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Salt River Times 3
'We better go to the side of the road,' says Mel, because
the tram had gone but the semi was still waiting and the
driver was looking down at them worse than a dog, no
wonder.
So they got the old woman to the side of the road, and
she told them how the water was warm, and how the
Chinamen had pulled her up out of it and put her in their
boat. And how they would not stop at the wharf but went
up on the tide, up and up, out of the Salt River and into
the Iramoo River. And how she sat shivering.
'And so dirty,' she says. 'The sweet water in the Iramoo River is one thing. But in those days the Salt River
was the dirtiest in the state. It must have been. My blue
dress was black. I was ashamed of wearing it. And it was
full of water. I wanted to get home, but they went up and
up the river. I thought I was being kidnapped. I thought I
was going for a slave.'
'I was quite excited,' says Miss White. 'I've often
wished it had happened. Nothing much else has.'
'We thought you were going to say it had,' says Mel.
'Kind of end the story.'
'No ending much,' says Miss White. 'When that didn't
happen. They'd got a market garden up the river, the
other side of the trestle bridge. They sailed up there. They
had the rest of them up there, and a fire, and they lent me
a blanket and I took off my dress in a hut. Then they
filled the boat up with vegetables and we went down the
river again. They kept my dress, and I didn't know what
they were saying. I just had the blanket. And then it was
mad. They hung all these vegetables and flowers on me,
bunches of carrots, beans, onions, parsley, their kind of
cabbage, ginger roots, daisies, all hung on me like a
garland.'
'They were just going to make you carry them,' says
Mel. 'You did get to be a slave.'
'No,' says Miss White. 'When they'd hung enough radishes and beans on me they took the boat to the wharf and
took me to my father's house. He got very angry. He had
to buy all the vegetables they'd hung on me. And the next
day one of the women brought my dress round, all washed and ironed. It must have taken them hours. They
didn't get much thanks from my father. He was that sort
of man. In fact he had it in for the Chinese after that,
when they had that bit of trouble, and I don't think it got
cleared up how the man went missing. But I don't know
what went on because I went to school interstate and
when I came back I think they'd gone.'
'Maybe,' says Joe. He's one of them still.
'There's you still,' said Miss White. 'You could be
another lot. But that's a long time later. Now is a long
time later than then.'
'Maybe,' says Joe again, and then he turns his back a
bit on Mel and Kev and walks on a bit with the old
woman, she gets him by the arm, she's got nothing
against Chinese.
While Joe's along there with her Kev looks round.
'Hey, will you look at that?' he says. 'We're worse off
than we started, Mel. We've got away past the park and
we'll have to walk back and it's further than when we
began, and we paid to do it.'
'You don't need me to get off a tram,' says Mel. 'Come
on, Joe, we're waiting for you.'
'O.K.,' says Joe, and gets away from the old woman.
'She was just telling me that she knows it isn't tinned catfood at the take-away.'
'You got to believe something,' says Mel.
'Hey,' says Joe, because he's begun to notice too. 'You
got us off the tram about nine blocks late. We get to walk
now, do we?'
'Yeah,' says Mel. 'No worries though. I'll shout you
the walk. Right?'
'Right on,' says Kev, it suits him, something free. Joe
says something else. It could be a Chinese word, if you
don't know anything better. So they think up some other
words for themselves, and walk back to the park gates
hanging the words round their shoulders like Miss
White's vegetables. But hers were all good fresh vegetables. These are all old bad words.
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