It was a bit like we’d been beamed onto the moon, or had just wandered into a bomb blast. It didn’t look like our station. The cattle were lying around, like rubbish blown by the wind. They were dead and dying, caught in the mud, desperate for water. They would have walked for miles to get to Cockatoo Creek for a drink. When they got there, they’d have been exhausted, but they would have smelled water and waded into the thick sludge. I guess they thought that if they went a bit further in they’d find something to drink, but the deeper it got, the weaker it made them. They died in the mud, too tired to carry on.
One cow was braying quietly as she lay in the mud. She looked mad. She seemed to be crying for something. Her legs were too tired to even stand up. The flies were probably already eating her. I was glad I had Jonny’s gun with me. Dad always had a gun with him so he could deal with a sorry situation like that.
I couldn’t stand to look at all the bloated carcasses any more. I hated the filthy stink coming from the mud – I could taste it, it was so strong. It smelled of stagnant water, like when the old wash-house drain blocked, but as well as that, I could smell rotten meat – and death. It made me feel sick. There were so many flies, it was like they’d beaten us to the muster. Every now and then I’d hear one of the cattle cry out. Sometimes I couldn’t tell which ones were alive and which were already dead.
As we sat in the ute looking at the carcasses around us, Dad and me didn’t speak much. I could tell he was thinking because his eyes were narrow and the tip of his tongue flicked from one side of his top lip to the other. We drove down closer to the dam. I pointed out a couple of carcasses as we went past them and he nodded. He didn’t want to see them.
We hadn’t thought about the shade from the trees and bushes, which were along the sides of the track on the way to Cockatoo Creek, until it was gone. When we left the trees behind, the sun came through the windscreen like a nasty surprise. It made my seat sticky and my eyes sting. On the bare part of the desert around the dam the ground shimmered, so the dead cattle appeared and disappeared like a magic trick. The drought had stopped being a chat about the weather. It wasn’t even about water, or dead cattle. I guess Dad was scared we’d dry up too. His eyes darted around the dust in front of us and picked over the dead and dying cattle. He said, ‘Jesus,’ under his breath.
Dad stopped the ute and cut the engine. As he climbed out of the door he reached for his gun, which was on the back seat. ‘Right, Danny – shoot the worst. The fellas’ll help shift the carcasses.’ We’d have to get rid of the dead cattle. If we didn’t, it would mean that when the dam filled up with water again, it’d be poisoned. I asked Dad what we’d do with them. The carcass dump was too far away and too small for all the dead cattle at Cockatoo Creek. He said we’d burn them.
Dad started at one side of the dirty bit of earth that had been the dam and I went to the other. All you could hear was the buzz of flies, broken every now and then by a gunshot or a cow crying out. I shot a couple of cattle and then stopped to wipe my face and reload. I was concentrating on slotting the bullets into the barrel when Dad shouted, ‘Danny! Daniel! Watch out!’ I turned round to see what was wrong, but before I could work it out, Dad had fired his gun. I felt my body jolt – the sound bounced off the desert into me. I looked to the other side, and out of the corner of my eye saw a cow flop over. It looked like it was wearing muddy trousers; a tidemark of sludge clung to its belly. I looked back at Dad and he was running towards me. His face was hard as he grabbed me roughly by the arm and said, ‘This is too dangerous.’
As we went back to the ute, he told me that the cow had seen me and had probably got spooked by the gunshots. He said it was crazed with dehydration, had scrambled onto its feet in the mud and for some reason was charging towards me. He said he had no choice but to shoot. ‘Even the live ones are no use,’ he said, like he’d lost already.
Instead of working on foot, we got in the ute. I drove and when Dad spotted a dying animal, he told me to stop. He’d load his gun and shoot at his target through the window. We’d been driving round shooting at the cattle for a while when we heard Reg’s voice on the radio. He wanted to know how things were at Cockatoo Creek. ‘It’s a bloody disaster – we’ll be bust by the time the year’s out at this rate,’ Dad said. Then he added, ‘A bloody disaster,’ again, but it was like he was talking to himself. I could tell things were real serious.
Reg said they’d almost finished taking the yards down at Simpson’s Dam, so he’d send Rick with the tanker to Wild Ridge. Once it was full, he’d bring it over to Cockatoo Creek. I knew that would take a while – it took hours for the tanker to fill and Wild Ridge was as far away from Cockatoo Creek as anywhere on the station. They wanted to know if there was anything we needed from Timber Creek because they’d be passing the station on their way through. Dad asked Reg to send Elliot over right away, and for him to bring the loader, chains and some diesel from the station. ‘I’ve never seen it like this. Just get over here as fast as you can.’
When Elliot arrived at Cockatoo Creek, he didn’t bring the loader, he came in his ute with the chains and a few cans of diesel. When he saw the mess he pulled the neck of his shirt up over his nose to try to block the bad smells. He couldn’t believe how quickly the dam had dried up. Elliot had checked the dams a few days before and he reckoned Cockatoo Creek had looked a lot better than Gum Tree Dam. Dad shook his head. When the loader growled down the track, I could tell it was Lloyd inside – no one else was as muscly as him. He stopped and climbed out of the cab. His mouth was open, and eventually he managed to find the word he wanted: Jeez!
Reg had told Elliot and Lloyd to come over to help Dad and me. He reckoned his mob could bring the tanker over when they brought the fencing, ready to build the yards. Elliot said that when Reg had the bit between his teeth, he worked faster than any fella he knew. Dad nodded and asked how long Elliot reckoned it’d be before they all got to Cockatoo Creek. Elliot looked at Lloyd, who shrugged. ‘It’ll be later on tonight,’ Elliot guessed. It was a lot quicker to take down the yards than to build them up, but even so, it’d been real hot and the fellas were tired.
Dad turned his attention back to the carcass dump around us. We’d killed all the cattle we could see that needed to be shot. Dad told the fellas to start moving the dead ones over to a clearing a few hundred yards away from the dam. He was angry. Mainly with the weather, but all of us knew not to test him.
Elliot started off by tying the chains around the dead cattle. Then he attached the other end to his ute and dragged the carcasses away. He couldn’t do that with the ones that had perished on the edge of the dam because the mud had dried solid and held them down like superglue. For the ones that had died in the dam, Lloyd used the loader. To get them he drove into the sticky dirt, then dropped the bucket into the mess and scooped up the carcass. Sometimes bits fell off into the desert when they were shaken by the loader bumping over an uneven bit of dry ground. Seeing a leg falling out of the sky was like being in a horror movie.
Lloyd carried the carcasses to where we were going to burn them. He dumped them on top of each other and then scooped up the dead ones Elliot had left there, to make them into a tidier pile for burning. From where I was, it looked just like fire wood, until you noticed a head or a hoof.
Dad and me were doing the same job as Elliot with our ute. Dad wouldn’t let me tie the chains onto the cows, so I had to drive. It was hot inside the ute. My hands were sweaty and they slipped against the steering wheel. Every now and then Dad would swear when we accidentally ripped the legs off a carcass.
It was starting to get dark when Reg radioed to say he was on his way to Cockatoo Creek to help. He said him and Rick would drive over with the tanker while Jack and the Barron brothers finished off at Simpson’s Dam. When Dad took the radio from me, his hand was brown and wet-looking from handling the rotten carcasses. He said, ‘Get over here as fast as you can, fellas, we need all the help we can get.’ Ron from Gold River came on the radio then.
Gum Tree and Cockatoo Creek were the two water holes nearest the station, and they were both fed from the same borehole.
Ron said he’d been to Gum Tree and the situation there was just as bad. He told Dad that him and Greg would be over to help as soon as they could. Normally Dad would have said it was OK, that we would manage. But this time he didn’t. He just said, ‘Thanks, Ron.’
When Mum and Liz arrived with some food for us, I realised I’d forgotten about eating. It was getting dark, but we’d been so busy scraping carcasses off the desert I hadn’t thought about food. It was hard to feel hungry when there was such a bad smell everywhere. The Pommie looked like she did when she saw Dad and me butchering the killer. She’d gone real white and held her hand over her mouth and nose. After a minute or two she went round the other side of the ute where no one could see her. When she came back, wiping her mouth with a hanky, I guess we all knew she’d puked. She pretended to be OK, though. Mum just looked angry, like she was about to pick a fight with someone.
Mum and the Pommie lifted pots of chilli out of the ute. We all stopped what we were doing and sat down, as far away from the pile of stinking dead cows as we could. Mum rubbed Dad’s back, and I could tell she was real worried. The Pommie dished the food up and we didn’t speak until it was all gone.
Afterwards Elliot asked Dad if he wanted him and Lloyd to go over to Gum Tree Dam to start cleaning up there. Dad said he couldn’t decide what to do next. He said he thought the best thing would be to start burning the dead ones at Cockatoo Creek. As soon as the fire was lit, someone would have to stay with it until it had gone out. He was real concerned about the weather. It had been so dry, and if there was even the slightest breeze, it would take the fire and make it spread across the Territory. We didn’t want a bushfire on our hands too.
While he and the fellas talked about what to do, Mum and the Pommie cleared the food away. We heard the tanker rumbling towards us before its headlights made our eyes water. When it roared into view and stopped, Reg leaned out of the truck window, like it was a nice, cool, sunny day, and shouted down to Dad, ‘Where d’you want it, Derek?’
Dad had his back to us and we couldn’t hear what he said above the engine noise, but he pointed his arms to his right, at an area of flat ground further over towards where the dam had been. Jack was behind, in the Toyota. He had a trailer on the back, full of fencing and some troughs, so we got up ready to unload them. Jack left the Toyota’s headlights on so we could see where we were working. The fence panels felt twice as heavy in the dark.
The Crofts arrived. Even Dick came. He had his overalls on and his hat. I hadn’t seen him dressed like that for ages. In the dark he looked like normal, but when his face caught in the headlights he looked old and empty, and if you were near enough you could hear his chest rattle. He walked straight over to Dad and Reg. He put his hand on Dad’s shoulder. His voice was raspy because of whatever was inside him. He said, ‘We’ve seen worse than this, Derek.’ Dad shook his hand and said how glad he was to have Dick and his family there.
Dick reckoned the weather was about right for having a fire. He said he’d checked the forecast and thought we’d be as well getting the fire going as soon as we could. Dad explained we would have to go to Gum Tree Dam, to clear out the dead there too. We didn’t want both water holes to become poisoned. Dick nodded and said Dad should leave him to see to the fire at Cockatoo Creek and take the fellas to Gum Tree.
Dad shook his head. He said he reckoned it would be better for them all to get some rest and tackle Gum Tree in the morning. Dick looked at Ron and Greg and they nodded at him, like they could read his mind. They said Dick would stay with the fire at Cockatoo Creek Dam while Greg and Ron went to Gum Tree to start cleaning up over there. ‘You take Danny home and get some rest,’ Dick said. I guess the sooner we’d dealt with the dead, the sooner we could get the live ones mustered. We needed to get them together into the yards where there would be water troughs.
Dad told me to get in the ute with Mum and the Pommie, who were going back to the station. I told him I wanted to stay with him and the fellas, to help.
But he rubbed his eyes as he squinted through the darkness and said, ‘There’ll still be plenty to do tomorrow.’