nothing but bread and tea in the last twenty-four hours. Although she was not an enthusiastic cook, to avoid the prospect of more Vegemite on toast, she offered to prepare the evening meal. ‘My treat,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ll hunt about in the cupboard and buy what else I need. I think I saw some shops last night.’
‘Yeah. Just around the corner from the bus stop where you got off. Or you could take the short-cut across the footy ground.’ He gestured in the direction of the backyard. ‘There should be some onions and spinach in the vegie garden if you need them.’
After a quick lunch, Finn disappeared down the hall to his room. Ever resourceful, Moss found some pasta and a bottle of bolognaise sauce in the cupboard and fetched some onions from the garden. This seemed to be a good basis for an easy meal. She put on her japara and took a shopping bag from behind the door. Instead of retracing last night’s route, she set out across the footy ground. The ragged grass around the perimeter wet the hem of her jeans, but the day was sunny and she enjoyed the feeling of purpose. There were two small shelters just inside the fence and a low brick building with cyclone wire over the windows, above which a sign enigmatically proclaimed HOME OF THE OPPORTUNITY KNOCKERS. Bizarre name for a football team, she thought. She crossed a bridge over the creek, which flowed sluggishly after the night’s rain. She could just make out the original sign, HALFWAY BRIDGE, smothered as it was under layers of graffiti.
Turning onto the main road, she looked down its length across the open landscape. A city girl, she could see no redeeming feature in its flat, unremitting yellowness. Apart from a few apologetic eucalypts, there was no green to define and control this amorphous space. Most of the houses bordering the road had sparse gardens that the rain had brought momentarily to life, but there was a mirage-like quality to the water that lay in puddles on fatally compacted soil. Only the geraniums seemed to do well in these conditions. Her Grandma Kathy had grown prim geraniums in pots, but these shrubs sprawled, wanton and leggy, like careless old whores grown tired of life.
In contrast, the little public gardens at the end of town (the OPPORTUNITY WAR MEMORIAL GARDENS, she read on the wrought-iron entrance gate) were pleasantly fresh and green. Moss looked in surprise at the well-tended lawn and garden beds. They occupy enchanted space, she thought. It was as though all the life and energy of the town were vested in this small oasis.
Moss noticed that most of the businesses in the main street provided a somewhat eclectic range of goods and services. There was a service station that also sold groceries (and offered electrical and lawnmower repairs), a small supermarket, a craft-cum-coffee shop, a newsagency-cum-post office/bank, a general store, and a rather fine old corner pub that boasted vacant accommodation. Across the road was a purveyor of fine antiques and bric-a-–brac (also dry-cleaning). This had once been the Commonwealth Bank—the name was still etched deeply into the stone. Next door was Marisa’s Boutique— ladies and children’s discount fashions—a fish ’n’ chip shop, a pharmacy and the Country Women’s Association Op Shop (Open Wednesdays, the sign said. Please leave only usable goods in the container. No electrical ). Despite this last plea, an old TV set had been dumped outside the shop, along with a rusty bike and a bulging green garbage bag. Peering at the window, Moss made out a faint gold outline advertising its former life as a barber shop and private men’s club. Three other shops were boarded up, a forlorn testament to the slow dying of a country community.
With time on her hands, she wandered on past the shops to the Mechanics Institute (opened in 1891 by the Hon. Charles Sandilands, OBE). Now, she read on the fading notice–board, it served as a meeting hall and, once a month, as a cinema. It would never again welcome young men, farmers’ sons, doggedly seeking an education after a hard day’s labour. Moss could almost see them, with their bullet heads and overalls and grubby hands, sweating over their books with a faith in learning that was almost sublime; the great-grandfathers, perhaps, of today’s urban lawyers and doctors and accountants. At the far end of the street, on a little rise, stood a small stone Anglican church with