Back to the Pilliga

by Tony Parsons

  After the wake as Fiona and I prepared to leave town, I talked with Mum about why I felt I had to leave. She knew how strained my relationship with Father and Stuart was and how hard it would be for us to work together on Kamilaroi but couldn’t understand why I had to leave the district altogether.

  ‘Being here would be a constant reminder of Kenneth’s death – it’d never feel the same hanging out with friends or playing cricket here. And Fiona’s future lies in Sydney. It’s best for all concerned that I go, Mum. I hate leaving you, especially now, and I wouldn’t be able to do it if you didn’t have Flora close by,’ I said.

  Fiona remained wonderfully supportive in the aftermath of Kenneth’s death. She took time off university to be with me and she invited me to come down and live with her in Sydney. We discussed what I would do if I moved down there and, whatever her private feelings about it, she was supportive of my desire to join the police force, perhaps knowing it would provide me with some distraction from my grief about Kenneth.

  I felt a huge sense of relief as we left Coonabarabran and while I drove I turned my thoughts to the future. I didn’t see being in the police force as a long-term proposition because I knew, even then, I’d eventually want to get back on the land. I couldn’t see how I was going to do it and nor could I see how it would fit in with Fiona’s plans. She hadn’t talked a lot about what she hoped to do other than to say she wanted to specialise.

  Shortly after I arrived in Sydney I went ahead and joined the police force. And though originally one of the things that had appealed to me about becoming a policeman was the inducements they offered for sporting types, I was never again able to work up much enthusiasm for playing sport after Kenneth died. Instead, I threw myself into my new role as a police officer. I soon realised that Fiona’s future as a specialist lay in Sydney where the big hospitals offered the latest in medical procedures. And though I did do a stint away in the Central West it wasn’t long before I transferred to plain clothes work back in Sydney and became a detective sergeant.

  Having grown up using firearms I was not a bad shot, though up until I joined the police all my shooting had been with a rifle. I’d even done a bit of competitive rifle shooting. After becoming a detective I practised very hard with hand guns, which assumed greater importance than rifles in a detective’s life. Still, funnily enough, after years of identifying individual sheep and cattle and learning to read the bush I had a keen eye for detail with regard to people.

  Fiona and I decided to get married when she completed her medical degree and, with me still unable to face the thought of going back to Coonabarabran for any reason, we had our wedding ceremony in Sydney.

  Father and Stuart didn’t come down for the wedding. Nicole and her girls were there though I learnt later that there’d been an unholy row between Nicole and Stuart about them coming. Mum and Flora were the two that mattered and they were there. There was quite a contingent of other people from Coonabarabran because the Camerons had been prominent landowners there for generations. Sheila was one of Fiona’s bridesmaids and I asked Luke Stirling – who had become one of my good mates in the force – to be my best man, though I’d always envisaged Kenneth in that role.

  Fiona had graduated from medicine with first class honours and her parents had bought her a house on the North Shore which we moved into straight after our honeymoon. Within weeks of our wedding Fiona started out as an intern and her life soon became completely dominated by work. The hours she and the other interns were required to work amazed me and it seemed like a wonder they could stand up, let alone treat gravely injured people, by the time their shifts were coming to a close. Our sex life – which had always been a focal point of our relationship – waned under the weight of Fiona’s constant exhaustion.

  After her period as an intern Fiona started postgraduate work so that she could specialise in heart surgery. It was during this time that she seemed to change from the girl I’d known back in Coonabarabran. She’d never put much effort into cooking – which had never greatly bothered me – but rather than the two of us going out together, her idea of a good night out was for us to go to a restaurant with some of her medical colleagues. Their conversation was often way above my head so I usually felt like a fish out of water.

  Whenever I raised the idea of having children, Fiona said there’d be plenty of time to have kids once she was established as a heart surgeon. I was very keen on having kids and I dreamt of us having a son called Kenneth who I could teach how to play cricket and rugby. Whenever I thought about bringing up kids I wanted to give them everything I’d been denied growing up. Though growing up in the country had been great I was glad we’d be living in the city only insofar as our kids wouldn’t have to be sent away to school.

  I think I continued to wilfully ignore Flora’s warning that Fiona wouldn’t necessarily want to have any children. After establishing herself in heart surgery Fiona began to hint that I leave the police force. Though she never really said it, it was clear to me that she thought there were a lot more desirable things I could be doing.

  ‘You could buy into a business,’ she kept telling me.

  ‘What kind of business do you have in mind?’ I asked her on one occasion.

  ‘The father of one of my colleagues owns a company that supplies purified water to businesses. It’s quite lucrative and he’s got cancer and wants to sell it,’ said Fiona.

  I groaned. ‘What makes you think I’d prefer selling water to the police work I do which is at least interesting.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have to do the actual work, only look after the administration. Your employees would do the actual work,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ I said emphatically.

  I thought I was doing quite well in the police force and I had a great partner in the bloke who’d been my best man, Luke Stirling. I had no desire to change my job for something I knew nothing about while Fiona went happily on doing what she wanted.

  Married life with Fiona wasn’t at all like I’d expected it to be. The crisis point in our marriage came when I was shot while Luke and I were apprehending Ben ‘Bud’ Hollis. Hollis was a bad egg, who was in the top ten of Australia’s most wanted criminals. After two stints in the clink he had sworn never to be taken again. Following a tip-off, Luke and I had located Hollis and we were watching a house in Chatswood while waiting for back-up. Hollis had a partner and he sent her out of the house and we thought she might have gone for food. A few minutes later a car came screaming up the street and Hollis burst out of the house with a pistol in one hand and a sawn-off shotgun in the other. Luke gunned our Holden into life and drove it up the street to block the other car’s getaway. Hollis fired two shots, both of which hit the Holden and as I got out to fire from behind our vehicle I was hit in the shoulder. As Hollis brought up the shotgun to fire at Luke I steadied my arm against the Holden and squeezed off a single shot. Hollis dropped.

  ‘Get the woman, Luke. I’ll watch Hollis,’ I shouted. Watching was about all I could do because of the terrible pain in my shoulder. But Hollis didn’t require any watching because he was dead and Luke soon had his handcuffs on the woman. He called an ambulance for me by which time our back-up had arrived.

  Both the police and the media praised Luke and me for dealing with Hollis. He’d had the firepower to deal with both of us which had certainly been his intention.

  Fiona was great while I was in hospital and looked after me well when I first came home. However I had only been recuperating for a couple of weeks before she started pressuring me to leave the force again.

  ‘You aren’t thinking of staying in the force now, are you? You’re going to have a stiff shoulder indefinitely and they’ll probably put you in some dreary office job you’ll hate,’ said Fiona.

  ‘I’ll be as right as rain after a couple of months of gym work and physio,’ I said.

  ‘It’s too dangerous. You’re putting yourself at risk all the time,’ she said.

  ‘Someone has to do it and I
think I’m good at my job,’ I said.

  ‘Being good at it didn’t prevent you from being shot. You’re going up against the very worst type of criminal and some of them have no compunction about shooting policemen. I’ve had enough of it, Lachie. Resign and do something else,’ she said.

  ‘If I resign it will be to work for myself in the same field,’ I said.

  ‘You mean as a private detective?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said.

  ‘That’s worse than what you’re doing now. Getting evidence for divorces. Ugh,’ she said.

  ‘What it really boils down to is that me being a cop, private or otherwise, is bad for your image. That’s the real reason you want me out of the force, isn’t it? I’m an embarrassment to you,’ I said harshly.

  I could see that I’d hit the target and that Fiona didn’t appreciate being put on the spot.

  ‘The fact of the matter is that we’re not compatible, Lachie. We never have been except in bed and the magic’s been missing from that for some time. I’m largely to blame. If you’d married Sheila, you’d have had a family and been much happier,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe I should have married Sheila. I don’t reckon she’d go running around with other blokes behind my back,’ I said, finally raising a long-held suspicion of mine.

  Fiona’s face flamed and I knew I’d scored a hit.

  ‘When your shoulder is right I want you to leave, Lachie. Can you get the tenants out of the Neutral Bay house?’ she asked.

  Not long after Kenneth’s death my mother had bequeathed a considerable amount of money to Flora, Stuart and me. She was a wealthy woman in her own right because as well as having been left a pile of money – most of which had been invested for her – she also received an ongoing share of the income from her family’s properties. I think in the aftermath of Kenneth’s death she’d wanted to do something for all us kids to make life a bit easier financially.

  The money Mum sent me was enough to make a large down payment on a big old house in Neutral Bay. The house and grounds had been let go and both needed quite a lot of attention. I paid a charitable organisation to clean up the grounds then I moved in and gradually cleaned up the inside of the house and did some essential repair work. When Fiona and I had married she was keen to remain in the house her parents had bought her on the North Shore because it was easier to get to the hospital she was working at. So, whenever a tenant moved out of Neutral Bay I’d do some work on it, one room at a time. First a bedroom and then the kitchen. Fiona never contributed a hand’s turn to the restoration as she was studying most of the time.

  ‘I’ll find out,’ I said.

  ‘Good. Whatever the case I want you to move out as soon as you’re feeling up to it. You’re still in good shape and young enough to enjoy children if you happen to find a woman you like. Twelve months’ separation is sufficient for divorce. I don’t want anything from you, Lachie. I want our separation to be amicable so I hope you won’t bring my friendship with Richard into the divorce proceedings,’ she said.

  ‘No, I won’t do that,’ I said firmly. ‘I’m sorry it’s had to end like this, Fiona. I realise now that our marriage has been going downhill for a while but I suppose I’d been hoping things would improve.’

  I hated the idea of divorce, because any way you looked at it it meant failure, but I’d learned to look at things as they were and not as I’d like them to be, and clearly Fiona and I wanted different things in life.

  After I’d been patched up I went back to work and stayed with the police force until after the divorce came through before resigning. Some of the chiefs tried very hard to persuade me to reconsider my decision. My immediate boss, Detective Superintendent Ballinger, tried hardest of all.

  ‘You’ve got a great future here, Lachie,’ he said. ‘You could go right to the top.’

  I had a lot of time for Ballinger. He was a top bloke and a great cop. He had lost his wife to cancer and raised their daughter, Alison, by himself. Alison was a very clever woman who, coincidentally, had gone through medical school with Fiona.

  ‘It’s time to move on, Super,’ I said. ‘Fiona blames the Force for our separation and to a certain extent she’s right.’

  ‘I hate to lose you, Lachie,’ said Ballinger. ‘I mean that. If you’re determined to leave I can’t stop you and I hope it turns out for the best. Let me know if there’s any way I can help you.’

  ‘Thanks, Super. I appreciate your offer. Maybe I’ll be able to help you occasionally,’ I said.

  ‘How’s that?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m setting up as a security adviser. I’ll be doing other work but I’ll be fairly choosey with what I take on. If I ever hear anything to your advantage I’ll pass it on via Luke,’ I said.

  ‘I see,’ he said and drummed his fingers on his desk. ‘Keep in touch, Lachie,’ he said.

  ‘I will, Super. I’ll get Luke to bring you a fish or two,’ I said with a grin. We shook hands and I was almost to the door when he called me back.

  ‘Alison was asking after you, Lachie. She told me to say hello.’

  I looked at him and nodded. ‘How’s she doing?’

  ‘She’s specialising in paediatrics. You should give her a call when you get settled down,’ Ballinger said with a slight smile.

  ‘I might get to like her too much, Super. No more career women for me. Once bitten, forever shy,’ I said.

  So I walked out of police headquarters as my own man. I couldn’t truthfully say that I was disenchanted with the force, though I was frustrated by the fact that many criminals were being treated too leniently. I was also aware that some prominent officers were on the take but this wasn’t a situation unique to the New South Wales force. But by and large the majority of the State’s police officers did a great job and often under very trying circumstances.

  I left the police force with a lot of experience of crims, a scar on my right shoulder and a medal. Before I settled into my new role as security adviser and private investigator, I decided to travel around Australia, which was something I’d always wanted to do, though I hadn’t anticipated doing it solo. During my trip, which I now look back on as a highlight of my life, I began to take a real interest in photography as distinct from simply taking pictures. I made a lot of lonely camps and had plenty of time to think about what I was doing with the rest of my life and what I hoped to achieve.

  I decided that before too long I’d sell the Neutral Bay place and go back to the bush. I wanted to buy a property, get married and work up the property with my wife – if that’s what she wanted to do. It wouldn’t matter if there was no great fortune to be made or even if we had to battle a bit. And we’d have kids and we’d rear them with love and consideration. That was what I’d had from my mother and I wanted to be a very different type of father than my own.

  CHAPTER 5

  Kenneth’s death and my departure from Kamilaroi affected my parents a great deal, though in different ways. It was a real heart-wrenching time for my mother who was grief-stricken about Kenneth being cut down in his prime with such a promising future ahead of him. She also missed having me close by as we’d always got on well and been each other’s allies. For my father, Kenneth’s death resulted in his standing in the local community being greatly reduced and although he maintained an outward stance of indifference, he was probably aware that some people blamed him for Kenneth’s death.

  I knew quite a lot of what went on at Kamilaroi because both Mum and Nicole talked to Flora about most things and she and I spoke regularly by phone. Flora told me several times that Father took his guilt and sadness out on Mum. She didn’t think he’d ever hit her but he criticised her all the time. Sticking up for Nicole over Stuart seemed to be one of Father’s main complaints against her. Mum was aware that Stuart could be a little Hitler and she wasn’t backward in telling him what she thought of his conduct.

  ‘You should keep out of it,’ Father growled at her whenever he heard she’d remonstrated with
Stuart about his treatment of Nicole. ‘It’s not your business what Stuart and Nicole do.’

  ‘It is my business while I live at Kamilaroi. Stuart is my son and his daughters are my grandchildren. Nicole is a lovely person and I won’t see her being put down and criticised. If she wasn’t such a sweet woman she’d have left Stuart long ago,’ said Mum, who probably didn’t want Nicole to go through what she’d experienced with my father.

  Underlying a lot of the friction between Stuart and Nicole was the fact that they didn’t have a son to take over Kamilaroi. Neither Stuart nor my father had any faith in the ability of girls to run a place as extensive as Kamilaroi. Apparently Stuart often pressured Nicole about having another child in the hope of getting a son but she steadfastly refused.

  There wasn’t anything I could do to improve the general situation at home, Father and Stuart being the type of men they were. In any case, I had my own problems to deal with and they eclipsed what was happening at Kamilaroi.

  When I began my career in private security, I realised that a lot of my youthful hopes had been well and truly shattered. I hadn’t gone on to play big time cricket, which had been a dream of mine, and my hopes of an ideal marriage that would last all my life had gone down the drain.

  After the divorce I stayed away from women, which wasn’t easy since I’d always enjoyed their company. Instead I spent a lot of time practising my photography, going to classes at night in my attempt to master it. Consequently, when I wasn’t at work I was away fishing with Luke Stirling or off somewhere taking pictures.