It wasn’t a big room – about five metres by four. In one corner stood wide shelves lined with old newspapers and covered with jars of preserved fruit and vegies that her mother had bottled. There were oranges laid out on newspaper and eggs in cartons stacked on top of one another.
In the other corner was a cupboard full of folders and papers to do with the farm. And Aunty Spider’s diaries.
Tessa opened the door of the cupboard. There they were, stacked into shelves. What secrets did they hold? Tessa felt apprehension as she took the first book in her hands and opened it, almost reverently.
It was the earliest one, written in a woman’s hand, the firmer, steadier script of a younger Spider.
Tuesday, 24 April 1928
Well, it’s finally happened. We’ve been granted a Water Lease. Over the last four months, we’ve been droving our stock slowly towards Balladonia, where we know there is a good water supply. I’m riding my push bike, while my brothers Len, George and Edward are all on horseback.
Grace will come on the train next month.
Once we find a place that looks like a good spot for a homestead we will start to build.
Aunty Margaret and Uncle Sam have given the journal-keeping responsibility to me. I am to record the events such as weather, temperatures and the developing of the land. Aunty Margaret is helping me and it is part of my schooling. I feel very important.
Today it was one hundred and ten and the wind blew strongly from the west. Soft clouds scuttled across the sky and Uncle Sam thinks there is rain coming. The ants have been very busy scuttling around.
Uncle Sam killed a wether today so we will have fresh meat for tonight’s tea, but we’ll have to be very careful with the meat that is left. A dingo followed him the whole way back to the camp afterwards, attracted by the smell of the blood. They seem to be in large numbers at the moment.
. . .
Monday, 14 May 1928
We have started to build a homestead but more importantly, a shearing shed. Our chosen place is about thirty miles south of the road that goes to South Australia. The walls are made from limestone and at the moment we are trying to get the roof on. The cameleers will replenish our supplies when they come by.
We’re expecting a boring plant within the next twelve months – it would be nice to sink some bores so we don’t have to move the stock further north each time we head out.
The rain seems to be taking its time in coming this year. We had about half an inch last month but nothing more. We are being teased with large rain clouds to the south, but they aren’t coming this far up.
The weather has been cold at night but lovely during the day.
. . .
Wednesday, 5 September 1928
There was great excitement today when a cloud of dust appeared in the distance. It was the first Afghan cameleer train we have seen since we moved out here.
The camels snorted and some even spat – they seemed very cranky creatures, but their brown eyes are beautiful. Ali, the man who walks alongside them, uses a nose peg and rope to direct them.
The camels carry everything from timber to household needs. They are camped over at the small crater of water we call the house dam. It’s not a dam at all, but rocks that hold water. There were other men with Mr Ali. Three, I think and what looked like a young boy a bit older than me.
Oh, I forgot to record the weather. It was ninety-two today and sunny, and for once there wasn’t any sign of dingo tracks around our camp this morning.
Tessa ran through the dates and worked out Spider would have been seven at the time these entries were written. She flicked through a few more pages and didn’t see anything of interest, so she chose another later one.
Saturday, 1 January 1955
We’ve been here for many years, on this piece of land, but it seems that the rest of Australia has only just realised the potential of the Nullarbor. People have come and gone since we arrived. Not many stay long – it takes a special type of person to be able to handle the isolation and remoteness. But recently we have started to get neighbours who are settling.
A big company has bought the stretch of land next to us and installed a manager who is going to ‘develop the country’. They’ve been sinking bores, searching for water.
I believe they have brought stock from South Australia across the telegraph line.
If they haven’t already, they will soon realise the hardship of this land and how unwilling it is to be tamed.
In the years we have been here, the weather plays the most important role in our lives. It dictates when we fence, when we muster, even what we eat.
The last three weeks have been unbearably hot, but the nights have been cool. The breeze off the ocean comes in around eight in the evening and later, as the sun sets, it really is quite pleasant.
For the first day of the year, it was one hundred and four in the shade of the verandah. But it would be much hotter ‘in the waterbag’, as the stockmen say. As I write this by the light of the lamp, it’s a nice eighty-six.
Len has brought us a kero fridge! We feel very rich and spoilt to have somewhere to keep our supplies cold. He had to show Uncle Sam where to put the fuel and as they shuffled it into the corner of the kitchen, it spilt on the floor. Such a waste!
We have had word that our water lease has changed to a pastoral lease. We now have to fence the 782,000 acres that are ours. We started on the boundary, but Uncle Sam says it will take us many years to fence the paddocks the way he wants them done. He tells us he and Len have surveyed the whole of the station and says there will have to be at least fifty paddocks!
Today we managed to get in about half a mile of posts and tomorrow, George, Edward and I will run the wire. We’re going to use rabbit-proof netting, which Len brought back from his last trip to the railway line. The Tea and Sugar Train is a godsend when it comes to getting supplies, as were the cameleer trains.
I miss Ali and his team of camels. Neither he nor any others have been through here in many years. When they upgraded the road in the 1940s so vehicles and trucks could access the route it really put these kindly men and their animals out of business. I guess these new trucks are making it easier and quicker to cart supplies. Maybe they are not even using camels anywhere anymore.
It was a grand sight to see those stately animals pull our wool on flatbed trailers down to the coast. I know it took them many days and I can only imagine what it looked like when the bales were floated on barges out across the sea and loaded onto ships. They would then sail to Fremantle, where the wool would be sold.
This is something these new neighbours will have to get used to. Markets are a long way away and we have to use other means of transport to get our produce there. Maybe I sound cynical, but having lived here for so many years, I know it isn’t a life or land for the faint-hearted.
‘Tessa? Do you want a cup of tea?’ Peggy’s voice floated down the stairs.
Tessa glanced at her watch. She would have to head home soon.
‘Yes, please. Just a quick one, Mum.’ She flicked through the books again. The first few were in date order, then it seemed some were missing. She went back to the cupboard to see if she’d missed some, but she hadn’t. There must have been some missing.
‘Can I take these back to Aunty Spider’s, Mum?’ she asked when she was back in the kitchen upstairs. ‘I’d like to read them.’
‘Course you can. I’ve hardly ever looked at them other than to have a quick flick through.’ Peggy grabbed a couple of potatoes out of the pantry and started to peel them. ‘Do you want to stay for tea, petal?’
‘Uh, no, thanks. I’ve got something defrosting already.’ Potatoes could only mean meat! ‘You know, I’m not sure they interest me, either, but I’d like to have a read. But there’s one from 1930, then nothing again until 1945. Are there any other diaries somewhere else, Mum? There are a few years missing.
‘No. I shifted them all from the office down to the cellar when Dad and I moved in. Th
ey’re not over at Spider’s?’
‘I haven’t seen any diaries except for the 2009 one. And she didn’t write in it every day, like she has in these ones.’ She paused. ‘Do you know why Aunty Spider’s family came out here?’
Peggy was busy pouring the tea. ‘Not really. I had a brief conversation with her years ago. Spider’s mother got pregnant with one of the boys – Edward, I think. It was just before the Depression while they were living in Adelaide. There wasn’t any food and her mother was very ill. Spider said she remembered a train journey to Ceduna, where her uncle met her and two of the older boys – George and Len – and took them to live on their station. They sort of gravitated out here. There seemed more opportunity, I guess. I have some idea her mother may have died during childbirth – or maybe not.’
‘Can’t have – there was Tom a whole lot later,’ Tessa pointed out.
‘That’s true. Maybe during Tom’s birth? I honestly don’t know. I certainly don’t have any idea where her dad ended up.’
Tessa watched her mum run water over the potatoes and set them on the stove to boil. ‘It must have been horrible for kids in the Depression,’ she said.
‘Horrible for anyone, I’d think,’ Peggy answered.
‘Yeah, but imagine being so young and being sent away from your parents.’
‘Did that happen much? Kids being sent away to other family members like Spider was?’
‘Good Lord, how would I know? But it does seem to make sense. When you live on a farm there’s always food – eggs, chooks, rabbits, sheep, cattle. Even when things are pretty desperate, as they were during the Depression.
‘Anyway, I would have thought if Spider’s mum died, then her dad would have come out here, too. But he didn’t as far as I know. Your dad might know.’
‘Or, maybe I could check with Elsie.’
‘Oh, now, while I think about it, Elsie rang to see how you were getting on. She’s left her number again, even though you’ve already got it. I think that was a hint.’
Now that was an idea.
Elsie.
Chapter 22
Tuesday, 1 March 1955
I’m so glad we know this land like the back of our hands. When Uncle Sam and Aunty Margaret first brought us out here, there weren’t any roads or tracks, but as time went on, rabbit trappers, gold hunters and ordinary travellers have made a criss-cross of tracks which, to the untrained eye, might look like one huge cobweb. The trails don’t all lead to the same place or even to anywhere. Just into the open bush.
We had a tracker arrive today looking for two blokes who have become lost ‘out there, somewhere’. Len was here, so he’s joined the search party on horseback. I pray they find them. This terrain can be merciless.
There won’t be any point looking for tracks now, because the winds have been so strong from the south. Any footprint or bike or horse tracks will have been filled by the drifting sand. They will have to rely on looking for broken branches and scrub. Not the easiest way to find someone.
I still have George, Edward and Tom here. Even though I’m perfectly capable of handling everything on my own, I prefer it when my brothers are around. And, of course, Uncle Sam and Aunty Margaret.
Thankfully the weather is kind. Cool, today, with no sign of rain, even though it’s overcast.
. . .
Tuesday, 24 April 1956
The boundary fence was finally completed today. We’ve been working on it for twelve months. Our pastoral lease is at last clear to everyone. We celebrated by trapping some rabbits and killing a wether. Because Len had just arrived back from the Tea and Sugar Train, we had fresh vegetables for a stew and a bottle of port. Such a luxury!
It’s taken a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get these fences erected. Len and George started them, with Uncle Sam helping, but we found the limestone and rock was too hard for us to get through just by digging or with a crowbar. Len decided we needed help so, about six months ago, he went to Kalgoorlie to find someone who would be able to spare the time. The fencers he brought back have gelignite, and they blast out the post-holes much more easily and faster than we could have ever done. The fence just appeared in no time!
The nights are beginning to get cold now but the days are still lovely and warm.
. . .
Friday, 6 December 1957
I have neglected the diary for some time. What is left of our family is only three and it’s taken some while to become used to that. The deaths of my uncle and three brothers left Aunty Margaret, Tom and me grief-stricken, but after so many months, we are beginning to come out of the fog that has surrounded us and Danjar Plains.
In April, Uncle Sam was mustering ewes in the home paddock. He hadn’t returned by dark, so Len and Tom went looking for him. They found him dead, underneath his horse, Buck, who had obviously stepped in a rabbit hole and thrown him. The horse had snapped his leg so he also had to be put down. Uncle Sam was the reason we came here, the reason we have become one with this land. And now he is gone. Aunty Margaret won’t stay. She’s asked to go back to Adelaide, so I will go with her next month and get her settled, then return.
Next Len, the golden-tongued and charismatic Len. He went in June. Our property is dirty with rocks and limestone and we were very impatient to get three more fences up so we could keep the sheep close to our house. The dingoes had been taking lambs – a loss we couldn’t afford. Len and George had started to help the fencers again, instead of dedicating their time to putting in windmills and troughs. They were getting ready to blow a post-hole and the dynamite went off while Len was holding the charge. He was killed instantly.
Thinking nothing more could go wrong, we started to muster for crutching. August had been a good month – enough rains to make the grasses abundant and make us confident of a good wool clip. The shearing team who came was short of a presser, so George filled in. He spent hours at the Ajax press, pumping the arms up and down and pushing the pins through to hold the wool down.
Somehow, God only knows how, he was on the inside of the press, jumping the wool down and was speared through the chest with a pin. I have my suspicions about this, especially after a couple of the other blokes made it clear there had been an argument between George and Dan, one of the shearers. Something to do with revenge, but I don’t understand how Dan could have known. Of course, it doesn’t do any good to think about these things. The death has already happened and we’ve got no proof. It will just make us afraid of our own shadows. And of the shearing team.
And Edward, cheeky, fun-loving Edward? He fell from the windmill in the house paddock.
Our boys are buried not with my William but under the grove of mallee trees we always joked would become the cemetery. Uncle Sam picked the spot when we first came out here, saying it was the coolest and most peaceful place on the station. We’ve always known and been prepared for death out here, but we never thought we would bury so many there so quickly.
It could have weakened a lesser family, but their deaths have made Tom’s and my resolve stronger than ever to make this stretch of land into one of the best stations on the Nullarbor.
Yes, tonight, sitting in front of our fire, we are a lot more solemn and sad, but we won’t fail, because that is not a word either Tom or I understand.
Tessa drew a sharp breath. She’d had no idea what Aunty Spider had faced – such disaster and sorrow! Spider had never spoken about it, never mentioned those losses. In fact, she’d rarely talked of early times, except to recall what year they’d had a good clip, or bad rains.
This must have been why she was so understanding, so sympathetic, when Kendra had been killed. Because she understood loss by accident. Lord, it made the things Tessa had faced seem insignificant by comparison.
Nine words, in particular, had jumped off the page for Tessa: ‘He fell from the windmill in the house paddock’. So Kendra’s death wasn’t the first one on Danjar Plains! The local Aborigines might have said the place was cursed but, really, accidents were noth
ing but bad luck or bad management. At least, that was what Spider would have said, but it was not necessarily what Tessa believed.
Restlessly, she got up and paced. What a horrendous year for them all, but it was just like Aunty Spider to not give up, the tough old bird. Obviously she’d gone on to do what she had promised ‘the boys’, because Danjar Plains, although a small station, was a good one.
Tessa placed the 1957 diary on the pile next to her and opened another.
Tuesday, 8 July 1958
It is going to be a good season – the grass is long and the bush green (or rather a bluey-silver) with new shoots. We have started to see the budgerigars in large flocks. The noise they make is just deafening and when they fly together they seem like one green cloud moving across the sky. I rode my bike out to Jackman’s paddock yesterday and there they were lining the trees. From a distance it looked like the branches had some kind of growth all over them! It really was an incredible sight. I’ve been here now since 1928 and while the birds come every year, I don’t believe I have seen so many. Dear Uncle Sam would have told an old wives’ tale about why they are here in such numbers, I’m sure.
They drink from the puddles and the dams we have dug. Even though there are heaps of live ones, there seems to be many dead ones too. Who knows why, but I am continually scooping them out of my house water tank. This impresses me no end. Tom says he’ll bring me back a gas cannon next time he goes to Kalgoorlie. It will keep them away from my fruit trees, which I’ve so carefully looked after and which these pesky birds love to eat!
. . .
Sunday, 13 December 1959
We are celebrating tonight. It is the biggest wool clip we have ever sent off. And it went by truck. Yes, I know, we’ve been doing that for a few years now, but I still find it strange seeing the bales loaded one by one onto motorised machinery, rather than the trailers pulled by the camels down to the sea.
. . .
Thursday, 14 January 1960
Well, well, isn’t Tom a dark horse? He has arrived home from his annual break in Kalgoorlie with a bride in tow. Always to be expected, I guess, but at 29, I did wonder if marriage would pass him by. Lucy is a station girl from further north of Kalgoorlie and is a good worker. We will get along fine.
Silver Clouds Page 17