The Foreshadowed Land
by
Kurt Ulmer
SMASHWORDS EDITION
Published by smashwords.com
Copyright © 2011 by Kurt Ulmer
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
Disclaimer
This short story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
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The Foreshadowed Land
There we were! My parents had arrived in Australia with their seventeen year old son and three young daughters. There was Station Pier, Port Melbourne on a June morning in 1962. We had said good-bye to our migrant ship home of five weeks, collected our suitcases and boarded a special Victorian Railways train. Its diesel locomotive belched acrid smoke. The carriages looked tired in their peeling, red, sun faded paint. Inside however were comfortable plush fabric seats, head rests and heated foot warmers. The train lurched and off we went - clankety, clank, clankety, clank and stopped ten minutes later, a stone’s throw from an impressive station.
“Dad, where are we?”
“Melbourne,” my father replied.
“Where are we going?”
“Bonegilla.”
What lay ahead for us in the land foreshadowed by my ‘Travel Guide to Australia’ and its three outrageous statements? Australian myths? Predictions? A warning even? The answers were not long in coming.
After two hours, we rolled through the station and past houses with rusted corrugated iron back fences. Most houses were old, single storey weatherboard dwellings on small blocks with outdoor toilets, ramshackle sheds and makeshift clotheslines. Houses and factories gave way to open ground. We travelled through a flat landscape with paddock after paddock and an occasional farmhouse and outbuildings.
“Look at the sheep. Look, look!” my little sister called out.
“There! Look! Three, four five, ten,” the older one said.
And then nothing but empty paddocks. The train driver ignored all stations along the way. It was getting dark and we were hungry but at least, we were warm. It was pitch black when the train stopped. No station, no lights? We were in the middle of nowhere!
“Bonegilla. Everybody out!”
We walked along the railway tracks to waiting buses near a level crossing. Then off at breakneck speed. The bus lurched from side to side when the driver took the corners too fast. He raced along unmade roads and slowed down when he had to, not by applying the brakes but by changing to a lower gear, which over-revved the engine. Finally, lights ahead, streets and houses. Well, not really houses but wooden cabins clad with vertical timber boards.
The racing driver brought the bus to a skidding, crunching halt in the gravel outside a hall. Bonegilla Migrant Camp-once an army base, we heard.
We lined up for canteen food, aluminium tray in hand. The staff behind the counter had done this before, many times: dishing out mashed potatoes and sliced carrots. They pointed to sausages? chops? gravy? Help yourself to green jelly or yellow jelly with pineapple chunks. White coffee came in an urn and in an aluminium pot, bitter tea of brown colour. Next to it milk in a glass jug. An Australian flag on the left and another on the right framed a reproduction of an oil painting of the Queen. We ate our food in silence and liked it only because we were hungry. My guide book could have alerted us to Australian cuisine. Then again, we hadn’t travelled half way round the world for the familiar. Everything we experienced would be novel and different. We never got to like instant mashed potatoes and overcooked sliced carrots like that.
The staff collected trays, dishes and cutlery and wiped the basket weave laminex table top with a grey, tattered cloth that left soapy streaks.
I had a cabin to myself with a single bed, worn rug, a steel locker, a tiny table, one rickety chair and a black tubular wall heater that was never more than warm to the touch. June can be cold in Northern Victoria. A streetlight shone through the gap between threshold and door. Thin curtains on windows either side of the wooden door let light in and the cold. Three blankets barely kept me warm.
I woke to flute like sounds at daybreak. Slow notes, not a composition, but a random, warbling, burbling and joyful expression. A bird chanted its simple melody and extended an invitation. Nearby, a neighbour piped up and the two birds jabbered, babbled and greeted the day. As if to compete, a third bird much further away called, chatted and joined the morning chorus. I lay awake for a while, listened and felt good.
“Welcome,” the birds said.
“Thank you birds.”
I found the shower block and hung my threadbare towel on a nail. I worked the small cake of soap into a lather with lukewarm water. As others turned on taps, the hot water ran out. The concrete floor was chipped and cold. I shivered, quickly dried myself and returned to the cabin.
The canteen was not yet open. A young woman stood at the door. I had noticed her and her boyfriend on the migrant ship. Her beguiling smile had left me quite bewildered then.
“The kookaburras make a crazy noise,” she said, pointing to the birds that were now drowning out my friends. She gave me that ‘come hither’ smile again and introduced herself as Franziska.
“You’re Manfred. I asked about you on the ship.”
“Is that so,” I said and changed the subject. “You know about Australian bird names?”
“The black and white ones are magpies.”
I whistled, a magpie replied and I mimicked its call again. The bird looked around searching for the competitor. I whistled again but it just flew away. The kookaburra laughed.
I told her the travel guide’s first statement:
“In Australia, the birds don’t sing.”
We agreed: Australian birds, at least the two we knew, didn’t sing. Not like the chaffinch, the thrush or the lark. Magpies warble and the Kookaburra laughs. Not a myth, but one true observation, two to go. I listened a while longer.
The canteen fly wire door squeaked and slammed shut behind me. Franziska was three ahead of me in the queue and waited for me to get served.
“Let’s have breakfast together,” she said and led the way. I took my plate and cup of tea from the tray and put them on the table. She had already tucked in and after another mouthful said:
“I need a bit of excitement. You too?”
I kept eating.
She cut off another slice of sausage, thought better of it, and nibbled pensively on a piece of toast. She played with the cutlery while I mopped up the last bit of runny scrambled egg.
I jumped when I felt her playful toes exploring my groin.
“Cut that out!”
She did, then leaned over the table, entwined her fingers in mine and grinned.
“Yous lovebirds finished?” The canteen lady interrupted, stacked the plates and rattled the cutlery.
“Yes.” I replied.
“You blushed,” Franziska said. “That is so….”
“So nothing,” I objected.
Next to the canteen, a small tree covered in sprays of yellow blossoms greeted us.
“Welcome to Australia. I colour your winter days.”
The Kookaburra laughed again.
I told Franziska the second prediction:
“In Australia, the flowers don’t smell.”
She broke off a sprig and took it to the Information Centre and returned with an answer:
“Cootamundra wattles flower in winter.”
“Are they blossoms or flowers?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Franziska decided. “These don’t have a scent.”
I counted two guide statements down; one to go!
She asked what I had in mind for later and salaciously licked her lips. I searched for an answer.
“You are so sweet when you blush,” she said. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Your place or mine?”
Go for it, the animal in me screamed. She wants it, you want it!
But my calm inner voice dissented: You don’t want sex like that.
She misread my silence.
“You have someone?”
“A girl in the old country,” I lied.
“And you promised eternal love,” Franziska said sarcastically. “So that’s why you ignored me on the ship?”
“Yes,” I lied again and because of your boyfriend.
“No one will ever know,” she teased.
The answer I had would offend, so I didn't reply.
“How old are you? Eighteen? Nineteen?”
“Seventeen.”
“And a virgin.”
“No I’m not. I’ve been around,” I insisted.
She just laughed.
Shut up kookaburra.
It would have been mean to reveal to Franziska what my travel guide’s third statement foretold about women. And I will never tell my true love, yet to come, either. She would rightly be offended by the insulting warning:
In Australia, the women cheat.
You know this to be a myth.
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About the author
I have one grandfather, a builder. My other grandfather was a stonemason and my father was a traditional blacksmith. Both my grandmothers had cooked for a living, one in a hotel and the other for well-to-do people. A career in construction or perhaps engineering or catering would have been obvious choices.
Instead, I spent 20 years in business and in mid life retrained myself. I chose to work with my hands as my father and grandparents had. I become a renowned woodcraftsman and founded with my wife an art and craft gallery in a Tasmanian tourist town. After 20 years there, we followed our children to mainland Australia to retire on Victoria’s Bellarine Peninsula. I took up writing seriously in 2003.
Working with their hands, creating and shaping materials has occupied my forebear. From stone, to iron, to wood. Now I spend my time putting pen to paper. The medium is getting softer.
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