Racing the Moon Read online

  The cabin wasn’t quite what I’d expected – some of the panes of glass in the windows were broken, and there were bars on the outside and no curtains on the inside. My home away from home, I thought. Above the doorway was another big crucifix, while a cracked and faded painting of Our Lady holding baby Jesus looked down on me from the cabin wall.

  It felt good to take off my St Bart’s uniform and stow it away under the bed. It was hard to believe that earlier that day, I was still locked in an isolation room at St Bart’s wearing a woollen blazer, tie and black leather school shoes; and then five hours later I was at a reformatory in the country putting on overalls and going barefoot. Teddy would be proud of me, I thought, as I walked out onto the verandah.

  ‘Find a pair of gumboots that fit,’ Sister Agnes said, pointing to the wooden box and then closing her eyes. While I rummaged through the box of gumboots, she rubbed her rosary beads and prayed.

  I tried on one boot after another until I found a matching pair that I could walk in without falling over. They all seemed to be either large or extra-large.

  I stood there waiting for Sister Agnes to stop praying and open her eyes. She looked so peaceful – I didn’t want to disturb her.

  ‘The boys are working down in the vegetable garden,’ she said, suddenly looking straight at me. ‘Go over the first cattle stop, past the barn and the cattle and sheep paddocks, then over the second cattle stop. Sister Cornelius will be waiting for you.’

  Sister Agnes walked back to the house, leaving me to find my own way. I had no idea what a cattle stop was and I wasn’t sure that I deserved her trust at this early stage of the game.

  On my way to the barn, I crossed a small bridge built into the track with wide gaps between the timber slats. Must be a cattle stop, I thought, because it’d be impossible for cows to get across without falling through the gaps.

  Walking past paddocks with cattle and sheep grazing, I felt a sense of freedom that I hadn’t felt in a long time. I couldn’t believe that this was my punishment for punching Brother Felix in the face and breaking his nose. It was heaven compared to the isolation room at St Bart’s.

  I wasn’t watching where I was going and tripped over what must have been the second cattle stop, getting splinters in my hand. I got up and looked around but couldn’t see anyone.

  Further along on my right was an orchard with apple, orange, lemon and other fruit trees. There were only a handful of apples left high up in the trees but lots of oranges and lemons ready for picking.

  As I stopped to pull the splinters out of my hand, I watched the sun sink behind the mountain, which was so close I felt that I could reach out and touch it. The pink sky was fading to grey and a cold wind was blowing; it was the start of winter.

  CABBAGES AND CAULIFLOWERS

  CHAPTER 22

  ‘Hello, Joe – over here!’ a nun wearing a brown habit, dirty white apron, gumboots and swinging a stick called out. She was standing on a mound of dirt surrounded by a group of boys who seemed more interested in watching me than doing any work. Hurrying towards me, she wiped her dirty hands on her apron then held out a hand for me to shake. ‘I’m Sister Cornelius, your English, Science and Gardening teacher. Grab a hoe and start digging. We need to get this manure turned over and mixed in ready for spring. Get cracking – it’ll be dark soon.’ She didn’t look big enough or old enough to be a nun, and the stick she was holding was almost as tall as she was. There were at least twenty boys in the veggie garden wearing overalls and gumboots just like mine, only dirtier. I looked at the tools they were using and picked up one like theirs.

  ‘That hoe’s no good, mate. The head keeps flyin’ off,’ a small boy next to me said.

  ‘No talking, Pete. You know the drill,’ said Sister Cornelius. I took Pete’s advice and picked up a different hoe.

  It felt good digging in the dirt. The manure was all dried out and didn’t smell at all. I swung the hoe higher and higher until I got into a rhythm. The last garden tool I remembered using was a shovel to dig a hole in the backyard to bury our old cat, Sammy.

  ‘Well done, boys!’ Sister Cornelius called out. ‘Time to pack up the tools and get these cabbages and cauliflowers to the kitchen.’

  We piled up the cabbages and cauliflowers as high as we could in the wheelbarrow and then carried the rest. They were so big we could only carry two each.

  ‘Cabbage makes me fart,’ Pete said, juggling his two cabbages.

  ‘Me too,’ I said, and we both laughed.

  ‘Watch this!’ he said, throwing a cabbage in the air and kicking it three times before catching it. When I tried to do the same, my cabbage split open. I quickly picked up the two halves before Sister Cornelius noticed.

  We carried them to the kitchen, waiting outside on the verandah. It was the first time that I’d met Mrs Lucas – the cook, housekeeper and Henry’s wife. She isn’t as friendly as Henry, and is about twice his size.

  ‘Where am I s’posed to put all those?’ she said, throwing her arms up in the air. ‘Ya may as well leave ’em in the wheelbarra an’ put the rest on the table. At this rate, we’ll be eatin’ cabbages an’ cauliflowers till the cows come home.’

  We did our best to balance them on the long table but as soon as we walked away, some of the cabbages rolled off. Pete and I kept going; it wasn’t our problem anymore.

  While two boys took it in turns to pump water from a forty-four gallon drum, the rest of us lined up, washing our hands in the outside washbasin that looked more like a cattle trough. The water in the trough was a dark grey by the time it was my turn to wash. Showers are only every second day so I’d have to wait another day for that privilege.

  I was one of the boys on wood duty, so I carried armfuls of chopped wood into the kitchen and stacked them next to the fireplace for Mrs Lucas.

  A huge kettle and two enormous pots were hanging from chains over the blazing fire. It was much warmer in the kitchen than outside on the verandah where I then sat down with the rest of the boys, shivering and waiting for dinner to be served. The nuns sat inside around the kitchen table with Henry and Mrs Lucas to eat their dinner.

  We had cabbage and cauliflower soup that night, which tasted better than it sounds. The hot freshly baked bread wasn’t half bad either. Mrs Lucas might be an old grump, but she knows how to cook.

  After the table was cleared and the dishes washed, wiped and put away, I needed to go to the dunny. Looking around out the back in the dark, I couldn’t see anything.

  ‘Where’s the dunny?’ I asked Pete.

  He put up his hand to get the attention of Sister Cornelius. ‘Sister, can I show Joe where the dunny is?’

  ‘You know the rules, Pete – it’s one at a time. Joe, you just need to go down the track past the cabins until you get to the flame trees then turn right. You can’t miss it.’

  With only a kerosene lantern to light my way, I followed the dirt track, my gum boots flicking up stones as I walked. I watched the light from my lantern reflecting back at me from the cabin windows. A family of kookaburras started laughing in the nearby flame trees, their laughter echoing off the mountain that was hidden in the darkness. Crickets were chirping all around, and I could feel eyes watching me the whole time. I managed to find the dunny, which, at first, looked like any other dunny back home. The timber was held together with a few rusty nails and the door was hanging off. I heard a buzzing sound before I smelt the stench. Inside, the toilet was just a hole in the ground, a bit like Uncle George’s but more disgusting and covered with the biggest flies I’d ever seen.

  I wandered over to the flame trees and peed there instead, deciding that if I drank and ate less, I wouldn’t have to go to the toilet as often, and that whenever I got the chance, I’d just go somewhere in the bush. I remembered Walter, an Aboriginal boy at Glebe Public School, telling me that soft leaves and grass are just as good, if not better than newspaper for wiping your bum. I was keen to put it to the test.

  After dinner, Sister Cornelius and Si
ster Ambrose (who’s young like Sister Cornelius but much bigger) took it in turns to tell us Bible stories and parables around the campfire that was blazing on the far side of the cabins. It was magical listening to their soft Irish voices, watching the flames rising out of the burning logs. I lost myself in the stories about Cain and Abel, Abraham and the rest of the family. I can’t believe that Cain killed his own brother!

  It was a dark, starry night without any moon, and pitch black when it was time to go to bed.

  A kerosene lamp was flickering on the verandah of the cabin and I could see two buckets, one at either end – our night toilets – so that we didn’t have to find our way out the back in the dark.

  That first night, I kept warm by breathing and farting under my two thin blankets. Judging by the noises and smells coming from the other beds, we were all doing the same thing. Must have been the cabbage and cauliflower soup we had for dinner.

  GETTING THE HANG OF IT

  CHAPTER 23

  ‘Wake up, mate, yer on bucket duty.’

  Pulling my overalls up over the shirt I’d slept in, I followed a broad-shouldered boy with a deep voice I’d recognised from the day before, out onto the verandah.

  ‘Pick up that bucket, I’ll get this one,’ he said. ‘There’s a trench down near the creek where we empty ’em.’

  As soon as I picked up the bucket and started walking, yellow pee and brown turds splashed onto my overalls and bare feet. Everyone laughed, and some boys whistled. They were all watching, waiting for the show, and I didn’t disappoint.

  ‘G’day, I’m Lance, ya team foreman. Congratulations, yer officially a Farm boy,’ he said, smirking. One of his front teeth was missing and the other one was black. I shook hands with him, even though I felt like punching his head in. Lance put a pole through the handle of my bucket. ‘Grab the other end – it takes two to empty a night bucket.’

  We walked along the dirt track, down past the orchard and veggie garden, emptying the first bucket into a trench, not too far from a creek that flowed around the base of the mountain. ‘Alright then,’ Lance said, ‘let’s get the other one. I’ll race ya.’ He got a head start but I was faster – I ran like the wind. By the time I jumped onto the verandah, Lance was still coming past the barn. When all the boys cheered, I raised the pole in the air, waving it around like a flag.

  ‘Smart arse,’ Lance said, as we picked up the second bucket.

  The barn is also the milking shed. Every morning and afternoon, we’re on rosters to herd the cows into the shed, wash their teats ready for milking, milk them by hand, collect the milk buckets for separating or to go straight to the kitchen, use a separator to take the cream out, wash up everything, and then herd the cows back into their paddock.

  Pete showed me how to use the separator the first time I was on milking duty. As I turned the handle, he poured in bucket after bucket of fresh, warm milk, which spun around and around. The heavier milk moved towards the walls of the separator, while the lighter cream stayed in the middle. Milk started pouring out the bottom spout into one bucket while cream ran out the top spout into another. As each bucket of milk filled up, Pete swapped it for an empty one.

  We took the buckets of separated milk to the kitchen for breakfast, as well as half a bucket of cream for Mrs Lucas to churn into butter.

  It’d be so much easier to just buy the milk and butter, I thought. By the time we cleaned the separator, buckets and ladles, I was starving.

  Mrs Lucas had two large pots of bubbling porridge ready to serve. My mouth was watering as we said grace. There was no sugar, just honey from the beehives, which tastes even better. I poured milk and honey all over my porridge, mixing it in. Delicious! No sooner had Mrs Lucas put the bread and butter on the table than it was all gone. Henry supervised the boys on tea duty who poured thirty-two cups of hot tea, leaving room in the cups for lots of fresh milk and honey. Yum! I was on clearing up duty so I got to lick one of the ladles. I could’ve eaten a whole potful of porridge, I was so hungry. The porridge was much better than the slop we used to get at St Bart’s.

  Sister Agnes, Sister Cornelius and Sister Ambrose (or the Three Sisters as we call them) eat breakfast by themselves then join us when the tea is poured. Sister Agnes, the Principal, is always bright and cheery in the morning, but as the day wears on, she gets crankier and crankier until by late afternoon – watch out! ‘Good morning, boys. We are going to be blessed with another beautiful day,’ she says every morning – rain, hail or shine; only the roster changes.

  ‘About the roster for this morning: Lance, Pete, Charlie and Joe are on water duty. You’ll need to water the vegetable garden and fill up the animal troughs, kitchen basins and shower drums – it’s shower day. Trevor, Ray, Douglas and Tom are on wood duty. Now that the weather’s turned cold, we need a lot more wood chopped and split. Make sure you put all of the unseasoned wood in the barn, and only stack up the older, dried-out logs on the verandah.’

  And so the roster goes on until each of the eight work teams has been given their list of chores, which can also include: weeding, pruning and picking fruit and veggies in the orchard and veggie garden; clearing scrub, roots, rocks and weeds from a new paddock to get ready for ploughing; cleaning out the barn and chook pen; looking after the stock; digging up charcoal and making new pits; planting seeds, seedlings and trees; building and repairing fences; and collecting honey from the beehives (under Henry’s watchful eye).

  Water duty is a real chore. That day, I made twenty-seven trips, filling up and carting buckets of water from the creek to water the veggies, then filling up the animal and kitchen troughs, and the killer forty-four gallon shower drums.

  It took our team more than three hours, two swims and four water fights to do water duty. We’d tried to fire up the old pump to pump water from the creek to the veggie garden, but all it did was cough black soot over us. On our last trip back down to the creek to fill up the buckets, Pete was the first one to take off his overalls and jump in the water. It was our second swim of the day.

  ‘Is it still cold?’ I called out, undoing my overalls.

  ‘Find out for yaself !’ Lance said, pushing me into the creek. It wasn’t cold, it was freezing.

  ‘Bastard!’ I yelled, throwing my wet overalls at him, and then splashing him with as much water as I could before swimming away towards Pete. I caught up with him in the middle of the creek. Lance and Charlie stayed on the bank watching us. Neither of them could swim.

  ‘I’m glad I’ve got a swimmin’ partner,’ Pete said. ‘Not as much fun swimmin’ out here by meself. Do ya wanna see a waterfall?’

  ‘You bet!’ I swam with Pete further up the creek, through a school of very small fish that were darting about, trying to avoid us. The water was crystal clear but getting too deep to stand up in. Suddenly, something long, thin and snake-like glided past underneath me, going in the other direction. I caught up to Pete and tapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘Did you see that snake?’ I asked, treading water.

  ‘It wasn’t a snake, it was an eel,’ he said, laughing. ‘Take a look at that beauty!’ Pete pointed up at the mountain and the biggest waterfall I’d ever seen – actually it was the only waterfall I’d ever seen. Water was flowing over a rock ledge, half-way up the mountain, splashing into the creek below. ‘Ya wanna swim under it?’ he asked.

  ‘You bet!’ I shouted, swimming with him under the waterfall to the rock face, then in and out so many times, I lost count. It was a lot of fun, but we couldn’t keep it up for too long, we had work to do.

  ‘Ya lazy bludgers, get out o’ there!’ Lance said, waving his arms about. At least that’s what I thought he said – I couldn’t actually hear him. He was about fifty yards away, jumping up and down on the creek bank.

  Pete and I planned our attack. We swam back and filled up our buckets of water, put our overalls back on and then followed Lance and Charlie to the shower drums. Pete poured his bucket into one of the drums, while I tipped in the water fro
m my first bucket then threw the next one over Lance before running as fast as I could towards the flame trees for lunch. I was a marked man, but it was worth it to get back at Lance.

  The Three Sisters were waiting impatiently for us with the rest of the boys under the flame trees. No-one seemed to notice that my overalls were wet.

  Lance was fuming when he arrived, and kept giving me the evil eye. I don’t know why he was so angry; it was clean creek water that I threw over him, not the muck from the night buckets that went all over me that first morning.

  There were loaves of freshly baked bread, a slab of butter and a couple of jars of blackberry jam from Mrs Lucas’s pantry spread out on a rug on the grass. After saying grace and quickly demolishing my two slices, I took the opportunity to lie down and dry off in the noon-day sun.

  This is the life, I thought. Beats Rowing, Rugby and ’Rithmetic at St Bart’s any day.

  THE PITS

  CHAPTER 24

  After lunch we stood up under the flame trees, saying prayers and singing hymns. Sister Agnes has a beautiful voice, but although Sister Cornelius and Sister Ambrose sing with passion, they’re always out of time and out of tune – not a good combination. If more boys would’ve sung properly instead of mumbling, we wouldn’t have had to suffer listening to Sister Cornelius and Sister Ambrose sing their hearts out.

  As everyone was on charcoal duty that afternoon, we made our way past the orchard, veggie garden and beehives to the charcoal pits. There were piles of dead wood and mounds of dirt in the paddock, but no sign of any charcoal.