Tommy Makes It Rich

Chapter 08.

05 January 1967

I awoke once again naked on my bed. It was still dark but I knew it was time to get up. I had a terrible headache and thought I would throw up at any minute. I stumbled into the kitchen where mum was making tea. She took one look at me and said, “You don’t look so well.”

“I feel terrible.” I whined. “My head feels like it is about to split open and I feel like spewing.”

Mum put her hand on my forehead; like she does whenever we are sick and said. “You have a temperature.”

 She went to the drawer and got a Vincent powder then poured a glass of water. “If you are going to spew do it now. Other wise take this.”

I raced outside and threw up in the November Lilies under the steps. Then back inside and mum handed me the powder on a teaspoon and the glass of water. I swallowed the powder and gulped some water to take away the taste. Then mum said, “Right, son, back to bed.”

As I made my way back to my room I heard her waking Fran to help with the milking. It was almost worth being sick just to hear her whinge and complain about the injustice of it all.

I climbed into my bed feeling absolutely dreadful. I put my hand across my forehead to ease the pain and suddenly I was falling. I blinked my eyes open. The good news was my head didn’t hurt any more. I didn’t get a chance to think of the bad news because I stopped falling with a thud. I had landed in soft wet leafy ground under a huge canopy of leaves. I was in the middle of a jungle or a rain forest. 

My first thought was that because of my headache my “Time Traveller” gizmo in my brain was on the fritz because I was not in the house. I didn’t know where I was. Except that I was in a rain forest of some kind and it had just started to rain. It wasn’t particularly cold but I was naked and so somewhat uncomfortable.

Now the rules of time travel as I had worked out were that I always wake up in the same place as I go to sleep only in a different time. Logic, therefor, meant that I must be in Inglewood near Johnson’s Creek, exactly where our house is/will be/was. I had woken up this morning before sunrise and was back in bed not long after it was light. I am guessing five thirty maybe six AM. That would make 0530 to 0600 AD. Crikey, Europeans don’t get here for another thousand years. Now how do I to get back home to my time? Surely all I need to do is go to sleep. I will just lay down here and go to sleep.

I lay there for about an hour battling the mosquitos. I gave up and went for a walk to see what I could see. I was a bit thirsty so I went down the hill toward the creek. There was a smell of decomposing leaves but other than that there was no smell at all. This was strange because both our place and Jackie’s smelled alike except Jackie’s often had the smell of baking bread. But here there was no cooking smells. There was no cow manure smell. Here it was just pure fresh air. The creek was the about the same distance but instead of a five minute amble down the track it took nearly half an hour to struggle over roots and rocks and stuff.

It was hard to tell if the creek was the same as 1967 because the forest was just too thick to see any land marks. I waded down stream for a bit, as the going was much easier then going on land or going up stream. The water was clear yet it did seem a bit deeper than I remember it. I figured it wouldn’t take me long to get to the big bend just near our boundary fence. Here there should be a sandy beach, well there will be in a thousand years.