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“I know we sell small quantities of meat to the Zanettis and the pub, but we just don’t have the cold room space or the qualifications to butcher and package our meat. We’re lucky we have a mobile butcher who accommodates us. And if we are producing worthless wool this year, I did everything wrong. I’m going for the lowest micron we can get with the merinos.”
“Okay, bees and, therefore, honey?”
“Thought of that, but Flo next door has already gotten into that on the apple orchard. Don’t want to undercut her.”
“Ah, okay. What about—?” Pete began.
I shushed him as there was shuffling and then gravel being sprayed under the floorboards.
“Wombats.”
Where had I put that article from Rosie just now? I searched my desk as Pete scrunched his face. “Wombats?”
“People pay to see them. Could be a thing. A tourist attraction.”
“Wombats,” Pete said flatly, glancing outside to where my nemesis was tossing dirt around its burrow.
“Well, that one hates me, for sure. Had a call today from a wine tour company that always stops in at the Zanettis for lunch. Asked about taking the group to wombat burrows at dusk for photos after their last wine tasting.”
“People pay money for that?”
“Maybe? I mean, bushwalkers come to the national park hoping to see the wombats at dusk.”
“Huh. Duly noted.” Pete scratched the word ‘wombats’ on the poster paper. “But that is for free.”
“What are you two doing?” Stacey asked, standing in the doorway.
How she always managed to get past the marsupial terror under the quarters puzzled me.Tell me your secrets, dear sister.
“Workshopping ideas for new ventures.” Pete tapped the marker on the sheet of paper.
“If we get the price for the wool,” I added, finding the article and then shoving it in my backpack for reading material at the hut.
Stacey raised an eyebrow and immediately went to look over Pete’s shoulder.
“It’s not finished yet—”
Stacey tutted me away with a flick of her hand and snatched the large sheet of poster paper we’d been writing on. She flicked her eyes over the options and tsked. “Where’s the proposal you were working on for the farmstay in our heritage buildings?”
Both Pete and I looked up.
“Like, the old cottages?” Pete asked.
“Yeah, like the old stone cottages and the old shearing shed, and the chapel ruins and the other foundations of the old buildings here.” Stacey threw the poster paper to the bed, unimpressed. “You did a proposal years ago. I remembered liking it and when I had to do an asset register for heritage buildings for a design subject last year, I chose the homestead and our buildings. Had to look at their current state of repair with estimated costs to transform them into residential accommodation.”
“How did you know I wrote a proposal about that?” I demanded over Pete.
“You had it on your desk. Huh, after your eighteenth birthday, I think. Years ago.”
“You were snooping in his room?” Pete snickered.
“No,” Stacey said sharply. “Tom had been reading to me at night at the time, and I couldn’t find the book he was reading from when I came in here to find it.”
I’d spent many long nights reading to Stacey while she recovered from the numerous surgical procedures for her burns injuries. We never talked about her pain or what was going on in her head; instead, I read books. Fantasy, like George RR Martin, sometimes Terry Pratchett, sometimes the latest bestseller or a cosy mystery.
Even when it was my textbooks, she didn’t seem to mind. In our senior year, Stacey used to quiz me and Pete on topics for our exams. If she’d finished high school, I’m sure she would have aced her studies.
“It was sitting on your desk. So I read it.” She shrugged. “It was good. I always thought you were going to present that as the plan going forward.”
