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.

Between Here and the Sky- Chapter 4: The Cellar

Looking at the clock in the bottom corner of his screen for the thousandth time that day Marshall declared it to be time to head to the pub. He shut down the computer for the weekend and checked that his drawers were locked before throwing his satchel over his shoulder and crossing the corridor to Yoshi’s office. Together they did the rounds of the department, picking up those who were keen and a few who were not so keen but didn’t want to create a scene by refusing.

They left the building as a mob, Yoshi skipping ahead while Marshall called Piers to let him know they’d already left. They procured a table in the beer garden under the shade of the oak trees as Marshall went to the bar and bought 2 jugs of Golden Ale to kick things off. Karl and Leigh lambasted him- Karl for not getting Amber Ale, and Leigh for getting beer in the first place. Leigh went to get a bottle of red as Karl and Marshall started pouring out the beer.

By the end of Happy Hour the group was down to its core members of Marshall, Piers, Yoshi, Karl and Leigh, the others making their excuses and heading home for the weekend. Marshall had his arms around Karl’s hulking shoulders at one end of the table, going over the details of his latest breakup, while the others entertained themselves with their plans for the forthcoming Postgraduate Student Association cocktail night.

According to Karl the breakup had been due to his inability to go to Leigh’s mother’s 60^th birthday party, and that if he couldn’t commit to something so small, yet so meaningful to her, then what was the point in staying together? In her mind it meant that Karl was afraid of commitment. He had tried to dissuade her- that he had an important timed experiment that had to be done- but she wasn’t listening. So that was that. Karl stared vacantly into the froth of his beer.

The relationship between Karl and Leigh stretched back some years to their time in student politics, when Karl had been VP of the Student Guild having formed a coalition with the not-quite-as-left-as-him Labor Party. He was loathe to call himself a communist and risk being tarred with the same brush as the campus socialists involved in circular group-think and handing out copies of the Socialist Weekly outside the Reid library. Despite his personal manifesto being in a state of continual flux, like-minded people still seemed to be pulled into his orbit like moons around a planet. If he had the self-confidence to match his formidable intellect he would have been a danger to any impressionable fresher looking to shift their ideology from the right-wing dogma of their middle-class parents. As it was he was tearing himself up with Leigh.

Leigh, an avowed Green had been one of the normal members of the Guild Council. She spent much of her time at these weekly meetings trading glances with this larger-than-life character over the polished wooden table while their peers drafted pressers condemning the actions of Japanese whalers and declaring the campus a safe haven for refugees. They discovered a shared source of amusement trading in underhanded and cynical comments while everyone else seemed too caught up in their own moral seriousness. Before long Leigh found herself in Karl’s flat, naked, after several hours debating the Northern Territory Intervention over a cask of rough red. Even from the start their relationship was built on seismic fault lines. They were both as bad as each other.

The drama Karl and Leigh wrote together was at simultaneously irritating and amusing to those caught up in their web. They were wonderful and engaging people and both thoroughly enjoyed a long night out, but their acquaintances were never quite sure of the status of their relationship and, not wanting to bring the topic up in conversation, would ignore the entire thing until someone informed them of the pendulum’s swing.

The evening had reached the fork in the road. Either they could take the low road and continue in the current quixotic frenzy and be written off by dinner time, or they could take the high road, put the brakes on and make a night of it. In the spirit of democracy they argued the merits of each option before putting it to a vote. Leigh voted for annihilation, but it was all for nought. Piers, Marshall and Yoshi were intent on making it to the gig, while Karl agreed predominantly as a means of pissing Leigh off. She rolled her eyes and poured the final dribble of the wine into her glass.

They finished off the last of their drinks and gathered their bags from underneath the table. The boys tried to convince Leigh to come out with them and enjoy a night out on the town, Karl even lowered his lance in reconciliation, but she offered her excuses and made off into the night. She had designs on going around to her best friend’s house with a couple more bottles of wine to curl up on the couch in front of the heater and bitch about life. All the time being surrounded by the boys had built up so much pressure inside her that she needed to vent.

Piers called his brother and got him to reserve another couple of tickets on the door. The four of them would split the cost of the fourth. They caught a taxi into Northbridge and after paying wandered through a back alley into the heart of what passed as the local version of Chinatown. A young spruiker, probably the daughter of the owner, welcomed them into a room where the tables were wedged tightly around each other and the walkways were choked with a gridlock of food trolleys. They approached the maitre de with the number of people to be seated, took a number and loitered out the front trying to topple each other into piles of rubbish bags that lined the redbrick wall.

At the call of their number they slid back inside and around a plastic-covered table and steeled themselves for the onslaught ahead. As the gleaming metallic carts came around they selected an array of baskets filled with various steamed and fried dumplings and giant plates of deep fried squid tentacles battered in garlic they took glee in calling ‘curly fries’. A couple of pots of complimentary green tea were delivered to their table to help wash it all down, rehydrating and preparing them for the night ahead.

It only took them 20 minutes to gorge themselves to the brink of coma. Their eyes glazed over and their jaws hung slack from the mountains of MSG now lining their stomachs. They loosened their belts, slouched in their chairs, stared at the ceiling and smiled contentedly, blissed with the state of the world.

While they were in their fugue the staff bustled around them like birds, clearing away empty bowls, cups, baskets, napkins and plates. A freshly printed white bill was placed deliberately in the middle of the table, a message to ‘pay up and get out so we can do another sitting’. They each put in $15 for the pleasure of the experience and, groaning their appreciation, slid back out into the aisle and waddled out the door.

Hit by the blare of the shouts and noise of James Street a sudden fear overcame them. The fog of MSG lifting from their eyes and they looked out of terrified eyes. Their urge was to dart back the way they came and regain their composure before figuring out a plan to skirt around the sinister heart of Northbridge. Instead they steeled themselves and lifted a façade of nonchalance so as not to let their illusions of masculinity be perceived. Not uttering a word of the fear each was silently battling, they strode purposefully up the street weaving in and out of traffic intent on not making eye contact with strangers, and making it to the other end undamaged.

They were headed towards a regular haunt on the fringes of the city. Nights at The Cellar were typically filled in equal measures by magical musical gems- those that shine so bright you think they will explode- and miscarriages- trashed equipment and bandmates turning on each other mid-song. It acted as a lone beacon to those youths disenchanted with the shiny lights and plastic sounds, the drunken brawlers, the smeared skanks and the strip clubs that pass as popular entertainment. It offered the opportunity to immerse oneself in a counter-culture amongst the painfully cool kids with their tattoos, piercings and avant-garde fashions. But more than that, a place to go to forget yourself, to forget your inhibitions and just act as though you are the only person left in the universe. A place of freedom. To dance without worrying about the eyes of others judging your every move. Because no one was there to care about what anybody else did, so long as there was a spirit and mood created to carry them through the dark of night.

Nightclub bouncers lay in wait for the disorderly teens to descend from the suburbs. They hurried past and made it to The Cellar as the queue was dwindling and people were filing into the outer courtyard. An unorganised line had spread out across the bar as patrons waited impatiently for the staff to tend to their whims. A couple of guys were plugging cords into their synthesisers on the stage inside. Marshall, Piers and Karl got beers with which to recommence their drinking, while Yoshi rued his ancestry and got a pint of water. Small clumps of people randomly dotted the floor of the room, some sitting, some standing, a couple dancing. They assumed their positions towards the back of the dance floor nodding and shifting their weight almost in time with the beat. After a couple of songs they grew restless and returned to the concrete garden to perch on stacks of wooden pallets while they waited for Alby’s turn to take the stage.

An interval between the acts gave the fashionable latecomers a chance to arrive and lean nonchalantly against the walls of the club. Finally the MC summonsed everyone to crush into the dimly lit room. The scientists were washed forwards to end up around the paisley-printed pillar in the centre of the room by the tide of people eager to secure a good vantage point. By the time the house lights went down the room was full, with barely room for the small women to squeeze through to the front and they clutched their beers close to their chests.

A cheer rose to greet Eye’s Quittin’ as they strode through the black velvet curtain to the stage. They shouldered arm and scrunched up their sleeves nervously while they awaiting the drummers signal to begin. The drummer, decked in only Wayfarers and torn denim shorts attacked the snare with a machine gun staccato attack before launching into a relentlessly complex pattern of toms, bass and snare. The bass joined and swirled intricately around the drum rolls. The guitars fed around each other and through all manner of effects pedals- one buzzing and sawing a rhythm, the other trilling and picking out a melody. Jarring counterpoints melted into slick harmony and back again. Timings morphed and stretched the rhythms, melodies and counter-melodies seamlessly. Breath was paused. The banter at the bar surrendered to the intensity on stage. Those closest leaned in to breathe the music; smiles splitting their faces in half. The room was on the brink of falling apart into a billion tiny fragments, held together only by the collective strength of those on stage and the rapturous and glowing faces hanging on their every sound.

Alby and his co-vocalist Zach stalked and preened out in front as though this was what they had been put on this earth to do. They traded front-man duties, the other taking up station at either at the series of pedals and switches on the floor, or beating the second drum kit on the side of the stage to within an inch of its life. They were loud and relentless, pushing the music forward into new and vital places. Feet were moved, hearts were raced, limbs were flailed, brows were wiped. Eyes from every direction burned and illuminated the stage.

The drummer appeared as though overcome by some unseen force that would launch him through the bass drum, across the stage, through the crowd and out the door at any moment, tracks smouldering in his wake. The audience dared not look away for fear of missing the offer of enlightenment radiating from the stage. They were statues during the eerie, woozy troughs, and flailed as though decapitated through the soaring crescendos. They would do anything the music commanded them.

They played the album straight through from start to finish, intricately weaving one song into the next without pause to create a single, overwhelming symphony. They left the stage bathed in layers of reverb, the lights softly breathing through the smoke to the instruments flung haphazardly across the floor. The audience roared their appreciation, and as the drone of feedback subsided Alby and Zach returned to stage. Zach plugged in the acoustic guitar strapped over his shoulder and Alby bent and picked up a trumpet from between the drums. Zach elicited the nostalgic sound of crackling vinyl from an effects pedal and began to pick out a simple two bar melody, and Alby coaxed an achingly pretty sustained note from his muted horn. The three other band members calmly walked on stage, huddled around a microphone and together softly began to breathe the chant ‘it’s all alright’. One by one their voices broke away from the central line, folding harmonies around each other and enveloping the silenced audience in a cloud of bliss. Marshall closed his eyes and soared above the room, swooping and soaring with the music. A perfect dénouement; a cool rain after a hot day.

The band took their bows and sustained applause escorted them from the stage. Out back they were quiet, smiling blissfully and patting each other on the arms for a job well done. Out the front, Marshall’s chest burst with pride over what he had just witnessed, Karl joined the line for merchandise, and Yoshi continued to nod his head in dazed appreciation well after the floor had been cleared. Electric murmurs swept through those in line as they waited to pick up a copy of the album, before dispersing into the night to bury it in their stereos in a desperate attempt to relive the night. 

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.

Between Here and the Sky- Chapter 2: Primers

As he neared the end of his candidature the amount of work still needing to be done loomed in front of Marshall like an angry hydra- each head a different branch of the project that somehow had to be coaxed and cajoled into a smooth and consistent thesis. Time was running out. The days were lengthening with the coming of summer and with a determination brought about by the fear of failure he forced his mind to burn from sunrise to sunset.

By now he was used being the first in the lab. Well, it was either he or his lab mate Yoshi. They had started their PhD’s at more-or-less the same time, albeit from different directions, and had worked together quite a lot, helping out with the more time consuming and repetitive elements of their experiments. Both thought it was a good thing to have some companionship through the ups and downs of their candidature, even if working that closely with another person for so long inevitably led to squabbling, bickering, the odd fight. In effect they were like brothers forced together by fate or whatever grand design there is in the world, if indeed there is any.

Marshall threw the switches to the fluorescent lights to revel the usual white starkness of the laboratory. Bottles of clear liquids labelled with autoclave tape lined the shelves; the air-conditioning sprang to life with the lights. Overnight the lab had developed the fetid stench of mouse shit and piss, a consequence of the renovations being done in the animal house below disrupting the extraction and conditioning of the surrounding rooms. Marshall screwed his nose up in disgust. He knew he would take half an hour before the smell would clear. In the meantime he would have to suck it up.

He slipped the starched lab coat over his shoulders and pressed the studs closed at the front before slouching around the bench. In a well-practised motion he ferreted out some gloves- large- from their cardboard box. He cursed as the latex band around the wrist tore and he had to put on another. Once his hands were secured and the polystyrene box filled with crushed ice Marshall delved into the freezer to collect his reagents. The laminar flow hood started its familiar rumble as he turned it on and leaned its metal sash against the bench. The radio noise was lost in the din. Marshall grabbed a plastic bottle and sprayed ethanol over the metallic interior of the hood and wiped it down with a paper towel. He placed the frozen tubes of reagents to thaw on the grill over the rush of filtered air. He stuck a yellow post-it to the glass panel separating him from the hood and placed 72 tiny plastic tubes into their holes in the frozen metal rack and selected a yellow-tip pipette. Following the recipe he’d scrawled onto the post-it he set to work.

16 samples, duplicate; 4 standards;  p53 and GAPDH ((16x2)+4)x2
	1x	36x (+8%)
Sybr	5	194.4
Primer-F	1	38.88
Primer-R	1	38.88
H2O	2	77.76
cDNA	1

Without really thinking about it, Marshall aliquoted nine microlitres of the cocktail into each of the tiny tubes. He reflected with wonder at the number of such pipette motions he’d done over the course of his PhD, and how many more he would do before he finished. Millions. A new robot had recently been installed in the department to do such tasks for them, but both Marshall and Yoshi preferred the absolute control of doing the entire procedure themselves. Now that they were nearing the end neither wanted to start messing with a system that they both knew worked. Of course, if something went wrong with their system there was no one to blame but themselves, but to their minds this was a small price to pay for absolute confidence in their results. Marshall sighed and kept pipetting as cramp started to set in to thumb and wrist.

Yoshi walked through the doorway as though searching for something. Marshall looked in his direction and Yoshi idly waved and entered the cool room. A moment later he stepped out and called across the room.

“I’m gonna run a gel. Do you have any samples you want run?”

Marshall pondered at the ceiling a while. “Nah.”

“I’ve only doing two samples. It seems such a waste, but it beats trying to write.”

Marshall laughed, then as Yoshi turned away, returned to work. He’d lost his place. Lifting tubes out of their slots he found where he was up to and continued in his precise but absent-minded way. Once each tube had been filled he turned on the next hood, removing its sash in one practised movement and transferred the rack into it. He lined up the 16 experimental samples and the 8 standards in order on the grill to thaw and, taking in a deep breath started add the cDNA in careful sequence. He did everything in duplicate to control for any error in his pipetting. All checks and balances must be in place and accounted for. He had to be meticulous. Despite having done this procedure a hundred times, he still had to stay focussed, particularly on this step. Any slip up- putting the cDNA into the wrong tube, forgetting to change tips between each action, losing his place- would mean he would have to start the entire process all over again. He held his breath involuntarily with each motion of his arm and thumb.

He capped the tubes and moved everything into the PCR room, sterilising and shutting down the hoods as he did so. As he turned his back a noise like a gunshot ricocheted off the walls, splinters of plastic thwacked off his jeans. Marshall flinched and turned to be struck in the face by a pair of gloves. Yoshi appeared in the space vacated by the falling gloves.

“Jesus! Motherfucker!”

Yoshi leant against the bench, pointing and laughing.

“You’re a pest.”

“Yep. What are you in so early for?”

“To be hassled by you, whadya think? PCR.”

“Yeah? What are you doing?”

 “p53.” Marshall’s face fell into a pout.

“Haha! p-fucking-53. Sucks to be you.”

 “Tell me about it.” Marshall grimaced. It had been an ongoing pact between the two of them that they would never look at p53. Papers were coming out all the time implicating it in this disease or that pathway, but to their minds it was mostly a load of hot air. They refused to believe that life hinged on one single gene, that if that one gene were to go bung then the whole system would collapse. To them it defied the fundamentals of evolution. Instead they preferred to toil away within their own little obscure niche trying to make a contribution to science without getting caught up in the flashing lights of scientific fads.

“What the hell are you doing that for?”

“I’m just making sure it’s not altered after knockdown of PGC-1α. Just validation, really.”

“You realise you’ll have to dive down that rabbit hole for your lit review, you know.”

“I know...” Marshall looked downtrodden. “Any better ideas?”

“Pfff. You’re on your own. I’m not touching that. Let’s just hope for your sake it’s not changed.” He laughed and Marshall grinned wryly. If it turned out badly he could just write it off as outside the scope of the study and not include it in his thesis. Just a mild case of fraud by omission, really. He turned back towards the PCR machine and loaded the samples into the rotor, being careful to place them in their specified order, and started the run.

95°C for 5 minutes
60°C for 5 seconds
72°C for 5 seconds	-- 45 cycles
95°C for 1 second
55°C à 95°C (0.5°C stepwise)

It would take just over an hour.

Satisfied that the machine could take care of things without his supervision Marshall returned all his reagents and samples to their respective boxes in the freezer, disposed of his gloves and coat and returned to his office. As he switched his computer on he grabbed his jar of coffee and heaped 2 spoonfuls into his oversized mug. Before trotting downstairs he logged on to his computer so it would be primed for his return.

            The screen was brightly lit with a photograph from the farm, but the laptop was still chugging away loading all the settings. “Fucking Vista,” he muttered under his breath. He clicked on the taskbar icon for the internet and the page loaded to the image of three elderly and very naked men in the act of performing an array of sexual acts with each other. “YOSHI!” he yelled as he jabbed at the esc button at the top left of the keyboard.

Giggling could be heard down the corridor. All of the occupants of the third floor were meticulously vigilant about locking their computers when Yoshi was in the vicinity, but for whatever reason- he blamed it on the early hour and lack of caffeine- Marshall had failed to follow protocol. He withdrew his ruler and a handful of elastic bands from his drawer and stuffed a couple of stress balls down his pants to ferment amongst his junk and, locking his computer, set forth to hunt.

It hadn’t been the best of days. To start with it was a Friday, and really nothing potentially momentous should be started on a Friday. That was his first mistake. The second was to take a shortcut. Rather than first testing and optimising the primers and experimental conditions Marshall had skipped ahead and gone straight to running the unvalidated primers directly on his samples. If it had worked it would have saved maybe a weeks work. But as it stood he had instead wasted time, not to mention effort, his precious samples, and the hundreds of dollars in costs. He couldn’t get them back now. Having looked at the computer read-out 40 minutes after it started he’d marched straight back to his desk, unlocked his computer, and sent an email around to his usual accomplices stating that he was heading to the pub early and wasn’t planning on leaving without a security escort at closing time. Until then he had 4 hours to kill.

            He did the usual whip-around of the major news sites to keep up to speed with the world, and tried to at least be productive in his time wasting by cataloguing all the chemicals and machinery he’d used during his project for his Methods chapter, but had instead become caught up chatting with anyone he ran into, anyone that would stop and talk to him of their weekend plans and dreams. He even cornered the head of department to discuss the weekends football tipping and to taunt him over his team’s poor league position. What should have been a half hour task was stretched out to an hour and a half. Impressed with his efforts he rewarded himself with an early lunch.

            He rustled up a group of like-minded postgrads and headed down to Broadway to grab takeaways to eat on the departmental balcony overlooking the med students on the grass below. They sat and ate and shot idle thoughts into the wind for what didn’t seem long enough, until their sense of duty and habit gnawed at their conscience and they burst apart to their own desks or benches within the corridors of the building. Behind their eyes was the Tav later in the afternoon, when all of the week’s troubles and disappointments could be put aside as they toasted each other, the weekend, the world, but until then there was work to be done.

A pile of journal papers was fanned out over Marshall’s keyboard when he returned, evidence of supervisor surveillance. He blew out his cheeks and quickly skimmed the titles- p53 presented a common theme. Fuck. An early finish was wiped from the table.

He unlocked his computer and checked the availability of the PCR machines. His favourite was booked up for the afternoon, but there was a 2-hour slot available on the cantankerous old beast. He shrugged. He was only running optimisation. The beast would suffice. He wrote in his booking, and set about drafting the conditions and settings he’d trial.

“What’s up?” Piers walked into the room through the door at the other end of the office. He wiped at a lock of black hair that had shaken loose and fallen over an eye.

“I’ve just created a whole heap more work for myself.”

“Fuck.”

“Have you knocked off for the day?”

“Nah. Not yet. I’m delivering some documents to the Dean’s office.”

“Isn’t that up your end of campus?”

“Yep.” Piers grinned like a child knowingly doing wrong. “I’ve got a simulation running anyway. Nothing much else for me to do. Just wait.” He sat and spun around on a chair with his feet tucked in to his chest. Marshall watched idly. Piers stopped, facing his friend. “You guys going to the Tav later?”

“Planning on it. I need a fucking drink.”

Piers laughed. “That’s not all you need. Alby’s band is playing at the Cellar tonight. Got their album launch. Wanna come?”

“Sure.” He thought for a moment into dead air space. “Reckon you could get us on the door? I’m running a bit low on cash.”

“I can see what I can do. I’m on the list. Don’t know how many other spots he’s got free.”

“Cheers.”

“They’ve improved a hell of a lot in the past couple of months. Some of their new stuff is fucking immense.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Apparently they’ve got some record labels sniffing around. Like, big ones.”

“Shit, good on ‘em.”

“He’s pretty exciting. And you know how excitable he can be.”

Marshall laughed. He’d met Piers in their first year Chemistry labs, and had straight away had clung to him. He’d only just moved to the city and aside from a few schoolmates in other courses he knew no one. He had to grab hold of whoever would tolerate him. Luckily, Piers had turned out to be just the type of person Marshall had been looking for, and they quickly became close friends.

Whenever he’d gone around to Piers’ house, his younger brother Alby would be hanging around wanting to get involved in whatever they were up to. He could get enthusiastic about anything; even the act of sharing a joint around the table on the patio would impart a wide-mouthed grin on Alby’s face. He always seemed to be excited about everything. He certainly wasn’t like all those 16 year olds he had seen loitering around Forrest Place- all frowns, attitude and eyeliner.

“Have you caught up with that girl from Tuesday night?”

Piers smiled sardonically. “Nah. I messaged, but she didn’t message back. I guess I’ll leave it as a once off.”

“Better than nothing I s’pose.”

“I guess. Well there’ll no doubt be some girls there tonight, and you never know your luck- Alby’s friends are all a little mad.”

“Mad and single?”

“Dunno. Probably?”

“Well I guess I’ll come then. Let me know if you can get more comps.” Marshall turned back to his pencil and paper. “Now if you don’t mind, I have to get some calculations done, and then there are some Flash games that won’t play themselves.”

Piers stood and slapped him on the back. “I’ll be back at 3:30 to collect you for the Tav.”

“No worries. I’ll let you know if we go earlier.”

Piers wandered out the door and down the corridor to Yoshi’s office. Marshall pushed the buds into his ears.

Between Here and the Sky- Chapter 1: Kingdom

The old man sits on his throne. He stares out over his kingdom, down the slope of the paddock to the crystal still waters reflecting the sky and its spare pale clouds. He is lord of all he surveys, from the gentle hills that roll down on each side to plunge headlong into the frigid waters of the lake, to the low sheltered scrubland dotted with mangy paper barks protecting the lakes edges. His eyes refocus onto the foreground, to a patch of hardy Jarrah atop the jutting ridge obscuring the dam wall from view. A kangaroo, startled, bounds over rock piles and between blackboys. Spud lifted his head, his ears pricked in alarm. His instinct begged to sprint after the roo and make as much of a ruckus as he could manage, but no, he had been given a task, and he must fulfil it to the best of his ability. He turned his head to the glass behind which his king sat, tea in hand, and stifled the noise forming in his throat.

A sheep, alert to the attentions of her guard, quivered her left leg fractionally. Sensing its chance it bolted from beneath the strangled shade of the skeletal Karri towards the gravel track demarking the edge of freedom- the hillside below. Spud’s head snapped back from the window, his muscles twitched into relieving action and he set off like the tail of a whip- crack- after it, alongside it, in front of it, wheeling it around until it saw its salvation amongst the numbers camped beneath the twisting white trunk. As she hit her flock she initiated a chain reaction that rattled through the herd until its effect became known on the other side. Sheep shuddered nervously, threatening to break equilibrium, only for Spud to round the pack, menace and quell any flights of fancy that may shake loose from his meticulous control. He trotted around proudly with his pink tongue lolling gratuitously from the side of his mouth as he conducted a quick head count and gauged the mood of his audience. Content, he once more stretched his back legs out behind him, front legs bent beneath his ribs, to lay in the in the shade of an arm on high.

            The King shuffles restlessly behind the glass, turned to sit almost sideways on his chair, his right forearm on the low back of the chair, his right on the table. The perfection of the tableau brings out an involuntary and contented smile on his sun-weary face. A black swan drifts uneasily between the Karri and the bush, descending perilously towards the lake. Spud looks up lazily, yawns and lowers his head once to rest between his paws, eyes trained on the mob. Phillip traces the swan’s ungainly descent, its wings everted against the wind to slow itself before the plunge. It extends its legs towards the water as the wings beat hard against the wind rushing into its face. It hangs there a moment, suspended in time, before it’s webbed feet skid briefly across the surface before it suddenly sinks to sit and preen on the lake’s surface. The swan extends its neck and honks softly in greeting to its mate padding in the shallows, a doleful cry that drifts languidly up the hill, over Spuds head, toward the homestead.

            From the left, a silver Gemini bumps quietly and slowly along the track beside the lake. Its occupants peer intently out the windows at the smooth surface, the islands, the furrowed lines of old crops running up the slopes, the tree, and the house perched on the hilltop like an idle splotch of watercolour on a painter’s canvas. For one of them it is like a second home, for the other a whole new experience. For both it is splendour. Phillip turns to his wife in the kitchen busying herself with the Sunday roast.

            “They’re here”, he announces.