Dirt Busters: A Cracker & Gilly Mystery

By Melinda Hammond, Richard Hammond and Denita Browning

When Gilly McMahon sets out to build a billy-cart to enter a local racing derby she decides to do it without the help of her big brother, Cracker, and his friends, Trann and Bone. And keep the $1000 prize money. She is busy hunting for wood from a deserted shack in the dark of night to build her billy-cart when she overhears a conversation that

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tropical Writing Services
• Release date: Feb 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9780992438654

Book preview

1.

THE MAKING OF A PLAN

GILLY McMahon paced her darkened bedroom. Another day over and she still hadn’t put her plan into practice.

Well, now was as good a time as any. She moved to the door, opened it a fraction, and listened.

Great, Cracker was downstairs, trapped, as their father talked him through the history of Malua Bay – like Cracker cared – and it was the break Gilly needed. Dad would be at it for ages. There was no way Cracker was getting away for at least another hour.

Before she changed her mind, she pulled open the door and slipped down the hallway to Cracker’s bedroom. His door, as usual, was wide open. She stepped over a pile of crumpled school clothes, a discarded backpack and an upended game of battleships, and came to a halt in front of a bookshelf crammed with dog-eared books, scratched out papers turned into planes, and several unfinished homework sheets.

She scanned the rows and stretched up on her tiptoes to a set of matching and, to Gilly, uninteresting ‘boy’ books. She pulled one off the shelf, flicked on her torch, and scanned the index.

Bingo!

She turned to page seventy-four and studied the two pages of instructions intently for several long minutes, grinned, and carefully tore out them out. She closed the book and placed it back on the shelf, listened for a moment to make sure nobody was in the hallway, then slipped back to her own room.

How to build a billy-cart in six easy lessons, courtesy of her brother and he didn’t even know it. Because, one thing was for sure, with a prize of a thousand dollars there was no way Cracker would knowingly help her win the billy-cart derby. No, Cracker, with the help of his best friends, Trann and Bone, would make sure Gilly didn’t get within cooee of the instruction manual, not to mention the tools and equipment required to build her billy-cart.

She had the entry form and the instructions. All she needed was the tools and materials.

Tools were easy. She’d raid their father’s shed with its line of neatly ordered spanners, hammers and other assorted contraptions, knowing her father would never notice something missing from a place he never went anyway. She’d use the wheels off her Rolls Royce doll’s pram and her skipping rope to steer.

Last, she needed wood for the frame and the seat.

Hmmm…

She listened at the door again and, sure enough, Cracker was still stuck with their father. This time she changed into navy track pants and matching sweater with a hood, and slipped the torch into her pocket. She placed her pillow in a lump under her doona. It wasn’t like the shape would fool anyone who was really checking – anyone like their mother for instance – but if Cracker poked his head in, he’d never notice she was missing. Once that was done she headed for the door once more.

Safely outside the house, she turned away from the road and strode towards the cliff. Her destination was old Mrs Thorburn’s shack, three doors down via the cliff track, and away from the street lights that would give her away if Cracker happened to look out the lounge room window during his detention – whoops, homework lesson. It was bad enough that the moon was full and reflecting on the white stripes down the side of her track pants. Oh well, if anyone saw her they’d think she was a bandicoot or a possum in search of adventure.

She grinned again. Poor Cracker, stuck inside on such a glorious night while she was free, and like the possums and bandicoots, in search of adventure, or at least enough wood to build one frame and one billy-cart seat.

She hurried along the cliff track to Thorburn’s gate, using the light of the moon to guide her. She hesitated, one hand on the gate. It was darker than she thought in there. The shack was surrounded by tall pine trees and totally hidden from the street with its comforting lights.

The shack was built on timber poles, a metre off the ground, and underneath was a pile of glorious untended wood for her to pilfer. She was sure Mrs. Thorburn would let her have all the wood she wanted for free if she waited until the weekend when the Thorburns came down from their hometown of Goulburn. But she had a competition to enter and a billy-cart to build and, if she was lucky, Cousin Bobby to help her decipher the gobbledygook that was the instruction pages tucked safely in her track pants pocket.

How hard could it be to build a billy-cart, anyway? Cracker was always stealing wheels and making contraptions to launch him and his friends down Pyang Avenue to the beach track below, never once, she remembered with disgust, letting her have even one ride.

Too dangerous for girls, he’d declare as he sailed off down the hill for the tenth time.

Yeah, agreed his loyal foot-soldiers with smirks on their faces as they took their turns.

Well, not this time.

This was one billy-cart she would not only get to ride but one that would also make her richer than Cracker ever had a chance of being, no matter how many golf balls he hauled out of the river and sold back to their unsuspecting owners.

Move over, big bro. Little sister is coming through.

2.

UNEXPECTED VISITORS

GILLY swung opened the gate and stepped into Thorburn’s yard. Not only was she out after dark without permission, she was trespassing with the intent to steal. If Cracker found out about this he’d tell their mother and make sure she was grounded for a month. Then he’d enter her competition and win her prize. There was no way she was going to let that happen.

She strode towards the shack, torch in hand.

And stopped.

She arced her torch under the shack and then again to make sure. Yep, spiders. She glared at the mess of wood under the shack. Why hadn’t she thought of spiders? And snakes. And whatever other crawlies lurked under there.

Maybe she should have waited for the weekend after all. But she’d come this far and she wasn’t about to let a bunch of night crawlies stop her. What she needed was a plan.

Bobby, of course. He’d be down on the weekend for mid-term break from that fancy school of his in Canberra and she’d corral him into getting dirty on her behalf. In return she’d let him share in the prize money. Maybe. Tonight, she’d do a quick reconnaissance and come back on the weekend with Bobby in tow and sworn to secrecy.

Happy with her new plan, she shone the torch under the shack one last time. ‘Farewell, crawlies,’ she muttered. She flicked off the torch