Alex by Rosanne Hawke & Lyn White

Author:Rosanne Hawke & Lyn White [Rosanne Hawke & Lyn White]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2023-07-20T00:00:00+00:00

In the morning they pick up Bonnie. ‘Hello, Tangi,’ she says first. ‘Do you like going to town?’

Tangi yips. ‘She likes the dog park,’ Alex says. Tangi barks this time, like she knows what he said.

‘She understands a lot of words,’ Bonnie says. ‘I’ve only been in town for school,’ she adds. ‘Sully hasn’t had time to take me to look around.’

On the way in they drop their recycling in the bin at the town tip.

‘Can you pick up bread and milk, please, Alex. And the mail.’ Rachael lets Alex, Bonnie and Tangi off at the General Store while she goes to the pharmacy.

‘Ta daaa,’ Alex says in a pretend tour guide voice after he ties Tangi to a post. ‘This is the General Store: grocery store, cafe and takeaway, gifts and Post Office all under one roof.’

Bonnie smiles. She likes the crafts. ‘Look at these earrings made from drink-can pulls – they look like platinum. Anything can be upcycled.’

Just then Summer and Tara walk inside the store. Summer sees Bonnie and leans closer to Tara to whisper something. They’re meant to hear Tara’s reply. ‘Yeah, she stinks so bad I thought she never gets away from those camels.’

‘You’re not wrong,’ Summer says, staring straight at Bonnie. ‘She’ll have a camel face soon, whiskers coming out of her nostrils and ears.’

Bonnie ignores them and Alex admires the way she doesn’t let it spoil her morning. The bread his mum likes isn’t available, so they choose another brand.

‘Shops in town can’t always stock what they used to,’ Alex says. ‘Mum says people move away because they can’t make a living – that’s fewer people buying stuff. Fewer people going to the medical centre, so a doctor leaves. Other services close. It’s even affected tourism. People want to come to a nice green place that makes them feel good, not where there are whirly-whirlies, the kangaroos are skinny and the paint is peeling off shopfronts and houses because they don’t have the money to do them up.’

Alex buys a picnic lunch of chicken and salad wraps and asks for the mail. There are a few letters and the Stock Journal, which he puts in the bag with the bread. He catches the return address on one of the letters: Elders. That’s the agent who sends up a carrier to get their bales of wool and take them to Port Adelaide to sell. Money will be coming into their bank account in a week or two. He hopes it will be enough.

He leads Bonnie and Tangi down the street. ‘There’s something special I want to show you. Tourists used to come interstate to see this before the pandemic.’ They walk into an art gallery. ‘This guy paints panoramic scenes. Imagine being this talented.’ Bonnie climbs steps to see a painting stretching 360 degrees; it has to be two metres high. ‘This is what it would look like if you’d just climbed St Mary Peak in the Flinders Ranges.’

‘Incredible,’ Bonnie whispers as she turns on the wooden platform in the huge circular shed.

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