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chapter 5
Ally
The two new blokes had arrived only a week earlier and so far, so good. Scottie had hired them after one phone call, and they hadn’t disappointed. Their references were top-notch, and they didn’t flinch when taking orders from Ma or me, even though we weren’t technically in charge. They didn’t even look to Scottie for confirmation either—a nice change after the last lot we hired, who’d lasted a week before we fired their arses. But I could see these two sticking around for longer. They seemed to fit.
Sam and Craig were a bit of alright too. Half a head taller than Craig, Sam was the dark-haired, dark-eyed quiet-type. He was wiry and seemed shy. He was a cool drink of water—beautiful, if you could call a man that. Looks wise, he was about as different to Craig as they came. But while they were opposites in many respects, they were equally as attractive. Craig’s sandy blond hair and thick muscles made me want to strip him off and see just what was underneath those dusty clothes he wore. His blunt honesty had me initially sitting on the fence about him, but he’d proven his skill and his loyalty. That loyalty was all directed to Sam so far, but I was glad he had the other man’s back. He’d told Ma that provided he and Sam worked side by side, he’d do whatever was needed of him. Sam had agreed, promising to be there for all of us if it meant staying on for the long term. We appreciated that promise. It wasn’t exactly an easy life out here, and although I knew they’d both spent all their lives on stations, there weren’t many they’d been on that were as remote as ours.
I watched them in the rear-view mirror of the tractor, keeping them in my sights as I turned the vehicle around, ready to pick them up and head back to the homestead. They moved together, completely in sync. They weren’t talking, just moving around each other, dodging the too curious cows that were getting right in among them as they kicked at the rounded bale, rolling it along the earth. We were in the springer paddock that morning. Smaller than the others, it kept the cows close together during their gestation and allowed us to closely monitor them, an impossibility in the other larger paddocks. Our station was five thousand square kilometres of desert, unique and wild. Its untamed plains stretched out endlessly until red dirt met blue skies at the horizon. Normally the contrast between the two was stark, but today the earth was dotted with rich greens as new grasses sprouted after the rains earlier in the month. Not much of it remained in the springer paddock. The grazing cows had razed most of the ground bare, but there were still a few lone clumps that were growing. To give the vegetation a fighting chance of survival, we were adding hay.
I gazed out, looking to the west. I could see the ranges in the distance, changing colours with the desert as the day progressed. That afternoon as the winter sun reached its peak, they would look almost purple, but for now they were yellow. The grasses had already grown long enough in places to have begun drying.
It was still cool, even for a winter’s day, and I adjusted my beanie before turning my attention back to Craig and Sam. I enjoyed working with them. There was an easiness between them borne of years of friendship. No drama, no conflict. Just the way I liked things.
“C’arn you lot,” I yelled from the cab, grinning at them as they flipped out the last part of the bale. Faded-blue jeans hugged Craig’s thighs while Sam’s stretched across his tight high arse. Their footy jerseys hid whatever fineness was underneath, and I almost felt bad for perving on them both. Almost.
Craig leaped up onto the step of the tractor and grinned. “Couldn’t wait to be near me again, huh?”
“Keep dreamin’, mate.” Sam laughed, chucking me gently in the chin from the opposite step. “She’s head over heels for me.”
“Oh, boys,” I sighed, “If only you knew.” Grinning at each of them, I floored the tractor and side-eyed them as they grabbed for the handrails to stop them from falling off.
The ride back to the homestead was bumpy, but the boys hung on tight as I manoeuvred us around the rutted paddocks. My heart lurched as I saw my brother on the roof of the oldest of the buildings—the original homestead—which was being converted into our new guesthouse. He was hammering away, replacing sheets of roofing iron with Yindi’s help. Waru and Jono stood below. We were a motley bunch. A cobbled-together family of drifters, Australian Aboriginals, and generations of station owners. But even though we weren’t all related by blood, we were all family, and this was our home.
The building they were working on was dilapidated—its roof had sagged and parts of the veranda rotted away. We kept it because of its sentimental value, but the idea to restore it and rent it out had been genius. City folk were looking for farm stays—an escape. We’d started pulling apart the damaged parts of the homestead and realized most of the rot could be fixed with a bit of hard yakka.
Now that we were restoring it, we could celebrate its history too. Pops had grown up in the two-room house, extending it to five when he’d married Nan, and their three girls came along. His parents and their parents before them had lived there, and they raised Ma in that house until she’d married Dad. Scottie and I had spent so much of our childhood sleeping over at Nan and Pops’s house, especially when the fighting between Ma and Dad got bad.
When they’d gotten married, Dad had insisted building a new homestead, putting some space between them and Nan and Pops. I wondered sometimes if Ma would have married Dad had she foreseen that he wasn’t going to last out here. I couldn’t blame him for wanting to leave though. He’d grown up in the city. Lived there his whole life. I thought I wanted the same thing—to go to Sydney and experience the harbour city and all it had to offer. I’d enrolled in uni, packed my bags and walked away from this place, determined not to look back. I hadn’t even made it to the beginning of the semester before I realized that the red dirt and big skies were a part of me that I never wanted to give up.
I’d missed this place down to the very depths of my soul. The quiet, and the sense of belonging. Sydney was amazing. Incredible. The food and the culture and the excitement. But none of it held a candle to dusty plains and trees as old as our country. To blue skies unmarred by smog and planes and helicopters at all times of the day and night. To my family, even though only a few of us were related by blood, and so many species of animals that I couldn’t count which survived against all odds.
“Whaddya need us to do now, Ally?” Sam eyed Scottie hauling the final piece of roofing into place. His words broke me out of my reverie.
“Let’s go see if Scottie’s got everything under control. If he has, I need to help Ma with a couple of the garden beds in the veggie patch. One of the dogs dug under the fence and destroyed a section of it.”
“No worries,” Craig answered, nodding.
With the tractor and trailer parked in the shed, we walked the short distance to the old homestead. Scottie was just getting down off the ladder and Yindi was already pulling her toolbelt off. She and Waru were only ten years older than me, but their life hadn’t been easy. Like many of our Indigenous Australians, they had suffered through generations of systemic racism and class differences that had been etched into the very grain of this land like an ugly jagged scar. Yindi and Waru were mentors to many of the youth around Longreach. They lived on the station with us in the workers’ cottages, but they continued their traditional ways too.
Visiting their ancestral lands, teaching their ways to the youth and preserving their culture, Waru and Yindi wanted nothing less than to educate every Aboriginal child in the area. It was a lofty goal and one that we were all in favour of helping with in any way we could. Usually that meant having groups of young people ranging in age from children to teenagers travelling out a couple of times a month to visit the places of cultural significance on the land and stay overnight as they hunted and performed ceremonies together.
“Scottie, you right, mate?” Sam asked. “Need any help?”
“Nah, we’re wrapping up here, but Ma was in the veggie garden. If you could help her out, that’d be great.”
“That’s where we were headed next,” I called out, detouring that way.
Ma had only just gotten started and she looked to be struggling already. “You right, Mrs P?” Craig took the shovel from her as she held a hand to her lower back, sweating and obviously in pain.
“I’m hurtin’ all over already.” She wiped her brow and groaned.
“Let us take over then, Ma,” I encouraged. “Tell us what needs to be done and we’ll look after it for you.”
Sam didn’t hesitate, holding his pointer finger up to indicate one minute, and he took off at a sprint to the house. Ma narrowed her eyes at his retreating form and shook her head. I had an inkling what he was doing, but Craig snared my attention when he picked up the crowbar and snapped the partially rotted sleeper away from the support post. “Mrs P, that dog did you a favour. This timber needed replacing anyway. It’s full of termites.”
“Craig, I’m only going to tell you this one more time. I’m not Mrs P. It’s Ma or Lynn. Please.” She glared at him waiting for him to react. She wasn’t really annoyed with him though—the twitch in her lips as she supressed her smile made it obvious enough.
“Okay, Ma.” His lips tilted up in a shy smile, and he nodded once. “Thank you. It means a lot having family again.” I knew he’d moved around a lot over the last few years, and he didn’t spend all that much time with his own folks. It wasn’t as if they were estranged, but Craig’s and Sam’s parents had travelled where work took them, just like their sons did. I guessed it didn’t leave them with much time to keep their relationship intact.
