Between Here and the Sky- Chapter 3: Stories to scare children and the gullible

I have watched my family farm this valley for four generations now. We arrived here from England in the early 1920’s as part of a government Scheme to populate the country. Being only 6 years old at the time I didn’t really have much choice. My memories of ‘The Mother Country’ are very hazy, in fact I cannot be sure that I haven’t just invented them from stories I have since heard; mythologies of the Motherland.

My family had been farmers in Lincolnshire, near Louth, but despite the great demand for food in the wake of what is perversely known as the Great War we were not able to capitalise. Our crops were destroyed in the flood of 1920 and decimated by drought the next, so by the time 1922 came along my family was in considerable financial difficulty.

One day, my mother was in town buying the week’s groceries and happened to overhear that Ted Cambridge was selling up and clearing out everything from his farm in the neighbouring valley. He had got word from his brother in London about some Scheme in which some government in Australia was advertising for strapping young men and their families, fallen on post-war hardship, to move across the world and help build a great nation; to get out of the murky winters and into the most beautiful sunshine anyone was ever likely to see.

Ever the chaser of improbable dreams, Ted Cambridge had submitted his application to the London offices of the Midland Railway Company of Western Australia, and within a month was packing up his life and preparing to set out to Paradise, his head filled with illusions of grandeur and swimming with the idea of capturing himself some savage native bride.

            Her interest piqued, Ma returned home with more than just the weekly potatoes to weigh her down. Once their three extra mouths were open and snoring in bed, Dad and Ma sat down over their ritual glass of sherry and discussed what had overheard in town. Depressed by their current state of affairs and excited by the opportunity for a fresh start in life they agreed to at least look into it.

            A month later we 5 Spring’s found ourselves curled tightly within the belly of a ship sailing for Paradise. Our tiny parcel of land within the Lincolnshire Wolds lay dormant in wait of the next sap willing to waste away his life tilling its soil. All the stock and machinery had been sold in a rush, and my Uncle Hester would oversee the final sale of the farm itself. Part of the proceeds from the sale had been used to buy each of us a new set of clothes for the trip, the rest squirreled away to give us a leg-up once we arrived. One needs a dashing suit when starting a new life. It lends a distinct personality and an air of optimism.

            The month or so spent at sea, while largely uneventful, wasn’t without its hiccups. Hundreds of people crammed into barely a couple of acres and cut off from the remainder of humanity meant that the month couldn’t possibly pass without incident. Besides the inevitable minor skirmishes and squabbles over property and privacy, the entire natural born Spring family spent more of our time with heads overboard or immersed within the confines of the toilet bowl than playing or relaxing. The Mediterranean wasn’t too bad- mostly fine weather and a little bit of a headwind, but this was merely a prelude to the unrelenting undulations- up, down, left, right or any combination of the above- of the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. The constant movement sent our food lurching out of its gastric cul-de-sac and into whatever the nearest receptacle happened to be at the time. Our land-bound breeding undiluted for generations had left us completely unprepared for the terrors of the open sea. Only Ma, whose grandfather had been in the Empire’s navy and whose father had been a merchant seaman in his youth was afforded some form of imprinted protection.

            By the time we reached Ceylon my siblings Margie and Albert were starting to come good and discovering our extant sea legs. Only Dad was left clutching the fixtures and pining for either a swift death or the emergence of Paradise from out of the sunrise. Even the couple of days we were afforded to refind our land legs amongst the palm trees of Colombo Dad spent worrying himself sick with trepidation of the thousands of uninterrupted miles between himself and his new home. He resolved to anyone that cared to listen that he would never again leave the safety of the firm earth beneath his feet- the provider of life and the place to which we all return once our time is deemed to be through. It is what he was bred to know, to devote his life to; a part of him from even before he was but a twinkle in his father’s eye. He held this with him for the rest of the trip. Every pool of sick reaffirmed this steadfast position. And indeed he was a man of his word.

            We were met in the northern Indian Ocean by favourable currents and weather conditions, which shuttled us down to our desired latitude within a fortnight. Turning west, the first thing to greet us of our new home was the perfume of the eucalypts that drifted out to meet us beyond the horizon, our noses tickled by the crisp, sweet scent rolling off the shore. We hadn’t even realised that there had been a hole deep within us that needed filling, but even before setting our eyes upon Paradise we knew that we had re-found that ingredient our souls had been craving.

            As we neared the coast we finally caught sight of our new home. A thin sliver of land, then three granite domes poked above the horizon- the same vista that only a decade earlier had served as the final glimpse of home for the tens of thousands of young men, boys, who would never return from the blood drenched mud of Gallipoli, Flanders and the Somme. Our ship glided around the rugged spur protecting the natural deep harbour from the battering Antarctic waters. We drifted past Breaksea Island and into King George Sound before creeping through the unnervingly narrow passage between the two arms of land into the embrace of Princess Royal Harbour. After the inevitable delays in docking and the frantic search of paperwork we descended the gangplank and onto the cool dust of Paradise.

            Having suffered the interminable horrors of the sea, Dad, boots in hand, agitatedly tried to hurry those in front along, eager to get his bare white feet into the brown dirt of his new home. Overwhelming waves of relief flooded him. His throat started a chuckle, which rose slowly up to a crescendo of booming laughter that reverberated against the craggy hills encircling the harbour. Tears a mixture of joy and relief coated his face. The other passengers shuffled awkwardly past the now prostate man, grinning nervously, not knowing how to deal with this man clearly teetering on the edge of his sanity. The rest of us stood together a few paces away, meeting the anxious glances of our recent neighbours with apologetic nods as we waited for Dad to regain his composure.

Once all the other passengers had disembarked and shuffled towards the sundry hotels lining the harbour, we wiped the dust from Dad’s suit and lumbered after them, with Dad smirking and giggling the entire way, a far away look in his glazed eyes. He knew that fate had just thrown him the biggest bone of his life, and he was grinning like a schoolboy allowed to put his hand up a girls’ blouse for the very first time.

Over the course of the next fortnight we relearnt the motion of the earth. Mum and Dad set about organising our move up into the untamed bush, spending the £3 landing wage on food, clothes and a shabby little hotel room until we could set out. In the meantime we little ones entertained ourselves as best we saw fit. My older sister Margie, already 10, quickly found friends amongst the dusty streets and salty air. She busied herself with hopscotch and whispered giggles amongst the terraces and gardens of the new boom, and always had something to do or somewhere to be.

            Albert and I were restricted to the corridors of the third floor, hiding from each other around corners and behind vase stands in the winding corridors above the public bar. We were only 7 and 6, so weren’t allowed the freedoms afforded our sister. Ma instead preferred to employ a policy of constant vigilance to keep her boys from sticking their noses into other people’s business and out of harm’s way. But no amount of attention could keep us from running havoc across the floor, breaking china and attacking the linen with scissors found in the tattered wooden cupboard.

            Just as we were getting settled and confident in our new surroundings, we were forced to up-stumps once more. Our parents were on the move again. They saw no use in sitting around gathering dust near the port when there was a whole new life to begin out there beyond the hills. Dad had organised passage in a convoy destined for a mill town in the middle of the forest. A site had been selected by the government a few miles out of town for our new little community- Group Settlement #79- to take root. A few other families destined for the same Group Settlement were to join us in the convoy, three having arrived in Albany a few weeks before us, the other just a couple of days before. Like us they’d used their time in Albany to get a hold of the necessities for starting their new lives, and lined up the purchase of stock that would await us in Manjimup.

            Early in the morning, as the roosters were strutting out of their roosts and preparing to awake the world to a new dawn, we all gathered next to the port to load our lives onto the flatbeds and horses that would take us another step closer to Paradise. Personal belongings, food, water, sacks of seed, cages of chickens, bundles of saws and axes, and finally the human cargo were piled aboard the carts. Taking the reins our guides set the horse teams to a walk, heading north away from the harbour towards the Teatree shaded dunes of the coastal plain. The horses strained and groaned and the wheels creaked and rumbled hypnotically over the gravel road out of town.

The landscape rapidly became drier as we left the coast. Within the hour we were surrounded by flat pastures of browned grasses on both sides broken up by the occasional patch of scrub. We sat bright and wide eyed atop the cart taking in this foreign landscape. Waves of ancient spirits shimmered above the baked fields, inspecting us, keeping their distance, watching as we slowly passed.

Margie turned suddenly and shouted, pointing, out across the western plain. Following the line of her arm we spied the most curious creature any of us had seen. On the voyage over we had heard tales of the improbable creatures that stalked the barren crust of the lost continent. Our parents had offhandedly dismissed these as mere tales designed to scare children and the gullible. As children, without the feted cynicism that comes with age, our imaginations had overflowed at the spectacular imagery spun by the storytellers and we had believed every word. But even still we stared agog at the absurd image before us. The creature stalked slowly, clumsily, across the dust on tiptoes poised at the ends of illogically thin legs, atop which sat an undistinguished blob of grey-brown, with a rake thin neck protruding from the blob and demarcating the front of the creature from its back. At the end of this line sat a tiny head barely the size of a fist, half of which seemed to be taken up two startlingly piercing eyes. Heaven only knows where the brain was supposed to fit in.

Our guides had seen it all before- both the emu and the stunned look plastered across our parents’ faces. “Bloody Poms.”

“Look, boy. Get on after it!” they cried as the latch to the dog box was opened and the door swung open. The dog needed no second offer and sprung lithely out of its box, darting over the wheat stubble in hot pursuit. Alerted by the sound of the dogs manic barking the emu set its legs spinning, the long extensions of skin, bone and tendon gaining momentum before the rest of its body, which had no other option but to be dragged along by force of inertia. It set off at a crazy reclined angle like a weighted feather propelled by a slingshot. Its legs clawed wildly at the sand in its attempt to gain sufficient traction to flee, slowly gaining an irresistible momentum until it was sprinting through the scrub, its head flailing from side to side atop its yawing neck.

In reality the dog had no chance of catching the graceless bird, and our guides knew this. Its pace and endurance would never be able to match that of a bird so expertly evolved to suit this scorching environment. The dog’s role was merely an amusing sideshow for the benefit of us Poms, and to provide a hearty laugh for the hardened drovers. In that first moment we held grave fears for the unlikely bird, and expressed our fear and resentment towards our guides in the form of screams and tears. The parents however quickly realised that the odds were biased impossibly towards the emu, and joined in with the laughter. Only us kids remained upset. Margie wailed her empathy for the ugly creature while Albert and I wailed on about the fact that we could no longer stare and point at it. The dog was called to heel, while our parents giggled as they tried to placate their children and the caravan rolled relentlessly onwards.

We had barely calmed down when we startled a mob of grey kangaroos dozing in the morning sunlight in the culvert next to the road. The rattle of the approaching carts, the stamp of the hooves and the cries of the kids warned them of our arrival, so that by the time we rounded the corner they had already awoken and sprung onto their giant feet. All that we managed to see of them was the cloud of dust they stirred up, and their thick, heavy tails bouncing rhythmically away down the track. They leapt off at startling angles into the scrub, where all that could be seen of them was the occasional head bobbing above the scraggly tops of the scrub.

It was all over so fast that by the time Dad had alerted Margie- who had rolled herself into a ball and was still sobbing about the cruel trick played upon the unsuspecting emu- the mob had already disappeared in their flurry of energy and dust. This set her off on another round of howling, from which she gradually slipped into sleep.

She needn’t have been upset, because at least twice a day through our strange procession we would stumble across a mob of kangaroos lounging on the road, or else we would see them feeding on the grasses to the side of the road, and their novelty slowly lost its lustre. Even so, these sightings of kangaroos, emus, echidnas, snakes and lizards would serve to break up the monotony of travel.