Once again Kate stepped out of the clinic to find Jeff’s Land Rover still standing by the boardwalk, empty. She remembered what the little girl had said about him being in the shed – obviously she’d meant the Maintenance Shed he’d pointed out to Kate earlier. She stepped onto the dirt road and walked diagonally across to the large building. It was her second experience of how hot it was away from the shade.
It had to be the biggest she had seen so far, or at least a close second to the clinic, and as she neared the huge open doors she could hear the sound of metal hitting metal. It was the sound she would have expected from a metal worker, although she had never seen or heard one before. Just as she’d never come across a smell like the one that seemed to pervade the very ground she was walking on.
The closer she got, the stronger it became; it seemed a mixture of all things. Her senses were assaulted by an overall smell of oil, the type you get around cars, with a hint of something burning, and above all that, a familiar aroma of nail polish. Of course it would not be nail polish, but one of its ingredients, acetone.
As she entered the noxious building and stood just inside the doorway, she heard Jeff talking to someone out of view. She spotted him standing in front of an old vehicle; the other person must have been behind it. Jeff looked up.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Kate. I got carried away. Have you been waiting for me?”
“Not at all, Jeff,” she said, stepping a little closer out of the heat. “Your community kept me informed as to where I might find you.”
“My community?” he asked, a little puzzled.
“Yes…Miss Gerry and a small Aboriginal girl.”
He laughed and a mass of unkempt grey hair popped up from behind the vehicle. The rugged-looking workman must have been listening and Jeff’s outburst had been too much for his curiosity. “This must be Martin’s wife,” he said in a distinctly Irish accent.
“Yes…I’m Kate,” she said, offering her hand across the bonnet.
“Ah, I won’t shake hands with you just now, dear lady; I’m covered in grease,” he replied with a big smile. “I hope the husband is feeling better for seeing his beautiful wife. Is he improving?”
“I think so. Enough to take him home tomorrow.”
He looked surprised. “And we’re not going to have the pleasure of your company after tomorrow?”
“All right, Sean, I’m sure Kate has better things to do than listen to your overtures,” Jeff spoke out. “You’ll have to forgive Sean; he’s a bit of a romantic.”
The burly man walked out from behind the vehicle rubbing his hands on a cloth just as dirty and Kate hoped he was not about to shake her hand. In fact he was an awful sight in his long leather apron, tattered shirt and what she could see of his jeans and huge leather boots. But what caught her attention most was the unusual leather leggings he had strapped to his legs.
He noticed her downward look straightaway. “Do you like them?” he said, sporting them for her benefit with a stunted jig.
“They look like something I once saw in a documentary about the 1914-1918 War.” She hesitated to recall the instance. “Yes…they called them gaiters.”
“That’s where I got the idea from. Out of an old magazine I found.”
“He’s talking about my grandfather’s collection of magazines from that period. He had them piled up in the corner over there. This used to be his old shed where he fiddled with his inventions, like our water truck here,” Jeff said, patting the old vehicle they were leaning against.
“Do you mind?” Sean interrupted. “I was telling the lady about my gaiters.”
Kate smiled and refocused her attention on the blackened and burnt-looking objects around his lower legs.
“Sorry…I’m sure,” Jeff replied. “Carry on.”
“I should think so,” he bantered. “For that I shall definitely accept your dinner invitation tonight. I’ll put the fear of Almighty God into Marge.”
“Why would you do that?” Kate said.
“Is this a conspiracy or something?” he blustered, looking angry. “Here I am trying to tell you about me gaiters and you keep changing the subject. I’ll come to Marge in a minute.” Jeff just shook his head and turned to one side. “Now, dear lady, can you imagine the suffering I had to endure every time I used that old welding equipment over there? I used to burn the bottom of my jeans every time and my ankles into the bargain. Then one day I was looking through this old magazine I’d come across about the First World War and saw the soldiers wearing these strange leggings. Just the thing I thought, and cut myself a pair from some leather, a few old belts and here you are – no more burnt ankles.”
“That’s all very well, Sean,” Kate jumped in, “but what about Marge?”
“Oh, very well… When Jeff has an argument with Marge he invites this scruffy fella to dinner, knowing Marge will go crazy worrying about her fine furniture.”
“Who’s this scruffy old fella?” Kate asked, glancing at Jeff.
“Why me, of course,” Sean shouted. “I’m the scruffy old fella.”
They all laughed, including Kate, not sure if she was being joshed.
Kate turned her attention to the shiny-looking vintage vehicle Jeff seemed particularly proud of. But what drew her attention back to it was him calling it a water truck. It caught her interest as she realised water, especially when there were bushfires, could be an issue in the Sandy Desert.
“So tell me about this water truck,” Kate asked them.
“Now you’re talking,” Sean started. “She’s a beauty.”
“It was something my grandfather started but never finished,” Jeff took over. “Back then he was trying to convert it to a water truck. We’re only nine kilometres from the Oakover River, which is only a short drive; certainly not enough to use up a lot of petrol. It was very scarce back then…still is, really. Anyway that was before I had all the bores put in, so we didn’t really need it.”
“Not until the fire,” Sean interrupted.
“I was getting to that,” Jeff corrected him. “Sean’s right. When we had our first bad fire back in 2000, we found the pressure from the bores was not enough to beat the fire. We lost three buildings. That was two years’ hard work up in smoke.”
“Can I speak now?” Sean asked. Jeff nodded. “You have to understand this was a 1929 Ford Station Wagon. It had a wooden back on it, and it was stored in one of those buildings. Jeff’s grandfather had done no more to it since he’d found it in some old barn, than get it started again. And the fire destroyed the wooden back. We hauled the burnt-out wreck over here with the intention of rebuilding it. In the process Jeff had the brilliant idea of putting a water tank on the back. I don’t think we could have rebuilt the wooden back-part anyway. We kidded ourselves we could, but we just didn’t have the carpentry experience.”
“You speak for yourself,” Jeff interrupted. “I’ve done a lot of renovation on the old house. It’s looking good now. Especially all the work I’ve done on the staircase…and what about the veranda? That took a lot of doing.”
“I’ll grant you that, Jeff,” Sean acknowledged. “But the tanker idea was much better. I know we haven’t had a fire since to test it out, but for keeping all the tanks topped up and watering the vegetable gardens it has proved its worth in gold.”
“What does it actually do?” Kate asked.
They both stared at her thinking it was so obvious, but to her it was not.
Jeff took the lead. “Look, Kate, the bores are holes we have drilled into the underwater aquifers. They’re enough to supply us with drinking water and a low-pressure tap water. We pump it up to large water tanks. That improves the pressure a bit with gravity, but it means we have to keep the tanks topped up. We can’t rely on the meagre rainfall, so we had to cart it from the river. That was very labour intensive and time consuming. Then Sean came up with the idea of using the pump we’d built into the tank on the back of this fire-truck. He fitted a reversal valve to it and now we can drive down to the river, suck up enough water to fill the tank and then hose it back into the water tanks on the station.”
“A job, I might add, that can be done by two,” Sean boasted.
“So you’ve found a use for her after all,” Kate pointed out.
“That’s what I keep telling him,” Sean said, nudging Jeff’s side.
“Ah…but what about the petrol situation?” Kate questioned. “You’ll be going back and forth to the river more often now.”
“That’s no longer a problem since the Cattlemen’s Association agreed to a collective in this region on petrol delivery. Now we have a regular tanker delivery every two months. He sets off from Port Hedland and does the circuit to Newman and back, cutting off on the dirt roads to each cattle station on the way.”
“And I suppose you have a storage tank for that as well?’ Kate said.
Jeff’s face broke out in a broad smile. “We sure do,” he said, glancing at his watch. “Good grief…have you seen what time it is?”
Kate checked hers. “It’s only five-twenty.”
“I promised Marge I would help her with the roast,” he said, taking Kate’s elbow. “I’ll see you later, you old reprobate,” he remarked to Sean.
“You will that.”
Jeff walked Kate back across the road to the clinic and stopped on the boardwalk by the car. “What do you want to do, Kate? Stay here for a while with Martin or come home with me? I can always bring you back later if you want.”
“No, Jeff, Martin’s exhausted me today. He’s nodding off anyway. So if it’s all right I’d rather come with you. I’m dying to meet Marge.”
“She’s going to be busy getting this evening’s meal ready, but I’m sure she can speak to you at the same time. She usually does with everyone else,” Jeff replied, as he opened the car door for Kate.
She decided to sit in the passenger seat this time, “Am I right in thinking Sean is going to be there tonight?”
Jeff started the car, pulled away from the clinic and left the station’s outbuildings, driving in the opposite direction. “Yes, you heard right,” he answered her when he cleared the last building and headed out into the open country.
“That must make for an interesting evening,” she said.
“It’s interesting every night at the homestead. Marge nearly went mad with loneliness when we first arrived on the station, despite my father being around. He had just lost my mother, so he wasn’t much company and I had to spend most of the day doing all the jobs he’d let go. So…being the hardy individual she is, she decided to keep the homestead alive with people all the time. And that includes scruffy layabouts like Sean.”
“I hope he washes his hands before he comes. That’s if he can get all that grease off; and the caked-in dirt under his fingernails.”
Jeff laughed as he increased his speed. “Believe me, Sean will be leaving the shed about now and heading for his chalet and he’ll spend the next hour or so scrubbing himself raw. You won’t recognise him when you see him later.”
Kate was surprised how the departure from civilisation to the wide open space of coarse scrub and the occasional acacia was so abrupt. It was like a film set, with wooden shacks on one side of the road and desert on the other. Then Jeff turned left onto another track that was barely noticeable. There were parts where the sand had blown over the track obliterating it completely, but Jeff seemed to know where he was going. It was an instinctive sense Kate thought until she noticed he was heading for an isolated hill up ahead. From her perspective it was no more than a hump in the middle of a flat plain. It looked as though it had just been dumped there millions of years ago. And then, what looked like scrub from a distance suddenly became an oasis of small trees, too neat to be part of nature.
As the dirt track joined what appeared to be a circular road following the base of the hill, Kate noticed tall chimneys poking their ornate heads above the trees. Then, just as quickly, a large Colonial house appeared in the middle. As Jeff neared the open area in front, Kate could see the house was not unlike the Colonial houses in Broome, all built sometime in the 1800s.
The double-storey dwelling looked identical, right down to the shuttered windows and delicate fretwork on the pillars supporting the corrugated canopy that curved across the eaves to the edge of a deep veranda, shadowing nests of rattan chairs and tables.
Jeff pulled up in front of a wide set of steps and Kate noticed a woman standing at the top. Kate took her for Jeff’s wife Marge. She was everything Kate expected of a woman in the outback; just as everyone described her.
As Kate stepped out of the car and walked towards the steps, Marge walked out of the shadow. Kate guessed she was in her forties; greying light-brown hair, weathered Anglo features, little make-up, country-style blouse and jeans and of all things, cowboy boots.
By now Jeff had retrieved her bag from the boot and was urging Kate forward, and as she climbed the six steps to the boarded veranda, Marge took hold of her arm and led her through the double front doors to what could only be described as a vestibule; it was too big to be a lobby.
“Now then,” she started, in a motherly way. “If you don’t already know, my name is Marge and I know you’re Kate. Don’t look surprised. On the two occasions I had to visit the station today, everyone was talking about Martin’s wife, Kate; so I know more about you than you think.”
Kate let out a snigger. “And for what it’s worth I know all about you too.”
They both laughed as Marge led Kate over to the grand staircase.
“Now, don’t you think I’m being impolite, but I bet all you want to do right now is flop down on a bed. What time did you start this morning?”
“Three-thirty…and you’re right; I’m exhausted.”
“I knew it. Well, I’ve got a dinner to prepare…” She scowled at Jeff returning down the stairs after dropping Kate’s bag off in her room. “That’s when someone butchers the meat. So why don’t you have an hour to yourself.”
“I think I will, Marge, although I would like to freshen up first.”
“I understand. It can get real dirty out there on the station. The bathroom is on your right at the top of the stairs and your room is on the right at the end of the corridor. You can’t miss it. Jeff had the bright idea of putting a slot on the guest room door so that he could put the guest’s name in it.”
“What if you have more than one guest?”
Marge laughed. “That’s not very often out here. But if it does occur, we just let them know the one with his name on the door is more important.”
“I’ll see you later,” Kate said, climbing the stairs.
“Oh…when you come down, just walk through to the lounge here; there’ll be someone about. And if you fall asleep, I’ll give you a shout about six-thirty.”
Kate nodded and continued on up the stairs. There was a long landing either way at the first level and she turned right. She popped her head into the bathroom, expecting if anything that it would be modern, but it was far from that. The bath, basin and toilet looked straight out of a vintage magazine. They were white porcelain, not enamel and they were covered in Victorian-style flowers. She lifted the lid of the toilet. It looked normal enough, but made her wonder where the contents went, and how efficiently, after what Jeff had said about the low water pressure.
Now for her room, she thought. It was only two doors along at what looked to be the corner of the building. There was a small window at the end of the corridor and she checked what it was like at the back of the house. She was looking down on a small courtyard paved with irregular slabs of stone. Over on the far side she could see Jeff’s Land Rover standing in front of a weatherboard building that looked like a garage. On the other side there was a large open patch of earth. It was black, just like ordinary garden earth, which surprised her, and it appeared to be planted out with vegetables like the open ground in front of the church.
She turned and faced her door and there was her name in big capital letters just as Marge had said. She opened the door and her eyes opened wide. It was beautiful – straight out of a period movie: an antique dressing table with a huge mirror that had flowers cut into one corner, a massive mahogany wardrobe, matching chest-of-drawers and a bed that had to be seen to be believed.
“Oh my God,” Kate uttered when she looked round the door and saw the bed.
It was the biggest, fluffiest bed she had ever seen. When Kate walked over to it the mattress came up to her waist. How she was going to climb into it she had no idea and she looked around for some steps. And when she pressed the floral eiderdown cover, her hand sunk all the way to her elbow. She soon realised this was not an inner-spring mattress; it was either stuffed with lamb’s wool or old-fashioned feathers. Then again it could have been straw.
Kate then looked for her bag wondering if she should change for tonight. She could wear the same clothes tomorrow. No one would notice on the plane; especially Chris – he would be too occupied with Martin. As she swung round to see where Jeff had dropped it she noticed it was standing next to a small Victorian en suite in the corner. It was a white cabinet with a basin in the top, a towel rail on the side and hot and cold taps. This surprised her because in the period there would have been no taps, just a bowl and ewer on a shelf behind a door in the front. Out of curiosity she tried the taps and to her further surprise the water was at least warm.
This she just had to ask Marge about. She knew about the generators that supplied electricity to the buildings and the water tanks, but how did they get rid of the waste from the toilet and heat the hot water. Kate finally washed the thin layer of sandy dust from her skin, managed to climb up onto the huge bed and, sinking back into it, she lay there staring up at the ornate ceiling. The day had rushed past quicker than she’d expected, she thought, and then she continued thinking about her journey back to Broome with Martin tomorrow.