My Place by Sally Morgan

Author:Sally Morgan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fremantle Press
Published: 1988-08-16T04:00:00+00:00

Where to next?

‘It’s a wonderful story.’ Mum had tears in her eyes when she finished reading Arthur’s story.

Like me, Mum now felt that at last we had something from the past to hang on to. And, for Mum in particular, there was something to be proud of.

However, in an odd way, we also experienced a sense of loss. We were suddenly much more aware of how little we knew about Nan and about the history and experience of our own family. We were now desperate to learn more, but there appeared to be few obvious leads left.

After much thought, I decided that our best course was to return to Nan and Arthur’s birthplace, Corunna Downs.

Paul thought this was a wonderful idea, he loved the North and he also could see no other way forward for us. He hoped we could persuade Nan to go with us.

When I told Mum about the idea, she wasn’t very positive.

‘You can’t go up there. It’s a silly idea, you don’t know anyone. Nan won’t want you to go.’

‘Nan doesn’t want me to do anything! All my leads have dried up, Mum, that’s all there is left now.’

When I approached Nan about the idea of going up North, she was disgusted.

‘You’re like your mother, you like to throw money away. All you’ll be lookin’ at is dirt. Dirt and scrub.’

I ignored her and said, ‘Why don’t you come with me? You might meet some of your old mates up there.’

‘Haa!’ she laughed and shook her head in disbelief, ‘I’m too old. Too old to go bush now. You think I got young legs? Look at them!’

‘They look all right to me, Nan. They’ve been holding you up for over seventy years, no reason to think they’ll give out on you now. Besides, you’ll be in the car most of the time.’

‘I don’t like cars and I’m too old to go bush. It’s a waste of money, you’re chasin’ the wind. You go up there and the cyclone’ll get you.’

Just then, Mum entered the fray. All this time, she’d been quietly observing Nan’s reaction.

‘Nan’s right, Sally,’ she said, much to Nan’s surprise. ‘You shouldn’t spend that money just to look at dirt. What will it achieve? There’s no one up there we know. What are you going to do, anyway, walk up to strangers in the street and ask them if they knew Daisy or Arthur Corunna?’

‘Yep,’ I replied. ‘I’ll take my tape-recorder, who knows what we will find out.’ Mum’s face changed from disbelief to laughter in a matter of seconds.

‘You’re really determined to do this, aren’t you?’ she said in a rather hoarse voice.

‘You know me, Mum.’

‘You know,’ Mum said wistfully, ‘I’ve always had a hankering to go North.’

‘Who said anything about taking you? I mean, all you’d be doing is looking at dirt. You don’t want to go two thousand kilometres for that.’

‘You’re not leaving me here?’

‘I don’t want to be dragging a reluctant mother around,’ I said. ‘No, it wouldn’t work. You stay here with Nan.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.