Currawalli Street (3 page)

‘A map, a compass, and the route they were planning to travel. There and back. You do know my daughter, don't you?'

‘Yes, I have talked to her at church a few times.'

‘Ah yes. Church. Of course.' Alfred doesn't go to church. It won't be too long before Johnny doesn't go either. He feels like he is wasting time there. His time and the church's time.

‘If you travel their route the opposite way then you should make contact with them . . . soon, I hope. And would you pass this to my daughter when you see her?' Alfred hands Johnny a slip of paper. ‘It's a note from me. Telling her to come home. To give up on the map.'

‘I'll give it to her. Will she obey it?'

‘No. But give it to her anyway.'

By the time Johnny turns his horse to face the direction they are going to travel, Alfred has come out onto the street. Both men nod without looking at each other. The sound of the horse's hooves fills the early morning.

At the end of the street, he turns to the left and heads along the little road towards Choppingblock Road up ahead. He is tempted to cross over the creek and enter the bush there, joining up with the road a few miles further on, but he decides not to in case he misses the wagons.

Johnny always likes being on a road at this time of day. The air is clear and the horse keen to move. Johnny's mind is fresh too. He rides steadily underneath the flowering gums that hang over the road. At the corner of the little road where the Choppingblock Hotel stands, he sees Arthur the publican splitting some firewood for the stove. Arthur nods between axe strokes and Johnny lifts his hat. Arthur is usually too busy to stop; he's always working on either the pub or his garden. Sure enough, Johnny sees a partially built arch for training roses lying on its side at the back of the pub, much like the one his mother used to have in her kitchen garden.

He looks back at the road he has turned out of. It doesn't have a name but everyone knows it as the little road. It runs past the railway station. Choppingblock Road soon begins to climb the first of many hills. Johnny gives the horse her head for a moment so she can stretch her legs a little. She breaks into a gallop and the increased speed fills him with a tiny tremor of excitement. He pulls her up after a few hundred yards and she falls back into an easy walk.

He is travelling underneath a continuous cloud of dust that sits still in the air. A bullock dray must be travelling along the road, going north. Johnny judges that it has passed about five minutes before and he will come up to it soon.

He sits back in the saddle and begins to think out the day ahead. He is used to planning like this. It is also how he paints a portrait. The blank canvas is like the road to be travelled; he maps out which
direction to take, which lines need to be drawn first as references, just as he looks for landmarks to keep himself riding in the right direction.

Only fifty years ago this road was frequented by bushrangers, waiting for a lone traveller like himself to come along. But old age, a better police force and the threat of the noose has thinned the ranks of the bushrangers and now they are virtually non-existent. Only the light of mind or the savage at heart venture into that profession nowadays.

He can soon see the outline of the bullock dray up ahead. Most of the time its wheels run smoothly in the ruts worn into the road by earlier traffic; the dust rises up in clouds only when the wheels veer towards the side of the road where the dirt has been displaced. But there is still enough for Johnny to taste it in his mouth.

By the time he reaches the back of the dray he can see that it is full of supplies and probably heading back to one of the logging camps. A company chops down the trees near Mount Sterling and brings them to the city docks where they are loaded as ballast on the ships leaving for Europe. So even before the insects have come to their senses and realised that their home is now dead, they are likely to be deep in the belly of a ship steaming to Portsmouth or Marseilles.

As he draws abreast of the dray, Johnny nods to the driver, who nods back. They look at each other for a while, neither feeling like engaging in the standard exchange about the weather. The driver sits forward on his bench, his hat pulled down close to his eyes, a cigarette drooping out of the corner of his mouth. Eventually he tilts his head in the direction of the storm clouds brewing, and Johnny nods again before lifting up his chin and spurring his horse on.

He pulls the horse back to a walk when he is two hundred yards
further up the road, at the crest of a hill. Before him he can see the lay of the land, the twists and turns of the creeks and gullies. Behind him are the bullock dray, struggling up the hill, and the land he has already seen and is content not to see again until he returns home.

Before him Choppingblock Road dips and turns as it climbs small hills, drops down into tiny green valleys, runs alongside creeks and squeezes around rocky outcrops. The predominant feature of the panorama is the vast choppy sea of grey-green eucalypts. Gum trees that bend to no wind and grow straight and tall towards the clouds. He stops longer to take it all in.

Johnny hears the hooves and the clink of saddling gear as another horseman comes up behind him. Without looking he can tell that the rider expects to be in the saddle for a long while, as the ring of the saddle buckles are quickly deadened with each step by the weight of a heavy load. By the ease of the horse's steps he can also tell that this is a journey beginning, not coming to its conclusion.

‘Hello, travelling well?' he asks, his eyes still surveying the horizon. He turns as the other horseman comes up beside him and stops. The face is familiar.

‘Yes. I believe I am travelling well. And I hope, all things considered, I will continue to do so.'

Johnny sees a man of his own age. But whereas Johnny is dressed for the road, with a broad straw hat, solid boots and a heavy coat that will keep out the coming rain and the wind, this man is dressed in a town man's suit of the current fashion: expensive heavy tweed cut to
sit close to the body, and a matching hat with a thin brim. A pair of two-toned button-up shoes that look as if they have never seen mud completes the picture of a city man on his way to being lost in the country.

Johnny looks briefly at the man's horse. There is the difference.

The animal looks as if it has travelled great distances before, and all of the saddling gear looks well used. It shapes the horse. The man is at ease, his back comfortably straight and his legs well accustomed to their position. The stirrups have been drawn up closer to the saddle in the old stockman's trick. By lunchtime, when the opportunity for faster riding is gone, the stranger will drop them into a more standard relaxed position. Johnny did the same thing in the morning. It adds speed to a journey by giving the fresh horse more freedom to run. The trick is to know when to drop them down; in that position, stirrups become very tiring for the rider.

‘You're headed a fair way?' Johnny guesses.

‘Yep. All the way to Sydney. Will take me fifteen days, I believe.'

Johnny nods and looks thoughtfully at the dirt between them. ‘Could be more. Don't think it will be less.'

‘Me neither. But I'm hoping. I've done it a few times before. It's a good ride.'

‘I've done it only once before. Good farm country. Worth seeing.' Johnny continues to look away when he says, ‘I know you. I've seen your face somewhere.'

A trace of suspicion and what sounds like exhaustion creep into the stranger's voice. ‘I've been living at the Choppingblock Hotel for a few years. You know it? Perhaps you've seen me in there.' He scratches his
chin, and Johnny notices that he has shaved this morning. It says something about a man when he takes the time to shave his face even though he will be alone on a country road for most of the day.

‘Maybe, but I don't go into the bar often. I live around the corner in Currawalli Street. Perhaps I've seen you walking about.'

‘Perhaps that's it. Where are you headed?' the stranger says as his horse drops its head to investigate a scarlet beetle crawling across the gravel.

‘Up a ways. I'm cutting across at Weather Hill. Heading to Wensleydale.'

‘We're going in the same direction. Let's travel together a bit.'

Without another word both men direct their horses towards the centre of the dirt road and encourage them to walk on down the hill. Both men ride in silence and only begin talking again when they dismount for a cup of tea by a creek.

‘That was a big snake back there,' says the stranger.

Johnny nods. ‘Yep. Keep my eyes open for them this time of year. Never know when I'm going to come between the mother and her babies.'

‘It's not a good place to be. My horse previous to this was bitten because I hadn't been paying attention and wandered into a nest area. Horse died. Left me out in the bush for a few days.'

‘Same thing happened to me. Can't blame the mother snake. Who wants a horse stepping on your babies?'

While they are talking they build a small fire and fill a billy with water from the creek. When it boils, Johnny drops in a handful of Ceylonese tea-leaves and both men retrieve their cups from their saddlebags.

‘What's your name?' Johnny asks.

The man looks him up and down, suddenly serious. ‘You know, I don't like to tell people my name. But I assume you're asking me so that we can talk better?'

‘That's right. Why else would I ask?' Johnny is surprised.

There is suddenly something dangerous in the air. If not for the easiness of the stranger's manner previously, Johnny would be getting ready to protect himself.

‘Alright. My name is Alfred Brady . . . Bert Brady.'

‘The gangster that everybody talks about? The one who robbed that big department store in the city? The one who goes out with actresses?'

‘Yep, that's me. I'm the gangster. Although I don't have a gang or a girlfriend.'

‘Pleased to meet you, Bert. My name is Johnny Oatley.' The sense of danger blows away as Johnny stretches out to shake hands.

‘Pleased to meet you, Johnny. What do you do?'

‘I was a farmer. Now I paint pictures of people.'

‘You mean a court painter? That bloke who sits up the back of the courtroom and draws pictures of the people on trial?'

‘No. People pay me to paint their portrait. They sit in a chair and I do an oil painting of them.'

‘Leaving out the rough bits.' Bert grins.

‘That's right. That's if I want to get paid. People don't judge a portrait painter on how good his paintings are. They judge him on how good they look in the painting.'

Bert laughs.

‘People. You can't beat them. Why are you going to Wensleydale?'

‘Helping a neighbour. He's trying to find his daughter and their two wagons. They're late back.'

‘How late?'

‘Three weeks. A bit more.'

‘That's not long. My dad was three years overdue once.'

‘I don't think this neighbour would be able to wait that long.'

‘Shall we ride a bit more?'

They stamp out the fire and rinse their cups in the creek. The horses are standing together under a currawalli tree; its branches hang down low to the ground. They are standing on either side of the tree, scratching their flanks against its trunk. Johnny likes the look of the currawalli tree. Its leaves always seem too big for its branches, giving it a top-heavy look. The men draw the horses away from the trunk of the tree and are soon on their way.

Bert is tall and thin. When he pushes his hat back on his head he looks even taller. He has a face that makes him look like a hard man. Johnny realises now that he has seen photographs of him in the daily paper; he assumes that they received those photographs from the police. They looked like they were police-style photographs. Except for one he saw of Bert as he sat exhausted in a tram shelter after being jostled, according to the newspaper, by a group of drunken thugs. One trouser leg was up his calf as he looked into the camera, evidently too tired to look away or complain about the photographer's intrusion.

‘Why are you going to Sydney?' asks Johnny.

Bert sits back in the saddle. He looks into the scrub by the side of the road for a few moments. ‘Well, Johnny, I am going to join the army. I
have been trying for a long time to abandon the way I have been living. I want to do something, I don't know . . . decent, something worthwhile. I fell into my life just like anyone falls into anything. I don't feel I had much say in it. And now I am Melbourne's favourite career criminal. Everyone knows me or about me so it doesn't matter anymore whether I commit a crime or not, if I can be stitched for something then everybody is happy. Except me. The papers, the police, the politicians, the man in the street, they're all happy. It doesn't matter that I didn't commit the crime or that the real criminal is still free. Doesn't matter at all.'

He looks over at Johnny. ‘I figure I am a sure bet for the hangman's noose one of these days. I'll be charged with a murder and they'll be happy to wrap it around me. That's why I left in a hurry this morning; word is that I'm about to be set up for something. So I had to move quick. Hence the city clothes. I'm going to join the army in Sydney where I'm not known. The way things are looking, there will soon be a war and we'll all be going over to Europe to help out the mother country.'

‘A war? But I thought they were talking their way out of it?'

Fatigue comes into Bert's voice again. ‘They're not even trying to talk their way out of it. The papers just say they are. We'll be at war before the year is finished. And if we are, then that means most of the world will be.'

‘Why?' Johnny asks, dismayed at the idea.

‘One word. Progress.' Bert makes it sound like a sad word.

‘I don't understand.'