The Stockmen Read online

  Penguin Books

  The Stockmen

  Rachael Treasure lives on a farm in Tasmania with her husband, John, and her children, Rosie and Charlie. They run sheep and cattle along with a new venture producing hydroponic stock feed with their company T&T Fast Grass. Rachael has an exciting, ever-changing website at 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 & Publisher

  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

  ‘A rollicking good read’

  Brisbane Courier Mail

  The Cattleman’s Daughter

  ‘A moving Australian story of landscape, love and forgiveness’

  Weekend Gold Coast Bulletin

  ‘Treasure writes with true grit, wit and warmth’

  Australian Women’s Weekly

  RACHAEL TREASURE

  The Stockmen

  Penguin Books

  For my daughter Rosie Erin

  and

  in memory of Jack Gleeson

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Epilogue

  Notes for The Stockmen

  Kelpie

  Prologue

  BELFAST, PORT PHILLIP, 1856

  The boy could hear cows bellowing as they searched out their calves in the boggy dockside yards. He breathed in their scent and the bracing sea-breeze as if it were God’s greatest perfume. Exhaling a long breath, which was more like a sigh, Jack ran towards the docks, ducking under the noses of draught horses and diving between ponies and carts that passed each other on the wide street. At the yards, Jack climbed onto a post-and-rail fence to eye the cattle that milled about nervously.

  ‘Well, if it isn’t me young stockman-in-waiting, Jack Gleeson,’ called old Albert from the yard, his little terrier dancing in circles at his muddy boots. Behind him stood Mark Tully. Jack couldn’t help being envious of Mark. He barely had to go to school and spent most of his days helping down at the Port.

  ‘Hello to you both,’ said Jack.

  Albert coughed a raspy cough.

  ‘Mary, Joseph and Holy Jesus, I’m workin’ for me whisky today,’ he wheezed. ‘A penny for your thoughts on these beasts, me boy?’

  Jack cast his eye over the cattle and bit his bottom lip.

  ‘Mostly a nice lot, but I wouldn’t take her.’ Jack pointed to a small heifer on the rail. ‘She has a head on her like a gargoyle and her teats are set all wrong.’

  ‘Ah, well done. Couldn’t agree with you more. And this one? What of her?’ He pointed his worn cattle cane towards a short black heifer with shining, up-turned horns.

  ‘She’s all right.’

  ‘All right nothin’.’ Albert banged his stick on her rump. ‘She’ll have a devil of a time calving with pins as narrow as that. Look out for the likes of her, Jack. It’s like eyein’ over a woman – you need the gift to see beneath her clothes and even beneath her skin if she’s going to be any good to you in the long run.’

  Jack didn’t quite understand what Albert meant but ran his eye over the heifer and nodded anyway.

  ‘Where are they going?’

  ‘Not goin’ – they’re comin’. They’ve sailed all the way over the devilish seas and they’re about to be walked hundreds of miles up the road to Glenelg. If you ask me – which most folks don’t – I wouldn’t ship the likes of these cows halfway over the world, not a mixed lot like this. There’s a real art to picking God’s beasts, Jack, and some of those toffs back in the Mother Country just don’t pay attention to what the Lord packaged up for us. They’re too busy with papers, pedigrees and prestige to pick a good beast by eye. It’s an art you’ll need to learn if you and Mark are going to be the stockmen you say you are.’

  Jack noticed two men riding towards them. They were big men with broad shoulders who sat lightly in the saddles of their ambling horses. Their saddlebags were full and every loop had something tied from it. A bed-roll, a pannikin, a billy full of tea and flour. Loaded up for the long drove. Jack felt his heart beat faster. Arthur tapped Jack on the knee with his cane and nodded towards the men.

  ‘Those lads have the gift – just look at them. Watch their stockhorses, look at their dogs. Watch how they take the cattle quietly along that busy street.’

  The drover’s dog loped forward to inspect Albert’s terrier. The big black working dog circled the small wire-haired one. They sniffed at each other’s rear ends. The black dog held his tail high while Albert’s dog wagged his low and fast.

  ‘See them dogs, lads? See how they sniff each other’s arses like that? Do you know why they do that?’

  ‘No,’ said Jack, leaning forward, eager to learn more from the old man.

  ‘It happened long, long ago, when God was creating this very earth I’m standin’ on now.’

  Albert moved closer to Jack and lowered his voice.

  ‘Well,’ he began, ‘God had been at it for days. Creatin’ and creatin’ away. By the tenth day He was getting a little bored with it all, so He thought He’d play a joke … just to liven things up a bit. So, He pulled all the arseholes off all the dogs,’ Albert began to pluck at the air with his thumb and forefinger, ‘and then, He put ’em in a big bag and shook it up.’ Albert shook his imaginary bag. ‘Oh, God was chucklin’ all right when He did it – He thought it was a right joke. So, after He had mixed up all the arseholes, He put them back on the dogs again. And that, Jack my boy, is why dogs are havin’ a sniff whenever they meet each other, in the hope of findin’ their real arsehole …’

  Jack looked at Albert with a frown. Albert thumped him on the leg, beginning to wheeze, cough and laugh all at once.

  ‘Ha! Get it, boy? You’ll learn the ways of animals from me, all right! Ha ha!’

  Albert hobbled away to let the sliprails drop down in the mud. The drover whistled and the black dog forgot about looking for his backside and ran around the heifers, pushing them through the gate. Jack watched them as th
ey moved in unison, man and beast, away from the town and towards the land that Jack longed to see. Then he heard his Aunt Margaret’s voice on the wind and turned to see her waving from the buggy loaded up with supplies for their trip home to Codrington. He got down from the fence and jogged over to his aunt with his hands shoved deep in his pockets and a frown on his face.

  ‘Lookin’ for their arseholes my arse,’ he muttered in the broadest Irish accent he could muster.

  Chapter 1

  Rosemary Highgrove-Jones focused on the dog through her camera’s viewfinder. She chuckled, then pressed the shutter button down. Click. In the sweltering heat, amongst dozing red gums and drunken racegoers, she’d captured the image of a cocky little Jack Russell pissing on Prudence Beaton’s chunky leg. Yellow urine seeped into Prue’s beige pantyhose as she continued to sip, politely and obliviously, on equally yellow Chardonnay.

  Satisfied, the Jack Russell snorted, pointed his stumpy tail to the sky and scuffed up dried grass and dust with rigid legs. He then turned his attention to Prue’s Maltese Terrier. The two little dogs stood nose to tail, in a formation not unlike yin and yang, and began spinning slowly in a circle, oblivious to the throng of human activity above their heads. Rosemary had raised her camera again to capture the bum-sniffing on film, when she heard her mother’s voice.

  ‘Rosemary Highgrove-Jones! What in God’s name are you doing?’ Margaret hissed, firmly pushing the camera down. ‘You’re supposed to be working! Duncan’s relying on you! You’re not going to let him down again, are you?’

  ‘Why do you think they do that, Mum?’

  ‘Do what?’ Margaret frowned, momentarily creasing her perfect foundation.

  Rosemary nodded at the dogs. ‘Sniff each other’s bums like that.’

  ‘Oh, Rosemary!’ Margaret Highgrove-Jones took her daughter’s elbow in a pincer-like grip and steered her towards the VIP tent. ‘Now come on, I’ve got some people who are dying to get their faces in the social pages.’

  Margaret, tall, slim and upright in her blocky heels, seemed to tower above her daughter. Rosemary squinted at the sun shimmering in her mother’s rust-coloured organza dress and chanted to herself, ‘I must not be antisocial when doing the social pages, I must not be antisocial when doing the social pages.’

  ‘Let’s huddle in close for a nice photograph for The Chronicle,’ said Margaret as she gathered up a collection of old ladies sweating in race-day frocks.

  Rosemary raised the camera, her eyes scanning the women. Her mother stood front and centre of the group, looking like a blonde version of Jackie Onassis. Click. Rosemary took up her pen and notebook and began to scribble down who was in the shot. No need to ask how to spell their names. They were her mother’s regular rent-a-crowd of graziers’ wives.

  ‘Got time on your social rounds for a glass of shampoo?’ Margaret asked, waving a champagne flute at her.

  ‘’Fraid I can’t,’ Rosemary said. ‘Got to watch Sam in the next race.’

  Rosemary walked through the crowd towards the racetrack. The men standing among the litter of betting slips glanced away from odds chalked up on the bookies’ stands to watch the pretty girl pass. Some of them wore their dinner jackets with shorts and Blunnie boots. Others in proper suits had their shirtsleeves rolled and ties slackened about their necks. Beyond the fringe of bookies and punters, boys in jeans, blue singlets and big black hats slumped on a sagging couch on the back of a ute, drinking beer. They clutched cans in stubby holders while Lee Kernaghan’s songs vibrated from the ute’s stereo. When they saw Rosemary, one boy whistled. Embarrassed, she looked away, but then stumbled as a green wheelie bin rolled past her. A tubby bloke stood tall in the wheelie bin, like Russell Crowe in a Gladiator chariot. He held his beer can high and roared ‘Charge!’ as his mate pushed him at high speed over the bumpy ground, scattering the crowd. Rosemary watched the boys until they were out of sight, then turned to see her father’s serious face.

  Gerald Highgrove-Jones was standing tall, like a slim grey gum, with other gentlemen of the ‘tweed coat brigade’. These were the men of the district who never loosened their ties no matter how hot it was or how much alcohol they drank. Royal Show badges were pinned with pride to the thick woollen lapels of their jackets. Among them, his fine long legs clad in moleskin pants, was her brother Julian. As usual, he looked subdued and bored. Like Gerald he towered above the other men, but instead of standing upright he seemed to stoop, as if trying to hide.

  Rosemary waved to him as she passed and Julian waved back, rolling his eyes to indicate boredom. At the racetrack rail she looked at the familiar faces in the crowd. Like Julian, she had tried so hard to fit in. Each year, she’d tried to get excited about the coming bush races. Weeks before, the volley of phone calls between the ladies in the district would begin. Who would do hors d’oeuvres? Salmon or shrimp in the vol-au-vents? Caramel slice or coconut ice? She tried to gush over the dresses in the latest catalogues from Maddison & Rose and be upbeat and bubbly about her mother’s special trips to Laura Ashley and Country Road in Melbourne. Margaret was always striving for Country Style magazine perfection. But Rosemary and perfection just didn’t fit.

  She looked down at her now-creased white linen dress with its pattern of cornflowers and daisies. It had been ordered from Melbourne and had cost a bomb. But still, Sam had said she looked nice. She looked for him now in the area cordoned off for riders. Pretty girls in tight Wranglers, cowboy hats and singlets moved purposefully about their horses, carrying buckets, adjusting buckles, rubbing rough brushes over their mounts. They were girls her age. She’d known a couple of them at pony club, but her mother had refused to let her go on with her riding once she’d left the district for boarding school. In the years since she’d been home, the girls had barely spoken to her. Except when she was with Sam.

  She saw him on the far side of the track. He was with a group of riders making their way to the starting line. Collected in on tight reins, the horses bowed their heads and swished their tails nervously. Sam’s black gelding, Oakwood, loped in circles. Sam rode like a stockman, not a jockey, and he’d set his stirrups longer than the other riders as he always did at bush races. Rosemary eyed Sam’s strong, tanned hands as he expertly gripped his reins. Beneath brown skin, the veins in his arms stood out. Oakwood, too, had rivers of veins running under his glossy coat. His Australian stockhorse freeze-brand gleamed against his dark coat. Rosemary felt a tingle run through her as she took in how magnificent Sam and Oakwood looked together. It was as if man and horse shared the same blood, veins pumping as one. As they came nearer she tottered closer to the rail in her high heels, waved and called out.

  ‘Good luck, Sam!’

  Sam and Oakwood spun in a circle and then leapt towards her.

  ‘Make sure you get a winning photo of us, Pooky,’ he called. His dark-brown eyes shone as he winked and smiled at her.

  ‘I will!’ She winked back. She hated it when he called her Pooky, but there he was. Gorgeous Sam. Handsome right down to his boxer shorts.

  Behind him on the track rode Jillian Rogers, her long dark ponytail flying behind her. She thundered past on her leggy chestnut, yelling to Sam as she sped by, ‘Are you coming to get your arse whipped or not?’

  ‘You’ll regret that, Rogers!’ Sam called after her, laughing. ‘See you soon, Pooks.’

  Rosemary watched Oakwood’s muscular hindquarters bunch beneath him as Sam turned the gelding towards Jillian and cantered after her.

  ‘Good luck,’ she said again, but her voice was carried away on the wind.

  Rosemary reached for the ring on her engagement finger and spun it around and around. As she touched the sapphire and smooth gold, she wondered again how it was that, of all the girls in the district, she was the one who was going to marry Sam Chillcott-Clark.

  The voice of Rosemary’s editor from The Chronicle crackled from the loudspeaker. Duncan Pellmet fancied himself as a race caller. He had a special nasal voice for the one day of the year that was m
arked for the Glenelg Bush Races.

  ‘Well, ladies and gents, welcome back for the continuation of our Sunday bush racing program,’ said Duncan. ‘It’s time for the feature event of the day – the Glenelg Stockman’s Cup – sponsored by our very own local newspaper, The Chronicle. This event is open to all local stockmen and their horses. And these days, folks, “stockmen” includes the ladies – that’s right, fellas … look out! One little miss that’ll be hard to beat this year is Jillian Rogers, riding her mare Victory. But she’s up against three-time cup winner Sam Chillcott-Clark on his magnificent gelding Oakwood. Now, folks, Oakwood is no stranger to this track or the bush racing circuit. He’s also a polocrosse champ, a second place-getter in the national Stockman’s Challenge and gives a fair run at campdrafts all over the countryside. No surprises who the bookies’ favourite is today …’

  The public address system whined, as if complaining about Duncan’s voice. But he was soon back on the airwaves talking to a crowd who had long since stopped listening.

  ‘Er … now while the riders are getting ready for the start, some housekeeping … if anyone has seen my Jack Russell please show him to the secretary’s office … thank you. He answers to Derek.’

  The crowd hushed in anticipation as they waited for the mounted clerk of the course to drop the starter’s flag. As the white flag fell, the line of horses leapt from their standing start on the far side of the track. Goosebumps rose on Rosemary’s skin as Duncan Pellmet’s excited commentary reverberated through her. She watched the horses bunch and gallop in the haze of summer heat, eating up dust, belting along as if they were one giant beast. As they came more clearly into view round the turn, the slower horses started falling away and from the pack emerged Oakwood and Victory, the chestnut and the black, doing battle neck and neck. Sam leant over his horse and hissed in his ear. Jillian, perched on short stirrups, called to her horse in a gutsy voice. Then with just a few lengths to go, Duncan’s Jack Russell burst onto the track, yapping madly at the horses. Oakwood, a seasoned stockhorse, barely glanced at the little dog. But Jillian’s thoroughbred mare, more used to showjumping than stockwork, threw her head and took a sidestep just on the line. Sam had won. The crowd erupted into cheers and the wheelie-bin boys ran onto the track to rugby-tackle the dog.