When The Ground Shook

• Maggie Hutchens, Grade 6, Pleasant Street Primary School
• Short Story
• 2013

Excellence Award in the 'Dream Big 2013' competition

‘It’s going to be a stinker!’, Already the day was hot and yet it was still only morning.
I walk over to the cattle yard. Resting one foot on the lower rung of the steel fence, I spread my arms out on the higher rung and just hang there like a scarecrow.

I look down on the parched brown dust of the empty yard. How I hate this time of year. It was too hot, to dry and I always seemed to have a headache.

Although it was hot and dry for most of the year I do not mind the outback part of life, there is plenty to do, like exploring the bush and hunting for all different types of animals.

Sometimes when it was really hot my brother and I would walk 12km to get to the closest dam or lake and sometimes we would be out of luck.

But one day something happened something so bad that I don’t think it can ever be fixed.
I never knew that death was so close until I saw it staring me in the eyes.

It all started when I heard some sort of, some sort of sound. The sound echoed for what seemed like forever.

I started to wonder what it was but did not get much time because all of a sudden the ground shook, the windows shattered. I tried to keep my balance but soon fall down, a tree plummets and I just manage dodge it. What the heck is happening! I ask myself. The shaking goes on forever. My head is spinning my sore feet have pins and needles. My eyes are filled with the red outback dust. I hear yelling from inside the house it my mum. She is yelling Ruby come inside. My feet feel like piles of bricks. I take my first step. With strong winds lightly pushing me back. I finally get back into the house. I take one look at mum to see she has blood streaming down her arm. I walk over to where the book case was to see that it is a book case no more. Books everywhere from one corner of the room to the other. Then the shaking just stops the books stop falling off the book case and the floor stops shaking.

My mum asks if I am ok, I say that I’m ok and don’t have any physical. Soon I go to check out the damage around the house and in my room.
There’s what looks like a lot of mess but once we start cleaning it up it soon just fades away , I’m not quite sure what happened that day but I hope for the life of me that it never happens again.