Carpentaria Read Online Free PDF

richness, money befalls them, and that was the reason why they owned all the businesses in town.
    The seagulls, lifting off all over the dump, in the mind-bending sounds they made seemed to be singing a hymn, Glory! Glory, Magnificat . The atmosphere was haunting, with steam rising from the ground, hovering birds in every direction, and she simply appeared from nowhere, walking out of the oleander. Fugitively, she searched around for potential robbers with her magical brown eyes, checking every angle for movement in the distortion of haphazard, mass waste. She hurried, carrying the statue and the potato sack, eager to escape before the Council men started work in the slow-moving truck. She did not expect to see so many other people from the Pricklebush walking about so early in the morning.
    Her movements had startled the otherwise peaceful scene where dozens of others from the Pricklebush had ensconced themselves under cardboard boxes, pieces of corrugated iron, inside forty-four-gallon tar barrels, or broken parts of abandoned water tanks. Suddenly, people appeared from everywhere, poking and pulling everything apart, tilling the dumping ground. Children were playing in the puddles, parents gossiping, others walking about with their bags full up.
    Angel Day, queen herself, surveyed their stares and started abusing first. She started it. ‘What are you all staring at me for?’ Her voice had no problem emptying the contents of other people’s lives in the rubbish and calling it nothing. Angel stood her ground. She just started yelling out in a very open manner what she liked, to all and sundry: the same kind of things she called other people all the time around the house.
    ‘Hey! What are you people doing here?’ she hollered. ‘What’s wrong with you people? You people don’t belong here. Who said you got any normal rights to be hanging around here? On other people’s laaand for? Just taking what you want, hey? What about the traditional owner then?’ Her voice radiated like shock waves all over the dump. Well! Most people had heard that argument before. Angel Day was mouthing off again about the poor old traditional owner being bypassed – once again. And this time, it must have been an unlucky day, because they were having naught of it. You could hear all those people sucking in their breath. Angel had no shame causing all of that trouble. She was a hussy, first class, the old ones had heard people whispering about Angel while she went on her way, cursing them for nothing, as though she was the keeper of other people’s lives.
    Goodness knows so much happened then. It was hard for two eyes to keep up. Those poor people were pretty upset, and Angel had no intuition about other people, none at all. All those grim faces were just glaring at her but she did nothing. After several moments the air broke like dynamite. The air broke clean: We can’t help that, Mrs Who-Does-She-Thinks-She-Is. This came out of the mouth of someone who had picked up straightaway that business line of hers of not belonging here. She called out for everybody to decide who she thinks she is. There was going to be a war, good and proper. Gravelly morning voices sounding like someone was jumping up and down on their lungs shouted back, She’s bloody nobody, that’s what.
    Everyone started slinging off about who would want to belong there anyway? The place was a mess. The place was too full of fighting all the time. Everyone was moving forward, screaming at each other. Then they started taunting, throwing sticks and stones at the ones trying to defend the peace. Nobody listened to the other because everyone was either that mad in the head or did not care whether they were defending the peace or not. Each was well and truly sick of it. Sick of Angel Day.
    One big woman, dressed in a big white dress: Well! She looked like the white cliffs of Dover, and it was she who did most of the shouting, spitting out incoherent words, on and on, like she