Worried for the safety of the riders, imagining bodies trampled into the dirt, I strained my eyes for any sign of human life. I felt that Michael and Robby could hold their own among the stirred-up cattle, but I worried for Tara. Even though I knew she was a hands-on sort of girl who wanted to be where the action was, understood cattle and wasn’t afraid of them, I would never forgive myself if anything bad happened to her while she helped muster our mob.
Just then there was a break in the heavy dust and Michael rode in from the left, followed by Robby from the right of the cattle – yet there was no sign of Tara, only bolting, bellowing animals and crying calves. I felt sick to my stomach as I stood straining my eyes, searching the mob for any sign of Robby’s partner.
Then, out of the dust, black from head to boots and with bloodshot eyes, came Tara on foot, waving and sporting a huge smile. Noting that she was okay and that there were no broken bones, I heaved a massive sigh of relief, then asked her what had happened.
‘Right at that vital moment – while I was in the centre pushing the cattle up and over the last ridge – my bike broke down,’ she said. She told me it had been a hair-raising experience as the cattle rushed all around her.
She can hold her own with the best of them, I thought – Tara had done herself proud.
We regrouped to muster the spring paddock again, only this time we planned not to give the cattle too much time to think over the last 200 metres. The mob began to look around wildly for another escape route, clearly not taking into consideration just how much they were testing our patience. With no plans to attempt this muster a third time, we kept the pressure on the tail of the mob until they were successfully yarded. It had been a tough but successful day’s work, and we had all pulled together as a team.
*
I was working around the homestead one damp day in July 2009 when the phone rang. On answering it I was happy to hear Robby’s voice.
‘Mum, I’ve got something to tell you,’ he said.
Immediately I panicked. ‘What’s wrong, Rob?’ I asked. My son had been battling a health problem, although I had believed he was on top of it. ‘What is it?’ Then a light bulb flashed on in my mind and I blurted out excitedly, ‘Is Tara pregnant, love?’
‘Yes, Mum, we’ve had it confirmed this morning by our doctor in Barker.’
I was over the moon. ‘Well, that’s the best news I’ve had for a while,’ I said. ‘This is just wonderful news – you’ve made my day!’
Robby put Tara on the phone and she assured me that she was well and happy and that they were both as excited as each other. Now all we had to do was wait another eight months for the little bundle that would bring so much more joy into our lives.
CHAPTER 9
Clearing the air
When Michael and I were first getting to know each other, there were moments of quiet, in between the hours of cattle and yard work, when we would talk of our future together. He had already told me that he loved me and was prepared to wait for me to be ready to properly have a life together, however long it took. As the months rolled on through 2009, we found we were spending more time together loving each other, and working our farms, than we were actually apart. Michael assured me that he wanted me by his side, and I loved him enough to want to be there.
Wandering through the Forrest Downs farmhouse I could see that it was a typical bachelor pad: sparsely furnished and reasonably clean. Most of the rooms were only used when Michael’s mother, Margy, and his younger brother Scott visited. The lounge room was not one of Michael’s favourite rooms, he told me. In fact he hated it and hardly ever went in there, so he left the door permanently closed.
One day when I was alone in the homestead I stood in the lounge-room doorway and looked slowly about the room, trying to see what bothered him about it. On the mantelpiece above the unused fireplace lay a legacy from Michael’s past: photos of his parents with the glass in the photo frames smashed. The damage was the result of a senseless act by an ex-wife, Michael told me. I felt saddened by it all.
A black leather lounge and a red motorbike filled the remaining space. When Michael arrived back at the house he said with a mischievous smile that he could justify keeping the motorbike in the house because it was new. In some ways the place reminded me of Oobagooma Station in the Kimberley, where I had first got to know McCorry. I felt that the Forrest Downs farmhouse was crying out to be loved, and knew deep within myself that I could give it that love.
I remembered reading in a magazine about how to rid a house of any ill feeling on the part of its past occupants by using a smoking sage stick. It sounded interesting and I decided I would give it a go. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I thought. So next time I was in town I bought a sage stick. A few days later, when Michael was out in the paddock and I was alone in the homestead, I decided the conditions were in my favour.
I brought out my white sage stick, thinking it looked far bigger than when I had bought it. The article said that all the windows and doors had to be closed for the ‘saging’, so I dutifully did that. ‘Start at one end of the building and work through each room’ was the next instruction. Once I had completed saging the entire home I was to throw open the back door, stand aside and let the bad spirits or ill feeling from the past escape. I was a little sceptical, although obviously I hoped that the cleansing of bad feelings would do the old farmhouse a world of good.
I was on a mission: I knew that if I was going to live with Michael in this homestead, I would certainly need to live in the whole house – every damn room of it. So the whole place had to be done. With my newly purchased sage stick in hand, I confidently struck a match and lit it.
Flames whooshed up towards the ceiling. I panicked a bit and starting to step smartly around the lounge room carrying a flaming sage torch like an Olympic torchbearer. With my heartbeat moving up a gear, I began to worry that I might burn the bloody homestead down. Then I remembered that the article referred to a smoking sage stick, not a roaring sage fire. I went to the kitchen sink and put the flames out with a wet dishcloth; now my sage stick sent heavy grey smoke wafting towards the kitchen ceiling.
‘Ahhh, I’ve got it right at last,’ I said with a massive feeling of relief.
I went back into the lounge room, determined to get ‘into every nook and cranny’, as the magazine said. So around and around I went, waving the sage stick above my head while bouncing about like a bloody fairy. With a spring in my step I floated in and out of every room, filling the air with smoke almost to the point of choking.
Then, to my horror, I found the bedspread in the main bedroom was smoking thanks to particles of smouldering sage that had fallen from my stick while I busily pivoted around the bed. ‘Bloody hell!’ I cried, very nearly seized with panic. Reminding myself, it was better to stay calm, I rushed towards the bathroom to get a bucket of water to douse the smoking bedspread. It occurred to me that if I’d had to light a fire in a hurry to boil a billy of water to make tea, it wouldn’t have happened as easily as that.
I wondered how to explain the burnt hole in the bedspread to Michael – somehow I didn’t think he would really understand my explanation, and it would have been worse still if he arrived home to a house full of sage smoke. Being a mere male he would, no doubt, attempt to blow the magazine theory out the window. But time was on my side and Michael didn’t arrive at the homestead in the middle of me clearing out the past. When he did come in for a late-afternoon smoko he sniffed the air and said, ‘What’s that strange smell in the house? Have you burnt something?’ He craned and twisted his neck, looking around the kitchen for signs of a fire or a burnt saucepan.
Dear reader, have you ever had selective hearing? My own children have at different times. Well, I tried it and this time it worked for me!
*
In spring 2009, Robby and his partner, Tara, moved from Broome to manage the Shiralee for me and look after the cattle. Michael and I took this opportunity to load up our trailers with my antique furnit
ure and precious vases, paintings and family photos, and enough linen to set up our home on Forrest Downs. The antique vases with their handpainted old-world themes had been passed down through the women on my mother’s side of the family, all the way from my great-gran Dina. I hadn’t been so happy or excited for a long time, and was really looking forward to unpacking these personal possessions for the first time in ages.
Before we set up house, Michael and I had many talks about our different pasts and our future together. During one of these conversations Michael explained to me that he carried a three-million-dollar debt that required annual repayments of $300,000. He was worried that as a result of this debt our life could be tough financially. I felt reasonably confident that with our love for each other never wavering and our joint belief in hard work, and with the support of our families, Forrest Downs would survive the tough times and we could look forward to a brighter future.
By the time Michael and I met there hadn’t been much money in the cattle industry, or agriculture in general, for some years. Michael was working extremely long, tiring days; often he only had the tractor lights to guide him as he worked through to 9 p.m. most evenings. He had been working this way, all alone, for years; no wonder his mother, Margy – who lives on the family’s farm near Pemberton – would worry each evening until she received that late-night phone call from Michael to reassure her that he was back at the homestead safely.
I know that Thyse, who owned the farm further down the road, kept his eye out for Michael on those nights, hoping to spot him in the wooden cattle yards or see his tractor lights at night while Michael was feeding the cows. Thyse told me that he expected to sight Michael about every third day, and if not he would make a phone call or drop by Forrest Downs just to see that Michael was okay. Margy would also call Thyse sometimes if she was worried about her son’s whereabouts or his safety. We really cannot be without good neighbours in the pastoral industry – they’re worth their weight in gold.
So by the time Michael told me about his financial affairs, I already had a fair idea of how hard he had been working to keep his farm afloat. He explained that out of pig-headedness he had taken on more than he could handle at the time, but through hard work, good planning and a rather tight budget he had always been able to stay just ahead of the bank manager and the farm had paid its way.
My gentle giant wanted there to be no illusions about what lay ahead of us, which I appreciated – but I wasn’t entirely green. For almost twenty years of my life I had worked for a cattle company in the Kimberley that had had a bucketload of financial problems, to the point that it had almost been run into the ground; I can honestly say that I enjoyed the challenges thrown at me in those hard times.
*
After my new-age adventures with the sage stick, and many road trips carting my precious pieces of furniture from the Shiralee to Forrest Downs, I eventually settled in with Michael. Together we began to decorate his homestead, turning it into our home. We bought new curtains and placed my Victorian vase collection and favourite pieces of antique furniture throughout the old farmhouse. My family photos now sat next to Michael’s, which had been repaired and newly framed, and they all took pride of place on the mantelpiece in our lounge room.
The homestead that I had once referred to as a ‘camp’ had become our home. Michael now says that it’s a real pleasure to come back to after what can sometimes be rough days in the cattle yard, and I feel the same way. It is a place where I feel happy, comfortable, loved and protected, under the same roof as my gentle giant.
Our new king-sized bedroom suite became our place of pleasure – our sanctuary – where we could be intimate and feel loved. My days of curling up in bed at night in a foetal position while crying myself to sleep have well and truly gone.
Those terrible times of anxiety in the past had left me in bad shape physically, even though I wasn’t living through them any more, and I had to take care of myself. I had had breast cancer once, and a few scares since – not to mention lots of mysterious aches and pains during my previous marriage – and I promised myself that I would beat my health problems and get well again.
In late 2008 I had suffered from a severe flu, heavy head and chest pains; I really felt like death. My body was incredibly run-down and so very tired that all I wanted to do was snuggle up in my bed, keep warm and sleep off my illness. However, Michael and my children would not allow it; Leisha had insisted I go with Michael to see my doctor at the Dunsborough Medical Clinic. I was diagnosed with bronchitis and a rattle in my right lung and promptly put on medication. By the third lot of antibiotics I was on the mend again and feeling much better.
It never helped my health to know that family members dearest to me – including Michael – were receiving anonymous phone calls as we all had for a long time after Terry and I split. Their phones would ring and the moment they answered the caller would hang up. We all came to feel like we were being stalked by these spooky phone calls. Eventually it all got too much for me and I registered a complaint with Telstra, who promptly put a trace on the phone line. During this time the mail that had been redirected to Forrest Downs ended up at Wildwood (my ex-husband’s house), never to be seen again. These were phone and bank accounts addressed to me (as I had been assured by the senders).
To top off this miserable time, Michael’s ex-wife Julia took to leaving abusive messages on the farm’s phone-answering service, and I wondered at times if all this telephone harassment would ever come to an end. One morning the cattle that were ready to go into the feedlot were being inoculated for stress, and Michael and I wondered if we should have joined the line-up of cattle and been injected for stress ourselves.
Whenever Julia called to abuse Michael I would wonder what in the hell had we done to deserve such outbursts. I kept telling myself that life wasn’t meant to be easy, that at times we need to be tried and tested to find our own strength; I still tell myself that. But I also know that life can be good. Deep within my soul I believe that Michael and I have found one another for a very good reason. We understand each other and the hurt and challenges life has dealt us. At long last I feel that I have met my match in life: a man who loves the land like I do; a man with strength, virtue and exuberance, who is red-blooded and so very masculine.
Right from the very beginning of our relationship, Michael had told me that he loved me and that he would wait for me to feel that it was right for us to move forward together – and move forward we have.
Helping each other to earmark, tag or inoculate cattle through the old cattle yards – as Michael and I have done almost since we met – would be enough to test any relationship. Quite often I’ve been covered in yard muck from head to toe with only the whites of my eyes showing, my battered and sweat-laden Akubra the resting place for thousands of members of the new season’s fly population. But although it is often exhausting, as we work through the cattle season together, with a helping hand from my children and their partners, and I still find the experience exciting. Even my inquisitive grandsons, Brock and young Cohen – Leisha’s sons with her ex-husband, Adam – have pitched in by helping to push cattle up the race and into the cattle yard. These tough and happy little workers are our apprentice jackaroos, in training to be future cattlemen.
No matter what challenges we face, Michael and I face them together surrounded by our loving family.
CHAPTER 10
Busy days at Forrest Downs
Life on Forrest Downs runs at one pace and that is flat out, seven days a week. Once the calves are weaned off the cows in January and February each year, Michael brings in other cattle to process through the farm feedlot. Sometimes there are 200 or 300 head of cattle a week, and they all have to be inoculated with the Ultravac vaccine for prevention of enterotoxaemia (also known as pulpy kidney disease) and tetanus. We also inject each beast with Bovilis MH, to aid in the control of bovine respiratory disease caused by the Mannheimia haemolytica bacteria.
By the time an animal h
as left its original farm, been mustered and transported to the saleyards, gone through the sale process and been trucked to a further destination, it would have to be suffering some form of stress. We use Bovilis MH in the hope that it will prevent further stress caused by anything from feedlot induction to weather extremes and change of diet. Sometimes we are lucky, but sometimes we lose a beast or two – and that’s cold hard cash straight down the drain. It hurts knowing that the beast is dead and the bank must still be paid out each month.
Since Michael and I have come together we have tossed around and analysed many ideas about how to save stressed cattle. I have my theories from my days in the Kimberley, and Michael has his from running southern cattle. We now place most of the cattle that are purchased for our feedlot, either from Mount Barker or Boyanup, straight into our own farm paddocks, where we ‘spell’ them for three to four weeks without any interruptions. We find that the cattle become a lot calmer when processed through the cattle yards prior to the feedlot, and our losses are minimal – which is just as well, I think, as we need to win sometimes.
When the feedlot is in full swing we sell an average of 180 head of grain-fed cattle per week. Michael and I start our days at around 5 a.m. and end them with dinner together at 9 p.m. or later each evening. By then we are usually both bone-weary, but the hard work has not stopped us from appreciating and respecting each other as our love only grows stronger.
Love on Forrest Downs Page 12
