The next morning,

Mum's little wind up travel clock woke us up with a start. It was one of her wedding presents, and I was always fascinated by how the little numbers would show up in the dark. The alarm was set for six am, and being the end of March the sun had already been up for an hour. There was no shower in the cabin, so we quickly got dressed, and walked past six other cabins and into the building that was used as toilets and laundry with showers at one end.

Mum had to send me back to the cabin to get some towels, which was my job in the first place. When I got back, Mum was already in the shower. Rita was sitting on a little bench between the shower cubicles shaking her head with a silly grin on her face.

“Took you long enough didn't it? You'd forget your head if it wasn't screwed on.”

Anyway, we had our showers and went back to our cabin, and Mum went out to the ute, and brought
in an Esky which was an ice box, with all the necessary food to make breakfast. There was an electric fry pan and an electric jug on a little bench beside a tiny fridge which was empty. Mum let Rita fry up eggs and bacon. There was no toaster in the cabin, so Mum cut some slices of bread and buttered them. There were no tea bags so Mum had to make the tea the old way in a tea pot and let it draw for ten minutes.

After we had breakfast and cleaned up all our gear, we were ready to hit the road again. It was still only seven thirty am, so if we got going we would make good progress on the road. Mum drove out to the service station driveway and got out of the ute to give Bill back the key to the cabin. After she thanked him and said goodbye, she started walking back towards us when she stopped and looked underneath the ute as if something was wrong. Bill saw what she was looking at and came over to look under the ute. When he stood up he looked at Mum and said in a dry voice

“Donna, you ain't goin' nowhere with that oil leakin' from ya gear box.”

Mum just stood there. I think she was about cry, when Bill turned to her said “She'll be right. It'll take a couple of days, but the old girl will be as good as new”.

Needless to say we weren’t going anywhere that day, so Bill went into his work shop and got a push trolley to take some of our suitcases, or 'ports'* as we used to call them, back to the same cabin we had stayed in last night. Once Mum organised what clothes we'd needed for the next few days the trolley was taken back to the cabin. Bill came with us to turn on the fridge and also brought a small gas stove for us to cook on.

Then Bill went back to his workshop to organise his mechanic to get started on repairing the Land-rover. He was back at the cabin ten minutes later to tell Mum he had radioed the owner of River Downs and got the o.k. to send the bill to him for the repairs that needed doing,

Mum looked at Bill with surprised look on her face, and said “I am not broke and can pay my way”

Bill looked at her with hurt expression on his face and said, “It's done, so please don't worry about it”.

While Bill was talking with Tom Granger the station owner, he asked all about us, as it worked out he knew my dad James and brother John. I think Bill had wanted to 'befriend' Mum, as he had lost his wife to cancer two years earlier and had taken a shine to Mum. After all she was only thirty eight years old and quite good looking with a nice figure.

Mum never got a divorce, probably hoping she and Dad would get together again but both John and Dad had not been around for quite a while. Tom Granger must have told Bill about me and Rita, because he looked at Mum and said “Tom told me about Carl and Rita and not to worry if I see him in girl's clothes.”

Mum had a worried frown and looked at Bill who had sat down on a chair that he grabbed from from another cabin, and she asked him if he was o.k. with my cross-dressing. He said that his only son committed suicide because he was homosexual, (the word gay was not used back then), and he was sorry that he wasn't there for him when he needed his love and support the most.

Bill looked at me and said if I want to dress up while we were staying here it was o.k. with him. I thought 'all my Christmases had come at once' and couldn't speak, Rita put her arm around me and hugged me with tears in her eyes. Mum asked Bill to step outside for minute to talk to him without us kids listening to what was being said. I thought that was a bit mean, but Rita just said “It looks like I get to have a little sister”, at least while we are here anyway.

Rita was sitting next to me on the bed being quiet to see if we could overhear anything that they were saying. when they walked back in and sat down on the other bed. Mum looked at Bill and gave him a nod. He turned to me and my sister and said he and Donna had a few things in common. I sat on the edge of the bed and was getting nervous about what he was about to say. Rita looked at Mum with a questioning look, but Mum just said she would let Bill do the talking. Mum came and sat in between me and Rita and put her arms around our shoulders.

Bill said “Donna, um, your mum an' me got to thinkin' that we got somethin' in common, and I reckon if you want to hang about here for a bit, it would help me out with opening up the restaurant again.”

Bill had closed it down when his wife Ann died. It didn't take long for me and Rita to nod our heads Quilpie wasn't a big town but it is on the banks of the Bulloo River and we could go swimming in its cool water any time it wasn't in flood. Mum told Bill she would fill us in about what she had decided to do. Bill said “See ya later kids” and went back to his workshop, probably to check up on our Land-rover.

Rita and I sat on the bed with Mum sitting opposite on the other bed facing us as she explained what she had decided to do for the time being. As she hadn’t made any real plans as to which town we were going to settle down in we might as well stay in Quilpie for a few months.

Mum looked at us and said “What do you girls think?”

I had that hot face again. “Um Mum, you called us girls, not kids as you usually do.”

Mum said if she was going to have two daughters there were two girls sitting on the bed in front of her. My face still hot, I jumped up onto her lap and felt something inside me tingle. It was a strange sensation, as if there was two of us hugging mum , but Rita was still sitting on the other bed. Mum felt me tremble and said I had goose bumps all over my arms.

Rita just said “Jean has come with us and I will just have to put up with her being part of my life. Her body might be buried back at River Downs but her soul and spirit is well and truly inside of Carla.”

The three of us stayed in the cabin for three more days. Then Bill Croft moved us to his huge homestead type home just outside of town. It was still within walking distance of his garage and cabins so it meant nothing to us, as distance is irrelevant to people that lived in Western Queensland.

Mum had accepted Bill's offer to reopen the restaurant connected to the garage which had been closed since his wife Ann died two years ago. We were going to share his house which was an original homestead of the property that the town was built around in the late eighteen hundreds. There were six bedrooms and they all had doors opening out to the verandas that surrounded the house. Bill slept in a small room next to the kitchen and his home office. I guess he didn't like having to do too much housework. Mum took the bedroom next to the main one which still had all of Ann's things in it, I don't think Bill had the heart to throw anything of his late wife's things out. Rita and I decided to share a bedroom. They were very large rooms and we brought one of the other beds from the next room into ours. I was not going to go to any school until we settle in to the local community, so Mum was going to home school me for the rest of that year.

Rita was going to work in the restaurant with Mum. Legally she could work at fourteen, so she could now do an apprenticeship as a chef since Mum was a qualified chef and needed a hand to run the restaurant. I was only eight and had to do the school work that mum set out for me each morning, which I could usually get done in about four hours. I was quite used to doing school work by myself as I had done it by two way radio with School of Air for the last three years. I had already started fourth grade at the station and was a fairly good student so it wasn't a big deal for Mum to do the teaching.

This brings me to the best part of my life so far, seeing no one really knew us in this town apart from Bill, his mechanic and the dentist that I had to come into town to see twelve months ago. I was allowed to go in girl mode and see how things work out. The first chance I got, Mum gave Rita a five pound note and said to go to St Vincent de Paul's charity shop, which is a Catholic organisation to help out poorer people in the community.

Five pound would buy me everything I need including two pairs of girl shoes.

Rita said, “Carla how lucky can you get girl?”

“Um I think Jean is making things happen. I get tingly, feelings every time I touch any girl clothes.”

Rita was looking at my arms which had goose bumps all over them again, so it looked like I was taking my twin sister shopping with me. By the time Rita had looked through all of the clothes racks for eight year old girls, I finished up with a half decent wardrobe including Mary Jane type shoes. Most of the things we bought were like new, so all we had to do was wash and iron them. We put all our purchases on the counter by the till, I was dressed in Rita's hand me downs, so I well and truly looked like a girl with her older sister doing what girls do .

The volunteer lady that was looking after the shop for the day came out of a sorting room to serve us. When she saw the amount of clothes we were buying she looked at me and said. “You poor girl why is a pretty young girl like you dressed in rags?”

“Um we lost most of our things in a flooded creek when Mum got stuck in deep water” I lied.

Rita said “That's right, so we will come back in a couple of days and buy some for me and Mum.”

We tried to pay the lady for the stuff we got but she wouldn’t hear of it, so we thanked her and said we would be back later.

When we got home Mum was in Bill's office talking on the phone, ordering things for the restaurant.
When she saw us come in she finished the call and turned to us and looked at pile of clothes that Rita had put on a chair in the office.

“My God how much did you spend? I only gave you a fiver. There is at least ten quid's worth in that lot” she said.

When I told her what the lady said to me, and that I had lied about what was supposed to have happened to our clothes, mum frowned first at Rita and then at me.

“Rita and Carla, I have told you never tell lies to anyone. It will come back and bite you both on the bum.”

She said she would go and see the the lady tomorrow and pay for the things we had brought home. By this time I was sobbing and Rita said that I was embarrassed when the lady called me a poor little girl dressed in rags. Mum came and hugged me till I calmed down.

After we had our evening meal, Rita and I went to bed early to read for a while and she cuddled me
until I went to sleep and dreamed of my twin sister Jean.

To be continued.

* port (short for portmanteau) was the word used for a suitcase, but only in northern parts of Australia.