Diamonds and Dust Read online

  Sitting at the bridal table, half taking in what was going on around me, I was feeling I didn’t belong. Seeing the guests toasting us with champagne, I toasted myself with a few glasses as well. I’m sure the champagne helped the Dutch courage to kick in, and the rebel in me came alive. I was dazed and angry and sat at the table while my new husband circulated with the guests; I refused to please anyone but myself. My dear mother and Gran tried to persuade me to change into my ‘going-away outfit’. No way. It was time for the bride and groom to leave. Why should I leave? It was my party, wasn’t it?

  As my husband escorted me to the foyer, I glanced up to the veranda on my right and caught a glimpse of a man. He walked to the balustrade and stood looking at me. There was something special about him: his dark penetrating eyes, black hair, white creased shirt and moleskins. It was Bob McCorry, a drover and buffalo shooter from the Northern Territory, a friend of my father’s and many years older than I. He was managing Oobagooma and Waterbank stations at the time. I’d first met him when he’d visited my father to discuss a walk-in freezer Dad was building for Waterbank, and he’d come to our house a few times since. I’d only caught glimpses of him, and he was reserved on his visits, not gregarious or sociable, so we hadn’t spoken. But he’d certainly taken my eye.

  I stopped, looked up and took in the R.M. Williams boots. A shiver went through me. I should have married him, I thought.

  There was a tug on my hand. I looked up again but the dark-haired man had gone. If he had asked me to go with him right then and there, I would have. Instead, I was taken to the bridal suite by Chuck. I refused to consummate the marriage on our wedding night; I slept in a bed alone. Angry about the revelation that Chuck was a playboy, I felt nothing for him. The next night was spent at the new Walkabout Motel in Port Hedland and, after an argument because I refused to balance on a bar stool and drink with him, he spent the next two days on the booze and became aggressively drunk. I spent my time alone and crying in the motel room. I had no money of my own and felt I had nowhere to go. I’d made my bed and had to lie in it. We eventually arrived at the Raffles Hotel in Perth, where Chuck would leave me in the room all day while he went off drinking in the bar, I assume, although I never really knew where he was, except that he arrived back tanked. I realised I’d never known him at all, and soon worked myself up so much I became ill.

  Dear Aunty Alvis, my mother’s sister, came to my rescue, took me home to her house and tucked me up in bed with an electric blanket, assuring me everything would be all right in the morning. I now worried about being electrocuted. This was all new to me. She was thinking my problem was either the wedding or newlywed nerves. I was trying to tell Aunty that no, everything would not be all right.

  I stayed with her for about three days. She seemed to understand my position, but couldn’t interfere. I knew I had to go back to Chuck and make the marriage work, even though he only visited me once at Aunty’s – he seemed unsure of what to do. So was I! But I was married, and had to give it a go.

  Some months later, we did end up consummating our marriage and I tried to make it work. We returned to the Kimberley with two Ford F100s and a bulldozer and went contract dam sinking and fencing throughout the country, until Chuck’s drinking and womanising became too much to handle. Unbeknown to Chuck, I followed him into Kununurra one weekend and conveniently walked in on an orgy that he and three others were having in a motel room. I took off my wedding band and flicked it into the air, never to be seen again. Then as I turned to walk out the door Chuck lunged and grabbed me from behind, around the throat. We fell to the ground struggling. I thought I was going to die. I couldn’t scream, or breathe, froth was coming from my mouth, and I blacked out. I don’t recall what happened next but he must have let go. I ended up in Wyndham Hospital with my neck in a brace, my body sore and covered in black and blue bruises. Chuck confessed to having spent time in a padded cell in his Navy days. I decided to end the marriage. There was no point going on.

  I returned to Broome, neither asking for sympathy nor expecting to receive any. My father belonged to the era where people believed you should always give your marriage your best shot. Well, I had done that.

  I was in my bedroom changing my clothes when my mother walked in. A look of absolute horror crossed her face when she saw the bruises and welts on my shoulders, ribs and arms. Without saying a word, she left the room immediately and spoke to Dad. They didn’t push me to go back to Chuck.

  Back in Broome, after moving into a flat with my brother Darryl and his wife Leonie, I landed a job with the post office and worked hard in the telephone exchange to earn enough money to hire a detective. With Mr Peter Dowding Snr, whose son would become Premier of Western Australia many years later, as my lawyer, I divorced Chuck on the grounds of adultery. It was easy to catch him out and embarrassing to see it all again.

  Looking back, I wonder if it was necessary for Chuck to marry an Australian to keep himself and his father in the country to do their work, managing stations. I never discovered why that creepy old man was always looming over Chuck’s shoulder. He even brought a tape recorder to one of our meetings, but I couldn’t work out why. I never spoke to him. I’ll never know and now I don’t care, but it wasn’t long after the divorce that they both left Australia. Chuck’s father would later die from a brain tumour. Maybe this had had some influence on his bizarre, unnerving behaviour.

  CHAPTER 6

  Oobagooma Station

  ‘Be at Derby airport on the fifteenth at 2 pm.’

  I read the note from Bob McCorry with mounting excitement, mixed with shock – who did he think he was, giving me a directive like this? I knew Dad had asked McCorry to keep an eye on me now that he and Mum had left Broome for Shark Bay, several days’ drive away. Believing Broome was growing too rapidly for them, Dad had bought a boat at Shark Bay and started fishing commercially.

  I’d been quite ill the last time Dad had seen me. Perhaps it was the stress of my doomed marriage, but I hadn’t been able to shake off a lingering virus. Dad had asked McCorry to check on my health, and McCorry suggested that some time in the outback might help my recovery. Maybe McCorry’s intentions were good, but I resented being treated like a child. I felt I had grown up now.

  On the other hand, I hadn’t forgotten the man with the dark smouldering eyes at my farcical wedding, and I felt something of a thrill at the prospect of seeing him again, on his own territory. Besides, I sensed that this might present an opportunity to go mustering, something I’d never done before, and I wasn’t going to miss that for the world. So I relented, and was off to Oobagooma, a station abutting the coast five hours’ drive north-east of Broome.

  ‘Buckle up and leave the seatbelt on until we land at the station. Some days she gets a little rough,’ were the pilot’s words after we’d flown out of Derby. Soon we were dropping altitude, seemingly to buzz a mob of wild black pigs digging in the grass. But this was the west end of Oobagooma’s airstrip. My stomach lurched and there was a light thump and sound of wheels on gravel. We were safely down. McCorry managed the station for a rich city slicker, ‘Monty’ Montague from New South Wales. A prospering wheeler-dealer with a taste for flashy women he brought out from Kings Cross, Monty also owned several cattle properties in the southern states.

  McCorry walked over to the plane from the old corrugated-iron homestead. He greeted me as warmly as if I was an old friend. I smiled and shook his hand. I stood for a moment and looked around. As far as I could see the country was harsh and rugged. The green treeline of a river and the craggy mountains marked the horizon, but there was not much around us except some broken fencing and the homestead, which was little more than a tin shed. McCorry’s dusty Akubra shaded his sun-tanned face, but those steely dark eyes had a soft twinkle in them, and his colouring reminded me of a Cherokee Indian. Yes, I thought, I reckon I can handle this for a while.

  As we ambled towards the homestead I could see the Aboriginal stockmen, their wives and their children moving
slowly down the hill from their camp. They seemed keen to check me out. Some of the younger faces had huge smiles, giggling and talking among themselves, reading more into this friendship between McCorry and me than there was. The older men eyed me suspiciously. I had on a smart red pantsuit, makeup and painted nails. I had always promised myself that wherever I lived or worked in the outback I would try to keep myself attractive and feminine.

  As my makeup melted in the exhausting heat, the mascara burning my eyes, I knew they weren’t expecting me to last. I felt awkward and nervous, wondering what I’d got myself into. The quizzical look on the older stockmen’s faces said they were wondering what the hell happened to old McCorry on his last trip to Broome. ‘That poor bugger McCorry,’ they seemed to be saying, ‘he’s gone off his rocker.’

  That evening, I dropped my swag and a bag into a room that seemed untidily occupied. It was McCorry’s bedroom, which he shared with his two dogs. While I was debating between nightie and pyjamas for bed, the staff drifted past the window and giggled at me. That made my decision for me: pyjamas! I said goodnight to McCorry and climbed onto my wartime camp stretcher, which emitted more creaks and groans than I’d ever heard coming from a bed. The mattress was paper-thin and the bed hard as hell. I felt the weave of the wire beneath me. But the sheets were spotless. I lay thinking about what might lie ahead, happy to be there with McCorry and trusting him to look after me. I had a crush on him, but wasn’t sure if it was the man or his connection to the land. Either way, it didn’t seem to bother me.

  When I’d received the note from McCorry, I thought I was going to the station for two weeks’ holiday. When he told me he was going outback to muster cattle, I jumped at the opportunity to go along. This would be my first wild cattle muster; I was excited and extremely happy, as keen as could be. His offer brought back the desire for adventure and challenge that I’d enjoyed so much as a young girl. First thing next morning, I radioed my boss asking for extended leave from the post office.

  McCorry wanted to get his horses ready for the stock-camp, and get out into the Robinson River country. Word was circulating about the Kimberley that the Australian Land & Cattle Co., owned privately in America, had purchased two large properties: Kimberley Downs and Napier Downs. These two properties had about 2.25 million acres between them and probably between 38,000 and 40,000 head of cattle, a good half of them unbranded. This presented an irresistible challenge to Bob: cattle weren’t considered yours to sell until they were branded, and up to that point it was a free-for-all. McCorry had been mustering cleanskin cattle, with no earmark or brand, for years. They had never been caught or handled by man and were running free for the taking. He saw an opportunity to catch and brand these cattle before the Americans got there; they would then be dollars on the hoof to him.

  He wondered if these new cattlemen from America had any idea how imaginary the boundaries to their property might be, because there were no fences, no gates. By contrast, he had an unfair advantage: McCorry could read the country, line up a rocky outcrop with a schist hill in the distance and know exactly what survey features to look for. All the Americans had was lines on a map.

  An old grey Land Rover pulled up at the front gate.

  ‘Hey, come and give your cook a hand out!’

  Silver had arrived. He didn’t need a helping hand: he fell out onto the ground, landing like a sack of potatoes. He started scratching in the dirt to retrieve his half-smoked tailormade cigarette. McCorry had told me about the cook, and he lived up to his billing: Silver by name, silver hair and very, very drunk. I just stood staring; this was toughen-up time, Sheryl. What the hell was going to happen next? I glanced towards McCorry, but he smiled and shook his head, saying he could write a book on camp cooks.

  He told Silver to get his swag, find a camp stretcher and sleep off the grog, adding: ‘You start in the cook house in the morning.’ While Silver was out cold I was given orders to hunt around and find all the metho, lemon essence, and anything else he could possibly mix with cordial or water and get inebriated on while we were away rounding up cattle. I hid the metho and lemon essence behind the old freezer, hoping I had outsmarted him.

  The preparations were proceeding, though not without a hitch. Harry Watson, our Aboriginal head stockman, who always wore elastic-sided riding boots two sizes too big, came in from the horse yard and said, ‘The camp horses are ready, but three missing, probably dead, old man, walkabout.’

  This was during a wet season, a time when the crotalaria plant thrived. If the horses ate too much of it they would end up with what the stockmen called ‘walkabout’, walking blindly and running into trees and gullies until they died. McCorry had put some quiet cattle together to use for ‘coaches’. The small mob, kept around the homestead, was mostly made up of quiet, obedient six- to eight-year-old bullocks who would step out on command from the old man. They were big rangy shorthorn cattle with speary horns that would do a good day’s walk when needed. McCorry explained that it was necessary to keep coaches all the time if you are mustering wild feral cattle on horseback. When you spread the coaches out and run the wild cattle into them, they act as a buffer – coaches have the temperament of a group of fussy mothers. The idea is to get the coaches going in a circular motion and the wild cattle will stay enclosed until you can settle them down. You lose some, you retain some, but very seldom can you hold them all. The fact that the coaches might have belonged to the neighbours wasn’t mentioned at the time.

  The morning came for us to set off. Warm and sunny with that outback bite in the air, the day was filled with the cattle’s calls, the ringing of the chains hobbling the horses, and the clang of the condamine, the bell on the leading horse. Little quails scattered in the spinifex as kite-hawks dived for them. I was as excited as the stockmen as they mounted the lucky horses that survived the walkabout. ‘Old man’, as the Aboriginal men called McCorry, took a deep draw from his tailormade, raised his right arm and, mounted on his trusty Arab mare, led the coaches out, closely followed by two faithful working bull terrier crosses, Whiskey and old Jim. Harry was in a short-wheelbase Toyota with the canopy removed and a bull bar added – the ‘bull-buggy’.

  Our team included several stockmen: Malki, Churchill, Raymond Warbi, Charlie Riley, Peter, and several other men. They were all moving out with the coaches for the first leg of the muster.

  Yardie, an older Aboriginal stockman with white hair and a long white beard, was the horse-tailer, minding the extra horses and keeping them together. He’d look after the three spare horses each stockman needed during a muster, and keep them rotating as they grew tired. Yardie had gone on ahead of me.

  I was sitting behind the wheel of the supply vehicle, an old-model International truck, the cab full of spiderwebs and the tray loaded with camp swags, shoeing gear, a first-aid box, the salted beef, drums of flour to make the dampers with, a few onions and potatoes, a couple of jars of Rosella pickles, plenty of niki niki (plugs of chewing tobacco) and tinned Log Cabin rolling tobacco, tea leaf and coarse salt, but that was about it. If I could eat tobacco I certainly wouldn’t starve! McCorry was known for travelling light and he figured that salt beef, damper and tea leaf was all we needed. As we had packed, in the storeroom, I’d questioned McCorry on the amount of stores we had, which didn’t seem enough to me. He stopped what he was doing, looked towards me in the dark storeroom, took his hat off and ran his hand through his hair, and smiled, as if surprised by my question. He assured me that we had plenty of everything and explained gently how he ran his camp. I was to understand that this was his country and his way of life. His explanation, rather than sounding arrogant, settled me; I felt that everything was going to be all right.

  As I sat in the supply truck, I listened to the radio. All the stations had Flying Doctor radios. Sessions in which station business, telegrams and medical information were exchanged took place at three set times a day. Before and after these periods, the stations could converse freely in ‘galah sessions’, talking, gossip
ing and passing on messages. So if you listened, you would have some idea of the other stations’ movements, their mustering patterns and what yards they were organising road trains to and from.

  Half of our team of 17 working dogs was with us, a mix of blue and red heelers and bull terriers. Glancing over my shoulder I checked on Missy, a bull terrier bitch that McCorry had given me the day before. I was touched and surprised by his gift; I’d tied her securely to the truck’s centre rail where she rested peacefully on my swag. Missy was 18 months old and all white with no markings. I knew I would love this dog – she was mine. Not all the dogs would return from the musters. Some would be gored by bulls, while others would become dehydrated and disoriented and fall behind after chasing wild and feral cattle. (Having to confront this was to nearly undo me at times: I’d want to spend time searching for a missing dog, but McCorry was always set on moving the cattle along to the next camp.)

  Whiskey and old Jim were McCorry’s dogs, and only he handled them. The rest were purely working dogs, out on the runs to help bring in the fresh cattle to the coaches. If they failed to return to camp after a quick run with wild cattle, they were left behind and forgotten and no more would be said. I would soon realise that this was unforgiving land, and that I had better prepare for hard work and a harsh life.

  The pressure was on from that first day. On our first leg out from the homestead we didn’t sight many cattle; the water-hole and billabongs were further out and up the Robinson River. The stockmen did only one run and brought in eight head. McCorry was more interested in the country further out, on the boundaries. By about 2 pm we were held up, having to dig into the banks down on the Robinson so as to get the trucks over.