Chapter 13: Life on the most unexpected scale

In the days before she left the valley for the city, Margie left me the pages of the meticulous chronicle she had kept of the history of our hidden valley, burying them at my feet- a grand monument to the people who transformed the landscape to eek out there lives in its loam. From its pages I discovered the story of my death and the effects of it on my family and the community. I think the best way of telling you the story is to start from the beginning, from where I left off. And for the most part I will rely on the voice of my sister. She was the one that was there, so she is the best one to tell it.

Dad was up on the hill, as he was every day, helping Mr Monroe clear his land. All of the men did this, moving from one property to the next while we waited for the crops to grow. Those of us not of age spent our days learning to read and write and helping our mother around the house- doing chores and staying out of the way.

One morning Albert and Henry disappeared. Mum and I couldn’t find them anywhere. Not even by Cooee-ing. Before they went missing I had been sure they were up to mischief. That something was going on. I often wonder, to the point of convincing myself it’s true, that I somehow knew what they were planning. But I am sure that I was just being an over-suspicious kid. Still there is something that nags at my mind. That if Mum had listened to me, or if I had been more adamant, things would have turned out differently. Or even that I should have watched over them more closely, or been more of a ‘good’ big sister. I know I shouldn’t blame myself, but I can’t shake the feeling that I am in some way responsible. Then again, everyone else in the community, Ma and Dad included, probably feel that they are the ones responsible, too. Especially poor Albert.

Anyway, it turns out that Albert and Henry had wandered off into the bush trying to reach the men who were working there. Dad says that the first he knew of it was seeing Henry standing there, in the bush, right beneath where the tree was falling. As far as I know, Dad was the only one to see him.

Mr Enfield and Mr Monroe were running away from the tree they had just felled, while the rest were milling around talking or eating lunch by the fire. Dad doesn’t know why he looked up when he did. He’d witnessed a hundred or more falling trees over the previous months. But he did look. He says the image of Henry standing there is burned into his mind, and that now, almost a decade later, he still wakes in the night to dreams in which his son is standing there beneath the falling tree.

Dad let out a shout- Mr Craig likens it to a curdling, cracking scream- heard way above the sound of the crashing tree. The men looked at him, standing there like a statue, staring towards the fallen eucalypt. He recoiled from the shock and charged off into the bush, shouting Henry’s name to the wind. Mr Craig says that the rest of them look around at each other confused. They thought Dad had lost his mind. They had seen him engrossed by the soap trees on the first journey in here, and that impression of Dad had stuck with them. To them it seemed like it would only be a matter of time before he lost his mind out here in the middle of nowhere.

They followed him, more curious than concerned. Dad was trying to lift a thick bough through sheer force of will. One by one they saw the small, thin frame pinned under the bough. With mouths open in horror they lent their shoulders, their chests, their legs to the effort, heaving at the monumental bough with all of their might to lift the mere inches required for Henry to be dragged clear.

No one noticed Albert until Henry was pulled clear. Only his head was visible above the log he had been hiding behind. He had turned white and his arms hung limp, in shock. Mr Craig doesn’t know how Albert’s legs were holding him upright. He came over slowly, tentatively. Mr Elliot intercepted him and prevented him from seeing the worst, but even now Albert cannot speak about what he saw. It’s as though those few moments have been completely erased from his memory.

Everyone there knew straight away that there was no chance of saving Henry’s life. Dad cradled and rocked him in his arms as he wept, and the men slumped against fallen tree trunks, holding their hats, holding their faces in their hands, or just staring off into the distance. As Dad kneeled in the dirt cradling his son the men came one by one to pay their condolences with a soft hand on the shoulder, before dispersing to pack away their equipment and prepare the cart, leaving him there to spend those final moments with his son in peace.

When the time came they huddled around my father, offering their sympathy and taking Henry’s body and placing it on top of a layer of shirts they had spread out over the deck of the cart. They made their way down the well-worn path towards the creek in silence. Mr Elliot held onto Albert as Dad held fast to Henry’s shoulder.

Back at the house, Ma and I had searched for the boys in all the usual places around the house. I heard the creak of the axles of the convoy before I could see it. I called Mum and we walked up the track towards the noise.

As they emerged from the bush, something about their demeanour told Ma what had happened. She dropped the apron from her hand into the mud and sprinted towards the bleak procession. I had never before seen her run, and I’m sure I’ve never seen her run since. It was a physical expression borne of fear and anguish. A mother’s intuition told her the worst; she already knew the outcome.

I cantered behind, still confused. I must have known something wasn’t right from her extreme reactions and the ashen faces appearing out of the undergrowth, however my child’s mind didn’t yet realise the full extent of this event.

The horses and carts stopped as Mum neared. The sad eyes of the men set upon my mother and they watched in mournful silence as she hurried past. No one said a word, but tears stung even the severest face.

She started sobbing. Great suffocating sobs escaped her throat, but she didn’t slow down. She collapsed against the wheel of the cart. Dad was huddled over the benign shape of their son. His eyes to meet those of his wife and they shared a moment laden with all of the misery in the world. Dad lowered Henry into Mum’s shaking arms, stepped down from the dray and held her tight. The broken heart of the world passed between their bodies as they cried; together, yet further apart than they had ever been before. They were their own universes of sorrow lamenting their cursed lot.

Mr Elliot lowered Albert from his horse and sent him towards me. Albert’s face was white and slippery streaks outlined his cheeks. He ran to me and buried his head in my armpit. I held him under my arm as I watched at our parents. It was at that moment I became aware of the world, and learned exactly what pain is.

Henry’s body was laid out on the table in preparation for its last rites. His wounds were cleaned-, the water stained forever red in the bucket- and his body clothed in his Sunday best. Once the adults had finished hiding his wounds as best they could, Albert and I were paraded past to pay our final respects. Albert, silent, placed his palm to Henry’s forehead in a simple act of grief and horror. Tears erupted around the room and Albert hid his in the crook of his arm, turning into the lap of our mother beside him. Something in Albert had broken and he would never be the same. I whispered my goodbye still numb with shock before rushing quickly out of the suffocating air of the room.

The whole community staged a silent vigil in their homes giving us time as a family to grieve. In bed Dad drank the tears of his wife and pleaded with the almighty that this act might soothe their pain and return the world to how it had been. The soft sobs of his wife coiled alongside him must have burned his heart to ashes. He must have felt powerless to soothe her broken heart.

So that is how I died.

But I was not buried in the anonymity of the cemetery in town, but on the slope of the ridge above the house in a humble mound overlooking the valley.

Albert was apparently the one to suggest a tree as a tombstone. He reasoned that as it was the death of a tree that took my life along with it, so it should be a tree that should find a new life in me and become my memorial. My resurrection. So, a week after my body was returned to the earth, my family took a morning off to traverse the ridge to the gully beyond to select a suitable memorial.

Amongst the grove of patina-skinned Karri, with the sickly sweet scent of Boronia saturating their pores, they retreated into their own worlds. With heads bowed and minds reflective they scoured the muddy floor in search of the perfect specimen.

            Mum called out through the undergrowth. She was obscured behind mossy logs and creepers. At her feet stood, unassumingly, a tender seedling. It was exposed, vulnerable in the heavy grey clay, on the fringe of an animal path along the foot of the gully. It appeared as though one errant footfall would put paid to its fight for survival. It trembled softly with the weight of eight feet sinking slowly into its mud as hey all craned in for a better look.

            With a decisive grunt Dad plunged the shovel into the grey clay. He repeated this ritual on each side of the sapling to loosen the hold of the earth before lifting it free from its bed. He placed it in a bucket and the four of them sidled back up the ridge lost in their own worlds. The usual incessant banter and nonsense was suppressed. Even Margie and Albert reached a truce in their sibling bickering.

            Dad placed the bucket alongside the mound that harboured my remains and etched out a divot directly above my heart. Gently he fondled the stem and leaves being careful not to damage its delicate frame. He wiped mud from its feet and lowered it into the earth. Together they all knelt and gently tamped the cool earth. Their fingers caressed the course dirt, burying their hands and turning the loam over in wonder. They wondered how they had never noticed its potency. Some mystic life-forced flowed through it. It gave life on the most unexpected scale. It connected us together, the tie that binds, the glue that holds.

            In their own time they rose to their feet and wiped the grit from their palms and from under their nails, embarrassed by the cloying spirituality of their actions. They stood in stoic silence as if waiting for some unforeseen magic to occur. Then as if ashamed by its failure, turned and sat on the semi-hollow husk of a log at the perimeter of the clearing.

Chapter 11: Mapping Their Veins and Flesh

I’m fairly sure I regained some form of consciousness after about 18 months. Before that there was nothing. No light, no sound, no taste, no smell, no pressure inside my nondescript box. There was no ticking of a clock to mark the time, no calendar to cross off the days. I have no memory- much like looking back on your infancy and childhood, trying to recall what happened. You know it happened, but you’re damned if you can remember. Then as you grow details begin to stick, memory fades in and out. You remember those random instances like drinking cordial on a summer’s day, or drowning your sister’s doll in a puddle, but important milestones slip your grasp. The order of events is jumbled. You can’t say with certainty if you first took a bite of an apple, or hit your head on a doorknob.

I cannot recall the exact order, but I remember the sensation of being cradled, like a child being held too tightly to its mother’s chest. I had an overwhelming feeling of comfort. I’m fairly certain that my first concrete memory amongst the jumble of half-thoughts was of being softly tickled. I remember thinking it a curious sensation.

I remember the taste of air. Sweet, glorious air flowed through the microscopic cables and pores of my body. The decay and fertiliser of my body, my atoms and ions, were siphoned through billions of miniscule pores by nano-pumps, delivered to the core, distributed and fed through the walls of trillions of cells. My carbon sequestered in cellulose and my remaining oxygen powered up the trunk, out the branches, through the leaves and into the atmosphere.

Weightless and at peace. I closed my eyes and soared.

I filled out leaves, mapped out their veins and flesh. I remember sunlight. I leaned back in glorious recline to bask in the healing glow of its radiation.

My education has continued since my death- through the whispers of the bush, the voices of the living as they pass, and the letters left buried at my feet. Even now I am sure I have but scratched the surface of the skin of all there is to know. I certainly wouldn’t be so gormless as to suggest that I know as much as those looming wistfully over the wires. Their wisdom is ageless and I am but their eager student.

Much of my learning has occurred in parallel with my siblings. As I was coming into consciousness they conspired to dig a cubby-house underground, a hide-away from the eyes of the other kids, their own secret club. They dug into the hill some meters across from my grave. With picks, mattocks and shovels stolen from the shed they dug down and into the gravelly hill until they reached the chunky sheets of ironstone barely 3 feet down. They lay scraps of corrugated iron over the top to act as a roof and piled sticks and branches on top as camouflage against invading forces. They toiled for weeks during breaks in their lessons and chores, digging first one room, then a passage leading to an another and a third separated from the others by a trapdoor made from a flattened drum. Alcoves were dug into the walls for stolen candles to lend an ethereal quality to the stale air of a thousand centuries. All the while Mum and Dad looked on bemused, yet thrilled by the ingenuity of their offspring.

The cubby-house became their personal library. They would secretly slip small pieces of paper into holes drilled into the walls, offering their thoughts and feelings up to the unjudging worms and microbes. They wrote down their feelings, the things they deemed too emotional, too obscure, to ever say out loud. These were their heartfelt words.

They did this while not even aware that the other was mimicking their own actions. When these- their heartfelt words- could be translated into words they would slip away from the house, peel the soiled hessian sacks from the doorway and burrow down on all fours into the darkness. Illuminated by parallel lines of light filtering in through nail holes in the roof, they would light the candles with the matches they stowed in their pockets and cast shifting shadows against the walls of their secret tomb. They would loosen the dirt at a non-descript part of the wall and burrow a small hole in which to bury their notes, then leave, sneak out as if the softest sound would reverberate through the earth and alert the world to this private act, never to return, surrendering them to the bugs and the germs.

I enclosed their hideaway in my loving embrace. I pined for them. As my embrace tightened, my roots discovered the abandoned parcels. My fingers wrapped around them and I devoured their very being, taking the ink up into my body and memorising their shape and form. Slowly I built a compendium of words and taught myself the conventions of the English language, piecing them together to form sentences of my own. It was from these notes and against their emotions that I learned to write.

My self-discovery was like a mirror of my childhood learning. At first I had no control over letters and words, just as I had no control over my new body. With time and practice I could reorganise the jumble of characters to form words. I could control which part of my body I inhabited. I learned to read, then to write. I could manipulate my limbs, my leaves, my pores. I could compose my own stories and treatises. My body and mind became perfectly aligned and I became myself.

I became attuned to the whispers and conversations of the spirits around me- sometimes whimsical, often wistful, always wise. I learnt the secrets and knowledge of the bush and became myself a part of that world. They rejoiced at the sight of life, and in time my voice would rise in unison. We hushed as one in reverence at the climax of death and mourned the loss of another friend.

As I grew, so too did the space surrounding me. My peers were removed by Progress and with each loss the silence of the spirits spread. In solidarity I grew that little bit more erect, spreading my limbs ever wider to compensate for the air cleft between our bodies. To compensate for this growth I diverted the energy from the maintenance of my canopy, so that with each loss a leaf would fall until I was but a standing skeleton, bereft of cover, alone on the hillside; a naked reflection to man’s world. My arms raised in alarm to the sky; my silhouette stark and disquieting above the bare ridge, a permanent reminder of the mortality of spirit. Men would stand and look and wonder at the omens I represent, wonder at their own transience before turning back to their work in fear of their grim reality.

I started engraving the stories of the past into the new bands of my growth as a permanent reminder of where we are from. Just as when I was a child my first attempts at writing in my new form proved jarring and uncontrolled. But as I learned to control my body my hand improved. I etch out this story between here and the sky- from the morning-edge of moss, all the way around my core until my prose reaches the end of its annual thesis. What start as microscopic pores spelling out my words transform into widening grooves as they are pushed outwards by the next year’s growth. As I grow taller my template increases, giving me license to outlandish bursts of poetry and prose, until I finish this story and move onto the next- the grand narrative of the land itself.

Now I stand here, stark against the sky waiting for the day- and it will come- that I shall die again. I shall lay there in wait for the day, the day that has already come, that you open me up and carefully separate the rings from my trunk, from my branches, and from the buds that never develop into leaves- the day the saw carves into my story, my life. If you do this for an entire forest you can read the stories of the spirit, the great, all-encompassing story of this land; this whole absurd conglomeration of life. It is a library waiting to be read. But be careful, for the spirits themselves will be lost and all that will be left behind will be their stories; and once they are told they cannot be taken back, cannot be edited, and cannot be finished.

Chapter 9: Gone Bush

The men were up on the hill above the Monroe’s place next door. Over the autumn and into the winter they had churned up the flats and ploughed fertilizer through the grey earth. We had bought seeds and had planted the first crops of onions and potatoes, and while they were content to slowly dig their way into the soil and reach, yawning, into the sunlight, our attention turned to the imposing hardwoods as the rains hit with the full fury of winter.

While the older kids- the teens- were expected to pitch in with the men, those of us still snapping at legs were restricted to the homes. The ridge was a place for grown-ups. We would grumble and grizzle against the injustice of it all every morning as Dad ate his toast and drank his black, bitter tea. We assured him we wouldn’t get in the way. We would help. We could stack broken limbs, chase rabbits, or just watch quietly from the sidelines. We wouldn’t get bored, we wouldn’t be a nuisance. We would be saints, angels. We wouldn’t raise so much as an eyebrow out of place. If only he would let us follow him.

And every morning Dad would pat us on the head and tell us “Not today. Maybe tomorrow. Once you’ve grown enough to reach my nipples.” And we’d stand, Dad, Margie, Albert and I, with our backs to the wall as Mum sized us up to check if, during the night, we had miraculously grown enough. And every morning would end the same- with Dad lifting us up in turn to kiss us goodbye. He’d pick up his tucker box and thermos and whistle off on his horse. We would watch and listen as he disappeared once more into the bush.

So we had to stay around the house, helping in the garden and the kitchen, and tend to the sheep and chickens scratching around the house. In the mornings we would tend to our chores and the reading and writing lessons Ma assigned us. The afternoons however were practically our own. We would make mud pies in the garden, or try to control nature by damming the creek with whatever we had at our disposal- rocks and sticks as foundations, broken reeds, mud and slime to fill the inevitable cracks and crevices. As our wall rose, so too did the weight of the water behind its barrier. It rose faster than we could build, flowing over the top and dislodging our reinforcements until we had to concede an altogether inglorious defeat. But rather than wallow, immediately started plotting the build of a bigger and better dam as soon as the creek dried up over summer. Ma would watch us through the kitchen window and smile to herself at our antics.

All day we would listen to the distant thunder of sharpened metal biting into wood and the rhythmic whir of steel teeth eating back and forth through dense-grained timber. They served as sirens- calling to us, luring us. And we’d pause in whatever we were doing and wish that we were all grown up and able to go with our father to do the things that we most wished to do. To lift and grunt and heave and thrust and swing and sweat. We wished to be men. The monotonous thuds rolling through the bush resonated inside us until they were too strong for us to ignore.

One morning in the height of that first winter Albert and I were sitting in the middle of the chook pen simultaneously terrifying the hens, trying to bathe the chicks, and preparing mud pies to feed to the sheep, or, if we were sneaky enough, Margie. Before long the hills began to reverberate with that heavenly score drifting down on the cold westerly wind. Every now and then the earth shuddered with the shock of a great jarrah or marri separating from its stump and crashing into the mud below.

Albert looked around before leaning in to whisper something in my ear. He suggested we go exploring. See what the men got up to when they were out of our sight. It could be a reconnaissance mission. I retorted that we weren’t allowed. That Mum, or worse Dad, would have our hides if they found out. We were used to being scolded by Mum, but Dad was an entirely different proposition. If you got bellowed at by Dad you knew you were in trouble.

Nevertheless, it didn’t take much for Albert to convince me of the merits of his plan. He was older, persuasive, and quite naturally I looked up to him as someone wiser than I. He knew that I was just as curious as him and that all he had to do was to keep at me and eventually I would cave.

We knew we would have to slip away quietly, but would also need supplies. Albert used his cunning to concoct a plan. I would distract Mum, while Albert would slip into the kitchen and procure some biscuits and cake. Our biggest challenge would probably be distracting Margie and throwing her off the scent or else she could ruin our plans quick smart.

As if by intuition, Margie squinted at us from her swing beneath the gnarled Redgum tree. Her eyes bored into us, stripping us bare. She watched us suspiciously, waiting for us to slip up and give away whatever treachery we plotted, looking for any evidence at all so she could run inside and tell Mum that we were up to no good.

Acting like nothing was wrong, we stalked around the woodpile searching for the perfectly shaped weapons to take with us in case we were ambushed in the forest. We leant our rifles and pistols against the chicken-wire fence and stood whispering, trying to concoct a plan to distract Margie, but when we looked over to the swing she was gone, the wooden seat gently rocking back and forth from the bough.

We cursed her out a bit, called her names like dummy, pest and loser. We knew she’d try to wreck our plans. She always tried to wreck our plans. But we decided to go ahead with it anyway. After all, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

As the butterflies set to flight in my stomach I circled the long way around the house so as not to arouse any undue suspicion. My heart pounded in my chest and my breathing got faster and shallower until I was nearly panting. My skin flushed and my palms started to sweat. I knew I was doing something very bad. Lying to Mum was about as bad as it could get. A crime punishable by the words: just wait until your father gets home.

I took a deep breath, trying to still my heart and compose myself, and turned the corner of the house and stepped up onto the veranda. I practised my tummy-ache face, and pushed the door open.

Damn. Margie stood directly in front of me, waiting. She folded her arms across her chest and glared at me accusingly. The baubles in her plaits dangled either side of her face staring at me like a second pair of all-seeing, all-knowing eyes. Oh, why couldn’t she have confronted Albert? Why did it always have to be me?

“Wodarya up to,” she hissed more as a declaration of guilt than a question.

“Nothin’. I gotta sore tummy an’ needa see Mum.” I wanted to boldly push past her, but my legs were rooted to the spot under the intensity of her glare. I swallowed hard, hoping she would buy the lie.

“Do not.”

“I dooooo! Lemme past”, I whined.

“Don’t believe you. I seen you two running ‘round the yard. You’re up to somethin’.” She paused as if summing up her options. “I’m gonna to tell Ma.” She turned on her heels and marched through the kitchen, down the hall and into Mum and Dad’s bedroom to where our mother was folding washing. “Maaaa! Albert and Henry are up to somethin’. Henry sez he’s got a tummy ache, but I reckon he’s lyin’.”

“Oh why are you so suspicious all the time, Margie?” Ma sighed. “Come here Henry.” She ushered me past Margie, who refused to give up any room, bumping me with her shoulder as I squeezed past. “What’s wrong?” She placed the back of her hand against my forehead.

“I don’t feel well. My tummy hurts.” I put on my best hangdog expression. My tummy gurgled. So this is what it’s like to lie?

“Hmmm, you don’t feel hot…” Margie grinned at me menacingly and I shot her a look of hatred. “When did the pain start?”

“A while ago.” I said. “I didn’t want to disturb you.” *gurgle, gurgle* At this rate I would give myself a real tummy ache from the stress.

“Hmmm. You should always let me know if you feel unwell.”

“But he’s fakin’ it!” Margie implored.

“That’s enough, Margie. Here, take your clothes to your room. Now, Henry. Have you done poo’s today?”

Margie huffed out of the room with clothes in arms as I put some thought into the question.

“Ummm. Can’t remember. Ahhh, no?”

“Hmmm. That might be it. How ‘bout you go to the toilet and see if you can do poo? Okay?”

I nodded, trying not to giggle at Mum saying ‘poo’. I bit my lip, embarrassed, and left the room quietly. My mind returned to the final goal and whether Albert had enough time to get in and out with supplies. I panicked and made a bid for more time, turning back to Ma and Dad’s room.

“Ma? Thanks. I love you.” I flashed her my most charming and innocent smile. As I look back on it, it could seem to an outsider that I didn’t mean it; that I was just stalling for time. And I guess I would have to concede that in part this is true, but I know that I actually did mean it. Here was a woman that would love me unconditionally forever. And I would love her the same. And even then I knew that I would remember this moment forever.

“Awww, come here.” She held her arms wide and I came to her, hiding myself in her bosom. “I love you, too.” She hugged me for what felt like too long, intensifying my guilt at firstly the lie, and secondly the fact that I was about to betray her trust. My tummy gurgled and I could hear the sound reverberate off the walls. Tears of shame welled in my eyes. I swallowed the bitter pill. As she let me go and wiped a tear from her own eye I knew I would never feel this bad again in my life.

“Go do poos.” She had a smile on her face as broad as all of the oceans of the world.

I left the house quickly, suffocating on the guilt trapped between the walls and roof. I needed air. I ran to the chook shed and leant with my backs against its slats. I tried to steady my heart and breathe normally, but I could only suck air in short, sharp bursts, panting like a dog. I felt my head go light and the world start to spin and blur. All the light in the world condensed into a solitary point before my eyes and then there was nothing.

I came to with Albert shaking my shoulder.

“What are you doin? I’ve got supplies. Let’s go.”

I blinked against the slow jolt of consciousness. My brain pounded against the sides of my skull as if it were trying to escape. I couldn’t make sense of what was happening. All my thoughts were muddled. I sat up and leaned against the chook shed. My fingers moved to my temples and I groaned.

“What’s goin’ on,” I croaked.

“Wodya mean ‘What’s goin’ on’? We’re goin’ bush. I’ve got the supplies.” He lifted a hessian sack as proof.

“Oh. Yeah.” I rubbed my face.

“Come on. Get up. What were ya doin’ sleep’n in chook poo for?”

“Huh?” I looked down. My entire left side was caked in muck. I smelt like the long-drop. “Awww, shoot.”

“No, shit.” He giggled at his subversive use of a swear word and I joined in weakly, not wanting to look square.

I slowly got up leant against the wall and started wiping muck from my clothes. A sour taste coated the insides of my mouth. I needed water.

“Hurry up, would ya! Do you want us to get caught, or somethin’?”

“I’m comin’, I’m comin’. I just need a drink.” I staggered to the water tank and took a long drink from the tap.

My bowels started to groan and I remembered the lie. The guilt rose again and acid rose up into the back of my throat and my breakfast sprayed out of my mouth and over the leg of the tank-stand. A feeling of relief flooded over me as I glibly accepted the punishment for my sins.

My insides tried to turn themselves inside out. I rushed to the toilet, dropped my pants and aimed my bottom towards the hole as fast as I could. I launched a fluid line and groaned in pain and relief. I grinned at the irony of taking Mum’s advice, albeit unwillingly.

Albert hissed something at me from outside and I responded with a moan. He resorted to throwing rocks at the dunny. The musty air inside the bathroom rang as he took to throwing stones against the iron sheeting.

Once I was certain that I’d evacuated all that there was to possibly evacuate I emerged, beaten, from the loo. Albert stopped mid-throw and dropped his stone.

“Jeez, you look awful!”

“Mmmnngmm”

“You gonna be ‘right?”

“Hhhgn. Yeah. I’ll be fine.”

“Maybe we should wait till tomorrow. You look really awful.”

“Nah. I’ll be fine. C’mon. Let’s go.” I walked back towards the chook shed as confidently as I could manage and Albert trotted to catch up. I didn’t want to appear to be some kind of sissy, especially with so much at stake. My legs wobbled like cold custard, but I kept up my stoic pace.

“You sure?”

“Yeah sure.”

“K then.”

        We picked up our supplies and our guns and headed up the hill away from home. We hadn’t specified a route, but were led through the bush by the sound of the axes marking time ahead of us. We picked our way between the trees, giving a wide berth to the prickly leaves of the Banksia and long spines of the Blackboy, and the ticks we knew to be hiding within their foliage.

            The canopy pressed down on us like ominous green clouds gathering for the apocalypse. Knotted brown arms grappled at us as we passed. We’d been in the bush before, but never without our parents, and this loneliness bred a menace feeling that clung to our skin and pervaded our pores. The silence sounded so much denser when we were alone.

            As we clambered over rusty ironstone outcrops any noise amongst the leaf litter became the quick-snap slither of unseen snakes. Each crackle would stop us in our tracks and thrust our hearts into our throats- never mind that it was winter and any self-respecting reptile would be burrowed up somewhere safe and dry. We felt certain that the incessant throbbing in our chests would bring them sliding from the rocks to sink their glistening fangs into our flesh. Our skin crawled. We took to whistling to still our hearts and divert our attention away from such fear.

            We were men, doing manly things, so we had to act like men- we couldn’t just abandon our plans because we were scared. And after all that I’d been through- the lying, the fainting, the vomiting, the diarrhoea - there was no way I would conceding defeat. I’d already invested too much in this plan. Besides, if we retreated we would get into trouble for disappearing. We both thought it better to get in trouble for something we actually did rather than something we set out to do and failed.

            So on when trudged, picking our way through the undergrowth, led ever onwards by the woodsmen’s song. Albert visibly shivered as a cool and calm breeze washed our skin. We held the sour breath of the bush in our lungs.

            We reached the bluntened razor of the ridge above where our house would be amongst the knotted gums below. Sap of the deepest red seeped from a wound in the side of a broad Marri formed a sluggish river coursing through the crevices of the brittle brown bark. A small bug lay embedded within the red amber, suspended in the very moment of death. I prodded at it for a while with a twig, pulling fine threads of tree-blood from the wound into a web. Curious, I pressed a finger into the goo, coating it with the tacky red gum. I tried wiping it off on my pants, but only succeeded in spreading a thick smear. And still my finger was coated. Before long my hands and face were coated also. Once it touched a surface, it stayed there. Albert swore at me and delved into the sack to grab a handful of biscuits.

            “Here you go. Lunch.”

            “Tah.” I gave up on cleaning my hands and took the offered biscuits, being careful not to taint my food.

            “We’re ‘bout half way, I reckon.”

            “Mmmhmm.”

            “Be there in half and hour.”

            I allowed Albert his commentary, but I was more concerned with keeping the sap out of my food. I sucked crumbs from my palms and watched two lines of ants marching in and out of their home next to my foot.

The throb and whine from the workers intensified as we picked our way along the ridge. Each thwack bounced between the trees, raising the alarm of the advance of man. They shook and whispered, agitated. Every component of the bush could sense the danger and realised the threat to its survival- that eventually it would be their turn to meet the sharpened splice.

            Normally our focus would have been pulled by any number of things and we would have forgotten all about our plans, but on this particular occasion we were relentless. It was our mission, our destiny, to meet up with the men, and we weren’t going to let any old stray roo or balled-up echidna distract us from our objective.

            We drew closer and the rhythm grew louder. It was as though a symphony was being composed. The clamour of the axes and saws provided the counterpoint to the trills and chatter of the bird and the swishes of the wind dancing through the leaves. It sang to us and sent waves of chills crashing up and down our spines.

            We knew we must have been close when we came across evidence of the men’s activity. Bands of bark had been stripped from the trunks to expose their flesh. The leaves at the tips of the branches were withering brown; the wounds wept with the blood of giants. We poked at the glistening beads of eucalyptus and revelled in its heavenly scent.

            Finally we caught sight of the men. They swung their axes with power and precision and their singlets were stained a deeper blue around their collars, chests and armpits where the sweat ran in torrents. Two axemen worked each tree, their swings staggered to maximise efficiency and each impact of forged steel sent shards of red flying through the air. Other pairs stood on opposite sides of a tree, each bracing against the push of the other as they grunted into their sweet, whirring cadence. Flecks of pulpy red mud were spat from the wound with each pass of the saw. Our nostrils burned with the rich, sticky scent of freshly cut wood hanging in the heavy air beneath the canopy.

            We watched from afar, each daring the other to be first to emerge from the shadows. We had come to join the men, but were scared of those final steps into their realm. We crouched behind a rotting and mossy log and waited, watching, but we couldn’t just crouch there all day amongst the rot and bugs. I was the one who finally succumbed. A combination of Albert’s goading, my desire to be a man, and sheer bloody-mindedness lifted me. My Legs drifted of their own volition as if on clouds. I would like to say I strode purposefully into the clearing, but I was more like a mouse assessing the safety of a room. I placed each foot carefully, trying not to break any spring-loaded sticks lest they give away my position. Albert hissed something at me, his head peering over the log, urging me on with a stiff wave of his hand. I looked ahead apprehensively, caught between my desire to stay out of trouble and my desire to prove myself. I hesitated mid-stride. Caught in the glare of a million eyes.

            “TIM-BURRRRRRRR!” The war-cry. I looked up. Most of the men had already adjourned to the far side of the clearing, while Matt Elliot and Bob Enfield scampered away in running crouches from their tools at the base of the tilting tree. The Jarrah twitched on its stump and its arrow point wavered ever-so-slightly from its aim towards the sun. It lost its precarious balance and gained its terrible momentum.

            It all happened so slowly, yet even now I am unsure of the exact order of events. I was paused between steps, the tree was barely moving, merely reclining, slowly easing towards the floor. Time slowed to less than a crawl. The air gasped. The canopy traced a prefect arc through the sky, scything through the limbs of its neighbours. It swept towards the ground in its rolling arc, Matt Elliot and Bob Enfield scurried away, my eyes aligned with my father’s. His face instantly turned ashen, his mouth open, his eyes dying. I don’t know how long we were locked like that, but in that terrible instance we were rooted in terror. Our eyes remained locked. I didn’t bother looking up. I knew what was coming. And then it came.

Chapter 7: Plotting the Future

The men awoke with the sun, made tea on the embers of the fire and set out to inspect exactly what they had bought into. They retraced their steps back down the creek to the first set of survey points and started out across the flats. The markers stretched through the bush to the top of the ridge and down into the base of the gully beyond. They ducked and weaved their way along the boundary, stopping now and then to uncatch their clothing from the spiky Banksia and Zamia bushes that made them itch and scratch at their skin.

Each farm consisted of a patchwork of Teatrees, paperbarks, Jarrah, Marri, Blackboys, Banksia and even a small copse of stringy Karri in the far gullies, while the soil itself spanned the spectrum from grey sand on the flats and rocky ironstone up on the ridge. Certainly, the sheer size and abundance of the trees suggested that the soil would prove fertile and ensure the success of their crops. The experienced farmers in the group were certain they could make something of it.

            They made their way along the floor of the back gullies, walking slightly up the gradient until the gully morphed into the neighbouring ridge. They continued downhill once more on the other side, marching across the back of the six lots before turning again and tracing their way back towards the creek. After crossing the drying creekbed they followed the markers round the other half of the allotments before returning to the camp for a late lunch where they declared that the land didn’t look too bad, and that the division of land was fair and equitable.

            We arranged ourselves in a circle and discussed over a cup of tea exactly how the land was to be allocated. The contracts the parents had signed specified that this wasn’t to happen until at least 25 acres had been cleared from each block, but in light of the beastly situation the Scheme had placed us in it was unanimously agreed that the land would be balloted off now, and everyone would pitch in to clear sufficient space on each block in turn.

Each block was assigned a number, and each number written on a piece of paper and placed into the broad hat of one of the Kelly’s. The patriarch of each family- in descending age order- drew a tab from the hat bearing the number of their slice of Paradise. Bill Munroe, at 40 years of age, was the first up, drawing number 4. Then Roger Craig (35) drew 1, the bachelor Matthew Elliot (34) number 5, Dad (28) number 2, and Robert Enfield (23) finally drew number 3 out of the hat. The Craig’s, Enfield’s and Elliot would be in a row along the Southern side of the creek, with the Munroe’s and us on the North. There were mock complaints and grumblings about the procedure and verdict, a keeping up of appearances, but they were accompanied by glints and wily grins.

            With this the inaugural meeting of the new Group Settlement community of Karabup was adjourned. The Foremen bid us farewell, promising to return within the week with the first batch of building materials. They rode off at a trot back to their respective families, homes and lives, leaving us alone for the first time amongst the silence of the bush. No sound save for the wind dancing across the leaves in the canopy could be heard. We were utterly alone in a foreign wilderness; completely isolated and cut off from the rest of the world. The silence and stillness were overwhelming. Each of us were hypnotised by our own thoughts and reveries as we set out in our familial directions to select our home sites amongst the scrub.

True to their word the Kelly’s returned with carts piled high with timber beams and slats. Whips cracked and bullocks groaned as they lumbered forward with their cargo. Those still up on the hill meandered down to welcome them in, intrigued- our first external interaction in seven days. In that time we had set with gusto into the task of clearing sites for our new homes a safe distance from the winter mudflats.

The men had managed to carve out of the bush clearings 30 square feet in size on each selection with crosscut saws and axes. As they directed their power into the tree trunks, the smaller of us were set the task of collecting the smaller broken and fallen arms of the knotted gums for firewood, loading them onto the loose and rattling old cart until we could no longer reach the top. We built a woodpile against the side of the hall, and started clearing the innumerable rocks that littered the ground into easily accessible piles to be dealt with once everything had settled down.

The men took care of the larger limbs and trunks, hauling them from the site of their execution, down the slopes and into windrows by the creek ready to be split and cut into fence-posts and stakes. Meanwhile the women prepared all our meals and drinks, helped us with our tasks, made sure the smallest of us didn’t get ourselves into trouble, and chased snakes and lizards away from the stock and larders.

            The men quickly found out that the local jarrah and marri were a far cry from the oak and birch they were used to back home. The knotted and gnarled wood was astonishingly hard, and heaving a great axe into it caused vibrations of refined energy to pulse through the handle, into the hands, up the arms and into the core, jangling the organs and stinging the bones of those who wielded the power. And to add to the insult, each terrible swing only ate an inch further into the trunk. It did not seem proportionate to the amount of effort expended. Hands were transformed into a collection of weeping blisters, the skin peeling from their palms, and the muscles of their arms, shoulders and chests throbbing from the exertion and jarring pain.

            However by the end of the week they could look back with pride at their efforts and the freshly cleared sites scattered around the valley. Upon their return, the Kelly’s were surprised by the progress we had made and admired the work ethic of this seemingly soft and rag-tag mob of Poms. They remarked that even rough-necked Aussies such as themselves would struggle to achieve this much over the same period of time.

The Kelly’s led their cart around to each property to drop off the required building materials, and by night fall we were all gathered around the bonfire watching the kangaroo stew steaming above the flames and the potatoes roasting in the coals. The air buzzed with the tired but excited energy of the people and the cloud of mosquitoes diving onto any unprotected patches of skin.

            We all awoke at first light and, after a breakfast of porridge and charred buttered toast, set out to the Craig’s property to erect the first Karabup house. Holes had already been dug at the four corners of the clearing in preparation for the erection of the outer pillars. A thick Jarrah log was positioned over each hole and four ropes were lashed around the top. With a man on each rope they hauled the log upright in an arc and slipped the base into the hole with a dull thud. It stood there at a jaunty angle pointing above the morning sun. They carefully manipulated the pole to stand perfectly erect and the soil was poured back in around the base with shovels and compacted with the flat ends of 6-foot crowbars until set like concrete. Within an hour all four soldiers stood sentry at the corners of the house warding off any bad luck or pessimism that may have been stalking through the scrub. The only thing possessing our hearts was a rampant and buoyant optimism; a feeling that we could, together, create something truly unique and amazing.

It was another month before the finishing touches could be laid onto the outer shell of the last house, and with it the physical manifestation of the community was complete. 5 identical, rudimentary, 4-walled houses with roofs of shimmering corrugated iron stood around the valley, secreted from each other by the scrub but for the wood-smoke winding upwards from the chimneys. A flat veranda covered each front porch from where anybody with some free time could gaze out into the scrub contemplate their lot in life. Inside, each was partitioned into 6 rooms sprouting off of a central hallway. They weren’t flashy, but they were functional. In another fortnight gutters were affixed to the edges of the roof and pipes fed into new rainwater tanks perched against each house, but until the rains started again we would have to rely on weekly raids to the reservoir a few valley’s over. Ours was a simple life, but one that we embraced with opened arms and the passion of the soul.

While the men were up on the hills clearing the land and fencing off the selections, the women took it upon themselves to move everything from the hall and temporary humpies into the relevant houses. Up until this point we had conducted everything as a community. Now had come the time to partition ourselves off from our neighbours.

            The Kelly brothers came and went on a regular basis. They owned a farm a few miles to the east and had young families of their own to look after, and had taken on the job of looking after us as a way of supplementing their incomes. Every time they came they brought with them extra supplies, correspondence, furnishings, building materials and treats for us little ones. They fast became our closest allies. We were their ‘Groupies’, and they could always be depended upon to lend a helping hand, whether prompted or not. I’m pretty sure a lot of us would have walked off the land a lot earlier if it weren’t for their help.

The Kelly’s showed the men how to strip the bark from the jarrah logs drying by the creek, and then how to divide the timber into 6-foot fence posts using sledgehammers and steel wedges to split the logs along their grain. As they were split the green posts were laid out to dry under the summer sun for a couple of weeks and prevent them from rotting and splintering once they were embedded in the ground.

While the Kelly’s, Dad, Bob Enfield and Matt Elliot put their backs into splitting the posts, the two elder patriarchs Bill Monroe and Roger Craig took their teenage boys Danny and Oscar and Josh out into the scrub to dig holes seven paces apart like perforations along the seam of the hill in which the fence-posts would stand. They dug for a fortnight, slowly tracing out the borders of each property until each was delineated from the next like a sheet of postage stamps.

As they lay the Jarrah posts out alongside the holes it quickly became apparent that they only had about half the number of posts that they needed. As a compromise they made the diplomatic decision to instead fence off about a third of each farm so that each family would have a safe enclosed area in which to keep the stock. Thicker, heavier posts were placed at the junction of fences where the holes had been dug in deeper. These would act as levers, preventing the fence from being torn from the ground as tension was added to the wire. Gates were also suspended from these strainer posts to allow the easy movement of stock between paddocks. The rest of the fences would have to wait until more trees had been felled in the process of clearing the land.

            With the sheep and cattle safely enclosed and the boundaries of each farm etched into the valley the men stood face to face with the daunting task of clearing the bush. When looked upon as a whole it appeared overwhelming. A thousand acres of sunburnt rocky ground covered completely with the spikes of blackboy, zamia and Banksia and shaded by a continuous canopy of Jarrah and Redgum with trunks were so fat that four men together couldn’t warp their arms around their base. Instead of charging straight in, they started with the low-lying scrub along the banks of the creek. The general opinion was that if they could just clear a little bit of arable land, then they could start growing crops and get a little bit of money trickling in. They would worry about the daunting hardwoods when the time came.

And so the men slashed away at the shrubs around the creek bed, their arms and legs getting scratched and lashed by the prickly and brittle bushes. Heavy chains were connected between teams of horses that were led in parallel across the plain to tear the Teatrees from the grey, sandy earth. After helping to remove the Teatrees, the horses were hitched to ploughs to churn up the soil and release the small flora. Only a handful of paperbarks and scrawny gums persisted, too strong to be merely ripped from the ground; symbols of the power of the native earth.

Not long into the clearing process it dawned on someone- I don’t know who- that it would be easier to clear the land if they burnt the forest first, thereby removing the smaller shrubs and plants that would otherwise get in their way. They stood around thinking, berating themselves, until someone started laughing at his naivety and they all joined in the chorus, disrupting a gaggle of Kookaburras in the trees behind. They could hardly burn out the bush now that they’d spent all that time and energy fencing it off- the fences would be destroyed. They spat, cursed and laughed at their folly, then turned back to their horses and axes, shrugging, and kept on tearing at the scrub.

Teatree skeletons were heaped into windrows next to the creek, and one still, late autumn afternoon they were set alight to glow orange against the sunset and release their sweet incense to the wind. Twigs and branches of the twisted shrubs crackled and flared as the flames licked at their skin. The snap and pop of bursting kindling continued its hypnotic rhythm throughout the evening and into the night. That evening the sun burnt crimson through the smoke, and the sky was alive with intense slathers of reds, oranges and purples. Everyone sat in wonder around the fires and smiled in wonder at the perfection of the night.

We all took the afternoon off from our regular duties to gather around the fires. As we watched the sun dip beneath the hanging heads of the trees the entire community converged on the plain to sit around toasting bread, making tea and roasting potatoes in the coals. We sang the songs of home into the night, our faces hot from the fire and our backs chilled by the plunging night. Mr Monroe brought his banjo down from his house and provided the backing track, before Mr Craig squeezed the strains of Northern songs from his bagpipes under the magnificent expanse of the Southern sky. For once the hills echoed with the voices of the living. We felt like we must be the last surviving inhabitants of the world.

Between Here and the Sky- Chapter 5: Group Settlement

The inevitable unforeseen problems started with the breaking of an axle barely an hour out of Mount Barker, near the top of the ascent out of town where a few generations later vineyards and wineries would dominate the landscape. A couple of the men rode back to town to procure another axle, while those left behind unloaded the cart and removed the splintered remnants. The sun rose towards its zenith, bringing the hot wind from the desert to sweep up the dust from the road.

We huddled beneath redgum trees on the roadside out of the sun and wind and passed around flagons of water propped inside cardboard boxes insulated with newspaper. We rolled our sleeves and cuffs up above our elbows and knees in a vain attempt at cooling off. Some men even removed their shirts and lay on the wagons sunning their pasty white chests. Our local guides warned us against this practise, but their advice fell on deaf ears.

During the day the skin of our arms, legs, chests, backs, faces and necks developed a soft pink hue that by nightfall had deepened to crimson. Suddenly our folly and arrogance was realised and the thick long sleeves, pants, boots and slouch hats of the locals no longer seemed like such a strange decision. They smiled and cracked wise, taunting and slapping unaware red backs with calloused palms. Finally one took pity on us and unwrapped the severed green frond of an aloe vera plant and offered it around the circle. The sap cooled our skin for a moment, but nothing of any consequence could be done to alleviate it- even rinsing the days dust off in the cool water of a waterhole only offered temporary relief.

            By the morning our pain was audible. The mere sensation of blankets against red and blistered skin caused the sucking of air through gritted teeth. Rolling out of bed excised yelps from our throats, while putting on sensible full-length clothing brought even the most stoic of men to the brink of sobs. Bloody fissures had formed on our lips and our hot skin gained the wrinkled texture of soft leather. Mr Monroe even suffered the indignity of a red and blistered scalp. He took to swaddling his raw crown with dampened rags, and drizzling water over the bandages every hour. All in all it was an elaborate form of torture.

            We nursed our burns and licked our sore egos as the days drifted slowly by. Much of the excitement of the previous few days had dissipated and we sat quietly watching the progress of the monotonous forest with dull eyes. Hill merged into hill, all covered with the same mix of Redgum, Banksia and blackboy. At first these tall trees weeping their characteristic red sap captivated us, but after hours and days of the same landscape and the constant scourge of blood-sucking ticks we soon grew bored and cantankerous at the tedium. It wasn’t until the afternoon of the 7^th day that the Redgums receded. The trees grew sparser, and the undergrowth denser until we were completely closed in by tea-tree scrub pressing in to watch us pass. Deep wheel ruts criss-crossed the road in testament to the treacherously swampy nature of the region in winter. As the sun drifted towards the west, mosquitoes rained down on us whenever the breeze dropped from the stagnant pools littering the roots of the scratchy shrubs.

We spent the night with a community of farmers next to Lake Muir. They had settled here a few of years earlier as a pilot group to the Group Settlement Scheme. As we ate the lovely stews of rabbit and kangaroo they had prepared us for dinner, our parents discussed the hardships of the country, questioning and gleaning information, handy hints and recipes from those with the experience. Every now and then after we had been put to bed we would be woken by the exclamations and astonished laughs of our parents as they talked well into the night, taking on the enormity of what they now faced until the fire turned into coals flickering against the blue of a moonlit night.

We woke again at dawn to eat toast and bacon cooked by our hosts over the reawakened coals. We said our goodbyes, climbed back aboard the carts and set off with frantic waves back at our disappearing new friends. Within an hour the vegetation began to soar again, even higher than before. Jarrah trees threw themselves towards the sun. Their skin looked like it had been coated with mud as they burst through the ground, and had now dried into a rippling grey crust. Their canopies formed a vaulted archway high above, predicting our advance. These rich, pink hardwoods sheltered us from the worst of the sun, maintaining a pleasant temperature within their shade.

Our guides regaled us with new stories of the bush- the perfect grain of the wood a perfect building material, but at the expense of hundreds of axe heads and handles- their density making them slow to cut, and the blades quick to blunten. However while the locals trembled at the knowledge of life with these trees, to us they were a source of beauty. We marvelled at their breadth and towering heights, each greater even than the mightiest oak back home.

Finally, after days on end marching up and down forested hills we arrived at the end of the road. Our caravan drove down the main street of town, past the grizzled, tanned and bitter faces of the locals. Their shoulders were broad and square, too much weight sat around their necks and chests and with each lumbering step they looked like even the slightest nudge would be enough to tip them off kilter and topple them sideways into the dust. We couldn’t help but watch and giggle to ourselves at the sight of these strange, unbalanced, savage men.

We pulled up around the back of the Manjimup Hotel at the far end of the street. It was one of a dozen such hotels in town, but as the first established (before even a general store, if local lore were to be believed) it earned the right to co-opt the name of the town as its own. In fact, many locals argued that it worked the other way around- that the town earned the right to name itself after the pub.

We left the carts and wagons- still loaded- tied lazily to the railings as the weary horses were led to the stables where they would be tended back to vitality. Their job done, the guides joined the local men at the bar for a raucous night of beer, swearing, singing and brawling before returning to their homes the next morning bleary eyed and weak stomached.

The rest of us dragged ourselves upstairs to our rooms to wash the week’s dust from our bodies and peel vast swathes of deadened skin from our slowly healing wounds, before reconvening in the dining room to eat our dinners in silence. Barely a word was uttered through the fog of exhaustion. Heads nodded and lungs sighed. I fell asleep in my chair; my parents having to carry my limp bones up to bed, before turning in for the night themselves, welcoming a proper bed instead of the thin mats they had to contend with throughout the migration. I was not the only one to sleep heavily past dawn, immune to the boisterous sounds emanating from downstairs.

When we descended the stairs for breakfast the next morning we were informed that we would be setting out on the last leg of our journey in an hour or so. My parents smiled and hugged each other and a general buzz whipped through the dining room. It was to be a ten-mile trek along a trail only recently cut through the virgin forest. Manjimup was already established as a pivotal timber-milling town, its occupants having already cleared vast swathes of the forest, leaving behind pastureland in an ever-expanding circle from the town.

It was the state governments plan, through its puppet Midland Railway Company, to populate the area and establish the region as the state’s breadbasket, to provide the state’s growing population with meat, milk, vegetables, fruits and grains. They advertised extensively throughout England for young men and families such as my own willing to transplant their lives and bring their Anglo culture with them to form the nucleus of these new regional communities.

Families who signed up to the Scheme were allocated to Group Settlements, each under the guidance of a Foreman. Twelve families were assigned to each newly surveyed cluster of land, thus creating new little slices of the Motherland. Each man or family would receive a 160-acre parcel of land, the stipulation being that each had to clear at least 25 acres of forest from their block in order to be given the rights to buy the land using low interest loans provided by the government. As an added incentive, each migrant would receive a small herd of sheep and cows, tools and machinery to clear the land, seed to start crops and brand new houses in which to live. And if all went to plan each family would quickly settle into their new life and start producing goods for sale back to the state and thereby pay back their loan.

After hastily throwing down breakfast we climbed aboard our carts for the last time and, under the guidance of our new Foremen- the local Kelly brothers, set out for Paradise. At first we passed quickly through the gentle roll of farmland as workers in the fields tilled the soil, then past loggers wielding mighty cross-saws and axes, and even past a small mill as we neared the edge of the cleared land. The giant circular saw screeched terribly as it passed through the heart of a ten-foot jarrah trunk.

The road slowly narrowed and the forest encroached ever closer until we were travelling along the floor of an improbable chasm formed by the variegated trunks souring above. The Karri stood fat and bold alongside the track inspiring awe in those who passed. Patches of white, grey, yellow and pink pastels showed beneath the long tendrils of silvery skin peeling off via forces unseen. Our necks craned upwards in reverence, tracing the parallel lines of their unfeasibly straight trunks tapering infinitesimally in their ascent, only to burst outwards in a paused explosion of verdant foliage between here and the sky. We fell silent, speaking only in whispers for fear of other, invisible, ears hearing.

The air hung rich and musty as axles squeaked, bullwhips cracked, cattle complained and distant axes thudded rhythmically into the heart of the trees. Even the broad and burly local Foremen quietened to listen to the conversations of the wind tussling the canopy and the crisp crack of twigs snapped by startled kangaroos as they bounded away in a panic.

The be-creeked gullies grew ever cooler, darker and damper. No wind could penetrate the lid of the canopy, rendering the gullies ripe with decades of stale composting air. Mosses and ferns grew from the rotting logs littering the floor and decomposition was accelerated by the clinging dampness. Armies of insects flitted amongst the detritus scavenging whatever they could find. Our skin prickled with electricity as we breathed in decades of life and death, each humbled by the likelihood that we amongst the very first people to have ever trodden this earth. This place somehow felt familiar, yet simultaneously foreign and mystical. We felt separated from the rest of humanity yet somehow soothed, alone in creation. There was something profoundly spiritual about this place that penetrated your bones and soul.

The men began to whisper amongst themselves, getting excited by what possibly lay in store. “Look at the size of these trees!” “If they can grow that big, just imagine how good the soil is!” “It must be better than anything back home.” “Were going to be rolling in it!” They relaxed and started to have some fun, figuring that life would be a doddle from here on in.

Our new Foremen, younger and more vivacious than the grizzled men that had led us to Manjimup, took us young ones under their wings. They showed us how to rub the fuzzy leaves from the shrubs lining our path between our hands and, with a few drops of water, create a frothing pile of bubbles. Delighted, we proceeded to strip entire branches of their leaves, lathering them furiously between our palms and creating ridiculous quantities of froth and foam, which we pressed to our faces as bubbly white beards and moustaches in imitation of our elders.

The adults too got involved, and Dad in particular spent a lot of his time walking alongside our cart idly making froth and decorating the horses’ manes with Mohawks of fine white bubbles. The men had this curious man pegged as a simpleton, a little touched perhaps. They whispered and joked amongst themselves, and even took wagers on how long he would last once we reached our new home and the real work began. Dad’s hands, which in England had been the hardened and cracked brown leather hands of a farmer and labourer, had become soft and pink through the sedentary weeks spent cooped up in the hull of the ship. And all this constant lathering couldn’t be helping his cause. Still, while the guides mocked him behind his back, we knew that our father was a lot stronger than he looked. In our eyes he was a man of action, a hero. Nothing could ever hold him back. We had no doubt that he would thrive in this our Paradise.

Our carts, in single file, continued down, down, down the steep track into deep rippling valley. The sun was obscured by the trees so we had no reference for how far or how long we had been descending. Our necks grew tired from the constant craning upwards, and vertigo from watching countless identical trunks pass by into infinity.

Eventually we reached the banks of the warbling river that had carved the valley out of the landscape over millennia. The still water was stained into a yellow-brown tea by the tannins leached from the branches and leaves of the overhanging shrubs hanging precariously from the muddy banks.

Dad bent down and took a small handful of the cold water and sipped, and proclaimed it to be perfectly pure, defying its murky colour. He grabbed a long stick and, clinging to the branch of a ‘soap-bush’, leant out over the waters to test its depth. The waters swallowed the entire stick at the same time the willowy limb cracked. Dad lost his balance and plunged headlong into the frigid pool to the rapturous howls of delight of those on the shore. He came up spluttering and flailing for the riverbank until he quickly regained his composure and planted his feet into the sludgy mud lining the bottom of the river. He wiped the water from his face and looked wide-eyed and stunned at the gaggle pointing and laughing at him.

The men united in helping drag Dad up the slippery clay of the riverbank and slapped him heartily on the back as Ma rummaged through our belongings in search of a change of clothes. He sheepishly took the proffered towel, clothes and boots and trudged away into the bush to change, his feet squelching with every step. The rest of us continued our laughter until he re-emerged from the undergrowth; pride wounded, but spirit intact.

Composure regained, we followed the bumpy track upstream until we stumbled across a set of stony rapids. The water cascaded over the glistening rocks from the top pool to the bottom. As it churned and bounced down the rapids the saponin leached from the undergrowth swelled into mounds of foam that swirled with the currents and eddies around the lower pool, forming abstract patterns and swirls on the surface of the deep, dark water.

We diverted up a side creek and, if we could have surveyed the landscape from between the trees, out onto a wallowing plain. The hills retreated on either side, leaving in their wake a broad and marshy flat littered with prickly shrubs and Paperbarks. The air smelt of minty tea. The hill slopes stood in submission a safe distance away from the water, creating the illusion that we were placed at the very centre of a giant’s saucer. The ghostly giants that had guided our path dispersed to the slopes of the hills, surrendering like shy and meek children in the face of something new. We were perched in an enclave hidden away from the rest of the world. This was our oasis, our prison, our Paradise.

A clearing opened up in front of us and a lone building, nothing more than four walls, a roof and a rainwater tank, emerged from the afternoon shadows, tentatively making its presence known. About 3 acres of bush had been hacked away around it. A couple dozen cattle and sheep were milling around within a crudely fenced enclosure. Little wooden pickets with coloured ribbon tied around the ends dotted the clearing and off into the bush in all directions, demarcating the borders of each selection, each parcel of land. They stretched away from the creek and up the slopes of the enclosing hills. The creek itself bisected the valley in half, creating two rows of farms staring at one another across the brook.

Once the initial awe and reverence of the tranquillity wore off, the realisation of the enormity of the task started to sink in. Disgruntled rumblings arose amongst the group and broke as a wave through every head. This was not the scene that had been promised. Our families hadn’t uprooted our lives, transported us to the nether regions of the globe and isolated ourselves from all that we knew just to be plonked in the middle of a wild and untamed wilderness. The posters and pamphlets and salesmen of the Scheme had assured us that we would arrive to the splendour of ready-made farms; that we could walk straight onto them and continue our farming traditions with an absolute minimum of fuss. We had all walked blindly into a trap and the shock that hit us bubbled over into rage.

The Foremen, being the visible and tangible incarnation of the Scheme, were the natural targets for our collective anger, however it seemed that they too had walked unknowingly into the trap. They had just been given instruction to guide us to the settlement, having already been here to erect the shed and deliver the stock. They didn’t know what the authorities had promised, and all that had not been delivered. They had no way of knowing the intricacies of the contracts drafted by the company and signed by the participants. They were equally as naïve, and equally incensed at being at the coalface and the focus of the blame. All they could do was offer their own personal assistance, and a voice to lobby the company on behalf of the people.

It was clear from their reactions that they were indeed as innocent as us, so there was no point in continuing to protest. What good would it do to ostracise those that were in the best position to help our present situation? The flames of our frustrations were quieted into coals smouldering beneath the surface where they could burn in preparedness for an encounter with those that were to blame.

Everybody, even us kids, pitched in to help unload the wagons and deliver the myriad crates of furniture, crockery, kerosene lamps, clothes, and water inside. The shed was nothing more than a large open room, with a kitchen tacked onto the end as if it were an oversight. A long-drop toilet was stationed a safe distance away uphill. With no other candidate, it was unanimously decreed that the building would serve as the town hall; the epicentre and visible soul of our community- Group Settlement #79 (Karabup).

By the time the sun had dipped into the canopies of the trees lining the crest of the hill beyond the river, the lives of each family had been unloaded into the hall. The horses had been tethered and fed, and a small amount of hay was distributed amongst the sheep and cows. Dead wood had been collected from the fringes of the clearing and made into a pile alongside the first flickering flames of a campfire, its orange glow rebounding off the encircling scrub. We shared our first meal as a town. We ate, played and laughed together into the night, suspending the uneasiness over the false promises and establishing the tight bonds of community that comes through shared experience.