Summer at Mount Hope by Rosalie Ham

gate and wrenched the brake lever and leapt to the ground before the Hampden had fully come to rest.
    A cloud of dust wafted over to the grapes and Robert called, ‘Damned larrikin.’
    â€˜Nice evening, isn’t it Mr Crupp?’ said Henrietta coming towards the house, her long strides stretching the hem of her skirt and her shoulders swaying. Her blouse was pulled from her skirt at the back. She pointed up to the outcrop and said to Phoeba, ‘They’re turning the lights on in Geelong tonight.’
    Phoeba was relieved. Hadley mustn’t have mentioned the refusal to his sister.
    Up on the outcrop a blue mist hung in the tree canopy above the campfires. Henrietta removed her battered hat. She had excellent hair, thick and auburn and the envy of many women who craved bouffant waves to support their enormous hats. But Henrietta wound it in a plaited coil around her head, like the base of a colander.
    It was Maude who asked a series of questions about Hadley – why hadn’t they seen him? He was packing for his new job and organising the flock, his sister explained. When was he going to Overton? Sunday after church. How long would he be at Overton? Until the end of season, of course. Was he entering the ploughing match this year? Certainly, Hadley always entered the ploughing match. He was, Henrietta said proudly, the neatest ploughman in the district.
    â€˜So dependable,’ said Maude, tightening her eyes at Phoeba. The girls could go to the outcrop, she agreed, if they promised not to go near the camps, and they must take candles and matches or they’d surely turn their ankles in the dark and miss the entire season, as if they had a full diary of balls to look forward to. ‘And,’ she warned, ‘be careful of those new electric lights – they cause fires.’
    Phoeba and Henrietta climbed the track as the shadows faded and the view dulled. Mosquitoes sang in the hot silence and the sound of the evening express travelled up to them, its carriage windows faint orange boxes gliding through the dusk. Above them, clouds curled over the rocks, unfurling, long fingers that reached out and pooled together over the bay. Rods of silver pierced them making puddles of sparkling mercury on the dark water and the small lanterns on sailing ships winked.
    They branched off the shortcut track along the path towards the spring, climbing through air that was thick with the stink of wood smoke.
    â€˜Swaggies,’ said Henrietta, assuredly, but Phoeba was beginning to wonder about the scruffy men who had passed through her yard that afternoon.
    Suddenly the smell of the air changed and Henrietta stopped. A chill ran through Phoeba. The atmosphere was eerie, stale, as though something vile had fled a split second before and left a foul curling wake. Human odour, human waste, burning tobacco. Phoeba and Henrietta reached for each other and turned to go but it was too late. The camp leader – the ragged man with skin dulled with black spots – slipped from a branch and landed behind them. Two more men crawled from behind boulders and women and children, wielding small branches, crept from the bush enclosing them, holding them with their gaze.
    â€˜Look what we have here,’ said the ragged man as the circle closed in.
    The skin on Phoeba’s neck tingled. Henrietta’s grip tightened on her hand.
    â€˜We’ve only come to look at the lights,’ said Phoeba in her strongest voice. She stepped in front of Henrietta and could feel her friend’s short, shallow breath on the back of her hair.
    â€˜What lights?’ snarled the itinerant flicking his eyes to the trees. The skin on his cheekbones was raw with festering black pimples – Barcoo rot. The man was starving.
    A scruffy, dull-eyed youth rushed from behind and knocked Henrietta’s hat sideways on her head. The children laughed and waved the sticks they carried. Phoeba