The Last Mile Home Read Online Free Page B

as the gate loomed into the headlights. The engine idled with an ominously tired cough as the boy struggled with the gate that was dragging in the dirt.
    â€˜Help him lift it, Abby,’ said the father, wiping his hands around the big circle of the fat steering wheel as if trying to energise the car over this last hurdle. A tall slim girl of twenty, her long dark hair tied in a ponytail, wearing a full-skirted, faded flowered dress and old sandshoes, helped her brother lift the gate and then stood back expectantly.
    But Betsy the Buick was pooped. She’d come this far and that was close enough. Like a plump matron suddenly relieved of the constraints of her corsets, the doors burst open and crammed passengers rolled out into the cool night air as Betsy steamed and heaved and refused to start.
    Bob McBride understood her moods. ‘That’s it, Mum. She won’t budge till morning now.’
    Wails replaced the excited chatter and laughter. Gwen McBride stood with a small child on one hip, his three-year-old head leaning sleepilyagainst her shoulder. In her other hand she held back the excited Border collie on his leash. ‘So what are we going to do? How far to the house do you reckon?’
    â€˜One way to find out, eh? Shut the gate, Kev. Everyone grab a bag, roll up the windows. We’ll hoof it from here and bring Betsy up after breakfast.’
    â€˜Grab some food, that Rinso box from the boot has bread and eggs in it,’ directed Gwen McBride. ‘Just in case there’s nothing in the cottage. Though Mrs Pemberton said she’d have it ready for us. But you never know what that means.’
    Amid mutterings, moans, giggles and admonishments, the McBride tribe of seven plus a dog and silkworms in a shoe box, straggled up the track, the slowly rising moon lighting their way. Bob McBride soon had them heartily singing, ‘If I knew you were coming I’d have baked a cake . . .’ as they made their way towards their unknown new home.

B ARNEY DROVE BACK TO AMBA LATE SUNDAY morning. It felt like a Sunday too: a lazy, sun-ripened day stretching ahead without any commitments. However, he knew his father would insist they have everything ready for the start of mustering the next day.
    The Frenchams’ party had been fun, and had virtually continued through until the breakfast barbecue. Some of the boys had hit the keg pretty hard and were the worse for wear in the morning, but all had hoed into the sausages, chops, eggs and bacon sizzling on the barbecue in a grove of gum trees. Sitting around on logs, with their plates ontheir laps, the girls toasting slices of bread on sticks before the fire or dishing out thick slabs that had soaked up the grease on the barbecue, all agreed it had been a great party.
    The two dozen partygoers had all known each other for years. Friendships had been renewed after stints at boarding schools, trips abroad, or work out of the district. Most would now stay in the area on their parents’ properties in readiness for putting down their own roots. Although the girls would move to wherever their husbands might be, few would marry outside this resident circle.
    Barney glanced up at the fresh pink gumtips translucent against the blue light of morning. How Australian. How he’d missed the clearness of the light, the smell of the bush, the sound of the native birds in the years he’d been living in the city.
    He had graduated from Kings School at Parramatta and like many promising and well-to-do country lads had joined the staff of one of the big wool broking houses in preparation for returning to work their own places. In the wood-panelled offices and cavernous warehouses of Golds-borough Mort he had learned much about the business of classing and selling wool, as well as servicing the farmers and graziers with everything from finance to shearing machines.
    They had been years of mixed feelings. He had missed the land terribly. Every holiday and