A Changing Land(40)
They moved slowly across the uneven ground, once or twice bogging down in the freshly turned earth, Matt accelerating to bring them clear. Only when they drew level with the dozers did Sarah see the extent of their work; great trees and stringy saplings all bowed down between the great lumbering chain linking the dozers together. The metal links, each as large as a football, crawled across the ground collecting everything in their wake.
‘The country will be far more valuable once it’s cleared, Sarah.’
‘Not everything is about money,’ she snapped back, instantly regretting her tone.
‘Maybe not, but even if Anthony didn’t intend to farm it, imagine the increased stock numbers we would be able to run once the dozers get into that heavily timbered country. He is doing very selective clearing. Once the trees are gone the grasses will grow back tenfold.’
Sarah considered Matt’s comments. He was not one to speak idly. ‘Well, Matt, I don’t agree with this, especially considering the way it’s been handled. Besides which, it’s being ploughed up. Where the hell are we meant to run the cattle and sheep that usually graze here?’ She ran irritated fingers through her hair. ‘Then there is the monetary side. How much is this going to cost?’
‘Upwards of two hundred thousand dollars, with the work to be done in two stages. At least that’s what the contractor tells me. I haven’t spoken to Anthony about it.’
Sarah felt physically ill.
‘His intention is to clear all of Boxer’s Plains eventually. Personally I don’t think it’s a good idea. Farming is costly. You’ve got spraying and machinery and the vagaries of the weather. Then there is the infrastructure: you need silos to store seed, trucks for cartage to the rail lines at harvest …’
‘The list goes on.’
‘Pretty much.’ Matt drew up to the side of the one of the dozers and got out to speak to the driver.
In an hour these men would be hunting down Anthony, querying him furiously as to why a stop-work mandate had been suddenly imposed on them. ‘This is going to be difficult,’ Sarah admitted as they headed back to the homestead. ‘Can we get those cows from Boxer’s Plains out on the stock route pronto?’
‘Sure thing, Sarah.’
‘Good. And the sheep?’ They drove through the house paddock gate.
‘They’ll be right. We can feed them out there.’ Matt’s knuckles were white, gripping the steering wheel.
‘I’ll get the corn delivered asap. We can store it in the portable 25 tonne silo and then fill up the sheep feeder when needed.’ Sarah knew that like her, Matt was mad as hell. Yet beyond her anger lay something far more distressing; there was a terrible unravelling within her. Anthony had broken her trust.
Jim Macken finished reading the file and closed the manila folder. He glanced uneasily at his mother, who smiled at him nervously. He knew her opinion. She believed he should be leaving well enough alone. With her usual quiet movements she walked into the kitchen and closed the door. Jim heard the rattle of the water tap as it came to life and the solid click of a kitchen cupboard. She would be making tea, strong and hot, perhaps pouring a nip of whisky into hers to ward off the melancholy that stalked her these days. It was true that his mother wished Sarah Gordon had never come to their country. And it was equally true that neither of them would have believed that he could be heir to land in Australia.
‘The place has been willed to you fair and square by Angus Gordon himself,’ said Robert Macken, chewing on the stem of his pipe.
Jim flicked back through the folder. ‘I still can’t believe you waited so long to tell me.’
‘Probate took some time, I told you that, lad; and there was a clause in the will that gave us until next month to respond. I was not of a mind to use it, but your mother insisted. She didn’t want to rush things. We only want what’s best for you,’ his father persevered.
‘Do you?’ Normally his father would begin arguing. They had always argued and the past that grows between father and son is always difficult to erase, no matter whether it has been good or bad. Yet their relationship was now altered. For three weeks Robert had not been his blood father and although Robert knew of his wife’s pregnant state before they were betrothed, the revelation of Jim’s natural father caused a marked alteration in their reasonably contented existence.
‘Now what type of a question is that?’
It was one Jim decided was plain enough, for he knew where his mother’s preference lay. She would sooner see him a pauper than open himself up to grief. As for his father, or his Scottish father as he’d mentally begun addressing the man who’d clothed and fed him, he was beginning to see the makings of what pride could do when there was the opportunity of mixing it with a little revenge.