The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway Page B

tormentedhim with ever darker visions of disaster. She regarded this fevered imagination dourly and thought it should be controllable. He tried to keep his worst fears to himself.
    Our help came in the wonderful form of two brothers, half aboriginal, half Chinese. The elder brother, Ron, in his early twenties, was light-skinned and slightly slant-eyed; the younger, Jack, looked like a full-blooded aboriginal. They came from the mission station in Menindee, one hundred and seventy miles away. They were as fine a pair of station hands as one could ever hope for. Ron could fix engines and manage all things mechanical. He was quiet, efficient, and totally dependable. Jack could talk to animals, soothe a frightened horse, persuade half-starving sheep to get up and keep walking. Jack could pick up a stone and toss it casually to knock down out of the sky the crows gathering around a foundered animal. He could track anything: snakes, sheep, kangaroos, lizards. Jack’s only defect so far as station management was concerned was that at any time he might feel the aboriginal need to go “on walkabout.” He was utterly reliable and would always reappear to complete the abandoned task he’d been at work on when the urge came. But he could be gone for days, or weeks, or months.
    Feeding the sheep was hard work. Feed troughs made of metal could not be considered because the drifting sand would quickly cover them. If the weaker sheep were to get their nourishment, the expanse of feeding troughs must be large so that every animal would have its chance at the grain. So we settled on burlap troughs hung on wire—light enough for the wind to blow beneath when empty, cheap enough to produce in hundred-foot lengths. Replacement lengths became available each time we emptied a hundredweight bag of wheat. With a bag needle and a hank of twine at hand anyone could mend the troughs, or with a little wire and some wooden pegs, create new ones.
    When we began our feeding program in the troughs placed by major watering places, the sheep seemed only slowly to discover the grain. Within a few weeks the hungry animals would stampedeat the sight of anyone carrying bags of wheat, and someone had to be sent as a decoy to draw them off in search of a small supply of grain while the major ration was being poured into the troughs. Since I could carry only twenty pounds at a fast run, I was the decoy while the men carried forty- and fifty-pound bags on their shoulders to empty into the feeding troughs. At first the sheep were ravenous but measured in following the decoy. Soon they would race so hard toward the grain that they would send the decoy flying unless he or she outraced them. Then they would pause, wheel on catching the scent of the ration in the troughs, and stampede back toward the food.
    Our principal enemies as we carried out this daily process were the pink cockatoos and crows, which tore the burlap to pieces in search of the grains of wheat left behind. Soon the mending of the troughs was a daily task, a task made miserable by the blowflies, the blistering sun, the blowing sand, and the stench of the bodies of the sheep for whom the wheat had arrived too late.
    For my father each death was a personal blow, and he took himself to task for the suffering of the animals. Our conversations as we rode about the place took on a grimmer tone. “When I’m gone, Jill, sell this place. Take care of your mother. Make sure she goes to the city. There’s nothing but heartbreak in fighting the seasons.” Or, “If anything happens to me, promise me you’ll take care of your mother. Make her sell this place. Don’t let her stay here.” I would promise anything to change his mood and get the conversation on another topic. But I rarely succeeded. Usually he would go on to talk about my future, a future in which he clearly did not expect to share. “Work hard, Jill,” he’d say. “Don’t just waste time.
Make something of yourself.
” Reverting to his