Bluey
A Short Australian Story
It was December 1966, and the sun seemed to have a vendetta against Bluey Harris.
The drought was driving cattle to test fences severely, but for some reason Milton Harris always left it til mid-summer to decide that the five-mile line between Belleview and the Manning place needed rewiring. And Bluey of course, red-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned Bluey was the only one of Milton’s three sons he could trust with fencing.
Put Mal, the lady’s man with lady’s hands, or Victor the scowling drunk on fences? Not bloody likely.
Bluey swept his terry-toweling hat from his head and wiped his forehead with it. He perched it back up on his red curls willing it to catch some breeze, but there was none. The black Queensland topsoil baked. The rusty old Holden work truck baked. The box eucalypt scrub on Manning’s side of the fence sullenly baked. Bluey worked the wire for all he was worth, and baked in his long brown sleeves.
In the hottest part of the afternoon a sound caught his attention. Dust raised from the road — a horse. Mal, unmistakable in his long boots and jodhpurs, riding like blazes from the house.
Now there was a picture. Bluey stopped for a drink and contemplation of the scene.
Something was up, alright. The old man must have raised some hell, Bluey thought, to get Mal out of the house at this time of day. It wasn’t one of the stock-horses he was riding either — it was Cricket, the thoroughbred gelding, and they were going flat-strap.
Something really was up.
Unconsciously Bluey strode down the road to meet them. Mal reined the wild-eyed Cricket to a dead stop beside him and drew something — an envelope — from the top of his boot.
“Bluey — there’s a letter for you. A letter from the Governor General — the government —”
The dead silent, beaten land suddenly seemed to roar with the sound of cicadas.
Bluey pulled off his gloves and hung them carefully on his belt. He took the envelope from Mal’s shaking hand, read his name on it and opened it, his strong fingers fumbling to unfold the papers inside. At the front was the letter with the Governor General’s stamp — and there was no doubt about it.
He’d been drafted. Conscripted for two years’ National Service.
It was 1966, and National Service in Australia meant one thing only: Vietnam.
