Creamy Bunyip Soup

The narrator relates the mysterious fate of an old school friend.

Tugboat Turner lost twenty kilos and did a law degree before he met the Lassy Redwood. Those what say it wasn't love forget he gave up two apartments and a personal parking space to win that stubborn heart. He was never given to fits of rash neglect. Rather, before he thought he found himself, he always seemed the sticky pimple in the group. His trousers were shoe-shy and he stuttered when the girls walked by. Fortune, though, made him a Barrister's assistant with lucrative handshakes, a manly frame and uncanny insights into esoteric aspects of industrial real estate. One Tuesday, he just did a flit and ran away. His mother said the Lassy was a fluffy sex-rat and cast doubts upon her santitation. His father, disappointed, cursed his birthday and put his diploma in the dank garage. The Tugboat stacked his clothes into an old Bedford van, emptied his accounts and drove into the hills; by his side the Lassy Redwood navigated the airwaves, fiddling with dials, singing lilting songs of yore, and told him of the ghosts that live in the black boulders and the massive gums - Nargun country - and of Mrs Kettle's house far away from the Sunburst Drink factory and complications with the once-in-a-lifetime Microtex land-grab transfer deal. His secretary was embarrassed. No one in the office ever spoke of him again. He had forsaken new worlds of aluminium.

Across the river was a delapidated weatherboard where the brown snakes lived. Mrs Kettle grew her own spices by the backdoor. She had died of frost and gout and thirty years of dreary nights dusting dew-drops and peppercorn sugar balls. The Lassy Redwood's house sat upon an over-reaching outcrop, a mountain of rock to the left, and a mile of forest against the southern boundary. Turner supposed that the white markers bearing the imprint of the Shire had been rendered null and void by the Local Government Amendment Act of 1964, in which case, he explained, she might have a claim to a portion of the riverflats, the darkest soils in the district. They determined to explore. Cautiously, they ventured in, stepping out where the foundations to the old dairy must have been. The cast-cream enamel woodstove was ransacked by curly spruce vine. The verandah was ramshackle. The chimney was in seven pieces, unrepaired as distant relatives struggled with the will. "But look at this," he said, calling to the Lassy of his dreams. "A locket!" The image of Mrs Kettle was raindamaged. Her cheeks were stained. The corners of her frock were bleached with sun. She stood beside a tall clock in what must have been the parlor in the days the incredible drays passed along the river track and carried hardwood logs the size of ancient obelisks down to the Orbost easement.

"And this..!" said the Lassy Redwood, recovering, nearby, a tidy green notebook from its bed among the thistles that were irrepressible in the district and slowly splitting the floorboards in the kitchen, "This is Mrs Kettle's cookbook!" There was an instruction pamphlet, dated 1931, among the rusting remains of the bottling kit and three empty jams labelled in a steady cursive ink 'Gooseberry Melon '36'. There were rusty knick-knacks and assorted trinkets. Nuts and bolts of corroded history. But the notebook was a water-stained treasure, replete with scrawl in Mrs Kettle's old-time steady hand. A hundred recipes. The secrets of a colonial kitchen, meticulous and tidy. Thus began their love affair with genuine local cuisine.

Oftentimes Harry from the Forestry dropped by. "There was an extensive garden," he said, explaining, "and a hedge." Mario, the son-in-law, carted horse manure and occasionally the loggers down from Delegate Hill stopped in to sample Mrs Kettle's legendary preserves. "Every day," said Harry, "she fired up the burly stove. Even in the blazing hots of summertime." As a boy he could remember going in and sitting at the table, promised by his mother some of Mrs Kettle's famous pancake sauce sprinkled with cinnamon gum. "A sturdy woman," he concluded. "Supplies came down each Easter. They depended on the telegraph back then." Sacks of white flour. Baking powders measured in imperial. A half pint of Batavian vanilla. Three measures of roasted bunya nuts. And yet, in such dusty conditions - against the constant threat of ants and only wet tea-towels for refridgeration - the old-timers had rejoiced on Butter Buns and Londonderry Wafers, Quandong salad and sweetened Illawarra plums. With only a scoop of unbleached white and a gnarl of dripping Mrs Kettle could cook up Turnip Mushlings renowned a hundred miles in all directions. With little more than a dob of butter, an emu apple and a handful of yakajirri leaves she could make the mountaineers salivate and say their please and thankyous. Tough men - men with no teeth - felt a yearning for her fare and left the crackling gullies and followed McGinty's Gorge to take the back track to her house on the soily river flats.

Excited, the next morning the Lassy Redwood headed directly into town. She returned with bicarbonate of soda, clary sage vinegar malt, churl-wee powder, Smith's free-flowing table condiment, shortening wrap, triple-sifted wholemeal, a bag of wallaby truffles, creaming tartrates and substitutes for all she couldn't find. "I've placed some spicey wattle seed on order at the shop," she announced, lugging the vinegar in. "But they say they don't make Carlson's food enhancer anymore." Mrs Kettle used it in everything. Bob Draper in the General Store informed the Lassy it was found to be carcinogenic as long ago as 1947 while he found - by some miracle - the last remaining Halliway's black molasses in a bulky square tin under a pile of faded  copies of the Argus.

That lunchtime Lassy rustled up what had evidently been a favourite with the cow-cocks, comfrey crusts and mashed potato with a yabby and munthari dipping sauce, a slight innovation. Then, for dinner it was ginger meltmores, even without the platypus egg. For supper she insisted on Mrs Kettle's wombat tripe frittata drowned in a chickweed sauce with a side serve of native wongi and blackfellas yam. The wild rosella eclair. Witchety grub parfait. Australis gastronomique!

By the next morning they were in love all over again. Then, afterwards, for breakfast, Turner tried his hand and conjured perfect chivey dogwood scones from practically nothing. They were, they both agreed, delectable, with that clean, agreeable after-taste by which chivey dogwood scones are judged. The recipe insisted that only the chives "around the side near the blue hydranger" may be used. They were both at a loss to interpret the instruction: "tug down and toss thrice before each kneading" so Turner had to improvise. The proof was in the eating. "If only," said the Redwood, "we had some pickle of the zigzag vine to offset the stubborn tartness." Mrs Kettle's notes suggested it was essential.

"But where," wondered the Tugboat, digging in, "might we encounter half a hundredweight of roasted mulga nuts at this time of year?" It was true. The mulga trees were bare; autumn had slain them all. They sulked in the fog or misled the chilly winds.

It was the intention, from this time forth, however, to awake every morning looking through the window slats at the forlorn assymmetry of the quince orchard, and with not a care in the world, sit up in their pyjamas pouring over saucy pages. The Lassy read: Turner determined whether it was delectible or not. Wild mallards still nested in the tufts of Grigson's marshweed, an introduced species, that had since invaded up the slope. Huge suns of quince, hovering globes of quince, fluffy with down, dangled on the branches into the dead of the year. The tulip lillies and manuka flowers came and went. Breaks of morning sun poured in. Upon the pale folds of card, marked with folded clippings, the twisted scrawl of notes, neat but miniscule, was often hard to read. Was it three slates of possum tale, as the Lassy thought? What was Filmore's Raisin Dye? What might it mean to "turn the plate to avoid the dough-crust folding in the pan"? What plate? Eventually, they'd decide on golwinda sage buns or King Albert trifle and for dinner chilli goanna balls. One day, at the Post Office, ageing Mrs Warren explained to them the mysteries of the true koala pie. Those that thought they made an ugly couple thought again. Turner put his experiments in contractural obligation far behind and became a man of rustic grace. It's said he grew a beard. The Lassy Redwood - never a favourite with the locals (for she frollicked in the hills) - was almost happy to be among them. Turner put on twenty kilos and the Lassy Redwood didn't mind.

That October they invited Milker Charlie across the creek for dinner. The bees had been cantackerous, he said; mere locks of rocket and scrub nettle could never keep them through the winter. The cows, however, saw no reason to object; the Queensland bottlegrass was booming. He dropped around three quarts of cottage cheese for the Lassy that she might whip up some warrigal cheese frills, the stuff of fame, reputedly a hand-me-down from Mrs Kettle's mother Mrs Baxter. Turner mixed the batter. "There was that look of deep contentment in her eyes," Charlie recalls. The Lassy had found a culinary peace. Turner only mentioned conveyencing reform once, and after coffee. "If," the Lassy said, "I catch those Johnson boys knocking down the wonga apples in the laneway, I'II shoot them in the arse with my loud and trusty!" She was joking. Charlie remembers a serene evening and gentle conversation on the back verandah, the scent of a third attempt at eggplant and wild coriander lifts wafting from the kitchen. Night came, emphatically black. "Late, as I was leaving," Charlie says, "they spoke of ghosts. We chatted in the driveway. I nearly caught a chill."

Then, one day, the Monday, the Lassy turned up in town and bought a bandage and a hunting knife. She filled the van with petrol and checked the sump for oil. She looked a tad distracted. Arthur Kingstall said "Good morning." She spoke of pressing business and quickly drove away. It was a beige and olive day and the kookaburras saw the funny side of how the sun elbowed its way between the southern hills that morning. The orange myrtle buzzed with tiny Tully flies and the air was laced with wafts of Marinda citrifolia, dense among the mess of Chinese coffee scrub. "How are things where the brown snakes live?" asked Arthur. The Lassy didn't answer. The locals were used to strange ways and blank replies. They put it down to her alternative lifestyle.

But when Harry of the Forest dropped by on Friday afternoon, no one was around. The door was half ajar; the cats had got into the rectified golawindi oil. A soft garbonzo batter - evidently for tansy tempura - was frothing with wild yeasts. A bowl of bush tomatos wilted on the window ledge. Another bowl of Macquarie River cherries were half-pitted on the sidedresser and the pitting knife was on the floor. It seemed from the leftovers they'd had cucumber pie and banksia greens the night before.

Striding out, Harry called and listened to his echo. The massive gums seemed to struggle among each other to possess it. A breeze came up and made the foxgloves nod. Native tom-twits perched on the kerosene funnel near the outhouse and wondered what was going on. The hills were unresponsive. The lyre birds were saying nothing. Someone had dug three post holes where the side gate needed fixing. The shovel leaned against the pickets and the white clay was dry. Harry checked in the tool shed. No one.

Then a moment down the road he found the van, warm with recent conversation. The radio was tuned into the weather. "Hello!" he called. "Is anyone around? They say your woomera peppers are just in from the train!" The eucalypt forest consumed the inquiry. The echos were empty. He checked in the glove box. A map. Overdue registration.

It was when he came back in that he noticed Mrs Kettle's cookbook open to creamy bunyip soup. He leaned over and read the cursive instructions. "Take," it said, "the hindquarter, rub with salt and stand. Prepare a sauce, adding slowly 20 drops of juniper essence and a sprig of pearly dogmint..." There were plain muffins on the table and sprays of seeded parsley bound with rubberbands. And Turner, it seems, still liked to read the papers. The Saturday Post was open to the realty pages. He had doodled the words "Burrawindi shanks" with several exclamation marks at the very top, not far from the list of coming auctions. Harry scratched his head. Creamy bunyip soup? Tugboat Turner and his Lassy Redwood were nowhere to be seen.

The last person to see them living was an electrical contractor who'd taken the wrong turn at Frawley's Bridge and was asking for directions. This was on the Wednesday. After a warming cup of tea and a generous spread of Woolongong biscuits - Mrs Kettle's snack of preference - the Tugboat showed him how the back-road cut twenty minutes from the journey. He explained how the boulders seem to settle with the tree roots causing unexpected pot-holes when it rains, but added that the road was clear, and said he knew. The contractor detected nothing untoward. He exchanged a pleasant tale of how his grandmother had made her famous Yo-yos using castor sugar and had won the red ribbon at the Mallacoota Royal Show for a decade in a row.

They searched for eighteen days and found not a trace. Had they set off on a bunyip hunt and lost their way among the meandering flood tracks? Had they ventured too far in a quest for tasty herbage? Had they met wicked carnivors while making love in hidden glens? Or had they argued about the brandy slips which never seemed to work, though they followed Mrs Kettle to the letter? Had they run away again, as Tugboat Turner had before? Trackers searched the dales where piquant mushrooms extract meaty flavors from the sub-soil. They searched among the black acacia where the delicious daphnandra micrantha grows. They found the place where they had been collecting fruits from the lanky callicoma tree. Had they stumbled down a mineshaft? Had the nargun come out from their boulders and taken them to the Dreamtime? Or had they dived into a billabong to escape from troopers one, two, three? The locals all went out in convoys of khaki land-rovers but only found the great southern nothingness among the mountain ash.

Six months later surveyors preparing rough-hewn routes for logging trucks found the rainstained locket - Mrs Kettle by the clock - in a nook in Latham's Gully, fourteen miles from where the highway does a dog leg. The river came in nearby and the beekeeper who had agisted in the region, Archie May, said he'd heard that bunyips live within the overflow, but are quick to anger and don't like the smell of European women, although this is not something down-to-earthers are inclined to understand. The inquest was adjourned. There were no footprints. There had been heavy rains. Someone said they saw them at a motel in Yackandandah. Others said they saw them - merely apparitions - in amongst the tumbledowns of Mrs Kettle's weatherboard around the side near the blue hydranger. After an open verdict they sent the locket to the Tugboat Turner's Dad who, still disappointed, put it in the dank gararge with his son's diploma and all his other things.