A Town like Alice

Willstown in the afternoon and called at various cattle stations with the mail and correspondence lessons for the children from the school at Cairns, at Dunbar and Miranda and Vanrook. With the last of the light they put down at Normanton for the night, and drove into the town in a truck.
    The hotel at Normanton was similar to the hotel at Willstown, but rather larger. Jean had tea with the pilot, a man called Mackenzie; after tea she sat with him on the veranda. She asked him if anyone made shoes in Normanton. "I don't think so," he said. He called out to an acquaintance. "Ted, does anyone make shoes round here?"
    Ted shook his head. "Buy 'em from Burns Philp," he said. "Want a pair of shoes mended?"
    Jean said, "No-I was just curious. They all come from the cities, do they?"
    "That's right." Ted rolled himself a cigarette. "My wife's sister, she works in a shoe factory down at Rockhampton. That's where a lot of the shoes come from. Manning Cooper, at Rockhampton. That's where Burns Philp get 'em from"
    Jean asked, "Was your wife's sister born round here?"
    "Croydon," he said. "Their Dad used to keep a hotel at Croydon, but he give up; there wasn't work for two. Mrs Bridson's is the only one there now."
    "She's not married?"
    "Who? Elsie Peters?"
    "That's the one who works at Manning Cooper, is it?"
    "No, she's not married. Got to be a charge hand now, with a lot of girls under her."
    When he had moved on Jean asked the pilot, "Who was that?"
    "Him? Ted Horner. He runs the garage here." She noted the name for future reference.
    They flew on to Cairns early the next morning; she drove into the town and went to the Strand Hotel. Cairns, she found, was a prosperous town of about twenty thousand people, situated rather beautifully on an inlet of the sea. There were several streets of shops, wide avenues with flower beds down the middle of the road; the buildings were all wood and most had iron roofs. It looked rather like the cinema pictures she had seen of American towns in the deep south, with its wide broad sidewalks shaded by verandas to enable you to look into the shop windows in the shade, but it was almost aggressively English in its loyalties. She liked Cairns from the start.
    She wrote to me from there. She had written to me twice from Willstown, and at the Strand Hotel she found a letter from me waiting for her that had been there for some days, on account of her delays. She wrote,
    Strand Hotel, Cairns,
    North Queensland
    My dear Noel
    I got your letter of the 24th when I arrived here yesterday, and you will have got my two from Willstown by this time. I wish I had a typewriter because this is going to be a long letter. I think I'll have to get a portable soon in order to keep copies of my letters-not to you, but I'm getting involved a bit in business out here.
    First of all, thank you so very much for telling me what you did about Joe Harman. You've evidently been very nice to him and, as you know, that's being nice to me. I can't get over what you say about him rushing off to England and spending all that money, just to see me again. But people out here are like that, I think. I could say an awful lot of rude things about Australians by this time, but I can say this, too. The people that I've met in the outback have all been like Joe Harman, very simple, very genuine, and very true.
    And now, about Willstown. I don't know if Joe Harman will still be so keen on marrying me when he sees me; six years is a long time, and people change. I don't know if I'll be keen on marrying him. But if we were to want to marry, what he told you about Willstown is absolutely right.
    It's just terrible there, Noel. There are some places in the outback where one could live a full and happy life. Alice Springs is a grand little town. But Willstown's not one of them. Noel, it's absolutely the bottom. There's nothing for a woman there at all except the washtub. I know that one ought to be able to get along without such things as radio and lipstick and ice-cream and pretty clothes. I think I can get along all right without them-I did in Malaya. But when it comes to no fresh milk and no fresh vegetables or fruit, it's a bit thick. I think that what Joe told you was absolutely right. I don't think any girl could come straight out from England and live happily in Willstown. I don't think I could.
    And yet, Noel, I wouldn't want to see Joe try and change his way of life. He's a first-class station manager, and he'll do very well. I