Ripples on a Pond by Joy Dettman

the south side of the railway paddock, easily accessible from South Street, where most of the action was.
    The weather had been kind, the night warm but not hot. No wind, thank God. Two days ago there’d been wind enough to knock over a handful of the street pot plants and send them rolling down the road. They were back where they belonged, bruised, a few wilted. They only had to make it through to midnight.
    The planning committee had expected to get a crowd and got more than they’d expected. They’d had to put the concert on last night for the locals or there would have been no seats to sell tonight to the visitors. There was standing room only at the hotel; Freddy Bowen, the publican, and his wife had been running around like chooks with their heads cut off since early evening, their dining room and beer garden the only places in town to get a sit-down meal.
    Seating was available if you bought a cup of tea and a cake from the CWA ladies, who had set up trestle tables and stools on the station platform. They were doing a roaring trade. As was the hot doughnut van, and why not? Hot grease was tasty – and those doughnuts smelled like Jenny’s fried dough balls. Georgie joined his queue. Ten minutes later, a hot brown paper bag in hand, she walked on towards Charlie’s corner, eating grease and scalding jam.
    Three girls from the hippy commune had a stall beneath Charlie’s veranda. One made tie-dyed silk scarves. Georgie wasn’t into scarves, but with time to fill she walked down to have a look.
    Trudy was there, looking at their necklaces and decorated hair combs. Elsie, Harry and Teddy Hall stood nearby, keeping an eye on Trudy while talking to one of the stallholders. Teddy turned as Georgie offered her doughnuts.
    He helped himself to one. ‘Back me up,’ Teddy said. ‘How long did it take us to walk home from Monk’s that day?’
    â€˜I couldn’t afford a watch in those day,’ Georgie said.
    â€˜Monk’s is less than half an hour from Georgie’s place – as the crow flies,’ Teddy told the stallholder.
    Bush kids, like crows, learn to draw direct lines. Teddy Hall had learnt earlier than most. He’d spent a lot of his early years leaving home.
    Georgie would have been eleven, going on for twelve, the Christmas Day Ray King had turned up on his bike with Raelene and Donny. They might have been there for a week the day Teddy had shown her two inner tubes and told her he was going to rope them together and float down the creek to some place and never come back. It had sounded like a good idea at the time.
    They’d done it one Saturday morning. She’d supplied plums, peaches and two corned-beef sandwiches. Teddy had supplied two rabbit traps, rope and Lenny’s bike pump, and away they’d gone, on their two-truck-tyre raft, their supplies, shoes and clothes in a hessian bag and with an oar that had started life as a strip of leftover three-ply and the handle of Elsie’s worn-out straw broom.
    Had the creek been higher, the current running faster, had it followed the crow’s flight they may have gone further. Georgie had been convinced they’d travelled fifty miles of twists and turns when Teddy recognised Monk’s house. It had taken them too long to get to nowhere and she’d been burnt to a crisp. They’d rowed to shore, opposite Monk’s, deflated their craft, eaten their damp corned-beef sandwiches, then she’d followed Teddy into the bush, eating peaches and plums and leaving a trail of seeds as Hansel and Gretel had left a trail of breadcrumbs, Georgie, dead certain that Teddy hadn’t had a clue where he was leading her.
    He had, and one of those seeds had taken root. It produced plums too. Teddy had brought a handful into the shop two weeks ago and they’d laughed again about their aborted escape.
    A stranger interrupted her thoughts. ‘If you’re not Georgie Morrison,