Joyday for Jodi: An Australian Outback Romance by Lucy Walker

Author:Lucy Walker [Walker, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: small town and rural, outback romance, clean romance, clean and wholesome, australian romance, autstralian rural romance, australian author, australian rural novels
Publisher: Wyndham Books (Small Town & Rural Romance)
Published: 2022-06-02T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Jodi began her first wholly free Tuesday by having breakfast in the canteen with Carina.

The grey light of early morning was giving way to the brilliant light of a late-summer day. Breakfast was quickly over. Other people had to go to work, so within minutes of downing her tea-cup Jodi found herself alone.

As she walked through the door, she had a wonderful sense of exhilaration. It would be hot today. But not too hot. She was free! Simon Mansion would come sometime around midday.

The eastern sky was turning from hazy grey to sea-blue; so clear and sparkling. The sun was on the point of rising, and Jodi’s spirits were rising with it.

She would go for a walk. A long beautiful walk through the bush. She would go exploring. The great Tarrara Rock for instance! It was somewhere off the west out-road. Matt had said the Rock was as wide as the town, high as the sky, and criss-crossed with water-carved gullies where ferns and night-flowering scrub-bushes grew. Somewhere in the gullies, created by overhanging rocks ‒ Matt said ‒ the ghingi lived. The ghingi, he explained, was the Aboriginal people’s version of the devil-spirit.

Mary Roberts had later said that the ghingi stories were told by foolish mothers to warn their children to keep away from the area. The real purpose for the Rock’s ‘out-of-bounds’ seclusion was because it was the watershed which provided the town’s water supply.

‘You ought to see it when you have some free time, Jodi,’ Mary had suggested. ‘These enormous rock intrusions over Western Australia must be some of the world’s wonders. Huge things. Ayers Rock in Central Australia is the most famous of all. But Hyden Wave Rock, Bruce Rock, and Tarrara Rock are wonders to behold too. For my cup of tea I find Tarrara Rock too stark and formidable. Still it’s something that ought to be seen once in a lifetime, anyway.’

Jodi took her sun hat and set out, walking at first along the wide track to the west, then along a narrow foot track through the bush.

Sometimes she just wanted to stand and stare. Each time she did so she looked about her, not only at the landscape but to pick her landmark as Alec had warned her to do.

Once or twice when she stood still, looking around her, she had again the strange feeling that the bush was watching her. Or that some being was shadowing her. This was not a frightening feeling, but it was a weird one. She caught herself looking round quickly, perhaps in hope that she would spot some soft-footed bush animal following her. Or a bird hopping from bush to bush.

She laughed a little at herself. All of this was quite absurd, she knew. Except for snakes, whatever was in the bush was harmless. The occasional shuffle of dried leaves, or a dead twig on the ground cracking, she decided, was caused by the change of temperature because the land was heating up so quickly. Gum leaves and twigs were combustible.

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