The Last Dingo Summer Read online

  Ambulance. Ambulance!

  It took her eight minutes to speed down the road to the factory, gripping the steering wheel hard, trying to endure the extra minutes to weave through the complaining sheep.

  Ambulance . . .

  No ambulance in the factory car park. Just a truck, blokes standing around a big cardboard box. They moved and she saw the figure on the ground next to the box.

  Then she saw the blood.

  Mack ran to her. Jed pushed her away and scrambled out of the car. ‘Look after Mattie,’ she ordered.

  She ran to the figure on the ground.

  The Beards stood back as she kneeled by Sam. He lay in a black pool slowly growing around his chest. Even his hair was crusted red.

  ‘Sam! Sam, it’s me!’ The faint wail of an ambulance siren came closer.

  No answer. She looked around wildly. ‘Can’t you stop the bleeding?’ Her knees were wet with blood.

  Mack kneeled next to her, ignoring the blackness seeping into her jeans too. ‘It’s internal,’ she said gently. ‘The ambulance will be here in a minute.’

  Jed stared at Sam’s pale face again. ‘Sam,’ she cried urgently.

  His eyes opened. Thank God, his eyes opened.

  ‘Sam, do you know who I am?’

  He gazed at her, unknowing. His eyelids drooped. Mattie gave a wail from the car. Jed was vaguely aware of Mack scrambling up to get her.

  ‘Sam! Sam, please!’

  The eyelids flickered open again. Saw her, stared at her, as if clinging to the sight.

  ‘Do you know me?’ Jed pleaded.

  ‘Yes.’ The whisper was almost too faint to hear.

  ‘What’s my name?’

  ‘Don’t . . . know . . .’ He blinked slowly, forcing himself to focus.

  Concussion, she thought. But he was conscious, so it must be going to be all right. Twenty minutes to the hospital, a blood transfusion, surgery . . .

  ‘Sam, who am I?’ she urged as the ambulance came to a stop next to them.

  A look of triumph. The slightest of smiles. ‘I know your name now. It’s Darling.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, that’s right. Sam, you’re going to be okay. I love you so much, Sam.’

  His eyes closed, the smile still on his face.

  The Beards parted again for the ambos. Jed moved back so they could feel his pulse, open his shirt, look at the crushed pulp of what had once been a rib cage. The world whirled, but she would not faint, not till Sam was safe.

  ‘Mack, I’m going with him in the ambulance. Can you follow in my car with Mattie?’

  ‘Jed . . .’ said Mack softly, Mattie in her arms. Jed ran over to the ambulance. The two medics had already lifted Sam onto a stretcher and pulled a blanket over his face.

  ‘No!’ she screamed. She pulled the blanket back. His eyes looked up at her, seeing nothing.

  Suddenly he seemed so far away. But she wouldn’t let him go. She couldn’t!

  ‘He’s not breathing,’ said the younger medic, vaguely familiar, as was everyone in Gibber’s Creek. Sam was slid into the back of the ambulance.

  ‘You have to resuscitate him! Mouth to mouth. Compress his . . .’ She stopped at the word ‘chest’.

  ‘Love, I’m sorry,’ said the older medic sympathetically. ‘It’s no use.’

  She beat on the man’s shoulder with her fists. He allowed it. ‘How do you know till you try it?’

  ‘Too much damage to compress his chest,’ said the younger man. The other quietened him with a look.

  ‘At least try mouth to mouth!’

  The older man looked at her. ‘All right.’ He turned to the other. ‘You drive. I’ll be in the back with Mrs . . .’

  ‘McAlpine,’ she said as he clambered in next to Sam, bent and began to gently breathe into his mouth. Except she’d always used Ms McAlpine-Kelly. She stumbled after him, felt Mack help her into the ambulance.

  ‘I’ll see you at the hospital,’ said Mack softly.

  Jed just nodded, hardly hearing as she watched the older ambo blow gently again. Something must happen. It had to happen. But the medic’s eyes were on her, not Sam.

  The doors shut behind them. The ambulance moved off, no siren now. ‘Use the siren!’ she yelled. ‘Hurry.’

  The older ambo glanced at her in sympathy, then bent to Sam’s cold mouth again.

  Chapter 2

  Gibber’s Creek Gazette, February 1979

  20 Vietnamese Refugees Found Dead in the South China Sea, Singapore

  A refugee boat, which had been aimlessly floating in the South China Sea for a month, has just been picked up by an oil tanker, World Kingdom. Many of the 54 survivors were too weak to even board the tanker, suffering from malnutrition, dehydration and dysentery. One woman had to bury her husband and three of her four children. Another went into labour, only to see her child die.

  Since 1975, 45 boats have made it to Australian territory with 1,664 people, but it is believed that the majority of those trying to make it to our shores have sunk. The government has established posts in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia to process refugees to try to prevent further loss of life.

  FISH

  The tiny 1948 de Havilland Dragon, deeply loved and faithfully restored by Gran and Gramps, buzzed towards the distant township of Gibber’s Creek. Fish pushed her pink sunglasses back up her nose and stared down as Gran manoeuvred the joystick. The bush below looked big. She felt extremely small.

  Down there was what people called ‘real Australia’, as if the bush were more solid than suburbs or city centres. Endless trees and endless paddocks. If she painted them, they’d be slabs of greens and browns.

  Down there were also snakes, funnel-web spiders, dingoes, bushfires, mountains people got lost in, feral cats as big as tigers, and maybe even yowies and bunyips. Why would anyone in their right mind want to live here? It was all completely strange to her, even though she was Australian. Was still Australian, not Vietnamese, despite what everyone had been thinking the last few months . . .

  ‘Going all right?’ called Gran over the noise of the wind and engine.

  ‘I’m fine.’ Fish wasn’t fine. She would never be fine again. But she wasn’t scared of the bumps that came from flying in a small plane, which was what Gran meant, so ‘fine’ wasn’t a lie. The truth mattered. Always, always, the truth mattered.

  Which was why she was here now, exiled from her life.

  Gran glanced at her. ‘It’ll be all right, you know. Your mum —’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ said Fish loudly.

  Gran bit her lip, shrugged, then looked at the controls again.

  Fish gazed down as the town emerged from the paddocks. A straight main street wide enough to turn a bullock train. No building over two storeys. Old houses in old gardens with big leafy trees. A black patch with the remnants of house foundations from last year’s bushfire. And a big building . . .

  ‘That’s the Whole Australia Factory.’ Gran attempted conversation again.

  Fish just nodded. The Whole Australia Factory had been started by Gran’s nephew, Sam. She looked down at the tiny figures shifting something onto a truck. The factory was still going despite Sam’s tragedy.

  ‘That’s the old train station over there. Used to be trains twice a day when I was young. You can see the school too,’ said Gran.

  Fish looked. Small towns were good, weren’t they? Everyone knew each other, fought bushfires together, shared food when asked to ‘bring a plate’. Maybe that was why they lived here, despite snakes and bushfires. There’d be no secrets in a town like this, or anyway, not the kind of secret where a whole life was built on a lie, like hers had been. Secrets like Mum’s lies to her. Secrets that led to tragedy, like what happened when she’d told the truth to Dad. Truth mattered!

  Fish was good at seeing the truth. An artist’s job was to see what was really there. But she was used to embarrassment and anger too. The few friends she had at school knew how to stop her telling too muc
h of the truth with a quick, ‘Shh, Fish.’ If only they’d been there to stop her telling Dad the truth too.

  She missed them. Missed them badly, Di and Carly and the others. But she couldn’t go back now. People back home would soon find out what she’d done. At least here the Greats and Gran probably wouldn’t want to ask questions about Dad.

  Fish glanced at her grandmother, her truly excellent red boots and scarlet flying jacket, her look of focused joy as she steadied the small plane among the updraughts from the hot brown paddocks laid out neatly as if someone had carved them with a ruler, the only unruly elements the drifting mobs of pale brown sheep.

  Gran hadn’t even asked her any questions when she picked her up after her anguished phone call. She’d just brought her here, on her long-delayed visit to her younger brother, and then to her older sister, up in the mountains, where her great-niece was due to have a baby, away from Mum’s despair and anger. Mum had no right to be angry! It was Mum’s lies that had caused it all . . .

  Fish shoved the past week away as her grandmother looped down over Moura homestead to let her great-uncle and -aunts know they had arrived. Why don’t sheep look up? thought Fish as the Dragon began to circle over a twist of glinting river, banks of quartz-white sand, shaggy lines of gum trees and curiously incurious sheep, as if Gran was soaking up the once-familiar landscape again, and at last glided in over the Drinkwater paddocks, the small plane’s wheels touching, bouncing, drifting, bumping across the paddock.

  The sheep just stared at them.

  Fish glanced at her grandmother, her eyes bright with the joy of flying as the Dragon came to a standstill. Fish thrust her fingers through her pink hair so it spiked up again, then shrugged off her poncho. It had been cold up there. She grabbed her bag from behind the seat and opened the door. The air hit her, thick with the smells of animal and hot dirt, a dryer heat than she was used to in Brisbane. She clambered out onto the wing, inspected the ground carefully for long slithery things and spiders, then jumped down.

  Each sheep head turned again as an elderly ute bumped across the tussocks. The flock began to move towards it in a single brown tide. Interesting, thought Fish. Sheep ignored planes, but were interested in utes. Why? Maybe sheep food came in utes. And why were sheep portrayed as white when clearly they were not? That sound wasn’t ‘baa’ either.

  Did sheep ever get bitten by snakes? Sheep didn’t wear shoes, so how come they even survived in snake country? And did sheep bite people? They ate grass, so they must have sharp teeth. But at least they weren’t interested in her. From a sheep’s point of view, she was probably just a potential nuisance. From everyone’s point of view, actually. Including Gran’s, even if she was too nice to say so.

  The ute stopped. An elderly man got out, his face lined with strain and loss. Great-Uncle Joseph, retired country doctor and Gran’s only surviving brother. Fish hadn’t met him since she was five, when he and Great-Aunt Blue had come up to Brisbane to stay with Gran. Mum wasn’t keen on ‘nuclear families’ or ‘extended families’ either.

  ‘Kirsty!’ he yelled.

  Gran ran to him. For a second brother and sister held each other, then Gran stepped back. ‘I’m so sorry we weren’t able to get here before.’

  Great-Uncle Joseph’s face twisted. ‘You couldn’t help it.’ He forced his voice into cheerfulness again. ‘How’s Johnno doing now?’

  ‘Still on crutches, but trying to convince everyone he’s up to flying. Silly old coot,’ said Gran with affection.

  ‘Hopefully next time he won’t land on a cow.’

  ‘He didn’t land on a cow,’ corrected Fish before she could stop herself. ‘It was a bullock. He avoided it at the last minute. That’s why his plane rolled.’

  Great-Uncle Joseph blinked at her pink hair, the matching pink sunglasses and the pink fanged fish Fish had painted on her flares, but didn’t comment. Fish awarded him eight points. He managed a tired smile. ‘And you must be Fish. I’m glad to meet you again.’

  Interesting. He meant it. And he used the name she’d adopted, way back when she was six and overheard someone saying she was a ‘queer fish’, instead of the name she’d been given, Felice.

  ‘I’m so sorry about your son,’ said Fish, hoping it wasn’t the wrong thing to say. But grief was a grey cloud about him: ignoring it would be a lie. Fish met Great-Uncle Joseph’s eyes briefly.

  ‘It’s breaking my heart,’ said Joseph quietly. ‘And Blue’s.’ He stopped, looking startled at his own honesty. Gran gave a muffled sob and hugged him again.

  The grey cloud thinned. Fish let out a breath of relief. Truth had been right, this time, at least. Maybe things would be different down here.

  They all squeezed into the ute’s front seat. The sheep turned away, disappointed. It would not be interesting to be a sheep, thought Fish. She suspected sheep asked fewer questions of the world than any creature other than an amoeba.

  But she’d like to paint them, even though she normally never painted animals or trees, except for fish, of course. She’d make the sheep a single beige creature, moving through beige landscape like a machine . . .

  The ute bumped through paddocks. Fish got out twice to open and shut gates, which it appeared was the job of the most junior occupant of any vehicle in this part of the world. She didn’t mind: at least it got her temporarily out of the sweaty front seat.

  ‘That’s Drinkwater homestead up on the hill,’ said Great-Uncle Joseph, pointing to a grove of trees in varied shades of greener green than gum trees. ‘Old Matilda used to live there. She was the one who gave Moura to Blue.’ He smiled reminiscently. ‘Matilda said every young “gel” needed a home of her own. She gave Jed Dribble too.’

  ‘Dribble?’ asked Fish.

  ‘It’s a house and a few acres halfway between Drinkwater and Overflow. Matilda gave it to Jed, long before she and Sam were married. The name began as a joke, because it’s between Drinkwater and Overflow. They’ve been run as one property since Michael married Nancy. Drinkwater homestead’s a temporary physical rehabilitation centre for young people since River View burned down last year.’

  Fish nodded. Gran had told her about the bushfire. Great-Uncle Andy had died in it, saving a kid.

  ‘A hard year,’ said Gran quietly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Great-Uncle Joseph blankly.

  And you need the comfort of your sister, thought Fish, not to be lumbered with me so you can’t talk easily to each other. But Fish had nowhere else to go.

  The ute bumped out onto the road. Bitumen and boring, but the scenery was not, the river flashing mirror gleams through the gum trees and casuarinas on one side, paddocks on the other, rising to hills. She’d paint this as light, water blue-bright on one side, blue hill light on the other.

  Another ute passed. Great-Uncle Joseph raised three fingers in a sort of salute. The ute’s driver made the same signal back. ‘Drinkwater’s septic tank must have got blocked up again,’ Great-Uncle Joseph said to Gran.

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Fish.

  Great-Uncle Joseph looked at her in surprise. ‘That was Steve. He pumps out the septic tanks around here.’

  ‘Wretched septic tanks always go wrong,’ said Gran. ‘It was all long-drops in my day.’

  Great-Uncle Joseph nodded. ‘Can’t beat a well-positioned long-drop dunny.’

  Gran grinned. ‘As long as there’s plenty of absorbent newspaper . . .’

  ‘And no redbacks under the toilet seat,’ finished her brother. ‘But try telling that to the council.’

  ‘Um, redbacks?’ asked Fish.

  ‘Spiders,’ said Gran cheerfully. ‘Deadly.’

  ‘But not if you get to hospital in time,’ said Great-Uncle Joseph.

  Were they serious? Yes, they were. ‘Thank you,’ Fish said politely, adding ‘redback spiders’ to the list of things to avoid here. She needed to check the carnivorous habits of sheep too.

  ‘Remember when Sam dropped six double bungers down the dunny one Christmas? He was te
n,’ said Great-Uncle Joseph wistfully. ‘He wanted to see if human waste really did produce methane.’

  ‘And he found out,’ said Gran dryly. ‘The house stank for weeks.’ She gave Joseph’s sun-spotted hand a squeeze.

  A small speck down the bitumen became a bicycle pulling a three-wheeled trolley. Fish stared. The bicyclist’s scanty hair was pulled back in a ponytail. He wore baggy long pants made of scraps of many fabrics and a red vest. His brown arms and the rest of him were bare, except for bangles that seemed to have been made of strips of aluminium cans. Excellent.

  Great-Uncle Joseph wound down the window. ‘How’s it going, Bill?’ he called.

  The bicyclist nodded. ‘Doing okay.’ He wasn’t even out of breath. ‘Delivered the cooking tomatoes Blue asked for. Sure I can’t tempt you with some zucchini? Two bags for a dollar.’

  ‘No, thanks, we’ve got plenty.’

  ‘How about I give you a dollar to take some of mine?’

  Great-Uncle Joseph laughed and shook his head. He wound up the window.

  Fish peered back at the bicyclist. His trolley was filled with shaggy lettuces, clusters of radishes, boxes of tomatoes that seemed not to have been told that tomatoes should be really round and only one colour red, as well as zucchini, and bunches of greens that must be herbs. ‘Where’s he going?’

  ‘Drinkwater, Dribble, Overflow,’ said Great-Uncle Joseph. ‘They’re the only places further along this road. That’s Broccoli Bill. Good bloke. They grow the veg at Halfway to Eternity, that’s a commune on the way into town. First really fresh vegetables in Gibber’s Creek since the Lees closed their market garden. When I first came here, you had to grow your own if you wanted anything other than pumpkin or cabbages.’

  ‘Do you remember that pumpkin vine that grew through Andy’s bedroom window?’ asked Gran. ‘He named it Horatio.’

  Fish tuned out as they reminisced.

  The ute swung into a dusty driveway. The rutted track led between two looming cliffs, then there was the house.