had to watch all those things. It was a hell of a big job, as well as doing an eight-hour day shearing â any overseer was doing one manâs job already without the other. And who was Bertram Junior? A young bloke in a hard country trying to juggle a liking for people and life with being all that. Someone had to be joking.
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Some nights Cookie would stagger off to bed at eleven, and Bertram Junior would still be sitting at the mess table, surrounded by paperwork, muttering his good-nights. One morning when he got up at his usual time of quarter to five Bertram Junior was there, sitting at the mess table surrounded by sheets of paper and folded-back cheque books, staring like an insomniac. âI been up all night since you slacked off,â he accused.
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Barbara moved around the smoko bale briskly, economically selecting her smoko and sitting quietly beside Davo, conserving her stamina. As she ate, she played with her dog, feeding him scraps. She had an unfazed smile â not the sort of woman who would be defeated by a crisis of authority. She had about her a tensioned, tuned wariness. Against the low, confused murmur of Louella and Pamâs objections to her work practices she sent out her signal: Do it my way or not at all .
Bertram Junior and Maurice Holgate were discussing the weather â big storms over Alice Springs. Maybe a wet was coming this way. Wet wool was the growerâs nightmare. The storms surely wouldnât drift this way, though. He stood near the galvanised, propped-open cantilever windows of the wool bay and stared out at the eye-hurting landscape. The openings were wide as movie screens, framing red sandhills and low, intricate, endlessscrub in both directions. The sun throbbed and glared. Heat radiated from every given point in space.
âGit away, yer hound!â bellowed Christian T, giving Davo and Barbaraâs border collie a sharp kick with his shearing boot. (The boot was manufactured from hemp. It looked like a mauled ginger terrier.)
âTouch my dog ââ warned Davo, making a fist.
âGah, go and get fucked,â Christian T jabbed, finishing his sentence with an upright finger. The banter was ill-natured, but wouldnât lead to anything. Davo was a lean, agile six-footer who proposed punch-ups as the solution to shed problems. A challenge from Christian T was nothing. The guy was leaving. Even if he wasnât, why should Davo bother messing his hands up. (Not over you, fella.)
Christian T and his wife had recently arrived in Australia from New Zealand with the aim of saving the deposit for a house back home. They worked their first shed at Hay, she as a rouseabout, and they hated what they found. How could people live in this country? They would have to be stupid, eh. Too bloody far from anywhere, and Jesus Christ, mate, the heat. Both hated it equally, but Christian T wasnât going to turn tail without a dollar. His missus announced she was going home without him. That night they fought. It happened inside the quarters, in their room, doors and windows closed tight. He wouldnât give her money for her ticket. But off she went anyway, eye swollen, lip split, cheek bruised, back to Kiwi. In town for a week between sheds, alone, Christian T sat in a hotel room drinking piss, smiling to himself, brooding. Hay wasnât a very big place. He acted like he wasnât in it. There was never any change to Christian Tâs expression. He was like a rat in a cartoon, always affable, with a bewhiskered smile, a sparkle of black-eyed charm. As a little boy, he must have gone the whole hog on charm and decided it was all he needed. You see, he was fooling you â had you taped â and when you werenât looking heâd pull something clever, like stealing your beer from the fridge, or saying youâd ripped him off over radiobatteries, all the time telling you about the times heâd had in the abattoirs, where the guys
Joyce Chng, Nicolette Barischoff, A.C. Buchanan, Sarah Pinsker