Calypso Summer by Jared Thomas Page B

real solid kind of fella with a gut and grey hair. He was dressed kind of pretty flash for a Saturday too, wearing a shirt, jeans and a pair of brown soft leather shoes. Vic also had grey hair but he looked like a footballer or something, all toned, you know. He was dressed more casually than Bruce, wearing a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and sneakers. Bruce asked me if I wanted a drink and after I told him I was alright, he started yarning with his brother.
    â€˜Don’t get me wrong,’ said Bruce, ‘Of course I’m not complaining about investment into country but the terms are wrong.’
    â€˜What’s there to worry about? We’re being offered a way to start making some real money from the property, the biggest mobs of money,’ Vic said, convincingly.
    â€˜You’re starting to sound like a bloody whitefella, you don’t get it either,’ Bruce interjected. ‘We’re being pressured into running the property like a whitefella farm … with cattle and that.’
    â€˜Well we’re already doing the sheep agistment and that’s going alright.’
    â€˜It barely pays the bills and you know how them sheep bugger up the land.’
    â€˜But with a bit of extra cattle the bills are paid and we’ll have extra cash to do other things with.’
    â€˜All I want Vic is to see some of this country come back to life you know, even if it just comes back to how it was when we were kids, a few patches of proper bush here and there. Just give us a chance to get things back to like that.’ Bruce said frustrated. ‘Even our old people were farming it back in the 1930s, leasing sections and taking a cut.’
    â€˜I am sure they were doing what they needed to, but times have changed, there’s other ways of making the property work.’
    â€˜How long ago was our country returned to us? Twenty years, what? Everyone’s got a good idea but not much has happened unna?’
    â€˜Even if we leave it just the way it is, it’s better than having sheep and cattle tearing it up.’
    â€˜If we don’t start making some money and looking after it, the government and everyone will say we’ve failed … again … That’s just the way it is,’ said Vic.
    I could understand where Bruce was coming from, even if I wasn’t raised in the bush with my mob. You just had to look at all the bare paddocks everywhere to see what farming is doing.
    Mel walked out of Aunty Janet’s front door with more people. There was an old fella, not as old as the two really old uncles, but an old fella, in a western shirt, cowboy hat and boots, with a bushy salt and pepper moustache, sideburns and hair. A really skinny and dark fella, not much older than me, was with him. He wore a cap and drank beer from a longneck bottle. There was an older lady wearing a t-shirt, long skirt and thongs. The old cowboy fella handed a cigarette to them and Mel introduced me.The cowboy was Uncle Ray, the bearded teenager was cousin Will, and the older lady Auntie Val-May.
    Uncle Ray shook my hand, ‘I’ve been waiting long time to see you again neph,’ he said. Will just nodded at me shyly. Aunty Val-May puffed on her cigarette and then gave me a kiss on the cheek and a hug and said, ‘I’m Aunty Janet’s cousin, your mother’s cousin too. I used to give you smacks when you were little, so don’t go getting cheeky or I’ll slap your murntu again.’
    A woman who looked a lot like Mum but wearing glasses and maybe ten or so years older walked through the front door, looked at me and came and gave me a big hug too. She took one of my dreads in her wrinkled black hands and said, ‘What in the buggery is this Calypso?’ I just smiled at her and said, ‘Nice to meet you Aunty Janet.’
    â€˜You too, Kyle. You hungry or what? I’m starving. Come out the back and have a feed with all the mob, hey?’

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    Everybody