Alan Pilkington

Four of Diamonds: an Australian's Journey Alan Pilkington

Rex spent a quiet Christmas Day. He opened the parcel from his family; it contained a leather fishing fly wallet from his father, a knitted woolen sweater from his mother and a book titled The Spell of the Yukon, by Robert Service, from Margorie. He re-read his father's letters and rested, and after a big dinner in the cookhouse at midday with those station men who had not left to join their families, he fished in the Upper Murray River until evening. The cook had left, after cleaning the kitchen following Christmas dinner, and Rex had the big kitchen to himself. He fried two small trout in butter for tea, and ate alone, enjoying his solitude in the evening without loneliness. He sat quietly on the verandah of the bunkhouse, listening to the water from the windmill sprinkling the orchard, and to the birds roosting in the box trees that lined the homestead's driveway. Rex was thinking about his family and his life, and he wondered when he would see them again, when his odyssey would be over.