Hills End (11 page)

‘Come on, Adrian. Let's go.'

He couldn't get out of it. They would have called him a coward, and in his heart he cared very much about what people thought of him.

‘All right. But don't blame me if someone gets drowned.'

 

At 1.30 p.m., Eastern Time, Hills End featured once more in the afternoon news broadcast. The same pleasant young man, in the same air-conditioned studio, in the same capital city more than a thousand miles away, was perturbed enough to raise an eyebrow before he reached for the sheet of paper bearing the next story. This is what had raised his eyebrow:

‘The big timber and cattle-raising district in and around the Stanley Ranges has emerged as the worst-hit centre in yesterday's disastrous cyclonic storm. Fourteen inches of rain deluged the area in a few hours, destroying roads, communications and property over a wide area. Not a bridge between Stanley and its outlying districts appears to have survived, and this is complicating rescue operations.

‘Extensive flooding of low-lying land has caused heavy stock losses. Many farms and stations are completely cut off and the final extent of damage cannot be estimated. The entire adult male population of Stanley, under the direction of Police Sergeant Crabb, is at present engaged in rescue work or urgent repairs to bridges, roads and property. Further rain is predicted for later today. Contact between Stanley and the outside world is being maintained through the Flying Doctor Service radio transmitter.

‘Early this morning fifty searchers, led by Police Constable Fleming, headed into the ranges to attempt to reach the ninety men, women, children, and infants marooned on the road between Stanley and Hills End. Their location is not known nor are any details of their condition to hand. Early reports indicated that the rescue party was being hampered by landslides, washaways, flooded streams and fallen timber, and was proceeding on foot at only a few hundred yards an hour.

‘A Lincoln bomber of the RAAF surveyed the area this morning and a message received a short time ago stated that no trace of human survival had been seen along the road. Dense timber made detailed observation impossible except in the vicinity of the township of Hills End. Most of the weatherboard dwellings and buildings appeared to be damaged and all were deserted. The only life observed was several roaming dogs and a crazed bull, which took fright at the approach of the aircraft.

‘A mystery centres on the mill-hands certain to have been left on duty in the township early yesterday when the rest of the population began the journey to the annual Picnic Race Meeting at Stanley—cancelled, this year, for the first time on record. Of these men remaining on duty, probably two or three in number, no trace has been found. No signals were observed. No bodies were seen. Gravest fears are held for the safety of all persons concerned. The search is continuing.

‘A RAAF spokesman commented that no landing facilities for aircraft are available in or remotely near Hills End and that the landing strip at Stanley is under two feet of water. He added that helicopter operations are at present unlikely, the urgent airlift of the native population of Valdi Island, threatened by volcanic eruption, having drawn all serviceable helicopters to northern New Guinea.

‘An announcement from Canberra, just received, states that the Commonwealth Government has voted £100,000 for immediate relief in the distressed area.'

 

The children wriggled down the face of the bluff as carefully as they had climbed it those many hours before. It wasn't difficult. They were agile and they were young. What was a test of courage for Miss Godwin was all in the day's play for children.

They
were
frightened, but not of the bluff. Even the torrent foaming across the rock pan had lost its terrors, because their thoughts were reaching out beyond it. It was the unknown that was frightening them now, not the physical dangers before them. A heavy weight seemed to be inside them. They couldn't smile any more or relieve their worries by chattering about other things. Even Harvey couldn't summon his cheeky grin, and little boys like Harvey are not easily squashed. If the aeroplane had not come they might have invented a reason for the things that puzzled them, but not one was too young to understand now. The aeroplane would not have come if everything had been all right.

The fear was, ‘If we really and truly are alone, for ever and ever, what shall we do? What will become of us? Where shall we go?'

They crossed the rock pan without harm, sometimes following Adrian, sometimes following Paul, sometimes Frances, or hand in hand through the more perilous and faster-flowing waters. They battled across like little Britons, but they came through safely because the rock pan had ceased to frighten them. They were given the opportunity to learn that fear, not danger, was their greatest enemy. If they had been more awake to the present they might have realized that courage was more than a virtue—they might have seen that courage was common sense. Perhaps they were too young. Perhaps they were too miserable to learn anything.

They struggled into the forest, not knowing that the crossing of the rock pan was something to be proud of. Their spirits were low. Four and a half miles of steamy, sticky, and tangled forest stretched ahead of them. When they had come the day before they had followed the path that had been tramped by erring children for ten years. This afternoon it was there in part only, in places washed away, in places smothered by fallen timber, and in the gullies submerged beneath streams they had never seen flow before. They leapt some of the streams, anxiously waded through some, and scouted others up hill and down until they found bridges of broken trees or could climb across overhanging boughs. Soon their clothes were filthy and torn.

At a quarter to four by Adrian's watch it started raining again; steady, solid rain, but not accompanied by the violent winds and thunder of the day before. Hail didn't fall and the rain didn't roar as though its one desire was to destroy them, but in a very short time they were drenched and cold and the forest floor turned into a gloomy vault that was not at all friendly. The light was weird, as though belonging to another epoch in time or perhaps to another world. Once, from a hilltop, they caught a glimpse of the upper reaches of the bluff far behind them, with cloud swirling round it like smoke. It was low cloud such as they saw in the wet season, that sagged out of heavy skies and sometimes stayed on the mountain-tops and in the gullies for days.

They plodded on and on. They knew they were heading in the right direction, but they had long since lost the old path and were gradually forced lower into the valley towards the road, to avoid washaways and landslides. There were times they had to wallow calf-deep through mud. They had seen storm damage before, but nothing like this. Never had such a volume of wind, hail, and rain struck their mountains so fiercely and in so few hours. Spread over a week the dry land would have absorbed the rain, but too much had come too quickly, and now it was raining again.

Two thousand yards to the south of the town they reached the road. They were very, very tired, but not too tired to read the story it told.

‘Golly!' groaned Paul.

It was pitted with deep holes and the wheel-ruts had been cut to ditches by fast-flowing water. And water still flowed, red with earth, in the direction of the invisible township, ever cutting deeper into the surface of the road, until diverted by fallen boulders or snapped trees, or cascaded over the side towards the river. It simply wasn't a road any more.

Frances looked back into the south, and going uphill it was just the same. ‘This is awful,' she said. ‘Perhaps even the bridge at the crossing is down.'

That wasn't an idle fancy because the river was roaring so much they could hear it above the rain. In two or three places they could see it, swirling high above its banks, thick with mud and rubbish and scum, all fouled up with tangled trees. It looked like some evil red monster writhing.

‘I'm hungry,' whimpered Harvey.

‘Won't be long now,' said Frances.

‘We can't use the road,' said Adrian. ‘It'll be safer in the bush.'

‘We can't go through the bush either. That's why we're here.'

‘You know,' said Maisie quietly, ‘if the road was like this yesterday, no one will be in the town at all. They wouldn't have been able to get back.'

‘Yeah…And I'll bet the bridge has gone. It took four months to build that bridge. I know, because my dad told me. He had to get engineers up from the city, specially.'

‘Four months?' wailed Gussie. ‘Four
whole
months?'

‘That's what it took 'em to build it; but they built it from both sides, stupid. Just because it took 'em four months to build, it doesn't mean we've got to wait four more months until they get here.'

‘How long did it take them to put the road through, Adrian?'

Adrian hadn't thought of that. ‘I think the Government did it, but I think dad said there'd been a track out this way for sixty or seventy years. Maybe no one made the road. Maybe it sort of grew up.'

‘I'm glad the road's gone,' Frances said suddenly.

‘What?' shrieked Paul.

‘It means that nothing has happened to our families. It means that they're just not here because they couldn't get here, as Maisie said.'

Paul suddenly felt that awful weight that had been bowing him down disappear like magic. And he wasn't the only one. There were wide smiles everywhere, and Maisie and Gussie hugged each other, and Harvey started dancing up and down, and Adrian let out a great whoop of joy.

‘But there's something else,' Frances said. ‘Butch, Miss Godwin, Mr Tobias—surely Mr Tobias could have got out to us on a tractor or a bulldozer.'

Paul snorted. ‘Girls! How could anyone drive through this? They couldn't get a 'dozer up here until the ground dries, and a tractor wouldn't get ten yards. It'd turn over.'

‘Yeah,' said Adrian. ‘That's silly, Frances. We couldn't even get through the bush on foot. Maybe they are trying to reach us, anyway. They could be out at the bluff now. We might have passed them. I'll bet that's what happened. While we've been trying to get through the bush, they've been trying to get through the bush, too.'

Paul grunted. ‘Could be,' he said. ‘Easily enough. We've been up and down and all over the place. We might have missed them by a hundred yards or missed them by a mile. Golly, the way things are Butch and Miss Godwin mightn't have got back to the township until this morning. I reckon things are going to be all right. I do, you know. Things are beginning to make sense.'

‘Even the aeroplane?' said Frances.

‘Of course. Why not? Adrian's dad would have organized it. Probably the mob was held up at Stanley. Golly, perhaps even the picnic was washed out! The storm might have gone for miles. Adrian's dad would have asked the Air Force to see if we were all right. That makes sense, doesn't it? Your dad was an officer in the Air Force. He'd know the right people to ask, wouldn't he, Adrian?'

Adrian shrugged his shoulders with importance. ‘Sure he would. My dad knows everyone. He even knows a Cabinet Minister.'

‘There you are,' said Paul. ‘We've got all worked up over nothing.'

‘I wish I could feel the same way,' said Frances. ‘It seems to fit together too easily.'

‘Now who's not facing facts? They're good facts, so you won't believe them.'

‘I didn't say I didn't believe them. I'd like to, very much.'

Adrian suddenly had a wonderful idea. ‘Tell you what,' he said. ‘As soon as we get home we can call up the Flying Doctor Service on the wireless. Then we'll know for sure.'

‘Can you work the wireless?'

‘Of course I can. I can even send S.O.S. in morse code. What say we send an S.O.S.? Gee, we'd be in all the newspapers then.'

‘I think I'd rather talk in ordinary language,' said Paul, ‘and be sure they got the message straight. But the blooming old wireless isn't much good. The time when Mrs Matheson thought she had appendicitis your dad couldn't even get through. Couldn't even ask the doctor what to do for her.'

‘It was only indigestion. She'd eaten too much.'

‘That doesn't make any difference. The wireless wouldn't work.'

‘Goodness!' said Frances. ‘Talk, talk, talk!'

‘Too right,' said Harvey. ‘Let's go home. I'm hungry and I know there's a dirty big pie in our fridge.' A sharp frown suddenly lined Harvey's forehead. ‘Buzz! He's tied up at his kennel. He wouldn't have had anything to eat since yesterday. Ooh, I hope Mr Tobias remembered.'

‘Of course Mr Tobias would remember,' said Adrian. ‘He's got a dog himself. He wouldn't have forgotten the dogs. But let's go, eh? And it looks as though we'll have to stick to the bank above the road. And it's gettin' late. It's twenty to five. If it's hard to get through we might be caught in the dark. You don't want to get caught in the dark, do you?'

‘Not me,' said Harvey. ‘Not with that pie in the fridge.'

 

They weren't caught in the dark. In less than ten minutes the schoolhouse came into view. There always had been a clearing through there, that opened back on the magnificent vista so loved by Miss Godwin. The clearing hadn't gone. It was wider than ever. The howling wind had torn through it, uprooting trees and snapping others like sticks. One had fallen across the schoolhouse, and crushed it like a tin can.

Someone gave a frightened cry, because above the schoolhouse, dimly visible through the rain, but stark for all that, was Miss Godwin's cottage. The roof and two walls had gone. It looked like a ruin from a bombed city.

Gussie shivered. ‘Poor Miss Godwin!'

‘Golly!' Paul squared himself and thrust out his jaw. ‘It looks bad. But come on, everyone.'

They hurried across the tangle of the clearing, and the open ground was almost denuded of soil. It looked as though it had been swilled with a fire-hose. In places the runaway soil had piled up against ledges of rock like sand-drifts. It was mud, with texture fine as silk, and very dangerous. They had to keep clear, because immediately their feet touched it they began to sink.