An entry from our Summer Reading competition.

ARE we there yet?”

We’ve been on the road for hours… this same boring red dirt for kilometres, so you can’t even play I Spy because you’ll always end up with either the sky, the road or the stupid dirt! 

Then, rising from the horizon faster than my friend Dale can run, there was a servo. 

I hadn’t noticed I was hungry ‘til the delicious smell of meat pies flowed through my nostrils. 

We pulled over and Dad got out and immediately burnt his feet on the scorching cement. 

Me and mum burst out laughing as Dad hopped around like a kangaroo. 

Then he threatened us that if we didn’t stop laughing, he wouldn’t get us a meat pie, and suddenly it wasn’t funny anymore. 

Dad went in and came out with three brown bags and handed me and mum the perfect combination of delicious, flaky pastry and tender beefy goodness, which I drowned in tomato sauce and gobbled down in less than four bites, which is a new record for me.

It took another two hours of pure boredom to arrive at the campsite just as the sun was beginning to set. 

We had to set up the tent, and quick. 

It’s like what my Italian teacher, Mrs Spagnoli would say, “If you get your work done quick then you get free time”. 

So, I helped Dad pull the tent out of the boot and basically just stood there until Dad told me to “connect those” or “pull here”. 

And then, faster than a kangaroo can hop, it was done. 

I felt so proud of us, getting it done in such a small amount of time, which I later learnt was actually a lot of time and we were just slow. 

After that, Dad got the barbie going and I plonked myself in one of our camp chairs with an apple juice in one hand and a pack of Twisties in the other. 

Dad peered his head around a big gumtree that was inconveniently placed in the middle of our campsite, 

“Hey Hazza, what do you want in your hotdog?”

“Just some onions and the usual sauces please,” I replied. 

Every time I have a hot dog, I always make sure I get Rosella tomato sauce with a hearty drizzle of Heinz barbeque sauce, and the onions must ALWAYS be above the sauce, not below. 

Anyway, while Dad was getting that sorted, I was just sitting there and taking in all the Australian outback when I heard a scrunching sound behind me. 

I was sure it – whatever ‘it’ was – could kill us. 

Anything out here can kill you, like the redback spider or this yellow and black snake that’ll both kill you in under 30 minutes. 

Even the platypus can kill you with this poisonous thing on its foot. 

But then, seeing it out of the corner of my eye, was a bloody massive kangaroo.

I knew what it was here for. 

My snag. I wasn’t gonna let him take my sausagey goodness from the barbie, where it was being cooked to perfection. 

So, I got up and confidently looked it straight in the eye, secretly hoping for it to just not be bothered and leave. 

But then I saw its muscles, more defined than that guy Arnold Schwarzen-Vader or something, so, I called to Dad, “Dad! There’s a roo here and he wants my snag!” 

And like that, my dad came flying out of nowhere, like Bruce Lee, and full-on kicked that roo in the chest. But it didn’t budge. 

Not even a muscle moved. 

It was like he was invincible. 

You could see the confidence in its eyes, like one of those wrestlers from the telly. 

Then Dad swung around and punched that roo square in the face. 

It was on.

The kangaroo jumped from side to side, like a boxer before his fight, and launched himself feet-first straight into my dad, which knocked him clean to the floor. 

Punched

He got up, holding his stomach with his hairy hands. 

And again, the roo attacked, this time hitting Dad square in the chest. 

It wasn’t over. 

Dad wasn’t gonna let him do anything to me or my snag. 

So, he leapt up and fully roundhouse-kicked the roo in the face, causing it to go flying. 

Then he turned to me with a comforting yet smug grin, “I guess we won’t be seeing much more of him anytime soon.” 

That made me laugh so I hard I thought I was gonna pass a kidney stone or something like that. 

I learnt about that in science class, and apparently it really hurts. 

Then, like in one of those magic tricks, Mum emerged from the tent, oblivious to the events that had just occurred.

“What was that all about?”

“Did you seriously not see? There was a kangaroo, and dad and it fought, and dad won!”

“Wow,” Mum said sarcastically. 

Why didn’t she believe me? 

It had all happened right in front of my eyes. Or had it? 

Was it just a figure of my imagination and the whole scenario was just played out inside my head? Was I going crazy? 

It must have been that meat pie I had eaten earlier, right? 

Shimmered

“Bedtime!” shouted Mum and I stumbled into the tent and flopped on to my inflatable mattress. 

We had one of those star-gazer tents, so I just laid there for a while, looking at the stars as the memories of today replayed in my head hundreds of times.

 I fell asleep and woke up in the middle of the night, with everything pitch black apart from the stars, as they shimmered in the night sky. But then I noticed a shape, illuminated by the stars. 

The kangaroo was staring me straight in the eyes and it was here for revenge. 

I screamed.

by LACHLAN SWEETING