LITMIR.BIZ

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her conspiratorial tone sounds concerned.

      “Yes, but it hardly applies to us, as father’s bankers have never contacted me.”

      Sue mouths the words to Roger, “Good, then let’s leave quickly before they do.”

      Outside another downpour is well into its stride. Rain pelts down in heavy sheets. For a while, it bounces off the pavement like one long drum roll.

      “I wonder if it rains much in Australia.” Sue yells above the din. Roger merely shrugs.

      “For tail end of summer the wind is bitterly cold.”

      Roger cannot see the children thanks to their bundles of clothes. They resemble Michelin Men as they hurry to their car to make their way home.

      After their visit to Australia House, they receive a registered letter.

      “Might it be a change of heart about Fred?” Sue opines.

      Roger frowns. “Not likely, let’s open it and see.”

      He scans the letter, with Sue leaning heavily across his arm.

      “What’s it say?” Sue asks anxiously.

      “It states they don’t like our preferred destination of Perth.”

      Their disappointment is palpable.

      Sue’s face is as if she has secured a ticket to a Rolling Stones concert only to be told at the last minute that it has been cancelled.

      Her face drains of colour. “So, what’s our next move?”

      Trying to appear cool, calm, and composed when he feels none of those things Roger ponders their tabletop at length.

      “Why that damned harpoon to my brain and on a day when it’s already suffering impaired activity.” He whines on. “Why us?”

      Sue grabs his wrist with surprising strength; her voice is phlegmy, “All is not lost.”

      “Maybe Fretsaw and the way he avoided questions about Perth was a clue?” Roger ponders.

      “Or, if he saw the content of this letter, after all it is from another department, might he be as surprised as we are?”

      “Don’t call him to try and find out,” Sue cautions.

      Roger nods in agreement. “If there’s one thing Dad instilled in me, it was trust no-one.”

      “I’m guessing that made for some interesting Sunday lunches?”

      The letter expressed in polite terms how someone with Roger’s qualifications, or lack of them, would be better placed in one of their Eastern States. They gave the following choices:

      1. Sydney 2. Adelaide 3. Melbourne

      “Now what do we do?” Sue asks.

      Out comes their only map, again.

      “Its use is proving as reliable as my bowels,” Roger jokes.

      In a state of shock and disappointment, they stare stonily at the dot on the extreme left that represents Perth. They then traverse the latitude from Perth in the West across towards the Eastern States. They double-check their letter.

      “Seeking is the goal and searching will be the answer,” Roger sounds totally without conviction.

      “Yes,” Sue confirms, “it’s written — Eastern States.”

      After attempting to drown their sorrows about Perth being a no go, Roger has a shot at drawing a straight horizontal line across the map from Perth in the west.

      “Look,” Sue is cheering up a little, “the line you’ve drawn sits just below a place in the east called B-R-I-S-B-A-N-E that’s Brisbane, capital city of Queensland.”

      Looking at each other Roger snorts, “Climate wise it’s a no brainer, being further north, and nearer to the equator, it has to be the right side of warmer than Perth.”

      Sue is thoughtful. “I’m not sure what to do? We don’t want to upset our chances.”

      “They say Eastern States. Brisbane, my Love, is Eastern. Actually, you can’t get any further east than that, or you’ll be in…the drink.

      Look, we shouldn’t get frustrated by these Australian rules one, two, or three. They say east but don’t mention Brisbane. How’s about we hedge our bets.”

      “How?”

      “I’ll attach a hand written entry; ‘Sirs, we respectfully request we be considered for Brisbane—please, blah, blah, blah!’”

      They send their missive away. Days slowly trudged into weeks.

      Now they wait for the powers-that-be to sprinkle their pixie dust.

      In the meantime buoyed by a non-response, which they find strangely encouraging they try to find out something, anything about Brisbane at the Norwich library. It is the largest in their area and Brainy greets them as old friends.

      “Based on what we need to know today, I’d say these are good for lining budgie cages,” Roger retorts smoothing the newspaper with the palm of his hand.

      “Admittedly, they’re old newspapers,” Brainy agrees with a wry smile, “but Brisbane is rarely mentioned. I deduce therefore that Brisbane must be a very plain and uninteresting place. There’s quite a bit about Canberra and Melbourne, though. Sydney gets a few mentions.”

      After a while Brainy finds them a book that shows a small part of the Gold Coast in South East Queensland. On the map, it looks slightly more than an afternoon’s drive from Perth but on closer inspection Brainy suggests they might require taking a picnic lunch.

      Sue who finally has her hands on the book is excited. “Look there’s a recent photograph. Oh, this is so much better than those black and white drawings of Captain Cook.”

      Whoever had written the segment about the Gold Coast included a single colour photograph.

      “A novel change from etchings of convicts in chains,” Brainy agrees amiably. Nodding like a Pekinese doll on the dashboard, he loans them the book.

      At home, they do more than peruse. They study that photograph of a man hosing down the drive-way to a house.

      Without question that photograph was never intended to provide the hours of in-depth investigation that Sue and Roger devote to it. The expression ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ comes to mind. Roger briefly scans the image looking for something of interest, like a woman’s cleavage or a dog doing something despicable in the background.

      Sue dissects the picture with a considering look as if conducting an autopsy. “Other than being referred to as banana benders it clearly states: A fastidious Queenslander. That’s a bit unfair; it’s as if Queen-Z-landers are not overly popular with others in Australia. Why call him fastidious just because he likes hosing down his driveway?”

      “A good point, if it is his driveway. Unless of course you don’t like Queen-Z-landers anyway.”

      “The hosing down looks more like some sort of relaxation ritual. There are no obvious signs necessitating a clean down.”

      “There’s a big timber house,” Roger chimes in. “Means it can’t be that cold, otherwise it would be brick. Wouldn’t it?”

      “Not necessarily; colder places do have timber homes. At least he has reticulated water and apparently plenty of it.” Sue observes with excitement. “Look, he’s using a hose draped from what looks like a car wheel mounted on the side of his house.”

      “Maybe he can’t afford a proper one, but it’s not a novelty him having the means to splash water around. There can’t be any shortage of water. Just makes you wonder sometimes how close an anthropologist’s deductions are…”

      “He’s dressed in

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