- hillbilly
a term used to refer to a person from a backwoods or other remote area.
Join the Hillbilly children on a tale of wild adventures and endearing characters.
All is shown through the eyes of a young narrator, the oldest and...
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• The View of the Sleeping Beauty Mountain Range from the Hillbilly House •
"Hillbilly" is a term (often derogatory) for people who dwell in rural, mountainous areas in the United States.
Well, at least that's what Wikipedia said when I searched it up. Thing is though, this story isn't even set in the United States and Wikipedia isn't always the most trust-worthy source. The title just sounded cool so I rolled with it.
Actually, this story is set in a little cold, mountainous island called Tasmania that sits just off the south-east end of Australia. It is so small you can drive from one end to the other in just under 4 hours.
When most people think of Australia they probably have one image in their minds: desert. While that isn't entirely untrue, Tasmania is, in fact, quite the opposite of a desert. It hosts lush, green meadows, deep valleys, and ranges of huge, towering mountains whose peaks are dusted with snow every winter.
It is cold there, very cold, where we lived at least – which was on a long narrow dirt track that winded its way up Misty Hill Mountain. It could barely be called a road at some stages and eventually just stopped at a mound of stones. We could probably walk to that mound of stones in about ten minutes from where we lived – but we never went up there.
We were right up the top of this road overlooking a quiet place we called The Valley that dipped and rolled it's way through a large break in the mountains. It stopped right in front of the sweeping majesty of the Sleeping Beauty Mountain Range. The Big Mountain was nicknamed Sleeping Beauty because if you tilted your head to the side, the top of the mountain looked like a woman's profile lying down peacefully. The mountain to the right was her long, flowing hair and the mountain to the left was her neck and chest. Our small, cosy farm house had glass windows top to bottom so from every room in the house you could see her.
Sleeping Beauty always got covered in snow – which lingered until mid-November. Icy cold winds rushed down from the very tops of those mountains and froze the tips of your fingers and ears off. Sometimes it was so windy you felt like your entire body was going to get blown away into the oblivion.
During the freezing winter nights you could hear the angry bursts of wind rattling all the windows and howling at the cracks in the door-sills. But I would always feel safe as long as I was under a heavy pile of blankets and my eyes were squeezed tightly shut. I was convinced that any monsters lurking in the shadows of my room couldn't see me if I lay very, very still. I suppose that is why I am still alive today – because I got very good at hiding from those monsters.
Winter not only howled and screamed – it also rained, a lot. Many a time it would wash our gravel driveway down the hill and into the car-port. It would be a daily job unblocking the drains and shovelling the dirt back to where it belonged. It was probably the main reason I went through so many pairs of gum-boots.
