by Tony Parsons
During her stay at High Peaks, Kate insisted on being taken up to the infamous ledge on Yellow Rock. Andy was high up in the hills ringing green timber and would not be home before dark, so Anne, Kate and David decided to make a day of it. They took sandwiches and a billy for a lunch in the hills.
At the bottom of the mountain Kate looked towards David and said, ‘Righto, young man, you lead the way,’ and turned her horse towards the narrow track up Yellow Rock.
‘Okay,’ he replied. ‘There’s a whopper carpet snake that lives in a cave up near where Cat went over, and your horse might spook. A horse can smell a snake a fair way off. We’ll get off this side of the ledge and leave the horses there.’
‘Lead on, Macduff,’ Kate said, winking at Anne.
There was no sign of the snake this day, so they tied the three horses to trees and saplings and from there they made their way on foot to the narrow ledge above the rubble slide. Kate got down on her hands and knees and peered over the edge. ‘No wonder you couldn’t get the pony up this way. And is that the slide where you jumped her down?’
‘That’s it.’
Kate stood up and rolled her eyes at her sister. She patted her nephew on his head. ‘Don’t ever join the army and go to war, David.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you’re the sort of boy who would run at a machine gun or try some other ridiculous feat and be awarded the Victoria Cross for it. Whew, this place makes me feel funny. You don’t mean you actually ride up this track?’
‘Oh, yes. I haven’t ridden Gift up this far before, but my ponies never had any trouble. Sometimes there are wethers right on top.’
‘Since we’ve come this far, why don’t we walk up the rest of the way?’ Anne suggested. ‘It’s about the only spot on High Peaks you haven’t seen, Kate. There is the most marvellous view from up there.’
‘If you’re game, I am,’ Kate said and clapped David on his back. ‘Up you go, captain.’
David grinned. He led off up the mountain with the others labouring behind him. When at last they stood at the very top of the mountain, Kate drew in a deep breath and then exhaled.
‘Oh, this air. You could eat it. What a view. Anne, why have you never brought me up here before?’
‘Perhaps because the ride is so dangerous. I always steer clear of it. Also, it has some rather special memories. Andy proposed to me up here.’
‘What a perfectly wonderful place for it,’ Kate said.
‘Sheep come up here because they think they’re safe,’ David said. ‘Some sheep never leave these high places. They drink water from rock pools and springs and they don’t mix with other sheep. As soon as they see a horse or dog, they bolt for the roughest place they can find. It takes a really good dog to get them down and can take a week to get every last one. Dad said that when he started mustering up here it was common to find sheep with three or four years’ growth of wool. Sheep like high places more than flat places. They always head for the higher places at night,’ David explained.
‘Thank you, professor,’ Kate said. ‘I can assure you that I won’t be coming up here at night.’
Anne pointed out several landmarks. Far below them they could follow the course of Half Moon Creek as it snaked its way towards Inverlochy and then on towards the Cassilis Road. In the other direction they could see the township of Willow Tree.
‘Once upon a time the tops of these ranges and the fall of the water used to be the boundary lines for the first big stations,’ David recited, memorising word for word the story that had been passed down from generation to generation of MacLeods.
‘Didn’t Grandfather MacLeod come to grief on this mountain?’ Kate asked suddenly.
Anne nodded. ‘Yes. Andy found him, but unfortunately not in time.’
‘I can see now why the Campbells were so appreciative of what you did, David. It was a miracle that Catriona landed where she did.’
‘Mum told her not to come up here and she should have had enough sense not to attempt it. It was her own fault. She was trying to show off.’
‘Ah, well, I can understand that. She had a lovely new pony and she fancies herself as a rider, pony club champion and all that. She wanted to impress you.’
‘She did not,’ David said gruffly. He wished people wouldn’t keep harking back to Cat and that day on the mountain.
They stood for several minutes and tried to absorb the vast panorama exposed from the peak of Yellow Rock. Although a fairly warm day on the lower country, it was deliciously, refreshingly cool on the peak. A few white clouds in the intensely blue sky cast shadows across the side of the mountain. Far above them, floating in the thermals, was a wedge-tailed eagle.
‘There’s an eagle’s nest in the big old tree on the next hill,’ David said and pointed. ‘You can’t see it from here because it’s on the other side of the hill. Sshh, look down below us. There.’ He pointed to a patch of scrub and rock on the opposite side of the mountain. Kate followed his finger and picked up two wallabies squatting on a ledge of rock. ‘Plenty of them up here,’ David informed her. ‘Also some roos and wombats. You need to be careful of wombat holes. If a horse puts its foot in one, it can do itself a lot of damage, maybe break a leg. Horses bred and worked here look for that sort of thing.’
Kate smiled inwardly. David was a real chip off the old block. He had ridden at his father’s knee since he was two years of age and he had as much bush lore and wisdom at his disposal as most people collected in a lifetime.
Sated of the view, they made their way back down the crest, collected their horses and rode to the creek. It was lined with she-oaks, and when the wind blew, the oaks sighed and moaned. The sound emanated in the hills and traversed the length of the creek almost to Merriwa. Andy said it was because the creek was in a kind of funnel.
‘Dad says that when you hear the she-oaks sighing, it’s a sure sign there will be rain to follow,’ David told his aunt.
‘Is that right?’
‘Almost never fails,’ he said.
David would have preferred to stay out longer and have afternoon smoko beside the creek but they had finished off all the tucker at lunchtime so they rode back to the homestead and had smoko there.
Kate always helped David collect the cow and calf and feed the horses. She would then leave him and go to help Anne prepare the evening meal. David would let all the dogs off and take them down the paddock for a run before feeding them. When he had the time, Andrew would kill sheep to feed his dogs. There were always several bags of dog biscuits in the feed shed as these were a great standby. In winter – mostly on weekends when there was more time – they boiled up meat and vegetables and made a broth to pour over the biscuits. The pups were given milk two or three times a day, depending on their age.
There was only one hiccup to mark the perfection of this period for David. One morning soon after Kate arrived, Anne announced that, as Kate was with them, it would be a good opportunity to teach David to dance.
David went hot and cold. Dance! Did he hear his mother say dance?
‘You will be going to parties, David, and you must know how to dance. Later, there will be balls. If you learn to dance now, with us, you won’t have to learn later on. Kate and I will dance and you can watch. Then, while one of us plays, the other will partner you.’
‘Gee, Mum, do I have to? I don’t want to dance, now or ever.’
‘Nonsense. Even your father knows how to dance. That was how we met. If he hadn’t been able to dance, you wouldn’t be here.’
David had no reply.
‘You should be a very good dancer,’ Kate chipped in. ‘You have natural agility. Look at the way you get on and off a horse.’
David could see that it was one of those times when his mother’s mind was made up. She insisted that he spend at least half an hour two or three times a week while she and Kate instilled into him the technique required for several dance steps. Both Anne and Kate were accomplished pianists and dancers so the lessons
he received were both thorough and professional. David appealed to his father for relief but for once received no help. Andrew approved completely of the dancing lessons. They would have been a real pain except that his aunt made a fun thing out of just about everything.
On top of the dance lessons, David had yet another unpleasant surprise in store. He knew that his father had been plaiting a bridle. It was a beautiful job, worth a lot of money, and he imagined that his father could only be making it for him. His face fell when he was informed that the bridle was to be the MacLeods’ present for Catriona’s eleventh birthday. As Anne pointed out, ‘If you aren’t going, the least we can do is send a worthwhile present. It would look very paltry of us not to do so after the Campbells’ gift of your lovely saddle. Furthermore, you are going to deliver the bridle yourself the day before the party.’
David took it in good part because anything at all was better than having to attend the party with a lot of silly, chattering girls. The thought of it made him shudder. While they were carrying on in their idle, stupid fashion, he would be at the campdraft – and this time he would be competing.
The day before Kate was due to return to Sydney she sat with David under the big pepperina tree in the back yard and watched him as he handled his new pup. He had been training the pup by attaching a long piece of cord to its collar and every now and then he would call the pup to him as he pulled on the cord. By the last week of her stay, he had the little fellow coming to him quite quickly and had even begun teaching him to sit. Lad was only a baby but he seemed to grasp what was required of him very quickly.
During the previous weeks, Kate had ridden – mostly with David – over nearly all of High Peaks and had come to admire her small nephew’s wonderful horsemanship and stock sense. She had watched him with her heart in her mouth as he had practised drafting Hereford steers both in the open and in the cattle yard. She reckoned that if God happened to speak to her out of the clouds above High Peaks and offer to grant her one wish, she would ask for a son in David’s mould. She had wanted to be truly loved by a man and to have children, but this had not happened. David was the closest thing she had to her own child. It was not that he was a perfect child – far from it. He was at times headstrong, impulsive and very intolerant of people outside his sphere of interests, and the interests he did have were, at that stage, all associated with livestock. Andy was his role model and instructor and David was his willing disciple.
‘What do you hope to achieve with your dogs, David?’ Kate asked at last.
David looked at his aunt but did not answer for a little while. He was used to people slinging off at him, even making fun of his interest in sheepdogs, and although he knew that his aunt was not that sort of person, he still had doubts about admitting his innermost thoughts to her.
‘I want to breed and work the best kelpies in Australia and I want to win the National Trials with one of them,’ he said at last.
‘The National Trials. Are they the biggest?’ she asked.
‘Yes. The biggest and the most important. Only one kelpie has ever won the National. His name was Johnny, and he won five of them. Dad says he had a lot of collie in him, but he was always called a kelpie because he looked like one and worked like one. Dad says he was a freaky dog and his handler was a genius. No other kelpie has won at Canberra since Johnny’s last win in 1952. Two kelpies dead-heated for second in 1953. They lost by only one point. An old blue kelpie probably should have won that year and some say would have won if they had finished working the final that afternoon. Instead, they ran two next morning when the weather and sheep were miles better.’
‘Why is winning the National so important to you?’ Kate asked.
‘It’s like winning the big campdraft at Warwick. It would be the best thing a fella’s dogs could do,’ he said simply. ‘Also, it would be the best present I could give Dad for all the years he’s tried to keep the dogs so good. Dad was never able to take his dogs away to places like the National because he couldn’t afford the break. I’d like to win the National for him.’
‘What did people think when you won the local trial? They couldn’t have been very happy about being beaten by a ten-year-old boy.’
‘I think they were pretty pleased for me. Sheepdog people are mostly fairly decent. All but one came up and shook hands with me. Even Mr Campbell said I did very well, and he’d had a dog in the trial. There was a fourteen-year-old girl working at the same trial and she came fourth.’
‘Four years older than you. Four years is a fair difference in age,’ Kate pointed out.
‘She doesn’t have a father like mine,’ David said. ‘That made the difference. And she didn’t have a dog as good as Glen.’
‘So now you have to try and produce another dog like Glen. Is Lad a son of his?’
He nodded. ‘Breeding sheepdogs is all about trying to produce better dogs,’ he said very patiently. ‘If you lose a good dog you just have to forget about that and get on with the job of trying to produce another good one.’
‘Which is what you are doing with Lad.’
‘Yep. If not with Lad, some other dog or bitch. The main thing is to know what you’re looking for and then be able to handle a dog when you have it.’
My God, he’s like an old man, Kate thought. Surely there isn’t another boy like him in the whole country. She stretched her legs towards the sun. She had put on a pair of shorts so she could get a suntan on her legs before she went back to Sydney.
‘When will you know if Lad is good enough to go on with for trials?’ she asked.
David considered the question and tried to work out how he could explain. Some dogs matured very early while others did not come really good until they were three to four years old. It was all a matter of temperament and breeding.
‘I’ll have a very good idea what Lad has in him by this time next year. He won’t be ready by then but we’ll know if he has the things in him that we want in a dog. Some dogs can’t be rushed along. Dad says a lot of people spoil kelpies by trying to push them into trials too soon. He says the great Scottish handlers don’t make that mistake. They let a dog mature. There was a Scottish trainer by the name of James Wilson who won nine international trials and some of his dogs were four years old when he brought them to a trial. They were real mature dogs. A lot of good young dogs are ruined because people won’t let them mature.’
David spoke in the quiet, assured manner of a middle-aged man, and Kate had no doubt that every word he said made good sense. She could not help but feel that at some stage down the track her nephew would achieve his ambition. He had the ability, and he would move towards achieving his goal just as surely as the water in Half Moon Creek eventually merged with the river that carried the water on to the ocean.
‘I hope you achieve your ambition before you get tangled up with girls,’ she said. ‘You’re going to be a very handsome young man.’
‘Girls.’ David spoke the word with utter scorn. ‘I won’t be going near any girls.’
‘David, just about every boy your age says the same thing. They nearly all change their tune. It’s called growing up.’ She ruffled his hair affectionately. ‘I hope you win your National Trial, David, and I’d like to be there to see you do it.’
David picked up his pup and made his way over to the dog yards.
Kate went and joined Anne in the house. ‘That son of yours is so serious about what he wants to do,’ she said.
‘I know. It worries me, Katie. His idea of having fun is to muster Yellow Rock or Jimmy’s Mountain. David lost interest in toys years ago. His whips are his toys. One of the only times I’ve seen him laugh was when you fell in the creek that time we went eel-bashing. He’s much too serious for a boy of his age. I don’t want him old before his time, but you can’t change him. Dogs and horses are serious business with him. Some of the other boys call him “Barky”, but he doesn’t even care about that.’
‘Yes, David does need to lighten up, but there is something ve
ry special in that boy. And his confidence is amazing. He is absolutely committed to winning the National Trials. I’m sure there isn’t another boy in the country who has that same ambition.’
‘That’s all he thinks about,’ Anne sighed. ‘School is simply an impediment to his goal. He does just enough to pass everything, yet the little rascal could do a whole lot better. His school reports all say the same thing. You see, Kate, David knows he’s going to inherit High Peaks so he feels there’s no need for him to worry about working too hard at school.’
‘I appreciate all that you’re saying, but I wouldn’t worry too much. I have the feeling that David will go a long way and make a wonderful man. I’m very fond of him.’
‘I know that in his own way David is very fond of you too, Katie. I am glad of the time you spend with him on your visits here to guide him through adolescence so he does not become a recluse up here. If anything happened to Andy and me, that is what he would become. He loves this place and the animals just too much. That was why I made you executrix. I knew that you would take over here and look after David.’
‘I can see that I shall have to try and visit here more often,’ Kate said. ‘Would you mind that, Anne? Would Andy mind?’
‘Please, come as as often as you like. You know you’re always welcome here.’
Kate felt a surge of affection for her sister. They had always been fairly close, but were probably closer now than they had ever been.
Kate left for Sydney the next day with the greatest reluctance. She would have liked to stay forever because she so loved High Peaks and the three people who lived there.
In the following weeks, as Sister Kate Gilmour scrubbed up for another operating session each day, her thoughts invariably flew to High Peaks as she pondered what each member of the MacLeod family might be doing. If only she were there with them …