Return to the High Country

by Tony Parsons

  Unlike David, Dougal loved school, and attended the primary school in Merriwa where David and Catriona were once students. David’s old principal, Mr Car-ruthers, had long gone but his replacement, Miss Barwick, never had to complain that Dougal did not have his heart or his mind on his school work. Academically, Dougal left all the other children of the district in his wake.

  David MacLeod was perhaps less impressed with his son’s achievements at school than he should have been. David himself had won a local sheepdog trial when he was only ten years of age and had run second in a junior campdraft when he was not a great deal older. Dougal had no such ability to speak of – there was no way that Dougal could bring straggler wethers down off Yellow Rock as David had done.

  ‘What are you doing, Dougal?’ Anne called to him. The boy was stretched out on a dead tree that overhung the creek.

  ‘There’s a dead eel underneath, Nanna. I wonder what happened to it,’ Dougal mused. He stood up with the eel hanging by its tail from one hand. He thrust it towards his grandmother and his siblings so they could examine the creature at closer quarters.

  ‘Poo, it smells,’ Moira said with disgust.

  ‘Poo, it mells,’ Angus said, copying his sister. Angus copied her a lot because of his two older siblings, she was closer to him. Dougal was four years older and seemed to occupy a different world.

  ‘Yes, it smells, Dougal,’ Anne concurred. ‘Throw it back into the creek and the yabbies will eat it.’

  Dougal let the eel dangle from his hand for a few moments before reluctantly dropping it back in the creek. ‘Now wash your hands, Dougal,’ Anne told him.

  The boy was certainly different from his father, Anne thought, as she watched him. Where David had done things instinctively, Dougal questioned everything. For example, why had Starana broken down? Why couldn’t she be healed? Why couldn’t she have a foal? Of course, Dougal asked about a lot of things but Starana was his main concern because, as he told his grandmother one day, ‘Starana is my friend.’

  ‘Why is she your friend, Dougal?’ Anne asked him, curious.

  ‘Because she talks to me with her eyes,’ Dougal told her earnestly. ‘I can talk to her and she looks at me as if she knows what I’m saying.’

  Anne loved the three children but she had a big soft spot for Dougal because she felt he needed more understanding than his brother and sister. Dougal, she told Kate, was a square peg in a round hole.

  Moira was like a piece of quicksilver. She had her father’s dark hair, her mother’s brown eyes. As a child she wasn’t as pretty as her mother had been, though her features were handsome. Anne felt that she would blossom into a striking girl later, which was exactly what happened – Moira grew more beautiful with each year that passed.

  From when she was only a tiny girl Moira adored her father. David would carry her in front of him on his saddle with one great arm wrapped around her and the other holding the reins. Before long Moira’s little hand took the reins. David bought her a pony and led it round with Moira perched on top just as his own father had led his first pony. Moira would put on a turn if her father left without her. David had great difficulty in explaining to Moira that a day in the hills was too much for the little girl.

  When Catriona finished ‘baby-farming’, as she called it, and began accompanying David again, Moira saw no reason why she should remain at home with Lottie. Lottie was nice, and good to her, but could never compare to her father, who did all kinds of exciting things. A trip to Glen Morrison was about the zenith of Moira’s expectations at that period of her young life. Hand in hand with her father, she would walk up and down the big show shed where his red-and-white cattle were housed. Often there would be a small red-and-white calf sucking away at its very large mother. Lottie could offer nothing as wonderful as this.

  Moira, Anne noted, possessed some of David’s innate stockmanship. She did things instinctively. You didn’t have to tell Moira not to push sheep too hard through a gate, but to let them draw through steadily – it was something she had picked up from watching her father in the yards. David used to carry her there and sit her on a big strainer post while he worked sheep through the yards. So, without really knowing why her father did things in a certain way, Moira followed suit.

  At the age of ten, Moira could muster sheep down off Wallaby Rocks to the Poitrel shed. David wouldn’t allow her to muster Yellow Rock without him and she would not have been able to bring stragglers down as he had done, but she was, he told his mother, ‘a pretty damned good kid’. In actual fact, David was thrilled to bits about Moira. The only reservation he had about his daughter was that one day he would lose her, for that was the fate of daughters. Moira’s passion for the land made up for Dougal’s lack of interest, in David’s eyes. And while Catriona fretted to Anne that Moira was too much of a tomboy, she reasoned that boarding school would straighten her daughter out.

  Of the three children, Angus was the closest in nature to David and the most reckless of the trio. Angus could do everything his sister could do and then some. He broke his arm falling off a horse at eight and experienced concussion at ten. This frightened the life out of David and he read the riot act to Angus. There was nothing the fearless boy would not attempt and of the three children he was by far the most gifted with sheepdogs. As a teenager he could run rings around Angus Campbell, who had been working sheepdogs all his life. Angus still hadn’t managed to win an Open Trial though he had come close a couple of times. ‘Grandpa doesn’t think fast enough,’ Angus confided to his father. David recognised that this was a telling statement. He had known for years that Angus Campbell wasn’t a natural stockman but it was remarkable of his young son to recognise this failing.

  The youngest MacLeod was known to everyone as Young Angus. Once, Angus Campbell had been called Young Angus and his father Old Angus, and the old man was delighted to have a grandson to carry his name. The boy was born to love the land – which he did with all his heart and soul. Horses, cattle, sheep, sheepdogs, it didn’t matter: Young Angus thrived on them all.

  Young Angus differed from his father in one respect – he was a very nice-looking boy and he liked girls, and girls liked him. Dougal didn’t pay girls much attention and in this respect alone he was like his father had been at the same age. However, Young Angus had a steady stream of girlfriends and discarded them with the same speed with which he picked them up. It was all a great joke to Young Angus. David attempted a couple of very serious discussions with his son but they didn’t do a lot of good. That was until, returning one night from a B & S ball, Angus just about wrote off a utility and put himself in hospital. Young Angus knew he had pushed his father’s patience too far, and was grounded for six months. No balls, no shows, no nothing except work. ‘I’ll cure him or kill him,’ David told Catriona. Of course, he didn’t mean it literally. He had plenty of liking for his younger son but he was a mad bugger at times. David didn’t want to kill his spirit but the boy had to learn some sense. He reckoned if he could get him over this wild period, Angus would be the goods. After the boy finished boarding school, with much foreboding, David sent him off to the pastoral college at Longreach. He hoped the teachers there would be able to handle him. He also hoped Angus wouldn’t get into too many fights over girls.

  But of course all of this was years down the track. Yet even now Anne could see vast differences in her son’s three children, and it was exciting to ponder what paths they would take. She hoped she would live long enough to see it. In the meantime, she entirely approved of these ‘bonding’ excursions, as Catriona described them, and enjoyed herself thoroughly around the camp fire. ‘Oh, Andy, I wish you were here to see the children’, she sighed to herself. But perhaps he did see them from up above High Peaks.

  After they had eaten, they all sang until the children fell asleep under the stars and were put into their swags. When they awoke the next morning their father had the billy boiling on the fire and they had a hot breakfast of sizzling bacon and eggs. Then they pul
led camp and rode home.

  The children loved these camping trips. Anne, David and Catriona all felt that there was no place like the bush to rear children. Reality would come all too soon but it was important that children had a happy upbringing and that they experienced simple pleasures before they had to tackle the harder lessons of life. So camping trips figured strongly in the childhoods of the MacLeod children.

  When the children were older, they rode to Wallaby Rocks and camped in the big cave where Nap had taken the sheep to shelter during the great bushfire. There, Catriona confided to Moira, David had at last asked her to marry him.

  ‘In the big cave?’ Moira breathed.

  ‘Yes, it was there that he told me he had been left Aberfeldy and that we could get married and I knew that we would. I would have married David even though I knew Daddy and Mummy didn’t approve,’ Catriona reflected wistfully.

  ‘But don’t they think Dad is rather wonderful?’ Moira asked.

  ‘They do now, but they didn’t know about Aberfeldy or Glen Morrison at that time and they had other plans of grandeur for me.’

  ‘But how could any other man get within a bull’s roar of Dad?’ Moira asked.

  ‘Moira, please. Some of your expressions are distinctly earthy. But, to answer your question, of course no other man could come close to your father. He was the only man I ever loved and wanted and as it has turned out, I was right to want him so much. I’ll let you in on a little secret, Moira. I wasn’t the only woman to have eyes for your father. Susan wanted him, too.’

  ‘You mean Susan Hunter?’ Moira asked, shocked.

  ‘That’s precisely who I mean. Susan was always my best friend, and she carried a torch for David for years. When she couldn’t have him, she married Michael on the rebound. That’s girl talk just between you and me, Moira.’

  ‘Whew,’ Moira breathed. It was quite exciting to be let in on old secrets. It made a girl feel very grown-up.

  ‘Sometimes a girl marries a man she doesn’t love because it is a way out of difficulties. She decides that although she doesn’t love the man in question, she can live with him. My view is that you have to decide whether you can live without a certain man. I didn’t want to live my life without David. It was as simple as that. I would have done just about anything to be with him forever,’ Catriona said.

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘Just about anything,’ Catriona reiterated.

  ‘Holy moley,’ Moira exclaimed, in a long drawn-out breath. This disclosure had elevated her mother to a higher level of esteem. Moira knew that her mother was a super horsewoman with a seat and hands second to none but to now know that she would have gone to almost any length to win her father was something else again.

  ‘Well, of course, Dad is rather special, isn’t he?’ Moira said at last.

  ‘He was always rather special, Moira. He fought for me twice and he helped to save me when I went over the ledge on Yellow Rock,’ Catriona said. ‘Both Wilf White and Tim Sparkes realised that your father was rather special, Moira. That’s why Wilf gave him Ajana and why Tim left him Aberfeldy. And he hasn’t let them down. Of course, David sets high standards for everyone, including his children, and he is disappointed when people let him down.’

  ‘I hope I shall never let Dad down,’ Moira said earnestly.

  ‘I’m sure you never will intentionally, sweetheart. Daddy thinks you’re rather special. Dougal isn’t what he hoped for, though he is terribly clever. Angus is extremely talented with animals but rather wild, and Daddy is worried how he will end up. You’re his surprise packet. But he is determined not to hope for too much from you.’

  ‘Why is that, Mum?’ Moira asked.

  ‘Because one day a fine young man will sweep you off your feet and take you away from High Peaks. That’s what happens to daughters. A man needs sons to run the kind of operation David has put together. If Angus had been a girl, I promised Daddy I would try for another boy. I didn’t want to have another baby but when you love a man and you know he wants something, you try and give it to him. That’s what women do, Moira. If you don’t feel that deeply about a man, you shouldn’t marry him,’ Catriona said firmly.

  ‘Gosh,’ Moira said. So many confidences at one time. She really felt she was growing up. She also knew that she would never let her father down.

  ‘You see, dear, it’s fairly clear that Dougal isn’t interested in being on the land and he was Daddy’s big hope. He looks so like Grandfather Andrew but is nothing like him in character or disposition. You’re next, and because you’re a girl, you may well be gone in a few years. As for Angus, well the jury is still out on him. If he doesn’t kill himself off a horse, he could be all right. Daddy needs Angus because Shaun can’t go on forever. He really misses Kate but her arthritis has become so bad she can’t carry on much longer. High Peaks Pastoral Company is a pretty big operation, Moira. It was built up on the expectation that one day there would be sons to carry it on. Otherwise why work so hard? Daddy could sell up everything, invest the money and not do a hand’s turn of work. Of course, it’s not in his nature to do that but you see what I mean, Moira?’

  ‘But what if I don’t marry, Mum? What if I stay here and help Dad run the properties?’

  ‘There’s hardly an unmarried girl in the district, Moira, and suitors will soon come calling on you. Few women who choose to live on the land remain single. And you are likely to fall in love one day – it’s the nature of things. Daddy knows this is the way it will be. Of course, you will always come back to us but you will have your own family one day.’

  This was all heavy stuff and left a deep impression on Moira. And if David felt any apprehension about losing his daughter he didn’t exhibit it in his actions. Dougal was a dead loss as far as working on the land went, but David pitched Moira and Angus into every junior judging competition in sight – sheep and cattle. Both children were taught how to parade cattle and how to show sheep. There was a judging ring adjacent to the show shed at Glen Morrison and David, Angus Campbell and Shaun Covers drilled Moira and Angus in judging techniques. They had to explain why they put certain cattle up and certain cattle down. When they went on and won junior judging competitions, David was over the moon.

  David’s frustration with his elder son gradually grew to disappointment. This would have been more acute had it not been for the fact that the two younger children were so extroverted and so obviously mad on animals and the bush generally. As Dougal grew away from his father, Moira and Angus grew closer to him. Moira, in particular, idolised her father and Angus would run to do his bidding.

  ‘They’re the kind of kids Dad would have loved,’ David said to his mother on one of the many occasions he called in to see her. This was virtually daily, and sometimes even twice a day.

  Anne looked at her son and smiled. What a man he had turned out to be. While Andrew had set his heart on having a big family, what he got was one outstanding son of whom he had been very proud. Of course, David had his faults; chiefly, that he expected his children to be cast in his own and Andy’s mould.

  ‘You are too hard and unreasonable where Dougal is concerned, David,’ she said. ‘It comes from having preconceived ideas and expectations about your children. All children are different. They’re individuals, so you can’t treat them all the same and you can’t expect the same of them. You should understand this from all the dogs and horses you’ve trained. Have there ever been two the same? Dougal has qualities and talents Moira and Angus don’t have and they have leanings and qualities Dougal doesn’t possess. I suspect that one day Dougal will do something quite remarkable and you will be very proud of him. If you keep criticising him, he will grow further away from you.’

  ‘A lot of my hopes were based on Dougal, Mum. I say were because it is becoming increasingly more obvious that he isn’t interested in stock work. Do you know that he boxed two lots of sheep because he was watching some new bird that appeared out of nowhere? His mind just wasn’t on the job,’ David said w
ith feeling.

  ‘Poor Dougal. And of course you would never have boxed two lots of sheep?’

  ‘You’re damned right I wouldn’t have! Dad would have given me a thick ear quick smart if I had done that,’ David said indignantly.

  ‘Have you seen any of Dougal’s schoolwork, David?’ Anne asked.

  ‘Can’t say I have, Mum. Been too busy lately. Cat tells me it’s pretty good.’

  ‘Not just good, David. It’s just about perfect. I saw Jill Barwick at the school fete a few weeks ago and she told me that Dougal is the cleverest child she has ever taught. I should think that ought to make up for some boxed sheep,’ Anne said with a wry smile.

  ‘What is Dougal’s cleverness going to do for us here at High Peaks, Mum?’ David asked, exasperated. ‘We’ve got five properties to look after and there are more things I want to do. You need sons on the land today. I’ve got the places and the money to give them a good honest living. There are plenty of challenges for a young fellow. It’s no good pinning my hopes on Moira because she’s such a pretty girl that some fellow is likely to snap her up and before I know it she’ll be gone. That leaves Angus. While he’s terrific with dogs and horses he’s a bit mad-headed. I wanted more children but Cat said three was enough to look after. She would have had another for me if Angus had been a girl. But one son to look after all I’ve got is a big ask,’ David said.

  ‘Andy wanted more children, too, but when I couldn’t have any more after you were born he never once complained because there was only you. Andy was simply grateful you were the kind of boy you were,’ Anne chided.

  ‘Dad didn’t have five properties to look after. At that stage he only had High Peaks and when we bought Poitrel and he went away, Kate and I did the work,’ David reminded her.

  ‘I doubt he would have complained, anyway. It seems to me that you should be grateful for what you’ve got and make the best of it. You’ve got three wonderful children and a lovely wife plus the five properties, and that’s a lot more than most people have,’ Anne said.