Author: Dave Sturgis

At lunch, over a big hunk of meat pie, I learned I was to spend the afternoon helping Dick with a project. I hoped the experience would be less confounding than my recent afternoon wrestling truck tires into submission.

I walked to the workshop an hour later, Kelly Dog running circles around me with all the vigor of an escaped convict. Dick, dressed in a singlet, small shorts, and oversize boots, greeted me with that racehorse smile of his.

“I’m yours for the afternoon, Dick. What are we up to?”

The elderly gent’s response carried through the air, entered my ears, and died. The sound waves forwarded by my eardrums were received within my brain the same way a car with a dead battery receives the turn of a key. Nothing, Nada. Zilch. Not even the click of a starter.

“I…ah…didn’t quite catch that, Dick. Come again?”

Dick repeated himself, reveling in my confoundment. Now, a forensic examination of his utterance would’ve revealed that he’d ask me if I was “all finished wrapping your laughing gear around a bit of dog’s eye”. I, alas, hadn’t thought to bring along a professor expert in deciphering Cockney aphorisms wrapped in Ocker brogue, so I was able to offer no more than a blank stare.

The thin man had a chuckle at himself for dishing out slang expressions for eating (‘wrapping your laughing gear around’) and meat pie (‘a Dog’s Eye’) which he knew would be opaque to me. What he didn’t realize was that had he recited the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America I would have struggled to recognize the familiar lines in his dense regional enunciation.

“So yer ‘ere to give a hand, eh?”

“Yes, Dick. I’m with you. What are we up to this afternoon?”

“Gotta fix’ ‘dem bloody panels, mite. Gotta beat ‘em straight and see that the lugs all match up. We’ll git rid of dem what don’t match and slap some new buggas on the ones what need ‘em, right-o?”

“Right-o.” I smiled weakly and stood waiting for directions, as I had absolutely no idea what the old mechanic was talking about.

Dick started to turn away, but noticing that I hadn’t budged, paused to see whether I might register any brain wave activity. Seeing an expression on my face which must have resembled a Cro-Magnon staring at computer code he stepped closer to the piteous Yank and motioned towards the materials yard, lowering his voice near a whisper.

“Ya know what yard panels are, Dive?”

I nodded vigorously. I did know what yard panels were. Yard panels — we’re doing something with yard panels. Yard panels, yay! Thank you, God! Yard panels!

“Well,” he said slowly, “you jus’ go on over there and pull all da bent ones outa there, Dive, an bring ’em ova here. As ya go, if ya see one with da wrong number o’ lugs,” he paused, perhaps wondering whether he needed to confirm that I was able to count, “set ‘em against that wall, eh? Now go on ova an ‘ave a Cap’n Cook.” He offered a sentimental smile and turned back to his work.

I walked over to the pile to have a look (“a Cap’n Cook”), hoping I could make sense of the old gent’s request. These portable panels, soon to become a stockyard, were eight feet across and six feet high. Each had five rails going across, but what I hadn’t noticed earlier were the pieces on the ends. Each panel end had three small round pipe segments welded to it. On one end, two were grouped closely at the top and a single was about a foot off the ground. These were reversed on the other end, in a way where when two panels would meet end to end the single lug would slip between the pair and the panels could be pinned together. As I looked through the stack, I could see several which were missing a lug. I peeled the panels off one by one, starting a new stack on a different tree, taking the aberrant ones to Dick in the workshop.

He’d set up his welding tanks and the air soon flashed with the light of the sun as he affixed new lugs.

When I’d brought in all the several dozen panels which needed repair Dick swung his welding mask to the top of his head and said, “Dive, I’m runnin’ short o’ pipe. May be we’ve a bit o’ three-quarter pipe out back –  you’ll go ‘ave a quick look. If not, I know you’ll find some in da chook ‘ouse. Used to be some oivie growin’ there. Get me ten foot or so, will ya?”

Now, I gathered that the issue involved the pipe he was cutting into sections to create the new lugs. I discerned that ‘da chook ‘ouse’ was the chicken coop – ‘chook’ being one of my favorite Australian-isms. I noticed that he was working with only a small piece of ¾” pipe, so I set out to scavenge more. Finding nothing useful in the salvage yard I grabbed a hacksaw and set out for the chicken coop.

“Chook, choooOK, choooOOOK, choooOOOOOK,” I called as I neared the birdhouse. When I swung open the gate, the white laying hens bustled to the opposite fence, turning their heads quizzically, half mortified, half fascinated by the odd creature who made such sounds. As I entered the pen the birds scurried about in exaggerated consternation. I saw four lengths of pipe crossing overhead. I dragged an old trough into the henhouse to stand upon. As the realization spread among the little chickens that their nightmares of falling skies were about to come true they careened about the small space with apocalyptic fervor.

I closely examined the structure. I was working more carefully now, after several weeks on the job, paying attention to the mechanics of a situation, staying alert to potential dangers. The pipe I originally thought I would cut turned out to be a part of the structure. I laughed as I imagined Charlie hearing a crash and rushing outside to find me standing on the old trough, hacksaw frozen mid-stroke, the chicken coop a deconstructed heap, traumatized pullets scattering like marbles.

As I searched further I discovered an old trellis (formerly covered in “oivie”) stashed above the coop. I hacked a section off and brought it to Dick, who showed me how to use the pipe cutter. I donned a pair of safety goggles and for the next thirty minutes stood amidst a whirlwind of sparks, cutting metal with stone.

I loved the elemental nature of the conflict. I wasn’t accustomed to dealing with things back home more dramatically matched than bread knife against butter. Here, the stone wheel shrieked and threw fluorescing sparks as it ate through the bare metal, heating it to color. The metal exacted its own toll, wearing the wheel down until it had spent to a nub the whirring disc. I replaced the wheel with fresh meat and watched it bite into the metal with a youthful zest. Christ, I thought, without this machine I could take that same bit of stone and work for ages without making a dent in the pipe. By the blessing of technology I flip a switch, and it eats away at superhuman speed.

I’d then take the three-inch sections out to Dick, where he’d combine oxygen and acetylene to generate 3500 degrees of heat, melting the metal, securing it so that not even a full-grown scrub bull could separate the new bond.

It’s incredible, really, the forces that we’ve captured to create our modern world. Forget the atomic bomb – that kind of power is unfathomable, like the distance of a light year or a twenty trillion-dollar debt. How about simply a stone that eats through inches of metal for a snack, or 3500° of heat in a can? That we modern humans take for granted our ability to marshal such forces, even out here in the farthest reaches of human habitation, speaks to the advancements we’ve made since those days when we were alone, in the same scrub, confronting an indifferent natural world with nothing but the endless potential of human ingenuity to counter insatiable need.

I enjoyed having the industrial world become part of my day. In the comfortable lives of non-industrial man we get to know Elmer’s glue and plastic screws and pop top lids. Most of us deal with nothing but the most rounded corners of technology, user-friendly, FDA-approved, designed for use by anyone, anywhere, anytime. Look what happens to many of us when things are made more complicated. Consider the teeth-gnashing Santa generates when he brings an IKEA desk, with its Slots A and Tabs B, or when we moderns are confronted by a plastic seal and no sharp implements at hand. Think of how confounded some of us become before we discover we simply need to push down in order to unscrew the medicine bottle. No; when left to tooth and claw contemporary man more often than not is defeated before even breeching the packaging on our most basic needs.

Imagine if a group of Park Avenue professionals had to cut pipe into pieces, adhere them permanently to steel, use them to construct a fence which would confine the cattle they had to shoot then butcher by hand, all before they could offer that invite to the big Fourth of July BBQ. How would that work out for any of us? We’d be going hungry, that’s how. And sooner rather than later we’d be turning to men and women such as those found on Bullo River Station to save our dehabilitated kiesters. And what plums might we offer as a ‘thank you’ for their life-sustaining acts? Perhaps a sweet tee time at the Club? Hot stock tips? Front row tickets to see The Eagles?

Alongside my existential musings I used the opportunity to ask Dick about himself. When I raised the issue of family he paused, mentioned a woman and a child then looked away. I wanted to question him further, to find out what drives a man to the kind of isolation he’d found for himself for the past fifteen years at Bullo. But with his entire mien intimating at sad circumstance I demurred, not wanting to violate this sanctuary he’d found for himself from exactly these kind of questions.

Australia’s Top End is, for some folks, an isle in the castaway’s archipelago, a refuge for people with a past either they want to forget, or others won’t. In a place where an innocent can get their face broken for pointing a camera the wrong way live people who expect to see their lives reflected nowhere except the bottom of their beer glass. The Northern Territory of Australia has the highest per capita alcohol consumption on earth, a taciturn population of solo nomads calibrating their bearings in dusty and unadorned beer halls.

Uncle Dick did become animated when talking about the mischief he’d gotten into with and–mostly–at the expense of former cronies. His wide mouth split his face like a muppet as he told me of the day he’d welded his buddy’s favorite coffee cup to the beam they were working on, or how he’d once epoxied another mate’s distinctive work boots to the floor in a bathroom stall, turning him by all appearances into a permanent resident of that commode. By the time we wrapped up our task he’d transformed himself before my eyes into a wonderfully likable old man. By allowing him to lead the conversation wherever he wanted a charmingly amiable side revealed itself. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the sun was well up by this point. I’d already discovered that Uncle Dick didn’t like mornings–a distaste he and I shared with a gourmand’s passion.

 

The next day found me greeting the sunrise in Nutwood Paddock, adjacent to Bull Rush and the final contained space before the open and endless bush. Peter, Bundy, and I had headed out with a chainsaw and two axes and the directive to “cut us some fence posts.” We’d brought two vehicles, the Toyota – dubbed the King – and the antique old red flatbed truck. Peter drove us into a stand of Bloodwoods–so named for the viscous red syrup that pours out of them when they’re felled. Peter strode off with the chainsaw, leaving Bundy and I with a moment’s pause before beginning the time-consuming debarking process.

 

With Peter sawing in the near distance, I seized the idle time to satisfy some of my curiosities about my indigenous workmate.

“Say Bundy, you mind if I ask how old you are?” I put him in his mid-thirties.

“I dunno, Dave. Hadn’t really kept count.”

“Really? No idea?”

“Naw. But I’m not dead yet, I know that. Apart from that, the number doesn’t much matter, does it?”

I had no ready answer. “Did you grow up in the bush?”

“Yeah, some of the time. I mostly grew up near Kunnunarra, at Bulla Camp.”

“What’s Bulla Camp? You don’t mean here on the station?”

“Naw, Bulla Camp. It’s the black fella’s camp. It’s away from town. We run it; don’t no whites come into it.”

“What about the police? Don’t they have to do their business?”

“Police stay away from Bulla Camp. We have our own.”

“So you can live in the bush? I mean, survive for a long time without food or water – you know, I mean, like, normal food or water?” I grimaced, wishing I’d have written my questions down beforehand had I known I was gonna sound this stupid.

Bundy didn’t fail to be amused by my fumblings; his one good eye sparkled, and he smiled his signature smile — the wry, knowing smile of a fox who’d been invited into the hen-house.

“Water’s the same in town as out, pretty much. And there’s plenty food to be had around.”

“Right now? Just around us here?” I asked, eager for a demonstration. I caught myself channeling Grape-Nut pitchman Euell Gibbons, famous for asking the question “did you ever eat a pine tree?”

Bundy looked slowly around us. “Naw, nothing much good.”

“Anything at all?” I asked, a Tenderfoot Scout on his first campout.

“Dem berries there. You can eat them at the right time of year. When they’re red.” He nodded towards a shrub in the near distance. I didn’t see any berries, but when we walked closer he pointed out the buds of what would become bush tucker.

My initiation into the mysteries of Aboriginal life paused as Peter make the final cut on a large Bloodwood. It tottered and fell to the ground with an impressive thump. Bundy and I retrieved our axes and joined Peter, who was stepping off a nine-foot section of the trunk, which he then cleanly severed. He then made another cut, right below where the crown of branches sprouted upwards. Bundy and I began whacking at the tree bark with the backs of our axes while Peter set off in search of another suitable victim. For several minutes the only sound in the broad valley was the reverberation of ax head against wood, for a beat or two in tandem, then dissonant with each other.

Though the morning was still cool I soon worked up a full sweat. I removed my shirt, enjoying feeling the crystalline sunlight as it warmed my skin. I worked my way down the first log, denuding about a five-inch-wide strip, sending chunks of moist green bark flying in all directions. The wood underneath glistened a warm vanilla color. When I reached the end, I rolled the log slightly, setting up another portion of its surface to be stripped clean. As I did so, I saw a tennis ball sized glob of beautiful scarlet sap pooling on the ground. The newly cross-cut surface of the tree was streaked with incarnadine tears. I asked Bundy if the material had any bush use.

“Not much. You can put it on cuts and sores, a bit.” I was disappointed at his answer. It was too lovely, this radiant ruby in its pastel world, to fancy it not being a treasure.

By the time I’d stripped the log clean Peter’d sliced up five additional trees, all within 200 yards of where Bundy and I were working. I contemplated the barking to come, then looked at my hands, They were burning with hot spots from my exertions, the soft flesh flushed and damp. Blisters I’d already earned were now floppy tags of dead skin scattered about my palms. I explored with my thumb and found several spots on each hand which promised to soon become blisters themselves.

Bundy looked up from his labors. The older man swung his ax more deliberately, with a slower, more measured rhythm than mine. I was proud of myself for finishing my log before he’d finished his, but I think he approached the job with a clearer realization that we were running a marathon, not a sprint.

When he was through, we walked together to the next felled tree. It had crushed a stout termite mound in its fall. I watched the dumpy gelatinous insects drag their abdomens back into the darkness with what must have been a pace as near as they could muster to panic. The mound in cross section was honeycombed, very much unlike those ants I’d ever known make their digs. Ants in my world carve little pinholes into the earth, as if sewing coarse fabric with a fine thread. These Aussie “white ants” mound dirt above ground in impressive constructions, then carve it with coral-like tunnels which leave paper-thin walls winding between broad channels. Thin as these walls were, they were deceptively sturdy, offering resistance to my touch. The smooth outer surface of the hill was rock hard – as I’d discovered the first time I surrendered to the impulse to kick one over.

The ants, Bundy told me, could actually eat into any material found on a station, other than metal. A truck that had been parked in the same spot for a while would suddenly one day blow a tire, the tread having been penetrated by inquisitive — and presumably regretful — termites.

“So what can you do with something like this?” I asked my new friend, gesturing towards the shattered mound. I was eager to restart my how-to-survive-in-the-outback-like-a-native seminar.

“Dat one too old,” he said, dismissively.

“Why too old? Too old for what?”

“Too old to eat, for sick stomach.”

I looked at the termites scurrying all about. It was easy to imagine that nibbling on those doughy sprinkles would make a belly ache. But, if they were younger, a different result?

“You mean, these termites are too old; it’s important to only eat, what, teenaged termites?”

“No, it’s not the ants you eat. It’s the hill.”

I was quite uncertain at that moment whether things were becoming more or less clear. So it wasn’t necessary to ask individual termites for ID before consuming them, apparently, but the condominium in which they live makes a tasty nosh?

“Bundy, I truly have no idea what you’re telling me.”

“New ant hills. We eat them for sick stomach, diarrhea. Woman eat them when she pregnant. Make you strong.”

“And…what do…anthills…taste like?” asked the flummoxed schoolboy inhabiting my body.

“Taste like chicken,” answered the dark man with a massive smile.

Alrighty, then…class dismissed…

 

I was, at that moment, a poor candidate for operating sharp implements, yet duty beckoned. We set upon two new posts laying amidst the tangle of its trimmed bower. Peter had cut the trunk into fence posts but had also formed a slender log twelve feet long from one of its primary branches. This was to be a new rail, Bundy said, replacing the one recently broken in the round pen during the horse branding. Fifteen minutes later I’d stripped it clean.

The sun by now was an imposing presence overhead. My hands were radiant with the heat of friction, though I didn’t notice the discomfort so much when I was swinging the ax. But as I walked from one log to the next my hands tingled and flushed, as though I’d just pulled them off the surface of a warmed motor.

After three hours a dozen denuded trees lay scattered about the eucalyptus stand. Peter joined us in the debarking after felling the trees. Peter had turned all but one into either eight-foot strainer posts, or twelve-foot rails. One fat tree, however, had been made into a single long post. This tree was thicker than the rest–perhaps twenty inches thick at its base–and only a little less at its top a full ten feet away.

“Christ, Peter! What’s this for?” I asked, “Are we building a wharf somewhere?”

“That’s for the round yard. One of the primary gateposts is about rotten,” Peter answered, “It’s not likely to last much longer.”

“It’ll be great fun wrestling this beast into place,” I murmured to myself.

Before any of our new posts could be set into their new homes we needed to load the logs onto the old red flatbed. Bundy’d been called away by Charlie after lunch to help Dick in the workshop, so Peter and I were left with only our wits and muscles to load the heavy posts. Most we could lift between the two of us and drop it into the King with a solid crash. The posts were two- to three-hundred pounds apiece, making each one a chore to lift and a joy to release to its spot in the truck. The rails were slender and light; these we easily tossed aboard.

We ceased our loading when a careful eye on the rear leaf springs told us our ute was maxed out. Then we’d drive the load to the red truck, which we’d left that morning parked on the main track. With an equal mixture of straining and ingenuity – ok;  perhaps it was ninety-five percent straining and five percent ingenuity — we moved the logs from the back of the pickup onto the flatbed truck. This was strenuous work – a “real physical grunt” in Peter’s words.

He was as easy to work with as ever, with his humor and collegial spirit. “You know,” he said at one point, “we need this laneway we’ll be building in order to do our thing. We have to run the cattle to survive, right? So we have to cut this fence out of the ground in order to stick it back in where we need it. It’s like us against nature, sort of. You know what I mean?” he asked, a thoughtful expression on his face. “It’s like, it’s the right material, but in the wrong place, and we’ve gotta straighten out God’s handiwork.”

It might have been the unexpectedly spiritual nature of the remark, or the unabashed guilelessness emanating from my customarily wry workmate, but I couldn’t resist ribbing him. “Damn Peter, you’re a regular country philosopher – the Will Rogers of the outback.”

“Yeah, the only philosopher trained at Agricultural College – by correspondence, yet!”

“But I do get your point. I’ve been thinking about that myself,” I said, “You don’t do things out here because you want to, or avoid things because you don’t want to do ‘em. Things just need to be done. So you do them. There’s no choice, really. There’s no end to things which need fixing. And there’s no looking at the watch to know when they’ll be finished, no whistle to say ‘okay that’s enough; now you can go home and there’ll be plenty of food in the fridge and the lights will be on. All’s well; your paycheck cleared.’

I continued. “Here, we don’t have dinner unless we shoot a bullock when we need to, and no lights if we don’t know how to keep a generator running.” I was on a roll. “It makes life easier in a way, to be free from choosing what to do, how to spend your time. Simpler, more focused. Do what’s needed, and enjoy the gratification of seeing your handiwork, solving an issue. Don’t do what needs doing, and that Nature you speak of battling will soon reclaim your body and put it to its own needs. Most likely as worm food.”

I brought my sights down from the heavens to see Peter staring at me, a wide smile on his face. “Damn, who’s the bush philosopher now? You didn’t tell me you went to Ag School too!”

By midafternoon we’d stacked two dozen logs on the antique flatbed sitting knee-deep in spinifex grass along the main road. The only posts still laying in the woods were a half dozen which I took to be too heavy for Peter and me to lift by ourselves.

That’s not to say Peter and I didn’t have to lift them by ourselves. This was our job to finish, so we just had to find a way to get it done.  We decided to back the Toyota up to one end of the fatties. Then Peter and I would lift together to stand the post on end. Braced strategically against the dead weight we would tip it as gently as we could on to the back of the ute, then slide it completely aboard. This technique worked well enough until we reached Big Mama, the beefy ten-footer destined to be the new gatepost. When Peter and I tried to lift it on end its massive weight fought us hard. We only managed to raise it to waist height, unable to get underneath and tip it up on one end.

We dropped the monster and reverted to Plan B. We raised the one end to waist height, then, leaving the log braced on Peter’s leg, I dashed to King’s driver seat and carefully reversed the tailgate underneath the raised end. Somehow I managed to do this before my sinewy companion’s femur snapped. By continuing to back slowly the log was lifted, until Peter was able to teeter-totter the beast to bed height, then shimmy and roll the log onto the truck. It was a good feeling; the two of us, physically inferior to the quarter-ton log, bending it to our wishes with an application of ingenuity, persistence, and man-made technology.

And what great fun it was to be sweating – fully, shamelessly, way, way beyond anything Arrid Extra Dry had to say about it. And it occurred to me that this was finally and fully the work I’d come to Australia to do – both at Bullo itself, yes, but in my life generally.

How so? It’s simply this; I’d read at an impressionable age Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, a story which imprinted upon my adolescent mind the idea that hard physical labor is the purest manifestation of integrity. Young architect Howard Roark, the book’s protagonist, refused to compromise his aesthetic principles in the slightest detail, principles based on the idea that the form of a structure must arise only and ever out of its function, that rococo curlicues or faux ornamental columns were violations against the nature of beauty itself. This iconoclastic caliber of stubborn didn’t go over well as he sought commissions straight out of architecture school, so he committed himself to a life of grinding labor rather than compromise his sense of right and wrong. When the world didn’t offer work on his terms, he chose to work in a stone quarry, swinging a pick all day in exchange for the honest if spartan comforts of a laborer’s life. He dedicated himself to working there until he could fund the opportunity to search the world, seeking clients who would resonate with his vision of artistic cohesiveness.

So I had Howard Roark in mind the day I set out looking for my first adult job, nineteen years old, committed to the idea there could be no job too physically demanding to serve as the starting line on my personal quest for an integrated self. Standing on the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and La Brea Avenue in Hollywood, California, I randomly pointed my feet west and began walking through the front door of every gritty commercial enterprise in this neighborhood of auto body shops and arc welders and galvanized plating facilities. Wherever sparks flew or metal clanked a hope arose within me that this might be the place where shards and grit and metal dust would sandpaper the soft edges of my suburban self, grind me down until I might discover what manner of steel formed my own elemental self.

Somewhere in the first midday of my quest I came upon an unassuming asphalt lot stacked to the sky with split firewood.

“This is it!” I thought to myself. “This is the place for me to begin. This looks like hard work. This will be my stone quarry. This will be the place from which I sort out the frauds and the fakers and the compromisers of this world from the doers of deeds, the crystal visionaries, the agents of change rather than guardians of an ossified status quo. I’ll be in the background, sure, but I’ll watch, learn, grow. I won’t be paying the rent selling shabby timeshares in some boiler room operation. Nay, I’ll be sweating a good honest sweat, working with wood — splinters of raw Nature! — and I’ll stack and deliver firewood forty honest hours each week, distributing a thousand points of light, scattered from Malibu to Mt. Baldy, from Pearblossom to Poway. Then, once I’m the best firewood stacker the world has ever known, then…then…Oh hell, I don’t know what then, exactly. That part’s a little fuzzy; I’ll figure it out when I get there. But for now, I wanna be the best damn firewood stacker these folks have ever seen!”

I found the manager and made my best pitch, laid out for him my vision of firewood stacking as portal to personal wholeness.

I fear Rodrigo may have missed some of my key selling points, however; his command of English was not particularly nuanced. “Not is looking helping,” said the slight Latino man with a look equal parts confused and concerned.

Several doors later, I entered a nondescript storefront underneath a Pepsi sign with plain block letters spelling out ‘Studio Grill’. After a brief if earnest conversation with the manager I was hired to repaint the interior walls of the unexpectedly swank restaurant. Within a week the painting job segued into busboy and, several years later, I found myself waiting tables at the blue-nose Mr. Chow in Beverly Hills. One night during dinner service a man offered me a job driving hoi poloi around town in his limousine, which, in turn, several years later led to me looking in my rearview mirror and saying, “Your Highness, we’ve arrived at Van Cleef & Arpels.”

Then one evening I looked in the mirror in my dinky Hollywood apartment and discovered that the man in my reflection could not hold my gaze. His belly was flabby, his ample butt fitted to the contours of cushy car seats. His pallid skin flushed with only a suggestion of vitality within.

I nodded and pursed my lips at the stranger, the perfunctory greeting of two people who won’t get past discussing the weather in their acquaintance. As I confronted the truth that he and I were one it came with the realization that I’d taken my hand off the rudder, that I’d become a passenger in my own life. I was drifting from experience to experience, my amorphous aspirations slowly morphing into even more gossamer dreams, those dreams becoming images on someone else’s screen, some interesting other’s life, someone other than that chubby guy looking back at me from the mirror. Any inner steel I possessed lay hidden behind layers of accumulated lard, an adipose shroud between the man I’d become and the man I’d intended to be.

You might discern at this point in my narrative that I’d never formed a clear picture of what precisely I wanted from life, what exact profession I wanted to pursue. Your sense is correct; I’d always known with what markers I intended to guide my life but never set a precise destination for the journey. I knew how I wanted to do my life’s work – with integrity and commitment and intensity of experience – but I didn’t know what I wanted to do professionally. I wasn’t that kid who knew at the age of four he wanted to be an astronaut, or a fireman. I’d moved through childhood and adolescence from vision to vision, unwilling to confine my ambitions under a single hat. I navigated my way capriciously, steering according to the particular adventure tale or biography or history yarn inflaming my fancy at any given moment.

So I found myself that night earning big money carting about her Royal Rumpness but watching my dreams of doing significant things with a monolithic integrity — worldly, willing, bold – fast becoming celluloid illusions casting their fractured light upon an audience of a single lonely soul.

Within a month I’d booked a ticket to Australia, where I soon met a family friend who knew of a fellow American, a naval aviator from World War II, who owned a cattle ranch in Australia’s remote Northern Territory. He, his Australian wife, and their three daughters ran the place, and invitations for friends to visit had never been refused. So I hoisted my backpack on my shoulder and caught a bus to the Top End.

Now I found myself standing on a log in Nutwood Paddock in the boundless solitude of the Australian outback, knocking bark off with deft blows, wrestling massive logs into submission, focused by obligation, freed by agency, sweaty, fit, my every sense very much alive. It had taken a while, but I’d found my stone quarry.

“It’s a bloody grunt, eh, Dave?” Peter was leaning on a felled pillar, exhausted, grinning.

I smiled to my anatomy’s limit – a proper Peter Clarke smile – and answered, “What, barking in Nutwood? Yeah, it’s a bloody grunt, Peter. It sure as hell is.” I paused as we both gazed upon the scene before us. “And mate, I’ll tell ya what. There’s not a place in this world I’d rather be, or a damned thing I’d rather be doing.”

With the fence finally serviceable we were ready for the second horse muster. It sounded like an easy enough operation as I listened to Charlie and Marlee spell it out. We would fan out along one edge of Rock Hole paddock, aggregate the horses along the opposite fence, then gently walk them along the fenceline to a gate leading into the yards.

With a pale orange stripe across the horizon hinting at the new day I rode with Danielle as we pushed the horses we’d be riding that day into the yard where our saddles waited. The sky above the dawn light dove through lilac into a deep purple, then into the ebbing black of night. Stars remained overhead. At one point, the flowing manes and pert ears of the horses running in front of the Toyota were silhouetted against the lilac, their warm breath a ghostly vapor in the cool dawn air.

The five of us saddled up and walked to Rock Hole. I felt part of a posse, each of us sitting tall in the saddle, our faces hidden by the brims of our hats, our bodies swaying to the easy gait of the horses. The rustle and squeak of leather mixed with the equine exhortations of our mounts as they accommodated their burdens. We entered Rock Hole after about a ten-minute walk, where Charlie offered one last admonition.

“Watch for each other. Don’t let yourself get ahead of the rest or you’re liable to stuff things up.”

We spread ourselves about a hundred feet apart, the fenceline to our backs. I was between Marlee to my left and Peter on my right. We began walking slowly into the scrub. I was eager to see some ’targets’, but a bit anxious as well. The last horse muster I’d played what was certainly a marginal role, but here I was a link in a very short chain, with an integral part to play. I’d gone riding the previous Sunday with Danielle so I was slightly more comfortable on the animal – I had posting down, at least – but I could still be taken off guard by a sudden turn or stop. Though I’d come to appreciate Silibark’s gentle nature I was well aware I was by no stretch a horseman.

Suddenly three tall figures moved in front of me, crossing from right to left. I looked to my right and saw Peter in the near distance. He motioned to the animals, and I indicated with a nod that I’d seen them. I looked to my left. Marlee had seen them, too. She was trotting at them, trying to get them running directly away from us. I tried to follow the three as they flashed between the obscuring trees. Marlee waved to me and I broke into a trot to follow her.

“Where’d they go?” She hissed as I drew close.

“I don’t know. I lost them.”

“There! On the right!” I followed her hand to see the trio. They had turned around and were trotting back past us about fifty yards away.

Marlee broke quickly into a canter. “Stand in your stirrups!” She called out. “It’s easier to maneuver in the scrub that way!” I did as she said as we wove our way through the stunted trees in an effort to cut off the three errant equines.

My heart raced with excitement. I seemed to be more in control in the standing position. Silibark responded more readily and it was easier to duck down to avoid the low branches. I just might be okay, I thought. The three reappeared on our left, heading the wrong direction. Marlee broke quickly to circle in front of them. I smiled as the three turned synchronously. They looked like the trained horses in a Ringling Brothers Circus.

She cried out, which got them running the proper direction. Suddenly a horse appeared behind us, running at full speed out of the scrub. Marlee and I wheeled our horses and tried to track it down. She chased it into the scrub and I followed her with my eyes. It was wonderful to watch her ride. She was an accomplished horsewoman who moved beautifully with her mount.

I cut the angle and followed her back into the scrub. I rode behind her to her right, ready to turn the horse if it came my way. I marveled at her speed making her way through the treacherous woods. All of a sudden something odd happened. I saw her sit upright, rise out of her seat, then re-seat herself back onto her horse, behind the saddle. She immediately scooted back where she belonged and pulled her horse up short. I joined her and saw that she was holding her hand across her chest and grimacing.

“What happened? Are you all right?” I asked.

“Yes, I think so. I’m all right, but just barely. I caught a vine right across the chest,” she started to pull up her shirt to examine the area but thought better of it in my company. “Luckily it broke when it did. Another second and I’d have been sitting on the ground.” Just as quickly as it had happened she brushed it off. “Let’s go get those bloody horses. The mongrels need a bullet, most of them!”

We took off with renewed purpose, but soon found ourselves amidst a scene that looked like rush hour in Bangkok. Horses with and without riders were heading every which way, chaos and confusion being the only unifying element to the scene. It was impossible for me to figure out who was chasing what and which way anything was supposed to be going. I’d find an errant horse and begin pushing it what I assumed to be the proper direction when I’d be crossed by Danielle or Peter or Marlee trying to commandeer their own mob, going in the exact opposite direction. Bundy simply seemed amused, but Peter, who had started the day not feeling well, looked a shade deeper green every time I saw him, Danielle seemed increasingly aggravated, and Marlee increasingly intent. I’d heard Charlie a few times but never actually saw him. As for me, I simply became more and more confounded as we all crisscrossed each other in the woods.

After about thirty minutes of chaos I managed to drive one guy I’d been dogging for ten minutes onto the large flat along what I hoped was the target fenceline. The insides of my calves were rubbed raw from all the breakneck riding, but I was proud of myself – not so much for playing any kind of a significant role but for not getting thrown or proving completely inept. I’d actually done some pretty impressive riding. At one point I was chasing a large red filly when it hurtled down a steep creek bed and up the opposite bank. Without hesitation – thoroughly caught up in the intensity of the affair – I spurred my horse on. He launched himself down the eight-foot drop at full canter. I leaned way back as I’d seen young Jim Craig — the Man from Snowy River – do. I caught myself at the bottom, then leaned forward over the horse’s neck as we surged up the opposite bank. I felt for the moment like a bona fide pro, though I lost the horse I’d been chasing moments later in a patch of rubber plants.

When I emerged onto the meadow I could make out Charlie, Marlee, and Peter trotting behind a mob of perhaps twenty horses as they sauntered along the fenceline. I trotted towards them as Dan emerged from the woods a couple of hundred yards to my right. She approached me with great urgency.

“Slow down! You get that bastard galloping into the mob and they’ll all take off!” she cautioned in a stage whisper. We slowed to a walk as we neared the other riders and my colt joined the larger mob.

Danielle continued her instructions. “We’ll walk them up along the fence. Give us a hand until we get to the corner, then, when Charlie says, swing way wide, then ride ahead to open the gate. Go as fast as you can, then after it’s open go through and about a hundred meters up the fence line on your right so you can slide down and block the rear and close the gate after they’ve gone through. Don’t move or say a word as we approach the gate or you’ll spook the mob. Find a tree to stand behind, if you can. Got it?” I nodded apprehensively. Her words made sense, but there was much at Bullo which seemed absolutely clear in theory but absolutely opaque in practice.

We joined our compadres and walked the jumpy herd slowly up the fence line. Soon we reached the road, at which point Charlie motioned me away. I pealed discreetly off, steered a wide circle, then, full of purpose, pointed Silibark down the road towards the gate into our home paddock for the day. My calves stung terribly; I’d taken Danielle’s admonition to grip primarily with my legs seriously and my jeans had rubbed my soft skin bloody, more gnarly than any road rash or rug burn I’d ever experienced. Gritting my teeth, I spurred Silly through a canter into a full gallop. I hadn’t actually galloped before, but my growing confidence fooled me into thinking I could handle it. For a few moments I was exhilarated, watching the scenery speed by and feeling the animal surge beneath me. I leaned over Silly’s neck and hung on gamely with my screaming calves.

Without warning Silibark veered hard to the left. I was horrified to see a solid Ghost Gum directly in front of us, perhaps fifty feet distant. Silibark was moving at full speed. I reined to the left to avoid the tree, but I’d let my reins go slack; Silibark barely felt the command. It was too close for me to stop. Silibark aimed himself just left of the tree, where a primary branch jutted up at about 45° from the trunk, exactly at head level. As Silibark brushed against the tree I ducked my head to the left in an autonomic feint for survival. I felt my leg brush against the trunk, then felt my ear scratch against the branch as my shoulder slammed heavily into the unyielding wood. Had I not ducked at the last instant the branch would have caught me full in the throat. Were the branch growing at a 90 degree angle from the tree rather than slightly upward there would have been no way to avoid it whatsoever.

In slow-motion I flew from my horse, my feet mercifully not hanging up in the stirrups. “I’m all right!” I said to myself, “I’m all right!” I landed hard on my back, rolled a few times, then sprang to my feet in an act of reflexive optimism. My shoulder was numb, but my legs held, if shaking. I weakly walked towards Silly, who’d pulled up a short distance away and began casually munching grass.

“Here, old fellow.” My voice had a quaver. “We’re not done yet, old boy.”

Damn, I thought, I’m screwing this up. They’ll be coming along any second and I’m standing here, quivering in my boots. I put my foot in the stirrup, intending to swing my other leg over the horses’ back. My support leg turned to a noodle and I stumbled backwards onto my backside. I took a moment to collect myself, then mounted the horse on my second try. I felt nothing in my shoulder. I felt nothing anywhere in my body, sensed nothing clearly except the hollow echo of failure, or, perhaps, the thin veneer of mortality itself.

When we reached my destination I swung my leg off to dismount. Again, my knee gave out and I fell in a heap to the ground. My muscles were Jell-O, my stomach nauseous. I swung the gate open, walked a distance up the intersecting fence line, and waited. I looked in Silibark’s eyes, looking for any sign of malevolence, pity, empathy. I saw nothing. He chomped his bit and rotated his ears, oblivious to the doubts I had about him and the oblivion to which he had nearly consigned me.

As I waited, my shoulder began to grow sore. I pulled my shirt off to examine it. It was red with the imprint of contact. Sections were growing purple, the color of the sky that morning, I thought.

The rest of the operation came off without a hitch. I decided to keep the story of my misadventure to myself. These good people already had enough doubts about my competence; no need to stoke that fire. And, at the end of the day, I’d gotten my assigned task done and remained in one piece for tomorrow’s labors. I’d managed not to break any bones. If I had I would have been onboard the next vehicle out and my outback adventure would’ve been over. As it was, my shoulder was sore for the next several days and ugly for the next several weeks, but its function remained intact.

The same cannot be said for my poor calves. The first thing I noticed the next morning when the generator’s whir jolted me from my sleep was the stickly pain on the inside of my legs. A viscous scab had covered the abrasions that ran the length of both my calves. The scab cracked as I swung my feet onto the floor. I gingerly pulled my shorts on and limped outside with Peter to do the milking. I was surprised to see that he was moving stiffly in a similarly compromised state. The effort of rounding up Pumpkin and Daisy left my wounds wet with blood and lymph.

At the breakfast table Charlie laid out the day’s duties. Peter and I were to join him to begin a project involving water troughs in distant pastures. After breakfast we picked up Bundy and Bill before heading out onto the broad flat of Bull Rush. A metal storage tank stood in a distant corner of the plain, where the tree line edged onto the great flatness. The tank glinted an unnatural metallic color in the landscape. As we neared it I realized it was much larger than I expected, with the capacity to hold several thousand gallons. Nearby, a concrete trough sat full of water. The cows we’d scared upon approach gradually braved their way back to the water trough to resume drinking, lifting their sopping maws frequently to monitor our intentions.

An underground pipe led from the holding tank to the trough, which accounted for its water, but where did the thousands of gallons come from?

“There’s a pipe goes from the main bore to out here,” Charlie stooped to point out the connection where a plastic pipe curved out of the ground to join the metal length running up the side of the tank. Clear water spilled out of its top end. “It’s buried deep at this end, but about halfway to the bore it’s barely covered.” Charlie pointed out the line of bare ground which covered the pipe. “Horses keep kicking holes in it and it’s cracking in the sun. The whole lot is shot to hell. We need to pull it all up, keeping any sections which look okay.” Well down the line a windmill rose above the workshop, marking the main bore. From our vantage point the windmill resembled a lawn ornament. The distance was well over a mile.

We drove together a short distance to where the inadequate depth began. “Two of you start digging at this end. The others come back and start at the other end. Who’ll start here?”

“We will,” said Bundy quickly. As he retrieved a shovel and mattock from the back of the truck I remembered his first rule of station life regarding the boss’s presence. He was quick on his feet, I’ll give him that.

“Right. Dave and Peter will meet you halfway, about where it pops right out of the ground,” Charlie said.

“I reckon you’ll be waiting for a while,” said Bundy, eyeing the stretch of hardpacked dirt.

“Isn’t there a rule about that, Bundy? Something about half the work being done by half the work crew?” I asked, with a grin.

“Actually, it’s the first rule of station life, and I just broke it. Keep your mouth shut when there’s digging to be done.” Everyone laughed, including Charlie.

“So why didn’t you follow your own rule?” I teased.

“It’s early. Besides, Stumpie kept me up all night snoring. Then his dingo started to howling around 4 AM.”

“So you’re not quite yourself, eh?”

“Obviously not,” he said ruefully, jabbing the spade disconsolately into the hardpan earth.

We left them to their task and drove back towards the homestead. At the bore Charlie closed the valve at the head of the two-inch pipe leading to the Nutwood tank. “This time of year, the animals have other places to drink while we fix this, but come August-September this’ll be all they’ve got,” he said.

Using two heavy pipe wrenches he disassembled the plastic joint and pulled the pipe upwards. The first two feet of many broke easily through the earth.

“Most of this is pretty shallow. You should be able to pull it up. But take a shovel anyway. And try not to kink it. Some of it we’ll have to use again.”

“You’ve got some more coming in though, right?” asked Peter.

“Yeah. A truck will be here at the road, probably tomorrow night.”

Charlie left Peter and I to begin our chore. The first twenty feet or so easily unburied itself under the combined pull of the two of us. As soon as the line entered a stand of scrub the task became more difficult. Networks of roots held the layers of earth together above the pipe. While Peter pulled I cleared the roots with the mattock.

Our progress was steady. After two hours several hundred yards of black tubing snaked along the ground in our wake. We emerged from the scrub onto the hard-baked Bull Rush flat, slowing our progress significantly. So it was with considerable relief that we reached a depression which becomes a seasonal swamp during the wet. Here the pipe rose easily from the mire, with a sucking sound and covered in muck. Peter walked into the swamp without taking off his shoes or socks. When I made an obvious suggestion – “why don’t you take your shoes off” – he offered an equally sensible reply — “They’ll dry.”

So I strode into the warm water as well. It felt good on my abraded calves. Peter and I leapfrogged each other, coaxing the reluctant pipe from its murky bed. Though we were both quickly smeared with muck I channeled Peter’s nonchalance to quell my distaste. Hey, you’re a ringer now, I thought. It’ll wash off.

My next discovery was far more difficult to dismiss. I put my hand down to brush my sore calves and noticed they felt slimy. I was thunderstruck to see both large sores writhing with parasites.

“Aaaaaaargh!” I cried, “Leeches!”

My high-stepping sprint from the swamp was a reflex as dependable as that which pulls a finger from a hot stove. There was nothing considered, no deductive faculties whatsoever involved in my dash. It was a flat-out evolutionary flight from a ghastly enemy. It was me versus the leeches, and my battle plan was strictly gut-level stuff. With revulsion I clawed the parasites from my wounds. The fresh layers of exposed skin that came with them were no concern to me. I ripped them from my legs and flung them to the ground. At least a dozen of the vampires met their fate as I plucked and stomped them in a herky-jerky dance of primal Parasitic Agonistis.

Now, I’ve never been particularly squeamish. I’m not a huge fan of needles but I’ll buck up for the stick. I’ve played hockey my whole life. I loved dissecting critters in middle school science class, to the point of carrying interesting portions of frogs or tubeworms around in anticipation of finding just the right time and place for their reappearance. (Being a regrettably dorky lad that opportunity usually involved an admired female, and lunch.) But parasites crawling in my skin? No. Full stop. I’m not available for symbiosis. Any verminous translucent segmented monster which aspires to couple in indiscriminate liaison in the dark alleyways of my corpus is gonna find a ‘No Vacancy’ sign hanging above my doorstep.

At some point I settled my nerves enough to notice Peter. My stout Aussie friend was standing in the water, doing an aquatic version of my performance. He’d clear one leg, start on the other, then with a splash drop the second leg as the bloodsucking congress reconvened on the first.

“Look at ‘em!” he cried, his voice a pitiable mixture of hilarity and revulsion. “The bloody things are coming from a mile around! Look at ‘em!”

I walked to the water’s edge and saw the slimy sanguisuges squirming through the water towards his undefended legs from all directions. He ran from the bog and pulled the fluted bloodsuckers off his legs.

“Bloody hell, Dave! I reckoned you had a few roos loose in the top paddock, mate, ‘til I looked at me own legs! Bloody bastards!”

In the distance I noticed Bundy and Bill. They appeared to be leaning on their shovels, laughing hysterically. It occurred to me for the first time that Bundy’s quick response to Charlie earlier may have had a strategic component, after all.

Peter and I regained our composure by moving to the section of pipe past the swamp. But this was no more than a delaying action. After a short while Peter put his hand on my shoulder, eyed the bog, and confronted the unescapable truth.

“Dave, that pipe’s not gonna pull itself from the water. You ready, mate?”

I’d sooner have whacked myself in the noggin with a hammer than go back in those infested waters but, truly, we had no choice. There was no one we could turn to, no laborer at the local Home Depot or tradesman we could get on the phone to come do this job for us.

We pulled our socks high, grabbed the pipe, and moved into the water. Working like men possessed we drew the plastic out of the muck, splashing madly, not looking at our legs for fear of what we’d see. After several minutes of frantic activity we scurried from the bog, repeated our high-steppin’ purge, our peculiar pluck de deux, and the unpleasant job was behind us.

After another full day of fencing we were feeding ourselves when the discussion turned to a trip into Kunnunarra, Western Australia – at eight hours distant the nearest town to Bullo. Marlee and Charlie were planning on leaving early the next morning. Marlee would shop for supplies while Charlie stepped in for a few days as a flight instructor at the local helicopter pilot school.

“And I need some new riding boots, Marlee,” said Danielle “my old ones have had it.”

“I’ll say,” exclaimed Sara. “Your feet are hanging out of the ones you’ve got. I followed some footprints yesterday. It was a boot heel and four toes and it led right to your room.”

“Maybe I should pick up some more feed. How are we on all the bags? Do we have what we need for the horses? And the cows?”

“We don’t,” said Danielle, “I’ll give you a list after supper.”

“And check the chicken feed as well,” quipped Peter. “I’m hoping to get paid.”

“Dave, anything you want from town?” asked Marlee, ignoring Peter’s impertinence.

I never could have predicted my answer to that question a month earlier. I’d been drinking voluminous quantities of milk and water for two weeks now, and when Mike had come by the other day he brought along a six-pack of his favorite beverage. He’d generously offered me one and the change of pace had been stirring.

“Yes. I’d love a case of Coca-Cola,” I said with a gusto that surprised me. I’d always turned my nose up at the sugary fizzy stuff – and the people who drink it – while smugly sipping on my fruit juice or Perrier water, a true Los Angelino. “Maybe two – how much are they?”

“I think they’re about $1.25 per can.”

Hmmm… More than a day’s wages per case. I reached to my calf and ran my raw hands across the bite I’d received in gator creek the day before.

“Just one, thanks. And a Time magazine if you can find one.”

“You don’t want to read that trash,” interjected Sara.

“I enjoy politics; it’s a decent magazine to get an idea of what’s going on in the world.”

“No, it’s not. It’s rubbish. We used to have a friend who’d worked for them. He said they changed his stories all the time.”

“Well, the editor has the right to shorten an article to make it fit or something,” I speculated.

“No he doesn’t. He doesn’t have the right to change the facts.”

“No, that’s definitely no good. I think Time’s pretty reliable, though. Of course, the editor does have the right to even change the facts, if he wants to for some reason. I mean, theoretically…”

“No, he doesn’t. Nobody has the right to lie,” she said emphatically. I was surprised by the vociferous tone of the woman’s conviction.

“Well, in theory, he does. I mean, he can say red is blue if he wants to. Then his readers can assess his truthfulness.”

“No he can’t. That’s called lying. They shouldn’t be allowed to.”

“Yes, it is lying, but the idea is if someone lies, then he will eventually be exposed in a free speech system, a marketplace of ideas.” This breezy assertion came courtesy of the Communications Law class I’d taken at UCLA not long before departing for Australia.

“Hooey. A person shouldn’t be allowed to lie. Most people have no sense, and they’ll believe it.”

“Right, that’s why it’s the responsibility of citizens in a democracy to expose themselves to a wide range of sources, so they’re not duped.”

“Who’s got time for that? People simply shouldn’t be allowed to lie.”

“Well, it sounds good. But who’s to decide who is lying and who is telling the truth?”

“Nobody has to decide. You just have to look at the truth. When something happens and someone says something else happened, that’s lying. That shouldn’t be allowed.”

“Great, except that we all see things differently. Ask five people at a car crash what happened, and you’ll get five different stories. Perception is subjective.” I was on a roll.

“Maybe so, but four of those people are lying.”

“No, they’re not,” I noticed everyone other than Sara had grown silent, but I persisted. I love these kinds of conversations. “Look, there’s no such thing as objective perception. We’re all locked into our own private viewing booths in this world. What you see and what I see are always different, even if only by a small bit.”

Marlee spoke up to defend her mom’s point of view, “Well, say a bull were to throw you thirty feet in the air, Dave, then walk all over your face. You mean maybe it didn’t happen?”

“Sure it happened. But maybe you think it’s a tragedy, and I sort of enjoyed it. You saw a savage attack while I saw a ride in an amusement park.”

“Yeah, if that’s the case,” said Danielle, “that would be because we are normal and you are crazy.”

“And hearing the nonsense you’re talking,” said Charlie, chewing a mouthful of steak, “I’m starting to wonder if I’d think it was such a tragedy.”

I decided at that point not to press the subjective truth issue any further.

“Okay. Let’s just say there is some sort of objective truth. You would like a group of people deciding what that is and what it isn’t?”

“Sure. The truth’s obvious,” said Sara.

“But making those sorts of decisions is called censorship. That’s what they do in communist countries.”

This remark hit close to Charlie’s bone. “No,” he said, “you’re the communist. That’s what they do in Russia. They lie to the people. And that’s what you’re saying we should allow people to do.”

I decided at that point to back off the communism comparatives.

“So what would you do to the people who these censors decided were lying?”

“Shoot ‘em!” said Peter, as the others chuckled in agreement.

Though I recognized that Peter’s remedy carried his customary comic shock value I was also beginning to see that there was little time in this lifestyle for the conceptual fripperies of the salon. Black and white structures of right and wrong have sufficient complexity within when the issues at hand are so often matters of life and death. Obtuse abstractions are a luxury of the air-conditioned classes.

I decided at that point to scratch political theory off the list of conversation topics. I’d had plenty of that gamesmanship at college, anyway. What was being offered me at Bullo was a strong dose of the real world.

 

Before sunrise the next day Charlie and Marlee loaded Charlie’s personal Jeep with three spare tires, a large toolbox, an ’eskie’ full of food, and ten gallons of water. A two-way radio was mounted inside the cab. Around five am they said their goodbyes and departed.

Peter and I followed in the Toyota. The station’s grader had been left just past the river several weeks ago, and Peter was to bring the earth mover back to the homestead for a tune-up.

The ride out reminded me of the enjoyment I’d experienced on the day I arrived. We whizzed through the green and orange landscape, past the wary cows, past the glistening stands of Ghost gums and voluptuous Baobabs. Our progress halted when we reached the river. Charlie got out and waded into the middle, a grimace overtaking his face.

“River looks high,” Peter explained. “The Jeep is a petrol engine; it bogs more easily in high water than a diesel.” As he spoke, Charlie approached our car.

“You go across first. I’m not sure we’ll make it. If not, you’ll have to pull us out. We have a chain?”

Peter’d put one in the truck that morning in case we needed it with the grader.

“Good. Have a go, then.”

Peter put the Toyota in low four-wheel-drive and entered the Bullo. The water soon covered the side fenders and seeped into the cab. Steam rose from the hot engine. After we were across Charlie crept into our wake. His engine started to sputter as he reached midstream. Charlie gunned it and just managed to emerge on the opposite bank when the engine died.

 

I remember as a child in Michigan leaving one June for a drive to grandmother’s house in Georgia. For a kid, the long journey on the featureless interstate was already an obstacle to overcome before the gratification of arriving. On this particular trip, however, we weren’t fifty miles away from home when the engine in Dad’s Lincoln Continental suddenly died. The gasoline Pop had filled his tank with had been contaminated with water.

I remember sitting by the side of the road for what seemed like a lifetime before being towed to a country gas station. There I idled restlessly among the fumes and greasy clutter for another lifetime before we were finally again underway.

Ever since that trip I’ve been one to become aggravated by piddling delays during a much anticipated journey. I fuss and moan at the McDonald’s stops and grocery stops and sidetrips to ‘The Largest Hand Dug Pit in the World!’. If the destination is an exciting place I want to be on the road, seeing those yellow lines flashing by, eating Screaming Yellow Zonkers at 90 mph. That’s the way I’m built. I don’t even like to stop for gas; mechanical pit stops find me pacing around like a chicken looking for a place to lay an egg.

So when Charlie’s car died I experienced a similar feeling. Oh Christ, I thought, remaining in the truck. Now we’re going to be here the whole damn day, tinkering and puttering, while I’m sitting in the sun watching my skin wrinkle.

Meanwhile, Charlie’d retrieved his toolbox from the Jeep and crawled beneath the car, using an old blanket to lay upon. He didn’t seem the least bit disturbed. Marlee and Peter were examining the engine, sharing a laugh.

I bet we’ll have to drive all the way back for some friggin’ tool or obscure thingamajig, I muttered to myself. Maybe these damn flies will just pick us up and drop us off back at the house. Or maybe if we’re really lucky the heat will just kill us first.  I skulked around the periphery, watching dubiously as Charlie removed several substantial pieces of the engine, fiddled with them, then replaced them. He turned over the engine and it caught immediately.

The whole operation had taken barely longer than it takes to fill a tank with gasoline at the local Chevron.

We reached the grader a short while later and as I watched Charlie and Marlee drive into the distance I got a stronger sense of the worth of the big man then I had yet felt. I’d seen him around the workshop and in the yards moving authoritatively and tackling jobs with great assurance. But there it was safer. One had things to fall back upon: other people, a shed full of tools, the radio telephone as last recourse. Out here in the bush, a job needed to be done quickly, with limited tools, at the risk of great inconvenience – or worse – in case of failure.

And he’d approached the job of restarting the engine without kicking the ground or cursing his luck. He’d simply diagnosed the problem, had prepared himself before hand with the tools he’d need. There was such a competence to that, a self-sufficiency quite foreign in my specialized world of stockbrokers who can shuffle billions of dollars but can’t change a light bulb, or hotshots in Ferraris who wouldn’t be able to add antifreeze to their quarter million dollar vehicles no matter how sharply their snippy trophy wives might taunt.

I considered myself, driving around in a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow chauffeuring a Saudi princess between Rodeo Drive jewelry stores. As she’d shop I would lean on the bumper, reek of nonchalant superiority as hayseeds on vacation from Nebraska snapped photos, feeling proud of myself for, what exactly? Borrowing another person’s success as wallpapering over my barely-better-than-minimum wage reality? Yet when left to my own capabilities I’d nearly melted down a $60,000 limousine out of sheer ineptitude. Yeah, we city folk, we’re all quite something, aren’t we – quite impressed with our cosmopolitan sheen – so long as we’re in our own lane. But behind the glare of our shiny objects we sophisticates are screwed if the smallest thing goes awry and we can’t get through to our mechanic, or gardener, or the Roto-Rooter man.

I remember being in traffic one afternoon behind two anarchists with purple mohawks. They’d filled their extended adolescence by spray-painting an old junker with as many offensive symbols as they could conjure – vulgar graffiti, swastikas, the middle finger. “We don’t need you!” they were symbolically screaming, “We don’t care about you or your system!  To Hell with your material world!”

Then their proletarian hero bucket-of-bolts crapped out. The punks hopped out and perfunctorily raised the hood, cast an empty glance at the steam rising from within, then desperately looked around for some possibility of aid. They walked towards my car. Suddenly, their message to the world changed dramatically.

“Can you help us, buddy?” they’d implored. “We need a push,” they’d pleaded. “How much is a tow truck?” they’d wondered. “Piece of shit!” they’d moaned. “I don’t see a phone!” they’d kvetched. The antiestablishment warriors had been conquered by a ten dollar radiator hose.

As I watched the long line of dust settle behind the Henderson’s Jeep disappearing towards the horizon it occurred to me that Charlie, and all the people here at Bullo, inhabited a world precisely consonant with their ability to live in that world. There was no time or call for artifice, unnecessary adornments, distracting veneer. The demands of their world filled their schedule entirely, given that they were responsible to handle those demands themselves, in all their depth and variety. By absolute necessity they were masters of all they needed to make their systems run. As they went about their day there could be no voids to fall helplessly into, for there were no safety nets. There could exist no obstacles to expose them as frauds, pretenders, poseurs, only opportunities to learn more, do more, overcome more. Their excellence was manifest in their actions, not their stuff. And humility was imposed by the enormity of the stakes facing them each morning when they rose to face the day.

The synchronicity of honest voice with capable action is what we refer to as integrity. There was a wholeness of vision, a unified dedication to purpose and an unsentimental judgment about need versus want which radiated from these good people, and this bare-bones place. Bullo River was soaked in integrity, in the most meaningful sense of the term. The folks here had plenty of junkers, yet there wasn’t an offensive symbol to be found on any of them. Nor did any of these good people have purple hair.

That fact went way beyond mere aesthetic choice, that urban obsession least among concerns in the order of things at Bullo River Station.

 

By now I’d been involved in refurbishing several miles of fencing. I found great satisfaction in looking upon the long, straight lines, in the same way a contractor must take pride when passing a building he’d built. The lines of pickets with their taut wires and fresh wooden strainer posts spoke of hours of effort, fulfilled. As Peter and I drove one day to our worksite I mentioned my satisfaction to him.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s nice. Makes you feel like you haven’t been wasting your life drinking piss and wrecking cars hitting stray livestock on dark roads.”

“That’s what you used to do, is it?”

“Aw, I’ve done my share. Of drinking, anyway. Hadn’t started wrecking cars – yet,” he smiled mischievously, “guess I haven’t found the right cow yet. But yeah, that’s what most of me mates are getting up to back home.”

I’d found a similar self-destructive purposelessness among high-school buddies on a return visit to my own hometown.

“I’m a college boy, though. Half of them dropped out of school at fifteen,” said Peter, this son of a professor.

I’d been astounded when I heard the dropout rate for Australian youth – about 55%; similar to the rate in the inner cities of Detroit or Chicago.

“Why is that, do you suppose?”

“Bloody wankers, most of ’em!” he said as if his buddies could hear the needling. “No, really, I reckon most of them feel like if they stay in school they’re bludging, instead of getting a job and paying for their own piss.”

“Yeah, but what kind of work can anyone get at fifteen, anyway?”

“Aw, plenty. Pick a trade. Start as an apprentice. Join the union. Go on strike. You know; work.”

“You said it there. Plenty of strikes in this country. While I was in Canberra, the garbage men went on strike. You know what they wanted?”

“Air fresheners?”

“The right to say when it’s too hot to work. And after two weeks they got it, too. Including back pay for the time they were out on strike!”

“Let’s try that with Sara; it’s gobs hotter here than in Canberra! Maybe Stumpie can make us some signs!”

“Well now’s our chance, Pete. If we wait to break the news until Charlie returns I’ve got a feeling we’ll find ourselves hanging on a hook in the abattoir.”

“All-you-can-eat Jackeroo steaks! Woohoo!”

 

That night, the radio phone rang just after nine o’clock. Danielle, Peter, Sara, and I were watching the latest goofy movie brought by the mail plane. It was later than usual for a call. Sara looked worried as she went to answer the phone. She came back with a look that caused Danielle to hop up and turn the TV off.

“What’s the matter, mummy?” She asked anxiously.

“It’s Charlie. He crashed a chopper today.”

“Oh my God! Is he okay?!”

“I don’t know; Marlee’s at the hospital with him. Slingsby called. He’s going to the hospital. He said he’ll call us back.”

It’s hard to describe the feelings bouncing around that remote home for the next thirty minutes. No one spoke much; there were no answers to any of the questions racing through our heads. How could Charlie crash? He’s one of the best chopper pilots in the Top End. Hell, he’s practically a legend. Is he all right? What if he’s not; then what happens to the season? What happens to this family? I kept conjuring in my mind the image of him driving off the day before – level, competent, in control. What could’ve gone wrong?

“He’s gone down before,” Danielle said. “A couple of times he put it down in an emergency when he heard engine trouble developing.” I’d seen his ability to discern potential problems, to hear a single violin out of tune in the mechanical symphony of combustion. What could’ve happened?

That particular question had to wait, but the important issue was answered by the next phone call. Charlie was okay. He’d walked away, though the chopper was a write-off. He’d been with a student, who suffered minor injuries. They’d been practicing something called auto-rotations, we learned, when something had gone very wrong.

Being Sunday, and a rare day off, the time went by slowly as we waited for Marlee and Charlie’s return. Peter and I went fishing with Stumpie but had no luck. Darkness came and we shared a quiet meal at the house, joined by Bundy, Bill, Stumpie, and Dick, which was unusual. We were drawing together in the way people tend to in a crisis.

Finally, at about 9 o’clock – about two hours later than expected – the two-way radio in the office crackled.

“Mummy, mummy, mummy. Are you there, mummy?” It was Marlee’s voice. She sounded happy.

“Yes,” Sara answered with relief, “where are you?”

“We’re at six mile. See you in a few minutes.”

Ten minutes later headlights appeared alongside the airstrip. The Jeep drew up to the garden gate, entered, and parked alongside the garage. The back was heavily laden with bags and boxes.

“Well, well,” said Sara, “look who’s returned. And in one piece, yet.” She gave Charlie a big hug while he grinned bashfully.

“I know,” threw in Marlee, joining the hug, “what a big fool, huh?”

“So what happened?” Danielle asked breathlessly, blurting out the question on everyone’s mind.

“I stuffed up,” said the big man with as close to embarrassment as I’d yet seen.

“Too much machine for you, eh?” jabbed Peter gently.

“Guess so,” Charlie pursed his lips.

“So what’s an auto-rotation,” I asked.

“Slow down,” said Marlee. “Let the big drongo breathe.”

“Right,” Charlie said. “Let’s get this stuff unloaded and I’ll tell you all about it.”

After the bags and boxes had been unloaded and taken to the storeroom – including, happily, my case of Coca-Cola – Charlie told us his tale of woe.

“It was late. We’ve been up most of the day. Maybe I was pushing it too hard. Anyway, I wanted to show this bloke one 360° auto-rotation because we were going to be doing those the next day.”

“And a 360° auto-rotation is…what, exactly?” I asked.

“It’s a maneuver, an escape, you use if the engine cuts out on you and the only place you can put it down happens to be directly beneath you. You essentially spiral down to the ground.”

“What, with the engine off?” I asked incredulously.

“Yeah. It’s the only way to practice auto-rotations.”

“You mean the propeller is not turning?”

“No, it’s turning. The force of the air spins it as you fall.”

“Jesus Christ! This is something you do on purpose? Drop from the sky like a stone? You’ve done it before?”

“Hundreds of times.”

“A 360° auto is the hardest maneuver you can do in a chopper,” Marlee added.

“So what happened?” urged Danielle.

“I don’t know. I’ve only felt that feeling once before. It’s like falling in a vacuum. No air rushing up to meet you. I checked my instruments and saw we were going down way too fast. The attitude of the props was right. I don’t know. It was like there was no air.”

“How high were you?” asked Peter. His question had none of the whiff of ganja use it may have had back in LA.

“About 500 feet. I wanted to give us an extra bit of room. It has been a while since I’ve done one. A 360° anyway.”

That sensibility to add extra room in case of trouble probably saved Charlie’s life.

“So you were just losing it. Did you hit hard?” I asked.

“Yeah, it was a good bump. We landed hard on the skids. I thought just before we hit I could save it, but the guy with me pulled up his lever. I don’t know if I could have, but as soon as he did that we were buggered for sure.”

“So after we hit, we bounced pretty hard. We were still going a bit forward, one of the skids dug in and we flipped over onto our right side.”

“I hopped out and gave Gary a hand. We walked to a nearby house and called Slingsby.”

“Neither of you were hurt?”

“Not much. Gary was a bit shaken up. I thought perhaps he’d broken a collarbone.”

Marlee jumped in at this point. “Charlie, you missed the worst part. When they hit,” she said, turning to us, “the blade came down and cut the top of the bubble off,” Charlie’s wife said, hugging him.

“True. About this far.” Charlie held his hands six inches apart. He laughed and glanced at his worried wife.

“Damn you Charlie! You better be careful,” scolded a blanched Sara. “We can’t afford to lose you!”

Sara’s words chilled the room. The thought of losing Charlie was inconceivable. He was the field marshal which kept Bullo on the move. The girls, for all their toughness and deep knowledge in certain areas, didn’t have the benefit of being raised by inheritors of generations of rural life. Sara was a city girl until adulthood, and ex-Army officer Charles Henderson moved forward more on iron will than indigenous understandings. Danielle and Marlee are first-generation station owners, whereas Charlie Ahlers was at least the fourth generation of his family to live off the land. There are things in any holistic lifestyle which must be imbibed osmotically as much as learned via words and practice, and Charlie had access to such knowledge from the cradle.

We eventually learned that a critical cable had failed on the chopper, but that was merely academic. Sara’s fears expressed a poignancy that lingered with all of us as the house darkened, and we drifted off to sleep.

 

One last stretch of fence required repair before we could turn our efforts to the other tasks which needed completion before the muster. Many of the horses we had earlier released back into Bull Rush paddock had found their way into Rock Hole. Rock Hole was a paddock of perhaps one hundred acres, most of which was exposed shelf rock. This made the fencing tough, for the ground was littered with the rubble of eons of exposure. It was also thick with shallow rooted scrub trees.

Peter, Bundy, and I bounced our way along its eastern fence early one morning. The existing fencing was a parody of a fence, really. It hung in three slack wires, it’s strainer posts rotten and pickets spaced far apart, rather than slammed into the rocky ground where proper architecture required. Our mandate, given by Charlie the night before, was to make a functional fence of it. That meant, of course, bothering to put the pickets where they needed to be, rather than where convenience allowed.

It was a difficult and frustrating morning. The rocky earth rebuffed most of our efforts; often we had to move the picket a foot this way or that four times before finding a spot it could be sunk home. Half a dozen times in the first hundred yards we had to resort to plan B – hanging a large rock from the inadequately deep picket in order to hold it in place. The going was slow, and by noon we covered only a quarter-mile.

“Knockoff time,” Peter called to me as we tied up our new fourth wire. “Let’s have some lunch.” I climbed onboard the truck with Bundy and Peter and drove to a creek crossing a few minutes away.

It was a surprise to discover. From fifty yards away the creek was hidden in its gulch and to the uninitiated eye the land looked flat and dry. But the telltale vegetation at the edge of the creek created a beautiful glade, cool and welcoming.

Peter collected firewood and soon had the water heating for tea. A teapot Down Under is known as a ’billy’, from the tin cans emptied of ‘billy beef’ – the boiled meat carried along on early Outback expeditions. (A competing theory suggests the name comes from the Aboriginal word for water – billi.) Bush poet Banjo Patterson’s poem Waltzing Matilda, the de facto national song of Australia, speaks of a traveler who “sang and he watched and he waited ‘til his billy boiled”, which is exactly what this traveler found himself doing at that moment, humming Waltzing Matilda and anticipating a nice cup of billy tea.

I sat in the middle of the shaded creek to eat my roast beef sandwich, watching minnows nibble my leg hairs. I spent the entire time laughing, as Peter and Bundy worked to outdo each other in casting aspersions upon the others’ handiwork, looks, and general manliness.

This was our lunch spot for the next five days as we made our way around the paddock, rejuvenating the fence where possible, reconstructing it where necessary. The exertions would begin when we arrived in Rock Hole at sunrise and our stiff muscles would loosen up as the day heated and the blood began flowing.

The difficult and tedious work was made quite bearable, however, by the promise of roast beef and billy tea eaten while resting in that lovely, cool, creek come noontime. For those pleasant interludes I surely felt a jolly swagman.

After lunch, I joined Charlie in the workshop. I’d mentioned that I rode a motorcycle back home, so he had me bring the station bike in and give it a going over. It had been adapted for its agricultural purpose with a black tubular frame to protect the handlebars, brake pedal, and shift lever from branches and termite mounds. A plastic milk crate was mounted on the luggage rack over the rear tire.

I slipped into mechanic mode and set upon the machine. It didn’t take long before I was finished with the tune-up—not because I was efficient, but because all I knew how to do was remove the spark plug and gap it. I’d told Charlie I knew how to ride motorcycles — I hadn’t claimed I knew how to service them. For him, the two went hand-in-hand. For me, repairing my daily ride was as improbable as my whipping out a socket set and giving the Qantas 747 a going-over before flying back to the States. I leave that kinda stuff to professionals.

Charlie could have serviced the jet had he needed to. In my picture-book understanding of agricultural life farmers were always seen with a pig under one arm and a bushel of corn under the other. Never mind that pigs weigh upwards of seven hundred pounds and corn is found in bushels nowhere except the suburban supermarket – the more accurate depiction of anyone in the agricultural life would be with a wrench in hand and grease-stained clothing. Machinery is the muscle and bone of rural life. Founder at tasks mechanical and all the cows and pigs or acres of fertile soil you might want will do you no good. Trucks and tractors and dozers are extensions of the human component in country living, the tools which bring order to the wild natural world. Remove those mighty tools, let the engines of ag life seize up and fail, and commercial agriculture itself dies in the silence.

During my time at Bullo, in addition to the constant maintenance of the prosaic station machines I saw Charlie pull the clutch from a gigantic D8 bulldozer, and service the rotor bearings in a Bell helicopter. I never saw him consult an instruction manual of any kind (“Read the instructions when all else fails,” he told me once). His understanding of the logic of machinery was complete. He could read the internal needs of inert objects as expertly as he read the intentions in the eyes of an ornery bull, or stroppy horse. Bringing metal and diesel to life simply made sense to him, and I came to see that our success or failure rode very much on those understandings.

Eager to make myself dimly useful I searched for other things to check after the spark plug was finished. I checked the water in the battery. It was fine. I checked the oil—it was full. I checked the spark plug again. I’d screwed it in properly. Then I thought of a duty I’d mastered as a child.

“Charlie,” he was bent over a disassembled engine. “Where do we keep the chrome cleaner?”

The big man popped straight up. “The what?!”

“The chrome cleaner. I thought I’d give the rims a shine. They’re awfully dirty.” They were very dirty.

“Have you set the timing?”

“Ah, no.” I hadn’t even realized the bike had a clock.

“Have you checked the points?”

A Bob Seger song came to mind. “Checked the what?”

“I didn’t hear you fire it up, you couldn’t have set the carburetor.”

“You are right about that.”

“Can you do those things?”

“Well, I do know how to fire it up.”

He arched his eyebrows. “How do you keep your bike running back home?”

“Um, I put gas in it and go, so long as I can find my keys. Honda of Hollywood is just around the corner if something seems wrong. They’re pretty good.”

“But that you have to pay for,” he said, shaking his head. “When I was your age I was building race cars with my mates.”

“Oh yeah? Well, when I was my age I poured gasoline into the fuel-injected carburetor of a limousine to prime it, after running out of gas, and nearly burned the car to the ground.”

He laughed more in disbelief than derision. “Okay, Dave. Let’s give you something away from petrol.” He glanced around the workshop. “Have you ever changed a tire?”

This I had done often.  I was delighted to be offered a job that required nothing more than muscle.

“Truck tires?”

That I’d never done before. But they’re like—what; bigger? Shouldn’t be a problem.

“These have split rims.”

Oh. I don’t like the sound of that.

He rolled two great tires into the center of the workshop. “Split rims are tricky. You’ve got to be careful putting them together or they’ll blow up in your face when you inflate them. If one of those rims isn’t seated properly it would take your head right off. These tires have innertubes; the tubes have holes in them. Pull them off these wheels, find the holes, patch them, and put them back on those rims.” He motioned towards two large metal wheels leaning against the wall.

After Charlie showed me the basics of the matter, I began a Sisyphean struggle with the rubber and metal. Back home tires are separated from their wheels on a nifty pneumatic gizmo which breaks the bead, then leverages the rubber away from its industrial-strength grip on the metal rims. Here there was no pneumatic save, just peripatetic Dave, and a couple of prybars.

I struggled to extract the innertubes for the next hour, banging on the rubber to break the bead, jumping on them when that didn’t work, using short crowbars to draw the thick rubber over the metal. Anyone who has tried to put a queen-sized fitted sheet on a king mattress may appreciate my frustration that afternoon. I would struggle mightily to seal one edge, then move to the next, only to see the first pop back off the rim.

Modern evolutionary theorists speculate evolution happens, not in gradual small increments, but in occasional spurts of accelerated change, followed by long periods of stagnation. This paradigm of Punctuated Equilibrium describes well my struggle with those tires. I’d sweat and pound for endless minutes with no measurable advancement when alas, the heavens would part, and the bead would break or the rim clear. I would go on to the next step, twist and swear for a fruitless stretch before the cosmic balance would again shift, sliding me suddenly past this next obstacle.

Charlie kept quiet and allowed me to work it out by myself. When I finally stood, drained but triumphant, holding both tubes, he walked me through the patching process. As we were applying the rubber cement, Dick walked into the workshop. He overheard Charlie telling me drying time was critical for proper adhesion.

“I smoke a cig, reckon that’s about the proper time,” he said affably in his garbled Okker accent. He then extracted with bony fingers a cigarette from the pocket of his loose shirt, as if his suggestion sparked a notion of how he might be helpful.

His morning orneriness had worn off. He was a changed man, offering pleasant asides as he moved about the workshop. He was still working on the large metal structure he’d been busy with the past several days.

“What is that, Dick?” I asked, taking a break from reassembling the truck tires.

“It’s a portable gantry. If the dozer or grader ever broke down in the field we’d be able to roll this over and pull the engine without having to tow the great thing back home. Not easy to tow a D8, mate.”

“Sounds useful. Was it your idea?”

“No, Charlie’s. He come up with the design. A good ‘un, this. The whole bloody operation could be buggered for days without it if we ever needed it.”

 

When I finally had the tires repaired and reassembled I let Charlie know.

“Alrighty. When Dick turns the power on at 5 o’clock we’ll inflate the tires and see how you did,” he said with a big smile.

Given that these were the first split-rim tires I’d ever serviced I was uncertain I’d be around to see 5:15.

He sent me to do some organizing around the workshop. As I tackled the jumble of cast-off pipes and metal and household machinery I was intrigued to find everything made more sense than initial observation indicated. All the corrugated tin was in one place, old plumbing supplies in another, square tubing separate again. Junkyards to city folk are wastelands; the grubby detritus of an auto repair shop or the industrial lot on the corner considered a neighborhood blight. It was fun to discover a logic to the chaos; this oil spot is the site of the oil changes, that stack of twisted metal is a treasure trove of salvageable parts one goes to at specific times for specific things. Somehow, discovering this made everything less of an eyesore.

With a whir and a catch, the power started back up as the evening ripened. I returned to the workshop to test out the quality of my earlier labor on the tires. As I unrolled the compressor hose one image kept reappearing in my mind; that of a dummy being blown sky high by the explosion of an improperly assembled split rim truck tire. It was a National Safety Board film I’d seen aired on a 60 Minutes story about the hazards of split rim tires. The explosion was equivalent to a stick of dynamite, I seemed to remember them saying.

With great trepidation I connected the valve onto the valve stem and, after Charlie gave it a long look over, began inflating the first tire. As I did so, Peter drove up in the pickup. He’d gone out with Bundy and Bill to do some fencing, and the three of them began unloading gear.

Suddenly, the tire made a popping noise. I’d been squatting alongside of it, extending my arm to stay as far away as possible. (Why lose my head when I could only lose an arm, I’d figured). When the tire popped I sprang backwards like a startled frog. Peter, Charlie, Dick, Bundy, and Bill all stopped what they were doing and stared at me. The tire sat innocuously in the same spot it had been.

“Christ! I thought that was the end,” I exclaimed.

“That was just the bead catching,” Charlie explained.

“I thought he saw a King Brown or something,” said Bill, talking to his taller friend.

“If she goes, she goes,” said Peter, “no time to get away. Take your head clean off.” He seemed to enjoy sharing that fact.

“Well, that’s the first rule of station life.” Everyone looked towards Bundy. “Respect your tools, and they’ll respect you,” said the new man in a soupy drawl. He was lighter skinned than his mate, with striking pale-blue eyes.

Peter hooted at the improbable remark. “That’s right, the first rule of station life. And don’t forget, your hat’s your most important tool.” He said, handing me my own, which had flown off my head in my scramble.

“Yup. That’s the first rule of station life. Respect your hat, and it’ll respect you,” said Bundy, as if repeating himself. A wide smile crossed his friendly face. I wanted to point out the contradiction in having two first rules but couldn’t untangle the new man’s intentions in the moment. Uncle Dick simply shook his head at the non-sequitur and returned to his welding.

 

That night at the dinner table Charlie asked Peter how the two new hands had done.

“They were all right,” he answered. “They seem to know what they’re doing.”

“Tomorrow I want you and Dave to take them to continue on from the new gate we made in Bull Rush. Some of the brood mares went through the fence there and back into Rock Hole paddock. We’ll have to muster it again. I want that fence finished soon, so don’t waste any time tomorrow.”

We didn’t. Sunrise found the four of us at the Bull Rush fence with a full load of pickets and wire, a half-mile of shabby fence stretching towards the open grassy plain.

I was becoming proficient at fencing. I could sight a straight line and use the strainers to tighten the new wire. The most taxing aspect of the job remained bashing the pickets with the heavy basher, but Peter and I traded off every ten pickets, one person sighting while the other bashed, so there were frequent respites. Additionally, the ground became less rocky the farther we got from the new gate.

I was fascinated to see how Peter worked. My lean, well-built friend moved quickly from task to task with great assurance. He seemed to enjoy himself. He was very meticulous. He’d devised a small tool specifically to wrap loose wire ends neatly, rather than bending it sloppily out of the way as I did. He was cheerful and robust, and his good humor infectious.

The other work crew–Bundy and Bill–worked more perfunctorily and with less zeal, less precision. They stopped regularly to smoke a cigarette or get a drink of water. When I saw their handiwork I was disappointed to find it didn’t have the precise quality of ours. Loops were lackadaisically tied, with the old ties tossed on the ground instead of in the pickup for disposal.

A major complication occurred after we’d paced out the new line of pickets. Peter had learned in agricultural school that the most scientifically correct method of installing the metal pickets was directly opposite to the Bullo River method. The difference hinged on which direction the stock pressure is best handled.

The picket, as I’ve mentioned, has three flanges running its entire length. Only one of these flanges has holes to accept the ties supporting the barbed wire itself. Bang the pickets in one way, and the animals push against the wire which pushes against the picket. Put it in the other way and the animals push against wire only.

Peter was convinced the former method was superior. Apparently that went against a strong territory convention, for Bundy and Bill would have none of Pete’s high-falutin’ logic.

“Naw, it’s not done that way,” they protested.

“Go ahead, put them in the way I say. That way, see, the animal pushes against the wire and picket. Besides, my way the wire has only one contact point with the metal. Less chance to rust.”

“I ain’t never done it that way before. Charlie didn’t say nothing about that.” Bundy shook his head while Bill looked at his feet. Peter was the crew boss, but Charlie wasn’t to be trifled with.

“Go ahead. I’ll take the responsibility,” Peter said.

“You’ll get yourself in a mob of trouble, I reckon,” said Bundy. “I ain’t never…”

“Just do it, all right? I said I’ll take the blame.” Peter lacked his usual humor in the moment.

“Maybe you don’t like your job,” Bundy countered.

It went on like this for a few minutes; the boys eventually refused, but Peter and I started bashing the pickets “backwards”.

“See, they only meet the metal once this way. Less chance to rust,” he repeated. He was quite serious. I thought he looked a bit worried. “Besides, the pressure pushes against more metal.”

This was undeniably true. I was convinced, anyway.

Later that evening, Charlie entered the kitchen and strode over to Peter. He caught Peter’s eyes and held them.

“Put the pickets in backwards, eh?” He asked slowly.

“No. Not backwards, really. It’s the way they are made to be put in.” He got up and walked over to the chalkboard Sara used it to list items needed from town. “See, put them this way, the stock pressure is resisted by the construction…” He went on for a few moments, a rustic professor at the lecturn.

“Well, that’s all good in the classroom, but when you put them in the right way the wire is braced at two points on each picket. That’s twice the strength. And our pickets have a galvanized coating – not much rust to worry about.” The big man continued his case as well, bringing his time-earned sensibility into sharp focus.

Both arguments had merit, from where I was sitting. What I perceived was a broader struggle – that age-old friction point where science rubs up against tradition. In a place such as Bullo where one saves one’s own skin day in and day out with quick wits and quicker perceptions, great stock gets placed on practical experience. Books and theories are less reliable than those things which a person has seen with their own eyes, built with their own hands. If a fence has been built a certain way and it seems to work, that’s what matters. The common maxim “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” is the broad back of an agricultural society, supporting the kind of long-term activity which perpetuates a robust and repeatable system.

Of course, the corollary is the attitude which says build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. The old one works; it’s always full. But what about all the other mice skittering about while the dead one fills the trap? This kind of restlessness causes people to leave their not necessarily broken hometown in search of something different, something better. It’s the restlessness of a society which drives progress.

I don’t know whose argument had more merit. But I do know two things for certain: 1. that I did see a frustration and alienation on Peter’s face I hadn’t seen before, and 2. that Danielle was really pissed off that Peter had wrecked “her fence”.

Charlie didn’t make us pull the pickets out we’d slammed home that day, but Peter’s discontent hadn’t eased the next morning when the four of us were back on the fence line.

“Charlie didn’t go for it, eh?” Bundy said matter-of-factly. “I knew he wouldn’t. I ain’t never…”

“All right,” said my sulking friend. “I don’t care. I really don’t care. It’s their bloody station. I’ll put their pickets in upside down if they want ’em that way.”

His face attempted a look of nonchalance, but its failure merely undermined his words. He was genuinely disappointed. I suppose he wanted to impress Charlie, a man he respected and admired, and put his own mark on Bullo River.

“Well,” said Bundy, smiling, “that’s the first rule of station life, don’t you know.” A hint of a smile appeared in Peter’s eyes. “What’s that?”

“Be careful not to use your head too much. You’ll wear it out.” Our small group had a good laugh. “Hey, I thought the first rule of the station life was’ respect your hat and it’ll respect to you’?” I asked, laughing.

“Yeah, it is,” said Bundy, smiling his sly smile. “It’s the most important thing. And you need your head so you have a good hat rack.”

“I don’t know,” said Peter, with a sardonic chuckle, “I thought the first rule of station life was ‘don’t use your head at all, just your body.’” Peter was regaining his familiar mood.

“Which brings us to the first rule of station life,” said Bundy, “use your head only when the boss is around.”

“And make up for it when he’s gone, eh? Don’t use your bloody head at all!” said Peter.

“You got it!”

 

Later, during a break – charmingly called a smoke–o by the Aussies – I had my first chance to chat one-on-one with Bundy.

“What brings you to this life, Bundy? I mean, there must be easier ways to make a living?”

“Me old lady threw me out,” answered the cinnamon-skinned man. “She’s a good one, though.”

“Oh yeah? She treats you well, huh?”

“No. She treats me like shit. But she’s got five kids.”

“Nice? So you’re a father of five?”

“Oh, no!”

“Wait,” I said with a confused look, “if they’re not your children, why does that make her a good woman for you. What’s that got to do with it?”

“By myself, I only get $115 per week.”

“Working where?” I was still completely lost.

“Working for Bob Hawke. On the dole, mate.” It was Peter seated nearby who set me straight.

“Right,” continued Bundy, “but me old lady gets $700 every two weeks.”

“Yeah, but she’s got all those kids to feed. Comes out about the same, doesn’t it?”

“Naw. The kids don’t cost anything. She takes them to St. Vincent de Paul.”

The plain-faced way in which he revealed this corruption – taking the kids for free charity meals while spending the welfare check on themselves – made me in its sheer blatancy join in with the laughter of the others.

 

The morning had been demanding, and I was happy to head to the homestead for lunch upon hearing from across the acres the telltale sound of the generator. There’s a primeval satisfaction to splashing a bit of water on a grimy face, then sitting down for a meal amidst hearty camaraderie while looking back on five hours of accomplishment.

Another more tangible reason I enjoyed lunch was because it was Friday, and every Friday around noon the world encroached on Bullo River, however briefly, in the form of the mail plane. I’d been looking forward to it all week with its cargo of mail and supplies, including four VHS movies courtesy of the local rental outfit in tiny Katherine, Western Australia.

I was feeding greedily on a roast beef sandwich when Danielle cocked her head and said brightly, “mail plane!” I focused my ears but heard nothing. I walked out with her to open the large gate into the garden while Peter hopped on the newly tuned (though with chrome unpolished) station bike. He zoomed through our open gate, momentarily drowning out the low aeronautical hum I was now able to perceive in the distance. He tore down the length of the airstrip, clearing the center of the strip of the few animals there grazing lazily.

A small propeller plane dropped from the sky and bumped along the grass airstrip to where Danielle and I stood. It turned slowly, rolled past us, and came to a halt within twenty yards of the house.

A slim young woman in khaki shorts, knee socks, and a khaki shirt with epaulets dropped from the pilot’s seat. She nodded to Danielle and I, who’d closed the gate and stood by the rear cargo door.

“G’day,” she said brightly, opening the cargo door. She handed me a cardboard box and carried a green postal sack as we all walked indoors.

With everyone arrayed around the kitchen counter she handed a bundle of mail to Sara. The Hendersons have a private mailbag which is located in Katherine, as do the rest of the remote properties dotting the vast area.

As Sara distributed the mail Charlie opened the box. It contained a mechanical part he’d been waiting on for a while. As I received no mail I had to sit and watch the others read theirs. Marlee unwrapped the videotapes. I did not recognize any of the titles. These were obviously not the top shelf stuff. I guessed the video store uses the situation to unload some of their slow-moving titles.

This became painfully apparent when we all sat down around 8 o’clock that evening to watch Ghost of a Chance, starring Dick Van Dyke and Redd Foxx. I had no idea those two fellas made a movie together, and after I saw it I wondered why they bothered. It was a formulaic piece of cinematic doggerel, predictable and trite.

I think my perspective may have been a bit hard-boiled, however; it went over well with everyone else. Danielle in particular seemed to enjoy it–she squirmed in her seat, her eyes alight. She squealed at all the right places. It’s a shame producer Sam Strangis wasn’t there to share her joy; it’s likely the only positive review he might have earned with this straight-to-VHS clunker.

 

Sunrise the next morning found me standing chest deep in Homestead Creek, next to Peter, similarly submerged. It was not easy peeling down to my shorts and walking into the muddy water at that hour – or any hour, considering where we stood was only twenty yards from where Homestead Creek emptied into the opaque waters of the Bullo River, thick with saltwater crocodiles.

“It’s probably okay,” Marlee had said when giving us our instructions, “the big crocs usually won’t swim up the smaller creeks.”

“Usually, huh?” It wasn’t much consolation, despite Marlee’s doctoral dissertation on the creek-swimming habits of saltwater crocodil – wait; what’s that you say? She’d never actually studied the creek-swimming habits of saltwater crocodiles? Anyway, remembering back on their genuine concern when I dipped my toe in the water while fishing I assumed this must be a different situation.

And I was correct on that point; this was totally different – the difference being, fishing is optional, and fencing is mandatory.

For we’d reached the point where our fence crossed this creek and we couldn’t simply drop a post, end the fence, and pick it up on the opposite bank. No; it had to be strung across the creek, for, like the Bullo River, the creek had a strong tide of two or three feet, making it a simple matter for livestock to breach the fence line at low tide. The exposed tidal ground was too muddy to drive the pickets in so when the barbed wire was strung the whole assembly hung suspended above the creek. Peter found a long log and we intended to hang it from the bottom of the fence to cover the gap exposed at low tide.

Rugged and as authentically outback as standing deep in the cocoa-colored water was, the exercise was uneventful – until some unknown monster took a chunk out of my left calf. Given that my incipient destiny to become crocodile chow had occupied at least as much of my attention as the job at hand I was, shall we say, startled by the development. Had it been a big monster there would have been no reaction time. Nope; this was apparently just some innocuous kind of a small biting fish that favors opaque, salty, croc-infested waters, probably nothing more than a kissing cousin of the piranha or one of those deep-sea critters with the fleshy light-bulb illuminating their stalactite teeth.

Regardless, I wasn’t taking chances. When I felt the bite I rocketed straight up and, in a feat of ambiguous physics, walked across ten feet of water to dry land. My understandably jumpy companion followed my lead.

Now, I think myself a rational man; stories of improbable happenings have a limited impact upon me. But had a collared priest, say, happened by at that particular moment, had seen two mortal men walk on water, I’d have to imagine Homestead Creek would have begun a new life as a destination for pilgrims from across the globe.

The only fly in the ointment, the part of the scene which wouldn’t have made it onto the visitor’s center mural, was Marlee standing on the bank, doubled over in laughter.

We drove to the workshop in silence. Under Danielle’s instruction I put several shovels and a long metal digging bar into the truck. She retrieved an unusual looking homemade mechanism from a corner and added it to our stockpile. This was to be used for pulling old pickets out of the ground.  In essence it worked like an old-time water pump. It’s set next to the picket. A handle is raised, lowering a chain. The chain fits over the top of the picket. As the handle is pulled down the picket pops out of the ground. Easy peasy lemon squeezy — in theory.

The last addition to our motley load were two pipes, about three feet long and four inches in diameter. Dick had welded a heavy cover on one end of each. These pipes were used to drive new pickets into the ground, which explained their substantial weight. Pretty clever things, I came to realize, likely contrived after going through countless sledgehammer handles broken on errant swings at narrow picket heads.

Danielle approached carrying a hand tool. “These are to be your fencing pliers. See this number ‘5’ scratched in? They’re yours while you’re here. If you lose them, the thirty-five dollars they’ll cost you will be the least of it. Okay?”

I nodded.

“Do you want gloves?”

“I need to toughen my hands. I’ll do without.”

“Let me see your hands.” I showed her my fleshy pink palms, blotched and sore where the ropes had worn them during the horse branding.

“Right. Use these.” She dropped a pair of canvas and leather train-engineer gloves in my open hands. “Your hands will get tough anyway. We don’t want the barbed wire taking them clean off, though, before that happens.” I put the gloves in my pocket. “They cost four dollars,” she added as we drove off.

Fencing proved no easier than anything I’d yet done. I’d expected it to be more benign, more meditative, than the work with animals. It was different assuredly, but had its own demands, and dangers.

We began our renovations on the fence that ran along the treacherous thicket of several days before. A ten foot track had once been cleared along both sides of the fence, but the intervening years of neglect had invited all manner of plant growth. It was a rough ride as we bumped along to our starting point despite Danielle’s slow pace. When we reached the corner she killed the engine. The silence of the outback settled upon us.

“First, we have to undo the ties holding the wire to the pickets. When each wire is free I’ll cut one end and we’ll lay it on the ground – bottom wire closest to the picket. Then we’ll clear the plants from the fence line, replace the pickets, and re-strain the wires, adding one more.”

“How far are we going?” I asked.

She pointed to another corner about 200 yards away. It seemed manageable. The rest of the day we spent moving slowly to that opposite corner. About every sixty feet, or five pickets, stood a stout wooden post. These strainer posts marked our progress as we moved along the line.

The old fence really showed its age. The pickets were bent and rusted from years of assault by animals. The cracked gray posts strained to do their jobs. The surest sign of age, however, was the saplings that had grown up along the fence, intertwining the wires in an organic crochet.

“There is more of these than I expected,” said Danielle. “Should have brought the chainsaw.”

“Who needs a chainsaw?” I asked, seeing the opportunity to earn some man points. “We have the axe, right?”

“Too many of them. It’ll take too much time.” She objected.

“Watch!” I said, retrieving the axe with naive bravado. My first swing felled a two inch sapling. “See?”

“Keep going,” she said, unimpressed.

I dispatched a few more small trees, then attacked a four inch trunk. After a dozen blows it fell, then another, and before long I was beginning to feel a mite less game. A stubborn streak kept me from showing it, though. I kept swinging, but after another several minutes I had to take a break. I’d cleared eight feet of the scrub.

“Okay. Let me have a go, eh. I’m hopeless with an ax though.” Danielle took the instrument and uncorked some effective if not graceful strokes. She handed the ax back to me, saying, “This is your idea. You go ahead. I’ll start laying the wire out.”

I hacked away for a few more minutes and started feeling foolish for pushing the point. The cool of the morning had evaporated, leaving behind the familiar heat and leaden humidity. By the time I’d cleared two of the ten sections it was time for lunch. Every bit of energy had drained from my body with the sweat that soaked my clothes and ran down my legs, soaking my socks. Danielle had gone ahead in the truck to untie the ties all the way to the corner. I leaned weakly on my axe as she bumped her way back to me.

“Say, you don’t have a chainsaw around here, do you?” I asked with a defeated smile.

“You know, I think we may,” said the lass with a knowing smirk.  “You have your lunch. I’ll be right back.”

After a big lunch and a catnap in the cab we set to work repairing the sections of fenceline I’d cleared by hand. My first chore was cutting twelve-inch sections off the plain wire to serve as ties. These were cut using my new fencing pliers and required a strong squeeze to accomplish. After cutting the needed ties my grip was weakening; I was glad to move on to our next stage. Danielle scuffed a line in the dirt, took twelve strides, then scuffed another. “See how many steps that is for you.” I took ten strides to cover the distance. “That’s how far apart the pickets go. I’ll drive along slowly. You take the new pickets from the truck, pace the distance off, then drop ‘em where they belong.”

This we did for the entire run of the fence line. Before the new pickets could be driven into the ground, however, the old ones had to be removed.

I hauled the bulky picket puller from the truck, hoisted it over my shoulder, and had no trouble easing the first few pickets out of the ground. On the fourth, when I leaned on the handle it didn’t move at all. I pulled harder, with no success. I leaped in the air and directed my entire weight upon the sturdy metal handle–to no effect.

“Danielle! I think I need a hand here!” She was a few sections away chain sawing the remaining foliage. Under the strain of our dual exertions the picket moved, slowly. With an explosion of dirt the picket popped from the soil, exposing the source of its reticence. Over the twenty or so years it had been planted a layer of clay had aggregated itself to the metal pole. In order to extract the bent and twisted picket we’d brought the nascent rock to the surface as well.

This proved an indication of things to come. While about half the pickets slid out easily the others were gripped in a subterranean vice by the sedimentary tableau underlying Bullo River station. This rock was the source of the cobbles used to build the homestead and formed the ragged craggy bluffs I’d seen from the highway. On this day it was an intractable nuisance, soon to become my sworn enemy when it came time to dig holes for new strainer posts.

With great relief I pulled the final picket out of the ground; many had required the digging bar to free them from the grippy substrate. The next step in the project involved pounding the new pickets into place. For this step Danielle and I worked together. She’d hunch down, her back to the first fence post, sighting with one eye closed as she directed me to move either forward or backwards to get the picket I was holding in line with the corner fence post.

“Away. Away. Too much. More. Another hair. Nope, too much. Half a post away. That’s it.”

I’d then slide the homemade driver over the top of the picket and thrust the heavy pipe up and down until the picket was seated to the proper depth.

I quickly came to appreciate what a clever instrument this pipe was. Before the picket was planted it stood six feet tall. A sledgehammer would have been useless; even with a proper striking angle a narrow picket head provides too meager a target. But aim was not a factor with the pipe–just slide it over the top of the pole and bang the sucker home.

For the rest of the afternoon we swapped between the two duties. One of us would sight the line while the other held a fresh picket in one hand, then raised the heavy basher with the other and smashed the picket into the rocky ground, which allowed entry in small increments only.

Often, a single picket required twenty or twenty-five smashes until it sunk to the necessary depth. Not infrequently, a solid subterranean rock would prove impenetrable, forcing us to withdraw the picket and re-sight it a foot away up or down the fence line. It was tedious and exhausting work.

I was struck by the thumbnail nature of the engineering. When sighting, I’d guestimate the location of the relevant picket in relation to the rest of the fence as it stretched towards the horizon. I suppose precision wasn’t critical; with the constant re-sets required in the hard soil and the various angles at which the seated poles stood exactitude was out of our reach.

So it went for the next few days – heading down to the workshop in the new day’s light, the dogs frisking and nipping at each other as we walked, loading the truck with the days supplies, then untying and pulling and bashing and re-straining the new wires, finishing at dusk, then looking upon the new fenceline we’d built that day. We were unknown Mason and Dixons, stripe painters on a deserted highway eyeballing mark after mark, leaving a trail that swept to the horizon as it split the vastness into imperfect halves.

I was thankful for the gloves. Barbed wire is incorrigible stuff with a malevolent will to snag clothing and flesh. After a few days it had crosshatched my arms and legs with scratches and thoroughly perforated my clothing.

One night I had an unsettling dream. I’d been tasked with building an S-shaped fence, an impossible task. Barbed wire is made taut by a simple but ingenious device called a strainer. Small levers hook onto the barbed wire with one set of jaws while plain wire affixed around the fence post is held by another. The handle on the strainer is then jacked back and forth and slack disappears. Strainers can tighten any length of wire in a straight run but would be useless trying to tighten anything S-shaped.

What’s more, I had to finish the fence quickly, for in my dormant fog I knew morning would come soon and I desperately wanted to get some rest. Several times the wire snapped, sending a thorny coil rushing back upon me. The pain was secondary; it was the added effort of redoing it that troubled me. The job finally faded away only moments before the generator forced me out of bed to begin a day of fencing in the waking realm, where, at least, the runs were straight.

After Danielle’s dressing down I had become more conscientious about rising when the generator bid its unwanted welcome in the cool darkness. After a week or so my body adjusted to the early-to-bed early-to-rise regime, but I still wouldn’t classify mornings as joyful. I certainly wasn’t feeling joy as I sat under a blasé cow or over a sodden bowl of Weetabix mush.

This routine was altered when Charlie instructed us to build a new gate halfway along the particular fence line we were working on. This rocky stretch had been causing constant frustration. Bashing pickets was demanding enough in the best of circumstances, but the rocks here had us constantly relocating our pickets when after a few inches of penetration we’d hit an impenetrable sheet of bedrock. Sometimes we’d move the darn pickets four or even five times, effectively turning fifty pickets into 250. It was with great trepidation that we set out to build the gate, then, for the four stout posts would require holes three feet deep.

As Danielle and I pulled up to the build site we grimly eyeballed the exposed slabs of rock covering the area, diving underneath a meager layer of topsoil only sporadically. We knew our shovels would be useless, that the only digging instrument that day would be the heavy six-foot iron crowbars we’d brought.

Danielle sighted along the fence line and we chose as our first hole location a spot that looked, if not promising, at least not impossible. She dusted away the six inches of topsoil before I drove the spiked metal bar into the red rock with mighty thrusts. She took over the heavy pole when I tired and in no time we were both soaked with sweat in the humid 90 degree air. The repeated slams caused hot points to develop on my hands, spots which became eleven separate blisters by that evening.

Our efforts were not without result, however. Within fifteen minutes we’d chipped through a foot of the sedimentary rock. We were a third the way home on this first of the four necessary holes when a well-placed drive broke off a several inch thick piece of rock. Encouraged, I raised the bar high up with both arms, but when it hit the ground it rang like a tuning fork and bounced a foot in the air. We had hit a primary layer of God-only-knows what thickness. With great chagrin, we faced the fact we had no choice but to make another attempt several feet away. The second attempt was just underway when we were again stymied by the same fateful ring. We began anew, exerting great effort before again being frustrated by the impenetrable earth. Finally, on the fourth try, two hours in, we managed to dig a decent hole.

This complicated things in a way, however, for the placement of one hole necessarily determines the location of the next, with decreasing leeway. After two more hours of great effort and greater frustration our site was full of abandoned half-holes. It was time for the heavy artillery. Danielle drove off to get Charlie, who appeared thirty minutes later at the helm of the station’s goliath bulldozer. The Caterpillar D8 clanked and snorted as it rolled our way. I hurriedly moved our ineffectual hand tools aside. At the rear of the dozer two fang-like rippers were poised with powerful menace. Charlie positioned them over our worksite, then, with an hydraulic hiss, sunk them into the ground. The dozer bucked and jumped as the metal teeth broke through the rock layers.

The ground reverberated with the underground discontent. I was awed by the brute collision of metal and stone, the raw elemental force of each against the other battling in a forum completely outside the realm of puny human exertion. The rock would resist, lifting one end of the thirty-two-ton machine fully off the ground, then break with a brutal crunch and explosions of dust, dropping the machine heavily. Charlie would then creep forward, clawing massive slabs of rubble from the earth. The air pulsed with the sound of roaring diesel and the screeching of metal against rock as the two elements vied to discover which was the immovable object, which the irresistible force. The primal struggle left the area broken and strewn with debris. The air smelled of powdered rock and vented exhaust.

When the battle was over Danielle and I moved back in. After witnessing the mechanized show of might I felt ridiculously weak and insignificant as a force tasked with reshaping the broken land to our purposes. But in ant-like increments we made progress over the rest of the morning, and by lunch time four holes sat ready for gate posts.

Charlie joined Danielle and me in the truck after a nice lunch and a short rest. We drove to the workshop for the chainsaw and a couple of axes before heading off into the woods in search of our four new gate posts. Charlie soon found a stand of Bloodwoods that suited him. I asked why the ramrod straight Ghost gums didn’t interest him.

“Naw,” the big man said, “Those gums are no good. They rot within a few years.”

Charlie parked the truck among the hardwoods and grabbed the chainsaw. With a buzz and a crack the trees soon fell. He cut one or two eight-foot sections from each of the solid stocky trunks. Danielle and I took our axes and, using the back faces, began knocking the bark off the logs. This is necessary as the bark rots quickly, loosening the fit in the post holes. Also, by knocking the bark off it was possible to treat the bare posts to keep the all-pervasive termites away — for a while, at least.

Debarking was an art I didn’t readily pick up. I watched as Danielle stood upon her log, hitting the bark at just the right angle to send small square chunks of pulpy bark flying. My first blows, though more forceful, pulverized the wood rather than removing it. I could then knock it off, but this required two strokes to cover the same area Danielle cleaned in one.

Eventually I got the hang of it. Rather than striking square I angled the ax head so that it struck along one edge. This sent the water-soaked bark shooting off in the desired chunks. Before long we’d debarked the four posts we needed, along with several smaller bracing posts made from stout limbs. Several cut sections were left lying; they’d be there when needed. Danielle wrapped a chain around two of the logs then attached it to the trailer hitch on the Toyota. The three of us drove the short distance to the gate site, the posts destroying all vegetation in their path as they dragged along. We dropped the posts off, then drove Charlie to the workshop. While there Danielle filled a metal drum with black sump oil, the exhausted oil saved when the many station vehicles receive oil changes.

After retrieving the other two posts we were faced with planting the massive pillars in our dearly won holes. Each was eight feet long and about a foot thick – they would surely have weighed 400 pounds apiece. Danielle decided which post was appropriate for which location, then we rolled the column to its hole. With the bottom overhanging the hole slightly and the long digging bar standing on the opposite side to guide the post we managed the gut busting job of raising the opposite end enough that the bottom slid to the bottom of the hole. I’d then stand it straight while Danielle poured oil all around the wood, below ground level. The oil deterred termites, she said. After the post had been sighted in line with the fence we filled the hole, using a narrow metal plunger to pack it firmly around the post.

By the time all four were in place dusk had arrived, and we were both exhausted. When we got back to the house I took close notice of the dozen or so posts that formed the structural base of the homestead. Each was at least ten feet tall – a few approached fifteen. None were less than two feet thick. All had been raised by hand, Sara said, a Herculean effort that spoke volumes to me about the sweat and agonizing labor that had gone into Bullo River station for many the years before I’d arrived. Some of it, like these massive gray pillars, remained as a testament to the human effort, but the bulk of it had been shipped away to the slaughterhouse each year, or lay dormant in the portable panels stacked outside the work houses, or was barely hinted at in the brands on the horses or the broken down abattoir sitting idly by Stumpie’s place.

I spent the next morning with Danielle constructing the new gate. Once the posts were in place she instructed me as we built a clever gate out of plain wire and pickets. The method is a bit too complex to describe here, but it resulted in a strong wire gate that looked like a continuation of the fence when closed, and was loose as a break dancer when its tension was released to open it.

 

During lunch we spied a car driving down the road, heading towards the house. Charlie rose to meet the arriving vehicle.

When he returned he’d been joined by three men. A bearish white fellow was introduced to me as Mike. He had something to do with the Northern Territory Roads Department and was apparently well known to the Hendersons, who greeted him warmly. He cracked a wide smile as he said hello in a broad Irish rogue. The two other men were aborigines. Their names were Bundy and Bill and were the stock hands sent by the Commonwealth Employment Service that Sara’d been expecting. Mike had picked them up on his way through Katherine. The new arrivals briefly said hello and picked up a few supplies–some gloves, fencing pliers, a few beers apiece–before Peter took them down to the motel-like stockman’s quarters where Stumpie lived. They both seemed quiet and withdrawn, but I was excited to have these indigenous residents as new workmates in the outback.

 

Very early the next morning I found myself studying a patch of ground containing the homestead’s septic tank.

“We’ll need to pop the lid off this septic and pump it clean, Dave,” Charlie instructed. “It may have a bit of concrete over the handle. There’s a pick in the shed if you need it. Peter will be along with the pump to clear it out. Do what he says.”

As the big man strode away, I used a shovel to expose the tank lid under about three inches of dirt. Sure enough, a seal of concrete had been troweled over the tank lid. “Damn,” I thought, “I’ve gotta walk all the way down to get the damn pick.” Any avoidable exertion in my standard predawn funk was guaranteed to elicit a grump from me.

I walked several minutes to the large open building where Dick was moving stiffly about, mumbling inchoate oaths. I sensed he may be the same cast of curmudgeon as I regarding mornings. Several picks stood in a corner with other worn and dulled implements. I hoisted the sharpest one onto my shoulder and was trudging back to the homestead when Peter appeared in the pickup.

“Dave! Cheer up, mate. I need your help with this pump, as long as you’re here!” Then, more quietly, “I’d have asked Dick if need be, but I’m glad I don’t have to. He’s a bugger in the morning. Always looking for a blue.”

Peter and I wrestled a bulky hunk of machinery from underneath a shelf in the shed and swung it into the truck. Peter climbed onto a loft covering half the workspace and presently handed down a large diameter hose, loosely coiled. It fell through me to the floor when Peter released his hold. Dick glanced sourly my way.

“Sorry, Dave,” Peter said with a grin as he bounced off a workbench back onto the floor. “I thought you were awake, since I seen you walking about and all.”

We loaded a few more tools and hoses into the truck, then started back towards the house. We carried the pump to the small patch of dirt covering the main septic tank. As Peter set up the hoses I retrieved the pick and, spreading my feet wide, raised the tool and directed all my morning animus at the concrete. The hollow impact made Peter stand straight up.

“David! Bloody hell, mate. You looking to take a swim?!”

“What do you mean?” I asked, more annoyed by the interruption than curious as to his meaning.

“That’s the septic lid you’re banging at. And that’s the septic lid you’re standing on, matey. One more knock and you’d have been taking a very rude early morning dip, old boy!”

I blanched as the situation became clear. His consternation turned into hilarity. “And I don’t think you could have counted on me to jump in and save you!” He howled. “That’d be a bloody rough piece of business, Dave, even for a mate!”

“But…” I fumbled, “Charlie said there’d be concrete over the lid.”

“Aye, there is. Between the sections. But the lid’s concrete, too. And that’s what you’re hitting at.” He stooped down to examine the chip I’d drawn.

“A bit of a belly on you, Dave, and you would have been treading some evil water, matey!” He leaned back and hooted until tears came to his eyes. Watching his mirth broke my own bad mood. I began chuckling as I imagined walking down to the workshop covered in filth, haplessly holding up the broken piece of the septic lid to Uncle Dick, asking him to cast another. Hard to imagine that request would have offered the old fella any of the cheer Peter and I were feeling in the moment.

After we’d recovered our composure, I took a shovel and began gingerly scraping the rest of the dirt off the septic lid. Sure enough, where the three large slabs joined a thin skin of cement had been spread. This I chipped away with the pickax, and before long the cesspool was exposed and our noxious duty discharged.

My next assignment regarded two faucets in the bathroom near the kitchen.

“The hot water leaks in the shower,” Charlie informed me. “It’s probably just a bad seal in the stopper pen, so pull off the hot water faucet and check the seal. Dick will have the tools you need. Replace it if it’s worn. If it seems okay, get Peter or me.  And one more thing. The water pipes are concreted into the foundation, so if you stuff up we’ll have to tear out the whole shower to get at it. Keep that in mind.”

Charlie need not have worried. Though I’d never worked on plumbing before, having nearly sent myself to a watery hell an hour earlier had sharpened my senses. It was absolutely guaranteed I would be a ninja all the way through this job.

I squatted in the shower and examined the faulty faucet. And ornamental cylinder covered the connection onto the pipe. I would need a pipe wrench. I walked to the workshop and got one, then used it to remove the cylinder. An array of bolts confronted me. I retrieved tools as needed, investigated carefully the disassembled mechanism, found a replacement for a worn rubber washer, and reassembled the unit. When I ran the water I was half surprised and fully delighted to see that the tap no longer leaked.

I attacked the tub faucet with the same dedication. The hard Bullo water had eaten a groove in the metal stopper facing. I fixed the facing. I fixed the faucet. I’d pumped the septic. I’d fixed two faucets. I’d put tools in my hands then used my mind to direct them. By any reasonable measure, the day was already a success. It had been lived. Nay, the day had been conquered.

At lunch, I let everyone know how fruitful my day had been.

“Both of them,” I crowed, “fixed. Immutably, irrevocably, and forever.” Perhaps I was overstating things a bit but making myself useful felt good.

“Right,” said Sara. “Now you’ll know how to fix the jacuzzi in case you ever want to take the plunge,” she said referring to a neglected hot tub sitting beside the house.

“I don’t know mummy; from the sound of it, Dave came bloody close to taking the plunge this morning!” snickered Danielle. At that, the whole crowd broke up at my expense. I was discovering how quickly word travels in a community of eight.

Just as the laughter died down, Stumpie walked in.

“What’s the laugh about? Maybe Dave’s swimming hole?” His question reignited the howls. The world was feeling very small.

 

“Danielle,” Charlie was speaking. “After lunch you take Peter and the Frog Man,” Charlie gestured my direction, “and go get a killer.”

“A killer? What’s a killer?” I inquired.

“Food, Dave,” explained Danielle. “Those steaks you’ve been wolfing down; we don’t buy them at the supermarket.”

“It’s what you use to generate the rubber ducks floating around in your private bubble bath, mate,” chortled Peter.

This time I joined the entire ensemble in another round of laughter.

 

An hour later I stood with Peter in the back of a ute, rolling slowly through a sparsely treed meadow of pale green knee-high grass. Grasshoppers scattered in our path like hailstones off a tin roof. Danielle was speaking softly to us out the window, keeping a running commentary on the cattle as they wandered in the distance. We were looking for a husky steer—a castrated male—to turn into a month of steaks.

“Mob of cows, there. Maybe over there? Nope, look a little young. There’s a bullock over there—let’s have a look… Nope… Too run-out. Okay old fella, we’ll leave you be. Maybe those in the trees…” She chewed the inside of her bottom lip as she scanned.

“Naw, cows…wait, look! There’s a big fellow. Peter do you see him?” My companion nodded.

I could tell the babies from the adults but sorting the girls from the boys was opaque to me. How these two could spy a wang-dang-doodle or the lack thereof at a quarter mile was more than I could comprehend.

“Let’s go have a look at him,” she said, accelerating slightly towards a group of cattle off to our right. The cattle raised their heads to watch our approach.

“He’ll do. Can you get a shot?” Danielle asked from the front seat.

“Not yet. Bloody cows in the way. Circle clockwise.”

As Dan did so the half-dozen animals broke towards a group of scrubby trees.

“Oh, he’s a good one!” Danielle gushed as she accelerated sharply.

Peter, holding onto his rifle with one hand, swung solidly into me as the girl spun the wheel. I’d learned the hard way to hang onto the rail with both hands, so Peter bounced off me and back onto both feet. Danielle drove alongside the fleeing bovines. They loped with all they had, as though aware of our murderous intentions.

Suddenly the head animal—a large buckskin cow—pulled short and stared at us from about fifteen yards. When the rest of the mob followed suit our quarry stood unobscured. Danielle slammed on the brakes. We skidded slightly sideways in the soft grass.

“Get him!” Danielle whispered urgently.

Peter didn’t need to be prodded. He rested his gun barrel on the rooftop and focused along the scope. Just as the leader again broke into a trot the shot rang out, loud and sharp. The big brown bullock collapsed in an inanimate heap, as if a robot, unplugged. I was dazed, by the reverberation of the shot and by the complete way in which the shot severed the beast’s life systems. All four legs buckled simultaneously, pillars in a controlled demolition, the animal’s bulk dropping with the solidity of an anvil. Bam. Blackout. Dead.

Peter turned my way with victory in his eyes as Danielle pumped her fist outside the window. “Good shot, Peter! Dropped ‘im. A big fellow, too! Okay, let’s get at him.”

She drove up alongside the rotund castrati and hopped out. On the seat next to her lay a leather roll containing butchering knives. She selected a long narrow blade and bent over the beast. She stuck her knife up to the hilt into the bullock’s throat, then slit it open from side to side. I joined Peter in pumping the animal’s flanks with our feet. This caused it to bleed profusely from the cut, the blood pooling in the grass and staining Danielle’s sneakers purply brown.

“Okay,” she said after a moment, “let’s get him on his back.”

Peter seized the front left leg, and I got hold of the rear. We pulled as Danielle twisted the head around to its shoulder, which braced the animal upside down. Peter grabbed two knives and handed one to me. We moved to the rear legs, which stuck straight up in the air, undignified and cartoonish.

“Watch me,” he said, “and watch out, the bugger can still kick you. Reflexes.”

I remembered how as a child with more curiosity than scruples I had once pulled a spider’s leg off and watched its disembodied twitch. That child could never have imagined that same phenomena someday threatening his dental work.

Peter bent the beefy leg forward at its lowest joint. Starting from the outside he sliced through the animal’s thick hide into its milky white joint. I followed suit. I easily parted the hide but hit bone just below.

“Too high,” said Peter. I sliced again and found a knot of tendon and ligaments. As I cut these they made a fleshy swoosh. Clear fluid—the bursa around the joint—flowed over my fingers. It was warm. Peter demonstrated how to cut all around the joint, and after several moments of probing and cutting I held a hock in my right hand. The mud in the hoof was still moist.

“Now Dave, you need to do the front alone. I need Peter’s help.” I moved to the animal’s front limbs and hacked and sawed as I watched my two friends quarter the beast.

Danielle began by cutting the animal open from head to stern. She sliced through the thick muscle over the rib cage and through the belly. Then they each reached deep within the animal’s body cavity and counted four ribs up from the stomach. Along this rib they cut from the spine up to the initial lengthwise incision. Peter took an axe—one used only for this purpose—and with a dozen precise blows parted the rib cage and pelvic bone.

By this point I’d finish cutting off the hocks and stood watching. I was appalled and fascinated. Violent death in the city—the only death I’d known—seems so dramatic. Lights and sirens dance, spectators lend mystery, preachers eulogize, newscasters sensationalize. Here, I was the sole spectator, and the animal’s only death knell was tomorrow’s dinner bell.

“Dave, give us a hand,” Danielle called. She sat crouched over the animal, her arm to the shoulder inside the beast and her clothing covered in blood. “Hold the guts out of the way while I get the liver.” I squatted down and got a grip on the squishy yellow membrane containing the digestive organs.

The animal’s stomach was vast; a duffel seemingly large enough to hold the equipment for an entire league of bowlers. The labyrinthine intestines slopped about, gray and turgid. Peristaltic action continued, pointlessly pushing the load of grass through the expired animal’s system.

Danielle rolled the gut out of the carcass after cutting it loose from the ribs. She removed the heart, liver, kidneys, sweetbreads, and most of the body fat. These she slid into a plastic garbage bag. Peter, with some delicate knife work, removed the head. Sitting it upright, he split the skull with the axe. Shelling it like a coconut he scooped out the brains and dropped them in the bag.

“Danielle makes great crumbed brains,” he said enthusiastically.

With one last blow Peter severed the spinal column. Danielle sliced through the last bit of skin and the animal lay in four quarters. The two then moved about these pieces cutting slits in the hide to serve as handholds.

“Grab a hold,” Peter said, indicating a front quarter. I slid my hand through the incision in the cowhide and put my other through a slit cut between two ribs. Peter did likewise. With a heave we hoisted the 250 pound quarter of beef into the pickup’s bed.

“Christ, that’s not light!” I exclaimed. I was surprised by the density and substance of the animal flesh, and equally by the durability of the materials. The handhold Peter had cut was only a quarter inch wide, but managed to not rip under the great weight of the forequarter. I had noticed while cutting through the leg joints how well-made and resilient the tissues were. It seemed absurd it’s ever possible humans, composed of similar tissue, could do anything so banal as slip in a bathtub, say, and die.

But this beast had most surely left this life. Twenty minutes after it stood eying us suspiciously it lay in pieces, filling the bed of the pickup, jiggling grotesquely as we drove home. Bone splinters from the axe blows were scattered across the meat. Flies flitted with a lurid zeal along the tracks of dripping blood.

The by now familiar wary looks cast our direction by the cattle along our route home struck me for the first time as entirely appropriate, as if they knew something I hadn’t realized before that morning.

“That’s right; you’d better keep your heads on a swivel,” I whispered to them as we passed.

We drove our corporeal cargo back home, stopping at the dilapidated abattoir. I was happy to see that the former home of Bullo’s commercial meatworks remained in a more functional condition inside than its outside promised. A shiny meat grinder and bandsaw stood in the uncluttered concrete space. A large metal dressing table sat in one corner. A network of iron rails snaked along the ceiling, lined with dozens of S-shaped meat hooks.

Danielle stood on her toes to unhook four of the hooks. We returned to the truck and sunk a hook into each quarter of beef. With a heave we hoisted the bone-in steaks-to-be out of the bed and hung each from the overhead railway. The rear quarters must have weighed three hundred pounds.

“We’ll leave them here overnight to drain, then dress them in the morning,” said Danielle.

“What about all the flies? Won’t they get at it?” I wondered.

“Sure they will. That’s why we have to get here early in the morning.”

“Not to worry, Dave. This Bullo beef’s too tough for ‘em. Can’t sink their teeth in,” Peter said, gauging Danielle’s reaction with a sidelong glance.

She’d begun hosing down the carcasses, and appeared to ignore the comment, until with a sudden squeal she aimed a jet of cold water at the lithe joker. He caught the full brunt as he jumped for the hose. My laughter was rewarded with a frigid bath of my own. Peter and I wrestled the hose from the spirited lass and returned the favor in full measure.

The boisterous water fight washed much of the late beast’s blood off all of us, along with any lingering compunctions I may have been feeling over the afternoon’s fatal duty. We’d done our jobs; dinner would be served. There was no call for anguished moralizing. The gory spectacle was appalling to the senses, to be certain, and to my suburban sensibility, but the cold facts were that the animal hadn’t suffered, and we’d secured sustenance for a month.

The day’s chores completed, and I now wringing wet, my attention turned to the prospect of dry clothing and a wet whistle. The long hot day of labor had wrung my gizzard dry; I was sure a cold beer would be the perfect re-hydration.

“That brings up a good point,” said Charlie, who’d finished his own labors and was sitting at the kitchen counter with Marlee. “Beers are two dollars apiece. It’s best if you tell us how many you want each week and we’ll take it off your pay.”

“Ummm… How about two per night?” Two tinnies after a hard day seemed a modest ask.

“So fourteen each week then?” confirmed Charlie.

“Right.”

“Okay; so that’s $28 per week,” he paused as he calculated, “$112 per month.”

Christ, I thought, two beers per night would drain the better part of a week’s pay.

“Better make it one per night,” I offered as amendment, then immediately reconsidered. Only one solo beer on a Friday night? No indulgence in honor of the past week’s labors?

“And two on Friday.”

But we work Saturday as well, so Saturday is really the end of the week.

“And two on Saturday, as well.”

Charlie must have sensed my tangled musings, as he paused his calculations to see if this last declaration was to be my final answer.

Okay. Now that’s four plus five. Nine beers. Eighteen dollars per week, seventy some dollars per month. No way—I can’t work multiple twelve-plus hour days just to pay the beer bill.

“Wait! Let’s cut out the weekday beers. Two Saturday. Two Friday. Eight dollars per week. That works.”

Hold the door—that means I can’t have one now!

“And one today!”

Charlie chuckled. “This one’s on the house. It’s worth two dollars just to hear you stop talking.”

“Dave, you haven’t been bush long enough, mate.” Peter looked serious. “You’ve got your priorities upside down. First you take care of your grog, then you worry about your pay. It’s better to be sane than sober.”

For a split second I thought he may have a solid point.

Charlie retrieved a round of brews from the refrigerator inside the locked storeroom and passed to each of us red, gold, and white cans of Emu Export Lager.

“Would you go an Export, mate?!” laughed Peter, echoing the beer’s ad slogan.

We hoisted the beverages in mutual salute and I took a deep draw. My anticipation immediately turned to mortification. The brew tasted as though it’d been brewed for a junior high science fair. Emu Export Lager—now the name made sense. Australians, known worldwide as beer enthusiasts, would certainly have nothing to do with this acrid brew. Send it to the Kiwis, send it to Africa. Hell, send it to merry old England. But don’t put this stuff in front of me.

Unless, of course, I happen to live in a roasted backwater in the middle of nowhere. Folks in the Northern Territory of Australia drink more beer per capita than anyone anywhere else in the world. With that kind of dedication what matters isn’t the clarity or balance or yeastiness in a man’s brew, but how far that 5% alcohol content takes him from the heat and the dust and the sweat. If it can do a good job of that, sure, I’ll go an Export, mate!. Thanks a bunch! Set us up again. My shout. Two bucks per stubbie? No worries! This piss is worth its weight in gold!

In that spirit, I happily drained my first of many cans of the low-grade shellac.

 

That night was the first comfortable one I’d spent at Bullo; a cool breeze blew throughout. Carried upon it were the muted lows of distant cattle, enriched by the occasional whinny of an amorous horse, all aloft upon a magic carpet of rustling, chirps, and ratchets that brought the vastness of the outback to my bedside, small and private.

Nighttime here was the dub version of daytime—similar sounds, different mix. I appreciated for the first time how unobtrusive the house was after the power went off. In my stone cell, where it seemed even an electric light would violate the tranquility, the days labor was over, and tomorrow’s were far off. I had nothing to do but listen, relax, and sleep.

Like all riches, such moments aren’t fully appreciated until the opposite is juxtaposed. I would like to think enriching my appreciation was Danielle’s primary motivation as she stood at my door in the early morning, irritably rousting me out of bed with a curt “Let’s get going!”

I’d heard the power come on but had assumed it was a nightmare and had dismissed it, and rolled over. Now Danielle was talking about cows and fences and missing breakfast and I knew this reality was all too real. I spent several hypnopompic moments pulling on my trousers and wandering about before I woke to find myself seated below a phlegmatic cow, tugging perfunctorily at its recalcitrant udder.

Pumpkin was looking at me with a bovine moonface I read as saying, “why don’t you just go back to bed?” For the first time I credited the beast with a grain of sense.

Danielle’s stony gaze, however, bespoke more of impending peril as she went back into the house, her bucket full, and I decided to listen to my own good sense over that of the cow. I hurried inside with barely one gallon of milk (my personal daily consumption) and stuffed a slice of cold roast beef in my mouth before following Danielle to the truck.

We were to begin a new task. Several of the barbed wire fences partitioning the local real estate into separate paddocks were old and decrepit. The integrity of those paddocks was critical, for they’re used to keep specific animals together, separate from others. One paddock would hold all the horses suitable for riding, for example, another kept the horde of knock-kneed teenage bovine females from the amorous depredations of Henry VIII, the Brahman stud bull, who, like his namesake, was none too choosy about his liaisons.

Much of this fence network was slack and broken from years of assaults and repairs. In places, the metal pickets spaced out between wooden strainer posts were too far apart to be effective. Many of the strainer posts themselves were rotten. The decision had been made to use the necessary time and manpower needed to tune up the fences as a critical step in preparing for the first muster.

That first round-up was supposed to take place in mid to late May, and much needed to be done to prepare the yard sites and necessary machinery. For the near future, fencing was to be the focus for Danielle and me. As Charlie set off to butcher yesterday’s killer, Danielle and I drove to the fencing dump sprawled alongside Stumpie’s place, where deliberately placed coils and stacks and pallets included all the material needed for fencing.

The bulk barbed wire resembled oversized spools of thread, tightly wound and compact. A few paces away was the plain wire, stacked like coins in two-foot diameter rolls. Next to them lay a great pile of six-foot-long metal star pickets. These green posts were shaped like the inside of the Mercedes-Benz symbol when viewed on end. Holes were punched at intervals along one flanged edge. With an industrial clatter we loaded fifty of these onto the pickup.

Danielle then heaved one large roll of plain wire into the truck while I wrestled with another. It must have weighed eighty pounds. I rolled it over the edge of the truck bed and released it with a crash. Danielle looked at me askance.

“Too much for you?” she asked sourly.

“No. Just putting it in the truck…”

“Well, take it easy on the gear,” she barked.

I paused for a moment. Was this the same person gleefully dousing Peter and me the evening before? “Lighten up,” I said. “You know, like last night in the abattoir.”

“There’s a time for work, and a time for play,” she said with a glare, “and there’s never any reason to mistreat the tools.”

I shook my head to clear my thoughts. This girl was nineteen, and she was talking to me like my parent. I was in no mood to swallow it at that hour.

“What’s eating you? You sound like a preacher.”

“Well, I’m glad you asked.” She looked squarely at me, “You wake up on time, and do your work, I’ll get off my pulpit. This is no country club you’ve come to. We’ve got a hell of a lot of work to do. We hired you on to do it. If you can’t or won’t, we’ll find somebody else.”

She turned away. “Look. I think you’re a nice guy. But you can’t be sleeping in. And you can’t throw things around like that. For some reason I’ve come out responsible for you, and Charlie will expect me to make you useful around here.”

“But that’s bullshit. If Charlie has a problem with me, I want him to come to me about it.”

“No, you don’t,” she said, “Charlie tells you what to do. He expects you’ll do it. If you don’t, he’ll come to you to send you packing. Until then he expects me, and Marlee and Peter when you work with them, to help you out. That’s more than he gives most blokes. You’re a special case. But he’ll not keep you here if you act like you’re here on a bloody school trip.”

“Look, I’m sorry. Does he know I slept late this morning?”

“Of course he does. There’s not much goes on around here that he doesn’t know.”

Coming as it did amid my usual morning gloom the exchange dented my pride, and I spent a few moments fuming. But as my head cleared the unpleasant conversation began to have a transformative effect on me.

I couldn’t stand the thought I’d antagonized any of these good people. I realized with some embarrassment that Danielle was right, that I was absorbed by the personal nature of my quest, without opening myself to the needs or expectations of the community of which I was now a vital part.

No, this adventure could no longer be a lark, an exotic indulgence; I had stumbled into playing an important role in the lives of the Hendersons. Though I couldn’t threaten their existence in any real way, I could surely inconvenience it. What a lousy way to repay them for the risk they took in hiring me on, despite whatever suspicions they likely had as to my ability to play that role in a meaningful way.

“Danielle, you tell me whatever you need to, whenever you need to. I’m probably way over my head here—I’d be crazy to throw away my only life preserver. Just give me a little slack in the mornings, okay?”

The country beauty paused, nodded slightly in recognition of my contrite tone, then squared her jaw.

“Morning,” she said in a level tone, “is half the day, Dave.”

 

Sure enough, the cool morning seemed to arrive mere minutes after my head hit the pillow. Despite my early bedtime here was no sense of luxuriant snoozing. I hunkered half-asleep over a bowl of Weetabix, trying to get my internal engine started.  I was sore from the previous day’s exertions. There was to be no pity party in my honor, however. There was nothing but to get moving when Danielle called me to help her push the brood mares from Colt into River Paddock.

This required moving the animals through a gate halfway down the laneway. Typically, one person blocked the animals from racing past the open gate while another urged them from behind. So as the morning sun opened its eyes below the horizon – even it wasn’t yet out of its bed – I found myself walking behind the group of spirited young mares. The mob sauntered ahead of me along the green strip, towards Dan’s blocking position, then descended into and through Homestead Creek.

With the last animal across I stood at the water’s edge. Danielle, needing as she did to maintain the block position, couldn’t pick up for me at the opposite bank as she’d done the day before. The horses milled about on the opposite side of the creek, awaiting my encouragement to move on.

This creek was ten feet wide, so jumping over was a dubious proposition. I would’ve liked to at least attempt to clear it, however, rather than simply wading in, but the sloppy bank prevented a good running start. And I had to continue pushing the horses. I considered taking off my boots but knew Danielle was unlikely to wait quietly while I indulged in such a dainty luxury. Feeling oppressed and irascible yet pushed by the irresistible force of necessity I waded into the thigh high water. It was midday before I noticed I was no longer squishing with every step.

Dan asked me to start the branding fire while the others sorted the horses into the several drafting yards. This pleased me; as an Eagle Scout I know something about building a fire. As an added bonus it gave me hope of drying my sopping jeans, at least. So as the sun slipped out from behind its nocturnal cover I honored it with a conflagration jumping and snatching at the sky. I stepped back, hands on my hips, admiring my pyrotechnic handiwork, reveling in the heat rising all around. When I deemed it necessary, which was often, I stoked the blaze with a worthy bough.

I don’t know what mechanism it is that allows a person as distracted as I to retain the capacity to sense something as subtle as another’s gaze. Yet as I stood admiring my efforts I became aware I was being watched. I turned to my left to find Charlie towering over my shoulder. His quizzical look went from me to my fire then back to me, where it stayed.

“Fixing to start a bushfire, are ya Dave?” He asked.

“A bush fire? No! Goodness, no. Just trying to make some good coals.”

He laughed, pretended to be relieved to hear I had no intention to burn down the entire operation.

“Oh, that’s good,” he said. “Go easier on the wood” Then, his humor past, “Much easier.”

With the horses ready to go and the fire still leaping gaudily we all strode to the workshop and loaded ourselves with branding irons and ropes. Uncle Dick was filing something in a vice; he seemed withdrawn—he scowled and looked at his hands during a brief conclave with Charlie.

Charlie took the day’s tools back to the yard and set the heads of the homemade branding irons in the fire. Marlee retrieved from the truck a box containing medical pliers, bandages and tapes, a clipboard with wrinkled pages, and a bottle of Pine-0 household cleaner.

“Be ready to move like lightning,” Marlee instructed me. “You bring us the brands, but don’t come into the round yard until we call you. We put a year brand on first, then will number the horse.” She looked at the list on her clipboard. “The first this year will be two seventy. So bring the year then the numbers two, seven, and zero. But not until we have the horse down. Got it?”

The first horse into the round yard was a dark filly. She circled anxiously, her eyes wide with fright. When Charlie stepped into the ring, carrying a rope, the youngster tried to leap through two of the lower rails, knocking her knees heavily. Stymied, she pranced away from the big man, who slid behind and to her side. As she jumped away, he lofted a loop around her head. She recoiled against the constraint, a cat on a leash.

From opposite sides of the yard Peter and Marlee both cast a looped rope onto the ground inside the round yard. Within moments the distraught animal had in her struggle stepped her front left and rear right hooves into the loops. As she did so, Peter and Marlee jerked their respective ropes tight around the horse’s hoof. Wrapping the stout lines twice around the rails they pulled the animal’s legs into the air, despite her powerful kicks. Perched now on two opposing legs she was primed to fall under the effect of Charlie’s pull from her right. Fall on her side she did, with a solid whump.

I raced to the branding irons after swinging the gate open into the round yard where I’d lined up the irons in numerical order. I found the “1”, “9” and “8” and carried them by their long handles to Charlie, who stood above the little filly’s shoulder. Danielle had thrown her leg over the horse’s neck and was holding its long face. She was leaning back, pulling the horse’s nose straight up in the air, which kept the animal from leveraging itself into a sitting position.

“Here’s the ‘1’!” I thrust the hot iron towards Charlie. “And here’s the ‘9’!”

“I don’t need the ‘1’! What’s the ‘1’ for?!” He said.

“For the year! Nineteen eighty-eight!”

“Bloody hell, mate, the ‘8’ will do! We’re not writing a bloody book on the bastard!”

Despite the urgency I heard Peter and Marlee chuckling as I bustled back to the fire.

I brought the ‘8’ and the ‘2’ and Charlie used them to sear the code into the thin skin on the animal’s front left shoulder. Smoke rose in a white mist as the metal took. It smelled burnt and meaty. I returned for the ‘7’ and ‘0’. Having tossed the used irons into the sand Charlie applied the final two to the animal. After applying the iron for an instant he’d raise it and examine the depth of the brand. Then he’d either reapply it for another instant, or drop it in satisfaction. I then returned the irons to the fire. The day was rapidly heating up, and the good coals I’d hoped for glowed in radiant waves. I was getting uncomfortable again inside my clothing and my wet boots, now loaded with sand.

When the newly branded horse was released it galloped into my yard. She turned my direction as she pranced through the gate but spooked and hopped away upon seeing me. I closed the gate and another dark filly raced in to meet the Hendersons. She was roped around the head, though she didn’t step as readily as the first into the snares on the ground. Once, she stepped her front left foot into Peter’s loop. As the wiry lad pulled, the frightened animal danced its right foot into the loop instead just as it closed. Peter relaxed his rope, and it kicked loose; he recast his line. Within the next two minutes this unhappy lass was on her side, branded, and released.

The third horse to peel away from its mates and surge into the round yard was a year old colt who (by definition) had never been castrated. A beautiful young stallion he was too. His burnt umber coat reflected copper in the nascent day as he scampered from gate to gate, only to find them all closed. He reared on his powerful hind legs, took two powerful strides, and launched himself at my gate. His broad torso struck the top metal rail with the solidity of a semi-truck, and he stumbled backwards, rebuffed.

I also stumbled backwards in my retreat from the gate, though not far enough to guarantee my safety had the latch not held. The freight train of horse and metal would’ve waffled me between the inflexible rails behind me and the ones launched my direction. By Grace, I’d hooked the chain properly, however, and my second day on Bullo River was not my last. It would’ve taken a much greater horse than the one at hand to break the hold. No matter. In that moment I became acutely aware of the forces I was to be working with that year, and the very real possibility of sudden disastrous injury. This plain fact proved itself true with the station machinery, the half-wild animals, or the setting itself–the unforgiving Australian outback.

Everyone kept quiet as the spunky colt paused with nostrils flared, its animated ears and eyes searching desperately for escape. Charlie moved deliberately to his gate and let himself into the round yard. The horse backed away from him in deepest suspicion. The big man walked forward, extending his arm. The horse skittered away. It circled clockwise. Charlie stood in the middle of the pen, following the horse’s movements, the loop in his left hand. The horse turned his head often as he trotted around the perimeter, wild for refuge. Charlie spun the rope alongside his body and cast. The heavy line fell against the animal’s neck, causing it to shudder and whinny.

With his eyes still on the pony Charlie addressed me with a quiet urgency.

“David, after we get him down you’ll need to come inside and get a rope around his back foot.” Marlee indicated the end of a rope curled at her feet. She picked up the looped end and laid it over a rail. “Watch when you’re putting it on, and don’t come inside until he’s down.”

I considered this new development as Charlie’s second throw sailed over the animal’s head. Marlee and Peter cast their loops upon the ground and after several failed tries each had the appropriate leg snared. While the first two horses we’d branded had been small—less than a year old and no more than five feet tall—this big fellow was full grown in stature if not bulk. He was one of the feisty ones who’d evaded the ordeal the year before. He’d not have encountered humans before, except as passing vehicles or figures on the horizon. Terrified, fierce, and wild, he fought the hemp binding him with all he had.

Danielle was closest to Peter, so she moved over to help him draw the rope holding the animal’s front left hoof around the rail. As Peter hopped into the ring to pull the rope unimpeded she took up the slack as it circled around the stout rail.

“David, get in here!” cried Marlee, whose body convulsed from the vibrations sent out rapid-fire by the horse’s awesome back leg. I scooted inside and along the rails to where she struggled.

“Pull! Pull!” She ordered. I reached for the rope with both hands. It whipped down hard and sharp against my knuckles. I winced.

“Grab it!” She repeated. I seized the churning rope and pulled. My hat flew off as the effort whiplashed my body. It was akin to snagging a whale on a fishhook.

I pulled in perhaps a foot of slack, which Marlee took up around the rail. I tugged, Peter tugged, and when two of the horse’s feet were in the air, Charlie tugged.

The indignant beast crashed to its side. Danielle leapt over its head, pulling it back towards her, then spoke to it in a soothing voice.

“David, get the rope!” Peter joined me as I grabbed the loop waiting on the rail. He took it from me, cried “Watch!”, then stepped towards the animals left rear foot. The beleaguered creature kicked with lethal force. Staying just out of range Peter bent forward and snagged the animal’s fetlock, then handed me the rope. I wrapped it around a rail and pulled with all I had against the animal’s mighty limb, extending it fully and thereby stabilizing it.

Charlie leaned over the bound and trembling animal from its back, razor knife in hand. Reaching down he kneaded the horse’s belly in search of its testicles. Unlike most male mammals, horses have no external sac containing its reproductive organs. He located one through the skin and pulled the testicle tight against the animal’s flank. Using a special blade designed for the purpose he cut a two inch slit and pulled the testicle outside the animal’s body. The gland was encased in a transparent membrane. Charlie gently cut this open, whereupon it retracted within. A noodly tube trailed from the testicle itself.

Peter handed Charlie the pliers I’d noticed earlier. Emasculators are designed to stymie blood loss while cutting the tube. Charlie hadn’t used this set before and didn’t trust them.

“A bit fancy, aren’t they?” He said to Marlee, who’d bought them the last time she’d been in Darwin.

“Let’s have a go, then,” he answered himself. With a crunch the clamp bit upon the tube, several inches below the testicle which came off in Charlie’s left hand. The horse whinnied as Charlie tossed the nugget in the sand. After squeezing the pliers for several more seconds Charlie released the severed tube. The waffled end bled only a little as it withdrew into its home cavity.

Charlie repeated the procedure with the other testicle, cutting a new slit, extracting the testicle, then mashing the organic ductwork in similar fashion. When both glands lay in the sand he cleaned the wound—by mopping the incision with a hand towel sopped in Pine-O.

The overall rustic nature of the operating theater was fascinating, but this final act flabbergasted me. Using household cleaner seemed so inappropriate for the job as to seem irresponsible. I wasn’t the least bit tempted to share this impression; I said nothing, assuming there was something redeemable about the choice which I didn’t know and wouldn’t understand. I simply let it remain part of the wonder of the morning.

At the conclusion of the countrified procedure I handed Peter my rope and ran through the sand to get the branding irons. Charlie applied his artistry and we released the horse which whinnied as he rolled to his feet and bolted through the open gate. I surveyed the remaining several dozen horses; many looked to be the size of this one who’d rattled my frame and rubbed dime size abrasions on my hands. This would be a long day—the first of a long summer.

And a long day it was, although the idiosyncratic drama of each new horse kept it from getting anything close to boring. The females were a blessing as they only required branding. The procedure involving males was unchanged; a bone-jarring struggle to get it on its side, the rope secured to contain the powerful and dangerous free leg, the country surgery, and the branding. My hands were raw and tender, the heat of the sun and the fire soaked me, and the sheer physicality of the job wore me to the nub.

It was interesting watching the character of each horse—whether brazen or bashful, scared or friendly—as expressed in their dark eyes and private dance. My workmates were equally impressive. The aspects of equine behavior and character they perceived were wonderfully nuanced, whether in judging a pedigree or reading a faint brand on a moving animal.

A crisis occurred when Charlie found in one young male an undescended second testicle. As Charlie searched deeper and deeper the poor beast’s intestines began peeking out of the four inch slit in its belly. Charlie cursed and held back the guts from the sand inches below. Like sausages in a press they kept sliding inexorably out of the wound. Marlee gave them a dose of Pine-O and sewed the incision shut while Charlie tried to hold the innards where they belong.

“Poor bastard. I must have broken the gut wall,” Charlie muttered. “Usually don’t make it when that happens.” Sadly, that was to be the animal’s fate. Two days later Charlie dispatched the doomed animal out on the airstrip with a single rifle shot.

One young colt vaulted over the top rail of the pen—a full six feet—only to land in a different enclosure.

“Christ Almighty—get that one to Princess Anne!” Danielle gasped.

Another tried the same feat but failed to clear the top rail, cracking the dried wood. We took a break to reinforce the compromised rail with a metal pole and some wire. One young filly, hearing mama call, launched herself between the second and third rail. This rail also broke.

Charlie smirked. “Great yard we have here.”

“Well, Charlie, it’s only about twenty-five years old,” responded Marlee.

“Shows it, too.”

My favorite diversion of the day was the long lunch we took between 11 o’clock and 1:30 PM.

“The horses will get overheated.” Charlie had said.

“Not to mention us.” I threw in.

“Not turning into a wimp on us, are you?” Marlee challenged with veiled humor.

“Not just yet, but I’m seriously considering it.” This comment of mine played well only with Peter.

The ample lunch and long nap left me in reasonable shape for resuming our labors. As we reentered the yard, the wary horses crowded together. Many had straw hanging out of their mouths, giving them the appearance of goofy equine hillbillies. Their eyes, however, sent a different message—the threatening darts of one whose territory has been broached.

Several minutes later we’d shifted the horses through the funneling process and one strong young colt raced into the round yard. That’s when another problem developed in the O.R. Charlie removed one of the young fellow’s testicles when a quizzical look crossed his face. He kneaded up and down its belly, then dipped his fingers inside the initial incision, where he gently searched about.

“Here, you have a look,” he said to Marlee. “I think he’s only got one.”

Marlee bent over the prostrate chestnut and with her much smaller hands, felt about.

“Does that happen often?” I asked.

“Occasionally. Usually he’s just got one pulled up, like that bugger this morning. But I couldn’t feel anything here.”

“What happens if you leave one in?”

“A proud stone, it’s called. Makes him act like a stallion. Causes troubles in the mob. Likely won’t be fertile though.”

“That’s a great name,” I laughed. Charlie looked at me with a blank expression.

“Is this it?” Marlee asked, looking up from her awkward position. Her hand squeezed a bulge in the horse’s skin.

“Let’s have a feel.” Charlie stooped over. “Doesn’t feel like anything to me,” he said, his face a picture of concentration. The aura of the earlier sad trouble still hung over the process. “I don’t think so. Let’s let him go. He’s not too old yet. If he’s acting up, we’ll take care of it next year.”

After we’d marked him with the Bullo brand, I saw a trickle of blood running down inside his thick hock as he returned to his pen.

The rest of the afternoon unfolded in an ever-increasing dusty haze. Caught, thrown, cut, branded. Reds, grays (flea-bitten and blues), roans, bays, chestnuts, browns, and, rarely, blacks.

The Henderson’s dialogue was fascinating, rich in equestrian terminology, referring to things that remained to me imperceptibly subtle. Danielle, especially, amazed me by announcing not only the name of each animal, if it had one—a stupendous feat of identification in itself, given how little direct contact she had with the individual horses—but the names of its mother as well. Given that she knew which mobs most of the horses ran with, she could make an intelligent guess on the father often.

Whereas I looked upon the milling group of animals and saw various shades of four-legged cut-out paper dolls, she looked and saw networks of friends, a community of complex relationships.

Later that night, after we’d finished the last of seventy-six horses, taken a dip in the sun-warmed pool, and consumed a vast meal, I mentioned to Danielle my admiration for her equine knowledge. I was hoping to get past the official face she’d presented thus far, self-effacing and officious as it was. I’d seen her beautiful white smile only a few times; I wanted to see it now.

“Oh, it’s no big deal when you’ve been watching them over time,” she said demurely.

“Oh yeah? Then how come Marlee or Charlie kept asking you? They’ve seen them around as much as you have.”

“They know I know these things.” I couldn’t make out whether she was being coy, humble, or evasive.

“Oh, I see. It’s just duty, huh?” I said with mock credulity.

“Yeah, I guess it is. What are you getting at?”

“Nothing, I suppose. Just trying to give you a compliment. I was really impressed.”

“Ha!” She laughed, “That’s nice, but save it for when I do something actually impressive!”

“Well, I was truly impressed.”

“Oh, forget it.” She said, flashing the broad smile I’d been seeking.

Marlee had been sitting at the kitchen counter, reading an Australian movie fanzine left behind by some chopper pilots who’d passed through.

“Dave,” she called, “have you ever seen this bloke?” During dinner I’d been relating stories from my former life driving a limousine in Hollywood. “I reckon he’d do!”

Danielle and I walked over to where she was holding a photo of Tom Selleck.

“No, I never drove him. But I did see him backstage at the Golden Globes a couple of years ago as he walked past.”

“What is the Golden Globes?” Danielle asked.

“What are they? There are the awards handed out by the International Movie Critics Writers Association for excellence. You know-like the Oscars, or the Emmys.”

“The Oscars?” The girls said in unison.

“Yeah, the Oscars. The awards given for best picture, best director, that kind of thing.”

“Oh yeah. Michael Jackson won them a while back, right?”

“No. He won a Grammy. That’s for selling music.”

“Un-huh. They give a lot of them away, from the sound of it,” said Marlee with an attitude that conveyed a lower opinion of the Hollywood crowd than they hold of themselves.

“Look, there’s Cher,” I said, happy for the diversion, “I drove her a couple of times.”

“Who?” They said. I pointed at a woman in full voice wearing a mesh bodysuit. “Cher.”

“Oh,” said Danielle. “You mean Chair.”

“Well, her name is pronounced Cher, as in ‘share and share alike.’”

“But she doesn’t spell it ‘share’. She spells it C—H—E—R. Chair, as in cherry.”

“Or cherub,” said Marlee.

“Or cherish,” threw in her mother, who’d been reading a magazine nearby.

“Look,” I said, the futility of inevitable defeat rising within, “she may spell it C—H—E—R, but she says ‘share’. Sonny and Cher, not ‘sunny’ and ‘chair’.”

“Then she ought to spell it S—H—A—R,” said Danielle.

“But that would be shar, like in shark,” objected Marlee.

“That’s not bad,” put in Sara, “maybe she ought to change her name to shark. Acts like one, from what I hear.”

I bit my tongue and prayed there was no photo of Sade in the magazine.

“Who’s that guy she’s with?” asked Sara, who’d wandered over to investigate the controversial photo.

“That’s Greg Allman. He’s one of the Allman Brothers.”

“There’s more? Do they all look like him? What a specimen!”

“I don’t know, mummy. I’d take his hair,” said Marlee.

Mel Gibson’s handsome countenance gazed from the next page.

“Now there is a man!” exclaimed Marlee.

“Well, he is an Aussie, but I’ve heard he’s short. Only about 5’7”,” I informed the girls.

“How many centimeters is that? asked Danielle.

“Let’s see. Two and a half centimeters to one inch. Sixty-seven inches. That would be one hundred sixty-seven and a half centimeters.”

“Bloody hell!” Exclaimed Marlee. “What a shrimp! One hundred sixty-seven centimeters—that’s about Hunter’s height!” she hooted, referring to her beloved Rottweiler.

“Or mommies bustline!” cackled Danielle.

“Ha! You’re way ahead of me there, little one!” retorted mom.

Marlee, for the record, made it a well-rounded competition. Hard work and nature had formed three very shapely women.

Marlee turned the page. Various television series casts looked out from an article about ratings wars.

“So that’s Tony Danza,” I said. “He used to be on Taxi. I drove some friends of his to his wedding. And, let’s see, this is Bruce Willis. I used to drive him often. We were nose-to-nose one night over his treatment of the limo. And that woman is Cybill Shepherd. She was a big model a few years back. This is Bill Cosby. He’s a funny man. When my brother and I were small our mom took us to visit him on the set of his TV show. Drank a bunch of cranberry juice with him even though neither of us could stand the taste of it. And this is Michael J. Fox. He’s on Family Ties with Meredith Baxter Birney. She used to be married to David Birney from Love Story. And this is Mike Wallace, the journalist who once interviewed…”

A boisterous exclamation from Danielle interrupted my dissertation. “Christ Almighty!” she hooted, “You think I’m something for knowing a mob of horses. You bloody well know half the planet!”

Six – Keen Eyes for Conformation

We passed through the gate from Bull Rush to the main laneway after the last of the horses. While the others waited, Danielle dismounted and closed the gate, a gate unlike any I’d seen before. Made of barbed wire, it appeared at first glance like a continuation of the fence line. In fact, it was a clever construction strung between two stout posts and fastened using a metal fence post as a lever to rack the whole thing tight.

With the mob securely within the corral the five of us entered, dismounted, and unsaddled our horses. The sun had climbed to its full mast; the moist air closed in upon me. I squirmed in my tight clothes; the effort of struggling with the heavy leather saddle further opened my pores. Within minutes I was sweating as if in a sauna. Saltwater glazed my glasses as I trudged about the shifting sand in my heavy boots.

Our mounts were all dark with sweat; after removing the saddles and saddle blankets we led them by the bridles to an old green hose snaking out of the abattoir and cooled them off. I released Silibark into the laneway where he treated himself to a good roll in the dust. I laughed to see the large animal on his back, snorting and kicking as I’d seen only dogs do before.

“What’d you think Dave?” Peter asked as we drank deeply of the cool water we’d brought from the house that morning.

“It was all right! Definitely all right!” I enthused, grinning and nodding. I was proud of myself. Although I hadn’t played a critical role in the operation, neither had I fallen off my horse nor somehow sent the horses off in a hundred different directions. I lasted the duration, an accomplishment for a greenhorn such as myself.

“Going to be a little sore tomorrow?” Marlee asked, a gleam in her eyes. “I looked over once and saw you bouncing around like a sack of flour on an oxcart,” she said, sending a chuckle through the small group.

“Yeah, it was a bit rough there at one point. Damn horse was giving it more than I’d asked, I’m afraid.”

“You’ve got to control your horse with your body and your legs. He gets away and you can get in big trouble,” Charlie cautioned.

“Yeah, and remember if your horse does go bush, hop off if you want your pay,” Peter said in mock seriousness.

“Minus the cost of the saddle,” Charlie added, in a rather more serious tone.

“In that case, you may as well stay on and go bush with it, because you’ll be working for years at jackaroo wages to pay for one of them,” laughed Peter.

After our short break we returned to the yards. As we’d done with the stock horses that morning we chased the new batch of horses through the various pens until they filled up the forcing pen and the large pen opening onto it. Marlee seated herself on the top rail of the round yard, Danielle stood in a position to open one of the gates, as did Peter. I manned the gate into the main yard as I had several hours earlier. Charlie entered the forcing pen and gently shushed the horses one at a time into the round yard for evaluation.

“Looks alright in stature,” someone would say.

“Naw. Rump’s too thin,” another would interject.

“She’s young, may grow a bit.”

“Have a look next year.” On general assent each beast would surge through my open gate to join the others in the main yard.

“Good God, look at the dirty great head on that thing!” Danielle was most often quickest to offer these sorts of editorials.

“And the wonky rear!”

“Give this one to St. Vincent de Paul!”

Or;

“There’s a good-looking animal.”

“Yeah, beautiful line to her.”

“She’ll do.”

In this manner the horses were sorted into two general categories; animals who would be allowed to reproduce, and those who would be sterilized. Several horses entered the ring with a growth or wound of some sort. These animals were gathered in their own pen for later treatment.

When the dozen horses in the forcing pen were all sorted we would hop into the holding yard and push another group into the forcing pen. The nearest person would hasten to close the gate and the process would begin again.

“No beam to that one.”

“Christ, where did that thing come from?”

“Looks like an eye problem here.”

“What you think of this one Charlie?”

“A bit long legged.”

“There’s a good looker.”

“Yeah, but she’s had two ugly foals already.”

To my eye they all looked much the same – large, powerful, feral. It was fascinating to see what was said as each animal entered the ring for scrutiny; with each comment I’d try to see what qualities were being referenced. Occasionally a characteristic would be obvious, but most often the critique remained too subtle for my eye. Time and again a sure winner would enter the round yard only to be verbally shredded under the acute Henderson eye.

One important group segregated from the rest comprised the unbranded horses, or clean skins. These were young colts, frisky and obstreperous in their adolescence. They were a joy to watch, high-stepping and tossing their heads, their short manes bristling. Several were only a few months old. These scampered in confusion, bawling in response to their mother’s whinnies. These cries filled the air as friends and family protested the indignity of the separation.

The sorting process continued for several hours amidst the dust and the cries. I never ceased to be awed by the might of the animals as they charged past my open gate, or moved by their reunions as kin rejoined each other in the main yard. As I watched their interplay I gained for the first time a sense of why so many folks are smitten with these intelligent and elegant animals.

By eleven o’clock we’d run the last of the animals into their appropriate pen. Throughout the morning I had seen Uncle Dick moving about the workshop, sixty yards or so from the corral where we toiled. As we finished with the horses I saw him disappear into the grimy corrugated metal shack home to the generator, and a moment later the whir of an engine sounded, then caught. Other sounds came to life as electricity flowed to Bullo’s various buildings. From the direction of a large round water tank an electric motor strained, then began humming. In the workshop an air compressor kicked on. A country-western ballad drifted from Stumpie’s residence.

After all the horses had been segregated into their appropriate groups Danielle and I began pushing the various mobs into the appropriate paddocks. The others headed off in other directions: Charlie and Peter joined Dick in the workshop, Marlee headed to the house for medicine to treat the ailing horses.

Danielle and I first released all the geldings and non-brood mares back into Bull Rush through a gate opening from the corral into that pasture. I watched as the first few explored then tentatively stepped through the open gate. When their mates realized freedom was at hand a crush developed as, suffused with a reinvigorated independence, they raced to join their compadres in the scraggly forest we’d only just cleared that morning. How long, I wondered, before I’d be fighting its entanglements again?

The brood mares we allowed back into the laneway. Danielle gave me some instructions before she hopped into the truck and drove off to open the gate leading from the laneway to their new home in River Paddock. I was to wait several moments before pushing the two dozen bachelorettes over the creek which crossed the laneway. Then Danielle would pick them up and drive them through into River paddock via the gate she would’ve opened. This we accomplished without incident.

We met again at the yards. Danielle motioned me into her truck and we drove to a building standing close to the homestead and which once had been an airplane hangar. Now it was empty except for a small stack of hay bales and a brood of resident laying hens. As we passed through the gate leading into the small home or “garden” paddock surrounding the homestead Pumpkin and Daisy eyed us warily. Banjo and Kelly, who’d returned home after exhausting herself on the morning run, ran out to meet us, happy for the promise of more excitement. After we’d thrown several of the hay bales into the back of the truck Kelly jumped on, though Banjo seemed to remember his earlier futility and chose not to relive the moment.

These bales we drove back to the corral and broke them up in the pen where the cleanskins scampered. The next morning, Danielle explained, we would brand them and castrate the males. The prospect excited me – it promised to be another archetypal cowboy experience.

The sun by now stood full overhead. My hat, symbol of my new status, made it’s true purpose apparent; shielding my face and head from the scalding sun. It’s comforts notwithstanding I was miserable. The tight pants and boots suffocated my legs, my soaked shirt stuck to my body, pulling against me as I moved. Hay dust and dirt kicked up by the horses caked my arms and face. I’d given up cleaning my glasses.

I jumped in the truck when we finished spreading the hay bales as Danielle called lunchtime. Eating habits in my previous life typically involved no breakfast whatsoever, followed by a big meal a few hours after waking. With only a small breakfast in my belly and five hours of hard work behind me I was ravenous.

As we drove to the house Peter and Charlie were striding across the small salty white flat between Homestead Creek and the sprawling house. They arrived as we pulled up in the truck and as we walked inside Charlie questioned Danielle about the dispersal of the horses. Inside, Sara, accompanied by Kenny Rogers on the stereo, was arranging on the countertop a hearty meal – the fact I didn’t bother to strip off my uncomfortable clothing was a testament to its allure.

Indeed, I was preparing to sit down in front of a large pan of crusty meat pie when Charlie upbraided me for not washing my hands. For the second time that day I kicked myself for having to be told something so elementary. Though I slunk to the bathroom feeling like a juvenile the banquet confronting me upon my return resuscitated me completely. Along with the meat pie, Sara had prepared a roasting pan full of steaks, a bowl full of buttery vegetables, grilled pumpkin squash, and a hearty salad. The circular loaf of rustic bread stood nearby, along with a jug of ice cold milk and several liters of water.

Unsure where to begin the bacchanal I reached for a knife and seized the nearest article, which happened to be the bread. I hacked off a prodigious wedge, smeared it with butter, and packed the dough in my mouth. Momentarily appeased, and aware of ten astonished eyes upon me, I approached the rest of the meal with more civility, if no less an appetite, and my hunger was soon assuaged.

The table conversation – what I caught of it – revolved around the success of that morning and plans for the near future, little of which I fully deciphered. There was talk of graders and straining in this paddock and that paddock — which had something to do with fences — then segued into talk of cattle and panels and yard sites. I did discern that within a few days two more station hands and a domestic would arrive. With the coming cool weather the mustering season was about to shift into top gear. The two men were aborigines, sent by the Commonwealth Employment Service in Katherine, Western Australia.

I realized as I listened just how little I knew of what I was in for. I didn’t know how cattle were mustered or what was involved once they were all together. When Charlie directed Peter and I to collect a load of wood for branding fires I knew that the afternoon with Peter would get a few of my questions answered.

After lunch I retired to my room for a nap. I reveled in the sanctuary the ceiling fan in my small room provided from the dead still and clammy outside air. The cool breeze combined with the hearty lunch and the early morning’s exertions lead easily into a nap which ended far, far too soon.

I awoke, sweating, to Peter’s call. My fan no longer offered relief; Dick had powered down the generator. I managed to rouse myself and, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, joined Peter in the truck. We swung by the workshop where we picked up fuel, various tools, and a length of rope. We drove out the main drive several miles, then left the road to follow a fence line, along which lay small trees felled during its construction. Peter filled me in on the work ahead as we scavenged firewood.

“You’ve seen that stack of metal panels by the workshop?”

I’d noticed the couple of hundred metal rectangles leaning against a large Bloodwood tree. Each section was about six feet tall and eight feet wide, constructed of square pipe welded into two sides and four or five rails.

“Basically,” he continued, “we load those onto the old flatbed Toyota and drive them out to the yard site, where we take them off and build a bloody great ring.”

“Where’s the yard site?”

“Varies. This station is divided into sections and Charlie picks the site according to where it is best suited.”

“So is each section mustered separately?”

“Yeah. This year, from the way he’s talking, looks like we’ll have four or five yard sites.”

“And each time, the thing has to be taken down and put up in a different place?”

“Right. But that’s not even half of it. There’s also the bales and the trough to be brought in and the wings built.”

“What are wings?” The info was coming in scads.

“Wings are fences to direct the cattle into the portable yard. Like the permanent laneway, except that they’ve got to be rolled up afterwards.”

“Sounds like a lot of work.”

“Aw, it’s not that bad. Besides, what else is there to do?” He asked with an ironic smile. He did have a point. With the nearest mall or movie theatre more than a day’s hard drive distant, “on a whim” didn’t exist at Bullo.

Peter pulled up next to a felled hardwood — bald, contorted, gray with death. We snapped off the smaller branches by hand as the conversation continued.

“So how does a college professor’s child end up out here?”

“Well matey, as I said on the ride in, I haven’t ended up anywhere, just yet. But I like it here, reckon I’m outside in the fresh air – don’t have much of that in LA, I hear. Reckon it’s just in me blood, this.”

“What, a taste for the rural life?” I asked.

“No – insanity.” His boyish face split with a gleaming grin.

Before the truck was half full our tree was exhausted of fodder small enough for us to break off under the concentrated lean of both our weight. We each pulled an axe out of the front seat and whacked off another several branches. We then left the stumpy carcass of our first behind and drove, sweaty and caked with wood debris, to another lifeless tree.

“Where have you worked besides Bullo?”

“Only a couple of sheep stations down in South Australia since leaving Ag college two years back. It’s on those sheep stations that Spike earns his keep.” The little terrier perked his ears up at the mention of his name.

“Do you like working sheep?”

“Bloody love the bastards, though they hadn’t got a bit of sense. And they stink.”

“Dumber than cows?”

“Heaps, mate. Heaps. If there’s fifty of them jammed into a pen and you open a door the bloody bastards will stand and bloody look at each other. Gotta start shoving them through the gate before they catch on.”

I laughed at this description of ovine groupthink. It reminded me of Los Angeles motorists confronted with a broken traffic light.

“I suppose you’d have been prepared for that, though, having gone to agricultural school.”

“Been working with sheep longer than that, Dave. I went to Ag college because I’d like to be a manager of a place. Some owners like to see that piece of paper.”

“What can you learn indoors about this type of life?” I asked.

“Business end, mostly. Had to learn a bit of economics and the like. Spent most of the time outdoors with the animals. Even learned some about plants and crops. I had a project where I grew all the little seedlings and measured them and all.” He offered this tidbit with the cheery enthusiasm of a kindergartner who’d sprouted a corn kernel in a milk carton.

”So how’d you get from there to here?”

“I drove from the gulf in Queensland into Bullo. It took me five hours to travel the driveway in hope of a job. I had no fuel left by the time I got here and then Sara said there was no work. I asked if I could do a day’s work for a tank of fuel. I ended up in the workshop repairing punctured bull catcher tires. At the end of the day Charlie turned up and we got to talking about the bulldozer out in front of the shed. He said it was waiting to have its tracks hard-face welded but he and Dick had no time. I told him I can weld so next day he put me on the welder and after two hours he offered me a full-time job here.”

“So what, you just drove in on a hope and a prayer? And why this station? Why Bullo River?” I asked, trying to get my head around the idea of doing something that speculative, though not hard enough to recognize myself in his tale.

“I’d seen Bullo on an Australian TV program called A Big Country. The episode was called Henderson’s Daughters. It looked like a beautiful place.”

Given that these lovely women had been featured on a national television program, I thought, I’m surprised the Bullo turnoff doesn’t require a traffic signal.

“So you’re here for the social scene?” My arched eyebrows hinted at the obvious.

“No, I have a bird already. Back home in South Australia. Her name’s Diane,” he said. “I’ll have a photo back home.”

“A sweetheart, is she?”

“I reckon she’ll do,” he said, smiling at his understatement.

“No, I stick around to work with Charlie. He’s a top bloke. Knows what he’s doing just about all the time. There’s easier places to work, but Charlie is an education by himself. College of Experience. And that’s the more important part. I mean, a quick bloke can pick up most things I learned in school over time, if he keeps his eyes open. Not all, but most. Precious little that can be picked up in school about driving a grader, or planning a muster, running a crew. And Charlie got a feel for those things like few people, Dave. Very few.” His clear blue eyes reflected his admiration for the older man.

When we finished gleaning two trees our truck was piled high with a spaghetti stack of dead branches. We jumped back in the vehicle and moseyed along the fence line. I assumed we were returning to the road, but Peter pulled up alongside another fallen tree.

“More?” I asked, looking at the impressive load of interlacing limbs.

“Sure; we’ll get plenty more on here. Probably have to come back for a second load anyway.” I wondered what size branding fire we were planning. “This stuff is right dry, it’ll burn quickly.”

By the time we’d doubled our load the chopping and stacking left me gassed. Peter tied two ropes to a small rail running along one side of the truck, threw them over the top of the load, and secured the load with a clever self-tightening knot.

We drove the several miles back to the yard in easy conversation about life in Los Angeles. The twelve million people in LA County equaled the better part of Australia’s entire sixteen-plus million population. This was the main difference I’d noticed so far, the absence of the constant buzz of human activity always present on the periphery, an omnipresent background energy. Here, I had a sense of moving within the environment, rather than having the scenery relentlessly rushing past me. It was relaxing; sort of an extended version of the relief one feels when a noisy neighbor turns off their stereo.

I also liked the irregular curves and quirk of the natural landscape, so varied and unconstrained. The rhythms were more sedate as it passed by than the flashy angularity of urban scenes.

Peter cast his glance around as I talked, trying to imagine living amongst millions of strangers packed into four-cornered buildings. He’d been to Sydney, he said, found it great fun if over-populated. He’d enjoyed the voluptuous charms of Bondi beach, as had I. As a man comfortable in urban environments I was smitten with almost everything about low-rise red-brick terra-cotta Sydney, scattered about the rounded hills which rise out of Port Jackson in the Tasman Sea.

Once back at the yard I swung the final gate open and Peter drove into the sandy main pen. About twenty feet from the round yard gate he stopped and we untied our load. When the entirety of it lay askew in the sand we drove to the workshop, where Charlie had his arms deep within a diesel engine. Peter returned from a brief conversation with the mandate to collect another load.

“We have yearlings to do tomorrow. Charlie says it may take a while to deal with all of them.”

“Why so?” I asked.

“Because they’re big and don’t go down easily. Should make quite a fuss, actually. Most of them wouldn’t have gotten a good whiff of humans before.”

“Why do we have so many large horses if they’re difficult? Wouldn’t it be better to get them young?”

“Sure! Much better. But last year we were a bit shorthanded when the season began, which was late anyhow seeing how the wet season lasted nearly into May. Didn’t have time to get to them all before the wet returned.”

“So now they’re wild and independent, and not too fond of strangers, I take it?

“Yup. Proper brumbies, Dave. Should be something interesting to tell the folks back home in California, I reckon.”

The balance of his and my workday involved gathering another impressive load of deadwood, then using our hands, knees, and axes to break the two loads into manageable pieces of firewood. We were both sweating profusely by the time evening’s filtered glow shone upon our stack of truncated Ghost Gums. As we were finishing, Danielle came up and scattered more hay for the horses.

With the unhurried pace of day’s end we rolled over to the workshop, past the treacherous copse amid whose million finger grip I’d begun the day upon Silibark. It seemed a long time ago, the way summer feels on the second day of a new school year. Charlie remained occupied in the workshop, but he’d heard us leave the yards and had begun cleaning up. He slid onto the seat next to me and the three of us – dirty, hungry, and full of tangible accomplishment – drove to the house for dinner where, once again, I managed to outdo everyone in both volume and enthusiasm for my repast. The day had left me with just enough energy to resupply.

“He eats like there’s no tomorrow!” Sara said, but she had it wrong – I ate precisely because there was a tomorrow, and it promised to be every bit as demanding as today had been.

I wolf down the last of my Weetabix (“Have YOU Had YOUR Weetabix?”) then go to my room to pull on some Levi’s and the old black motorcycle boots I’ve brought for riding. I hadn’t tried on the combination before I’d left home, so it’s only now I realize how difficult it is to get the boots on over thick hiking socks and the pegged Levis. As I struggle to dress myself I hear Charlie and Peter and Marlee walk past my door and go outside.

“All set, Dave?” Peter calls out.

“Coming!” I reply, gathering my gloves, my hat, and my second boot, which for the moment has the upper hand in our struggle. I expect to dump everything in the back of the Toyota and sort it out on the brief drive down to the corral, but as I step outside Charlie calls for me to collect my day’s saddle from the feed room, where eight Western-style saddles hang from the wall. One sits propped against the door frame. I hoist the bulky leather item awkwardly.

With one foot in stockings I head towards the Toyota, dropping articles along the way. I am, yet again, acutely aware of how amateurish I must appear.

“First thing Dave, put your hat on your head.” Peter is walking from the vehicle to help me. “Put your gloves, if you think you need ‘em, in your pocket. And carry the saddle like this…”

Peter lifts the saddle so it rests on his shoulder and outstretched arm. I’d been carrying it like a big sister might tote her brother, hugging it against my belly, my back arched and shoulders hunched to keep from stepping on the dangling straps.

“Don’t come to breakfast until you’re ready to go out,” Charlie adds.

I kick myself for having to be told such elementary things, realizing what I’ll need at Bullo even more than these folks advice is their sensibility.

I join Danielle and Peter in the back of the pickup, standing among the five saddles. Danielle’s dog Kelly, Peter’s Spike, and old Banjo have followed us outside and are longingly waiting for an invitation to join the expedition. Peter whistles and the little fox terrier springs into the bed of the truck. Kelly eagerly follows, but when Banjo leaps he doesn’t get a good jump. His front paws barely hook onto the edge of the tailgate and for a moment he reminds me of myself clinging onto that same tailgate the day before. Banjo falls back to the ground and watches as we drive off.

A brief ride brings us to the corral. It’s a more complicated construction than I’d have imagined. The main pen opens to the laneway funneling in from the adjoining pasture. Opposite the laneway gate, a six foot high gate opens into a small round pen. This pen has four other gates which open onto smaller pens, each half the size of the main yard, large enough for perhaps several dozen stock animals. Various other gates, now closed, allow for movement between these sub-yards.

The entire structure is designed such that one animal at a time moves from the main yard, into the tiny round yard, and from there into an appropriate pen. The process of sorting a large group of animals into smaller groups is called drafting, and is a foundational component of station work. The tiny round corral – properly, the drafting yard — is built of solid wooden posts eight to ten feet apart, six feet tall, the distance between spanned by hand-hewn horizontal rails. The grayed wood is dry and lifeless, all vitality chased out by years in the driving sun. Inside the yards, the hardtack outback ground has become soft and sandy, having been powdered by tens of thousands of brute feet over the years. The overall impression is one of both age and purpose, a hand-wrought and well-worn functionality.

Danielle’s small mob of horses is milling in the main pen when we arrive. The rising sun is emitting the first light of dawn, a trickle over the levy soon to burst open with a deluge of sunshine. Even at this early hour the light has a palpable clarity to it, scattering greyscale shadows all about the rustic scene. The horses huff and frisk in their enclosure, reminding us of an independence beyond their role in our day’s drama.

I’ve at last managed to pull my second boot on, then draw my pants leg tightly over the tall leather. The four of us hop out of the truck, grab our saddles, and set them on the top rail of the main yard. Peter carries Danielle’s alongside his own, the large load stretched out like a goliath football player’s shoulder pads along his arms, an apocalyptic figure in the muddled morning light.

We shimmy between the two lowest rails of the yard then circle slowly behind the milling horses. Danielle has opened or closed the various gates in such a way that as we slowly press forward the horses move in from pen to pen until they stand crowded in a single small pen.

“Dave, this is your saddle.” Danielle points out several characteristics of one particular saddle using technical terminology unfamiliar to me. I notice it has an oilier sheen than the others. I tell myself I’ll recognize it by that quality.

“When you approach your horse, hold your bridal like this.” She drapes the strappy mouth guide over and under her fingers, ending up with a leather and metal Cat’s Cradle swirling around both her strong hands.

“Okaaaay,” I say, studying Danielle’s example. With a few patient instructions from the capable lass I prep the bridal correctly.

“Come at your horse from the front. Silibark is a good stock horse, but no horse likes quick movements. Reach out slowly and circle his neck with the reins. Watch how we do it. Move the bit up to his mouth then reach behind and grab this second halter strap. Then buckle the neck strap.”

“Does it need to be real tight?”

“Oh, not too tight. You should be able to slip two fingers easily under it.”

My Horsemanship 101 tutorial concluded, I advance with the others to the forcing pen.

Charlie catches my eye and gestures. “Dave, you take this gate. Open it when I tell you.” He’s referring to one of the gates leading from the round yard into the main receiving yard.

Danielle, Marlee, and Peter, stand behind various rails, looking into the round yard. Charlie opens the gate between the round yard and the forcing pen. As he does so the horses push against each other at the opposite end of the small enclosure.

The light has increased to a pale blue, casting our efforts into an eerie monochrome aura, the surreal diffuse world of the scuba diver. Half the horses remain dark silhouettes to my eyes, but the nearer beasts glow with a ghostly whiteness. They’re large, larger than I remember horses being, and move with a masculine authority as they retreat from Charlie’s approach.

Suddenly, a large gray with a black mane and dark eyes breaks from the rest and, head down and legs pumping, surges into the tiny round yard. Charlie quickly steps to block the rest of the animals and sharply swings the gate closed.

The big gray draws up abruptly when he sees that the opposite gate—the one at which I’m stationed—is closed. Head held high, nostrils flaring, ears alert, it stomps vigorously around the small enclosure.

“Rocket!” Marlee addresses the considerable beast. She then slips between two rails and joins the horse in the tiny yard.

“Rocket,” She repeats, this time more gently. The big horse cocks an ear her way and casts its ebony eyes upon her, but keeps high-stepping forcefully in a circle. Marlee steps directly in front of the horse. It halts its motions with a whinny and a shiver. Marlee stares directly into its face, cooing “Here, big boy…attaboy…easy now, big fella…”

The horse pauses, then shifts its attention away from the young woman, who immediately steps back into its line of sight. I watch in the dim light as Marlee gently extends her hand to the animal, loops her reigns around its neck, and slips the bit into its mouth.

“David, open up!” comes the hushed command. I swing my gate wide. Marlee walks the impressive animal past me to where the saddles sit. As she passes, I’m frozen by her horse’s wide black eyes and powerful musculature and hope my mount is, in some significant measure, very, very, different.

“Close the bloody gate!” The authority of the voice immediately moves my nervous musings to the back of my mind. With a start I swing the gate closed.

The second animal to break past Charlie is much smaller. It has a light brown color and a more subdued demeanor.

“David!” I’m happy to hear this relatively docile being is to be mine. I gather my bridle and stoop to enter the round yard.

“No, drongo, open the gate! That mongrel’s not a stock horse!”

Danielle is laughing as she pictures me riding this misshapen nag on the muster. I swing the gate open and my dream mount scampers through.

The next animal out is a beautiful chestnut horse, slender with an elegant bearing.

“That’s Fleetfoot, eh?” Peter asks. When Danielle indicates this is indeed Peter’s horse my lithe friend enters the round yard and approaches his horse with a loose-jointed assurance.

“All right, you mongrel. Stand up now, will ya…” Peter coos. He uses the same broad smile and easy charm I’d grown so quickly familiar with on this dignified horse, and within a minute he has the bridle secured around its head and is leading it past me. He winks as he passes.

“No worries, mate,” he assures me. “You’ve just gotta show it who’s the boss.”  I wonder whether pretending to be the boss will suffice.

Charlie’s horse follows, another large gray named Spartan, larger if more docile than Rocket. Danielle applies the bridle, then hands the reins to Charlie, who joins Peter and Marlee.

About eight horses remain in the forcing pen. With some accurate gate-keeping Danielle and I reduce that number to two — one in the forcing pen, and one in the round yard. Both are large and, again, gray.

“This is Blue Bob,” says Danielle, gesturing to the horse trotting around the round yard. “That’s Silibark in there,” indicating with a nod the animal standing quietly at the far end of the forcing pen.

“I’ll put my bridle on, then give you a hand with Silly.”

With that soft manner I’d seen flashes of she approaches her horse and quickly has it bridled. She loops her reigns loosely around a rail and together we enter the forcing pen.

“Hey Silly, hey sweetheart,” she continues in a softly reassuring tone, “you’re going to have a new rider today. Yes you are. He’s going to be real nice to you too, yes.” She puts her hand on the strong animal’s neck and addresses me without looking away from the horse.

“Okay, come forward. Steady now. Hold the bridle like I showed you.” I reach out and stroke the animal’s meaty neck. Its skin tightens and shivers, accompanied by a strong exhalation from its rubbery nostrils.

“See, he’s okay,” she says to me — nope, to the horse — then, to me, “now loop the reins around his neck. Keep your hands close to his neck! Okay, give him his bit.”

I touch the metal device against the horses teeth. With coal black eyes upon me he parts his jaws; I reach high above his mane, seize the top halter strap and draw the bridle on fully. The metal clanks against his teeth as he adjusts the intruder with his tongue.

“Doesn’t that bother him?” I ask.

“No, not really. Horses have a gap in their teeth towards the back of their mouths. That’s where the bit sits.” She draws back the horse’s gums and I see the space between the front and rear teeth in which the bit rests.

“The bridle fits correctly when you see these two wrinkles in his gums,” she says, referring to the loose skin around Silibark’s jowls.

“Let’s go!” Charlie’s noticed our digression from the matter at hand, however brief. Danielle and I join as Charlie begins to lay out the morning’s game plan.

“We’ll start along the River Paddock fence, chase all the horses out of that corner and across the gully. You two get settled quickly,” the big man indicates Dan and I, “Go along Camp Paddock to clear the scrub, then wait on the bush fence where you can stop anything running from us from continuing on into that stuff. Dave, you do exactly what Danielle says; don’t go running off on your own.”

“Okay Charlie, I won’t — if I have anything to say about it.” The laughter does little to ease my tension. These guys are so comfortable, so professional upon their spirited horses. Do they have any idea how little experience I have?

As I saddle my horse with Danielle’s help I’m coming to terms with just how substantial this animal is. His great belly raises and lowers in easy rhythm as I fasten the girth strap (after inspecting it for burrs or other potential irritants). I move warily among its limbs, thick and menacing in their potential. I have for years ridden street-racing motorcycles back home, machines ballyhooed for their awesome horsepower, but none of that triple-digit horsepower has ever seemed as fearsome or potentially dangerous as the enigmatic one-horse critter now towering over me, cool and imperious, as I fasten the trifling human accouterments around its girth.

Finally, with a heave and a swing, I sit atop a genuine Australian stock horse, and I begin moving across the landscape with these trusting people.

I feel reasonably solid at the start. Danielle and I saunter away from the yard, across a small field littered with industrial junk, into a stand of slender trees thick with brittle branches. I sense the creature’s living will beneath me. It’s a disconcerting sensation being astride a conveyance with a mind of its own, and the insecurity adds another layer of excitement to the archetypal moment. With my Acubra hat jammed on my head and my boots lodged in the stirrups, a recognition seizes me—an identification with the Western hardies I’ve seen my entire life from the passive side of the movie screen. Now I’m inside the drama, and it feels both just right and entirely alien.

Though the sun is still not yet up I find myself squinting like the Marlboro Man, as if some inner mechanism has taken over to complete the picture. I imagine the same phenomena may take place if I was to climb into the crow’s nest on a sailing ship; that I’d shade my eyes with one hand while pointing with the other to some object in the distance. I’d likely be as close then to a “Land ho!” as I was now to a “Yee-haw!”. I feel comfortable, iconic, maybe just a bit heroic.

Silibark rolls as he moves; I roll along with his cadence.

“Keep your toes forward,” Danielle instructs, “and hang on with your calves and thighs, not your hands. Keep the reins just loose enough so they don’t tug as he moves his head, but if they’re too slack you won’t have any control. When you turn, lay the opposite rein against his neck and give a little kick with your opposite foot. Silly is responsive; keep your heels away from his flanks unless you really want to go. All right?”

I nod.

“Let’s go!” she says.

Danielle and I trot into the woody scrub, where immediately my thin veneer of competence disintegrates. The trees have grown tall and skinny in their competition for sunlight. None are more than five inches wide at the base yet shoot several yards above our heads. Their bushy crowns intercept almost all the sun’s rays, leaving little sustenance for undergrowth. All the lower branches—twigs really—have grown only briefly before dying. In their dried state they comprise a brittle network of spiky growth.

Cattle and horses have over time broken off most of these branches as they meander in the shade, leaving the ground strewn with deadwood, but everything above the height of a horse’s head remains. It is this jumble of tinder I’m battling as I move through the scrub.

Most of the spiny limbs break off as I press against them, carried forward by my relatively unhindered steed. Particularly stout specimens don’t snap immediately, pushing me back in my saddle as they scrape along my chest, face, or shoulders. Each time I’m pushed back I inadvertently tighten Silibark’s reins and he turns one way or the other. So while I aspire to pick my way carefully, seeking a path of least resistance, constant unintended turns take me invariably into another ugly knot of dead wood.

I quickly discover a second hazard of that bewitched forest. The dead limbs are home to communities of spiders, dark and long-legged, denizens whose ideal condo spinning location, it would seem, coincides with the altitude of my face. Several times in the first few minutes I’m bent backwards, only to rebound face-first into a village of eight-legged insectivores.

So my introduction to station work becomes that of a bewildered tree surgeon, wandering pointlessly among exploding bark and twigs while wearing a silvery shroud of spider web. I’ve seen no stray horses—the rounding up of whom is supposed to be the point of my presence, and I’ve managed to lose sight of Danielle. I call out her name. A moment after her response I spy her, ducking and weaving, apparently in a state similar to my own. Spider webs cover her hat, with bits of bark and wood sticking to the webs, her skin, and her clothes.

“Now you see why they put us on this detail,” she says in an oppressed tone. At nineteen Danielle was, before my arrival, low man on a well-established totem pole. Though my presence changed the specifics, the basic dynamics remain and in the following months she and I would do our share of unpleasant jobs together.

The sun is fully above the horizon now, finding us in fits and starts as we make our way through the clingy maze. Before long I’m hot and uncomfortable in my tight clothing. We reorient ourselves to the fence line, then followed a parallel path about seventy yards from the simple wire structure. The sticks and twigs continue unabated, but by ducking down to the level of Silly’s head I find I’m able to avoid many of them.

The undergrowth proves helpful to our mission in one way, actually; the noise we’re making passing through scares any livestock away from us and out into the open.

After about ten minutes of following the fence line, a clearing appears ahead of us. This turns out to be the barbed wire fence bordering Bull Rush on the south. The fence line has been bulldozed clear along its entire length, and along this narrow clearing stand three small dark brown horses. Danielle sends me back into the scrub to ride parallel to her as she pushes the three back up the fence line a quarter mile to the broad open meadow that comprises most of Bull Rush paddock.

My job is to cut the horses off should they bolt into the scrub; I seriously doubt my ability to navigate quickly enough through the internecine vegetation to do so but, as Danielle foresees, my presence inside the tree line is enough to keep the young mares from leaving the fence.

Just before we emerge onto the plain I see a great black bull off to my left. He’s eyeing me and swishing his tail in a menacing fashion. It occurs to me that I’m lucky I don’t have to milk him.

Upon reaching open ground our three charges scamper away, and as my eyes rise to follow them a picture postcard landscape reveals itself to me. In the near distance covering perhaps three acres stands a shallow swamp, nurturing a lime-green grass lighter and more vivid than the grass extending from there to the horizon. As the horses splash through the water a flock of long-legged brolga cranes—the state bird of Queensland—extend their impressive gray wings and fly a short distance.

Far off to the left a line of short trees marks a creek bed. The only things riding upon the intervening ocean of grass are several independent foals, and a white dirt road snaking towards some low hills off to the right.

As my eyes became adjusted to the scale, I spy a large metal object reflecting the warm morning light. It is at least two miles away. I have no way of knowing it then, but I was getting my first look at a water tank to which I was to spend many hours running a water line in the coming months.

Suddenly my awareness shifts to a commotion just to the left of this object. A mass of animals moves along a line perpendicular to Danielle and me, kicking up a cloud of dust as they bustle along.

“Look!” I call to Danielle, “what’s that?”

“That’s what we’re here to intercept. All those horses have been rounded up by Charlie and Peter and Marlee.”

“Are they still chasing them?” I wonder.

“No, these crazy mongrels–as soon as a few start running they all take off along the fence. That fence they’re on now stops at this one here,” she says, motioning to the barbed wire gate several dozen yards off to our right, “so they’ll turn when they hit it and run towards us. Our job is to be seen by them so they don’t all go straight into the scrub we’ve just cleared. We’ll peel them off the fence, then all of us will surround them in the flat.”

Ok; that sounds simple enough.

Things became considerably less simple as the herd thunders closer. At the lead a large black gelding charges, its mane flowing with the rhythm of its stride. Behind him a great pied mob stretches out along the fence, perhaps one hundred in all, advancing towards us with all the impetus of a torpedo. As they near, Danielle moves stealthily towards them along the fence line. I stay back about thirty yards off the fence line in the short grass. Silibark’s ears are up and rotated towards his oncoming brothers and sisters. He seems agitated, restless, a boy passing the local ball field on his way to church.

And sure enough as the juggernaut catches sight of us they veer away from the fence into the open grass. They thunder by, a hundred feet in front of me, a mighty cavalcade of brute power and beauty that transfixes me with their fearsome determination and surging equine grace. The thought of containing this force of nature seems, in the moment, beyond possibility.

I’m jolted from my bedazzlement by Danielle, who speeds past, yelling, “Let’s go! They’re heading for the scrub!”

The leaders of the pack are indeed making for that intractable tangle of real estate we’d just recently cleared. Danielle cuts an angle to head them off; I rein hard to the left to follow her. In my excitement I kick Silibark more vigorously than prudent, for, primed as he is, he takes off with a powerful lurch.

Now, my excursions on the urban ponies of Griffith Park had introduced me to the concept of posting—that method of rising in the saddle which evens out the bouncy gate of a trotting horse. I didn’t realize as I hurried to cut off the mob that I’d already accelerated well past a trot into a fast canter, however. I raise and lower myself with the best intent, only to have the horse meet my rear end on each cycle with an indelicate whack. Through some original amalgam of break dancing and bronc busting I manage to avoid being ejected.

Scared and out of control I rein in Silibark; he’s eager to run and speeds up again as soon as I relax my pull. Hoping to catch up with Danielle I allow Silibark to run, trying to feel the animal’s natural motion and accommodate myself to it. After several bumpy moments I discover if I sit well back in the saddle and leaned forwards I can ride the waves of its cadence. What an exhilarating moment it is, speeding along faster than I’d ever been on a horse, through the wide-open outback, pursuing a fulminating phalanx of half wild brumbies!

Danielle reaches the edge of the scrub before the speeding leaders and they again turn away from her towards the open field. The formation takes a giant U-turn and heads back the direction from which they’d come. As I bounce along I see Charlie, Marlee, and Peter in position to head off the mob and, I assume, slow them up so we can encircle them. Instead the three riders bolt in tight formation towards the lead group, coming upon it from the right and turning it towards the left. By doing so the horses are channeled into a laneway which funnels into the drafting yard where we’d begun our day.

The leaders troop into the laneway ahead of their malleable compatriots, followed in the rear by us five riders, Danielle and I having joined the other three. I’m exhilarated, both by the complete success of the mission and by my dash alongside the thundering herd. Danielle and the others are smiling too. The morning has been an easily gained and unqualified success.

The next morning breaks warm and still. Dick doesn’t fire up the generator until eight am on this, a Sunday. With a rattle of buckets Danielle and Peter set out to chase down Pumpkin and Daisy for the morning milking. I’m still weary from the long trip; with some difficulty I rouse myself into the new day. I throw a towel across my shoulder and shuffle to the bathroom. As I pass through the kitchen Charlie is putting butter and treacle on a steak sandwich. He’s moving with an alertness usually seen in the meat of the day. I find his energy oddly disruptive in the drowsy atmosphere.

On my return trip through the kitchen Danielle and Peter have finished milking and are distributing the bounty into plastic pitchers. Charlie is at the truck. I dress hurriedly and go into the kitchen, where, as I drain a full half-gallon of milk and crunch two thick slices of bread, I encounter an unfamiliar face.

“You’d be Dave. I’m Marlee,” the elder Henderson daughter says, extending her hand in business-like manner. Marlee is dressed in worn jeans and a green military-style long-sleeve shirt with prominent chest pockets. She’s slight if sturdy in stature, and though she would certainly qualify as attractive I read in her features more an aspect of strength than the softer beauty seen in her sister.

“Hi, Marlee. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I answer, then, “It’s a mighty fine caliber of morning toast y’all offer up around here.” I gesture towards my thick slice of rustic bread slathered in butter and molasses.

“Yeah, mummy does a right job of it. And you’ll do well to have a go at cutting it square next time, eh?” She holds up the loaf so I can see my asymmetrical hack. I offer a wan smile.

“Sorry.”

“No worries. You about ready? Let’s get outside.”

Marlee joins Charlie in the cab as the rest of us squat in the bed of the pickup. As we drive across the creek I get my first glimpse of the areas surrounding the homestead.

With its porch and small, fenced-off yard, Uncle Dick’s abode has the most conventional appearance of any home on the property. A few steps away a corrugated metal bungalow houses the power plant, an old diesel truck engine throbbing industrially. Around the powerhouse, an oil-soaked litter of rusted drums and discarded machinery is under assault from profuse grasses, Mother Nature’s attempt to reclaim the foreign articles as white blood cells attack a pathogen.

The great open-sided workshop is next, jammed with a gray and black jumble of rubber and metal. To its left a wooden corral snakes around a dilapidated building. The building had once been white but time has bleached the old abattoir to a grizzled gray.

Beyond the abbatoir sits a building with the look of a rundown motel, such as might be seen along depopulated stretches of Route 66. Several doors demarcate rooms along a repeating facade. This is the stockman’s quarters, though now Stumpie is the sole resident. At one end an open high-roofed structure is a-flutter with a collection of vividly-colored birds.

Past the workshop we enter Bull Rush paddock – open, green, flat, bordered by low hills. A two-lane track leads along a creek bed to its intersection with the wide Bullo River, whose dense load of silt gives a cinnamon color to the swift water. Slick featureless banks of mud rise gently from the river’s edge and run twenty or thirty feet uphill before giving way to tentative vegetation and a few scattered small trees.

The Henderson property is close to Bonaparte Gulf in the Timor Sea, making this river part of the tidal flow. Twice each day the waters rise and fall and the water flow reverses itself. Given the widely varying water levels the muddy banks remain wet, and slick as ice.

With water bottles and hand reels and tackle boxes in hand we squish barefoot through the fine crimson mud to the river’s edge. I’d expected conventional fishing poles so I’m curious to see how the hand lines work. Peter pulls a shiny lure out of the tackle box, attaches it to his line, holds the plastic “O” and winds the line around it with his left hand. With his right he spins several feet of line into a barbed propeller. At the right moment he releases the line. It arcs fifty feet into the muddy river, the line rolling easily off the ring. When the lure strikes the water Peter begins briskly drawing it in, hand over hand. My companions launch several spiky missiles with similar deadly intent. Whoosh, plop. Whoosh, plop. Our exertions are the sole interruptions upon the brown and red landscape and the broad fast-running but silent river.

When I feel I have the idea I unroll about four feet of line, attached a silver spoon, twirl it about with aplomb, and send it with hopeful gusto — straight up into the air. Whoosh, thunk. After it lands, the five of us retrace the footsteps we’d made scattering for cover from my aerial assault.

“We’re after fish today, Dave, not flesh,” Charlie says.

I sheepishly give it a second go. This effort is less vigorous but with far better timing on the release. My lure almost reaches the water’s edge. Whoosh. Splat. As I’m winding up for a third throw, I see Peter dash away. I assume he’s making sport of me so I conjure a defensive wisecrack to protect my dignity when I see the line in his hands has become taut. He backs away from the river as he retrieves his line, wrapping it around the large reel. Momentarily a very large fish slides out of the opaque water and flops in protest upon the muddy bank.

This barramundi is larger than I’d expected, perhaps twenty inches long and twelve or fifteen pounds. It’s silver and white, its coarse scales iridescent in the strong morning sun. Peter seizes the fish, extracts his lure, and drops the quarry into a large cooler we’ve brought for the purpose.

I reconvene my amateur efforts with fresh enthusiasm and before long my line is running twenty or thirty feet over the water. After each cast I pull the line in, taking care not to tangle it, then send it out again. On about my fourth or fifth cast I feel a strong knock on the line. A momentary pause, then the line runs through my hands. With the plastic “O” at my feet I clamp down on the line and prepare to pull the great fish in. A searing pain shoots up my arm. I release the line with the speed of someone who’s touched a live electric wire. The slack line at my feet rushes into the water, followed by the O ring. I try to stop it with my feet but miss. I step into the river and bend forward for one last grab, but as I (thank you, God) seize the plastic hoop the pain intensifies. I withdraw my hand and examine it. On each of my fingers the fishing line had sawed a clean and substantial cut. Blood mixes freely with the salt water as I stand calf deep in the murky water.

“Get the hell out of the water!” Charlie’s command reaches me as I stare at my wounds. I look up at him.

“Come on! Get out!” Danielle and Marlee repeat the order. They look worried. I step briskly back ashore.

“There are mobs of crocs in the water here,” Danielle explains. “We almost lost a dog here once.”

“And I don’t want to play tug-of-war with some twenty-footer today,” Marlee adds with an exaggerated smirk. Charlie is shaking his head. Peter laughs.

“We’ve got plenty of bait as it is, Dave. No need for you to offer yourself up like that,” Peter says.

I smile sheepishly. “What’s that about a dog?”

“We were doing some branding one day just up there,” Danielle points to where we’re parked, “and we had a big black dog named Barkeley who came down here for a drink when this bloody great croc–“

“A baby, I reckon,” Marlee interjects, “only about four or five feet long.”

“–grabs ‘im by the leg. Marlee and I run down and grab her head but we’re pretty young so we couldn’t pull her free. The croc tries to flip over but can’t in the mud. We’re tugging back and forth when Mummy comes running down the hill and clobbers the bastard over the head with a branding iron.”

Danielle evinces great conviction as she speaks but her tone has a charmingly self-effacing quality to it. Her dark full brows knit and loom over her large eyes and full expressive mouth. I notice her straight white teeth and momentarily wonder how far these folks travel for their dentist appointments.

“Christ, let’s have a look at your hand,” Marlee is speaking. “Wash that when we get home. Ask Mummy for some Medicreme and some Elastoplast to put over it.”

“Oh, it’s not too deep,” I say, “I’ll be all right.” I realize it is deep, of course, but I need to make some macho capital with this crew, show them what a city boy can and cannot take.

“The heck it will,” Marlee exclaims, putting on a theatrically indignant face. “In this environment everything goes septic quickly. Whenever you break the skin, no matter how small, always clean it. Always.”

Disagreement does not seem an option. Peter, meanwhile, had caught two more fish.

Within a short while we have all caught at least one of the large fish. When one gobbles my lure I hold tightly onto the spool and let it take the strain from the meaty river-dweller as I drag it from the opaque water. “Finally,” I think, “I’ve managed to do something useful around here.”

The tide rises along with the new day’s sun. With a half-dozen of the large fish in hand we collect our trophies, scale and gut them, then re-assemble in the pickup. I stand in back holding on to the solid frame rising from the front of the truck bed. Bull Rush spreads green and close-cropped under a gentle blue sky. The purple hills in the distance harbor the last traces of morning’s shadow. Animals graze in knots, still and reflective.

My own reflections on the surrounding beauty come suddenly to a violent end. Moving behind Danielle to pet Spike, Peter’s feisty fox terrier, I release both hands from the support bar of the bouncing vehicle and immediately regret my decision. In bewildering slow motion I take three or four ineffective corrective steps and crash over the tailgate. For what must have been a fleeting moment but which seemed long enough to debate several alternatives I hang from the metal tailgate, my left leg and right arm having snatched enough substance to break a complete collapse to the ground. The options I consider add up to nothing, I realize, as my inevitable end arrives with a thump. Charlie is just heeding Danielle’s cries to stop the truck as I hit the ground and roll several times.

Now, as a child I’d developed a way of surviving your standard juvenile crash-and-burn. How I’d come up with this is obscure; some kids simply get along well in life from the start while others have to strategize every step of the way. Me, I needed strategies. Somehow I discovered that if I said to myself “I’m all right!” while falling from the swing, or watching the huge defenseman line me up on the hockey rink, I might bounce off everything physics could contrive but would come out unharmed.

“I’m all right,” I think as I roll along in the scrub. “I’m all right.”

And, once again, I was. But my pride? Some acts are so amateurish they cause doubt about the possession of common sense, such as a rookie cop giving the chief’s wife a speeding ticket. Falling off the pickup on the first day at an agricultural job qualifies as the same caliber of stupid. Apparently I was not alone in that assessment; there was no deceiving myself that the laughs rocking the pickup as I sheepishly lifted myself back aboard were laughs with me, not at me.

Back at the homestead we deposit all but two of the fish in the freezer. Sara fillets these, and sets them aside for supper. Peter and Danielle go out to milk the cows, then return, strain the several gallons of milk, and refill the half gallon jugs, one of which I drain all by myself as I sit in an archway and watch the steady progress of the afternoon sun.

That evening I join Sara and the girls, Peter and Charlie for a fish dinner. The girls have both put on clean button-down shirts and have a freshly scrubbed glow about them. Peter and Charlie get involved in a technical discussion of guns, using names and numbers Chinese to me, who knows precious little about the subject. Marlee interjects herself into the conversation with a vigorous manner — forward, questioning, challenging. Danielle listens, intense and wondering. Sara occasionally throws in a wry aside.

With nothing to add and a minimum of interest I happily consume the fleshy flavorful fish and baked squash Sara has prepared. When I ask for another fish fillet I’m surprised to find the conversation turn my direction.

“Fill-ay?!” Marlee squawks. “Fill–ay! We aren’t having fill-ays, are we mummy?” Her eyes widen and nose wrinkles as she repeats my pronunciation in an exaggerated French manner.

“Yes, fillet,” I repeat with a quizzical look.

“Oh, very well. We’ll just let you have a fil-ay. Charles, please pass the young man a FILL-AY.” Marlee has gone from broad French to the Queen’s English, raising her brows and drawing the sides of her mouth sharply downward in an aristocratic mime. There is nothing retiring about this girl, even in the presence of a virtual stranger.

“Well, in America we say fill-ay, trying to capture, I suppose, the French nature of the word.”

Marlee cackles as Charlie interjects.

“Well, here in Australia we say fill-it, because that’s the way it’s spelled. F-I-L-L-E-T. Fill-it.” he says, with an air of finality.

“I see. Then what happened with the word ‘no’? It’s an ‘n’ and an ‘o’. Two letters. Yet you Aussies manage to turn it into about seven,” I say with a bemused smile. “Nnnnn…iiii…eeeee.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Charlie exclaims. “But I’ll tell you one thing; we damn sure don’t do things to sound like the bloody Frogs!”

After the laughter dies down Danielle speaks up.

“So what’s the plan for tomorrow, Charlie?”

“Did you finish checking the fences in Bull Rush?” he asks her.

“I did.”

“Right. Then tomorrow we’ll cut out the brood mares. Dave, can you ride?” The big man says, turning my way.

“Oh, I’ve been on horseback a few times. I’m not real good though.”

That was putting it mildly. I’d been on trail nags in LA’s Griffith Park, maybe twice, astride spent beasts who’d plodded along the public track with all the vigor of a yawn.

“You’ll stick with Danielle tomorrow.” He turns to Danielle. “Who’s he riding?”

“I’m going to let him have Silibark. I’ll be on Blue Bob.”

“Are Rocket and Spartan in Colt Paddock?” Marlee quizzes Danielle, who answers yes. She seems in charge of the horses. “Also Fleetfoot, for Peter.”

“Good. Get them in early. It’s still plenty hot. I don’t want to be running around much after 10 o’clock.”

“I have to milk,” Danielle says.

“Peter and Dave can take care of that.” Marlee looks my way.

Danielle lets out a big laugh. “I don’t know about that. Dave’s hopeless. He’ll be tuggin’ on her teats till noon!”

“He’ll learn.” Charlie casts a direct look my way and offers a scant smile.

“Yeah,” Peter, who’s been busily eating, speaks up. “If the bloody cow doesn’t fall asleep on him!”

After dinner we retire to our rooms. Around nine thirty Uncle Dick shuts the power off and I wander outside before going to sleep. I’ve always enjoyed star-gazing, for the sheer wonder of it all but also for the consistent sense of place the night sky offers. Whether in Georgia or California or Hawaii the night sky wraps overhead like a familiar blanket. As I gaze into the undimmed night sky at Bullo I see a dome crowded with stars, thousands compared to the hundreds back home, but no familiar patterns, no shimmering friends to say hello to. I scan for anything which looks like a Southern Cross, the most prominent Southern Hemisphere constellation, but recognize nothing. The heavens are as foreign to me as the new world I’ve entered, and the obligations within it I’ve taken on.

The house is quiet, a dark island in a sea of insect noise. I’m anxious about the next day. I hadn’t expected to be on horseback so soon. I’d seen plenty of cowboys on horseback, sure, but as I stood on the other side of the globe from all I knew I sense that watching the Cartwright boys ride into town would prove about as useful to horseback riding as watching Wayne Gretzy play hockey would be to scoring a goal in the NHL. I mean, it looks easy enough…

Once in bed I fall into a restless sleep.

I’m running recklessly. Wanton stretches of bristly land speed by, clogged by four-legged beasts—dashing, dissolving, angry, frightened. I stop. Aggressive eyes find me, demanding answers. Lurking mobs wait with sinister intent. The eyes again, from my beast this time. “Who’s in charge?” they ask. I answer with my heels. Off again, through streaking galaxies of baked earth I climb. The eyes challenge, strong and broad, malice aforethought. Who’s the law? The limb approaches, chest high. A conspiracy—the eyes have it!

A dark figure looms.

“Dave! Come on mate. Milking time!” It’s Peter, standing at my door, dressed and ready to go. In a sober confusion I pull my clothes on and find my way outdoors, into the yet unbroken day. Peter is in the feed room filling two buckets with a granola mixture. I wonder whether I have time for breakfast before milking, perhaps a cup of coffee. I assume a nap is out of the question.

Peter’s instruction answers my question. “Dump these in the feed buckets. I’m going out to chase the girls up. Stand away from the milking area so you don’t make them bale up when they see you, okay?”

From within a hypnpompic haze I do as Peter instructs, and several minutes later we’re both seated beneath a cow. From Peter’s direction I hear furious spurts of milk ringing against the bucket bottom, then become lower pitched and more muted as the bucket fills. Unwilling to give in to my ineptitude I persevere, drawing a squirt every few seconds, though Pumpkin seems almost dry.

But I’m not giving in to the old bitty; she’s going to have to get used to my fingers. Christ; I’m certain they’re softer than any others which have been kneading her milk bag in recent memory. I tug industriously at the old girls teats, wetting my fingers in the bucket to keep the squeezing well lubricated. An especially artless tug—when I jerk or my fingers slip and pinch— is met with a sodden slap from Pumpkin’s filthy tail.

Peter finishes tapping out his splay-hipped charge, then spins around to drain Pumpkin as I filter the milk he’d gotten from Daisy. Several minutes later he joins me inside. We pour about seven liters of the warm liquid through a cheesecloth.

“Get the cloth wet or it’ll do no good,” Danielle had said, and I’d obeyed, even though the milk seemed to me to do a fine job of wetting the cloth on its own. Pointless exertions have never been a part of my mornings, but adapt I must.

By the time we’ve strained the milk and put it in the refrigerator Charlie is making his breakfast in the dark and stony kitchen. He’d cut two thick slices off the circular loaf of homemade bread, toasted them, then basted them with “mar-jar-een”. As Peter and I walk in, Charlie’s great hand holds a carving knife, poised to sever a healthy slice of roast beef. He lays a slab upon the bread before pouring golden syrup on top of the aggregation. He seems quite content without the salt, tomatoes, and—most importantly — the mayonnaise I’d be hankering for.

 

I instead head for the Weetabix. Perhaps the grainy mixture we’d just given the cows primed my appetite for a bowl of Quaker Natural. The closest thing Bullo offers is these oversized shredded wheats. I extract a bale, break it up, then pull a pitcher of last night’s milk from the nearest fridge. A thin crystalline sheet of ice covers the top of an inch-thick layer of sweet cream. I slosh a dollop of this delicious extract into my tea as Charlie and Peter have done already. For a fella who’s always liked his coffee light, this newly minted sweet cream is the perfect amendment. And the ice-cold whole milk below turns my Weetabix into a satisfying if rustic bowl of cereal.

The sun has not yet appeared above the horizon. Last night’s nervous excitement is still with me; it gives my customary morning grogginess an uncomfortable edge. Though Peter and Charlie grin and joke easily a seriousness dominates my mood. Mornings carry the gravity of weighty endeavors on any day, but this day promises unknowable challenges.

Danielle, Charlie tells us, is already out in the Toyota pushing the saddle horses from Colt Paddock (several dozen acres that serve as temporary grazing grounds) down a broad laneway bordered by stout barbed wire fencing. This laneway crosses a small creek, then narrows as it climbs a gently sloping bank.

Within several hundred yards it diminishes from perhaps seventy yards across to the twelve-foot width of a twisted iron gate that opens onto a wooden post-and-rail corral into which a pursuer can funnel the animals.

“You riding today, Dave?” Charlie’s question comes as a surprise.

“Yes. I mean, you said last night I am to be with Danielle, right?”

“You’ll probably want to put on some long pants and boots, if you have them then,” he says with no apparent irony in his voice.

I realize I’d pulled on some shorts and sneakers in my heavy-lidded first stumblings. No real surprise there; ‘planning’ and ‘four-thirty am’ are two concepts which never crossed paths in the world I’d left behind.