Read The Road from Coorain for Free Online Page A

work, and ingenuity, the sheep station of my early childhood became a more and more delightful place to live. Each year after the wool sales, some new comfort was added. A kerosene refrigerator appeared to replace the old burlap drip safe, bringing ice water into our lives. My mother acquired a 1934 Ford V-8 sedan, with leather upholstery and unbelievably comfortable springs. Our clothes now came from mail-order catalogues, and an occasional case of crisp red apples would arrive from the irrigation area orchards several hundred miles to the east. A small pond was made for the poultry yard, and my mother added ducks to the chickens we had to protect each night from the foxes.
    In the year of my fifth birthday, the totally unexpected happened. It rained five inches in one night, and we woke in the morning to see our homestead sitting on a comfortable island. The clump of trees behind the house was half submerged. The chickens were clucking nervously on their perches in the night poultry yard, sitting just above the water, and the ducks were sailing magisterially around a vastly enlarged pond. The sheepdogs sat on top of their kennels gazing at the water swirling by, and an army of ants, beetles, scorpions, and other insects milled about at the water’s edge driven before the slowly advancing flood.
    In the next few weeks it continued to rain more, so that an unheard-of eight inches had fallen within less than a month. The transformation of the countryside was magical. As far as the eye could see wild flowers exploded into bloom. Each breeze would waft their pollen round the house, making it seem as though we lived in an enormous garden. Everywhere one looked the sites of old creek beds became clear as the water gathered and drained away. Bullrushes shot up beside the watercourses, and suddenly there were waterfowl round about, erupting into flight as one approached. We saw the sky reflected in water for the first time. Stranger still, the whole countryside was green, a color we scarcely knew. Evidences of the fertility of the soil were all about us. Trees sprang up as the waters receded around our house, and before long a new clump of eucalyptus saplings was well launched in life. On walks we would find enormous mushrooms, as large as a dinner plate, but perfectly formed. These we would gather to take home to grill on top of the wood stove, filling the house with a wonderful aroma. Walks became adventures of a new kind because they were likely to reveal some new plant or flower not seen before, or show us why the aboriginal ovens were located where they were, close to what was once a stream or a water hole. We made a wooden raft and poled it cheerfully around the lake near the house, alighting on islands that were old sandhills, now suddenly sprouting grass.
    Everywhere one went on the property was a vision of plenty. Dams brimmed with water. Sheep and cattle bloomed with health and nourishment. It was clear that there would be an abundant crop of wool, whiter and longer than any we had ever grown. On the heavier land, tall strong grasses grew resembling the pampas grass of Argentina. My father looked at it dubiously. When it dried it would be a fire hazard, and so a fresh herd of cattle was bought to eat it down and fatten for the market. Best of all, my father planned a late lambing season that year, and the young lambs, nourished by their mothers’ ample milk, frisked away like creatures in a child’s picture book.
    My parents were jubilant. My mother was forty-one, my father in his early fifties. I recall them then, in the prime of life, surrounded by their young family, full of plans for the future. Success did not make them complaisant, for in one very important respect they were not like other people in our part of the world. They did not simply concern themselves with local affairs. Their dwelling might be remote but they were conscious of living in a world touched by important political and economic events. They took