Walking The Boundaries

MAP

DEDICATION

To Edward Ffrench Dumaresq

with the hope that one day he will

walk the boundaries, and to all

those who walk the boundaries too.

CONTENTS

Map

Dedication

One: Old Ted

Two: Setting Out

Three: Up the Gorge

Four: Walking the Hills with Meg

Five: Meg’s World

Six: Yabbies

Seven: Fire!

Eight: Into the Mist

Nine: A Diprotodont Called Dracula

Ten: The View from the Hill

Eleven: Decision

Author’s Note

About the Author

Selected Awards

Also by Jackie French

Copyright

ONE

Old Ted

PURPLE PATERSON’S CURSE LINED the road towards Old Ted’s, along with milky thistles and dandelions and other weeds dropped from passing trucks of hay. On either side of the road the paddocks rolled like bright carpets, covered in a fuzz of phalaris grass, its yellow seeds ripening in the summer heat, broken only by the slash of erosion gullies, orange in a golden land, the taut brown lines of barbed-wire fences, dams like giant puddles and the dusty verges of the road.

A grasshopper splattered against the windscreen, then another and another.

‘Yuk,’ muttered Martin. One buzzed through the window and landed on his arm. Its legs prickled his bare skin. He picked it up with two fingers and thrust it out the window, then wound the window up.

‘Should have squashed the little pest,’ said Old Ted, his bony hands spotty brown on the steering wheel.

Martin shook his head. ‘Have you got grasshoppers like this too?’

‘Nup. Too many trees, too many birds. Don’t get them down our way like this.’

‘There are trees and birds here too,’ said Martin, gesturing at a stand of old gums by the road. A mob of sheep sheltered under them. Half the branches were dead, gnarled grey skeletons against a clear blue sky. A magpie sat on one, watching the road for carrion left by the cars.

‘Hah,’ snorted Old Ted.

The country changed near Ted’s. The road dropped suddenly through dense trees. Cliffs rose steeply at the side of the road, walls of granite rock that shone with quartz and eagle droppings. Even the air smelt different, no longer hot with dust and the thick sweet smell of cattle, but a sharper mix of hot rock and damp leaf litter and cool water from the creek that cut through the deep gorge, then nuzzled its way through the casuarinas to the valley below and Old Ted’s farm.

Martin glanced at him. Old Ted’s nose was twitching like he smelt home. He hadn’t said much since he had picked Martin up at the bus stop in town, just nodded in the vague direction of the butcher’s shop across the road, the paddocks behind it, and presumably his valley, and said, ‘Home’s that way,’ before shutting up.

It was hard to believe that Old Ted was a relative. He didn’t look like anyone he’d ever known. Martin had hoped it wasn’t him, when he first saw him out of the bus window. But he was the only one waiting there. It was either go with Ted or go back home.

Old Ted looked like he’d dropped out of a TV documentary about somewhere dry and old and boring, the sort you’d never bother to watch. But on TV at least you wouldn’t be able to smell him — Old Ted smelt of sweat and musty clothes and the sweet papery scent of age. The ute smelt worse.

Other kids’ great-grandparents stayed for holidays, and took them to adventure playgrounds; or the kids visited them in old people’s homes, where they lay under tidy sheets. Other kids’ relatives sent them presents on their birthdays. Not Old Ted. Martin had never even met Old Ted before.

Mum didn’t like Old Ted — couldn’t stand him, she had explained to Martin as she hurried through the dishes the night before he left. That was why she’d never mentioned him before. For all she knew he could have died years ago. The only time she’d met him was when she’d married Dad.

‘Why didn’t you like him?’ Martin had asked, wiping the limp tea towel over the baking dish that had held their frozen pizza.

His mother had shrugged, her fingers in greasy water. One of her ambitions was to get a dishwasher, as soon as they could afford it. ‘Impossible old man. Mad as a meat axe. Didn’t even get a decent suit to wear to his own grandson’s wedding. He could have at least hired one.’

‘Maybe he was too poor,’ Martin had suggested.

‘Don’t you believe it. He just liked embarrassing us all. The old man’s sitting on a gold mine out there. The farm must be worth a million if it’s worth a cent. Good thing your father never had much to do with him. I’ll say that for your father’s mother — she had her father-in-law pegged the moment she met him.’

Martin had wondered what his great-grandfather was like. The only relative they saw much of was Aunty Jean, who wore thick red lipstick that came off on the coffee mugs and interrupted whenever he said anything, as though what kids had to say didn’t count.

‘It’d be nice to have a great-grandfather,’ Martin had muttered. But he said it quietly. Mum had been working hard and her temper was short.

‘Not one like Ted,’ said his mother, slapping the Wettex against the sink. ‘The old fool’s probably senile by now anyway. You’d have to pay me a million dollars to get me out to his place.’

A million dollars. That was why he was here.

He never thought he’d even meet Old Ted. He couldn’t believe it when Dad had rung from Adelaide, where he lived now with his new family, to tell him about Old Ted’s offer. It was a weird offer, but no weirder than Old Ted, Dad had said. It was an incredible offer. It could mean money. Real money. For once Mum had agreed with Dad. She’d let him come.

The ute twisted round a bend, shaded by squat tree ferns and thick-trunked trees. Old Ted raised a dirty white eyebrow at him. ‘This is the farm’s lower boundary. The other’s over the ridge a way, across the gorge.’

Martin nodded without speaking. The trees seemed taller here, like a giant’s thighs, too tall to see the tops. The air was sweet with rotting leaves and bark. Somewhere a bird sang, clearer than he’d ever heard. It seemed a long way from one boundary to another, over all those ridges.

‘How much land is there, Ted?’ he asked.

‘Didn’t your dad tell you?’

Martin shook his head. He stayed with his father at Christmas and Easter holidays, but Dad was working, mostly. There was never time to talk, certainly not about Old Ted.

‘Ten thousand acres. Less than that in hectares. Never bothered to work it out,’ said Old Ted.

Nearly five thousand hectares! Martin looked at the twisting road, the high green skyline, the wriggling stretch of casuarinas along the creek. A wallaby jumped from the bushes where it had been sleeping, startled by the car, and dived into the steep green banks below, leaving its long black tail like a thick snake poking out of the bush behind it. Yellow flowers dotted the edges of the road, in between red-tipped ferns and tiny small-leafed creepers. The ridges glowed like giant building blocks, sheltering the gorge and river flats below.

By Monday, if things went well, all this would be his. Then he’d sell it, and be rich.

TED’S HOUSE LOOKED as though it had wriggled into the hillside a century before and never found its way out. Roses spread thorny fingers over the path, and brown-tailed chooks scuttled through the dahlias. An apple tree sagged across the fence, its branches heavy with fat apples. A handful of sheep raised curious noses at them as the ute pulled up, as though hoping for a bale of hay. Apart from the sheep paddock, the tangled orchard and the garden, everything else was bush.

The kitchen smelt of stale fat. The lino gaped by the stove; the rest was grained brown by mud and boots. Chipped plates hung in the dresser by the wall, next to a calendar that read: Merry Christmas from Simpson’s Hardware, 1982.

Ted caught his glance. ‘Never got round to taking that down,’ he admitted. ‘The place looked better when your great-granny was alive.’ He nodded at a photo on the dresser of a woman with bright white hair in a halo round her head.

‘When was that?’ asked Martin, before he could stop himself.

Old Ted raised a hairy eyebrow. ‘You mean when did she die?’

Martin nodded.

Old Ted seemed to get smaller suddenly. He tramped over to the stove and opened the fire box, and began stuffing bits of wood into the smoky flames. ‘Summer of 1943. One of those dry days when the heat eats at your throat. She’d walked up the gorge a way. Always did that if she wanted to think. She’d got a letter from our Michael — that was your grandfather, your dad’s dad. He was up fighting in New Guinea. That was during the war. She wanted to read it with her friends.’

‘Friends?’ asked Martin. He wondered what friends would be up in the gorge. Surely no one lived there. Maybe Ted meant birds and animals and things. He looked crazy enough to think of animals as friends.

Old Ted ignored the question. ‘A branch fell and killed her. Crushed her head against a rock. She wouldn’t have known anything. Just the cicadas and the water and the smell of rocks and leaves. Then nothing.’

Martin looked blank.

‘You mean the wind blew a tree down?’

Old Ted shook his head. ‘No wind. A branch just fell off. The sap goes out of trees when it’s hot. Saves their moisture. Pity humans can’t do the same. Lots of times I’ve wished I could stop my sweat seeping up towards the sun. I found her lying there that night. I’d been searching