Untitled Document

CHAPTER THREE: SUGARLOAF MTN.

Kathy parks the car at a familiar address. It is an address so familiar she could scarcely fail to find it in a pea soup fog. With the car standing motionless now but with the engine still idling, she can smell foul fumes and heat. They are the fumes that billow when leaking oil drips onto an excessively hot engine.

The car has earned a much-needed rest. As Kathy cuts the engine, the front porch light is simultaneously switched on to illuminate the whole front yard. The screen-door opens and Grandma Wilson's portly frame emerges.

"Drive straight around to your house," said Grandma, poking her head inside the driver's open window. "You can park in the garage, or in the yard if that's easier for unloading the car. Charlie 'n' me will walk round and show you through the place so as to settle you in for the night."

Driving or walking that short distance takes an almost equal amount of time. Grandma unlocks the front door, reaches inside and switches the porch light on. Kathy struggles to extricate a large bundle of blankets and linen from the rear passenger seat.

In her haste, she has packed too many items into one huge and cumbersome bundle, which she can barely carry let alone see around. And that problem is aggravated now that night has fallen. She awkwardly maneuvers her burden across the lawn, up the porch stairs and through the front doorway.

Gran guides Kathy to the first door on her left, which is the front bedroom, or master bedroom, though it isn't especially big at 12’ x 12’, and no bigger, in fact, than the second or middle bedroom. The master bedroom contains a double bed, onto which Kathy offloads her burdensome bundle of blankets and bedding.

Because there is no hallway, the bedroom doorway leads straight out to the living room, which appears stark and uninviting due to its lack of furniture. There are pieces torn out of the linoleum revealing floorboards and the dust of ages beneath. The wall between the kitchen and living room has been removed to make one big room of 15' X 24'.

At the living room end there is a wood-burning stove and a single lounge chair. The kitchen has a table with two wooden chairs, and an electric range with an oven that doesn't work because the element has burnt out. There is also a toaster, electric kettle and a quantity of cups, plates and cutlery.

The middle bedroom has nothing in it. The walls are only partly painted; the parts left unpainted, form shadowy boundaries outlining furniture that stood there once like immovable objects to be painted around.

There is a single bed in the back bedroom, which Josh claims as his--the very first room of his own. It is a narrow room at 12 x 7 but seems twice that size now that he won’t have to share it with his big bully brother.

There is no flush toilet in the bathroom--or anywhere else for that matter. The toilet is situated in an outhouse in the back yard. It is an old-style, Australian ‘dunny’, incorporating a ten-gallon pot, which is emptied once a week. It is certainly primitive and it smells offensively but that is the crude reality of it.

The house is a standard, Tasmanian miner's house of the WW2 era; is 900 sq. ft in size and is clad with cheap weather-board siding, which was roughly hewn from eucalyptus hardwood by the mine's own sawmill. Most of that wood came out of the surrounding forest except for the floorboards, which are smooth and straight, store- bought and of much higher quality.

Upon the mine's closure, the houses were offered to their occupants for a token $1 as part of a severance package. At face value, a three-bedroom house at such a price would appear to be a gift of real worth.

But, unfortunately, there is a catch: The miners can't live in these houses if they have to move elsewhere to find work; therefore, they cannot have both a house and a job but are forced instead to choose between one or the other.

Virtually the only way to remain living in one of these houses is by going on the dole. But such a life of leisure has a downside, because it entails an eighty-percent reduction in income.

That is a prospect, which fails to appeal to most--instead, it causes a frantic scramble to sell up and move out. With home ownership having briefly reached a spectacular, one hundred percent, the townspeople are now preoccupied with the forlorn burden of offloading their glittering gifts for whatever small dollar sum they can get.

"These houses are a real steal," said Gran, "and, for that reason, there are other parties interested in buyin' 'em: Grant Lloyd is tryin' to buy as many as he can so he can rent 'em out and make money as a big-time landlord . . . Do you remember him?"

"No, I don't think so," said Kathy, looking pensively at the hodgepodge of paint-work. Her attention is then further focussed upon a line of thick paint that serves to underscore the boundary between the painted parts and the unpainted parts.

She runs a finger along that line and notes it is raised more than an eighth of an inch. It is the layered accumulation of successive, sporadic efforts, of timesaving, moneysaving slipshod shortcuts.

"He was the maintenance contractor for the mine. That miserly old skinflint! He used to paint the houses with cheap paint, but he now has ambitions to become a slumlord. He offered Reggie Vesperman $100 for this place.

Reggie was disgusted and told Charlie he could have it for $300--the price of traveling expenses to a mine in Western Australia. Reggie didn't have no cash, so he was happy to sell it to Charlie.

There's some who's gonna be fightin' over these houses, but at least you and Liz have already got one a piece . . . Oh, when you see Liz later, try to talk some sense into her. Can you believe she is writing letters to all sorts of criminals in jails all over Australia?"

"Yes, I can." said Kathy, matter-of-factly.

"It costs her a fortune just for the postage, because she has to buy sheets of stamps and send them to these jailbirds, who can't pay for their own stamps. But worse than that, she has to pay double postage: they mail letters to her--which have got her stamps on them in the first place--and then she puts each of those letters in another envelope with another stamp and another address.

They are using her but she can't see it. She can't see it at all. She has always been drawn to riffraff ever since she was a teenager. That first boyfriend of hers, Danny Badden, has been in and out of jail for almost twenty years now."

"Badden was a bad one," said Kathy, shaking her head from side to side. "I remember him well. He was a real loser--no, worse than that, he was a real weasel, a real low life. He was just the kind of guy to interest Liz."

"Oh, you girls! I wish you would get along better. You haven't even seen her for years. I really wish you'd have more respect for Liz. She is your older sister, you know, and your only sister!"