Currawalli Street Read Online Free PDF Page A

that everybody talks about? The one who robbed that big department store in the city? The one who goes out with actresses?’
    â€˜Yep, that’s me. I’m the gangster. Although I don’t have a gang or a girlfriend.’
    â€˜Pleased to meet you, Bert. My name is Johnny Oatley.’ The sense of danger blows away as Johnny stretches out to shake hands.
    â€˜Pleased to meet you, Johnny. What do you do?’
    â€˜I was a farmer. Now I paint pictures of people.’
    â€˜You mean a court painter? That bloke who sits up the back of the courtroom and draws pictures of the people on trial?’
    â€˜No. People pay me to paint their portrait. They sit in a chair and I do an oil painting of them.’
    â€˜Leaving out the rough bits.’ Bert grins.
    â€˜That’s right. That’s if I want to get paid. People don’t judge a portrait painter on how good his paintings are. They judge him on how good they look in the painting.’
    Bert laughs.
    â€˜People. You can’t beat them. Why are you going to Wensleydale?’
    â€˜Helping a neighbour. He’s trying to find his daughter and their two wagons. They’re late back.’
    â€˜How late?’
    â€˜Three weeks. A bit more.’
    â€˜That’s not long. My dad was three years overdue once.’
    â€˜I don’t think this neighbour would be able to wait that long.’
    â€˜Shall we ride a bit more?’
    They stamp out the fire and rinse their cups in the creek. The horses are standing together under a currawalli tree; its branches hang down low to the ground. They are standing on either side of the tree, scratching their flanks against its trunk. Johnny likes the look of the currawalli tree. Its leaves always seem too big for its branches, giving it a top-heavy look. The men draw the horses away from the trunk of the tree and are soon on their way.
    Bert is tall and thin. When he pushes his hat back on his head he looks even taller. He has a face that makes him look like a hard man. Johnny realises now that he has seen photographs of him in the daily paper; he assumes that they received those photographs from the police. They looked like they were police-style photographs. Except for one he saw of Bert as he sat exhausted in a tram shelter after being jostled, according to the newspaper, by a group of drunken thugs. One trouser leg was up his calf as he looked into the camera, evidently too tired to look away or complain about the photographer’s intrusion.
    â€˜Why are you going to Sydney?’ asks Johnny.
    Bert sits back in the saddle. He looks into the scrub by the side of the road for a few moments. ‘Well, Johnny, I am going to join the army. Ihave been trying for a long time to abandon the way I have been living. I want to do something, I don’t know . . . decent, something worthwhile. I fell into my life just like anyone falls into anything. I don’t feel I had much say in it. And now I am Melbourne’s favourite career criminal. Everyone knows me or about me so it doesn’t matter anymore whether I commit a crime or not, if I can be stitched for something then everybody is happy. Except me. The papers, the police, the politicians, the man in the street, they’re all happy. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t commit the crime or that the real criminal is still free. Doesn’t matter at all.’
    He looks over at Johnny. ‘I figure I am a sure bet for the hangman’s noose one of these days. I’ll be charged with a murder and they’ll be happy to wrap it around me. That’s why I left in a hurry this morning; word is that I’m about to be set up for something. So I had to move quick. Hence the city clothes. I’m going to join the army in Sydney where I’m not known. The way things are looking, there will soon be a war and we’ll all be going over to Europe to help out the mother country.’
    â€˜A war? But I