Nothing Lasts Forever Read online

  He looked around the corner of his shed to check the sheep in the next paddock. They had moved into the nearest thicket of scrub, and were pressing together for protection, milling around in confusion.

  As quickly as it had arrived, the storm moved on, east, over the range. Mel felt relieved. He’d seen snow a few months back, in the dead of winter, when the ice was soft and giving. This ice was hard as a rock, and as he glanced at the fruit trees in the homestead paddock on his way to supper, he saw some were damaged. He’d make that his first job in the morning, he decided…pruning and clearing away the damage before Mrs. Phillips got too upset. He knew the big bottle-brush tree shading his shed was damaged as well. A lot of leaves had been shredded, and a branch was split. He’d better attend to that after supper in case it fell and did some damage.

  One day, while placing his bag of vegetables on the path to the camp, Mel was confronted by an aborigine youth, his face smeared and striped with coloured mud. He’d heard they wore war-paint, and the thought of that chilled his heart. The near naked young man had a ferocious expression on his face, and Mel stared at the formidable heavy brow jutting sharply over black glittering eyes. He felt his heart pounding like a drum and hoped the aborigine wouldn’t hear it and mistake it for a war drum. He didn’t want trouble with these ‘blacks’ as he’d heard them called…it would undermine all his efforts to be useful and trouble free. He liked where he was at the moment.

  The two young men stared at each other barely ten feet apart, Mel painfully aware of the spear in the other’s hand. If it was his time to die he’d face it like a man. He wouldn’t turn and run, though it took a lot of self control to keep him there.

  Almost hypnotized by the ferocious eyes staring at him, Mel swallowed his fear. How long they stood there, Mel didn’t know. He only knew his own eyes wanted to dart away from the unrelenting stare, but he couldn’t let that happen. He didn’t know why, but it seemed important not to back down. He’d stand his ground and hold that hostile stare to the end, even if that end was on the tip of that sharp spear.

  Then the aborigine’s stance relaxed. He smiled a wide, white-toothed grin, and for a moment Mel thought he was imagining it. But the aborigine stepped forward and placed a huge friendly hand on Mel’s shoulder, still with that wide smile on his face.

  Mel responded by lifting a hand to place on the aborigine’s shoulder, hoping he was not shaking as much as he thought he was, while trying to summon a smile to his frozen face. The aborigine muttered something Mel didn’t understand, making Mel aware of the difficulties in communication.

  Mel was led off the path into the scrub beside the creek, and he followed the aborigine warily. How long would it take before his body was found, he wondered? Running wasn’t the answer, either. Mel didn’t doubt the aborigine’s skill with his throwing spear. The aborigine squatted down in a small clearing in the scrubby bushes, and indicated Mel should do the same. Realizing the problem of communication, Mel bravely used a finger to draw in the damp earth.

  He drew an arrow pointing to himself and said with a smile, “me, Mel.”

  The aborigine looked confused. Mel tapped himself on the chest and repeated “Mel.”

  The aborigine tapped himself on the chest and repeated “Mel.” His voice was deep and seemed to rumble in his chest.

  Mel shook his head and tapped his chest again. “Mel.”

  The aborigine’s eyes brightened. He finally got it. He tapped Mel and said “Mel” as he pointed a strong finger.

  Mel laughed and nodded, grasping the aborigine’s arms in delight at the breakthrough. The smile slipped from the aborigine’s face as he glared at Mel’s hands grasping his arms.

  Without hesitation, Mel released his grip, trying bravely to keep a friendly smile on his face. “Mel,” he repeated, jabbing his chest again.

  The aborigine’s expression softened, and he poked Mel’s chest. “Mel.”

  And so began the lasting friendship between Mel and Joe, the name decided by mutual agreement at future meetings. Their grunts developed into a language only they knew. The grunts eventually became punctuated with something bordering on English, then into ‘pidgin English’. At a later meeting Mel drew dirt maps for Joe, so he understood where Mel came from. He also drew a good resemblance of the ship he’d arrived in, so Joe knew without doubt he’d come over the water. “Other land fella,” Joe said. He learned quickly.

  Joe drew maps for Mel, to show he had been inland, and drew pictures of strange lizards, kangaroos and emus; the latter Mel hadn’t sighted yet. Mel was delighted to have Joe as his friend, but never let on to William. He missed the companionship of his youth.

  Chapter Five

  Joe took Mel exploring. There were many aboriginal artifacts from previous tribes if you knew where to look for them…under rocks or deep in old tree roots. Each artifact had a story, and Mel was enthralled. In the back country, where the grass was coarse and yellow, Joe showed Mel the faded Bora Rings. These rings had played a significant role in the daily and spiritual lives of ancient Aboriginal people, and were only found in this area of southeast Queensland and northern New South Wales.

  In Joe’s opinion, many tribes had occupied the area over the years, not many staying for the cold winters. Those who braved the cold often used possum skins as short cloaks around bare shoulders. Joe spoke of the Kambu Wal tribe, the Keinjan tribe, and the Githabul people, a clan of Bundjalung. A stone tool Joe uncovered was decided, after much turning and studying, as coming from ‘other land, over water’. Mel held it for a while. It was completely foreign to him, and very primitive. There were many dreamtime stories in the carvings they found on rocks and trees. Mel realised that the Aborigine dreamtime beliefs were not so different from Samoan legends.

  Joe taught Mel a few aborigine words. Boonoo Boonoo in the Boorook tribe referred to the local ‘Big Rock’…Bald Rock to the Europeans. Thulimbah…place of water. Wallangarra…long waterhole. Wyberba…at the end of the mountain. It reinforced Mel’s thinking that this land called Australia was very important to the aborigine people and they cared for it lovingly.

  Mel was weeding his vegetable garden one afternoon when he noticed two horsemen ride in down the long driveway. They rode directly to the back of the homestead and hitched their horses to the rail. William and May had noticed their arrival and waited in the shade of the verandah. The dusty riders, hats in hands, suggested they talk inside.

  William and May were devastated when the pastor and local policeman told the shocked parents that their only son John had died last evening in a fall from his horse. It was their sad duty to deliver the news as telegrammed to them from Armidale. Mel had been near enough to hear when the devastating news was delivered, and he watched through the open French doors as May’s face crumbled. Her heart was broken…such sad news.

  Mel took refuge in his vegetable patch, from where he could hear William asking questions of the riders while May sobbed. William stepped outside for a moment to allow his tears to flow unseen by May, who was sobbing uncontrollably in the arms of Daisy and Rose.

  Mel stiffened as a wailing such as he’d never heard before came from the river. The sounds undulated, much worse than those he’d heard while on the Kanaka ship.

  “It’s the gins,” William said, his face streaked by tears. “Don’t ask me how they know, but they’re grieving for John, guiding his spirit. It’s what I’d like to be able to do, but I’ll let them do it for me.” Mel wished he could be of some comfort to the squatter and his wife.

  Mel found himself at a loss when William and May took the train to Armidale to arrange the funeral. William asked the old shepherd from the far back paddock to drive them to the railway station, leaving Mel feeling very useless. He couldn’t work the sheep, couldn’t handle the horses, let alone drive the horse and cart. He was sure William had paid big money to release him from the cane-fields, and was getting little in return. Mel
decided he needed to do more for William, but what?

  Dave drove the horse and cart back to the railway station a week later to bring William and May back home, and everyone had to adjust to their grief. May wore it on her face…a sad expression which tugged at Mel’s heartstrings. William had some hard decisions to make, and smiled rarely. He didn’t want to leave the sheep station, so the worry was what to do with the store which they had securely locked when they left Armidale. There was a huge investment at stake here. Should they sell it or put in a manager they could trust; no mean feat with the distance between. It would sell better as a running concern.

  After many anguished discussions over many weeks May came up with the solution: send Mel to run the store for a while. He was trustworthy, willing, good with figures and got on well with people. Once the store re-opened, and business picked up, it could be sold at a good profit. But first Mel had to learn to ride.

  Mel was terrified of the huge animal beneath him, as it breathed in large gulps of air and snorted steam into the chilled morning air. And then the horse turned its head and nibbled on Mel’s foot. Good God, he was going to be eaten alive…and he’d thought they were hay eaters.

  William, beside Mel on another horse, grinned. “He likes you, Mel. Old Sam likes you.”

  Mel’s eyes were huge. Did this horse like him enough to eat him? He jerked his foot back, away from the huge teeth, and felt his heel dig the horse’s ribs. The animal lunged forward, almost unseating him. Mel grabbed a handful of the horse’s mane and leaned forward to regain balance, which encouraged the horse to pick up speed and trot forward.

  With his head bouncing uncontrollably, Mel looked to William for help. The squatter was waiting and watching intently, leaning back in his saddle, his horse extremely interested with its ears pricked forward.

  “Pull on the reins, Mel, like I showed you,” William yelled. Before he could add “gently,” Mel was sailing through the air, arms and legs thrashing like an out of balance windmill.

  He fell in a deflated heap in front of the stationary horse, which lowered its head and snorted at him in disgust. William was laughing so much that his horse began prancing and fidgeting, unaccustomed to the peculiar vibrations from its rider.

  William dismounted and bent over Mel, tears of laughter on his face. “Anything broken?”

  “Yes! Everything!” Mel gasped, his lungs fighting for the air unceremoniously knocked out of them. Once on his feet, Mel found he was really quite O.K., except for a crick in his back which he would work out later by hanging from a branch of the mulberry tree.

  Old Sam stretched his head towards Mel and gave him a shove. Mel controlled the impulse to shove back, unsure of the consequences.

  “Climb aboard and try again,” William said. “Sam is very forgiving and wants to give it another go. Just be gentle with the signals. Squeeze with your heels for go, pull gently on the reins for stop. Talk to him and tell him what you want him to do. You’ll be surprised how much he understands just by the tone of your voice.”

  Mel gingerly swung up into the saddle again, and Old Sam turned his head to look at him. Mel could swear the horse was laughing at him, he saw a devilish twinkle in its eyes. So, Old Sam was much amused by his non-existent riding skills, was he? He’d tell the damn horse just what he thought of him and try to get the gist of this riding thing before he ended up with a broken neck.

  An hour later, William yelled from the other side of the corral fence. “You’ve got the feel of it now. See how Old Sam’s ears are swiveling to listen to what you tell him?”

  Thankfully Old Sam didn’t understand what Mel was saying. If he knew, he’d have dumped his rider for sure. Mel had delivered the insults in a soft sing-song voice which the horse seemed to find quite soothing.

  They rode side-by-side out of the corral into the open paddock, William changing the pace constantly. Mel found he was quite enjoying it, but common sense told him Old Sam was not taking instructions from his rider, he was just doing what William’s horse was doing and staying out of trouble.

  Day by day Mel’s riding improved. William was suitably impressed. “You have the seat of a gentleman, Mel. Straight of back, casual but in full control. You have good hands for riding. Now you need to try on the clothing May has bought for you. We need you to look the part to manage the store for us.”

  Mel looked at his reflection in the full-length mirror and barely recognized the person staring back at him. With new shiny leather boots, tight trousers, shirt, vest and tie, and a hat tilted rakishly he looked like a prosperous businessman as illustrated in one of May’s magazines. The change was amazing. Even his golden skin did not seem so obvious in the fancy European clothes.

  “I think this will work,” May said with a wide smile, and Mel was pleased to see pleasure in her eyes for a change. “Mel has the stature and intelligence to carry this off!”

  William nodded thoughtfully. “How long do we plan on keeping the store, May? Is Mel to be temporary manager until we can find a buyer, or what?”

  “Let’s play it by ear,” May said. “John was always telling us what a goldmine the store was.”

  They had discussed it at length, the three of them, over and over again, and Mel realised the enormity of trust put on him. He already had the feel of the store, working on the books in his capacity as ‘numbers man’, but actually bearing the full responsibility of this enterprise would be a whole new experience. He would not let them down, he thought, crossing his fingers for luck.

  Mel sat proudly on the magnificent big bay horse, a recent acquisition by William. They rode side by side for three days on their trek to Armidale, over the border in New South Wales. Mel was disappointed to find no wall or fence at the border; nothing at all to define it.

  “It’s a line on the map, see here?” William explained later as they waited for the billy to boil. Mel noticed the way William unfolded the map with care.

  Mel’s finger traced their progress on the map, from Jumbuck Downs to where they were now. “The border,” he said as his finger moved along it.

  “You’ve got it!” William said. He was always surprised and impressed with the intelligence of this young man.

  What William didn’t know was that Mel had studied a map privately, torn from an old newspaper, and had drawn a replica in the sand for Joe. That had been the hard part, saying good-bye to Joe. Their parting had been brief and sad, with a hand on each other’s shoulder. Joe mumbled something about going walkabout, which Mel knew was the custom of his people. The whole camp sometimes went off for months at a time, to avoid the cold winter, leaving the two women who worked in the homestead to sleep in one of the outhouses until the tribe returned. Some of the ways of the Aborigines were strange, Mel decided, while others were quite remarkable, not unlike the ways of the ancient Samoans.

  The countryside they rode through was the prettiest Mel had ever seen, and William was a wealth of information. “Armidale was gazetted as a town in 1849, then proclaimed a city in 1885.” William informed Mel. “But most of the citizens don’t live in the centre of town. They have large lots of pastoral land with their own villages to accommodate dozens of workers. And when the workers come to town, it is pretty chaotic. Armidale is the highest town in the country with thriving commercial ventures in the outer areas…breweries, inns and flour mills. But the fastest growth has been pastoral.”

  “Why is it called Armidale?” Mel was always interested, and William smiled at the question.

  “The story goes that a Scottish born Lands Commissioner set up his base here in 1839. He called the site Armidale after the seat of his clan on the Isle of Skye.”

  The information might as well have been in another language; Mel couldn’t fully understand, but he nodded anyway.

  When they first sighted the buildings which made up the city in the late afternoon sunlight Mel’s pulse quickened. In spite of a numb bum a
nd his calves burning with the chafe of stirrup leathers from the long ride, Mel felt strangely exhilarated. He had a good feeling about this place.

  The town spread over a huge area, much larger than he had anticipated with streets crossing over streets in an orderly fashion. It seemed to be well planned; nothing haphazard about it. This was to be his new home, and he would be almost a free man. His loyalty to William would ensure he would carry this responsibility to the utmost of his capabilities. He felt a deep gratitude to the old sheep farmer, and wouldn’t let him down.

  The clutter of commercial buildings consisted of the reasonably new Imperial Hotel which shared the Cobb & Co stables and yard, a blacksmith, and a long building housing a doctor’s residence, a lawyer, a bank, and a few more older hotels to cope with the rush when the station workers came to town.

  Across the street was an impressive building with a colonnaded front, housing the Lands Board office and the post office. St Peters Anglican cathedral caught Mel’s eye, it being the first Gothic-style cathedral in Australia built entirely of bricks, not the usual stone. Mel was mesmerized by the cathedral, he’d never seen anything like it; Impressive but beautiful, with amazing lead-light windows. The patterns in the brickwork and the arches formed with bricks left him puzzling how it could be done.

  Mel didn’t realize at first that his horse had stopped in its tracks as though it, too, was impressed with the beautiful building.

  “There is a tower to be built on to the church at a later date…rumor has it that it went over budget.” William was also stationary beside Mel. He had done his research on the area years ago before investing in the store. Further south was a smaller Catholic Cathedral and the Town Hall. The rest of the main street was lined with homes for the town workers, built of various materials and varying styles.

  The general store stood apart from the new hotel on a small parcel of land, around ten acres, owned freehold, William said, so Mel had access to all of it. The residence was behind the store under the same roof, and Mel grinned with delight as he roamed through it. Small though it was, dusty and draped with spiders webs, he thought it a mansion. He had his own kitchen and living area, a bedroom, store room for the store, and just outside was the outhouse for washing clothes and bodies, with a wood heated copper for hot water. Such luxury!