Published: 25 Sep 2025

Tate’s farmhouse was no more than an hour’s walk from their camp site. The house, if two rooms and a lean-to kitchen could satisfy the simplest of building requirements, stood on a slight rise at a bend in the river on an acre of cleared land, with another half acre of grass leading down to the river. It soon became obvious why the farmer had abandoned his claim as all about, even up to the house’s door, were signs of flooding, although the fire Tate recalled from the previous summer had only burned to the opposite bank and hadn’t jumped the water.

As they approached the house Ben releases a disapproving growl.

“What was that about?” Tate asks.

“I’m no carpenter but any fool can see he chose the worse spot possibly to build a house, besides the land is poor and rocky.”

“Were you once a carpenter, Ben?”

“Not me but my father was until he helped himself to someone else’s timber stack.”

“Was he caught?”

“He was and as I happened to be his accomplisher, we were sent out here on the very last convict transport ship.”

“I thought transportation ceased back in the late fifties?”

“Ours was a special deal; we were offered either a lengthy prison sentence or leave the country. It seemed the colony was in urgent need of carpenters.”

“What about you?”

“I guess I was as guilty as my old man, so here I am.”

Reaching the house Tate pauses without either admiring or condemning the house’s design, eventually he speaks, “you know something Ben.”

“I guess if I don’t you are about to tell me.”

“I could live here.”

Ben laughs; “you and I could move in take up growing stuff, then come the next big wet season we would be sitting on the roof waiting for the water to subside, or the summer fires you mentioned return and burn it out.”

“You and I?” Tate curiously questions.

“Well if you are dreaming you may as well go the whole hog.”

“I like bacon,” Tate makes light of Ben’s suggestion.

“But!” Ben cuts across Tate’s liking of bacon with a single word.

“But what?”

“Eventually civilization would reach here and I would be discovered. It is better for me to go west.”

Tate points towards a small worked plot of land beside the house

“Look there is what’s left of a kitchen garden and I can see things growing.”

They approach;

“More like things withering and going to seed,” Ben suggests.

“Still there are a number of small cabbage hearts and I can see carrots and by the tops of those, they could be potatoes.”

“A virtual feast,” Ben scoffs.

“Come on, have a geek inside, by my memory there are some old clothes and things, also cooking pots in the kitchen and it appears no one has been by since the farmer left.”

At the door Tate gives a slight push, “unlocked,” he says.

“Who except you, the owner and blacks would even know the house was here.”

“True.”

Inside they find a living room with the mandatory table and chairs, an empty side cupboard and some farming tools leaning against a wall where the cracks had been papered over with old Cairns Post newsprint with the print date four years previous. To one side there is a smaller room big enough for a bed or little else, except what could be considered an open cupboard, more to point a box frame with shelving.

On one of the shelves are a number of items, two pairs of working pants, one pair has the arse out and two shirts missing most of the buttons.

On the lower shelf is a pair of boots.

Tate collects the boots, ‘what do you think – your size?”

“About I would say.”

“Although not much better than the boots you are wearing they would do for now – try them for size.”

Ben removes what is left of his own boots and is about to slip his bare foot into the right boot.

“No!” Tate expresses loudly and reclaims the boot.

“What!”

“Firstly check it out as you never know what is living in it.”

Tate gives the boot a heavy banging to the floor.

Nothing moves.

He hammers the second boot onto the floor and a large cockroach darts for cover towards a gap in the floor boards.

“What was that?” Ben asks.

“Who knows you can’t be sure as in these parts, there are a dozen things that bite and sting.”

Now free from freeloaders Ben tries on the boots;

“They fit,” he exclaims with pleasing surprise.

“Try the dacks.”

“What are dacks?”

“It’s a local word for pants; I reckon they would be your size.” Tate passes the pair with the torn rear.

Ben is amused, “I think I will try the other pair.”

Ben removes his trousers becoming naked from the waist down.

Tate is smiling.

“Why are you so flaming happy kid?”

“I was remembering my dream and something Tolga suggested.”

The trousers are soon covering Ben’s nakedness and fixed at the waist, “go on, out with it,” he says.

“No I don’t think it is relevant, well not now.”

“You do realise you talk in riddles Tate.”

“That is what my brother Wilson reckons.”

Ben flexes at his knees to test if the trousers give enough manoeuvrability, the material stretch across his arse and he smiles, “you know that is considered to be my best attribute,” he says.

“What your arse?”

“So the ladies say.”

“I suppose it has been a long time since you lay with a woman?” Tate suggests.

“Since my last pay packet while working on a pearling lugger up near Cooktown, I shouted myself a visit to Mother Mary’s.”

“What is Mother Mary’s?”

Ben had a distant look as he recalls the time, “it’s a whore house near the Cooktown docks.”

“It sounds religious.”

“I assure you kid there isn’t anything religious about Mother Mary’s.”

“My brother Freddie caught something from a woman in Cairns.”

“Did he get the clap?”

“Not that, he said his crotch hair was alive with little bugs or something right up the crack of his bum, he shaved the hair off and the next brother up Michael, doused Freddie’s crotch with DDT-powder, it almost burned his knob off. That was one story our sister Elsie never heard about.”

“The DDT-powder seems a little excessive.”

“Do you like going to brothels?”

“They are a relief, especially if you can’t get what you want.”

“What do you want Ben?”

“At the moment I would like a belly full of food.”

“If you have a look at what’s in the patch worth eating, I’ll go down and see if I can catch us a couple of bream.”

Ben reaches for the shirt he had placed on the bed and no sooner had his hand touched the shirt before he jumped away shrieking like a possessed school girl. As Ben recoiled a long skinny snake commenced to dart for cover but isn’t quick enough, Tate has it by the tail, with one precise motion he flicked it like a whip, sending energy along the snakes length ending in a snapping behind its head.

Tate holds up the still writhing reptile.

Ben is visually shaking;

“I hate snakes!”

“It’s dead.”

“Is it venomous?”

“It is brown and that is usually a good indication.”

Ben settles a little, “I suppose you also learned that trick from the blacks?”

“No they mostly clobber them with a rock or waddy, I learned it from an old bushman but it isn’t infallible, he tried once too often and was bit’. He hadn’t even time to go for help and they found him and the snake dead close to his house.”

“If one gets ya’ what help is there?” Ben asks.

“From a number of them I would say bugger all. Wilson has a suggestion.”

“Go on.”

“He says if bit by an eastern brown put your head between your knees.”

“What good would that do?”

“And kiss your arse goodbye.”

Tate takes the reptile outside and hangs it over a low wicker fence protecting the kitchen garden. Ben follows although he remains cautions while keeping a good distance.

“It will be gone by morning, “Tate suggests.”

“What it’s going to come back to life and wriggle away?”

“A kookaburra or butcher bird will soon come by and have it for dinner.”

“If it’s venomous can you eat it?”

“The venom is in the head, cut it off and cook it up. The natives simply throw them into the hot coals.”

“I don’t think so, I would rather go hungry.”

“Agreed, I’ll get my fishing gear and if you like you sort out the stove in the kitchen.”

At the river Tate’s thoughts return to his friend Tolga but more so the dreaming of his friend and the imagined sighting while previously fishing. Casting his line he scans the banks and surrounding scrub.

Tate smiles as he softly calls, “are you about Tolga?”

He patiently waits for an answer.

“I thought not.”

There is a tug on the line and without effort he pulls in a fair size bream, he stuns the fish with a lump of wood then casts again.

‘When I thought I saw Tolga at the river, he called to tell me where the fish were.’