When lessons were over Sara produced the ringbinder she had filled with sheets cut from manila folders to serve as an album. ‘It’s a scrapbook,’ she explained. ‘I thought you might like to make your own collection of pictures and stories about yourself and your life on the station. Because it is sort of special, you know. People like me, from the city, don’t understand it at all. So it’d be like a pioneer’s diary. You can cover the pages in pretty paper if you like – your mum gave me some gift wrapping – and you can draw pictures and colour them in, or cut them out of magazines and paste them, or use photographs. Whatever you like.’
Becky fingered the stiff sheets, eyes bright with dawning possibilities. ‘Did you make one when you were a kid?’
‘No, but then, I had no one to help me, or buy me things. Your mum said you can raid her sewing box for bits of lace and ribbon. And if you keep your birthday cards . . .’
Becky nodded vigorously.
‘Well, there’s heaps of pictures on them you could cut out and use. What do you think?’
‘Oh, yes! Are you gonna help me?’
‘To start you off, but it’s your book remember. And when it’s done you might even want to take it into town to show Mrs Murray. You do see her sometimes?’
‘’Course. At the School of the Air break-up. We always go to that. And the sports days. I can show Nan too, and Pops. Wait’ll Mum sees it! You have the best ideas, Sara! I’m so glad you came. I like you heaps better than Gela. Sam does too, only he won’t ever tell you. That’s ’cause he’s a boy, Mum says.’
Sara was touched. She said lightly, ‘I’m glad to hear it. As it happens, I like you too, chicken. And Sam. Come on, then. Let’s get started.’
The following day school had just ended when the peremptory blast of the Toyota horn announced Jack’s arrival at the front gate. Becky whooped and ran, Sara following more slowly. It seemed wrong to walk out leaving the house unlocked. Jess, lying under the oleanders, swivelled lion eyes to watch them pass.
‘You’re sure it’s okay? Even the windows are open.’ Sara wedged the cake tin under the seat. She wore a long-sleeved shirt of pale blue over jeans, and had enlivened the straw hat’s crown with a matching blue scarf.
‘Jess is here. You try getting past a cattle dog,’ Jack replied. ‘Here, wriggle over, Squirt, and tuck your feet back. You got enough room there, Sara?’
‘Yes, thanks. Heaps.’ The rifle, clipped in its rack, promptly nudged her hat off. She dumped the hat on her lap, fingering the scarf. ‘So, where’s this bore?’
‘North.’ He jerked his chin as he set the vehicle moving. ‘And strictly speaking it’s a well, not a bore. There’s about three hundred head running on it.’
‘So it’s quite important,’ Sara guessed, and caught the affirmative dip of his chin.
‘They all are. Water’s precious out here, so we check ’em regularly. Don’t do much else really these days, apart from pushing scrub – that’s the mulga we knock down to feed ’em.’
‘It’ll be a long drive, if that driller Harry spoke about does make one for you out where all that dry feed is,’ she observed.
‘It’s called the Twelve Mile,’ Jack said, ‘the plain, that is – part of the Forty Mile. And you’re right about the distance. Incidentally, you don’t “make” bores, Miss Blake, you put them down.’
‘You do? Sounds like getting rid of an old dog,’ she said straight-faced and caught the edge of his grin from the corner of her eye.
Once through the horse-paddock gate Jack turned up along the fence, heading north, crossing over the shallow creek that ran through the paddock.
‘Skippers,’ he said.
‘What?’ Sara caught up. ‘Oh, the creek. Skipper who, then?’
‘No one. Skipper was a nag.’
‘Of course. I understand that Charlotte was a camel. Funny sense of priorities you people have out here.’ His lips twitched and she settled back, enjoying the drive despite the roughness of the track and the fact that there was nothing to see but scrub and sky. The sheer emptiness, coupled with the knowledge that there wasn’t another soul (save Len), within two hours’ drive in any direction, was somehow invigorating.
The change in the country, when it came, was disconcertingly abrupt. The harsh red soil and grey scrub vanished and there was suddenly a diversity of shapes and colours in the timber. A smudge of ochre ridge grew in the distance, glimpsed through the taller line of timber that she had come to recognise as a watercourse. There was even an emu; Becky pointed it out.
‘There – by the conkerberry bushes.’
‘I see it,’ Sara assured her. To Jack she added, ‘The hills are pretty. Is that where Redhill got its name?’
‘Yep. We’re a practical lot out here. Walkervale’s named for Tom Walker, who pioneered it. And it’s said Wintergreen came about because there was good winter rain the year it was taken up. It doesn’t happen often but when it does . . .’ His face softened. ‘Well, it’s worth seeing.’
‘You love it, don’t you? Beth said you’ve got a property too, is it like this?’
‘A bit,’ he conceded. ‘Desert country but more stone. Miles of spinifex ridges, a couple of good springs in the hills and the rest is like this place – mulga, and great herbage when it rains, but it’s basically a battler’s block. My parents managed on it but things are tighter these days. There’s Kileys.’
Sara searched ahead, then spotted the glitter of a mill wheel above the trees. Myriad thin tracks Sam had told her were cattle pads wove in towards it, and the bare ground all about the bore was darkened by years of dung. Cattle stood and lay about under the trees, their ribs and hipbones prominent. Jack drove slowly past them to stop in the shade by the creek bank. He switched off and the silence brought the buzz of flies into the cab, the squawk of a white cocky, and the drag of the working mill rods.
‘Well.’ He thrust his door open. ‘I’ll go check things. Reckon you girls can get a fire going and put the billy on? There’s matches in the glovebox.’
‘Yes.’ Sara didn’t intend admitting that she had never built a fire. Becky helped, gathering up handfuls of dried gum leaves that proved very combustible. As the blue smoke curled up into the pyramid of twigs and larger branches, Sara had a sudden, brief flash of memory – a family picnic with just such a fire and a billy heating beside it. The image was gone almost before she could grasp it, lost in the aromatic smoke. The smell of the burning leaves must have triggered it, she thought, staring blindly at the crackling flames. But who was the family involved? Certainly not Stella, who had nothing but scorn for ‘the sticks’. But for Sara to have the memory, surely she must have been there?
Becky was returning from the bore with the filled billy. Her mind in a whirl, Sara took it from her, casting a doubtful look at the water. ‘Is it clean?’
‘’Course! I got it from the outlet, not the trough.’
‘That’s okay, then, I think. Oh,’ Sara remembered in dismay, ‘I didn’t bring any cups.’
‘Under the Toyota seat.’ Becky rummaged to produce three enamel pannikins. ‘The green one’s Uncle Jack’s.’
Sara stared at their blackened interiors. ‘Well, they definitely aren’t clean. Come on, a bit of sand will work wonders.’ She sploshed a little water into one of them and headed down the shallow creek bank.
‘It’s only tea stains,’ Becky protested.
‘And this will get rid of them.’ Sara wet a little sand and scoured the enamel. ‘See, you have a go. You have to wet the sand, though.’
Becky’s enthusiasm soon took over. Sara let her finish the job, reflecting that she was a good kid, eager to try anything new. The creek sand was coarse and scattered with tiny spiral shells and millions of gum nuts from the white-trunked eucalypts lining its bank. She wondered if the seeds were ever washed to where they could grow. It seemed unlikely in such a desert place, but only water could have made the creeks, so they must occasionally fill. She wished she could see it. A whiff of burning gum teased her nostrils and she found herself remembering the children of her dream. They had been at a place somewhere like this, the sand as loose and as hot against the thin soles of her sandals. She could smell the gums and the moisture trapped beneath the deep sand. We could dig a soak. The ghostly words trickled through her mind and she recalled her own eager reply. Yes, let’s!
Sara jerked herself back to awareness, blinded by light. She had left her sunnies in the vehicle. Where had that voice come from? A shiver went through her as if something cold had traced a line down her spine. Cicadas shrilled and the long fingers of the eucalypt leaves spun in the heated air. She mopped her face on her sleeve. She was sweating but her skin felt cold. What was wrong with her? She turned towards the bank, meaning to find her sunglasses, and saw instead a man’s dark outline looming above her. Terror blanched her face. She shrieked, ‘No!’ then the blackness roared over her and she fell into darkness.