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Authors: John Marsden
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side we felt like being and the adults could treat us accordingly.
One thing did make me think, though. It wasn't exactly all these people telling me about kids in other countries being in the army when they were ten. I mean, if you listened to that stuff you'd think that babies in nappies were parachuting out of aircraft with M 16's in their little paws. No, what I did wonder about was those photos of Aboriginal kids being initiated as full adults, full members of the tribe. Because in every photo they looked to be about ten or eleven years old. And I'd always wondered about that. If they were fit to be full adults when they were ten, what was wrong with us that we weren't ready till we were twenty or twenty-one? Or in some cases even older I knew twenty-four-year-olds who were still treated like little kids. Randall McPhail, for instance. Sometimes I didn't think he was
ever going to grow up. He was twenty-eight and still living with his parents, still burning around the district in his hotted-up Holden ute with stickers on the back saying things like "No ute, no circle work" or "I survived the Stratton B&S."
Every time I saw him I was like, "Grow up, Randall."
Well, that's the way he was before the war. Maybe the war had made him grow up. But it shouldn't need a war to do that.
Everything you said now had to be dated as either before the war, or after the war started. It wasn't BC or AD any more; it was BW and AW
The thing is, I wanted a Holden ute too, and I loved B&S's, but I sort of assumed that by the time I was twenty-eight I'd have moved on to something else. I hoped I would have.
That still didn't solve my puzzle about the Aboriginal kids. Maybe it was because they had a shorter life expectancy in those days, so you had to grow up faster. Maybe now, with modern medicine and stuff, you could take longer with childhood; there wasn't such a rush to move on to the next stage. After all, that's what had happened with us. Our life expectancy had been reduced because of the war. And we'd sure grown up fast.
Eventually the soldiers and Lee got tired of cricket. They wandered off and sprawled out under trees and bushes. Iain had four people on sentry duty this time, so that soaked up a lot of the troops. I actually volunteered to do some but he thanked me politely and explained that he wanted me fresh for the walk through Wirrawee that night.
"Typical Iain," I thought cynically, "always sugarcoating everything." If he wanted you to do the washing up he'd tell you it was hand aerobics and you needed the exercise. If he didn't want you to do it, he'd tell you he wanted your hands kept dirty so they didn't shine at night. OK, slight exaggeration maybe, but I was still sure that somewhere sometime he'd done courses on how to get people to do what he wanted. It never felt quite sincere.
I saw Lee on the other side of the hill. He was sitting under a thin black wattle, an oddly shaped tree that seemed to have gone into contortions and tied itself into a knot. I had a sudden urge to be with him so I walked up there. He was scratching in the ground with a stick. He didn't look up when I got there so I just stood and watched for a while. I realised he was writing his name, then rubbing it out, then writing it again. Sometimes he'd write it plainly and sometimes ornately. Then he wrote my name. I laughed and he rubbed it out. Then he threw the stick away. I felt a bit guilty that I'd laughed, though I don't know why. I sat down beside him. Neither of us said anything for a while, then he said, "Remember that exercise we did in English once, where we had to say what we'd save?"
"Nuh."
"Oh maybe it was a different class. I think it was Mrs. Savvas in Year 8. We had to say which things we'd save if our house was burning down."
"So what did you say?"
"I can't remember them all. We had to name five things, I think. I know everyone said their photos, their photo albums. I probably said my violin. Belinda Norris
said her
One thing did make me think, though. It wasn't exactly all these people telling me about kids in other countries being in the army when they were ten. I mean, if you listened to that stuff you'd think that babies in nappies were parachuting out of aircraft with M 16's in their little paws. No, what I did wonder about was those photos of Aboriginal kids being initiated as full adults, full members of the tribe. Because in every photo they looked to be about ten or eleven years old. And I'd always wondered about that. If they were fit to be full adults when they were ten, what was wrong with us that we weren't ready till we were twenty or twenty-one? Or in some cases even older I knew twenty-four-year-olds who were still treated like little kids. Randall McPhail, for instance. Sometimes I didn't think he was
ever going to grow up. He was twenty-eight and still living with his parents, still burning around the district in his hotted-up Holden ute with stickers on the back saying things like "No ute, no circle work" or "I survived the Stratton B&S."
Every time I saw him I was like, "Grow up, Randall."
Well, that's the way he was before the war. Maybe the war had made him grow up. But it shouldn't need a war to do that.
Everything you said now had to be dated as either before the war, or after the war started. It wasn't BC or AD any more; it was BW and AW
The thing is, I wanted a Holden ute too, and I loved B&S's, but I sort of assumed that by the time I was twenty-eight I'd have moved on to something else. I hoped I would have.
That still didn't solve my puzzle about the Aboriginal kids. Maybe it was because they had a shorter life expectancy in those days, so you had to grow up faster. Maybe now, with modern medicine and stuff, you could take longer with childhood; there wasn't such a rush to move on to the next stage. After all, that's what had happened with us. Our life expectancy had been reduced because of the war. And we'd sure grown up fast.
Eventually the soldiers and Lee got tired of cricket. They wandered off and sprawled out under trees and bushes. Iain had four people on sentry duty this time, so that soaked up a lot of the troops. I actually volunteered to do some but he thanked me politely and explained that he wanted me fresh for the walk through Wirrawee that night.
"Typical Iain," I thought cynically, "always sugarcoating everything." If he wanted you to do the washing up he'd tell you it was hand aerobics and you needed the exercise. If he didn't want you to do it, he'd tell you he wanted your hands kept dirty so they didn't shine at night. OK, slight exaggeration maybe, but I was still sure that somewhere sometime he'd done courses on how to get people to do what he wanted. It never felt quite sincere.
I saw Lee on the other side of the hill. He was sitting under a thin black wattle, an oddly shaped tree that seemed to have gone into contortions and tied itself into a knot. I had a sudden urge to be with him so I walked up there. He was scratching in the ground with a stick. He didn't look up when I got there so I just stood and watched for a while. I realised he was writing his name, then rubbing it out, then writing it again. Sometimes he'd write it plainly and sometimes ornately. Then he wrote my name. I laughed and he rubbed it out. Then he threw the stick away. I felt a bit guilty that I'd laughed, though I don't know why. I sat down beside him. Neither of us said anything for a while, then he said, "Remember that exercise we did in English once, where we had to say what we'd save?"
"Nuh."
"Oh maybe it was a different class. I think it was Mrs. Savvas in Year 8. We had to say which things we'd save if our house was burning down."
"So what did you say?"
"I can't remember them all. We had to name five things, I think. I know everyone said their photos, their photo albums. I probably said my violin. Belinda Norris
said her
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