The Seconds That Changed My Life

• Grace Eyles, Grade 4
• Short Story
• 2017

I was about to board the ship, I was saying goodbye to my family. My mum squeezed me like it was the last time she could. Everyone always thought we were never going to see each other again, but mum never thought that way because if she did, the thing that she didn’t want to think about would come true. I slowly pushed away as a soldier grabbed me on the arm. I tried to get away, but he was too strong. I looked back the whole time with tears streaming down my face.
Mum yelled out, “I love you!”
Breathing deeply, I cried back, “I love you even more and I’ll never forget you.”
I got dragged up onto the ship and sat down with handcuffs on. They locked me down so I couldn’t get away. The ship slowly started moving across the water. I looked back.
I screamed, “MUMMY!”
But it was no use.
She yelled, “I’ll get to you someday, even if I have to steal something to come to Australia to be with you!”
I saw my little sister standing at the end of the jetty with my teddy bear. I had told her if I went away somewhere she could always remember me and think I was with her in our room. I thought she might have been disgusted by me. I had let her down because I should have been her role model. I was terrified of leaving my family. I thought I was going to die and this was all over stealing one shilling. If I could just take back those few seconds, this would never have happened.
The Captain of the Golden Grove, which was the ship that I was on, explained that it would take at least five months to arrive in our new land, but instead it took eight months. So eight long, stormy and lonely months later we arrived. We weren’t the first ones in this new country because they had already built a hospital, but only a tent plainly stood there. Also there were some tiny huts that could only fit a bed made out of straw.
I walked off the ship slowly with two soldiers right beside me. I saw someone in the trees and hiding in the bushes, they looked creepy and scary because they had spears and they always hid from everyone. They had stuff all over them like a sloppy dark mixture with brown and black. I looked up at the trees, there were birds I had never seen before or never imagined to see. There were people I had never seen the colour of. Everything in this country was different to my home in Great Britain. I lived in London and everyone looked different and every animal and every species of things was different. This was the scariest thing in the world and I knew I wasn’t alone in this new life of mine.