Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.
The woman struggled up the steeply inclined track, the babe in her arms grizzling for the breast. There was no time to stop. Three children were labouring to keep pace, the youngest tightly clutching her mother’s skirts.
It was a hot day and the woman felt overheated in her rough-spun woollen dress but she had no other. Her boots were patched at the heel but at least she was shod, unlike her barefoot children who snivelled and moaned when the rocks were too sharp or the ants bit. Her face under its battered straw hat was as worn as her clothes. In years, she was still a young woman, but her eyes told a different story, a story of hunger and pain, of childbirth and loss, of brutality and neglect. A common story.
Her husband was in front, leading the old carthorse that carried all their possessions on its bony back. His brass uniform buttons shone in the glistening sunlight. He was swigging from a jug. She knew that before their journey ended he would be staggering and she would have to somehow manage the horse as well as all the children. She silently prayed that he would be able to hold onto this job; that for once he could restrain his drinking and foul temper for the sake of his family.
“Keep up you lot or you’ll see the back of my hand, “he yelled back at them. “We gotta to be in Creswick by nightfall.”
The woman made an extra effort to quicken her pace. The little boy stumbled and fell, wailing as his knee smashed hard on the rocky ground. She stopped to bind his knee, begging him to shush. His father had no patience with snivelling children, especially his own. She sighed and set one foot in front of the other, just keeping going once again.
