Fleur McDonald has lived and worked on farms for much of her life. After growing up in the small town of Orroroo in South Australia, she went jillarooing, eventually co-owning an 8000-acre property in regional Western Australia.
Fleur likes to write about strong women overcoming adversity, drawing inspiration from her own experiences in rural Australia. She has two children, an energetic kelpie and a Jack Russell terrier.
www.fleurmcdonald.com
OTHER BOOKS
Red Dust
Blue Skies
Purple Roads
Silver Clouds
Crimson Dawn
Emerald Springs
Indigo Storm
Sapphire Falls
Missing Pieces of Us
Suddenly One Summer
First published in 2018
Copyright © Fleur McDonald 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
ISBN 978 1 76029 396 3
eISBN 978 1 76063 561 9
Set by Bookhouse, Sydney
Cover design: Nada Backovic
Cover photographs: © Shelley Richmond / Arcangel Images, background photographs © Dan Proud
To those who are precious
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Acknowledgements
The Farmer’s Choice - an original story
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Prologue
1945
The stars and the cold breeze were the only witnesses to the death.
Perhaps a bird saw the woman throwing the rope over the branch of the thick salmon gum, and maybe a dingo, sniffing along a scent, stopped to watch the woman take the steps to her final breath.
Paddy doubted it though.
It had been weeks since he’d seen a dingo and no doubt even longer since one had passed this way through the thick bush north of Barrabine. Water out here was scarce and wild dogs, like all creatures, stayed within walking distance of a watering point.
Scratching his head in distress, Paddy stood and watched the body swing gently for a few more moments. He’d heard about scenes like this over the years, but had never seen one firsthand. He wished he hadn’t come across this one—the whole sight was causing his heart anguish.
Even though there didn’t seem to be any witnesses, there had been visitors. What would have been a pool of blood on the ground under the body was now a small hole where the ants had scavenged. The line of moving black was scurrying busily up the tree trunk, across the branches and down the end of the rope for titbits to take back to their queen. A crow had been sitting on the dead woman’s shoulder when Paddy had first arrived. The damage the bird had done to her face was indescribable.
Looking away, he surveyed the familiar landscape. Red earth stretched for miles, scattered lumps of ironstone and quartz lying on the surface. Saltbush and bluebush littered the landscape, while salmon gums and gimlet trees rose tall and majestic against the blue sky.
The landscape was harsh; hot and dry. Too hard for some, while others loved it. The land, weather and life had clearly been too tough for this woman. It was pointless to question her decision; there would be many reasons, he knew. He’d heard about them from his friends and their wives—too isolated, too hot, too hard. Paddy understood. Sometimes, when he’d finished shovelling dirt from the depths of the earth without finding any gold, he’d thought life was too hard as well.
He searched the area for any sign of life—a little humpy or camp, the smell of smoke—but the landscape lay quiet, not revealing where she had come from or who had loved her. Barrabine, the closest town, was too far; she wouldn’t have walked from there. She would have lived around here somewhere. Somewhere within the vast miles of red dust, little water and no company. With a man gripped by gold fever.
He’d seen it before and knew he would continue seeing the pattern for as long as he travelled through these empty miles.
Still, surely someone had to be missing her. Or perhaps he hadn’t been back to camp to realise she was missing yet. What if there were children…No, he banished that thought. No mother would have left her children at camp by themselves to do this.
Scratching at his three-day growth and keeping his eyes averted now, he felt agitated and sad, as though he had to do something for her. But what? It was too late to help her. Too late to plead with her not to do this.
Paddy did the only thing he thought right. He took a shovel from his battered old car and began to dig. He’d give her a burial so the dingos couldn’t dig her up or the crows peck at her. Or the ants finish eating her. Then he would travel to Barrabine, stopping in at all the little digs along the way, letting people know what he’d found.
The next of kin might be angry he had buried her, but the way he looked at it, he couldn’t leave her here like this. If he put her in the ground, at least the family would know where she was. There would be somewhere to come and mourn and remember. He would have to find and tell them. Make sure they knew what had happened to her.
From the treetop a crow watched his effort, the only noise the shovel hitting the hard earth and his grunting. Puffs of red dust rose with each shovelful and his breathing became more laboured.
Finally he was done.
Driving his car close, he stood on the
