Stars over Shiralee

by Sheryl McCorry

  In the midst of preparations, an argument started between two of the camp kids over who was going to ride in the front of the truck with me.

  Lynette, whose skin was very dark, said to Mandy, ‘You’re mad.’ ‘No,’ Mandy replied, ‘you’re mad.’ Lynette answered with, ‘You’re mad, you’re white.’ Mandy’s heritage was a mixture of black and white, and her skin was quite light.

  ‘Hey, that’s enough of that. Come here, you two girls,’ I said. I hated to see this sort of thing. It was bad enough white folk discriminating on the basis of colour, but it really disturbed me to see the children attacking each other over who was more black or white.

  The other kids had heard, and soon the whole group was standing around. ‘Now, each of us put one arm side by side here,’ I said, and all the children thrust an arm into the circle. ‘What’s the difference?’ I said quietly.

  One girl replied, ‘All different colours, missus.’

  ‘Yes, all different colours on the outside, but you mob remember, we are all the same on the inside, all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes missus,’ the girls replied happily, and the cheap shots of the earlier argument were forgotten.

  And that was what Terry had been doing, taking a cheap shot at me. Too bad for him it missed the target.

  When we eventually reached Leisha’s — after a predictable detour to check on two of Terry’s horses — I was emotionally drained and in need of a cup of tea.

  ‘Mum, it’s him, isn’t it?’ my daughter asked when she saw my face. She put her arms around me while I tried to pull myself together.

  Terry was pacing the verandah and his true reason for the trip emerged. Not giving me time to drink my tea, he insisted on leaving to visit a thoroughbred stud at Serpentine.

  Leisha, wary of his unpredictable temper, said, ‘Hang on, the kids and I are coming too,’ and gathered her nappy bag and a bottle for young Cohen. We all piled into the Landcruiser, and when we arrived at the stud we left him to it.

  ‘Mum, you’ve got to do something about this, he’s turning you into a nervous wreck, can’t you see that?’ said my girl.

  ‘Right now I simply don’t have the strength, but I’m sure once the book is completed I’ll be stronger,’ I replied. It was the best I could do.

  Terry returned, his face dark as thunder, and we sped off down the dusty road, not a word spoken between us, my head bowed, hoping for peace.

  ‘The lights are flashing!’ yelled Leisha suddenly. Lifting my head, I saw we were approaching a railway crossing. I screamed, ‘For god’s sake, stop, Terry,’ but he only sped up.

  ‘Can’t you see the lights? A train is coming! Stop the bloody car, think of the children!’ I screamed at my husband, and at last he did, slamming his foot hard on the brake and sending us flying forward against seatbelts with a terrible jolt.

  Terry’s blind aggression had taken me by surprise. It had been a while since I had felt its full force. I didn’t know what triggered it, I hardly ever knew, but I was starting to wonder just how sick he must be. For a moment I even felt sorry for him. He carried so much tension and anger, and I don’t know if he had anyone he could talk to, anyone who could help him. I don’t think he had any real friends, he turned on everyone who tried to get close. I don’t suppose he was ever one of a bunch of twigs.

  As my children grew up and other children joined our family — some abandoned, others wayward, all from different walks of life — I introduced them to the story of the bunch of twigs.

  Not long after sixteen-year-old Bert turned up, courtesy of the welfare department, we sat under the massive canopy of a ghost gum on the banks of a billabong. It was peaceful except for some bickering between Bert and another of the children staying with us. I got up from where I was sitting and collected a handful of twigs, returned to my little group and sat down cross-legged in front of them.

  ‘Look here,’ I said, holding out my bunch of twigs to Leisha. ‘Can you break them?’ I asked her, and then suggested she pass them around the group to see if anyone could break all the twigs in the bunch. When they came back to me, some twigs were bruised and a little damaged, but no one was able to break the bunch as a whole. I explained to the children that the bunch of twigs was like us as a group.

  ‘See how strong we are,’ I said as I applied strength in vain to the task of breaking the bunch. Then I took one twig from the bunch and broke it. ‘This is one person — it is easier to break one person than break a group of people who look out for each other through life.’

  This, I explained to the two squabbling teenagers, was how my family worked, and I welcomed them to be part of it. Today we still get visits from Bert and the others, ‘Just checking to see you’re okay,’ they say.

  Two days after my visit to Leisha’s I went to my doctor’s for the results of the blood tests. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear — not that it was life-threatening, it wasn’t that. I had aggressive rheumatoid arthritis. It explained all my joint aches and pains, which was good, but the prognosis wasn’t great. Some days the aches and pains became so unbearable that I would retreat to my bed four times in one day. Constant joint aches and pains contributed to such an overwhelming tiredness so that all I wanted to do was sleep it away. This would be my life; I couldn’t expect it to go away.

  Terry stayed at Wildwood for six weeks. At the end of November I woke to a beautiful day. As I lay basking in the sunshine that filtered through my bedroom windows, I could hear movement in the house. I got up in time to catch Terry leaving the house with his suitcase.

  ‘Are you just going to Perth or back to Broome?’ I asked. He hadn’t given me any indication he’d be leaving.

  He turned around and yelled back at me, ‘You attacked me!’

  ‘I what?’ For days on end I’d had no idea what Terry was doing or where he was. ‘That isn’t remotely true and you know it,’ I said. ‘It isn’t even funny.’

  He didn’t answer, just threw his case into his old Holden Statesman and left the farmhouse with wheels spinning, sending a cloud of dust drifting through the open door. The next morning he rang and spoke to me as if nothing had happened. I should have been used to his erratic behaviour, but I was left feeling ragged and confused again. It was clear to me that no matter how strong I became, he still had the power to knock me sideways.

  CHAPTER 17

  Like Mother like Daughter

  In March 2007 I travelled to Northampton to pick up my mother and take her back to Wildwood for a holiday. My father was happy to stay at home and potter around. After the green of the southern country, the farm paddocks around Northampton were shockingly barren, not a blade of grass to be seen. The country looked like a desert, and I wondered just how many of the sheep and wheat farmers would survive this terrible dry spell. The men were taking jobs far and wide — in mines, on road gangs and driving trucks — while the women remained on the farms trying to keep some stability in the lives of their children. We really felt for them.

  After a few days at Wildwood we drove through the forests to the Shiralee, reminiscing about life in Arnhem Land where we scavenged on beaches for shells and pieces of coral. My mother was always a collector of beautiful or interesting things.

  As we drove I got her talking about her childhood. I wanted to know more about Dina, her grandmother. Mum had been very close to her gran, who had lived with her family for many years before the Second World War. This time she told me a story Dina had told her, about a white dingo.

  There were two brothers in the family, and they had travelled by horse and buggy across country on their way home and found a gold nugget lying in a creek bed they were camping in. After they arrived home, they decided to go back with packhorses and try to find the place where they’d found the gold nugget. Three days after they were due to return, people were starting to worry. Dina was sitting outside when she saw a white dingo coming towards her. She remembered hearing a story from her mother, Fanny, about how seeing a white dingo meant someone was in troubl
e, so she packed food and water and a swag, and went out following the dingo. In the end she found the brothers, nearly perished: they’d run out of water.

  Eventually, as Mum and I drove, the distinctive outline of the Porongurups came into view way in the distance, amethyst daubed with a palette of earthy colours. The sleeping princess looked so peaceful in the late evening, and warmth flooded my heart as it did every time I got this close to home. Mum loved the Shiralee as much as I did; it had such a serenity about it. I took her around the farm, checking on the fences, although that wasn’t really necessary as Richard was still keeping an eye on things for me. Mainly we just had a relaxing time there. It was restful and rejuvenating, waking each morning to the tap-tap-tapping of the little blue wrens on my bedroom windowsill.

  From the Shiralee we made a trip to Ravensthorpe, the town where my mother and grandmother were born. We visited the graves of my great-great-grandparents in the pioneer cemetery, and I saw the little old house Mum was born in, with her own grandmother as midwife. Dina was often called on to deliver babies as the local doctor was frequently unable to attend — due to being plastered, apparently. From Ravensthorpe to Hopetoun to Mason Bay (named after my great-great-grandfather John Mason, Dina’s brother), it was a journey of going back to beginnings, and it was wonderful to do this with my mother. We travelled well together; we were soft with each other, it was a revelation that two people could get along so well.

  My mother came from a musical family. Most of them could sing well or play a musical instrument by ear without ever having studied music. Johnny Mason was a horse breaker who handled horses for Australian soldiers shipping out to Gallipoli. He wanted to go to war himself, but they wouldn’t let him because he was needed to break in horses. However, at the age of thirty-three he accompanied a shipment of horses to Perth and managed to sign on with the 10th Light Horse Regiment. He served in Palestine and was one of the lucky ones as he survived the war, despite being wounded twice. Apparently Johnny Mason was famous in his unit for bursting into song on the battlefield, as I learned from the family memoir written by my aunty Ethel Coleman, who was Johnny’s niece.

  There was a news article in the old Western Mail. It said that a halt was called after a day of hell, fighting in the desert. Everyone was weary and dispirited, the men just threw down their gear and lay down to rest in the still, silent desert night, when gradually the wonderful voice of Trooper Johnny Mason rose on the evening air.

  On our trip Mother and I sang and listened to music all along the way. I felt connected to my mother in a new way, and connected through her to a long line of strong, determined, hard-working individuals. It reminded me that I had inherited some of their strength and uniqueness and that I should not lose sight of that.

  The day I received the advance copies of the book was unbelievable. Over the past months I had been fine-tuning my book with different editors and they had made me dig deeper, until I was expressing more than I had ever intended to. I was excited about the end result, but a little uncertain too. The kids all wanted the first copies out of the box, but I posted these to Mum and Dad. My tough old dad later said he cried most of the way through. Nobody had read the manuscript, and for all my family it was a revelation as to how deeply I had been affected by things.

  It was a revelation to me too. I read my copy from start to finish in one go. It was like reading about someone else’s life. I couldn’t put it down. It felt surreal, as though I was a stranger in my own life. That was the power of seeing the whole story, all in one piece, polished up and complete for the first time. I couldn’t really believe my own life — it gave me a big boost to see myself in that way.

  Finally, in October 2007, Diamonds and Dust was officially released, and then the interviews began. Flooded with invitations for speaking engagements and back-to-back phone interviews, fright and fear of facing the public and the many questions almost overcame me. But I surprised myself and found after my first interviews that I enjoyed talking about my life in the outback. And the enthusiastic response from the many readers who sat down and wrote to me was wonderful. People related deeply to what I had written, and that was more gratifying than I could have imagined.

  The time came for me to head to the east coast for a Diamonds and Dust publicity tour. I was very nervous. I had never flown alone to Sydney before. I forewarned Pan Macmillan’s publicist that I had never been to Sydney and was afraid I’d become lost — and I very nearly did so, before I had even left the airport! I wondered would I ever find my luggage and get out of the building, and regretted all my remarks about city slickers. I took a bearing on another passenger from my flight, hoping that would lead me to the carousel to retrieve my suitcase — and it did.

  A taxi took me to my hotel in the heart of Sydney. I was surprised that my driver wasn’t taking corners and bends on two wheels, as I had been warned before leaving the west. Maybe Robby had been pulling my leg!

  By the time I reached my suite I was looking forward to a bath and a cup of tea. I opened the door onto what initially looked like an entire wall of lights but turned out to be a huge picture window looking onto Sydney’s city lights. It was a beautiful view and could have passed as a fairyland, until I suddenly registered how far up off the ground I was — and quickly pulled the blinds.

  For the next week I moved around in what seemed to me another world. With so many media interviews, and only time to take a cab from one studio to another, there was never time for fear to set in. I was whisked in and out of hair and make-up to be interviewed live on Channel 7 by Kylie Gillies and Larry Emdur. This was my first television interview and I was absolutely terrified. But Kylie and Larry made me feel so at ease and as I stepped down from the cameras after the interview several cameramen wrapped their arms around me and said I had done very well. One said he had filmed hundreds of these and mine was one of the best. This gave me tremendous confidence to go out and face the world, although I’m sure he was only saying it to help me out.

  In Melbourne for a live Channel Ten interview with David and Kim, I grasped for the first time how deeply Diamonds and Dust had affected readers who were complete strangers to me. As I talked I noticed Kim’s eyes fill with tears. When we went to an advertisement break, the make-up artist raced in and fixed her face. I glanced up, only to notice a cameraman wiping tears away too. After the interview I got up to walk away, only to have people wrap their arms around me in big hugs. I was so surprised, and happy; I needed that. But I never wanted to make people cry.

  After that hectic week I returned to the west carrying with me new visions and broader horizons, though at the same time it all seemed unreal. Back at Wildwood I had many more phone interviews lined up for me from all over Australia.

  Some weeks later Terry asked me to spend a fortnight with him in Broome. I decided to say yes. I had book signings to go to, and radio and newspaper interviews there anyway. People at the park were buying the book and wanting it signed. I was stopped everywhere, by friends and friends of friends who wanted to congratulate me on it. Suddenly Terry got caught up in all the excitement too. When people stopped me to ask about my life in the outback he came and stood tall by my side, beaming and happy for me. He seemed proud of me at last. A bit late, I couldn’t help thinking.

  We hired a car and travelled to the Aboriginal community of Yiyili, halfway between Fitzroy Crossing and Halls Creek on Louisa Downs, the cattle station I once managed. I wanted to visit Katie and the many other old friends who kept in contact. Katie still called me regularly and once we started talking it was as if I had never left the station. I wanted to hand Katie my book personally. There were hugs and laughter, tears and joy as the women crowded around me, then Katie showed me the new art studio built on Yiyili land.

  ‘You got more photos, missus?’ Katie asked me, having turned straight to the photo sections and exclaimed over the people she knew. She and the other women on the community who had been on Louisa and Bohemia Downs were keen to look back over the picture
s of our years together. I promised that I would make multiple copies of any photos I had and deliver them at the first opportunity.

  Arriving back in Perth I caught up with the news that Diamonds and Dust was on its fourth reprint, and that one was selling out fast. I was delighted, though it didn’t feel quite real to me. As Leisha and I drove home to the Shiralee I realised I couldn’t have been happier. Life looked so full of possibilities and promise. I decided it was more than time for me to take a darn good look at my marriage.

  Being treated with so much respect and admiration for the book made it impossible for me to take Terry’s insults and put-downs any longer. I was finding my confidence, courage and determination coming back to me in waves. To hear my book described in such positive terms gave me an amazing boost. It was a very strange experience, suddenly to be a public person, but with every passing day I was becoming less of a stranger to myself.

  CHAPTER 18

  The Nightmare is Over

  It was Christmas 2007 and Robby and Tara had come down from Broome to be at the Shiralee. Leisha had moved back to Wildwood to be with me, and Kristy was away working with horses, further to the south-west of the state.

  Terry came to Wildwood, and I used the opportunity to tell him that I could no longer see any future for us as a married couple. In response, he told me he had threatened to do away with the solicitor of his last wife if she didn’t agree to his divorce terms. He boasted that he had kicked in the front door of his last matrimonial home.

  Other than that, he never responded directly to my saying I no longer saw a future with him. Perhaps to him that would have meant taking me seriously, and I think he never felt I was worth that. The pride he seemed to feel for me in Broome, when people were making a fuss about the book, had vanished.