Diamonds and Dust

by Sheryl McCorry

  I was alone in the shed one day when out of the blue a wild storm came roaring through the gap between Mount Marmion and Homestead Hill. Pushing balls of spinifex, tarps and drums, it ripped bonnets from trucks and buggies on its way towards the shed. Sheets of torn corrugated iron came with it.

  Little Robby ran through the shed door, crying with arms outstretched: ‘I was worried about you, Mummy!’ There was no time for fear. I thanked God my boy was safe. We crouched behind the power plant. I could feel his little body trembling against mine. The next instant Leisha, who was 12, arrived, crying as the wind hurled her about. I raced out and grabbed her; we fought the wind and took cover with Robby.

  We watched, petrified, as the torn and twisted metal from cars and shed roofs went spiralling high into the sky. The noise was deafening. Eventually, after only five violent minutes or so but seemingly much longer, we ventured out. Twisted sheets of iron stretched out across the station for a kilometre towards the ridge. The buildings in a direct line with the gap were destroyed. Old-timers had warned me to beware of any storms that came directly through the gap, and they were right!

  ‘Mum, Mummy!’ I heard the raised voices of the children as they came running towards me. ‘There’s a crocodile in our billabong!’

  Laughing, believing they were pulling my leg, I paid no heed. Des Higgins, the owner of Waterbank Station, had excavated the billabong for me for the price of a pannikin of tea. It was now very beautiful and filled with flowering blue waterlilies, surrounded by bottlebrush, golden wattle and the sharp leaf of pandanus – so beautiful, it attracted all manner of creatures.

  I knew that Bob had found a 1.5 metre freshwater crocodile stretched out under a cattle trough, looking terribly thin and dehydrated, and now the kids were telling me that he’d put it in our billabong. I didn’t believe them, and brushed them away. Big mistake. Admiring the lilies several weeks later, I glanced up to see a crocodile slowly move up out of the water to the opposite bank and settle to soak up the morning sun.

  Next store run, I bought a sign that said, ‘No Swimming – Crocodile’ and attached it to the boab tree close by. No visitor ever believed the sign was for real.

  ‘Dundee’ took up residence and remained for many years, free to roam. He took a holiday during the wet season when all the rivers were up and running, and returned once Homestead Creek dropped.

  Our pet would scare the living daylights out of old Jim in the workshop and once, enjoying the cool cement base of the shower recess, sent one of the men running partly-clothed from the ablution block. Liz, our newly-hired Pommy cook, often took fright, screaming blue murder when she saw Dundee. I considered relocating our crazed crocodile to the Lennard River, but soon after that Liz nearly electrocuted herself by washing an electric handbeater in the kitchen sink while it was switched on, and she up and left.

  Dundee remained king of his billabong and kept us on our toes – never more so than when Robby fell off a wattle branch into the water with the croc. The water was freezing cold and Robby scrambled out at record speed. After he arrived at the house, shivering, his eyes the sizes of saucers, he told his father: ‘I walked on water, Dad. I’ll never do that again.’

  Bob had completed a mustering contract at Millijiddee, an outstation of Noonkanbah. He was back at Kimberley Downs, and I waited patiently for him to sit down with a pannikin of tea before breaking the news.

  ‘I bought Kilto Station,’ I said.

  Bob looked at me, eyes wide with disbelief.

  ‘I have, honestly. We’re now the owners of Kilto Station.’

  Although the property belonged to the same company I worked for, it was through town gossip that I found out it was on the market. Unable to make contact with Bob on Millijiddee, I’d faxed off a tender. I hadn’t given it any more thought until several weeks later I received the phone call from the Perth office. Kilto was ours! My plan was that we’d develop it for ourselves at the end of each Kimberley Downs mustering season.

  Bob didn’t express his feelings in words – in fact, he never said anything, but he showed his pleasure in a typical Bob way. On breaks from mustering, he went off to Kilto to work enthusiastically on the station. This was how I knew he approved.

  Sandy, the girls’ governess, and Craig, one of Bob’s stockmen, had been living together as a couple for some time. On Craig’s return from Millijiddee, they decided to tie the knot in Derby town, much to the pleasure of us all. Between many helpful hands in the kitchen, we produced a wedding dinner suitable for a station marriage. The girls decorated the kitchen veranda with balloons and colourful homemade streamers and tinsel cut from Alfoil.

  With the help of Narda, our new cook, Leisha short-sheeted the marriage bed and secured my condamine and camel bell to the mattress springs. On retiring for the night, Sandy and Craig apparently enjoyed the bells so much they kept the remainder of the station staff, including the dogs, awake all night with the continuous clanging and the slow dong-dong. The bells would start, the dogs would start, and the whole station would start yelling at ungodly hours. I’d never been so pleased to see piccaninny daylight smile over Homestead Hill.

  All were red and bleary-eyed over breakfast. The finger was pointed at me; with tongue in cheek I confessed it was my idea and my bells and I’d do the same for any of them who wished to marry on the station. One thing we all agreed on: Sandy and Craig were off to a great start! The following year, Sandy and Craig became the proud parents of a beautiful baby girl, whom they named Kelly after our son. I was sure my bells had had a hand in her conception!

  We battled on through wet and dry, keeping Kimberley Downs running on the smell of an oily rag while it remained in receivership. If the rains came late, the dams bogged and we lost cattle. I dragged survivors out of the mud myself, just as I patched tanks and fixed fences and harangued head office for funds. Bob’s year was filled with contract mustering jobs and then working on Kilto. I ran Kimberley Downs independently. At times it seemed our lives were running in parallel, and I grew so tired, not only from work but from carrying the worry of Bob’s battle with his grief over Kelly, his pain and moodiness, on top of everything else, sometimes I wondered what was the point of it all.

  But the bush would always offer up moments of salvation. One hot humid day, about a hundred in the waterbag, not a breath of air, even the odd bird having fallen out of the sky, I was sitting in the shade of an ancient boab feeling that I couldn’t keep going. I spotted an amazing sight: two large golden-brown serpents, raised from the ground and swaying in harmony.

  All my life living in the bush I had never witnessed two fully-grown king browns perform a mating dance: a most impressive performance as they swayed in a gentle rhythm, slowly closing the distance until they were entwined. It was things like this that gave me back my strength and determination to go on.

  The children were my other source of strength. Robby, now six, would help me with outside jobs, following me around to slit open the bagged 20-kilo blocks of mineral supplements I was laying out for the cattle. One day at Mariana Bore, Robby yelled out ‘Look out, Mum!’, warning me that I was about to be nailed by an aggressive mickey bull. If it hadn’t been for my little offsider I could easily have ended up on the ground, a flattened out mum!

  Leisha and Kristy were always helpful with the horses and stables, and one day I rewarded them with a trip to the limestone range that ran the full length of Napier Downs. We stopped near a place where, many years ago, a Flying Doctor aircraft returning from a mercy flight to Mount House Station had crashed, killing all on board. My thoughts drifted to my beloved Kelly, the outback and the great distances. Could we have saved him if we’d lived closer to town?

  ‘Come on, Mum, we can’t see anything here,’ the children urged, dispelling my sombre thoughts.

  We were heading for one of my favourite places, a nest of caves containing what had been described as a religious vision. We picked our way across the buggar buggar black-soil plains, going easy on the Toyota to minim
ise damage. The plains were rough, scattered with hundreds of tough ant mounds and treacherous holes. We got out and climbed a 7-metre rise to a hidden cave’s opening, camouflaged behind a sturdy bauhinia bush. We ate the picnic lunch in one of our secret spots, a welcome cool breeze flowing from within the caves. We gazed back across the plains towards Kimberley Downs. Everything was covered in brown spear grass and willowy floodweed bent from the knock ’em down rains. In the distance we could see the treeline of the Lennard River. A rangy bull was busily pushing his little herd of cows further afield. I thought of Kelly again, how I missed him terribly, and of Bob’s grief and the dark places it had taken him. Then I glanced towards the children, and their happy laughter reminded me how lucky I was.

  We advanced into Lake Cave. Its deep cavities were filled with clear, pure water, which gave off a chill, and the rock had a luminous crystalline shimmer. We found stalagmites and stalactites, even bats. The children were curious. If you stopped with torches off and looked towards the glow of daylight coming from the entrance, you could see a striking impression of the Virgin Mary. I’m not a religious person, but I marvelled at the likeness and had photographed it many times.

  I asked the children: did this rock formation remind them of anything at all?

  ‘No, just a rock, Mum.’

  Bless me, Father, I thought, but I have tried. Having found great comfort over the years from Father Lawrence, who had propped me up, telling me to ‘believe in myself’, I’d had him to the homestead one day to talk to the children. He had tried untiringly to educate the children and me on some of the Bible’s teachings, but our sit-down took a farcical turn when Robby leaned towards me and asked urgently: ‘Mum, is this Jesus fella like that Father Christmas fella?’

  There wasn’t much Father Lawrence could say after that.

  We retraced our steps out of this beautiful place, leaving it untouched, as it should be. Further along the range I liked to check that the many human skulls were left in peace. On my return after six years away managing Louisa and Bohemia, I had noticed that eight skulls had disappeared, others were broken and only pieces remained in a particular cave. This upset me. What demented person would want a human skull on the mantel or in the storeroom? I decided the only way to keep skulls, Aboriginal art and artefacts safe was to stop all visitors to this range, which I did while I was manager. I believed there were something like eight different tribes who once lived along this range. Those skulls were their only known remains.

  Much later in the day, after I’d shown the children some Aboriginal art and an unusual water supply, the sun gently settled west of the ancient range, throwing its shadows across the plain towards the river. The children and I, bone-weary, were looking forward to returning to the homestead.

  CHAPTER 20

  Trust in Them

  It hardly seemed like 10 years since we’d lost our dear son. On the anniversary of Kelly’s death, we always went to his grave in Broome. This day in 1991, I laid fresh flowers for my darling boy and Bob spent the day clearing the grass from the grave. Robby was seven now, and I felt I needed to explain that his older brother was buried here. There were questions about Kelly and questions about Daddy, and as I told Robby about it all I shed many tears.

  Bob, meanwhile, sat alone by the graveside, a heart-wrenching sight. When we went back to the station he did what he always did on this day: he drank himself to sleep. He was a quiet drunk. Inconspicuously, he had started to drink more and more, in his steady and private way. He seemed in more pain than ever and sometimes just sat doubled-over, holding his stomach and saying nothing, preferring to be left in a world of his own.

  As Bob’s health and moods deteriorated, children were truly my consolation: mine and others’, caucasian and indigenous. I couldn’t get enough of children’s company, so I offered to look after young people who were troubled or trying to find their way in life. I had a motto: ‘We pull together to survive.’ To explain this to some of them I would collect a bunch of twigs, and liken them to people. Then I’d hold the bunch in one hand and demonstrate how hard it was to break, compared with how easy it was to break one twig on its own.

  Just as Bob had placed trust in me, I placed trust in the children. In 1991 I was looking after Bert, a 16-year-old boy from Mingenew, a wheatbelt town. Bert had arrived via the Welfare people in Derby: a volatile and angry young man unwilling to accept anyone into his world. I’d made it clear to him that I was the boss of this outfit, I carried no passengers, and I tolerated no bullshit. I’d made Bert a deal. Welfare was paying him a pittance to be out of Derby and on the station. I gave him three weeks to prove to me he could work. If he did, I would pay him a respectable salary. Bert worked hard in the camp, and as his confidence improved he took up rodeo riding, competing in the most dangerous events. He wasn’t a bad kid by any means; he only needed someone to show they had faith in him.

  That same year, the Welfare office in Perth called, asking if I was in a position to take Del, Kristy’s sister, again. Del had turned 16. From my understanding, foster children at that age were moved into group housing. Del, who had stepped out of line, was in trouble. Could I help?

  In a round-table conference, my children said they rather liked the idea of having Del around again. When she returned to me on Kimberley Downs, I sat her down, laid the rules on the line and gave her the choice of work or study. She chose to study under Sandy. But the first month’s lessons were a waste of time. Del dedicated herself to putting Sandy through the wringer. Luckily Sandy was made of sterner stuff. After reading Del’s first report, I fired it from one end of the kitchen table to the other where it stopped directly in front of her chest. As I’d done with Bert, I made a deal with her. If she tried to improve her grades I would give her a pure Arab gelding, a horse of her very own. The horse in question was called Kidman, and she’d had her eye on him since she’d arrived.

  This proved the best deal ever. Del’s grades went to straight As and Bs. She just needed some kind of incentive. Together she and Kidman won many trophies and ribbons, and eventually Del moved out and grew into a responsible adult.

  It wasn’t as if my attempts to guide troubled young people were always an unqualified success. When Beccy, homesick, returned to her family on Thursday Island, I hired a new cook. Mary was tall, honey-blonde and very attractive – model material. My first question had been why a girl like her had accepted a job to cook in the outback. ‘A change,’ was her answer.

  Two weeks after Mary started, the whole station cleared out to the Fitzroy Rodeo, except for Sandy, Leisha and me. Mary stayed too, saying she wished to settle in. Before returning to the homestead from an evening walk around the horse paddock, Sandy, Leisha and I came across a sight that sent my blood cold. Leisha stood shivering, with her hands clenched. ‘Surely not!’ she repeated over and over. There were remnants of some kind of mayhem: scattered on the ground were two empty whisky bottles, hair combs, and what was once a packet of cigarettes now in shreds. More frighteningly, there was also our razor-sharp Green Rivers butcher’s knife, often used for boning out killers, near what looked to be the claw marks of a crazed and disoriented animal. But I could soon see that the claw marks were human. Returning to the station, I immediately went to Mary’s room. My mind was a can of worms, churning, questioning: ‘Why?’

  I called her name as I slowly climbed the steps to her room. When she heard me, she tried to run away.

  ‘Front up to it, Mary,’ I urged rather harshly. ‘Look at me!’ I held both her shoulders. ‘The butcher’s knife, Mary,’ I said. ‘What were you going to do with the butcher’s knife?’

  She sobbed her heart out, eventually telling me, ‘I heard voices in my head telling me to kill myself.’

  ‘No, Mary,’ I said. ‘You’re strong – stronger than those voices.’

  Thank God in the dark of night she’d been unable to find the butcher’s knife that lay partly hidden in the bulldust. The marks were where she had been clawing in the dust to find it. A
t times I have cursed the bulldust, but that night I blessed it. I called a female doctor friend and explained the circumstances. She advised the children and me not to allow ourselves to be cornered in a room with Mary. I noticed that some of Mary’s mail came from a well-known psychiatric institution. Her usual medication had made her tired and sleepy, she had stopped taking it, and the devastating scene we had witnessed was the outcome.

  I had her walk twice a day with me and talk. At times she cried in anger: ‘You are tougher than my counsellor!’ Back on her medication, Mary was happy. In the four or five months she was with us on Kimberley Downs, she never tried to kill herself again. Later we found out that Mary was schizophrenic, which was never helped by a bout of secret drinking.

  My own girls were growing into young women, which brought a whole new glut of worries. One Turkey Creek Rodeo week, while Leisha and Kristy went off I remained behind on Kimberley Downs with Bob. He had been prescribed a low dose of morphine every day to help with his pain. I worried myself sick wondering what was at the root of it all. Three days together without any action about the station would do us both good, though, and I planned to rest.

  I tried, but I couldn’t stop fretting about Leisha and Kristy, who were, I heard, soon caught up in all the excitement, the competition, and the fun of meeting up with friends their own age. Desperate with a mother’s anxiety, I had my own means of keeping tabs on things. One night, while all the crowd were drinking at the bow-shed bar at the rodeo, the Turkey Creek police paddy wagon pulled up. Tommy, an Aboriginal boy who’d grown up on the station, stepped out, dressed in his full police uniform. The sight of a cop and the police wagon sent the crowd scattering. There was immediate silence, then a whispering:

  ‘Shit, it’s the cops!’

  ‘Who’s in trouble?’