Wonderlands

Katherine Thomson

• Publisher: Currency Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781921429743
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

In 1931, Alice, a white station owner, goes riding with her Aboriginal head stockman and friend, Jim. During the course of the afternoon, they come to an agreement about the running and ownership of the property, Ambertrue.%##CHAR13##%%##CHAR13##%Many years later, in an environment of white paranoia fed by misinformation, Alice's great nephew Lon finds himself running Ambertrue. When Lon receives a letter announcing a native title claim in the area, he is terrified that his dream of passing the family property on to his son-in-law will be shattered. Includes an introduction by Henry Reynolds and a foreword by Bob Munn (a Gunggari Native Title claimant).

ACT ONE

Bush sounds. EDIE, CATHY, LON and TOM appear.

EDIE: Over the river. The other side of the river from here. On the second Yumba. Tin houses that grew like topsy, when’s that hammering ever going to let up, our parents used to say. How many more extensions can that poor old excuse for a house take? Not always bodgy, sometimes good. Kerosene lights and long shadows across the circle of dirt grown smooth and bald from all those feet playing rounders for as late as you could as kids. Are you kids still playing rounders, school’s tomorra. And casuarinas and trudging home from the pictures along the creek on a moonless night, the noise of old aunties playing cards to steer you home by. And good we’re not on the run anymore. And Jim the water tank coming over selling water and weren’t we mugs thinking that was all right when town water had been on for years. In town. Everyone knew everyone. Gambling away under the stars.

LON: When it’s that still you can hear your own pulse. Some days that still you’d swear you can hear your old man. Watch that woody weed before it gets a hold. Clear as day. Everything’s always sooner than you think.

TOM: Up the top of the second hill from the homestead. Not when the light bleaches everything to a blur, but morning time. Dusk. The top of the trees, you look down on them, they’re making patterns like in paintings. If an artist came, they’d paint the trees, the horizon maybe, the red earth. One thing for certain is even if I was there with them they wouldn’t paint me.

CATHY: When you open the gate to leave, there’s a ridge that’s been made in the soil. Over the years. The gate must have scratched and scraped that dirt and now there’s an arc. And on top of that little arc, near the fence post, are a couple of flowers. Weeds really, that manage to grow. I notice them. And I’m always careful when I open the gate not to crush them. Tessie and Lon, sometimes they crush them, but eventually they grow again. I don’t say to them watch the weeds. They’re my secret, I suppose. My pact with the weeds. If a pact can be one way.

Transition.

The heat of the day. LON is waiting for TOM, who is repairing a fence, offstage.

LON: [trying to find a rhyme] Wedding… Wedding… Treading. Heading. Bedding. Jesus. Heading…

Pause.

Only yesterday it seems

That Tessie was on her first pony,

Today she’s resplendent in white

And hitched to Tom Maloney.

As kids they played and raced their horses—

TOM enters during the following. LON repeats some of the poem for him.

How’s this? Dum de dum de dum, etcetera, bit of work needed at the top then…

Today she’s resplendent in white

And hitched to Tom Maloney.

As kids they rode and raced their horses

From Sanders End to Devil’s Courses—

TOM: That’s good.

LON: My darling Tessie has become Tom’s bride, Now they’re up for a whole new ride.

Pause.

I’ll work on the last two lines.

TOM: Good. It’s good.

LON: For the reception. It’ll change. You need to think about it for a while and… I’ll work it up.

TOM: Wouldn’t be an occasion without one.

LON: It’s an occasion all right.

TOM: It will be.

LON: You’re working up a sweat all right. Sorry I can’t help.

TOM: Smoke-oh, eh. [Pause.] She’s feeling the pressure, I think. Tessie. The wedding.

LON: Women get nervous.

TOM: Once she gets the dress right.

LON: Once she gets the dress right. That’s right. [He kicks his heel into the soil.] You think how many times you’ve fallen on this. Hard as iron. Christ, I’ve had some falls on this.

TOM: If it’s got four legs it can knock you down.

LON: You think back to those stock camps. Sleeping on the bare ground. I probably wouldn’t get back up again these days.

TOM: You’re going all right.

LON: Still, it can feel like a mattress when you’ve done a hard day’s work. Until about three o’clock in the morning when the Bundy wears off.

TOM: True.

LON: Very few nights I haven’t slept here, Tom, on this property. Very few nights in my life. On the few occasions I wasn’t sleeping here I dreamt all night I was.

TOM: I had a dream the other night. About that fan belt in the generator.

LON: Dream how to fix the blasted thing?

TOM: Almost. Every night I shut my eyes and go come on, have that dream again, but this time don’t wake up.

LON: We’ll figure it out.

TOM: Yep.

LON: You know, when my father arrived out here to take over he was a city boy, all he knew about the land was that vegetables grew in it. No natural affinity whatsoever. Sure, he’d spent his Christmas holidays up here, to see the old aunty, and the spinster cousin Alice. I remember him saying after this cousin Alice died, and the will was read, and he came up here to take over, he scanned the property and felt like he’d been handed an orphan. This land was orphaned, and the stock was orphaned. But he knew he’d been called to set it right. And he lived up to the task that had been set. You get me? You get what I’m saying?

TOM: No.

LON: I’m not a well man.

TOM nods.

I mean really not well.

TOM: You’ll be right once you ease up a bit.

LON: You know what the specialist told me, Tom?

TOM: To go easy. Which is why I’m… go on.

LON: More than that. Thank Christ Cathy wasn’t with me that day, she’s high strung enough as it is just lately. This doctor, he looked me in the eye, and said I shouldn’t be surprised if one day I just dropped down dead. I’d have thought being surprised about it’d be the least of my worries, but they were his words and I gleaned his meaning. After something like that you look at things differently.

TOM: I imagine you do.

LON: I do imagine. You look at things differently. What you might have done. You’ve done this. You’ve done that. You’ve kept this land going. You’ve developed runs, sunk bores, scraped through more droughts than you’ve had hot sausages, but you always think you could have done more.

TOM: ...