Don't Pat the Wombat! Read online

  This paperback edition published in 2000

  First published in 1996

  Copyright © text and photographs, Elizabeth Honey, 1996

  Copyright © illustrations, William Clarke, 1996

  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 10% 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 Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

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  Crows Nest NSW 2065

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  Web:www.allenandunwin.com

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Honey, Elizabeth, 1947-.

  Don’t pat the wombat!

  ISBN 9781865080888

  eISBN 9781743437148

  Clarke, William, 1985-.

  II. Title.

  A823.3

  Photo, Penny Stephens, The Age.

  Designed and typeset by Elizabeth Honey and Tou-Can Design

  Photographic prints by lan Tong of Oscar 1 Hour Photos

  For Gig

  Contents

  1 The Coconuts

  2 Two things

  3 Friends?

  4 Teachers and parents

  5 The Bomb

  6 How to be unpopular in five easy lessons the Brian Cromwell way

  7 Jonah rides to school

  8 Loathe at first sight

  9 The Bomb v Jonah — Round 2

  10 Getting ready for camp

  11 Jonah lights a fire

  12 The big day — Little tips to make your departure easy

  13 Sandtiger sharks

  14 The bus for camp will be leaving promptly at 8 o’clock. Please be punctual!

  15 Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

  16 Gumbinya Pioneer Camp

  17 Bulldozer’s story

  18 Monday evening

  19 The second day

  20 Wattle and daub

  21 Glumbinya

  22 Meatloaf

  23 Azza’s leg

  24 Nicko’s dream

  25 Bloody leeches

  26 The feather

  27 Stick-and-spud spinning

  28 More trouble than the early settlers

  29 Kitchen duty

  30 Letter home

  31 Talk in darkness

  32 The trip to the doctor

  33 Canoeing

  34 Concert practice

  35 The concert

  36 All bad things come to an end

  37 Re-entry

  38 After the holidays

  The Coconuts

  The Coconuts. Mum gave us that name one sunny day, rattling along all squashed into our old bomb. ‘I’ve got a lov-er-ly bunch of coconuts,’ she sang at the top of her voice.

  So now you know what Mum’s like.

  As for the rest of us, I made friends with Wormz at pre-school, except in those days he was called Dear Little Michael. I remember we built a cubby with some boards behind a bush. It was a great success because it had a big daddy-long-legs spider at the back. Bunches of kids used to squeeze in, see the spider, then rush out screaming, ‘Spideeeeeee!

  Spideeeeeee! Spideeeeeee!’ And we would stay in the cubby even though the spider was still there.

  We never told them it was dead.

  Also, you know how they make you have a sleep? Well, Wormz and me never wanted to have a sleep. We would lie on our mats beside each other and play winking games.

  Wormz wears his sisters’ hand-me-down clothes, even though sometimes they’re verging on the girl look. The label on his windcheater says Tessa Merlino. I guess his mum is trying to get the clothes worn out.

  He wasn’t in my class last year. (They split you up from your friends.) But this year we are in grade six together, which is extremely cool.

  His great toothy grin is the inspiration for the front of Luna

  Park. Everyone’s hoping his head will grow to fit his teeth. I reckon he has to concentrate when he wants to keep his mouth shut. The Merlinos laugh a lot. His mum and dad run a bulldozer business called Easy Doze It.

  Wormz is as skinny as a rake, but he’s always eating. That’s why he’s called Wormz. His life slips along easily. You can’t help being friends with Wormz. He’ll be friends with anybody.

  Then there’s Nicko. Real name: David Nicholson. Nicko is the storyman. The only one who brought books to camp. He brought his favourite Little Golden Book, Mickey Mouse and His Spaceship, a John Marsden book and everything in between. Favourite author: everybody. Nicko has read every Goosebumps book there is, and has shaken hands with a person who has shaken hands with a person who has shaken hands with a person who has shaken hands with the man who cuts R.L Stine’s hair.

  Nicko lives near us, and he stayed with us for a whole month when his parents visited his gran in Canada.

  Mitch. Real name: Fawkner A.* Mitchell. Rich Mitch.

  *He won’t tell us what the A stands for.

  His hair cuts cost $90 and his Nike Air Max 3 cost over $200 in America. He came to our school in grade two, I think. I remember how he looked because his clothes were so new.

  He didn’t make any friends. Then he turned up with a new ball.

  ‘Do you want to play with my ball?’

  The kids played with his ball, but they still didn’t play with him. I hey said he was stuck-up, and he got in trouble for being a bully.

  Then he wasn’t in my class again until grade five. He has changed. He’s much better. He doesn’t always have to have everything, and be best and first all the time. He still does have everything, and he can be a pain, but he can also be wickedly funny. His mum does his projects.

  The Mitchells live in a fancy new architect house with windows down to the floor. When it was finished, Mitch’s dad put multicoloured party lights round the pool, and plastic furniture. The architect had a nervous breakdown.

  Always have something to eat before you nick over to Mitch’s house for a go on his computer. The first time I went there:

  ‘No, no, no! Don’t touch those chocolate biscuits! They’re Mum’s.’

  ‘How about those peanuts?’

  ‘No, no, no! They’re Dad’s.’

  ‘Well, can we have this little packet of Shapes?’

  ‘No, no, no! They’re just for school lunches.’

  ‘What about these sultanas?’

  ‘No, no, no! They’re for cooking.’

  Get the picture?

  Azza is very simple. Real name: Mario Azzami.

  I think he hatched out of a basketball. We

  love basketball. He lives basketball.

  He always has a ball in his hand...

  boing...boing...boing... bouncing it off a seat, door, fire hydrant, tree, pedestrian, boing...boing...

  boing...boing...boing...boing...boing...

  He doesn’t have to look when he bounces.

  He was born with an invisible ball magnet in his hand. The ball automatically comes back to it. He shoots for goal and six times out of five it’s a swish! Needless to say, he’s captain of the basketball team.

  And if he’s not bouncing a basketball he’s throwing a stick, a rock or something. He’s won stacks of things for sport. He’s fast in
some ways but he’s slow in others, like writing and maths. He is also fantastic at sound effects, which adults describe as ’annoying noises’.

  Then there’s me, Mark Ryder. Nickname: Exclamation Mark. No prize for guessing why!!!!!!! Most Unimproved Player of the Year (but best writer!).

  So now you know what we’re like. We aren’t an exclusive club or anything, we’ve just been friends for a long time. We muck around together and stay at each other’s houses and stuff. At school we’re the funny ones. If Miss Cappelli wants someone to do something crazy, she picks one of us. In the Cinderella assembly, we were all ugly sisters.

  Then along comes Jonah.

  Mitch didn’t like Jonah much, which is funny, because for a long time Mitch didn’t fit in very well either.

  Two Things

  Two things happened the month before school camp: Jonah suddenly arrived in our class, and Mum gave me her old camera for my birthday.

  Jonah was there on a Monday morning, sitting up the back with a blank look on his face. He wasn’t shy, but he wasn’t smiley want-to-be-my-friend either. He wore a black hat with a brim. Not a school hat, or a Crocodile Dundee hat. Like this: and daggy overalls with lots of pockets, and a daggy dark purple jacket.

  Miss Cappelli made a little mime to him to take his hat off. He put it on the desk in front of him.

  ‘We’ve got a new member in our class.

  Stand up, Jonah. Jonah comes from up near Tubbut.’

  He stood looking out the window.

  ‘Tubbut’s up in the north-east, near...what’s it near, Jonah?’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s not near anything.’

  ‘Azza, will you stop making that Velcro noise with your shoe.

  Jonah’s come from a little school to our big school. Welcome to 5/6C, Jonah. I guess you’re feeling a bit strange, but we’re a friendly lot. You’ll certainly get to know everyone on camp.’

  We stared at him, but he didn’t look at anybody or anything.

  He stood as if his mother was trying on him some new clothes that he couldn’t care less about. Or as if he was trapped in an invisible force field.

  Beth the Good, whose dad works in the Post Office, whispered, ‘In the Bible, Jonah got swallowed by a whale!’

  ‘Where’s his whale?’ sniggered Tommo loudly.

  ‘I’d like you to make Jonah welcome,’ says Miss Cappelli, glaring at Tommo. So we give Jonah a clap like we always do, to show our appreciation, or welcome, or any stupid thing. He wasn’t the sort of person to clap. Anyway, the clap bounced off Jonah like rain off a tin roof.

  ‘Pete and Tak, could you show Jonah around at lunchtime, please?’

  Then we got on with our work.

  At lunchtime, Pete says to Jonah, ‘I’ll show you where the toilets are.’

  ‘No, it’s OK, I’ll go with them,’ says Jonah pointing to us. And that’s how he came to be a Coconut.

  Now I’ll tell you about the camera. It doesn’t sound like much, getting your mum’s old camera for your birthday, but it’s a Pentax. This is a big deal, even if it has a dint in the viewfinder where Mum dropped it. She bought a new camera, and had the old camera repaired. You should see some of the black-and-white photos she took with it. There’s one in our kitchen of our old dog leaping down from a fence. It’s fantastic!

  Mum showed me how to take photos. If you let in too much light, the photo is all white. Not enough light, and the photo is black. And you have to get it in focus, otherwise the photo looks like you took it through a shower screen.

  ‘I’m taking my camera on school camp,’ I said.

  Mum looked a bit unsure. ‘It’s a good camera, you know.’

  ‘I’ll look after it.’

  Then she decided it was worth the risk. ‘I’d love to see some photos of camp. I’ll give you a roll of film.’

  ‘Black-and-white?’

  ‘If that’s what you want.’

  ‘I do.’

  Friends?

  So Jonah attached himself to us, although he didn’t seem to need anybody. I think he thought it was the easiest thing to do. He was so quiet, and we were so ’us’.

  ‘Why did you leave your farm?’ Nicko asked.

  ‘We had to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Bad luck.’

  ‘Like, your dad lost all your money at the casino?’

  ‘No. We didn’t sell the bullocks at the right time, then it didn’t rain. The prices dropped and we ran out of feed.’

  ‘That’s a great heap of bad luck!’ said Wormz. ‘What happened to the bullocks?’

  ‘We trucked them to my uncle’s farm, and sold our farm.’

  ‘Gee...that must have been so bad.’

  He shrugged. Jonah didn’t want to be mothered around.

  He looked so uncool. Tomorrow, he’ll wear something not so daggy, I thought. Next day it was the same old overalls and hat. We couldn’t figure him out. He was like one of those blanks in Scrabble. But somehow I wanted him to like us.

  Jonah got picked on, especially by Watts and Tommo. They thought everything about him was dumb. He mostly ignored them, which made them worse.

  ‘Hey, derr brain, what do you wear that dumb hat for?’ goes Watts.

  ‘It looks real derr dumb dork,’ goes Tommo.

  Jonah looked at Watt’s baseball cap.

  ‘Where’s Chicago then?’

  ‘America,’ says Watts.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  Jonah looked at him, without blinking. ‘It’s better than wearing a dumb hat from some city and you don’t even know where it is.’ Then he walked off.

  ‘What are ya, a man or a mouse?’ yells Tommo.

  ‘Hey mousie!’ yells Watts. ‘Here’s some cheesy cheesy cheese for ya,’ and he threw an empty Coke can at him.

  ‘Why don’t you flatten him?’ said Mitch.

  ‘Waste of time,’ said Jonah.

  In maths we were doing prime numbers and I was thinking if Jonah was a number he’d be a prime number for sure.

  Something like 97, that you couldn’t divide anything else into.

  Now Wormz, he’d be a number everything could be divided into. He’d be easy-going number 12. Me, I take the simple way, I’m 10. Mitch is definitely number 1.

  We were sitting on the footpath after school, waiting for Nicko’s mum to pick us up.

  ‘What do you think of Jonah the Loner?’ goes Mitch.

  ‘I dunno. He doesn’t say much,’ said Azza.

  Mitch picked at the sole of his shoe. ‘He’s weird.’

  ‘He’s OK.’ said Nicko, ‘but we’ll have to teach him a lot of things.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Azza. ‘Can you believe he doesn’t know how to play football or basketball? Can you believe that?’

  ‘He’s been in a time warp,’ said Nicko. ‘He was the only kid in grade six at his old school.’

  ‘He used to help his dad a lot,’ said Azza, bouncing a bald tennis ball in the gutter.

  ‘He’s not a Coconut,’ said Mitch.

  ‘He’s a tough nut from Tubbut,’ said Nicko.

  ‘Do we want him hanging round us?’ goes Mitch.

  ‘Give him a chance,’ said Azza. ‘If he wants to muck around with us, that’s cool.’

  Anyway, after a bit of an argument, we decided Jonah was OK, but weird.

  Teachers and Parents

  Teachers are very important in this story. I’m an expert on teachers. I’ve had plenty of them. I have observed their behaviour all day for five days a week, for four terms a year, for almost seven years.

  Good teachers have a sense of humour, and they know how to control the class, otherwise someone like Faith Williamson yells, ‘Shut up everyone!’ all the time.

  Some teachers think the perfect class is a room full of statues, but with good teachers you do things. For example, Mr Robinson yells, ‘Who wants to train for footy after school on Wednesday?’ and we all do.

  We had a fantastic art teacher, Miss Rose.
We made so much great stuff in art, our kitchen looked like a gallery. We’d carry all the new masterpieces in the kitchen door.

  ‘Make way! Make way! For the next exhibition!’

  Then in fourth term Miss Rose left.

  ‘Where are the new masterpieces?’ said Mum.

  ‘Miss Rose left.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘We’re still doing what we started three weeks ago.’

  Good teachers are strong. Once we had Miss Cleare. She was one big migraine. Watts used to time how long until she took a Panadol. Good teachers do not have nervous breakdowns because the kids give them a hard time. They don’t have a hard time.

  Also there is something a bit mad about the best ones. We had a teacher once, he was so in love with nature we had cocoons and bones and dead penguins in our room, and he took us to the zoo so we could see the new born baby orang-outang, on Saturday!!!!!!!!

  These are the teachers on camp with us:

  MR HOLMES He teaches 5/6H.

  Mr Holmes is a permanently crumpled person. I remember once he nearly hung himself on his tie. His car door slammed just as a gust of wind blew his tie, and he went to dash off because he was late and throttled himself. He always wears a tie. Maybe he thinks it looks professional. Anyway, it’s always covered with stains. He is a nice person and he tries hard but he’s HOPeLEsS!!!

  ‘He’s a nerd.’

  ‘No,’ says Mum,‘nerd’s the wrong word, too modern; he’s a duffer.’

  MISS CAPPELLI We always say it in one word, like mischief.

  Antonia Cappelli. She teaches our class, 5/6C.

  I’m in love with her. We’re all in love with her. We’re all going to marry her. She has a great smile, great teeth, great eyes, great personality and a great sense of humour. Her legs are a bit short, but you can’t have everything.

  When she needs to, she has a voice that cuts through steel, and she can also do that whistle where you put your fingers in your mouth, which is good for taxis, but earsplitting!!!!!!

  In class, without looking up, she goes, ‘Jason, if you’re doing what I think you’re doing, stop it right now!’

  ‘What?’ goes Jason.

  ‘Cutting your eraser into tiny pieces and flicking them at Beth and Jessica up the front.’