Michael Morpurgo - Unforgettable Journeys - Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea, Running Wild and Dear Olly

“Well, you’ve told me your little tale,” she began, “so I’ll tell you mine. Then we’ll know one another better, won’t we?

And so she told us who she was and what she was doing living there in the Ark with all her creatures around her, and Henry down his hat hole. We listened agog, because she was a wonderful storyteller. She could paint pictures in your head with words, and she could touch the heart of you too.

“Megs Molloy, that’s me – Margaret really – but Aunty Megs will be fine. Just call me that, everyone does. I do a little of everything, a bit of farming, write a bit of poetry – love that – and I make boats too in my shed, because Mick made boats. You’ll see photos of him about the place. He was my husband, but I lost him in the war, which was sad for me, but sadder still for him. His ship was sunk in some convoy, so he’s part of the seabed now. It’s as good a place to end up as any, I reckon. He made model boats all his life, sailed them too, all kinds, a destroyer in the end. Boats were his life, boats and me. So now I make boats because he taught me how to do it, and I love it. But I don’t get all maudlin about Mick, not often anyway. Life’s too short.

“Besides there’s too much needs doing round here. Years ago when Mick and me first came here, he discovered a dead wallaby up on the road – knocked down and killed by some stupid truck. He saw a little head sticking out of her pouch, and alive, alive o! So he brought it home. That was near enough twenty years ago now. That little fellow was the first of hundreds, thousands now maybe. From that day on one of us would check the road every morning at dawn, and whenever we found an orphan, a possum, a joey, a wombat, we’d bring him home. And in time the bushmen must have got to hear about it, because they would bring along little fellows they’d found and leave them with us. They don’t say much, but they’ve got their hearts in the right place.

“But we wouldn’t ever keep them. We wouldn’t cuddle them either. None of that. We’d just feed the little fellows and look after them. Tried never to tame them, never even touch them ‘less we had to. Once you tame them they’ll never go back to the wild. So we just kept them till they were strong enough. Then we’d all take a hike together up into the hills, and if one or two stayed up there, that was fine with us, that was just what we wanted. They were back where they belonged.

“When the war came along and Mick joined the navy, I went on doing it just the same. And when he didn’t come back, I carried on. Seemed the right thing to do. So here I am writing my poetry, making my boats, looking after whoever or whatever I find out there that needs me. Then this morning, I find something I’ve never found before – a couple of raggedy little scarecrows left behind for me by the bushmen. So I said to myself: they’ve done that for a good reason . And now I know the reason. So I know why you were there, and now you know why I was there. Just like all the little fellows out there, you can stay as long as you need to.”

The two of us walked out afterwards to see Big Black Jack in his paddock. He was trying to make friends with Aunty Megs’ horse and with Barnaby. But Barnaby wasn’t having any of it, and he didn’t much like it either when Jack started checking out Aunty Megs’ horse. I could hear Aunty Megs singing from inside the house and I felt I was the luckiest person alive. I didn’t pinch myself, but I wondered more than once that first day whether Marty and I were living inside some wonderful shared dream, that maybe we’d wake up and be back at Cooper’s Station again.

But when I woke up the next morning, I woke up to see Marty still fast asleep in the bed opposite, and high on a shelf all around the room models of sailing boats, and I knew the dream was not a dream at all. I heard a shuffling under my bed then, peered underneath and saw a wombat looking back up at me. He had one of my socks in his mouth. Aunty Megs was at the door then with a glass of milk for each of us. “I see you’ve met Henry then,” she said. “Forgot to tell you. He steals socks too.”

It turned out that Henry didn’t just pinch hats and socks, he’d steal just about anything that he fancied. So we never left our clothes lying around, nor shoes, nor towels. Aunty Megs told us to shoo him out of the house whenever he came in; but somehow, sooner or later, he’d always find a way back in again. And Aunty Megs was right, he did smell. If he was in the house we’d smell him before we saw him, and the stink of him lingered long in the air after we’d put him out. But we loved him all the same, just as Aunty Megs did. I think it was because of the way he looked up at you. His eyes said: “OK, so I stink. OK, so I’m a thief. But nobody’s perfect, are they? So give me a break, will you? Deep down you know you love me, everyone does.”

Feeding Henry his bottle of milk was the chore that was never a chore. Marty and I would often squabble over which of us should do this last task of the day. Whoever won would sit on the verandah steps right above Henry’s hole. He’d climb up on to your lap, roll over on his back and wait for it. Aunty Megs said he’d just never grown up, that she’d tried and tried to break him of the habit, but he’d hang around her feet making her feel so guilty that she couldn’t resist him. So Henry still got his milk, and it had to be out of a bottle.

We did have tasks at the Ark. We milked the cows, and the goats – learned to make butter and cheese too. We chopped wood, we fed the hens, got chased by the geese when we tried to shut them up in case the dingoes came in the night. But now it was work we wanted to do, because we wanted to help out, and because both of us loved being with Aunty Megs. Our hands blistered, our backs ached, but we didn’t mind. Every morning she’d take us down to the main road a mile or so away, and we’d walk along the verges, one of us on the right, one of us on the left, looking for any casualties. Most days we’d find something but more often than not they’d be dead already. But from time to time we’d get lucky.

I remember the first time I discovered a joey crouched trembling by the side of his dead mother. I couldn’t contain my excitement, and yelled for Aunty Megs, who came running over to pick him up. She was very strict about handling them. She never allowed us to feed them or handle them. If they were very small she’d keep them for a while in a box by the stove in the kitchen. We could crouch over them and look, but not touch. But as soon as they were old enough they’d live outside in the compound with the others. Marty and I would spend hours out there watching through the wire, but Aunty Megs was the only one allowed in. And she never talked to them, never stroked them. She just fed them.

She’d never let us come with her either when she went off for her rides into the bush, the orphan animals, her “little fellows,” trailing behind her. If we came, she said, we’d only confuse them. There was no point in saving them at all, she insisted, unless they could be returned back into the wild again successfully. She made it perfectly clear that this wasn’t an exercise in sentimentality, wasn’t just to make herself feel good. It was to give them a second chance of life, a chance they all deserved. It was a chance everyone deserved, she said, animals and people alike.