PROLOGUE

Dad gave me a hearty slap on the back. “Well, Jack old lad,” he said with a wink, “you’re a working man now. What sort of job will you take on?”

It was March 12, 1955 – my fifteenth birthday – and I was finally allowed to leave school. Euphoria!

“I think I’ll try writin’ a book, Dad.”

“Pooh! You wouldn’t know a rat’s arse about book-writin’,” my brother Denny said. This astute literary critic was all of twelve years old.

Admittedly, my choice of career did break with the Bournley tradition of shearing and I can’t say Mum offered much encouragement, either.

“You needn’t think you’re gonna sponge on us, sleepin’ in till midday and tuckin’ yer knees under my table,” she said, her jowls wobbling with indignation. “You can earn your keep like everyone else. There’s plenty of work around for a young bloke – musterin’, clearin’, fencin’…”

“Leave the boy alone, Lorna. Writin’s a good thing.” Dad was always one to see a positive side. “It’s in his blood – it’s hermetic.”

Dad was the reader in the family, and had a penchant for big words. I don’t think Mum could read or write at all, so the whole family was doubly impressed with Dad’s literary bent – especially Dad.

“I read the Sunday papers from cover to cover every week, whether there’s anything in ’em or not,” Dad often boasted, “and I can get through a Zane Grey western in a week.” Dad had an extensive personal library, acquired in job lots at local farm auctions. He once bid sixpence for an Oxford Dictionary at Maguire’s clearance sale and brought it home proudly.

“You never know, Mother. It might come in handy some day. One of the boys might go on to th’ university.” He always hoped one of us might ‘gravitate from university.’ Indeed, he often said he might have gravitated himself, but for a lack of education.

“Well, what would you write about, Jack? How about somethin’ scientific … you know, like compost?” Dad was into compost. He had several bins on the go in the back yard, and was experimenting with various mixtures, some smellier than others.

“Compost, Fred! We haven’t sunk that low, surely.”

“I’ve got it!” Dad chortled. “Do one of them hexposays on that bloody Pat O’Brien.”

Dad hated Pat O’Brien with a passion. “O’Brien thinks he’s the flamin’ mayor of Beetle Creek, and he doesn’t even live ‘ere,” he would say. O’Brien owned a farm on the outskirts, and he relied on villagers like Dad for shearing and casual work.

“All us locals are perfeckly happy the way things are, and he wants to bring in the sewerage and get the damned ‘lectricity put on,” Dad used to rant. “Before you know it, we’ll all be payin’ rates like those poor beggars in Moree. And for why?” Dad, at this point, would survey his audience grandly. “Because he’s too flamin’ lazy to dig a pit toilet like the rest of us, or pump up a Tilley lamp at night.”

By hotly opposing every scheme that Pat O’Brien put up, Dad single-handedly set the Beetle Creek Progress Association back twenty years. Of course, had O’Brien not regularly accused Dad of stealing sheep, Dad might have been a little more cooperative.

Beetle Creek had its share of small-town politics, like all the villages scattered around the commercial hub of Moree – villages with personalities as inscrutable as their names: Bellata, Gurley, Garah, Pallamallawa, Gravesend.

I knew I didn’t have much time before Dad climbed onto his soapbox.

“No, no,” I said hastily. “I thought I’d write about us, Dad – the Bournleys of Beetle Creek.” It had a ring to it, I thought.

At fifteen, I wanted to write about the Bournleys because there were plenty of funny stories to tell. As well, Beetle Creek was my world – a handful of modest houses clustered around a grey wheat silo, a pub, a shop, a school, a creek for swimming and fishing. What more could a bush kid want?

I was a little slow to realise that what most Beetle Creek residents wanted was to escape the stultification of village life. Of course, some stood still too long, got zapped by the place, and never mustered the energy to prise open the jaws of the trap. To our credit, we Bournleys all found our various means of escape.

As a kid, I found life in Beetle Creek pretty exciting – and I wanted to write it all down. Now, as an old codger, with a wife and children of my own, I look back with a different perspective. I see darker deeds I can recount … well, there’s little point in having family secrets if you can’t tell someone.

What’s more, I now know the outcomes of Lucy’s prophecies. Lucy was my sister – the weird one – there’s no kinder way to put it. Her predictions about the family have haunted me from childhood, and have taken a lifetime to prove or disprove. I’ve ticked them all off over the years.

On that birthday morning, as I rambled on to Mum and Dad about the funny stories I wanted to tell, they began to see my ambition for what it was: a kid’s pipedream. They humoured me.

Mum put her hands on her hips and said, “Well, don’t you mention that Uncle Wally was in jail, ‘cos it was just a silly misunderstandin’. And make sure you give me good teeth in the story.” Poor Mum was always embarrassed about her chipped, discoloured front teeth.

“An’ make sure y’ tell ’em I never once come ‘ome drunk in forty years,” Dad added.

So there you have it. My Mum had sparkling white teeth and my Dad never came home drunk in forty years – and they are the only two lies I intend to tell. I will be completely truthful about Uncle Wally’s deviant behaviour, because he’s long dead. For that matter, so are Mum and Dad. Publication can’t hurt anyone now.

This book has been a long time coming – I’ll be sixty-one in March.