Somewhere around the Corner Read Free Page B

there. Maybe cane cutting, if they can get that far. I couldn’t stay in Sydney by myself. I was living with them so I could go to school. There’s no school in the gully and Dad wanted me to get on. Ma says I’ve got to get the Intermediate. Uncle Bill was going to pay my fare back to the gully, but they’ve hardly got tuppence to rub together, so I said I’d find my own way home.’
    ‘He let you—’
    ‘Well, no.’ Young Jim grinned in the darkness. ‘I left a note. He’ll be as mad as a hornet when he finds I’ve gone, but there’s not much he can do about it. He’ll know I’ll be all right. I can look after myself.’
    There was a clanking up ahead. Young Jim stiffened, wondering if the train was going to start.
    ‘What’s happening? What’s that?’
    ‘Getting a full head of steam. Don’t they have trains where you come from?’
    ‘Not steam trains.’
    She seemed matter of fact. Young Jim cranedaround, trying to see her face in the darkness. Surely her story couldn’t be true. Nah, she’d hit her head, that’s all. Or maybe she had rats in her attic, although she seemed the full quid apart from that. Young Jim wriggled back in the boxes, trying to find a comfortable position.
    ‘Can’t your uncle get a job in Sydney?’
    ‘You kidding. What bally jobs? It’s a depression.’
    Barbara’s voice was thoughtful beside him. ‘I’ve heard about the Depression. Nearly everyone was unemployed, weren’t they?’
    ‘Nearly everyone is unemployed. You’re in the middle of it now.’ For a moment Young Jim wondered if she really could have…Nah.
    ‘About one in three, one in four, don’t have jobs, they reckon. I dunno though, it seems like most people to me. That’s why we’re down in Poverty Gully. Dad had a job in Sydney, a real good job in a shoe factory, then it closed down. He got another job as a nightwatchman, then that place closed too. Dad thought he might have a chance panning for gold. Poverty Gully used to be a real boom town in the old days, gold mines all over the place. Dad was going to try his luck all by himself, but Ma said no, where he goes we all go.’
    ‘Did he find gold?’ Her voice sounded sleepy, nestled down in the boxes of soap.
    ‘Nah. Not yet anyway. I reckon most of the gold was all worked out years ago. Just about everyone who comes to the gully thinks they’re going to find gold. Doesn’t take them long to realise it’s all worked out. Only one who thinks he’s going to find gold now is Gully Jack, and he’s as nutty as a fruit cake. But Ma reckons there isn’t much use moving on. Not till things get better. Dad put up a shack, and he’s got a vegie garden going: tomatoes, cabbages like you wouldn’t believe—you should see the soil down there—and there’s water and all the rabbits you can trap.’
    ‘What do you do with the rabbits?’
    ‘Eat them, of course. Haven’t you ever had a rabbit? Cripes, what I couldn’t do to a roast bunny now…and you can sell the skins, too. Poverty Gully’s a real beaut place in summer, though it can be cruel in winter when the wind blows off the tablelands. I told you, the gully’s not like some of those other susso camps. I wouldn’t go near those with a ten-foot pole. Poverty Gully’s different.’
    ‘Why?’ asked Barbara drowsily.
    ‘What do you mean?’ It had never occurred to him to question it before. ‘I dunno—maybe because we’re all in the same boat. I mean the farmers round there are living on the smell of an oily rag too, what withprices down and everything. They’re not going to stick their noses up at someone else who’s down on their luck. Maybe ’cause it’s just easier living in the valley. At least there’s always plenty to eat, even if it’s stewed eel and tomatoes and bread and scrape…’ Young Jim paused. ‘You know, I reckon it’s different because we all work together. I mean, it’s not like the other camps where people went because they had nowhere else to go. We