A Town Like Alice (23 page)

Rose was still looking round for work that would suit her.

"I like a shop," she said. "I couldn't ever learn shorthand, like you do. I like a shop all right, but I don't know that the dress shop is much catch. I can never tell what suits a person till I see it on, so I don't think I'll ever be a dress designer. I'd like to run a milk bar, that's what I'd like to do. I think it must be ever such fun, running a milk bar…"

Jean visited Mr Sawyer at the bank in his professional capacity, and arranged for him to transfer to Willstown any credits that might come for her account after she had gone. She left Alice Springs on Monday morning with regret, and the Sawyers and Macleans were sorry to see her go.

She flew all that day in a Dragonfly, and it was a very instructive day for her. The machine did not go directly to Cloncurry, but zigzagged to and fro across the wastes of Central Australia, depositing small bags of mail at cattle stations and picking up stockmen and travellers to drop them off after a hundred or a hundred and fifty miles. They landed eight or ten times in the course of the day, at Ammaroo and Hatches Creek and Kurundi and Rockhampton Downs and many other stations; at each place they would get out of the plane and drink a cup of tea and gossip with the station manager or owner, and get back into the plane and go on their way. By the end of the day Jean Paget knew exactly what the homestead of a cattle station looked like, and she was beginning to have a very good idea of what went on there.

They got to Cloncurry at dusk, a fairly extensive town on a railway that ran eastward to the sea at Townsville. Here she was in Queensland, and she heard for the first time the slow, deliberate speech of the Queenslander that reminded her of Joe Harman at once. She was driven into town in a very old open car and deposited at the Post Office Hotel; she got a bedroom but tea was over, and she had to go down the wide, dusty main street to a cafe for her evening meal. Cloncurry, she found, had none of the clean glamour of Alice Springs; it was a town redolent of cattle, with wide streets through which to drive the herds down to the stockyards, many hotels, and a few shops. All the houses were of wood with red-painted corrugated iron roofs; the hotels were of two storeys, but very few of the other houses were more than bungalows.

She had to spend a day here, because the air service to Normanton and Willstown ran weekly on a Wednesday. She went out after breakfast while the air was still cool and walked up the huge main street for half a mile till she came to the end of the town, and she walked down it a quarter of a mile till she came to the other end. Then she went and had a look at the railway station, and, having seen the aerodrome, with that she had exhausted the sights of Cloncurry. She looked in at a shop that sold toys and newspapers, but they were sold out of all reading matter except a few dressmaking journals; as the day was starting to warm up she went back to the hotel. She managed to borrow a copy of the Australian
Women's Weekly
from the manageress of the hotel and took it up to her room, and took off most of her clothes and lay down on her bed to sweat it out during the heat of the day. Most of the other citizens of Cloncurry seemed to be doing the same thing.

She revived shortly before tea and had a shower, and went out to the cafe for an ice-cream soda. Stupefied by the heavy meal of roast beef and plum pudding that the Queenslanders call 'tea' she sat in a deckchair for a little in the dusk of the veranda, and went to bed again at about eight o'clock.

She was called before dawn, and was out at the aerodrome with the first light. The aircraft this time was a vintage Dragon, which wandered round the cattle stations as on the previous flight, Canobie and Wandoola and Milgarra. About midday, after four or five landings, they came to the sea, a desolate marshy coast, and shortly after that they put down at Normanton. Half an hour later they were in the air again for Constance Downs station; they had a cup of tea here and a chat with the manager's wife, and took off on the last leg to Willstown.

They got there about the middle of the afternoon, and Jean got a bird's-eye view of the place as they circled for a landing. The country was well wooded with gum trees and fairly green; the Gilbert River ran into the sea about three miles below the town. There was deep, permanent water in it as far up as Willstown and beyond, because she could see a wooden jetty, and the river ran inland out of sight into the heat haze with water in it as far as she could see. All the other watercourses, however, seemed to be dry.

The town itself consisted of about thirty buildings, very widely scattered on two enormous intersecting streets or areas of land, for the streets were not paved. Only one building, which she later learned to be the hotel, was of two storeys. From the town dirt tracks ran out into the country in various directions. That was all that one could see of Willstown, that and a magnificent aerodrome put there in the war for defence purposes, with three enormous tarmac runways each a mile long.

They landed upon one of these huge runways, and taxied towards a truck parked at the runway intersection; this truck was loaded with two barrels of petrol and a semi-rotary pump for refuelling. The pilot said to Jean as he came down the cabin, "You're getting off here, Miss Paget? Is anyone meeting you?"

She shook her head. "I want to see a man who's living in this district, on one of the stations. I'll have to go to the hotel, I think."

"Who is it? Al Burns, the Shell agent out there on the truck, he knows everybody here."

She said, "Oh, that's a good idea. I want to see Mr Joe Harman. He's manager of Midhurst station."

They got out of the aeroplane together. "Morning, Al," the pilot said. "She'll take about forty gallons. I'll have a look at the oil in a minute. Is Joe Harman in town?"

"Joe Harman?" said the man in the truck. He was a lean, dark-haired man of forty or so. "Joe Harman's in England. Went there for a holiday."

Jean blinked, and tried to collect her thoughts. She had been prepared to hear that Harman was out on his property or even that he was away in Cairns or Townsville, but it was absurd to be told that he was in England. She was staggered for a moment, and then she wanted to laugh. She realized that the men were looking at her curiously. "I sent him a telegram to say that I was coming," she said foolishly. "I suppose he didn't get that."

"Couldn't have done," said Al Burns slowly. "When did you send it?"

"About four or five days ago, from Alice Springs,"

"Oh no, he wouldn't have got that. Jim Lennon might have it, out at Midhurst station."

"That's dinky-die is it?" the pilot asked. "He's gone to England?"

"Went about a month ago," the man said. "Jim Lennon said the other night that he'd be back about the end of October."

The pilot turned to Jean. "What will you do, Miss Paget? Do you want to stay here now? It's not much of a place, you know."

She bit her lip in thought. "When will you be taking off?" she asked. "You're going back to Cloncurry?"

"That's right," he replied. "We're going back to Normanton tonight and night-stopping there, and back to the Curry tomorrow morning. I'm going into town now while Al fills her up. Take off in about half an hour."

Cloncurry was the last place that she wanted to go back to. "I'll have to think about this," she said. "I'll have to stay in Australia, till I've seen Joe Harman. Cairns is a nice place to stay, isn't it?"

"Oh, Cairns is a bonza town," he said. "Townsville, too. If you've got to wait six or eight weeks you don't want to wait here, Miss Paget."

"How could I get to Cairns?" she asked.

"Well," he said. "You could come back with me to Cloncurry and then go by train to Townsville and up to Cairns. I don't quite know how long that would take in the tram-it must be between six and seven hundred miles. Or you could wait here till next Wednesday, today week, and go by the Dakota straight to Cairns in about two and a half hours."

"How long would the train take, from Cloncurry to Cairns?"

"Oh, I don't know about that. I don't think they go every day from Townsville to Cairns, but I'm not really sure. I think you'd have to allow three days." He paused. "Of course, the best way would be to fly from Cloncurry to Townsville and then fly up to Cairns."

"I know." She was getting very sensitive of the cost of flying these vast distances, but the alternative of three days in an outback train in sweltering heat was almost unbearable. "It’ll be much cheaper to stay here and go by the Dakota next week, wouldn't it?"

The pilot said, "Oh, much. From here to Cairns would cost you ten pounds fifteen shillings. Flying back to Cloncurry and then on to Townsville and Cairns would be about thirty pounds."

"I suppose the hotel here is quite cheap?"

"About twelve and six a day, I should think." He turned to the Shell agent, busy with the fuel. "Al, how much does Mrs Connor charge?"

"Ten and six."

Jean did a rapid mental calculation; by staying in this place and waiting for the Dakota in a week's time she would save sixteen pounds. "I think I'll stay here," she said. "It's much cheaper than going back with you. I'll stay here and see Jim Lennon and wait for the Dakota next week."

"You know what it's going to be like, Miss Paget?"

"Like the Post Office Hotel at Cloncurry?"

"It's a bit more primitive than that. The whatnot's out in the back yard."

She laughed. "Will I have to lock myself in my room and take a revolver to bed with me?"

He was a little shocked. "Oh, you'll find it quite respectable. But, well, you may find it a little primitive, you know."

"I expect I'll survive."

By that time another truck had appeared, a lorry with a couple of men in it; they stared at Jean curiously. The pilot took her suitcase and put it in the back; the driver helped her up into the cab beside him. It was a relief to get out of the blazing sunshine into the shade again.

The driver said, "Staying in Willstown?"

"I wanted to see Joe Harman, but they say he's away. I'm staying here till next week if Mrs Connor can have me, and going on to Cairns in the Dakota."

He looked at her curiously. "Joe Harman's gone to England. You're English, aren't you?"

The truck moved off down the wide tarmac runway. "That's right," she replied.

He beamed at her. "My mother and my dad, they both came from England. My dad, he was born in Lewisham, that's part of London, I think, and my mother, she came from Hull." He paused. "My name's Small," he said. "Sam Small, like the chap with the musket."

The truck left the runway and began bumping and swaying over the earth track leading to the town. Dust rose into the cab, the engine roared, and blue fumes enveloped them; every item of the structure creaked and rattled. "Why did Joe Harman go to England?" she shouted above the din. "What did he go for?"

"Just took a fancy, I think," Mr Small replied. "He won the Casket couple of years back." This was Greek to her. "There's not a lot to do upon the stations, this time of the year."

She shouted, "Do you know if there's a room vacant at the hotel?"

"Oh, aye, there'll be a room for you. You just out from England?"

"Yes."

"What's the rationing like at home, now?"

She shouted her information to him as the truck bumped and swayed across the landscape to the town. A wooden shack appeared on one side of the track, and fifty yards on there was another on the left; there was another some distance ahead, and they were in the main street. They drew up in front of a two-storeyed building with a faded signboard on the first-floor veranda, australian hotel. "This is it," said Mr Small. "Come on in, and I'll find Mrs Connor."

The Australian Hotel was a fair-sized building with about ten small bedrooms opening on to the top floor veranda. It had wooden floors and wooden doors; the whole of the rest of it was built of corrugated iron on a wood framework. Jean was accustomed by that time to the universal corrugated iron roofs, but a corrugated iron wall to her bedroom was a novelty. She waited on the upstairs veranda while Mr Small went to find Mrs Connor; the veranda had one or two beds on it. When the landlady appeared she was evidently only just awake; she was a tall, grey-haired determined woman of about fifty.

Jean said, "Good afternoon. My name's Jean Paget, and I've got to stop here till next week. Have you got a room?"

The woman looked her up and down. "Well, I don't know, I'm sure. You travelling alone?"

"Yes. I really came to see Joe Harman, but they tell me he's away. I'm going on to Cairns."

"You just missed the Cairns aeroplane."

"I know. They say I'll have to wait a week for the next one."

"That's right." The woman looked around. "Well, I don't know. You see, the men sleep out on this balcony, often as not. That wouldn't be very nice for you."

Sam Small said, "What about the two back rooms, Ma?"

"Aye, she could go there." She turned to Jean. "It's on the back balcony, looks out over the yard. You'll see the boys all going to the gents, but I can't help that."

Jean said, "I expect I'll survive that."

"You been in outback towns before?"

She shook her head. "I've only just come out from England."

"Is that so! What's it like in England now? Do you get enough to eat?" Jean said her piece again.