agricultural education in the development of a truly modern society. Most of us have been on the train for several tours â a year or more â but we still listen politely.
Some of the men ask about my sewing. Mr Baker breaks off from pig talk and points at my lap. âAnd what useful item are you making there, Miss Finnegan?â I hold the lace netting out to him. âAh, a veil.â His whiskers dip and bob as he speaks. âDo you have a sister getting married?â âI have no sisters.â Mary covers the marriage terrain for me as we lie on our bunks. It amuses her so I feign interest. Sister Crock is already snoring loudly in the next compartment. Mary starts with the older, portly men and works down to the more likely. Many of them are damaged, either by the war or by work. Several have lost fingers. Mr Plattfuss has a glass eye. Mr Baker has a glass eye and an ugly dragging scar across his cheek where a sharp fencing wire has danced upon him. All of the older men, that is older than thirty, have sun-roughened skin and thinning hair. Mr Pettergree, the new soil and cropping expert, seems to be some sort of scientific recluse. He never comes to the sitting car and we have only seen him from a distance. âAnd what think you of the Asiatic?â Mary asks me with mock formality. I laugh, but the truth is I think of Mr Ohno a great deal. I imagine him standing in the poultry car taking off his jacket. He hands it to me so I can study its strange seams and creases. Then I canât help but lift it to my face. Only one of the men is beautiful â Mr Kit Collins from horticulture. Mr Kit Collins has large green eyes and curly hair. He is an expert on the pruning and irrigation of fruit trees. On rest days when the men play cricket in a paddock next to the train, Mr Kit Collins always switches the ball for an orange, and the batsman always pretends he hasnât noticed until after the orange has been hit and flies mushily through the air.
â 2 â FRANK FINNEGANâS FRUIT 1915 M y dad gave me an orange every day. Each peeling was an exploration â they were all different â on the outside and on the inside too. My dad was an orchardist â Frank Finneganâs Fruit . He smelt of soil and oranges just on the turn. His cheeks were gravelly and bits of pith filled out the gaps between his teeth. He sent me to school at four to get me out from under him. I walked down the hill and across the creek, the orange rolling backwards and forwards in my metal case. We had a cat called Abe who walked nearly all of the way with me but he got shy near the road and slunk back home even though I tried to call him across or lead him with a bit of torn-up sandwich. I had sticky fingers. The books always got dirty. I spilled the ink. My white embroidery square was crumpled and smeary. It said Jean Finneg â I wasnât able to finish it. My hair had knots, but only at the back. First thing each morning we did physical jerks outside by the flagpole. My bonnet flopped in my eyes. I couldnât stand on one leg or stretch up tall like a giraffe without wobbling. My mother died before my eyes had barely opened and because of this people liked to touch me and give me things. Most weeks the teacher gave me something from her pocket â a hair slide, a picture of the Baby Jesus all fat and white like a grub, or a piece of chocolate. A special low voice went with the giving and some patting of my arm or head. I thought that this was like me with Abe the cat, so I tried to stay still for her and look happy to be petted. I liked the singing and when the teacher read us a story. I didnât like all the numbers dancing around getting taken in or taken away by the other numbers. I didnât like the spelling words that stayed on the blackboard all week until the test on Friday: cho-rus, shrap-nel, corps, kha-ki. I didnât like it when the teacher split us into boys