Bill Rules (4 page)

I'm telling you, this berry is called a bush tomato. You can eat it.'

‘Maybe you can, Matty, but I'd rather not.'

Despite sleeping in late, both children were feeling tired and irritable. An unusual heat had built up and this added to the tension. Mat had insisted they try to get a fire going with Nan's firesticks, but Bill and her combined efforts had failed. They left the sticks and kindling on the floor of the rock overhang. Mat then announced that they would look for bush tucker rather than give in and eat the supplies they had brought.

‘Bill O'Connell, you need to toughen up. And you need to be a team player.'

Mrs Facey at school used that expression, ‘team player', during sports lessons. It came in handy now Mat wanted to explain that Bill was not co-operating with her plans for a survival camp.

‘I'll eat just one, then. As long as you promise to let me eat some of the Trail Mix.'

A compromise was reached. Bill gingerly nibbled at the red berry Mat proffered. Then they ate mouthfuls of the nuts and dried fruit they had brought. After swigging this down with some water, they both felt more cheerful.

‘I think we should have a dip in the creek we crossed yesterday,' suggested Mat.

‘You're on,' said Bill.

The creek was narrow and fast-moving with a rocky bottom and mini rapids at intervals. It tumbled and gurgled down the mountain. Mat and Bill were soon sitting in a shallow section with their backs to a small waterfall. The icy water of the melted post-winter snow from further up the mountains pounded over their shoulders. It was like having a massage from
someone with strong, tough hands. It felt good. Bill's persistent worries about his dad's imprisonment and his mum's lonely battle to make a living became something he could handle. He couldn't solve his parents' problems; they were grown-ups and somehow they'd muddle along.

‘I could do with a spa like this every day after school,' said Bill. The sounds of the falling water meant the children had to raise their voices to speak.

‘Maybe not in winter,' laughed Mat. ‘It snows further up this mountain.'

‘How do you reckon this compares with your bath?' Bill asked.

‘Think tank, you mean,' corrected Mat, ‘Both are good in different ways.'

‘Yeah,' agreed Bill. ‘But they're both good places to daydream.'

Then they drifted off into their own thoughts. Bill was a man from the High Country, like in ‘The Man from Snowy River'. He lived in a two-room log hut with a huge fireplace that kept you warm and cooked your food. He had a black and white kelpie dog that slept on his bunk; it was a brilliant cattledog. His
horse was corralled outside. Bill also owned cattle that he'd round up with a stockwhip. Mat would have her own hut within coo-ee of his. Sometimes they would eat together at night. Possum stew.

It was just as well that Bill didn't know what Mat's daydream was because it might have caused further tensions. Her daydream was very similar to Bill's except that she and Bill shared the same hut. She had her own bunk, though. In Mat's daydream, she was the brains behind the cattle business.

After their bathe in the creek, Matty and Bill lay in the shade of a tree. They must have dozed a bit because now the position of the sun showed it was late afternoon. Bill had felt hungry before he'd slept, but now he felt hunger pains. This was a long weekend in every sense. It was only Saturday and Bill wondered how little food he could get by on to still be alive by Monday.

‘If we'd been able to make those firesticks work,' asked Bill, ‘what were you going to cook?'

‘Porridge with a bit of dried milk,' said Mat, ‘and noodles. And I brought flour to make damper.'

‘Well, which one of those could you face eating cold?'

‘Porridge,' said Mat.

‘Yeah. Muesli is cold porridge,' said Bill. ‘At least we're used to that.'

Mat and Bill had an early dinner. They picked out tiny pieces of dried fruit from the last of the Trail Mix and put it into the small cooking pot. Then they stirred in some dried milk and water.

Each of them used their drinking cups as bowls to eat their muesli.

‘Not bad at all,' said Bill who twenty-four hours before would have turned his nose up at this concoction. His grumbling stomach had stopped complaining. Mat doled out a small bit of chocolate each. Bill made his bit last, letting it melt in his mouth and slide down his throat. He'd never ever forget the joy of that taste of chocolate – or the longing to eat more.

It was dusk by the time dinner was over. You couldn't really do much with darkness falling. The two friends decided to go to bed early.

‘That way it will be tomorrow quicker,' said Mat as she started to climb into her makeshift bed. Bill checked his sleeping bag for spiders, then got in.

‘Does wanting tomorrow to come quicker mean you're a bit bored like me?' asked Bill, looking across at Mat.

‘No way,' said Mat. ‘But out here without TV we need to re-learn the lost art of conversation.'

The first time they'd met the year before, Mat had picked up a rock and told Bill, ‘This is an igneous rock.' He had been silent with admiration. Mat had a wealth of knowledge. On this occasion, Bill was equally impressed. Mat also had a way with words. After a pause, Bill had the courage to ask, ‘What does
the lost art
mean?'

‘Like doing a painting or making pottery and then forgetting how to do it,' said Mat.

‘Have you and me lost the art of conversation?'

‘You can't take it for granted. You have to practise,' said Mat. ‘So you can be first to choose something to talk about.'

‘Let's talk about our favourite junk food,' said Bill hoping that Mat would never again suggest survival camps and bush tucker.

‘Pizza Supreme,' said Mat dreamily.

‘Hamburger with the lot,' said Bill.

‘Pancakes with maple syrup, ice-cream and strawberries,' said Mat.

‘Deathly rich double chocolate milkshake,' said Bill.

‘Yum,' said Mat.

Bill gave a secret smile.

Despite their doze in the hot afternoon, Mat and Bill went to sleep quickly. The last thing Bill noticed before he drifted off under the hootchie was that the sky seemed darker than the night before. The reason for this became obvious during the night.

At first, there were just some spits of rain that darted through the gaps of their shelter. Bill stirred. The air had grown cold and distant thunder grumbled. ‘Like giants moving furniture,' was the way his mum would put it. He pulled his coat over himself more tightly and slept again. When he woke next, the rain was pelting down. A small moat of water had formed round the dried grass mattress he shared with Mat. Even worse, the dripping spring in the rock shelter had turned into a channel and was running like a
gutter across his feet. Bill and Mat moved closer and curled into damp balls. Their shelter wasn't exactly waterproof. Before long, the wind picked up, the trees bent under its force, bits of bark and twigs hurtled through the air, and the hootchie flapped off the two children; they were instantly soaked.

Instinctively the children made for the overhang. The end away from the spring was relatively dry, but Bill and Mat realised they had left the backpack, shoes and socks out in the open near the hootchie.

‘I'll get our stuff,' said Bill. He dashed into the wet night. By now, there was more than rain and wind. Bill felt hundreds of tiny needle pricks flying at his skin; it was starting to snow. Bill's muddled thoughts told him that it should not be snowing; it was spring. He fumbled about trying to find their belongings in the dark. When he returned, dragging with him their things and the sodden hootchie as well, his teeth were chattering. The temperature had dropped in great lurches, like an out-of-control elevator plunging to earth. It was icy. Mat managed to wriggle herself into a reasonably comfortable position, and she laid her soaking coat over herself. Bill tried to settle, but he was restless.

‘I can't stand it under here,' said Bill, ‘I'm going to move around to get warm.'

He walked out into the storm.

‘Get back!' called Mat.

Bill was behaving strangely. He ran around in circles a few times, then gave that up and went and crouched under a large snow gum. Mat ran out to him.

‘For heaven's sake, Bill! Get under cover!'

Bill didn't have the energy or willpower to move. The cold felt as if it had gone into the marrow of his bones. His head was down between his knees and he was shivering uncontrollably.

‘You'll get hypothermia, Bill.'

Bill didn't answer. Mat was worried. She took Bill by one arm and shouted, ‘Stand up and come with me. Now!' Something in Bill responded. He staggered across and up onto the covered rock ledge. ‘Get your clothes off!' Mat ordered.

‘No. Get away from me,' said Bill in a cold and distant voice. Mat tried to understand Bill's reaction. Mat had once seen a TV show on bushwalking and she had learnt about hypothermia. If you got too cold and wet you could die. But before you did, you might
behave oddly. Luckily, Mat remembered how to keep a person suffering hypothermia alive. It said you had to take your clothes off and get into a sleeping bag with them. Your own body heat would naturally and gently warm up the person who was freezing.

‘Bill, if we're going to get through this night, we have to keep each other warm. Now get everything off except your singlet and jocks.'

Mat peeled off Bill's sopping top clothes – his hoodie and T-shirt. Bill did nothing to help. He couldn't. Mat sat him down and pulled off his sodden jeans. Then she took her own outer clothes off. She searched through the backpack and pulled out two small packages – the foil blankets.

‘Lie down,' she ordered Bill.

Bill wearily obeyed. Mat lay on her side next to him and arranged the two foil blankets as tightly around them both as she could. Bill had his back to her. Mat put her arms around Bill's waist and held him tight. His body kept shaking for about fifteen minutes. The cold in his body seemed to seep through her own. Then Mat detected a quietening. Her own body heat was gently winning. She never could have said that
they began to feel comfortably warm all over, but where her chest met Bill's back there was a flickering of warmth. The desperate, killing kind of cold had been defeated. When Bill fell to sleep, Matty was able to let herself sleep, too.

For the first part of that night, the two children's sleep was light. Even so, Mat was to miss a most strange occurrence that only Bill would witness. Some time during the night, Bill woke to see an old lady crouching near them. She was humming softly and busily working the firesticks back and forth in her hands. Bill closed his eyes for what seemed a moment, but when he opened them again, the old lady had gone. Instead, there was a fire about a metre away, safely ringed with small rocks. The heat from the fire radiated across the children. The children uncurled their tightly wound bodies and sank into a deep, healing sleep.

Why didn't you wake me when you saw her using the Djelwuck?'

‘I didn't know if I was dreaming.'

‘Well that fire isn't a dream,' said Mat motioning with her head.

Mat had made Bill describe what he saw, over and over again. He couldn't remember what the old lady was wearing. He didn't even properly see her face, but he somehow just knew she was Aboriginal. But maybe he believed this because the old lady was using the firesticks. And how did he know the lady was old? He didn't know that either. He had seen her and he had
heard her humming. Matty wanted to know what sort of humming. Bill said it wasn't a real tune, not something he knew, but it was sort of calm and slow.

‘Well one thing is for sure,' said Mat taking charge as she usually did, ‘we're going to keep this fire going all day.'

The two friends had woken to a clear blue day; the storm had worked out its bad temper and moved on. Nevertheless, the children realised how important a reliable fire was for heating, comfort and food. They gathered twigs and small lengths of branches to stoke it up. Mat and Bill were still in their singlets and underpants, their only dry clothes, so they carted a couple of logs to near the fire and draped their wet clothes, their sodden shoes and the hootchie to dry. Next, Mat produced a plastic bag of flour from the backpack, mixed it in the saucepan with dried milk and water, added a sprinkle of salt from a small lidded container, and rolled it into a firm ball that she covered in some foil. She scraped glowing coals away from the main part of the fire, then laid her creation among them and covered it with more coals. Half an hour later, the children were eating hot bread with a
scraping of strawberry jam from little peel-back containers that Mat had brought along as a surprise.

‘Where'd you learn to make this stuff?' asked Bill.

‘Damper,' corrected Mat. ‘We sometimes make it in the fire at home during winter. Just for fun.'

Two days of a cold and basic diet had made this damper a feast. Bill and Mat were sitting shoulder to shoulder under the overhang. They were near the fire and looking out onto the clear, fresh day. Feeling warm on the outside and warm on the inside, the two friends decided the world was a good place to be in. In fact, the camping expedition was now an experience they would never have wanted to miss.

It was just at this moment of comfort and wellbeing that Bill absentmindedly started running his right hand in circular motions on the rock shelf floor. His fingers connected with some ribbony grooves. He wiped away a bit of gravel and dirt.

‘What are you looking at?' asked Mat.

‘Dunno,' said Bill examining the lines. ‘But it looks like someone's got a carving knife into this.'

Mat leaned across to get a better look. ‘Crikey! It's Tiddalick!'

‘It's what?' asked Bill.

‘Nan's frog!'

Bill peered more closely. Sure enough, someone had used the natural curves, rises and irregularities of the rock floor to form a fat, rather cheerful frog.

‘Look how they've used this bumpy bit of rock to give him a beer gut!' said Bill.

‘Yeah. It's Bas Relief,' explained Mat. ‘The Ancient Greeks used to do sculptures that sort of stuck out like that.'

Bill was used to Mat being a bottomless pit of general knowledge, but this information seemed outside her normal areas of interest.

‘Now, where would you pick up something like that?' he asked.

‘Tom, naturally. When he was doing his Art Diploma.'

‘Well, whether the sculptor who did this frog knew about Ancient Greece or not, he was clever. Maybe he was saying this place was special.' He remembered Nan saying the frog she'd painted on the Grubs' combi was her ‘totem'. He wasn't sure what ‘totem' meant, but he guessed it was something like your footy team's colour or your club symbol.

‘I reckon Nan's Tiddlywinks has kept an eye on us,' smiled Bill.

‘Tiddalick, you mean!'

Bill made some frog croaks. Mat answered back. Somewhere out in the rain-soaked grasses below the rockshelf, a real frog gave a contented, yawny sort of croak in a deep baritone. Mat and Bill started giggling. Their lightheartedness coloured the rest of the day. Even the bird calls sounded especially chirpy – as fresh, energetic and noisy as kids mucking round in the playground before school starts. Matty and Bill built up the fire, and turned their clothes over, like toast, to dry on the other side. After this, Mat suggested they go fishing; she produced two small hand reels from the backpack. Mat and Bill raced to the creek that was now much higher and faster than the day before.

‘So Matty, what do we use as bait?' asked Bill.

‘Damper,' said Mat, handing Bill a small piece.

They sat there, side-by-side, their lines taut in the hurtling waters. The morning sun was warm on their backs. They had survived two night-time ordeals. They were dry and full of good food. It didn't bother
Bill if they caught a fish or not. But at that moment, Mat pulled in a fish. It was small, too small to eat. Bill gently released the hook from its mouth and Mat threw it back in.

‘We can still tell the kids at school you caught a fish,' said Bill.

‘Yep,' said Mat. ‘We don't have to say how big.'

And just as she said this, Bill felt an almighty tug on his line. He pulled quickly. Out onto the grass beside them flopped a brown fish – just short of a foot long, a bigger version of the one Mat had caught.

Lunch was fish baked in foil and more hot damper. With full bellies, life had never seemed so good. The rest of the day was slow and easy. Keeping the fire going with regular hunts for wood was the most important job. But Mat and Bill also did a bit of exploring. The roof of the overhang was part of a vast rock formation on the side of the mountain. It sloped upwards at an angle gentle enough to scramble up. They surprised a family of small wallabies who skittered away. Some minutes later, Mat and Bill found a metre-long goanna warming itself in the sun. They stood back to let it escape, watching its lumbering crocodile run.

By night-fall, the rock shelter felt like home. Mat and Bill used little ledges as shelves for their few, simple possessions. The hootchie was now a rug. The fire was their light, their warmth, their comforter, their provider of cooked food. The two friends ate hot noodles, the last of the chocolate, and drank plenty of water. The children knew they were going to enjoy their sleep no matter what the weather brought. And that's what happened.

By the Monday morning, it felt to Mat and Bill that they had been in the bush for an uncountable number of days. Their life was fire building, fire gazing, eating, water fetching, some quiet talking, sitting in the creek, some fishless fishing, some exploring – over and over again. But by afternoon, the adventure had to come to an end. The children doused the fire with water, stowed away their things (including Nan's precious fire-sticks) in the backpack, and started walking the two kilometres down the track to Tom's tent.

‘How can we get to do more of this camping?' asked Bill.

‘I've been wondering that myself,' said Mat.

‘We can't keep expecting Tom to take us. He has the markets most weekends.'

‘And the same with Mum and Dad,' said Mat.

The craft markets were a mainstay of the Grub family's income. Not only did Tom sell artwork, but Donald sold his garden furniture, Tessa sold jams and garden produce, and Nan sold crocheted rugs.

‘And my mum sells her folk art if she's not doing overtime at the laundromat,' added Bill.

The two friends were walking in silence, when Mat suddenly said, ‘Bingo!'

‘What?' asked Bill.

‘Scouts!' said Mat.

‘Good one,' said Bill. ‘Yeah, we'll join the Scouts.'