Love on Forrest Downs Read online

I used to visit McCorry sometimes, just to see if he was all right. We’d help each other with the cattle and with odd jobs around the properties. I’d take him shopping, because his driving wasn’t the best, and after a little while we even started going for picnics together. Despite everything that had happened, I felt responsible for him. By that time he was an elderly man, and he was also the father of my children. There was a bond between us that I couldn’t break, even if I’d wanted to.

  With all the time we were spending together, we regained some of the respect that we’d once had for each other. I was very forgiving of him, but I also knew that there was something wrong with him – grief over Kelly’s death, sickness, pain – that was responsible for the worst things he’d done. And now I was starting to see some of the real Bob returning, the one I’d known at Oobagooma.

  It wasn’t to last, because McCorry died on 5 October 1998, on our daughter Leisha’s twenty-first birthday. Despite all of that, I will never forget McCorry’s greatest gift, which was bestowed on Leisha, Robby and me as this weary old Kimberley cattleman lay dying in St John of God Hospital in Perth. With hardly enough life left in him, McCorry whispered those three precious words, ‘I love you’, so softly that only our children and I could hear. Finally, on his deathbed, the real McCorry had returned to me.

  Not six months later I found a hard lump in my right breast. Diamonds and Dust was initially written for my children after I was diagnosed with breast cancer following the discovery of that lump – not that I thought I was going anywhere in a hurry, but as a gift for them. I never thought, or believed, that anyone else would read it.

  I had an aggressive form of cancer and soon one lump had become three. There was no family history of breast cancer, and I certainly hadn’t planned on being the first! At the very beginning there were no tears for me. There was no anger or a feeling of ‘Why me?’ – it simply all seemed unreal. My real pain came from seeing my children’s suffering. Leisha cried for a week, and Robby, who was thirteen at the time, withdrew into a deep silence; this worried me more than Leisha’s tears. I felt that my children had had more than enough to contend with, having recently lost their father, and it must now have seemed to them that they might lose their mother too. While all this was happening, the new man in my life, Terry, was pushing for us to marry. For some reason or other, Terry was in one hell of a hurry to get to the altar.

  My subsequent marriage to Terry sent me to the depths of despair, and eventually depression, because he was a manipulative and violent man whose only interest was in having power and control over me. Those depths are a place I have promised my family and friends I will never go to again. In Stars Over Shiralee I wrote openly about my loss of confidence and identity because of this man’s put-downs and criticism, his constant mind games, humiliation, physical abuse and intimidation. The abuse affected my family and friends, and frustrated the hell out of the people around me, because I could not see what was happening. I still cannot believe that for so long I was unable to see the signs or help myself escape from that terrible situation. But eventually I did, with help from a counsellor, family and dear friends.

  Domestic violence is far more widespread in our community than many of us want to believe. It should be remembered that perpetrators of domestic violence don’t always use their fists: psychological violence can cut as deep as any physical wound. I should know. I was a victim of a marriage made in hell, and although I am now free of it, there are still some days when it haunts me terribly, to the point that I suffer heart palpitations and panic attacks.

  One day I’m sure this deep-seated fear of Terry will leave me. But there are lots of people out there who are terrified for the same reason. We all need to be brave and speak out against domestic violence, and I write this with both men and women in my thoughts. Since that terrible time I have researched abusive behaviour, and learnt that it not only affects women but also men – and our precious children. Abusive behaviour and depression are not subjects the general public really likes to acknowledge or be associated with; I think people are afraid to talk about them. But I’m not. I’ve been there and I’ve survived. And if I can get caught up in something as awful as that, anyone can. I hope that by writing about my own experiences I can help someone else who is in the same situation – or, even better, help people recognise the signs of this behaviour before they get into the situation. Life is full of challenges. They test you, they can break you, but ultimately they make you stronger.

  This is the third volume of the story of my life, and I am very lucky to be able to share it with you. This is my story of life in the beautiful outback, on the properties I have called home, and all the different people I have met and worked with. I hope you enjoy it.

  CHAPTER 2

  A childhood in the Top End

  I was adventurous even as a young child, always feeling a need to explore everything further. ‘You quite often pushed your boundaries,’ Gran said, smiling, ‘just like your great-gran Dina.’ (Dina was born in 1879 on Balladonia Station on the Nullarbor Plain.) ‘You always had that need to see beyond the homestead fence at Fresh Water Rapid Creek, to go beyond the next clump of prickly pandanus palms.’

  For the first eleven years of my life we lived with Grandma and Grandpa Bond, Mum’s parents, in a huge house clad in corrugated iron – it was a former officers’ quarters from the war days, close to Fresh Water Rapid Creek, a little over 30 kilometres south-east of Darwin. There were no neighbours, and we didn’t need any, just bush, prickly pandanus palms and tall, itchy spear grass. Of course, I also had my younger brothers, Bruce, Darryl and Eric (Michael was yet to be born). As the oldest, I would mother them and boss them around – if I could get away with it, Mum said.

  ‘There were times we worried we would lose you,’ my mother told me in later years as she reminded me of all my explorations. Remembering those times, I could understand why my own children, Leisha and Robby, felt the need to investigate every nook and cranny, in every shed, on every station my husband McCorry and I managed and owned over the years. I had always placed the blame on their old bushy father! But maybe I did have something to do with it after all . . .

  Mum also told me that I wasn’t always the most patient child. From an early age I seemed to have an urgent need to investigate my surroundings. ‘I could have ended up a nervous wreck with worry for your whereabouts,’ she said.

  As Mum told me more, I realised that I must have been a real handful when I was a child. There I was out in the middle of nowhere, galloping off and about all over the place without a care in the world. More often than not I would disappear from the house, following a little windy track (called a foot pad) made in among the spear grass by the Aboriginal people as they walked to and from their camp to work in the homestead or ‘big house’ for Grandma.

  Although my father, Snowy, might sound like the adventurous one in the family, always taking Mum and us kids off to various parts of the Northern Territory and Western Australia, my mother was in no way reluctant to go with him. Whatever Dad was doing – whether it was shooting and boning buffalo, or skinning crocodiles and gutting fish – Mum was always there helping him.

  Mum was born and raised in Ravensthorpe, down near Hopetoun at the bottom of Western Australia, and she grew up with her grandmother, Dina. Mum has always told me that Dina and I are very much alike, both in looks and personality. Dina loved the bush, accepted it for what it was and could survive out there with whatever was available, and that’s how I’ve lived my life too. So Mum grew up going hunting with Dina and making do with whatever they had out there on the land. She never wanted for much and still doesn’t to this day. Maybe that kind of early life made Mum very practical, as well as adventurous the way my dad was. And the way I am, too.

  My brothers don’t seem to have inherited the adventurous gene; at least, not to the same extent I have. They love their fishing and they go off on great treks up and down the coast to all their secret spots, fishing and mud-crabbing. I g
o out with them too when I can. But they all have their home bases and blocks of land and mango trees, and that’s where they have remained. They don’t seem to like to venture too far beyond what they know and love. I don’t think I could have just stayed in Broome and done what they have done. There’s too much adventure in me, I suppose, to stick with what seems like a safe life. And maybe my need for a bit of excitement has got me into the odd tough spot, but I can’t imagine living any other way.

  The camp at Fresh Water Rapid Creek was home to the Larrakia Aboriginal people from south of Darwin, and my mother said that some others used it as a transit camp. The sooty-black soil flats were covered with many smoky humpies and bark huts, as well as the ubiquitous evergreen spiky-leafed pandanus palm. My friend Mary Larrakia would spend long hours patiently tearing the pandanus leaves into long, fine strips, then carefully weave these into carry bags and circular mats. Sometimes Mary would let me help strip the pandanus leaves. Mum says that the width of my strips varied greatly. ‘I don’t remember Mary giving you a gold star for your help!’ she says. Nevertheless, Mary made me a special bag to carry my biscuits and fruit in – that way I would have extra food when she took me hunting with her. She gave Mum and Gran beautiful mats specially woven into patterns and dyed with rock ochre of many colours. The largest mat, which had a fringe of curly pandanus, took pride of place in Gran’s lounge room, while the two smaller mats went into the bedrooms.

  I used to write to my grandfather Wallis about the early days at Fresh Water Rapid Creek. I wrote him stories that my mother and grandmother had passed on to me, but also told him stories of a little blue-eyed child whose hair colour fascinated the Larrakia people.

  Each morning my mother performed a ritual with my thick, curly, blonde hair – it had to be tamed, she said. She would lift me up and place me on the edge of the kitchen bench, turn the tap on and leave it trickling slowly, then patiently untangle my thick mane. She painstakingly parted each section of my hair, kept hold of it with her left hand while using the right to swipe the comb under the tap then ran the comb through the dry hair to dampen it. She wound the damp hair around and around her index finger and held it for a moment, then let the newly formed ringlet fall gently. This procedure would continue until every strand of hair on my head was turned into beautiful, soft ringlets. Only then would my mother lift me down from the kitchen bench, and she and Grandma would stand back and admire Mum’s handiwork, cooing, ‘What beautiful curls you have.’

  One morning, during a sultry wet south of Darwin, dark thunderheads rumbled and grumbled in the distance, their cloud cover bringing no relief from the heat and humidity. The rash of prickly heat around my neck was as itchy as hell, and I couldn’t sit still. Poor Mum was only trying to help me by putting my hair up in ringlets and getting it off my neck, but I gave her a terrible time. On this particular morning, trying to keep me still, Mum told Mary Larrakia and Johnny and Frankie from the camp that I was a naughty girl and wouldn’t sit still long enough to let her tend to my unruly hair.

  ‘If you don’t sit still, Mary can do your hair in the mornings,’ Mum told me in frustration. But she knew I wasn’t afraid of Mary – Mary and the others were my minders and friends, and I often spent morning teatime sitting with the women and their children under the shade of a poinciana tree. I watched the women as they deloused their own children’s hair and then, in turn, each other’s hair. Mary would also go through my mass of ringlets in search of lice. I don’t know if they ever found any in my hair, but the gentle trolling of their fingers through my curls always made me want to sleep (and sometimes I did). So Mum’s gentle threat backfired on her, because I was all for Mary doing my hair!

  *

  My father always seemed to be away driving his Leyland Hippo truck between Alice Springs and Darwin, visiting the many cattle stations in between. During the 1950s, Snowy (as my father was known due to his shock of white-blond hair) often delivered store rations and the odd bottle of OP rum to the managers of the cattle stations in the Territory. During the wet season these stations became hemmed in when the rivers flooded and the blacksoil plains became quagmires, and the station people could no longer get to town. This was one way my father made a few extra pounds to support his wife and young family.

  Dad also spent periods of time crocodile or buffalo shooting, or helping out his Greek mate Noondy Haritos on Noondy’s barge, the Betty–Joan, which was named after Noondy’s wife. Every three months or so – depending on the weather – Noondy and my father would collect the mission rations from Haritos’s Store in Darwin and load the barge while partaking of a few nips of OP rum together. Snowy would then drive the dusty Bagot track all the way home to Fresh Water Rapid Creek to say his goodbyes to Mum. He reassured my younger brothers and me that he would be back as soon as the job was completed, and reminded us to be good and try to behave ourselves. This conversation would take place while we sat in a circle watching Dad roll his swag of fresh sheets and blankets, a column of ten tins of Log Cabin tobacco, and two bottles of OP rum ‘for medicinal purposes’. Then he’d be gone, because the tides were calling. They always left on a high tide, with the barge overloaded for the ‘mission run’, and they’d return on the high tide as well.

  When Dad worked with Noondy on the barge or on his boat The Tiki, each man knew he would sleep well at night if the other was at the helm. If they were confronted by rough, treacherous seas, especially at nightfall, Dad said he slept like a baby in his swaying bunk when Noondy took his turn at the wheel instead of the mad, chopper-wielding Chinese cook who once grounded them on a reef off Goulburn Island in the Arafura Sea.

  The Phoenix was an ex–Bass Strait trader that also belonged to Noondy. It had planking eight centimetres thick and it was also in good shape. At that time the barge was running on one motor; the other motor was stuffed. For cooking purposes Dad’s friends had on deck half of a forty-four-gallon drum filled with sand, and they used this as an open fireplace. Cooking had always been done this way on the Phoenix as she travelled the treacherous coastal seas.

  Dad’s mates Darkey Westcath and Tom Esaby had taken on the job to sail the Phoenix to the old Truscott air base to bring back a CAT HD10 dozer that Boggy Young, another mate, had purchased from army disposals in Darwin. Payment for the trip consisted of a motor to replace the worn-out second engine on the Phoenix. This seemed a reasonably good deal at the time, as in the 1950s engines were expensive and hard to come by.

  Dad gave his mates a hand to load the stores, then stood on the old Darwin jetty and waved goodbye to Darkey and Tom and the two enthusiastic Aboriginal boys, Tommy and Charlie, who often worked as deck crew on the Phoenix.

  Yet another mate, ‘Pancho Prince’, was sailing his own boat down the west coast at the same time, and he decided to call in to the old wartime airstrip at Truscott to take a break. When he arrived the Phoenix was already there and loading. Pancho Prince said later that throughout the heat of the day he saw the crew of the Phoenix loading maritime matting and Boggy Young’s HD10 dozer. They topped up the load with many rusting old drums of highly flammable octane fuel.

  Once the Phoenix was fully loaded, the men said their goodbyes to Pancho Prince, who would continue to sail south to Broome. The two barges – accompanied by sea eagles soaring high above them – left the idyllic beaches of the rugged north-west coast, and then the humming and burbling of their own engines drew them further apart into the warm sapphire-coloured waters of the north. Sadly the Phoenix, with its bow pointed north, towards Darwin, was never seen again. Somewhere and somehow it disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving families and mates devastated.

  Air-Sea Rescue patrolled the seas from Darwin to South Africa in their Lincoln aircraft, hoping to find survivors or sight some debris. All that was ever found were some charred-looking forty-four-gallon drums washed up in mangroves on the west coast.

  *

  My brother Bruce and I got up to a lot of mischief when Mum was left alone with us kids. There ar
e seventeen months between Bruce and me – he’s the closest brother to me in age – and I suppose we worked well together. And with Dad out on the barge in the Arafura Sea or somewhere between Darwin and Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Bruce and I had plenty of time to investigate what was out in the spear grass. As young children the simple things we found around us brought great joy and excitement. One day, though, we found something quite unexpected.

  Bruce and I had taken it in turns to push his little red tricycle down a foot pad we had discovered in our wanderings through the tall grass below Gran’s homestead, and along this path we found a huge grey aircraft to play in. It turned out to be an old bomber – a wartime relic. And it was a wreck: the wings and tail of the aircraft had been destroyed and the pieces were scattered about in the grass. Although the fuselage and cockpit were there, its little windows were gone. But there was enough left for us to bang and clang about with while flying (in our imaginations) around the bush. We found piece after piece of metal, and it was exciting because we had all this new gear to play with. Real fear was unknown to us adventurous young children and we were oblivious to the dangers in our playground.

  ‘Follow me! Come on, Bruce!’ I called from the cockpit of the plane as I made my way over bits and pieces of metal, including gears that still seemed to be able to move. All the more to play with, I thought as I clambered up high in the cockpit to stick my head through what had once been a window. ‘Look at me – I’m flying the plane! Come on, help me!’ I implored him. Then, ‘Pull the gears,’ I urged as I imagined we were nose-diving towards the ground.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ Bruce said when he’d had enough. ‘Come on, come oooonnn, sis.’ By then Bruce was tired and thirsty, and so was I. It was time to go.

  Before we left the old plane, though, we loaded the little carrier on the back of Bruce’s trike with what turned out to be highly dangerous objects. They were bullets of all shapes and sizes – some soft (left open at the tip), many alive, and others (thank God) not. The ground surrounding the old bomber was alive with ammunition, a lot of it lying loosely on top of the soil and the rest of it partly buried; we only had to scratch the soil to find more. We had no idea just how dangerous this little payload was, nor of the possibility of one of us being maimed or killed by it. It was probably just as well that we didn’t know.