Valley of the White Gold

by Tony Parsons

  ‘Be careful, Rod. This wind is very strong and it’ll be murder close to the fire,’ Alec warned.

  ‘I realise that. Soak this blanket well and get me a bucket of water while I get the tractor. At least we have all the vehicles fuelled up.’ Rod ran with great strides for the machinery shed where the John Deere was housed and still fitted with the disc plough he had used to do the firebreaks. The disc turned the grass over and into the ground.

  ‘Alec, when you get back, stay by the phone but have a dekko outside every half hour or so. The firebreaks should hold the fire but there’s no telling with the strength of this wind. It might carry sparks beyond the breaks and you’ll have to take the tanker and deal with the fire as best you can until the fire units put in an appearance. If there’s a risk to the sheep, box them. They’re all colour-tagged so we can draft them when all this is over. Ready to go?’

  ‘Ready, Rod. And you be damned careful,’ Alec cautioned again.

  Alec shook his head as Rod started the John Deere. He had great admiration for the way Glengarry’s new owner was running the property. He’d been sure no one could run it as well as Hector had, but Rod had proven him wrong. Now, Alec followed in the grey Ferguson as Rod headed in a virtually straight line cross-country towards the Mattai homestead.

  Rod held the bucket of water with the wet blanket folded on top of it between his legs to prevent it from spilling as the tractor lurched and swayed across the uneven ground. The closer he got to the Mattai back boundary, the thicker the smoke became. When he drove over the last rise before the boundary fence, he saw the fire spread out below him. It was burning right across the Stafford property in a great arc, effectively sealing off the homestead. Rod judged it to be about three-quarters of a mile from the homestead but the wind was so strong that the fire would be able to cover it in no time at all. The problem he faced was how to break through the fire to reach the clear ground on the homestead side. He had to get through to be able to help Beth, Bella and Dorothy. There was no time to backtrack and come in by the Mattai road. Each minute was all-important and to take the safe route would probably mean not having time to plough the vital firebreak to stop the fire reaching the homestead and outbuildings. The only option was to pick the weakest part of the fire and drive through it at full speed. If the tractor stalled when it hit the fire, he would probably be burned alive. If it stalled on the other side of the fire, he would have to run for his life to stay ahead and just hope he could reach the Staffords’ tractor. If that happened, he would lose his own tractor but that couldn’t be helped. It was a hell of a situation, but if he didn’t try whatever he could, everything below would be engulfed.

  He gave Hannaford the thumbs-up, put the tractor back into gear and headed down the slope. When he drove through the last fence, with Hannaford still close behind him, he reckoned he was within about half a mile of the fire. The smoke was very thick now and he could hear the fire roaring and crackling as the wind drove it on. He turned and waved Hannaford back and then drove on towards the line of flames. As he came in behind it, he noticed that there was an area of flinty ground on which the grass grew only sparsely. The fire here was nowhere near as intense as elsewhere. It was only a small area, perhaps thirty feet across, but it seemed to Rod to offer the best and really the only chance of breaking through the fire at least risk to both the tractor and himself. He realised that if he pulled out now, nobody could blame him for not trying, but he simply had to give it a go.

  Rod stopped the tractor, doused the blanket in water and then pinned it over his head to form a hooded cape. The remaining water in the bucket he tipped over the bag he used on the tractor’s seat and then wired it to the front of the machine. He wished for the umpteenth time that the tractor was one of the new models with an enclosed cabin. He reckoned that if he got out of the fire safely, he’d purchase a new one. Without pausing any longer, he let in the clutch and roared down the paddock. As he drew closer to the fire, the heat became intense and the wind blew smoke and black ashes into his face, making it difficult to see. The fire stretched to the right and left of him, devouring fresh country in an almost unbroken line. There was just the one narrow break where the ground was relatively stony. Rod headed for this gap, praying that the heat from both sides wouldn’t be too much for him to bear and, more importantly, wouldn’t vaporise anything on the tractor.

  Meanwhile the Stafford women were filling the gutters, watering the walls of the homestead and flooding the ground around the house.

  ‘Rod will never get here in time, even if he can get through,’ Bella cried out anxiously to her mother and sister.

  ‘He’ll get here and he’ll get through if it’s humanly possible,’ Beth panted. She had just about run herself into the ground since arriving back from Mudgee. ‘Rod won’t let anything beat him. Bella, you and Mum keep going with the hoses. I’ll get the tractor and plough ready. I’m not sure what Rod’s got in mind but, if he gets through, he can show me. Like he said, two tractors will be better than one.’

  They couldn’t see a thing at any distance because the smoke was so thick. Increasingly alarmed, Bella raced into the house for Jim’s binoculars. She ranged them above the smoke and searched for any sign of Rod. Higher still, she saw his green tractor. It was temporarily stationary, then she saw it move forward towards the line of the fire.

  Beth got down off the tractor and ran to her sister. ‘Can you see anything?’

  Bella nodded. ‘There’s Rod. It looks like he’s going to try to break through.’

  ‘He couldn’t be. He can’t.’ Beth had to catch her breath. She didn’t want him to risk his life.

  ‘Yes, he is,’ Bella said with her eyes glued to the scene through the binoculars. She lost sight of the tractor as it disappeared into the thick smoke. Bella handed the binoculars to her sister and Beth hurriedly focused them on the line of the fire. She noticed that there was only one place, a narrow gap, where the fire didn’t seem to be burning so fiercely.

  ‘He’s headed for that gap,’ Beth said. ‘I’m going out to meet him. If his tractor stalls, I might be able to get to him, and if it doesn’t, at least I’ll be there to help him.’

  ‘Please be careful, Beth,’ Dorothy called from behind them.

  Beth waved and headed the Ford for the fire line. How could she hesitate when the man she loved was risking his life to get through to them?

  Rod realised, as he drew nearer to the fire, that it was going to be a touch-and-go situation. Nothing could survive the fiercer parts of the fire. And although it was burning much less fiercely and lower to the ground in the gap he had chosen, the wind was blowing the flames in great licking sweeps and the heat was terrific. Rod held his breath, pulled the wet blanket right over his head with one hand, and gunned the tractor at top speed towards the gap. He was almost there when the tractor’s left-hand front wheel hit a rock, causing it to slew sideways. He let go of the blanket and gripped the steering wheel with both hands to straighten the tractor and keep it on course. At that moment, the safety pin holding the blanket pulled apart and the blanket slipped off his head and shoulders. The wind gusted strongly and flames leapt at the tractor as he powered through the gap. He felt the heat as a lick of flame reached for him, followed by a searing pain at the tip of his shoulder. A quick glance sideways revealed that his shirt was alight. He swatted at it with the blanket but kept his attention focused on getting through the gap. The heat was suffocating and his lungs felt as if they would burst when at last he emerged from the flames. The tractor seemed still to be running sweetly and he fervently hoped that none of the vital parts of the engine had been affected by the heat. As he looked down the paddock, he saw a blue tractor coming towards him. Through smoke-reddened eyes, he could just make out Beth driving the Ford. ‘Crazy girl,’ he breathed.

  Once again Beth had proved why she was the girl for him. She was always there when you needed her, no matter what. She was bred to be a bush thoroughbred. He reckoned she would probably even la
y her life on the line for him.

  ‘Rod, are you all right?’ she cried as the two tractors came to a stop. ‘That was the scariest stunt I’ve ever seen.’ And then she spotted his shirt and knew that he hadn’t come through unscathed. How could he? The big John Deere was a black and blistered mess with very little of its green paint left. ‘Oh, Rod, you’re burnt. Is it bad?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘I don’t know. It hurts a bit but we haven’t got time to think about it right now. Let’s get stuck into a firebreak,’ he rasped between coughs. ‘Drop your plough and run a furrow out parallel with the fire and then turn across its face. That should stop it creeping around the house. I’ll run my furrow in the opposite direction and we’ll meet in the middle. When you get to the end of the line, come back and keep widening the break, just as if you were ploughing a paddock. Even two plough widths will help, but with this wind four will be better. Go for your life and don’t get too close to the fire.’

  They moved off in opposite directions with the two sets of discs turning the dry grass into the soil. The wind was carrying sparks across their paths and Rod wished he had a few more people there to watch for new outbreaks until they had the firebreak ploughed wider. The wind had dropped marginally and the flames didn’t seem to be approaching quite as fast now. When the two tractors met in the middle of the second break, he called to Beth that they would plough two more breaks and then drop back and plough a wide break around the far side of the house. He had just begun the third furrow when he saw the station utility coming towards him. Bella was driving and Dorothy was beside her. As they pulled up, he looked down into the back of the ute and noted the drums of water and wet corn sacks.

  ‘You damned idiot,’ Bella shouted up at him. ‘What did you do a crazy thing like that for?’

  Rod ignored her question. ‘You couldn’t manage a drink for a fella, could you?’ he croaked.

  Bella unhooked the water bag from the front of the ute and handed it up to him.

  ‘Good show, Bella,’ he said as he upended the bag and let the water pour down his parched throat.

  ‘We’ll watch this side in case the fire jumps your breaks,’ Bella said.

  ‘You must have read my mind. I was just wishing I had someone to patrol this side,’ he said, handing the water-bag back to her. Thank goodness for Dorothy and Bella, he thought as he began ploughing the new swathe. All of the Stafford women had been valiant in their efforts.

  He had just finished running out the swathe when the fire hit the line of his first break. The ground was hard and they hadn’t been able to plough very deeply but they had turned the dry grass over so there was no fuel for the fire to feed on. In some places the fire, with the wind behind it, jumped across to patches of grass only partially covered by soil, but in the main it had been stopped all along the line nearest the homestead. He could see Dorothy and Bella patrolling the mini-fires in the ploughed breaks; Dorothy was driving the ute while Bella was beating the flames with the wet sacks.

  The heat was not as great now as the fire was dying all along the line of ploughed ground, but the wind was still gusting strongly, and Rod and Beth had to prevent the fire from coming around the extreme end of the breaks. Rod drove into the new ground and saw that Beth was keeping in line with him. He began a long sickle-shaped break around the homestead and had to cut a fence to complete it. When it was done, the homestead was protected from the left wing of the fire. At Beth’s end of the ploughed area, the fire had run up against the earth wall of a large dam but it was still burning towards the ram shed.

  Rod felt tired and sick because of all the smoke he’d inhaled. He was in immense pain from his shoulder but he ploughed on and ran a break between the dam and the timber below the sheep sheds. This blocked the fire from moving in the direction of the sheds and house, and it began to die all along this front.

  Rod’s head was spinning as he drove around the dam and back towards Dorothy and Beth. They were still watching for fresh outbreaks but there were none to be seen. He was conscious that the roar of the flames had lessened considerably, too. The only roaring now was in his head and he knew he was going to be sick. He got down off the tractor and immediately doubled over and retched. When he straightened up, the three women were around him. He leaned back against the solidity of the tractor and tried to concentrate on their faces. He saw that Beth was crying.

  ‘Rod, your shoulder is badly burnt. You can’t stay here any longer,’ Dorothy said gently.

  Rod turned and looked across the paddock. ‘It looks as if we’ve stopped it here, anyway,’ he said. ‘The house and sheds should be safe. What’s burning beyond our breaks is too much for us to handle. Maybe the local fire units will turn up before long. Somebody should check if they’re on their way. Bella, can you look after this tractor? I’ll get Dorothy to drive me up to the house to find something to put on this blasted shoulder.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll stay here and watch things,’ Bella said.

  As they drove back to the homestead, Dorothy said, ‘It’s a miracle you weren’t burned to a crisp. If the tractor had stalled, that would’ve been it for you. I shudder to think what would have happened here if you hadn’t got through the fire. Not that we expected you to perform heroics.’

  ‘It was the only chance we had of saving your house and sheds. I saw that gap and thought I could get through at top speed. I didn’t want to see you lose everything, especially with the big show coming up. If Dan lost his top rams, he’d be devastated. As it is, you’ve lost sheep and fencing.’

  ‘Don’t worry. You’ve done Dan the greatest favour anyone ever could by saving those rams – and us, of course! Now, let’s have a cool drink while the kettle’s boiling.’

  Once Rod had downed several glasses of orange juice, Dorothy turned her attention to his shoulder. She cut away his shirt and shook her head when she saw the mess beneath. ‘I don’t know what I can do for this, Rod. You’ll have to go to hospital. One of us will take you in,’ she said, her face pale with worry.

  ‘I can take myself in. You’ve got enough to handle here,’ he protested.

  ‘No, you can’t. I can tell you’re dizzy. Too much smoke. You could have an accident.’

  ‘Will you contact Alec and let him know what’s happened? That’s if the line is still standing. Ah, that sounds like your firefighters,’ Rod said with relief in his voice as the sound of trucks pulling up in the drive reached the kitchen.

  Dorothy went to the back door and looked out. ‘Yes, it’s them. Two units,’ she said. ‘I’ll try Alec now. Don’t you worry another second about the fire. We’ll all be fine.’

  ‘You won’t, you know. There’s sheep to be put down and you’re going to need new fences. Dan will burst a blood vessel when he sees what’s happened here. I’d say he’ll have lost a heap of his young rams down in the bottom paddock,’ Rod said tiredly.

  ‘He’s lucky he’s got any rams to come home to. And a house. And a family. We can replace the fences but it’s awful to see the poor sheep suffering.’

  ‘I’ve become very fond of you Stafford ladies and I didn’t fancy the idea of you losing your home,’ Rod said.

  ‘Better to lose the house than your life,’ she retorted. She could see that Rod was putting on a brave face. His shoulder had to be hurting a lot. ‘Let’s have some tea now.’

  Rod felt he could have drunk gallons of the stuff. His throat was still dry and rough and it hurt to speak. Presently they heard the sound of a tractor and Dorothy said it was the Ford.

  ‘Mmm, tea. Let me at it,’ Beth said as she came into the kitchen. ‘Bella’s on her way. The fire units have just arrived. Gee, Rod, your shoulder’s in a mess.’ She wanted to thank him for everything he had done for them today but she knew it was impossible to express just how much gratitude – and love – she had for him in her heart. She hoped he could see it in her eyes, though he was probably in too much pain to notice anything much right now.

  ‘One of us will have to take Rod int
o hospital, Beth. That shoulder is beyond my capabilities,’ Dorothy said.

  Beth desperately wanted to take him but there was a grisly job waiting for her in the bottom paddock and Bella hated shooting anything. ‘I can’t let those sheep suffer until Dad and Jim arrive back,’ she said.

  ‘Of course not,’ Dorothy agreed.

  ‘I could help you put them down,’ Rod said to Beth.

  ‘No, you couldn’t. You get into town and get that shoulder attended to as quickly as you can. You’ve done quite enough for us today – for a lifetime, really. I can handle the sheep,’ she said firmly.

  Rod looked at Beth admiringly. He didn’t know many women – in fact, he probably didn’t know any – who could have helped him as courageously as Beth had today.

  ‘All right. I’ll take Rod in,’ Dorothy said. ‘We’ll take the Fairlane.’

  Rod was very content to sit in the comfortable car with a small cushion behind his shoulder. It was hurting like blazes, even though he’d taken three aspirins. He looked out the window and saw many burnt carcases, and other sheep, burnt but not dead, huddled pitifully in small groups.

  ‘Is it still hurting?’ Dorothy asked as they turned on to the Mattai road.

  ‘Some,’ he admitted.

  ‘You’ll probably have a lovely burn mark on your shoulder – something to remember us by,’ Dorothy said with a sympathetic smile.

  The first spots fell on their windscreen as they pulled into the hospital car park, and then it began to rain quite heavily. They sat in the car for a little while as the rain pelted down.

  ‘Thank God,’ Dorothy breathed.

  ‘Amen,’ Rod agreed. ‘I saw this happen the first year I went to Yass. Ah well, the grass will soon grow on the burnt ground but we’ve certainly got some fencing to do.’