Free Shearers' Motel by Roger McDonald Page A

steamed roasts in the autoclave. ‘Ever worked in a slaughterhouse, Cookie?’
    One reason he was glad to be sleeping away from the huts was that the cook’s room was next to where Christian T had himself locked in. All night he played a borrowed radio, belched, groaned, knocked things over in the dark, farted, and sighed long, baffled sighs until somewhere towards daylight he began to snore.
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    The shearers headed back to the board. The two rousies, Louella and Pam, glowering in the wool bins, granted themselves another minute of time — they were that much farther down the production line. They weren’t going to make any obvious effort. Not with Barbara pushing.
    Barbara yawned, dusted crumbs from her knees, tidied her hair, and stood ready for the next two-hour run. If the shed walls flipped over and the roof went sailing into space, and this heat set the world on fire, she would stay cool.
    A shout came from back in the shed somewhere, the diesel engine gave a kick, a chug, a rumble, and the belt drive flopped into motion, rotating the shearing gear.
    As he dumped smoko crusts and leftover tea slops out the side window he waited for Davo to tell him something. Last man at the horizontal was Davo, snoozing his extra couple of minutes away, arm shielding his eyes. If anyone had an eye for the drama of the shed, following the goings-on with feisty curiosity, it was Davo. He’d already told him a lot — made an instant shearers’ cook out of him on that very first day, for example. Now he said: ‘Most cooks don’t hang round at smoko time’. It wasn’t a criticism. It was a way of saying he didn’t need to waste time making sure things were all right all the time.
    â€˜By the way,’ he stretched. ‘What’s for lunch?’
    â€˜Your basic leftovers.’
    â€˜Heap on the meat, mate.’
    The wool bins wouldn’t start refilling for a while yet,but now Davo’s name was being called from the holding pens, because he wasn’t just a presser, on this small team, he was a shed hand as well. ‘Pen em up!’ Some contractors deigned to put on the extra man, but not Clean Team Alastair. ‘Bloody hell. You wouldn’t believe it, would you.’ Davo clenched a smoke between his teeth while he kneed sheep forward. Light still came through the floorboards, and the sheep baulked despite Maurie Holgate’s days of hammering.
    â€˜Alastair would have to be the original tightarse,’ raged Davo.
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    In the kitchen he slid dark, crusty rolls from the oven, brought the roast shoulder up a shelf or two, and grabbed at a recipe book, between times, to see what could be done with two kilos of frozen peas that had gone slushy in the gas freezer, and were starting to smell sharp, like paint stripper. An hour to go till dinner-time.
    No barely subdued panic though. Not so far. Moving around the kitchen he congratulated himself. Mentally he’d planned ahead till the end of the week — knew what each meal would involve: had calculated quantities, and knew what had to be done in advance, and when. He could anticipate Friday night, now, promising himself another six-pack chilled down to toothache coldness. And Saturday, another day again, when he’d read a book, make cups of coffee at any hour, and write letters home:
    â€˜Sandridge raised above scrubline visible from hut window. About a kilometre off, another world. Emus stalk there. Roos come slithering down. Hawks hunt the updrafts. I’ve seen the owner’s sister there, sitting in the thin shade of acacias, sketchbook on her knee.’
    That sort of letter — evocative?
    He’d make a boast:
    â€˜Cook invisible in kitchen even in a crowd, people talk, say anything they like, in words, in body language, in stares — and I feel what’s going on, they forget about me, I become invisible, I disappear.’
    He chopped half an onion, opened a tin of three