Bridge of Triangles by John Muk Muk Burke

Author:John Muk Muk Burke
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction/General
ISBN: 9780702250231
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Published: 2008-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

The Sydney days warmed and the two smaller ones learned various ramp routes to the school. Joe and Mary had to catch the electric train along a few stops to their high schools and they quickly learned the way and the names of the stations. Sissy learned that finding a job was not as easy as she thought. No matter how she pleaded and insisted that she would work hard the answer always seemed to be the same: washy smiles which said there was nothing at the moment. No, they had just stopped taking on any more until some time next year. So the woman walked around the industrial suburbs or took buses to not too distant factories in her search for work. Although she collected the child endowment and had Welfare assistance with the rent money she knew she must get a job. The Sydney dream was not coming true.

Meanwhile the family lived largely on devon and bread and jam.

The older kids had train tickets provided weekly, but the shame of going to school with a lunch of jam sandwhiches wrapped up in scraps of paper or sometimes without lunch at all kept them home more often than not. Chris felt deep shame at going to school in old torn clothes and would pretend to be sick rather than feel the stares and taunts of the other kids. Of course if Chris stayed home then Keith did too. And then it was an easy matter for Sissy to let Joe and Mary stay home to look after the smaller ones.

After a few months of frequent absences the authorities came round to investigate. The authorities came in the person of a short little lady with a rosy face and a handbag which contained a blue-backed notebook. On the day she arrived the kids were all playing in the bullring. The bullring was a circular area about the size of two tennis courts. It was between the puddly road under Joe’s window and the scrubby wasteland at the end of the settlement. Its surface was uneven with clumps of cutty grass and be patches of earth. Kids had been calling it the bullring forever it seemed and although its original purpose could only be guessed at it was now perfect for scrappy soccer, bike races and gang wars. The wars could be plotted and waged from the safety of forts partly buried in the deep red clay trench which circled the bullring. The short little lady must have followed the noise all the way round the flats until she found its source. The sight awaiting her made her grope for her notebook. With shrieks and warlike menace Joe was in the act of jumping from his window. The others were riotously celebrating the razing of a rival fort. The sheets of thick lino which had once been the roof over their enemy were now well alight with viciously hot orange and yellow flames.

The lady shouted, “Are you a Leeton boy? Stay there, I want to talk to you.

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