Waybell Station, Northern Territory
They rode through moist hot air over rocky ground, stopping at midday to make camp and swallow tea and day-old damper before setting off again. For an hour or more they travelled across a floodplain covered with a foot of water, where ghostly groves of willowy white paperbarks rose a hundred feet into the sky. The travellers were short on conversation. Stringing out behind them came the women, then Toby and JJ, with the packhorses bringing up the rear. Their chatter and spurts of laughter were loud enough to send birds from the trees.
‘At least some are enjoying themselves,’ said Connor.
The girl looked at Ross, her slight body moving rhythmically with the gait of the horse. The dress had been replaced with calico pants and a tunic top. There was a guardedness in the way she viewed everything, and yet she’d settled into this newness with little fuss. Quick to tend the fire and help with the preparation of meals if the other women allowed, she’d proved her usefulness. The fact that she’d travelled from Darwin not initially outfitted for horse travel suggested that she too lacked any idea of where she was heading. That created something of a bond between them, Ross supposed. Even if they were strangers to each other, they were both outsiders in a new world.
‘What’s being burnt?’ Ross asked Mick. Pillars of smoke smudged the sky as if a number of fires had been lit, one after another, some distance apart.
‘They say you’re coming.’ Mick nodded. ‘A few more days and you finish crossing their country.’
‘You mean Grant country,’ corrected Connor.
‘Sure,’ answered Mick, turning his head away slightly.
‘Tell me about the property, the workings of it,’ said Ross.
‘Big team on Waybell. Maybe eighty men for muster-up. Hundred and thirty horses. Not so many here now with rain coming. This sit-down time.’
‘How are we managing to lose so many head of cattle each year?’ asked Ross.
The stockman pointed to the northeast, where a dark bulge of cloud threatened. Towering columns of cumulus bridged the gap between earth and sky.
‘The cattle?’ repeated Ross.
‘Ask Bill,’ said Mick.
‘I’m asking you.’
‘Better you ask Bill,’ said Mick.
‘Why?’
Mick swivelled in the saddle. ‘Because Bill’s in charge.’
‘You’re the head stockman and you don’t have an opinion?’ persisted Ross.
‘Best you talk to Bill. Soon you know plenty.’
Ross gave up trying to press the reticent stockman. He wanted to believe Mick’s reluctance to speak was a matter of hierarchy, and yet sensed it wasn’t. Slowing his horse, he drew level with Connor. ‘I’m not learning much,’ he said.
‘Aye. The only harm that could be caused by speaking were if there were things needing to be kept hidden,’ replied Connor.
In the late afternoon of the fourth day, they reached the house paddock fence. Two hours later, they crossed a creek and saw a house in the distance. It was dwarfed by a sheer escarpment that loomed craggy and brown in the dimming light. The riders skirted a wide billabong covered with lotus pads and, winding their way along the track, were confronted with an oblong dwelling of corrugated iron and timber. The roof pitched downwards to rest on sturdy tree-trunks and a veranda encircled the modest house. The entire building was enclosed with chicken wire from ground to roof, with sheets of iron forming a rough door.
Ross scanned the outer buildings, wondering if there was another home nearby, but quickly concluded that the legendary Waybell of his childhood was starkly different in reality. Mick pointed out the Aboriginal workers’ camp. One hundred yards away, numerous wurlies were perched close to the billabong. Sitting midpoint between the camp and the house was the men’s quarters and stables, which appeared in fair condition compared to the dwelling ahead.
‘Not much to it.’ Connor chewed on the stem of the unlit pipe.
Compared to Gleneagle, with its neatly fenced paddocks and tidy farmhouse and outbuildings, Waybell Station resembled the last outpost on the edge of a frontier. The only other fencing Ross noted on their journey came in the form of two sets of cattle yards, ten miles apart. The last structure located near the track they’d rode in on and only a mile from the house. His father had clearly kept a close eye on the chequebook and it showed.
‘I don’t like it here.’ The girl broke her silence.
‘She speaks!’ said Connor.
Ross drew level to where she sat behind Connor, her delicate fingers grasping his friend’s shirt-tail. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Maria,’ she replied.
‘Maria. Your parents named you well,’ he told her, for want of anything better to say.
‘They didn’t name me, I gave it to myself.’
Connor cleared his throat. ‘Now I’ve heard everything.’
Toby and JJ led the horses to the stables as Ross, Connor and the girl followed Mick to the house. A number of Aboriginal people ambled across from the camp to study the newcomers. There was no front garden or proper fence. Several dogs raised their heads disinterestedly as they passed. Chickens scratched in the dirt. Beneath the tin awning a white man sat in a rocking chair, a blanket over his knees and a rifle leaning against the wall. A dark woman waved a fan, stirring the air. There was a washstand further along, with a cast-iron bucket and a scrap of towel hanging from a nail above it.
‘Ross Grant?’ the man said curtly through the mesh, nodding pleasantly to Mick.
‘Yes,’ replied Ross. ‘And this is Connor Andrews and Maria.’ He stepped through the doorway. The chicken-wire outer walls were attached to a low fence made from two-foot-high iron sheeting, which stuck out from the ground and bordered the house.
‘Keeps the snakes and goannas out.’ The manager was jowly, with hair that grew in irregular tufts out of a shiny red skull. ‘Bill Sowden.’ He reluctantly shook hands. ‘And the girl?’
‘Belongs to Marcus Holder,’ said Mick.
Sowden examined her. ‘He always did like the shiny ones. Well, we’ll worry about her in a day or two. You can dump your gear on the back veranda and then we’ll have something to eat. Did you bring the potatoes, jam and tea?’
Ross held up one of the bags and the manager told the woman next to him, whose name was Annie, to take it to the kitchen, a separate building at the rear of the house.
‘A place can never have too much tea,’ he informed them. ‘Especially in the wet season. Make yourselves comfortable.’
Ross walked inside and across the dirt floor with its covering of threadbare half-chewed hides. In the centre of the room, cheesecloth netting hung from the iron ceiling, falling to a heap in the middle of a table. The house was divided into three rooms. One area served as a dining room and study, with a storeroom attached, the other a bedroom partially concealed by a hessian curtain. The tin walls were adorned with old newspaper pictures and for airflow, shutters had been cut into the iron, held up by lengths of wood. A corner table and a tin trunk appeared to be the sturdiest pieces of furniture in the house. Next to the desk sat a couple of makeshift chairs with cattle-hide seats, and on the opposite wall an empty sideboard.
‘No expense spared,’ muttered Connor.
At the rear of the narrow building they stepped out onto the veranda. The sleep-out held a row of five beds each with a cheesecloth net suspended from the sloping ceiling. There was nowhere separate for Maria to sleep, and she waited until Ross dumped his swag on a bunk before selecting a rusty-wired contraption next to his. He considered choosing another bed. The last thing he wanted was a woman next to him. Ross had some idea of what they could be like – pleasing one instant and scornful the next – but the thought he might appear prudish kept him from moving.
The bunk squeaked as Maria sat down. And for a moment Ross thought she resembled a fox, her fingers gripping the shabby edge of the bed, her eyes darting left and right.
Connor stuck his fingers through the w
ire mesh. ‘I wouldn’t be begrudging Sowden’s lack of welcome. I can’t say that I’d be having guests if I lived here. The man exists on the smell of an oily rag.’
‘I’ve never seen country so green,’ said Ross. Beyond the wire, emerald grass extended outwards to a vegetable garden and a rather dejected-looking structure that he surmised was the long-drop.
‘Aye, it’s green,’ agreed Connor. He shook the wire. ‘But what’s this for? To keep us in, or someone out?’
Chapter 18
Bill Sowden was already seated when they arrived at the table for dinner. They joined him, sitting on rickety chairs made from packing cases. There was fish, duck and crunchy damper as well as red jelly for dessert, washed down with scalding black tea. Annie placed everything on the table at once, arranging the platters around a kerosene lantern and then drew the netting over them before departing. Cocooned within the cheesecloth, moths, mosquitoes and other insects gradually massed on the outside of the netting as the night drew on and the lantern was lit.
Sowden didn’t stand on ceremony. Ross, Connor and Maria passed the platters among themselves as Bill ate, quickly chewing large mouthfuls of food. Bread and meat were rolled around his mouth as he talked, each piece circulating for show until finally swallowed.
‘I ain’t moving out of my bedroom and Annie ain’t leaving the house. It’s important I make that plain to the both of you in case you be getting ideas. I’m sure you understand. She’s my woman. De facto. And there not being enough time to build another room, well, not that there’s a carpenter around to do the job, there isn’t anywhere else for us to go. I built this place with my own two hands, battling cyclonic winds and white ants along the way. It’s not perfect, but I figured Mr Grant Senior wouldn’t care, as he ain’t the one who has to live here.’
Annie hovered at the doorway that led to the separate kitchen. It was strange having an Aboriginal woman in the house. Ross wasn’t used to it. The Aboriginal stockmen were different, he’d worked with them at Gleneagle and respected their abilities, but a black woman sleeping under the same roof was another thing entirely. Ross was seized by a compulsion to ask her to leave immediately. Cooking and waiting on tables was one thing but this arrangement was unacceptable.
‘It’s worth remembering that there are more of them than us,’ said Sowden.
Annie glowered, as if they’d already told her to leave, and then stormed off.
‘The conventions you men are used to don’t exist up here. So you best accept things as they are,’ Sowden told them. ‘Black, white or brindle. It’s all the same when it comes to relations and there’s no point letting pride get in the way, for you’ll be guzzling it down like the rest of us eventually. Mark my words, in a few months the two of you might be partial to a bit of black velvet.’ He took a slug of tea. ‘Begging your pardon, girl.’
‘I’d appreciate it, Mr Sowden, if you didn’t speak that way in the presence of a lady,’ said Ross.
‘No harm intended,’ replied the manager.
Ross felt the pressure of Connor’s boot on his own. A warning to not provoke their host.
‘Have you finished eating, Maria?’ he asked. The girl ducked under the netting and was gone in an instant.
‘Don’t be worried about the likes of her,’ said Sowden. ‘I’m betting she’s crossed some dry creek beds to get to where she is today.’
It was strange how Sowden’s features miniaturised the more Ross scrutinised the man. His eyes and mouth, even his nostrils, which flared widely when a subject stirred him, were small and nondescript, more suiting a woman.
‘You want to know about the chicken wire, don’t you?’ asked Sowden, when he’d finished skinning the meat from the spine of the duck. ‘There were wild buggers around here in the beginning. I don’t know about the first few years your father owned the place. There was only a shanty by the creek when I arrived and I never met the first manager. The story was he got the fever and died but I’m more inclined to think he was run through. The first twelve months I was here they’d loom out of the bush and pitch a spear. I lost my first stockman that way. Got one in the gizzards during the dry season when we were out rounding up. Asleep he was in his swag. We never slept much after that when we were away.’ He took a mouthful, holding a knife in mid-air. ‘The wire went up soon after Jim died, and though I’d be unlucky if a spear found me now, after all these years, I’m happier having it. Call it an insurance policy. It requires a bit of bargaining, living here the way we do. On their country. Most of the time the tribe’s happy. We give ’em a few head of cattle every year, especially at corroboree time, flour, sugar and tea and let ’em wander wherever they like and they give us a hand during round-up.
‘Don’t be thinking it’s like down South, where the blacks are grateful for the bits you people throw their way. That’s the first advice I can give a newcomer. They still own this country. They move across it on a whim and some take what they need when they choose to. Get along with ’em, I say. Strike a deal and everyone wins.’
When Sowden finally took a breath, Ross asked how far away the closest neighbour was.
‘If you want people, head north or south. Waybell is the last cattle place to the northeast. After that, you’re in stone country and then the big floodplains, where there’s almost as many buffalo as crocs. But five days’ ride south, that would be Holder’s Run. Got himself a right looker with that girl. That’s the thing when a man’s got money. Options. You can never have too many of them, eh? But you’d know about that, Ross?’
‘I represent my father,’ he replied tersely.
Sowden scratched thoughtfully at his chin. ‘You’re the only one left, aren’t you? I mean, with your brother gone and disappeared. So when the time comes,’ he extended his arms, ‘all this will be yours.’
Word travelled quickly, it seemed. Connor sent Ross a steadying gaze while plugging tobacco into his pipe with a jerky action.
‘You know there were folk up here who didn’t even know there was a war on until they walked out of the bush a few years after it started. Never saw a newspaper.’ Sowden pushed a grubby thumb inside his mouth, massaging his gum. ‘You didn’t fight, Connor?’
‘Too old. Not that age should be a guide point for ability.’
‘I’d agree with that,’ said Sowden. ‘People come up here to lose themselves,’ he continued pointedly, his head cocked to one side as if he were trying to sum Ross up. ‘Others try to make their mark in some way. The losing bit is fairly easy.’
Annie returned to clear the table, bobbing under the netting and sweeping the plates and cutlery onto a wooden tray. When she was gone, Sowden produced a quart pot from under his chair and Ross and Connor received a good measure of liquid in their pannikins.
‘What is it?’ asked Connor, smelling the concoction apprehensively.
‘Sunset rum. It’s the only grog we’ve got at the moment. The unions didn’t unload the last ship in time. Best to drink it in one go. Here’s to you.’
Not wanting to appear unsociable, Ross took a gulp. He spat it back into the cup. Connor drank and winced.
‘Come on, boy,’ Sowden said to Ross. ‘If you’re going to own a man-sized slice of the Territory then you’d better be able to act like one, even if you are still a lad.’
Ross once again raised it to his lips, and this time drained the contents. Every part of his insides began to burn.
The manager slapped the tabletop and gave a raucous laugh. ‘Good, good. You’ll fit in here real well. And don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on you, young Ross Grant. You won’t go drinking me out of house and home or imbibing so much that you’re in need of the deadhouse. No, we can’t have that.’
‘What’s in it?’ asked Connor.
‘It’s an old goldfields brew handed down to me by a prospector at Pine Creek. Methylated spirit and kerosene mixed with Worcestershire sauce and a bit of brown sugar. Gives it a nice colour, don’t you think, the sugar? But keep it to yourselves. I don’t ne
ed the camp getting whiff of it, not when the wet season’s only just begun.’
Ross filled his pannikin with tea, swirling the cleansing taste around his mouth.
‘It’ll be a bit slow for you boys, coming as you have before the big wet. It’s only the blacks and me who stay to sit it out. It’s true, it can be a wily place but you can scratch a living out of it. Tomorrow Mick will show you around. Best horseman there is in these parts. He’d give some of those fancy southerners a run, I tell you. Come on. Let’s have another drink.’
Chapter 19
Ross fell from his bed in the middle of the night, his stomach churning. He wanted to run but was tangled in something, something that was pinning him, constricting his movements. He kicked violently, and then finally scrabbled free and crawled across the ground. The smell of dirt filled his nostrils. His head hit something hard as he reached out, grappling with a wall that bent under his touch. He pulled at the barrier, swaying uncontrollably until he was upright. In the pitch black someone snored and muttered. He edged along the wall with difficulty, certain he would fall over if he let go. Dark shapes swirled in his head as he stumbled forwards, a shard of jagged whiteness splitting the night.
He woke on the ground, head pounding and abdomen paining. It was raining heavily. Hard sheets of water pricked his skin.
‘It’s nearly dawn.’ Maria was next to him, water running in tiny streams down her face. Her hair was loose. It hung straight and gleaming, plastered to the sides of her head, clinging to her shoulders and chest, partly concealing the skin that showed through the front of the saturated shirt. ‘Don’t try and sit. Not yet,’ she warned.
Ross lay on his back, opening his mouth, tasting the droplets of moisture. ‘What happened?’ His voice was croaky, parched.
‘You drank the sunset rum,’ she said. ‘It sends some mad, others die if they drink enough of it.’
Ross sat up gingerly. Around them, branches had been torn down and a tree ripped from the wet earth, its stringy mass of tuberous roots naked in the rain.
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