Free Castaway by Joanne Van Os

looks a bit foreign, and he can’t speak any English. And he eats a lot!’
    ‘Well if eating a lot makes him foreign, you must be from the moon, George,’ said Sam. ‘We found him lying on the beach, right beside the water –’
    ‘And just in time,’ broke in George, ‘because that humungous old croc, the one we told you about from the rookery? He was just about to snatch the kid from the beach but we frightened him away. Sam sconed him with a big rock and he took off!’
    Tess shook her head in disbelief. ‘Wow. What did Uncle Mungo say?’ she said, remembering the comments he had made a few nights earlier about illegal immigrants. ‘He must have been really cross!’
    ‘Uncle Mungo doesn’t know about it. We’re not telling him.’ Sam frowned and looked away. His mare Holly had come up to them, and she pushed her nose into his back and demanded a pat. He turned towards her and rubbed her neck absently.
    Tess looked at him curiously. ‘So where’s this kid now then?’
    ‘We hid him up in the hay loft – you know, where we used to have our old cubbyhouse. We brought him inside to have a bath yesterday while everyone was out of the house,’ George said in his usual rush of words,‘and then we gave him cornflakes. He didn’t know what they were!’
    Tess and Darcy pondered all this for a moment, then Darcy said, ‘Well, what are you going to do with him? You have to tell someone, don’t you?’
    ‘Yeah, we know. But not Uncle Mungo,’ said Sam vehemently. ‘He’ll either shoot him –’
    ‘Sam! He would not!’ Tess was shocked.
    ‘– or he’ll call in the Immigration people and they’ll lock him up in a detention centre somewhere, like those kids we saw on tv at your place. He’s just a little kid. We can’t let that happen to him.’
    ‘Hey, what about Charles?’ said Darcy. ‘He’s a good bloke!’
    ‘Yeah, I thought of that, but he works for Customs now. He was here looking for illegal boats the day …’ Sam’s voice faltered, but they knew he meant the day that Mac was hurt so badly. He was suddenly a lot more interested in Holly, and scratched her ears thoroughly.
    ‘Yes,’ said Tess hurriedly filling in the silence. ‘He couldn’t do anything, not when he’s working for them. He would have to report it. We need to think of something else.’ She frowned. ‘Mum’s got this friend who belongs to Amnesty International. You know, that mob who try and get people out of prison when they’re locked up because of politics, not because they’recriminals or anything? Maybe we could ask her about it.’
    Darcy disagreed. ‘Wanda’s a total fruit-loop. She’d want to hold a cake stall to raise money and then picket Parliament House and hug everyone in sight.’
    George laughed out loud, but Tess nodded. ‘Yeah, you’re right. She’s a bit nutty. But they won’t all be like Wanda. It was on the news again last night, about the refugees who landed last week. There’s some lawyer in town who’s representing them. Maybe we could talk to him?’
    Just then they heard Jaz calling them to come in and eat while the food was still hot.
    ‘Can we go and meet this kid after lunch?’ asked Tess.
    ‘Yeah – no one goes to the hay shed much at the moment. We’re not feeding any buffaloes in the yards or anything,’ said Sam.
    He gave Holly a final pat, and they turned to go back up to the house.

Lunch was delicious. Aunty Lou and Jaz had reheated the food from the market stalls, and the spicy aromas of tom yum soup, green chicken curry, juicy beef satays and fragrant jasmine rice filled the dining room. Even Old Jock, who usually didn’t go in for that ‘fancy foreign muck’, as he called it, tried some, and decided the beef satays were almost civilised food.
    Jaz talked animatedly about what she’d seen down at the Point, and Uncle Mungo boomed his opinions just as loudly as ever about illegal immigrants until heand Aunty Lou almost had a heated argument across the table.