‘Bye bye, eagles,’ Tamara said.
‘Glory be to God for dappled things. A poet said that. But Jaeger isn’t the sort to let a few eagles stand between him and a profit.’ Bec took her granddaughter’s hands in hers. ‘Now it’s time to pass the torch to you. You’ve been managing the place for a good while anyway but there’s a big difference between being a manager and a custodian.
‘Derwent is our heritage – yours, mine and the future generations. Of course it needs to be managed but whoever’s in charge has to be someone who understands the significance of the past. Because the past is the present, and the future.’
‘What does the custodian do?’
‘Provide an heir whenever you’re ready. Cherish the land. Derwent is our burden, perhaps, but also our grail. It is up to each generation to keep it safe and eventually pass it on down the line. That has to be the way of it. Each of us is here for such a little time but the land endures.’
The land endures…
How true that was. You could be sure of the land but it was a different story where humans were concerned.
Bec wondered how things worked out on the other side of the threshold. Would her spirit remain nearby or would it simply evaporate? Would she meet up with the past that had been her present for most of her life? Was there, could there be, a reunion of the dead, or did people become insensate ectoplasm borne on the wind, travelling perhaps into the darkness beyond the stars?
The Venerable Bede had described life as a sparrow that flies into a lighted hall before leaving again, with no one able to say whence it came or where it went.
Was that how things were?
She would like to know, if it was permitted, to learn the answers to all the questions.
In the meantime she would say goodbye to the things that had been important to her. All the dappled things.
Three months, Dr Shinbone had said. Six tops. She would not wait for the inevitable conclusion, drugged and choking for one last breath on a sweat-stained bed. What was the point of that?
She could see them waiting in the shadows. Emma and Alice and Bessie and – yes! – Maria and Jane and her own mother. Even Rose Penrose was there, in the parade of past faces, for without her there would have been no Jonathan. Now, finally, there was Tamara, the latest incarnation of all those who had gone before. In her Bec’s hopes and the family’s future would be borne: a feather, as Hildegard of Bingen had described herself in the twelfth century, borne upon the breath of God.
The grail, as she had said. And this grail too was holy.
When the day came she would know. She would have chosen to lie at Jonathan’s side. Since that was impossible she had always told herself she would drive to the Gimbaloo valley hidden between its basalt cliffs. With the last of her strength she would drag herself down the creek until she reached the lip of the fall. She would look down at the canopy of the trees far below then, with Jonathan waiting, she would launch herself into whatever lay ahead.
That was what she had always intended but now she had a different idea. Something that would not involve her bones cluttering up the forest.
A better way to handle things and bring her closer to Jonathan too.
She sorted her affairs. She checked her will, wrote a number of letters – to the bank and the lawyers, to Tamara and a handful of friends – and left them where they would easily be found. She filled up the petrol tank and drove to the coast.
She left the keys in the ignition. She opened up the shed, dragged out the old rubber dinghy and pumped it up. It wasn’t easy and by the time she’d finished she felt she’d run a mile.
‘I’ll never make a water baby,’ she’d told herself once. Well, it was never too late to learn.
She put the oars in the dinghy and pushed it out. It was hard to get in – old age was such a degrading business – but she managed it eventually. The oars were also a problem but she managed them too. A hundred yards offshore the current took over and carried her further out. She managed to lose one of the oars but that didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered now.
The dinghy rocked as she stood up.
‘Time to visit the mermaids,’ she said.
Maybe, who knew, she might become one herself?
She stepped over the side.
The empty dinghy bobbed and drifted slowly on.
Tamara stood at the bedroom’s open window, staring out at the vastness of the land and feeling the breeze cool on her naked body.
The pre-dawn light shone silver in the eastern sky. Below the house the valley lay in shadow but once the sun rose the hills on either side would be bathed in the glory of the golden wattle. From the stringybark trees lining the access road a kookaburra’s strident voice summoned the morning.
‘She was so keen on our having a child,’ she said. ‘A pity she missed the news, but maybe, wherever she is, she knows now.’
‘I never believed she’d do it,’ Grant said.
‘It was exactly what I thought she’d do. She was a woman who lived her own life, made her own decisions. Giving herself to death was her way of giving herself to life. She often told me that she saw our ancestors – that the so-called dead had as much claim on us as the so-called living. I believe that myself.’
‘Right or wrong, she knows now,’ Grant said. ‘So where do we go from here?’
‘Onwards and upwards. I want to put up a memorial to her, a granite one to stand up to the weather, and stick it up near the shack. After that we’ll be busy enough. We have an estate to run. If we intend to make it the best property in Tasmania as well as the biggest we’d better get on with it.’
‘Is that what you think?’ said Grant.
She turned and looked at him lying on the bed. He was as naked as she was. God, she thought, how beautiful he was.
‘Maybe in a little while,’ she said.
She walked towards her husband and the future.
AUTHOR’S NOTES
The immigrant ship Admiral Cockburn sailed from London on 29 September 1826 and arrived at Hobart Town in Van Diemen’s Land on 14 February 1827.
Trusts are a legal device commonly used to preserve and administer property. They or their equivalent have been in existence for thousands of years. A form of what was effectively a trust is mentioned in the Old Testament. They were also commonly used in Roman days. They remain widely used today.
Contrary to rumour, many people of part Aboriginal heritage still live in Tasmania today.
Whaling was a significant source both of revenue and catastrophe in the early years of the colony. The name of Van Diemen’s Land was changed to the present name of Tasmania in 1856. The system of free land settlement was abolished in the early 1830s.
The storming of the Eureka Stockade, one of the best known events in Australian history, and the conditions prevailing in Ballarat at the time, were as described. The intransigence of Sir Charles Hotham, lieutenant governor of Victoria, was a significant factor in causing the insurrection. It is one of history’s ironies that Sir Charles died unexpectedly, a year after the storming of the stockade.
The relationship between mosquitoes and malaria was unknown at the time Emma Dark died of the disease.
The First Tasmanian Mounted Rifles served in South Africa from 27 October 1899 until 7 December 1900.
Bessie’s acquisition of her Model T Ford preceded by twelve months its appearance on the commercial market.
Frenetic speculation leading to the stock market collapse of 1929 had catastrophic consequences throughout the world. Australia was badly affected.
The demand for woollen uniforms to withstand the bitter cold caused the price of wool to rise significantly during the Korean war.
In the face of ferocious opposition from the unions, the so-called White Australia policy was effectively dismantled by the Holt Liberal Government’s Migration Act of 1966. This was later amplified by the Whitlam government in 1973.
Quotations are from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Gerard Manley Hopk
ins and Hildegard of Bingen, a Benedictine abbess, poet, mystic and musician.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To Selwa, as always, precious friend, precious agent. Also to my wonderful editors, Annabel and Kate, and to all the team at Harlequin.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J.H. Fletcher is the prize-winning author of eighteen novels, published to both critical and popular acclaim in Australia, Germany and the UK, as well as numerous short stories and plays for radio and television. He was educated in England and France and travelled and worked in Europe, Asia and Africa before emigrating to Australia in 1991. Home is a house on the edge of the Western Tier Mountains in northern Tasmania.
DUST OF THE LAND
J.H. Fletcher
There was only one way she could guarantee her future…and she knew that she would take it.
Bella Tucker has come a long way. Born illegitimate and banished to the London slums by her vindictive stepmother, at six Bella is rescued by her grandfather and brought up as a member of the aristocratic Richmond family. Her future seems assured when she falls passionately in love with Charles Hardy, heir to the wealthy Hardy estate — until her grandfather’s death changes everything…
Heartbroken and headstrong, Bella flees to Australia, where she is offered a job by the charismatic Garth Tucker, owner of Miranda Downs, a vast cattle station in the stunning and remote Pilbara region. After several near disasters, she finds herself falling in love with Garth amidst the dust, heat and the endless expanse of bush.
Together, Bella and Garth become major players in the new mining industry, allowing Bella to build her dream home, the sprawling homestead, ‘Desire’. But after Garth’s unfortunate death, Bella is forced to deal with circumstances that bring the family close to ruin…and the business Bella and Garth have built to the brink of collapse.
Can Bella untangle the lies and save the business and her family home? And will she ever lay eyes again on the man she never ceased to love, Charles Hardy?
Dust of the Land is an epic saga of one woman’s strength through her trials in love and betrayal on Australia’s red frontier.
THE GOVERNOR’S HOUSE
J.H. Fletcher
The story of two remarkable women, united by blood but separated by time – from the author of Dust of the Land
Born in poverty, transported for theft, and in love with a charismatic but dangerous man – for Cat Haggard the Tasmanian Governor’s House is not merely a beautiful building but a symbol of all she hopes to obtain in life. From convict, bushranger and accused pirate, Cat transforms herself into an entrepreneur and pillar of colonial Tasmanian society. But how is she connected to a missing ship? And could she be involved in the disappearance of a priceless treasure that, one hundred and three years after her death, will be claimed not only by a foreign government but by unscrupulous men determined to use it for their own ends?
Joanne, dean of history at the university and Cat’s descendant, is assigned the task of locating the missing artefact. Joanne believes the key may lie in a coded notebook she has inherited along with Cat’s other mysteries. But will she be able to decipher the message and put a century-old secret to rest? And will she survive to join her true love in the Governor’s House – a house that has come to mean as much to her as it did to her long-dead ancestor?
A WOMAN OF COURAGE
J.H. Fletcher
A rags to riches story of a woman of indomitable spirit and of the passionate love that moulds and ultimately changes her life…
Fighting her way from humble beginnings in a foster home to CEO of her own highly respected international company hasn’t been easy for Hilary Brand. Even after she seems to have reached the top, troubles abound: her business in China, always fraught with problems, is in peril; and her arch-nemesis Haskins Gould – once her closest business associate, but now her greatest enemy – is gaining traction in his unceasing determination to destroy all she has created.
Hilary’s two daughters – unhappy trophy wife Jennifer and brilliant but troubled journalist Sara – also traverse the joys and terrors of love as they try to tread their own paths in the shadow of such a powerful woman.
From the vastness of Western Australia to glittering Sydney and the teeming streets of Hong Kong and Singapore, this is a story of contrasting loves and of a woman of fierce determination… a woman of courage.
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ISBN: 9781489233264
Title: Land of Golden Wattle
First Australian Publication 2017
Copyright © 2017 J.H. Fletcher
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