The Legacy Of Old Gran Parks

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Book excerpt

Preface

It was three-deep at the bar. Friday, a scorcher of a day and the loggers were in town slaking their thirst. The generator out the back was taking the strain but what with having to open the fridges every few seconds, Gloria wondered if it would cope.

The teachers from the local primary school were in, as was the Postmaster. The farmers had come into town for the chook raffle, and while the men got pissed, their wives were seated in the lounge drinking lemon squash.

Gloria looked around for her husband. He was off shift and should have been helping her behind the bar, but he was nowhere to be found. She had young Jim from the general store in, re-filling the fridge and pulling beers, and Beryl, a farmer’s wife and as hardworking as they come, in the kitchen, cooking the meals.

Gloria had never known it so busy.

They’d taken over the hotel twenty years before in 1931, after the first owner dropped down dead of a heart attack while he was pulling a dark ale. Back then, Gloria’s husband, Frank, had been young and fit, and Gloria able, and they’d bought the pub with the proceeds from the sale of her recently deceased father’s farm.

The day they moved in the trouble started. Gloria never could figure out why. First it was the put downs, then came the ridicule. It wasn’t long before he was knocking her about. He seemed to think she was his to do with whatever he liked. Being a mean-spirited, woman-hating man, that translated into the sorts of acts a man would have done jail time for if he’d done it to someone other than his wife.

The night before had been the worst she’d ever known. Her body was bruised head to toe. It hurt to inhale, and she was sure he’d cracked a rib. She had to stand behind the bar serving her beery eyed regulars as she explained away her fat lip and the cut above her eye.

Gloria was no mouse. She was a big-boned bushie’s daughter, as deft with a chain saw as she was with an iron or a whisk. It wasn’t fear that brewed in her. It was anger.

With every full glass she passed across the bar, that anger deepened.

Six o’clock shaded into seven and then eight. By nine the meals were over, Beryl had gone home, and the clientele had thinned. At ten she had the lounge all wiped down and straightened out, and the last of the drinkers had staggered outside.

She paid Jim out of the till and let him go, closing the saloon door behind him on the best night’s trade she’d ever known. She went behind the bar to clean up, thinking the night’s takings would cover the doctor’s bill and then some.

She was drying a tray of pots when Frank appeared. From his swagger, she could tell he’d been drinking somewhere else.

‘Get me a beer,’ he snarled.

She didn’t answer.

Instead, she walked away.

He growled at her. She felt his growl as though it were a goblin clinging to her back.

She kept walking, rage pulsating in every cell of her. She went into the lounge and on through to the kitchen. Frank was close behind her. She turned.

There was nothing in his eyes but hate.

He took a step forward and she took a step back, sidling by the long kitchen table.

There was no escaping what he was about to do to her. Soon, he’d have her cornered.

Seeing no way out of the kitchen, she let him approach.

Three more paces and behind her was the stove. Beside the stove was a drawer. In the drawer, were the knives.

There was no time to open that drawer. He’d be on her in an instant.

Panic stirred, familiar, like toast.

Then in her side vision she saw Beryl hadn’t finished clearing up. The cleaver was still on the bench.

Gloria glanced out the window.

Frank followed her gaze.

Her hand gripped the cleaver.

She brought the weapon down on his head, right between the eyes. She heard a crack.

The flesh burst open; blood sprayed in her face.

She flinched, disgusted.

He reeled and fell back hard against the table.

In an upsurge of power, she brought the cleaver down again, her aim sharp, her motion fierce.

Beryl had sharpened the blade.

It took two more blows to kill him. Another twenty to hack him in half.

Miriam

I didn’t see it at first. The intersection was staggered so the two arms, north-south and east-west, didn’t quite align. Not that I was thinking in symbols back then. That came later. It came with an awareness that crossroads are meeting places, drawing in forces from all four directions, for better, for worse. Although, that particular intersection didn’t seem to want to be a crossroads. Then again, maybe it did. Best not to overthink things. I do know crossroads are places where decisions are made for you and crossroads are not places to get stuck in. My stay in Cann River taught me that.

My car rolled into town about six. At that time of year—it was autumn—the light of the day had begun to give way to the darkness. I’d been driving all afternoon, and I was on a downhill stretch of road coming in from the west. Didn’t notice the lack of power until I’d reached the bridge and saw the scattered buildings of the town up ahead. It was then, as the road flattened out, that I realised something was wrong. I depressed the clutch and changed down, touched the accelerator and nothing happened.

I felt that rippling in my belly, a sensation I refused to give in to. I had to be practical, rational, calm. Things worked out better when people stayed calm.

It felt like good luck when I saw the roadhouse coming into view on my right, lit up in anticipation of the night. I depressed the clutch again and coasted towards it. Hoping to park out of the way, I jerked the steering wheel as the tyres hit the concrete driveway, coming to a full stop on the forecourt a bit shy of the bowsers.

I pulled the keys from the ignition, thinking with relief I’d been saved. As if some guardian angel up there in the heavens was looking down on me, kindly. In the moment, it was a reasonable thing to think. Had my car packed up a mile back, I’d have been forced to spend the night at the roadside on one of the loneliest stretches of uninhabited forest that corner of the world had to offer. Not a nice place for a single woman to find herself. People have been murdered out there. Bushwhacked, disappearing without a trace. Besides, my belly was empty, and I had no food in the car. My mouth was dry, and I nursed one mother of a headache too, after my send off the night before.

All the way from Cockatoo, that send-off had felt like punishment. I convinced myself my workmates had bought the cheapest grog known to woman or beast, and that it just about summed up their view of me. A sort of alcoholic good riddance.

Or maybe they were jealous.

After all, I was relocating up the coast. Set to take possession of a neat cottage in open country after taking early retirement from a position in local government. I’d had enough of the office lifestyle and thought to try my hand at something else. Besides, my house had burned down in the catastrophic wild fires of February 1983—Ash Wednesday, as they were calling the conflagration and, unlike some, I wasn’t going to rebuild.

That was all behind me and I was looking ahead to the east in anticipation of a fresh start. Sun rising over sapphire waters. Rolling green country and cows. The village fair. I thought maybe I’d join the historical society. They were bound to have one. I was brimming with speculation and optimism. I couldn’t get there soon enough.

Cann River was halfway from where I’d come to where I was heading. Halfway to paradise. The horror firmly behind me.

Even as I entered the roadhouse, taking in at a glance the young man seated by a window to my left, his multicoloured beanie failing to obscure his scarred brow, I had a sinking sense that my optimism was premature. On the jukebox, Joan Baez was busy lamenting poor old Dixie. Misgivings reared, and it was as though the carnage back in Cockatoo had followed me all the way along the highway, trailing behind me like a wraith.

I shook away my thoughts and approached the counter. The woman cleaning the pie warmer looked personable enough. Although she had her back to me, I thought she might have been a kindred soul. She seemed about my age and same in height and build. I thought it funny how women over fifty all ended up looking the same. Well, maybe on the surface. She wore her hair scooped up high on her head and as she turned, I saw the fingers of grey pinned back from her face. She’d painted her eyebrows—they were overly arched—and caked on the makeup, yet her cheeks still creased when she offered me a smile, waiting, hands on hips.

‘What you want?’

‘My car has died on me,’ I said by way of explanation.

She eyed me with cool hostility. Any hope I had of conviviality withered. ‘My car has died on me,’ I repeated, deciding, despite my rumbling belly, that if she expected me to order, she had another think coming.

‘That it, there.’ She indicated with a tilt of her head and I followed her gaze back to my steel-grey hatchback, angled awkwardly, its rear jutting out, obstructing the exit.

‘It isn’t in the way, I hope.’

‘I get Con to shift it.’

Her accent was thick. I couldn’t place it. Italian? I detected a twang. Eastern Europe, maybe. Somewhere like Romania.

She held out her hand. I gave her my keys and she disappeared.

I shifted round a fraction and surveyed the roadhouse interior, avoiding looking in the direction of the scar-faced man. Set alongside the long run of casement windows were tables of lurid orange Formica with matching chairs. The sort of colour that showed every blemish. The floor was covered in cheap grey patterned linoleum, worn and chipped about the entrance.

The counter, with its display cabinets and vintage till, protruded into the space. In one cabinet were the remains after the day’s trade: two sandwiches—egg mayo, and ham and salad—and an otherwise lonely Kitchener bun. I hadn’t seen one of those since the weekend I spent in Adelaide several years back. It looked odd and out of place and homemade.

On a menu board, propped on a high shelf behind the counter, were listed hamburgers with the lot and chips, written in neat lettering. Beneath, written in large, clumsy letters by someone who couldn’t spell, was a small range of gourmet pies: Venisen, Hunta and Stake. I thought maybe there was a good cook in residence, for those pies were obviously not bought in. Besides, almost no one deviated from the traditional meat pie, not even in the city. Meat slurry they were normally, with tomato sauce squirted in the crust vent.

The woman reappeared behind the counter.

‘He’s moving it into the garage.’

I looked around to see a burly-looking man heading past the bowsers to my car. He had on the navy-blue overalls of a mechanic. I noticed a slight limp in his gait. He opened the driver’s side door and reached in to release the handbrake and disengage the gears. Then he went around and leaned back against the rear bumper. Once the car was moving, he hurried back and took hold of the steering wheel. There was a brief pause in which I admired his strength.

‘You want to order something?’

‘I’ll have a steak pie, please.’

‘With chips?’

‘Go on, then.’

‘Fresh out of steak,’ the woman said without turning. ‘Only got the hunter.’

‘What’s in it?’

‘This and that. Could be chicken.’ She didn’t sound that sure. ‘He changes it,’ she added as an afterthought.

‘The baker?’

‘Con.’

She gestured behind me. She didn’t mean scar face. She was referring to the mechanic. It was a confronting revelation, that the man who fixes cars also bakes the pies. I chose not to make too much of it.

‘Sauce?’ she said, raising her eyebrows to her hairline.

‘No, thank you.’

‘Better with sauce,’ she mumbled grumpily.

‘If you say so.’

The woman flounced away, her piled-high coiffure bobbing behind her. I leaned against the counter and waited. My sense that I’d offended her was confirmed when she reappeared, grabbed the tongs from the bench and extracted the only pie in the warmer, plonking it on a plate and squirting on the side the sauce I expressly didn’t want, and setting the whole affair down on the counter in front of me along with some cutlery.

‘You have it here,’ she said, nudging the plate in my direction.

‘My chips?’

‘Sit. I bring them across.’

‘Can I get a drink?’

‘Help yourself.’ She pointed to the fridge beside the door to the kitchen. I went over and grabbed an orange squash.

Loaded up with my dinner, I made my way to a table far from the guy with the scar who sat there motionless, staring into space, ignoring his surroundings or oblivious to them.

I leaned back in my seat and waited for the chips. A few minutes later the sour woman came and plonked down a bowl. The chips were heavily salted.

Avoiding the sauce on my plate, which had taken on the colour of congealed blood, I proceeded to cut into my pie. Flakes of pale meat smothered in gravy oozed out. Looked like chicken. He must have used the thigh. I detected the flavour of fresh thyme beneath a liberal dousing of pepper and a hint of something unfamiliar. Aniseed perhaps.

Midway through my repast the mechanic, Con, wandered in, trailing a smell of diesel behind him which spread and infused the room. He put my keys on the counter, turned and scanned around as though observing a crowd, taking in each of the two of us in turn. I reciprocated, taking him in, and not with a sympathetic eye. He was broad shouldered, long in the body and he had a bit of a belly on him. His left foot kicked out sideways. He had fuzzy, brown hair, a cleft chin and his eyes were set too close together. His brow was arranged in a permanent frown, and his lips were the same as his mother’s, thin and tight, curved down at the edges. I placed him around thirty.

Our eyes met and he didn’t look away.

‘Not like the sauce, then?’ he said. I thought he was addressing me, but there was a loud clang behind the counter and the woman cleared her throat.

‘She said, no sauce.’

‘Is that right?’

How could two people get so caught up on whether I wanted the sauce? What difference could it make to either of them? To anything?

I polished off the chips and bit into the last segment of my pie and washed it all down with the orange squash. Outside, long shadows leached into the gloaming. The neon sign centred on the wide verge at the corner flickered as though trembling in the cooling air. Across the highway, stood a hotel. Two storeys, the upper level fronted by a deep veranda, its balcony sheltering the pavement below, the whole affair painted a pale shade of aqua. Two of the downstairs windows were lighted. Another came on as I watched. Upstairs this time.

A woman exited the front door and took in a sandwich board advertising the nightly accommodation rate. For a while no cars passed through the town.

‘You’ll be wanting to stop the night then,’ Con said to me from his station by the counter.

I got up, collected my plate, and made my approach.

‘You can’t look at my car straight away?’

‘Afraid not,’ the woman said, standing behind the till. ‘Con’s come in to wash up for the night. Those pies won’t bake themselves.’

‘She can stay here. We got plenty of room out the back.’

I put down my plate and stepped aside, keen not to stand too close to Con.

‘The hotel looks fine.’

‘It’ll cost ya.’

‘Two dollars twenty.’ The woman held out her hand.

Con came and stood over me as I ferreted about in my purse.

‘Not stopping then?’

‘The hotel will do just fine, thanks.’

‘Suit yourself.’

The door swung shut behind me and I took a lungful of the cool night air. There was no wind. A peppering of street lighting sent forth a milky haze into the dark. The trees that hugged the town loomed like ghouls.

Heading for the hotel, I crossed the forecourt and waited roadside. A second later, I was frozen like a rabbit caught in the high beam of a truck. The great, rumbling behemoth approached from the west. As it crossed the bridge the groan of compression brakes splintered the quiet. Weighed down by its load of tree trunks, the truck thundered by, headed through the town and was gone.

I hurried across the highway in case it had a mate. Approaching the hotel entrance, I started to lose faith in luck. The chips were repeating on me. No doubt fried in rancid oil. The flavours of the pie were blending with the orange squash, the entire mixture resulting in a series of unpleasant belches.

I entered an empty and wide corridor. There was a glass-panelled saloon door to my left and a plain door to my right, and stairs leading up to the accommodation. I heard voices. Pushing open the saloon door I was received by the yeasty smell of beer and three pairs of dismissive eyes as the men at the bar all turned. A silence descended. I took in the blue shirts and the suntans and returned the silence with a casual smile. The back bar was cluttered with bottles of beer, wine and spirits, packets of potato chips and nuts, a Bex powders display and a haphazard assortment of glasses. On a cabinet in the centre sat an old television, switched off. I wondered if it was colour.

‘Can I help you?’

It was a woman’s voice. She materialised, standing up behind the bar. Small, slight of build, with thick sandy coloured hair, shoulder length and parted in the middle. She had a round, open face that carried the nondescript features of a woman too busy doing chores to fuss with makeup. I picked her to be in her mid-thirties. She seemed personable.

I stepped forward and the men turned back to their beers.

‘A room, please. If you’ve one spare.’

Someone sniggered.

‘Okie dokie.’

She disappeared and a second later, poked her head through the saloon door.

‘Follow me.’

The corridor contained a small reception desk tucked beneath the stairs. There were more doors leading off in all directions.

‘Just the one night?’

‘I expect so. Or should I say I hope so.’

‘Aw, take no notice of them blokes in there,’ she said. ‘They’re not used to seeing a woman in the bar.’

You’re a woman, I thought but didn’t say.

‘You on holidays?’

‘Moving interstate. Car broke down.’

‘So that was you. Thought so. I’ll put you in Room Four.’

I followed her upstairs. She was a brisk climber, lithe. The sort of woman always on her feet. I was panting at the last tread.

‘You’ll be comfy in here,’ she said, flicking on the light.

She moved aside for me to enter, handing me the key as I passed by. The room was spacious and pleasantly furnished. High ceiling, faded rugs on scantly polished floorboards. Other than the bed, the room contained a free-standing wardrobe on legs, a dressing table and a couple of chairs. Long velvet curtains hung open, framing the windows. I went and stood in the middle of it all.

‘You eaten?’

‘I had a pie across the road.’

‘Belly okay?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘No reason.’

That explained it then. It was the pie.

‘Breakfast at seven thirty suit you?’

‘Sure will.’

‘Have a good night.’

She closed the door.

I ambled about the room, ran a finger along the dressing table

top and found it satisfyingly clear of dust. Then I stood by the pair of windows. They were double hung, with nets of cream lace strung across the lower frames. The sills were set at waist height which meant I had a clear line of sight out the top panes. She’d given me the corner room, overlooking the crossroads. The iron lacework beneath the railing conjured a vintage era of horses and carts. Realising I was a silhouette backlit by the single pendant light hanging from the ceiling, I crossed the room and switched it off, returning to my lookout, knowing I wouldn’t be seen.

I wasn’t there long when I heard a cough, followed by a groan and a muffled scrape of something—a chair maybe—being dragged across the floor of the adjoining room. Then all went quiet. I took umbrage at having been put right next door to another guest. Wasting no time, I left my station and locked myself in my room. Over by the door I heard the distant sound of laughter coming up from the bar. It felt comforting in a fashion, yet the cheery sound seemed to reinforce my isolation.

A digital clock on the bedside table told me in vivid green that it was seven. I considered joining the men downstairs but thought better of it. Instead, I returned to the window.

The town looked lifeless. Nothing moved, not even in the roadhouse. Despite the brightly lit neon sign, the roadhouse was closed. I wished I’d had the presence of mind to grab a few things out of the car before checking in, but then again, Con had been hostile. Realising he still had my keys, I didn’t like to think of all my possessions piled on the back seat, and in the boot. I felt oddly violated, intruded upon, as though something vital had been taken from me. My power. Maybe I should have stayed there, the better to guard what I had brought with me, all that I’d scraped together in the aftermath of my charred life.

I was there in a flash, back in Cockatoo, standing by another window, the one in the living room that looked out over a forested valley, on one of the hottest days I’d ever experienced.

I should have known it would turn out bad after the birds had gone. It was Wednesday the sixteen of February and at that hour in late-summer, sulphur-crested cockatoos would grace the valley with a raucous chorus. Not that day. On that day, the silken trunks of the mountain ash stood tall along the back fence of my yard, silhouetted in a dense haze. The sun, blazing red on the horizon, couldn’t raise a glimmer or a shadow. The feathery fronds of the ferns were crisping about their edges. Not a rustle of a lizard could be heard in the undergrowth. High above, the tufty tree canopy was still.

A conflagration had been billowing beyond the western hills all day. A southerly was due any minute. Everyone was hanging out for the cool change. The heat wave had been dragging on too long and this was the hottest day of all. We were all craving that wolfish wind to roar through and devour the fire front, make it blow back on itself. Aching for the sigh of cool and clean air that would follow. I had the radio on. The presenter said the wind would arrive in an hour, possibly two.

I waited. Like a lot of people in town that day, I waited. What few of us knew was another, smaller fire was threading its way east through the bush up Bailey Road and heading for the town centre.

The leaves on the trees beside the road fluttered for a few moments before settling still. I leaned forward and gazed up at the canopy. Clusters of leaves on the ends of thin branches were swaying languorously. Fern fronds in the undergrowth quivered and waved. I opened my bedroom window to listen. Smoke stung my nose—the air acrid from the smoke of the Belgrave and Beaconsfield fires. The radio had said those fires were under control.

The sun dipped behind the western ridge. Then, below the gentle crackle and crinkle of the tinder-dry bush, there was a distant, roaring rush, like a far-away kettle-drum roll.

Something told me to get out of the house fast. Going outside was like entering a fan-forced oven. Breathing was an effort, the smoke raw in my lungs. It was eight-thirty and the sun had nearly set when the wind caught the thin thread of blaze that had been tracking down the hillside, transforming it into a mile-long fire front blasting down the valley with the force of a hurricane. It all happened so fast. The smoke had got so thick I couldn’t see more than a few metres. Trees were falling, some uprooting. Families were running out of their houses, screaming, and heading down to the reserve. Panic-stricken men and women raced their cars helter-skelter towards the Woori Yallock Road. Suddenly, the police helicopter was overhead with its siren blaring. In minutes the firies started evacuating the town. They did the right thing, cos that fire was raging down Bailey Road razing everything in its path.

We didn’t know it then, but in just sixteen minutes, two-hundred and eighty-three houses were gone. Another twenty-four were lost in the following hours and days.

The firies had been tackling blazes all day. They were exhausted. You could see it in the way they moved. Yet they went hell for leather up and down the streets behind the shops and there wasn’t a whole lot of time. There were hundreds of us who couldn’t get out. We had nowhere to shelter.

Someone must have had a key to the kinder building down by the railway line. It wasn’t ideal. We knew it wasn’t much more than a shack, despite its fancy design, a glass-windowed carousel. But we had no choice. The smoke was suffocating us. The fire was sucking the oxygen from the air. Birds, the ones that had ignored their instincts, like us, and hung around, were dropping dead from the sky. You could hear the gas bottles exploding. Boom. Boom. Boom. And then came the fireballs, larger than a soccer ball. The endless roar of the fire, deafening like a hundred jet engines. None of us thought we would survive.

Seared in my memory was the terror of three-hundred residents crammed shoulder to shoulder into that kindergarten building. Stinking hot we were, staring out all those windows at the apocalypse. A third of us were kids. Some men climbed up onto the roof to keep it free of embers. It was a bitumen roof, and without those men risking their own lives to keep us women and kids safe, the building would have burned for sure.

They were good men.

I will never forget how good they were.

You don’t forget something like that. The distress on everyone’s face, the terror in their eyes, the crying, the wailing, the choking stench.

My thoughts were interrupted by headlights approaching from the west. The vehicle didn’t stop. I followed it with my gaze and was about to move away from my post by the window when I saw the roadhouse garage doors open. More headlights, this time a double set, and I watched a station wagon pulling out and heading across the forecourt. As the car entered the reach of the street lights I saw it was canary yellow. Its engine rumbled and chugged. The driver, Con presumably, made a right turn and then a sudden left, and disappeared up the road to the north.

Where was he off to at that time of night?

It came to me then that I knew not a thing about Cann River, a town I’d driven through on my way up the coast so many times before. It had always been a nothing place, a welcome relief from the endless forest, a chance to take a short break, a corner sort of place where, soon after, the coastline would stop being southern. A place welcoming at first sight.

Half an hour later, and I was always glad to see the back of it.

I drew the velvet curtains, flicked the light back on and lay down in the centre of the bed. Noises from next door started up again, bonks, a moan, a cough. I tried to block them out. Told myself the next day, I would be on my way. It couldn’t have come soon enough.