Tomorrow When The War Began by John Marsden Read Free Book Online Page A

way for all
those years he’d been hanging a big sign around his neck, and like
a fool I’d kept reading it. Animals were smarter. They couldn’t
read. Dogs, horses, cats, they didn’t bother reading any signs.
They used their own brains, their own judgement.
    No, Hell wasn’t anything to do with places,
Hell was all to do with people. Maybe Hell was people.

Chapter Five

    We got fat and lazy, camping in the clearing.
Every day someone would say ‘OK, today we’re definitely going up
the top and doing a good long walk’, and every day we’d all say
‘Yeah, I’ll come’, ‘Yeah, we’re getting too slack’, ‘Yeah, good
idea’.
    Somehow though we never got round to it.
Lunch-time would creep up on us, then there’d be a bit of serious
sleeping to do, a bit of reading or paddling in the creek, then
it’d be mid-afternoon getting on to late afternoon. Corrie and I
were probably the most energetic. We took a few walks, back to the
bridge, or to different cliffs, so we could have long private
conversations. We talked about boys and friends and school and
parents, all the usual stuff. We decided that when we left school
we’d earn some money for six months and then go overseas together.
We got really excited about it.
    ‘I want to stay away for years and years,’
Corrie said dreamily.
    ‘Corrie! You got homesick on the Year 8 camp,
and that was only four days!’
    ‘That wasn’t real homesickness. That was
because Ian and them were giving me such a hard time.’
    ‘Weren’t they such mongrels? I hated
them.’
    ‘Remember when they got caught bombing us with
firelighters? They were crazy. At least they’ve improved since
then.’
    ‘Ian’s still a dork.’
    ‘I don’t mind him now. He’s all right.’
    Corrie was much more forgiving than me. More
tolerant.
    ‘So will your parents let you go overseas?’ I
asked.
    ‘I don’t know. They might, if I work on them
long enough. They let me apply for that exchange thing,
remember.’
    ‘Your parents are so easy to get on with.’
    ‘So are yours.’
    ‘Oh, most of the time I guess they are. It’s
only when Dad’s in one of his moods. And he is awfully sexist. All
the stuff I had to go through just to come on this trip. If I was a
boy it’d be no problem.’
    ‘Mmm. My dad’s not bad. I’ve been educating
him.’
    I smiled. A lot of people underestimated
Corrie. She just quietly worked away on people till she got what
she wanted.
    We figured out our itinerary. Indonesia,
Thailand, China, India, then up to Egypt. Corrie wanted to go from
there into Africa, but I wanted to go on to Europe. Corrie had this
idea that she’d have a look at everything, come home, do nursing,
then go back and work in the country that needed nurses most. I
admired her for that. I was more interested in making money.
    So the time drifted by. Even on our last full
day, when food was getting short, no one could be bothered going
all the way back to the Landrover to get more. Instead we
improvised, and put together snacks that at any other time we would
have chucked at the nearest rubbish tin. We ate meals that I
wouldn’t have fed to our chooks. There was no butter left, no
powdered milk, no condensed milk because we’d sucked the tubes dry
on our first day. No fruit, no tea, no cheese. No chocolate – that
was serious. But not serious enough to motivate us to get off our
butts. ‘It’s catch twenty-something,’ Kevin explained. ‘If we had
chocolate it’d give me the energy to get up to the Landie to get
some more. But without it I don’t think I could make it to the
first step.’
    It was hot, that was our main excuse.
    Homer was still rapt in Fi, always wanting to
talk to me about her, trying to accidentally put himself wherever
she happened to be going, turning red every time she spoke to him.
But Fi was being very frustrating. She wouldn’t discuss it with me
at all, just pretended she didn’t know what I was talking about,
when it must have been obvious