River Run

by Alexander, Nicole

  ‘Anything else?’ asked Eleanor.

  ‘The rain water tastes gritty.’ They shared a smile. ‘Not enough coarse emery paper, a broken rail in the yards, and a complaint in general about old machinery. Well, didn’t Mr Lomax get the wind up about that one. The old Chinaman’s bookkeeping ability is only equalled by his knowledge of shearing machinery. The shed expert was the next to get toey, he’d gone over the gear with a fine tooth comb.’ He stubbed the cigarette out in the palm of his hand, then flicked it to the ground. ‘We haven’t had any whinges about the sheep yet – apart from the burr – but they’ll come.’ The overseer doffed his hat. ‘Welcome to shearing time at River Run, Miss Webber.’

  Although the remark carried a hint of sarcasm, Eleanor found herself blushing inexplicably. ‘Thank you,’ she replied quickly, ‘for Saturday night. We, well, I appreciated you being there.’

  The man appeared a little taken aback by the acknowledgement. ‘You shouldn’t have gone back out there,’ he said with concern. ‘Anyway, I best be off before these two get even more cantankerous.’ He gestured to the horse and the dog and tugged the reins, riding towards the shed. The red dog ducked under the overseer’s arm to stare defiantly at Eleanor as they rode away.

  Chapter Nineteen

  At the woolshed, the Lister engine that drove the overhead gear on the board suddenly went quiet. Eleanor’s wristwatch read 9.30 exactly: smoko. Halting at the adjoining shed, which provided cover for pressed wool bales, she looked above the double doors to where an etched number immortalised a gun blade-shearer’s tally from the previous century. A line of men began to stream from the woolshed across to the ablution block. Shearers first. Tall, short, wide and narrow, most wore Jackie Howe singlets, some had braces to hold up trousers and soft leather moccasin-type shoes. They gradually reappeared with washed faces and hands, some with their hair freshly combed to line up at the long makeshift table, where Fitzy the cook was pouring tea from one of three large enamel teapots. Containers of sandwiches and cake filled the rest of the table, while a beat-up Ford pick-up truck was parked nearby.

  The shed-hands arrived next, waiting respectfully in line for the shearers to be served. A black dog ambled out from under the truck to sprawl beneath the trestle table, observing proceedings as the men took what they wanted and drifted off. Some leant on the wooden railings forming the yard boundary, others returned inside the shed to lie flat on the board and rest aching limbs.

  Eleanor sat on one of the bales, running her hand across the black stencilling that marked the wool as belonging to them. Having arrived unnoticed, she quietly opened the sketchpad and focused on the interior of the shed. It was a cavernous T-shaped building, some three hundred feet long. The ground section, the T, was for the pressing and loading of wool, the far wall holding a row of timber stalls for each class of fleece. Between these bins, three wide steps led up to the wool tables. Here fleeces were skirted, classed and then thrown into the appropriate bin on the ground level. Beyond this area there were two boards divided by catching pens, which ran down the middle. With twenty stands apiece, the forty stands once used for blade-shearing had been reduced. Now only one board and fourteen stands were used with the current mechanised gear.

  The first run of the morning must have been fast, for the wool classer was still examining the last of the skirted fleeces piled on a side table for his scrutiny. Having checked staple length, strength and colour he directed one of the wool rollers working on the table to place the fleece in the correct line bin. With the task finally completed, Spec Wilson and the remaining wool rollers left the shed for smoko.

  ‘G’day, g’day, g’day.’

  Three shearers, aged in their twenties, strolled past Eleanor. The tallest, a lanky black-haired boy with blue eyes and a dimpled smile, stopped before her. His right arm was twice the size of his left.

  ‘You got a temper to match that hair?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ answered Eleanor, aware the men had made a point of detouring her way.

  One of the other youths elbowed the speaker in the ribs. Prompted, the young shearer spoke up quickly. ‘I’m Geoff, Geoff Ferguson, pleased to meet you.’

  ‘I’m Eleanor, hi.’

  ‘That’s the daughter,’ one of his mates whispered.

  Geoff blushed. ‘Maybe see you at the cut-out party, eh?’

  Eleanor smiled. ‘Maybe.’

  The young man grinned and swaggered into the shed with his mates.

  Dim rays of light angled through the small louvred windows above each stand, throwing the shearers into relief. Some lay flat on the board, others leant against lanolin-polished timber. Geoff stuck a finger in the little tin sitting on the ledge of the shed, checking his combs and cutters, another was strapping a wrist. Eleanor couldn’t see any sheep, blocked as they were by the timber wall between the boards, but the clatter of their hoofs echoed as the penner-uppers walked the ewes up the ramp at the opposite end of the shed and into the series of enclosures and sweating pens, which would eventually lead to the catching pens. Outside, stockmen could be heard calling to dogs, as men talked and laughed. Eleanor breathed in greasy wool, manure and sweat, the hot, dry wind funnelling the dust so that it floated within the shed like confetti.

  ‘You the wordsmith then, girl?’

  Eleanor hadn’t noticed the sinewy shearer approach but she recognised him immediately. ‘Hello, Mr Wright.’ River Run’s gun shearer was of average height, with the build of an Olympic swimmer, broad shoulders and a tapering waist. Hands the size of dinner plates and ribbons of veins on heavily tattooed, lean, strong arms, suggested he could also fight when required. Only his face betrayed a man ravaged by the demands of his job.

  He winked and took a sip of steaming tea from a battered pannikin. ‘We both know you should be calling me Billy by now, but,’ he shrugged, ‘it wouldn’t do with this lot.’ He indicated to the shed’s interior. ‘A man’s got to keep up appearances.’ He patted his sandy-coloured hair. ‘So what’s this caper involving the boy? Trigger happy?’

  ‘It was an accident.’ The last thing Eleanor wanted was to get embroiled in a discussion. ‘He didn’t meant to shoot the man.’

  The shearer bit into a piece of Fitzy’s teacake. ‘Ah. Word is, the bloke he hit is a red ragger. Did you know he was a commo?’

  ‘Mr Wright, no-one has any idea who the stranger is.’

  ‘Ah.’ He finished the cake, eating like he shore, clean and fast. ‘But you were with the boy.’

  ‘Robbie was up a tree.’ Eleanor was feeling extremely uncomfortable. ‘I was on the ground waiting for him to come down. It was an accident.’

  Billy Wright reflected on this, as if giving consideration to whether what Eleanor was telling him was fact or fiction. ‘I heard on the frog and toad a while back that you wrote stories, and drew a bit.’ He took another sip of the tea, pointing at the sketchbook with a calloused pinkie. The action resembled that of a genteel woman drinking tea.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Eleanor answered softly, wondering who had overheard what at the homestead.

  ‘Ah. Not real popular at the big house, eh? The thing is, girl, I was thinking you’d be needing material, a leading man. Take, for example, myself. Good-looking,’ he smiled, revealing a gold tooth, ‘athletic in appearance, record-maker and breaker of women’s hearts.’ Billy Wright nodded enthusiastically. ‘And stories. Well, I can tell you a few. Like when I was a young cobber, knocking about in western Queensland. Got me first stand as a learner after two years in the sheds. Started as a tar-boy, then board-boy, watched how they did it. How they shore, how they selected sheep from the catching-pen, the way they dragged them out to the stand to the exact same spot so they were always closest to the gear. Always. So I watched and learnt and then I’d offer to finish off the odd shearer’s sheep.’ He tossed the remnants of tea on the ground. ‘Slept in a sheepskin hammock once, with the legs still attached. Best night’s sleep I ever had.’

  ‘I could draw you,’ Eleanor offered.

/>   Billy Wright crossed his arms across his chest. ‘Done.’ His voice grew serious. ‘Oh,’ he gave a crinkly, bashful smile, ‘and my left side, girl.’ He touched his cheek. ‘My mother always said that was my best.’

  ‘Left side it is,’ Eleanor consented. The shearer moved nimbly through the shed, the shearers lolling on the board pulling their legs up so that Billy didn’t have to step over them.

  Outside, the men began wandering in from the yards while Mr Lomax remained to count out the last of the recently shorn sheep from each shearer’s pen. The animals jumped in the air as they passed through each gate, spilling out into a holding yard where they would wait their turn before being subjected to a swim through the plunge dip.

  Eleanor studied the golden hues of the polished timber within the shed, noting the indecipherable markings left on the wood by the Chinese builders contracted to erect the shed in the previous century. She lifted her pencil to draw.

  ‘Well, we know their true colours now.’ The man was out of sight and barely audible, as if he was losing his voice. ‘You seen what they’re using for dunny paper? The Worker. Torn up in sheets it is and hanging up as clear as day.’

  ‘Someone’s just having a go,’ she heard his companion reply, a younger voice with a slightly nasal twang.

  ‘Having a go, alright. It’s a warning, that’s what it is. We’ve got power we have and they don’t like it. So what do they do? Shoot one of us and blame it on the kid. Who’s to say it wasn’t Webber himself or even Goward what done it, on the Boss’s say so.’

  ‘I dunno, mate,’ the younger man’s tone decreased in volume. ‘Seems unlikely. I mean they don’t even know who the bloke is.’

  ‘The publican heard that old gardener say to the Greek at the store on Sunday that the boy thought he was a communist.’ Tea was tossed in the dirt. The half-choked voice continued, ‘Menzies is trying to make everyone hate the commos, and he’s using this Korea thing as an excuse. But who else is standing up for the workers, eh? Who else is lending a hand to us battlers? And who’s running the unions? Ask yourself that, mate. It used to be that shearers were king. But the squatters have been fighting with us from the very beginning. Wouldn’t be no unions in Australia if it wasn’t for us shearers. Read up on your history, boy. We started it all. But the squatters, they’re always looking for a bit of leverage. Always looking to cut us down to size. So, if they can say that a shady communist was shot on a big run after being found trespassing, don’t you think Menzies will rub his hands together, with this referendum thing in the wind? And if the Communist Party is declared illegal, it makes sense that they’ll go after those like-minded blokes in the unions. Think about that.’

  ‘I dunno.’ The companion was clearly doubtful. ‘I mean, it seems to me, it’ll be the boy that did the shooting that will get in trouble.’

  The faint-voiced man gave a grunt of disbelief. ‘Don’t kid yourself. Nothing will happen to him. He might be locked in his room now, but he’ll be out in a day or so playing merry-hell. They say he’s a terror, got it in for one of the jackeroos. I reckon,’ the voice grew softer, Eleanor strained to hear, ‘I reckon that the toffs know who the poor blighter is. That could be all part of it, you see. Pretend you don’t know who he is, when you really do. Picked their target I reckon.’

  ‘Do you know him?’ his companion asked.

  ‘Him that’s been shot? How would I? It only happened two days ago. I ain’t seen no picture of him in the paper yet. Have you? Poor bastard. But they got him, they did. Took him down as sure as if he’d been a kangaroo run over by a truck. Never stood a chance.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘My cousin was one of them that got sent to jail after the strike of ’49. His missus, well she did it real tough. Ended up near starving, lost a kid they did.’

  The chug of the engines reluctantly came to life, gathering in speed and sound until all talking was drowned out by the noise. The men were moving about the interior of the shed. A fizz of sparks shot out from the engine room where the shed expert, Stump Ward, was sharpening combs.

  ‘You want some cake, Eleanor?’ Mr Goward yelled across the flat, lifting his voice over the noise. Fitzy, sitting in a canvas camp chair beneath a candy-striped umbrella, held out a round tin. ‘A cup of tea? There’s a bit left. You’ll need some sugar in it though. It’s that brewed a spoon would stand up in it by itself.’ The cook, a wide, big-stomached man, shot the overseer a look of disgust from beneath the parasol.

  Calling out a thank you, but no, Eleanor walked around the side of the rainwater tank. Only the splash of thrown tea on the ground was left to show that anyone had been there. Should she tell Mr Goward what she’d overheard? Strictly speaking, as shed overseer, Mr Lomax should be informed of any problems, however, Eleanor wasn’t comfortable speaking to the Chinaman when she’d been eavesdropping and the men were unknown to her, although it was obviously the faint-voiced individual’s first shearing at River Run. And he definitely sounded like a troublemaker. Perhaps it would be better if she told her mother instead.

  The red dog started to growl at the stubby-tailed dog under the smoko table. Immediately a fight broke out between the two. Eleanor ran towards the unfolding drama, as a blur of black and red rolled about in the dirt, banging into one of the table legs and upsetting the contents. A container of sandwiches fell to the ground, spilling the bread in the dirt. A teapot followed. Mr Goward roared at the dogs to settle down, finally laying in to both of them with his boot.

  The cook let out a string of obscenities, pitched the striped umbrella into the air and snatched up his injured animal. ‘I told you to keep that half-breed mangy dog of yours away from my little Nettie.’

  ‘Don’t mind Fitzy,’ Mr Goward advised, beckoning Eleanor as he strode towards the sheep-yards. He told the red dog to sit and wait and the animal obeyed, although he observed every move made by his master.

  Eleanor joined the overseer, grimacing at the mess made by the fighting dogs.

  ‘Don’t think I’ll be making more sandwiches,’ the cook called after them, scooping up the bread and filling and half-heartedly shaking the earth from them. ‘No, sir, they can eat these ones tomorrow and when they complain, I’ll send the buggers to you.’ He threw containers and teapots onto the tray of the truck.

  Mr Goward winked at Eleanor. ‘Who called the cook a bastard, eh? Who called the bastard a cook?’

  Chapter Twenty

  Eleanor tracked the overseer through the maze of timber yards, wondering what he wanted to show her. Some of the fencing dated back to the 1870s and was a mishmash in places of dropped logs, iron mesh, flat and corrugated iron, sawn rails and star pickets. The ground underfoot was soft and powdery and the air hummed with the clamour of the Lister engine, whirring hand-pieces and the click of individual cords as the men either started or finished shearing a sheep. Men yelled from inside the shed and from the maze of yards at the rear where they penned up sheep. Eleanor sneezed. The air was thick with fine, gritty dirt.

  From inside the shed came the call of ‘Wool away’, a shearer yelling loudly from the board, complaining to the frantic picker-ups that fleeces were piling up around his feet.

  Freshly shorn ewes slid down the chutes to land on their feet in the counting-out pens, large brown eyes blinking. Dogs barked, sheep called, dust rose in willy-willies about them as the day warmed.

  ‘Another one for you, Mr Lomax,’ a shed-hand called out as a dead woolly was pushed out into one of the tally pens. ‘Suffocated.’

  ‘Then don’t pen them up so tight,’ was his reply, as the Chinaman walked along the rows of counting-out pens and, reaching the one holding the dead sheep, hurdled the railing and began to drag it away.

  The years faded and Eleanor remembered being a child. She and Lesley were walking side by side, pushing and shoving each other playfully as they trailed their dad. He’d promised to let each of them take a turn drenching the ewes and they were pleased to have escaped the stuffy school house with its an
cient map, hard-backed chairs and musty books.

  ‘Do you agree?’

  The overseer broke into Eleanor’s memories. ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ she answered vaguely as Mr Goward pointed to a shutter on the side of the building, which hung lopsided from a broken hinge.

  Overhead a wispy cloud of dust signalled that more sheep were being brought in from the paddock to be shorn, funnelled from the large receiving yards through a series of smaller ones.

  Gates slowed their progress as the pair continued traversing the yards, securing latches and waiting for sheep to be moved from one enclosure to another. At the long drafting race Eleanor and the overseer paused in the shade of the split timber roof as a mob of shorn ewes were counted out into another yard by Murph.

  ‘Hundred,’ the senior jackeroo yelled, his attention never diverting from the stream of animals jumping through the gateway.

  ‘Eighteen,’ a young freckled redhead replied loudly, intent on keeping the count. A new recruit, she thought, observing the barely scuffed riding boots and as-new clothes.

  Eleanor watched as Murph used his hand, dividing the sheep into groups in mid-air, or took a step forward or back, depending on whether the speed of the passing animals needed to be slowed or quickened.

  ‘Hundred.’

  ‘Nineteen,’ the gangly youth responded.

  The tail of the mob rushed through the gateway. ‘Nineteen hundred and twenty-seven. Good job, Archie.’ Murph turned to the overseer, tipping his hat on noticing Eleanor.

  ‘Nineteen hundred and twenty-seven.’ Mr Goward pencilled the number in his pocket notebook. ‘We’ll check it with Mr Lomax’s tally tonight, Murph. Murph’s getting a bit of counting practice,’ he told Eleanor.

  ‘How’s he doing?’ she asked, as the overseer strode on ahead, beckoning the younger of the two jackeroos, Archie, to join them.