Stars over Shiralee

by Sheryl McCorry

  Walking through the resort in the dark I suddenly felt sure someone was following me. I stopped for a moment. I knew he was behind me then because he stopped too. ‘I know you’re, there Terry,’ I said.

  ‘Urgers are worse than bludgers,’ he started again.

  When he came home, he got on his push bike and said, ‘I’m going to check the park.’ But he left the door wide open, something he never normally did, particularly at night. As he set off on his bike I pushed the door shut then returned to the pile of clothes I planned to iron.

  I had my back to the door and didn’t even hear it open, but I suddenly froze in fear as I realised I was not alone. There was a thump, thump, thump across the timber floor, and I didn’t even have time to turn around before I was grabbed from behind. Struggling, I turned around to face my attacker. It was my husband.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked, almost laughing, thinking it was some kind of joke. But his hold on me tightened as he shoved me towards the glass coffee table. ‘Let me go, what are you doing?’ I cried. His face was set in a frozen, twisted smile and I was suddenly afraid for my life. Thoughts of my children finding their mother bleeding to death on the floor flooded me.

  ‘Get off me, let me go!’ I yelled at him, using every scrap of strength I had to get out of his grip.

  ‘See how strong you are now,’ he said, pushing me backwards across the coffee table. I landed smack up against the TV set. The more I fought, the more spaced out became the look in his eyes. I kicked him as hard as I could, but to no avail. I twisted and turned my body to break free, only to cop a hit across my shoulder and breast that almost floored me with pain. I screamed, but it was as though he had no off button, he had become another person. He pushed and shoved me across the floor. Then the most stupid thing blurted out of my mouth, but it definitely saved me. ‘I’m calling the police.’

  He immediately let go of me, put both hands in the air and said, ‘I never touched you, I never touched you.’

  When he let me go I was ready to run, but I stopped, unable to believe my ears. I looked down at myself. Red welts and bruises were already appearing on my arms. I stood and looked at him for a moment. ‘You’ve done this before, haven’t you?’ I said. He knew what to do. It was as if he was remembering some lawyer’s advice.

  I moved further away from him. ‘Yes, you’ve done it before.’ He said nothing. I was free to go. I moved into the tiny spare room and locked the door, then the shaking and trembling started.

  I got up early the next morning, my body stiff and bruised. Terry had disappeared and I took advantage of his absence to begin packing. I was going home to the Shiralee. I organised removalists to load my boxes on Friday and arranged for new tyres on the Landcruiser that day. Leisha and Robby dropped in as they did most days, took one look at me and demanded an explanation. Upset and angry, my girl demanded, ‘Mum, how much more are you going to take? He has no respect for you — he couldn’t marry you fast enough, and now he treats you like shit! You’re just a possession to him, Mum, can’t you see it?’

  At that moment it seemed like she was the mother. I just looked at her dumbly, struggling not to cry.

  ‘You’ve got to leave, Mum, you can’t let him talk you out of it again. We’re quitting! We’re coming with you.’ She was on fire. She and Adam were separated at this time, and he had gone back down south. They were handling things well though, and both managed to keep young Brock’s welfare firmly in top priority.

  They left the room when Terry arrived with an enormous bunch of flowers. Not that he thought he was in the wrong — there was no apology, there never had been — but he wanted me to stay. He had plans to meet a friend at the Fitzroy River rodeo and wanted to take the Landcruiser.

  ‘Are you coming?’ he asked in a rather subdued manner. ‘No,’ I muttered, mistrusting him, but trying to hide my feelings. I did not want him flying into another rage. He stood there looking so lost, I came close to feeling sorry for him — until I reminded myself of the look in his eyes the night before. ‘No,’ I said again, more strongly.

  ‘A lot of your Aboriginal friends will be there,’ he said, trying to persuade me.

  ‘No,’ I said again, thinking of Katie, Jeanie, Alma and the old elders. I could almost hear them saying, ‘Him no good for you, yumun, him no good,’ their pain for me showing in their eyes. I didn’t want to see it; I was ashamed and embarrassed to be caught in this web.

  I had been strong once, I reminded myself, watching my husband’s temper rise again. How quickly the hang-dog look was replaced by a set jaw, unreadable eyes and clenched fists.

  I was terrified of him hitting me again.

  The situation felt tense and volatile, and I returned to my little room to finish packing as he took himself off to the rodeo. Leisha came back with my Landcruiser fuelled and packed and Robby’s farm bike and gear in our trailer.

  Terry arrived back from the Fitzroy rodeo just as we were about to set off the next day. He looked pale, sick and sorry for himself, and I told him I wasn’t leaving him for good, but that I needed time and space to think things through. I was feeling muddled and was frightened that the slightest little thing might cause Terry to grab me and nail me up against the cupboards again. I was fearful of his strength and wondered just how far he would go. Would he or could he kill me? I honestly thought he might. I was far from rational myself, but I was trying not to enrage him before we left. I had packed everything and I had no intentions of going back to him.

  ‘Are you ready, Mum?’ Leisha called out, worried that I might be talked into staying again.

  ‘Yes, love, I’m coming now,’ I said, then turned to my husband. ‘Are you sure you want to be married to me? Because a lot of the time I don’t think you are. We are not exactly on the bones of our arse, yet I have no privacy in my married life with you, and I live in a room here at the park and a room at your mum’s house. Please think about this.’

  I said goodbye and walked out the door. I was not a punching bag, I still had enough strength in me to realise that.

  CHAPTER 9

  Back to the Shiralee Again

  We reached Carnarvon that night and early the next morning we left Perth and just powered on through to the Shiralee.

  Refuelling on our way through the city, I had expressed to Leisha how surprised I was that we were all so wide awake, considering the miles we’d covered. ‘It feels like Daddy and Kelly are travelling with us,’ I said, ‘making sure we get home safely.’

  A few days later I called my mother. Before I could give her my news she said she had something to tell me. She had had a dream three days earlier, in which a little blond-haired boy appeared saying, ‘Tell Mum to go home.’

  ‘Mum,’ I said, ‘I am home. I’m at the farm.’ At first she hadn’t been sure what to make of the dream, but I think we both understood now. Kelly had been looking out for me.

  Looking back, the past seemed blissfully simple, and I often remembered funny old stories to cheer myself up and remind me of the way life — and I — used to be.

  When we were living on Oobagooma station, a hundred and fifty kilometres north-west of Derby, I felt I was in the middle of a million acres of freedom. I never had a care in the world — well, I thought I hadn’t.

  I have a sharp memory of a cool Kimberley night in the stock camp when I really wanted to bathe and wash my clothes, but the spring near our camp had an icy edge to it. So I walked back to camp to collect my bath tub — a forty-four gallon drum cut in half. The quickest way to get it down to the spring was to roll it clean off the top of the bank. I did this, and the tub came to a halt right at the water’s edge, just as I’d intended. This was my bathroom. I collected three good sized rocks, sat my tub on top of them, made sure it was balanced, then filled it three-quarters full with spring water. Once satisfied with the water level, I collected wood and piled it high around the sides and jammed what I could under the drum, then lit the fire. I climbed back up the river bank to my camp, grabbe
d my shampoo, towel and a clean change of clothes and returned with a keen sense of anticipation.

  Tonight’s bath was going to be the best — and, most importantly, warm! On my return, the fire had died down somewhat. I threw a few more logs on and decided I couldn’t wait any longer. Stripping off my dust and sweat-covered clothes I sank into the warmth and luxury, adding shampoo to make a bubble bath. With my knees up around my chin and my hair lathered in shampoo, I gazed up at the clear night sky, alive with a hundred thousand twinkling stars. It was hard to imagine there could be a better bathtub on earth.

  My paradise was short-lived, however. Soon my bath time was interrupted by the grunting, rooting and squeals of feral pigs moving up the spring in search of vegetation and roots to eat, or maybe just to check me out. In the golden glow of the fire it looked like a large family, most of them covered in coarse black hair and some with white markings. There was one huge male with a broken tusk, probably the daddy of them all since he seemed to be pushing and shoving the others around. They advanced towards me, rooting and snorting, the piglets squealing as they flipped my clean clothes about before burying them in sand. I froze. I wanted to keep my dignity but I was terrified of what they might do next. I sank myself down into the tub of water as I wondered just how inquisitive they might be before moving on.

  It eventually occurred to me that the pigs wouldn’t get going before I boiled myself alive, so I swallowed my pride and called out to McCorry for help. This sent the invaders wild. All hell broke loose, and clothes, burning logs and coals were scattered in all directions. Wild boars and sows were fighting, piglets squealing and running amok, and my tub had become a carnival ride. Within no time they had uprooted everything and disappeared into the night.

  McCorry eventually put his head over the bank. He had walked down from the stock camp where he had been repairing a saddle in the firelight. ‘What’s wrong?’ he called. ‘Nothing,’ I answered, trying to keep some dignity. ‘But come down to the spring, the wild pigs were rooting around.’ I was still submerged in my tub.

  ‘They’re gone now, they won’t be back,’ McCorry said, as if wondering what all the fuss was about. He was rolling a cigarette. ‘Find your clothes, I’ll be here.’ Grateful to have him close by, I flew out of the bathtub, dodging bits of burning wood and glowing coals to find my clothes. They were filthy, but I was grinning. This was a way of life for me and I never saw anything unusual about it, in fact I loved it.

  When we arrived back at Oobagooma with the cattle, I left the stockmen to yard-up on the banks of the Robinson River while I returned to the station homestead to let Silver the cook know we were back. ‘Silver, we’re home mate,’ I sang out loudly, not wanting to spook him and set off a heart attack. There was no answer. ‘Silver, Silver!’ I yelled, walking from room to room, thinking, You old bastard, what have you got up to now?

  I was starting to feel uneasy, and checked all the rooms again, just in case he was slumped in a corner and hidden in the shadows. Maybe he’d gone fishing down on the river . . . had a saltwater crocodile got him? I was still running around the homestead, calling out for him, when the stockmen and working dogs arrived back. I should have had the billy on; they were looking for a pannikin of tea. Then the sound of laughter and cattle dogs barking came from the new laundry thirty metres up the flat.

  ‘Missus, come,’ said one of the men. ‘Come an’ look at that old man Silver.’ Well, at least it sounded like he was alive.

  I followed the man up the path to the new laundry, which was now surrounded by the stockmen and their wives, laughing and ribbing each other. As I approached they moved aside to let me through. The laundry reeked of alcohol. Sporting indecent red jocks, Silver was out cold and badly sunburned — he was shedding skin like a lizard. The old bastard was surrounded by watermelons he’d obviously picked from my vegetable garden. He’d cut the tops off them, then fixed them back on with my meat skewers. There was what looked like a bung in the bottom of some of them and a straw poking out the side of one.

  I sent the stockmen away and turned the hose on Silver until I had woken him up. He looked pretty sorry for himself, and I told him I hoped he’d suffer a headache for pinching my watermelons. I helped him to his room and left him to sleep off the grog, then turned my thoughts to dinner. I was the cook now until Silver recovered sufficiently to take over again. I stoked the wood stove on the verandah, then sliced up a huge rump, knocked the shoots off some old potatoes and put them in a pot with some onions and a dozen shrivelled carrots. I found a packet of dried green peas that would enhance the appearance of the dilapidated carrots and had just begun to grill the rump when the dogs started going berserk outside. As the barking closed in I could also make out the squeal and grunt of pigs.

  Pigs again. I suddenly realised it must be mating season, that’s why they were on the roam. All of a sudden a very large agitated black pig burst onto the verandah followed by seventeen barking dogs and a tangle of squealing boars, sows and piglets. They all met in an aggressive dance, ploughing right through the old homestead. With a firm grip on the sizzling pan of steaks, I clambered up onto a flour drum and balanced myself with the other foot on the wood stove as the dogs and feral pigs fought it out below. The noise in the corrugated-iron homestead was painful, but at least it caught the attention of the stockmen, who soon came roaring and hollering. They got the dogs penned up again while the feral pigs scattered into the scrub in the direction of the billabong. Calm settled back over the homestead and I was able to get on with cooking tea.

  I didn’t have the worry of feral pigs on the Shiralee and, for a while at least, I could leave behind the trauma of my marriage and work on regaining my strength in a place of beauty and contentment. On our return Richard moved back to his own farm. He’d done a good job. Paddocks looked lush and green with feed in abundance. The cattle looked good and the fences were up and tight.

  It was time to buy steers for fattening again. It was so good to get back into what I loved doing. Cattle were plentiful at the saleyards, though in July the prices had jumped — good for the seller but not the buyer. Robby helped me with the cattle, moving them about the farm and keeping an eye on the fences. He was his old self back at the Shiralee, happy to step back out of his shell. By unspoken agreement, we never talked about Terry.

  Once Leisha had seen me settled back home she sold her house in Albany. She and Adam were giving their relationship another go and they wanted to try Cairns. In part, Leisha needed some distance from me, since I could not promise her that I wouldn’t get back with Terry and that really upset her.

  She and Robby and I were sitting out on the back verandah when she told me this.

  ‘Please, Mum, Robby and I can’t handle watching him destroy you in front of our eyes,’ she said. I could understand how they felt, and it made me feel terrible that I was hurting them so much, but I still couldn’t see myself leaving my marriage. I’d worked everything out in my life up till this point, and I figured I could also work this out. I tried to tell them that.

  ‘But Mum,’ Leisha entreated, ‘each time you go back to him it always ends with him drinking and getting into foul moods. How is that ever going to change?’

  ‘I don’t know, love, but each time he wants me back it’s an opportunity for us to work things out. I’ve got to be able to meet him halfway.’

  But even as I said that, I knew the chances of him meeting me halfway were slimmer than the Second Coming. I was caught between two hard places, and I felt my eyes brim with tears. Robby came over and gave me a hug. ‘It’s all right, Mum, I’m staying here with you. But right now I’m going to check on the cattle in the back paddock, okay?’

  When he was gone, Leisha asked me if I loved Terry.

  ‘Love him?’ I repeated. ‘I don’t think I know what love is any more.’

  ‘Yes you do, Mum,’ said my incredibly wise daughter. ‘It’s trust, togetherness, wanting to do and create things as a couple. It’s not feeling like you’re all al
one in the world.’

  She had hit the nail right on the head. I had never felt so alone in my life as I did with Terry. There was no trust or togetherness, and the very thought of these things made me realise that was what I wanted in my marriage. Was that asking too much?

  Did I have a fear of being alone? Is that why I couldn’t leave him? One thing I knew, I didn’t want another divorce. I’m a woman who can work well on her own — most of my time managing cattle stations I was on my own — but all the time I was being the independent manager, I knew McCorry was there for me. I didn’t want to be completely alone and I didn’t want to be looking for another partner at this time in my life. If that sounds desperate, or pathetic, well I didn’t have a lot of gumption left in me at this point. It seemed a long time since I’d been the strong and confident woman who could deal with just about anything life threw at her.

  ‘Mum —’ Leisha started, and then paused.

  ‘What is it, love? You can say anything you want to me,’ I replied. ‘I am strong, you know.’

  ‘That’s just it,’ she said. ‘As soon as you’re away from him, you’re far happier and healthier than when you’re with him. You really are better on your own.’

  I didn’t have any answer to that. I felt like I had become a downtrodden wife. I hardly felt like a grown-up woman any more.

  ‘Mum, I know he can be a good person, but what’s a man of his age doing hanging out in nightclubs when you’re not around? Handing out money to girls to say he wasn’t there?’ This was something she’d witnessed herself in Broome.

  ‘I know, I know. Everything you say is true. It’s only . . .’ But I couldn’t finish. There was no argument I could make in his defence — nor in mine.

  ‘It’s your life, Mum. I know you’ll make a decision when it feels right for you. Just be careful. Take care of yourself. We love you.’

  How did my daughter get to be so wise and compassionate?