Chapter 1
1990
The motorbike pulled up with a spray of gravel in front of the large, lush garden.
Struggling to her feet, Carlene pulled off her gloves and stood up from the garden bed she was tending. She put her hands on her hips, drawing her brow into a deep frown and wagging her finger in a no-no fashion.
The rider had a large grin, even though his face was covered with a helmet. Her twenty-three-year-old youngest son always had a smile on his face for her, which matched his easy-going personality and she was so glad to have him home after four years of ag college. He brought a sunniness to the farm which hadn’t been here before he arrived home.
‘If you spray anymore gravel towards my garden, David Burrows, I swear you’ll be out there raking it all back by hand. Your brother’s wedding is only days away!’ Carlene doubted he heard her words over the roar of the engine, but she felt compelled to remind him—even though she said it almost every day.
The farmyard was stunned into silence as Dave killed the engine and pulled off his helmet, still sitting astride the bike. ‘Hi, Mum. Back making everything look perfect again?’
‘The garden won’t take care of itself, you know, and Mandy and Dean will be walking down the path in four days! The countdown is on, Dave.’
‘I know, I know. But it has to be fifty degrees out here. Surely you could wait until it is cooler. Or at least get the groom-to-be to help you. Come on inside and I’ll pour you a drink.’
Carlene smiled and watched as Dave got off the motorbike, dressed in shorts and a tank top. His short brown hair was slicked with sweat from where the helmet had sat. She reached out and patted his arm. ‘I think you’re exaggerating about the temperature. That’s very kind of you, darling, but I need to keep on. Have you seen your father?’ ‘Not since yesterday.’ He kicked the stand of the motorbike down. ‘I’ll bring you out something cold, then,’ he said and bounded up the stone steps into the old homestead.
Adjusting her wide-brimmed hat, Carlene pulled her gloves on and turned back to the agapanthus she’d been deadheading before Dave had arrived. Thinking about her three boys, she knew that Dave was the most thoughtful out of all of them. And perhaps the most sensitive. Dean, her eldest, was serious and quiet, whereas Adam used his charm and good looks to draw people to him. They were all so different, her boys, but the one thing which linked them together was their vivid blue eyes—that was the one feature she recognised from her side of the family. Their broad foreheads and high cheekbones came from their father, Sam.
As she thought of her husband, her brow furrowed again and she turned to look out over the paddocks, hoping to see dust rising in the distance. All she saw was a shimmering mirage over the line of hills that bordered their property. The wheat paddocks had all been harvested, and the grain carted to the nearby silos at Northam. Now, the paddocks of golden stalks had ewes grazing in them, instead of large machines, which just days ago had seemed to eat up the wheat as they’d been driven in endless straight lines.
Dave had made sure the ewes were drenched and ready to put out into these stubbles as soon as the paddocks were harvested, so they wouldn’t need hand-feeding unless the break of the season was late.
Turning towards the main road, where the cattle should have been camped on the dam in the midday sun, Carlene looked carefully but couldn’t see any dust or cattle chasing the tractor to grab their first sweet mouthful of hay.
‘Where are you?’ she whispered to herself, slowly turning in circles, hoping to catch a glint of a vehicle or a cloud of dust.
Sam hadn’t come home for lunch, which was unusual. Usually she’d hear his heavy footsteps pounding up the garden path at 11.56 am on the dot. That gave him four minutes to get inside, wash his hands and be sitting at the table when the ABC’s Country Hour came onto the wireless. Today, his place at the table had been empty. When she’d walked up to the shearing shed, it had been silent and unoccupied. Further investigation had found his ute was missing too. Perhaps he was out checking waters, or stock. Carlene hoped he wasn’t checking Dave’s work. And, even if he was, it was unlike him to miss lunch.
She sighed, her secateurs automatically snipping at the long, dry stems of the flowers and piling them up next to her on the lawn. Her instincts told her he was still smarting from last night’s disagreement.
With all three boys now living and working together at Wind Valley Farm, it was like pups fighting for food, except they were arguing about who should do what and how it should be done. Sam was used to being the boss and didn’t like it when his authority was challenged. All the boys had gone to agricultural college and embraced new ideas for the farm—not necessarily in agreement with each other. Dean was certainly interested in all the innovative new cropping systems, which were now coming into play—things she’d never heard of before like tram lines, nil-till and raised beds. He’d taken a trip to New Zealand with the college and learned about them, bringing the ideas home. Sam had shot his ideas down in flames at first, but gradually, somehow, Dean had been able to talk him around.
Adam was more interested in the financial side. He’d brought home
