A Town like Alice

stared at her. "I never heard Joe Harman had a family. He wasn't married, not so far as I know."
    She said defensively. "My uncle back in England thinks he's married."
    "I never heard nothing of a wife," the old man said.
    Jean thought about this for a minute, and then said to Mrs Driver, "Is there a telephone at Wollara? I mean, if Mr Duveen knows his address, I'd like to ring him up and get it."
    "There isn't any telephone," she said. "They'll be speaking on the radio schedule morning and evening from Wollara, of course." There was an extensive radio network operated by the Flying Doctor service from the hospital; morning and evening an operator at the hospital sat down to call up forty or fifty stations on the radio telephone to transmit messages, pass news, and generally ascertain that all was well. The station housewife operated the other end. "Mrs Duveen is sure to be on the air tonight because her sister Amy is in hospital here for a baby and Edith'll want to know if it's come off yet. If you write out a telegram and take it down to Mr Taylor at the hospital, he'll pass it to them tonight."
    Jean went back to her room and wrote out a suitable cable and took it down to the hospital to Mr Taylor, who agreed to pass it to Wollara, "Come back at about eight o'clock, and I may have the answer if they know the address right off; if they've got to look it up they'll probably transmit it on the schedule tomorrow morning." That freed her for the remainder of the day, and she went back to the milk bar for another ice-cream.
    In the milk bar she made a friend, a girl called Rose Sawyer. Miss Sawyer was about eighteen and had an Aberdeen terrier on a lead; she worked in the dress shop in the afternoons. She was very interested to hear that Jean came from England, and they talked about England for a time. "How do you like Alice?" she asked presently, and there was a touch of conventional scorn in her tone.
    "I like it," Jean said candidly. "I've seen many worse places. I should think you could have a pretty good time here."
    The girl said, "Well, I like it all right. We were in Newcastle before, and then Daddy got the job of being bank manager here and we all thought it would be awful. All my friends said these outback places were just terrible. I thought I wouldn't be able to stick it, but I've been here fifteen months now and it's not so bad."
    "Alice is better than most, isn't it?"
    "That's what they say-I haven't been in any of the others. Of course, all this has come quite recently. There weren't any of these shops before the war, they say."
    Jean learned a little of the history of the town and she was surprised at the rapidity of its growth. In 1928 it was about three houses and a pub; that was the year when the railway reached it from Oodnadatta. The Flying Doctor service started about 1930 and small hospitals were placed about in the surrounding districts. The sisters married furiously, and Jean learned that most of the older families were those of these sisters. By 1939 the population was about three hundred; when the war came the town became a military staging point. After the war the population had risen to about seven hundred and fifty in 1945, and when Jean was there it was about twelve hundred. "All these new houses and shops going up," Miss Sawyer said. "People seem to be coming in here all the time now."
    She suggested that Jean should come swimming in the late afternoon. "Mrs Maclean's got a lovely swimming-pool, just out by the aerodrome," she said. "I'll ring her up and ask if I can bring you."
    She called for Jean that afternoon at five o'clock and Jean joined the swimming party at the pool; sitting and basking in the evening sun and looking at the gaunt line of Mount Ertwa, she become absorbed into the social life of Alice Springs. Most of the girls and married women were under thirty; she found them kindly, hospitable people, well educated and avid for news of England. Some spoke quite naturally of England as 'home' though none of them had ever been there; each of them cherished the ambition that one day she would be able to go 'home' for a trip. By the end of the evening Jean was in a humble frame of mind; these pleasant people knew so much about her country, and she knew so very little about theirs.
    She strolled down to the hospital in the cool night, after tea. Mrs Duveen had not been able to give Joe Harman's address offhand, but she confirmed that he was managing a station somewhere in the Gulf