The Strength of Our Dreams

by Sara Henderson

  The house was very quiet after everyone departed, but after such a turbulent year just to be with family for the first time in many months was great.

  It was soon December which meant full-time writing for me. The weather was quickly changing with the monsoonal trough slowly settling over the North giving the comforting feeling of good rains to come.

  Storms were almost daily now and the valley was turning a deep, rich green. I watched the storms cause havoc as they swept into the valley with winds so strong even the geese had trouble pitching on the front lawn. They hovered above the ground, flying into the wind, struggling not to be swept away. They then waited for the lulls in between the gusts so they could swoop down and land gracefully. There were some whose timing was a bit off, the landings reminiscent of our brolga Bleep learning to fly.

  After I finished my writing one day I watched the movement of the trees and crops in the fields intensify as wind swept into the valley. My eyes lifted to the horizon and I saw the next storm moving swiftly towards the valley. It was a massive front, reaching from mountain range to mountain range and towering tens of thousands of feet into the air. In its wake was rolling turbulence sucking in dust and grass as it steamrolled across the valley.

  The Outback never ceases to amaze me. It always manages to produce something new. I had been alerted to this storm by the screeching of hundreds of cockatoos. An entire flock was caught in the raging vortex before the storm. Helpless in its grip, they protested loudly as they were swept along in the whirlwind. In short lulls, as the raging wind took a deep breath, birds fell out of the whirlpool and found themselves left behind on the ground as the storm continued on its way with the rest of their flock.

  I watched the lightning bounce off the mountains and the colours of the valley deepen as the sun disappeared behind blue-black clouds.

  The few hundred geese had taken up residence in Marlee’s birdbath, settling themselves in for the storm. They were joined by brolgas, ibis, and our milking cows, Daisy and Pumpkin. Marlee’s birdbath is the result of my remark to Marlee one weekend that maybe we should build a birdbath in the garden, so the birds wouldn’t have to drink out of the swimming pool. We were constantly rescuing birds who had fallen into the swimming pool, while trying to have a drink, only to get their feathers waterlogged so they couldn’t fly.

  The next thing I knew, Marlee was in the bulldozer. I certainly got my birdbath, although at forty feet long and twenty feet wide it was slightly larger than I had envisaged! But despite its size, it was full to capacity this year, with standing room only.

  I am always profoundly affected by the change from dry to wet season. Gone was the brown landscape with dust billowing, perpetual grittiness of dust between your teeth and in your eyes, the ever-present flies and the heat haze distorting the horizon. In their place was overcast weather, light rain falling—a prelude to the distant storm—and animals grazing slowly, thankful to see green grass. After pulling each mouthful, their heads were held high and their eyes closed as they savoured the flavour of fresh, sweet grass.

  I settled down with a cool drink in the middle of the living room and watched the storm. Soft rain continued to fall and there was the promise of more in the deep rumbling of the thunder and the lightning striking repeatedly around the valley.

  I watched the last fuel truck for the season hastily departing leaving us with our wet season supply of fuel, the driver not keen to repeat his bogging of last year.

  With the fuel safely in our tanks we could officially start the wet season. When the heavy rains flood the creeks we are cut off for the next five months but life is comfortable as long as we have electricity.

  With the arrival of the wet each year my writing starts in earnest, and continues daily until March. The wet is also our dreaming and talking time. It is the time when we go over the past year’s events and when we look into the future.

  But it was not quite time to close the doors on the outside world. First there was the Christmas shopping to be done in Darwin. Franz and Marlee were also off to a Christmas party in Katherine, their first in many years.

  This party coincided with an irrigation field day showcasing many of the latest developments in water management. Living in this part of the world makes you think a lot about water. Mostly about the abundance of it during the wet season and the amazing amount the rivers generate, only for it to flow away out to sea.

  I flew to Sydney after our Christmas shopping and Marlee drove home.

  I had a meeting for the miniseries on the first day and, after many hours of talking, reading and discussing contracts, I was at the stage of being an expert on contracts. Well … let’s say miniseries contracts, anyway. I left the meeting not sure if we had progressed or not!

  Then it was time for my first premiere, Oscar & Lucinda! I had a wonderful night and caught up with some old friends. The party after was at Victoria Barracks and that brought back old memories.

  The next night it was onto James’s birthday. I couldn’t remember when I had had two such enjoyable nights in a row and decided I had to do it more often. It was time in my life to stop and smell the roses.

  But for the moment this enjoyment was just a temporary pause, because I had this book to finish, so I was back home late the next day.

  I did take a break on Christmas Eve and called family and friends to wish them a wonderful Christmas. I just caught Susan as Ralph was about to take her to hospital! She had injured her toe in the garden a few days earlier and it had been causing her pain. The toe started to swell and when a red line started to show on her leg, they headed for the hospital. It was just as well as she ended staying up in hospital for five days taking the strongest of antibiotics. It was touch and go as to whether the doctor would operate but in the end he didn’t have to.

  Our Christmas on Bullo was a family affair—something we had not had for a while. The whole celebration was still a bit of a mystery to Ben who was now twenty months old. Of course the presents were the major attraction. He stood back and watched us open our presents. Then as his were piled high in front of him, he thought the best course of action would be to have someone open them for him. He elected me and stood in front of me with each present and repeated, ‘Nana, Nana, Nana!’ until the present was unwrapped and he had the gift in his hands. He would look it over, turn it around in his hands a few times and drop it on the floor. Then picking up the next present and starting all over again.

  The next week passed quickly as I wrote day and night. Then what I had been wishing for most of the year was finally here, New Year’s Eve. I had a feeling the next year had to be better than this one.

  On New Year’s Eve I always find myself sitting under the stars evaluating the year just finished. Although this year it looked as if it might be at Bullo on my own. Marlee had been battling a persistent flu for weeks. She had taken a course of antibiotics and was still not over the cough, so after talking again to our doctor, he wanted her to fly to Darwin for an examination. So despite the bad weather they took off for Darwin, assuring me they would be home before nightfall.

  Being the usual worrier I am, I could see Marlee in hospital in Darwin and Franz and Ben unable to come home because of bad weather. I was resigned to spending New Year’s Eve alone—well, just me and the dogs and a few trillion stars, when I heard the familiar sound of the plane engine. They were back! Fifteen minutes after they left they ran into a wall of weather at the Fitzmaurice River and had no choice to go anywhere but back home.

  We saw the old year out with French champagne (although it was orange juice for Marlee) and cheese sandwiches. We watched a video because our television receiver wasn’t working, and so engrossed were we in the action-packed movie that the new year arrived and we didn’t realise until Marlee glanced at the clock at the end of the movie.

  CHAPTER 16

  January 1998 – April 1998

  New Year’s Day was overcast and pleasantly cool. I took a break from writing knowing I would be back at it t
he next day and for months to come. Ben is so used to me sitting at the word processor that when his mother asks ‘Where is Nana?’ he replies, ‘Nana, type.’ Which about sums up January.

  A cyclone moved over us near the end of the month and poured rain down all day and continued through the night. I couldn’t stop myself from walking around the house and looking at the dry floors. It was blissful watching the rain pour down outside and not inside the homestead for the first time in twenty years!

  The next morning I looked out over a very wet cattle station. I didn’t need to read the rain gauge to tell me we had had a lot of rain!

  After seven months we finally had a television receiving box that worked longer than one hour after it came back from the repair shop. After many trips to a Darwin repair shop, we took the receiver to a nice man in Katherine who gave us another receiver while he waited for parts to repair ours.

  I was slowly catching up on what was happening in the outside world. I sat down that wet morning and turned on the news, only to see the main street of Katherine under water! As the news helicopter moved slowly along the main street showing the devastation, I saw all the familiar stores we trade with and there was our repairman’s shop with flood waters lapping at the roof line! Only the business sign was sticking out of the water.

  Over the weeks to come we realised our town was no longer functioning. All our mail went under with the post office, our television receiver was no more and we couldn’t order our food or get emergency medicine from the pharmacy out on the mail plane. There were no office supplies, no clothing, the list just went on and on. Our main lifeline had just been severed.

  But we were lucky compared with the people of Katherine who had lost everything! The way these people coped with this major disaster in the months to come was awe inspiring. The people of Katherine and those who came to help them showed pure pioneer spirit and good old-fashioned guts.

  Our mail was dried out and put into little plastic bags. When I opened the bags the smell was overpowering which made me imagine the stench these people worked in to bring their town back to working order.

  During the floods in Katherine we recorded 205 millimetres in one night. Marlee and Franz went up in the chopper the next morning to check the lower paddocks on the Victoria River and found that the river had flooded ten miles into our valley and there were about two hundred head of cattle trapped on an island of land in one of the paddocks. In the chopper they mustered the stranded cattle across the flooded creek and up the valley through the gate into dry paddocks. That was our only trial in the flood that wreaked such havoc on Katherine.

  By this stage of the wet season it was fairly evident we were going to get a very good amount of rain. We just wished it didn’t come as fast and furious as the Katherine floods. This wish wasn’t granted. The rain kept coming in the form of violent storms and frightening winds.

  Over the years it has been evident to me that wild animals seem to know when nature is about to unleash her fury. After the cyclone moved away from the valley and the skies cleared I watched a tiny finch build her nest in an ornamental figtree in a pot in the middle of our living room.

  We watched the nest being built, kept her company while she laid her eggs and looked closely while the chicks were born. While Mum was away busy finding food for three very hungry mouths we would often watch the chicks. Just a gentle touch of the nest and the three little beaks would open wide waiting for food. If Mum returned to the nest and we were peering in at her babies she was very upset. But she soon realised we were not going to harm her or her babies, so although she didn’t welcome our presence, she tolerated it with a goodly show of annoyance. Landing on the edge of the nest with the next food offering, she would ruffle her feathers, then proceed to feed the chicks, pretending we were not there.

  I wondered why a wild bird would risk building her nest inside a house. My answer came the day after her babies were born. We had the most horrific storm of the season—even the new roof was vibrating. All the time through this frightening storm the mother sat safely and snuggly on her dry nest with her newborns. I think she knew this storm and many more like it were on their way, so she took the risk that we were a safer bet than braving Mother Nature.

  After a director’s meeting in Melbourne via a conference in Broome, I flew into Sydney to have another miniseries meeting. This was followed by a meeting with the Olympic Club organisers who wanted me to be the Northern Territory’s representative for the club. I feel this concept is a wonderful way to get everyone involved and interested in the development of our Olympic Games. The club was formed so all Australians can participate in the Olympic Games. You receive information about the events leading up to the Games, with opportunities to meet athletes, attend events and even win tickets to the Games. It’s a great idea. So I said yes, I would be honoured.

  Then in the middle of all these negotiations I was asked to do a washing detergent commercial! At any other time I might have said no to a commercial. But with no cattle markets for years I said yes.

  Now I had diversified into television commercials. Although I had been involved with the BreastScreen campaign, I see it as sending important messages which save lives rather than making commercials as such. But to advertise laundry detergent, that definitely is a commercial.

  I was only home from Sydney for a week then it was off to Darwin to launch the Olympic Club. I met with the media and some officials from the Olympic Club and SOCOG who came up from Sydney. The club was officially announced and launched at the same time all around Australia.

  Then it was back down to Melbourne. The evening after speaking to 650 for Senior Citizens’ Week I had dinner with my dear friend Fairlie Yenchan. That’s Fairlie who swam in the pool at Bullo with ‘George’ the seven-foot king brown. When Fairlie visited Bullo all those years ago it was a wild and woolly place and she was trying not to look too much like a city slicker. So after a few days of sharing the swimming pool with a snake that appeared every time she swam, she casually asked one night what was the pet snake’s name!

  When Fairlie discovered we didn’t have a pet snake she suddenly lost the desire to go swimming! Fairlie is painting a portrait of me for the Camberwell Rotary Art Show from a photo she had taken at that time, about fifteen years ago. The photo showed me in a dressy picture hat and jeans, sneakers with holes in them, and a cooking apron.

  Back in those days I was cook, cleaner, school teacher, nurse, telephone receptionist, gardener, hostess and a few other things. By the time it got to the end of the day I was usually very tired, but still working flat out cooking, serving dinner and washing the dishes.

  My routine was to finish the work and then take a long hot bath and collapse into bed.

  Charlie, on the other hand, was usually drinking beer, eating cheese and crackers and reading some pirate novels all day. At sunset he would dress for cocktails and dinner, which, of course, I had to provide.

  On the first night of Fairlie’s visit I was still cooking when Charlie insisted I sit and spend the cocktail hour with our guest, as if I didn’t have a care in the world and had a kitchen full of staff!

  I sat down and he complained that I hadn’t dressed for dinner. Seeing I still had dinner for around twenty to serve, the dishes to do, and breakfast for the next day to think about, I didn’t appreciate the remark.

  But never letting him get the better of me, whenever possible, I stood up and politely said, ‘Excuse me.’

  I returned a few minutes later with the very large picture hat on my head to which I had added a long bright pink scarf and a few plastic flowers to give it a touch of the ridiculous. But nothing else had changed. I still had on jeans, sandshoes with holes in them and an apron with the day’s grime of the kitchen still in place.

  I quietly sat down and started sipping my drink. Fairlie laughed uproariously and raced off to get her camera.

  Charlie was silent. He wasn’t quite sure if I was being funny, or if I was perilously close to exploding.
So he didn’t test the waters. He just gave me one of his I’ll-leave-this-one-alone smiles.

  The next day it was off to Canberra for the Order of Australia Council meeting which took up the next two days. I had finished my two-year term on the council which has been a wonderful experience and one I wouldn’t have missed for the world. I had the privilege to read thousands of pages of the hard work, sacrifice, kindness and humanity of thousands of wonderful Australians.

  I returned home to film the detergent commercial. This turned out to be a lot of fun. There was a crew of sixteen so we had people everywhere, but again we were lucky and they were great to work with.

  This time I had a wardrobe assistant and a make-up assistant. Just like in the movies! Every time I was ready for a shot my make-up artist would rush out and check every detail of my face and hair and my wardrobe assistant would check my clothes. It was a very glamorous few days and I can’t wait to see what all that make-up looks like on screen. No-one will probably recognise me!

  The next big event was when the American Today Show came to do a story on Bullo, Marlee and me a few days after. Of course I had managed to fit in a conference in Coolum before their arrival. We had had such a long run of good media crews I thought Murphy’s Law was sure to come into effect sooner or later. Because we wanted this to be a good shoot, I was sure this would be the time we didn’t get a good crew. But I was wrong. The next few days were spent with four great people, two of whom, the cameraman and sound girl, were Australian. They were very full days, and our two New Yorkers went away with some amazing footage of an Outback cattle station, even down to Kelly, the presenter, patting a small crocodile, shades of Crocodile Dundee!