The Burnt Country Read online

  About the Book

  AUSTRALIA 1948. As a young woman running Amiens, a sizeable sheep station in New South Wales, Kate Dowd knows she’s expected to fail. And her grazier neighbour is doing his best to ensure she does, attacking her method of burning off to repel a bushfire.

  But fire risk is just one of her problems. Kate cannot lose Amiens, or give in to her estranged husband Jack’s demands to sell: the farm is her livelihood and the only protection she can offer her half-sister Pearl, as the Aborigines Welfare Board threatens to take her away.

  Ostracised by the local community for even acknowledging Pearl, Kate cannot risk another scandal. Which means turning her back on her wartime lover, Luca Canali …

  Then Jack drops a bombshell. He wants a divorce. He’ll protect what’s left of Kate’s reputation, and keep Luca out of it – but for an extortionate price.

  Soon Kate is putting out fires on all fronts to save her farm, keep her family together and protect the man she loves. Then a catastrophic real fire threatens everything …

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  MAP OF AMIENS, 1948

  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

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ATTRIBUTIONS

  RESOURCES

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  RECIPES

  BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS

  THE WOOLGROWER’S COMPANION

  ALSO BY JOY RHOADES

  IMPRINT

  READ MORE AT PENGUIN BOOKS AUSTRALIA

  For my family

  CHAPTER 1

  When engaging an overseer for stock work, the prudent woolgrower shall first make discreet and specific enquiry, before any personal interview might be conducted, to form solid notions as to the character of the applicant. ‘Repent at leisure’ is an apothegm for the yards, as much as for the household.

  THE WOOLGROWER’S COMPANION, 1906

  Amiens, via Longhope, New South Wales

  November 1948

  Afterwards, Kate Dowd believed that if luck had been with her, if Jack had been unable to find his way that night, things would have been different. But as it was, her husband had made it to Amiens, all of the sixteen miles out from Longhope.

  It had been a quiet night, hot, the household off to sleep early as usual. Before turning in, Kate had curled up for a few minutes in one of the verandah wicker chairs, wrapped in a sheet she’d pulled off her bed. She loved to sit there. Even in the black milk of that night, Amiens was beautiful. Kate made out the hills along the horizon and the creek line marked with myalls. She preferred moonlight, of course. But there was none tonight, just some slivers of light from the Milky Way. Dust from a witch’s housekeeping, her father used to say.

  She smiled, thinking of him, and pulled the sheet closer around her to ward off the mosquitoes. He’d built Amiens’s thirty thousand acres and seven thousand head of sheep from nothing, and he was proud of his ‘bit of dirt’. Her father loved the Milky Way too, even as he got older, as he got sicker. He’d stand on this verandah and show the stars to her, the saucepan and the Southern Cross. He taught her, when she was only seven or eight, how to find the two stars a bit to the side, the pointers for the Southern Cross. If you run a line, he’d say, out perpendicular from the pointers, and one out from the bottom of the Southern Cross, where they meet? That’s south. You can always find y’way, now, Katie.

  Finding her way was hard. And it was hard, too, to think of her father without sadness, even now, years after his death. She pushed that out of her head and looked up again. There was something peaceful about that night sky, Amiens under it, as though the land itself slept too, along with the handful of souls in the homestead – the children, Daisy, Mrs Walters, the new housekeeper – and the men in the workers’ cottages half a mile off down the flats. Amiens was a little community, struggling to stay afloat, but good people, finding their way.

  Calmed of her worries by the sky and the land, Kate took herself to bed, and, despite the heat, was soon asleep. But not for long.

  It was the crash that woke her, a chair going over in the dark.

  ‘Bugger.’

  Kate was jolted upright. ‘Jack?’ she guessed, fearful. The air smelled of grog. She pulled the sheet up. ‘Jack? Is that you? Are you all right?’

  ‘Never bloody better.’ His words were thick, angry even. Kate worried for the four others asleep in the house. Jack had a temper when sober, and now he was drunk.

  ‘Cup of tea, Jack?’ Kate said. It sounded ridiculous, even to her.

  His voice came back through the darkness. ‘You know what I want. We’re selling up.’

  She listened hard in the dark. Was he moving? Coming towards her?

  She went to get up but suddenly Jack was on her, pushing her back onto the bed, the stink of stale beer around them. She knew not to struggle. His breathing came through the dark but calmed a little against her stillness. He released her and flicked on the light.

  He seemed to fill the room with coiled energy. A fair head taller than her, with a solid build, he looked ragged, older than his twenty-eight years.

  Unsteady, he fished about and pulled a dog-eared piece of paper, folded longways, from his back pocket and threw it in her lap. Contract of sale filled the top of one side.

  ‘Sign it.’

  She didn’t move.

  ‘For a wife, I bloody drew the short straw.’

  Kate didn’t speak.

  ‘Well? You have to sign.’

  ‘I can’t. I have to help Daisy and Pearl. They’ve no one else.’

  ‘Pearl?’ He almost spat the word. ‘There’s at least ten blokes in this district with black kids running round. You think they acknowledge those kids? Much less raise em.’

  ‘I must. Because Dad—’

  ‘Must? Your duty is to me. Duty, Kate. You don’t know the first thing about it.’

  She knew to be quiet.

  ‘Honour and
obey. O-bloody-bey. What if womenfolk didn’t do as they were told? Jesus H. Christ.’

  Kate listened, hearing nothing in the rest of the homestead. Hoping they’d stay asleep.

  ‘You do as you please, as if you were a bloke.’ He was incredulous. ‘And don’t think I don’t know about that Eye-tie bastard sniffing around you during the war.’

  Kate steeled herself again not to react. She was now deeply ashamed of herself, of her wartime affair with Luca, even as brief as it was. The years since had shown her her madness.

  ‘I’m bloody away doing my bit in the war, and he’s here having a go.’

  She cried then, trying not to make any sound for fear of getting him angrier. Jack had left her and gone to work in the Islands three years before. Why was he back now?

  ‘The bloody war put ideas in your head. And you’re burning off too much, I hear.’

  ‘No—’

  ‘You think you can run this place? You! Now you do something right for bloody once. Sign.’ He jabbed at the contract in her lap.

  A wet circle formed on the deed, a tear fallen on the paper. Very slowly, firmly, Kate shook her head.

  Backhanding her, he knocked her across the bedside table. She crashed onto the floor, the lamp with her.

  ‘You’re a bloody disgrace.’ His voice was thick with grog and anger.

  Her face burnt, from shame and pain. In shock, her mind moved slowly. Please God, let the others stay away. Safe.

  Jack picked up the deed. ‘Sign,’ he said again.

  She shook her head. She couldn’t.

  ‘You’ll sign, all right.’ He started to unbuckle his belt.

  Suddenly there was the sound of a shotgun breech snapped shut. Jack’s head spun round to the barrel as it was pushed into the room.

  ‘Mrs Walters.’ Kate’s voice was hoarse with fear, afraid for what Jack would do if he got to the housekeeper.

  He moved towards the gun. The barrel swung away from him to point out the open verandah doors. BANG. A single shot filled the room, deafening them.

  Kate could hear nothing. But she could see. Jack lurched back, fumbling with his belt, his eyes still on the gun. The shooter was hidden in the hallway but the gun barrel jerked, motioning Jack away, gone. He stumbled out the open doors.

  Her ears still ringing, Kate followed onto the verandah and with a shaking hand threw on the yard lights, daylighting the homestead garden and yards of the house paddocks. Even lit up, Jack didn’t look back. He went over the homestead fence, running on towards the creek. Soon headlights shot into the darkness from the gully as a car swerved round and off towards the main road.

  She turned inside, shocked to find it was Harry, not Mrs Walters, cradling the shotgun. Kate felt ill at what might have happened. Harry was just thirteen.

  But he was grinning, a mouthful of bright white teeth. He was as tall as Kate but skinny, his blond hair in a short crew cut. ‘I showed im, eh?’ she heard through the ringing. Behind him was Daisy with little Pearl in her arms, and Mrs Walters in curlers and dressing gown.

  ‘You all right, Missus?’ Daisy rubbed one ear as Pearl cried, her head of dark curls against her young mother’s brown shoulder.

  Kate nodded. Daisy might be seventeen, but she was resourceful. She had woken Pearl, scooped the two-year-old into her arms, ready to run.

  Everyone was safe. ‘Is there another cartridge in it?’ she asked Harry.

  ‘Nuh.’

  She reached out for the shotgun and he handed it over, reluctantly.

  ‘Back to bed then.’ Mrs Walters’s voice shook but she took charge and shepherded them all into the house.

  Kate turned off the yard lights, her face still stinging from the blow. For now, at least, Jack was gone. But she would never forgive him for tonight. Nor he, her.

  What had become of them?

  CHAPTER 2

  It may be laid down as a rule that the most important traits for a woolgrower are fortitude and a stoic turn of mind, in the face of the inevitable vagaries of fortune which will be visited upon his endeavours.

  THE WOOLGROWER’S COMPANION, 1906

  The next morning Kate woke in the heat, groggy with tiredness, glad of the gentle rhythm of the day, of breakfast noises carrying to her from the homestead kitchen. She dressed, then took her sore cheek to the bathroom to inspect the damage.

  The mirror above the basin was tizzy, its frame a laurel of exotic leaves, all painted over in a now-chipped gold colour. Her mother had found it in a junk shop somewhere, years and years before, but Kate’s father had observed it was ‘fit for a bordello’, so it had ended up here, hidden away in the bathroom. Kate wished she could hide away for the day, out of sight, as well.

  Today, with her cut lip and bruised cheek, off-balance from Jack’s visit, she almost didn’t recognise the woman looking back at her in the mirror. Youngish – twenty-five – with an oval face, short brown hair, a quick smile and a watchful expression. She wondered how others saw her, if they spotted her wariness. Sometimes, the hardest person to see clearly is yourself.

  Kate went to the kitchen, busy with Harry and Daisy and Pearl. She took a potato from the basket in the pantry and sliced it in two, pressing one side against her bruised cheek. She tried to sip tea with her cut lip.

  ‘Tea leaves, Missus, eh. For ya cheek.’ Daisy smiled at her in sympathy and held out a tiny trussed pudding cloth. Kate accepted the poultice gratefully and winced as she applied it. It always struck Kate how pretty Daisy was, with her deep brown eyes and head of full curls. No wonder Ed was keen.

  Beside Kate, Harry attacked a plate of Vegemite toast. ‘You ever been hit, Dais?’ he asked.

  ‘Harry!’ Kate hissed.

  Daisy carried on with the breakfast.

  ‘At that Home, eh, in town, I bet. The bastards.’ Harry went back to his toast.

  Kate gave him a stern look from under her pudding cloth.

  Mrs Walters came through the kitchen door, her petite frame almost hidden by the basket of laundry in her covered arms. She avoided Kate’s eye and Kate knew she had a problem. She’d not told the new housekeeper any of the scandal about Amiens, about Jack leaving, about her father. After last night there was no sweeping it under the carpets they didn’t have. She just hoped this housekeeper wouldn’t up and quit, like the last one.

  Outside, Gunner barked and a truck door banged shut.

  ‘Damn,’ Kate said, remembering. ‘It’s mail day.’ She got up quickly.

  ‘No swearing,’ Harry crowed virtuously.

  Kate was almost into the hall when Mick Maguire’s voice boomed behind her. She had to stop but was careful to keep her back to the postman.

  ‘Morning, all. How the hell are youse?’

  Harry replied, a mouthful of food and greeting. ‘All right, eh.’

  ‘What about you, Mrs D?’

  Kate had no choice. She turned, annoyed with herself for being too slow to escape.

  The postman filled the doorway. A big man, more than six feet, with a girth and a booming voice to match his size.

  ‘Jeez. That’s a beauty. Tea leaves and whatnot’ll never work. Put porridge on it.’

  Maguire was always giving Kate instructions – whether on bruises, like today, or on any and every aspect of the management of the sheep property Kate had run successfully since her father died. Maguire told her what to do and she ignored him.

  ‘How’d ya get that?’ Maguire asked, putting the post on the table in front of Harry.

  ‘The yards.’ Kate said the first thing that came into her head.

  ‘Yeah?’

  She wondered if the postman knew Jack was in town, and had been on a bender. And whether he might then put two and two together. Jack was still popular in Longhope, his charm effective on men and women alike.

  ‘Loose rail come down,’ Harry said conversationally, smart enough to know they couldn’t tell the truth. ‘You see my wallaroo on ya way in?’

  Maguire grinned. ‘Hissed at me from under the ta
nk stand.’

  ‘Doesn’t like strangers. Watch you shut the gate on your way out.’

  ‘Where’d you get him?’

  ‘The mum was hit by the side of the main road and Ed checked her pouch.’

  Maguire smiled. ‘What’s his name, then?’

  ‘Donald. For Bradman, eh.’

  Maguire laughed. ‘Your wallaroo gunna be a cricketer?’

  ‘Mebbe.’ Harry grinned.

  ‘You seen your uncle, young Harry? Y’know he’s back?’

  Harry was suddenly serious but not surprised.

  ‘No secrets in a country town. I saw im yesterday.’

  Harry threw a filthy look. ‘He’s not m’uncle.’ He got his school case and was gone.

  Maguire took a mug of tea, nodding thanks at Daisy. ‘No love lost there, eh? Grimesy’s not a man who’s easy to like, I’ll give you all that.’

  ‘It’s his great-uncle,’ Kate said needlessly. Either way, she wasn’t pleased. Grimes had been gone from the district – and from Amiens where he’d been manager – for three years now. Maybe he was only passing through? Harry’s reaction surprised her too. She wondered if he had already heard. Harry had an unfortunate tendency to eavesdrop.