Drake was late. Matt waited for him on the verandah, with sandwiches and a lunchtime beer. He loved Mondays, when the park was closed to visitors. Binburra stretched out before him, basking in the warmth of the early summer afternoon. Though a shelf of dark sky building in the south said the sunshine wouldn’t last. He’d enjoy it while he could. A light morning rain had left the bush gardens sparkling and fragrant. Animals and birds were out enjoying the sunshine. Even nocturnal devils lay sunbaking on the grass of their pens. They had nothing to fear in this peaceful place.
In the distance, proud purple peaks rose into a sky of brilliant blue – a view unchanged for thousands of years. Time had stood still here. One-hundred-and-fifty years ago, his forefather, naturalist Daniel Campbell, must have gazed out on the very same scene. Matt marvelled again at the foresight it had taken for Daniel to preserve this place, at a time when farmers still shot thylacines as pests. He’d been a man way ahead of his time.
Matt had read Daniel Campbell’s journals, read of the Englishman’s love for his adopted home and his despair at the wholesale destruction of Tasmania’s native flora and fauna. There was one diary entry that Matt particularly loved. He knew the date by heart – the sixth of November 1880. Perhaps the best way to protect the forest is to own the forest. Daniel had purchased Binburra two months later. How proud Matt was to be related to a man of such vision, and to be carrying on his legacy. It made up a little for Fraser.
Drake arrived, wearing a wide smile, and settled himself into a canvas chair. ‘We’ve won,’ he said. ‘Pallawarra will be safe in time for Christmas.’
Matt offered him a beer and cast him a sceptical glance. Maybe. It was true that logging crews had temporarily retreated from the Tuggerah, but Fraser was no quitter. He was bound to move an even bigger force into the forest eventually. Still, Matt had to admit that for the time being, the protesters had triumphed.
They’d fought a fierce fight, backed by Drake’s clever and far-reaching international media campaign. The tragedy of the two officers who fell to their deaths was on one hand a public relations disaster, but it also drew the world’s attention to what was happening in the forest. It fuelled debate on the very issues that Burns Timber wanted to suppress.
With some strategic encouragement, the media enthusiastically personified Pallawarra. They played up the curse angle, turning the tree into a celebrity, even a hero to many. Drake used donations and his considerable personal wealth to produce figurines, along with a story book and computer game, in which the characters defended their home from wicked Mr Woodchip. King Pallawarra fought alongside Bertie Blackwood, Henrietta Huon Pine, Larry Leatherwood and Captain Sally Sassafras to protect their forest. Drake distributed the toys, books and games for free at schools, shopping centres and hospitals. Politically correct they were not – King Pallawarra wielded a sword and ray gun – but they were a hit with the kids. The scheme even attracted sponsors.
Save The Tuggerah rallies in Hobart drew thousands of supporters, including mainland and overseas celebrities. A televised fundraising concert proved to be a big hit. A host of foot soldiers in the trenches maintained a relentless pressure on the logging operations. They winched logs across roads, poured glue into padlocks, chained themselves to trees and bulldozers. They befriended bored journalists.
Bold breakaway groups took radical, even violent, action. They drained diesel tanks, and drove spikes into trees to tear apart high-speed saws with potentially lethal consequences. They cut through the supports of Charon River bridge, causing a fully-laden log truck to topple in, hurting the driver. Jammed tight between the narrow banks, the truck blocked the road for days. They damaged equipment and strung fine wire cables between trees, thirty metres above the ground, so increasingly jumpy loggers couldn’t predict how their trees might fall.
The gloves were off on both sides. Timber workers took sledgehammers to a protester’s car, injuring a terrified woman and child who were trapped inside. A published video of the incident sparked outrage. Accusations flew fast and furious on both sides. A girl disappeared from the forest, and Drake ran a media beat-up, highlighting the threats made against the protesters by some of Burns’s men. The police were ready to drag the Charon. ‘Why bother with that muddy ditch?’ said one of the logging crew. ‘When there’s a thousand old mine shafts where we could dump a body?’ A young dozer driver went missing at the same time. Wild, superstitious talk had him sacrificed by a coven of witches. When the two of them turned up together in a Nandena motel room, there were red faces all round.
Drake’s publicity campaign was so effective that as fast as protesters were arrested, more arrived. The contractors couldn’t make a living in this snail’s pace operation. ‘By the time we’d finished, they needed fifty police to guard each convoy,’ said Drake, sipping his beer. ‘Half a dozen coppers around each truck so the tyres wouldn’t get spiked. Then, get this, they walked beside the trucks to the police camp. From there they moved out with one police car in front, one in back, a copper in the passenger seat of every truck, and another on the driver’s side running board. The convoy crawled along so slowly that Joey Hancock spiked two rear tyres while the trucks were still moving.’
‘Joey Hancock. One of Ken Murphy’s apprentices?’
Drake nodded. ‘All the guys at the sawmill are fired up. Everyone is, even the press. Pallawarra is publicity gold. Public opinion has well and truly swung our way.’
‘What about your mother?’
Drake gave a rueful smile. ‘I’m no miracle worker. Some challenges are beyond me.’ He leaned forward in his chair. ‘Like convincing Sarah to go on a date. She only has eyes for you.’
Matt didn’t deny it. Sarah always stood very close to him. Sometimes she touched him – butterfly light. When Matt spoke, Sarah listened with a singular intensity, as if his words brimmed with special meaning. He was flattered, of course, by the admiration of a beautiful woman. Yet, it did not compensate for the fact that Penny was barely speaking to him. Not that Matt blamed her. He’d built a wall to guard his secret and left his wife on the other side.
A knock came at the door. ‘Speak of the devil,’ said Drake as he caught the scent of Sarah’s perfume.
Penny wasn’t home. How did Sarah always know? Her work at the park was finished. She was living and researching in Hobart now, but she’d taken to spending weekends at Hills End when she could.
‘Welcome, Doc,’ said Drake. ‘As you can see, we’re celebrating.’
‘I heard the loggers have pulled out,’ said Sarah, joining them on the verandah. ‘Congratulations.’ Her lacy singlet didn’t quite reach the top of her shorts, showing off her tanned stomach, complete with a gold belly-button ring. Matt glanced at the sky, at the black clouds rolling in, wondering idly if Sarah had brought a coat. She was going to need one. Storms blew in quickly over the mountains.
‘I’d better head off.’ Drake jumped up. ‘Come on, Doc. There’s a celebration bash at my place.’
Sarah’s amber eyes found Matt’s. ‘Are you coming?’
He finished his beer. ‘Maybe later. I still have to feed the eagles.’
‘Can I help?’
Matt looked from Sarah’s expectant expression to Drake’s I told you so face.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Catch you later, Drake.’
‘Remember to tell Penny about the party,’ Drake called after them.
Binburra had six flight aviaries, sponsored by Eagle Insurance. The two largest had fifty-metre flight paths running side by side. Opening the gates at each end converted them into a single elliptical hundred-metre flyway. Sarah followed Matt down to the mews. A battered fridge and freezer stood near the door, with the new chest freezer right at the back beside the coolroom. Sarah wrinkled her nose as Matt took two possums and a little wallaby from the fridge. He foraged around in the old freezer and extracted a number of frozen rabbits to defrost.
‘I’m hoping those lovebirds might share this wallaby.’ He sharpened a cleaver.
‘These freezers are full of dead animals?’ asked Sarah.
Matt nodded, slicing great gashes in the carcasses and sprinkling in vitamin and mineral powder. ‘Mainly roadkill. Penny picks out a few she wants to stuff and the rest go in the freezer. Woorawa and Aquila are fed only what they’ll find in the wild.’
With the meat bucket ready, they headed for the aviaries – towering spaces constructed of trawler netting and eleven-metre-tall telegraph poles. The two eagles were perched close together on high branches, framed by the darkening sky. Matt placed the possums on separate stumps, and the wallaby on the ground. The birds observed him with keen eyes. When Matt left the enclosure, they descended as one, in measured flight, to feed on the little wallaby.
‘The black one,’ said Matt, ‘that’s Woorawa. He’d have me if he could. See him watching? Two years in care before he arrived, but he’s not tame. Never will be. Without that sort of a mate, Aquila could never be set free. She needs something truly wild to teach her.’
‘Look.’ Sarah touched his arm. ‘How sweet.’
Aquila had reached out to tentatively nibble Woorawa’s neck, just as she used to do to him. It was the first time Matt had seen Aquila make this gesture to her new mate, and he felt an absurd prickle of jealousy. Ridiculous, to be jealous of an eagle, but he sure could use some affection himself right now. He imagined Penny’s freckled arms around his neck, the warmth of her soft lips on his, and a wave of loneliness crashed in. One way or another, he had to find a way to resolve things with his wife.
‘It must have been hard losing your other eagle,’ said Sarah.
‘What other eagle?’
‘You lost one a few months ago, didn’t you?’ said Sarah. ‘Another male? Not quite as big and black as Woorawa, but beautiful just the same.’
‘Some idiot hunter shot that bird from the sky for no reason at all. A farmer found him half-dead in a paddock, too sick to save. Did Pen tell you?’
‘No.’
‘Then how did you—?’
‘Your father. He told me that he helped Penny mount that eagle. She’s done a fantastic job, hasn’t she? Really made him come alive.’
Matt stared at her, disbelieving. His throat refused to swallow. ‘That’s impossible.’
Sarah pressed on, speaking quickly as if she thought he would interrupt. ‘The bird was hit twice; once high in the left wing, and again in the leg. One talon was shot off, so Penny substituted a replica. You’d never know.’ Sarah paused for breath. ‘Didn’t she tell you?’
His heart lurched at the betrayal. Penny knew how much this would hurt him, knew that he’d never forgiven Fraser for the car crash that killed his mother and sisters. Fraser had been drunk the afternoon that he ran off the road and hit a tree. Matt could still smell the alcohol on his father’s breath, still hear his mother asking to let her drive instead.
He survived because he’d been forbidden to attend the Christmas Eve party thrown each year for the mineworkers’ families. That morning Matt had sneaked the keys to the gun cabinet from his father’s desk, and Fraser had discovered him playing with a rifle. He’d been grounded, left at home with the gardener and maid.
Matt saw the scene like he was standing outside his own body. Him as a twelve-year-old boy, sitting disconsolate on the stone steps of the verandah. His little sisters skipping to the car, all laughter and bouncing curls. His mother, running back at the last moment, kissing him and promising to bring back a show bag. He never saw them again.
Fraser survived with barely a scratch. He was charged with dangerous driving; it was in all the papers. But somehow the results of his breath test went missing, courtesy, Matt guessed, of a police minister in Fraser’s pocket. The case fell apart, and Fraser never faced justice for his crime. But his relationship with his son was shattered; a son filled with so much misery and grief that it swallowed him whole. Matt left home at sixteen to work on the scallop boats up north.
Two years later, homesick for the mountains, he returned to Hills End and found a job at Binburra. That’s when he met Penny. That’s when love and light returned to his life. Her parents had died in a car crash, and it served as a powerful point of connection between them. She of all people should understand his bitterness towards Fraser – should understand why he’d washed his hands of his father and wanted them to have nothing to do with him.
Matt left the buckets where they were and strode to the house. Sarah followed him, running to keep up. Penny still wasn’t home. He tried her phone. It was turned off. He rang Fraser, his fingers so unsteady that he could barely press the digits, annoyed that he still knew the number.
‘Is Penny there?’
‘Ah, Matthew.’ His father sounded unsurprised, despite this being the first call from his son in fourteen years. ‘It’s conventional to begin a conversation with hello.’
Matt repeated the question, his voice thick with fury.
‘No, your wife is not here, Matthew. Why, is something wrong?’
Matt ended the call and glared at Sarah. He wished that she’d stayed away, that she’d never dropped her bombshell. But the concern on her face tempered his anger. Blaming Sarah was shooting the messenger. She couldn’t have known the trouble her news would cause.
‘That party at Drake’s,’ he said. ‘You want to go?’ When she nodded, Matt steered her out to the jeep, and took off down the track. Sarah sat silent beside him. Banks of low cloud erupted in torrents, inundating the road. The speeding jeep slipped and slid.
When they reached the broad gates of Canterbury Downs, Matt turned into the driveway. Curtains of rain obscured the front of the house. He hadn’t been here since he was sixteen years old, but could still picture the dark shutters and the shape of each blue stone. His chest tightened, just to be there.
Matt peered through the downpour, searching for Penny’s car, hoping not to find it. Was it parked around the back? He leapt from his seat, head bent against the blast, and ran to the house. His father stood in the open doorway, his face inscrutable. He looked scrawny, easy to snap.
‘Is it true about Penny? Has she been coming to see you.’ Matt was shivering and dripping water on the porch.
Fraser’s eyes narrowed. ‘Your wife is my student, yes. Does she not have the right?’
‘It’s you who doesn’t have the right,’ yelled Matt. ‘You don’t have the right to come anywhere near my wife. Not after killing my mother and sisters. Not after splitting this town in half with your special brand of bribery and vandalism. You destroy everything fine that you touch, Dad. I tried to get away, begin again, create some sort of a life for myself. But you’re always there, aren’t you, lurking in the shadows to ruin things?’
For a moment Fraser looked hurt, but only for a moment. Then he shrugged – a one-shouldered shrug as if his son warranted nothing more. ‘Don’t blame me if you’ve lost your wife, Matthew. I suggest you look for her elsewhere.’ Fraser closed the door hard, just short of a slam.
Matt stood there for a minute, wrestling with his rage. Then he headed for the jeep with an unfamiliar stinging behind his eyes. He didn’t make it. He sank down on the ground in the driveway, barely aware of the storm slapping him in the face. Elbows on knees. Head in hands. Tears mingling with the rain.
Someone tapped him on the shoulder – Sarah, carrying Matilda’s sparkly My Little Pony umbrella. She held it over his head, sacrificing herself to the downpour. Water streamed down her face, her chest, and plastered her clothes to her body. The whole thing seemed suddenly ridiculous. Penny. Fraser. Himself. Soggy Sarah with the pretty pink umbrella.
‘Let’s go.’ She offered her hand to help him stand, and he took it. Matt looked back at the house as he drove away, and saw the curtain fall back into place at the window.