Diamonds and Dust

by Sheryl McCorry

  As I drifted peacefully towards sleep, I felt blessed to have been surrounded with excellent staff and family to attack the challenges and opportunities together. I felt proud and content. I have to admit that I was also enjoying a moment of freedom from the tension caused by Bob’s presence. When I was away from him, I could feel that moment’s peace by myself, and it seemed more precious and pure.

  One day at Fairfield, Robby had something on his mind. Sitting close to his father on the veranda, he said softly: ‘Dad, Kelly has died, and Bandit [one of our dogs] has died, and Susie [another one of our dogs] has died. They’re all dead, Dad,’ With a slightly worried look, he continued: ‘Who will be next, Dad?’

  I could tell he was worried about his father. Bob refused to see any doctor, even though he was in constant pain. Bob told Robby that we were only here for a certain time, before we were taken from the earth again. Robby was satisfied with this answer – he just wanted to know that his dad wasn’t about to be taken away. But Bob had already left us; I just hadn’t realised it yet. I’d wanted Fairfield for the family, after the trauma we’d gone through. It could present a new beginning for Bob, a property we could all work together, enthusiastically and proprietorially. But I was banging my head against a brick wall. He was no help during the move, even when, hot and exhausted, I had arrived with the last of many truckloads. When I got out of the truck and walked up to the house, wanting nothing more than the warmth of my husband’s arms around me, he thrust me aside, never speaking a word, walking around me as if I didn’t exist. His dark look was fixed somewhere in the distance. Horrified and astounded, I shivered in the gentle spirit breeze, wondering why I bothered. That rebuff was the revelatory moment for me, the first time I saw that our marriage might truly be coming to an end.

  We only spent a year at Fairfield, a brevity that still wrenches me with pain. Bob went from bad to worse. While I was away for a few nights in Perth, he went through all of my personal possessions. He had become paranoid, and confessed on one of his drunken nights that he had had me tailed by a private eye while I was in Perth – he said the detective was in the motel room next to mine! Whether this was true or not I don’t know. I was worried that he was losing his marbles.

  I shook my head and said, ‘After all we’ve been through, you do this to me.’ As usual, Bob had nothing to say.

  Why did I stay? As a wife and mother, having just purchased a cattle station of our own, I lived in hope that this situation would turn around and I’d have the old Bob back.

  I announced I was taking a walk before sundown, alone. I climbed through the paddock fences, working my way towards the airstrip, in search of silence and tranquillity. Walking north towards the claypan, my overwrought mind repeatedly churning over my anguish, I could see nothing, feel nothing – only sorrow. I needed these walks to get away from what was quickly becoming my homestead of sheer hell. I had never been so distraught in my entire life; I was really battling, and trying to make sense of things.

  Looking towards the end of the airstrip, I noticed a small gilgai – a depression in the ground – filled with water from the rains and surrounded by grass. Three dingoes were hunting frogs and lizards while others lounged close by. Then a touch on my arm. With my nerves stretched to near breaking point, I swung around screaming in fear. Robby got such a fright and we both burst into tears. I felt awful when I noticed the confused and worried look in his blue eyes. With my arm around my distraught son we turned towards the homestead.

  Bob’s strange attitude was affecting Robby terribly. His father was no longer communicating with him. This made me both angry and unhappy, and I would try to comfort Robby all the more.

  Looking up I had noticed that my screams attracted another two dingoes from the far side of the airstrip. The first three abandoned their hunting around the waterhole and I was now fearful for my son’s safety, noting five very large dingoes were slowly and fearlessly slinking towards us.

  I searched frantically for a weapon, a rock or a lump of wood. Refusing to turn my back, I grabbed a piece of timber and prompted Robby to walk a little quicker while I frantically swung at the two forward dogs. I hated the way they were half crouched and never took their yellow eyes from mine. As they kept coming I kept swinging while Robby walked ahead of me towards the homestead, trying not to show fear.

  Picking up the throb of the power plant the dingoes backed off, and we were left to clamber through the horse paddock fences, then home. That evening we told Bob. He couldn’t have cared less.

  Life wasn’t all doom and gloom on Fairfield. I put in great effort trying to shield the children from our stressful situation. They and I had many happy and exciting days investigating the beautiful springs that flowed freely from the great Oscar Range. Wire Spring in particular was a place of solace. I visited often, searching for lost peace. There was a spring that seemed to pop right out of the rock, cascading down from one perfectly rounded granite pool to the next, so clear and clean with the constant flushing from the spring that no algae or weed grew there. Close by, an enormous fig tree provided shade for an all-day picnic, a perfect spot for the children and me.

  But while there were moments of happiness and even laughter with the children, each night Bob drank himself into oblivion. After only a few months on Fairfield, Bob said he wanted us to sell the station and Robby was suffering from nightmares again.

  CHAPTER 25

  The End of a Marriage

  It was an unusual day for March, overcast and cloudy, more like winter. Worried that the three creek crossings in Delta paddock were flood-damaged, Bob and I drove as far as we possibly could and then walked the remaining distance into the paddock.

  The Kimberley had had a good wet season, rivers still running, roads churned up and the buggar buggar country too boggy to move around on. I followed Bob down the fence line dragging a broken wire, which constantly caught on the mounds of grass growing in the heavy black soil. He was not speaking to me again, his mood deep and dark as he walked ahead under his black cloud.

  As I followed, dragging the wire, I tripped on a mound in the buggar buggar and fell into the quagmire of oozing soil, my arms sinking to my elbows. I lay there, shocked and helpless from the fall. Bob kept walking, without missing a beat. Any decent person would have stopped and checked on a dog if it was stuck fast in the hungry mud like I was. What would it take to get a word of kindness out of him? This jolt was the final wake-up call I needed to believe in myself and regain the self-respect that I’d once carried so proudly. No more excuses. Bob was no longer the man I’d married some 20 years earlier.

  I’d had a gutful. His cocktail of medication and alcohol was enough to destroy the average person’s sanity. If things kept going as they were, his deterioration would surely destroy me and in turn the children. This man that I loved so dearly with all my heart had hurt and humiliated me more than I ever imagined possible. The children would be emotionally scarred for life if I didn’t do something now. Bob would not leave the property or take a holiday by himself, as he had often threatened to do, so I finally realised that the only way out was to give up everything I had worked so hard for and everything that meant so much to me. I knew this was the right move.

  I gathered the children around me and said Robby and I had to move to Derby. We would come back out to help on the weekends until we sold Fairfield. Leisha and Kristy knew I didn’t want to sell it, and weren’t too keen on moving into town, so they stayed for the time being. Their horses were at Fairfield, and they knew no other life – nor did I for that matter – and of course they also loved their father.

  Leaving my dreams behind, feeling quite numb, I moved into a duplex with Sister Pat of the Catholic Church in Derby. Robby moved with me. Within days Leisha left Fairfield, unable to handle Bob’s black moods. Kristy followed soon after, moving to the small township of Camballin where she had other family. Bob took it upon himself to give away many of my personal possessions: two new sewing machines, a beautiful Italia
n table, a bucket of garnets I’d collected, and more. He even sold, or gave away, a caravan I’d bought to take to rodeos. I’d go out there to pick something up, and it would be gone. But I was too hurt to get to the bottom of it.

  My bright spark was Robby. He loved schooling in a class atmosphere and having mates his own age. Once he was off the station and away from heartache, he bloomed.

  I was battling mixed emotions living in the town and suffered enormous grief over leaving the station. But Bob was out of control. Loaded with stores and fencing material, Robby and I arrived at the station one weekend to be greeted by a shocking sight. I tearfully rescued my treasured photos and paintings, all attacked with an axe and discarded in the rubbish tip among the trees near the track leading to the homestead. Afraid for our safety, I hid them behind the shed, but not before noticing my favourite, a poster-sized portrait of Bob and me from our Oobagooma days. He had chopped himself to pieces with the axe!

  Yet several hours later, on his return from a bore run, all hot and tired, his body noticeably racked with pain, he insisted on cooking for me and treating me like a queen. He served the food and made me tea like a servile waiter. When I went to put the kettle on, he jumped up to do it for me.

  I was so confused. One moment he would be the man I knew, and the next a bitter, nasty, calculating madman. I lost any semblance of trust in him. He was a stranger to me.

  In the last weeks at Fairfield, his delirious mood swings only got worse. He handled the sale of one of our company businesses, yet not a cent from this deal was ever returned to the company account. He had been receiving the proceeds in cash payments behind my back. For a man who didn’t spend money and had never been interested in it, this was quite a shock. I don’t believe he had any plans for it, unless he was worried that I might dud him on the sale and was insuring himself pre-emptively. It was so uncharacteristic of him – but no more uncharacteristic than the wild acts of generosity that were happening at the same time. He bought me an $8,000 emerald bracelet, and tried to splurge more on jewellery until I stopped him. Truly, I was so numb by now I could hardly raise the energy to be angry.

  I made one last effort. I wasn’t going to let go of everything without a fight.

  Robby and I returned to Fairfield one weekend, to work alongside his father as we always did. We had checked the mills. I was cleaning a trough that was spring-fed from the Oscar Range, located at the foot of the escarpment on a rugged mound of dirt covered with craggy white gums.

  Bob sat in the Toyota watching me, half-concentrating as he rolled a tailormade in the palm of his hand.

  ‘Bob,’ I hesitantly began. ‘Are you positive you want out of Fairfield?’

  His head was on a slight angle, his eyes suddenly wary. I stopped cleaning and stood to look at him, making eye contact. He continued rolling the tobacco at the same steady pace, showing total disregard to my question.

  ‘I have a bank loan, a five-year budget and program worked out,’ I said. ‘If you don’t want the station, then please sell me your half share.’

  I still dreamed of running Fairfield as a steer depot for the export market. Regaining what little composure I had left, my head ready to explode with anger, I placed the bung in the trough and turned again to Bob with my arms reaching out, palms facing the heavens.

  An unreadable darkness covered his eyes. As a sardonic smile crossed his vacant face, he shook his head. He was not a man to change his mind.

  ‘Why, why, Bob? Just give me a reason. For God’s sake, you must have a reason!’

  My lifelong dream was shattered. He may as well have kicked me in the guts. Bob knew I could make Fairfield work, but he refused to give me a fair go.

  That evening Bob cooked roast beef and vegetables. He drank more than his fair share of beer. As I stood to leave the table, he asked me to sit down again.

  ‘Well, what’s happening?’ he said.

  ‘Surely we can get it together,’ I said.

  In an offhand way, he said: ‘What about a divorce?’

  I looked straight into his eyes, which were hesitant. ‘Is that what you really want?’

  After another long hesitation, he said: ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you trust me to do the paperwork, so the lawyers don’t rip us off?’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’

  And that was that.

  Before I climbed into bed that night, he placed a small rug on the floor by my side.

  ‘So your feet don’t touch the cold lino in the morning,’ he said. His movements were stiff as he tried to straighten the rug on the floor. A kind gesture but impossible to reconcile with the Bob I had come to know. I felt like crying with exasperation. He had chosen this moment, now that we’d agreed to divorce, to show such small acts of kindness.

  The following week I discussed the outcome of the property sale with the children, then told them about the divorce. Leisha and Robby made it very plain they didn’t want me to fight for the station on their behalf. In fact they wanted to be as far away from Fairfield as they could. They understood that Daddy was not well, and I was afraid of his threats.

  The divorce papers were ready to sign in the middle of the big wet season of 1994–95.

  Jack, our trusted friend, also a Justice of the Peace in Derby, travelled with me along the Gibb River Road to meet with Bob. Bob arrived via chopper, piloted by another friend. There on the muddy banks of flooded Mount North Creek we signed the legal documents.

  ‘Don’t be sad,’ Bob offered. ‘It’s only a piece of paper.’

  I felt both relieved and bewildered by it all, and returned to Derby to my little flat.

  In 1995, after I’d been unable to get Bob to agree to selling me his half-share, Fairfield was sold to the Aboriginal people who had kindly waived their land claims in favour of us at the beginning of the saga. With the property on the market, their land claims were reinstated and Fairfield subsequently became theirs with our blessing. Bob could never give me a reason why he hadn’t let me buy it. Deep down, I think he was afraid I might make a success of it.

  CHAPTER 26

  Long Yard

  In the year following our divorce, Bob and I were to travel in different directions across Australia in search of peace. Having left school, Leisha moved to Townsville, and Bob roamed around Queensland, wandering from place to place until he stayed with her for a while. Always close until that last year at Fairfield, they reconciled. I stayed in Derby for a while and then took Robby down to the south-west of Western Australia, searching for a small block with some cattle. Bob and I kept in contact for the children’s sake with the odd letter. His were sometimes apologetic, at other times a tangled mess and out of this world with incoherence. I hoped that somewhere in his travels he would find a cure for his pain and learn to be at peace with his mind. Before leaving Derby I studied meditation and counselling with the West Australian Ministry of Justice and also found time to listen to Robby and his schoolmates read aloud during class. To see a beautiful smile come over a child’s face was well worth it.

  In late 1995 and 1996 Bob and I both bought properties 18 kilometres apart in the Great Southern, near Albany in Western Australia. I bought the Shiralee, a 230-acre farm – barely a horse paddock! – and Bob bought Sleepy Hollow, a 160-acre property. There we endeavoured to start afresh. Although living on separate farms, we knew about each other’s usefulness and knowledge. Cautiously, we offered to help out with each other’s cattle. Sometimes I visited him just to see that he was all right. I’d take him shopping, because his driving was wobbly. After a while, we found we could go for little picnics in the country. After everything that had happened, I felt responsible for him. He was an elderly man, and the father of my children. There was a bond I couldn’t – and didn’t want to – break. If it hadn’t been for Bob, the cold would have surely driven me home to the Kimberley.

  With my visits to his farm, helping each other as we had in years long gone in the simple pleasures of shopping, fencing and cattle work, we regai
ned some of the respect that we’d once had for each other. Having lunch out together once a week, something we’d never experienced as a couple, brought much contentment and gladness to us both. I was very forgiving, it’s true, but I knew there was something wrong with him – his grief, his bodily sickness and pain – that was responsible for the worst things he’d done. It seemed to me now that a measure of the real Bob, the one I had known at Oobagooma, was re-emerging.

  Still ambitious and in need of more stimulation, we went to look over a large neighbouring cattle property of a few thousand acres, Crystal Brook, with full intentions to buy it. I was ready to buy land again and get back into the cattle game. This would be my way of moving on from the past, but I could not move on from Bob. I felt that buying land together, and consolidating what we had, would set things up for the children so that they might have a future on the land. Two weeks later, near the end of 1998, I noticed a sudden and drastic decline in Bob’s health.

  I’d had suspicions when he brought me two magnificent rose bushes and said, ‘If anything ever happens to me, don’t become sad – sit and look at these roses with a cup of tea and think of the good times.’

  I was visiting him every day, bringing him food and checking on his wellbeing. He was old and sick, but when I found him unconscious on the bathroom floor of his house, it was still a shock. Deep down, I knew he was a terribly unwell man – but not the dying kind, for he had suffered pain as long as I could remember.

  Leisha arranged an appointment with a top specialist in Perth while I organised a charter flight from Albany to have Bob there on time. An afternoon of tests and visits yielded the fateful news: he only had a month to live. He had advanced cancer of the pancreas and the liver.