A Town like Alice

Midhurst homestead. It was prettily situated on a low hill above the bend of a creek; this creek was not running, but there were still pools of water held along its length. "Of course, you're seeing it at the worst time of year," he said, and she became aware of his anxiety. "It's a lovely little river in the winter, oh my word. But even in the worst part of the dry, like now, there's always water there."
    The homestead was a fairly large building that stood high off the ground on posts, so that you climbed eight feet up a flight of steps to reach the veranda and the one floor of the house. It was built of wood and had the inevitable corrugated iron roof. Four rooms, three bedrooms and one sitting-room, were surrounded on all four sides by a veranda twelve feet deep; masses of ferns and greenery of all sorts stood in pots and on stands on this veranda at the outer edge and killed most of the direct rays of the sun. There was a kitchen annexe at one end and a bathroom annexe at the other; the toilet was a little hut over a pit in the paddock, some distance from the house. Most of the life of the building evidently went on in the veranda and the rooms seemed to be little used; in the veranda was Joe's bed and his mosquito net, and several cane easy chairs, and the dining-room tables and chairs. Suspended from the rafters was a large canvas waterbag cooling in the draft, with an enamelled mug hung from it by a string.
    Five or six dogs greeted them noisily as the utility came to a standstill before the steps. He brushed them aside, but pointed out a large blue and yellow bitch like no dog Jean had ever seen before. "That's Lily," he said fondly. "She had a bonza litter, oh my word."
    He took her up into the coolness of the veranda; she turned to him. "Oh Joe, this is nice!"
    "Like it?" Puppies were surging about them, grovelling and licking their hands; odd-shaped yellow and blue puppies. Along the veranda a small animal stood erect behind a chair, peering at them around the corner. Joe took the puppies one by one and dropped them into a wire-netting enclosure in one corner. "I let them out this morning before driving in," he said. "They'll be big enough to go down in the yard pretty soon."
    "Joe, who fixed up these plants? Did you?"
    He shook his head. "Mrs Spears did that, when she used to live here. I kept them going. The lubras water them, morning and evening." He told her that he had three Abo women, wives of three of his stockriders, who shared the domestic duties of the homestead and cooked for him.
    He looked around. "There's the joey somewhere." They found the little wallaby lolloping about on the other side of the veranda; it stood like a little kangaroo about eighteen inches high, and had no fear of them. Jean stooped beside it and it nibbled at her fingers. "What do you feed it on, Joe?"
    "Bread and milk. It's doing fine on that."
    "Don't the puppies hurt it?"
    "They chase it now and then, but it can kick all right. A full-grown wallaby can kill a dog. Rip him right up." He paused, watching her caress the little creature, thinking how lovely she was. "It's all in fun," he said. "They get along all right. By and by when he gets bigger and the dogs are bigger he'll get angry with them, and then he'll go off into the bush."
    A fat, middle-aged lubra, a black golliwog of a woman, laid the table and presently appeared with two plates of the inevitable steak with two eggs on the top, and a pot of strong tea. Jean had become accustomed to the outback breakfast by this time but this steak was tougher than most; she made mental notes to look into the Midhurst cooking as she struggled with it. In the end she gave up and sat back laughing. "I'm sorry, Joe," she said. "It's because I'm English, I suppose."
    He was very much concerned: "Have a couple more fried eggs. You haven't eaten anything."
    "I've eaten six times as much as I ever ate in England for breakfast, Joe. Who does the cooking?"
    "Palmolive did this," he said. "It's her day. Mary cooks much better; but it's her day off."
    "Who are they, Joe?"
    "I've got a ringer called Moonshine," he said. "Palmolive's his gin. My boss Abo, he's called Bourneville; he's a bonza boy. Mary's his gin. Mary cooks all right."
    "Tell me, Joe," she said, "do you ever get any indigestion?"
    He grinned. "Not very often. Just now and then."
    "You won't mind if I reorganize the cooking a bit when I come in?"
    "Not so long as you don't do it all yourself," he said.
    "You wouldn't like