Big Sky Page 2

  All I could think was, now that you’re here, it is.

  By the time Angry stomped back to the Cessna, I wished he’d kept drinking at the pub so we’d have to stay in Kununurra. Then Dan and I could have talked all night long. He was nothing like Damien’s bragging, bonehead mates. Dan actually listened and managed to extract more information about my life at St Anne’s than I’d told anyone before.

  Angry hit his head as he bent to open the hold. Dan trailed alongside me, then loaded my duffle bag next to his swag before offering me the window seat.

  It was impossible to talk above the roar of the old mail plane. I think Angry preferred it that way because he flew tight-lipped and sour-faced. I sat cramped between the window, the mail sack and spare parts for tractors and bores while we sped over the pocked, stony landscape with scrub clinging to red rock piles and buttes and the occasional mirror glint of a river twisting beneath.

  As we flew over a familiar bend in the river I spotted the Devil’s Horns and knew we’d soon land at Bundwarra. I racked my brains for a cool way to say goodbye to Dan. Super casual, like: ‘See you at a rodeo sometime.’

  The Cessna taxied onto the makeshift runway marked out by rusty forty-four gallon drums. It was a strip of dirt just beyond the homestead. Long ago I had spent weeks helping to clear rocks from it.

  Dan grabbed his swag and readied to leave.

  ‘You’re getting off here?’ I asked. ‘I thought you were going to a big station?’

  Dan blinked. ‘This is Bundwarra, isn’t it?’

  My mouth went dry. ‘Yes,’ I croaked.

  Angry watched us through the mirror with bleary eyes. ‘Nice work sucking up to the boss’s daughter, blackfella.’

  Dan recoiled. He sprang away from me and fled from the plane, as though I’d suddenly become contagious.

  Twin balls of red dust hurtled towards us and erupted into a lather of insanely happy dogs. Zippo and Red had been let off their chains. They usually snarled at strangers, but both dogs leaped on me, then Dan, drooling and slobbering as if he was a long lost friend. I batted them away, and kneed Zippo in the chest to stop him jumping. I tried to feel their joy at my homecoming. But watching Dan slink further from the plane, I couldn’t shake Angry’s obnoxious words. As they replayed in my mind, the in-flight meal – a stale salad sandwich – flipped in my stomach and I tasted bile. I’d stake my All-Around Cowgirl Buckle that Gran had no idea.

  ‘Skye!’ Gran strode over to the runway. There was never any doubt where I got my height from: Gran was an imposing figure – a tall, grey-haired woman in a faded blue floral dress and white orthopedic shoes permanently stained with red dust.

  I submitted to the obligatory peck on my cheek. ‘Gran. This is —’ ‘You must be Dan.’ Narrowing her eyes, Gran took in Dan’s battered Stetson, checked shirt, jeans and low-slung belt equipped with the pouch for his knives. He was scrubbed up and looked the part, but she sniffed. I could practically hear what she was thinking and my cheeks burned with shame.

  ‘The rules are: no alcohol, no swearing, no vulgar behaviour,’ Gran said crisply. ‘The big house is off limits. Except for Saturday dinner. Mail run on Thursdays. Phone calls to be made between six and seven. Internet access after sunset on Fridays. The bunkhouse is over there.’ She pointed to a rectangular building near the tractor shed and closer to the river. It was a typical Kimberley-style stockmen’s quarters with a corrugated iron roof and flyscreened panels for windows – all breezes gratefully accepted.

  Dan continued to stand, as if waiting for further instructions, or perhaps he was hoping for a welcome.

  Gran waved a reddened, calloused hand. Her knuckles were swollen from years of constant work. ‘Well? What are you waiting for? Dinner’s in three hours.’

  Cringing at her tone, I barely had time to roll my eyes at Dan in sympathy before Gran tugged at my elbow with an iron grip.

  ‘If I’d known,’ Gran muttered as she bustled me towards the big house, ‘I would never have —’ ‘Never have what?’

  ‘That’s the trouble with hiring over the phone.’ White lines showed at the edges of her pressed lips.

  ‘What exactly is the problem?’ I demanded.

  ‘They’re more trouble than they’re worth.’

  I wrenched my arm away.

  ‘They go walkabout. Can’t keep the time to save themselves. Spoil the horses for other riders.’

  You didn’t have to go to a camp draft or rodeo to know that Aboriginal stockmen were among the very best. Besides, we were living in country where Aboriginal and white people lived side by side, lived together. ‘What century are you living in, Gran?’

  ‘Don’t be insolent, young lady.’

  Despite adapting to internet technology, Gran still inhabited some weird version of frontier life. When I was a kid, Mum had told me that some people wouldn’t change just because the rest of the world had, something about how leopards couldn’t change their spots.

  I’d argued that a palomino’s spots got lighter. Mum had laughed like I’d said something funny. But I’d meant it.

  I resolved to make up for Gran’s treatment of Dan and, with his beautiful golden eyes and that crooked smile, being nice to him wasn’t going to be hard . . .

  At the sight of the homestead my heart thumped audibly. The sound rushed to fill my ears. Bundwarra. With its pitched tin roof, wide verandahs screened to keep out the mozzies, purple bougainvillea growing up the posts, and the huge old mango tree shading a stubborn square of green lawn. This was the place I’d cried for every night for a whole term when I’d first been stuck in the holding yard of St Anne’s Ladies College.

  Halfway through Year 9, Mum had decided that long distance education via the School of the Air wasn’t working. Correction – it was working, and better than ever with the new internet satellite technology, but I wasn’t. It was far too easy for me to do a couple of hours on the computer then sneak out to the home paddock, slip onto Blue Dreamer and take off. I’d spend hours going feral in the bush. I’d swim in the higher country creeks, climb trees, and poke around the old gorges and caves to discover rock paintings, crystals and, once, a stone shelf with a bundle of old bones that had scared me silly.

  Gran had been on my side. She’d argued that I should stay – to help out with the fencing and repairs – but Mum had said that no daughter of hers was going to be a dropout. I’d go to boarding school and finish Year 12 and hopefully have the rough edges knocked off me into the bargain. Luckily, I’d always been a reader – there wasn’t much else to do during the knock’em down rains – I’d passed the scholarship exam easily.

  It was weird when I first got to school. I couldn’t find a single person who enjoyed lying on the grass and staring at the clouds, or watching birds building nests, or exploring the riverbank, continuing on and on past each bend wanting to see what came next. Fun in the city was always ‘arranged’. You had to buy something, or go somewhere that had been purpose-built – like an ice-skating rink or a shopping centre. In Perth, fun cost money.

  The screen door swung open.

  Dad hobbled out, his sun-faded eyes flicking first to the horizon, then to me.

  ‘Dad!’ I charged and tackled him. Dad was the touchy, huggy one. If it had been up to Mum and Gran, Damien and I would have grown up not knowing what a hug was.

  Dad rocked backwards. ‘Whoa. Careful.’

  ‘Nice work.’ I surveyed the crutches and white cast, already grimy with red dust.

  Dad nodded. ‘Yard post fell off the truck and collected me. Smashed the bone in three places.’

  ‘Impressive.’ I rested my head against his neck, inhaling sweat and hay and diesel engine – Dad smell. I had to bend to do it.

  ‘Reckon they must be putting growth hormones in the feed down at that school of yours.’

  ‘Yeah, well – you’re obviously not getting enough of them up here.’ I looked pointedly at his cast. ‘Horse or cow breaks a leg and you have to shoot it.’

  ‘W
hat do they teach you down there – how to give your old man cheek? There’s still some good in me yet, missy.’

  ‘But not for the muster. You got yourself out of this one.’

  I remembered the pastoral care officer we’d had during my first term at St Anne’s: she’d said every part of our body was connected to our thoughts and feelings. I’d bunged up my ankle in a hockey tournament and she’d reckoned my ankle injury was to do with my fear of the future, my sub-concious fear of moving forward. Either that or a ruddy big hockey stick had smashed against it – it still gave out on me occasionally.

  I wondered if this subconcious fear thing was what had happened with Dad. Bundwarra was on a financial knife-edge. Mum had tried to hide it from me; she’d wanted me to do well at St Anne’s without all the worry, but Gran, typically, was frank.

  ‘It couldn’t have happened at a worse time,’ she grumbled. ‘We have to hope the cattle are in good condition after all that blasted summer rain. The grass would have hayed off quickly, so the pasture will be poor. And we just have to pray that Liz does well in Jakarta.’

  Dad turned to Gran. ‘How’s the new fella then, Edith?’

  ‘He’s cool, a good bloke,’ I butted in. ‘He’s Aboriginal. His grandmother came from up near here.’

  Dad nodded. ‘Good. Might have a feel for the country then.’ He creased his eyes and shook his head as though he felt sorry for me. ‘Reckon the muster might be a bit of a handful, Skye, with those two German backpackers and that method actor fella from Sydney on the team.’

  ‘What?’ I disentangled myself and stood with my hands on my hips, just like Mum used to do when she was telling off Damien after he’d cracked a whip and nearly caused the mob to rush the yards. ‘Is anyone else coming? Anyone with experience?’

  Dad shook his head. ‘Most of the regular blokes are off working at the mines. Money’s too good. You and the new fella are it. The Germans have worked on another station for a bit, too.’

  I turned to Gran. ‘Apart from Dan and me, who has any decent experience with a muster?’

  Gran sniffed. ‘No one wants to earn an honest living above ground.’

  ‘So how exactly did you find these . . . people, Gran?’

  Dad laughed, his eyes crinkling up in a nest of crow’s feet. ‘The internet. Things are getting flash out here. Edith has been busy building a website. Next thing you know the dogs’ll be wearing collars.’

  THREE

  ‘I can’t believe you used that picture!’ I pointed to the image dominating the homepage: a fall of long, wheat-coloured hair draped over Blue Dreamer’s chestnut mane. Blue Dreamer’s lips were pulled back over his teeth as if he were grinning at some joke I’d just told him. We were framed with a frieze of interweaving hearts and roses. Yuck. The faux copperplate caption read: ‘Girl and Horse.’ It was total cheese – the equine equivalent of a couple kissing on a beach at sunset.

  ‘Every other station website had a picture of a girl on a horse,’ Gran said. ‘So I scanned it in. That’s how the young fella from Sydney found it. Said he’s doing something called method acting. He needs to learn about being a stockman so I suggested we wouldn’t charge, but train him for free. The Germans didn’t even see the site, I got them from a WWOOFer listing.’

  ‘Woofing?’

  ‘Willing Workers On Organic Farms.’

  ‘But we’re not an organic farm!’

  Gran shrugged. ‘We give them accommodation and food and they work for us.’

  ‘You mean we give them a smelly swag, billy tea and salt beef and they bust their guts on a muster?’

  Gran pointed back to the website and the corny picture of me and Blue Dreamer. ‘Don’t be silly – they get all this!’ The website was impressive. A little old-fashioned – its flouncy typography and soft-focus images of the Bundwarra homestead at sunset resembled a CWA member’s tapestry – but basically pretty good.

  ‘When did you learn how to do this?’

  ‘Since you’ve been at boarding school and Liz has been travelling on business, the internet’s been freed up,’ Gran said, clicking the mouse like a pro. ‘So I took a correspondence course in website building. Turns out it’s quite easy. It’s just a matter of wrangling characters and bytes and switches. It’s a lot like knitting. Purling on and purling off. The download speed is wretchedly slow, but I’m hoping when the new RAM’s installed that —’

  I cut her off. ‘My brain’s hurting, Gran. Can I go now?’

  Gran’s lips pursed. ‘Life isn’t meant to be easy, Skye.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ But I was already out of the office.

  I threw my duffle bag into my room. It was a large room with a single bed and one entire wall plastered with faded pictures of horses. It smelled like saddle polish and dust, wooden furniture, fruit-scented erasers, and soap from my underwear drawer: it smelled like me as a kid. I swallowed, remembering the first time I’d come home from St Anne’s and seen this wall of horse pictures. It was as if I’d had different eyes or was seeing through supercool sunglasses; it had looked so childish.

  I’d changed. Grown up. Even the furniture seemed to have shrunk. The bed was too narrow and my feet hung over the edge. It felt as if the child who had once slept there had gone away, lost forever. It was the same with the girl in Gran’s hearts-and-roses frame. She was untouched. Unknowing. Satisfied with what was here, neatly contained by Bundwarra’s unfenced hectares. I felt an intruder in this girlish bedroom, and I could hardly bear it. I grabbed my battered akubra and pulled it down hard over my head, comforted by the firm felt against my brow and the stale sweaty scent of countless rides. Boots back on, I jogged past the feed sheds and the home paddock where the night horse, Flash, grazed on a bale of lucerne, until I reached the gate to the horse paddock. It was a two hundred hectare paddock and Bundwarra’s ninety-five horses could all be at the far end. But I wouldn’t need to take Flash out to round them up and bring them in. My horse would know I was home. Blue Dreamer and I had shared a connection since we were both small. It was hard to explain; we communicated through our feelings. Blue Dreamer would have sensed my arrival, just as he did every time I returned to Bundwarra.

  I gave a long, low whistle.

  Sure enough, a lone horse galloped through a maze of jagged ant hills, kicking up gleeful clouds of rusty dirt. My horse: a chestnut quarter horse born and bred on the station so he’d be sure-footed in his own country. Even as a rangy foal he’d intuitively sensed soil cracks, splintery timber, loose stones and hidden breakaways.

  I’d begged Dad to let him be mine, then waited three long years before breaking him. I’d been determined to do it my way, not like some of the guys I’d seen on other stations, who literally broke a horse’s spirit, leaving it a slave with dull, sad eyes. Instead, I had learned Blue Dreamer’s language. At St Anne’s I was still struggling with Bahasa Indonesian, but I knew the language of horses off by heart.

  I climbed the rail and slipped onto his back, then leaned my head to inhale the musky velvet of his sun-burnished fur. He whinnied with pleasure.

  ‘Come on, Blue. Just a short ride to the river.’

  I clung to his neck as Blue Dreamer cantered across the cracked earth, neatly sweeping past anthills and through blossoming stands of acacia scrub, then slowing to pick his way over scatterings of small rocks until we came to the river and a deep waterhole. My bum felt bruised and my thighs trembled with exertion as I slid down Blue Dreamer’s sweaty flank and stripped off. Eleven weeks without riding and I could feel it.

  The river smelled of earth and wet rocks and the air before a storm. The water was warm silk flowing around my bare skin. Diving down, I pressed my hands to a gold-gleaming boulder then shot back up in a shower of diamond drops. I flipped over and floated on my back, watching the reflections of sun-lit water dappling the leaves of the pandanus and river gums.

  The first time I had waded into the ocean at Cottesloe beach in Perth, I’d been shocked by the icy water and fierce, brutal tug of the waves
. The wind had stung my face and I’d had to plant my feet in the sand to stop from being knocked over. Here, the water was perfect; I could stay in for hours. We were lucky – Bundwarra had a river running through it and a number of tributary creeks. Not like some stations where they had to drink bore water that spurted out of the ground, steaming and tasting like rotten eggs.

  I turned dreamy circles, tumbling over and over, washing away the term at St Anne’s and abandoning myself to the sweet water. As the shadows from the river gums lengthened and shaded the waterhole to a deep smoky blue, I reluctantly clambered out. Blue Dreamer happily nosed about in the grasses tufting the higher bank. I stood, faced the river, and did what I’d done since I was a child. I put my hands together, as if in prayer, and thanked the spirits of the place. Every time, there was an answer. Sometimes the sharp call of a bird, at other times a mysterious rustle of leaves where there had been no wind moments before.

  I thought about what Gran had said in her letter about Bundwarra. What would it be like to have to sell up and move? Would I be able to keep Blue Dreamer? Some of the boarders from other stations couldn’t wait to live in the city and be lawyers or journalists or event management coordinators. But I wasn’t like that. I’d always known where I wanted to be. Bundwarra was more than a place to live – it was family.

  As the only surviving child of five siblings who had been variously killed by childhood diseases and a terrible incident with a cattle truck, Gran had inherited Bundwarra from her father. And Mum was an only child. Complications after Mum’s birth had stopped Gran from breeding up a dynasty. Gran wanted Damien to inherit, but Mum wouldn’t have a bar of it. It was going to be left to both of us and we’d run the station together – if Damien hadn’t been lured away to grander pastures.

  Gran was always complaining. ‘Why would he want to work in Wyoming?’

  But that was just Damien. Bundwarra wasn’t big enough; he wanted the whole world.