Cuppa Time by Jan Price
In response to our July 2024 invitation, we have received submissions of original work (stories and poems) in no longer than 300 words, inspired by the image, ‘Cuppa Time,’ by Jan Price.
We congratulate the following authors for their submissions, which are published below:
Adam Stone Adrian Brookes Allan Barden Mel King Catherine Bell
David Bridge Gail Griffin Geoffrey Gaskill Glen Donaldson
Guenter Sahr John Heritage Ian Stewart Daphne Delores Winter
Fire
A father surveys his son with lived experience. He knows this. He’s been this. Perhaps he still is this. That worn, torn and fraying gait. The stoop in his shoulders that speak of defeat. The scorched earth that wants to swallow you up so you can join the lost crops, the dead cattle, the house…
They did what they could to save the house. The fire was relentless though. A brutal and unforgiving monster that can never take enough lives, livelihoods, homes. It’s never enough.
They didn’t want to keep his three grandsons at the house but they needed hands. His daughter and toddler granddaughter escaped to the community hall in town.
All too quickly, it became abundantly clear that they wouldn’t be able to save the house. The ute was packed with supplies and they made a dash for the clearing near the largest dam on the property. They can’t escape the smoke or the calamitous orange sky but they’ll be safe there.
Granddad Bill is concerned for his son and daughter-in-law. ‘What’s left for them?’ he worries. His hope for his grandchildren is that they can get a good education and go to the city and to university. It will give them some options. ‘They don’t need to be wedded to the land like I have been. Three generations is enough’ he ponders.
His eldest grandchild, Patty leans towards him and his eyes say it all, ‘I’m going to break this cycle and our family will be okay.’ Tom, the next eldest is a deep thinker. He pulls his knees to his chest as protection from an uncertain future. The youngest boy, Sam is more freewheeling and his main concern is cooking the yabbies from the dam whilst his dad pours out the billy for tea.
– By Adam Stone
Into the Unknown
Smoko! Smoko!
Oh good—oh no
Hard work takes your mind off things
Till smoko brings them all piling back
Hold your mug to the steaming billy
Ease your bones a spell
Round the fire with mates
Never doubt they’ll stick up for you
But who are they really?
Brave smiles without
Caverns of solitude within
Because I know—yes I know
Smoko’s great existential conundrum:
How did it all come to this?
Can it really be thirty years
And still you can’t let her go?
For here she is again, all young and pretty
Just like she’s been for all time
The pale gentle face still fresh as the day
Of that last goodbye squeeze three decades ago
‘I’ll head up the bush!—hard work for hard cash
‘To get us the start we need…’
Then came the letter
She’d found someone else
A watchmaker, well off, a younger man
And a ‘Please wish me luck as I wish you’
Wrote back to her, pleading
She hasn’t replied
Not in all this time
Never meant to be a bushman
Always assumed there’d be a way out
But months turned to years
And years into exile
No more city with its watchmaking types
Playing fast and loose behind your back
Was it all for the best?
You know you’ll never know
But still
Perhaps if I’d been a watchmaker—
No! the thought’s too cruel to bear
So swill down your tea
Smoko’s all done
Hard work to take your mind off things
Off all that might have been
And isn’t
– By Adrian Brookes
In Wal’s Absence
‘I can’t believe you came back here, Pete.’
‘I can’t believe you took up with Wal, Dora.’
‘Why not?! I didn’t exactly have a choice.’ Dora jutted her jaw at him, her eyes ablaze in the shade of her hat.
Pete scratched his beard and looked off into the distance. ‘But Wal. Of all people.’
Rob stopped in his tracks and turned towards Pete. ‘What you got against Wal? Do you even know him?’
Dora and Pete ignored the interruption.
‘Wal was here. Anyway, now we’ve finished baling, what are you going to do now?’
‘I follow your drift. I’ll be on my way.’ Pete rose and started gathering his gear.
‘What? You heading off already?’ David asked.
‘Yep. I reckon there’s not much to keep me here, Davy boy.’
‘But you only just got here this morning! You haven’t even seen the yabbies. We’ve got some big ones in the far dam. And you haven’t told me about Sydney yet! You said you would.’
At this, Sally joined in. ‘Yes, and you haven’t seen the kittens! Don’t go!’
‘Listen, you two, if Pete has to go, he has to go. Don’t you start whining about it,’ Dora said briskly.
David stared at his mother. ‘Can’t you make him stay? It’s going to be dark soon, and where’s he going to sleep tonight?’
Dora didn’t reply.
‘Keep clear of the Narrandera road. He’ll be coming that way,’ she told Pete quietly, out of Rob’s hearing.
‘The kids have got a good life here,’ she said more firmly.
‘Pete! You’ll be back, won’t you?’ David demanded.
‘Well, sure, Davy. I’ll be back. Someday.’
‘What? In how many years?’ Dora scoffed.
‘It’s no easy life on the road, Dora.’
‘Sure. Nothing’s easy here, either,’ Dora spoke to Pete’s retreating back.
– By Daphne Delores Winter
Red Desert Dreaming
She observed him quietly, while she folded the ironing. ‘Bill,’ she said. There was no reply. ‘Bill!’ she said again. He turned around and looked at her dreamily. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked. ‘You seem away with the fairies.’
Until she spoke, Bill had been dreaming of setting up camp after a day of hiking in the central Australian desert. His mind was lost in the visual splendour of the desert with its endless deep-red earth and otherworldly atmosphere. He was in heaven.
‘Oh, sorry,’ Bill replied. ‘I was just contemplating the new garden fence design you want.’ Still in his own dreamtime, Bill said this as he imagined himself sitting under the desert night sky mesmerized by the brightness of the stars unhindered by the light pollution of cities and towns.
‘Yeah sure, and pigs might fly. For heaven’s sake Bill, give me a break’ she said. ‘Since you retired all you seem to do is spend time lolling about and doing very little else, I’m getting worried about you. You need to move, get out more, find a hobby, or something.’
‘I’m overwhelmed with my volunteering work presently,’ she said. ‘You enjoy hiking; why don’t you take a walking holiday in the countryside somewhere? It’ll do us both some good. You can wander about as you like, admiring the scenery and whatnot and I can get some things done.’
Her suggestion was music to Bill’s ears. Sitting around a desert campfire with a cup of billy tea under an illuminated desert night sky immediately came to mind. ‘Good idea love,’ he replied. ‘I’ll look at some options.’
His mind wandered back to the solitude of hiking in the majestic landscape of the central desert. Soon, he was away with the fairies once again.
– By Allan Barden
Who shall have the bedroll?
‘Who forgot the bedrolls?’
Says father with a frown
‘We’ve only brought the one
And I’m not sleeping on the ground’
‘I deserve the bedroll’
Says Barry to himself
‘I’m the one who brought it
They would have left it on the shelf’
‘Don’t think you’re having it,’
Says Anthony, the oldest
‘Grandad’s back is sore-
I know because he told us’
‘Anthony’s right,’ says father
‘Grampa shall have the bed
We”ll survive the ground a night
Now do as I have said’
‘It’s kind of you young chap’
Says Grampa with a nod
‘A nice soft bed does wonders
for my weary old man bod’
‘Now I shall have that bedroll’
Thinks little Stevie with a grin
‘Gramps won’t notice when I roll him off-
Not after five tin cups of gin’
But deep within the bedroll
Come a hundred tiny titters
Cause that bedroll is quite occupied
With a hundred just-hatched critters
– By Mel King
The Shearers’ Picnic Basket
It’s hot under the tin roof. A row of handpieces dangles silently from the shearing machines mounted on the wall. Cutters, combs and clippers are neatly stacked on the narrow shelf. The boards are swept clean.
Jacko the rouseabout’s flat out. He’s running in all directions, sweeping, skirting, penning up. Jean ducks as he piffs a handful of greasy sheep dags into the hessian bag slumped on the floor beside her.
He grins.
‘How was school today, Jean?’
She’s too busy scanning the wool bales stacked neatly like scones on a baking tray to reply.
‘The shearers’ picnic basket is out the back. They’re still having smoko.’
She scrambles down from the wool bales and peers out the back window of the shed. The men are resting in the dappled shade of the sprawling gumtree. And the cane picnic basket is lying abandoned on the dry grass.
A few minutes later, the men return for the last run of the day. One of the shearers plonks the picnic basket down next to Jean.
‘That was a good thermos of tea,’ he says smacking his lips.
Jean waits until the first sheep are dragged onto the board and the shearing machines are whirring again. Then she grabs the cake tin, yanks off the metal lid, and rips away the protective sheet of greaseproof paper.
The cake hasn’t been touched. She bites her lip.
Jacko notices.
‘It’s my chocolate cake,’ she says.
The one that sat low in the battered old cake tin and refused to rise. The one she smothered with a thin drizzle of watery icing and a generous dusting of desiccated coconut to disguise its dryness.
Her eyes fill with tears.
‘It’s too hot to eat today, Jean. All the men wanted were their roll-your-owns and strong black tea.’
– By Catherine Bell
Outback Artistry
The woman worked industriously across the canvas sketching in the horizon and burnt orange heavens that would overlook the bush scene of workhands settling in for a final brew-up ahead of unwrapping swags for the night. It was the fourth such canvas this week and it contained much the same ingredients, only the protagonists would vary as a new group sampled this ‘genuine outback experience.’
Each ‘punter’, as the agent enthusiastically described their paying guests, would come away with a tee-shirt printed with a ‘unique souvenir image’ recalling their stockman overnighter decked out in the appropriate gear. Most opted for the protective chaps to stave off the scratching brush. Not that the ponies that the company employed would bear any of the customers on other than safe, well-worn pathways. Even the soil at their camping site was well seeded with deterrents to keep away any critters that might have considered embedding themselves into folds of leather or skin.
It was interesting that the ‘joes’, the artist’s preferred term for her subjects, were keen to participate in the chores of fire setting, water heating and tea brewing. Only the cheapest leaves were scooped into the pot with scraps of eucalypt for pungent authenticity. Surprisingly, few turned down the resulting tannin-laden drop, although hardly any drained their mugs completely, except to wash down copious amounts of damper.
Important features in place, the artist began her clean-up, eager to utilise the meagre wash facilities ahead of the post meal rush. Not quite the source of original works she had hoped for, but it kept the financial wolf from the door. Maybe her work across a stretched torso or two would provoke interest, but she doubted it. She envisioned the op-shop rack would become her most likely gallery.
– By David Bridge
Old Billy
Twenty-two years had passed since I was in this same spot. Back then, Mum was there, along with my sister, Lily, Pa and Old Billy Forester. It was the day Pa offered Old Billy the job as jackaroo on our farm after we’d lost Dad the year before in a freak accident. But, today I stood here alone, with the urn housing the ashes of my mate, Old Billy, cupped in my hands. Distraught, I cried aloud, ‘What should I do, Billy?’
During the time he worked for our family I became his shadow at every opportunity. Thinking about it now, I must’ve driven him crazy with my constant questions. Good-natured, though, he’d ask me, ‘What are ya? A detective?’ A man of few words, he’d often just reply with a ‘Yeah’ or a ‘Nah’ or ‘Heads down, bums up.’ Everything I learned about the land, I learned from Old Billy. His passion for farming and the outdoors never wavered and his work ethic rubbed off on me.
Sadly though, progressively, his physical strength declined. His reflexes weren’t as quick and his hearing wasn’t as sharp, but, hey, that’s not surprising, considering he was well and truly over seventy. Too old to be mustering livestock on a motorbike, on his own.
Home from uni and the last time I saw him, he’d really slowed up. I tried to convince him to retire.
‘Retire? Not in me makeup, Joe. No schoolin’ like you, ya lucky bugger. I’ll be workin’ ‘til the day I drop dead.’
And drop dead, he did. Just like that.
And, just like that, I instinctively knew then and there what I had to do—scatter his ashes and honour Old Billy’s legacy by coming back home to where we’d started, and manage the farm, in his memory.
– By Gail Griffin
Tea
It was bloody hot but that didn’t stop Bluey dropping a handful of tea leaves into a billy of boiling water. ‘See, Dickie?’ Bluey chortled.
Dickie saw.
Bluey tapped his temple. ‘Drinking hot tea makes you sweat. Sweat keeps you cool. Old bushman’s trick.’
The twins, sitting next to Dickie, looked dubious. They told Dickie, ‘Camping’s fun.’ In this heat, it wasn’t. They asked for iced lemonade.
Bluey refused. ‘Hot tea’s better,’ he said.
Asking more than once wouldn’t make the twins’ longed-for soft drink appear. On the contrary it stirred the old man’s stubborn streak.
Bluey looked at his kids and sighed. Why couldn’t they accept he knew stuff that they didn’t? ‘When I was a swaggie …’ he told Dickie.
The twins winced. The full when-I-was-a-swaggie speech was imminent.
But Bluey took a different tack. ‘Cold lemonade,’ he told Dickie while shooting the twins a look, ‘makes you thirstier.’
Youngsters, whingeing and nagging, he sighed inwardly. He was sick of them all. Heat, tiredness, thirst … The list went on. He particularly hated, ‘Why can’t we go to Maccas?’
But he had to admit, his kids were good naggers. He called it mithering. When he thought he’d heard it all, they always came up with something new. ‘Stop mithering,’ he told them, ‘or go without.’
The twins knew on which side their bread was buttered.
Dickie, however, didn’t look like a mitherer. ‘It’s not just the handful of tea in the boiling water,’ Bluey continued, ‘it’s swinging the billy around in circles a couple of times and …’
‘How much tea?’
The twins groaned aloud. Why hadn’t Dickie listened? ‘Whatever you do,’ they’d told him on the eve of their camping trip, ‘don’t get dad talking about bushtucker or making billy tea. You’ll never shut him up.’
– By Geoffrey Gaskill
Uncle Levi’s Dry Sense of Humour
That night our campfire echoed the brilliant starlight above. The flames so close and yet so distant had much to say to each other as they shimmied and swayed in their fiery jitterbug dance.
Dad was known to dance ironically after a few rums but on this night he’d taken to his favourite hard liquor, a thunderdome matchup between gin and bourbon, so was ready to pass out. That left Uncle Levi – known to all as Boomerang Bob for his habit of returning to town to lay low after yet another stint of cattle rustling – to entertain us kids.
River sat close on a dry log with older brother Sawyer propping his head up with an elbow on his knee on the other end, trying to stay interested. I was nestled in the middle, my face toasty warm from staring into the flames. Uncle Levi began with tales of bandits among the distant hills before setting up a game of knock-ems with five cans of beans he retrieved from his pack. He was happy to oblige when we asked him to do his ol’ talking cactus trick and then it was time to show off his famous lasso skills.
‘You’re in luck young cowpokes’, Uncle Levi then announced in his trademark Texas drawl, ‘Me has a little surprise for y’all – and by “surprise” I don’t mean the rattlesnake-at-a-square-dance-kind.’ With that he stepped behind the campfire and retrieved a boiling billy. At least that’s what us kids thought it was. He told us he was going to show us something called ‘magic fog’. We sat spellbound, mouths agape. Years later we figured out he’d somehow got his hands on a hunk of dry ice. Quite the entertainer was our dear old, rascally Uncle Levi.
– By Glen Donaldson
The Careless Land
It wasn’t meant to be like this. We worked hard all day for our tea and damper and that lordly purse of six pence, three farthings twice a week. Worn out. Sun down. Sit around. Pass the billy round. Savour the sun’s diminishing warmth through febrile eyelids closed in readiness for rest before we take to ground to curl up in our swags.
What will tomorrow bring in this indifferent country besides the squatter’s early hoof beats and his overseer’s guttural commands. The morning’s plates are scraped clean and the billy does its brewed fresh round to be relished by somnambulists. Done. With twists of wrists tin mugs are emptied on the indifferent soil, wrapped in oilcloth and secreted in swags.
As we assemble, in the distance, cockatoos raucously greet the day and take flight freely across the careless land.
– By Guenter Sahr
An Image of Rural Life
The central trio, a working team
On the right: wisdom, experience
He, studying youth
Across the group
Across the years
Three ages close-welded
Warming by the fire
Sharing the fellowship of a brew
The day’s work complete
One deep in thought
Does he range through tomorrow’s tasks
Or is he more deeply engaged with
The future of life on the land
That simple life
Day-to-day, season after season
Bound by the roll of the months and the years
The rural lifestyle, now changed
From hands in the dirt or on the plough
To boardroom and the business model
Selling water
Selling stock
Storing grain for later trade
Or next year’s sowing
The pictured five seem out of place
In this new world electronic
Will their sense of belonging be retained
This feeling of being rooted in the earth
Or will it – and they – go the way of the draughthorse
And the scythe?
– By Ian Stewart
take a proper ganda at history
painting’s version
of colonial past
truth choked
by sentimental
bullshit
to support
establishment’s view
on this stolen land
– By John Heritage
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