Cleanskin Cowgirls

by Rachael Treasure

  When she’d first arrived back in Australia with the others, still a little weak and feeble of body, she was nevertheless strong in her certainty that her life would change. She was now fearless in creating an entirely new life from the place of her altered perspective.

  The financial wealth she continued to amass through her celebrity, her music and the sale of her near-death story was now all channelled into establishing the Culvert Co-operative with the community, headed by the Smiths and Tara. Music royalties along with Cleanagain had funded the rolling out of a pilot natural-gas project in Culvert at the old sewage plant. Her songs paid for the conversion of commercial tractors that ran on the renewable fuel that was generated at the state-of-the-art sewage and gas-generation plant. The council too had chipped in, using money they had at last received from the state government. Elsie, Zac, Tara, Amos, Gwinnie and Elvis, on a roll, had even established a line of direct-seeding implements. The seeders were not only reinvigorating Grassmore by direct-drill cropping, backed by time-controlled grazing, but were now being quietly sold to other interested farmers at really good prices. Better than the machinery giants who cornered the market with big marketing budgets and blokey advertising.

  The Grassmore ballroom had been revamped and Elsie had already hosted her first round of inspiring agricultural and new-science speakers, ones she had idolised at school and ones she studied now. She was beside herself with excitement that Allan Savory was due to visit the next month. Rangeland scientist Dr Fred Provenza, who she met so briefly all those years ago on Goldsborough, was booked for the following year. Even Gordon Fairweather was scheduled to come and speak about training young people into agriculture, along with Joel Salatin from Polyface Farms. The list went on and on as more speakers said yes to the beautiful musician who had gone bush and ‘found herself’. She even had a concert planned, like a big B&S ball, but one with top-name artists and a message to impart about soils and sewage, getting high on living in the now, and not escaping with drugs. The email list grew and grew as more and more people wanted to travel to Culvert to discover for themselves what was going on out there.

  Also, for Elsie, beneath the big western-plains sky the weighty crush of fame had dissipated. No one paid celebrity much heed at the IGA or the pub or in the shearing shed, so it wasn’t long before Elsie was simply one of the locals again. She knew fame was merely an illusion created by people who craved it. People like Jacinta.

  As she attached an insulator to the fence and turned to get the solar battery, she thanked the stars that a clever lawyer friend of Elvis’s had found a loophole in Jacinta’s dodgy Tamworth-to-Nashville competition contracts, so now, creatively and financially, Elsie was as free as a bird.

  She looked again to the grasses beneath her feet and scuffed at them to reveal the damp soil below. That’s real, she thought. That was what she needed. The soil. Glancing up at Zac, she felt a melody drift to her and words forming above her like rain clouds lit by sunlight. She knew she would soon be ready to create music again. How could she not with a man like Zac by her side?

  This time, though, the music would be under her own label, and she would sing and perform for the greater good, and foster young musicians’ careers too. She wouldn’t be using her gift of music any more just to feed her frail and hungry-for-love ego created by a lonely childhood. She looked back to the homestead a small distance away, sending love from her heart to her brother, Simon, who had all but given her his share of Grassmore, so happy was he to have his own life and a second chance at family down in Victoria. She now knew her parents, though flawed, had loved her, and with that knowledge she could let all else go. She, along with her friends, had a planet to save. And today, they would take their vision to the world. It was all so exciting it felt like a dream. But as Elsie had learned from dying then coming back, life was a dream. Death had felt more real to her. It meant that she could play out her days on earth with no fear or guilt. No fear of death or failure or judgement. She now knew at the end of the line there was only love.

  ‘It’s almost time to change,’ Elsie said as Zac opened the gate and watched the sheep happily amble into the newly set-up grazing strip.

  ‘I think we both already have changed,’ Zac said, laughing.

  She took off her gloves and slipped her hand into Zac’s, smiling up at him. ‘Ha, ha. Very funny. But you’re not wrong!’ He bent to kiss her and she felt butterflies of joy flutter in her heart.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ he said. ‘Let’s show the world.’

  Fifty-nine

  The morning sun turned the new Culvert sewage-plant walls to gold — though after this particular day, it was no longer going to be called a sewage plant. It would officially become the Culvert Cleanagain Energy Co-op Resource Centre. The first of the journalists were arriving, enjoying fresh coffees out of Sylvia’s Silverspoon Café marquee and stuffing themselves on CWA cream-filled sponges available for a gold-coin donation. More helicopters hovered, setting down in one of the Smiths’ paddocks; this one was slashed, and now had a windsock and a runway marked with white rubber tyres. Elsie and Zac stood beside Tara and Amos, watching it all unfolding, knowing by the end of the day their positive news stories would be taken back to the cities where the rest of Australia and the world was about to be inspired.

  The Smiths, along with Mike Schnelle and his Cleanagain colleagues, welcomed the visiting politicians and media at the new gas-generation plant. The visitors looked around in wonder. Tara had fenged the design at the plant, so instead of a cold industrial feel, the place had high windows, colourful pipes and artfully designed steel. The visitors craned their necks, looking up and around the series of tanks and sheds. It was a pretty poo plant, Tara decided as she followed their gaze. It was also a miracle. Yet another miracle of the Poo Prophecy. A miracle they had made.

  ‘The way it works is simple,’ Amos said, looking like a country-boy model in a royal-blue drill shirt and new jeans. ‘The waste comes in from the sewage ponds into the reaction tanks, which during winter can be solar warmed if required to keep all that lovely bacterial digestion going. The fermentation process begins, producing biogas. The gas crosses a column of water and comes to rest at the top of a tank. It can then be piped to cylinders or tankers, depending on where it is required.

  ‘A population as small as Culvert is somewhat limited by outputs, which is why we’re topping up the system with organic waste from the tip next door and any agricultural bio-waste from local industry. We are then diverting all our fuel back to farmers for food production, but if our population grows, which it will given the new industry here, we have the capacity to transfer the technology to cars driven by the general public. But that’s not all. The filtered water that comes out of the biodigester is rich in nutrients and can support many forms of plant and animal life. We are in the process of setting up a fishery and free-range poultry enterprise in the next phase of construction. This will create more jobs and more local food produced without chemicals.’ Amos paused and roamed his intense brown eyes over the crowd. ‘Imagine the potential of harvesting the volumes of such resources in cities like Hong Kong, Beijing, London or New York.’ The good-looking young man, who spoke with such clarity and intelligence, began to open the minds of his audience. ‘Imagine.’

  And as Elsie and Tara stood beside him smiling at them all, the media pack’s sometimes judgemental hearts melted too. What gorgeous girls. Everyone knew Elsie’s story, and to see her looking so happy, natural and down to earth in her Dogger boots, jeans and checked cowgirl shirt gave them heart. She was so accessible. And so normal. And this project sounded so exciting, for everyone.

  Not long after the plant tour, Elsie and Tara had loaded the two Culvert school buses with the visiting journalists and politicians, and the twins had driven them the short distance to the Cleanagain Energy Community Hub, the site of Tara’s old abattoir house. Entering via a wide gate, visitors were treated to a garden of Eden, where fruit and vegetables grew in boxes amid trellise
d flowers and ornamental trees. School children from Culvert Primary greeted the guests with a gift of a strawberry or a snow pea served on napkins saying Today’s food, Tomorrow’s fuel. Under the verandah of the modest but beautiful building made from recycled wood and steel, the elderly from the nursing home offered the visitors cups of tea. It was Tara who this time led the group inside the foyer, where Elvis presented a computerised display of the engines he and the twins had designed.

  ‘Using this cheap plentiful resource and this new technology, we are now able to convert methane gas to power in agricultural machinery with significantly more efficiency than that of traditional engines powered by fossil fuel. At Culvert, our plan is to roll out the fuel to the farmers first. If we can enhance our food sector, and the people in it who produce our food, then we stabilise our entire society. Our next step will be altering the local cropping and grazing systems, using animals, grass and manure to sequester the gas emissions back into the soil as carbon. It’s a win, win, win.’

  The media took grabs of Elvis on their television cameras as he talked about the monetary savings, the environmental savings and also the social answers to rural decline and pollution around the world. He even answered their questions about his earlier ‘unapproved’ experiments and the explosion, but this time the interviewers’ slant was aimed at a hero-to-a-cause everyone had finally come to support. Then they turned their cameras to Mike Schnelle, who outlined the business models the company were operating with success in other countries.

  With smooth efficiency as the media were ushered again to the bus bound for Grassmore, the team from council, headed by Tammie and Christine, answered further questions, with Christine enjoying the attention she was getting from some of the men in her extremely low-cut top.

  At the homestead Amos pointed out a home-sewage prototype unit that was piped to the kitchen and fuelled the gas stove. On the farm he showed them the gas bowser that fuelled the tractors. Just inside the gate of the northern paddock, the cameras panned over the modified tractor and its pristine engine and exhaust system that put emissions back into the soil. Then Amos hauled his handsome farm-boy body up into the cab and fired the tractor up, giving it a few impressive revs and turns, showing the visitors how to direct-drill oats into the pastures to kick-start the microbes in the soil back to health. Elsie then pointed out the happy sheep, all of whom were camped now in long grasses, chewing and relaxed, doing their bit for the environment by manuring onto pasture and using their hooves to compress leaf litter back into the soil for the microbes to feed on.

  ‘It’s a perfect closed cycle,’ Elsie said. ‘It’s Mother Nature’s way.’

  By twelve-thirty pm, the journalists and politicians were corralled onto the Grassmore lawn, where Gwinnie had prepared a spread of sandwiches on a large trestle table under one of the giant sleepy trees. There the farm dogs, Arnie and Excuses, charmed them with their dog-smiles.

  Zac clapped his hands together. ‘Folks, we’re almost done for the day. The buses will be leaving in ten minutes to take you back to the gas plant, where your varying modes of transport await you. But for now, the toilets are that way . . .’ He indicated the outdoor toilet on the side verandah of the house. ‘We would appreciate your generous donation to our Culvert power supply. Thank you so very much.’

  He grinned as he said it and a rumble of amusement passed through the crowd; they began to clap. The applause spread and soon Zac reached for Elsie’s hand, Elsie reached for Tara’s, Tara reached for Amos’s, and Gwinnie and Elvis reached for each other and then Zac’s hand.

  ‘We did it,’ Tara said, tears in her eyes.

  ‘We did it,’ Elvis said, and they folded into one another in a big hug as the applause continued, rising up and rippling out into the clear wide plains sky.

  Sixty

  That evening in the Grassmore kitchen Tara laid out trays of hot home-cooked pizza on the giant old wooden table, while Elsie set out glasses and a big jug of water with fresh lemon and mint floating in it. Sunlight spilled into the house from recently added bi-fold doors, outside which Gwinnie and Elvis stood embracing each other on the deck overlooking the garden. They were smiling softly and Elvis was humming to Gwinnie, rocking her in a slow dance.

  Elsie glanced at them. ‘Do you reckon we’ll all still be in love like that in years to come?’ she asked, pausing wistfully.

  Tara smiled. ‘That’ll be entirely up to each individual us. You get what you give. You reap what you sow.’

  ‘You poo what you eat. You use what you poo.’

  Tara laughed and whacked Elsie on the arm. ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Me? Silly? You’re the silly one. You’re the poo-joke queen.’ They smiled at each other, the distance of miles and years falling away.

  ‘Ah, poo jokes. It’s so good to be home,’ Elsie said.

  ‘It sure is.’ They hugged each other and each felt the love that transcended time and place. They knew that this was it. This was how their life would be from now on, with Zac and Amos. They had at last found each other again.

  ‘Speaking of poo,’ Elsie said, smiling warmly at Tara, ‘where are those boys?’

  And on cue, in they tramped, holding aloft two bottles of champagne.

  ‘Don’t get too excited,’ Amos said. ‘It’s non-alcoholic from the IGA.’

  ‘The pub’s run out of the real stuff,’ Zac added. ‘It seems everyone in Culvert is celebrating tonight.’

  ‘Suits me just fine,’ Elsie said with a grin, gathering up some glasses from the kitchen dresser.

  ‘C’mon,’ Amos said, grabbing Tara’s hand and dragging her over to the lounge. ‘It must be news time! Let’s see what the world will see!’

  ‘Mum! Dad! Get in here, or get a room,’ called Zac out the doors. ‘News time.’

  As they flicked on the first of the nightly news programs and Tara popped the cork off the faux-champagne, they were met with the image of Chunky Nicholson standing outside the Energy Co-op, grinning at the cameras like a nitwit.

  ‘Coming up in the program,’ said the newsreader with the dome of blonde hair, ‘a good news, or should I say good poos, story on the future of renewable energy.’

  ‘What they’ve done here is amazing,’ Chunky said emphatically. ‘It’s the best thing coulda happened to this town. Who’da thought our Culvert crap could change the world?’ The footage flicked to Miss Beechcroft standing with her flushed cheeks, blinking behind her glasses outside the Cleanagain Energy Community Hub, while children from the primary school waved madly at the camera in the background.

  ‘I taught Elsie Jones to play guitar in the first place, so it’s nice to know my teaching skills have come to some good purpose. It’s EJ’s music funds and the know-how of the Smiths and Mayor Tara that have got this whole thing rolling. They’re a credit to the town.’

  Then Nathanial Rogerson flashed up, his red hair and freckled face full screen. ‘It’s amazing it’s people’s shit we’re talking about here. Hard to believe. Why didn’t we use our crap ponds like this before now? Later I’ll be doin’ my bit to help supply a bit of fuel.’ He grinned a crooked grin, then bit down into a pie and roughly began to chew like a dog.

  Zac shook his head. ‘That’s all so base and basic. What are they thinking putting him on, saying that?’

  ‘Shush shush,’ Elsie said. ‘It’s just a way of getting the viewers in. I know how they package these things for the everyday Joe Blow . . . Just you wait.’

  And there on the screen came Tara outside the council offices, her hair falling over her shoulders prettily, her green eyes clear. She wore a tailored white shirt, jeans and green flats. She looked utterly serene, even though they all knew she had faced a wall of journalists armed with all kinds of recording devices. A close-up shot showed just how naturally beautiful she was; and her voice was steady, her speech intelligent, and just right.

  ‘It’s a technology for the people, so it’s not up for sale to any corporation. This technology, teamed with the a
gricultural practices showcased here, sets a platform for the recovery of all regional Australia. Over time it will mean better food supplies for everyone and carbon sequestered into soils via grasslands. It means no more corporate coal and gas mining and destruction of land, waterways and the atmosphere.’

  The footage flicked to Grassmore, of the paddocks and the tractor, the healthy sheep. A journalist voiceover said, ‘For every five rural councils that sign up for the project, the Culvert Co-operative has pledged to donate a sewage-conversion plant to a developing-nation rural village. The wait list is long — already ten regional councils have expressed interest in working with Culvert, with the larger neighbouring town of Rington starting their conversion as soon as next week.’

  The media package flicked back to Tara talking. ‘It’s big companies, big bucks and power-hungry people who have caused constipation in both agriculture and the energy industries — pardon my pun. But no more . . . It’s time for the people to take back their power. And if it’s poo power, then so be it. Culvert is the capital of the world in terms of change.’

  Gathered around the television, they all let out a cheer and again hugged one another. Tara flicked to three more channels, all with lengthy good news reports. It was out. The project was under way. Change was happening and the Smiths and Tara and Elsie couldn’t be happier.

  Tara’s mobile buzzed with the arrival of a text. It was Christine at the council offices manning the phones. ‘Wow!’ Tara said as she read it. ‘Christine reckons the phones are ringing off the hooks, there’re emails coming in from around the world, and the Facebook page for Cleanagain Energy has gone nuts. She also said the media team has it in hand, so we are to enjoy our night off. Apparently, we deserve it.’

  With the realisation that they had achieved what they had set out to do, there was a lull in their energy and all six of them drifted out to watch the sun go down.

  ‘What a day,’ Elsie said.