Red Dirt Diary 2 (9 page)

When James rang back, I pretended he had called an ice-cream shop in Denmark.

And when Sophie blamed me for the enormous bruise on her bum, I pretended it was an innocent mistake.

Dad came home tonight with a swollen thumb and a split lip. Wes and Fez looked like they'd tried to escape a prisoner-of-war camp by running full-speed through the barbed-wire fencing. Dad said Sophie and I would have to help with the fencing on Monday because things didn't work out so well with the twin tornadoes.

Sunday, 21 January

Watched cricket all day.

Just me, Dad, Peter, Petal and a plate of ham sandwiches.

No dodgy phone calls from James Welsh-Pearson.

No emotional phone calls from Matilda Jane the Mature.

No phone calls from
anyone
, for that matter. I pulled the telephone connection out of its socket before breakfast and Mum didn't notice until 10.30 pm. Hee hee!

Total peace and quiet.

Bliss!

Monday, 22 January

James WP rang
again
this morning. What is wrong with that man?

Thankfully Peter answered the phone, because
I
was out fencing with Dad. When Peter realised who it was, he started singing the Malaysian national anthem (learnt from his friend Xiu), just like I'd asked him to. James hung up.

Mat is coming to stay for a week tomorrow. Mr and Mrs Sweeney have a veterinary conference in Sydney. Lynette's staying with Sarah Love.

Gavin is coming to stay for a few days, too, because he reckons Mat is always good for a laugh. Poor Mat. I hope she's over the whole wind and diarrhoea trauma, otherwise she'll be unbearable to live with.

Tuesday, 23 January

Mat and Mr Sweeney arrived at seven this morning, with Sheba in the horse float. Mr Sweeney said Sheba couldn't be left at home on the farm because she has to be given special digestive tablets every morning and night. She's on a strict diet of fresh grass and oats — no carrots, apples, sugar or any other special treats.

Mat blushed like a beetroot. I was very sensitive and didn't mention gas or bowel bacteria or SBDs.

Sheba seems happy enough here at Hillrose Poo. She's hanging out in the long grass with Macka, Gunther and the ducklings. The Festering Punks' music seemed to upset her digestive system at sunset, but the air has been fresh and clear since. Hopefully it will stay that way!

Sophie, Mat and I have moved our stuff into the sleep-out. You can hardly move with three beds all crammed in, but it's fun.

Wednesday, 24 January

Gavin arrived today. Mat has been hiding behind trees, tank stands and veranda posts all day. I don't get it. If it's really love, shouldn't people be happy? Why can't she just clear the air (pardon the pun) about Sheba's gas problem, and have a laugh about it?

Love really turns people's brains to mush.

Poor Mat!

Thank goodness Miss McKenzie came to her senses!

Sophie, Mat and I went swimming in the dam today. Petal was ecstatic, chugging in and out between us, quacking noisily. We were having a great time, drifting around on the tyre tubes, talking about chocolate, until a dead sheep popped up to the surface and started floating around with us.

Gross!

Thursday, 25 January

The New and Improved Flying Ferals Catapult had its first run today.

Fez leapt off the chook shed roof onto the end of the plank, launching a sack full of chook pellets. The sack flew through the air and landed
exactly where it was supposed to, right in the middle of the trampoline. Quite impressive really … until it bounced back up into the air, hit the peppercorn tree, split open and flung chook pellets all over Gunther and his ducks.

Gunther squealed with anger, and chased Peter up the nearest tree.

The ducks flapped their wings and quacked ferociously, chasing Wes up the clothesline.

Macka appeared from nowhere, spat in Gavin's face, then trotted around gurgling merrily.

Fez burst into tears, crying, ‘Why won't Macka spit on me?'

We were all killing ourselves laughing when Mat ran across the yard like a maniac, yelling, ‘NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!'

Sheba was gobbling chook pellets as fast as she could before Gerty, Mildred and Doris vacuumed them all up.

Gavin ran after Mat, laughing. ‘It's only chook food!'

Mat started crying and blubbered that Sheba was on a special diet. Gavin laughed and said fat horses were funny as. And Mat cried, ‘You don't understand!'

But an hour later when Sheba had started digesting the chook pellets, he sure did. We had to move her three paddocks away just so we could breathe without gagging.

Friday, 26 January —
Australia Day

The Hardbake Plains Australia Day picnic race was held for the first time in three years today. The last two years it was cancelled because of the drought. This year the track was soft and grassy.

We started at nine with the bacon and eggs breakfast barbie. Mrs Whittington was there, serving eggs. She wore a big, red satin sash that said ‘Miss Wool and Wheat'. She kept on telling everyone how proud she was to have won the competition once again. No-one had the heart to tell her that the Harvest Festival pageant hadn't been run for the last forty years.

Sunshine gave the official welcome, reminding everyone that they would probably be dehydrated and have sunstroke by noon. He's such a gloomy-guts.

The Australia Day picnic race is an open race — you can ride anything that doesn't
have a motor, as long as it's not a horse. Bikes are always popular. Davo and Gary Hartley both entered on their BMX bikes. Sammy Ferris, Lucy's grandpa, had an old penny-farthing bike and little James Love was on his tricycle.

Mrs Murphy entered on Mr Murphy. Everyone was splitting their sides laughing because Mr Murphy is skinny as a bean pole and Mrs Murphy is quite round and jolly. Jed Murphy, Ned's cousin, was visiting from the Blue Mountains, and he entered on his hang glider. He'd been at the race track since 5 am assembling a tower so he could fly off at the start.

Sunshine had an antique beer-keg barrow with wooden wheels to push Miss McKenzie around in. Harry Wilson and his little sister, Dora, had a sheep each, with fantastic saddles their mum had made. Harry was wearing his flying goggles and Dora was dressed like a proper jockey in pink and purple silk. There were the usual donkeys, cows, a camel and, of course, Wes and Fez in their pig chariots pulled by Doris and Mildred.

Banjo launched the race with his latest poem, ‘Ode to the Australia Day Picnic Race':

The starter gun exploded and they were off.

Jed Murphy leapt from the tower in his hang glider and nose-dived straight into Mrs Love's donkey. The donkey kicked and bucked, tossing Mrs Love into Sunshine's beer-keg barrow. Miss McKenzie and Mrs Love screeched with laughter. Sunshine snarled and cursed, and refused to go on.

Mr Murphy piggy-backed Mrs Murphy just five or six paces and had to put her down. Mrs Murphy didn't want to give up that easily, so she threw Mr Murphy over her shoulder and continued to run around the race track.

Harry and Dora Wilson were doing pretty well on their sheep until Tom Gillies' kelpie slipped its collar and rounded them up into the schoolyard.

Wes and Fez galloped to the front in their pig
chariots, screaming and yelling like maniacs, but enough is never enough with those boys. Just as they looked certain to win, they pulled tea cosies onto their heads, stood up and started juggling oranges and pears. Doris veered across the track and knocked Davo and Gary off their BMX bikes. Mildred turned a full circle and ran back into the camel.

Mrs Murphy chugged up from behind and took the lead, with Mr Murphy bobbing over her shoulder. Everyone started to cheer.

Sammy Ferris caught up on his penny-farthing, but Mrs Murphy swung Mr Murphy around until his head caught Sammy in the guts, knocking him to the ground. The crowd went wild. Mrs Murphy waved and smiled, her face like a big, red tomato, dripping with sweat. She bulldozed on, crossed the finish line and dumped Mr Murphy on the grass. She waved her hands above her head like an Olympic champion.

Everyone said it was the most spectacular win ever.

The whole day would have been perfect, except that as we were leaving, Miss McKenzie apologised for the calls James had been making.

Mum said, ‘What calls?' but Sophie and I knew — the calls he had made to Italy, Denmark, Malaysia …

Miss McKenzie sighed and said she hoped she'd done the right thing, cancelling the wedding.

I was about to yell, ‘Too right you did!' but Mat and Sophie shoved me into the car. Sophie told me to shut up. Mat threatened to tie me up in Sheba's paddock when we got home if I interfered.

What could I do? There would be no point in saving Miss McKenzie from a fate worse than death if I actually died myself …

Saturday, 27 January

Mat and Sophie kept me awake for hours last night, talking about boys and kissing and romance and LOVE. I wanted to puke even more than when I inhaled Sheba's toxic gas the other day.

They have all these rules about how to behave around boys that sound
really
stupid. The most important are:

So, as far as I can see, your feet, appetite and brain have to be tiny. You have to pretend to be someone you are
not
, so that a boy likes you, but the you he ends up liking will be so different from the
real
you, that he doesn't actually like the real you at all!

Phew! Doesn't sound like it's worth the effort to me!

No wonder Miss McKenzie was so miserable when she was engaged to James Welsh-Pearson.

Anyway, Mat obviously thinks it
is
worth the effort …

Sophie, Mat and I were down at the dam today. We were lying on our towels, nibbling on chocolate, when Peter and Gavin rode down on the motorbike. Mat didn't want to be seen eating, because that would be so TOTALLY UNCOOL, but she didn't want to throw her whole block of chocolate in the dam either. I could see a real struggle going on in her attractively tiny brain. Just as the boys arrived, she decided to stuff the whole block in her mouth at once, to conceal the evidence.

Mat's cheeks were bulging. Gavin asked how she was going and she couldn't say a word. She just nodded stupidly and tried to keep the melting chocolate from oozing out between her lips.

I could see sheer terror on her face when Gavin started telling a joke and Sophie and I burst out laughing. Mat's eyes filled with tears and bits of melted chocolate started to dribble out the sides of her mouth. In a last desperate attempt to save face, she ran to the dam and dived in.

Unfortunately, she dived straight into another dead sheep and came up out of the dam screaming hysterically, waving a rotten sheep leg in her hand, and dribbling chocolate all down the front of her yellow bathers.

Peter and Gavin staggered around laughing.