Diamonds and Dust

by Sheryl McCorry

  The following day, we were informed that the median nerve in Bob’s arm had been severed. After four hours on the surgeon’s table he ended up with a crazy, mixed-up hand with no feeling.

  Years later, I believed the power of the mind and Bob’s determination to keep on using his hand – even without it retaining any feeling at all – had stopped it from curling up into a hard, lifeless claw. Not long after the accident, while I was servicing the power plant, a job I rather enjoyed, McCorry dropped by to see if I needed help. I was in the process of tightening the fuel filter when I smelled a strange odour coming off the engine. Bob had rested his numb hand on the hot exhaust and it was cooking! He never felt a thing.

  Hardly a breath of air, no leaves moving: it was October, and I was due to have my baby. The grass was crying out for rain and so were we. I looked out towards the Leopold Ranges at the massive wet season thunderheads coming our way.

  ‘Send it down, Hughie!’ I called to the Almighty. My parents were up visiting from Kilto Station, a small property in the Kimberley 50 km north-east of Broome and about three hours from us. They had moved there from Shark Bay in 1976 to manage the station. Having been connected with the bush all their lives, they’d had the urge to return to the outback.

  Dad, ever mechanical-minded, was working on the grader. My mother, who kept herself busy around the homestead, had tolerated my cravings for raw onions throughout this pregnancy, and was setting up for smoko in our favourite spot on the front veranda overlooking the horse paddock. Kelly was in the bedroom having his afternoon nap.

  Out of the blue, a huge bolt of lightning struck the middle of the horse paddock. Horses were squealing and galloping in all directions and the paddock was on fire. With my heart pounding from the closeness of the strike, I stood transfixed. Then a water glass exploded on the table, shattering into tiny fragments.

  ‘Mum, come on!’ I grabbed her arm, wondering where the next strike would be. We ran into the dining room and within seconds the next strike was directly behind the homestead, hitting the Napier Range. We stood, staring through the windows, then moved further into the house to get away from the glass. This time we could hear the thunder grumbling in the distance. Sinking down into the sofa I thought, thank God. My big baby was kicking away inside me.

  Then the pains started.

  I timed the labour pains, and then they eased off. False alarm, I thought, and slept well through the night. In the morning I packed my hospital bag and headed for Derby. I was admitted to hospital and by 1.30 am, after another rush to theatre, beautiful Leisha Marie was born, weighing nine and a half pounds (4.3 kilograms). How lucky we were. McCorry and I were over the moon – we had two precious children.

  I felt very confident looking after Leisha. Whereas Kelly was my first-born and had arrived under more traumatic circumstances, and was also a smaller baby, Leisha was bigger and I’d well and truly mastered the breastfeeding. Though slightly sore from another caesarean, I was allowed home early.

  Father Lawrence of the Catholic Church in Derby would often do station rounds to check on the followers, have a cup of tea or whisky, a smoke, crack a joke and move on to the next station on his round. He had always been there in my time of need and yet he knew I was a bush Baptist. After helping Father to load his trusty ute, I always had a parcel of beef for him.

  ‘Next door’s beef?’ he asked.

  ‘No, Father, ours,’ I replied, and winked. ‘You should know, Father, that to eat one’s own beef, we must eat the neighbour’s.’ This was a common joke in the Kimberley, referring to the unbranded cattle that roamed freely between stations.

  He blessed me and said, ‘Goodbye, Mother’, and headed off to Derby town.

  Bob was constantly unwell during 1978, vomiting blood and getting so sick he could hardly move. With this he drank more in the evenings and grew moody with his pain. He would pass out while working, and I’d drag him under a tree to recover. I first feared Bob was having health problems the year before Kelly was born, but whenever I mentioned seeing a doctor, he would explode. As Bob grew harder to live with, my brother Michael left Kilto, where he’d been helping Mum and Dad and came to work for us permanently.

  One day after Bob passed out near the toilet, vomiting blood, I erupted for the first time. I’d had enough. I dragged him from the bathroom to the radio room, laid him on the camp stretcher by the window where a cool breeze was gently moving the curtains, and returned to clean up the bathroom. When I went back to him, McCorry was coming to, a terrible deathly grey colour. I was frightened he might die, but upset and angry too.

  ‘I’m calling the Flying Doctor,’ I said as I picked up the radio handpiece. ‘I’m taking you to hospital right now. Do you understand? You must see a doctor!’

  I had the microphone in my hand, the cord stretched to its limit.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere, I’m not going,’ he said, angry with me, refusing point-blank.

  My voice raised, I thumped the radio desk hard. ‘Go on, McCorry, go on and die, take the easy way out!’ I screamed. It was the maddest he’d ever seen me. The bed was creaking as he battled to sit up. He looked so sick, so terrible, but his eyes never wavered from mine. They were black and watery. He had nothing to say.

  ‘When you’re dead and gone, you’ll be happy – no pain, no worries,’ I said. ‘Is that what you want?’

  He never answered.

  ‘The easy way out,’ I repeated, the tears flowing freely now. ‘Don’t worry about the hurt it’ll cause me and the children.’

  He tried to speak.

  ‘No!’ I shouted. ‘You don’t care! The children won’t have a father and I won’t have a husband because you’re too pig-headed to let me take you to the hospital, for God’s sake!’

  McCorry raised his hand, a weak smile on his face: it was a peace offering. It seemed I’d got through to him. He agreed to go to Derby Hospital, where he was diagnosed with a massive bleeding ulcer the size of his fist.

  Through 1978 and 1979 my frustration was mounting with the company we worked for. I could accept the long and hard days of work, but no longer the many months of waiting for the pay cheque. This bothered me more than it did McCorry. As long as he had beef, bread, beer and tobacco, he would ride along forever. But now we had two beautiful children and I had begun to think about their future. I really couldn’t see one for us remaining where we were.

  Unbeknown to McCorry, I had applied to the Lands Department in Perth and successfully obtained two 10-acre blocks on the outskirts of Broome. He wasn’t particularly pleased with me at first, but came around in the end. The blocks were leasehold at 45 dollars each a year. Once we’d planted some mango trees and laid down the slab for a house, we could apply to buy them outright. I wanted to freehold them as soon as possible.

  After many months of agonising, I saw another way of getting out of our rut. Without telling McCorry, I applied for the position of General Manager of Mount Hart, Silent Grove, Ellendale and Blina stations, a group of stations owned by Sir Leslie and Cecil Thiess, who also owned the Demco Meatworks in Broome. In October 1979 we received a message over the Flying Doctor radio from Doug Halleen, the chief of Thiess Bros Pastoral, to say the General Manager’s position was ours if we wanted it.

  Bob took the radio message and ran to me with a thundercloud over his head.

  ‘What’s this about Blina – Thiess Brothers?’ he bellowed.

  I stood my ground and said calmly: ‘I’ve applied for the General Manager’s position.’

  ‘You’ve done what?’

  I ignored his anger and asked: ‘Did they say we’ve got the job?’

  ‘Yes. And what are you going to do about it?’ he asked, as if I was going to turn the offer down.

  ‘I’m going to start packing right now.’

  All hell broke loose. McCorry hated change. He and I had never really argued before, but this time I laid it on the line; I’d had enough of wondering if the staff, or ourselves, were going to be paid, even thou
gh the dollars were on the hoof. I’d had enough of being told to hide the station trucks. I didn’t need to make excuses for what I’d done. I needed change, and if McCorry wouldn’t take the first step, I would.

  I accepted the General Manager’s position on our behalf, and told McCorry, ‘We do it together, or I go alone.’ I can’t say for certain what I’d have done if he’d resisted, but I think my determination shocked him into compliance. Once he saw I wasn’t going to back down, he fell into line. The next thing I knew, he was helping the boys load the truck. He never said much, never put his arms around me and said what a great move it would be. But he came.

  CHAPTER 10

  Blina and Beyond

  The Blina landscape differed considerably from Napier Downs, even though we were more or less neighbours. Blina country was flat and scrubby, with part of the southern end circled by the Erskine Range.

  An elder from the Wungundin and Dutchie Aboriginal groups asked if they could move with us from Napier to Blina Station. McCorry and I were extremely happy to have these devoted and faithful stockmen and their families follow us. Bluey and Rita also joined the crew. There were currently no staff on Blina or Ellendale stations, but as it turned out we always had more ready and willing people than we could possibly hire.

  The Blina homestead was an older-style transportable, very large and airy. There was a little windmill man’s cottage and kitchen, white men’s quarters, corrugated-iron individual huts for the Aboriginal stockmen and their families, and a huge workshop for Bluey. A good-sized saddle and tack room and station storeroom completed the list.

  We’d been on Blina three months when Sir Leslie Thiess arrived from Queensland in the company jet. We found him a delightful and charming gentleman. Kelly and Leisha had their first flight with Sir Leslie on a trip to Broome, where they stayed at their cousins’ place while Sir Leslie and I watched a load of the station’s cattle killed at Demco Meatworks.

  Two and a half months later, we had a visit from his brother Cecil. Cecil was more of a rough diamond and we had many laughs with him while doing the rounds of the company’s four stations. His only worry was whether the ice cubes would set during the day and be ready for his whisky at night.

  One of the first jobs that needed attention was cleaning up the station store. I don’t think I’d ever come across so many cartons of outdated tinned fruit, some of it two years past its use-by date. The walls were covered in cobwebs and heavily coated in dust. I had one of the stock boys pull up the big camp trailer a metre or so from the door. Three of the stockmen’s wives who had followed us from Napier – Betty, Janey and Maisie – came up from the camp to give me a hand and we started going through box after box, discarding anything rusty or out of date. Many of the cans were ready to explode. While dusting the bottom shelf I found a wooden box of what I thought were antique bottles, containing a pinky mauve powder. Proud of my find, I was holding the bottles up and showing everyone. After I took them up to the house and washed the powder out, I sat the little bottles on the kitchen ledge to look at. Some days later we had a visit from an older couple, Len and Sylvia Connell, our caretakers from Mount Hart Station. While preparing lunch with me, Sylvia spotted the bottles, walked over to them and demanded to know where I had found them and what I had done with the contents.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ I asked.

  ‘Strychnine powder,’ she said. It was used in the early days for baiting wild dogs. My heart started working overtime. I’d heard stories from doggers about terrible deaths from strychnine. I threw the bottles straight into the bin.

  During muster we’d noticed that there weren’t as many calves as we’d expected. McCorry and I thought from day one that there may have been a problem with the bulls. Previous management had had the bright idea that Santa Gertrudis bulls were the way to go. Normally, tough shorthorn and Brahman were the dominant breeds in the Kimberley. Santa Gertrudis bulls, shorter in the leg and a softer breed, had never before been seen in the area to my knowledge. They were brought onto the station – big, fat and lazy, dragging their pizzles along the ground like giant vacuum cleaners and picking up spear grass seeds, which of course rendered them useless for anything more than decoration. We ordered a single-deck road train, loaded them on and sent the whole lot to Demco Meatworks.

  It was the middle of the wet season and Blina was awash. One afternoon in February Maisie came up to the homestead. ‘Missus, Missus, that Margaret she having a piccaninny.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘Margaret has said nothing and she doesn’t even look pregnant.’

  Maisie, who’d had several of her own, was sure. I followed her back to camp to check on the girl, who at 16 might have concealed her pregnancy because she was frightened. Who could blame her? When I got to the camp the older women were pulling her out of a hut and seemed to be growling at her in their language.

  ‘Come on, Margaret, we must go to Derby Hospital,’ I coaxed. I radioed the Flying Doctor who organised for an ambulance with a doctor, named Gaudier, on board. They would meet us on the road. I explained that we were having a very wet season, the lake in front of the homestead was overflowing in several places, and I would have a battle getting through to the highway. Most importantly, I didn’t know how long this girl had been in labour.

  I put her on a mattress in the back of the F100 truck and told her to knock on the cab if she thought the baby was coming. The dirt track out to the main road was covered with water and very boggy and soon we were slipping and sliding from one side to the other with mud and grass flying all around us. I was hanging onto the steering wheel with all my power; there would be no hope if we slipped over the embankment.

  I stopped where the creek crossed the road. The water was deep and moving fast. In the cab I had a large canvas mailbag, always handy in an emergency. I climbed into the back of the F100 and checked Margaret and her pulse. It was rapid. Why the hell hadn’t she admitted to being pregnant? I was feeling really sorry for her. I hung the mailbag over the radiator and slammed the bonnet closed. The idea was to stop the pressure of incoming water from pushing the fan back through the radiator.

  ‘We’re going into deep water. Hang on, Margaret!’ I yelled over the sound of the engine.

  No answer. Entering the water, we gently made our way across the creek and up the other side, sounding like a sick submarine. As we had another dip to cross within a hundred metres or so, I left the bag hanging. I was starting to wonder what the hell I was doing when the next lot of deep water came up. I sang out to Margaret again: ‘Hang on, deep water!’

  Again there was no answer. I glanced back and thought that as soon as I hit the main road I would stop and check her and try to comfort her – she was only a young girl.

  Hitting the Great Northern Highway was a great relief. I immediately pulled over, removed the mailbag from the radiator, then climbed over the tailgate to do another check on Margaret. Her only sound was a deep moan. She hadn’t spoken a word since we’d left the station. I thought the sooner we got going and met up with the doctor, the better. It was 154 kilometres to Derby from the homestead and we had about 90 to go.

  There was not another vehicle on the road and I was travelling as fast as I could. At the 80-kilometre peg I saw a distant flash of light. Dr Gareth Gaudier – what a relief. Margaret was transferred to the ambulance to continue to hospital, and I turned the vehicle around and headed back for the station. Later that same afternoon I received a call on the Flying Doctor radio, telling me that Margaret had given birth 10 minutes after arriving, but that her baby boy was dead.

  I was left with a lot of mixed emotions, thoughts and unanswered questions. What value does life have? Did she really want the child? I didn’t know, but I felt angry that we had lost the little boy.

  The following weekend the Aboriginal families asked me to be godmother to 18 of their kids whom Father Lawrence was arriving to baptise. The camp women and I decided to put on a smoko for all, with cakes and little party pies and
homemade sausage rolls, lemonade for the kids, tea for us adults and a whisky for Father Lawrence. It did something to relieve the anger I was still feeling about Margaret’s baby.

  My disquiet was only a shadow, however, of Bob’s. He just couldn’t settle at Blina. The challenge of mustering was nowhere near as great, the country not as rugged, as Napier and Kimberley Downs. And the pay cheques were coming in every fortnight! To top it all off, the owners were happy with the profit. But McCorry wanted out of the station. The harder the mustering was, the better for him, even if his body was racked with pain. With this easier job he seemed to be moody, suffering pain of some sort, and was drinking more.

  I never wanted to leave Blina. McCorry just needed more time to accept the change. But in the end I was prepared to move rather than see him so unhappy. This was part of the give-and-take in the marriage, but I wondered where it would lead us next.

  Sir Leslie Thiess flew over to visit and wanted to hand over Mount Hart Station as a gift. Yes – literally give it to us. Sadly, we couldn’t accept it, even with the offer from the Aboriginal stockmen to work without wages. We never had the finance to back a cattle station and because of McCorry’s age he’d always refused to take out a bank loan. I was keen to take up the offer. I knew we could survive and keep our heads above water there and maybe add a small tourist venture to it at a later date. But McCorry had the last word, and his answer was a firm ‘No’. We offered the management position to Errol Appleton, a young, smart cattleman from Clermont, Queensland. The Thiess brothers were happy with our choice, if regretful that we’d decided to move.

  The day before we pulled out from Blina, I spent some time gazing out over the beautiful lake that had appeared after the wet season’s rain. I watched the birds feeding, the swans gliding against the evening sunset, and wished for many good wet seasons to come and for the swans, ducks and hundreds of other water birds to be left in peace.