Lillipilly Hill (15 page)

Harriet trudged back home in a thoughtful mood. To Harriet, few things were impossible. At first, the idea of going to Winneroo with Dinny was just an idle dream. But as she climbed the hill towards the lillipillies, Harriet became so obsessed with the vision of sandy shores and rolling waves that it seemed altogether too inviting to be forgotten. Here was just the adventure she had been craving, and she was experienced enough to know that the opportunity might not come again. Next time, Dinny would perhaps not ask Harriet to be her companion—already the Barley Creek girl was more than a little scornful of the rules and regulations which surrounded her friend.

‘And yet', thought Harriet, pausing to look up through the lillipillies' dripping leaves, which remained steadfast and unchanged throughout the autumn, ‘I daren't ask Mother. She would certainly say “no”. Father might let me go, if he were here—or Aidan might come with us. Oh,
bother
being a girl!'

She was silent and sullen during dinner, and immediately afterwards went to her room to fling herself face down on her bed. She was so still that Rose-Ann dared not address her, and was consequently taken by surprise when Harriet sat up, pushed back her hair, and said dramatically: ‘I
shall
go, so there!'

Rose-Ann merely stared at her.

‘You're supposed to ask me where I'm going,' Harriet said sharply.

‘Why?' demanded Rose-Ann. ‘You're always saying you're going to Africa, or China, or some other queer place. You haven't gone yet.'

‘Don't be impertinent,' Harriet said, in an attempt to imitate her mother's voice. ‘This time I
am
going, but not as far as China. I'm going to Winneroo.'

‘Where's that?'

‘It's a place at the seaside, five miles away. Dinny asked me to go with her, tomorrow. And you're to help me.'

‘You don't want me to go too, do you?' asked Rose-Ann nervously.

‘Of course not. You could never walk as far as that. Why, it will be ten miles, there and back. No, you must wait half an hour after I've gone, and then tell Mother. And be sure to tell her it's perfectly safe, that I'll be home before dark, and that I'm taking my dinner.'

‘But, Harriet!' protested the horrified Rose-Ann. ‘Whatever will Mother say? And Father, too, when he comes home.'

‘I intend to be as good as good afterwards,' Harriet assured her. ‘I shall practise all morning, and sew all afternoon. This will be my only adventure—I do think it's time I had one.'

‘What if it rains?'

Harriet glared at her sister.

‘It won't rain. I'll
make
it not rain.'

Rose-Ann was quite convinced next morning that Harriet was strong-minded enough to influence even the weather. For the day dawned fresh and clear and calm, with blue sky and benevolent sun. At a quarter to seven Harriet was fully dressed, and the early light transformed her sandy hair into a most unsuitable halo, as she addressed the drowsy Rose-Ann.

‘Now don't forget to tell Mother everything—but not till half past seven. She doesn't usually come out till then, anyway.'

‘All right,' mumbled Rose-Ann unhappily. ‘I do think you're mad, Harriet.'

Unperturbed, Harriet crept around to the back door, and so into the kitchen, where Polly was already at work.

‘Please, Polly, may I have some bread and cheese? Only don't ask what it's for.'

‘Goin' off without your breakfast, are you?' said Polly. ‘Never mind, I won't ask no questions. There's some bread cut on the table, an' you know where to find the butter and cheese.'

Harriet hastily made herself some rough but substantial sandwiches, to which the kind-hearted Polly added an apple and a lavish handful of raisins. Carefully Harriet wrapped her booty in a handkerchief of Aidan's and stowed it in her pocket.

‘Good-bye, Polly—I'll see you at tea,' and before the surprised Polly could make any remark, Harriet was off, racing across the back yard. The path down the hill from the cowshed was familiar ground to her now, and she knew how to dodge the prickly vines and the bunches of sword-grass, even at top speed.

Dinny was waiting at the fence, barefooted and bare-headed as usual, for the mild May weather did not qualify as the season for donning boots or caps—June would be time enough for that.

‘I didn't think you'd come,' she remarked, in pleased astonishment. ‘I was just going to wait a bit, in case, but I never thought your Ma would say “yes”.'

‘Well, as a matter of fact, she didn't,' confessed Harriet. ‘Do you mind if I eat my apple now, Dinny? I haven't had any breakfast.'

‘Ma will give you some,' said Dinny. ‘It won't matter if we're a bit late starting.'

‘Oh, no,' said Harriet hurriedly. ‘Let's start now. Which way do we go?'

Dinny put her hand in Harriet's—a rare gesture, for Dinny was the most undemonstrative of mortals.

‘Come on, then. An' don't you worry about what they'll say—just tell 'em it was all my fault.'

Harriet smiled gratefully, and they set off along the Deacon's Flat road.

‘We turn off here half a mile along,' explained Dinny. ‘After that it's mostly up an' down all the way, over the hills.'

‘Do we go near the swamp?' asked Harriet eagerly.

‘You mean Heron Swamp? We don't have to cross it, thank goodness, but you can see part of it from the track. What do you know about the swamp, anyway?'

Harriet told her of Aidan's journey, and Dinny was suitably impressed.

‘He must of been real brave to go down there at night. That's where the bunyip lives. An' that swamp hasn't got no bottom in places, Pa says.'

Once they left the road, Harriet's initial uneasiness began to wear off, for everything conspired to make her feel cheerful—the gentle sunlight, the mirth of nearby kookaburras, the company of Dinny. The track curved gradually along a hill-side, where moss shone bright green beneath the trees, and faint rustlings told of bandicoots and possums seeking their day-time refuge. Below, blue smoke rose straight up into the clear air from the houses of Barley Creek: far to the right, beyond the forest of bluegums, one isolated plume showed the whereabouts of Lillipilly Hill. Harriet was quite thankful when they turned to the left again, and all traces of habitation were left behind.

‘We should be at Winneroo before nine,' said Dinny, her bare feet padding steadily along the stony track. ‘Then we can stay on the beach for hours—we won't have to leave till about four.'

‘Won't your father want to talk to you?' asked Harriet, resolutely putting to the back of her mind the thought of those eleven long hours away from home. She had expected to be at Lillipilly Hill in time for tea.

‘Oh, he'll be busy,' said Dinny. ‘He ain't much of a one for talking, anyway. Ma does all the talking for
him. He likes me to keep out of the way when I go to Winneroo—I might get caught in the timber when they're loading. Once Joe sat down right in the middle of the tramway to eat his dinner, an' the truck nearly killed him. Pa never forgot that. He makes us go 'way down the beach now.'

It all sounded very strange and exciting to Harriet, and in her eagerness to see Winneroo for herself, she kept up valiantly with Dinny, although she had never before been obliged to walk so fast. Dinny seemed absolutely tireless as she marched along beneath the spiky branches of a line of she-oaks, which twisted downhill into yet another gully.

‘When we get to the top of the next hill, we'll see the swamp, an' the sea an' everything,' she promised. ‘Keep to the track—there's bound to be leeches after all the rain.'

‘Leeches?' repeated Harriet, peering in horror at the scrub on either side. ‘What do they look like?'

‘Oh, you'd hardly notice 'em at first,' said Dinny cheerfully. ‘They're sort of like black threads. But when they're on you, they get fatter an' fatter, an' you can't get 'em off, not without salt.'

If Harriet had been walking fast already, she now positively ran. She was well ahead of Dinny as they scrambled up the rocky slope out of the gully,
and not until they were right at the top did she stop to regain her breath.

‘Would you please look and see if there are any leeches on me?' she asked imploringly, and with unusual patience Dinny examined her companion's stockings and the hem of her dress.

‘Can't find any,' came the reassuring verdict. ‘They wouldn't of hurt you, anyhow.'

At last Harriet turned to look at the view, and the leeches were forgotten. Aidan's swamp, just as immense and lonely as he had described it, stretched away to the right, a vast pattern of glittering water and dark green reed-beds. Ahead, the land fell in a series of low, sparsely-covered ridges to the golden shore and the blue, beckoning sea.

‘Winneroo's over there,' said Dinny, pointing to a steep headland on the left. ‘The timber-yard is the other side of that hill. There's only about another mile to go.'

It was an enchanted mile to Harriet. The track broadened and flattened, and the soil was soft and sandy, yellowish-grey in colour, and pleasant underfoot. The tall gums and turpentines gave way to lower, more sprawling trees—creamy paperbarks, whose spongy trunks Harriet delighted to poke, and slender-leaved bottlebrushes, some bearing wiry, scarlet flowers. Harriet picked one or two, but immediately
dropped them when she found that they were alive with tiny black ants.

Across the ridges drifted the sound of waves, and as they drew nearer to the headland, with it came a medley of other noises—clankings, hissings, and metallic rumblings. Filled with excitement, Harriet began to run, until she reached the top of the hill and felt the wonderful salt sea-breeze on her face and in her hair. At first she gazed in delight at the long yellow beach, with its pure clean sand, and its shining edges where seagulls walked beside the waves. Presently, however, she became aware that the slope below her was a hive of activity, to which the noises she had heard were directly related.

‘My Pa must be down there somewhere,' said Dinny, indicating the group of men engaged in piling shingles on to a truck. ‘When the truck's full, it runs down those lines to the wharf. The mill's just up there in the trees—that noise is the engine that drives the saws. Joe told me all about it once.'

Harriet could see now that the headland curved in a protective fashion around a little bay, a calm, sheltered place ideal for the mooring of boats. At the end of the wharf, rocking very gently on the breast of the pale-green water, were two ketches, one fully loaded and ready to sail.

‘That's the
Winneroo Star
,' said Dinny. ‘She's one of the old ones. They don't use the ketches much now—they've got real steamers, to carry the big timber. Pa went on one last summer, all the way to Sydney. I've never been to Sydney—Joe says he'll take me one day.'

They began to pick their way down the slope, keeping well clear of the tramway. Several of the men called a greeting to Dinny, and stared curiously at Harriet.

‘Who's the carrot-top?' asked one youth, a weedy, thin-faced creature whom Harriet instinctively disliked.

‘No business of yours, Alf Turner,' returned Dinny, taking Harriet's arm to hurry her past the group.

‘He's the meanest of the lot,' Dinny whispered. ‘No one likes him. They say old Bentley's just dying to get rid of him. But he ain't done nothing really bad—not yet. There's Pa, waving to us.'

Pinky O'Brien was a tough, stocky, squarely-built man, with the thick black hair his children had inherited, and skin the colour of mahogany from constant exposure to the sun. He had spent most of his life in the timber trade, beginning among the cedar forests of the North Coast, and no power on earth would have lured him to an indoor existence, or a job that confined him to one place. After a few days with his family, he
grew restless, and could hardly wait to be back in the bush, or on the salty Winneroo hill-side.

He grunted rather than spoke to Dinny, nodded off-handedly to Harriet, and began to investigate the contents of the sack his daughter gave him. The splitter's rations were adequate, but hardly luxurious, consisting mainly of black tea, damper, and salt beef. Therefore the few extra delicacies sent out to him now and then by his wife were greeted with as much enthusiasm as Pinky could ever express.

‘Joe's out sawing,' he told Dinny, meanwhile stuffing tobacco into his ancient black pipe. ‘You won't see 'im this trip. Tell your Ma I'll be 'ome at the end of the month. You staying all day?'

‘My word,' said Dinny. ‘Harriet here ain't seen a beach like this one, have you, Harriet? Come on—let's go on the sand.'

The sun had not yet warmed the beach, being still quite low over the horizon—the girls had made good time, and it was barely nine o'clock. The sand was cool and damp, and at every step Harriet's boots left a print so perfect that she kept stopping to admire it.

‘Why don't you go barefoot?' demanded Dinny. ‘Then we can paddle.'

After all, thought Harriet, this was a day of rebellion, so why not be thorough? She sat down
and stripped off the heavy boots and stockings, and wriggled her toes ecstatically.

‘That feels good,' she sighed. ‘I wish I could go like this always. I'll leave my boots here, then we can get them afterwards. Let's run!'

They raced to the edge of the waves, and let the creamy water surge about their ankles, gasping a little at the first shock of cold. Then they laughed and jumped, running as far out as they dared, and leaping back just in time as the next wave curved and fell before them. Harriet had never been so happy. Sky and sea and beach seemed to stretch on for ever, and Lillipilly Hill belonged to another world.

‘Come on—let's go round to the rocks,' suggested Dinny. ‘We'd better go there now, before the tide's too high.'