Mountain Tails by Sharyn Munro Page A

on the gate: ‘Vacancies. Koalas wanted. Apply within.’

THE NIGHT MONSTER

    Koalas aren’t the only roaring beasties in the bush. When we first lived here, the plan was for my husband to be away for work at uni several days a week, staying overnight, while the kids and I stayed here alone, with no phone, no car, no human neighbours.
    In my blithe new-chum way, I wasn’t worried and I didn’t expect to be scared. Yet I was, the very first night he was away...
    I was awoken by the most fearsome noise I had ever heard in real life. It seemed to be inches from my ear, just the other side of the fragile canvas wall of the tent. I knew there were no savage man-eating animals in the Australian bush, no bears, no tigers, and yet the sound was as if both of those had bred with a rabid dog to produce this offspring. Sucha noise had to be accompanied by bared, sharp teeth. One slash of a claw and my children and I would be exposed to this monster of the night!
    Very scared, but acting the grown-up, I grabbed the torch and rushed to unzip the tent door to the tiny annexe of mosquito netting, where we had stored tools and the kero fridge. Here I seized a hammer as a defending weapon on my way to unzip the outer netting door.
    But zips are too slow and noisy to surprise an enemy, and the sounds had stopped long before I emerged into the darkness. The torch beam revealed nothing but the gum tree, looming, and the canvas shower bag, swinging. I zipped my way back to bed and lay in trepidation until nearly dawn. The kids woke me shortly after.
    Later that day I lit the fire and balanced the billies on the old fridge rack, itself balanced on four rocks, that formed our ‘stove’, to boil water for the kids’ shower. We had four billies made from large fruit juice tins, with fencing-wire handles. At this early stage water for everything had to be carted in buckets up the steep slope from the spring. My legs soon became stronger, my back straighter, and I think my arms grew longer with the weight of the buckets!
    From a fairly horizontal branch of the grey gum beside the tent we’d erected a pulley system for the canvas shower bag, which had a luxuriously adjustable copper rose. Four thin poles supported hessian modesty panels that still allowed great views to the far mountains, and bush rocks prevented muddy feet. However, my 30-something daughter would now prefer I hadn’t taken certain photos which show that the modesty panels began too high up to cover her three-year-old bottom.
    I let down the bag to fill it—a bucket of cold water and two billies of hot water gave a surprisingly long and satisfying shower. I tipped it up to empty out any leaves first. Instead, a handful of black pellets fell to the rock floor.
    At that stage I was unfamiliar with the various calling cards of my neighbours, so I couldn’t say who’d left these. Next night, and most nights afterwards, the night monster came to loudly mark its territory,wake us up, walk along the branch of the grey gum, shit in the shower bag, and depart. ‘Take that!’
    On his return, my husband, who’d grown up in a leafy Newcastle suburb, had known the noise immediately and had laughed at my terrified descriptions. It was ‘only’ a possum, an all-too-common brushtail. On the farm and orchard where I grew up we’d had a dog, and no trees except two tall fir trees near the house, so I’d never heard or seen a possum. As you now know, I wish I could have stayed in that blissful state!
    After a short time of our tent living, the night monster possum began including us on his route earlier in the evening, so he too could sample the dinner. The tent being tiny, we did everything outdoors except sleeping. Any dish placed on the ground or on the washing-up stand would be lumbered up to with his full-nappy gait, inspected, and usually cleaned up. Rice was very popular. No matter if the dish happened to be beside our