Alice-Miranda in the Outback by Jacqueline Harvey

Author:Jacqueline Harvey [Harvey, Jacqueline]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781760147242
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia

Barnaby Lewis’s study was a large room at the front of the house, across the hall from the master bedroom. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves of century-old cedar lined two walls, with a library ladder on a rail used to reach the highest points. An acreage of antique desk sat in the middle of the space, accompanied by a swivel chair that looked original. It was an imposing room, with portraits of Lewises past hanging from picture rails on the other two walls. They were mostly stern men with deeply-lined faces and skin like leather – no doubt the result of years of working outdoors in one of the harshest environments on earth.

There was a single photo of the station’s female residents. The lady of the house stood in the centre of the frame, dressed in a fine long gown and a hat that could have been used as a shade umbrella; two young girls standing either side. They were surrounded by the household – Indigenous women and girls. Their dresses, simple long pinafores and, in keeping with the style of the times, there wasn’t a smile among them – although Alice-Miranda thought one of the young women looked as if she was about to grin. It was a picture of a time long past. She couldn’t help wondering about the staff – were they treated well and fairly? The way Hayden and Larry talked about Molly – she seemed more like a grandmother than an employee, and they seemed very close to Stormy and River too. Alice-Miranda hoped they’d be home soon so she could meet them all.

‘Family photos,’ Hayden commented, pointing to a picture on the other wall. ‘That’s my grandpa, Evan, and his brother, Chester. I’m not sure what happened to him. Molly just shakes her head when I ask and Dad says he knows as much as we do. There is one story – see his finger?’ Alice-Miranda peered in at the picture. The shot had been taken outside, the boys leaning over a post-and-rail fence. ‘Chester’s got a claw instead of a nail. Dad said he got it mangled in a motorbike chain and it grew back looking like a parrot’s beak.’

‘Oh, that’s nasty,’ the girl replied. She pointed at a portrait of a young man and woman in a silver frame on the desk. ‘Who’s that?’

‘That’s Grandpa again, and Grandma Thea. She was from Norway – can you imagine what a shock it would have been to come and live out here with all this heat and dust after the snowy landscape of Scandinavia? Dad doesn’t talk about them much, but Molly says Grandma left Grandpa when Dad was only five. She went back to Norway and no one ever heard from her again. Pretty sad, don’t you think? Molly said Grandpa died of a broken heart when he was forty-six.’

‘That’s tragic,’ Alice-Miranda said. ‘Families can be complicated, can’t they?’

‘Sure can,’ Hayden said.

‘Where should we begin?’ Alice-Miranda asked, looking around the shelves.

Hayden pointed up to some slender green spines with gilt writing at the top of the bookcase.

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