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Only when they were out of sight and hearing, and Fi and Homer had come forward, did I allow myself to get the shakes.
When we did go on into the culvert we travelled like snails rather than crocodiles or soldiers, crawling silently along. I don’t know about the others but I could easily have left a glistening trail behind me, a trail of sweat.
We stayed there about an hour, and in that time we saw only one small convoy. There were two armoured cars in the lead, followed by half a dozen jeeps, half a dozen trucks, then two more armoured cars. We also saw a second patrol; a truck with a spotlight mounted on the roof of the cabin and a machine gun in the back. It wasn’t a very smart arrangement, because we could see it from a long way off, the light combing the bush, backwards and forwards. We had time to slide back into the scrub and watch from behind trees. I wouldn’t like to have been a soldier in that truck, because guerillas could have picked them off easily. Perhaps it showed that guerillas weren’t so active around here. But as I waited behind the tree for the truck to pass I was surprised and a little alarmed to realise how much I was starting to think like a soldier. ‘If we were up a tree with rifles,’ I thought, ‘and one person shot out the spotlight and the others went for the machine gu
Satisfied with our ‘time spent in reco
‘Can we just go up to the Heron?’ he asked. ‘I want to have a look at something.’
The Heron was the local river, not named after the birds but after Arthur Chesterfield Heron, who’d been the first person to settle in the district. Half of Wirrawee, including the High School, was named after him. The river flooded occasionally, so that the bed was wide and sandy, and the water itself meandered across its bed in a pretty casual way. A long old wooden bridge – almost a kilometre long – crossed the Heron just outside Wirrawee. The bridge was too narrow and rickety for the highway, and about every twelve months there’d be a big ruckus about the need for a new one, but nothing ever seemed to get done. To close it for any time would have been a big inconvenience, as the detour into town was a long and awkward one. In the meantime the bridge was quite a tourist attraction – there wasn’t a big demand for postcards in Wirrawee but the few that you could buy showed either the bridge or the War Memorial or the new Sports Centre.
Under the bridge, along the banks of the river, were the picnic grounds and the scenic drive. ‘Scenic’ was a joke; it was just a road that went past the rotunda and the barbecues and the swimming pool, and on into the flower gardens. But that’s where Homer wanted to take us, and that’s where we went. Three of us, anyway. Lee had done enough. His leg was hurting and he was sweating. I realised how exhausted he was when we parked him under a tree and told him to wait, and he hardly complained at all. He just closed his eyes and sat there. I kissed him on the forehead and left him, hoping we’d be able to find the tree again on the way back.
We got very cautious once we were close to the bridge, as we figured it might be heavily guarded. It was obviously the weakest link of the highway, which I guessed was why Homer was so anxious to see it. We came at it from a sideways direction, across country, through the Kristicevics’ market gardens. I wondered how my mate Natalie Kristicevic was doing, as I munched on her snowpeas. It was good to have some fresh greens, even if Fi got nervous at the noise I made crunching them.
From among the sweet corn we had a good view of the bridge and the picnic grounds. We could see the dark silhouettes of soldiers walking along the bridge. There seemed to be six of them, four standing at one end while the other two prowled around on a regular beat. Another convoy came through, and the sentries gathered at the end of the bridge, watching it. One held a clipboard and made notes, checking the number of vehicles maybe. One talked to the drivers; the others seemed to search under the trucks. It took quite a while. The bigger trucks then crawled across the bridge with wide gaps between them. They obviously didn’t have a lot of faith in Wirrawee’s mighty bridge.
At about 4 am we picked Lee up and retreated to our hide-out, which was a tourist cabin on the Fleets’ property; a little place that they rented to people from the city. It was quite isolated and unobtrusive, so we figured it was safe. Fi volunteered to be first sentry; the rest of us fell gratefully into the beds and slept and slept.
It was midafternoon before we had the energy to talk tactics. It was obvious that Homer had spent a good bit of time thinking about the bridge, because he went straight to the point.
‘Let’s blow it up,’ he said, his eyes shining.
The last time I’d seen his eyes shine like that was at school, when he told me he’d taken all the screws out of the Principal’s lectern in the Assembly Hall. If blowing up the bridge was going to be as big a disaster as that day turned out to be, I didn’t want to be a part of it.
‘OK,’ I said, humouring him. ‘How are we going to do that?’
With his eyes going to high beam, he told us.
‘What Ellie did with the ride-on mower gave me the idea,’ he said. ‘Petrol’s our easiest and best way of making explosions. So I tried to think of how we could repeat what Ellie did, but on a bigger scale. And of course the biggest version of a ride-on mower is a petrol tanker. What we’ve got to do is get a petrol tanker, park it under the bridge, on the scenic drive, then blow it up. Should be quite a bang.’
There was a deadly silence. I wanted to ask a lot of questions, but couldn’t get enough breath to do it. For a start, I knew who’d be driving the petrol tanker.
‘Where would we get the tanker?’ Fi asked.
‘Curr’s.’
Curr’s was the local distributor for Blue Star petrol They came round to our place once a month to fill our tank It was a big business and he had quite a fleet of tankers. That part was certainly possible. In fact it might be the easiest part of the whole insane scheme.
Homer was asking me something, interrupting my thoughts.
‘What?’
‘I was asking, can you drive an articulated vehicle?’
‘Well, I guess. I think it’d be the same as driving the truck at home when we’ve got the trailer on. The question is, how the hell am I going to drive it under a bridge, get out and blow it up while the soldiers on the bridge just watch, wave and take photographs?’
‘No problems.’
‘No problems?’
‘None.’
‘Oh good,’ I said. ‘Now that’s settled I’ll just relax.’
‘Listen,’ said Homer, ‘while you guys were walking towards Wirrawee last night with your eyes shut, I was noticing a few things. For example, what’s around the corner from the bridge, going towards Cobbler’s Bay?’
Homer was fast becoming like the teachers he’d always despised.
‘I don’t know sir, you tell us,’ I said helpfully.
‘Kristicevics’ place,’ said Fi, a little more helpfully.
‘And on the other side?’
‘Just paddocks,’ said Fi. We were all looking at Homer, waiting for him to pull the rabbit out of the hat.
‘Not just paddocks,’ said Homer, offended. ‘That’s the trouble with you townies. One of the most famous studs in the district, and you call it “just paddocks”.’
‘Mmm,’ I said, remembering. ‘That’s Roxburghs’ place. Gowan Brae Poll Hereford Stud.’
‘Yes,’ said Homer, emphatically. I was still struggling to make co
‘So what do we do? Train the cattle to tow the tanker into position? Or use methane for the explosion? If we find a cow that’s been dead long enough to bloat, we can put a hole in his side and light the gas. I’ve seen that done.’