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When the Snow Gums Dance
Legend of the Snow Gums
There is a legend that if two people kiss beneath the snowgums, arms
entwined under branches heavy with snow, the love that results is more
potent and more passionate than any other on the face of the earth.
Yet in adversity that love can freeze over in an instant, like the
crystal clear icicles that hang from the snow gum’s branches, or melt
into nothing with the coming of the spring warmth.
To be kissed beneath the snow gums is to receive love at its most
pure and its most devilish where only immeasurable sacrifice can bring
peace to the lovers.
PART ONE
Chapter One
Seventeen-year-old Kylie Harris knew she didn’t really have time to ski
the slalom course before the school bus that crisp Friday morning.
She also knew that if her mother found out she was risking being
late for one of her final year trial exams, she would almost certainly
be banned from competing in the downhill race for the Lyrebird Cup
tomorrow, a race she desperately wanted to win. But in her mind she had no choice. Three times now, she had fallen on Murphy’s Turn, the last
steep bend of the course.
All she needed was a couple more goes at it.
The sun was just peeping over the snow capped ridges of Victoria’s Snowy
Mountains, as she crept out of the drying room, Sunburst Lodge, and onto
the snow, clutching her skis and stocks and school bag.
Shivering, she zipped up her purple and white ski jacket, a
hand-me-down from her elder sister Gwyneth. She adjusted the tight
fitting ski pants she had saved six months to buy and which her mother
heartily disapproved of and crunched quietly down the road.
Heart pounding guiltily, she stepped into her skis and pulled on
her gloves. She
pulled the head band around her wild, flaming red hair and slung her
school bag over one shoulder, glancimg quickly behind her to check the
house was still sleeping.
Grabbing her poles she pushed off towards the express quad chair lift
that would take her up to Koala Bowl and the slalom course.
Kylie had stepped into her first pair of skies when she was two,
staggering behind her five year old sister down the nursery slopes, it
was not until Geoff and Susan Harris bought Sunburst Lodge in the heart
of Lyrebird Falls ski resort eight years ago that Kylie’s passion for
skiing really started to blossom. Encouraged by her parents, both good
skiers themselves, she discovered she was a natural and she quickly
started winning trophies. The prestigious Lyrebird Cup was the only
junior trophy in the district she hadn’t won. This year was Kylie’s last
chance to compete and she was convinced that if she could add this
internationally recognised award to her collection, she had a far
greater chance of being accepted into one of the overseas ski hire
clinics.
She intended to apply as soon as she could afford the airfare.
For passionate, uninhibited, Kylie, the Lyrebird Cup was the start
of her dream to become a ski instructor to the rich and famous.
By the time Kylie had covered the distance between Sunburst Lodge and
the chairlift, she had
convinced herself if the
worst happened and she missed the bus she could get around her dad. Not
only had she inherited his adventurous spirit and fearlessness on the
slopes, she knew how proud he was of her skiing achievements and that he
understood how much winning the Lyrebird Cup meant to her.
She had also learned from him that there were times in life when
you took risks. This was one of those times. Besides, her mother was far
too occupied organising Gwyneth’s wedding to take her usual notice of
Kylie’s activites. Last
night there had been talk of nothing else, her dad trying to work out
how they were going to accommodate all the cars, while Gwyn and Susan
went over and over the plans with such controlled precision and boring
detail that Kylie had wanted to scream out ‘What happened to romance and
fun!’ But she had kept quiet partly because she wanted her sister to be
happy and partly because she was hoping that they would all stay up so
late, immersed in the wedding they would be too tired to hear her slink
off before school. Kylie had been right about slinking off.
There had been no sign of movement as she had slipped past her
parent’s bedroom door this morning.
Tom Wickham, the resort engineer was already on his daily rounds
checking the chairlifts for ice and any mechanical problems.
He greeted Kylie with a cheery grin. ‘Bit early for the milk run.’
he laughed.
‘I know. I was hoping…please Tom, can I get an earlier ride?
I wanted to have another goes at the slalom course and I don’t know
if I can make it this afternoon, with exams and everything.’
She turned her melting green eyes on Tom.
Tom thought for a moment. ‘Go on then.’ he smiled. He radioed to his
mate at the top of the slope, then pressed the button and the chairs
slowly ground into motion. ‘Just you be careful up there today, there’s
still quiet a bit of ice about,’
‘You’re tops!’ grinned Kylie. Quickly she slid her bag off her shoulder
and handed it to Tom with a grateful smile. She skied through the
automatic bars and onto the quad chair. ‘I’ll love you for ever.’ she
shouted, pulling the safety bar down in front of her.
Kylie’s mood changed from guilt to excitement as the chair sped her up
the mountainside. She glanced at her watch.
It’d take her ten minutes to get to the top, if she went flat out
she’d just have time for two runs and still make it to the bus. She
looked around her, as always filled with awe at the beauty of the
snowfields. Behind and
above her stood the main restaurant of Lyrebird Falls, the ski racks
empty, the buildings silent.
Beneath her and to either side, clouded in a faint mist, stunted
gumtrees lined the wide pistes, a faint dusting of snow on their frosted
branches. The sent long shadowy blue fingers across the pristine,
groomed slopes which were broken by the occasional rock starting to show
through.
Snowmakers dotted the bottom of the slope, ready to spew out snow
with the flick of a switch. Kylie’s eyes glowed with delight as the quad
chair reached the peak; here the snow tinged a pinky gold by the early
morning sun. This was the magic of Lyrebird the empty world, the crisp
breeze stinging her cheeks, the challenge of the slopes.
Kylie adjusted her sunglasses then skied across to Koala Bowl and the
top of the slalom course. Sheltered from the wind, with the sun on the
slope for most of the day, the run was both delightful and challenging,
with sheltered spots that could get icy as soft snow refroze.
Today it was groomed to perfection but the freezing overnight
temperatures had left a hard crusty surface and icy patches.
A young man clad in the purple and green resort ski gear was
placing the slalom poles in position. He waved to her. Kylie waved
backand then skied across to the start gate, a built up mound of snow.
Perched on the steep slope she glancing down the mountain and her
heart starting to pound. She set her watch and pushed off.
Knees bent, skis parallel she zigzagged down the slope, carving the
first tracks of the day. The cold wind brushed her cheeks and made her
eyes water. She sped up, digging her ski edges in harder as she went,
exulting in the pure rhythmic freedom.
The first two corners were easy, the snow crisp
and firm under her skis, At the next turn she almost lost her balance as
her skis slipped over ice. Jolted, she took the next bit slightly more
slowly, then covered a steep but fairly easy run across a wider piste,
slid comfortably round the next curve and headed towards Murphy’s turn.
Her stomach muscles tightened as she neared the dreaded spot.
Forcing herself to relax she rapidly recited her instructions to
herself, shifting her weight, bending her knees.
She was almost round. Heart pounding, totally focussed, she felt a
rush of exhilaration. She
was going to do it! Just as she thought she was clear, her outside ski
slipped and she lost her balance. She toppled sideways and slewed round
on the icy surface, losing her left ski as she slid and skidded downhill
at an alarming rate. Frantically she tried to grab onto snow, the side
of the track, anything, her gloved hands grasping and scrabbling as she
slid faster and faster down the slope.
Her other ski was wrenched from her boot, her poles snatched from her
wrists as she fell.
©
Simon &Schuster Australia
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Song of the Bellbirds
By channels of
coolness the echoes are calling,
And down the dim gorges I hear the creek falling:
It lives in the mountain where moss and the sedges
Touch with their beauty the banks and the ledges.
Through breaks of the cedar and sycamore bowers
Struggles the light that is love to the flowers;
And, softer than slumber, and sweeter than singing,
The notes of the bell-birds are running and ringing.
BELL-BIRDS, (first verse) by Henry Kendall
PART ONE
Chapter One
The newborn foal contentedly suckled its mother.
Peering into the stall, fourteen-year-old Lizzy Foster should have
been bursting with happiness.
Her two great passions in life were horses and singing.
Three weeks ago she had been given the lead role in the end-of-year
musical at her Catholic boarding school in Toowoomba, and now this
perfect little creature had been born when she was home for the weekend
on Kinmalley, the family wheat and sheep property in Queensland’s
Darling Downs. Yet on this
crisp early September morning the one thought Lizzy kept going over and
over was that there was no way she could tell her father about her
singing role.
The sweet scent of fresh hay filled the big barn.
Beside her, saddled and groomed, Woeful, Lizzy’s twelve year old
mare waited patiently, nibbling occasionally at her shoulder and blowing
down the back of her T-shirt.
In the next stall Lizzy could hear her best friend, Marcia Pearce who
was staying for the weekend, humming the opening chorus of Okalahoma!
as she clattered about saddling up Misty.
Marcia’s parents owned Four Pines an hour or so’s drive away, where
they bred fat lambs for
meat.
Mucking out the stables and exercising the horses were activities Lizzy
eagerly looked forward to, but today her dark eyes were clouded with
worry.
Sighing deeply, one hand fiddling with the silver medallion around
her neck, a present from her father on her 6th birthday, she turned and
laid her cheek against Woeful’s warm brown coat, trying to figure a way
out of the mess she had got herself into.
Woeful it was. She should have never have accepted the role. Kidding herself
she could win her father over by waiting until the dress rehearsal had
been madness. Trouble was, it wasn’t just that Lizzy had accepted the
part. Dan Foster believed
his daughter was singing in a church service.
It had been hard enough to get him to agree to her singing at all. If he found out that she had deceived him he was just as
likely, with his Irish temper, to pull her out of school altogether.
She tried to ignore the sickening sensation in her stomach knowing
she had to tell him she was taking part in a musical with all the
colour, dancing and noise that she knew he detested.
Yet once he had loved them.
How could she make him understand that when the female lead singer had
dropped out and darling Sister Angelica had offered her the part with so
much excitement and enthusiasm, she just hadn’t been able to say no?
Worse, for the last three weekends, she had been staying with
Marcia to hide her activities, eking out the delicious stolen time,
losing herself in the music while she worked out how to win her father
over.
Last night the timing had been perfect.
Relaxing on the wide veranda before dinner with ‘the boys’, Lizzy’s
twenty-two year old cousin, Bob, and Ken the 38 year old rodeo rider and
rouseabout, who had given her Woeful, Dan Foster had been in one of the
happiest moods Lizzy had seen for ages.
Stretched out beside him lay his two hardworking kelpies, Ned and
six month old Gyp. Taking a long pull from his bottle of beer, he had scratched
Ned’s belly and announced the finally the bumper crop was almost all in.
By the following day they’d be finished harvesting, the wheat
safely stored in the silos in town, easily beating the predicted storms.
It had been the start of a great evening and with Marcia there to back
her up Lizzy had really believed she stood a chance.
Then the foal decided to arrive and Lizzy’s chance had vanished.
Nature had been generous to Lizzy Foster.
Burnished lights gleamed in her freshly washed jet black hair.
Luscious dark lashes fringed her large almond shaped eyes, above
high cheekbones and a wide mouth.
Most people still thought of her as a tomboy, yet behind her larrikin
behaviour was emerging a sensuous young woman.
While still shedding her puppy fat, there was a voluptuousness
about Lizzy that hinted of pleasures to come.
Her smooth skin tanned almost black, added to her beauty and her
naturally rhythmic movements and musical aptitude, both inherited from
her Polynesian grandmother, gave her an air of mystery.
A mixture of fire and ice, Lizzy knew the only way out of her
present trouble was to smother the passion that burned within her,
accept the outcome and wait. She had tasted life on the stage. That was a start.
Lizzy had been eight when her mother had walked out on them.
She remembered it was a Wednesday.
She vaguely remembered the darkly handsome man with the deep
baritone voice, who had come to town with a travelling show, and who
made her father angry. Before the man, Dad used to love listening to Lizzy and her
mother sing.
It was her mother who had given Lizzy her love of the stage, and who had
filled her head with dreams of great shows in far off places, dreams
that had never left her.
She had told Lizzy how her grandmother had been a Polynesian princess
who had run away to sing and how music was in thier blood.
In her soprano voice she had taught Lizzy all the songs she knew -
songs from the old vaudeville shows, love songs, Polynesian folk songs -
and they would sing and dance together, playing to imaginary
audiences, her mother thumping out the beat on the old upright piano, or
playing the scratched records on the old gramophone.
Twirling around in her mother’s battered fancy hats and boa
feathers, the two would run around the sofa, laughing and kicking up
their legs. Once she took
Lizzy to the natural amphitheatre on a neighbour’s property in the hills
not far from Kinmalley and they had sung together, their voices carrying
across the bush. It was a memory Lizzy cherished. Mostly her father just
watched and clapped, but sometimes he’d join in singing in his tuneless
drone, which made them laugh all the more.
A big, loving man Dan Foster would then clasp his precious women to him
and they would kiss and hug like the tight knit family Lizzy believed
them to be. Then suddenly
her mother was gone and there was just her and dad and a sadness that
never left them but was never spoken about and dad had forbidden her to
sing ever again.
When Lizzy had started at Saint Cecilia’s Convent School, Dan had been
forced to capitulate. Sister Angelica had seen to that explaining patiently that as
a condition of entry all the girls sang in the school choir.
Afterwards on the way home he had said ‘never let me catch you
doing any of that ‘theatre stuff’.’
God! how she hated those words.
They were a jail sentence when song threatened to burst out of her
at every turn. Sometimes
she had felt she would suffocate at home for lack of singing.
While the loving easygoing man she remembered as a young child had
vanished, she never questioned her father’s churlishness and bad temper
because she loved him dearly and she knew he loved her too.
Yet she longed for him to understand her passionate need to sing,
that singing to her was like breathing and not to sing was not to
breathe.
Woeful, tired of standing still tossed her head jerking Lizzy back
to the present.
‘You understand, don’t you, you beautiful creature.’ she murmured.
Tucking her thick black hair back off her face, Lizzy jammed her wide
akubra on her head, mounted Woeful and led her into the sunshine
‘OK Marcie, let’s get up to these bores and see what needs doing, before
the storm comes through’ called Lizzy, smothering a yawn.
No one had got much sleep the night before with the excitement of
the new foal and Lizzy had been up again before dawn to prepare
breakfast before Dan and the boys headed off to finish harvesting.
Her father had asked her to check two of the bores that provided
water for the two thousand head of sheep.
It would take most of the morning but if they got a move on Lizzy
reckoned they should still have time to have the picnic they had planned
and beat the storm before Marcia’s brother arrived to take her home
‘What storm?’ scoffed Marcia trotting out on Misty, glancing around.
Only a few harmless white fluffy clouds forming to the far west
marred the perfect blue, yet both girls knew how fast storms could build
across the Downs and the havoc they could wreak. ‘Right, I’m ready,
what’s the wait?’ she said, comically wriggling her bottom into the
saddle
‘Dad reckons the storm they’ve been promising all week’ll hit today.’
explained Lizzy, her earlier gloom starting to lift.
A good head shorter, Marcia was the antithesis of Lizzy.
Slim, blue eyed, her cropped mouse-brown hair tinged with the
remains of a bright red tint, it was difficult to be dismal around
Marcia. Turning Woeful’s head sLizzy urged the mare forwards.
Then, saddlebags bulging, the two girls set off at a smart pace
across the paddock.
Reaching the stubble paddock they nudged the horses into a canter and
sped along the dirt track at the edge of the sun drenched paddocks, the
crisp breeze bringing a rosy flush to their cheeks.
Small bundles of tumble weed ran along beside them, a flock of long
beaked ibises soared from nowhere circling in the rising wind currents,
turning and gliding against the cobalt sky.
Feeling the rhythm of Woeful’s powerful body under her, catching
the familiar country smells, and with the vast undulating, countryside
stretching before her, Lizzy’s usual exhilaration returned. Out here she
could sing to her heart’s content, with only the birds, the kangaroos
and the wind to hear her and no one to stop her or tell her to stop
dreaming. Here the world
seemed to go on for ever.
Here everything was possible,
Out here she really believed dreams could come true.
‘Beat you to the gate.’
she shouted to Marcia, digging her heels into Woeful’s flanks, her
eyes full of fire.
©
Simon &Schuster Australia
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