Page 17 of Queenslander
(Maude) She was fighting on the bus.
(Ronnie) When?
(Maude) Last year. It’s resolved. Don’t bring it up.
(Ronnie) You should have told me.
(Maude) Why? So you could give her tips?
Back at Upsend Downs the next morning while Rainbow was in school, Ronnie rode in front of the flock carrying a small plastic bucket of grain, driving a thousand ewes and two thousand lambs from one paddock to another.
The flock had to be moved every day.
At the rear, Kazi looked at home in the saddle, having a brilliant time. He was in his element, unconcerned aboutstragglers. She admired how straight his back was, how lightly he perched on the saddle, and she copied the way he held the reins in one hand and rested the other on his thigh.
Droving was surprisingly relaxing. The way the flock carried her along before it swept forward under its own momentum, enveloping obstacles in its path, swallowing, spilling over, reminded her of surfing.
Dreadnought rocked side to side above the white sheep ocean. When Ronnie tapped the mare’s flanks with her heels the mare broke into a canter.
Sunlight glowed yellow ribbons through dust clouds churned by twelve thousand tear-shaved hooves. More torrential rains would flood the neighbor’s lowlands soon.
From the horse barn and gravel parking lot, Stone House appeared to be a squat, single-story stone box with a wraparound veranda, but it had been built on a hill—the back side was a two-story, open-concept, timber-frame and plaster villa with repurposed wrought-iron railings made of old Singer sewing machines and French doors looking down on a sloping lime-green lawn.
She found Nev in the kitchen fixing lunch. Nev looked like Robert Redford had walked off the set ofOut of Africa. Ronnie’s boss was one of those pink, weather-beaten people—old in the face, young in the body—who could be anywhere between thirty and fifty without surprising anyone.
Ronnie washed her hands, checking on the fingernail that had been black since she accidentally hit it with a hammer. A Christmas card smiled back from the windowsill behind the sink. On it Nev’s kid sister posed in front of the University of Auckland, surrounded by large handwritten letters: “Happybirthday big sis! I hope you, Ronnie and Rainbow have a happy Christmas and New Year. Love, Taylor.”
The kitchen looked down on Lazy Creek, Boar Pocket Road, and beyond that, hundreds of hectares of open eucalyptus scrub—Nev’s sheep on the left, Johnson’s cattle on the right—reaching down to the marshy shore of manmade Lake Tinaroo. Indigo mountains on the horizon.
Nev garnished with parsley before handing her two plates to carry out on to the veranda. Eating here was always posh. Today, lunch was salmon, wild rice, kale salad, mandolined radishes and baby rocket.
Flecks of hay coated the hair on Ronnie’s forearms. “What’s happening with the sheep in the paddock here?” A group of ewes stood grazing on the other side of an electric fence. One stared directly at them, hoping for a treat like the apple in front of Nev on the patio table.
“Their eyelids are pale. I’ll deworm them after lunch.” Nev walked over to the fence and gave the ewe the apple, scratching behind her ears and between her shoulder-blades. The sheep wiggled her butt and hind legs side to side like a dog.
Ronnie hadn’t grown up on a farm and the idea of parasites still gave her the ick. “How old is Kazi? Who’s replacing him?”
Nev wiped her hands on her pants and returned to the table. “He’s a dying breed. They don’t make men like him anymore.” The drover in question was half-naked in the yard wearing nothing but wool, greasy cap and a splash of white hair, back bent at a ninety-degree angle to trim a hoof. “He got into this before child labor laws, shearing at the big stations with his dad. He would prefer to be a full-time shearer, but he doesn’t have a driver’s license and he’s bollocks at swagging. You know how he is. Likes his creature comforts.”
She snorted, trying to decide if she enjoyed the peppery aftertaste of this arugula. Kazi lived by himself in the hayloft. Hehad worked for Nev’s father, which had always struck Ronnie as sad. The idea of belonging to an estate felt old-fashioned at best and colonial at worst.
Ronnie forked a burger-sized wedge of salmon into her wide mouth and chewed. “No new drover, then.”
“It’s not the life,” Nev agreed. “Stockmen are a dime a dozen and sheep people can’t find work within a hundred kilometers of a city. It’s not a transferable skill. Don’t end up like that, Dain’y. Stick with horses and machines, you’ll find work anywhere, Rome to Rio. If you can manage a barn or fix a car, you can support a family. It’s called job security. You always want to be moving into a field in high demand, so you can take vertical steps to a higher paid job.”
“Like you.”
“Do as I say, not as I do.”
Ronnie picked up Rainbow from school again and coached soccer. At her dad’s house that night, Reg and Blaise had a meeting at the fire station, so she made lasagna, salad, rice, and beans for Rainbow. As usual she cooked way too much food for two people. Rainbow wiped tomato sauce off the snake.
A local Yidinji artist had handmade the elaborate tile mosaic of the Rainbow Serpent on the kitchen floor. As a kid, Ronnie had taken her dad’s local art collection for granted, had been surprised when she went over to friends’ houses and they didn’t have Yidinji, Wadjanbarra Yidi artwork on the floors and walls. More than seventeen traditional owner groups and twenty thousand Aboriginal people lived across the Wet Tropics region.
After dinner, she piled leftovers into plastic containers which Rainbow stacked in the fridge.Teamwork makes the dream work.
“Can we go to the basketball court?” Rainbow asked.
“The one with lights?” It wasn’t raining outside and she didn’t have to return the girl to Gordonvale tonight. Ronnie was sore from lifting weights and exhausted from repotting hundreds of trees at Upsend Downs, but she would rally. “Put on your trainers and grab a ball from the shed.”
