Valley of the White Gold

by Tony Parsons

  What really concerned Beth was that Rod might think more of Bella than he did of her. Rod always spoke well of Bella and she’d been to see him recently. The fact that Bella was married didn’t mean that she couldn’t fall in love with Rod and he with her. This wasn’t something she was prepared to discuss with her mother, though, who had obviously fallen under Rod’s spell and thought he was merely playing for time. Dorothy apparently blamed Dan for the situation and Beth felt that it wouldn’t be long before things blew up. Her parents didn’t have many rows, but on the few occasions her mother really argued a point, her father usually retired, defeated. Beth could only hope it might be the same this time.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  After the accident involving Charlie Dillon, Dan had to concede that he might have misjudged his new neighbour, and he was considering making his revised opinion known to his family. However, in the meantime, he had a more important matter to attend to.

  This matter involved sheep. Dan was extremely sensitive when it came to any criticism of his sheep. When Drew Stevens suggested that his rams weren’t big enough and needed an infusion of bigger Riverina sheep, Dan got hot under the collar. Superfine rams, even fine-wool rams, did not grow as big as medium- and strong-wool rams. Any fool knew that.

  But Drew’s criticism rankled. Deep down, although he would never admit it, Dan was concerned that his rams did lack a bit of size. It wouldn’t matter so much if he was only showing against other superfine sheep, but he knew that if he was to be in a line-up for Grand Champion Ram, he’d find it hard to compete. The medium- and strong-wool rams were naturally much bigger than the Mattai sheep, but Dan knew that some fine-wool rams could grow as big as the stronger-woolled sheep.

  He’d been looking for a large superfine ram but had not been able to find what he considered to be a crackerjack ram for perhaps five years now. This irked him because the fine-wool market had been depressed, and if he had been able to locate the kind of ram he wanted, he reckoned he might have been able to buy it for a very reasonable price. Drew Stevens’ remark had added urgency to Dan’s quest for a top ram and it had become even more vital now that Rod Cameron was destined to become a real force in the breeding of fine-wool sheep. If they didn’t lift their act at Mattai, and lift it damned quickly, Rod would leave them languishing behind.

  So, accompanied by Jim and leaving Dorothy and Beth to look after Mattai, Dan headed south in his Holden ute for a tour of some of the main fine-wool studs. He and Jim looked at hundreds of rams, a lot of them quite good, but not one of them up to the standard Dan required. They had left calling at Merryville until last because Dan had hoped that one of the daughter studs would have made sufficient genetic progress. If he could get a top sheep elsewhere, it wouldn’t cost him nearly as much as he’d have to pay at Merryville. The problem was that Merryville had so many daughter studs vying for their top rams that the competition guaranteed these sheep would make big money.

  At Merryville, much to their delight, Dan and Jim found not one ram, but two. Two great rams with wool crimped so well that he could barely believe it. Dan was anything but a demonstrative man but when he looked at a really top sheep he felt a kind of inner glow. He had experienced this kind of feeling only two or three times in his life and the last page_274 had been when he’d inspected Rod Cameron’s two ewes at the Mudgee show.

  The superfine ram had just about everything he required but the one that really took his eye was a fine-wool ram. This ram was not only magnificent but he was massive – the kind of sheep that would put more size into his rams. Both rams were catalogued for sale in Melbourne, and although Dan wasn’t keen about travelling that far, he felt so strongly about the two rams, and especially the fine wool, that he decided he and Jim should go. They would drive down in the ute so that if they were successful in bidding, they would be able to bring the ram back.

  The big fine-wool ram won everything in sight in Melbourne and the superfine ram won Champion Superfine Ram. The superfine ram was the first of the Merryville draft to be sold and Dan bid up to his limit but was outbid by a thousand dollars. Dan liked this sheep but his sheepman’s heart was set on the fine-wool ram and he now turned all his attention to him.

  The bidding began at a furious pace and within seconds it had passed the price paid for the superfine ram. There were at least four bidders going hot and strong. Dan had set himself a limit much higher than he’d ever been prepared to pay for a ram before. When his limit was reached, there were still three bidders: Dan, a fine-wool breeder from Armidale, and an attractive young woman. Dan was getting desperate.

  ‘If you want him, you’ll have to go a bit higher, Dad,’ Jim whispered. Dan nodded and threw in another bid. At this price, he couldn’t afford to offer a cent more. There was a slight pause before Dan’s final bid was topped by the Armidale man. The blonde woman put her finger in the air and the two of them fought it out until finally, at an unbelievable price, the Armidale man shook his head and the ram was knocked down to F & G, Yass, just as the superfine ram had been.

  ‘Bad luck, Dad. Too many people thought the same as us about that ram,’ Jim said.

  Dan was inconsolable. ‘It will be a long time before we find another ram as good as that. I should have settled for the superfine fellow and made sure of him, but I had my heart set on that fine-wool bloke. I wonder who got them.’

  ‘There’s a lot of studs around Yass. Heaps of them. Are we going to bid on anything else?’

  ‘There’s nothing else here that comes anywhere near either of those two. We’ll have to look elsewhere. It’s a long drive home so we might as well make tracks. We can stay at Albury tonight and be home tomorrow. And we still don’t have a ram,’ Dan sighed.

  They arrived home tired and cranky. Dorothy and Beth were at the back gate to greet them. Dan’s disappointment was obvious. Both the women knew he’d had his heart set on purchasing one or other of the Merryville rams.

  They had just finished dinner that night when the phone rang. Their wool rep, Bill Stratton, wanted to speak to Dan. It was Bill’s job to know who got what at auction, especially if his clients in the Central Tablelands were involved. Bill was one of the best reps and he knew that Dan had been looking for a top ram.

  ‘You didn’t get a ram, Dan,’ Bill said. It was more a statement than a question.

  ‘Too much money for me, Bill. Too much for the ones I wanted, anyway. We could have bought a ram but it wouldn’t have done me any good. I should have concentrated on the big superfine fellow. He was a very nice-woolled sheep. I might have got him if I’d bid a bit more but I really wanted the top ram. He was a beauty. Obviously I wasn’t the only one who thought so.’

  ‘You’ll be able to see how they sire, anyway,’ Bill said. ‘You might even be able to get a ram by one or both of them.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Dan asked, confused.

  ‘Your neighbour Rod Cameron bought both rams. That was Rod’s sister, June Berryman, bidding for them. I believe both rams went from Melbourne to John Berryman’s at Yass and I think they’ll be at Glengarry tomorrow.’

  ‘You’re joking,’ Dan could barely restrain the fury in his voice.

  ‘No fear. Cameron bought them. I’ve got the list of New South Wales buyers.’

  ‘When is that man going to run out of money?’ Dan asked. His world was becoming blacker by the day.

  ‘He’ll probably write another book when he needs some more,’ Bill chuckled. His laughter grated on Dan. Bill’s wit was the last thing he needed right now.

  ‘I’m going to have a look at the rams before Rod shears them. I thought you might be interested to know where they’ll be,’ Bill said.

  ‘Thanks a lot, Bill,’ Dan said caustically.

  Dan was too stunned by this news to get up from the phone immediately. He sat and thought about his long, fruitless trip to Melbourne and the fact that he still lacked a top ram. He could have forgiven his new neighbour for buying one of the rams, but the fact that he’d bought
both was completely over the fence. He had a very good idea what sort of a job the big fine-wool ram would do over Rod’s top ewes and it didn’t bode well for Dan. He came out of the office with a thunderous expression on his face.

  ‘What’s the matter, dear?’ Dorothy asked.

  ‘He’s done it again,’ Dan said bitterly. ‘Rod Cameron bought both the rams we bid on. That was his sister doing the bidding.’

  ‘Rod got them both?’ Jim asked, incredulously.

  ‘They’re due at Glengarry tomorrow.’ What worried Dan was Rod’s acuteness. He considered himself a good judge of sheep and he’d been right about the quality of those two Merryville rams. But so had Rod.

  As Beth dried the dishes and her father’s resentment filled the kitchen, her heart sank. Surely Rod knew how much his actions were jeopardising his chances with her. Perhaps, after all, he just wasn’t that interested in her. Or perhaps he was more interested in his wool. Well, she was not going to marry a man like her father, whose life revolved around his sheep, that was for certain. If that’s the life Rod Cameron wanted, he could have it without her.

  A few days later, Dan was on his way to Mudgee when he saw a truck beside the road a couple of miles beyond the Glengarry gate. The driver was changing a flat tyre. Dan pulled up on the other side of the road and walked across to check whether the fellow needed any help. His eyes took in the sheep on the truck. They were merino ewes and by the tags in their ears he reckoned they had to be stud sheep.

  ‘D’ya need a hand?’ Dan asked.

  ‘No, I’ll be jake but thanks,’ the driver answered.

  ‘What have you got there?’ Dan asked, nodding towards the sheep.

  ‘Stud ewes, mate. They’re supposed to be pretty good stuff. They’re for Rod Cameron at Glengarry. He can’t be far from here, eh?’

  ‘Not far. Just a couple of miles down the road – you’ll see the sign beside his front gate,’ Dan said.

  Dan looked through the rails of the truck while the driver finished screwing on the new tyre. He reached through the rails and opened the wool on one of the ewes. They were carrying good fleeces so it was easy for him to assess its quality. They were old ewes but still sound in mouth, and all superfine. Here, Dan reckoned, was the nucleus of another family of sheep for Glengarry. It was a good bet that these ewes would be mated with the superfine ram Rod had bought in Melbourne.

  Dan crossed back to his vehicle filled with a mixture of dejection and anger. He had reached a kind of crisis point in his life. He was dejected about Rod’s clear commitment to founding a top fine-wool stud. If Hector McLeod had done the same, Dan wouldn’t have been dirty on him even though it would have meant more competition. He could have lived with that and he would have enjoyed discussing stud matters with Hector. But Dan was beginning to sense that Rod might be a far greater threat to his current val0002413 as a stud breeder than Hector would ever have been. Rod appeared to be ruthlessly ambitious; he reckoned if it came to the crunch, Rod would walk all over him. What angered Dan the most was that he had probably set the Rod Cameron train in motion himself. After all, he had phoned him about classing Mattai in the first place. Dan drove on to town, frustrated and unsure who to blame for his situation.

  Back at Glengarry, Bill Stratton inspected Rod’s two new rams before Charlie Dillon shore them with the blades. Bill had been amongst sheep all his life and knew a good sheep when he saw one. He reckoned the fine-wool ram was the best ram he had ever seen come to the Central Tablelands. He was a big sheep with a lovely thick fleece of sirey wool. The other ram was a cracking superfine but not as good a sheep as its mate. Nevertheless, Bill reckoned that the fleece off this ram would win a grand championship just about anywhere it was exhibited. Bill could see that Rod was going to put Glengarry on the map as a top fine-wool stud.

  Charlie took a lot of trouble shearing the two rams and there was hardly a mark on them when he had finished. He was full of praise for both sheep. ‘I don’t know what you’ve got in mind, but that fine-wool ram will breed you some great show sheep. He’d have to. The other bloke’d be a top-liner if you didn’t see him alongside the other ram. I suppose you have your reasons for buying both sheep.’

  Rod nodded. ‘Don’t worry, I do.’

  The next few days were busy ones for Rod. He went through the recently purchased draft of superfine ewes for the page_203 time and was very pleased with them. As soon as John Berryman delivered the two new rams to Glengarry, Rod put in a phone call to a top veterinarian who specialised in the artificial insemination of sheep. He explained what he had in mind and booked the vet’s services. His next step was to run in all the Glengarry ewes he had purchased with the property. He inspected all 6000 ewes, from two-tooth to full-mouth, and selected the top 200. This 200 would be artificially inseminated to the big fine-wool ram, giving Rod a relatively quick build-up in numbers and, hopefully, quality. The 200 ewes were tagged and Alec Hannaford took them away to a paddock Rod had been resting for them.

  Rod then went through the remaining 5800 ewes again and classed them according to spinning quality. The 500 or so best and finest would be inseminated with semen from the superfine ram because Rod wanted to fine up his next generation of sheep. He reckoned that with better nutrition he could hold the average wool cut to about where it was. He would reduce ewe numbers so as not to stress the paddocks. If wool prices continued to rise, especially prices for superfine wool, this should make up for any loss of weight. Rod was looking at things in the long term. He wanted to lift the Glengarry clip to top of the market status and put himself in line for winning the prizes on offer.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Eleanor Cameron had driven up from Terrigal to visit her son at Glengarry and was staying in one of the recently furnished bedrooms. Rod had her out inspecting the garden as soon as she had rested from the drive. She was an expert gardener and had created a beautiful tropical paradise at her house on the coast, and he was hoping she could work her magic here to improve the McLeods’ already fine garden. He had teed up a strong young man who was looking for some casual work and was willing to follow Eleanor’s direction.

  Rod had also employed someone who was supposed to be a reliable shearing contractor. It was more expensive than if he’d found shearers and shedhands himself, but he hadn’t been prepared to put in the time doing that sort of thing when he could be concentrating on the wool instead. Alec Hannaford mustered the woollies and brought them to the shed and then took the shorn sheep back to their paddocks, the same job Beth was doing over at Mattai.

  Rod wanted Dorothy, Beth and Bella to visit Glengarry for a barbecue the first weekend of shearing, as John Berryman and his wife, June, would be driving up from Yass on the Saturday. It would be a chance for the Stafford women to meet all of his family together. Rod rang Dorothy to invite them.

  ‘I’d love you to come but it’s up to you, Dorothy,’ he said. ‘If it’s going to create too many problems for you, I won’t be offended if you don’t make it. Mum and June will be here on Saturday evening and I thought that would be the best time as John needs to get back to Yass on Sunday morning.’

  After the phone call, Dorothy sat down and gave Rod’s invitation a great deal of thought. She sensed that Beth was almost at breaking point and was becoming more resentful of Dan by the day. Dorothy needed to give her daughter as many opportunities to see Rod as possible, and just hoped that any rift with her father would be temporary, and that Dan would come to his senses sooner or later. Dorothy felt that she had always been fairly straight with her husband and she didn’t fancy going behind Dan’s back again, now that they had already visited Glengarry once without telling him. The only option was to come right out and tell him that she and the girls had accepted an invitation to Glengarry to meet Rod’s family. There would be a scene but it would bring everything out into the open. Dan had dictated the way the women of the family behaved for a long while, and Dorothy felt it was time the rules were changed. She waited until after lunch on the day
of the barbecue to break the news.

  ‘Beth and I won’t be here for dinner tonight, Dan. Beth, Bella and I are going to Glengarry for a barbecue with Rod’s mother and sister. Jim and Wally won’t be back from cricket until late. I’ll leave some dinner for you and you can heat it up,’ Dorothy said matter-of-factly.

  Dan blinked, then pushed back his chair and looked at his wife, puzzled. He couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. ‘You did say you were going to Glengarry for a barbecue?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, dear, that’s what I said,’ Dorothy answered sweetly.

  ‘There’s no way you’re going. I won’t allow it,’ Dan said, glowering.

  ‘Don’t be childish, Dan. We’ve been invited and we’re going. I’m looking forward to it. This nonsense about Rod has gone on for far too long.’ Dorothy’s tone was now a shade less sweet than before.

  ‘Am I still head of this house or not?’ Dan thundered.

  ‘This house and the property are in both our names, Dan. I’ve worked my insides out for twenty-eight years, so I have as much right as you do to make decisions about what I and our children do. I’ve allowed you to make most of them up until now, but enough’s enough.’

  ‘If this is some attempt to get Beth closer to Cameron, you’re making a huge mistake. I don’t want to see my daughter married to him.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re becoming the joke of the district because of your attitude towards Rod. He’s a very fine man and a breath of fresh air in the valley,’ Dorothy said. ‘This is the 1970s not the 1870s. I’m not going to stand by and see Beth’s life messed up like Bella’s. God knows why I was weak enough to go along with you on that because I’ve never liked Wally. If Rod likes Beth and wants to marry her, I won’t stand in their way and neither should you.’