Lillipilly Hill by Eleanor Spence

story. Well aware that her own part in it did not sound too noble, Harriet gave the account as rapidly as she could, and then stood gazing at the first, mellow rays of sunlight gilding the tip of the willow tree.
    â€˜I see,’ said Mr Wilmot. ‘So you thought it best to arrange Aidan’s affairs for him. I’ve no doubt your intentions were good, Harriet, but I do wish you would think more and learn to leave well alone. Aidan must have felt too miserable last night to face up to school again this morning. And we have no notion of where he has gone. Did he have any close friends at school at all?’
    â€˜No,’ said Harriet. ‘He didn’t talk to anyone, except Mr Burnie.’
    â€˜Burnie might be able to help,’ reflected Mr Wilmot, speaking to himself rather than to Harriet, who stood before him feeling singularly useless and despondent. She blamed herself entirely for Aidan’s disappearance, and would have gladly offered to run straight off into the bush to search for him.
    â€˜And please, Harriet,’ said her father, as if reading her mind, ‘do not try to find your brother. This is work for men, not for little girls. The best thing for you to do is to go and sit with your poor mother.’
    Dismissed, Harriet crept away to her mother’s room. From the front window she watched Boz and her father drive past the garden and down the track towards the ford. Apparently they were going to search along the Blackhill road—that would be the obvious route for Aidan to choose. But he might already havebeen gone for some hours, and could have branched off the road in any direction. Harriet gazed across the garden at the stubby, crouching hills beyond the creek, hills that for mile upon mile looked exactly like one another, and had a very poor and scanty welcome to offer to any traveller. Aidan would soon be lost among them.
    â€˜Oh, why did we ever come to this horrible place?’ cried her mother. ‘As soon as Aidan is found, we shall all go back to England immediately.’
    Harriet seemed to be defeated at last. She could not fight the entire family, if they decided to leave Lillipilly Hill once Aidan returned to their midst. And if Aidan did not return—but Harriet went on staring at the hills, refusing to follow that train of thought.

7
    Aidan meets a Bunyip
    Aidan had wakened suddenly at midnight, to find that his headache was worse. At first he stayed in his bed, turning from side to side in a vain effort to recover the lost comfort of sleep. Finally he rose and went to the one small window, which overlooked the eastern garden.
    As he stood there, gratefully feeling the fresh, night air on his hot face, the moon swung up over the orchard hill, and shone into his eyes. It was a rather elderly moon, a little lop-sided, but still radiant enough to give life and shape to every bush and tree in the tangled garden. Aidan looked and listened, and could hear tiny sounds—the rustle of grass as a bandicootpadded by, the chirp of crickets, the thud of a possum dropping on to the cowshed roof, and, loneliest of all night noises, the baying of a dog far away down the gully.
    He was never quite sure what made him turn back into his room and put on his everyday clothes. Perhaps it was the realization that there was another world beyond the one he knew here—the hated world of school and Paddy Tolly, and the fight that wasn’t a fight. By the time he had collected two of his favourite books, and put on his cap, his decision was made. He would leave this unsatisfactory world behind him, and find another.
    â€˜If I follow the creek,’ he reflected, ‘I must reach Blackhill Bay in the end. And the packets go from there to Sydney. I shall have just enough money for my passage. In Sydney I shall surely find some sort of work.’
    All the money he had was a half-crown, which he had been keeping in the hope of buying a new book during his next visit to