Tomorrow When The War Began (2 page)

‘Do you think defence is high on the
Government’s agenda?’ the interviewer asked.

‘High? High? You must be joking! Do you know
what they’ve cut from the defence budget?’

Thank goodness I’m getting away from this for
a week, I thought.

I went into Dad’s office and rang Lee. It took
a while to explain to his mother that I wanted her son. Her English
wasn’t too crash hot. Lee was funny when he came to the phone,
almost suspicious. He seemed to react slowly to everything I said,
as though he was weighing it up. ‘I’m meant to be playing at the
Commemoration Day concert,’ he said, when I told him the dates.
There was a silence, which I finally broke.

‘Well do you want to come?’

He laughed then. ‘It sounds more fun than the
concert.’

Corrie had been puzzled when I’d said I wanted
to ask Lee. We didn’t really hang round with him at school. He
seemed a serious guy, very into his music, but I just thought he
was interesting. I suddenly realised that we didn’t have that much
time left at school, and I didn’t want to leave without getting to
know people like Lee. There were people in our year who still
didn’t know the names of everyone else in the form! And we were
such a small school. I had this intense curiosity about some kids,
and the more different they were to the people I normally hung
around with, the more curious I was.

‘Well, what do you think?’ I asked. There was
another long pause. Silence makes me uncomfortable, so I kept
talking. ‘Do you want to ask your mum and dad?’

‘No, no. I’ll handle them. Yeah, I’ll
come.’

‘You don’t sound all that keen.’

‘Hey, I’m keen! I was just thinking about the
problems. But it’s cool, I’ll be there. What’ll I bring?’

My last call was to Robyn.

‘Oh Ellie,’ she wailed. ‘It’d be great! But
I’d never be allowed.’

‘Come on Robyn, you’re tough. Put the pressure
on them.’

She sighed. ‘Oh Ellie, you don’t know what my
parents are like.’

‘Well ask them, anyway. I’ll wait on.’

‘OK.’

After a few minutes I heard the bumping noises
of the phone being picked up again, so I asked, ‘Well? Did you con
them into it?’

Unfortunately it was Mr Mathers who
answered.

‘No Ellie, she hasn’t conned us into it.’

‘Oh Mr Mathers!’ I was embarrassed, but
laughing too, cos I knew I could twist Mr Mathers round my
pinkie.

‘Now what’s this all about, Ellie?’

‘Well, we thought it was time we showed
independence and initiative and all those other good things. We
want to do a bushwalk along Tailor’s Stitch for a few days. Get
away from the sex and vice of Wirrawee into the clean wholesome air
of the mountains.’

‘Hmm. And no adults?’

‘Oh Mr Mathers, you’re invited, as long as
you’re under thirty, OK?’

‘That’s discrimination Ellie.’

We kidded around for five minutes till he
started getting serious. ‘You see Ellie, we just think you kids are
a bit young to be careering around the bush on your own.’

‘Mr Mathers, what were you doing when you were
our age?’

He laughed. ‘All right, one to you. I was
jackarooing at Callamatta Downs. That was before I got smart and
put on a collar and tie.’ Mr Mathers was an insurance agent.

‘So, what we’re doing’s small time compared to
jackarooing at Callamatta Downs!’

‘Hmm.’

‘After all, what’s the worst thing that could
happen? Hunters in four-wheel drives? They’d have to come through
our place, and Dad’d stop them. Bushfires? There’s so much rock up
there we’d be safer than we would at home. Snakebite? We all know
how to treat snakebite. We can’t get lost, cos Tailor’s Stitch is
like a highway. I’ve been going up into that country since I could
walk.’

‘Hmm.’

‘How about we take out insurance with you Mr
Mathers? Would you say yes then? Is it a deal?’

Robyn rang back the next night to say it was a
deal, even without the insurance. She was pleased and excited.
She’d had a long conversation with her parents; the best one ever,
she said. This was the biggest thing they’d ever trusted her on, so
she was keen for it to work out. ‘Oh Ellie, I hope there’s no
disasters,’ she kept saying.

The funny thing about it was that if parents
ever had a daughter they could trust it was the Mathers and Robyn,
but they didn’t seem to have worked it out yet The biggest problem
she was ever likely to give them was being late to church. And
that’d probably be because she was helping a boy scout across the
road.

Things kept going well. Mum and I were in town
shopping, Saturday morning, and we ran into Fi and her mum. The two
mums had a long serious conversation while Fi and I looked in
Tozers’ window and tried to eavesdrop. Mum was doing a lot of
reassuring. ‘Very sensible,’ I heard her say. ‘They’re all very
sensible.’ Luckily she didn’t mention Homer’s latest trick: he’d
just been caught pouring a line of solvent across the road and
lighting it from his hiding place when a car got close. He’d done
it half a dozen times before he got caught. I couldn’t imagine the
shock it must have given the drivers of the cars.

Anyway, whatever Mum said to Fi’s mum worked,
and I was able to cross off the question mark next to Fi’s name.
Our list of eight was down to seven, but they were all definite and
we were happy with them. Well, we were happy with ourselves, and
the other five were good. I’ll try to describe them the way they
were then – or the way I thought they were, because of course
they’ve changed, and my knowledge of them has changed.

For instance, I always thought of Robyn as
fairly quiet and serious. She got effort certificates at school
every year, and she was heavily into church stuff, but I knew there
was more to her than that She liked to win. You could see it at
sport. We were in the same netball team and honestly, I was
embarrassed by some of the things she did Talk about determined.
The moment the game started she was like a helicopter on heat
swooping and darting around everywhere, bumping people aside if she
had to. If you got weak umpires Robyn could do as much damage in
one game as an aerial gunship. Then the game would end and Robyn
would be quietly shaking everyone’s hands, saying ‘Well played’,
back to her normal self. Quite strange. She’s small, Robyn, but
strong, nuggety, and beautifully balanced. She skims lightly across
the ground, where the rest of us trudge across it like it’s made of
mud.

I should exempt Fi from that though, because
she’s light and graceful too. Fi was always a bit of a hero to me,
someone I looked up to as the perfect person. When she did
something wrong I’d say, ‘Fi! Don’t do that! You’re my role model!’
I love her beautiful delicate skin. She has what my mother calls
‘fine features’. She looked like she’d never done any hard work in
her life, never been in the sun, never got her hands dirty, and
that was all true, because unlike us rurals she lived in town and
spent more time playing piano than drenching sheep or marking
lambs. Her parents are both solicitors.

Kevin, now he was more your typical rural.
He’s older than the rest of us but he was Corrie’s man, so he had
to come or she would have lost interest straightaway.

The first thing you noticed about Kevin was
his wide wide mouth. The second thing you noticed was the size of
his hands. They were enormous, like trowels. He was known for
having a big ego and he liked to take the credit for everything; he
annoyed me quite often for that, but I still thought he was the
best thing that ever happened in Corrie’s life because before she
started going round with him she was too quiet and unnoticed. They
used to talk a lot at school, and then she’d tell me what a
sensitive caring guy he was. Although I couldn’t always see that
myself, I could see the way she started getting so much more
confident from going with him, and I liked that.

I always pictured Kevin in twenty years, when
he’d be President of the Show Society and playing cricket for the
club on Saturdays and talking about fat lamb prices and bringing up
his three kids – with Corrie maybe. That was the kind of world we
were used to. We never seriously thought it would change much.

Lee lived in town, like Fi. ‘Lee and Fi, from
Wirrawee,’ we used to sing. That was all they had in common though.
Lee was as dark as Fi was fair. He had a black crewcut and deep
brown intelligent eyes, and a nice soft voice which clips the ends
off some of his words. His father’s Thai and his mother’s
Vietnamese, and they had a restaurant which served Asian food.
Pretty good restaurant too; we went there a lot Lee was good at
Music and Art; in fact he was good at most things, but he could be
very annoying when things went against him. He’d go into long sulks
and not talk to anyone for days at a time.

The last one was Homer, who lived down the
road from me. Homer was wild, outrageous. He didn’t care what he
did or what anyone thought. I always remember going there for
lunch, when we were little kids. Mrs Yannos tried to make Homer eat
Brussels sprouts; they had a massive argument which ended with
Homer chucking the sprouts at his mum. One of them hit her in the
forehead, pretty hard too. I watched goggle-eyed. I’d never seen
anything like it. If I’d tried that at home I’d have been chained
to the tractor and used as a clodbuster. When we were in Year 8
Homer organised some of his madder mates into daily games of what
he called Greek Roulette. In Greek Roulette you’d go every
lunchtime to a room that was away from teachers’ eyes and then
you’d take it in turns to walk up to a window and head-butt it.
Each person kept doing it till the bell went for afternoon classes
or the window broke, whichever came first. If it was your head that
broke the window then you – or your parents – had to foot the bill
for a new one. They broke a lot of windows playing Greek Roulette,
before the school finally woke up to what was going on.

Homer always seemed to be in trouble. Another
of his favourite little amusements was to watch for workmen going
on the roof at school to fix leaks or get balls or replace
guttering. Homer would wait till they were safely up there, working
away hard at whatever they had to do, then he’d strike. Half an
hour later you’d hear yells and cries from the roof: ‘Help! Get us
down from here! Some mongrel’s pinched our bloody ladder!’

Homer had been quite short as a little kid but
he’d filled out and grown a lot in the last few years, until he
ended up one of the biggest guys in the school They were always at
him to play footy, but he hated most sports and wouldn’t join a
team for anything. He liked hunting and would often ring my parents
to ask if he and his brother could come on to our place to wipe out
a few more rabbits. And he liked swimming. And he liked music, some
of it quite weird.

Homer and I had spent all our free time
together when we were little, and we were still close.

So that was the Famous Five. I guess Corrie
and I made it the Secret Seven. Hah! Those books don’t have a lot
of bearing on what’s happened to us. I can’t think of any books
I’ve read – or films I’ve seen – that relate much to us. We’ve all
had to rewrite the scripts of our lives the last few weeks. We’ve
learnt a lot and we’ve had to figure out what’s important, what
matters – what really matters. It’s been quite a time.

Chapter Two

The plan was to leave at eight o’clock, nice
and early. By about ten o’clock we were nearly ready. By 10.30 we
were about four k’s from home, starting the ascent to Tailor’s
Stitch. It’s a long slow grunt up a track that’s become a real mess
over the years; holes so big that I thought we’d lose the Landrover
in them, mud slides, creek crossings. I don’t know how many times
we stopped for fallen trees. We’d brought the chain saw and after a
while Homer suggested we keep it running and he’d nurse it as we
drove along, to save having to start it when we came to another
log. I don’t think he was serious. I hope he wasn’t serious. It had
been a long time since anyone had been up there. We always know,
because they have to come through our paddocks to get to the spur.
If Dad had known how bad the track was he’d never have let us take
the Landrover. He trusts my driving, but not that much. Still, we
bounced along, me wrestling with the wheel, doing a steady five
k’s, with occasional bursts up to ten. There was another
unscheduled stop about half way when Fi decided she was going to be
sick. I stopped fast, she exited through the rear door looking
white as a corpse, and donated a sticky mess in the bushes for the
benefit of any passing feral dogs or cats.

It was not a pretty sight. Everything Fi did
she did gracefully, but even Fi found it hard to be graceful while
she was vomiting. After that she walked quite a while, but the rest
of us continued to lurch on up the spur in the Landie. It was
actually fun, in a strange sort of way. Like Lee said, it was
better than the Cocktail Shaker ride at the Show, because it was
longer – and it was free.

We were actually missing the Show to come on
this trip. We’d left the day before Commemoration Day, when the
whole country stops, but in our district people don’t just stop.
They stop and then they converge on Wirrawee, because Commemoration
Day is traditionally the day of the Wirrawee Show. It’s quite an
occasion. Still, we didn’t mind missing it. There’s a limit to the
number of balls you can roll down the clown’s throat, and there’s a
limit to the number of times you can get excited over your mother
winning Best Decorated Cake. A year’s break from the Show wouldn’t
do us any harm.

That’s what we thought.

It was about half past two when we got to the
top. Fi had ridden the last couple of k’s, but we were all relieved
to get out of the Landie and stretch our bones. We came out on the
south side of a knoll near Mt Martin. That was the end of the
vehicle track: from then on it was shanks’s pony. But for the time
being we wandered around and admired the view. On one side you
could see the ocean: beautiful Cobbler’s Bay, one of my favourite
places, and according to Dad one of the world’s great natural
harbours, used only by the occasional fishing boat or cruising
yacht. It was too far from the city for anything else. We could see
a couple of ships there this time though; one looked like a large
trawler maybe. The water looked as blue as royal blood; deep and
dark and still. In the opposite direction Tailor’s Stitch seamed
its way to the summit of Mt Martin, a sharp straight ridge, bare
black rocks forming a thin line as though a surgeon had made a
giant incision centuries ago. Another view faced back down the way
we’d come; the track invisible under its canopy of trees and
creepers. Way in the distance you got glimpses of the rich farmland
of the Wirrawee district, dotted with houses and clumps of trees,
the lazy Wirrawee River curving slowly through it.

And on the other side was Hell.

‘Wow,’ said Kevin, taking a long look into it.
‘We’re going to get into there?’

‘We’re going to try,’ I said, having doubts
already but trying to sound strong and sure.

‘It’s impressive,’ said Lee. ‘I’m
impressed.’

‘I’ve got two questions,’ said Kevin, ‘but
I’ll only ask one of them. How?’

‘What’s the other one?’

‘The other one is “Why?”. But I’m not going to
ask that. Just tell me how and I’ll be satisfied. I’m easily
satisfied.’

‘That’s not what Corrie says,’ said Homer,
beating me to it.

A few rocks were thrown; there was some
wrestling; Homer nearly took the fast route into Hell. That’s two
things guys are addicted to, throwing rocks and wrestling, but I’ve
noticed these guys don’t seem to do either any more. I wonder
why.

‘So how are we going to get in there?’ Kevin
asked again, at last.

I pointed to the right. ‘There it is. That’s
our route.’

‘That? That collection of cliffs?’

He was exaggerating a bit, but not much.
Satan’s Steps are huge granite blocks that look like they were
chucked there in random descending order by some drunken giant,
back in the Stone Age. There’s no vegetation on them: they’re
uncompromisingly bare. The more I looked at them the more unlikely
it all seemed, but that didn’t stop me making my big motivational
speech.

‘Guys, I don’t know if it’s possible or not,
but there’s plenty of people round Wirrawee who say it is. If you
believe the stories, there was an old ex-murderer lived in there
for years – the Hermit from Hell. If some pensioner can do it, we
sure can. I think we should give it our best shot. Let’s make like
dressmakers and get the tuck in there.’

‘Gee Ellie,’ said Lee with respect, ‘now I
understand why you’re captain of the netball team.’

‘How do you get to be an ex-murderer?’ Robyn
asked.

‘Eh?’

‘Well, what’s the difference between an
ex-murderer and a murderer?’

Robyn always did go straight to the point.

‘I’ve got one more question,’ Kevin said.

‘Yeah?’

‘Do you actually know anyone who’s been down
there?’

‘Um, let’s get the packs out of the
Landie.’

We did that, then sat against them, admiring
the views and the old blue sky, and munching on chicken and salad.
Fi’s pack was in direct line of vision from me, and the more I
looked at it the more I began to realise how swollen it seemed.

‘Fi,’ I said at last, ‘just what have you got
in that pack?’

She sat up, looking startled. ‘What do you
mean? Just clothes and stuff. Same as everyone else.’

‘What clothes exactly?’

‘What Corrie told me. Shirts. Jumpers. Gloves,
socks, undies, towel.’

‘But what else? That can’t be all.’

She started looking a bit embarrassed.

‘Pyjamas.’

‘Oh Fi.’

‘Dressing gown.’

‘Dressing gown? Fi!’

‘Well, you never know who you’ll meet.’

‘What else?’

‘I’m not telling you any more. You’ll all
laugh at me.’

‘Fi, we’ve still got to get the food into
these packs. And then carry them God knows how far.’

‘Oh. Do you think I should take out the pillow
then?’

We formed a committee of six to reorganise
Fi’s backpack for her. Fi was not a member of the committee. After
that we distributed the food that Corrie and I had so carefully
bought. There seemed to be a mountain of it, but there were seven
of us and we planned to be away five days. But try as we might we
couldn’t get it all in. Some of the bulky items were a big problem.
We ended up having to make some tough decisions, between the Vita
Brits and the marshmallows, the pita bread and the jam doughnuts,
the muesli and the chips. I’m ashamed to say what won in each case,
but we rationalised everything by saying, ‘Well, we mightn’t get
far from the Landie anyway, so we can always come back for
stuff’.

At about five o’clock we got moving, packs on
our backs like giant growths, strange protuberances. We set off
along the ridge, Robyn leading, Kevin and Corrie quite a way in the
rear, talking softly, more absorbed in each other than in the
scenery. The ground was hard and dry; although Tailor’s Stitch was
straight, the track wound around, on it and off it, but the footing
was easy and the sun still high in the sky. We were each carrying
three full water bottles, which added a lot to the weight of the
packs, but which still wouldn’t last us long. We were relying on
finding water in Hell, assuming we could get in there. Otherwise
we’d return to the Landie in the morning for more water. When the
supply in the jerry cans there gave out we’d drive a couple of k’s
down the track to a spring where I’d often camped with Mum and
Dad.

I walked along with Lee, and we talked about
horror movies. He was an expert: he must have seen a thousand. That
surprised me because I knew him mainly for his piano and violin,
which didn’t seem to go with horror movies. He said he watched them
late at night, when he couldn’t sleep. I got the feeling he was
probably quite a lonely guy.

From the top, Satan’s Steps looked as wild and
forbidding as they had from a distance. We stood and looked,
waiting for Kevin and Corrie to catch up.

‘Hmm,’ said Homer. ‘Interesting.’

That was about the shortest sentence I’d ever
heard from him.

‘There must be a way,’ Corrie said, arriving
at that moment.

‘When we were kids,’ I said, ‘we used to say
that looked like a track, down to the left there. We always told
ourselves that it was the Hermit’s path. We used to scare ourselves
by imagining that he’d appear at any moment.’

‘He was probably just a nice, misunderstood
old man,’ Fi said.

‘Don’t think so,’ I said. ‘They say he
murdered his wife and baby.’

‘I don’t think it’s a path, anyway,’ Corrie
said, ‘just a fault-line in the rock.’

We kept standing and looking for quite a
while, as if staring at the tumbled rocks would cause a path to
appear, as if this were Narnia or somewhere. Homer wandered along
the escarpment a bit further. ‘We could get over the first block I
think,’ he called back to us. ‘That ledge on the other side, it
looks like it drops pretty close to the ground at the far
corner.’

We followed over to where he stood. It
certainly looked possible.

‘Suppose we get down there and can’t go any
further?’ Fi asked.

‘Then we climb back and try something else,’
Robyn said.

‘What if we can’t get back?’

‘What goes down must come up,’ Homer said,
making it clear how much attention he’d been paying in Science over
the years.

‘Let’s do it,’ Corrie said, with surprising
firmness. I was glad. I didn’t want to push people too much but I
felt that the whole success or failure of this expedition reflected
on me, or at least on Corrie and me. We’d talked them into coming,
we’d promised them a good time, and it was our idea to take the
plunge into Hell. If we had a miserable failure I’d feel awful.
It’d be like throwing a party, then playing Mum’s ‘Themes from
Popular TV Shows’ all evening.

At least they seemed willing to take a shot at
the first of Satan’s Steps. But even the first step was difficult.
We had to drop into a tangle of old logs and blackberries, then
scramble up the tilted scarred face of the rock. We got quite
scarred ourselves. There was a fair bit of swearing and sweating
and pulling other people up and hanging on to other people’s packs
before we were all standing on top, peering down at Homer’s
ledge.

‘If they’re all as difficult as this ...’ Fi
panted, without needing to finish the sentence.

‘Over here,’ Homer said. He got on his hands
and knees, turned to face us, then slid backwards over the
edge.

‘Oh yes?’ Fi said.

‘No worries,’ we heard Homer say. There was a
worry, and that was how we were going to get back up again, but no
one else mentioned it so I didn’t. I think we were too caught up in
the thrill of the chase. Robyn followed Homer; then Kevin, with
much scrabbling and grunting, lowered himself cautiously after
them. I went next, scratching my hand a bit. It wasn’t easy because
the heavy packs kept wanting to overbalance us, to pull us
backwards. By the time I got down, Homer and Robyn were already
jumping off the end of the ledge and fighting their way through the
scrub to inspect the second huge block of granite.

‘The other side looks better,’ Lee said. I
followed him round there and we inspected the possibilities. It was
very difficult. There was quite a sheer drop either side of the
block, despite the bushes and grasses growing out of the cliff. And
the rock itself was sheer and high. Our only hope was an old fallen
log that disappeared into the shadows and undergrowth but at least
seemed to be going in the right direction.

‘That’s our path,’ I said.

‘Hmmm,’ Homer said, coming up beside us.

I straddled the log and started a slow slide
down it.

‘She loves it, doesn’t she?’ Kevin said. I
grinned as I heard the slap of Corrie’s hand hitting some part of
Kevin’s exposed flesh. The log was soft and damp but was holding
together. It was surprisingly long, and I realised it was taking me
under the front of the rock. Huge black beetles and slaters and
earwigs started spilling out of the wood between my legs as I got
towards the thin and more rotten end. I grinned again, hoping I’d
scared them all away before Fi followed me down here.

When I stood up I found I was under an
overhang, free of vegetation but facing a screen of trees that
almost concealed the next giant block. We’d be able to force a way
through the screen, no doubt getting torn and scratched a lot more,
but there was no guarantee we could get around or over or under the
granite. I sidestepped along, peering through the screen, looking
for possibilities, as the others started joining me. Fi was the
fourth, arriving a little breathless but without fuss; funnily
enough it was Kevin who was unnerved by the insects. He slid the
last few yards down the tree in a rush, yelling hysterically, ‘God
no, help, there’s creepy-crawlies everywhere! Get them off me! Get
them off me!’ He spent the next three minutes brushing himself
fiercely, spinning round and round in the narrow space we had,
trying to catch glimpses of any more that might be on him, shaking
his clothes frantically. I couldn’t help wondering how he coped
with fly-struck sheep.