By the author of Light Between the Oceans which was written 14 years ago. 12/4/26
About the Mc Bride Family in remote Western Australia in 1948 In 1958 Phil and his oldest son are killed and Matt the younger son barely survives. Back on the sheep station Phil’s wife Lorna and his daughter Rose are now alone to run this vast ranch. "Greek tragedy set in the Outback of Western Australia
The MacBrides came to Western Australia a few decades after the Swan River Colony was declared in 1829. Lorna was the daughter of an Adelaide stockbroker and met Phil at a Ball in 1933. Children you feed the same love the same food but each one is different. There were so many kangaroos that the station used a roo killer who could make a descent living killing them for their skins and sometimes pet meat. Pete Peachey each year had to go to a meeting at the Vermin board and renew his gun license at the police station.
1953 Matt came to Scotch College the year after Warren had finished school, very overwhelming to be with so many boys, that came from such remote homes. His best friend was Humpty who had his life all planned out, but in playing cricket a dive for a catch crushed Humpty spine so his road to 94years and 3 months ended up in ashes. When Matt visited him he said he must come with a gun for him to shoot himself. By 1955Warren had been helping his father for 3 years after leaving school and the wool prices were still booming . At school a kid that has relationship with a boy who got expelled from the school as a result. Shame is like a disease it blights the whole flock. .Rose was sent to the city Commercial Collage in Perth to do a business career. Miles arrived from England to learn about farming in Australia as his family had properties there, he was sent here to get a grounding in wool . Rose explained
Sheep This is a station and not a farm as the were pastoralists, in the US it is called a ranch. You keep your different sheep in paddocks rams, wethers, ewes and weaners. A hogget is the meat of a lamb between weaning and shearing. Nobody owns their station outright it is on leased from the Crown. They have 58 paddocks over 40,000 acres (60square miles ) bigger than Central London. Paddocks are named here after racehorses. Near the house is the killer paddocks those that are going to be slaughtered. Sheep are kept for 5 or 6 years as after that the quality of their wool deteriorated. They keep 4 rams with every 100 ewes. So the flock is 9000 ewes, 5000 weaners 6000 wethers (emasculated rams)and 400 rams. Sheep don't have top front teeth but a hard dental pad there and molars behind. Mustering takes 8 weeks and shearing takes about 5 weeks. 5 months after the rams have been joined with ewers the lambs are born. You dock the lambs tails and earmark them. In a drought years you don't put rams with the ewes as they won't be able to feed the lambs. You the sell of the wethers but you always save the ewes. Mustering starts in April to be ready for shearing in May. "Touch has a memory" by Keats, Lines to Fanny.
Their Silverdale merinos produce 7 pounds of wool and are good for dry country. They used to have Belders but the are bad mothers. They all know how to ride horses but nowadays the use motorbikes to round up the sheep. Mulesing is the surgical removal of strips of skin by the sheep's buttocks to prevent flystrike where maggots cause an infection.
In the outback you see abandoned houses, rusting windmills and splintered fence posts. There are exhausted mines the port usurped by an airport and rail left behind by roads. Whole communities and the ties that bound them are blown away with the dust. We are looking for a place to ride out the storm of life. A week after the accident Matt opens his eyes .He has no spinal damage but traumatic encephalopathy. He slowly had to learn dexterity like putting a key into a lock etc. The nurse said that Loss of inhibition was typical of head injuries. The Queen mother visited Perth in 1958.
In the 50s when the wool price went through the roof, sheepmen everywhere bought up big new machinery , new plant and build new homesteads with indoor plumbing.
Rose -her father was talking about a good match for her meant how many acres and how many sheep.
Miles sees the hole of the mine and quotes "Look on my works ye Mighty and despair" Shelley.
Rose and Matt take shelter in the shearing room. They watch the heavy rain and find lanterns and stuff in the cupboards including whiskey. Matt went out to pee and returned wet so he took off his clothes and was wrapped in a blanket. What happened after that is that Matt dreamed he was sleeping with his girlfriend that he was going to meet when the accident happened. When the rain ended they returned and Matt because of the alcohol was back under treatment and Rose was considered to have been negligent.
Rose goes to Perth to do the secretarial course. Lorna get a receipt from the collage that Rose is not doing the course but was given the rebate. She had written a letter and signed her dead fathers name.
Rose goes north where she gets a secretarial job at an abattoir, the job comes with a shack/house. In the evening she read the books in the house Dickens , Stevenson Bronte and Mark Twain. She is paid cash. In the old days it could take 3 months to drive the cattle there. Today the cattle are arrive on road trains in less than a week. Poll short horns, (polled cattle are ones bread to be hornless)
Ernestine lost her husband but gained a metalworks and sees Rose as a younger version of herself. Rose faints and Ernestine takes her to the local doctor but gives her a wedding band to put onto her finger. Rose is 5 months pregnant. Ernestine tells her she must live her life and not worry about who the father is.. Rose doesn't want the old doctor to deal with her pregnancy so they ask the flying doctor to and it the young doctor who says Afternoon Mrs. Smith- --Rosie Mc Bride. Matt collected Rose, baby and Dr Finbar Rafferty from the aerodrome.
Nunc Dimittis (now let depart) Miles tells them that he is the black sheep of the family , a remittance man and proud of it. Miles had stayed on longer as requested till Matt recovered. The croquet set is left behind for Matt.
Matt realizes that Rose had been more loving to orphaned lambs than she is to her baby. Matt is aware of the way she watches him. The baby is going to be adopted out to a professional childless couple, this way the scandal is hushed up. An ewe who's
birth has gone wrong, a ram savaged by a dingo or a horse crippled in a dog trap, you immediately put them out of their pain with a bullet.
Peachey saw Rose driving to the mineshaft he went after her and found she had fallen and the swaddled baby was there. The flying doctor confirmed that Roses fatal injuries were from falling a suicide would cause an inquest. Matt asked Pattie if he had abused her (sexually) Her reply was no you just broke my heart. Lorna went to Perth to register the death of Rose and the birth of her grandson. Name of father is left blank.
Matt now found Roses lighter with the note she made to burn that Matt was the father, he burns the note. Later Peachey also figured this out as he had taken shelter in the shearing shed and saw the 2 of them asleep with Matt naked. Matt now will not stay in the same room as baby Andrew. Peachy explains to Matt that as a POW under the Japanese, you think you won't survive and the trick is to keep living. Some things the more you run the harder they hunt you down.
The 1950 Australia was riding on the back of a sheep the wool was needed for clothes of the Korean War, but now nylon and synthetics were not dependent on drought, disease and death.
1890s was a gold rush but it did not last., but today the miners had the power and the earth was at the mercy of what was under it. This was when Bonnie Edquiet arrived with a team of geologist and they start to collect samples and map the land.
Andy had an childhood different from Matt and Warren , he never had to fight for his toys. At aged 7 he knew he could ask Nanna Lorno but not Matt about the crash.
Kangaroos would drink sheep's water and eat their feed but a wild dog could kill a hundred sheep in a night and not even eat one.
The Radio to the flying doctor was used for School on the Air, that Andy soaked up to get an education. In the house that Miles lived in Matt found a picture of a Grenadier guard. All my love Sandy so he knew that Miles had been attractive to men. Miles had called himself a "black sheep remittance man" luckily people here never found this out.
Funerals are one social occasion the a person can attend uninvited.
Andrew had a pen pal Harry who tell him that his father works in a crocidolite or Blue asbestos mine. Later Harry's father is ill with damaged lungs and can't get compensation because he didn't wear the protective gear he was given by the company.
Station people tend to marry station people. They always said that Mac Brides could be bastards.
Bonnie is leading a geological team surveying the minerals on the station. This is bad news as mining to get out what is underground get greater priority to the folks on living on the surface. This is Crown land leased to the agriculturalists. The minerals they are looking for are galena, copper, manganese, columbite, molybdenum , rhodium, palladium, iridium zinc lead asbestos. With the geologist there is good business for the pub keepers, petrol station. Later Bonnie wants to be close to Matt and should have stopped the survey earlier as the minerals are not very promising.
The area has a new Police Chief Rundle and he found that 13% of the population did not have driving license's. If they could afford a car and petrol the have enough to get a license. He also found draft dodgers who were escaping the Vietnam war. , but he let the towns brothels tic along. One of the cases he dealt with was "Botulism" Betsy who had a bad marriage and poisoned her husband. The vicar who stole from the collection plate. Sadie who was only 14 and married a man 9 years older. Rundle the chief of police will not use his power to get their son into the hockey team. He says that if he bends the rule for his family, they will be entitled to bend the rules for theirs. Eventually Rundle would investigate Roses death. When Rundle ask Peachy about Rosie that he wants to sort of the truth. Peachy tell him you will need reinforcement if you want to start policing the past as well as the present.
Later when Rundle decided that Peach was the father Peachy said "Then I won't say you are wrong.
Wombats dig under the fence and let other animal in. Andy has a collection of techtites or Australites. These are meteorites that hit Australia 785000 years ago and have a "flanged button" shape as they go into the ground.
Matt is at Monty's boat and says it has dried out and will have to be recaulked. He was on the 170 nautical mile race from Fremantle to Bunbury. Bonnie says if ever it get to the water she will volunteer to go on it. Matt read the book on Gypsy Moth the man who had sailed around the world.in a 54ft Ketch was Sir Francis Chichester.
Matt has not spoken to Humpty Dumpton for nearly 15 years since he refused to bring him a gun in hospital. Humpty and Carol come to visit the Mac Brides. He married Carol when she was working at the rehab centre, they have been given the right to adopt children. Every adopted baby comes from a cradle of sadness.
At school Andy is involved in the Pastoralists Heritage Project tracing the family trees of settler to West Australia back to 1870 Andy has a problem as his father side is Anonymous and his sir name should be that of his father.
The butcher bird ahs lots of sings - its territorial song , mating call , distress call and warning cry. Just because you have heard one song you don't know the whole bird.
There are cricket matches between the Jackaroos and shearers and drovers and station people.
Matt arrived at the annual singles dance and surprised Bonnie by coming to dance with her. Later on Bonnie was told that she should be the one to encourage Matt into a relationship with her. Matt was very different from Warren who always had a girlfriend. Bonnie kept visiting Andy with a gift to be with Matt. Andy wanted to be a geologist. Andy asks Bonnie to research who his father was as neither his grandmother or Matt would answer. "I don't think Rose ever told anyone" Bonnie was jilted by a man who had another girlfriend all along. But today people are living together without getting married. Her uncle Cyril left the barmaid pregnant, when the barmaid was dying years later her cousin Bernice arrived at her uncle Cyril who accepted her. Times had changed. At the time if Cyril had known of the pregnancy he would have made her get rid of it, so the mother never told him. Later Bonnie tracked down Miles in Sydney and realized he was gay and not the father. When Bonnie took Matt to meet her parents he refused and said I can't marry you. Matt considered himself as damaged good and that he had to live with that.
There a place that they have never run sheep as it is difficult to get them in and out and that is where the Jemima trees have survived.
We now discover that Myrtle Eedie the post office mistress, gave birth at 17 and the kid was adopted out. The man she had a relationship with she discovered too late had a wife and children who later joined him from Melbourne.
Pete Peachy had been sending money orders over the years. A parcel arrived for him of a dress but he had no wife and Andy was handed it as it had missed the postal van that week.
Pete had won the Kings Medal during the war after which he arrived at the station. He had been a Japanese POW for a few years. He had been in the play the Importance of Being Ernest. as a lady, the play was a triumph and he was the only one who made it home.
A bad storm is expected and before it starts hurling trees and windmills get ready. Lorna filled the bath and buckets with water. Got the lamps and candles ready and matches ready. It was a dry electric storm and every surface was covered with dust and the cyclone had sandblasted the paint off the windward sides of cars stripping away paint.5 inches of topsoil had vanished. First thing was to get the areal up. The flattened fences had to be repaired and the sheep brought back into their paddocks.
When Bonnie arrived Matt hugged and squeezed her. She was now being recalled to Perth.
Andy was waling around at night by the light of the lamp saw Peachy without a shirt, his body was covered with great slashes. One never saw Peachy without a shirt. Peachy then put on a dress and was dancing. He decided that Peachy was nice on the outside and weird inside. Later Andy let slip about this and Johnno's gang came and attacked Peachy the the pufta the hurt his dog protecting him. Matt and Andy arrived and drive them off. Peachy immediately had to soot his dog. The next day Peachy looked like he had become an old man, and said good bye it time for him to take off.
1975 Andy studied at Muresk Agricultural College, Western Australia, where he met Jane and married in 1983,they have 3 children. Andy flew to Perth in the Station's Cessna . He had shares in the mining company and Bonnie had become the director. Andy would keep the homestead but the place would be destocked. When Andy spoke to Bonnie about who his father was he said he was happy in "forgetment". It did not matter.
Matt could now free leave and at the Australian Embassy in Athens, Greece he signed to Andy the Power of Attorney. Matt had become an apprentice boat builder in Queensland and traveled the world.
They all met at Lorna Funeral .Bonnie had married Bob and but she did not want to sit home looking after kids and knitting so they separated. She said she loved Matt because he was mysteriousness. She was now retiring.
