The Noon Lady of Towitta Read Online Free PDF

her encircling arms pulled them to her ample warm bosom they felt soothed; the cold, the fear and the hunger disappeared. They began to cry, sobbing out all the woes of their short bleak lives.
    Aunt Giscelia told her aunt and uncle that before her mother died she remembered her parents being happy despite their poverty. But after her mother’s death, the agonies of bereavement exacerbated by having to support two motherless children made life unbearable for Josef. The three-roomed hut was mean, with nothing worth salvaging even for the children’s sake except a children’s storybook bound in green leather that he gave to Giscelia for safekeeping. Giscelia was still deeply affected by the loss of her mother. Mathes, quiet and sullen, had taken on Grandfather Josef’s peculiar traits and habits. Come the night, they both became fearful and agitated.
    In 1854, within a month of their blessed abduction, the new Schippan family migrated to South Australia from the port of Hamburg. Forgoing their original passage when they were to travel with their friends, Herman and Katie-Lizzie were able to secure a passage in the John Moller that plied the same route. And the green bound book of Grimms’ fairytales went too, secure in Giscelia’s care, all the children owned to remind them of their mother as they travelled to the far side of the earth.
    Plucked from gloomy forests, bogs, snow, rain, howling wind and the immense cold, they were taken to a land of heat, dust, flies, drought and barren landscapes. Nothing prepared them for such extreme change. But although the landscape may have been strange and new, their old fears, prejudices and strange Wendish customs and folklore travelled with them.
    Despite the best efforts made for the new life Josef and his two remaining children were to begin in a new land, tragedy struck on the long sea voyage to Australia. Josef had become fatigued from seasickness as the John Moller battled the great Southern Ocean. Perhaps he clambered onto the heaving deck that was continually awash with mountainous waves to purge his stomach to the elements. Whatever happened that night, the wind screamed through the rigging as it had done for many days, with Josef probably hanging onto the leeward railings as he retched over the side without thought for his safety. It was only with the pale dawn, when the children were unable to find their father, that the alarm was raised. The ship was travelling at too great a speed through big seas to turnabout and no one was sure when he went missing. The ship’s crew and passengers were saddened and alarmed. Some passengers tried to show extra sympathy to Josef’s two small children but they clung more tightly to Aunt Katie-Lizzie.
    Although life was better in South Australia, Mathes remained a quiet surly child who hid the horrors of his early Wendish childhood deep within. Losing his father at sea, when it seemed a new and better life was so close at hand, made it appear there was a curse on them for trying to escape. He became obsessed and comforted by the stories in the green book that his sister and their Aunt Katie-Lizzie read to him; stories read each evening around the fire when it was cold, or out on the verandah during the warmer months. The family also carried with them a stock of Wendish folktales as frightening as the fairytales in the book.
    Aunt Giscelia believed that life in Germany had been as brutal as the fairytales and that they should put the past behind them and make the best of their new South Australian home. Mathes, however, insisted she read him more stories from the book, or tell him Wendish tales they knew. Although clearly disturbed by the regular nightmares he suffered, he gained strange comfort from tales of the forests and creatures of the night such as wolves and bats, tales of changelings and heroes, kings, princes and princesses. Aunt would forbid the fairytales some mornings after his nightmares, but come the