going over. I wasn’t going to shoot anyone, just wanted them to know he was on my property, and they needed to behave. That was a bit tense. Anyway, they said they’d come to hear more from him. That he’d made sense. So, I let them in and followed them down to the river. Just in case. He was swimming, but he walks out of the water – starkers – then just looks at them and starts to talk. More of the God stuff and the ‘getting clean’ stuff and questions about how they wanted to live their lives. And they bloody listened. I got him a towel and a pair of pants. You get to know people out here. You grow up together. Even the newcomers give up their secrets in the end. And I knew most of this mob. I’m not saying they’re bad folk, just no better than the rest of us, even with their churchgoing. I could tell you a few stories about Maureen, for example. And Ahmed. It hasn’t all been Sunday School and church picnics for that lot, I can tell you. But then, they could tell you a few stories about me – some I probably can’t remember myself. Live and let live. But that was never Jonno’s approach. He was a ‘live and get better’ sort of bloke. By the end, some called him Mad John. Some, ‘Holy Jo’. Some called him ‘Bunyip’ because he was always dragging people into the river. But he was Jonno to me. But I’m getting ahead of myself. That first day with the mob on the bank, they listened. And then he tells them they’ve got to wash away the muck of their lives and get right with God. They’ve got to walk into the river with him and go under. And they did. They bloody did. One by one, they just walked in with him, and he dunked them right under and they came up spluttering and laughing and hugging each other. Then they stayed and he made them damper and tea, and they sung a bit and told stories. Sun went down; stars came out. No-one was going anywhere. And I just sat there on the edge of the firelight, listening. But he never put the hard word on me. Just gave me the occasional look to see how I was 14
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