The last of the twilight had gone. Not even the skyline trees above the camp were visible and I was becoming quietly concerned that Richard hadn’t arrived. With the coming of the night Sal had become subdued and a little of the old fear took hold again. I told her several times it would take eleven hours from Lismore. I was about to come up with something else, like engine trouble, when we heard the vehicle.

I snatched the camp torch from the table and strode over to the pile of boulders. The rock was so black. Anyone unaware of it would brake too late.

Richard drove into the gorge very cautiously and wouldn’t have hit the boulders.

‘You’ve been rockclimbing!’ That’s how he greeted me. He had his Uncle Henry’s spontaneous sense of humour. It always had a bit of bite to it. I had been poised to relate some scarcely feasible explanation about the rock, but instead burst out laughing myself. Sal laughed too, but I think it was nervous relief. She had her arms around Richie, hugging him so hard that I hoped she would soon let go, or he would know something was wrong.

‘Been a rock fall,’ I said. ‘Unstable bloody stuff it is.’

Richard looked a bit bewildered and focused his attention on the rock pile. ‘You haven’t been able to get out.’

‘It’s my leg. Not strong enough.’

Richard was too intelligent to accept the coincidence of a rock fall crashing squarely on the track, but he seemed to restrain himself from asking direct questions. I think it was because he knew there was a timid and very feminine side to his mother’s make-up. Instead he asked indirectly searching questions and I began to think the pact Sal and I had made was a bit ridiculous. We had decided to say nothing about the attack on the camp. It was so bizarre that any thinking person would question it, even our own son, we’d thought. I believe everyone at some time in their life witnesses an incident or sees something that goes beyond the outer limits of credibility. In the monsoons of 1963 I stood out in heavy rain one day to observe little fish falling out of the cloud. It was near Winton in north-west Queensland. I spoke of it just once and received looks that shut me up for good. In February 1997, it rained fish from a monsoon that had swung as far south as Olary in South Australia. An ABC cameraman captured the scene for the national news. Thirty-four years later I felt free to talk about my experience. I hoped on this occasion it would only be a matter of days before I could relate the real source of the rockfall and not find myself looking into a highly sceptical face.

I helped Richard carry his things to one of the extra tents I had put up and then we all sat down for a drink. Richard was very disappointed when we told him the boys had to be stopped. They had all worked well together in June and more importantly, had loved it. Having driven seven hundred kilometres on his own he was tired and looked it, but as Sal and I talked and he did the listening, I saw him stare into the darkness several times, towards the rockfall. He knew: he knew the excuses were covering something ugly.

Dinner finished, the three of us retired to the tents quite early. Richard looked very tired. The suntan from the June muster had faded and I suspect he had crammed his study to give me this week. We had decided to face the boulder problem in the morning.

The temperature dropped sharply that night. Before midnight I pulled up an extra blanket. With only a little sleep the night before I should have slept like a log, but I lay on my back listening. Sal breathed easily, a slow and relaxed rise and fall of her bosom. Richie was safe and that combined with no more instances of malevolence had resulted in a heavy sleep. I envied her.

The girls nestled in around our feet. Ellie was a very alert dog and as good as any posted sentry. Sometimes she growled. Never loudly, just enough to signal a mischievous possum or the passing of kangaroos and wallabies. I only had to whisper and her tail slapped against my leg.

Slipping in and out of fragile sleep I had no idea of the hour, but I woke to low growls from Ellie. When I whispered there was no response from her and I sat up, moving slowly so as not to disturb Sal. Ellie was shivering. I patted her gently, but it made no difference and the little growls were more like whimpers. I felt for the rifle and lay back again.

Three long howls filled the gorge and sent shivers down my neck and back. It was the dingo. That same dingo from the high plateau and later the stampede. I had an image of a large pale yellow dog, long legged and graceful, standing boldly at the cliff’s edge and staring down at the camp. Although a figment of my imagination, this creature of the Dreamtime seemed to be a spirit dog, left by people who had survived for thousands of years in these ranges, and I pulled up another blanket as pondering on the unknown always invites the cold, more so than the in-coming frost.

I fell into a troubled sleep with nightmares of absurd images. I was a priest standing on a high mountain spur and a young nun stood before me, her eyes askance as they always were when she looked at me. I told her weakness invited trouble and turning the other cheek and walking away ruined all the good intentions of men and women in the world. I told her I would walk with the gun in one hand and the rosary beads she had given me in the other. She said there was no conflict in her world and she would pray for me. Her face was soft and ageless and I wanted her to touch me again on the head, as she used to, but she was gone in the mist and I overstepped, almost falling. I woke with a start and Ellie pounced into my lap. I got up and lit the fire. The dogs went on their sniff-and-smell run. Before the billy boiled I put the sawn-off shotgun in the truck, under the seat. Then I made the tea and woke Sal and Richard.

After breakfast Richard and I got to work on the boulders. We had to roll some of the smaller ones away to get at the three big ones. In the daylight the suggestion of a natural rock fall was absurd. Rock falls occur when part of a cliff or steep rocky slope breaks away. There are several causes, but prolonged and heavy rain would cause ninety percent of them. The boulders and debris from this rock fall had come from a band of rock high up, where grass, bushes and dwarfed trees pointed to a stable composition of soil and rock.

‘Two separate falls,’ Richard commented. ‘The smaller one was aimed at the camp.’

‘I’m glad you said it,’ I responded. ‘Your mother and I felt you and everyone might begin to think we were not just visitors to the Blank Space, but victims of it.’

‘You don’t think we should shift camp?’

‘That might give them encouragement.’

Richard glanced towards the camp kitchen, where his mum was cleaning up. With her floppy outdoor hat on, she looked set for a day among the roses.

‘Mum must have been terrified,’ he said at last.

‘She had a few bad hours. We both did. Fear’s like all other emotions. Its intensity doesn’t last.’

‘Maybe a double murder out here could never be proved, but they would gain nothing, because they couldn’t possibly touch the cattle.’

‘Legal logic,’ I agreed. ‘But it doesn’t apply with men struggling against community rejection. They’re at war with the world. They always bring it on themselves of course, but they never see it that way.’

‘If you really believe that, Mum shouldn’t be here.’

‘She doesn’t think you should.’ I hesitated and ran my eyes along the skyline again. ‘The danger’s past, Richie. They tried us out and it failed. Anyway, try and tell her to go home! She’s as determined as me to save the herd. In the Capertee valley we lost and the taste still lingers.’

The weight of rock is probably more difficult to assess than any other matter. Taking a wild guess, I put the big boulder at a tonne, but it may have been double. We used a chunk of wood as a lever base for the crowbar and to begin with it seemed hopeless. We just couldn’t press enough weight on the crowbar. I got the metre length of pipe I use to extend the truck wheel spanner and it wouldn’t fit over the head of the crowbar. It took half an hour and two blades to hacksaw the head off, but the extended leverage with the pipe worked.

The next boulder had an oblong shape and I snigged it away with the four-wheel drive. The third big one had the shape of a giant marble. We couldn’t lever it and we couldn’t snig it. The only way to shift it was to excavate a depression, going underneath to the point of balance. We managed to move it about a metre and that was enough to squeeze the vehicles through. It only took ten minutes to clean up the rest of the debris.

The scones Sal made in the camp oven were so delicious I suggested to Richard we move the big round boulder another metre in the morning. He had done two-thirds of the work and gave me the ‘go to hell’ look. Yarramin’s nose picked up the scent of the freshly baked scones as well. The yard was at least thirty metres from the fire, but the faint drift of crisp morning air was enough. He whinnied and none of us could resist it. Richard took three over to him and he said they went down so fast he wasn’t sure it was a kind act after all.

After morning tea we left for Claravale, turning the bore off on the way. I drove the truck and Richard and Sal followed in the Brumby ute. The plan was to borrow two horses and while I floated them back to the camp Richard would drive to Mitchell and buy a ute load of hay. Sal planned to buy some groceries.

When we arrived there were about twenty horses in the yards. It was good luck in one respect. But it also suggested Gil may have been about to embark upon a mustering campaign. Under hard mustering conditions horses are changed every day and the release of two good saddle horses might be inconvenient.

Gil and his family were away and it was his cousin, Rowan, who met us on the front verandah. I had met Rowan before. A wiry man not much bigger than me, he looked to be in his late thirties. He told us he was staying for a couple of weeks and had run the horses in to re-handle four or five young ones. He explained he did most of the breaking since Gil had been injured. Gil rode as well as ever, but with a steel plate in his leg it was a simple matter of eliminating risk.

We were yarning away when old Stuart arrived.

‘You want more horses?’ he asked, before we had even shaken hands. I could have hugged him. It broke the ice. More than that, it prompted me to ask Rowan if he would help with the mustering. I explained my cash situation and told him if the muster was drawn-out, running into two or three weeks, I would approach Wesfarmers in Roma. The branch had already agreed to finance my bull purchase for the season and in Albury, Geoff White had authorised the payment of agistment and cartage. It was Wesfarmers Dalgety that saw me through my cash-flow crisis and I will never forget them. The bank’s response had been to bounce a hire-purchase payment, the only cheque ever bounced on me.

Rowan was optimistic the job could be done in a week. He knew the country. In any event he could only give me about a week. He had commitments in the Northern Territory. I felt with his help there would only be stragglers to collect after a week. What further impressed me was his total lack of concern about the rangeland mob. Provided they didn’t shoot at him, he wasn’t interested.

While we were talking Sal made a reverse-charge call to Sydney to stop the boys coming up. She wasn’t long and we all walked over to the yards. The Claravale yards were not just another set of stockyards. They were built in the 1890s and only rails had ever been replaced. In the early days the station covered a bigger area and ran more cattle. Two of the yards had been let go, but the rest had been kept in impeccable order. The same hardwood timber had been used to build the harness shed, the milking bales and the calf lock-up pens. For me it was a bush gallery of the Australian stockman.

Rowan told us to pick the two horses we wanted from the mob. He already had one saddled. I hadn’t noticed it before. It was a leggy pale-skinned gelding with dark, striped patches down one side. He was in a yard on his own and a bit fractious. His neck was wet from sweat. Rowan said he had saddled him not long before we arrived and had then gone over to have a cup of tea.

We all watched while Rowan mounted. The horse ran sideways and lifted its head high, but didn’t show any inclination to buck. Richard opened one of the gates and Rowan took his mount out into the paddock to trot and canter.

I gave Richard one of the bridles and we focused our attention on the mob. They had all been ridden at different times, but just run in from the ranges none looked too quiet. Richard saw Black Cotton and we both agreed on him. The black gelding had been taught to cut. We edged him into a corner and Richard managed to get the reins around the gelding’s neck and slip the bridle on.

I looked carefully through the rest. The big snorty bay was among them. I didn’t think he would be any good for cutting. In fact most of the horses were big, showing a marked infusion of thoroughbred. My eyes eventually fell on the dark bay Tommy had ridden. He still looked sour, but at fourteen and a half hands I thought he had potential for campdrafting. I caught him and led him over to the harness yard.

Richard had already collected the saddles from the truck. He saddled his mount and got on. There were no problems and we didn’t expect any.

Sal had been watching Rowan hack his mount through the timber at the front of the yards. When she made her way back she had to walk through the mob and they all ran to one end of the yard. Horses are very much aware of the different sexes and I suspect none of them had been touched by a woman.

‘We should be getting a contract team to go in and get them,’ she said, watching me saddle up. ‘It’s ridiculous.’

‘No money,’ I said. ‘They cut it off.’

‘Well Rowan’s coming with us on a zebra and I’ve been watching you on that leg. You couldn’t ride a loosely bolted rocking horse on a merry-go-round in kids’ corner.’

‘It’s weak,’ I agreed. ‘Not that bad.’

‘Get Richard to lunge him for a few minutes off Black Cotton.’

I glanced to where I had last seen Richard. He had taken Black Cotton outside for a canter. I waved my hand, in a manner of dismissal. ‘Look at him,’ I said of the horse I’d chosen. ‘He’s nearly asleep. Don’t take any notice of the ears. They’re always back.’

I took the dark bay into the next yard, a big yard about forty metres by twenty. Before mounting, I led him around the yard once and checked the girth. He was very much aware of me, but there was not a sign of playing up. Quiet horse this fella, I thought.

I reached the saddle a bit like an old man would and sat loose, not wanting the horse to feel any tension. We walked down one side of the yard and when I turned him every muscle in that animal’s body went rigid, as though he’d been poked with an electric prodder. I spoke to him quietly and urged him to walk on. The hump in his back grew. A horse thinking about a pigroot or two doesn’t necessarily hump up, but one bent on the real thing transmits a sensation to the rider of being astride a forty-four gallon drum on the crest of a wave.

The bugger caught me in the first move. Ninety-nine times from a hundred a bucking horse’s head will go down accompanied simultaneously by a skyward thrust of the rump. Instead this fella reared high, close to the point of overbalancing, and I was loose in the saddle before he recoiled into the first buck. Coming out of it I still had my feet in the stirrup irons but my bottom was on the edge of the saddle and I knew the best I could hope for was a safe landing. However, this fella intended to pelt me as high as the top rail before gravity took over. I left cleanly. The yard was spinning and I looked for the ground, arms wrapped in. Manure dust filled my mouth and through the fine powder of the same dust floating above, I saw the wild thrashing of hind legs.

There had been a thump on my back before I hit the ground. No pain, just a thump. The horse, still bucking, had moved on. I thought I had escaped injury.

It hit me with such force my mind reeled in confusion. I gasped for air and none would go in and I found myself clawing the ground with one arm. Down my right side there was a feeling of water, as though someone had doused me with a bucket of it. Sal was staring into my face, her lips moving and her hands clutching my shoulders. Slowly her voice came. I had heard her before, but the shock of pain was so consuming, my brain seemed to be locked in trauma.

Gradually I could breathe, then speak. The sudden onslaught of pain gave way to an overwhelming sensation of weakness. Sal and Richard helped me stand and I remember asking them to let me stand alone. Through the confusion I struggled against the consequences, the dark inevitability of shattered plans. Like the day at Echo Hills when I took the scalpel blade through my hand. Deep down in my subconscious there was a voice telling me the injury was bad and I might as well accept it.

There was no blood. The bleeding was all internal. Old Mrs Campbell—Stuart’s wife—was trying to spoon hot sweet tea into me and a towelful of ice cubes appeared from nowhere. They lay me down in the shade and there was a brief conference about an ambulance. Mrs Campbell had been a nurse in her young days and said first aid could do little for haemorrhaging and it might be two hours or more before an ambulance arrived. Also, she was worried that if an ambulance was called they could get lost. The roads were little more than tracks and the few sign posts only indicated towns. There were no facilities for an air ambulance and even if there were, regulations were in force for safety purposes. A patient had to be transferred to a recognised aerodrome.

Mrs Campbell suggested Sal take me to Roma and go straight to a private doctor’s surgery for immediate attention. She volunteered to telephone the surgery. Hands seem to gather around me and I was put into Richie’s ute. Other vehicles were offered, but the Suburu had four-wheel drive and Sal knew the vehicle. She felt she could gain time by taking the Mount Bindango road. The normal route to Roma was a hundred and fifty kilometres as opposed to one hundred and twenty kilometres.

I recall almost nothing at this point, except old Stuart. He stood there ashen faced and I wondered vaguely about the trip myself. But I knew Roma was the only destination. I was bleeding inside, my breathing was fast and the light seemed sharper than it should have been, which was probably the onset of shock. All I remember of the trip was trying to cushion the pain, for the road was so rough. At Roma a doctor examined me and I was transferred to hospital. For Sal and Richard there must have been an awful moment of uncertainty. At the time we didn’t know where most of the cattle were. The cut fences and the tracks gave clues, but for all we knew they could have been feeding along the tops of the Mt Hutton range or at that very moment held up in a rustler’s break.