Free Haunted Creek by Ann Cliff

pillow was wet. Incessant, heavy rain had soaked the bark slabs of the roof and was finding its way inside. Luke grunted, turned over and went back to sleep.
    With a sigh, Rose fetched a bucket to catch the drips and curled up at the bottom of the bed to wait for daylight. Maeve had been right; Luke was pleasant but not willing to put himself out. But then, he could hardly patch the roof in the middle of the night, and fetching a bucket was a wife’s job.
    The rain had changed everything, just a week or so ago. The hot weather had built up, more humid every day, until it pressed on you like a heavy weight. Huge biting flies that Luke called March flies were everywhere and they were both covered by angry red bites before the weather broke with thunderstorms.
    They had watched lightning dancing along the tops of the mountains, more dazzling than anything Rose had seen. Thunder rolled ominously through the bush and far away on tree-covered slopes they saw points of fire. ‘Lightning strikes,’ Luke said. ‘But the rain will put them out, I hope.’ It was strange to see forests climbing to the mountain tops, after the bare, sheep-nibbled grass of Yorkshire uplands.
    The dust outside the hut turned to mud, but the water barrels were full. A haze of green appeared where Luke had dug the earth and some of the trees started to flower. Rain made everything harder, but it was a blessing and at last Rose could start her garden.
    ‘This is the Victorian autumn,’ Luke told Rose. ‘The best time of year.’ It seemed all wrong to have Easter in the autumn, but everything was upside-down here. On Easter Sunday the Teesdales joined other settlers in the Wattle Tree school for a service conducted by an Anglican vicar from Moe.
    The rain had stopped for a while and the trees were brilliant with new green leaves. Apart from the strange and beautiful tree ferns in the sheltered gullies, Rose thought it looked more like an English spring than autumn.
    It was good to see so many people crowded into the little school-room , more than you’d expect when you looked at the empty bush. Some selectors were tucked into pockets of good land, surrounded by trees and hidden from the main tracks. You only knew they were there when they came out of their hiding places.
    Bert and Martha Carr were there with Charlie and Peter, the boys’ hair smoothed down with water and parted in the middle. Lordy, the gentleman worker, looked distinguished and altogether different, in clean clothes and wearing a tie. His back was straight and he had the high-beaked nose of authority, but the scar gave him a sinister look. The other eucy men were not there, thank goodness ; Rose didn’t want to meet Joe of the hat again.
    Lordy nodded to Rose. ‘Good morning, Mrs Teesdale. A Happy Easter to you.’ Mrs Teesdale felt almost like dropping a curtsy. The moors at home were full of gentry like Lordy in the grouse season and she’d helped to cater for them once or twice.
    Luke turned to Rose and whispered furiously, ‘How do you know him? He’s a villain.’ Rose smiled; he probably was, but his manners were good.
    Freda Jensen played the piano for the hymns, accompanied for some of them by Erik on a mouth organ. ‘We should have a dance here one night, if the music’s this good,’ Luke whispered.
    It was odd to hear the familiar Easter hymns so far from home … but this was home now, wasn’t it? Rose enjoyed singing, but it was so long since she had used her voice that it was husky at first.
    The Reverend Horace Jennings was on a mission that day. Speaking without notes and with rather less churchiness than Rose expected, he said that he realized the effort they had made to come to the service. Anyone who was even vaguely Christian had come from Haunted Creek, from Fumina and from the farms on the Latrobe River. It was the first time that so many had met at Wattle Tree, he said, a good sign of things to come.
    ‘You will know that a state school is not supposed