He had been washed a long way down the river. At least that's what he thought. Because by the time he found a person to ask about what had happened to him, they didn't recognise him, and had no information on where he had come from.
But they did give him a warm bed for the night. A change of clothes and a hot meal where also offered and graciously accepted before he headed back out, on his way to continue trying to find home.
The family he had stayed with that night owned a small property in Smithfeild. They didn't know him and he couldn't recognise anyone else he saw as he was taken into town by Mathew Gray.
Jill, Mathew's wife, didn't want him to leave. She got him settled in that first night and in the morning told him that there was room for him to stay as long as he needed.
But there was something telling him that he didn't have time to do that.
Run. Run. Run.
Lee - that's what he'd told them to call him when he couldn't figure out what his name was - didn't know why, but every so often something in his mind kept saying 'run'
It didn't make sense.
He didn't understand what it was he was supposed to be running from.
He didn't understand anything.
Lee spent a few days moving around Smithfeild, and found a kind farmer who didn't mind driving him to a neighbouring town when they had business to attend to in that direction.
From Smithfeild he headed to Spencer.
He knew he had to get some work, knew he couldn't survive on nothing.
As it turned out there was a lot of work going, because there had been a massive storm a couple of days back.
"Maybe that's why you don't know who you are?" Johno Robertson suggested. Lee met Johno in a pub when he was trying to rustle up some work and he was told that there was heaps of properties around that needed help.
It got Lee thinking anyway. Maybe the storm did have something to do with his memory loss. He had woken up out side in the rain after all.
He found himself at Carmichael's. They bred horse's there and Lee took to the work really easily. He did basic duties to begin with, mucking out yards, feeding, watering and brushing down the horses.
But as it turned out, Lee had a real aptitude for the work.
"Mr Carmichael, you wouldn't have a map handy with nearby properties on it, would you?" he asked, after working a couple of weeks with the horses.
"You still haven't figured it out then, I suppose?"
"Not yet. But I'm hoping that if I see some more names of places, it might jog my memory. I'm pretty sure I had something to do with horses too, wherever it was that I was living."
"Yeah, well, I'd be sorry to lose you, you sure know your way around the beasts, but if you do figure it out, it'd be best you headed on back, I reckon. Probably got a family at home, worried sick about you."
"Hear's hoping."
"I'll make sure that map's out for you later tonight."
"That'd be real great. Thanks mate."
Lee continued his day, working easier now that he had something to look forward too.
And later that night as he studied the properties all around, Kinsella's, Angorichina, Anna Creek, Killarney, Nimboona Downs, Drover's Run, another name popped into his head.
Kate.
