Stars over Shiralee

by Sheryl McCorry

  But he was also a caring person who wanted to play a positive part in my life. He once hired a horse float and drove the Landcruiser to Broome for me to collect two of our horses that had been left up there. One was Little Blue, a champion barrel-racing horse with whom Leisha had won numerous ‘All Round Champion Cowgirl’ titles in the Kimberley. We had retired the little mare from the rodeo circuit, but she still had plenty of go in her.

  I wanted Little Blue down on the Shiralee because I figured she would help quieten my new steers in the paddock. I was still trying to find faith in these southern cattle. I worried each time I unloaded a new mob that they would crash through every paddock and fence and continue rampaging across every farm in their path till I’d lost the bloody lot. It wasn’t as if I could bring in a chopper to muster them back up — well, not without upsetting the whole district. I was still thinking with a Kimberley mindset.

  I was lucky to have good neighbours like Richard O’Connor, who helped guide me and did contract seeding and haymaking for me in the early years. To prepare myself for farming on these smaller acreage farms I had studied for a Diploma of Agriculture, but I always believed that local farmers were the best teachers of all. I would listen to them and then work the Shiralee my way. I’m sure the locals were wary of this woman from up north, but they watched my farming methods with great interest over the fence.

  In fact my farm was looking good. I had soil-tested the paddocks halfway through 1996 and paid a local spreading contractor to lime and fertilise them. We had plenty of feed and the steers were a picture. The only problem I had was not wanting to send the cattle to market. I hated parting with them.

  There came a time when I realised I was wasting my time preparing a meal for Heath on a Friday evening. He was driving big rigs Monday to Friday between Perth and Albany, a job he was very happy with, but I had a gut feeling that he was playing around on me. Then rumours reached me that he was messing around with a younger married woman who worked in the office of his transport company.

  One Friday night when he came in late I was already in bed. I sat up and asked him quite bluntly, ‘Heath, are you playing around on me?’

  ‘No,’ he said straightaway, not looking at me.

  I didn’t believe him. I could tell there was something amiss, and he just didn’t want to talk to me.

  ‘Well, if you are, you can pack your bags and get the hell out of my life,’ I said angrily.

  I got out of bed and went to the kitchen to brew a pot of tea. Heath disappeared out the back door into the darkness and I was left with the hum of the cicadas. I drank my tea and returned to bed, shut the light off and fell asleep, only to wake with a start to the slamming of the back door. I heard Robby’s voice, calm but insistent, and Heath’s answering murmur. I was just getting up to investigate when Heath came into the bedroom. Without a word he got into bed and pulled the covers up over his head. I stood and watched him for a moment, then went out to Robby’s room to see him tucking the farm’s .22 rifle under his pillow.

  ‘What’s going on, Robby?’ I demanded. ‘Is that loaded?’

  ‘No, Mum, I’ve emptied it, the bullets are in the wardrobe. Everything’s cool, just go back to bed.’ Nothing was making sense to me, but Robby was tired and he didn’t want to talk. He wrapped his arms around me, gave me a big hug and told me to sleep tight. I went back to bed where Heath was already asleep.

  Morning came and everyone was busy and I didn’t mention the previous night’s antics. It niggled at me, but it was a couple of days later before Robby and I talked about it, when Heath was on the road.

  ‘What was that business with the gun, Robby?’ I asked.

  ‘Mum, I got up to go to the bathroom when Heath walked in from outside with the .22. I don’t know why, or what was going to happen,’ Robby said, ‘but he wasn’t going to walk around with that gun in our house, not around you anyway.’ Robby had followed Heath into the lounge room and found him sitting with his head down and the rifle in his hands. ‘He looked up at me, and his face was really sad, Mum. I just took the rifle out of his hands, he didn’t even try to stop me.’

  A shiver ran through me and I was suddenly covered in goosebumps. I tried to get my head around what Heath might have been doing with a gun, but my mind just ran amok with terrible thoughts and unspeakable questions. Had he intended to kill himself? Or was he going to shoot me? Maybe he was simply moving the rifle from the shed to the gun cabinet — but in the middle of the night? I thanked God for my level-headed son, but I was also very angry. Robby had enough on his plate having just lost his father, he shouldn’t have to be worrying about whether he had to protect his mother from a crazy lover; it was me who should have been protecting him.

  I was in a dilemma. I wanted to confront Heath, but each time I was about to bring it up, I lost my nerve. Despite his denials, I had no doubt he was playing around on me and I no longer felt safe or secure with him. I should have tossed him out — in my mind it was over between us anyway — but there was always that physical connection between us. I never spoke to Heath about the gun or the other woman, and we went on like this for a little longer.

  This was not the first brush with guns in my life. Some four or five years, earlier on Kimberley Downs, I had intervened between two fighting men with a gun. It was late evening and the last colours of the sunset were spreading a beautiful tranquil sky over the homestead. Jim, my right-hand man, and I were sharing pannikins of tea when cries came from the children. ‘Mum! Two stockmen are fighting with a gun out there!’

  We both rose at once. There was no moon or stars, and the night sky was rapidly turning pitch black. I told the children to go inside with Jim, then ran inside and grabbed a torch, and with some trepidation moved out into the dark. I could hear muffled sounds and I called out to the stockmen, but no answers came. I stood with my torch at eye level and moved it steadily until I picked up two dark silhouettes stepping warily around one another. The beam reflected off a firearm. Enraged, I yelled, ‘What the fuck is going on here?’ There was no answer.

  I kept walking in the dark in the direction of the two men, and their slow dance continued. Still neither of them answered me, which only exacerbated my frustration. My pulse was racing, but it was more in anger than fear of copping a bullet myself. They were moving in a wide circle and finally I was close enough and made a dash for the gun. I grabbed hold of it and refused to let it go. Eventually I managed to wrest it from the stockman’s hand. I walked back towards the verandah then swung around and shone the torch on the pair.

  ‘What did you think you were going to do with this?’ I yelled, furious as all hell. ‘Shoot someone? What for?’ Neither man answered me, they both stood with heads bowed, kicking at the dirt in front of them. ‘Is there any shit involved in this?’ By that I meant drugs; if there was, they’d both be on the road at first light. I searched their faces with the torch for signs of intoxication, but could see none.

  I took a deep breath. ‘Have either of you anything to say?’ I asked a lot more calmly. They glanced towards each other and both shook their heads. I needed the lesson to sink home. ‘You’ve disappointed me; I’ve lost my trust in you both. I’m keeping the gun, I’ll talk to you in the morning. Go to bed.’

  I emptied out the bullets from the .308 and walked into the house with it; the gun spent several nights under my bed for safekeeping before I bought it from the stockman who owned it and had it licensed in my own name.

  One night at the Shiralee, not long after the business with the gun, I was rolling over in bed when I suddenly felt a lump in my breast. It was so hard, I thought my pearl necklace had broken and a pearl was pushing into my chest. But it hadn’t broken, and I realised I had a distinct marble-like lump high in my right breast. Heath was beside me, and I told him, but his only response was a sense of annoyance that I seemed to be expecting some warmth or support from him for something I was probably imagining, or at least something that was in the world of older women, not younger men. />
  God knows what I was expecting him to say, but his utter lack of interest nearly reduced me to tears. I needed to talk to someone about this, but I made up my mind I would not burden the children or my parents until I knew what was going on. There was no one else I felt close enough to talk to about something so personal. This left me feeling very isolated. I couldn’t cry; I felt only a deep, sad emptiness. The next morning I made an appointment with the travelling breast X-ray van that was currently parked in Mount Barker.

  It was my first mammogram. What an education. My breasts were squeezed flat between the plates of what looked like an old-fashioned ironing press; they were pulled, prodded and tugged at by the clinic operator to get the desired shots. I was very relieved to find that they bounced back afterwards.

  A couple of weeks later I received a call from a Perth clinic telling me I had an appointment in Albany for further tests. They were concerned about my left breast, though it was my right I was worried about. But after more X-rays and ultrasounds, I was given the all-clear. I should have been jumping for joy, but I was still bothered by the hard marble-like lump, which I was told was a benign cyst. I told myself to ignore it, forget it, and with that in mind I was celebrating the good news that evening when Heath asked me if I would use the Shiralee as surety to finance him for a truck and trailers to start his own trucking business. He needed $500,000.

  ‘You want me to mortgage the Shiralee?’ I asked, unable to believe what I was hearing.

  He hesitated, then answered, ‘Well, yes.’

  Our relationship was hanging on by a thread, he didn’t even pretend that he cared about me, and he thought I was going to risk my farm for him! You’ve got to be joking, I thought, while studying his face for some kind of expression of love or concern. There was none. ‘No Heath, it’s not on,’ I said, and got up and left the room.

  I was incensed. I thought, Like bloody hell I’m going to mortgage my home for you! I’ve done some dumb things in my time but I’m not risking my farm for a man who doesn’t care a damn for me. I should’ve ended it then and there; I don’t know why I didn’t, except that the sexual attraction was still strong. I found this amazing, that you could lose your affection for a person, yet still want to make love — constantly.

  It was around this time that Terry, south-west farmer and Broome caravan park owner, came into my life. I thought it was a case of close one door, and another door opens, but it turned out to be more a matter of out of the frying pan, into the fire.

  I’d met Terry earlier, when he came down from Broome in 1999 to watch one of his horses run at Ascot. I had travelled to the city to visit Leisha, arguing with Heath most of the way.

  That evening we all gathered for a meal and drinks at the Ascot Inn, a popular watering hole for the local racing fraternity. Terry was there too, and when he discovered that we were from the Kimberley and had been involved with cattle stations, he introduced himself. As it turned out, Terry remembered our family from a visit to the Boyanup cattle saleyards several years earlier when McCorry, Leisha, Kristy, Robby and I had made an initial trip around the south-west looking at cattle and cattle country. Back then, I later discovered, Terry thought I was one of McCorry’s daughters! Old McCorry would have choked him for that.

  On meeting Terry I held out my hand for him to shake. He held on to it far longer than was necessary while bombarding me with questions about my life in the Kimberley. Tall, somewhat older than me, not bad looking, and very charming, he ignored all the rest of the company, including Heath. I did not know it at the time, but he was with a young woman, Lauren, his receptionist from Broome, and he had parked her at the far end of the room with a supply of drinks and peanuts to occupy her while he came to meet me.

  I had to admit I was impressed by his charm, and mildly flattered by the attention he was showering on me, but I didn’t think any more about him when I returned to the Shiralee the next day. However, one thing the meeting achieved was to make it very clear to me that my relationship with Heath was no more than a childish game and I no longer wanted any part of it. There was no sense of trust between us. I finally told him he had to leave. Except for the physical connection, I could see no future for us together.

  He left, though not without some unpleasantness. He felt he had made material contribution to my life on the Shiralee and thought he could waltz off with my Italian leather lounges. No way was he taking them, I’d bought them when I’d set up house. I could as legitimately have tried to lay claim to his tool box! Yet even then, we made love until the day he moved his last possessions out. The physical attraction was impossible to ignore. And when he had gone, I did miss that. But not so much that I regretted ending it.

  It was two months later when, out of the blue, I answered the door to Terry. I was surprised to see him and invited him in for a cup of tea. He said he was in the area to check on some mares he had in foal at Mungrup. Mungrup was not far from the Shiralee, and he asked me if I would come along and have a look at the horses with him. I said I would so long as I was back home in time to meet Robby’s school bus. I was never happy for Robby to arrive home to an empty farmhouse.

  While we were out he was constantly getting calls from his receptionist and I felt awkward sitting there, keeping my peace, as it was obvious Terry was hiding the fact that he had someone else in the car with him. When we left the stud he drove on towards Albany to visit friends, ignoring my requests to return to the farm. Looking back, it is easy to recognise that here was a clear sign of a man doing exactly what he wanted, when he wanted, and having no interest in the wishes of anyone else concerned. But back then I shrugged and told myself he was probably anxious, it was our first outing.

  And could he talk up a storm!

  His family had farms at the Carbunup River south of Busselton where he was to help with haymaking before returning to Broome, and at Wildwood River, not far from Dunsborough, where his parents lived. They had recently bought the caravan park in Broome, which he managed part of the year, in partnership with another brother. He had been married once before, was divorced and had three grown boys.

  By the time we were on our way back to the farm, Terry was offering me the world. We had similar goals in life, he said. We could travel together and farm together; my knowledge of the Kimberley would be an advantage in his tourist trade. He was painting a wonderful future for the two of us, but as we drove through the front gate of the Shiralee I was still trying to comprehend exactly what he was saying — it sounded suspiciously like a marriage proposal. And that was a bit damn quick on a first date — if this could even be called a date. Hell, I thought, one man has just left my life and now another sounds like he’s planning on moving in. What am I doing?

  As Terry brought his car to a slow stop by the farmhouse, still sweet-talking me, I opened the door and literally fell out onto the lawn. Frantically gathering my dignity I got up and waved my goodbyes as he drove off with promises to keep in touch. Some part of me knew what it was doing when I abandoned his car so quickly — he had the look of a man intent on pouncing! (And on another count, too, my intuition was spot on: I later learned that when he got back to Broome he said to the women who worked at the caravan park, ‘I’ve just met the woman I’m going to marry.’)

  It was five o’clock, and Robby was sitting waiting for me on the verandah.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Importance of a Holden Statesman

  It was early summer 1998 and Robby, Kristy and I were moving between Sleepy Hollow (old McCorry’s farm) and the Shiralee, fixing fences and checking on the cattle.

  I had negotiated a lease on the farm directly behind the Shiralee for the purpose of running my steers through to market. With more land I could carry the cattle longer so they could gain more weight before I sold them. It was a wonderful thing to watch them in the finishing paddock, a gentle breeze rippling across the luscious green feed, big black steers, heads down munching. It was a beautiful picture, but it had a bitter side too. This particular
mob of cattle was contracted for live export to the Middle East, but after watching a documentary on the way cattle are slaughtered in Muslim countries — slashing a hock then cutting the beast’s throat — I was no longer sure this was ethical. Of course I had a family to consider — the income put food on our table, and I wasn’t sure I could afford to have such scruples. The dilemma felt too much for me: it was the sort of thing I would have discussed with McCorry, and wished I could discuss with him now.

  I missed this capacity to talk things over; without it I felt more alone than I could bear. It wasn’t only the exports, there was so much building up in me that I couldn’t talk about — my private battle of dealing not only with old McCorry’s death, but with all the old anger, hurt and pain from our years together, never mind the hassles with Heath and the fear of cancer. And always memories of Kelly. But that didn’t mean I was going to take Terry’s wild proposals seriously. I was feeling far too vulnerable to be bringing anyone new into my life at this point.

  They say everybody hurts sometime, and I was hurting big time. But I was ploughing on with my life on the farm, telling myself constantly to keep it all together, while putting on a strong and confident face.

  I wasn’t the only one struggling. Leisha, too, was having a hard time coming to terms with McCorry’s death. She and her father had been very close. Bob had the kids late in life, and he was devoted to them. When Kelly died, there was only Leisha — Robby wasn’t born then — and he clung on to her tight. He didn’t want anything to happen to her.

  Leisha was trying to tough it out. Watching my daughter suffer whilst unable to express her true feelings upset me deeply. I wish she’d felt able to talk to me. Instead she hit the party scene, and it seemed she’d really lost her direction. While trying to manage the farm and be there for Robby and Kristy, I began to worry that I might lose my daughter to the dangers of the city.