by Sasha Wasley
‘Eight hours’ ride home tomorrow, I reckon,’ said Vern, pushing back his hat to show a line of sweat and dust much like the one Willow must have.
‘Easy,’ Willow said flatly, and earned a general chuckle.
As the sun sunk lower and the day cooled off, the helicopter came to land a couple of hundred metres away. Willow felt her body tense as Tom and Hegney approached. If only she could discreetly retire early for the night, it’d save her another painful meeting with Tom. But in no time they’d arrived and greeted the group and were holding enamel mugs of hot billy tea. Anyway, she couldn’t just avoid them; she had to at least make a show of socialising with the muster crew on the last night. It was tradition. Willow sipped from her water bottle, watching in silence as Nico and Paul argued over the best method of constructing a campfire. She straightened her back, stretching the aching muscles. Soldier on.
She could do this.
Tom sat on a rock in front of Willow while Hegney drew a mud map in the dirt and talked about how much water remained in their best waterholes. She tried to focus on Hegney’s words, aware of Tom’s eyes occasionally landing on her.
A couple of Vern’s boys were preparing the evening meal in the softening light: more billies of stew, along with coleslaw, potato salad and boiled eggs – a contribution from Tom.
‘The mayo Sam used in the salads is egg-free,’ he told her gruffly.
‘Oh!’ Willow was silenced for a few moments. ‘That’s really kind of you. I eat eggs nowadays – if they’re from the right farms, anyway.’
‘You’re not vegan any more?’
‘I’m vegetarian but not vegan. It’s easier to find eggs and milk from humane facilities these days.’
‘I see.’ He gazed at the sunset thoughtfully. ‘And cheese?’
She was too surprised to answer and checked his face. Was he referring to her cardboard soy cheese and his pizza prank? And was that the start of a small smile? Maybe she’d got his implacable resentment wrong. But then he turned away and went to refill his cup.
There was a ruckus in the distance, over by the horses. The holler went up, ‘King brown!’ and Willow jumped to her feet. Vern had a shotgun but she hoped he wasn’t going to use it – that was a sure way to scare the cattle that were now lowing contentedly by the water’s edge. But Vern was too experienced for that. He grabbed a long stick and jogged over to the horses to give the teenaged stockman who’d raised the alarm a hand. He was holding a couple of skittish horses, who clearly hadn’t enjoyed their encounter with the six-foot king brown snake. Vern ushered the snake away, tapping at the ground behind it with the stick to encourage it to leave.
Just when it seemed like a crisis had been averted, one of the horses, still nervous, reared up and landed too close to the other – with the young bloke in-between. He gave a strangled noise and staggered out from between the two solid mounts a moment later. The immediate response from the stockmen once they saw he was still upright was to laugh uproariously. However, Willow could see his face was pinched with pain.
Vern noticed as well. ‘Y’aw right, Si?’ he called.
‘Me shoulder. It bloody hurts,’ said the teen, sucking air through his teeth.
Willow met Si, who could not have been more than eighteen, in the centre of camp. ‘Where does it hurt?’
He touched a spot near his shoulder and drew another sharp breath. She pulled his T-shirt collar down and saw a bulge under the skin. Broken collarbone?
‘Okay, try not to move it. Come and sit down.’
Between them, Vern and Willow managed to get Si’s arm into a sling and Tom said he’d take him to Mount Clair in the helicopter. The other boys stood around giving Si hell for the accident, which was a good thing because it made him laugh sheepishly and relieved his shock.
‘I’ll help you walk to the heli, all right?’ Willow said in a low voice. ‘We can’t bring it any closer.’
‘Yeah, I know it’ll spook the mob. I’ll be okay to walk,’ he said, although he looked a little doubtful.
By now Vern had moved away from the group and was muttering with Hegney and Tom. ‘Change of plan, boss,’ he said as he headed back towards Willow. ‘Hegney’s gonna take Si to the doc.’
‘Why?’
‘The chopper only seats two. Hegney can’t stay with us because he won’t be able to ride Si’s horse back to the homestead. You know, because of his bad back. Mr Forrest can ride, so Hegney’ll fly young Si into town.’
‘Of course, his bad back.’ She concealed her alarm at the prospect of a night spent with Tom.
Hegney was already striding towards the helicopter so Willow took Si’s good arm and followed.
‘Sorry to embarrass you by holding onto you,’ she said. ‘It’s just, you’re in shock and I don’t want you keeling over.’
Si laughed, and muttered it was ‘awright’. She helped him into the helicopter and arranged the seatbelt so it wouldn’t aggravate his injury, while Tom ran through a couple of questions about the controls with Hegney. Then she and Tom stood back with Vern to watch them take off. They had to turn their backs to protect their eyes from the flying dust. The helicopter quickly became a distant speck and they made their way back to camp.
‘My sister’s gonna kill me,’ said Vern, pulling off his hat to rub a hand through his hair. ‘She said Si wasn’t ready for muster yet.’
Willow tilted her head. ‘Si’s your —’
‘Nephew.’
‘If this was Si’s first muster, he was doing really well. That was a freak accident. It could have happened to any of us.’
‘Yeah, but Violet won’t see it that way,’ Vern said. ‘Bugger of a thing to happen at the start of season. He’ll miss out on the first few musters.’
‘Well, it was a workplace accident,’ Willow said firmly. ‘So he’ll still get paid until he comes back to work, and any out-of-pocket medical bills will be covered too, of course.’
‘Shit. Thanks, boss.’ Vern sounded surprised and she wondered why. Patersons always look after its staff, and anyway, it was illegal not to cover employees for workplace accidents.
‘You’ve got good growth of junicora in this part of the property,’ Tom said, pulling her out of her private thoughts. ‘You could consider fencing for cultivation here.’
‘I was thinking the same thing,’ she answered, pleased he was willing to talk about the topic. Maybe he would be open to meeting with her and Hegney to discuss her business plan, after all.
‘Should only take a few months,’ he said. ‘If you fenced some sections along the river line, you could move the mob from one to the next whenever one paddock gets low. Build outwards from there.’
‘Exactly! Hegney thinks it will take years to establish the pasture strategy.’
‘Yeah, he said as much to me this morning. I told him how quickly our stock took to the new plants. During the dry, we harvested some of the native weeds we wanted them to eat and ground them up to mix in with their feed. They got a taste for the new pasture plants.’
Willow slowed, looking at Tom eagerly. ‘That’s my research!I wrote a paper on that!’
‘I know,’ he replied, which surprised her so much she didn’t know what to say.
The excitement over, the stockmen finished setting up a camp mess and served the meal. Willow sat on a boulder close to Vern, and Tom settled nearby. The other stockmen were sharing a fallen tree, deep in conversation. She ate baked beans and the Quintilla kitchen’s contributions and noticed Tom ate the same. Her curiosity overcame her discomfort and she had to ask.
‘Are you a vegetarian now, Tom?’
‘No. But I like to know where my food comes from.’
She looked at the beef stew Vern was eating. ‘Fair enough.’
‘Jean’s a good cook,’ Vern remarked. ‘She keeps a clean kitchen.’
‘Absolutely,’ Willow said. ‘But Tom and I like to know how the animals were treated before we eat animal products.’
Vern was intrigued. ‘F
ree range, you mean?’
‘Yes. And not just free range but farmed kindly.’
‘That’s what free range means, doesn’t it?’
‘Depends,’ said Tom. ‘Sometimes free range isn’t exactly free. It can still mean overcrowded, treated brutally, pumped full of chemicals and crap.’
Vern nodded. ‘Yep. I’ve seen that.’
Despite her exhaustion, Willow suddenly found herself feeling warm and peaceful. Even with the painful thought of Tom’s letters at the back of her mind, it was good to have an ally in this conversation. And Vern clearly thought a lot of Tom. All the staff seemed to think a lot of him. Even Hegney respected him. Hegney might not respect her, she reflected, but he sure respected Tom.
‘Quintilla does that kind-farming business, doesn’t it?’ Vern was saying. ‘A few of my relations work at Quintilla,’ he explained to Willow. ‘They’ve told me how they do things over there.’
‘How do you do things, Tom?’ Willow asked.
For a few minutes she forgot about the awkwardness between them and listened with growing delight as he described the gentle weaning, the muster practices, the feed they gave the animals, the veterinary treatment, the station supplies.
‘Do you use Buckthorne Feeds?’ she broke in. ‘That’s the company the professor I was working with usually recommended. I was going to use them for Patersons.’
He shook his head. ‘We did for a while but then we heard about their neighbours.’
‘Neighbours?’ Willow frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘They’re right next door to a medication production facility and they share a slurry dam. They use the water to clean their equipment. It’s treated, of course, but the risk of cross-contamination is too high. After the hoops we’ve had to jump through to get organic certification, we didn’t want to jeopardise our chances like that.’
Willow’s mouth fell open. ‘Really? But Quentin —’
‘Quentin Dale? I’ve read some of his articles. He’s not bad but he doesn’t dig deep enough. I get the feeling he hasn’t actually done a lot of farming.’
‘Bloody good potato salad,’ was Vern’s contribution. ‘I might get some more before it all goes.’
Willow barely heard Vern. ‘You’re right,’ she told Tom. ‘He’s worked with some farms but in a lab environment. He’s done some good work but I always felt like – I don’t know – like he was —’
‘A sham?’
She focused on eating for a few moments. Willow wasn’t going to badmouth a colleague, no matter how close a friend the listener was. Or not, she recalled, remembering the letters with a pang. Maybe – her pulse hiked. Could she tell him? Tell him she hadn’t meant to hurt him like she had? That she’d never read those letters back when —
‘Lovin’ Meadows.’ Tom broke in on her thoughts.
She blinked.
‘That’s the name of the feed company we use. Lovin’ Meadows Industries. No G.’
She laughed. ‘Dad would call that one of them hippie suppliers.’
He couldn’t repress a smile. ‘They’re good. Slightly more expensive than Buckthorne, but totally transparent.’
Vern had joined the other stockmen, so she and Tom were left alone to talk about pasture. Time flew as they discussed her favourite topic and some of the other stockmen went to bed, leaving just a couple of the younger blokes muttering in the lamplight. She was astonished by the depth of Tom’s knowledge. He seemed to have a solid understanding of all the best work that had been done on the topic.
‘I assumed Dad had told you about the pasture strategy stuff I wrote,’ she said. ‘But you know a lot more than I ever told Dad. And, to be honest, I’m not sure how much of it he took in. Tell me the truth, did you read my paper on using the Mount Clair region’s weeds in a pasture strategy?’
‘I read all your papers.’
Willow stared. His blunt statement just about took her breath away. ‘How?’
He dropped his eyes. ‘You shared them on Sustainable Ag-Net. I’m a member. I took an interest.’
No one had read all her papers. Not even Quentin. ‘And you . . .’ She trailed off, wondering for a moment if he was pranking her, just like the old Tom would have. He didn’t appear to be amused in any way. In fact, he looked quite embarrassed, eyes fixed on the a spot on the ground in front of him. ‘And you implemented some of what I wrote about?’
‘I’ve used a lot of it.’ To her growing amazement, he rattled off a few of her recommended methods. ‘Some of it didn’t work – for us, anyway. Maybe it’s our distance from the river. But most of it did. It is still. Working, I mean.’
Willow was speechless. This had to be the most gratifying moment of her career. Better than graduating. Better than getting an article published. For Tom Forrest, a guy who was clearly making excellent progress in building a humane beef facility, to be using her work and praising it – that meant something.
‘Better get some rest,’ he said, rising. ‘We’ve got a big ride tomorrow and I’m a bit out of practice. Night, Willow.’
He left her alone, crossing to Si’s swag and making himself comfortable. Willow followed suit after finding a tree behind which she could take a pee, but it took her a long time to get to sleep. She’d never met any farmers who’d used her ideas to this extent. That he’d had success with them was wonderful, but what made her heart beat faster than usual was that he’d gone out of his way to try so many of her strategies. He’d trusted Quintilla with her methods. He really believed in her.
Even after what she did.
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to forget that bit. If only there was some way to go back and undo her cowardice; undo those moments she’d stuffed his letters to the bottom of a drawer, too scared to read them; undo the way she’d made herself look like she had a heart of ice.
They rose before sunrise again and made their way back towards Paterson Downs. Tom, riding Si’s horse, stopped to adjust the stirrups, so Willow waited for him. They rode on at a distance behind the rest of the crew.
‘I feel so low to the ground,’ he said.
‘Compared to the helicopter?’
‘Compared to King!’
‘What? You still ride King?’
‘He’s only fifteen.’
‘Oh, wow, yes of course. He’s still doing well, then?’
‘Yeah, he’s great. Topnotch. Loves muster.’
‘It’d be good to see King again.’ She sighed. ‘Poor old Tuffie’s not up to muster any more.’
‘Not at what, twenty-five? I wouldn’t have expected it,’ Tom said. ‘He was the best, though, wasn’t he?’
‘There was no horse could round up a stray bullock like Tuffie could. I swear he’s half dog.’ Willow chuckled. ‘He’s enjoying a quiet retirement these days. He’s still in pretty good nick, though. I wouldn’t be surprised if he carries on another five years.’
Conversation naturally turned to station management and Tom asked, so Willow told him all about her certification plan for Paterson Downs. He listened, nodding thoughtfully. She kept checking his face, trying to gauge his opinion. She knew he probably wouldn’t react like Hegney but she hoped she didn’t sound too ambitious, too wet behind the ears. When she finished, they rode in silence for a couple of minutes.
‘What do you think?’ she asked at last.
‘Oh, you want my opinion?’
‘Of course!’
‘Well, I think it all sounds great. I’d quite like to try some of the things you’ve mentioned myself – if you don’t mind,’ he added quickly. ‘The weaning practices. And I reckon some of those things will be much easier to put in place than you’ve anticipated. You could probably cut down the projected timelines.’
She was grinning. ‘You reckon?’
‘Yep.’ He hesitated and then blurted, ‘Maybe rethink the microchipping. I spoke to a station that tried it and they said that, with the lack of visual identification, having to individually scan each beast really slowed them dow
n. They switched back to freeze-branding.’
‘That’s good to know.’ She looked at him curiously. ‘Tom, did you get much staff resistance to the changes around the station?’
‘The culture changes, that can be tough. Our previous cook left. Said he wasn’t going to work in a friggin’ Hari Krishna café. I thought that was a bit extreme, considering I’d only asked him to stop using canola oil.’
Willow laughed with him and then they lapsed into silence, watching the back of the muster crew.
‘It’s fantastic that you like my plan,’ she said shyly. ‘Hegney wanted to meet with you about it to get your opinion. He thinks a lot of you and obviously considers me a bit of an upstart, coming back into the station now with my high-falutin’ ideas. He wants to involve my dad, but I’m trying to keep Dad from worrying about things.’
Tom nodded. ‘Barry will worry, too, especially if he thinks something might hurt the livelihood of the station. All he cares about is being a good provider for his family and his staff. He won’t like seeing the costs go up.’
‘Exactly. But it’s a business start-up phase. There’s going to be extra costs. It’s like any business expansion or transition.’
He tipped his head in agreement. ‘You take some short-term pain for long-term gain.’
God, it was good to talk to Tom about this. He just got it. ‘It’s extraordinary how much you know about sustainable, organic beef production, Tom. I mean, you’ve started the process at Quintilla, so obviously you have the practical understanding, but I’m gobsmacked by how much you’ve read. You know more than some of my academic colleagues.’ Tom reddened under her praise so she rushed on. ‘Hey, maybe we could work together on some of this stuff. We could compare notes as we go, build up a bank of best practices and share them between Quintilla and Patersons, almost a co-management situation. Really make what we’re doing industry-leading —’