Wars were boiling up all over the world, and talk of war was every place. It was time, I felt, we went home. Mike Murder, my director, and I were making newsreel shots, but something called television was driving people out of the popcorn palaces that showed movies, so business was not so good.
We were making it home in easy stages, and the morning we got off the plane in Australia, Mike looked over the place and said, “Chum, it looks like Pasadena after a season of no rain.”
“Be nice to the people, Mike, they like it here.”
“I guess you ain't never been to Pasadena.”
“Nonsense, some of my best friends used to live in Pasadena.”
“What do they eat here?” Mike asked; he is a simple man with a double stomach and a way of finding things to fill it.
We had a morning tea, something yon find in countries where there are enough English to fly the flag and the tea bag. Porridge, fried steak, tea, and toast with marmalade and honey followed. Brownies are served, made of a bread dough in which brown sugar and currants are mixed. I don't know any other place in the world where they make them that way.
After breakfast we went to the local newspaper and discovered a society wedding was on for the day and went out with our camera to take pictures of the event. It was very plush; the best people had left off shark-fishing and sheep-herding, and a man who was said to be Noel Coward (and wasn't) was there running the thing.
I found the bride's mother, a very handsome woman, seated at the tea table on the lawn behind half a foot of cigarette holder. I asked her if she minded if we shot some of her guests.
“If you start with the bridegroom's mother, it's all right with me.”
“I mean with a movie camera.”
“Oh, the cinema.”
“It's been called that.”
She smiled at me, poured me some tea, and relit her cigarette. We had a long talk about the world. “It's so far from everything here,” she said, “and now my little girl is getting married, and I shall live here all alone.”
“We do like to get pictures of how life is lived out here.”
She laughed. “Really, you know this place is a copy of a house in England. If you want to see real Australia, why don't you go inside?”
“Inside?”
“I mean inside the country. I've got a station—you call them ranches, I believe—about a thousand miles inland. I'll give you a letter, and you can film sheep till you bahbhh.”
Mrs. Inchcliff, as I shall call her, laughed again, and I suspected she had been having more than tea. I said fine, I would call for the letter, and I went off to help film the wedding. Personally, I think the groom married the wrong lady; I would have picked Mrs. Inchcliff. She seemed very charming once you got behind her cigarette holder.
The food was very good. Whole lambs and chickens and the specials of the country. A fine spiced Kolendo sausage, caramel bananas, parsnip-and-walnut croquettes, and the whole range of fruits we never see in this country, papaw, and others. Rabbit baked in cream and all kinds of kidney dishes that most Americans wouldn't touch but which are very tasty.
I found Mike stuffing himself on rabbit and joined him. In Australia, there are more rabbits every minute, and they catch them by the millions. In self-defense they've learned how to cook them well. Baked rabbit in cream is easy to make. After half a dozen rabbits are cleaned and washed, cut them into sections. Boil them in water to which has been added bay leaf, black pepper, and onion. When the meat is soft, remove the pieces and cook down the stock to about a quart Salt and pepper each piece of meat very well. Put them in a bread-crumbed clay baking pot and wind some bacon strips around the rabbit bits. Keep piling up the rabbit and bread crumbs until the pot is filled. Slice some onions very finely over this. Mix the stock with half milk and half cream and pour it into the dish. In Australia this is baked in an open-air oven at about 370 degrees. When the bread crumbs are a deep brown, serve the rabbit in its baking dish.
I can't say much for the native wines. But Mrs. Inchcliff brought up some of her imported stock, and we toasted the bride and her mother and promised to come back and show her our pictures, from upcountry.
Mike wasn't so sure he wanted to go. “I hate sheep and I like dames.”
“You can take along your comic books. Anyway, they have three million people here and they must reproduce in some way. I'm sure they have girls on the stations.”
“I'm going to hate it,” Mike said.
We started by bus from Sydney and went to Canberra, which was dusty and not too busy. Then by more bus we got into the real inside of New South Wales and traveled for days. “There isn't much in Australia,” Mike used to say, “but there is a lot of it.” Somewhere near Lake Eyre Mrs. Inchcliff had her station. But nobody knew just where. They pointed to the next dust cloud and said, “It's in there somewheres, chap, right ahead, in there someplice.”
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