Brindabella Read online

  URSULA DUBOSARSKY

  The Blue Cat

  The Golden Day

  The Red Shoe

  Reindeer’s Christmas Surprise

  (illustrated by Sue deGennaro)

  The Cryptic Casebook of Coco Carlomagno (and Alberta)

  The Perplexing Pineapple

  The Looming Lamplight

  The Missing Mongoose

  The Dismal Daffodil

  The Quivering Quavers

  The Talkative Tombstone

  ANDREW JOYNER

  Bear Make Den

  (written by Jane Godwin and Michael Wagner)

  Published by Allen & Unwin in 2018

  Text copyright © Ursula Dubosarsky 2018

  Illustrations copyright © Andrew Joyner 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76011 204 2

  eISBN 978 1 76063 581 7

  Teachers’ notes available from www.allenandunwin.com/resources/for-teachers

  Cover and internal design by Romina Panetta

  Cover illustration by Andrew Joyner

  CONTENTS

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  A note from Ursula and Andrew

  About the author

  About the illustrator

  This is a story about a boy called Pender and a kangaroo called Brindabella, about how they became friends, and all the things that happened to them because of it.

  Pender lived in an old house in the bush by the river, in a hidden valley not far from the coast. The house was made of honey-coloured stone, with green shutters on the windows. All the rooms were on one floor, and a long verandah wound all the way around the outside like the moat of a castle.

  Pender’s father was an artist, so the house was filled with paintings and drawings. They were mainly of faces with large beautiful eyes, and sometimes of shadowy buildings or a sudden burst of flowers. The paintings and drawings hung on the walls or were propped up on shelves and tables, which were also crowded with statues made of wood and metal, leaves and pebbles, and folded animals cut out of different coloured bits of paper. At night, when it was very dark, it seemed to Pender that the whole house was filled with silent strangers.

  Outside the house lived a little black dog named Billy-Bob, a flock of red hens led by Pertelote the chief hen, and a grey-striped cat, Ricky, who never came down from his very comfortable spot on the roof except at dinnertime. Beyond the fence, there were two black-and-white cows and a very old white horse who belonged to someone else. Beyond that fence, there were wombats and kangaroos and possums and echidnas and quolls and galahs and cockatoos and rosellas and kookaburras and thousands of other creatures besides.

  When Pender and his father were inside the house, Billy-Bob lay on the back step, sleepily eyeing the red hens bobbing about the yard. As soon as Pender or his father came out, he would jump up and run around and around on his short legs in excited circles, barking, while the hens scattered for shelter in the bushes.

  ‘Calm yourself, Billy-Bob,’ Pender’s father would say. ‘It’ll all be the same in a hundred years.’

  Pender’s father had white hair and thick, black-rimmed glasses. Sometimes he was not very well and needed a stick to help him when he walked. He painted his pictures in a hut on a hill above the house. Most mornings, half-leaning on Pender and half-leaning on his stick, he made his way to the hut with Billy-Bob running alongside him.

  The hut used to belong to a shepherd, but all the sheep had gone a long time ago. It was just one room with a huge, cobwebbed window. There were piles of paintings stacked up carelessly on the floor, and there was a big desk covered in splotches of paint of every colour and dozens of paintbrushes of all different sizes lined up in a row.

  In the corner of the hut was a fireplace. In the cold weather, Pender’s father lit the fire with twigs until the logs began to smoke and glow. Billy-Bob would lie down on the mat in front of the warm flames and close his eyes, falling at once into a deep sleep.

  ‘He’s dreaming,’ Pender’s father said.

  ‘What does he dream about?’ wondered Pender.

  ‘Dog-dreams,’ said Pender’s father.

  After Billy-Bob fell asleep, it was time for Pender to go, to leave his father to paint. Pender’s father would pick up his paintbrush, say goodbye to Pender and shut the door behind him. He spent all day painting and would not usually come down again to the house until the late afternoon. So Pender was left to himself. His father didn’t seem to think Pender would be lonely. Pender didn’t think he was lonely, either. He was used to being alone.

  Above the front door of the house was a piece of wood that had some words carved into it. It was in a different language—even the letters were different:

  ‘It’s in Ancient Greek,’ his father told him. ‘This is how you say it: Mem-nays-tho an-air ag-a-thos ayn-eye.’

  He went through the words, one by one, and made Pender repeat them. The sounds felt strange in Pender’s mouth.

  Mem-nays-tho an-air ag-a-thos ayn-eye.

  ‘What does it mean?’ asked Pender.

  ‘It means, Remember to be a good man,’ replied his father. ‘You must remember that, Pender. It’s the most important thing.’

  The winter morning Pender met Brindabella, the sky was smeared with pink clouds. He woke up shivering in the cold morning air. He heard his father in the kitchen, so he got himself up and dressed and went out for breakfast. They always had the same breakfast in winter: a bowl of porridge, an apple cut into pieces, and a big cup of hot, milky, sweet coffee that his father brewed in a red pot on the stove.

  ‘I’m feeling good this morning,’ said Pender’s father. ‘I won’t need your help up the hill.’

  Some mornings were like this. His father seemed to wake up with extra strength. It made them all feel happy when that happened—especially Billy-Bob, who would leap up and down when he saw Pender’s father set off by himself. He would bark wildly, falling backwards, then pick himself up again.

  When they had finished their porridge, Pender helped his father make sandwiches with tomatoes and a very strong-smelling cheese. His father put one sandwich in his pocket and left the other on a plate on the kitchen table.

  ‘There’s your lunch, Pender,’ he said.

  He headed out the door. Pender stood on the verandah, eating another apple. Streams of fog appeared as he breathed in and out. He watched Billy-Bob turn circles along the path beside his father all the way to the top to the hut. The flock of red hens came bobbing over from the henhouse, making nervous cries and pecking at the grass and the patches of wildflowers.

  ‘Hello, you silly chickens,’ said Pender.

  He tossed them a bit of apple and they rushed forward in a frenzy. Pender watched the door of the hut on the hill close behind his father and Billy-Bob. He waited until the slender stream of smoke began to spurt out of the hut’s tiny chimney.

  Remember to be a good man, he thought, and sat down on the back step.

  He looked across to where the two black-and-white cows stood calmly chewing their cud, and the old white horse hung her head over the fence. The wide green meadows that sloped down towards the valley’s narrow river below the house were silvered with morning frost. In the early sunshine, the water shone like a piece of broken glass. As always, when he caught sight of the river, Pender felt a sudden surge of excitement.

  ‘That’s what I’ll do today,’ he decided. ‘I’ll go for a walk along the river.’

  Of course, he had done this many times before, but there was always something new to discover. He went to his bedroom to find his jacket, then headed back outside. Although the sun was strong, the ground was very cold, and he had to stamp his feet to get warm. Ricky the cat, high on the roof, stretched out and looked down at him. The flock of hens followed him through the yard up to the gate and hovered around until he was gone from their sight.

  A steep muddy slope led to the river and Pender half-slid slowly down it until he reached the bank. A walking path wound along the water through a mess of reeds, overhung by leaning trees and low branches of bright yellow wattle. Standing in the middle of the path, Pender looked up and down the glistening water.
He listened to the frogs, the gurgling and croaking, and the almost noiseless splashes as they jumped in and out.

  ‘Which way?’ he wondered.

  One way, he knew, led deeper into the valley. The other would take him towards the coast. There was no reason to go in one direction or the other, so he decided to close his eyes and spin around on one foot. When he opened his eyes, whichever way he was looking, that would be the direction he would walk. He opened his eyes.

  ‘There!’

  He headed off on the path that took him deeper into the valley. He felt the smooth hardness of the round pebbles through the soles of his boots, and dampness seeped into his socks. He ducked the overhanging branches and tried not to tread in the wombat holes.

  After a while, the river curved away and the pathway stretched out from the water’s edge and disappeared. Warm from walking, Pender took off his jacket and tied it around his waist.

  ‘Now where?’

  In the distance, up above the riverbank, he could see what looked like a wall of trees, lines of tall gums reaching upwards. Their trunks were tightly bound to each other, thick with leaves and branches. Pender felt himself drawn towards them. Could there be something secret behind the woody wall that he might discover if he were brave enough?

  He left the river behind him and began to make his way upwards. The wet grass slapped his legs and his calf muscles ached. As he came closer, the wall of bush no longer seemed like a wall. Now he could see large spaces between the trunks and he didn’t have to push his way in as it had seemed from a distance. It was almost as though the trees were moving aside to let him through, like curtains drawing back from a stage…

  He stepped from the open sunshine into the green-grey half-darkness of the bush and stopped to catch his breath from the climb. The sun broke through the leaves above in thin glimpses, like light through high church windows. There were birds calling each other, high curling trills and low hoots. There was a rapid humming of insects, and a stirring of leaves in the light wind. Pender felt his thoughts becoming so quiet, as though the rest of the world had disappeared.

  Then he felt something near him move. And suddenly—

  The insects and the birds stopped singing.

  Pender knew at once it was a gun. Nothing else sounds like a gunshot—so sudden, so crisp. So dangerous.

  He heard the fluttering of hundreds of wings disappearing into a distant world through the leaves. He heard the pattering of tiny feet running, running. All the blood inside his body rushed around inside him like a whirlpool. Then he heard something fall, with a thump on the earth.

  Pender waited and everything in the bush waited with him. Would there be another shot? He breathed in the smell of gum leaves and grass and wet earth. Then, just as suddenly as the sound of the shot in the first place, the birds began to sing again, the insects hummed, the wind rose and the leaves rustled. Safety rose up and surrounded him like a little cloud. The danger was over.

  He blinked several times to calm himself. He was in a kind of clearing, with rocks and brown leaves strewn across the ground and flecked with sharp shards of sunlight. When he stopped trembling, he looked around. Just a few steps away from where he stood, he saw a kangaroo.

  The kangaroo was lying sideways on the ground. Its head was sunk in the dirt and its eyes were open, seeing nothing. There was a trickle of sticky blood coming from just below its furry neck, where the bullet had struck. Who had shot it? Hunters, he supposed, although they were not allowed to shoot in this part of the bush.

  The kangaroo’s belly was rising and falling with quick breaths. Its tail stretched out behind it in a thick curve across the earth. Pender had seen dead animals before, but not one at the point of death. He knew what he was seeing now. The kangaroo had been shot, and it was dying.

  He walked slowly over and crouched down next to the stretched-out body. He had such a strange feeling. It was the same feeling he’d had when he once came across a nest of baby birds hidden behind the henhouse. They’d just come out of their eggs, and their tiny beaks were opening and closing, making the smallest, softest peeping sounds. He knew he was near something very important. It was like discovering a secret.

  The kangaroo lay motionless, except for the very slight rise and fall of its breath. Pender didn’t know afterwards how long he crouched there, watching. It was as though there was no time and all the clocks had stopped.

  Finally, the kangaroo stopped breathing. Pender reached out his hand and touched the brown-grey fur.

  ‘Poor thing,’ he muttered, and stroked its still belly.

  He stiffened suddenly and pulled his hand back. He had felt a movement. Was he mistaken—was the kangaroo breathing? He put his hand very gently again on the rough fur. The body was moving, he could feel it and see it, right there in front of him. But the kangaroo was not breathing. What was happening?

  Something was struggling inside it. Something that wanted to get out. Pender gazed in utter astonishment.

  Out of the kangaroo’s pouch came one little black spiky foot. Then another.

  Then a tiny black nose.

  Two small ears. Two bright round eyes.

  Those two eyes stared and the two ears pricked up.

  Brindabella.

  It would be impossible to say who was more amazed by the sight of the other, the boy or the joey.

  Brindabella made a sudden lunge forward. She was straining to get out of her mother’s pouch. Her legs were so long, it seemed as if she was tangled up with her own body.

  Pender hesitated. He wanted to help the joey get out, but he was afraid that he might hurt her—or she might hurt him! She must be very frightened. And her claws looked sharp.

  ‘But if I don’t help you,’ said Pender, only realising the truth of what he was saying as he spoke the words, ‘you will die.’

  He could see that the joey had fur and was big enough to hop around by herself, but he knew she was too young to survive without her mother. She needed her mother, just like those baby birds behind the henhouse with their endless opening beaks and tiny cries. If he left her there by herself, she would not have enough to eat or drink and she would not be able to get away from dingos or wild dogs.

  Pender couldn’t bear to think that the joey might die. He had to keep her alive, keep her safe. But how?

  ‘I’ll take her back home with me,’ he thought. ‘Dad will know what to do, how to look after her.’

  His father knew all about animals—not just cats and dogs and chickens, but all manner of bush animals as well. He would know the right thing to do. He would understand that Pender could not just leave her where she was.

  ‘Dad will know,’ he murmured to the joey. ‘Don’t worry.’

  Brindabella had pushed her delicate shoulders halfway out of the pouch by now. Her fur was patchy and growing in all directions. Pender untied his jacket from around his waist. He knew he had to act quickly to make sure he got hold of her before she was able to hop away from him, terrified, into the bush.

  Now was the moment! He came forward swiftly, enclosing the joey in his jacket and lifting her up and out of the pouch into his arms. He held her struggling, shaking body against his chest. Brindabella arched her back like a cat.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Pender, hanging on tight. She was strong! ‘Don’t be scared, joey. I won’t hurt you.’

  How her heart was hammering! She pushed wildly against him with the claws of all her legs, slapping her tail. Pender stood up and pulled the flaps of his jacket around her as firmly as he could. The joey dug her claws into him and he bit his lip against the pain. But he did not let go. He clung to Brindabella and Brindabella clung to him.

  They left the forest together, slowly and carefully back through the wall of trees and down, very slowly, to the riverbank. Pender held the trembling creature close to his heart. She seemed to become calmer with the movement and her thin little tail swung down from the jacket.

  They made their way together along the winding pathway strewn with yellow wattle and fallen branches, following the river steadily all the way until they reached the muddy slope that led up to the house. Pender climbed straight up the hill to the hut where his father and Billy-Bob were. The cows in the field watched him, as did the old horse with her head over the fence. Pertelote and the other hens, and even Ricky on the roof, all watched and wondered.