Small Things

​Introduction

— David Vernon

Over the years I have heard people state, often with significant emphasis, Australian history is boring.

I suspect these poor souls have been brought up solely on prime ministers and dates. For many generations history has been seen as stories about power and privilege — knowing the kings and queens of ye olde England, naming the countries that make up the British Empire, knowing who the Archbishop of Sydney was, or being able to parrot (incorrectly) that Edward Hammond Hargraves discovered gold in 1851, setting off the Australian gold rushes.

Yes, that is indeed history, but it is dry and indigestible history. It is not the history that we showcase in these pages. Here you discover how events shaped individuals: how people, like you and I responded to flood, fire, war, loss, victory, technological change, social upheaval and the myriad events that take place while we are busy living our hectic lives.

This is the fifth Stringybark anthology of historical ‘faction’ and our 45th anthology in total. These 37 winning and highly commended stories were chosen from a field of 115 entries. On behalf of our other judges, Alice Richardson, Justine Blunden and Stephen Senise, I hope you enjoy this ripper collection of Australian short history tales.

Happy reading!

DAVID VERNON

Judge and Editor

Stringybark Stories

​​A Man of Return

—  Graham D’Elboux

Ialways knew that there was something about the relationship between Uncle Ted and my mother. I was ten when he came to live at our place and although the old house was rough-built with hessian-bag walls and dirt floors, it was a drawcard for those down on their luck. Dad had a habit of inviting such people, and winter nights often found some old pipe-smoking bachelor telling yarns and spitting into the open fire. Some of them were there for a week before my mother threw them out. Uncle Ted stayed a year.

The day Uncle Ted arrived I watched him ride slowly through the river gums up to the house and wondered why he had one leg out at an angle. When he pulled up at the gate, I saw that he wore a thick moustache and a slouch hat and when I asked who he was I was told that he was Dad’s brother, the one who had gone off to fight at Gallipoli and the Western Front and had come back with grey hair and a stiff leg. I had never heard him mentioned before but Dad seemed happy to see him while Mum, unusually flustered, made a fuss over him.

Uncle Ted never said much but my brother Don and I knew that he’d seen some of the world and were keen to ask him about Gallipoli and France. We were told not to mention it as it was not something that he wanted to talk about and so that was the way it was until the night he frightened us all by screaming in his sleep. Dad rushed in to find Ted on his feet and swinging wildly at something that wasn’t there, and it took him a while to settle him down. Dad told us later that Ted had been in the tunnels at Lone Pine and had fought hand to hand with the bayonet. We never mentioned it again.

Dad and Ted were different. Ted did not drink whereas Dad was happiest when in the pub. Too many of Dad’s financial decisions were made at the bar and this made life difficult for Mum as she struggled to feed us and any old bushie who Dad had invited home. Mum may have ruled the house with an iron hand but she had it tough. She would sprinkle water on the dirt floor to keep the dust down and her chores seemed never ending. Wood had to be chopped for fuel, cows milked, animals fed, and water carried when the creek dried up in summer. It was a hard life and Don and I heard a lot of shouting when money meant for our table had disappeared across the bar. Dad was a man of grand schemes on how to make a fortune, from breeding pigs to racing horses he was always full of ideas and plans on how to strike it rich. He was a dreamer more than a worker and most of his ideas stayed at the bar where they were originally conceived.

My brother Don was two years older than me and, like Dad and Ted, we were different. He was game for anything while I was more cautious and needed to think things out before I made a move. He had dark hair like my mother and had her olive skin while I was sandy-haired and freckly. I loved him and looked up to him, but he did get me into trouble more than once. When the apples were in season at old Simpson’s property, he was keen to sneak up there and bag a few. We had been warned many times to stay away from Simpson’s as his bull was known to charge anyone on the wrong side of the fence. That didn’t worry Don, and as usual he talked me into going with him as his nervy accomplice. We scaled the fence and were filling the bag as fast as we could when the bull caught our scent and came at us. We were about to bolt when a voice came from behind us.

Don’t move, it said.

I don’t know how he got that stiff leg through the fence but there was Uncle Ted, standing behind us with his hat in his hand. The bull saw him and stopped. It was pawing the ground, snorting and bellowing in rage and us kids were now frozen in fear.

Then the old man slapped the side of his stiff leg with his hat and, never taking his eyes off the bull, took a step forward. Every second or so he would take another step and slap his leg again. The bull stared back but never moved, just roared and stamped. The old man took another step.

They were some of the longest minutes of my young life but Uncle Ted, the man of few words, got right up to that bull. Then, knowing it was beaten, the bull turned away.

Get over the fence, he said.

Don and I climbed up behind him on the back of his horse and headed back. Nobody said a word and I knew that a thrashing was coming. We were at the house before we were told, Say nothing to your mother.

I became close to Uncle Ted after that. I began to see him as not just a brave man but a gentle man who had seen and done terrible things, and I felt no fear of him. Like me he was left-handed, and in those days it wasn’t so common, so I was pleased to have someone on my side when I was teased. He taught me how to handle a horse and how to cure and plait leather and we spent hours together making a stockwhip. That whip became a symbol of a terrible night when Dad was at the pub and a bunch of stinking drunk bushmen arrived at the house. They pushed their way past Mum and there was a lot of shouting before someone smashed the lantern and threw the room into darkness. Don and I were crouching in the corner where the light from the fire showed a room full of dirty, drunken men and our mother backed up against the stove. Don, twelve at the time, then stood up and put himself between them and Mum. With Don to protect, she rose up and roared in fury at those whom she had fed and sheltered so many times before. The door then flew open, and Uncle Ted burst into the room with the stockwhip in his hand. The bushmen took one look at his face and melted into the darkness. Mum, who I never saw cry, threw her arms around Don and burst into tears.

Dad and Ted fell out over that episode. Dad, guilty at not being there, and Ted and Mum furious at him for encouraging those who had turned on us. There was a blazing row with the three of them at it. A lot of family truths came out that night and Don and I heard more than we wanted through those hessian walls. The next morning Ted told us that it was time for him to move on.

When Ted decided to leave, we all knew that we would miss him – me most of all.

Except perhaps for my mum, who called him Teddy and barely spoke for a week before he left. On the day he went, he’d already said goodbye to everyone else when he saw me hiding behind our old Peppertree. He came over to me and handed me the stockwhip and I was struggling not to cry when he suddenly hugged me. None of the others had got that. I don’t know why he did it, but I never forgot that hug. I like to think it was because we had become close mates, and I was the only one in our family with blue eyes. Just like him. I watched him ride away through the river gums and wanted to run after him. I’ve always wished I had.

I never saw him again.

Years later, when I was a grown man, I told my mother about what happened that day with Ted and Simpson’s bull and asked if it was true that he was really my father. She was old and worn out by then and she said nothing at first, just reached out for my hand and held it.

It was only when she turned her head that I saw the tears.

The Facts

The Battle of Lone Pine took place between Australian and New Zealand forces and the Ottoman Empire at Gallipoli between August 6 and 10, 1915. It was regarded as some of the fiercest fighting the Australians had experienced up to that point.

When the Australians reached the Ottoman trenches, they found them roofed over with thick pine logs. They then fired grenades and stabbed from above until some began to lift the logs to gain access. They then jumped into the dark, cramped conditions and fought with grenades and bayonet. Seven Australians were awarded the Victoria Cross.

GRAHAM D’ELBOUX lives on the South Coast of NSW and is considered to be an ordinary cook, persistent gardener and competent beer drinker. He also likes to read, travel and write the occasional short story. He has been published in NSW Stories for Seniors as well as Stringybark anthologies Behind the Wattles (2012), Malicious Mysteries (2014), Non Posso (2015), Gift of a Casserole (2017), Close to Heaven (2020) and The Mirror (2021).

​Captain Maconochie’s Fortepiano

—  Kevin O’Sullivan

Never in my life did I imagine that having been sent for my crimes to Botany Bay, on the other side of the world, I should sit in a fine parlour with a pretty girl and play the piano. True, it didn’t last, but that wasn’t altogether my fault. I don’t think the pretty girl imagined that she might fall for a young man of ill repute. They sent her away, back to England, to her aunt, I think.

I should introduce myself. My name is Arthur Wey and I spent my adult years, although they don’t number very many, in Bath, a bustling city full of gentry taking the waters and full of opportunities for a smart young man going places. I’m artistically inclined, not much given to hard labour, and I made a decent living playing the fortepiano in the Assembly Rooms and even composing, not that the gentry noticed my music: they notice only themselves. Perhaps, if I’d persevered more with my music and made a name for myself, I wouldn’t be telling you this story.

Besides my playing and composing, I learned another skill that was to make me and break me in short order. There are few trades as useful as that of a forger. Paper is powerful and the papers that folks need forged are the kind of papers that are to their advantage, like wills, and bills of sale, and letters of authority and suchlike. Even love letters I have known to be forged, to discredit a lady or a gentleman, and sometimes they have the devil’s own work to prove their innocence. To my credit, I never got involved in that sort of dirty work; it was mainly licences and such, documents with seals and signatures, that I produced.

I was told my work was very good and was paid handsomely for it. But whoever said that the pen is mightier than the sword had not pitted the forger’s pen against the sword of the Sheriff and his constables. I did, and the Sheriff won. I was sentenced at Bath assizes in the winter of 1838 to transportation for seven years and I fair sank into the very pit of despair.

It was almost a year before I arrived in Sydney town and as a presentable young man, who could read and write, I was given a job as store’s clerk in the quartermaster’s office, near the Barracks at Hyde Park. But envy ever accompanies good fortune and I fell afoul of the overseer who contrived an order for me to be transported to Norfolk Island. If my heart had sunk into despair in Bath, imagine how I felt at this new peril: Norfolk Island, the most feared place in the colony. No one returned from there to Sydney Town, or if they did, it was to be hanged or to be tried, which was pretty much the same thing in the end.

It was The Nautilus that conveyed us to the island, me and a clutch of Irish wretches chattering in their own language. The new commandant and his family were aboard too, but we never saw them, being confined below decks. We new arrivals were kept away from the old hands, who were all up at Longridge, whereas we were nearer to Kingston, but the sight of the other ‘old hands’, the ones in uniform, didn’t bode well for what our life was to be. The tales of brutality looked to be true. Imagine our surprise then, when news went around that the birthday of the young Queen was to be celebrated with the performance of a play, with music and fireworks, and with a toast to be drunk, not just by the officers and the guards, but by every man jack of us convicts! Such an event could scarcely be credited, and it wasn’t until I felt the tot of rum burn my throat that I believed it was happening.

That’s where he noticed me, at the meal that followed, and that too was strange. The guards always went armed and always in twos or threes, but there he was, walking around among us, no sword at his hip, coming up to a man, looking directly at him and speaking, as to an equal. He asked if any among us could play a musical instrument, as he had bought up a whole ship full of instruments and music and was anxious to form a band. I said that I could play the fortepiano, not that I supposed there to be one on the island.

What’s your name lad? he asked, like a vicar at a parish fête.

Arthur Wey, Sir, and he nodded.

The following day I was working in the dairy, when a commotion behind indicated that someone had arrived.

Wey! Over here quick smart. Cap off! Commandant wants you.

He spoke to me for a while about nothing in particular, asking where I was from, what job I had done, how it was I could play the piano, and what my crime was. Except for the part about the piano playing, I knew that he knew the answers to all the questions he asked about me, and I thought he might be seeing if I was telling the truth and also how I bore myself in conversation with a gentleman. I must have passed the test, because he said, Well, Wey, you may afford me some assistance. Please come to the commandant’s house tomorrow morning at ten.

I was dumbstruck! Not at being told to come to his house, but because he had said, "Please!" It was nigh on two years since I’d heard that word directed to me. This was a strange cove, maybe as strange as they all said.

The following morning, I was given some soap to wash with and a comb for my hair, and I reached the Commandant’s house at a few minutes to ten. Captain Maconochie came to the door himself and led me into a parlour on the right-hand side, where his wife was waiting.

Why don’t you play something for us, Wey, something simple, maybe a song?

I sat and played an air called As I walked over Salisbury Plain, and out of the corner of my eye I could see that Mrs Maconochie inclined her head and looked at her husband with the trace of a smile. As the last chord faded, the couple nodded to each other, and Mrs Maconochie rose and left the room. The captain congratulated me on my playing and in moments his wife reappeared and introduced her daughter, my pupil, Mary Ann.

How can I describe my first sight of Minnie? If I say it was like the sun breaking through clouds, you will say I am being romantic and sentimental. But I’m not. Have you felt the way the sun on your skin changes everything, warming not just your body but your heart, lifting your spirits, bringing hope? Well, that’s how I felt in that parlour on the twenty-seventh of May in the year 1840 as I bowed my head in greeting.

At first, Mrs Maconochie chaperoned us, knitting or crocheting quietly, but after a month of good behaviour, and with a brood of five other children to look after, she left us to our own company, putting her head round the door from time to time and only very occasionally coming to sit and listen. Minnie was really very good at the piano, and my ‘teaching’ consisted mostly of helping her choose pieces that she might enjoy and transcribing them into an easier key for her petite hands. This gave us lots of time to talk and it was quickly clear that she enjoyed my company. She had just turned seventeen and I was four years older; had we met in polite society, my attentions would not, I felt, be unwelcome. She soon told me I should call her Minnie rather than Mary Ann, but if the family were present, it was our convention that I should say Miss Maconochie. She began to call me Arthur when we were alone.

I suppose having a secret like that of the name was a sign that we were growing fond of each other, and when the heart is that moved, the face must show it. Mrs