A Town like Alice

"Sort of," he replied. "We met once in the war, in Malaya that was. I'll have to tell you who I am, of course. I'm a Queenslander. I run a station in the Gulf country, about twenty miles from Willstown." He spoke very slowly and deliberately, not from embarrassment but because that seemed to be his way. "I mean the homestead is twenty miles from the town, but one limb of the land runs down the creek to within five miles. Midhurst, that's the name of my station. Midhurst, Willstown, is the address."
    I made a note upon my pad, and smiled at him again. "You're a long way from home, Mr Harman," I said.
    "Too right," he replied. "I don't know nobody in England except Miss Paget and a cobber I met in the prison camp who lives at a place called Gateshead in the north of England. I came here for a holiday, you might say, and I thought perhaps Miss Paget might be glad to know that I'm in England, but I don't know her address."
    "Rather a long way to come for a holiday?" I observed.
    He smiled a little sheepishly. "I struck it lucky. I won the Casket."
    "The Casket?"
    "The Golden Casket. Don't you have that here?"
    I shook my head. "I'm afraid I've never heard of it."
    "Oh my word," he said. "We couldn't get along without the Casket in Queensland. It's the State lottery that gets the money to build hospitals."
    "I see," I said. "Did you win a prize in the lottery?"
    "Oh my word," he repeated. "Did I win a prize. I won a thousand pounds-not English pounds, of course, Australian pounds, but it's a thousand pounds to us. I always take a ticket in every Casket like everybody else because if you don't get a prize you get a hospital and there's times when that's more useful. You ought to see the hospital the Casket built at Willstown. Three wards it's got, with two beds in each, and two rooms for the sisters, and a separate house for the doctor only we can't get a doctor to come yet because Willstown's a bit isolated, you see. We've got an X-ray apparatus there and a wireless so that the sister can call for the Cairns Ambulance-the aeroplane, you know. We couldn't do without the Casket."
    I must say I was a little bit interested. "Does the Casket pay for the aeroplane, too?"
    He shook his head. "You pay seven pounds ten a year to the Cairns Ambulance, each family, that is. Then if you get sick and have to go to Cairns the sister calls Cairns on the wireless and the aeroplane comes out to take you into Cairns to hospital. That's free, provided that you pay the seven pounds ten each year."
    "How far are you from Cairns?"
    "About three hundred miles."
    I reverted to the business in hand. "Tell me, Mr Harman," I said, "how did you get to know that I was Miss Paget's solicitor?"
    "She told me in Malaya when we met, she lived in Southampton," he said. "I didn't know any address, so I went there and stayed in a hotel, because I thought maybe she'd like to know I was in England. I never saw a city that had been bombed before-oh my word. Well, then I looked in the telephone book and asked a lot of people but I couldn't find out nothing except she had an aunt that lived in Wales at a place called Colwyn Bay. So then I went to Colwyn Bay."
    "You went right up there, did you?"
    He nodded. "I think her aunt thought I was up to some crook game or other," he said simply. "She wouldn't tell me where she lived or anything. All she said was that you were her trustee, whatever that means. So I came here."
    "When did you arrive in England?" I asked.
    "Last Thursday. Five days ago."
    "You landed at Southampton, did you?"
    He shook his head. "I flew from Australia, by Quantas. You see, I got a good stockman looking after Midhurst for me, but I can't afford to be away so long. Jim Lennon's all right for a time, but I wouldn't want to be away from Midhurst more'n three months. You see, this is a slack time in the Gulf country. We mustered in March this year on account of the late season and drove the stock down Julia Creek in April-that's railhead, you know. I had about fourteen hundred stores I sold down to Rockhampton for fattening. Well, after getting them on rail I had to get back up to Midhurst on account of the bore crew. I got Mrs Spears-she's the owner of Midhurst-I got her to agree we sink a bore at Willow Creek, that's about flowing over thirty thousand gallons a day; it's going to make twenty miles south-east of the homestead, to get water down at that end in the dry, and we got a bonza bore, we did. She's a lot of difference down at that end.