Life flourishes day in and day out. Sunshine or rain, drought or flood. One animal or plant enjoying what another doesn't.

Kangaroos push out young faster when the season isn't the best and crocodiles will move upstream, or down, when the river floods or recedes to get the best food source. Life adapts to its surroundings and seasons, listening with an innate sense us humans can only dream of having.

I love animals. I've birthed calves and foals and watched chicks struggling to escape eggs. Even witnessed emu chicks with long necks and legs popping from the odd avocado green egg or two.

Had a kangaroo joey as a pet once. Somehow saved a dingo pup from turbulent floodwater, tamed him and made it daddy's best working dog. I've seen cockatoo young squawking for their mummas high up in the hollow branches of gum trees. The hollows perfect for nests. Once, I shimmied up then back down the trunk of the shorter gum with one too.

I've feed, twice daily, dozens of poddy calves, all sucking on teats attached to big Darwin stubby bottles full of milk..

I fuss like a mother-hen over my two precious horses, even though daddy said they were working horses and shouldn't have coats nor braided manes...

He relented on this point thankfully. Horses were my sunrise and sunset. He didn't begrudge me the time, and oft I would have him show up at the bare bones stable I fashioned myself to settle on a bale of hay and sit and watch quietly. Watching as I practiced braiding a mane, or tail, or both. We would ride together, for miles. Chatting as we ambled and letting the horses have their heads to nip grass underfoot as we meandered along swollen creek banks or pushed upwards to take in the view from the highest ridge.

Animals are easy. What you see is what you get. But men....

I've seen men at their finest; and at their very worst.

The finest, respect me, even if it's only a slight nod with knowing deference, after I have been right up alongside them at the business end of bone draining farm-work; When they acknowledge that I didn't whine while completing full day rides, for weeks on end, to find, flush out and muster a thousand head of cattle.

The finest, when they listen and undertake this girl's orders when it's only me there to give them, or when they get back to the job at hand after I've slung cutting barbs at them on their lazy days; On days after maybe a night of heavy drinking, to get tardy bums moving.

The worst...The worst of them would surreptitiously loosen saddle girths or slap my horse on the rump with a whip thin stick while I was rolling along on a loose rein and rolling a sneaky durry. Run me off into scrubby trees or push their horse against mine, edging us to closer to the river bank and possibility of a drop to the flow below. All the while they would swear strips to anyone that listened about a reed thin girl bossing them around.

Daddy couldn't be there all the time, all the miles, all the places. It was impossible. He was within miles of course, just not there in those moments.

Those bastards didn't last long, sent packing firstly by me. Then they would approach my father for a second chance. Thinking he would see sense... See that a girl wasn't worthy of being a cattleman. He sent them packing too.

Daddy, or Dad when I worked alongside him in the yards, warned the seasonal stockman- if he wasn't about, I was boss. I was a good boss, told so by old drovers and young bucks alike. I was in a man's world and worked as hard as they all did and most acted accordingly.

Another inevitable is death.

On the land, with harsh conditions, breeding and using livestock always has its losses. Shooting a horse that has broken a leg or having to cull an animal for a meal, it isn't nice but it is what it is.

Like I said I love animals although it's hard on a property; as an animal either works or is food, sale stock or vermin. They must fit one of the above or there is no place for them. So I care for them as only a farm kid can- keeping a weak calf or two hidden in an isolated 'secret' shed til it's healthy. Unfortunately, more often than not, those orphans would be discovered and placed, under my duress, back with the rest of the herd. Healthy, but sort of my pets after such a long time of handling.

I had names for all thirty of our chooks and tried my hardest to convince mum not cook roast chicken for Sunday dinner... Until I caught a whiff that is.. then bam! My mouth would water and Henny Penny or Dot or Daisy or Marshmallow would be forgotten. Nothing better than my mother's roast chook.

With fanciful thoughts of being an animal doctor in my head... I've learned to set dogs broken legs in makeshift casts with the help of nurse Daddy. Wishing and hoping my nursing could repair a good working dog back to good health once again... Sometimes I succeeded, and we gained a dog back; Sometimes I lost..

Making the bi-annual trip to town with a mother that had good intentions for her daughter and a father that understood her like no other, made for a long trip.... I was twenty-four, happy, still playing piano, jotting down poetry and tinkering with piano chords in my spare time or when the mercury hit boiling point. I wasn't great but ok.

For mum's sanity, I learnt to sew. And for mine, I overhauled the Fords' V8 engine.

Yet everything can change so quickly when you take your eye off the prize...

A blink and the entire world spins from your grasp.

***

We were loaded down with bags of flour, tins of food, sugar... everything. Everything we needed for a summer stuck in our watery paradise ~monsoon season, a humid, stinking hot Christmas, where rivers rose and we were stranded for months on end. Animals all hustling to higher ground.

This trip I managed to sneak off and get some presents for my parents and Melvin, and a bag of sugar cubes for the horses too. I also made a mad dash down the dusty wide streets to Missus Campbell at the post office where I purchased enough stamps for the overseas mail, as well as a fancy sticker that said 'AIRMAIL par Avion' and attached the lot to the parcel I sent to our Jim.

I had sewn a new doily for Jim. It was a rather girly affair for a man but I was proud of the stitching, proud I got it right. Carefully laid centre stage on a disc of cardboard and wrapped in brown paper, tied with string to secure it tight, the gift was then ready for a journey of thousands of miles to its new home, in Liverpool, England.

The Ford hugged the road, purring like a good growly kitten. I had sorted the gaskets and changed the spark plugs and oil she was in tippy top shape if I do say so myself. 'She' was called a Ford Falcon but at the present moment it wasn't flying much higher off the ground than a chook with its wings clipped. Wheel arches scrapped tyres as we drove and nearly got lost in big potholes. And as we rounded each corner, the back end felt full and ready to spill.

I was driving; daddy would take over in an hour or two. It was what we did, how we liked it. I enjoyed driving, and although mum would always say slow down a tad, I wasn't stupid, I definitely wasn't dumb. I didn't take chances; we were miles and miles from humanity- an accident out here... well it didn't bear thinking about.

"Remember the cattle grids up ahead and those emus were all over the road at Curloo Corner"

Dad slid his hat on deep as he gave me his warnings.

"Yes daddy, I know, they were all over the road and paddocks by the billabong at Corella Crossing too... now hush and have yourself a camp"

Hmmm.... love you, sweetie"

The Akubra low, his eyes shaded, he twisted in his seat to half lay facing me, legs bent by the gear stick, he was soon falling asleep in the warmth of the afternoon sun. He trusted me.

"Love you too old man"

Daddy harrumphed and grinned sleepily as he retorted back "Watch that tongue of yours, my luv"

"Yes daddy"

Silence... Well as silent as it got with the chugging lumpy sounds of a V8 out in front under the hood but it was silence in the matter of family chit chat, birds squawking, conversations and laughter.

Mum was sprawled across the back seat, sound asleep like the contented babe she was. She fussed about being sat in the back but soon settled into her newly purchased Woman's magazine 'Woman's Day' or 'Week' or something or other, and her beloved knitting... It wasn't long after we got to the outer fringe of Normanton that she succumbed to sleep too.

I sang softly as I drove. Some old country tunes, some of Calamity Jane's songs I memorised from the movie we saw at the cinema last time we were in town. One I sang to all and sundry at the town hall. Embarassing but who cares I won't see them lot in a month of sundays any how. In between performances to absolutely no one, I lit smokes I had rolled before the trip...

Freedom of a different kind driving a car... you had to be 'on' all the time, roos could bound blindly from the scrub either side of the road and often did. More so just before dark or when the crack of dawn occurred, but anytime at all a mob could streak across the road all around you.

If you see one bound by- pull up 'cause hundreds are behind that leader kangaroo.

I slowed down and rolled by six long necked, black legged, sticky beak emus. They were just as bad, but stupid too. Not a good combination at all... They run any which way and a few times I've hit a dumb bugger doing ballet in the centre of the road on a blind bend.

The old car lurched about like a big ole fat man drunk off his head so my hands gripped the wheel tighter for the corrugation we were presently bumping along on.

Gravel roads not graded for years, big divots of potholes and washouts from previous monsoonal rain. It all made for entertaining steering and sharp wits about the driver. The monsoonal torrents ultimately cut daggers of trenches across the road I now drove. Long gone flood waters that ran swift and fierce, angling from the higher ground, over the unmade road and off toward the gullies it wished to enter to get away.

I'm twenty-four, twenty-four!! And it's 1964!

Jim sent word that boy of his had been over to Australia singing! He sent a record, but I hadn't a needle for the turntable. The boy, James Paul was already back to England, he hadn't had the time to visit... Mum looked at me when I asked why they never wrote... Never visited either now.

Only Jim wrote.

I thought it was just because they were boys; you know. And... boys don't like to write stuff.

Apparently, they didn't know.

They know nothing about me...

I rode and rode the afternoon mum disclosed that little gem of information.

I rode to think about what it all meant. Wondering aloud to myself, my mare and any other animal within earshot if I was of such little consequence to Jim that he was embarrassed by me. Thus, he and Mary, never told their boys I existed. Their boys.

Jim never ever sounded like it on the airmail page, the ink dry and pressed firm as his neat script crossed the thin paper...

I read his letters twice, sometimes four times over, top to toe, and although he was a man, I just assumed, through his words, he must have at least liked me... That they had offered my mum and daddy me because they loved us all. I was confused and scared and unsure that England would ever see me that day, and all those days that followed. Unsure that my fantasy of another place to call home, existed. I should perhap-

A flurry of hooves and brown streaked from the left.

A water buffalo pounded from out of nowhere, its bulk darting with unwitting agility from dense scrubby trees that ran beside the gravel road.

Barrelling right into the Fords path...

Death is inevitable... young- old- weak- strong. It doesn't matter.

It's indiscriminate.

I will say here and now, and apologise too I guess; God didn't matter much to me in my day-to-day life. I was too busy living to do loads of praying. Although...

Although,

I sometimes prayed for rain...

I thanked him, her or it for the splendid land that ran away in every direction from my home.

I prayed thanks that I was blessed that we were a family and had a roof over our head. A meal on the table.

I also prayed, as I toyed with my correspondence from Jim; that I would meet him and my brothers one day.

We did also pray when we went to church when eventually we made it into town....

Maybe I should have prayed a little longer, a little harder, a tad more often.

Maybe.... I should have prayed every minute of every day.

But I didn't.

And now it's too late to start.

Now it is done.

Times up.

After dragging my mother gently back into the car, I kissed her cheek again. She was so pretty and innocent; she didn't deserve to be left in the burning sun. "I love you mummy..."

She wasn't breathing when I woke with a start, pain everywhere and blood seeping sticky, from some place on my skull.

There was more silence now than before 'cause there was only one set of lungs working- Mine.

The water buffalo was long gone, he'd done his damage and I..... I had done mine.

My shoulder stung and my ribs felt like I was burning inside as I lift my mum and took her to the car.

I should have been slower, more on the ball, not singing, not smoking. I should have been ready and alert waiting for movement, any fleeting movement....

I wasn't being a fool driver; I was being as cautious and careful as I had ever been.

But it wasn't enough.

I still should not have let a buffalo bump the bumper so hard and run me into a damn bluff with my parents unbelted and staring into the sun...

I love you mummy...

Daddy had a crook neck, bent so bad I couldn't make him sit straight to hug mum.

"I'm borrowing your hat; I can'ttt... I can't seem to find mine da.. ddaddy. I'll... I'll look after it- I promise. I love you both so much. Soooo, so much" Words barely whispers, as the trees were the only living things listening.

Shutting the door carefully, I changed my mind as soon as that resounding clunk of metal hitting metal reached and gnawed at my ears. I frantically yanked and struggled with the bent metal to open it up again.

Pulling the twisted metal open for another moment, for another wish.

Hoping I was wrong, knowing I was right.

Hugging my parent's once more.

A little longer, a little tighter.

I broke then, crying and cursing that dumb buffalo as I did so. Cursing myself for driving and being the demise of the greatest loves of my life.

Clutching my hair hard, yanking it with as much might as I did that twisted auto door, I wished and screamed and sobbed that this, right now, was all a nightmare. A horrible dream I could wake from.

Hope clutched and dragged at, with the frantic fingers of my soul, that I was wrong.

That I had made a mistake and they would turn to me, smile, and say 'I love you' right back.

But I got no reply to my pleas.

It was quiet as I walked away to start my lonely journey.

It would be many, many miles to the nearest telephone and help.

Hours and hour's til I would get them assistance.

However...
I knew with each leaden footstep I took.
With each and every fibre of my being.

That it was all too late....

Paul~ In another town in another hotel room in the UK

'Look at this tripe' Paul sat heavily, silently contemplating his month, or was it someone else that owned the month? Himself being the dumb nutter doing all the work had him thinking nothing was his.

Fame was theirs now but cages seemed all they were trapped in.

'All well and good making money but whenever will I ever get to spend it!'

"What's got up your nostrils then?" John flung his book over his head and rolled on his side. Paul's huffing and puffing wasn't helping the words transport his handsome self to another fictional world, nor room, unfortunately.

Staring at words, as if they were walls, was all fine and dandy if wingless flies happened to be racing to the ceiling of said walls. But if they weren't, it was shite.

"How did we get here?"

"Turned left at Greenland?"

"Gee, even you're off your game; citing lines from the film"

"Just trying to liven the place up a tad. All you're doing Paulie, is huffing and grumbling. And the other pair are snoring in noisy disharmony in the adjoining room" Finding his feet John scooted round Paul and fetched a scotch and coke "Wanna imbibe with me?"

"Why the hell not"

"Here! Here!" Pouring a generous amount of one liquid and a tiny amount of the other John fixed the brew and held out a tumbler to Paul "To money, fame and freedom... may we have a lot of some and some of a lot"

"Do you ever wonder if the price is too high"

"I don't know. How much is scotch nowadays?"

"Not the booze. Us, these walls, the fans, cameras. No time, no peace" His lips pressed to the edge of the cut crystal glass, Paul breathed in the aroma. Sometimes it brought back memories, sometimes it sent them away.

"What you need son is a grand holli-day" John tipped the remainder of his drink back. Pointedly finished, he raised the empty tumbler in tardy salute "Cheers!... Or, you need a grand shag. Much cheaper, a shag, though. That's if you don't propose marriage to her whilst ejaculating"

Paul rolled his eyes, Johns rude asides rolling over him like they were nothing out of the ordinary because they were. John was a nutter, nuttier than himself "Look at this list of towns, shows.... Every flipping day it is, and if it isn't, it's laundry day"

John gaped "Laundry!? I have to do my own laundry!?!"

"You know what I mean" His fingers flexed. Often, he felt like a caged lion... Pacing, waiting, for something. "You know.. I've not seen me Da in three whole months and then that was for just half a day. No! Not even half, four hours tops! Terrible. I'm a terrible son"

"He'd be entertaining our Angie Angela, would he not?" John caught the dirty look and flung it back at Paul "Stop your bloody sooking. He's happy ain't he. He's living. Give him that luxury Macca"

"Geez I know that. I feel like something's missing somewhere. I know Ang is good for him and in my head I'm happy for him but sometimes it hits right here in my chest that it doesn't feel like more than a moment ago, me mum.......... Ya know"

"Yeah, I know....." John wandered over to the window and gazed out at Dumbo coloured skies and buildings in need of pulling down..... "Look, I know we have been a flea circus and the next month isn't a help... How-abouts we clear the schedule, while we're in Liddypool. Just have family time"

Returning from the weather-beaten scene, John flopped on the sofa and continued "No reporters, no interviews, no nothing. Just me to Mimis and me little bed, you to Jimbo, George to his mam and Richy to his. Sound good?"

"That sounds bloody brilliant" The lion stopped pacing, his thoughts stopped churning and the engagements list didn't look half as bad as it had five minutes ago. Paul grinned as he walked to the liquor cart, his head not so clouded. He raised the bottle of scotch, swinging it in Johns general direction "Refill?"

"Now you're talking my language!"

Theresa~ a few months later.

"I said we finish the damn herd off" I bellowed as I shoved the branding iron haphazardly back into the small fire. The old oil tin was a good size for the little fire and the branding iron handle sat snug against the side as the brand lettering heated for the next calf's rump. Sparks shot up into the thick air that surrounded us. Untying the poddy calf, I pushed it up to its feet. It carefully teetered on the spot then skittered away. I waited impatiently as tired legs dragged the next calf toward me.

"There's another two hundred to drench and half again to cut, tag and brand Terri!" Melvin yelled back from the cattle crush, the metal jarring and groaning as the cattle rammed into the sides of the race and metal shute trap. It had gone four o'clock and everyone's back ached. Dust pushed deep into lungs as cattle milled and bellowed in the many yards that circled around us.

Watching the newbie, a boy of fifteen, unsuccessfully wrestling the poddy, I flipped. No other word for it. I got so angry I pushed him heartily toward the gate, took the poddy myself, swung it on its side, secured the struggler and inched us both closer to the fire pit.

"That's it, Theresa Mohin!"

I never heard old Mel bellow like that, nor had I heard him call me by my full name before. His hands circled my waist and lifted me from behind and, before I had an inkling of his plans, I was up and over his shoulder screaming, cursing and kicking him.

Hating him with every bone in my body. He proceeded to toss me in a trough of thick dirty stock water sending the animals skedaddling in all directions. My swearing increased in volume and I was shoved under twice for good measure, coming up coughing and spluttering when I re-emerged.

"You ruined my hat. Bloody hell Melvin!"

"Stop that cussing... Pull yourself outta there. Get your backside up to the house and wash up NOW" Melvin stared me down, eyes daring me to talkback so I did. I went to curse him out once more but his eyes gave me clear warning not to push him "Shut it Terri. House and bath. I'll be up in a few hours"

"You're not my father Melvin, nor my mother!!!!!!!!!!!!" Pulling myself upright I stood in that trough, hands on soaking hips. I stood my angry snarling ground as he shook his head sadly.

"An' by the good graciousness of God they don't see what you do today, nor last week or even these past few months. We know girl, we know you're hurting bad but you have to give these men, and yourself, a break"

"I pay em, don't I. I ask of them, only what I do myself. I don't sit up high, perched on the top rail shouting orders like old Percival Clarence on Riemore Downs. I don't send a lacky down with orders as I sit under a tree with my arm slung round a cold Darwin Stubby! I need-"

"You need to pull yourself together and get that arse of yours inside that house now girly!" Melvin smacked me on said arse. Geezus!

In my maddened state I went to sucker punch that old man in the jaw but his big old fist knew what I planned and wrapped my hand tight. He then sharply tugged me around to face the homestead "House- Now Theresa!"

I have been a bitch since the accident, and now, with a pile of legal letters untouched, Mister Brazier, who is apparently the family solicitor, is hounding Melvin because I won't talk to him on the telephone....

I guess Melvin has finally had enough.

The government wants the lease-holdings back, the lands that wrap half the boundary line and gave more available grass to us for stock feed. Red tape also wrapped constrictively around what I did inherit... A mortgage so big, it hurt.

We were sorting cattle for sale and it killed me inside to see my daddy's life work being readied for the stockyard auction... Good breeding stock was hard and costly to assemble and here we were selling it all... gone and goodbye. What would I do... without my life.

Hence my thick headedness...

If I wasn't working, readying stock and machinery for the dreaded dispersal sale or winding down the property to enable it to sit fallow I was either curled in a ball in my room, staring at the wall or escaping, not telling a soul where I was going. Days to myself, camping out while Melvin probably searched high and low...

Camping under a blanket of stars, letting the night drag my mind through every single solitary moment of the accident from the flicker of that buffalo hide to the Akubra borrowed from my daddy, and the last six months of crap that piled like dung on top. In the daylight, I let nothingness take hold, allowed my mind to cease function, eyes staring vacantly upon distant plains and if I could assemble my thoughts, I would gaze ever inwards at my haunted soul to thoughts of them, my parents, my hands on the wheel.

Stalking places daddy and I would lose ourselves for pleasure and bonding. Where we would be together, laughing, talking of England, talking of life and love and his wife, my mother and of his sister, my mother, Mary...

Daddy was with mother Mary now, resting in the loving arms of my birth mummy, his beloved sister...

I want them back so much it hurts my head, crushes my heart.

I agonise time and time again. I wish the afternoon to start over. This time I handle the entire scene; I drive by that buffalo stood on the verge, pull the car safely back onto the road and continue homeward with my precious cargo.

I make it home in one piece not millions of fragments of my heart.

Little shards of me litter the long trek back to my nightmare... to where my parents met their demise.

I wish the afternoon over again so we make it home for Christmas and happiness and the warmth of my parents' hearts I once basked in.

I washed myself ever so slowly, the bathwater in the tub turning muddy brown from the dust and stock water covering me. Grime and grit and possibly shit from the day in the cattle yards.

I cleaned my face, and once again I fail to stop the anger that gazes back in the mirror.

Bringing me a little joy I brushed my hair with my mother's hairbrush, closing my eyes as I imagined her holding my shoulder and kissing my cheek when she was done.

Bringing me a little of my daddy home I picked up his shave stick and smelt that scent that was all him. I then nicked my finger with his razor for my punishment.

And I eventually fall asleep..

In their big bed, but I did not dream. Nor nightmare cometh.
Darkness clouds over me.

Glossary:

Chook- Chicken!

Poddy- young calf.

Newbie- new employee/person that doesn't know much.

Cattle Grid- strips of metal placed at internals wider than a hoof, placed like a bridge in a road. Animals wont cross it. (instead of gates) Called a vehicle pass, Texas gate, or stock gap in SW USA. Also can be called a cattle guard or cattle stop.

Cattle Crush- Set in cattle yards, a thin one animal width wide shute has the cattle crush at the end. A handle opens the front and back, the cow sees freedom, walks through and bam! The operator moves the hand and the neck of the animal is secured. A side door opens or closes in for different procedures (castrating etc!) The animal can be inoculated, branded, ear tagged, etc. Alternate names are Squeeze Chute (North America), Standing Stock, or simply a Stock in North America & Ireland

Emu- second-largest living bird by height reaching @ 1.9metres tall, brown soft-feathered. Emus can travel great distances, and when necessary can sprint at 50 km/h (31 mph); they forage for a variety of plants and insects, but have been known to go for weeks without eating. They drink infrequently, but take in copious amounts of water when the opportunity arises.

Emu Egg- Thick-shelled, green eggs. The eggs are, on average, 13 cm × 9 cm (5.1 in × 3.5 in) and weigh between 450 and 650 g (1.0 and 1.4 lb).

Darwin Stubby- Arrrr beer. Beer in a huge bottle 2.25L (4.75 pints/ 0.6 of a gallon)

Water Buffalo- They were imported to Australia in the 19th century to supply meat to remote northern settlements. The settlements and their buffalo were abandoned in 1949 and, despite harvesting for meat, hides and as hunters' trophies, feral buffalo spread across the northern floodplains.

No Kangaroos or Emus were harmed in the making of this next video: