In Australia, autumn progresses towards winter. The Desert ash trees are losing their leaves. My white cat has a thick winter coat. She reminds me of an Arctic fox.

In the early spring of 2006 I was in the wilds of North east Greenland, travelling with the hunters by dog sledge.

Memories of lying in a little green tent at Kap Hoegh in the soft twilight that follows the midnight sun, listening to the hoarse bark of an arctic fox high up on a hill, as it summons its mate to a meal of nesting little auks. Katherine who is sharing the tent with me says, “That’s a vixen, she has a different note.”

Everyone else is sleeping in a hut safely out of reach of marauding polar bears that are also looking for a meal. We have the dogs tethered nearby who should alert the hunters if one should come our way. But my experience of Greenland hunters is they sleep as soundly as tired sledge dogs!

I ask why there is a very large hunting knife placed beside the musk ox skin that I‘m lying on.

Katherine says, “Jonas left it for us in case we have to kill a polar bear in the night; isn’t he sweet.  I will get out quicker than you will so I‘m leaving the knife with you.”

This is serious! I decide to swap the knife for a rifle.

I go to find Scoresby who understands me as he learnt English when watching the Australian TV show ‘Neighbours’ during an enforced stay in hospital.

I tell him we have been left a knife to kill a bear and ask, “What is the best way to kill a bear, do we have to cut its throat?” He says, “Yes, but the bear will be coming for you on its hind legs, waving its paws at you. It will be taller than you so if you are going to kill it you will have to be very quick and get in between its front legs, then reach up and push its head back and cut its throat. As most bears are southpaws chances are it will lead with the left paw. If you want to live a few seconds longer just dodge to the other side.” No, he won’t part with his rifle.”You might shoot Katherine.”

So we doze on and off in our little tent with the hunting knife  between us and the night filled with the incessant cries of little auks returning to their nests in the rocks, punctuated by the snores of the Greenland huskies and the bark of the arctic fox.

Two nights later we are again lying in our flimsy little green tent while everyone else is sleeping in a hut. This time the dogs are tethered out on the ice, nowhere near us. Suddenly there’s a thumping scratching noise on the wall of the tent beside me! … Our hearts stopped.  . … But it was only the wind.

Katherine said “Your eyes were huge!”  So were hers, we thought we were about to be eaten! 

The next morning we found a very large polar bear nearby.


Beverley Morton 
​May 2021

​Anzac day in Goorambat was always a solemn occasion, the ex-servicemen would go to Benalla to march at 10.30 a.m and to attend the R.S.L. service at the cenotaph.

Back in Goorambat, I was instructed to raise the flag that was flying at half-mast to the top of the flagpole at 12 M.D. as per the Anzac Day instructions in the Australian flag book. Then on their return they would gather for an hour or so at the Goorambat Hotel.

But in 1982 Anzac Day fell on a Sunday and the hotel would be closed! The publican said he would open unofficially for an hour just for the ex- servicemen.  We sat quietly behind closed blinds and doors while they had their own private reunion.

I observed the quiet close bond between them. On that day they had unspoken private memories that we who had not experienced those times could not share. It was their day.
Then someone suggested they should each buy a bottle of whisky!

My friend Flo looked at me in alarm. “We’d better get back to your place quickly and start cooking. They’re going to need a lot of food.“

The close band of merry makers arrived an hour later at peace with the world and radiating goodwill but their numbers had grown. Amongst others we had the publican and friends. A family who had moved to Goorambat that day who we didn’t know occupied the couch smiling at us, while an ex digger wearing an army  slouch hat sat asleep on the floor under a large pot plant for a couple of hours.

Flo and I passed food around frequently, hoping to preserve the equilibrium. The Anzac spirit prevailed and the afternoon was full of smiling unspoken mateship and quiet good cheer.

I don’t know how many people fell off the front veranda when they left. Just walked out of the front door and kept going and measured their length on the front lawn, each one saying, “I missed the step!” There were no steps there!

The stragglers stayed on for tea but didn’t seem hungry by then and the last one, a younger man who had seen active service in Vietnam left reluctantly at 3 a.m.

Those days are long gone and things have changed.

This year, Anzac Day in Goorambat has a different flavour. The flag flies at half mast at Victory Park as usual and no one bothers about a flag book.

The memorials to those who lost their lives in the two World Wars and Korea have been given a face lift and small white crosses have been placed along the path for the occasion.  I notice tourists who have come to admire the silo art wandering in there and standing solemnly for a while.

After midday there are several cars in the park and as the last post rings out from my neighbours TV, a small group of people are sitting on chairs around the memorial having their own private service.

Next door to the Park lunch is being served in the new Diggers Wife’s Café that is run by the Goorambat Veterans Retreat based at the closed Goorambat School.

Those Goorambat World War veterans are no longer with us and Anzac Day now belongs to the people.

On Anzac Day 2021, I am proud to think that I was given a special insight into that original day of remembrance and what it meant to those who had given so much to preserve our way of life.      
                                                                                                     
Bev Morton
​April 2021