The first day they made for the nearest watering points, and it wasn’t long before they had gathered a small mob of cattle. Each time they spotted more tracks and manure, Alice sent her dogs, who would swiftly disappear from sight. Once each bitch had found a little group of cattle, she’d begin to bark, holding the cattle there until Alice or Jeremy arrived to pick them up and drive them towards the main mob. Meanwhile, Sam and Ace stayed with the herd and the packhorses. Jeremy commented to Alice on her grandfather’s intricate knowledge of every rise and fall of the land, and his ability to predict where the cattle would be found. He was also impressed by the Bennet sisters and the way in which they performed their role as scouts.
The first night’s camp was up a deep gully. As they rode towards it, Alice looked with fondness at the familiar spot. There was no hut or yard here but they could push the cattle up to the head of the gorge where water seeped out of the hill most of the year. They set up camp below the cattle, effectively holding the mob in the enclosure made by the steep rock sides. Alice strung a rope high between two trees and tied Rita to a ring attached to it. This allowed her to walk freely along the length of the rope and reach just low enough to graze without getting tangled. Alice ‘nightlined’ one of the ponies in the same way, then turned the other horses loose. They wasted no time dropping their heads to crop the sweet untouched clumps of kangaroo grass.
Jeremy, who had built a fire and was collecting some bigger timber, stopped and looked at Rita on the nightline. ‘Did my nag draw the short straw?’ he asked Alice.
‘She’s the boss horse,’ Alice explained. ‘As long as she’s here the others won’t try to go anywhere.’
Sam looked up from where he was attempting to open a tin with a rusty tin opener and added, ‘Mares are a problem if brumbies are about. Stallions can lure them away. They have no use for geldings. Usually kill them.’
Jeremy nodded. ‘Dad lost one of his best mares that way when I was a kid. She was spelling in one of the back paddocks and she went off with some brumbies that’d broken the fence during the dry to get to water. He’s still looking for her.’ He poked Alice in the shoulder with a stick. ‘See, Ali, even lady horses like a bit of rough stuff.’ He trailed off to find more wood.
Sam shook his head in disgust and went back to his tin.
After a few nights, the smell of camp-fire smoke had permeated all their clothes and gear. Alice loved it. It was the special aroma of the bush run. As night came on, they sat around the fire and talked in soft voices. Alice had always noticed that her grandfather spoke more by the fire on the bush run than anywhere else.
On the first night, Jeremy had produced a flask of rum, swigged on it, sat back and sighed, ‘This is the life.’ But when no one would share it with him he’d put it away, complaining that it was no fun drinking alone.
On three of the nights they slept in the rustic log huts, herding the cattle into the rickety old holding yards. Alice spent some time alone in her favourite hut. It was a gum slab construction, with a tiny fireplace protruding from one end and a rusty tin roof. Carved into the walls and beams were old initials and words that she traced with her finger. Then she noticed to her surprise some brand-new carvings, and on inspection discovered Jeremy’s and her own initials, etched on either side of a love heart. Despite the silliness of the joke, Alice felt goose bumps rise on her skin at the sight of it.
The fourth hut and yards had burned down, so that night and the next, they took it in turns to watch the cattle.
They had mostly fine weather, warm by day and cool by evening. Alice loved listening to the noises of the night: the throbbing song of the crickets and the double hooting note of the mopoke owl, the whirring and screech of bats and the hurrying rustles of the tiny night creatures as they bustled on their way. She felt completely safe and satisfied with the companionship of all the life forces around her and the warmth of the dogs’ vibrant little bodies pressed against her. The ever-present munching of the horses in the dark was like a lullaby to Alice, and it was with this sound that she always gave herself up to sleep.
At dawn, the first bird call would slice through the darkness and chill of fallen dew. At this signal, Alice would get up and walk a little distance from the slumbering forms of Jeremy and Sam, and watch for a few minutes as the stars changed shift with the first glow of light in the east. Then she’d share in the exultation of all the singing feathered creatures as they exploded with the joy of the new day.
But then it would be a buzz of activity, rolling swags, stoking up the coals for breakfast tea, saddling the horses and loading up the ponies. By day the bush was full of life as well – they saw kangaroos, wallabies, shuffling echidnas and even the odd koala. Alice revelled in the smells and sounds around her as they travelled the familiar route. The bauhinias were covered in reddish-brown pods that contrasted with the bright splashes of white and pink made by the Major Mitchell cockatoos. Every now and then, one of the riders would intrude into the middle of an extended family of zebra finches gossiping in a patch of long grass.
One day, while she was answering Lydia’s summons, Alice witnessed the capture of a wallaby by an enormous wedge-tailed eagle. It swooped out of nowhere and pounded the small marsupial with the weight of its wings to stun it. Then it picked up the immobilised creature in its talons and lifted off again. The sound of the bird’s almighty wings beating reached Alice where she watched. On another occasion, her grandfather pointed out a kookaburra with a wriggling snake in its beak; they heard the thud, thud of the snake’s body as the bird belted it on a branch.
It was Sam’s ritual to read aloud of an evening from Henry Lawson or Banjo Paterson. His quiet voice took on a mellow expressive quality, rising and falling with the pattern of the words. Jeremy complained at first, but Sam told him to count himself lucky that it wasn’t Jane Austen.
One night when Sam had just finished reading ‘The Ballad of the Drover’ by Henry Lawson, Jeremy commented disparagingly, ‘Must have been a bit depressed, that fella – the stuff he writes.’ He added, ‘Needed a good drink, I reckon.’
‘He was an alcoholic,’ Alice said wryly. ‘That’s why he died so young.’
‘Well, let’s have some more of Banjo then. This stuff’s getting me down.’
Alice and her grandfather looked at him with amusement. ‘Pa, I do believe King Jed is requesting some poetry.’
‘It’s not as if there are many alternatives out here,’ Jeremy chuckled good-naturedly.
A few times, when Sam was really relaxed, he produced an old dented harmonica and played some tunes. Alice found herself becoming teary as she listened to him. Looking at her grandfather in the firelight gave her a sense of time slipping away and of the preciousness of the days that they had left together.
‘Normally Ali sings,’ Sam explained to Jeremy on one of these occasions. ‘Voice like a nightingale. Don’t think she will with you here, though. Bit shy.’
‘You guessed right,’ Alice said in confirmation.
‘I sing when I’m tanked,’ Jeremy revealed. ‘Not sure how good I am, though. Anything seems good when you’ve got a few rums under your belt.’
‘Maybe we shouldn’t ruin your delusions by letting you hear yourself sober,’ Alice suggested. Sam spluttered on the tea he was sipping and Jeremy feigned disappointment.
On the second-last night, Sam groaned as he sat down near the fire. ‘I’m getting too old for this sleeping-on-the-ground caper.’
Alice looked at him with concern as she handed out some plates of tuna, rice and surprise peas. ‘I’ll give your back a rub after tea,’ she promised.
‘Alice and I might have to come on our own next year then, what do ya reckon, Ali?’ Jeremy said enthusiastically. ‘You’ve taught me about Henry Lawson. I might teach you a thing or two next time.’
Alice knew it was a harmless jest and didn’t rise to the bait. But then she noticed the look on her grandfather’s face.
‘You shut your smutty trap, boy!’ the old
man growled, in a voice so unlike his own that Alice jumped in surprise. For the first time she could recall, Jeremy looked chastened.
Then, less aggressively, Sam added, ‘Sometimes you go too far with your rot, son.’
As usual, it was always with a sense of sadness that they returned to everyday life two days later. The days of the bush run always seemed somehow enchanted: for a little while the riders would step out of ordinary time and join with the scores of other bush travellers who had ever wandered the vastness and slept under the stars. The ordinary worries of everyday life seemed to fade to insignificance beside both the tiny and the immense rhythms of nature.
Chapter 14
Olive had some unwelcome news for the three weary riders when they returned from the bush run. They sat down at the kitchen table for a late lunch that Olive had prepared. They began to eat in silence; looking around, Olive could see they were all lost in thought. All three of them exuded a contented glow, and she felt excluded from the secret lingering magic of the jaunt. To her the vast reaches of the bush run represented a foreign and uninviting realm and she’d always felt that their special knowledge of this territory was an exclusive, unspoken understanding that Sam and Alice shared. And she could lay no claim to it.
They always returned from that cursed bush run with a dreamy, dangerously starry look in their eyes. Every year, without exception, they seemed so regretful to be returning to her world, the comfortable, predictable homestead that was Olive’s domain. A primarily social creature, Olive always disliked her solitary week in April, which for the others was the most anticipated event of the year.
And now, just when she was aching for some decent conversation, they all had the hide to sit there quietly, their minds still roving free, back in that unruly, overgrown national park. This time Olive had been relying on that loudmouth of a Jeremy to have something to say, but even he was silently and absent-mindedly devouring his roast beef and pickle sandwich. Well, there was nothing for it but to say something that would bring them back to reality with a thud. She hadn’t intended on telling them so soon, but petulance loosened her tongue.
‘Samuel, two men from one of those huge mining companies came while you were away.’
Sam’s eyes focused suddenly on Olive’s face and she saw with a mixture of satisfaction and shame that she’d won his attention. Putting down his cup he swallowed and took a moment to consider her words.
‘Mining company?’ he said at last. ‘What did they want with us?’
‘They want to do some exploratory drilling on Redstone, and next door at Eden Station and Glenorchy. There’s supposed to be a huge coal deposit under us.’ Olive watched as Sam took a sip of his tea, and noticed that his hand was trembling slightly. Now she felt guilty for upsetting him. Alice’s eyes were huge with horror as she waited for further details.
‘I hope you told the marauding bastards to ping off,’ Jeremy said vehemently.
‘Well, I did try,’ Olive said. ‘In more appropriate language, of course. But they said we have no choice. I refused to deal with them on my own. They left, saying they’d be back next week with some paperwork.’
The intervening week passed slowly and anxiously for all the folk at Redstone. Then, at mid-morning on the appointed day, a new-looking dark silver four-wheel drive pulled up at the Redstone house-yard gate and two men wearing blue shirts, moleskins, R.M. Williams boots and spotless felt hats climbed out.
Olive made them tea and radioed Sam, Alice and Jeremy, who were replacing one of the cracked concrete troughs in Brigalow. The two men stood politely to greet the three when they came into the kitchen a little while later, their clothes soiled with dark mud. Sam shook hands with them, his eyes full of suspicion. They introduced themselves as Lionel Schuster and Jason Bamph.
They shook hands with Alice, then turned to Jeremy, who put his hands in his pockets.
‘No point trying to come over all friendly, fellas, wearing those blooming cowboy outfits,’ he said. ‘Kicking cow cockies’ arses is what you blokes do for a living, isn’t it? We all know that’s what you’re here for. You lot and the government won’t rest till you’ve sent all us farming buggers to hell.’
‘Mr Day, is this your grandson?’ politely asked Lionel Schuster, the older of the two men.
‘No, Alice is my granddaughter, this is Jeremy O’Donnell, my head stockman,’ Sam answered.
‘Bloody hell, Sam, you never told me I’d been promoted!’ Jeremy roared with laughter.
In spite of themselves, the remainder of the company smiled cautiously at one another and sat down at the table.
Jeremy spoke first. ‘So what’s your game, Shyster? Spit it out then, and you can cut all the fancy talk.’ Jeremy had started the ball rolling.
The younger man, Bamph, looked uncomfortable and shifted in his seat, but Schuster calmly ignored Jeremy and looked instead at Sam. ‘Mr Day, as we explained to your wife last week, the government has given our company permission to do some exploratory drilling in this region of Queensland. Nine of the holes we need to make are on a coal seam we believe to be running under this property.’
‘My property. It’s called Redstone.’ Sam was burring up now.
Schuster was unfazed. ‘Yes, under Redstone.’
‘And what if I say no? What if I refuse you access?’
‘I’m afraid you can’t do that, Mr Day. I’m sure you’re aware that under Australian law the minerals under this land are government property. We are legally entitled to do the exploration. The holes are small and inconspicuous, and we will carry out the operation with as little inconvenience to yourself as possible. You’re more than welcome to be present at the drilling sites.’
‘Crikey, Sam, they’re inviting you onto your own place!’ Jeremy turned back to Schuster. ‘You lot are above all the rules the rest of us have to work under, eh? Poor old Stuey Hammond at Clermont there, got busted for clearing five acres out of an eight-hundred-acre paddock of virgin scrub – wanted to build some yards there two years ago. The fine he got nearly broke him. And now he’s been kicked off his place: whole thing’ll be a whopping black pit soon. Virgin scrub can go to buggery now they’ve found coal under it.’
‘Outrageous,’ agreed Olive, who was replacing the empty teapot with a full one.
‘What happens if you find what you’re looking for?’ Sam spoke softly and slowly.
‘Well, at this stage it’s only exploratory work. For coal to be suitable for mining it has to be of a particular grade, depth and accessibility.’ Schuster paused. ‘Mrs Day, I must say I have enjoyed this most delicious cake. I can’t recall tasting any better.’ He smiled at Olive, but for once she wasn’t affected by praise of her cooking and only nodded sternly. Schuster went on, ‘We don’t want to take up any more of your precious time this morning. We just require you to sign some paperwork, Mr Day, and then we’ll be on our way.’ Moving his plate and cup, he lifted a portable file onto the table and pulled out a thick sheaf of neatly stapled sheets and an expensive-looking black pen, which he slid across the table to Sam.
Alice had remained tensely silent up until this point, but now she addressed the older man coldly. ‘Why does my grandfather need to sign paperwork? You said we have no choice about the drilling, therefore you don’t need our permission.’
‘You tell ’em, Alice. Bloody good point.’ Jeremy sounded impressed.
‘Alice, I see you’re not just a pretty face,’ Schuster said, his smile unwavering. ‘But as you say, we don’t need permission to drill and this is just a formality.’
Alice looked at him directly. ‘If it’s so insignificant, then I’m sure it won’t matter if my grandfather doesn’t sign.’
Schuster looked back at Sam. ‘Mr Day, refusing to sign this document will hold things up a bit. You may have this business hanging over your head for longer than is necessary. It doesn’t have to be a drawn-out process at all – with your cooperation it can all be finished in a fortnight from today. So if you’ll just sign h
ere—’
‘Alice’s dead right, why the bloody hell should he sign?’ Jeremy snatched the paperwork out of Schuster’s hand and scanned a few pages. ‘You call this English? Here’s an idea, why don’t I take this wad and use it for—’
‘Jeremy, give it back to the men,’ Sam interrupted just in time. ‘I have no intention of signing anything.’
For the first time, Schuster’s smile began to slip. ‘Well, I’m afraid we can’t leave here today until we’ve completed all the necessary paperwork. We may be imposing on you a little longer than expected, Mrs Day. Is there any more of that most excellent cake?’
‘I won’t be signing, not today or any day,’ said Sam. ‘So it looks like you pair will be sticking around for quite a spell.’
There was a short pause while Schuster considered his next move. Bamph looked back and forth from Sam to his boss. Finally, Schuster spoke again, his tone confidential. ‘I’ll let you in on a little secret, Mr Day. Your neighbouring landholders have been far more obliging. As a result, I was able to offer them one thousand shares in our company at no charge, in return for their cooperation. I was hoping to be able to make you a similar offer.’
‘This old stick is just like Father Christmas, eh, Sam? Just needs a fluffy white beard.’ Jeremy sniggered at his own joke.
‘I don’t want shares in any damn coal company.’ Sam’s tone was becoming more hostile.
‘Perhaps you’re unaware of the value of a share in our company, Mr Day?’
But Sam answered only with a stubborn glare.
Schuster went on, ‘Alright, I’ll make a special concession just for you. It’s going to delay things a little, though. I’ll leave this form here for you to peruse at your leisure – I don’t think you’ll find anything of concern there. Next week our drill team will be on Eden Station to commence drilling. Someone will drop in to pick this up from you then. Please trust me when I tell you that you’re not doing yourselves any favours by holding up the process.’
Redstone Station Page 10