Pobby and Dingan Read Online Free PDF

muffled, like they was shouting with bits of cake in their mouths. But I heard Mum say she was tired a lot and homesick for England and Granny Pom and fed up of working at the checkout at Khan’s and not being able to look after her family for herself. And then I heard my dad shouting something about Her Royal Highness, and he kept repeating a man’s name, but I can’t remember what it was exactly. Probably some bloke who’d called Dad a ratter again and got him all upset and irritable.

5
    The next day I got up early, gobbled my breakfast, attached bits of cardboard to my spokes with clothes-pegs and rode into town in fourth gear, sounding like a motorbike. There was no streams of trucks driving out early in the morning, and no sounds of the drilling rigs going at all. It seemed like the whole town had stopped mining or something. Then, just as I was going down Opal Street, I saw that there was a bunch of people crouched down on the roadside looking under bushes and cars and over fences and everything. When they saw me riding by on my souped-up Chopper, some of the people saluted me like I was some sort of general and shouted out: “Young Ashmol! Go tell Kellyanne we’re searching as hard as we can!” I almost fell off my bike with surprise. The first part of my plan had worked. People were actually looking for Pobby and Dingan, they really were! I pedalled home like a maniac to tell my family.
    When Dad heard what I’d gone and done he patted me on the head and said: “Good thinking, son.” I told him it was important that Kellyanne saw what was taking place and Dad managed to persuade her to get out of bed. He lifted Kellyanne up in her sheet and took her out to the ute. Mum drove, because Dad wasn’t comfortable about going out and being seen by people yet.
    I sat in the back watching everything, and when I got into town I made Mum pull over so Kellyanne could see the special notices I had put up on the fences and gates and trees. She smiled a little when she saw them. I said, “Sorry, Kellyanne. I didn’t know how to describe them proper. I mean, what do they look like?” And Kellyanne whispered that they didn’t look like anything in particular, but Dingan had a lovely opal in her bellybutton, only you had to be a certain kind of person to see it. And Pobby had a limp in his right leg.
    There were now lines of people all over the dirt roads, and people out with their dogs, and we pulled up alongside them and waved out of the windows. They came up to the ute and said: “Hey, Kellyanne, we’ve been looking for six hours now and we’re not giving up until we find Pobby and Dingan. So don’t worry your head about it.” My sis smiled weakly. One boy asked her: “Do Dobby and Pingan speak Australian?”
    “No,” said my sis, “they speak English quietly. And they likes to whistle. But you have to be a certain kind of person to hear them.” It was the first time Kellyanne had done this much speaking for a long while and it brought a look of hope to my mum’s face.
    Well, everywhere we drove we saw little groups of people out and about hunting or pretending to hunt around the trees. I saw some of the line-dancers had a banner saying
Pobby and Dingan Search Party.
One big black bloke was standing on a mullock heap looking through a pair of binoculars. I recognized he was the man who brought Kellyanne home one time when his son kicked her in the shin and pulled her long hair when they were playing out behind the service station. Dad called him “the good coon” because he was dead-crazy about opals, and one time I’d seen him doing a traditional mating dance at the wet–T-shirt competition. When we drove up in the ute he came over and poked his head through the window on Kellyanne’s side and did a big grin and said: “Don’ worry, girl. I’ll find Pobby and Dingan in a flash for ya. I ain’t Lightning Dreaming for nothing. I’m gonna go walkabout ’til I find them.” And then he walked off