Valley of the White Gold

by Tony Parsons

  ‘Dan might be waiting for me with his shotgun out,’ Rod said with a grin.

  ‘Coming in for a nightcap or coffee?’ Beth asked as Rod brought the car to a halt.

  ‘At this hour?’

  ‘I thought you might like to share my company for a little while longer,’ she said archly.

  ‘Only teasing. Of course I would,’ he said and held the car door open for her.

  Inside, they agreed on tea and Beth set about putting the kettle on. Jim, in his dressing-gown, came in to greet them. ‘Have a good night?’ he asked.

  ‘The best,’ Beth replied. ‘What are you doing still up?’

  ‘Hector wants us to go to Glengarry for lunch tomorrow. It’s Dougal’s birthday. You’re invited too, Rod. I thought I’d better let you know tonight.’

  ‘What about the wool?’ Rod asked.

  ‘Dad said you could forget about it for a few hours.’

  ‘Well! Hector must have some pull,’ he said.

  ‘Okay, I’ll leave you two to it,’ Jim said, and with a cheeky grin he closed the kitchen door.

  Rod watched Beth intently as she moved about the kitchen. She did everything so smoothly and gracefully. She wasn’t as sophisticated or as well educated as some of the girls he’d known, and certainly wasn’t a woman of the world, but he reckoned Beth would be there when the whips were cracking. She was not only beautiful but she could obviously do almost anything on a property – and some of it, like handling sheepdogs, better than many blokes. He sensed she was an extremely special person.

  Beth sat down at the table opposite him and sipped at her tea. ‘Can I get you anything else?’ she asked after they’d looked shyly at each other for a couple of minutes.

  He shook his head. ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Shall I run you back to the cottage so you can get some sleep?’ Beth said, sad that the evening was almost over.

  ‘I could walk quite easily,’ he protested, albeit not too strenuously.

  ‘Come on. You haven’t got a torch. It’s no trouble,’ she said, ushering him out the door. She was hoping that a bit more would come out of their evening together before it was over. And she let Rod drive so that she’d have to get out of the passenger’s seat when they reached the shed.

  ‘Well, it’s back to business in the morning,’ he said as they drove down the track to the cottage.

  ‘And getting closer to cut-out,’ she said. It wasn’t a nice thought because it meant Rod wouldn’t be at Mattai for very much longer. Would that mean goodbye or would it be the start of something wonderful? She got out of the car and walked round to the driver’s side.

  ‘It was a great night, Beth,’ Rod said softly as he bent forward and, just as she had hoped, leant down and kissed her. His kiss was gentle and lasted a long time, or so it seemed to Beth. She’d never experienced anything like it. It shook her up and her legs felt so weak that she needed to lean against the car.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Rod asked and took her hand.

  ‘I am now,’ she whispered, as she got back behind the wheel. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’ She still had the presence of mind to shine the headlights up the path so he could find his way to the front door.

  ‘What a girl,’ he murmured. He stood at the door of the cottage and watched the Fairlane all the way until it reached the homestead.

  Beth’s heart was racing. She was so stirred up by Rod’s kiss that she couldn’t get out of the car. She wanted to recall, in every minute detail, the feel of it on her lips. Of one thing she was certain. It had happened: she was finally in love. The big question was whether Rod was too.

  Chapter Eleven

  Glengarry homestead was built on a gentle slope above a small stream that meandered through the property before joining the bigger Half Moon Creek. The house was surrounded by a thick windbreak – three belts of shrubs and pine trees. It was so dense that even the fiercest, coldest winds did not penetrate to the house. The shrubs and trees were a haven for many varieties of birds. These nested in absolute safety and sought worms and insects in the beautiful gardens surrounding the red-brick house. A fish pond and fountain above a wide bird bath completed the peaceful scene.

  Beth had seen all of this many times since she’d first come to the McLeod homestead as a small child, but today she only had eyes for the man beside her in the back seat of the Fairlane. In previous times it would have been Bella sitting next to her but now she and Wally were no longer invited to Glengarry. It was such a shame for Bella, who was still more than welcome, but Hector just couldn’t stand Wally. Jim usually came with the rest of his family but today he’d gone ahead in the station utility. Jim and Dougal were good mates and Dougal also played in the Mudgee cricket team.

  Dan dropped Dorothy and Beth off at the homestead and then drove along a track that curved towards the shearing shed and yards. Hector was waiting for Rod and him at the yards with a mob of about fifty ewes in a pen. After a gladiatorial handshake, Hector invited Rod to inspect them. Hector wasn’t one to blow his own trumpet but Rod could see that he thought the ewes were pretty damned good. Rod thought so, too. They were all on the fine side and very well-covered sheep with good bonnets.

  ‘They’d do me for stud ewes any old day,’ Rod told Hector.

  ‘Me, too,’ Dan added. ‘No trouble growing superfine wool here. You put a superfine ram over these ewes and you’d have it.’

  ‘I thought you’d like to see them, Rod,’ Hector said warmly. ‘They come out of a line of ewes my father established in the early 1930s. I’ve always kept them earmarked separately from the offer sheep in case Dougal ever wanted to go in for stud sheep. I reckon these fifty ewes would be good enough for the job. Anyway, I’ll turn these out and then we’d better go over to the house for lunch.’

  Rod turned and looked around him. There was a keen breeze coming from the hills behind. Below, the land sloped away towards the creek and the road that ran clear through the valley. Dan had told him that Glengarry was the best-managed property in the Half Moon. Apparently, Hector had learned management as a jackaroo and then under the eyes of a tough, demanding father. It was clear that this was a model property.

  Dougal, with Jim’s help, was looking after the barbecue. Rod was introduced to Flora McLeod, who, Beth had told him on the way to Glengarry, was her mother’s best friend. The major regret of Flora’s life was that she had only been able to have one child. Rod liked Flora at first sight. She didn’t have Dorothy’s striking looks and was fair-haired where her best friend was dark, but she was a warm, charming woman who had the great gift of making people feel absolutely at home.

  ‘And what will you be doing when you leave Mattai, Mr Cameron?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s Rod, please, Mrs McLeod,’ Rod said.

  ‘But I can’t call you Rod if you insist on calling me Mrs McLeod,’ she said with a twinkle in her eye. ‘Please call me Flora. And now you can answer my question,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘Oh, this and that,’ he answered.

  ‘This and that? You aren’t very forthcoming. More classing?’

  ‘No more classing. I’ve got other things on my plate,’ he said.

  ‘What a secretive person you are,’ she teased. ‘Dorothy tells me you also write.’

  ‘I’ve had a few stories published, yes,’ Rod said.

  ‘Beth, dear, you didn’t tell me that Rod was a published writer,’ Flora said to Beth who had come over from the barbecue to stand beside Rod.

  Beth looked carefully at Rod before replying. ‘We haven’t had much chance to talk properly over all the shearing. We’ve been very busy.’ She looked again at Rod momentarily and Flora picked up from her glance that she liked Rod Cameron very much. She hoped that Beth hadn’t fallen too hard for him as he might prove to be a very hard nut, especially if details about his private life were so elusive.

  Rod reckoned that, as social gatherings went, this was pretty good. They had steak, chops, sausages and onions on the barbecue, and all sorts of differ
ent salads on big pale-green china plates ornamented with red lobsters. It all looked very appetising.

  Rod reckoned Hector would make a good character for a future book. It would certainly be a challenge to describe the man. Patrician, perhaps? Hector wasn’t someone you could sum up easily or get to know quickly. He was like a Scottish laird who had been picked up and transplanted into the valley of the Half Moon.

  Rod was pleased he’d been invited to Glengarry. He’d seen a lot that impressed him greatly. He could understand now why McLeod was so greatly respected. The property obviously ran like clockwork and the sheep looked terrific. He reckoned he could learn a lot from Hector and he hoped he’d get the opportunity to come again.

  Rod experienced one last bout of vigorous handshaking before he left with the Staffords. Despite Hector’s gruff exterior, Rod knew, in his heart, that he had met a real man who he hoped might become his friend.

  Cut-out at Mattai caused a flurry of movement as people began to leave the property. The shearers were the first to depart. The shedhands washed down the board and a couple of them stayed to help the presser before leaving with him. All the wool, except Rod’s two special lines, was pressed, branded and stacked, ready for the wool carrier.

  The wool truck came late that afternoon. ‘These bales aren’t to go with this load,’ Rod said to the carrier, pointing towards the special bales in the corner of the room. ‘They’ll be going down on their own when I finish the line. I might need a few pounds out of them if I’m light on for weight at the finish.’ Dan had told him that he and Jim would take the two top lines to Sydney in their own truck.

  Rod spent most of Friday finishing off the five-bale line and then turned his attention to the wool off the older ewes. Most people probably wouldn’t have noticed much difference in this wool when it came onto the wool table, but there was definitely a difference and Rod thought it might mean a fair bit of money. The wool had very little tip and appeared marginally finer and drier. This meant the recover-able yield of superfine wool would be greater. And, rather than one bale, he fancied he could get two from what he had put aside.

  He cleared the other wool from the floor and put it into a wool pack before turning his attention to the new stack. Dan and Jim, who had come down to the shed, watched with great interest as he began going through it. Where Rod had been extremely thorough while he worked on the five-bale line, he was now meticulous. Virtually every staple was exposed to scrutiny, and, if there was the slightest change in style or spinning quality, the offending staples were removed. It was slow work but the end product was magnificent.

  At smoko on Friday afternoon, Jim put the question he had been dying to ask to Rod. ‘Do you think you could leave this for a while and come with me to cricket practice tomorrow morning? You can be back here by lunchtime. What do you say?’

  Rod’s first thought was that he just wanted to plough on and finish this second line of wool. He could do without the interruption and wasn’t really in the mood for cricket. But he had already told Jim he’d go and he wasn’t one to go back on his word.

  ‘My old creams will need ironing,’ he said. It had always been the done thing to wear creams to practice and he still carried them around in his ute.

  ‘Mum will do them for you,’ Jim said eagerly. ‘What about boots? I can probably get the boys to hunt down some boots for you.’

  ‘They probably wouldn’t be big enough,’ Rod said with a half-smile, looking down at his large feet. ‘Anyway, I’ve got a couple of old pairs in a kitbag.’

  ‘Ha. Old habits die hard,’ Jim grinned. ‘A little bird told me that you played in a charity game in Sydney not so very long ago and did very well. Five wickets, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Your sources of information amaze me, they really do. And, for the record, it was four wickets,’ Rod said, laughing.

  ‘There’s a great network in the cricket business,’ Jim said. ‘The bloke who told me said you could still walk into any Sydney first-grade team.’

  ‘He must have been drinking. I’m a has-been.’

  ‘Better a has-been than a never-was,’ Jim said gravely. ‘I told the boys you’d be there. Thanks heaps for this.’

  ‘No problem. What time do we go and how are we page_391 there? I want to be back here by the arvo,’ Rod said firmly.

  ‘Practice begins at nine-thirty. I’ll take you in and you can come back with Mum and Beth. They’ve got a bit of shopping to do but will get you back for lunch. That suit you?’

  ‘Sounds good. Righto, I’ll have a look at the local cricket scene,’ Rod replied.

  ‘You won’t find any budding Bradmans or O’Reillys but we have a few fair players. We’ve had some that went on to play grade in Sydney,’ Jim said, excited at the prospect of showing off his new mate to the club.

  The next day was certainly made for cricket, even if only for practice. Except for a few fluffy white clouds towards Bathurst and Orange, the sky was quite blue. There was nobody in the clubhouse when Rod and Jim arrived; the early birds were all out on the ground. Rod took off his elasticsided boots and grey socks and began putting on his white cricket socks.

  ‘You’re putting on four pairs of socks?’ Jim asked, his con-fusion evident.

  Rod nodded. ‘A bloke by the name of Keith Carmody put a mate of mine up to it and he told me about it. Keith was in the Services team with Lindsay Hassett and Keith Miller and then captained Western Australia. Keith said it saves your feet a lot, especially if you’re a fast bowler. Your feet take a lot of stress. I haven’t bowled for a while so I don’t want blisters.’

  They walked out on the ground and Jim began introducing Rod to the players. One name, David Parmenter, caught his attention. ‘I knew a Cec Parmenter once. He played in Sydney. Any relation?’ Rod asked.

  ‘Cec is my father,’ David said. ‘You broke his finger. It was his last game.’

  ‘Yes, I remember now. I was sorry about that,’ Cameron said earnestly.

  ‘You fast bowlers are never sorry about anything,’ Parmenter said with a grin.

  ‘This is our captain, Don Steele,’ Jim said as he introduced Rod.

  ‘Good to meet you, Rod. Many thanks for coming today,’ Don said.

  ‘You were at Shore, weren’t you, Don?’ Rod asked.

  ‘How do you know?’ Don asked.

  ‘Oh, I hear things,’ Rod said with a smile.

  ‘There are a few ex-GPS fellows here,’ Don said.

  ‘There would be.’ He knew Don Steele had been a very good all-round sportsman at Shore. He was a good-looking young man with fair, wavy hair, steady grey eyes and a lithe build. Jim said he was one of the team’s opening batsmen and also a spin bowler.

  ‘Get hold of a ball and we’ll go down the ground a bit so I can loosen up before I do anything at the nets. You can pull a muscle quick and lively if you go at it cold, especially an old fella like me,’ Rod said.

  ‘Old fella,’ Jim said and laughed. Rod was only a few years older than him.

  Rod and Jim walked to the far end of the oval, and after Rod had limbered up, he began rolling his arm over. Finally, he bowled a dozen or so slowish deliveries to Jim, who blocked them all with his bat.

  ‘Okay, that’s enough. Let’s go back to the net and see what gives,’ Cameron said.

  As they walked back up the oval towards the nets, Rod noticed Wally Osborne walking out on to the ground. Dressed in creams and a blazer, he was carrying a bat. ‘You didn’t tell me that Osborne played cricket,’ Rod said.

  ‘I never gave it a thought,’ Jim said, looking bewildered. ‘Does it make a difference?’

  ‘That will depend on him. I could be wrong but I have a feeling he doesn’t like me. It could be because Bella was laughing with me in your shed when Wally came for her. I’m only guessing, but I reckon he has a jealous streak in him where his wife is concerned.’

  ‘Mmm, that’s possible but I don’t know that he’ll cause any trouble here. Wally likes his cricket too much to do that,’ Jim said
.

  ‘What’s he like as a cricketer?’ Rod asked.

  ‘He’s a big hitter, a real big hitter. He can get a lot of runs quickly or he can get out just as quickly. He tries to smash a bowler from his very first ball, and he’s a really good fielder anywhere,’ Jim said.

  When Rod and Jim came up to the group gathered around the cricket bag that held the gear, Wally was sitting on the ground lacing up his boots. He looked up and saw Rod and Jim but made no attempt to get up and shake hands. Instead, he nodded to Jim and then got up and walked away.

  ‘Okay, I see what you mean,’ said Jim. He’d rarely seen this side of Wally before but he definitely didn’t like it. He’d also noticed that Bella seemed less than blissful these days, and he knew that Wally had been out drinking and telling really offensive jokes. ‘Anyway, let’s get on with it.’

  The practice session began with one of the Cox boys bowling to Don Steele. After Dougal McLeod had had a bat, Don asked Jim to put the pads on. ‘You can bowl to Jim if you like, Rod,’ he said and threw him the ball.

  Rod nodded and tossed the ball from hand to hand as Jim padded up. When Jim took his place at the crease, Rod walked back a few paces, then ran in and bowled his first ball. Jim didn’t expect much pace from such a short run and was surprised when the ball whipped past him. The second ball swung away and he missed it too. Rod seemed to be merely rolling his arm over, yet the ball was coming off the wicket quite quickly.

  Rod’s next ball was slower and dead straight and Jim played it stylishly to what would have been mid-on in a match. Rod nodded his appreciation. Jim, feeling better for the last shot, reckoned that Rod’s most dangerous delivery might be the outswinger, so he was ready for it.

  The fifth delivery swung in between bat and pad and knocked back his middle and leg stumps. Jim looked at the stumps in disbelief. He had the best batting technique in the team yet Rod had bowled him with his fifth ball. And clearly he was not bowling flat out – he couldn’t be, off that short run. After that, Rod dropped his pace back even further and Jim was able to handle him.