An Alice Girl

by Tanya Heaslip

  We never thought about the fact that we weren’t those men and nor could we ever be. On the contrary, we just thought of ourselves as little men working with big men, and eventually we would grow up to be big men too. We wanted to be the kind of worker that Dad was proud of.

  Nobody wanted to be a weak, girly sissy.

  No, we all wanted to be strong and courageous and loyal and legendary.

  33

  The Nightmare of Shearing

  We loved Christmas down south at Witchitie, but it came with a downside.

  The happy time spent with Nana and Papa Heaslip, Nana Parnell and Aunty June and Uncle John was short lived, followed immediately by the dreaded three-week sheep-shearing period in early January. During that time there was no chance for me to read, write or do anything creative. We all knew that Christmas holidays, like all our holidays, meant work.

  Dad would say, ‘A change is as good as a holiday,’ and that’s just how it was.

  But Dad seemed to drive us harder than usual at shearing time. Perhaps he hated it as much as we did, and had to steel himself to do it, especially as the Flinders Ranges rivalled Alice for heat in the new year. Most days the temperature reached forty to forty-five degrees.

  There were a number of practical reasons Dad chose January for shearing, though. It never rained, which was important, because you couldn’t shear wet sheep. He had M’Lis, Brett and me with him, so he had a strong workforce ready to go. Now he had Mick, too. The shearers were locked in at that time every year, and they delivered up lovely, thick wool for Dad to sell.

  The shearing shed was at Nana and Papa Heaslip’s property, Glenroy, so Dad spent most of the three weeks there, managing the shearing process, sorting the wool and overseeing the numbers of sheep in and out.

  We kids were stationed at Witchitie, with Mick.

  Our job was to muster the sheep, draft them into Dad’s required lots and load them onto the semi-trailer that Mick would then drive to Glenroy. Then we had to unload the shorn sheep when they returned. It was non-stop. Mick drove in and out several times a day.

  The blazing January temperatures made mustering the sheep out of the paddocks slow and difficult. They sheltered under trees in their hot, woolly coats, and didn’t want to move. They panted and sometimes lay down and wouldn’t move at all. I was convinced they were more stupid than cattle, but, in fact, perhaps they were just more cunning.

  ‘C’mon,’ Mick would say, giving them a push, ‘Yer’ll be glad when it’s all over. Yer’ll be much cooler.’

  We used Witchitie horses for the mustering, and also some others that Mick brought in, but that was always fraught with risk because the horses didn’t know us, and we didn’t know them. I got chucked off that summer, and ended up with not only sore muscles and bruised bits, but prickles stuck in my hands, legs and face.

  By the end of each day, we were exhausted.

  Mum would greet us three times a day with piles of food but we were usually too tired to eat. She would always be dead beat too, from cooking continuously over a wood oven in a little kitchen where temperatures exceeded forty-five degrees. She also had to keep Benny out of mischief, which was always difficult, especially because the woodheap was as big a draw to him as it was to the snakes.

  At night, we collapsed into bed at the usual time—7 p.m. But South Australia had daylight saving, so the sun didn’t go down until at least 9.30 or 10 p.m. It seemed ridiculous to be in bed when the light poured brightly in through the windows. We put our pillows over our heads and Mum pulled the curtains across tight, but our rooms were hot and stuffy, and we tossed and turned in damp sheets and woke up weary after broken sleep.

  Mick made jokes as often as he could to cheer us up. He reminded us on a daily basis to ignore the flies, to ignore the monotony and the heat, and just get on with the job, because it would be over soon enough.

  One day, when we were so hot and tired that all we could do was snap and argue with each other, he let us travel with him to Glenroy with a sheep load.

  ‘Yayyyy!’ we yelled, recovering our energy in an instant, and squashed ourselves into the dirty, hot semi-trailer cabin. Mick slowly reversed out and we headed off, sheep in the back. We were making so much noise that he grabbed his water bottle, ripped open the lid and chucked water on our heads.

  ‘Ahhh!’ We all shrieked with shock, then delight. The water was cool and refreshing and we were so hot. Brett grabbed the water bottle, and threw some back at Mick, who shook his head like a dog, while trying to focus on the road. M’Lis and I wrestled it off Brett, and soon the cabin was a free-for-all.

  Before long, the water bottle was empty.

  A total sin.

  Mick shouted, ‘You useless kids! Now we’ll all perish.’

  Mick saved us with his humour and sense of fun. He also saved me during one of the last days of mustering in the third week.

  It was blindingly hot as usual—over forty-five degrees—and neither we, nor our horses, nor the sheep could move beyond a plod. We’d stashed water bottles in trees along the route—even Dad conceded we needed something to drink during the day in January—but by the time we got to them, the sun’s heat had made the bottles sweat inside and turned the water putrid.

  It stunk, like it had been in a smelly, dried-up dam full of dead cattle. Its stench made me want to vomit, but not M’Lis and Brett. They were so parched, they drank it. But I couldn’t. Mick refused as well—but he was tough, like Dad, and could keep going.

  We set off again, by which point I was starting to feel delirious. Ahead of us we finally saw the next paddock gate. The blinding sun glinted off the barbed-wire fence.

  ‘Go ahead and open the gate!’ Mick ordered me.

  I was glad to do so, because I was desperate for a distraction. I had gone beyond the capacity to make up stories and escape into my imagination; I was just lost in a world of dehydrated, overheated misery. It took a long time for me to get there because my poor horse was struggling to put one hoof in front of another. And once I got to the gate, I stared out at the shimmering mirage in the distance, and couldn’t get off my horse. The coordination between my hands and feet didn’t seem to be working. I slumped over his neck.

  ‘Oi, what the hell do you think yer doin?’ Mick shouted.

  I tried to pull myself together. Voices were driving me, bouncing around in my head.

  Push on, keep going, push on.

  Then came another one.

  I can’t, I’m finished.

  I stayed slumped.

  When Mick got no response from me, he rode as fast as his horse would move to the gate, then dismounted and opened it himself. Then he walked towards me, his reins looped over his arm, his horse coming in behind.

  ‘Yer right?’ He sounded sceptical.

  But I couldn’t answer him. Stars spun before my eyes. I felt sick.

  ‘Righto, you go home,’ he said, finally.

  I stared at him, letting those magical words waft through my non-compos brain.

  ‘C’mon, Lis and Brett,’ he added, swinging his leg back up over his horse. ‘Push those sheep up.’

  Poor M’Lis and Brett—I left them there in the heat. M’Lis’s face was a study in anxiety. Brett thought I was faking it so I could get out of the afternoon’s work. Fair enough. But through my deluded brain, I couldn’t think of anything but getting home.

  It felt like several hours before my horse and I stumbled into the yards. I wanted to vomit, but I had nothing in my stomach. I felt feverish, my throat parched. I hoped that Mum would be there. I imagined her cool hands, her cool touch on my brow, her kind words, her putting me gently into bed, and me fading off into the distance, to wake again only once shearing was over and we could go home to the safety of Bond Springs and my typewriter.

  But as I sat unmoving on my horse, unable to get down, I saw a figure moving out of the corner of my eye. It was Dad. Suddenly, I panicked. Why wasn’t he at Glenroy?

  I could just make out the red-and-white
tip of DQG through the trees. He must have come home to refuel.

  I waited, steeling myself to be told off.

  Dad marched straight towards me, but by the time he got to the yards he must have realised there was no point saying anything. He simply pulled me off and hoisted me from the yards into the house. Through the blur, I finally found myself in the bathroom. I heard the noise of water. It was the shower. Dad had turned it on, and it was running, first boiling hot from the pipes, and finally, tepid warm.

  ‘Here, boots off.’ Dad then picked me up and pushed me under the tepid water. I collapsed, curled on the shower floor, with all my clothes on, except for my boots.

  It must have been an anathema for Dad to see so much precious water from the tank being wasted. Even as it poured over me, I realised the gift he was giving me.

  Finally, Dad turned off the tap, and pulled me out.

  I leaned over the bath, shivering, shaking, dripping everywhere. He handed me a cup of water.

  ‘Sip this slowly. Very slowly.’

  I slurped, gagged.

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ I finally managed.

  ‘She and Benny have gone to Glenroy. She’ll be back later.’

  Tears welled up, the first sign of moisture to actually come out of my body. I wanted Mum with every part of my being. But she wasn’t there.

  ‘You need to sleep this off. I’ll head out to the mob on the bike.’

  I crawled into bed in my wet clothes.

  ‘You’ll be right,’ were Dad’s firm, departing words. ‘Just a bit of heatstroke.’

  As I lay there curled up, I heard the motorbike rev and Dad roar off.

  Then I realised.

  I was at the Witchitie house, all alone.

  You’ll have to be alright, Tanya, no choice.

  You can’t get any worse. There’s no one around to save you if you do get worse.

  Fatigue finally won out over my overwrought imaginings. Even guilt at abandoning Mick, M’Lis and Brett, and forcing Dad to leave Glenroy for the mob dissipated.

  I slipped into sleep.

  Much later, there were voices, and eventually Mum’s cool, gentle touch. By then, there was no sun through the window, and the curtains were closed tight.

  In Mum’s arms, I cried, really cried.

  The next morning, I was a bit slow, but by midday I was back in the sheep yards, pushing up the recalcitrant, bleating, woolly animals with Mick, M’Lis and Brett, like I’d never been away at all.

  ‘No more slacking,’ said Mick, and I couldn’t tell whether the glint in his eye was amusement or not.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Brett, who still thought I’d put on a turn to get out of the last leg.

  But M’Lis stayed close and protective. ‘I was so worried,’ she said, her beautiful eyes clouded.

  I felt lucky.

  Mick had sent me home.

  Dad had poured his precious water over me.

  I’d had an afternoon off.

  Mum and M’Lis had cared for me.

  Admittedly, I was a letdown; I’d failed the standards of the legendary stockman.

  But at least I wasn’t dead.

  34

  My Last Year

  When I returned home, I started grade seven. It was a year of happy firsts and melancholy lasts.

  Aunty June and Uncle John had a baby, whom they named Fleur. We couldn’t wait to see her. A first cousin, at last! Babies Nicholas and Susan would follow and finally we would have a real family of cousins. We felt like other families, finally.

  It was also my last year before boarding school. Now that it was really on the horizon, Mum swung into action. She ordered name tags and uniforms. The list of clothes included strange things like ‘gym slips’ and ‘bloomers’ and ‘brown regulation pants’. The school sent schedules, timetables and advice that we would go to bed at 8 p.m. after ‘supper’ and ‘prep’.

  ‘But Mum, we go to bed at seven o’clock here,’ I said, panicked. ‘Eight is a whole extra hour later. D’you think I should try to stay up a bit longer each night, so I know what to do?’

  Mum’s face went a strange blotchy colour. She bowed her head back over the name tags she was sewing onto brown socks. Eventually I saw a tear drip down her cheek. Dad talked about ‘preparation’ all the time, but this was harder than anything I could have imagined.

  Lea Turner from Jinka Station and I were the only two students left in our School of the Air year, and we’d graduated to a new teacher, Mr Walker. He was very funny and I loved my classes because Lea and I could talk with him to our heart’s content.

  Mrs Hodder was teaching the younger children, and I still got to see her every time we went into the School of the Air office. Mrs Layton, who had taken me from grade one to grade seven, was still at the Correspondence School. She looked unchanged in each annual Correspondence School Magazine—earnest and clever—and I loved her with all my heart. She’d given me gold stars and written comments of support as I’d grown as a student, and I couldn’t have asked for a more wonderful teacher.

  The previous year Miss Thiele had celebrated her twenty-first birthday on Bond Springs and it was a wild night where everybody partied until dawn in Dad’s bar (of all places) and danced out on the patio (no problems about heels and spilt beer). Aunty Jill and Uncle Pete jived, and Mr and Mrs Gorey waltzed; Mum caught it all on camera. Miss Thiele had presented us with our own invitation. The dress code was ‘jodhpurs, please!’ This year she would get married, to Ken Watts, a handsome helicopter pilot from Alice Springs. Another wedding! It was especially thrilling because the reception would be held on Bond Springs. Mum would make identical long dresses for us girls (she drew the line at us wearing jodhpurs to a wedding).

  Miss Thiele would stay with us until I went away to boarding school. Then Mum would have to find another governess. The whole challenge of bringing someone new in would begin again. Benny would be starting school and the governess would have to deal with grades one, five and seven, in one classroom. Not an enviable task.

  My writing continued apace. Mum and M’Lis continued to support everything I created. And I had wonderful encouragement from two women outside my family.

  ‘How are your compositions going, Tanya?’ Mrs Gorey from Yambah Station would ask me whenever she came to visit. Mrs Gorey still looked like Sophia Loren and wore glamorous jewellery and I was inevitably tongue-tied in her presence. But for an adult to express interest in my writing was like being given a gold star, face-to-face. I adored Mrs Gorey.

  Rosie Johnson, a dynamic actress, singer, dancer, poet and radio host in Alice, even took one of my poems and read it aloud on her 8HA radio show ‘The Rosie Johnson Show’. She and her husband knew Mum and Dad well and she made me feel like a real star.

  None of this entirely removed the feelings of failure I still felt about Adventures at Cutters Creek Station not winning the competition, but I’d got my confidence back. And Mrs Gorey and Rosie Johnson really helped.

  I had started to think about my future, and about whether I perhaps could grow up to be a writer and singer and performer. But as we drew closer to the end of the year, my departure to boarding school consumed every other thought. I didn’t even know how I was going to survive the next five years in Adelaide, so it seemed pointless worrying about what I would do beyond it, when I grew up. A blanket of blackness hung heavily over my waking hours and sleepless nights.

  My fears weren’t helped by the fact that it was also a year of terrible bushfires.

  After the long drought of the 1960s, the seventies brought a great deal of welcome rain, which had led to good feed; every pastoralist’s dream. Feed meant fat and happy cattle, and good sales. However, good feed also meant bushfires. And while we’d been shearing at Glenroy, the brutal summer heat had dried off the feed, and we knew it was only a matter of time.

  Most days peaked beyond forty-five degrees, and long-awaited thunderstorms brought lightning, but no rain. We learned from the two-way radio sked that the lightning was
starting fires all over Central Australia. We could only guess when it would reach us, too.

  The level of dread in my stomach grew in line with the amount of time Dad spent watching the skies and listening to reports on the two-way radio. Before heading south he had spent most of December grading bushfire breaks, day after day, coming home exhausted at night, unable even to eat. Bushfires in the outback spread far and wide, and about the only way to control them was by grading breaks. Dad had never had to deal with bushfires before he came to Central Australia and, as with everything else on the Bond, he’d had to learn on the job.

  By the time we returned home in late January, the skies were black with clouds and the humidity was suffocating. Everyone was praying for rain. Surely God would not impose such an evil thing as fire upon us, especially if we prayed hard enough. But as dusk drew in one evening, a lightning storm hit with a vengeance.

  Dad’s jaw was tight. ‘There’ll be fires by the morning,’ he said.

  Before we went to bed, bright bolts of electricity were already scarring the blackness. And sure enough, we woke to waves of red and black engulfing the sky to the north and west. Dad said the fires would rip through the tinder-dry grass and he just hoped his fire breaks would hold. The air over the homestead became heavy with smoke hanging like a thick, grey blanket as though Revelations from the Bible was on its way.

  ‘Will we be alright?’ I asked Mum, as she hurriedly packed the tucker box with sandwiches and water.

  ‘Yes, it’s just going to be a very busy time for us all,’ said Mum, doing her best to sound practical and no-nonsense.

  We kids would be involved in every part of protecting Bond Springs.

  ‘Get dressed everyone,’ said Mum. ‘Long-sleeved shirts, jeans, boots, hat.’

  ‘It’s too hot,’ we whinged. ‘Can’t we wear shorts with our boots, instead?’