> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://martinsmithstories.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The King of Kinglake - URL: https://martinsmithstories.ghost.io/the-king-of-kinglake/ - Published: 2026-05-10T03:22:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-12T21:35:44.000Z - Description: A couple of empty nesters discover that the tree-change dream can end up a nightmare. - Author: Martin Smith - Tags: Book 4: Bant 122 The empty nesters agree. It’s time for a slower life, a simpler life. Less stress, more serenity. Yes, they agree, it’s time to escape the rat race. The wife sees a real estate listing online. A mud-brick house on ten acres for sale. Up Kinglake way. A bargain, given the drought. With its picture-perfect gardens, its fructuous orchard, its fertile veggie plots and its ample bore water, it is a veritable Garden of Eden. She phones the real estate agent and asks if she and her husband could inspect the property that weekend. The agent says it might not last until then. Keen bidders are lining up. Serious offers are before the vendor. It will most likely sell that day, if not within the hour. The empty nesters crunch numbers on the back of an envelope. A list of “ifs” is compiled, suffixed by a “then”. *If* they sell their inner-city family house ASAP and with a short-term contract, *if* they take out a bridging loan to finance the deposit for the Kinglake property and to tide them over until the inner-city pad settles, and *if* they can negotiate the price of the mud-brick house down, *then* Eden is theirs. Mortgage free. That, and a little nest egg tucked aside to supplement their aspired self-sufficient lifestyle. No more dour suits, no more dreary commutes, no more dreaded 9 to 5. The empty nesters buy the property sight unseen. But, alas, at a substantial premium. The nest egg is almost gone before it became. \*\*\* On their first night as tree-changers, over a celebratory glass of cask wine whilst warming their socked toes before a roaring open fire, they agree to raise chickens. What better than farm-fresh, free-range eggs every morning for breakfast? Yes, they agree, a dozen girls will do. And why not throw in a rooster, a king to reign over his oviparous queens, too? The empty nesters agree to head down the mountain the next day to purchase their poultry. \*\*\* *They* arrive at noon—the girls squeezed into two cardboard boxes on the back seat and he in a separate cardboard box in the boot—and are released into the hen house. He, the most handsome of Rhode Island Reds. With his shiny plumage and black tail feathers, his fire-red comb and wattle, his long, lean shanks, his regal bearing and his cocky strut, he truly is the King of Kinglake. They name him King George the Third, after the most attractive of the Hanoverian monarchs. All night, the empty nesters toss and turn in bed, eager to hear George announce the arrival of the new day. Alas, they sleep in, for neither a cock nor a doodle comes from the hen house. With coffee in hand, the husband wanders down after breakfast and peers inside the coop. The girls, forlorn, stand around a single black tail feather on the ground. Freshly dug soil surrounds a hole in a corner of the coop. A fox has feasted royally. Alas, the King of Kinglake is mort! While the husband spends the day digging a trench around the hen house, putting chicken wire down and filling the trench, the wife heads down the mountain for a new king. That, and a little retail therapy. \*\*\* *He* arrives at noon in a cardboard box. A Rhode Island Red as equally handsome as George the Third. The same shiny plumage and black tail feathers, the same fire-red comb and wattle, and the same regal bearing. He tumbles out of the box, finds his feet and begins a cocky strut … but, alas, on *short*, lean shanks. He truly is a king of short stature. They name him King Charles the First, after the least tall of the Stuart monarchs. All night, the empty nesters toss and turn in bed, eager to hear Charles announce the arrival of the new day. At dawn, they stir to a magnificent crow, only for it to strangle, then suddenly cut short. Naked, the husband grabs his torch, runs outside and rushes towards the hen house. A black blur carrying a limp black mass in its mouth flashes across the home paddock and is lost to the bush. The husband checks the hen house. The girls cower in a corner, trembling with fear. Not a single black tail feather is to be found. He checks for freshly dug holes, but his handiwork of yesterday has held firm. He looks to the heavens in exasperation and spies a hole in the coop roof. Another royal feast. Alas, the King of Kinglake II is mort! Later, the wife clambers up onto the coop roof to look for other holes. She steps on a stick, which responses with a crack. She looks down. She gasps and gags. Not a stick. No, a pair of royal rooster legs: short, lean shanks. Bloody and gnawed at the top. Rejected by the predator. While the husband spends the day covering the hen house in a double layer of reinforced chicken wire to protect the girls, the wife heads down the mountain. Not for a new king; rather, for a little psychotherapy. \*\*\* Winter comes and goes. Roosterless. They fill their days with foraging, gardening, home cooking, reading and Pinot Noir sipped whilst they bask before glorious crackling open fires. Their weary bodies ache, their clawfoot bath steams and their cosy house reeks of mentholated body rub. Yet despite the aches and pains and the rooster setbacks, there is contentment. They’re living the life. Their best life. The husband grows a salt-and-pepper beard. The wife stops colouring her hair. He plants a vineyard. She makes a sourdough mother. He revels in his blissful solitude. She links up with the local community hub. He studies viticulture books under an apple tree. She attends yoga sessions, painting classes and a meditation group. He belts out arias whilst pushing a mower. She chants at a full moon. He buys a rain gauge, hopeful for rain. She buys a set of chakra healing bowls, hopeful for karma. He is a student of the land. She is a devotee of the spiritual. One morning at the local cafe, the wife sips an almond milk decaf coffee whilst gossiping with her fellow yogis, one of whom has a daughter who teaches at the kindergarten. The students have raised Phoenix chickens from the egg. Now the chicks are too big for the classroom. They need a new home. The wife kindly offers to take one. The next day, after shopping, the wife arrives home to a cardboard box sitting at the front door. Guttural cawing and frenetic scratching come from within the box. The wife decides to wait for her husband to return from the back paddock. The husband lifts the box, only for a beak to pierce the cardboard and release a blood-curdling screech. With arms extended, he carries the box inside the fortified hen house. A daggered claw rips through the box and slashes his forearm, drawing blood in vertical stripes. He releases a blood-curdling roar and drops the box, only for a fowl fiend to burst from within. Not a complaisant cock, but the devil himself: his skin pale and wrinkled where clumps of white and black plumage are missing, his tail long, sparse and despondent, his beak gnarled and chipped, his eyes beady and death-black, his comb and wattle shrivelled and necrotic-grey, his back hunched and crooked, and his claws raptorish and sable. The husband scrambles through the coop gate, only just avoiding another slashing. The taloned terror screeches and throws himself against the wired gate. He truly is a tyrant of a king. That night, having drained a cask of Merlot, the empty nesters name him King Richard the Third, after the last king of the Plantagenet dynasty. They agree to return King Richard to the kindergarten in the morning. They pop sleeping pills and pray they’ll sleep beyond dawn. They wake at noon. To silence. The husband walks down to the hen house, peeks inside and gasps. Feathers and entrails are scattered about. Total carnage. The girls, all twelve, lie dead. Richard the Third is nowhere to be seen. Alas, the King of Kinglake III and his queens are mort! The husband curses the fox. He inspects the coop, yet finds no sign of the wire fortress breached. Does the regicide still lurk within? he ponders. A black shape stirs in the darkest corner of the coop. Richard the Third appears—hunchbacked, dragging a limp right foot and covered in white feathers and bloody gore. The King of Kinglake III. Not mort! His right eye hangs from its socket. His beady other eye glares at the husband with murderous intent. The husband retreats to the house to deliver the bad news. The wife bursts into tears, rushes to her wardrobe and rummages within until she locates a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Hands shaking, she lights a cigarette and loses herself to the jitters and a cloud of puffed smoke. The husband returns stiff-limbed to the hen house. He’s armoured himself with a cut-up yoga mat wrapped around his arms, baking trays strapped to his chest and back, the collar of his Driza-Bone coat wrapped tightly around his neck and a stainless steel colander tied to his head. He is Ned Kelly, Glenrowan-bound. He places a 44-gallon drum near the coop gate and lights a small fire within. He takes a deep breath, steels his nerves, grasps a shovel and enters Armageddon. He flings the nearest carcass through the gate and into the drum. Crackles and sizzles echo from within. As he reaches for another, a piercing shriek comes from his right, and a blur of black and white charges at him. The husband takes a quick step back, swings his shovel and with a bone-cracking crunch propels the raptorish royal towards the distant wired wall. A shriek sounds, followed by another crunch as the beastly bird explodes in a cloud of dust and dislodged feathers. The husband checks Richard the Third’s vitals. The King of Kinglake III is still. The King of Kinglake III is silent. The King of Kinglake III is mort! The husband delivers a final shovelled blow. Just to be sure. He then gathers the rest of the girls and drops them in the drum. Richard the Third follows, his brief winter of discontent over. That night, whilst preparing for bed, the wife, haunted by the henocide, washes down a benzodiazepine with a double bourbon. She retreats to their upstairs bedroom, assumes the foetal position on their bed and whimpers. The husband attempts to console her with empathetic pats and whispered assurances that at least their nightmare is over. Alas, her whimpering goes on and on into the night. Predawn, a harrowing, throttled crowing wakes them. They sit bolt upright in bed. ‘Good God!’ the husband whispers to his shaking wife. ‘The King of Kinglake III lives! But how?’ As the husband reaches for the bedside lamp, and the wife for another benzodiazepine, a thud comes at the back door beneath their open bedroom window. The empty nesters hold their breath. Another thud follows, then manic scratching and a piercing shriek. The cracking of splintering wood accompanies a third thud. ‘Good God!’ the husband whispers, bug-eyed. ‘We’re under attack!’ ‘Get. Me. The. Hell. Out. Of. Here,’ the wife whispers in a tremulous voice. ‘Now!’ All goes silent outside. Suddenly, there comes a flapping of wings. A black blur flies past their window, roof-bound. Then a bang sounds, followed by a shriek and a sizzle. The bedside lamp flickers, then cuts out. An echoing thud comes from atop the water tank. The husband clicks the bedside light switch, but it does not respond. He rises and tries the ensuite light. ‘Damn!’ the husband whispers. ‘That bloody bird has electrocuted himself and blown the fuses.’ The wife stands at the bedroom doorway, wearing her dressing gown and ugg boots. Shaking, she clutches the car keys, her purse and her pill bag. The essentials. ‘I’m leaving! This house! This farm! This whole bloody tree-change nightmare! Now!’ Downstairs in the mud room, the husband slips on his overalls and work boots. He creaks the side door open and peers outside. All is still. All is silent. All is dark. Surely the King of Kinglake III is mort. They tiptoe in single-file until they reach their car. They silently open the doors, squeeze themselves inside and lock themselves in. They both breathe a sigh of relief and allow their bodies to relax. The sanctuary of the city beckons. The husband starts the car but keeps the headlights off. He guides the car to the top of their driveway and pauses. Fifty metres separates them from the road to freedom. He switches on the headlights. The wife screams. The husband curses. There, between them and the road, hunches Richard the Third. What feathers he still has are singed. His exposed skin is charred, and his right eye still hangs from its socket, resting against his scorched wattle. The husband revs the engine and grips the steering wheel. The rooster flaps his wings and claws the driveway. The husband cracks his neck and swallows his fear. The rooster cracks his neck and swallows his eye. The husband releases a war cry and floors the accelerator. The rooster releases a war caw and charges the car. The adversaries are collision-bound. But just before they collide, Richard the Third leaps over the bonnet and crashes into the windscreen, shattering it at the point of impact. The husband slams on the brakes. The car skids to a halt. The wife screams, for before her lies an unconscious rooster with one eye socket empty and his other eye now dangling. The King of Kinglake III is now the Earl of Gloucester. The husband fumbles for the windscreen wiper switch. The blades scrape the shattered glass and gather the Earl in their trajectory. The husband floors the accelerator. But the featherless fiend rouses and clings to the swiping blades. Frantic, the husband steers left, then right, weaving the car down the driveway until Richard the Third loses his grip and tumbles from the car. Feathers and a bloody gore smear the windscreen. A detached eyeball hangs from the now bent left wiper and stares shocked at the wife. She screams, then shouts, ‘Go! Go!’ But the husband slams on the brakes and the car skids to a halt. ‘Go! Go!’ the wife shouts. ‘Wait! Wait!’ He looks in the rear-view mirror. Richard the Third lies motionless in the middle of the driveway. ‘I’m going to finish this bastard off, once and for all.’ The husband slips the car into reverse and backs up until he hears a squelch of flesh and a crunch of bones. He pauses to savour the moment. A grin of triumph spreads across his face. The King of Kinglake III is *definitely* mort! The husband presses the brake down and revs the car. And with a spinning of the back wheels and a spraying of driveway dirt, he releases the brake and the car shoots forward. The husband doesn’t bother braking when the car reaches the end of the driveway. With a screech of tyres, the car turns onto the main road, only to be greeted by a blaring horn and a flicking of headlights. A truck barrelling down the road. The husband slams on the brakes and steers off the road. The car hits a ditch, rises in the air and clips a roadside eucalypt. The empty nesters are shaken but not injured. \*\*\* They drive down the mountain. They drive through the suburbs. They return to the inner City. That night, they sleep fitfully on their son’s couch. Next morning, backs aching, they agree: list the property for sale, only ask for what they paid for it and vow never to return to Kinglake, not now, not ever. They live in their daughter’s crammed basement while waiting for a purchaser. Neither can get a job. Their hair turns prematurely white. Their health declines. They can’t afford therapy—neither retail nor psycho. Spring turns to summer. Record heat, no rain, parched lands. Mid-December and at the depths of their despair, a phone call comes from the real estate agent. An offer has been made. An interstate buyer. They’re happy to purchase the property sight unseen, but only at a huge discount to the advertised price. Given the neglected state of the abandoned farm. That, and reports of a feral, eyeless rooster tormenting anyone who attempts to set foot on the property. Full disclosure required, the agent advises. Saves a lot of tears and lawsuits later, she adds. ‘The King of Kinglake III lives!’ they gasp. ‘But how?’ Desperate, the empty nesters hastily agree to the offer and terms. They just want closure. And to rid themselves of the fowl fiend forever. Hopefully, once they clear their debt, there might be enough left over for a deposit on a tiny one-bedroom flat. Out on the metropolitan fringe. That’s if they can get jobs. A 60-day contract is signed. A deposit is paid. The settlement is set for a Monday. February 9th. Only two more months on the futon in the basement. Their backs may just survive. Late January, they hire a haulage gang to drive up to Kinglake on February 8th to pack and store their furniture and chattels. Two days before settlement they wake to dreadful news. A raging bush inferno has razed Kinglake. An earnest TV reporter stands before the charred remains of what’s left of their mud-brick house. The picture-perfect gardens, the fructuous orchard, the fertile veggie plot: all now gone, replaced by a moonscape of dust and smouldering smoke. Black Saturday. The husband turns ghostly white. Not from shock but, rather, because he had cancelled their property and contents insurance upon signing the contract. Save a few pennies, he thought at the time. He breaks into a manic laugh. She joins him. Tears stream down their cheeks. They squabble in disagreement. They have lost everything except ten acres of ash. They are destitute. They are nestless. But later, when they realise how lucky they are to have survived, they will agree on one thing: there was no way the King of Kinglake III, that fiendish Phoenix fowl, could rise from those ashes. Or could he?