Tracks (8 page)

She left a few days later. I inherited her old dog Blue, a cattle dog whom she had saved from a pound a few weeks before. As we hugged goodbye, she said, ‘You know, the moment I saw you, I knew you were going to play some important part in my life. Odd, isn’t it?’

Kurt returned shortly afterwards, and his vengeance was matchless. He now had me so terrorized that I slept with a small hatchet under my pillow. He continued to try to sell the place, or at least appeared to. My brother-in-law heard about this and, to my complete bewilderment, rang Kurt and offered to buy the place for me. At first it seemed like the answer to all my problems, then I realized that it was a crazy idea. We might not be able to resell and I could be stuck looking after it for years. However, if I could keep Kurt on the hook until Gladdy got herself together enough to see a lawyer that would be a good thing. So there followed a game of cat and mouse with my tormentor. To convince him that I had every intention of buying, I had to spend most of my time up there, pretending to prepare for take-over. There were no holds barred now. I remember Kurt came down to my room at Basso’s one morning at about six, ripped all the clothes off my bed, yanked me out and screamed that if I slept in when I had the ranch, the whole thing would be worthless. The murderous light never left his eyes during those weeks. We were involved in a tacit war, both playing games, both desperate to win. He was forcing me to train the young white bull, Bubby, without benefit of nose-line or saddle, something he would never have done in the old days. This meant that I was thrown at least three times a day, and my nerves were shot to bits. The tension of doing this, coupled with the tension of playing a very dangerous game, was taking its toll.

Then one morning I woke to find that he had disappeared overnight, in a puff of dust, like a genie, had sold the place secretly to some station people at half price and disappeared with all the money. He told the buyers that I went along with the ranch and would teach them all they needed to know about camels. They knew precisely nothing. I went to see them. ‘Look,’ I explained, ‘I do not go along with the place, but if you are willing to give me the two camels I want, I will certainly teach you all I know.’

They were pitifully confused. They didn’t know who was ripping off whom, or whom to trust. They acquiesced grudgingly, but kept putting off signing the piece of paper. I knew exactly the two camels I wanted, Biddy and Misch-Misch — two females because bulls were such a nuisance and quite dangerous when in season during winter. Once again I was tied to the ranch and beginning to believe that this process of trying to wheedle camels out of non-cooperative people was never-ending. I foolishly taught them enough camel-managing for them to think they didn’t need me, then, predictably, they backpedalled on the deal, offered me money for the work I had done, and dismissed me. ‘OK,’ I thought, ‘just wait until something goes wrong, you bastards, then let’s see who comes crawling to whom for what.’ And when it came, my stroke of good fortune, it was a little upward spiral of fate that made up for all the downers put together. Dearest Dookie, that most gentle of beasts, took a turn and frightened the socks, shirt, shoes and trousers off the new owner.

Luckily I was there. I had been up at the ranch most of the day, arguing about pieces of paper and money and so on, and watching smugly as the man made mistakes. My heart was hardened. ‘Ha, ha,’ I sneered to myself, ‘suffer or sign.’

When the time came to hobble the camels out at night I felt I had to show him how to do it for the camels’ sakes. If he left the hobble leathers too loose, they would slip down over the hock and possibly damage the animal’s legs. First, I took out dear quiet Dookie.

‘There, you see, in that hole there, and make sure this is never so loose that it can slip over this lump here, understand?’

‘Hmmm, yes I see.’

I let the bull go, and turned to fetch the others. Then I heard a strange rumbling sound behind me and glanced over my shoulder and froze in my tracks. I caught a look at the man’s face too. The blood had drained to his boots. Dookie had transmogrified. Dookie was coming for me with a decidedly Kurtish look in his eyes which were rolling back into his head like spun marbles. Dookie was making burbling noises and white froth was blowing out the side of his mouth. Dookie was trying to rut some rocks. Dookie was completely berserk. I had come between him and his girlfriends and for the first time in his young life he was taken over by those uncontrollable urges of a bull in season. He began thrashing his head and neck around like a whip. He was trying to gallop at me in his hobbles. He was going to try to knock me down and sit on me and crush the life and blood out of my body.

‘Dookie?’ I said, backing off. ‘Hey, Dook, this is me,’ I gasped as I made a bee-line for the gate. I hopped all five feet of it like Pop-Eye after spinach. Dookie was completely oblivious to the man who was still frozen, cowering against the wall of rocks, on the wrong side of the fence. It was me Dookie wanted.

‘Get out of there!’ I screamed as Dookie tried to bite off my head at the neck. ‘For Christ’s sake, man, get me the whip, get me the hobble chain, get me the cattle prodder!’ I yelled maniacally as Dookie pinned me to my side of the gate with his twisted neck and tried to squash me into a cardboard replica. He was leaning into the fence now, trying to smash it so he could get at me. I could not believe this. This was some nightmare from which I would wake screaming at any moment. My Dookie was a Jekyll and Hyde, a killer, a mad mad mad mad bull. The man was galvanized into action. He brought out all those instruments of torture. A cattle prod throws a huge number of volts, and this I pressed into Dookie’s snapping lips while I beat him as hard as I could across the back of the head with the hobble chain. I could barely hear my own whimpering through the fracas. Dookie did not feel a thing. He was like a windmill with teeth. I got away from the gate for a second and my mind crystallized. I raced for some ropes, a wood plank, and an iron bar weighing fifteen pounds. About five feet from the other side of the fence, Dookie’s side, was a gum tree. I walked up my side of the fence till I was in line with it. Dookie followed me bellowing and snorting and thrashing. I bent down to his front legs, threw the rope through the hobbles, cleared the fence, and quickly, oh so quickly, brought the rope around the tree and heaved with all my might. I had him tied to the tree by the legs now and I only hoped that all of it would hold. I then proceeded to bash that creature over the back of the neck with the wood, until it snapped, and then with the iron bar. Down he would go, half conscious, then up again to attack. I had the superhuman strength you only get when you are in a flat, adrenalin-pumping panic, and fighting for your life. Suddenly, Dookie sat down with a thump, shook his head a few times, and remained sitting, quietly grinding his teeth.

I waited a moment, bar poised in mid-air. Are you all right, Dookie?’ I whispered. I moved up to his head. No reaction. ‘Dookie, I’m going to put this nose-line on you now and if you go crazy again, I swear I’ll kill you.’ Dookie looked at me through his long graceful lashes. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. I quietly put the nose-line on him, asked him to stand up, bent down and undid the rope, took off his hobbles, and led him back into his yard. Like a little lamb he went, limping slightly.

I returned to the man. ‘Well, ha ha, that’s bulls for you,’ I said, trying to will a little colour back into my cheeks. I was drenched in sweat and shaking like a leaf in a high wind. His mouth was still open. We led each other inside and had a solid hit of brandy.

‘Do ah, do bulls often act like that?’ he said.

‘Oh hell yeeees,’ I answered, beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. ‘Christ, bulls attack like that all the time.’ I had him now, I knew what was coming. I was almost overcome with glee. I tried to slather a look of sisterly concern over my face. ‘Yeah, you want to keep your kids away from those bulls, that’s for sure.’

By nine o’clock I was running down the creek towards home, whooping and shouting and leaping and laughing hysterically. He had sold me the two bulls for seven hundred dollars — money I didn’t have but which I could borrow. They weren’t the two I would have chosen, but I was in no position to look a gift-camel in the mouth. Dookie, king of kings, and Bub that incorrigible little joker were mine. I had my three camels.

This miraculous turn of events opened a whole new vista of trouble for me. For a start, no matter how far I hobbled Dookie out bush, he would strain his way back to the ranch and terrorize everybody witless. He was harmless when hobbled and side-lined and legally there was nothing they could do, but I knew they were having a rough time and I felt sorry for them. I tied my boy up during the day, and let him go at night with Bub and Zelly, miles out in the hills, his feet chained together closely and cruelly; at six in the morning I would try to get him before his previous owners did. The man refused to listen to reason. Twice I caught him driving his car full pelt at Dookie’s rump, scaring the animal and making him more aggressive than ever, and possibly damaging those hobbled legs beyond repair. One day the man flew at me in a temper.

‘You’re just fooling around on a bloody holiday while I have to make a living out of these bloody animals,’ he said. ‘I’m telling you now, if that bull gets anywhere near my place, I’ll kill it.’

I saw red then. I had, after all, taught him all he knew and had he been civil I was quite willing to teach him more. He certainly hadn’t done badly on the deal. ‘And if anything happens to my Dookie, friend, you will wake up one morning and find all your camels missing. Gone out bush for a holiday.’ Counter-threatening came quite easily to me now, even though I secretly and guiltily believed him to be right.

This range-war mentality had been developed over the months, years now, until it governed my attitude to the world at large. I was a battleaxe — a product of the frontier. And there were perfectly good reasons for that.

Fullarton had paid me a little visit to suggest that the town wasn’t big enough for two camel businesses, should I be deciding to set one up.

On one occasion some people from town came to look over the place in the hope of buying it before the Aboriginal Lands Council could get its black hands on it. They walked straight through my bedroom as if I didn’t exist, without even a how do you do or a by your leave. I was furious and told them to get out of my house, and next time to have the civility to ask permission before walking through it and taking photographs. They blustered and shouted in return that they would have me thrown out by the health department.

There were also the occasional police visits to contend with. ‘Just checking up on how you’re doing,’ they would say as they made themselves at home and searched the roofless rooms, god knows for what. Molotov cocktails? Heroin? I don’t know. A couple of them even threatened to prevent my going on my trip: ‘You haven’t got a chance, you know, even men have died out there, so why should you rely on station people and us to come and rescue you?’

By this stage Julie, a friend, was living with me. We had taken up a window-cleaning business in town, pedalling in on our bikes with mops and squeegees and methylated spirits. Jenny was soon to come out too. Now that Kurt was gone I did not have to worry about my friends’ safety, and I was beginning to understand that being alone got awfully boring sometimes, and that I needed people, wanted them.

Life was changing for me. I was being softened and set on a different tack by my friends; in fact things were now so comfortable I had almost forgotten about the trip. I had previously lived the life of a miserly savage at Basso’s. I ate brown rice which I have always hated, and vegetables from my impoverished garden, and then at night after work, when I had brought home the cold meat given to me by the chefs at the restaurant, Diggity, Blue and I would attack it like wolves, all eating together and fighting over the best bits. But with my friends present, there was a reason for being more civilized, easier, pleasanter. Jen was a brilliant gardener, Toly was a superb fix-it man, and Julie was a wizard cook. We lived almost luxuriously. They loved Basso’s as much as I did and each gave it an added dimension which made it more of a home. At first this was slightly difficult for me to accept. When you are used to being the queen, it is hard to consider democracy replacing lone rule.

I realized how deep my resistance to change had gone when we were all sitting having tea one afternoon in the back garden. Some travelling hippies arrived. They’d heard about the place down south and were here to stay for a few days’ holiday. My hackles immediately rose and I said they couldn’t stay. When they had gone, I turned to the others and said, ‘How dare they assume they can just walk right in to someone’s private home and stay for a holiday, bloody boring insipid recorder-playing,
Jonathan-Livingston-Seagull-
reading weeds. Jesus.’

Jenny and Toly looked at me sideways, eyebrows slightly raised, and said nothing. But looks sometimes speak louder than words and I could see that they were thinking something like, ‘Intolerant, hypocritical old boiler, you’ve become what you most dislike.’

So I mulled that one over for a while. I tried to find out the root cause of this meanness in me, apart from the obvious things, like having to fight, at least in Alice Springs, fire with fire. I was surrounded by people who for some reason found my very presence a threat. And had I not been able to stand up to them on their terms, I would be somewhere back on the east coast, my tail between my legs. But it was more than that. For many outback people, the effect of almost total isolation coupled with that all-encompassing battle with the earth is so great that, when the prizes are won, they feel the need to build a psychological fortress around the knowledge and possessions they have broken their backs to obtain. That fiercely independent individualism was something akin to what I was feeling now — the stiffness, the inability to incorporate new people who hadn’t shared the same experience. I understood a facet of Alice Springs, and softened towards it, at that moment.