine.
Right, was he forgetting anything? Trophies and award-winner envelopes were safely locked up in Wombat’s rooms above the pub’s kitchen. Spare electrical boards and extension cables were in Hogey’s care; his emergency bucket had the lanyards for themuster committee members with emergency numbers in case of—god forbid—a gas leak, or if a kid broke an arm falling out of the party tree, or one of the other hundred scenarios in the committee’s What-If-Shit-Happens folder.
He was all set.
