Tommy Makes It Rich

Chapter 2. 1 January 1900

1 January 1900

I woke up and looked around me. I was in the same room but the paint was different. "What? Where am I?" I sat up. I was in some sort of bed. The mattress seemed to be stuffed with straw and even though there were sheets on the bed they were thin and patched with hessian sacks.

"Who are you?" I heard a girl's voice say.

"Who am I? Who are you? And what are you doing in our house?" I said.

"Your house? This is our house! Where did you come from?" said the voice.

"I didn't come from anywhere. I live here." I said not feeling quite so sure about everything. "This room was green when I went to bed and I was asleep on a nice comfy foam mattress with cool cotton sheets and a fluffy pillow full of goose feathers. What is going on?"

"Are you are a swaggie or a bushranger or are you running away to be one?" the voice asked.

"No, I am not. This is my house and I demand to know what you are doing here. Who are you anyway?"

"I'm Jackie Andrews and this is my place, well our place. Who are you?"

"I'm Tommy Adams and this is our house."

"Why don't you come with me and we will ask Mum". We both said in unison. This caused us both to laugh. "Righto lets go," we both said.

"Ah perhaps you should put on some clothes first." Jackie said. I looked down and realised I was naked. I know I put on my pyjamas when I went to bed. She threw me some shorts and a button up shirt which was missing a few buttons. "Turn around." I said. She giggled but she turned around while I pulled on the clothes.

As we left the bedroom and stepped into the lounge room I nearly died. There was no TV. There was no comfy vinyl lounge. There was a wooden table and some wooden chairs around it. Near the walls were some canvas slung folding chairs. The next horror came as I looked toward the dining room. It was not there at all. There was only a narrow walkway with no walls. It had railings and was as long as the dining room used to be wide. It led to the kitchen, which was in the same place as ours should be but it was like a separate building altogether. In the nook where the electric stove should be there was an old slow combustion stove. There was no fridge at all.

I said to Jackie. "Does this look normal to you?"

"Yep! This is home. Always has been and I guess always will be."

I was really starting to get freaked out about now. I stepped outside looking for our EH Holden Ute. There was nothing under the house except a broken down horse drawn cart. I looked for the tractor under the mango tree. There wasn't even a mango tree. I could see the shape of the land was very similar to our place.

"Where are we?"

"Johnson Hill."

"Are you sure it's not Inglewood" I asked shakily.

"Well," said Jackie "Some folks say its Inglewood but we always call it Johnson Hill. That's Johnson Creek down there."

"Yes," I said, "It is Johnson Creek!" Then a thought occurred to me. "What date is it?"

"First of January of course. It's New Year's Day. Don't you know anything?"

"Yeah, but what year is it?"

"You must me some sort of a half wit. It is 1900. It is a new century."

Was it true? Had my wish of time travel come true? What caused it to come true? I remember making a wish when Ida spurted all over me but I have had cow manure on me before.