Read Online Mullumbimby by Melissa Lucashenko - Free Book Online

seconds she heard her mother’s voice from childhood: I had to drink water with dead frogs floating in it. Jo turned the taps off and reached for a worn, stripy towel as she heard Chris’s dying Econovan clatter into the drive.
    Early the next morning, Jo and Caro pulled on gumboots and walked across the small paddock to check on Jo’s young jali jali billa. How she’d made the time to plant the small grove in her first week on the farm, Jo couldn’t remember rightly, but these thirty knee-highseedlings were her special project. The effort spent digging holes in the moonlight would be well worth it.
    â€˜You wouldn’t have heard of the Tree of Knowledge, I suppose–’ Caro said, with only half a question mark at the end of the sentence. This was exactly half a question mark too little for Jo’s liking, and she felt her face stiffen.
    â€˜Ah, Tree of Knowledge, umm, no...’ she answered. Caroline was about to speak again, when Jo interrupted.
    â€˜Unless, oh, hang on – do you mean the Tree of Knowledge in Barcaldine, where the modern Labor Party grew out of the iconic shearers’ strike of 1897?’ Don’t patronise me, luv.
    â€˜Oh, you’ve been there?’ Caroline asked in surprise.
    â€˜Just a lucky guess,’ Jo said, shortly.
    â€˜Oh.’
    â€˜Degree in Australian history and comparative literature, actually.’
    â€˜Ah. Woops.’
    Caroline went bright pink, and balled her fists inside her trouser pockets. Fucken hell, dugais are hard work, thought Jo.
    â€˜It’s okay. We’ve got special trees here too, you know,’ she said, pointing around the paddock.
    â€˜Oh, which ones?’
    Caroline grasped at this new thread in transparent relief. Jo pointed her lips at the neighbouring cattle property.
    â€˜Well ... see that big wattle starting to flower there over the road, no the big one further to the right, that one without so much blossom on it. Well, round here we call that the Tree of Children’s Learning.’
    â€˜Get outta here.’ Caroline looked as though if she had a notebook she’d be scribbling in it.
    â€˜Yeah, true. And that young spindly sandpaper fig closer to the fence, well that’s the Sapling of Self-Importance–’
    Caroline glanced sideways.
    â€˜â€“and a bit further back, well that’s the Camphor Laurel of Patronising City Folk, and just along here flourishing like billy-o we have the Groundsel of Rural and Regional Ignorance...’
    â€˜Okay, okay, point taken.’ Caroline looked skyward as a crow flapped east. ‘I apologise. I just didn’t think someone who mows grass in a cemetery would have a university degree.’
    â€˜Me neither,’ said Jo ruefully, twisting her mouth at this hard economic fact.
    â€˜Sorry,’ Caro repeated.
    â€˜Ah, forget it. Help me with my jali jali billa.’ Jo told her, as she bent to check the soil around the base of the she-oaks. She plucked at and straightened the narrow plastic bags which protected the trees, in theory, from wind and weeds and wildlife. Jo stroked the soft leaves of the seedlings, healthy and brightly thriving in British Racing Green as was proper and correct. She touched their soft scaly trunks, no thicker than pencils.
    Together the women spent a half-hour peering into the protector bags, tutting or not as the situation demanded, weeding around the seedlings, and pouring buckets of dam water onto the mounded earth beneath them. The dogs lay blissfully in the morning sun, watching them work, Warrigal still scratching like it was his mission in life to wear out his skin.
    â€˜That bloody dog’s going in the dam if he doesn’t stop scratching,’ Jo threatened. ‘We’ve done him for fleas that many times.’
    â€˜Bit cold isn’t it, the poor thing,’ Caro said in his defence.
    â€˜Ah, he’s a dingo, he’ll cope.’ Jo replied. Though maybe it