The Strength of Our Dreams

by Sara Henderson

  The show was like an assembly line with the guests lined up offstage and pushed, one at a time, into the spotlight, being wired for sound as they were bustled into the interviewing chair. The host would flash them a beautiful smile, fire a few questions in their direction, wave some products around, then thank them for coming. As the cameras moved off the stunned guest, the sound man would rush them offstage, grab the microphone and wire the next guest.

  When we’d just arrived I was standing at the end of the line and saw Bryce Courtenay leaving the set. I’m sorry I missed that interview, as the last thing Bryce would have been was dazed. He probably started selling the products for the host! As he was passing he let out a loud welcoming, ‘Sara!’, gave me a bear hug and said it was great to see me again, and was gone!

  Jane looked fairly surprised and said, ‘I didn’t know you knew Bryce Courtenay!’

  ‘Neither did I,’ I replied. ‘We were introduced at a conference recently, but I didn’t think he would remember me.’

  Recovering from my bear hug I watched as the guest before me was being interviewed. He was a magician performing at a local club and he had with him a lovely white rabbit, which sat on his lap during his brief interview.

  The magician was whisked away and I was wired and rushed to the chair. I sat down and immediately jumped up, as the rabbit was still on the chair. The magician was rushed offstage so fast he’d left his rabbit. The cameras were panning in on the scene and I was being hissed at to sit! It was evident they were running behind schedule. Behind the lights was someone intimating the same and a third person was dramatically holding up a hand with fingers disappearing at an alarming rate.

  No-one was heading onstage to take the rabbit and I had to sit down, so I picked it up and put it on my lap and waited for the cameras, smiling and stroking the rabbit. While the cameras were on the host doing a speedy introduction, the rabbit was whisked away by its owner. After a few rushed questions I was also whisked away and in record time found myself outside the building. All I can say about that interview is, ‘Whew!’

  Another amusing experience occurred at a book-signing session at David Jones in Melbourne. The store had put up a very big display just inside the main entrance with huge posters of the book’s cover. I was surrounded by these at a large desk with a sign over my head which read, ‘Come and meet Sara Henderson’.

  After a busy few hours of signing books I was sitting back massaging my signing hand when an elderly, well dressed gentleman approached. He leaned over the desk and in a quiet, confidential tone asked, ‘What floor underpants?’

  I looked at him with a dazed expression. ‘What?’

  With an annoyed expression he glanced both ways to check no-one was listening, and hissed a little louder, ‘Men’s underwear! What floor?’

  I had recovered sufficiently by this time to say I had no idea.

  Upon which he stepped back and in a loud sergeant-major voice demanded to know why.

  I told him, while pointing to the posters surrounding me, that I was there to sign books.

  Very angry by now, he told me I should sit somewhere else—not at the information desk—and marched away.

  Even with all these funny situations the same pressures are always present on tour. I don’t think I will ever eliminate the stress, but in some situations it does have a bizarre effect on me. On one occasion after speaking to a crowd of six hundred and signing what felt like several books for every person present, Jane handed me a book belonging to the woman who had organised the function and asked me to sign it. I wrote her name, signed my signature and was about to hand back the book, when Jane said, ‘Say, “thank you”.’

  So I did.

  Jane looked at me with a concerned expression and said patiently, ‘Write, “thank you”!’

  The rest of the twenty-six days were pretty much the same as the other tours—lots of travelling, meeting loads of lovely people, sleeping in a lot of strange beds, and not having a clue where I was most of the time. No, it would probably be fair to say, all the time!

  Midway through the tour Franz flew to America with Jim Hazelton to purchase a Cessna 185 tail-dragger for the station. For non-flying buffs, that’s a small six-seater aircraft. Jim Hazelton came into our lives in 1993 when he arrived on Bullo with Dick Smith and Dick’s wife, Pip. We had been in contact with him ever since, talking mostly about airplanes and fishing.

  We had been hiring an aircraft for months and the convenience of having a plane full time on the station was spoiling us. So we started looking for a smaller version of the old Beaver. We needed a plane that was rugged, had high-lift wing, could lift a good payload (although not in the Charlie category) and could be reliable on bush landing strips. Marlee and Franz told me such a plane was a Cessna 185 tail-dragger, but they were as scarce as hen’s teeth in Australia, particularly in good condition. There were a lot of ‘ifs’ involved: If we did find one, it would be very expensive. The next ‘if’ was if the owner was willing to part with it, so cherished are these planes.

  Jim Hazelton said we would be able to get a very good one in America: all we had to do was fly it back to Australia. Jim was starting to sound surprisingly like Charlie! Although it might have something to do with being a pilot as Franz and Marlee didn’t think there was anything particularly amazing in this idea.

  So Franz and Jim wandered around the mid-western states of America, looking at tail-draggers as I wandered around Australia signing books and Marlee was mustering at Bullo.

  Many faxes were sent in a circle between Franz in America, Marlee on the station, and me at a different hotel every night. If the bank manager wanted to ask a question or get my authority, he could only go through Marlee as I left the hotels at 5 a.m. each morning and Marlee had my dreaded itinerary.

  Marlee called one night to say Franz and Jim had found our plane. It had a gold-medal seal and only fifteen hours on the engine. The plane was in immaculate condition and belonged to a plane-crazy guy, so had every accessory you could imagine. I was about to forward the funds when Franz in his usual exacting manner went over the plane from tail to propeller with a fine-tooth comb.

  The owner assured Franz he was wasting his time as the engine was in top-class condition and the plane had gold-medal seal approval. Franz is not one easily swayed from his track so he continued his inspection and took out the oil filters. When he removed the second filter he found shavings. Fine metal shavings signify normal engine wear, but if larger shavings are found it indicates something is amiss. What Franz found in the second filter was larger than ‘fine’. After a thorough inspection, a fracture was found in the crankshaft! The owner couldn’t apologise enough and offered to replace the crankshaft. But the thought of how close they had come to engine failure over the Pacific wouldn’t leave Franz and Jim’s minds.

  The second plane of their choice didn’t have as many accessories, wasn’t finished in leather, didn’t belong to a plane-crazy buff, but its second oil filter came up clear! That was the all-important test when you had fifty hours of flying over the Pacific Ocean in front of you. For a second time the bank was geared up to transfer funds but this time they went through and we were now the proud owners of a 185 tail-dragger.

  Our little plane came from Eveleth, Minnesota. In his journey to find and finally purchase this plane, Franz and Jim had flown to Sydney, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Idaho, Minnesota, Denver and to Torrance, Palo Alto (where they got an export permit) and Oakland in California. From San Francisco Franz travelled to Hawaii by commercial jet as there was so much fuel to carry to get the little plane over this longest stretch—just over thirteen hours—there was only room for one person in the cockpit. So Jim flew this leg alone with the copilot’s seat occupied by a fuel tank.

  Franz joined him in Hilo, Hawaii and flew the little plane to Christmas Island, Pago Pago, Norfolk Island, Lord Howe Island and Kempsey where he dropped Jim home. Finally he flew to Sydney’s Bankstown Airport where the plane had to stay for a fe
w weeks to go through inspection so it could be listed on the Australian register and receive its new Australian call sign (or its registration number, similar to a car’s number plate). Franz left the plane there and flew to Darwin where he was met by Marlee and they drove back to the station in the truck. And I thought I had done a lot of travelling in nineteen days!

  I had arrived home on the morning of the 25th May, the same day the little plane was leaving Oakland, California on its long journey to its new home in the outback of Australia. Marlee and I followed the entire flight, living it by the hour. In the atlas we marked the route across the ocean and expected times of arrival for each touchdown. It seemed such a long way for such a tiny plane! We watched the clock and stood over the phone when an e.t.a. had passed and the phone hadn’t rung.

  When they arrived on Christmas Island after a smooth flight, the biggest problem was finding a phone to call us. We had some of the most worrying hours of our life just staring at the minute speck in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in the atlas, hoping with all our hearts Franz and Jim were on it! Christmas Island is not much more than a fuel stop in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. There are not many other facilities there apart from the fuel.

  Everything that needed to be done to get ready for a very early start the next morning took an extraordinary length of time. It was midnight before they could find a phone and a tired Franz opened with the words we were longing to hear, ‘Hello, Franz here.’

  The next leg to Pago Pago in American Samoa was nearly ten hours. When Franz and Jim were a few hours out of Christmas Island they picked up a 747 cargo plane on their radio, it was flying from Florida to Pago Pago. Franz told them he couldn’t pick up Pago Pago on the radio and asked them to relay his e.t.a. in Pago Pago and his current position.

  The pilot passed on the information. Not long after he came back to double-check Franz’s e.t.a. He wanted to know what Franz was flying as his e.t.a. was in another seven hours. He just wanted to make sure Franz was in an aircraft! The speed of a 747 would be around 360 knots, while Franz and Jim were floating along at around 130 knots, depending on which way the wind was blowing! When Franz told him they were flying a Cessna 185 from Minnesota to Australia, the pilot said they were crazy and gave Franz his contact number in Pago Pago. He wanted to take them out to dinner as he just had to meet people crazy enough to do what they were doing. He couldn’t believe they were flying across the ocean in a small single-engine plane!

  Seven hours later he picked them up at the airport and took them to dinner. It was a long night as he listened to Franz talk about the destination of the little plane from Minnesota—a half a million acre cattle station in the outback of Australia. They parted friends and he promised to come and visit Bullo if his cargo plane ever ended up in Darwin.

  When you register a plane you can choose your own call sign. Franz gave them SBH—my initials—so our new little plane was registered VH-SBH. But maybe we should have christened her VH-CEH—Charlie’s initials—because sitting here now, looking at the transfer papers, I see the date of purchase was Friday the 13th May! So while I was flying to Palm Beach in a Beaver, on the other side of the world Franz was taking delivery of our plane.

  Information about the sales of The Strength in Us All was coming in by the end of May. The book hit the bestseller list the first week of its release and on the 18th May in the Bulletin’s top ten bestsellers, The Strength in Us All was listed number one, with From Strength to Strength at number two. I definitely put that magazine away in my treasure box!

  Both books stayed on the bestseller lists for a few months, which dispelled my fears about the sequel. In fact The Strength in Us All sold around 89,000 copies in ten days, which was a record at the time.

  May from start to finish was full of challenge, excitement and triumph. What a month it was!

  CHAPTER 5

  June 1994 – August 1994

  June found us back together at Bullo for nine days. The mustering was in full swing and after a few days of relaxing I tackled the work piling up in the office. It was then off to Sydney again.

  This year I had again missed a holiday during the wet season and had no breaks ahead of me until December. I was certainly doing very poorly with this management of my life idea! June had the potential to develop the same breathtaking pace as May and I couldn’t do a thing about it—it was already down in the diary!

  I was in Sydney this time for the Australian Book Fair. James wanted me to sign books at the Pan Macmillan stand. I had never been to a book fair and thought it would be an interesting part of the publishing business to observe. A big attraction for me was that there were American publishers there. My big dream has always been to get my first book into the American market! If this happened, I could surely retire!

  Midmorning the first day James had some bad news. ‘Now don’t worry,’ were his first words, so of course I immediately started worrying. He told me there was a rumour going around the fair a book was being offered to publishers giving Charlie’s side of the story in response to my first book. This, I thought, was quite bizarre considering he had been dead for eight years. Who could give Charlie’s side of the story, except Charlie? There was no book written yet, just feelers out for money in advance to write a book. Now why didn’t that surprise me?

  There is easy money involved in riding on the coattails of a bestseller. Apparently publishers sometimes buy a negative manuscript about one of their bestselling authors just to keep it off the market. I asked James not to offer a penny. We would wait.

  The rest of the day passed gloomily as I fought the emotions that surged through my body. James said to forget about it, which was easier said than done! He said he would keep a finger on the pulse and come back to me as soon as he heard anything. He was right, of course, but there was a constant rumbling in the back of my head I was having trouble dismissing.

  The main reason I was in Sydney was that From Strength to Strength was on the shortlist for the Australian Booksellers’ Book of the Year Award. The awards dinner was that night so I decided not to let the nasty incident spoil this exciting night for me.

  Of course when I had first seen the list of books a few months before much of the excitement had faded. The other nine books were quite outstanding and I was honoured just to be listed.

  The Australian Book Awards include awards for non-fiction, fiction, poetry, publisher of the year, bookseller of the year, and so on. This was the first year of the Australian Book of the Year award.

  The time for the awards finally arrived during the dinner. The list was up on the screen and it looked pretty daunting. There I was, right down the bottom at number ten! About the right position against all those titles was my first thought. Some of the books had been around for a long time, others had won top awards. My book was up against the likes of Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, Remembering Babylon by David Malouf, Patrick White—A Life by David Marr and My Place by Sally Morgan. I was laughing to myself by the time I reached this far down the list, but it continued with A Fence Around the Cuckoo by Ruth Park and The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway! Yes, I said to myself, you’re in the right place there, my girl, tenth! Still, I reasoned with myself, being in the top ten was not bad, considering I was in the company of some of the great Australian books.

  ‘Sara!’ Jeannine, Pan Macmillan’s publicity director, was shaking my shoulder.

  ‘What?’ I answered, lost in deep thought.

  ‘It’s your book, you’ve won!’

  A spotlight zoomed in on me sitting at the table lost in my reverie, with Jeannine repeating, ‘Your book has won!’

  I couldn’t move or think. Now I truly know what the expression ‘like a stunned mullet’ means!

  All the recipients of the other awards had gone on stage with a speech clutched in their hand. When I had first seen the other books listed, I’d decided not to worry about writing a speech, so as I walked towards the stage, I screamed at my brain to start thinking. But my brain was blown
away by the events of the previous few minutes and all it could do was repeat, ‘What an honour! What an honour!’ I kept pleading with it to give me more. I needed a speech! But when I reached the microphone my brain was still on its chant, so my first words were, ‘What an honour!’ Then the very original, ‘This is something I certainly didn’t expect,’ I stared into the audience, close to tears.

  The clapping stopped and the audience sat waiting. I pleaded with my brain to produce something and the audience kept waiting. On the speaking circuit, like all speakers, I had always dreaded experiencing a mental block. A few times when speaking I had forgotten the question I was answering, but this had presented no problem, as I just asked the audience to repeat the question and I was back on track. This was different. My brain was like a broken record, repeating the same three words, and I had already used them!

  I smiled at the audience then turned to Andrew Olle, who was master of ceremonies for the evening. It was Andrew’s wonderful interview in 1990 that made James decide to ask me to write the book, he was MC at the launch of the book in Sydney in 1992, and now in June 1993 he was handing me the Book of the Year award. So I gave him the best smile I could muster, all the while having a raging argument with my brain. But still I was faced with a blank wall.

  My eyes fell on the beautiful red leather-bound version of my book I had been handed when I stepped on stage and had been clutching to my chest ever since. In a reflex action I held up the book and the words started to tumble out of my mouth. ‘This book has changed my life,’ came the emotional beginning, then I was back on track. I told the story of James making an appointment with me for the next day after the interview. He had arrived at my hotel while I was rushing across town to his office, overawed at the prospect of speaking to a publisher.