It was more serious than that, of course. Sitting by the radio with the medical kit at hand, I paid close attention as the doctor told me what I was to do. I had to measure two finger widths up from the top of the pelvic bone, get the syringe and put the needle in there to withdraw the urine.
I hadn’t done anything like this before, and I soon realised I didn’t have the confidence to tackle it properly. I looked at the old man. His face didn’t seem to be showing too much pain, so I said to the doctor, ‘I’ll do this procedure if I must, to save his life, but I don’t think he’s at that point yet.’ At least I hoped to god he wasn’t. ‘At this stage I think I’d rather just get him to you as quickly as I can.’
It was a hundred and fifty kilometre drive into Halls Creek. I got off the radio and called for the latest weather reports. Everywhere was pretty well flooded, but most of the terrain should be passable for a while yet. I got back to the doctor and said, ‘There’s only one river we might have trouble with between Louisa and Halls Creek, and at last report that was the Laura.’ There was no saying if it would be crossable when we got there. In such heavy rain, river rising was unpredictable. I suggested that the hospital vehicle travel as far as they could to meet us, and I would take the medical kit and radio. We would meet, God willing, even if on opposite sides of a flooded creek. If the old man took a turn for the worse before that, I would make radio contact and do my best to follow the doctor’s instructions.
We would have to take two vehicles. We couldn’t all fit in my brother Michael’s 4WD tray-back, yet we needed that vehicle to make the tracks for me to follow in the Ford. I made the old man as comfortable as I could on the mattress in the back of my Ford F100, his son Leslie sitting beside him. Leisha sat in the front with me. Then I set off, slowly following in the tracks of the tray-back. With a firm grip on the wheel I manoeuvred the vehicle as steadily as I could along the boggy and slippery highway — which was still a gravel road then. Even so, I was sliding from one side of the road to the other and tense with the effort of trying to keep from going over the steep banks.
There were several creek crossings between the station and Laura River. Prior to entering any swift-flowing creek, we would stop and cover the front of our radiators with a piece of tarp or a mail bag. We also attached one end of the long wire rope we carried for such emergencies to each vehicle. Michael would enter the water first and, once he was through the rushing torrent, I would follow down into the murky creek, keeping the vehicle moving slowly forward even as the water reached halfway up the cab door. I burned with fear when the floodwaters entered the cab and swirled around my feet; I felt the lift of the vehicle then the feeling of floating as we were moved by the current. Then a bump and the massive relief as the wheels gripped the muddy bank on the opposite side.
We went along in this fashion as far as the Laura River, but here the murky floodwaters were too powerful to even think of crossing. The old man was holding his own when I radioed the doctor for his location, which was some thirty kilometres away. Not far. Although maybe a case of ‘so near yet so far’ — in the vehicle’s headlights we could see the debris being churned up by the rapidly moving floodwaters. No way was I going in there. Standing by Michael, ankle deep in mud, I wondered how we would cross this one. Then one of the stockmen called, ‘Lights missus,’ and a sudden relief came over me as I looked towards the moving headlights in the distance.
Checking on my patient, I said, ‘Old man, doctor is nearly here.’ He acknowledged me with a movement of his eyes. He lay quiet and still, making no fuss at all, surrounded by the sounds of nature. The rushing floodwaters, the odd bullfrog calling for a mate, the high-pitched drone of the thousands of mosquitoes buzzing around, and somewhere out there in the darkness, the intermittent bellow of a lonely feral bull.
Soon the doctor’s 4WD ambulance was facing us on the other bank. By now we had ascertained that the water level was slowly dropping, but it was another two hours before the Laura River dropped enough for us to consider crossing. Michael and I hooked up our vehicles as the current was still too strong to take the slightest risk. Visibility outside the beam of our headlights was nil and the darkness could be deceiving. We would each in turn be an anchor for the other.
I watched Michael go in first with the Toyota to test the water. My heart was in my mouth as I saw him get pulled slightly downstream, but soon he was out of the main current and had manoeuvred himself up the opposite bank. I unhooked the wire rope so I could back up the bank — I wanted to load the Ford with a few heavy rocks, hoping the extra weight would help keep me grounded. Back down at the water’s edge I hooked back onto the wire rope. Entering the river slightly to the right of the crossing I could visualise approximately where the strongest current would hit me. With a firm grip on the wheel I steered the Ford gently down into the rushing floodwater and moved steadily across the river, listening to the gurgling sounds as the vehicle lifted gently in the current, water seeping into the floor of the cab. I felt the tension drain out of me as the tyres started to grip on the opposite bank. ‘Not long now, old man, the doctor is just at the top of the bank,’ I assured my passenger behind me. ‘Yull,’ was his answer, telling me he understood what was going on.
Once the elder was safely in the hands of the doctor and nurse, I heard him speak to his son. Leslie came over to me, unfolding a dillybag, and pulled out a boomerang. ‘This is for you, missus, from that old man,’ he said. ‘He wants you to have this.’
‘That’s very good of him,’ I said, ‘but I don’t need anything.’
Leslie pushed the boomerang into my hands and said, ‘You must take this,’ and I did. It was a true gesture of thanks from the old man. It had been a long and weary night, our patient was now in good hands, and Michael and I turned our vehicles around and started the slow trip home.
CHAPTER 19
Stars over Shiralee
Once Leisha had gained faith from the doctors that Cohen was going to come out the other side of his operations happy and healthy, she started to feel her old self again — in fact better than her old self: there was a new man in her life.
Midway through 2008 she became engaged to Nigel Millington, a man she had known since the previous winter when she was living in the second farmhouse at Wildwood. One of Nigel’s friends was a farmhand at Wildwood, and through this connection Nigel had come to the farm to do a bit of casual work. One day I noticed him chopping a great stack of firewood for Leisha, and I said to her, ‘I see he’s cutting firewood for you — funny that he hasn’t cut any for me!’ We had a laugh about that, but I was pleased to see a bit of a spark between them.
In Nigel I believe she has met her match. She needs a good strong man by her side and Nigel stood by her and Brock while Cohen was undergoing his operations. Nigel has a large farm-style house in Boyanup, a small country town south of Bunbury, and Leisha and the boys have moved in with him. It is a real home, and a good safe place for the children to live and play.
Their dreams included having a child together — it would be Nigel’s first — and my phone rang one day in August 2008 and it was Leisha, bubbling with happiness, announcing that she was pregnant. ‘Leisha, my girl, this is the best news,’ I said, excited as well. ‘I can’t wait to be a nan again.’ But for the first two months of her pregnancy she suffered the most shocking morning sickness; she was unable to leave her bed for days. I practically moved in with them to help out, she was so ill. I visited doctor after doctor with her, but no one was able to identify the problem. Nigel was pulling his hair out with worry, and I was too — I had never seen my girl so ill.
Then one day while she was lying on her bed and I was sitting there holding her hand, she cried, ‘Mum, I can’t see the baby’s face any more. I can’t see a baby in my arms.’ Each time she has been pregnant she has been able to see her baby’s face and name them before they were born. She worried there was something wrong with this pregnancy because she couldn’t see this baby’s face in her mind. ‘Leisha,�
� I whispered, ‘you’re going to be okay. You’re strong, darling.’ But four weeks later she woke in pain in the middle of the night, losing blood. Nigel drove her into the hospital, where they learned that their unborn child’s heart had stopped beating at about eight weeks — the time she had told me she could no longer see her baby’s face. She had been carrying the dead foetus all that time. She was so maternal, her body had been holding onto it, wouldn’t let it go.
She and Nigel both suffered terribly, and I shared their pain. When she recovered, I drove Leisha and the children through the Nannup forest to the Shiralee and picked up her two quarter horses to take home to Boyanup. This brightened her up. She needs her horses around; they are good medicine for her soul.
Robby and Tara had the Shiralee looking good. They had left Broome at the end of the 2008 season and were planning on staying this time. They were painting the posts and rails around the farmhouse, cleaning out sheds and keeping a watchful eye on the cattle.
I’d done a lot of emergency runs for other people. Now I needed to do one for myself. It was time to go home.
On that day at Wildwood when Terry left without a goodbye I felt the tie between us break. As though something had snapped. I didn’t decide it was over. It simply was. Over the months since that time, my strength had returned; the real me had come to life again and I was no longer afraid. I had been moving my things one trailer load at a time and finally I had almost all of my possessions back at the Shiralee.
On the day I closed the door of the Wildwood farm-house behind me for good, I didn’t have much left to pack. All of my boxes of personal belongings, which had never been unpacked in the nine years I’d been married to Terry, had already gone. Every inch of Molly’s house — all the cup-boards, wardrobes, even under the beds — was packed tight with family possessions; there was never any space for mine. Molly had told me to dispose of her things, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that after feeling the wrath of Terry’s temper when he couldn’t find the hay record book in a kitchen cupboard one year.
Maybe that was cowardly, but having faced his fury so many times, I desperately tried to avoid triggering it. I thought I could do that by steering clear of the things that set him off — and yet I also knew from experience that anything could set him off, at any time. There were no guarantees of safety. So maybe it was cowardly. But that is not what my counsellor thinks.
Yes, I finally began to see a counsellor — and before long realised that, aside from the writing, it was by far the best thing I had done for myself in years. It was as confronting as I’d feared, but it was also comforting in ways I’d never anticipated. I felt supported and encouraged by my counsellor, who never pushed me further than I wanted to go.
Funnily enough, the reason I overcame my fears and consented to see someone had nothing to do with Terry’s behaviour. It came about during the month before we realised Leisha had miscarried, when she was in a lot of pain. It was such a terrible time. Cohen was in plaster then; my health wasn’t the best, and Nigel was frantic with worry. One day I was with Leisha visiting yet another doctor, and feeling frustrated that they weren’t able to identify her problem, when I just broke down and cried. I couldn’t stop crying. The more I cried, the worse I felt. It seemed they already thought Leisha was crazy with her wild talk about not being able to see her baby’s face. Now they must think her mother was an absolute lunatic too.
I had never felt more hopeless. I couldn’t hold everything up a minute longer. I could barely hold my back up straight; I just wanted to curl up in a little ball. When I finally managed to stop the tears I told Leisha’s doctor I wanted to see a counsellor.
It turned out there was a counsellor operating from the medical centre, and they made me an appointment for the following week. She is a lovely young woman, and she has given me so much perspective on my relationship with Terry. The question that puzzled all the doctors, and which puzzles me too — why didn’t I, why couldn’t I, leave him? — is a subject we keep coming back to in our talks together.
It seems Terry’s behaviour indicates a man who must control his partner, and keep her in a state of disempowerment and disorientation through constant criticism, blaming, manipulating, verbal abuse, physical abuse, threats, affairs, mind games and humiliation. So disoriented, the woman is unable to see the mess her own life is in; so disempowered that even if she were able to see the mess, she’d feel it was impossible to do anything about it. I think I must have been a textbook case.
I don’t know whether Terry acted consciously in all this, but whether or not he purposefully tried to destroy me, the fact is that he did hurt me, and he was never sorry, and for a long time he got exactly what he wanted out of me. There are no excuses for any of that.
Unspeakable things go on behind many closed doors, and abusive people get away with terrible behaviour because their victims don’t speak out. Thanks to my counselling I am no longer ashamed to show my weak side; in fact, I want to say to any women, or men, who are the victims of abusive relationships that it can happen to anyone, no matter how strong or celebrated you are. It is not your fault if you find yourself paralysed into inaction — that is what the abusive behaviour does, it makes you unable to act in your own best interests. And also I want to say, you can escape it, though most likely you will need help for that, as I did. Indeed, that may be the biggest step, admitting that you can’t do it alone, that you need expert help. There is no shame in that.
I was singing as I loaded my trailer to cart the last of my things back to the Shiralee. I could have hired a removalist, but it felt wonderful to be taking charge of things myself. I had been unable to act for so many years, I was relishing the idea of moving on. It was another ending, and I felt truly happy.
To unpack my things at the Shiralee, to share the farmhouse with Robby and Tara with their youthful energy — it was absolute bliss. I felt alive for the first time in years. The sky looked bluer, the air was crisp and pure. I was fifty-nine years old, and every day I felt younger and healthier. There was even less pain from the arthritis.
I got stuck into the general maintenance that needed doing on the Shiralee; it’s never-ending, as on any farm. Robby and Tara worked hard by my side and were very good company. When we couldn’t work out between us how to do something, I would call my father in Northampton for advice. Then call him again when the job was completed, because I was proud of myself for doing it.
One day I phoned for advice on filling cracks in the lounge-room ceiling. ‘Hang on, love, Mum and I’ll jump in the car and come down and do it for you,’ Dad offered, worried that I might fall off the ladder or glue myself to the very high ceiling. Dad was eighty-four and Mum wasn’t far behind. ‘Dad, it’s okay, I can do it,’ I told him. ‘Anyway, I always wanted a chandelier’ — though I would have made a far from elegant light fitting.
Late one evening, after I had finished painting the external walls of the farmhouse, I was feeling tired but contented, satisfied because the job was completed. There was a chill in the night air. I took a moment to gaze up at the sky — there was a glittering canopy of a hundred thousand twinkling stars.
I had never seen so many, not even in the Kimberley. The night was magnificent.
Finally, I thought to myself, the stars are shining again over the Shiralee.
CHAPTER 20
Good Things Come to Those Who Wait
Diamonds and Dust brought me many unexpected blessings, but none more unexpected than Michael. It was August 2008 and I was attending a book club meeting at a Kojonup farmhouse. By chance, Michael was there too. He wasn’t a regular member of the book club, but a friend of the people who were hosting it. Those friends introduced us at the end of the evening and Michael told me he had enjoyed my book immensely. In a few minutes I learned that he lived alone and was a big reader in the evenings after a hard day’s work on his cattle farm.
A few months later I was considering restocking the Shiralee — I had run no cattle on it for two years �
�� and had heard from a stock firm that a cattle farmer south of Kojonup had good quality Angus cows for sale. Apparently he wanted to take advantage of predicted high canola prices, and needed to free up a couple of paddocks to plant canola in the coming season.
It turned out that the farmer was Michael. We discovered this over the course of a couple of phone calls discussing the cattle. I decided the cattle sounded worth looking at, and
we arranged a time to meet to look them over together. In fact, I think I might still have lined up a meeting even if the cattle hadn’t sounded so interesting. I remembered Michael very well from our initial meeting — he was over six foot tall, tanned and with the muscular physique of a hard-working man. I was struck by his massive hands, which he moved with great sensitivity. His brown wavy hair had a sprinkling of grey in it, and I thought he had a very kind face, though I hadn’t registered the colour of his eyes.
I found myself suffering butterflies for days before our appointment, but on the day itself I was soon at ease. It is very relaxing to be around cattle, great gentle beasts that they are. We both knew what we were talking about when it came to Angus cows, and we could see there was no bullshit in each other. I was more than impressed with the cattle — and with this lonely farmer as well. His eyes, I noted, were large and velvety brown, and as warm and compassionate as any I had ever seen.
I went home feeling very pleased with myself, and not just because Michael and I had shaken hands on a sale of seventy head of cows to start the herd again on the Shiralee. There seemed to be all sorts of possibilities opening up in the attraction between the two of us, and I felt ready to grip them with both hands. Gone was the depression and darkness that had shadowed my world through those nine long years with Terry.
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