The Lorikeet Tree

  Also by Paul Jennings

  A Different Land

  A Different Boy

  A Different Dog

  The Unforgettable What’s His Name illustrated by Craig Smith

  Don’t Look Now series illustrated by Andrew Weldon

  Unreal! The Ultimate Collection

  Around the Twist

  The Cabbage Patch Fibs illustrated by Craig Smith

  Paul Jennings’ Spookiest Stories

  Untwisted: The Story of My Life and many more!

  First published by Allen & Unwin in 2023

  Copyright © Lockley Lodge Pty Ltd 2023

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  Cammeraygal Country

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Allen & Unwin acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Country on which we live and work. We pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders, past and present.

  ISBN 978 1 76118 009 5

  eISBN 978 1 76118 608 0

  For teaching resources, explore

  www.allenandunwin.com/resources/for-teachers

  Cover and text design by Sandra Nobes

  Cover photo by Sheila Smart

  Set by Sandra Nobes

  www.pauljennings.com.au

  To Linda Moulds and all the wonderful staff at Warrnambool Veterinary Clinic.

  Thank you for caring for Ditto so lovingly.

  Contents

  WHAT’S GOING ON OR AS IT HAPPENS BY EMILY MORTIMER

  PART ONE: SUMMER

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  STUDENT FEEDBACK SHEET

  PART TWO: AUTUMN

  6

  7

  8

  STUDENT FEEDBACK SHEET

  PART THREE: WINTER

  9

  10

  11

  STUDENT FEEDBACK SHEET

  PART FOUR: SUMMER

  12

  13

  14

  WARRNAMBOOL SECONDARY COLLEGE

  EPILOGUE: SUMMER

  15

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  1

  OUR PROBLEMS STARTED on the day we learned that Dad was dying. My brother, Alex, was peering intently under our house at a family of cats that had taken up residence there – a black mother with white patches and her five kittens.

  ‘Don’t get your hopes up, Alex,’ I said. ‘I know that you want one of those ferals but we can’t keep them. We just can’t.’

  The four ginger kittens were jumping on each other and having fun. The grey one with the little white socks kept taking a dab at its mother. Each time it received a whack in return, which sent it tumbling head over heels.

  Alex spoke to the mother cat as if she could understand him.

  ‘What are you hitting your own baby for? It’s not fair.’

  ‘Life isn’t fair,’ I said. ‘Bad things happen to everyone. I know it’s hard to understand, Alex, but that’s the way it is.’

  The drama with the grey kitten continued. Dab, whack. Dab, whack. Dab, whack.

  ‘That one is not too smart,’ said Alex. ‘It just keeps coming back for more.’

  ‘It’s a survivor,’ I said. I wanted to add, Like me, but didn’t. Alex was clever in many ways but he was vulnerable to life’s knocks. And he, and sometimes even Dad, failed to see that at times I had my own problems.

  Alex snatched one last glance at the grey kitten. ‘I really want it, Emily. Talk to Dad about it. He lets you do anything. The little grey one. I really, really want it. Just to love.’

  I sighed. Just to love. Most fifteen-year-old boys wouldn’t say something like that. Alex didn’t know it, but my new friend Matthew, a forest and wildlife officer, was coming to take the mother cat and its litter away sometime in the next few days. I had called him myself.

  I shook Alex by the shoulder.

  ‘Come on, Dad wants to see us.’

  ‘Don’t give me orders,’ he said. ‘Don’t boss me around. I’m older than you.’

  He loved this little joke but I didn’t bite. I wanted to say, Yes, but only by ten minutes. And I’m always the one watching out for you.

  But of course I didn’t. He was my twin brother and I loved him.

  We made our way inside. Dad’s bedroom was full of light. He rarely closed the curtains because he liked to be awoken every morning by the sun as it climbed over the tops of our trees. The mood in the room, however, was sombre. Dad seemed deflated, drained of energy. He was propped up by pillows and struggling to keep his eyes open. His face was pale and he was breathing slowly.

  He had a visitor.

  Dr Price was Dad’s best friend. They had known each other since their primary school days. Every Thursday night until recently, they had met in the local pub for a meal and a few drinks. They loved to argue over politics and the state of the world. Jack liked to tease Dad over his left-wing leanings. On that day, however, his expression was that of a caring doctor, not a best friend.

  ‘Your father has some bad news,’ he said. ‘This is going to be very hard for you to accept, but I want you to know that I’m going to do everything I can to support you.’

  Dad looked at us both seriously.

  ‘As you know, I’m pretty sick at the moment. I’ve been spending a lot of time in this bed and getting headaches and dizzy spells. Over the past month or so Jack has investigated every possibility. Things are not looking great.’

  He paused and then sighed. He seemed to be having trouble finding the right words. Dr Price took over.

  ‘Your dad has been in and out of hospital a lot. We’ve done exhaustive testing and brought in several specialists. Now we have a diagnosis. It’s not great news. I’m sorry to say that Phillip has a brain tumour and it’s growing quickly.’

  My whole body seemed to turn to ice. If this had been about some stranger, I would have immediately realised what these words meant. But with Dad it was different – I didn’t want to know the terrible truth.

  ‘What’s going to happen, Jack?’ I whispered.

  ‘He will gradually get weaker and will need a fair bit of medication and help.’

  The reality of the situation suddenly hit me. I spoke without thinking.

  ‘Is it terminal?’

  Jack nodded.

  I felt as if he had just tossed me an invisible medicine ball that was too heavy for me to hold. I moaned and then threw myself onto the bed with my head on Dad’s chest.

  Alex couldn’t or wouldn’t take it in. ‘What do you mean, “terminal”? That’s ridiculous.’

  Dr Price tried to take the heat out of the moment.

  ‘Nothing is going to happen straight away,’ he said.

  Dad reached out for Alex’s hand. ‘I’m dying, mate. There isn’t any other way to say it.’

  Alex stood paralysed, staring at him with wide eyes.

  Dad tried again. ‘Everything will be all …’

  Alex covered his ears with his hands, screamed and then ran from the room, stumbling and yelling as he went.

  ‘Alex,’ I called after him.

  Dad spoke softly.

  ‘He’s going to need you more than ever now, Emily.’

  He’s gone to his usual hideout, I thought. I just hoped that his old magical thinking hadn’t returned.

  His problems could be traced back to one of the stories our mother used to read us at bedtime.

  Alex’s favourite was the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale about the poor little orphan girl who was freezing to death out in the snow. Every time she lit a match a wonderful scene appeared and she was warm and safe inside a cosy house for a few brief moments until the match flickered out. In the end she burned all of the matches at once, died and went to heaven where she was reunited with her beloved grandmother.

  When Alex and I were six, our mother died in a car accident. It was a terrible time and we cried for months. Dad took over the story reading and at Alex’s request he read The Little Match Girl every night. In the end I began to protest. I wanted something different and finally Dad stopped reading it altogether and hid the book.

  Was this the right thing to do? Who can say? But one thing is for sure. It was the beginning of Alex’s strange behaviour.

  Dad had planned an overnight trip to Melbourne. He was going to leave us in the care of a lady we didn’t know named Bree. Alex didn’t want Dad to go. He was terrified at the prospect of his father driving so far and possibly dying in another car accident.

  He built a tiny house out of a matchbox and made a plasticine figure of a boy, which he placed inside it. After this he lit a match and made a wish.

  And sure enough – Dad didn’t go to Melbourne.

  Not long after this Dr Price told us that his cat, Bella, was dyin
g.

  Alex built a new room on top of the first one and placed the plasticine figure inside it. Once again, he lit a match and made a wish.

  ‘Bella won’t die,’ he said.

  And he was right, Bella lived for another three years.

  Not long after, when the lower parts of Warrnambool were threatened by floods on the Merri River, yet another room appeared on top of the matchbox house.

  The floods subsided as they always do and of course Alex thought that he had made it happen.

  Dad took him see a psychologist but after one visit Alex refused to go again. Dad didn’t make him return because two good things had come out of the session. Alex gave up lighting matches and he stopped talking about his magic wishes.

  However, he kept building his little rooms right up until three years ago, when a fierce bushfire was approaching our home. Predictably, another level appeared on the matchbox tower.

  What really saved us was a sudden change of wind and the work of the Country Fire Authority. But I was almost certain that in Alex’s mind the new toy room had done the trick.

  In order to spot future fires before they reached us, Dad and Alex built a lookout platform halfway up a very special tree. Interestingly, this was the exact time that Alex stopped building rooms on the tower in his bedroom. And just as well, because the wobbly structure had almost reached the ceiling – forty-five storeys in all.

  Did he abandon his obsession because he could go no higher? Or did the new fire lookout have something to do with it?

  I wasn’t sure, but I knew that was where I would find him the day he fled after hearing about Dad’s tumour. He had been very busy up there over the last three years.

  ‘I’ll go after him,’ I said to Dad.

  ‘Take it gently,’ he replied.

  I nodded. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll talk it through and work things out.’

  I must have sounded quite controlled. But inside I was struggling with my own grief.

  I walked along the corridor and passed Alex’s bedroom. His little tower seemed so silly and futile. Just a fantasy.

  I stepped out of the front doorway and looked up at the heavens angrily. There was no help coming from there.

  One day there would just be me and Alex.

  2

  I LEFT OUR sprawling wooden house and walked along the track that led to the highest point on our land. There were several kilometres of these dusty pathways meandering through the shrubs beneath the more developed eucalypts and wattles.

  Our property is located on the Great Ocean Road some distance from the rural town of Warrnambool and is totally covered in native bush, which makes it stand out from the surrounding farms like an island in an endless sea.

  In winter the south-westerly winds shriek ashore from the ocean, transforming the protesting treetops into waves; always running, running, running but never able to leave.

  On that day, however, our new woodland was motionless, baking and waiting. Begging for rain.

  One hundred and fifty years earlier a thousand-year-old forest had covered the entire landscape. This had been almost totally cleared. The new green paddocks were grazed hungrily by thousands of dairy cows.

  Twenty years ago, my father purchased one of these bare farms and turned it, once again, into a thriving forest – a refuge for koalas, wallabies, spiny anteaters and countless birds. Over this period, he seeded, planted and lovingly tended the reintroduced native plants until they could stand on their own.

  The main species of tree Dad had planted was manna gum. These can grow as high as fifty metres and are particularly liked not just by birds but also koalas, which munch contentedly on the narrow glossy leaves.

  It will take another fifty years before our trees can reach such a height. At the moment they are only a quarter of this, and can’t yet provide the rich habitat of a mature forest with its dropped limbs and natural nesting hollows.

  But it will happen – we are well on our way, with hundreds of indigenous birds, mammals and reptiles already in residence.

  At the time of purchase, the property boasted only one tree, a magnificent manna gum. This thriving eucalypt was home to a huge flock of squawking lorikeets. From its branches they could stare down imperiously on our developing forest.

  As I walked towards Alex’s refuge my thoughts leaped between hope, confusion and despair. Life without my father was an idea I couldn’t fully comprehend. And tucked somewhere behind those thoughts was the gnawing prospect of life with no one but Alex for company. We would have to leave this property. We could never manage here by ourselves.

  The summer scent of eucalypt was heavy on the air and the sounds of dry leaves crunching beneath my feet gave warning that another bushfire could turn this silent forest into a blazing hell. A large blue-tongue lizard sunbaked on a nearby rock, blessedly unaware that life is a gift that can be snatched away without warning.

  The sun had brought out a small family of tiny fairy wrens, each with its cheeky tail feathers flicking and twitching from side to side. These little birds made a wonderful display; the females in their drab coats of grey and the males so splendid with patches of brilliant blue.

  Finally, I reached my destination. I stared up and blinked painfully in response to the merciless sun. As my eyes adapted, I could make out the trunk of the huge manna gum up to the point where it split into three branches. Sitting squarely in the middle of them was a small, bent cottage. It had a solid door and walls made of split logs. A tubular metal chimney twisted into the air like a broken arm. The whole thing reminded me of a painting ripped from the pages of a child’s book of fairytales.

  Access could be made by climbing planks which had been nailed one above the other into the trunk. These crude rungs ended at a platform, which was surrounded by a set of low railings.

  Far above the cottage, an enormous canopy of scented gum leaves shaded the building and provided protection and roosting perches for the lorikeets.

  I stared at my brother’s addition to the fire platform from my safe position on the ground. Without any help from Dad, he had turned it into something magical.

  Alex might have been sensitive and vulnerable but he sure had a way with tools and imaginative design.

  ‘Alex,’ I called. ‘Come down. Please.’

  He wouldn’t have heard me. He couldn’t have heard me. The lorikeets were screeching in the branches above his head. At times the noise was so loud that it almost drowned out my thoughts.

  I loved these beautiful parrots. I stood there transfixed. Each one had a dazzling blue head and belly. Brilliant green, orange and yellow patches covered their backs. Their beady eyes and hooked beaks gave them an appearance of alert curiosity.

  I would have done almost anything to protect them. I wasn’t really happy about the treehouse, which might have driven off the lorikeets, but so far they seemed to tolerate Alex’s residence quite well.

  Like me, Dad was a bird lover. He would talk for hours about them, pulling out his worn bird book in which every second page was marked with a little sticker.

  ‘Look at these,’ he would say proudly. ‘Every bird is new to the area. Brought back from the brink of extinction. All we had here before were introduced starlings. Now they’ve been scared off by the kites and other raptors attracted back here. All because of this new forest. There’s nothing like the sight of a wedge-tailed eagle floating on a prayer. Or the sound of a boobook owl hooting in the dark of the night.’

  I admired his extravagant way of speaking. I even adapted it into a style of writing that I could use to impress Mrs Henderson, our literature teacher at school.

  Dad always finished up with the same chant, waving his hands in the air like an actor on the stage.

  ‘Magnificent. Glorious. Free.’

  My thoughts returned to Alex.

  ‘I know you’re up there,’ I called again.

  I picked up a stone and threw it with all the care I could muster. It hit the metal chimney with a clang. Alex would have heard the stone hit its target, even over the sound of the squabbling parrots. Normally I would have smiled, pleased at my accuracy. But not today.

  I waited for a face to appear at the railing.

  Nothing.

  I picked up more stones and began to throw them at regular intervals. Clang, clang, clang.

  Without warning the lorikeets rose in one squalling cluster and fled across the treetops. I felt guilty for disturbing them but I was confident that I had not put them in any danger.