A Town like Alice

to take up claims and the population doubling itself every few days, the planner had had some excuse for dreaming of a New York of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Now all that remained was a network of rectangular tracks where once there had been streets of wooden houses; odd buildings alone remained among this network to show what had been the dream.
    As the light faded Pete and Al went out and lit the bore for Jean. They struck half a dozen matches and got it to light; a flame shot upwards from it and lit up the whole town, playing and flickering amongst the water and the steam till finally it was extinguished by a vomit of water. They lit it again, and Jean admired it duly; it was clear that this was the one entertainment that the town provided, and they were doing their best to give her a good time. "It's wonderful," she said. "I've never seen anything like that in England."
    They were duly modest. "Most towns around here have a bore like that, that you can light," they said.
    She was tired with her day of flying; at nine o'clock she excused herself from their company and they all wished her goodnight. She drew Al Burns a little to one side before she went. "Al," she said. "I'd like to see Jim Lennon-he's the man at Midhurst, isn't he? I'd like to see him before I go on Wednesday. Will he be coming into town?"
    "Saturday he might be in," Al said. "I'd say that he'd be in here Saturday for his grog. If I hear of anybody going out that way I'll send him word and say that you're in town, and want to see him."
    "Do they work a radio schedule at Midhurst?"
    He shook his head. "It's too close to town, it wouldn't be worth it. If anyone gets sick or has an accident they can get him into town here in an hour or so, and the sister has a radio at the hospital." He paused. "There'll be someone going out that way in the next day or so. If not, and if Jim Lennon doesn't come in on Saturday, I'll run you out there in the truck on Sunday."
    "That's awfully kind of you," she said. "I don't want to put you to that trouble."
    "It's no trouble," he said. "Make a bit of a change."
    She went up to bed. The hotel was lit by electric light made in the backyard by an oil engine and generator set that thumped steadily outside her room till she heard the bar close at ten o'clock; at five past ten the engine stopped and all the lights went out. Willstown slept.
    She was roused at five o'clock with the first light with the sounds of people getting up and washing; she lay dozing, listening to the early morning sounds. Breakfast was not till half past seven; she got up and had a shower and was punctual in the dining-room. She found that the standard breakfast in Willstown was half a pound of steak with two fried eggs on top of it; she surprised Annie very much by asking for one fried egg and no steak. "Breakfast is steak and eggs," Annie explained patiently to this queer Englishwoman.
    "I know it is," said Jean. "But I don't want the steak."
    "Well, you don't have to eat it." The girl was obviously puzzled.
    "Could I have just one fried egg, and no steak?" asked Jean.
    "You mean, just one fried egg on a plate by itself?"
    "That's right."
    Food conversation in Willstown was evidently quite a new idea. "I'll ask Mrs Conner," said Annie. She came back from the kitchen with a steak with two fried eggs on top. "We've only got the one breakfast," she explained. Jean gave up the struggle.
    She ventured out to the kitchen after breakfast and found Mrs Connor. "I've got a few things to wash," she said. "Could I use your washtub, do you think? And-have you got an iron?"
    "Annie'll do them for you," Mrs Connor said. "Just give them to her."
    Jean had no intention of trusting her clothes to Annie. "She's got a lot of work to do," she said, "and I've got nothing. I'll do them myself if I can borrow the tub."
    "Good-oh."
    Jean spent the morning washing and ironing in the back ground-floor veranda just outside the kitchen; in that dry, torrid place clothes hug out on a line were dry in ten minutes. In the kitchen the temperature must have been close on a hundred and twenty Fahrenheit; Jean made quick rushes in there to fetch her irons from the stove, and wondered at the fortitude of women who cooked three hot meals a day in such conditions. Annie came presently and stood around on the back veranda, furtively examining Jean's washing.
    She picked up a carton of soap flakes. "How much of this do you put in the water?"
    Jean said, "I think it's an ounce to a gallon