He turned his mind instead to the previous weekend, when Thomas Cramm had ridden into his camp with his sister Kathleen. Michael had danced with her the last time he had been in Esperance. He remembered the tinkle of the piano and the thump of heavy feet on wooden floorboards. Kathleen’s smile had left him spellbound, as had her dancing. He decided he would like to get to know her better so he invited her to visit.
The weekend had been a pleasant one. Michael had planned a small walk from his camp to the river’s edge, where all three had marvelled at the smell of the bush, the vivid red flowers of the bottlebrush trees and the granite rocks that lined the banks of the river.
Kathleen had then spent some time in his veggie garden and tidied his hut, making it look very much like a home. Michael had been struck by how natural she looked in this setting; it seemed obvious to him that this was the woman with whom he should spend his life.
A particularly strong gust of wind whipped past and the tin rattled so hard that Michael thought it would pull away from its fastenings. He wondered, as he did when things got hellish, if he would ever be able to make Kyleena what he wanted and was it fair to ask for Kathleen’s hand, before he had?
Chapter 13
Amanda sat at the kitchen table, flicking through the latest farm magazine that had arrived in the roadside mail box yesterday. Her cup of tea and toast were beside her and the radio was on, with the weather report from the Bureau of Meteorology. As she skimmed an article on abattoirs’ killing space, she vaguely heard the announcer say: ‘So there’ll be quite a lot of rain for the South Coast, John?’ Putting down the magazine, she started to listen intently.
‘Yes, Bernadette, with the strong front that’s approaching the Southern Coastal district is likely to receive a lot of heavy rain.The front is expected to cross the south-west corner tomorrow morning and move eastward reaching Esperance by Wednesday. There’ll be strong squalls with the passage of the front and we have a sheep farmers’ weather alert, we recommend that any loose items are tied down.’
Her father, sitting quietly at the other end of the table, seemed unmoved by the forecast, while Amanda’s heart started to flutter and her mind raced. She had ewes that were only two weeks off shears.
Looking at her father, she said ‘Sounds like a bit of bad weather.’
He nodded, and Amanda struggled to hide her frustration. Her father had begun to heal and their relationship had been steadily improving until the night Adrian Major had turned up uninvited a few weeks before. Since then, Brian had withdrawn back into his shell. His drinking had increased once more and the silences were long and brooding. His office had become his safe haven from which he rarely ventured.
Amanda had noticed the photo albums disappearing from the bookshelves and when she’d cautiously put her head into the office to call him for dinner one night she’d seen them piled up on the corner of his office desk. She didn’t know what he wanted with the old albums, and she doubted he’d tell her if she asked, so she’d thrust it to the back of her mind and concentrated on farming.
Now she pushed back her chair and without another word to her father headed out the door. Sitting astride her bike, she whistled to her new pup, Mingus, a bouncy black and tan kelpie with keen eyes. Mingus flew from under the bush where he’d been dozing and landed with a thump on the back of the bike.
At nine months old, he’d been a lucky find. After the week of heavy stock work and no dog, Amanda had scoured the pages of the farm journals. Spotting a small ad for a partly trained dog in the Esperance shire, she’d called the number, not really expecting to strike gold – but she had.
The shaky voice of an old man had answered the phone, but when Amanda had explained why she was ringing, his voice had become stronger.‘Only to a good home,’ he kept repeating.
‘Why do you need to pass him on?’ Amanda had asked.
There’d been a long silence and finally the man had said: ‘I’m dying of cancer. I thought I’d have a few years left and I’d still be able to keep a few sheep and work him, but I’ve got two months tops.’
‘He’ll have a good home with me,’ Amanda promised.
From the moment she had picked him up, Mingus had seemed to understand that Amanda was his new mistress and had loved her without hesitation. He was a natural sheep dog and the sick man had started to teach her well. Amanda had read with sadness the death notice in the paper not a week later. But, however forlorn she felt, she enjoyed Mingus’s company – it gave her someone to talk to. Hannah’s phone calls had become few and far between since she’d moved to Sydney and she rarely heard from Jonno other than when he sent her a rude chain email. She missed her friends, and didn’t really have much in common with the few acquaintances she’d met through the local stock firm or knew from primary school. At least Mingus listened and looked interested in what she was saying!
Riding down the laneway, Amanda decided to shift the shorn ewes from the open paddock on the road to Karru paddock. There was oodles of scrubby bush for them to shelter in and places for them to hide their newborn lambs to keep them warm and away from the cold southerlies. They were due to start lambing any day although the stock check she’d done two days ago had turned up some early lambs.
Pushing the mob gently together, Amanda watched carefully to make sure none of the lambs were mis-mothered. It was only about a kilometre to the next paddock, but it took her well over three hours to push the heavily pregnant ewes through the gate and head on to the next job: lunch!
She turned her bike towards the house, enjoying the cool sun on her skin. This autumn, now heading into winter, had been quite mild, making for idyllic lambing conditions, and today was no exception. But the atmosphere was heavy, she noticed, as she pulled up at the house. And there was no sound. Glancing around, Amanda thought the landscape looked different, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. Then she realised all the stock were sitting down and there wasn’t any wind. It was almost like nature was waiting for something to happen.
She walked into the house and yelled to her father that she was back, then set about getting some lunch. Amanda looked up as Brian stumbled into the kitchen, his face flushed from whisky.
‘All the stock are camped up. Bit unusual isn’t it?’ she asked, pretending not to notice that he was drunk again.
‘Storm comin’ today,’ he muttered thickly.
Amanda looked at him curiously. ‘How can you tell that? The bureau says it’s not due until late tomorrow or the next day.’
Brian took her arm, pulled her roughly toward the door and held up his finger. ‘Listen.’ Silence. ‘No noise. No birds or crickets or nothin’.’ He then pointed towards the paddocks. ‘Sheep’ve got their back to where the weather’s gonna come from and the cows are camped as far away from the south as the fences let ’em.’ He let go of her arm, lurched towards the table and sat down. ‘Lunch?’
Amanda rubbed the spot where his fingers had gripped her arm. She couldn’t decide if she felt resentful or just so sorry for this broken man. She walked over and kneeled beside him, her hand on his arm. ‘Dad, why do you have to drink so much? I could learn so much from you if you wanted to teach me.’ Even as she said the words, realisation dawned. Her mind raced back over the conversations which had turned into arguments. This is what he’s been trying to tell me, she thought. Now I understand what he’s been saying. She needed her dad – but she had pushed him away.
‘You know it all already,’ he said, looking at her without anger.‘You told me in the bank. You don’t need a drunken old man like me tellin’ you what to do. Don’t worry about lunch.’ He stood up from the table and weaved towards the door and back down the hall to the safety of his office.
Amanda lay in bed and tried not to think about her father. He hadn’t left his office since lunch but she’d decided not to let it upset her. She’d made her choice as he had made his and now they would both have to live with the consequences.
She wondered if she’d done all she
could to protect her freshly shorn ewes from the coming storm. Before she’d turned out the light, she’d checked the weather radar on the internet and seen the large band of rain that was crossing the western coast. Still a day or so before it would arrive at Kyleena, she thought.
But at 12.30 am the first crack of thunder sounded and the wind started to blow.
By daylight, the wind had dropped and Amanda was bleary-eyed, having not slept since the storm started. She was sitting at the window of her mother’s study, her head in her hands, as first light appeared. She peered into the grey light in the hope of seeing if there’d been any damage, but nothing immediate struck her.
Looking around, she couldn’t believe it was dry, save the light, misty sprinkling that came through in waves and that wasn’t enough to wet the rain gauge. To the south, the looming murky clouds held more chance of rain than the dirty ones above her at the moment.
It was too foul to contemplate work today, but knowing Mingus was scared of storms she ventured outside long enough to collect the quivering dog from his kennel.
Amanda felt a drop of rain as her foot hit the front garden. Looking skyward and holding out her hand in anticipation of another, she was disappointed. As her gaze swung over the land, she noticed the trees on the far southern boundary bending as if buffeted by gale-force winds, while where she stood only a soft breeze blew. With her feet glued to the ground, she watched in amazement as the wind came towards her – she could follow its path. First the grass started to move like a rippling sea, then the leaves and loose debris flew into the air, and finally there was a gust that was so strong it almost knocked Amanda off her feet. The rain started almost immediately, the needle-like drops stinging her skin. The temperature plummeted too.
Bolting for the house with Mingus at her heels, she stood on the verandah and watched.The rain drummed into the ground so hard that the raindrops broke into a thousand smaller drops and splashed back towards the sky. The gutters filled quickly and started to overflow under the eaves of the house and she turned to find the paddocks devoid of stock.
With mixed emotions, she shivered as the sweet smell of rain on dry earth rose to meet her. Storms were beautiful but they could be deadly. She jumped as thunder reverberated around the sky and the lightning flashed. The noise of the rain on the ground and tin roof was deafening.
For most of the day,Amanda sat at the window with Mingus at her feet and watched the rain pelt down. She marvelled at the ferocity of the storm and tried to quell her rising anxiety until it eased to a steady, gentle drizzle just before dark.
Beyond the house and sheds, there were gutters in the ground that had been eroded by the force of the water, there were small lakes in the low-lying areas of each paddock and, without venturing outside, Amanda could hear the roar of the river in Karru paddock. There would be a massive wall of water racing through its deep river walls today.
Amanda, dressed in a bright pink windbreaker and rubber boots, sloshed through the mud to get her bike. The shorn ewes that were due to lamb in Karru paddock were her main concern. None of the other ewes had been shorn.
Slipping and sliding on the bike she followed the waterlogged track to the paddock, stopping at a couple of dams to see how much water had run into them.
Her anxiety rose again as she pulled up at the gate. She couldn’t see any of the ewes. She’d noticed on her way here that some of the other stock had ventured out to graze after taking shelter in the bush all day.They were hungry.
The stock usually preferred to graze the clovers at the front of Karru but none were there. She rode alongside a sheep pad, which was flooded but would lead her to the river, and looked out over the gushing water. White foam gathered around the walls and the water was a muddy brown from all the soil it had picked up in its course upstream.
A white body floated past. Then another and another.
She stood still, watching them being carried by the water, bumping into the bank, logs and debris that were also on a non-stop trip to the sea. Then, with a cry of desperation, she ran, her boots covered with heavy mud, towards the bush that lined the river, Mingus at her heels.
Weaving her way through the bush, she ignored the cold, heavy drips from the leaves and the first two bodies she saw. Without stopping she headed towards the riverbank. There she came to a skidding halt, staring at the carnage that lay before her. The white bodies of five hundred ewes tucked in against trees and rocks, piled on top of one another. As she watched, a few dropped over the edge into the water as the crumbling bank gave way beneath their weight. Amanda could see the sheep had vainly tried to find enough shelter, but had failed. A low moan of despair passed her lips as she sank to her knees, tears running down her cheeks.
After some time, she finally found the strength to get up and walk towards the sheep, looking for survivors, but all she found were a few small lambs pushed against their mother’s bodies, bleating mournfully.
She gathered the lambs; some still covered with newborn blood, and put them under her jacket. She might be able to save these ones.
Feeling utterly desolate, she walked back to her bike, Mingus once again trotting at her heels. She sat astride the bike for a while, staring but not seeing, until the wriggling of a lamb roused her. She started the engine, called to Mingus and, revving the engine loudly, twisted the hand accelerator too fast for the weather conditions and brought the front wheel off the ground. As she gathered speed the back wheel caught in a muddy bog and slid out from under her, throwing the bike sideways. Instinctively, one hand let go of the handlebar to try to hold the lambs to her chest, but the bike toppled the other way and Amanda lost her grip. As if in slow motion, she felt herself being thrown towards the river. Mingus jumped clear just as the bike finally landed on the ground with Amanda a distance from it. She lay on the river’s edge, one arm hanging over the bank. Blood gushed from a gash where she’d clipped her head on a rock as she fell.
Chapter 14
There was a tiny voice in the background, persistent and annoying. Amanda tried to ignore it, but it was unrelenting.
‘Amanda? Oh my lord! Amanda?
’ Through a haze, she thought she recognised the voice, but her brain felt muddled and her head hurt.
‘Amanda? Talk to me, love. Please talk to me.’ The voice broke.
She tried to open her eyes, but everything swam in front of her and she felt sick. Quickly she shut her eyes again and tried to make her mouth open but it was dry and her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth. She couldn’t untangle it to form words.
‘Oh, Mandy, I’m sorry, love. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I know I’ve been a bastard. Please wake up.’
Whoever it was sounded like they were pleading. If only she could work out whose voice it was. She felt her head gently lowered to the ground and a rustling noise. A blanket covered her and then there was silence.
Suddenly fearful, Amanda tried to open her eyes again. This time she could see a figure standing on the river’s edge, a coat reflecting in the spotlights from a ute. Blurry again. She blinked to try and clear her vision but when she focused the person was gone. She blinked again and again, trying to work out if she’d seen an illusion and heard voices that weren’t there. The pain in her head throbbed and her eyes wouldn’t stay focused. It was easier to let the darkness envelop her.
A dog barked and then Amanda felt a wet nose on her face. Screwing up her nose she used a muddy hand to push Mingus away. Then she heard running feet and voices calling, ‘This way! She’s over here. Follow the lights.’
‘My head hurts,’ she groaned. Mingus pushed his nose towards her face again but Amanda saw it coming this time and moved her head. Pain shot through her. ‘Ow!’
‘Amanda? Are you okay?’ A man she didn’t know squatted beside her.
‘My head hurts,’ she mumbled.
‘We’ve got the ambulance on its way. Just lie still.’ Turning, he called to someone behind him, ‘We need another blanket,’ then he asked, ‘Do you rem
ember what happened? Thanks.’ He reached for the blanket and tucked it around her.
Amanda took in her surrounds. A shaft of light was coming from the ute’s spotlights, it was still drizzling and she could hear the river. Then she remembered. The sheep, the motorbike sliding out from under her . . .
‘I fell off,’ she stuttered. ‘My ewes – dead.’ She felt for the lambs that she’d put in her jacket, but they were gone. They must’ve fallen out. More deaths.
‘Don’t worry, love – we’ll get you fixed up.’
Something he said triggered her memory. ‘Dad? Where’s Dad?’
‘We’re not sure, but he’ll be around here somewhere. He rang us after he’d found you and said you were in strife. Looks like he was right. But not to worry, the ambos will be here soon. Ah, here they come now.’
There were men in yellow jackets with fluoro stripes and wearing white helmets walking up and down the river, their torch light dotting the black night. ‘Who are you?’ she asked, trying to sit up.
‘SES, love. Over here, boys,’ he called out and waved his arm. ‘She’s a bit dazed, I think. Don’t know how long she’s been out here, but we got the call from her old man about an hour ago,’ he told the ambos as they jumped from the vehicle.
‘What’s her name?’ asked the driver.
‘Amanda Greenfield. It’s her old man’s place, Brian Greenfield.’
Amanda sat up and grabbed at her head.
‘Easy does it. Hi, Amanda, I’m Jeff, one of the paramedics. Can you tell me what happened?’
‘I came off the bike. Must have hit my head on the ground. It hurts.’
‘Yes, I can see the gash. We’ll clean that up. Do you take any medication?’
‘No . . .’
A man in a drizabone and hat appeared out of the darkness and crouched down beside her. To her surprise she recognised Adrian Major.
Blue Skies Page 6
