Jillaroo Read online

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  The McGrath Foundation believes 150 of these specially trained nurses are needed to ensure every family experiencing breast cancer has access to a breast care nurse, no matter where they live or their financial situation.

  McGrath Breast Care Nurses offer a unique service to families who can self-refer to this free support.

  By purchasing this special edition you are helping the McGrath Foundation realise their goal. To find out how you can make a difference visit

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  Penguin Books

  Jillaroo

  Rachael Treasure lives on a sheep farm in Tasmania with her husband, John, and her children, Rosie and Charlie. Together they breed and train kelpies, border collies and Waler stockhorses.

  Rachael has an exciting, ever-changing website at www.rachaeltreasure.com featuring stories from her life on the farm and working-dog training information.

  PRAISE FOR RACHAEL TREASURE’S BESTSELLERS

  Jillaroo

  ‘Rebecca is a wonderful character being both feisty and fallible

  … The author’s solid and believable characters and plot … make Jillaroo

  a widely appealing read. In short, a real treasure.’

  Australian Bookseller and Publisher

  ‘Jillaroo has plenty of laughs, tears and emotion – this is a rural

  romance novel that will be enjoyed by generation X’

  The Weekly Times

  The Stockmen

  ‘I loved this honest and heartfelt tale of life on the land – it captures

  the very essence of being Australian.’

  Tania Kernaghan

  ‘… this is a terrific book – compelling, gritty, sexy, moving and funny – with some vibrant characters, set against heart-stoppingly beautiful Australian countryside. It’s so well depicted you’ll want to flee the city and find your very own stockman …’

  Australian Women’s Weekly

  The Rouseabout

  ‘A heartwarming look at women on the land’

  Who Weekly

  ‘Kate is a true Aussie heroine’

  Newcastle Herald

  ‘A rollicking good read’

  Brisbane Courier Mail

  RACHAEL

  TREASURE

  Jillaroo

  Penguin Books

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Penguin Books Australia 2002

  This edition published by Penguin Group (Australia) Pty Ltd, 2008

  Copyright © Rachael Treasure 2002

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This project has been assisted by the Tasmanian Writers’ Centre and the Australia Council, the Federal Government’s peak arts funding and advisory body.

  penguin.com.au

  ISBN: 978-1-74-228412-5

  For my husband John, who made this book happen,

  and for my dearly departed Dougall dog.

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  Rebecca Saunders whistled to her dog.

  ‘Mossy, go way back.’

  In the glow of morning sunlight the little kelpie, light on her feet, seemed to float out around the mob of sheep in the holding paddock. All that could be heard was her chain jingling around her neck as she cantered and crouched on the dusty ground. The sheep huddled and turned their heads towards Mossy’s motionless red and tan form. Bec turned to open the gate, knowing Mossy would bring the mob steadily into the yards. Unclipping the chain, she dragged the gate’s creaking rusted frame across the dust and whistled Mossy to stalk towards the sheep. Rebecca watched the sea of ewes move slowly towards her, with the ram in their midst. He held his head high with his lip curled up. His horns spiralled pompously around his face like a barrister’s wig. Bec frowned at him. His scrotum really bothered her. It had been on her mind most of the night.

  She remembered her withered, wiry grandfather holding out his hands with his bony fingers curved around the air.

  ‘Two full beer cans,’ he had said. ‘Two full beer cans. That’s what they’re s’posed to feel like.’ Her grandfather had lifted the weighty scrotum of one of his rams and jiggled the hefty sack in the palms of his hands.

  ‘Here, girl, have a feel.’

  So, how come, Bec thought to herself this morning, the ram which her father just paid $2000 for had one full beer can and one minibar bottle of gin for a scrotum? She shook her head as she closed the gate. If only her father had listened to her.

  Walking briskly to the yards she wondered if she could persuade him to take the ram back. She pictured the tweed-coated stud ram breeder with the grey hairs growing wildly from the tip of his nose and lobes of his ears. She couldn’t believe the man still spoke with a voice from the Mother Country.

  ‘Yars, he’s a fine upstanding sire,’ the breeder had said as if chatting to the Queen. He’d folded his arms across his belly and jutted out his chin. ‘Covered magnificently to the points, with a noble head.’

  ‘Wanker,’ she said out loud to the image in her head. If only they could take the dud ram back and spend the money on a performance-tested ram, one that was guaranteed to make an impact on the flock. But Rebecca knew her dad would never agree.

  As she swung the splintery wooden gate open into the largest yard, she heard an outburst of barking and the rush of hooves raising dust.

  ‘Bloody oath, Dad.’ Bec shook her head, sighed and rolled her eyes.

  Her father, Harry Saunders, was slipping through the wire fence yelling as he went, ‘Mate, Spot, Mardy … come behind! Get back in behind! You dogs! Mardy! Come here! Get out of that!’

  His crew of motley dogs were working in a pack, singling out a sheep and chasing it to the fence, biting as they went. Little Mossy was doing her best to keep the mob together while the other dogs zoned in close to the sheep, causing chaos.

  ‘Geez Dad. Are you sure you need all those mongrel dogs? I almost had them yarded.’ She put up her hands to shade her eyes from the sun and squinted at the circling mob. ‘Useless!’

  Her father, red in the f
ace, was holding Mardy by the collar. The young pup’s eyes were fixed on the sheep and his tongue lolled to the side of his mouth as he panted. So keen to work, Mardy was oblivious to the fact he was being choked.

  ‘Don’t you start, girl,’ her father warned, pointing a finger at her. To prove her point Bec whistled gently and called softly, ‘Mossy, come here to me.’ Mossy turned one ear towards Bec, glanced at her, then trotted to her side. Rebecca turned her back to her father. She knew he hated the fact that her dogs worked so well for her, but at the same time she felt sadness for his untrained dogs.

  ‘Yard the friggin’ sheep yourself then,’ she said under her breath.

  ‘What did you say, girl? What did you say to me?’

  Ignoring him, she marched off to sort out the tangle of tubes and drench-guns, which lay in a pile on the floor of the shearing shed’s grinding room.

  A while later her father’s large silhouette appeared in the doorway of the shed. His shadow spread across worn and weary floorboards.

  ‘You know we really don’t need you in the yards today, Bec,’ the shape said. He moved into the dimly lit shed. ‘Your brothers will be down after they’ve fixed the pump. They can do the drenching and I’ll shift the stock.’ He wouldn’t look at his daughter’s face.

  ‘But Dad, I told you, I’ve finished school … I’m home to work. For good.’ Rebecca heaved a twenty-litre drench drum onto the grinding room bench with a thud.

  ‘Bec, you know there’s not enough room for all three kids on the place. We’ve had this discussion before. No daughter of mine is going to make a so-called career out of farming. There’s no future in it.’

  ‘But farming’s good enough for your sons?’ Bec turned to look at him and stood with her hands on her hips.

  Harry took off his sweat-stained hat and ran his fingers through his greying hair.

  ‘That’s different Bec. The boys don’t know anything else … It’s what they were raised to do … The boys are capable of making a go of it here.’

  ‘And I’m not?’ Bec moved to meet his eyes.

  ‘It’s for your own good, Rebecca.’ Looking away from her, he turned his attention to the drench-gun on the bench. ‘Your best bet is to go do a teaching or nursing course, then you can marry a nice farmer who isn’t up to his neck in debt or paying his way out of a bloody divorce and … then you can …’

  ‘Bulldust Dad!’ exploded Bec. ‘Listen to you! Do you know how bloody sexist you sound? I was born here and I’m staying here … I have just as much right to the farm as Mick and Tom.’

  She threw down the cluster of tubes which were entwined around an empty drench pack. ‘There’s no way I’m going to become a nurse or a teacher so I can marry some conservative sexist pig who expects me to bake scones all day and join the CWA with his mum. Stuff that … and stuff what you think.’

  ‘Don’t you dare talk to me like that, girl.’ Harry had his back to her and Bec could see his shoulders tense in anger as he pretended to adjust the dose on the drench-gun. Knowing she was pushing him, she moved closer.

  ‘Dad. I’m not doing what you say. I’m not doing teaching. Or frigging nursing. How can you be so … so … bloody pigheaded. Chrissake, Dad! Mum’s a vet for crying out loud. You know all about career women who live on farms … and the way they have to race about to please their husbands and families and then juggle their workload. Just because you couldn’t handle Mum having a brain … and a life, don’t take it out on me!’

  ‘Leave your mother out of this!’ He turned to face his daughter. ‘If you hadn’t stuffed around so much with your dog training and horses and worked harder at school you could’ve got into vet science Rebecca. It’s your own fault.’

  ‘But I never wanted to be a vet! All I’ve ever wanted was to come home here to Waters Meeting and get this farm running how it should be.’

  ‘What’s that s’posed to mean?’ Harry slammed the drench-gun down on the oily wooden bench. ‘Are you saying I don’t run the place properly?’

  ‘Anyone can see this farm’s run in the dark ages. Mick and Tom are too afraid to ask you to look at the books. You’re always threatening to kick them off the place if they don’t toe the line. You don’t know half the things they’d say to you if they had the guts … like the fact that the new-beaut ram you’ve bought is a dud. They’re scared of you. The same way you were scared of Grandad.’

  At the mention of her grandad, Rebecca saw a muscle in her father’s jaw flinch. She knew she should walk away now and go up to the house. But she continued.

  ‘We’re going down the gurgler, Dad, because you won’t let go. So now I’m telling you. I’m not going to do teaching or nursing. I’ve enrolled in agricultural college next year and I’m going to get a degree in business and then come home and sort this mess out. I need a year’s practical experience as a jillaroo before I go, which I’ll do here and now, on this place.’

  ‘Like hell you will.’ Her father stood to his full height and took a step towards her, towering over her and pointing a large finger in her face.

  ‘Let me tell you, Little Miss High and Mighty – you won’t be doing work experience here for your useless snobby uni course. Either you respect and obey my wishes or you pack your swag up now, take your precious well-bred dogs with you and get off this property. And then you won’t be coming back to this part of the river so long as I’m alive on it.’

  In disbelief, tears began to well up in Bec’s eyes, but her father just dug deeper.

  ‘Your brothers will be glad to see the back end of you. Miss Self-Righteous. I never wanted another child. I told your mother no, it will be hard enough to carve up this block for two boys, let alone a third child … let alone a girl. Now get out of my sight.’

  Rebecca felt her bottom lip begin to quiver, so she bit it, trying to keep the hurt inside. Since the day she was born she had been her grandfather’s girl – never her father’s. From before she could remember, Grandad had rugged her up and sat her high in the saddle in front of him. They had ridden, she and he, up into the mountains looking for strays. He always muttered along the way, about the world around her, about the animals and the trees and how to find a beast and how to work a dog. She never remembered her father being there, or teaching her how to crutch a sheep or rope a calf or even boil a billy. The more love and attention her grandfather gave Rebecca, the more Harry withdrew from her. Over the years, the anger of the two men grew and the silence sizzled between them. It spilled over to Harry’s wife, Frankie, and then to his daughter.

  In the shearing shed, standing before her father, Rebecca couldn’t take it any longer. The words came in an angry burst and her face contorted with grief as she shouted at him. The rest of the shed blurred around her and she raged at his face.

  ‘No wonder Mum left you! You can’t see it, can you – you’re going to lose the lot!’

  ‘Shut your self-important little mouth and get out of my sight. You’ll be off the place by lunchtime or I’ll shoot all of your wretched dogs. I’ve had it with you.’ She felt his fingertips press angrily into the flesh of her shoulders as he shoved her towards the doorway. Shocked by the violence of his touch, she half stumbled down the steps. She looked up at her father and wanted to shout at him, but no sound came. Mossy trotted to Rebecca’s side and whined. Rebecca looked into her father’s unblinking eyes. There was cold in them. Even hate. She knew he meant it. Their frequent clashes since she was a child meant she had turned to the mountains, the soil, the plants and that beautiful river for happiness and strength. Deep down she knew her father resented her because she had a passion and a connection with the land that he never seemed to grasp even after years of farming. She became absorbed in the world of her dogs. She trained them, loved them, talked to them, studied them. She peered deep into their brown eyes and reached their souls. Her dogs were a way of escaping her father’s seething undercurrent of anger and his inability to show her love.

  Now that her mother, Frankie, wasn’t here to p
lace a calming hand on her father’s shoulder, she knew she had to go. She turned from his eyes and ran away from the shed. Mossy trotted after her and leapt up to lick at her hands in an offer of comfort.

  Bec was almost wailing as she threw clothes into a worn rucksack in her bedroom. The sobs jarred and caught in her throat. She ran down the stairs and out of the darkness of the house. Bundling her bags and swag into the back of her old Subaru ute, she motioned for her three dogs to jump in the back. They looked at her with worried eyes as she clipped each one onto the short chains. Shaking hands turned the key in the ignition. Her sobs turned to strangled screams of anger and she pounded the dashboard with her fists as she drove. She’d been at school when her mother had packed up and gone. She wondered if her mother had sobbed and wailed, or just calmly driven off with her proud head held high. Through a film of dust on the rear-vision mirror, Bec saw her father standing with his fists clenched by his side at the door of the shearing shed.

  In the paddock next to the driveway her black mare tossed her head and galloped along the fence line beside the Subaru. When the ute shuddered over the grid, the mare propped at the last minute and skidded to a halt just inches from the splintery strainer post.

  From the road along the hillside, Rebecca couldn’t bear to look at the sleepy green valley below. It tore her heart out to leave her river. Waters Meeting. Her place.

  Harry had watched his daughter as she jogged away from him towards the large stone house on the rise. Her light-footed dog had danced at her heels, looking up at her. How many times had he seen her swipe away the tears like that? He could still see her as an angry red-faced child screaming at him after he had said no.

  No, she couldn’t come mustering on the High Plains. No, he wouldn’t drive her to a dog trial. No he just wouldn’t. No. When Harry said no, she would run to her grandfather who said yes. The feelings of guilt flooded Harry. Guilt over only half loving his family and his farm. He had always been too busy for Bec. He had spent his days brooding in the machinery shed. Lingering around the homestead to avoid his father. Driving the tractor for hours sowing a crop, not dreaming of the rich green shoots which might come with rain, dreaming instead of being some place else, of being an engineer or an architect, even a pilot. Not here, trapped on the farm, living under the same roof as his father.