{"id":6536,"date":"2026-04-23T18:07:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T07:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/?p=6536"},"modified":"2026-04-23T18:07:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T07:37:11","slug":"extract-the-night-parrots-stephen-orr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/2026\/04\/extract-the-night-parrots-stephen-orr\/","title":{"rendered":"EXTRACT: The Night Parrots, Stephen Orr"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Earlier in the month, author Stephen Orr shared an extract from his forthcoming novel, The Night Parrots<\/a><\/em>, to his Substack<\/a> audience. We’re pleased to be able to share this sneak peek into the pages, along with an introduction by Stephen.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Night Parrots<\/em> will release on 15 May, but is available to pre-order here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

I have a new novel coming out in a few weeks. It\u2019s called The Night Parrots<\/em>. A night parrot is a small, rare bird that can\u2019t fly very well and hides from the world. It was thought to be extinct for years, but recently a few have been sighted. They persist<\/em>. Like the protagonists of this book. A Lutheran missionary dying of heart failure, his wife and son and friends trying to get him to a railhead. The story\u2019s about these few days, faith, love, struggle, acceptance.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The following describes their first day, setting off from the mission. The story is based on Pastor Carl Strehlow\u2019s journey (accompanied by his wife Frieda and 14-year-old son Theo) to find medical aid in 1922.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book\u2019s published by Wakefield Press, and the cover is by the talented Duncan Blachford.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

***<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The previous afternoon, Ludwig, Ted and a bloke called the Greek had gathered a dozen horses from around the waterhole and brought them into the yards. They\u2019d waited until they settled before harnessing them. Watched them graze the winter grass, drink from the trough that me and Oskar kept clean. As the dust settled, and the prospect of the journey was made real. When the horses had quietened, they led them up and down the track for an hour. Oskar and I had sat watching. Oskar had said, \u2018It\u2019s gonna be a lot of work, that many horses.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I can help.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018You\u2019re no good with horses.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

True. I\u2019d always avoided animals \u2013 the muster, the branding, vaccinations, driving them to the railhead. I had a reputation as an indoor kid. Maybe the men had taken pity on me, spared the pastor\u2019s son, or maybe they\u2019d just thought I wasn\u2019t up to it. It\u2019d been a big afternoon. Some of the other men had brought in a bullock, cut its throat, strung it up and butchered it. Me and Oskar again, watching from a safe distance, Oskar saying, \u2018Them dogs eat anything.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018That one\u2019s drinking the blood.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indicating a three-legged terrier. Oskar remembering: \u2018Did you ever find your parrot?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018No.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someone punctured the bowel and a spewy soup drained onto the dry sand, splashing everyone\u2019s feet and legs, bile and blood and half-digested grass, hundreds of flies descending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I can show you the picture,\u2019 I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018You did. But that coulda been any bird.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018This bloke they pay especially to find one of each animal, and he stuffs them and sends them to museums. He found a night parrot and killed it and put it in the mail, and it\u2019s in Holland or some place now, which proves it.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018What?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Whether you want to believe or not, it\u2019s real. You can go see it.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d shown him one of Father\u2019s pictures of a ringneck. But I\u2019d read about this man and his specimens and the special gun that shot a small slug through the heart. He was a good shot. The best. That\u2019s why they paid so much for holotypes. No mess, no blood, nothing missing. Unlike the bullock: legs removed with an axe, insides falling to the ground, more blood, the knives coming out. The heart hanging loose, the kidneys collected for pie night, the other organs thrown into a tub for the dogs. A few of the men singing, like they were enjoying it. They finished the bullock, took the meat to the smokehouse, salted it, wrapped it in cloth for the journey. Then this morning, the meat was packed into hessian sacks and put into a big ice-box that didn\u2019t have ice. Two iron handles, and a little drain for the blood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I said to Oskar, \u2018If you listen carefully, you can still hear it moaning.\u2019 And he said, \u2018Who\u2019s going to cook the meat?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Me.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018You can\u2019t cook.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Pauline\u2019s taught me.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018She hasn\u2019t. She\u2019s cooked your food while you\u2019ve sat in there on your bum listening to your dad go on about Jesus.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I just shook my head. \u2018Someone\u2019s gotta do it.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then a few of the women had milked the cows, strained the cheesy-white slop and poured it into a pail. A few days\u2019 supply, perhaps. Enough to get us to Henbury, floating in a sea of salted butter, fig jam and condensed milk. But all of this was unknown. Hardly anyone went to Horseshoe Bend, except perhaps Jack, on the mail run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s how it was on this not-hot, not-cold October morning. How it was as me and Oskar walked around, strangely uncomfortable with each other. Maybe we knew, sensed things were about to change. To ward off this un-charm, Oskar said, \u2018It\u2019s easy. You get to the train, and what\u2019s it take? Two days and you\u2019re in Adelaide?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We walked across the compound, Oskar in shorts, me in my best pants (Pauline had laid out my clothes for the journey). Fifty, sixty blacks had already gathered under the ghost gum, beside the lean-to where we stored saddles and harnesses. They were quietly singing, watching Ludwig and Silas, Jamy and Adele and Pauline coming out from the house, loading boxes onto the cart and dray and returning. They were summoning help, I guess \u2013 some of the old people who\u2019d travel with us. Ignatz had planned it all the previous evening, sitting around our table, adding up distances and dividing by days, studying a map of the rough country, the places that might have water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We stopped and watched this growing group. \u2018You wanna join them?\u2019 I asked Oskar, but he just continued into the church, and I followed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We sat at the back. On Sundays, the place was full. Father had wanted to build a new church, a big, better, cooler place, but of course there was no money, and the Board said, \u2018It\u2019s in the pipeline\u2019 (or something similar). The pipeline we\u2019d been waiting for since Father arrived to a collection of huts and stone buildings, good intentions and a box of Bibles. Waiting. Oskar said, \u2018And what\u2019d happen if \u2026?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018What?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I mean if \u2026 you lot wouldn\u2019t stay, would you?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hadn\u2019t thought about it but couldn\u2019t imagine what there\u2019d be to stay for. Mother was no missionary. I couldn\u2019t skin a bullock, build a smokehouse, preach, change anyone\u2019s life (let alone my own). \u2018I guess not.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018They\u2019d send someone else?\u2019 Oskar said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018They might. They mightn\u2019t be able to find anyone.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Right.\u2019 Wringing his hands like he did when he was confused. \u2018That\u2019d be funny, wouldn\u2019t it, because they come here and tell us all about Jesus, then when we\u2019re listening \u2026\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The singing was getting louder. \u2018I better see if they need help.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We turned and left, reluctantly. If any place was special, it was here. Special in the hand-hewn floorboards, the wattle and daub walls; in the burn marks the candles left on the walls, and the watercolour stations Isaiah had painted (more about him later). Special in the marble font that confirmed we were alive, and the old table for coffins. Special how everyone had their spot before the big cross, and special how we knew, every time we came in, we were being watched. And I was special, apparently. According to Opa, who must have heard it from Father. Maybe Father had said something to him like, \u2018You can hold on to the other children, you can send them to school and church, but I think I\u2019ll take Benno with me. I think, perhaps, he\u2019s special.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like I said, never explained. But maybe I was the lucky one, sent into the never-never to make new discoveries. We emerged and saw maybe a hundred people sitting around singing, the women moving rhythmically in the little bit of wind, the kids, even, still and serious and full of purpose. A sight I\u2019ll never forget. Sometimes I imagine my own funeral, and the six or seven people who might come. I wonder what I did wrong, less generously, not as wisely as my father. I still remember all of those people, sixty-six years ago, singing us towards salvation and good health, and I realise this is how people are meant to function. None of this better house or school. What\u2019s any of that matter? How does it explain why God breathed life into us? But I saw it that day. I saw that my father had become part of something bigger (though not the thing he\u2019d expected).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Benno!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pauline tried to lift a case onto the cart. Oskar and I ran over, climbed up, lifted it, packed it beside the box of books Father had requested. He\u2019d chosen them, as Ignatz had done his sums the previous evening. He\u2019d called out the titles, and Mother, on the porch, had packed them in the Oolong No. 29 box. \u2018Oh, and The Odyssey, put that in too.\u2019 He\u2019d been trying to get me to read it for years. Now, with no distractions, he was determined. As he\u2019d been with history, zoology, Greek, Latin \u2013 extra studies after class, because although I was a mission boy, soon I\u2019d be sent south to Adelaide, to Immanuel College, for a proper Lutheran education. He didn\u2019t want me lagging behind the other kids. He wanted me to be the marvel, the miracle, the scholar he\u2019d never officially become.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oskar and I returned to the house. We gathered supplies, dragged them back to the cart and dray and managed to load them. Bread that Adele had been baking all night; various meats; small and big water bags; the tents and lean-to, pegs rattling like small change. As the singing got louder, and Ignatz, shittier, asking me where I\u2019d been all morning, just when I was needed (you\u2019ll have to do better than that, Benno). I didn\u2019t reply. He wasn\u2019t in charge. Father was (or probably, Mother). And anyway, I hadn\u2019t applied to be a missionary\u2019s kid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I eventually returned to my room and finished packing the clothes Pauline had set out. I checked for a towel, soap, noticed the castor oil Mother put in my hair every Sunday morning (to make it go curly). Like the prime minister was coming to Hermannsburg. I put the oil in my drawer, but Mother came in, saw me, reclaimed it and said, \u2018I can\u2019t think what else to take.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I\u2019ve got everything,\u2019 I said, sitting on my bed, listening to the songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Just don\u2019t get in between him and Ignatz,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Is he better this morning?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018And keep his mind off \u2026 keep talking to him. That\u2019s your job. Read to him. Goethe, that\u2019ll do it, I\u2019ve packed Faust.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Father loved Goethe. He took us to Auerbach\u2019s Cellar in Leipzig, bought us a meal and said it was in celebration of our national poet, who came here (here! can you believe it?) to get his ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Is he better?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018If he gets bad, tell him. He won\u2019t listen to me.\u2019 Sitting, taking my knee and squeezing it (she hadn\u2019t done this in years).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018But he\u2019s better?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shaking her head. \u2018It\u2019s a necessary trip, isn\u2019t it, Benno?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Yes.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018We must do what we can.\u2019 Checking out the window for Father before giving up, going into her room and packing the last of his things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier in the month, author Stephen Orr shared an extract from his forthcoming novel, The Night Parrots, to his Substack audience. We’re pleased to be able to share this sneak peek into the pages, along with an introduction by Stephen. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-for-fun"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4v1Of-1Hq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6536"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6539,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6536\/revisions\/6539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}