1 bottle Brandy
1 bottle OP Rum
1 bottle Gin
‘Any food?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ replied Mary, ‘I’m coming to that.’
4 cartons Emu Export
1 column Log Cabin Tobacco
A column is ten tins. ‘Is that it?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, that’d be about right,’ said Mary.
‘You don’t want to order something to eat?’ I asked, and she got me to add five pounds of spuds.
‘And that should do it,’ she said, and went off to collect her toiletries in order to use the station’s shower. Bloody hell, I thought, I hope they don’t drink all this alcohol and fall into the crocodile-infested river.
I was on the back verandah lighting up the wood stove when all of a sudden the Pom let out a blood-curdling scream. Then came Mary’s voice. ‘What’s wrong with you, you bloody Pom, whinging about the water now, are you?’
‘No,’ was the Pom’s reply. ‘I was damned nearly electrocuted.’
Mary could hardly speak for laughter. Between gasps she wheezed out, ‘Who would have bloody believed me if I told them a Pom had got electrocuted in the shower.’
In fact the Pom probably did get a shock and the cockatoos were to blame. They often chewed on the power line’s insulation between the generator and the homestead; I had experienced the same shock myself.
The days were long at the park, and the humidity wasn’t disappearing in a hurry. I was becoming very tired, which I assumed was because I was putting in a lot of effort oiling the office floors, painting location numbers and tripping into the bank, post office and the local supermarket, sometimes three times a day. Then one day I found another marble-like lump in my right breast. This was the third.
I went to my doctor, who promptly referred me to my Perth specialist again. I didn’t need this, I thought, I was just too tired to go through it all again. But I pulled myself together and Robby accompanied me to Perth where I returned to my specialist for the necessary tests. I felt prepared for whatever lay ahead of me, though I really did believe I would be all right. My only worry was my children, but I told myself they were close enough to one another to draw strength from each other if it should prove the cancer had returned.
The next day I called my doctor for the results, to hear him say, ‘Sheryl, I’m happy to say you’re free to go home.’ It was another benign cyst. I immediately called Leisha, then my mother to relay the good news, then phoned Terry in Broome. He was happy for me, though I think he was mainly glad there would be no demands on him for support. Back at the caravan park I learned how he gave everyone the impression that he worried terribly about me. I just wished he would show that concern to me sometimes!
The day before my fifty-fourth birthday on 13 June, I sat waiting for Terry in his Statesman outside the bank when I saw Brian Singleton. I jumped out of the vehicle to greet him and was flabbergasted when he looked at me strangely and said, ‘What are you doing here?’
‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘Why wouldn’t I be here?’
Brian looked at me as if weighing up whether to speak, and then said, ‘When I saw Terry the other night he told me you two were separated. I understood you were down south. But he said there was a chance you’d get back together.’
I laughed, if somewhat half-heartedly, and said flippantly, ‘That would be Terry, keeping the back door open.’
Brian laughed too, then said, as he turned to leave, ‘Don’t let him affect your health, that’s most important.’ I told him I was okay.
I gazed towards the doors of the bank thinking, I’ve been in some tough situations in my life but this marriage has to be one of the toughest. At that moment Terry emerged and got into the car. I sat for a moment wondering what I wanted to say to him, then simply came out with, ‘Why did you tell Brian Singleton we were separated? You might at least have told me.’
‘No, it’s not true,’ he said, without much conviction, though he was looking rather grey. If he had a motto it would surely be ‘Deny, deny, deny’.
‘Well, I tell you what,’ I said, ‘I’ll believe Brian Singleton QC before I’ll believe you,’ and left the conversation at that.
He was quiet for the rest of the day, and the following day went shopping and presented me with a pearl necklace for my birthday. I might have been glad to receive it under different circumstances.
CHAPTER 11
Bad to Worse
Kristy flew in from the city for a week with me in Broome. She had recently left Melbourne to return to Perth but still missed the Kimberley. She was twenty-five now and had found work on the outskirts of the city riding thoroughbred racehorses and was over the moon as Hide the Halo, a horse she rode track on regularly, had won three races in a row.
It was a relief that one of my girls was in good shape. Over in Cairns Leisha was having a tough time. She and Adam were not getting on well and on top of that she was stressed out with working, renovating and taking care of Brock. Around midnight one night she called me in deep distress from a park bench, crying as she battled to make the right decision for her son’s future. To be so far away and unable to take care of her was more then I could bear, but I knew she needed me to be stronger than that.
Once I’d established that Brock was at home with his father, I said, ‘Leisha, I will get off the phone, then you must call a cab and go home. I’ll give you a few minutes, then I’ll call you back.’ I hurriedly made myself a cup of tea to help calm my nerves, then called Leisha again. By now she was in a cab and we talked about everything and nothing until the cab driver delivered her home, much calmer, and determined to think things over a little more. Adam was a decent man and they really loved and cared for each other, yet it seemed impossible for them to make it work.
Soon after that, in May 2003, I had what I thought were two minor skin cancers removed from my shoulders, but a few days later I received a call from my GP. ‘Sheryl, we need to take more from your right shoulder, it’s a little larger than I originally thought,’ said Dr Edmond, not giving away too much on the phone. I readily agreed to go in to the medical centre as soon as possible — at least I didn’t have to make a trip down to the city — but what he had discovered was a malignant growth, a melanoma.
My fair skin had taken a beating over the years in the outback. I’d always covered my face in sunscreen and now I wished I’d done the same for my shoulders and arms. And yet I had always gone out fully covered. When I was a child growing up in the Northern Territory, my mother always made me wear long-sleeved cotton shirts.
Dr Edmond was satisfied that he had removed all the cancer and there was no need for chemotherapy. I was shocked at first to find that I had cancer again, but at least it wasn’t breast cancer. But it was the fourth time I had faced the possibility of cancer, and the second time I had faced cancer itself. I promised myself and my children never to become blasé about it and to keep my cancer checks up-to-date.
I then flew to Cairns. Leisha and Adam were by now living separately, on amicable terms thankfully; both were mature enough to make their young son their main concern. Leisha had no particular plans, except a vague yearning to study, perhaps psychology, when she and Brock were settled. For now, she would come back to Broome with me. Adam was assured that he wasn’t losing his son, and I drove back west with Leisha and two-year-old Brock.
We had not been back long when one evening Terry came home after several hours at the local tavern. He was going into the office to deal with customers, which I thought was a bad idea, since he smelled strongly of alcohol. I made the mistake of saying so, and in a moment he had me slammed up against a wall cabinet. Then straightaway he was holding both arms out on either side of his body saying, ‘I didn’t touch you.’ I willed myself not to crumple. ‘Just get away,’ I demanded, and tried to push him off me, but he fastened a vicelike grip on my right arm, while threatening me with his clenched right fist.
‘You’re kinked in the head,’ he said, over and over, shaki
ng his fist in my face.
We were doing this crazy shuffle around the dining room when I heard the back door open. Terry instantly released his grip and stepped away from me. It was Leisha. With a look of horror, she stood for a moment surveying the situation. ‘What’s happening here?’ she demanded. ‘What was all the commotion about? I could hear it outside.’
Terry spun around and rapidly left. ‘Did he touch you?’ she asked me, leading me towards the bedroom. ‘Mum, you really have to get some help or you’re never going to get out of this.’
I was shaken, more scared than I’d ever been. If she hadn’t walked in at that moment, I don’t know what he would have done to me. The next morning I gave in to Leisha’s concern and visited my doctor in Broome. I talked openly to him and, like the other doctors, he assured me I was far from insane. But he thought I should leave Terry. ‘For your own sake, you need to get away from this situation, otherwise your health will go downhill fast,’ he said. He gave me the card of a counsellor he recommended. I slipped it in my purse, thinking I would call the number when I got home.
But I did not call the counsellor, and I did not leave. Over the months of writing this book and reading old diaries I have sat at my writing table and shaken with anger at myself for staying. When I finally did seek counselling I began to understand why, when I was in the middle of the abuse, I was unable to take care of myself — or my children — and seek help at that time.
There were many reasons. First, there was the simple fact that when I first knew Terry he was a fun, bubbly, happy man who loved my company, and I was still waiting for that man to return. I thought that was the real Terry, and I did everything I could to relieve his stresses and pressures so that the real, relaxed man I met could emerge again.
But it seems there might also have been a part of me that believed I deserved all the punishment I received. When the counsellor first suggested this, I laughed, it sounded so completely ridiculous to me. It still sounds ridiculous. But for all my wonderful uncomplicated, outback childhood — where my brothers and I were nature’s children, free to roam where we pleased — I grew up to make three very difficult marriages (not to mention the dramas with Heath). But if I’m honest with myself, I have to admit that every step of the way since Kelly died has been a battle. I think I felt responsible for the loss of our son. I have blurred memories of McCorry, in the long dark days that followed Kelly’s death, asleep at the dining table, his head resting on his arms, gazing intently into the dry distant paddock accompanied by only the deep dark silence that he used to shield himself with. He wouldn’t talk to me. When he did, his answers were short and sharp and full of anger. Because of his anger I always thought it was my fault. I now realise he dealt with our son’s death in a very destructive way and that I dealt with it differently, but in an equally destructive way, by putting on a brave face. Though I truly loved old McCorry and know he loved me back, he had a very dark streak, and after we lost Kelly he retreated into a terrible sadness that, fuelled by alcohol, became bitterness. Although McCorry’s anger was primarily turned on himself, anyone in range was going to cop it, and ultimately that was the reason we had to separate. He wouldn’t come back from that dark place to be with me and the children. And that upset me more than I let on at the time. I didn’t say it, because there was no getting through to him, but if he had let us try to work it out together, I feel sure we would have come out the other side stronger and happier.
But he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, and in our own ways we somehow survived, if separately. And even McCorry’s resentment of my successes never stopped me from functioning well in my work and as a mother. But with Terry, it was as if I became a completely different person. What I could manage, in all but the worst of times, was to put a bright face on for the world, my polished shell, and appear to function well. I suppose from the start I’d done this for the children, to protect them from McCorry in his depression. But McCorry at his worst was an angel compared to the way Terry tried to destroy the spirit of my son.
I can never forgive myself for keeping Robby under his stepfather’s roof. A person who dominates and ridicules a younger person until their spirit is broken is about as low as you can get. I tried but I could not protect my boy from my husband’s scornful and humiliating games. I should have left and never come back. And I did not.
Now all that is finally behind me, and counselling is giving me a way to understand what happened, I can see the tactics that are used by abusers in order to dominate others — in some animal species as well as by certain human beings. And I realised I had observed all this long ago in a contract horse breaker when I managed Kimberley Downs.
Roy was a lean six foot two and covered in freckles and an assortment of skin cancers. A shock of red hair jutted from under the brim of his dusty Akubra — and he had a temper to match!
Roy had finished handling the station colts in the round yard — reining and breaking them in — and was shoeing in the open lean-to off the adjoining shed. Now that he was done with the round yard, Leisha and Kristy had taken it over to handle their foals. The children always broke in and handled their own horses. Little Robby was sitting on the top rail of the yard, giving the girls his two bob’s worth.
Then I heard Robby calling. ‘Mum! Mum, the girls want you! Now, Mum!’ I hurried to the horse yards. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, and all three answered with their eyes, glaring at the horse breaker. As I turned and followed their gaze I saw Grey Boy shivering and shaking in a lather of sweat. The gelding was cut and bleeding up the flank, across the hindquarter, from under the belly to across the neck, and it copped another blow with the rasp while I was standing there. ‘Stop it!’ I screamed. I was shocked and furious; this was the first case of horse bashing I’d ever seen, anywhere.
‘This horse needs a bullet,’ Roy muttered. ‘So do you, mate,’ I said. It seemed he’d been trimming feet and shoeing horses all afternoon with no incident, but for some reason he and the grey fell out. Maybe the horse kicked out once too often, but that was no excuse for what he did, no excuse at all.
I told Roy to forget the shoeing and release the gelding; he was on a one-way ticket off Kimberley Downs. I paid him out and watched as he rolled his swag and headed for the road.
Meanwhile the girls led Grey Boy away to wash him down. Robby fetched the vet box from the homestead, and between the three of them they doctored his cuts and wounds with purple paint. A week later the children and I watched him limping around the airstrip paddock. Most of his wounds had scabbed and he was showing excellent signs of recovery.
There was another incident of wanton violence against animals on Napier Downs station some years before that, this one fuelled by arrogance, I thought.
Maria, a young friend from a neighbouring cattle station, had just suffered a very sad loss and was spending a few days with me. We were taking it easy and had just settled on the front verandah with our pannikins of tea when an ear-splitting explosion echoed down the range, destroying the peace and tranquillity. The blast hit us like a whack in the chest, it was so close to the homestead.
I checked on baby Kelly who had begun to murmur in his cot. Another blast rang out, even louder. I was pretty sure someone was close by, shooting a high-powered firearm. Wondering who it could possibly be, and where they were shooting from, I nervously checked the front and side verandahs for bullet holes. I pictured an unstable gunman who might nail any one of us.
Unable to work out the direction the shots were coming from, I crept back to Maria and said, ‘Crouch down and let’s get the hell out of here.’ I figured we could make a run from the homestead to the shelter of a large water tank, then to the old men’s quarters, and from there make a dash for a cave a little way up the hillside behind the homestead — the same cave where our pet dingo used to camp. I wrapped Kelly in a light blanket from his cot and we moved silently towards the back door. We were just at the door when it burst open, nearly hitting us. We both screamed, but it was only Jeffery, m
y head stockman. ‘Missus missus,’ he called out, trying to calm me down.
‘My god, Jeffery, what’s going on?’ I asked him.
‘You all right?’ he said.
‘Yes, we’re fine. What about the camp people, are they all right?’
He nodded his head.
Now Charlie arrived from the camp and came and stood beside Jeffery.
‘Missus,’ Jeffery said, ‘Charlie and I, we track ’im.’ I was worried for their safety but they were good trackers and smart men.
‘Be careful then, this person has a very powerful gun,’ I said. ‘And if you find him, tell him I want to speak to him, or else it will be a police matter.’ Maria, Kelly and I would join the other stockmen and their wives in their camp until they returned.
We waited at the camp for an hour and there were no more shots, and no sign of Charlie and Jeffery, so I decided to go back to the homestead. Another hour and a half later I picked up the sound of the bull buggy coming down the corrugated track. Running out to greet the men, I was pleased to see they were unharmed, but taken aback by Jeffery’s sombre mood.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
‘That fella shot your pet donkey, missus, in the front gateway, butchered and taken her hindquarters off,’ Jeffery said. ‘And that good pack mule too.’ The pack mule wasn’t quite dead when they got there and blood was still pumping like a fountain from its side.
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