Alastair was using his dad’s dogs. As well as opening the gates I’d closed, he and his gaggle of mongrels had the job of picking up any cows that fell back and were at risk of dropping behind the ute. Some of them were tough- looking dogs, so I kept Marmie with me, although it caused her a lot of grief. She made it obvious that I wouldn’t be forgiven, until the next mealtime at least.
Probably the busiest out of all of us was Alastair, but that’s only a guess, as I was too far ahead to know. I heard the occasional comment on the walkie-talkie though. ‘Get behind her, Alastair.’ ‘She’s trying to get through the fence.’ ‘There’s a couple of cars coming through.’ (That was me.) ‘Mr Nelson coming through in his Landrover.’ (That was Mr Young.) ‘Watch for that big ugly red girl, Alastair.’ ‘They’re all ugly, Dad, hadn’t you noticed?’
Alastair was shining with pride. Normally his big brother would be doing this job, but Sam was away at Brogan, the Ag College, checking it out for next year.
‘Ellie, did you say the cattle-truck gate into the Perreiras’ was open?’
‘No. Leave it shut, Alastair.’
There was a bit of fine mist for a while but not proper rain. The cows drifted along, grabbing at tufts of grass, trying to meander across the road occasionally and being given huge discouragement when they did.
Gavin rode past me with another grin and a wave then went back to his position, leaving me feeling good. Gavin had been so hot and cold lately, but mostly cold. I thought he’d be literally cold on the motorbike but he didn’t seem too bothered. He looked a bit damp. Thank goodness I hadn’t tried to make him go to school.
A grey car came towards me. I picked up the walkie-talkie. He was coming too fast and I flashed my high- beams. I realised a moment later who it was. Mr Rodd. Not my favourite person in the world. In fact on this side of the border he probably ranked dead last in my book, a little lower than Mr Sayle, the solicitor, and not much higher than the rats who got in the bathroom the other day and ate the last piece of my mother’s favourite soap.
Bit by bit, piece of soap by peanut cookie, the memories of my parents were being nibbled away.
Mr Rodd’s eyes met mine as his Audi got closer, but he immediately looked away again. And he didn’t slow down. I grabbed the walkie-talkie. ‘Mr Rodd’s coming through, way too fast.’ This was dangerous. Rodd was mad enough to smash into a cow deliberately, just to get revenge. Not to mention getting himself a brand-new car from someone else’s insurance company. He probably thought they were my cows. It’s a big problem with farming that you’re responsible for any of your stock that are on the road. You just hope they aren’t hit by a Rolls-Royce, or a busload of millionaires on a tour of the wineries. A couple of years back Mr Yannos had a steer that escaped one night and a car hit it. Mr and Mrs Yannos were the only ones home and they raced down there and luckily the people were OK. But the car was damaged and the steer was dead. While Mrs Yannos waited with the people for a tow truck Mr Yannos snuck home, got a knife, went back down and cut the ears off his dead beast, so no-one could say it was his. I don’t think he’d like me telling that story, but it’s true.
In my rear-vision mirror I saw the brake lights of the Audi come on, and the car slew a little to the right as Mr Rodd finally decided not to smash into a cow out of sheer bloody-mindedness. I heard the blast of the horn too, then Shannon in my walkie-talkie saying, ‘Jeez, what’s he think he’s doing?’ and Mr Young saying, ‘Honestly, sometimes I wonder about that man.’
That was extreme for Mr Young.
The car straightened up again and took off, still pretty fast. I shook my head. What was his problem? Wouldn’t you think we’d all had enough violence to last us half-a-dozen lifetimes?
CHAPTER 2
We divided the cattle into three paddocks. The main thing with putting cattle in a new paddock is to take them on a tour of the boundaries and show them the water, and then you can leave them to get on with eating and drinking, sightseeing, relationships and romances. No doubt they’d find the water if you didn’t do it, but it’s meant to settle them in faster. I’ve always done it, so I don’t know what would happen if I skipped it.
Afterwards Mr Young gave me a cheque for the first four weeks. Oh what a feeling. It was the first income from the farm since my parents died. Twelve thousand dollars. It was a thrill to hold it. Twelve thousand dollars of someone else’s money was approximately eleven thousand eight hundred dollars more than I’d ever had in my hand before. I wanted to frame the cheque and keep it forever but I don’t think that would have been a financially responsible thing to do.
It was only a few days since Mr Young had sat in my kitchen and mentioned the magic word ‘agistment’.
The cheque felt like it was vibrating in my hand. I sat down that night with the notepad and calculator and spent more than ten thousand bucks in half an hour. It was quite exciting. Five thousand dollars to the people we were renting from. That covered the whole month, plus a thousand in back rent, so they’d know I wasn’t trying to rip them off. Three thousand, seven hundred and sixty dollars to the bank to cover a month’s interest. Bills I hadn’t paid yet, from Jack Edgecombe for stock transport, from the DMT for rego of the Toyota, from Larry Whelan for taking out a pine tree that was about to fall on the shearing shed. One thousand, four hundred and thirty-five dollars for those three jobs, and I knew damn well Larry had charged me charity rates. Basically only the rent of the cherry-picker, which wasn’t his. Some blokes’d charge a thousand bucks just for looking at a tree as big as that. But Larry acted like it was a normal job so I swallowed my pride and didn’t say anything.
I sat there looking at my calculator and notepad. Bingo. Almost all gone. Eighteen hundred bucks left. I’d hoped to reduce the overdraft but there wouldn’t be much left of the eighteen hundred after a month. For Gavin and me merely to exist was incredibly expensive. I spent a moment wondering if it would be possible for anyone just to live, without having to spend money to do it. Why should we have to pay for the privilege of being alive?
I went back to the notepad. Gavin needed new everything, just about. He wouldn’t stop growing, even though I banged him on the top of the head occasionally, to slow him down. There were a couple of odds and ends I wouldn’t have minded for myself. Wirrawee was changing so fast with all the new people. Where we’d had one clothes shop, now there were four. Where there’d been zero coffee shops (unless you count the bakery, which I don’t) now there were two. Mr Downs, who sold second-hand farm machinery, had been forced to move his yard out to Sherlock Road, and the new bloke who owned the chain-saw repair shop was moving in a few weeks because the rents in Barker Street were so high.
The new Wirrawee had shops like Main Drag in Barker Street. I’d seen this great top in there. It was pink, not usually my best colour, or my favourite, but I liked this one. It was eighty bucks. Before the war I’d have had every chance of talking Mum into getting it for me. Now? Could I talk myself into getting it for me? Which was more important, me having a new top or reducing the overdraft?
There was no time to make such big decisions though. Mr Young’s cattle demanded attention from the moment they arrived. I’ve never known such pain-in-the-neck cattle. They had been so well-behaved as we drove them here that I thought they’d be the perfect guests. They’d just eat and put on weight and pay my bills. But I guess they thought that for three thousand dollars a week they were entitled to breakfast on a tray and a story read to them every night. When they didn’t get that they kicked up a fuss. They just wouldn’t settle. And on the fourth night we had a disaster.
I have to say that we were unlucky with the weather. The forecast was for scattered showers, local thunderstorms, clearing. Minimum 7, maximum 19. Not the kind of day you’d be planning a pool party or a BBQ, but nothing to get excited about. We were out early, Gavin and I, and checked them. I did think they were restless and I knew I really should stay home, but I just couldn’t miss more school. I’d had Tuesday off already, to move these beasts, and Wednesday, to make sure they were OK, then I’d gone to school yesterday. The little man was sitting on my shoulder muttering into my ear: ‘Don’t go, Ellie, leave your buns at home, girl, don’t take your buns to town.’ I just shrugged him off and left him sprawled in the mud. We nearly missed the bus though, while I dithered around wondering what to do, and then when it was time for Gavin to get off he came down the back of the bus and said quietly to me, ‘Those cattle were a bit crazy this morning.’
‘Yeah, I thought so too,’ I said, wondering why we hadn’t had this conversation back at home.
He waited for me to say something and all I could do was shrug and say, ‘Well, there’s nothing we can do now.’
The bus came to a halt, shuddering, and there was no more time for conversation. Gavin got off and I was left feeling nervous for the rest of the day. Not that I could necessarily have done anything if I had stayed home. I
