The Homestead in The Eucalypts by Leonie Kelsall Extract
The Homestead in The Eucalypts by Leonie Kelsall Extract
The Homestead in The Eucalypts by Leonie Kelsall Extract
KELSALL
The Homestead
in the Eucalypts
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
September 2008
She would probably die today. Road statistics no doubt
proved that driving across the country with an emotion-
ally unstable woman at the wheel was not a great idea.
Taylor slid her gaze to her mum. Good, she was holding
it together. Michelle usually made an effort when she had an
audience, but on more than one occasion, Taylor had come
home from uni to find her mother red-eyed, surrounded
by a failed attempt at scrapbooking the wreckage of their
family life.
Mum generally blamed the mounds of soggy tissues
on a Nicholas Sparks’ novel that hadn’t moved from the
coffee table for eight months. When she was really messed
up, there’d be chocolate wrappers.
Taylor sighed, making sure to let the sound roll around
the air-conditioned interior of their car. She was steadily
Taylor tried not to let her gaze drift toward the stack of
textbooks on the back seat. She had to carve out precious
minutes to spend with Zac, yet here she was, wasting liter-
ally days on Mum.
j
They stopped overnight at Hay, the cream, red and brown
brick–chequered motel room almost palatial after being
cooped up in the car for nine hours.
With only six hundred kilometres remaining, they left
late the next morning. ‘Roadhouses not responsible for
thinning ozone and polar bear extinction, then?’ Taylor
said as Mum brought steak sandwiches and mugs of coffee
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to touch her toes and would at any second swoop past the
window in a flurry of tie-dyed pastels as she arched into
a back bend.
It was probably lucky there was no one around to see
her middle-aged, harem-panted mother doing yoga in the
middle of the street.
As Mum headed into the shop, Taylor wound up her
window, privacy more important than the temperature,
which shouldn’t even be a thing in mid-spring. Obviously,
this place was a desert.
‘Princess.’ Zac’s voice was gravelly and she could tell
his gig had run late the previous night.
‘Hey, Zac.’ With nothing particular to say, she was
simply greedy to hear his voice. They’d spoken the previous
night when she was halfway across Australia and he was
halfway to his gig. Mum had been in the shower, so their
call had been . . . mutually satisfying.
‘Your mum there?’ he said.
‘No.’ She giggled as she realised why he’d asked. ‘But
she will be in precisely ninety seconds. I’d hate to think
you were that quick.’
‘Fair call. When will you be able to ditch your guard?’
The comment irked, but she understood his frustration
at her mother’s chastity-belt presence. ‘I’ll have a bit of
privacy when we get to the farm.’
‘Mmm. Come be alone with me then, princess. At least
on the phone, okay?’
She was momentarily glad Settlers Bridge was practi-
cally a ghost town—there was no one to see her grinning
like an idiot. ‘Sure. How was the gig?’
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‘Sweet as. But, hey, princess, I gotta go. I’ll give you
a call later, okay?’
She knuckled the phone to her ear, trying to bring him
closer for a moment. ‘Sure. Catch you then.’
Mum smacked a box down on the bonnet. ‘The govern-
ment’s banning plastic bags in South Australia from next
year,’ she crowed. ‘And apparently the shops here have
already got onboard. How’s that for progressive?’
Taylor clambered from the car and hauled the boot
open. ‘You mean regressive. And you are, literally,
the only person in the history of ever to get excited by
that news.’
Mum held up both hands. ‘People your age are supposed
to be all about the environment.’
People her age were supposed to be all about getting on
with their lives, not babysitting their parents through their
midlife crises.
‘Samantha says your grandparents were in town yester-
day, telling everyone we were coming over,’ Mum said as
she slid behind the steering wheel.
‘Samantha?’
‘She owns Ploughs and Pies.’ Mum shook her head in
admiration. ‘She’s probably only about your age, too.’
First-name terms with the locals. Trust Mum. ‘Probably
hasn’t had to spend a quarter of her life at med school
amassing a HECS debt.’
‘She packed me up a honey Swiss roll. Said it’s your
gran’s favourite.’
‘I’m sure whatever stale item she had the most of is
Gran’s favourite.’
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pace slowing. Her worry was for naught: they would have
eggs enough for another day.
Puffs of dust clouded her boots. After breakfast was
cleared, the first of her daily chores would be to take a
switch to the beaten-earth square between the house and
outbuildings. If more of her brothers had survived, their
home and the bakehouse would not be the only buildings
constructed of stone the menfolk cleared from the land.
Her fingers tracked the dips and hollows of the crumbling
pug-and-pine wall of the stable. In a few weeks’ time, she
and Emilie would help mix fresh mud and grass and pack
it between the pine saplings to weatherproof the structures
before winter. Mother would pretend to be unaware of
their involvement in the task.
A faint scuffle drew Anna’s gaze to the scrub beyond
the bakehouse. The noise betrayed the presence of a
wombat or echidna rooting among dead, crisped leaves
for a last mouthful before it tucked itself underground or
in a hollow log to escape the heat.
She ducked beneath the lintel of the bakehouse, navi-
gating the three steps to the cellar. Perhaps her brother was
not so different from the nocturnal creatures.
‘What do you want?’ Dieter’s deep voice was muffled
against the straw mattress.
‘It’s time you were up.’ She tried to emulate Mother’s
brisk tone. ‘I must get the bread on.’
‘I have not yet heard the birds,’ he grumbled as he
thrust aside his thin bedcover.
She tossed him the shirt hanging from a peg on the
back of the door and then rummaged beneath the wooden
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slab that ran the length of one wall. ‘I need the buckets.’
The pails clanged together as she dragged them out.
‘Anna,’ Dieter groaned. ‘Must you make such a din? Is
it not your sister’s job to fetch the water?’
‘Our sister. And yet it seems there is no water in the
house.’ Three years younger, Emilie had inherited Mother’s
blonde ringlets and blue eyes, where Anna was her
father’s grey-eyed and brunette image—thankfully, without
the whiskers. Emilie traded on her beauty, turning on
charm and waterworks in equal measure to avoid chores
and punishment. To be fair, she was good with the four-
year-old twins and spent hours embroidering their clothes
or arranging Frederika’s hair. Mother said it was well that
Emilie was pretty and accomplished in the finer skills; being
lazy and forgetful, she would never be of use as a farmer’s
wife, so would need to catch a rich man’s eye.
Useful and ordinary, Anna was uncertain where this
left her.
Dieter yawned. ‘Give me a moment to wake and I will
come with you. The waterhole is full of snakes this summer.’
Although nine years and two dead siblings separated
them, she and Dieter were closer than the twins. He
pulled on boots then stood to adjust his britches, his head
brushing the rafters.
‘Perhaps you can dig the floor lower in here so it is less
cramped,’ she suggested, though she knew Dieter wouldn’t
lower the floor, because he had his eye on Caroline Schen-
scher. Either that, or he had developed a devout interest
in church, attending weekly for the last three months,
since Caroline had returned from two years in Europe.
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‘That we will.’
It would take them six hours to make the journey to
Settlers Bridge and return with precious barrels of water
pumped from the Murray River. The water would be
carefully eked out for household use, filling the animal
troughs and sustaining their struggling vegetable garden.
Here, water had more value than the gold discovered at
Kanmantoo, twenty miles northeast.
‘At least you will be afforded the opportunity to swim.’
She could not imagine water surrounding her entire body.
The weekly luxury of the hip bath, when occasionally it
was her turn to use the water first, was as close as she
could ever hope to come.
Dieter swung himself off the wall. ‘Not much time for
that, Mäuschen. Come. Let us finish your sister’s task.’ Im
patient at her clumsiness in long skirts, he lifted her down.
The land dropped gradually from the house to a gorge
that seemed to promise the relief of a rushing torrent—but
it was a lie. The ravine, worn deep by a flood some time
past, was filled with boulders. Between these travelled
the slimmest trickle of water, already busy with bees and
dragonflies.
Taking an iron pannikin from the well, Dieter slid down
the bank to kneel on a raft of bulrushes. He leaned forward
and swept away the dull scum on the water. The reeds
crackled and he tensed, a dripping finger pressed to his lips
to silence Anna.
As clumsy footfalls punctured the hush, Dieter’s shoul-
ders eased.
‘Lizard.’
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set the dirty ones to soak in the copper tub beneath the
silver-trunked gum tree. Emilie, however, seemed to have
achieved nothing.
Anna dragged Mother’s oak rocking chair aside and
rolled the rag rug. One day, the grey and brown history
of their outworn clothing would cover the floor. But for
now, the rug was small enough that she could take it
outside to beat the dust from it.
Her shoulders strained as the two sisters struggled to
lift the rug over a rope strung between two trees. ‘Emilie,
put some effort into it.’ They had much to do before the
others returned for lunch.
Emilie flapped her thin, elegant hands. ‘But it’s heavy.’
Anna ducked beneath the rope and tugged the rug from
the opposite side. ‘No more so than last week. At the very
least, stop it from sliding.’
Finally, with the rug balanced, she wedged a forked
sapling under the line to lift it from the ground. She dashed
a hand across her damp brow. The air was ominously still
and thick, like congealed pig’s blood, and it was hard to
draw breath. Lightning crackled in the distance and she
turned to watch the forked flash. She lifted her chin toward
the bright illumination. ‘I hope rain chases that.’
Emilie followed her gaze. ‘I cannot smell any.’
‘Nor I. But perhaps a change will blow through. Then
Father and Dieter will hunt tonight.’
Emilie’s eyes grew huge. ‘But it is Sunday.’
‘Yes, and we shall use the last joint of mutton for lunch.
So, unless the rabbit traps come up full, tomorrow you
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suggested they head off to set up their tent while they had
daylight. Oblivious to Taylor’s lack of enthusiasm, she
kept up an excited monologue of ‘Ooh, do you remember
this?’ as she eased the car down barely existent tracks
where scrawny trees reached out to scratch the paintwork.
Textbooks slipped from the seat and into the footwell
as they juddered over an endless series of ruts. ‘Great, four
hundred bucks down the drain,’ Taylor muttered.
‘Don’t be dramatic,’ Mum said as she pulled the car
up dead centre of a paddock covered with flat, yellow-
flowered plants.
‘Is that some kind of canola, too?’ Taylor suggested
slyly. It would be degrees of hilarious if they camped in
the middle of a genetically modified crop.
‘I think it’s some kind of weed. Bet the bees love it,
though.’
Taylor squinted through the window at the acres
of scrub bordering the paddock. Why on earth had she
thought this place had an Enchanted Woods quality when
she was a kid? ‘Bet they love being in the world’s most
boring mandala. Literally everything out here is khaki
and yellow.’
‘Or, you know, green and gold.’
Taylor clambered out. Within five steps, pollen from
the black-centred flowers—which looked like coin-sized
sunflowers—had turned her boots bright yellow and she
sniffed experimentally. Oddly enough, they hadn’t trig-
gered her hayfever. But there was no need to let Mum
know that. ‘What’s with all the holes?’ she yelped as she
stumbled.
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She flung out her arms and let them drop heavily.
‘Where am I supposed to get wood from?’
Mum pushed the elastic-jointed rods together, trilling a
little laugh as the steel-tipped carbon fibre refused to engage.
But Taylor knew the giggle was a pressure gauge release.
Mum waved toward the surrounding greyness, the winged
sleeves of her boho top drifting in the breeze she created.
‘Show a little initiative, love. See the scrub? It’s made of—
wait for it—wood. Come on, don’t be childish.’
Childish? Funny how parents could invoke that accu-
sation with sublime disregard for chronological age. ‘Why
couldn’t we buy a bag from the petrol station on the way
here—you know, like normal people do?’
Mum’s lips pursed into a cat’s bum, her tone tightening
to match. ‘Just get little branches to start with. And watch
out for snakes.’
‘Jesus, Mum, I’m not thirteen.’ Taylor stamped back
toward the scrub. Prepared to leap away if something slith-
ered out, she kicked at fallen branches along the fringe of the
tangled bushland, then snapped twigs from the closest trees.
A vine covered in tiny white, fluffy stars and hanging
from a branch like a ghostly stalactite looked like it would
probably be flammable. She tugged the strands. The
branch creaked ominously and flowers cascaded, covering
her head and shoulders like dandruff.
Returning to the campground, Taylor dropped her
bundle of twigs, scowling as she picked minute, itchy
blossoms out of her cleavage. ‘Impressive. That you got
the tent up, I mean, not the Lilliputian dimensions. Where
are you sleeping?’
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‘Oh, baby, it’s all right. You mustn’t get upset. Dad and
I both—’
‘Mum, I’m not talking about that.’ Ever, if she could
avoid it. ‘I just realised there’s no signal here. Nothing.
Not a single bar.’ She leaned back, holding her phone high,
trying to catch a satellite. ‘I can’t stay here for days with
no service.’ Even the thought sent flutters of panic into her
chest. She relied on her phone, the internet, the c onnection.
‘I’m thinking of staying longer,’ Mum said in her typi-
cally disjointed fashion, her plans rarely tied to reality.
‘No, you’re not,’ Taylor said firmly. ‘I have to be back
within the week. And I’ll need to find coverage well before
that.’ Without the phone, work, Zac, her friends, uni—
everything disappeared, erased as though she’d been thrust
into some peculiar time warp. Which might be novel for
an hour or two, but wasn’t something she could possibly
tolerate any longer.
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