LITMIR.BIZ

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arrived, followed by a flurry of hens and chicks. This was to turn out to be our home for the next seven years, the first real home I ever had, the home of my childhood. And I’ve been grateful all my life ever since, to Ida and to those bushmen who brought us there, who must have sensed all along what we needed.

      She called it the Ark, and it didn’t take much to see why. The place was alive with every conceivable domestic animal: goats, sheep, a couple of pigs, a mournful-looking donkey called Barnaby, three milk cows and their calves, and of course, her entire family of wild creatures. The domestic animals all had names, but I only remember Barnaby and a cow called Poogly – not a name you easily forget.

      She didn’t give names to the wild ones, she said, because they were just passing through, except for one. Henry was a wombat. Henry, she said, was probably still asleep, and didn’t much like strangers. He’d been with her for seven years. He’d come and just stayed. He lived in a hole under the verandah steps, and collected hats. In fact he stole hats, any hat he could find, which was why she kept her hat on all the time. Henry slept on his hoard of hats down there in his hole and was very happy, probably the happiest wombat in the entire world, she said, which wasn’t difficult, she added, because wombats generally are not the happiest of creatures.

      “You can have a look later for yourself,” she told us, “just don’t breathe in while you’re doing it. It’s horrible down there. Stinks to high heaven. Not a great one for personal hygiene, our Henry.”

      She introduced her entire menagerie of animals before she even introduced herself. She did that over a glorious breakfast of eggs, and toast and jam, and milk, which we wolfed down, still unable to take in our extraordinary turn of luck. She waited until every last crumb was gone, every last drop. We discovered soon that this was always the thing with her. She could sense intuitively the needs and fears of us all, of all her “children,” which is why, from the very first day, we always felt so at ease with her, why we came to love and trust her as we did, whether we were boys or joeys. She’d saved all of us. We didn’t love her because we owed her, but because of the kind of person she was.

      She wanted to hear our story. So Marty told her everything – he was always better at words than me. I watched her as she listened, saw the sadness and anger in her face. I could see she was older under her hat than I’d first imagined. When you’re young you can’t work out the age of an adult – they’re just quite old, old, or very old. She was old, and (I’m guessing now because I never asked her of course) about fifty-five. Her hair was long to the shoulders, and grey, going to white around her temples, and this belied the youth in her face. She was quick to smile, and when she did her whole being seemed to light up. She laughed easily too. I’ve forgotten so much about her, so much about everything, but I can hear her laugh still. It warmed me then. It warms me now when I think of it, because there was love in her laughter, never mockery, unless it was self-mockery. And there was a directness about the way she looked at you, and the way she spoke to you.

      “Well, you’ve told me your little tale,” she began, “so I’ll tell you mine. Then we’ll know one another better, won’t we?

      And so she told us who she was and what she was doing living there in the Ark with all her creatures around her, and Henry down his hat hole. We listened agog, because she was a wonderful storyteller. She could paint pictures in your head with words, and she could touch the heart of you too.

      “Megs Molloy, that’s me – Margaret really – but Aunty Megs will be fine. Just call me that, everyone does. I do a little of everything, a bit of farming, write a bit of poetry – love that – and I make boats too in my shed, because Mick made boats. You’ll see photos of him about the place. He was my husband, but I lost him in the war, which was sad for me, but sadder still for him. His ship was sunk in some convoy, so he’s part of the seabed now. It’s as good a place to end up as any, I reckon. He made model boats all his life, sailed them too, all kinds, a destroyer in the end. Boats were his life, boats and me. So now I make boats because he taught me how to do it, and I love it. But I don’t get all maudlin about Mick, not often anyway. Life’s too short.

      “Besides there’s too much needs doing round here. Years ago when Mick and me first came here, he discovered a dead wallaby up on the road – knocked down and killed by some stupid truck. He saw a little head sticking out of her pouch, and alive, alive o! So he brought it home. That was near enough twenty years ago now. That little fellow was the first of hundreds, thousands now maybe. From that day on one of us would check the road every morning at dawn, and whenever we found an orphan, a possum, a joey, a wombat, we’d bring him home. And in time the bushmen must have got to hear about it, because they would bring along little fellows they’d found and leave them with us. They don’t say much, but they’ve got their hearts in the right place.

      “But we wouldn’t ever keep them. We wouldn’t cuddle them either. None of that. We’d just feed the little fellows and look after them. Tried never to tame them, never even touch them ‘less we had to. Once you tame them they’ll never go back to the wild. So we just kept them till they were strong enough. Then we’d all take a hike together up into the hills, and if one or two stayed up there, that was fine with us, that was just what we wanted. They were back where they belonged.

      “When the war came along and Mick joined the navy, I went on doing it just the same. And when he didn’t come back, I carried on. Seemed the right thing to do. So here I am writing my poetry, making my boats, looking after whoever or whatever I find out there that needs me. Then this morning, I find something I’ve never found before – a couple of raggedy little scarecrows left behind for me by the bushmen. So I said to myself: they’ve done that for a good reason. And now I know the reason. So I know why you were there, and now you know why I was there. Just like all the little fellows out there, you can stay as long as you need to.”

      The two of us walked out afterwards to see Big Black Jack in his paddock. He was trying to make friends with Aunty Megs’ horse and with Barnaby. But Barnaby wasn’t having any of it, and he didn’t much like it either when Jack started checking out Aunty Megs’ horse. I could hear Aunty Megs singing from inside the house and I felt I was the luckiest person alive. I didn’t pinch myself, but I wondered more than once that first day whether Marty and I were living inside some wonderful shared dream, that maybe we’d wake up and be back at Cooper’s Station again.

      But when I woke up the next morning, I woke up to see Marty still fast asleep in the bed opposite, and high on a shelf all around the room models of sailing boats, and I knew the dream was not a dream at all. I heard a shuffling under my bed then, peered underneath and saw a wombat looking back up at me. He had one of my socks in his mouth. Aunty Megs was at the door then with a glass of milk for each of us. “I see you’ve met Henry then,” she said. “Forgot to tell you. He steals socks too.”

       I Must Go Down to the Sea

      It turned out that Henry didn’t just pinch hats and socks, he’d steal just about anything that he fancied. So we never left our clothes lying around, nor shoes, nor towels. Aunty Megs told us to shoo him out of the house whenever he came in; but somehow, sooner or later, he’d always find a way back in again. And Aunty Megs was right, he did smell. If he was in the house we’d smell him before we saw him, and the stink of him lingered long in the air after we’d put him out. But we loved him all the same, just as Aunty Megs did. I think it was because of the way he looked up at you. His eyes said: “OK, so I stink. OK, so I’m a thief. But nobody’s perfect, are they? So give me a break, will you? Deep down you know you love me, everyone does.”

      Feeding Henry his bottle of milk was the chore that was never a chore. Marty and I would often squabble over which of us should do this last task of the day. Whoever won would sit on the verandah steps right above Henry’s hole. He’d climb up on to your lap, roll over on his back and wait for it. Aunty Megs said he’d just never grown up, that she’d tried and tried to break him of the habit, but he’d hang

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