Love in the Age of Drought

by Fiona Higgins

  I smiled down at Stu, floating on his back with arms outstretched. ‘This is the most authentic Australia Day I’ve ever had,’ I said.

  CHAPTER 18

  After the Australia Day deluge, Stuart’s farm activities were delayed by ten days of enforced drying out. In the interim, there were other distractions for Stuart, including watching me take my place as a rural Queensland representative in the Commonwealth Games Baton Relay. Several months earlier, I’d received a letter advising me that I had been nominated as a Commonwealth Games Baton Relay runner. The letter outlined that ‘the Queen’s Baton’ (which, as far as I was concerned, sounded like a dubious establishment in Sydney’s Kings Cross), would arrive in Sydney in late January, before heading north to Queensland. My nomination attracted the attention of The Dalby Herald (third cousin thrice-removed of The Sydney Morning Herald) and an article was published under the headline ‘Games Honour for Jandowae Woman’. This headline suggested that I was now a full-blown local; I was chuffed to realise I’d acquired such status in just under one year.

  On day nine of the Commonwealth Games Baton Relay, we drove to nearby Wondai (population 1,500). Upon arrival in the town centre, I received a military-style briefing from Jess, an excitable ‘Communications Host’ seconded to the relay from her day job as a financial officer in Perth. Jess pumped me with a vast amount of important information, such as how to hold the baton (up, not down), what to do with my ‘thumb wetsuit’ (fitted with a sensor so that 71 light bulbs on the baton, one for each country of the Commonwealth, glowed at every exchange between runners) and how to smile and wave at the same time (difficult, but possible). She also described the workings of a special ‘BatonCam’, a real-time camera embedded in the baton, bound to ensure that every stumble or fall by runners was mercilessly streamed to millions of viewers.

  I was the second of five runners in the Wondai leg; the first being Sandra, a local high school student. Sandra reluctantly passed me the baton only after a police escort shouted ‘Stop, Sandra, stop!’

  I set out on my 400 metres of glory, wondering who might have nominated me for this privilege. Feeling vaguely hypocritical, I pondered how many Queen’s Baton runners had voted ‘Yes’ in the 1999 referendum on an Australian Republic. I traversed a slight gradient, navigated a roundabout and waved enthusiastically at locals standing on the side of the road. In all likelihood they were thinking, ‘Who is that woman and why haven’t we seen her around Wondai?’ Within moments, I sighted the next Baton Relay runner. What will happen if I just keep running?

  The answer to this question was revealed by ‘Tiny’, a 190-centimetre giant of a man driving the minibus which collected runners on completion of their leg. As I boarded the bus, I remarked on the fitness of my ‘security escort runners’, Sally and Nick, who had stuck alarmingly close to me during my run. In hushed tones, Tiny advised me: ‘Well, you know, they’re part of the TRG – the Tactical Response Group.’

  Further discussion revealed that Tiny was not joking, and that at least one spectator had directly experienced the TRG’s hyper-vigilance. During the previous leg of the baton’s journey, Sally and Nick – ever-alert to possible breaches of security – crash-tackled an over-enthusiastic rural onlooker who had the gall to throw confetti over a relay runner. No such excitement on the Wondai leg. Having farewelled the baton on its journey to Kingaroy, Stuart and I returned to the big wet at Gebar.

  As the paddocks drained, Stuart started servicing his equipment. A cotton picker, a module builder and a boll buggy were put through their paces. While I understood the function of the cotton picker, I needed an ‘Agriculture for Dummies’ briefing on the other two items.

  ‘A module builder is what we dump the cotton into when we harvest it, Fi,’ Stuart explained, pointing to a semi-trailer sized receptacle. ‘And that big basket on wheels over there is a boll buggy. It transfers the cotton from the picker into the module builder.’

  While this machinery was only used for a short, intensive period each year, reliability was crucial. Stuart spent days checking hydraulic lines, seals, oil levels and grease nipples, as well as evicting birds, mice and wasps from nests made in the machines. ‘Preparation is everything,’ explained Stu, ‘because if any of this gear breaks down during harvest, there’s only one mechanic in town.’

  It was survival of the organised.

  There were some things, however, which couldn’t be anticipated. In mid-February, Stuart’s offsider of seven years tendered his resignation.

  ‘I’m goin’ overseas to drive headers in Europe,’ Roger advised, ‘and when I get back, I wanna work in the mines.’

  This decision seemed to be increasingly common for young men in the district. Despite the drought, Dalby was enjoying an economic renewal prompted by a mining boom. Its population had increased by ten per cent in just twelve months. Fuelled by coalmining and methane gas extraction, power stations were springing up like mushrooms after rain. It was possible for a young worker to be paid a salary of up to $100,000 in the mines. By comparison, the agricultural jobs market just didn’t stack up.

  With a short time until harvest, Stuart was left with the difficult task of recruiting Roger’s replacement in the middle of an Australia-wide agricultural skills shortage.

  ‘No-one will want the job,’ he despaired. ‘I just can’t compete with the mines.’

  ‘Well, we can only try,’ I replied. ‘Why don’t you let me write you a job description and we can send it through to Dalby Agricultural College? Maybe there’ll be a young graduate looking for some practical experience.’

  Stuart’s smile was half-hearted. ‘Thanks, Fi,’ he said, ‘that’d be great.’

  The following day I faxed off a carefully crafted job description, offering all manner of appealing perks – flexible working hours, accommodation, mobile phone and fuel card, plus a generous hourly rate of pay.

  ‘Let’s see how that goes,’ I said confidently.

  Not one person applied for the job. Irrespective of Stuart’s human resources problem, the season marched on. He irrigated the crop for the last time, using water held in storage from the Australia Day rain.

  ‘It’s great we got that rain in late January,’ I commented, perched on a head-ditch as I watched the now-familiar sight of water surging along furrows in the field.

  ‘Yeah, funny how it works though,’ Stuart said, adjusting a siphon, ‘if I’d known we’d get this much rain, I would have planted more crop. But I was gun-shy after last year. So I took what I thought was a responsible, risk-averse approach.’

  I surveyed the small area of cotton growing in the paddocks before us. The bolls on the plants, previously tight prisms of green, had begun to open. To my dismay, a flock of cockatoos suddenly swooped from the trees along the creek to chew at the cotton bolls.

  ‘Don’t worry, Fi,’ remarked Stu, observing the birds with admirable stoicism. ‘They won’t do nearly as much damage as heliothis grubs.’

  I marvelled at Stuart’s patience. The cockatoos were cackling with satisfaction as they tore at the seeds of his precious cotton bolls, leaving the lint strewn across the ground. I almost volunteered to fetch his rifle and dispense with the pests myself. But I remembered his leniency with our roof-inhabiting feral cat, which had been miraculously quiet in recent months. Perhaps if you waited long enough for nature, I reasoned, it sorted itself out.

  ‘Well,’ I said hopefully, ‘maybe the cockatoos will just disappear in good time, like the feral cat did.’ An odd look passed over Stuart’s face.

  ‘What?’ I asked, unable to read his expression.

  Clearly discomfited, Stuart suddenly blurted, ‘It didn’t leave of its own accord.’

  I stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘I waited until you went to Sydney,’ Stuart confessed, ‘and then I took it out.’

  ‘Where did you take it?’ I asked.

  He flinched. ‘I took it out permanently, with my rifle.’

  I gaped at him. ‘H
ow could you have pretended that the cat simply left of its own volition?’

  Stuart shrugged. ‘I never said that,’ he replied. ‘You wanted to believe it, babe.’

  Suppressing the inkling of a smile, he turned back to his siphons.

  Despite the incursions of cockatoos, the bolls continued to ripen. As they slowly split open, exposing the pearly lint within, the rest of the plants began to twist and droop.

  ‘That’s normal,’ Stuart assured me over dinner several days later. ‘It means the bolls are pulling the nutrients out of the leaves. The plants start to droop because the cotton’s so heavy.’

  I collected the dinner plates and stacked them in the sink.

  ‘So at this point in the season, you actually want the cotton plants to look wilted like that?’ I asked.

  Stuart nodded.

  I exhaled with relief; I couldn’t bear something else going wrong.

  Later that evening as I washed the dishes, I glanced up through the kitchen window and squinted. Was that flames I detected in the distance?

  ‘Stu!’ I called urgently. ‘Something’s on fire in the paddock!’

  Stuart sauntered over to the sink, peered through the window and replied, ‘Hmmm, let’s go have a look.’

  I sat rigid in the ute as we sped towards the flames. We don’t need a fire to devastate the harvest. I strained to see the source of the problem: a large piece of machinery appeared to be on fire in the field.

  Stuart took his foot off the accelerator as we drew nearer. I gaped, confused, at a most peculiar sight. A backhoe was parked on the edge of a paddock, its forks raised three metres above the ground. In the forks, an old iron-clawed bath was suspended over two 44-gallon drums in which fires were burning.

  ‘I wanted to say sorry about the feral cat,’ said Stu. ‘And it’s twelve months today since you arrived in Jandowae. I know how you miss your Sydney bath, so I’ve organised one for you.’

  I smiled, amazed. Since my relocation to Gebar I’d bemoaned the absence of a bath; the best I could do was to sit in ankle-deep water on the floor of our shower recess, or use Marie’s spa in an emergency.

  ‘Your tub, madam,’ said Stu, helping me out of the ute. He climbed behind the controls of the backhoe, and lowered the bath to the ground.

  ‘Hop in!’ he called. ‘Don’t mind the noise.’

  As Stuart idled the engine, I removed my clothes and cast them aside. I clambered over the backhoe and gingerly stepped into the bath, wedged in its forks. I sank into the blissfully deep, warm water. Rose petals floated on the surface and clung to my exposed skin. I couldn’t imagine where Stuart had sourced the roses, such an extravagant treat. I reclined, grinning with delight. Stuart raised the backhoe forks into the air and repositioned the bath over the fire drums.

  ‘Happy first anniversary in Jandowae, Fi,’ he called. ‘I’ll leave you here to relax for half an hour.’

  Suspended above the heat of the flames, I gazed out at the cotton in the surrounding fields. The moon had risen in the east, casting a silvery veil over the crop. I rubbed soap over my body and floated beneath the stars. A year ago, this sky had unnerved me. The cavernous night, uninterrupted by the neon signage of urban living, had seemed both beautiful and petrifying.

  So many things had seemed alien in the weeks following my arrival in Jandowae. My sense of insecurity had been amplified by Stuart’s habit of not locking the doors to Gebar. In my previous security-conscious urban existence, I’d carried at least eight keys jangling around in my handbag at any one time – for security doors, windows, the garage, the car, even the letterbox. By contrast, Stuart had lost the keys to our front door long ago and didn’t care to replace them. Our house was routinely left unsecured, whether we were popping out to the Jandowae shops or embarking upon an interstate trip. This was life in the bush – a trusting, open life, with which I had been thoroughly unfamiliar.

  One year on, I’d relaxed. Indeed, I’d even found myself becoming frustrated when visiting Sydney, irritated by the need for security grilles, intercoms and car alarms. This laissez-faire rural attitude had led me to leave hotel doors open, lose the security pass for my Sydney office, misplace my credit card in department stores and leave my laptop on the ferry (it was handed in to lost and found). It wasn’t that I’d become scatterbrained; I’d simply stopped fixating on the minutiae of personal security.

  Now, floating alone in a rural paddock, suspended several metres in the air, I realised I’d never felt safer in my life.

  Two weeks after my backhoe bath, Stuart defoliated the crop – causing the leaves to shrivel up and fall away – in the final step before harvest. It was as if autumn had occurred overnight.

  ‘What did you use to make the leaves drop off?’ I asked as Stuart and I hung out a load of washing together.

  ‘A chemical that triggers the cotton to throw off its leaves,’ he replied, pegging a green work shirt on the line. ‘The only thing that can stuff us up now is rain.’ He followed my gaze to the clouds scurrying across the sky. ‘Sounds picky, but we definitely don’t want rain when we’re about to harvest.’

  I retrieved a pair of jeans from the basket. ‘Not even just a little bit of rain to settle the dust down?’ A month of baking heat after Australia Day had seen the relentless dryness return.

  Stuart shook his head. ‘The cotton needs to be bleached white by the sun, Fi, which gives it a lustre,’ he replied. ‘If it rains, the cotton turns into a sodden, grey-coloured lump that’s difficult to gin. Obviously we won’t be paid as much for that kind of cotton.’

  I glanced at the sky, willing the weather to hold.

  ‘But you wouldn’t have done this washing if you thought it was going to rain.’ Stu smiled. ‘So let’s just stay optimistic, okay?’

  Optimism was in short supply, however, when twenty millimetres of rain fell early the next morning, the day before harvest. I stared in quiet disbelief as fat droplets of water splashed brown dust onto the pristine white bolls hanging lowest to the ground. Mercifully, however, the rain stopped several hours later and the clouds cleared into a bright, sunny afternoon.

  ‘That’ll give the bolls the opportunity to dry out,’ said Stu, relief in his voice. ‘But we’ll have to wait another two or three days to harvest, when the ground’s dry enough again to put the heavy machinery back into the field.’ He ran his hand across his forehead.

  ‘The biggest impact of that rain is actually more psychological than financial,’ he observed. ‘So close to harvest, a three-day wait feels like an eternity.’

  CHAPTER 19

  The ground duly dried out and harvest was upon us. I climbed to the top of the module builder, in which the harvested cotton would be compacted for transport to the gin, and watched the activity unfold. Stu’s farmhand had already gone overseas and, in his absence, two short-term picking contractors had been brought on board. A stream of dust along the road announced the arrival of Toby, who pulled up alongside the module builder.

  ‘I’ve just popped in to give Stu some moral support,’ he called from below. ‘Can I join you?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ I called back to him. ‘You can tell me what’s happening out there.’

  In the field before us a contractor was driving the cotton picker between rows. Stuart was carefully monitoring the process from the paddock’s edge to ensure that all of the cotton was peeled from the lowest parts of the bush.

  ‘It’s partly financial, partly farmer’s pride,’ explained Toby. ‘If other farmers drive past and notice you’ve left cotton on the bush, you feel embarrassed. ’Cause they won’t hesitate to talk about the money you’ve left behind in the field.’

  I eyed the low-hanging bolls; it would be easy for the picker to pass right over the top of them. No wonder Stu was scrutinising the job so closely.

  ‘The bottom stuff’s the best,’ said Toby. ‘It’s the most mature, so it holds the most cotton. We’ve got a saying in agronomy – the bottom’s for dough and the top’s for show.’
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  Before long, the boll buggy was making its way from the field towards the module builder. We climbed down and stood to one side as the buggy deposited its precious cargo, before returning again to the field for its next load.

  ‘I’ll go and have a word to the driver,’ said Toby, climbing back into his ute.

  I waved him off and scaled the ladder once more, peering into the depths of the module builder. The thirteen tonnes of cotton below resembled giant florets of cauliflower.

  I watched in awe as the other contractor operated an enormous hydraulic ram to compact the last of the cotton. Once complete, a colossal brick of white cotton was left standing upright on the dirt. Stuart pulled up alongside me in his ute.

  ‘Watch this,’ he said. ‘It’s the best bit of the season.’

  With the help of the contractor, Stuart dragged a yellow tarpaulin over the mound and tied a label to one corner with a flourish.

  ‘That’s called “tagging the module” and I’ve just transferred ownership to the merchant,’ he declared, patting the block with satisfaction.

  ‘We’ll find out about the quality of the cotton once it’s ginned over the next few days,’ he added.

  A week later, harvest was over.

  ‘How do you feel?’ I asked Stuart, relieved that last-minute rain hadn’t hampered the operation.

  Stuart grunted. ‘Well, the classing report indicates that the quality of the cotton is actually quite good,’ he said. ‘But the cotton market has dropped and unfortunately, I didn’t sell enough in advance when the price was higher.’

  I sighed. Between poor yields in one season and poor prices the next, it was hard to stay positive.

  The following week, after an intense period of work in Sydney, I returned to Gebar with relief. I was rapidly losing all patience with my city sojourns and couldn’t get back to the farm fast enough. How times had changed.

  The day after my return, Stuart walked into the Danube and sat on the edge of the lounge, picking at the palms of his hands. He smelt of grease and WD-40.