On Christmas Eve, Robby, Tara and little Lilah Marie arrived from the Shiralee loaded with gifts and more Christmas food. They were followed by Annette and Stephen, Tara’s mum and stepdad, who had travelled from Kulin in the wheat belt, also loaded with gifts and even more Christmas cheer. By this time we had that much food we were stacking it on top of the refrigerators! There were huge legs of pork, smoked hams, turkey, chicken, prawns and lobsters, all with the necessary ingredients for accompanying sauces, plus the salads and vegetables.
At 3 p.m. on Christmas Eve, Leisha and Nigel, with Brock, Cohen and baby Bella-Mia, arrived with their large caravan, carrying yet more gifts and food. I had to suggest to Leisha that the food would be better left in their caravan refrigerator as I had run out of cool room, and I blamed it on her younger brother, who had packed the last refrigerator on the back veranda with enough drinks to keep the family from dehydrating – if not a little inebriated – for the next week or two.
The farmhouse came alive with the children’s laughter and play while the adults had drinks and nibbles and shared few yarns. Helium-filled balloons floated from room to room, often with a little help from young Brock and Cohen.
That night, before going to bed, Nigel and Robby went spotlighting for foxes; after scouring the back paddocks with the powerful beam of his spotlight, Nigel ended up shooting fourteen foxes and scoring their scalps. We were extremely pleased, as the foxes had given us nothing but trouble of late, spooking our feedlot cattle.
I was woken before daylight on Christmas morning by my two beautiful grandsons moving about on the foot of our king-sized bed. Unable to sleep due to their excitement, the boys had somehow escaped the caravan in the early hours and had decided to curl up on our bed.
‘Nan!’ called Brock. ‘You should see all the presents under the Christmas tree.’
‘When are you getting up, Nan?’ asked Cohen.
The boys won, as they always do with me, and I tiptoed out to the kitchen and made some tea for Michael and me and a Milo each for the boys. By the time we had drunk a cup or two of tea there was movement in the camp, and soon wrapping paper was being torn from beautiful gift after beautiful gift, while several balloons popped, showering us all with hundreds of tiny Christmas stars. The whole family was enjoying the Christmas cheer; even Lilah Marie and little Bella-Mia, I’m sure, understood that it was Christmas. In no time the lounge room was covered in discarded wrapping paper while we were simultaneously serenaded by the revving of remote-control toys and children’s nursery rhymes playing over and over.
Eventually, the adults drifted towards the table and chairs placed on the back veranda. After a hearty breakfast of bacon, steak, eggs and tomatoes, washed down with many pints of tea and coffee, our Christmas Day had begun.
As the day progressed, dear Michael would slip away quietly and mix another seven tonnes of feed for the feedlot, or start the water pumps in the spring paddock, while Rob or Nigel would offer a helping hand. Feedlotting stops for no one and nothing, not even Christmas.
On the third day, Rob and Tara had to return to the Shiralee, followed by Annette and Stephen, who would continue their Christmas break there. And by the end of the week it was time for Leisha, Nigel and the children to return home too.
It had been a wonderful, happy Christmas and I was sad to see the families return to their prospective homes. I left the Christmas tree standing for another week, but then I knew it was time to return to the real world and dismantle it, and get on with pulling my weight beside Michael on the farm again.
CHAPTER 28
Michael and the barbed-wire fence
Michael was buying cattle again for the next feedlot season. We were in need of a few extra paddocks close to the stockyard to hold fussy feeders until they adjusted to the grain mixture they were being fed; Michael had begun to plot out a new paddock by sinking two posts into the ground and straining up a single line of barbed wire between the posts as a guide to drive star pickets along for the dividing fence.
The next morning, he was riding his two-wheeled motorbike (which he hardly ever uses these days, as he spends more time on his four-wheeler) past the planned paddock when he spotted a bull that had broken out of the neighbouring bull paddock. He swung his motorbike around in the little dirt laneway and sped off in the direction of the beast.
His adrenaline pumping, Michael rode hard across the rough paddock, planning to put a bend in the beast’s direction before it escaped to the paddocks further afield. With the motorbike’s throttle on full, he gave the chase his all. He was gaining on the escaped beast when he was suddenly torn from his motorbike by the razor-sharp barbs of the high-tensile barbed wire, which he’d forgotten about in his haste to pursue the bull.
Michael didn’t notice the bull changing its stride and turning in the same direction as him – which was lucky: he said afterwards that the bull’s almighty force had to have taken a lot of the pressure from the strained-up barbed wire. And if it wasn’t for the wire getting hooked under his motorbike’s headlight – ripping it clean off, which subsequently helped slow the motorbike down – I’m sure that Michael wouldn’t be here today.
Horribly, there was still enough tension left in the barbed wire that when it was unable to take any further strain, it released itself and hooked into Michael’s throat, dragging him from his bike to the ground, where he lay among the sodden cattle dung. His riderless bike careened for another fifty metres or so in the direction of the fleeing beast, until eventually it ran out of momentum and fell over, leaving only the silver spoke wheels spinning soundlessly.
Hurt, shaken and covered in blood, Michael looked up to see the bull escaping through fence after fence. Not knowing how deep his wounds were, Michael raised his hand to his throat, trying to stem the flow of blood. He told me later that he thought, Jesus, I’ve cut my bloody throat now, and then worried about the damage to his brand-new emerald-green work shirt!
Being a little bull-headed himself at times, he rose from the ground and staggered to retrieve his motorbike. I was working in the kitchen when Michael walked in through the door and stood looking at me, silently. He was covered in mud and fresh cattle dung, while blood was pouring from his throat wounds and the many others he had been given by the barbed wire. Gone was that fighting spirit he’d showed when first chasing his ‘cheeky bull’.
‘My God, Michael!’ I screamed in fright as I raced to grab towels to stem the flow of blood. ‘What happened?’
When the bleeding slowed I was able to get a look at the damage done to my husband’s throat, chest and back, and I again asked him what had happened. He slowly told me the story; although I was frustrated and wanted to lecture him, more than anything I was immensely relieved that I still had him alive. The accident could very easily have broken his neck.
My dear bull-headed husband refused to let me drive him to Kojonup Hospital for treatment, so I grabbed the first-aid box from the cupboard and laid out the antiseptic, large plasters, bandages and thread to pull Michael’s wounds together. He had so much faith in me, saying, ‘You can do it – come on, I know you can.’
‘I’m not a bloody doctor,’ I replied, and again begged him to give in and go to hospital, to no avail.
Then, more serious now, he said, ‘Come on, there’s just the two of us here – you’ve got to do it. Stitch me up.’
As I had no other option, I drew on my experience from when I lived on Oobagooma cattle station and had to stitch up the stomach of my bull terrier dog that had been ripped wide open by a feral pig. After cleaning Michael’s wounds thoroughly, I pulled them together with gritted teeth, stitched them and bandaged him up.
I looked after Michael’s wounds the best I could, as I worried about infection setting in, but fortunately this didn’t eventuate. And some weeks later I couldn’t help but feel quite proud of myself, noticing that he had healed rather well.
*
The week following Michael’s accident we had another surprise visit from his old
mate Harry from Tumbling Downs farm. Harry had also been in the wars; his leg was in a grubby plaster cast and he had only recently been released from a Perth hospital. Over a mug of good strong tea, Michael questioned him about his injuries.
Harry explained that given the good rain of late he had decided to make an early start on getting a hay crop in the ground. To move things along on the farm, he hired Thompson, an English farmhand, to drive one tractor and plough a paddock while Harry did the other. As the paddocks were side by side, Harry reckoned he’d be able to keep a bit of an eye on Thompson, who had never ploughed a paddock before. At that point in the story I looked up and caught Michael rolling his eyes, but everyone has to start somewhere, I thought.
Harry told us that at first Thompson looked to be furrowing the paddock just fine, but after a couple more rounds he noticed that Thompson was either getting tired or lazy, or maybe he was ‘plough blind’ already, as he had begun to leave great gaps of unploughed land between each run.
Harry parked up his tractor and walked across the paddock to wait for his new hired hand to come ploughing around again. Thompson pulled up next to Harry and threw open the cab door so he could hear what Harry had to say over the rumbling of the tractor’s engine. Unfortunately for Harry, as he did so Thompson’s foot slipped off the clutch and the tractor suddenly surged forward, knocking Harry to the ground.
The tractor’s large rear wheel had Harry pinned to the ground by the shoulder. Seeing this, Thompson panicked and threw the tractor into reverse gear; it shot backwards and ran over Harry with the front wheel, very nearly finishing him off. It took three months in hospital in the city until he was mended enough to return to his home on Tumbling Downs. On this visit to us, Harry was talking about having a ‘share farmer’ take over the cropping part of the farm until he was well enough to farm himself again.
Not six months later Harry was in the wars again. On this occasion he was fencing on Tumbling Downs with a mechanical post driver when he omitted to secure the fence post into the machine correctly. On impact the fence post shot out of the machine, striking him in the mouth and dislodging several teeth. Some time later, when Harry was describing to us what had happened to him, he said, ‘I didn’t look very pretty to start with, but this f—ing thing didn’t help much.’
It’s a wonder the man is still alive, but I also understand that many farmers are overworked, and sheer tiredness plays a huge part in the many farm accidents.
CHAPTER 29
More good news
The summer of 2011–12 turned out to be a stiflingly hot and humid one, and I was extremely pleased to see it go, as the countryside had become brown, while the winds were blowing the dust and making these last few days of summer feel like bloody hell.
In January I helped Michael muster a mob of cattle down to the stockyards in a forty-degree dry heat. When the job was done I returned to the homestead in a miserable mood, covered in irritating black dust from head to toe.
I was about to have a shower when the kitchen phone rang. On the end of the line was Robby. He asked how we were, and I filled him in on the goings-on on Forrest Downs. When I asked after Tara and Lilah Marie, Robby told me the good news – news that I had been waiting to hear for the last eight years: he and Tara had finally decided to tie the knot. I told him it was a good thing that I had never held my breath waiting, otherwise I would have been dead!
I am truly happy for them both, and believe they are a perfect match for each other. Tara is busy making plans for a late winter/early spring wedding among the majestic karri forests of Denmark in Western Australia. What a beautiful beginning to married life, in a country village with crisp, clean air and a tall forest filled with birdsong.
Tara’s mother, Annette, and I can’t wait for the big day. And to top off the excitement, our young couple are working frantically towards adding another child to their little family before Lilah Marie gets too much older. As a mother, I couldn’t wish for anything more than our families to be happy, content and together.
*
Michael and I have now been married for two years. In that time we have found that our love and respect for each other have only grown stronger – and we believe it is through listening to each other, and accepting and understanding each other’s past lives and experiences. Michael has put all the trauma from his past behind him, as I have done, and now we can move steadily forward with the support of our families and friends, while we love and enjoy each other and live our lives our way.
Yes, my lovable larrikin – we’ll not let the pressures beat us, or the hard yakka of the feedlot get us down, as we must remember that ‘the wise learn from a tragedy, and the foolish merely repeat it’.
Acknowledgements
Big hugs and thanks to Alex Craig and Samantha Sainsbury of Pan Macmillan – your faith and belief that I had a trilogy in me was correct. Thank you.
Also thanks to my editor, Sophie Hamley – you were a pleasure to work with. You made the process so easy.
Thank you, Tara, for helping type the manuscript and editing the photos for the book.
Special love to my father, Snowy, for telling of your stories – one in particular took courage.
I appreciate all the help and guidance I have been given throughout this book-writing process. Thank you and I love you all. Sheryl xx
Special hugs to Michael D for your strength and encouragement; to Leisha, Nigel, Brock, Cohen and darling little Mia Kelly; to Robby, Tara and beautiful Lilah Marie. Love to my parents, and our families everywhere.
My Great-Grandmother Dina was born in 1879 on Balladonia Station on the Nullarbor Plain. Mum has always told me that I’m very much like Dina was, both in looks and personality.
My mum and dad on their wedding day. They’ve been married 65 years.
My dad Snowy and me. Snowy got his name at a young age because of his shock of white-blond hair.
My brother Bruce, nineteen months, and me, three years at Rapid Creek, NT.
My dad protecting people on a filming expedition in Arnhem Land, NT.
From left: Daryl, Bruce, Dina, myself. In front, Michael and Eric.
Oobagooma Station in the ’60s. It was bloody rough but I loved it!
The family crew on Kimberley Downs.
Our dogs Jess and Bling. When Michael was knocked out from a fall off the mix-all, the dogs helped him regain consciousness by barking loudly and jumping on him.
Leisha loading the hay truck. Leisha is always willing to help on the farm. It makes me proud to work the land with my children.
You’re probably wondering, ‘Why don’t you get a hired hand on the farm?’ It’s because Michael and I are both bull-headed, and we still think we are in our forties, not our early sixties!
The Hay Crop. Work never stops on Forrest Downs. The days are long and hard but almost nothing makes me happier than working the land. It’s what I was born for.
I met my husband, Michael, while buying cows from his Forrest Downs property, which is about 260 kms, south-east of Perth. Yes, I thought at the time, if Michael was in the saleyard I would select him for myself.
My favourite red Mack truck (vintage 1968), with its two impressive gearsticks and a tonne of guts. I love it!
Our feedlot cattle: quiet, happy and content.
Work on the farm goes in cycles; we buy cattle in, we send cattle out – hopefully putting a relieved smile on the dial of our bank manager! Having debt is a challenge, which in turn gives us something to work and live for. And I like a challenge.
At moments like these I always hope that Robby’s dad and his older brother are gazing down on him from above. Seeing that Robby still has an interest in the land and in cattle would surely make them happy.
My girl Leisha. When tragedy struck her young family in 2009, Leisha found respite in the tranquil surroundings of the land. Working and resting helped heal her heart and soul.
A storm near Forrest Downs floods part of the property. There’s always something happe
ning out here.
Even today, I love the outback and I love being outside. Don’t get me wrong: I like a nice clean house too and I like material things, but I can always see beauty in the land.
I am truly happy for Tara and Robby. They are a perfect match for each other.
Two little angels in the bush. What could be more adorable?
As the last of the afternoon sunshine softly faded over the wedding ceremony, Leisha and Nigel exchanged wedding rings, kissed passionately and were declared husband and wife, which was celebrated with a roar of approval from family and friends.
Our celebrant kept our marriage ritual short and sweet, leaving out all the ‘bulldust’, which was just the way we wanted it.
I am so proud of Robby, Tara and their beautiful Lilah-Marie. As a mother, I couldn’t wish for anything more than our families to be happy, content and together.
My gorgeous grandsons Brock and Cohen flex their muscles for the camera.
Since Lilah Marie was born, Robby has turned into a complete homebody. He is incredibly protective of his little girl, so I can’t imagine him letting her do the things that I allowed him and Leisha to get up to!
Brock, Cohen and me holding darling little Bella-Mia. Born smiling, Bella-Mia is the beautiful little girl Leisha never thought she’d have.
Michael and I love working together and always find time for a laugh and a cuddle during the day.
Love on Forrest Downs Page 24