The Last Dingo Summer

by Jackie French

  ‘Oh, wow,’ said Fish. Homo sapiens had won again! One girl had bested ten thousand sheep. Or one thousand. Or maybe a hundred . . .

  A car approached, heading into the mob of sheep. Fish expected it to stop. Instead it slowed, moving steadily up the road. The sheep parted, not quite tidily, to let it through. The driver lifted two fingers casually to Fish. She’d never met him, but waved back uncertainly as he smiled.

  More sheep. Another car. The school bus coming the other way, which meant she had to run to shoo back two sheep trotting along on the other side past the gate. But they joined the others readily enough. The man on the bicycle she’d seen when they first arrived appeared, once more with a load of vegies. His waistcoat was orange and pink today, and his flowing trousers turquoise. ‘Could do with some rain,’ he called, not stopping as his bicycle ploughed between the sheep.

  ‘Um, yes,’ said Fish.

  ‘I like the fish.’

  ‘I like your waistcoat.’

  He laughed and waved to her as he passed.

  More sheep, moving more slowly now as they discovered the green pick at the edges of the road. How many sheep could one farm have? A police car. Those must be the police who’d called in on Monday. The man in the grey suit was probably the detective. He raised a hand in a vague salute. A giant young constable smiled at her and put the window down. ‘Got you working,’ he remarked.

  Fish nodded, smiling back automatically, then realised where they might be heading. ‘Are you going out to Jed’s again?’

  ‘No,’ the detective answered for him. ‘Overflow.’ He smiled a little grimly. ‘Everyone really does know everyone else’s business in a place like this. And no, Miss Johnstone, I don’t suspect anyone at Overflow. But they might have seen a stranger lurking about.’

  He knew her surname. Impressive. Though maybe the constable had told him Gran’s married name and he just assumed it was hers too, though if Mum had married Dad, then maybe they’d both have had his surname. ‘If you want to talk to Nancy and Michael, I think they’re behind the sheep.’

  Sheep still filled the horizon. ‘Thanks for that,’ said the detective. The constable smiled at her, then put the window up again. The car inched forwards into the sheep.

  Fish watched them go. If I was a mass murderer, she thought, I’d only kill people far away from where I lived. A place where no one knew me, and roads were deserted, and churches most of the time too — though that would make a stranger conspicuous, of course.

  But then she wasn’t a murderer, nor ever could be, so her reasoning probably didn’t count. She leaned on the gate again. The world smelled of sheep droppings and lanolin, the air filled with the clopping of sheep hooves and bleating. There was still no indication at all that the tide of sheep would stop. The first were already heading down the slope towards the river, presumably for a drink.

  What were the girls at school doing? Mum would be at work, probably. And Dad . . .

  Another car passed and then one more. A big sheep made a dash for freedom, or at least the tussocks further down the road. She had more confidence shooing it back this time. I have conquered a thousand sheep, she thought triumphantly as another car slowed down before it entered sheep world. And the sun warmed her skin and the river glinted and it was impossible, totally impossible, that murder could happen here.

  Chapter 16

  Hydatids Warning

  ‘Get Your Dogs Wormed’ is the call from Rocky Valley vet, Felicity Brewster. Hydatids’ life cycle is from sheep or wallabies to dogs and then possibly to humans, causing death if a cyst grows in a vital organ. Hydatid cysts can linger in the soil for decades, and wherever there are sheep and dogs, they are a problem. A monthly worming may save your life, or your child’s or your neighbour’s.

  THE KILLER

  No passer-by would ever believe murder might happen here, thought the killer, watching the half-grown lambs butt their mothers, the older ewes bleating at the indignity of having to move aside for a car. This was a place where kids accepted rides home without thinking of abductions; where neighbours took in each other’s washing if rain was threatening or milked the cow if someone was away; and where you only had to sneeze twice and half the district was bringing you casseroles.

  Gibber’s Creek was nice.

  So nice it had seemed no one would even notice the strange position of the wrists and ankles of the bloke who’d been burned. If it had just been that one body, probably no one from Sydney would have been called in. But then the others had been dug up and that put paid to that.

  The killer gazed at the sheep. Half of them were probably going for lamb chops, after they’d been shorn. Half the blokes around here killed a sheep as easily as looking at it.

  Did any of them ever think, ‘Hey, it’s probably just as easy to kill a person’? Possibly not. Maybe none of them even realised there were secrets all around them. Gibber’s Creek was nice.

  But the secrets lingered, just the same. The killer knew many of the district’s secrets. And only one of them was murder.

  Chapter 17

  Art Gallery at Eternity

  If you’re in the market for a good bite of culture, the commune Halfway to Eternity is opening an art gallery.

  The commune, best known for Brocolli Bill Smith’s organically grown vegies as well as prickles, chutneys and famous zucchini kasundi, has brunched out into the art world.

  The ‘Branch Out’ art gallery will feature pieces by local artists, as well as handcrafted bush furniture. The gullery hopes they will eject creativity into the community and urges all to come and have a look. Admission is tree.

  NANCY

  Michael had been yakking to the police amid the mob of sheep for half an hour now. Nancy perched on a fence post, trying unsuccessfully to clear her mind of everything except the comforting scent of sheep and gum trees, leaving Roger to munch the grass well behind the mob. It was beneath a horse’s dignity to eat with sheep.

  She could have walked down to be interviewed with her husband, but, hopefully, Michael would answer all their questions — and, legally, someone had to be behind the sheep to warn motorists. After all, these were police, presumably as alert for misdemeanours as they were for murder.

  It wasn’t murder to cut the throat of a sheep that would become a series of roast dinners or to shoot a dog that attacked the sheep. Was killing a man like Merv so different from killing a dog that had gone rogue? But the dog, after all, might have been a kind friend to its human family, savage only to stock. Nancy doubted Merv had ever been kind to anyone. Not that it mattered. Merv had threatened someone she loved. Did these men seriously expect her to help them find his killer?

  She shook her head only partly to get rid of the flies that always followed sheep, even in these days of imported giant dung beetles. And yet if people lost the inhibitions that stopped them killing other humans, society would break down. You’d have war, or worse. She had seen all too clearly what happened in war. Law, not war, she thought vaguely.

  She felt . . . odd. Not enough sleep the night before. Not enough sleep for many nights. And all at once she wanted to cry, because this stock had been bred for nearly three-quarters of a century, the young Matilda studying sheep husbandry to make her small flock the best possible, then bringing those techniques to Drinkwater.

  Overflow sheep had been bred on the ‘keep the best for rams and bung them in with the ewes once a year’ principle. Overflow’s sheep had been okay, but not prize winners. But then she’d married Michael and the Drinkwater strain had merged with Overflow’s. The resulting flocks produced some of the best wool in Australia, which meant some of the best in the world. She could only hope this mob would be bought as wool producers, not just for their meat. Surely they would . . .

  But they would not be hers.

  She glanced up at the sky, hard and blue. And it would stay hard and blue. She’d bet the whole of this flock that there’d be no rain at all for three years, bar maybe a thunderstorm or two. And of
course that was exactly what she was doing, betting this flock on her certainty about the coming drought, a far worse one even than the one in the 1960s, for even then there’d been a little rain.

  Gran had known the Federation drought, almost no rain from 1878 till August 1903. It had been the length and severity of that drought that had convinced men like Henry Parkes that the only way for the colonies to survive was to unite, in one more powerful economic unit. That drought had led to the lowering of wages that triggered the growth of unions and the Labor Party, and the temperance and suffrage campaigns to end child labour, which it had seemed might only be done by a new national parliament. Matilda had made her fortune borrowing money to buy land in the last years of that drought, using the signs of the land to predict exactly when the drought would break.

  Nancy of the Overflow had no doubts about her reading. She wished she did. Wished she didn’t know that nine out of ten roos and wombats were going to die and that she would smell the too-sweet stench of rotting flesh by every dried-up waterhole and along the river where starving animals drank and waited for their slow death.

  She didn’t want to see it. Desperately wished her sons did not have to see it. Almost envied old Matilda, dying before this drought. Day after day of blue sky and death . . .

  The police were getting back in their car. She waited as they edged through the last of the sheep, then pulled up across the road. Her horse eyed them incuriously; they were unlikely candidates to have apples or even a biscuit in their pockets.

  ‘Mrs Thompson.’ William Ryan tipped his cap. Nice lad. His mother was a Maori, the daughter of a New Zealand shearer, and his father’s mum a blonde from the Baltic, one of the many refugees after the war. Interesting combination of features: not handsome, but solid. And very big. Reassuringly large, in a young man so kind.

  How old was he now? Twenty-four or so. She remembered the year he’d started school with a crewcut cut so close to his head that he looked bald. The kids had called him Lex Luthor after the villain in the Batman comics. It was probably time she asked him to call her Nancy, but maybe not with this detective bloke in tow.

  ‘This is Detective Sergeant Rodrigues from Sydney.’ Something in William’s voice hinted he was not entirely impressed with Detective Rodrigues.

  She nodded to them, still perched on her fence post. ‘I know.’

  ‘Just confirming a few things,’ said Rodrigues, treading in a scatter of sheep droppings. He didn’t seem to notice. ‘You were at home all of the day of the fire?’ William leaned against a fence post, observing and taking notes. No sheep dung on his boots, thought Nancy.

  ‘Yes, I was home all day. But home is a big place, Sergeant. Michael and I went around the paddocks early that morning, bringing the sheep behind the firebreaks. From about eleven onwards we stayed by the house, wetting everything down and checking for spot fires. Michael went down to the river a few times to put more petrol in the pump, but that was all.’

  ‘You didn’t see anyone else?’

  Nancy shook her head. ‘Not a soul.’

  ‘There’s nothing you can add that might be helpful?’

  ‘No,’ she said bluntly. They could take that any way they wanted to.

  William gave Detective Rodrigues a look that might have meant ‘I told you so’.

  She watched as he expertly weaved the car back between the sheep.

  Chapter 18

  Flares with Flair

  A new sewing course to be held at Gibber’s Creek Central School hall each Wednesday night will show participants how you can revamp your wardrobe with a little flair.

  According to Domestic Science teacher, Marie Lee, even old jeans can be remade and brought back into fashion. Just cut the seams and insert ‘flares’ of a different fabric, and sew flower-shaped patches on any holes or worn areas, and you have a whole new look.

  Cost: $10. Classes: Wednesdays from 6 pm, March through July. Bookings can be made at Lee’s Emporium or the Blue Belle.

  FISH

  She’d thought it would only take half an hour at most to put the sheep into the Drinkwater paddock. But instead Nancy and Michael seemed happy to let most of them graze quietly on the verge, only speeding up when they noticed the new paddock, the open gate and fresh grass.

  Three hours later Fish was still there as a man she assumed was Michael wound through the mob towards her on a motorbike.

  ‘Thanks for that,’ he called. He drew up beside her. ‘Like to come back to Overflow for some lunch?’

  Fish calculated. Lunch at Overflow would mean she wouldn’t have time to see Mrs Lee that day.

  On the other hand . . . Overflow! You couldn’t get much more ‘Aussie’ than the place where Clancy of the Overflow had lived. Fish decided not to examine why it was suddenly so important to prove she was Australian, not just to the girls at school but to herself.

  She gestured at her bike. ‘Is it a long way?’

  ‘Too far to bicycle.’ He held up a helmet. ‘Hop on the back if you like.’

  On a motorbike! If only everyone at school could see her now.

  ‘What about my bike?’

  ‘Leave it here. I’ll drop you back later,’ said Michael casually.

  Interesting, thought Fish, fastening the helmet, which smelled of sheep and sweat. And she’d been about to lock the front door automatically that morning, but Great-Aunt Blue had told her to leave it. ‘We never lock the doors round here. What if someone had an accident and needed to use the phone?’

  It would be so easy to be a criminal around here. Or would it? She suspected Michael and Nancy knew every person who had driven along the road.

  She sat behind him gingerly, afraid she might lean the wrong way and tip the motorbike over. But he accelerated smoothly, waving to Nancy as she herded in the last of the sheep on a sleepy-looking brown horse.

  And suddenly it was exhilarating, the wind in her face, zooming past the turn-off to the billabong, then Dribble, up and over a hill and along the river. At last he turned into a wide driveway lined with shaggy gum trees.

  The house looked . . . big, wings tacked onto either end and then new rooms added onto them too, more or less bound together by a veranda along the front, with ramps instead of stairs leading up to it, just like at Dribble and Moura. It was painted a sort of nothing tan colour. Fish imagined it purple, like the hills, with red trim, like the edges of young gum leaves on the trees along the drive. Much better . . .

  She got off the motorbike reluctantly, handed Michael the helmet and looked around. Two sheep stared at her from a small pen.

  ‘Are those pets?’

  ‘What? No, they’re fly struck. Best where we can keep an eye on them.’

  Jed had used a similar term. ‘What’s fly struck?’

  ‘Flies lay their eggs in wet or sweaty wool, then when the maggots hatch, they burrow down into the flesh.’ His words were as casual as if he were discussing a haircut.

  Fish stared at the sheep in horror. ‘The poor things! Did the vet cure them?’

  Michael laughed. ‘We don’t call the vet out for fly strike, just cut away the wool and treat the strike.’

  He sounded so callous about it. ‘At least they won’t be sold now,’ Fish said, looking for the bright side.

  ‘Actually they will. Some sheep are more resistant to strike than others. We’ve always had a policy of selling those who get struck when the others don’t. These will go in the next lot for sale.’

  ‘Isn’t there any way to stop fly strike?’

  ‘Cut their tails off — a sheep with a tail is almost certain to get struck. You can mules them too — cut away strips of skin around their tails and down the top of their back legs so that the skin no longer grows any wool. Some farmers do radical mulesing, great bare patches.’

  ‘That’s horrible!’ said Fish.

  Michael shrugged. ‘Better than having maggots tunnelling into your flesh. But we find going around the flock every few days and getting anything early is just as
good. And dagging them often. More work, but much less pain for the sheep.’

  ‘Dagging?’ Fish asked cautiously.

  He grinned. ‘Cutting off the, er, bits of wool covered in dung. Sheep droppings are usually too dry to stick, but when there’s green pick, well, you get dags. Come on into the house and cool off a bit.’

  Fish followed him into a kitchen — two stoves, two fridges, a massive table. ‘I thought you only had two kids?’

  Michael stuck his head in the nearest refrigerator. ‘We used to have a pile of kids from River View out here every weekend. There are only a handful left now, and they go home at weekends. The whole centre will close down later this year when they finish the new rehab wing at the hospital. But our own two make enough noise for six and eat enough for half a dozen.’ He took out a Tupperware jug of cold water, poured two glasses, handed her one, then drank the other down. He began to rummage in the other fridge. ‘Put these on the table, will you? Plates are over there.’

  A large leg of mutton, half eaten, butter, sliced bread, a jar of chutney, the supermarket kind, not like the Greats had made yesterday, a bottle of tomato sauce, a box of Velveeta cheese, six big chunky tomatoes that looked like ones grown at the commune by the guy in turquoise trousers, half a weird red frilly lettuce and a half-empty can of beetroot.

  ‘Tuck in,’ said Michael, already piling mutton and chutney onto a couple of slices of bread.

  ‘Shouldn’t we wait for Nancy?’

  ‘She’ll be here soon.’

  ‘But she’s on a horse.’

  He grinned once more. It was a nice grin. Fish realised that as Jed was related to Michael, and as Jed was her first cousin-in-law once removed, then Fish was related to Michael too, and to Nancy, by marriage. I’m related to Clancy of the Overflow, she thought. Wait till I tell the girls at school that!

  ‘Nancy won’t be long. Don’t let old Roger fool you. He’ll be cantering back to get to his oats.’