Daisy Bates in the Desert by Julia Blackburn

Author:Julia Blackburn [Blackburn, Julia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-82923-8
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

NINETEEN

I couldn’t sleep last night. I lay on my back and stared at the stars until I seemed to be out there with them in the darkness. The sky was breathing; I could feel the cavity of the night expanding and contracting around me as if I was in the belly of the universe. It has been so quiet recently with no one to talk to; even the birds and lizards have deserted me, all except for the butcher bird but I wish he would go away and leave me alone. In the afternoons I sit and watch the shadows of the trees and bushes lengthening across the red sand. Sometimes I get up out of my chair and move forward very gently so that my own shadow merges with them and for a little while I can feel as if I have turned into a bush or a tree. Each day ends abruptly with the setting of the sun and then we can all die together. Just at the moment when the sun goes down there is often a violet afterglow, a sudden flare of unnatural light that illuminates the sky for an instant. I have never seen it anywhere else, except here in the desert.

A family of mice has established itself in the box of diaries I keep under my bed. I hear them rustling about and occasionally there is a fierce squeak; I rather like their musty, intimate smell. I pulled the box out from under the bed to look inside and inspect the damage. They have been eating the leather covers of some of my diaries and they have made themselves a beautiful nest out of the thin paper on which I kept a record of the days of my life. They must have torn the pages into strips with their teeth. I opened up their bed of words and there at its centre was a tangle of pink naked babies, but I didn’t have the heart to throw them out. The butcher bird would be sure to get them straight away; he would nail them to a tree and devour them at his leisure, just as he has done with my finches. I am sure he would eat his own young if he had any, but even the butcher birds have given up mating and nest-building in recent months.

I have decided that I will spend this day remembering the occasion when His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales came to visit me here at Ooldea. No, not here, it was further along the line at Cook; they decided that would be a better place for him to stop, although I don’t know why, it was most inconvenient. This was in July 1920 and the Prince was travelling on the Commonwealth train from Adelaide to Perth as part of his royal tour. Consolidating the Empire after the War, that is what he was doing and he did it very well, he was such a nice man.

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