‘What do you know about that plane?’
‘Used to see it up in the air when I was a kid. That’d be in the sixties. We didn’t have the Bush Poetry Muster then … this was still a dairy town, and the Ag Show was a big deal for all the locals. I remember that plane swooping down over the old fairground so low I nearly crapped my pants.’
‘Wow. How I would have loved to have seen it in the air.’
‘Might be a bit of news footage if you contacted the ABC.’
Yes! She hadn’t thought of that!
‘Ken, do you have any idea why the plane might have been abandoned by the family?’
‘The accident, I expect. I don’t recall the details, but when the young Bluett boy was killed—that’d be your father, I’m guessing—it knocked the stuffing out of his parents.’
‘Did you know them?’
‘Not really. Sorry, love. I wish there was more I could tell you.’
She sighed. ‘Me too. Carol and I have found a military museum in Brisbane that’s home to a big New Guinea collection who would be thrilled to take the Wirraway if we can get it to them.’
Ken nodded. ‘Be a big job moving it.’
‘Yep.’ Big and expensive, but she was going to worry about that when she knewhowbig and expensive. ‘Those farmstay cottages, they were taken up the hill on wide-bed trucks. Like, two wholehouses and an old railway station. That’s what gave me the idea that moving the plane might be possible.’
Ken clicked his mug to hers. ‘Sounds to me like you know what you’re doing.’
If only she had Ken’s confidence.
‘Speaking of people who know what they’re doing … I reckon you might be looking at this year’s winner of The Billy Tea prize. Started a new poem this morning—just in my head, like, while I was deadheading the ixoras—but I’m liking it so far. Want to hear the first verse?’
She smiled. Who could say no to that? ‘Sure.’
Ken picked up his secateurs, held them in front of him like a microphone, and launched into speech.
’Twas windy in the morning, blowing leaves right off the trees,
When Kenny pegged his sheets to dry amid the gusty breeze;
But wooden pegs are prone to rot and blast! That day had come:
His favourite sheet, it filled with wind, and high away it spun.