Pender sat up. A wind rose, warm as breath. Surely it couldn’t be—surely not—it couldn’t be… He rolled across to peer over the edge of the rock.
It was a little joey. It stood there boldly, all alone, looking around, blinking. Its fur was grey and soft and new and growing in all directions. It bent down and sniffed the ground, then straightened up again, listening, hopping forward, almost falling over itself.
Pender hardly allowed himself to breathe, watching the joey. It hopped forward on its thin legs in a way he remembered so clearly, and he felt a sharp pain in his heart.
Pender got up on his knees and crawled over across the fallen gum leaves, very quietly, down from the rock. Step by step, closer, and closer. The joey was so near! He leaned towards it, reaching out his hand.
Then suddenly, in answer to some unknowable call, the little joey hopped away, back into the bush, where her mother was waiting.
In 2009, we drove down a long, winding dirt road through the bush on the south coast of New South Wales, to spend a memorable week as guests of the Bundanon Trust, the historic homestead and property that the distinguished artist Arthur Boyd bequeathed to the people of Australia. We spent our days, like Pender, thinking about paintings and wandering along the riverbed, up the hillsides, into the thickness of the eucalypts and sandstone, full of the hidden presence of the animals and birds who lived there. Hidden—except for the families of wombats who, every morning and evening, appeared for a gentle graze on the lawns surrounding the house.
In this atmosphere of art and nature, the story and the vision of Brindabella was born.
Ursula Dubosarsky was born into a family of writers, and wanted to be a writer from the age of six. She is now the author of sixty books for children and young adults, and her work has been published all over the world. She has won several state literary awards, including the NSW Premier’s Literary Award a record five times, more than any other writer in the history of the awards. Internationally, Ursula has been nominated for both the Hans Christian Andersen Award and the Astrid Lindgren Prize.
Ursula has a PhD in English literature and currently lives in Sydney.
Andrew Joyner is an illustrator and author of children’s books. His first picture book, The Terrible Plop, also written by Ursula Dubosarsky, was published in 2009. Since then, he has illustrated many more picture books and been published in more than 25 countries. He lives with his family in South Australia.
