Love on Forrest Downs

by Sheryl McCorry

  Leisha remained upbeat throughout the remainder of her pregnancy; she kept up her daily exercise, which, she said, helped keep her mind positive, although she was still spending hours a day studying for the psychology degree she had commenced when the boys were very little. I think she just had sheer determination that the melanoma would not spoil the remaining months of pregnancy for her. But the idea of my daughter having cancer and a very young family did worry me, as I’m sure it would any mother. I kept my darkest thoughts to myself, though, and was very grateful to have Michael – with his strong, positive outlook – by my side.

  As the time for Leisha to give birth came closer, I travelled across to Boyanup to be on hand to look after Brock and Cohen when Mummy went into hospital. Nigel’s parents, Pam and Sid, were away on holiday near Augusta; they also travelled back to Busselton to wait for the big event. This time there were no false alarms, as with Brock, or panics that the baby might be born at the rubbish dump while we emptied the farm bins, as there had been with Cohen. In fact, everything seemed to go very smoothly, with Nigel as calm as could be – he was by his wife’s side as she walked and rocked herself through her difficult but necessary labour pains.

  Both of them were thankful for the cool shade of the hospital’s peppy trees, where Leisha walked and meditated until it was time to actually give birth. She was determined to have another totally natural, drug-free birth, as she’d had with Brock and Cohen. I was so pleased that she had a very loving and devoted husband by her side, because I could not bring myself to go near the labour ward again – I had been with her for Brock’s birth but I couldn’t bear seeing my girl in so much pain. I’m proud of Nigel: he never missed a beat, and never fainted. Leisha told me he was all smiles as he helped deliver their baby girl, and was on hand to cut the umbilical cord when their darling daughter Mia Kelly was born in the early afternoon on 3 February 2011.

  Born smiling, Bella-Mia is the beautiful little girl Leisha never thought she’d have. And three weeks later Leisha returned to the hospital with Nigel by her side to have the melanoma removed from her back. The doctor also removed skin surrounding the moles, hoping to catch any drifting cancer cells.

  Waiting for Leisha’s test results felt interminable, although little Bella-Mia’s gorgeous smile was a lovely distraction. When the day came for Leisha to visit her doctor for her results, I was on tenterhooks until I received that phone call from my daughter as she left the hospital, telling me that her doctor was sure he had removed all of the cancer. The news was a massive relief for Leisha and Nigel, and for all the family. At the time of writing this book, Leisha was on six-monthly check-ups with her cancer specialist.

  *

  Now that all was well with Leisha and her little family, I returned home to Michael and Forrest Downs and went back to helping with the daily grind of tending the several thousand head of feedlot cattle that were busily munching away on the grain rations. The day after I arrived, I jumped in to help Michael check the feedlot for unwell cattle and came across a prime Murray Grey beast that had just dropped dead – it was still warm. I thought, My God, another $1200 down the drain.

  Rain had finally fallen across the paddocks, washing the dust from shed roofs, gateways and corner posts, giving the farm a fresh feel (if nothing else) for the time being. And if we were blessed with follow-up rain the country would come to life overnight as fresh shoots, crops and native grasses broke through the brown paddocks, turning them into green pastures. With the fertiliser in the ground and the seeding completed, we just had to wait and see how the remainder of the growing season would pan out.

  In between buying, fattening and selling cattle from the feedlot, it was time to bring in the large herds of cows to earmark, and to tag and ring (castrate) their young offspring before they grew too large and became difficult to handle. The calves were immediately let go to their mothers afterwards, returned to the paddock and not mustered again until it was time for them to be weaned off.

  We also had breeders running down on the Shiralee, and others on agistment on a farm north of Manjimup. With no feed in the paddocks in autumn, Michael would use the tractor and forks to load the flat-top trailer with huge one-tonne bales of hay, and he’d deliver them to the Shiralee for Robby to feed out to the cows. Then the heifers on agistment would be trucked home to Forrest Downs, where Michael and I would need to keep a watchful eye out for any birthing difficulties as they calved down with their first offspring.

  *

  Towards the end of June, with everything wet and boggy on the farm, Michael had a very lucky escape.

  The icy-cold rains had tumbled down for three consecutive days and every dip in the paddocks was overflowing with water, while the creek behind the farmhouse was roaring loudly as it churned and frothed along. The cattle in the feedlot stood with their backs hunched against the showers. The farm’s temperature gauge had hovered around two degrees Celsius for the past week, and early-morning frosts had covered the nearby paddocks with a blanket of shiny ice crystals that would eventually kill off the new green pick that had found its way through the mud in search of the sun.

  So with the paddocks boggy, Michael decided to catch up on the backlog of jobs in his work shed that were crying out to be completed. I reminded my dear husband constantly that fatigue and stress can kill and that the mix is a deadly cocktail, and as he went out to work I begged him to please be careful, ‘as this wife certainly wants her husband alive’.

  That particular morning I hurried to complete my own jobs around the homestead, then jumped on my quad bike and headed to the workshop to see how Michael was going or if he needed a helping hand. When I arrived at the shed he was using a circular saw to cut lengths of box metal, which he used for struts to strengthen the legs on the feeder bins in the feedlot.

  ‘What can I do to help?’ I said.

  Michael lifted his head and thought for a moment, then said, ‘Can you check and refuel the water pump?’ I collected the fuel drum, loaded it into the carrier of the quad bike and left to do the job. When I returned half an hour later I found Michael severely shaken and in shock, because he had come very close to being electrocuted.

  He told me he’d noticed that the end of the extension cord, which he plugged the circular saw into, was buggered. He had disconnected the electrical power cord from the saw, taken out his pocketknife and, without thinking, automatically sliced the end off the extension cord, forgetting to turn it off at the wall. He was immediately hit with massive volts of electricity that caused him to drop to his knees and melted his pocketknife into the ground.

  I demanded that Michael return to the homestead with me. He was unwell for the remainder of the day, although he tried to convince me otherwise as he was worried about the mountain of jobs that wouldn’t get done on the farm.

  *

  Michael and I have spent many hours consuming gallons of tea and debating our farming future on Forrest Downs. As Albert Einstein once said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And we are both inclined to agree with that view. Don’t get me wrong – Michael and I love Forrest Downs: the isolation; breeding and feedlotting cattle; the spirited Angus bulls; and the birdlife that is a joy to have around. Forrest Downs has the potential to be an extremely prosperous business. But we are in the same boat as a lot of Australian farmers, with a humongous mortgage hanging over our heads like an enormous black thundercloud. And it is especially on those tiring extra-long days when everything seems to go wrong, or when the feedlot cattle stampede, that we worry what will become of the farm if one or other of us is badly hurt in an accident.

  I don’t know of another person who would do what Michael does on this farm; we are both constantly told that we do too much. If only we could knock down the debt, the pressure would immediately lift from our shoulders and we could remain living and working in the environment and lifestyle we both love and enjoy. The kids and I help work Forrest Downs, but we don’t ha
ve Michael’s strength and the knowledge of a lifetime spent feedlotting cattle. And that’s special – large butchering companies have told us that Michael turns off the best grain-fed cattle in the south-west.

  We have listed Forrest Downs for sale, but financially sound buyers are not around at this time. What we wish for is to do what we do on a smaller scale, to lighten the workload and be debt free.

  CHAPTER 25

  On the farm

  After a much-needed vacation, we arrived home to Forrest Downs appreciative of the break and the good amount of rain that had fallen on the crops while we holidayed. The farm was a picture, and my rose garden was blooming better than ever.

  Michael estimated that we had three weeks to get the hay-making gear in top order; then it would be time to mow, rake and bale. During this time we also had a visit from our bank manager, who was pleased with the way the feedlot cattle sales had panned out. So it looked to me that we were right for another year of the bank’s support, and I told Michael that I was proud of him, because this really was a one-man show. If he had a down moment I would do a finger count on how many feedlots I knew of in the south-west that had gone down the gurgler, and point out what an achievement it was to still be in operation in these difficult times.

  In 2011 we made a special trip across to the Pemberton Hotel for Michael’s mum’s eightieth birthday. It was a huge celebration of Margy by family and friends that lasted most of the day, giving everyone a chance to catch up with each other as they ate and drank the afternoon away.

  While we had been on holiday I had become quite ill, and Michael would sometimes pull over and let me lie in the caravan and rest awhile. The pain in my body hadn’t left me since – it just moved between being bearable and bloody painful. But I battled on, as we do. Once back on the farm, however, the pain became so severe that I knew it was time to do something about it. So dear Michael drove me to Mount Barker to visit my doctor and I ended up having to have a series of tests the length of my arm. But I was sure it would be worth it in the end.

  We then drove from Mount Barker out to the Shiralee to visit Robby, Tara and Lilah Marie, and found the farm looking a picture: green and beautiful, with the cows shining and content. When we were ready to leave for Forrest Downs, Tara cut a bunch of brilliant yellow roses for me from the rose bush I had planted years ago in honour of Kelly and his father. Although I wasn’t feeling on top of the world, the bouquet of beautiful yellow roses really did light up the remainder of the day for me.

  The following day, ignoring Michael’s suggestion that I remain at the homestead and rest, I helped mow down the many hundreds of acres of oaten hay. It was wonderful to be working outside in the crisp air, with the glorious sun shining brightly across the many rows of conditioned hay that lay waiting to be baled in the paddocks as we progressed.

  The 2011 hay season was the best of all on Forrest Downs – until the day we were hit with unexpected whirly winds and rain that laid 30 per cent of the crop flat on the ground, in great circles of fifty to 100 metres in diameter. I thought of trying to impress my adventurous young grandsons by telling them that ‘Nan had visits from spaceships overnight’, as these large circular areas of flattened hay looked spectacular. But Michael wasn’t at all pleased to see his good hay on the ground, and cussed and blamed the wild winds for the loss. However, the 2011 crop still produced three times the hay crop of the previous year for us, and we were over the moon with the good outcome. In fact, the 2010 season had proved eventful in another way, as I’d found one day when I was mowing away in the hill paddock. Suddenly my tractor had sunk down into a quagmire that had been shielded from sight by the oats that were yet to be mown. I battled to move the tractor forwards and backwards, but it soon became clear that we were bogged to the eyeballs, leaving me with a long walk home for help.

  As luck would have it, Michael had the tuckerbox on board his tractor and came to meet me with our lunch that day; we ran into each other just half a kilometre from my tractor. Before I got put on the block over my predicament, I decided to get in first. ‘Just you remember, I’m not a southern girl. I’m from the Kimberley – I’m not used to these bloody springs popping up out of the blue in paddocks.’

  Poor Michael just looked at me and burst out laughing. I then climbed on board the tractor, and after exchanging a hug we returned to my bogged machine, where we disconnected the mower, hooked the tractors together with chains, and in no time pulled my tractor out of the bog. I was in the hay-mowing business again.

  In 2011, it wasn’t long before Michael brought out of the shed my favourite red Mack truck (vintage 1968), with its two impressive gearsticks and a tonne of guts, and I couldn’t wait to climb in. Inside, though, I found myself busily flicking heavy layers of dust from the dashboard and whacking the redback spiders and their cobwebs out of my way – although I did relent and left one redback spider riding on the windshield wipers.

  I was happy to be pulling my weight again, and I really loved driving the red Mack even the challenge of pulling heavy trailerloads of hay through the undulating countryside. The crop was so good that when Nigel had days off from the mine, he and Leisha would travel across from Boyanup to lend a hand. Nigel spent many long hours relieving me of my job on the ‘conditioner mower’. Michael would follow behind and bale the hay that was ready to go in the far paddocks, only stopping to replenish the baling twine on the machine or fix a breakdown.

  I was becoming very tired, but wouldn’t admit to it or give in, when Nigel decided to take use of his leave from work to stay and help Michael ‘road-train’ the 3500 one-tonne bales of hay into the hay shed and haystacks. So while the men looked after the hay, Leisha and I started on a new mission in the homestead. We had decided to pull up the carpets in the bedrooms and passage, and paint the rooms.

  ‘Mum,’ Leisha said, ‘I don’t want you doing this. Just keep an eye on Bella-Mia and the boys, and keep the mugs of tea up.’ And within a day she had stripped out the rooms and painted the passage and our bedroom – I couldn’t believe it.

  With the hay all in and stacked, Nigel had to return to work and my grandsons to school, so I suggested to Leisha, ‘Let’s paint a room at a time and enjoy it as we go, and gradually we’ll get the whole homestead painted.’ And it’s all happening while I’m writing this book!

  *

  Within days of bogging the tractor I had received a phone call from Mum, informing me that my father wasn’t very well at all. I had asked Mum to put Dad on the telephone, and I could hear that he was battling to breathe and could barely speak to me. I suggested that they let me organise an ambulance to get Dad to Geraldton Hospital as soon as possible, but Dad wouldn’t have a bar of that idea.

  ‘Dad, do you realise that you could die if we don’t get help for you soon?’ I had said. But no, he wouldn’t let me call that ambulance.

  I thought, Dad, you’re still as stubborn as an old rogue bull! I was worried for my mother’s sake as well. They had been married for sixty-five years – how would she handle the shock if he suddenly passed away? I decided to travel to Northampton and bring them both home to Forrest Downs, where I could keep an eye on their health.

  So the following morning at 1 a.m., with Michael behind the wheel of the LandCruiser, we left to pick up my parents. With their suitcases loaded (I’m sure Mum had everything bar the kitchen sink packed in hers, it was so damn heavy), we turned around and drove the 700 kilometres back to Forrest Downs the same day, arriving home on the farm at eight-thirty that evening with a very grey-looking Dad. Mentally I was preparing myself for the worst possible outcome, and watched my father closely. When Mum produced a packet of salt and vinegar chips from her suitcase I thought, My God, what will come out of that case next? I suggested to Dad that he should stop eating all salty products and start taking his medication as his doctor prescribed for him and not just when he thought he should or needed to.

  I had noticed that my mother changed subjects frequently in mid-conversation and began
talking about something totally irrelevant; this left me feeling both embarrassed and flabbergasted. When she mentioned a Yankee admirer of hers from the war years, I thought, Bloody hell, if I hear that story again I’ll scream! I have a terrible fear that she might be developing the early signs of dementia – and yet she can still remember the birthdates of family members long gone, all the way back to the 1800s, as well as the Latin names

  of all the shells in her enormous collection. But she will also repeat the same family stories over and over again – sometimes up to four times in a morning session.

  Michael has been so understanding of Mum – a dear little lady with silvery-white hair – and so patient with her many stories of her ancestors; these days, if she gets lost in the middle of a story, he knows it well enough to help her along. When my parents visit us at the farm, Michael makes Mum’s porridge early in the morning while I make her a large cup of white tea to enjoy. Only Michael is allowed to make her porridge – ‘The way he makes it is special,’ she says – and she will then sit at the breakfast table to be served.

  ‘Mum, what about all the cups of tea I make for you?’ I say, as I can’t possibly let her give all the special treatment to Michael! Mum gently blows across the top of her tea, trying to cool it enough for her to sip it; then, with the beautiful smile that I love, she looks at me and says softly, ‘Yes, that’s special too, love.’ Then we’re all happy.

  On one trip to Albany together, in early 2012, I noticed something else that worried me. As usual, Mum was dressed and ready to leave before the rest of us. She loves wheels under her more than ever now – it makes her day to be driven somewhere (anywhere, really). My dear mother has always been a very neat, tidy and rather conservative dresser; she still is. But that morning I glanced down at Mum’s feet – honestly, I couldn’t miss them, because she was wearing candy-coloured green-and-pink socks with her shoes. Once she would never have worn anything like that, but now she took some convincing that the socks looked wrong. We’re not off to the circus, I thought. Eventually, after much persuasion on my behalf, I was able to convince her to change into a pair of dark-coloured knee-high stocking socks and we were both content.