Franz was completely calm and helpful throughout the entire drama. Marlee said it was just as well I was not there because the room was awash with blood. I just know I would have passed out in the middle of it all.
I called at midnight as soon as I touched down, not knowing Marlee was in the midst of this emergency. The doctor was stabilising Marlee’s haemorrhaging then rushing to operate on the woman in the next room. Franz was assisting the male nurse with Marlee then the paediatrician with the baby. It must have been quite a scene, yet when Franz answered my phone call his voice was as calm as could be. He just said the baby had been born and that they were a bit busy and he would call me when I reached the hotel.
Franz called me at my hotel to tell me I had a healthy little grandson. But he was not so little—Ben was quite a long baby. When I asked about Marlee he said she was well. That was stretching the truth a bit, but Marlee told him not to say anything to worry me. When I asked Franz if he was OK, his only complaint was he had blisters on his fingertips from massaging Marlee’s back and shoulders for a day and a half!
When I arrived back at the hospital two days later, Marlee looked very tired and was in quite a bit of pain from the cracked bone. Her bruised bladder was still not working properly and her blood pressure was still fairly high. The joys of motherhood!
When I looked at my grandson, it was like looking at a clone of Franz. It was amazing to me that a baby could look so completely like one parent. But when I studied him closely, as all grandmothers do, I could see Marlee’s features were also there in his dear little face.
It was a few more days before Marlee started to improve. Her blood pressure started to go down, other parts of her body started working normally and she brightened considerably. Once I was there Franz headed back to the station, where Alan, bless his heart, was holding the fort. He was not only directing the cook and housekeeper, but also the men building in the yard.
When Franz arrived home the cook and domestic gave notice. Those two had only lasted a few days and it probably would not have been that long if the plane had been on Bullo and not in Darwin. Franz and Alan handled this new turn of events with Alan back to chief cook and bottle washer. So Marlee and I didn’t know the homestead was without cook and housekeeper and at the mercy of a group of men and we went on enjoying our time in Darwin and our new baby boy.
Flowers and phone calls came from everywhere including Austria. Marlee’s room soon resembled a florist so we moved some of the flowers into other parts of the ward.
Franz’s family called the hospital when Franz was back at the station. Marlee and I did a lot of ‘ja’ing’ and when we finished the call we had no idea if they knew if the baby was a boy, let alone any other details. We called Franz and told him to call home, so they were not confused for long.
By the end of the week Marlee was well and truly on the mend and we were ready to take Ben into the outside world. Marlee had been so much calmer than me all the way through this exciting event. About the only time I really was helpful was when I did most of the emergency shopping required, like nappies and sleeping shirts, along with the everyday things that would be needed the first week out of hospital. Ben’s wardrobe was taking shape slowly, in fits and starts.
Franz arrived back from the station and told us of the latest departure of the houehold staff … over a week ago! And amused us with stories of the all-male crew looking after themselves, everyone taking turns at cooking mainly to get a change from Alan’s daily meal of hamburgers and self-saucing chocolate pudding. But at the end of each day they were more than happy to sit down to the same meal. It was always nicely cooked and they were usually tired and appreciated the meal ready and waiting.
But Marlee and I were well aware of what a house full of men could do to the homestead and although we wanted to get home, we knew it was not going to be all shiny and clean! So there was some rushing around Darwin trying to find replacement staff.
The plan was to stay in Darwin one night and fly down to the station next morning early so we would have a smooth flight home. On the way to the apartment from the hospital we stopped at a baby shop to buy a bassinet for Ben’s first night out of hospital.
I smiled as I watched Marlee buy the bassinet, remembering back to before Danielle’s Natalie was born. Everything a baby would need for the first year was waiting and assembled in the nursery a few days after Danielle knew she was pregnant. I called Danielle when she was only four months pregnant and said I would like to buy something for the new baby and what didn’t she have? Well, after a good half an hour conversation it was clear there wasn’t a thing the baby would need. So I moved onto the next year and bought a gift for a one-year-old, but didn’t ask, because I was sure she already had that year organised too.
Here we were ten days along and just buying Ben’s bed. But on his first night out of hospital Ben had clothes and a bed and was surrounded by love. With these essentials, a newborn needs nothing more.
We went home the next morning after Ben and Marlee went for one more check-up with their doctors. Friends in Darwin, Geoff and Kylie, came out to the plane to see us off and took a photo of Ben about to embark on his first plane ride at the age often days. He was a perfect traveller and slept all the way home.
Alan gave us a great welcome. I think he was very glad to see us after holding the fort. I took over the cooking for a few days, which pleased him and he took off down to the workshop with Franz, before I changed my mind. Marlee settled into being a mother and Ben just settled.
We hadn’t found any household help in Darwin. But the next day Franz flew into Kununurra for a food order and he found another cook. I came back to Kununurra two days later after a speaking engagement and Franz flew me out to the station with yet another set of cook and domestic!
I was home for the next fourteen days and Marlee took the opportunity to start grading the road. She took Ben with her in the grader in the early hours of the morning when it was cool. I just know, without the slightest doubt, that we have the only grader in the world with a baby capsule and a drop-down, plate-steel change table! Franz laughed at Marlee when she requested these modifications, but when she told him there was nowhere to change Ben and she had to grade the road, he made the alterations.
When Ben wasn’t acting as assistant grader driver, I had him for the rest of the day. But these peaceful two weeks of sharing my afternoons with Ben passed too quickly and I was soon off on a three-conference trip. Ben’s first nanny was waiting at the airport when I was dropped off and went back to the station with Franz. So Marlee finished grading the road with the nanny and Ben following along behind the grader in the Toyota, ready at hand when he was hungry.
When Franz flew to Darwin a week later to bring me home, Marlee, Ben and the nanny were still grading and had reached the front-gate end of the road, fifty miles away from the homestead. As we approached the valley just on sunset we saw that the whole Pinkerton Mountain range, for at least twenty miles from the Victoria River, was on fire and burning wildly. The most disturbing aspect for us was from our height of a few thousand feet we could see the wind was blowing the fire into the Bullo valley.
Marlee didn’t know of the fire, as she’d been out near the highway end of the road, all day. But she soon realised there was a fire close to home. First she smelt smoke and after turning a bend in the road saw that the mountain range as far as she could see was alight.
The wind didn’t change overnight, although it did drop a little, and it took up again the next morning with a vengeance. Dawn revealed we were in trouble. The fire was moving down the mountain and showed no chance of abating.
The fire that was about to engulf the valley had been lit by the Bush Fire Council on behalf of Auvernge Station. It was part of the controlled fire burning campaign that is carried out each year. We had decided not to burn, as it was just too dry for our liking. But as I looked out across the mountain range that separated the two properties, it seemed whether we wanted to or not, we w
ere burning. And it looked like quite a lot more of the valley and grassland than we would ever contemplate burning, was about to burn.
Marlee called the manager of Auvernge Station to inform him his burning program was now out of control and heading into our valley and we were in danger of losing all our grass. He came over with some men and the station grader to help us bring the fire under control.
Marlee drove out the road to get our grader which was still sitting at the front gate with about a day’s work left to be done. But there was no time for that now. She met the Auvernge firefighting team halfway out the road, they continued in the road and started to help Franz who was bulldozing a break to stop the wide front which was now burning near our twenty-two-mile campsite.
When Marlee arrived at our grader she found the fire had swept through the area and burnt around the grader in a complete circle. If she hadn’t graded her usual fire circle around it the night before we would have lost the grader.
Marlee arrived at the scene of the firebreak where they had finished the break only to watch the fire jump it effortlessly and roar off down the valley. It was advancing at such a pace everyone had to drop back sixteen miles to clear another firebreak at the six-mile yard site, which is only six miles from the homestead. This time they had the Bullo River and Dingo Creek as backstops on two sides of the break. But if the fire jumped this break, we really would be in trouble. There was nothing in the lower valley to stop it from burning all our best paddocks and all the feed for the rest of the year. So there was no thought of failure. This fire had to be stopped at six-mile because in the middle of all the feed for the rest of the year also sat our homestead. Not to mention all the equipment sheds, staff quarters, our generator shed and all the water-pumping equipment.
So the race was on and even after retreating all those miles, with two graders, the bulldozer and every person on the station working, we barely had the break finished and the back-burning alight before the fire came roaring down the valley to join the back-burning fire.
Everyone watched with relief as the intensity of the fire faded when it crashed into the wall of back-burning. There was an impressive whooshing noise as fire collided with fire. The fire faded as it ran out of fuel, appearing as if an invisible hand had turned down a giant gas jet. Where minutes earlier a great wall of flames had rushed forward devouring everything in its path, there was now a quiet, receding fire. It was still intensive in heat but with no forceful forward power. The fire ran into burnt fuel and quickly dissolved into small sputtering flames, struggling to survive. It appeared the battle had been won. The small fires still burning could be worked on now the fire was not growing bigger by the second.
There was still work ahead, but the break would protect the lower sixteen miles of the valley, our breeding paddocks and the homestead area. Weary people fell into bed, thankful for a night’s rest.
During the night winds fanned burning trees and the fire established itself on the other side of the firebreak and was once more heading down the valley for the paddocks and the house. A predawn start had the bulldozer, two graders and every able body working. It took until evening before it looked like we had once more stopped it in its tracks.
Franz went out late at night and drove along the break to make sure the fire was contained only to find the wind had carried this dreaded menace into new unburnt country.
Everyone headed out very early, before light, and started fighting again. It was very rough going this time, out the back of Bullion Paddock along the foot of the mountain range. As this is sandstone country, it was difficult grading any kind of break and fighting the fire on foot was demanding. People and machines had to fight for every inch of ground as the fire wove intricate patterns between trees and sandstone boulders. Treetops and clumps of grass ignited into flames without warning and most of the firefighting was done by hand with wet bags beating the grass in amongst the sandstone boulders. The machines graded breaks and back-burned and kept the fire from branching off into other valleys and spreading back into the main valley on a wide front. It was a hot, exhausting and dangerous day. The next day was more of the same—fighting and containing the fire all day.
The fifth day dawned and Franz went up in the plane to fly over the area. He came back and said the fire was finally out. So our men spent the next few days cleaning up the mess around the paddocks close to the homestead.
Marlee was away so much during these days that when she finally did come home to stay after the fire was beaten, Ben didn’t know her at first and wouldn’t leave my arms. During the days of around-the-clock firefighting Marlee would race into the house, express milk into bottles and rush out again. Sometimes she couldn’t stop grading and Ben had to be content with boiled water with sugar. I made a note during these hectic days to get a stand-by supply of formula milk!
As always, problems seem to follow problems. Marlee was off to Kununurra in the station wagon soon after and along the highway, just outside our gate, the front axle seized. The nut was sheared off on a rock and all the oil leaked out. Marlee, Ben and the nanny were sitting on the side of the road when they were picked up by tourists, who just happened to be book fans! After many photos with Marlee and Ben they dropped them off at Newry Station and Marlee waited for the tow truck to come out from Kununurra.
Ben was all of four weeks old and he had already been in a plane, a grader and now a tow truck. But he seemed to take it all in his stride.
They arrived home at around midnight. It was a long day for a tiny baby and I was worried about putting him through such rigours. I asked Marlee how he fared and she replied wearily as she wandered off to bed with the sleeping Ben in her arms, ‘He ate, slept and pooed all day!’
CHAPTER 12
July 1996 – December 1996
The next big event in our lives was Bazza, our Bazadaise bull, going to the Katherine Show for the second time. Getting to the show involved a mass of problems. The first problem was we had sold our small truck in December. So to get Bazza to the show we only had our prime mover and a double-decker cattle trailer. We thought it would be a bit over the top to turn up at the show with one bull in a double-decker road train, so Marlee found a single-decker trailer for sale in Batchelor, just outside of Darwin.
Marlee and Franz flew over to inspect the trailer and arranged for the owner to drop it off in Timber Creek, one hundred kilometres from our front gate. The day the trailer arrived Marlee left me with Ben and a day’s supply of milk in bottles and left for Timber Creek in the prime mover to pick it up.
There was enough milk to last until six o’clock, so with her estimated time of arrival being mid-afternoon, we would be OK. Ben finished the last drop of milk at six o’clock and there was still no sign of Marlee. Franz was out working in the lower paddock and I didn’t expect him back for at least another hour. I knew that if Marlee had broken down in the first hour along the highway after she left Timber Creek, she would be back in town by now and would have called me. So it was safe to say the truck was somewhere along our road. I had no choice but to wait for Franz as I couldn’t go racing around the countryside with a small baby.
Two hours later I had a very hungry baby on my hands. Franz had a rushed meal and shower, while I packed some food for Marlee in an esky and tried to comfort Ben. Franz started out on the road and I mixed yet another boiled water and sugar concoction, hoping Ben would drink it.
Franz was only five miles out the road when he met Marlee driving the prime mover. When they got home she sat feeding a ravenous baby while I fed her dinner and she told her story. The trailer brakes had seized going up the first steep jump-up as she came back in our road. She couldn’t stop on the jump-up so by the time the prime mover had hauled the protesting trailer to flat ground, the seized brake drums were on fire. Marlee put out the fire with the fire extinguisher and looked at her options. She quickly realised the brakes needed work back at the workshop so the best thing to do was to leave the trailer and drive home in the prime mover
. A glance at her watch told her she still had time up her sleeve before Ben ran out of milk.
However the simple task of disconnecting the trailer was now a major problem and Marlee couldn’t get it to unhitch. She couldn’t drive home dragging the trailer and she knew I would soon be running out of milk.
To release the trailer you need to pull a lever and the clamps which connect it to a vehicle open, but these clamps were not releasing.
The problem Marlee had was that she had to be in two places at once. She had to pull the lever on one side of the truck and at the same time be on the other side of the truck hitting a long steel bar to encourage the lever to move.
Marlee knew we would come looking for her around sunset. But if she sat down and waited she would not get home until midnight and Ben would be six hours without milk. So not wanting to sit around for the next eight hours, she set about solving the problem.
She tied a rope to the end of the lever and threaded it around some steel on the trailer to get leverage, then went over to the other side of the truck and tied it around her waist. While leaning back on the rope she hit the end of the steel bar resting against the end of the lever on the turntable with a hammer. It took her close to an hour but the clamps finally opened. Marlee drove the prime mover home leaving the trailer on top of the jump-up and arrived home at 8 p.m., not midnight.
The Strength of Our Dreams Page 16