A Changing Land(21)
Matt walked around the side of the tipper, kicking at the rear tyre as if checking the air pressure, his signature cigarette looking like an eleventh finger. Anthony nodded at the spits of rain. They couldn’t afford for the silage to get wet. ‘There are tarps in the back,’ Anthony pointed over his shoulder, ‘and you’ll need some tyres to secure them.’ He didn’t bother to remind Matt that waiting another day for the fine weather predicted would have been a better alternative than having tippers and excavators sitting down.
Matt took a drag of his cigarette. ‘No worries.’ His voice carried over the two-way radio in the Landcruiser as Anthony drove away. ‘We’ll have to knock off until the rain passes,’ he advised everyone.
In the rear-view mirror a line of bulbous grey–blue clouds appeared in the distance. It would be raining tonight although Anthony didn’t expect much out of this cold front moving through. The vehicle bumped over a stock ramp, jolted through a series of potholes on the road and then turned towards a gateway. There were some early calving cows to check on, and then a number of telephone calls to make. Anthony opened the gate, pausing to reflect on what he was about to do. He’d been deliberating over an idea for some months. A project which he was convinced would ensure Wangallon’s continued longevity and prosperity. Having been on the verge of mentioning it to Sarah he was now loathe to, especially after the stock route and silage pit argument. He tapped his fingers on the aluminum frame of the gate. Sarah wouldn’t be happy. Ahead a bore drain twisted away to the right, to his left a startled emu appeared from amid dry grass and bolted from a nest in an effort to lead Anthony away. Anthony pulled his akubra a little further over his eyes; this was one project that couldn’t be delayed.
Sarah stared glumly through the kitchen window at the misting rain, her fingers entwined around her morning coffee. She thought of Shelley, imagined her planning her Thursday night out and briefly wished there was a nice little restaurant around the corner where she and Anthony could go to. She was finding the station book work a chore and it was her own fault. The bookkeeper had been let go a few months after her grandfather’s death, at Sarah’s insistence. It seemed silly to pay for something she could manage herself and there was no better way of understanding the running of the property. Unfortunately the task of keeping the station office running required a good two and a half days a week and once summer arrived the constant watering the garden required would take up any spare moment. She felt her paddock time being gradually eroded.
Outside the lemon-scented gum’s trunk was streaked with rain. Sarah watched as a topknot pigeon huddled its head on its breast, a puff of white and grey clinging to a branch. Things were changing. She could feel it as surely as if a new door were open before her, yet a niggling sense of annoyance was competing for her attention. Last Monday’s meeting lay as an unsubtle reminder of her discontent. Maybe Anthony was right and she had suddenly developed an opinion – one she wanted heard. And wasn’t that how things should be? She certainly didn’t want to cause an argument, yet sometimes he made her feel like a bystander in the running of her family’s property. And being relegated to second-tier management was beginning to sit uneasily with her. Now she had added reasons to be upset. One of this morning’s accounts was for twenty-eight thousand dollars; two new loading ramps and a set of portable cattle yards. She sipped contemplatively at her coffee. She could live with that; however, the equipment finance loan application for one hundred thousand dollars worth of a body cattle truck was getting a little out of hand. Sarah rubbed her forehead; neither of the items were mentioned in the station diary as possible future purchases.
In the office Sarah sat down at the large oak desk and looked out the casement window to the garden. This side of the homestead held her grandmother’s cuttings and herb garden. Grandma Jessica had died of an asthma attack out there. The bush she adored had killed her through the combination of an environmental allergy and isolation. Angus had been out mustering at the time, returning to find her lying in the garden unconscious, her wide straw hat and wicker basket lying by her side. The garden was her passion and encompassed a small area of dirt once tended by a Chinese man. His vegetable garden supplied much of the homestead’s requirements for nearly forty years until his death. Then there had been extensions and renovations to the rear of Wangallon in the twenties, fifties and the eighties; an office, kitchen, pantry and a walk-in cool room with adjoining fridge and commercial-sized deep freeze now covered the majority of the garden he once tended.