Page 20 of A Home Among the Snow Gums
‘Need a hand, Dad?’ Not that he’d be much use, but still.
‘I’m not fucking useless yet.’ Bruno reached the ute’s passenger side, where the door had been opened for him, and used the handles and sheer determination to pull himself onto his feet and in.
Tom turned to Mrs L. ‘Here goes,’ he said.
‘Try to get over the cattle grid before you start arguing with each other.’
He kissed her cheek. ‘You’re such an optimist.’
‘You gonna stand there all day or are we going?’ yelled his dad.
It took a few minutes to get sorted. Thank heavens for the hoist Bruno had rigged up in the tray of his remodelled ute. Tom would have struggled to lift a toolbox off the ground, let alone his father’s mechanised wheelchair.
‘Staring at the bloody steering wheel won’t get us to Dalgety, son.’
Tom released the handbrake and took off from the front of the homestead with—if he was honest—an unnecessary spray of gravel. It felt good.
‘So,’ he said, having come up with a line of conversation that might keep the peace, ‘who’s the local campdrafting champion in the district since you hung up your boots, Dad?’
‘It sure as hell isn’t you, son.’
Navigating a path for a wheelchair through an old showground crammed with country folk keen to say g’day, and where grass and mud patches outranked cement, was a challenge. To give the old man his due, Bruno didn’t waste time with pleasantries. He made his way to the power brokers at the base of the officials’ tower by the simple means of barking at everyone who got in his way and pointing imperiously in the direction he wanted to go. A cluster of old blokes in footy jerseys, jeans and Akubras made some room at the rail when Bruno got there, nodding their heads in greeting and saying things like ‘Bugger me, it’s Bruno’ and ‘Thought you’d popped your clogs, mate’.
‘And who’s this then?’ said a man about Tom’s own age, sporting a hi-vis vest with a walkie-talkie tucked into its top pocket. ‘It’s not Tom, is it?’
‘You’ve got a long memory,’ said Bruno. ‘Tom, this is Roger Kettering. You might’ve ridden against him back in the day.’
Roger held out his hand. ‘I was a couple of years ahead of you at school. Been away in the Navy, haven’t you? Naval Intelligence?’
Tom shook the hand he was offered. ‘Didn’t know that news was doing the rounds.’
‘My dad’s old man was warrant officer on the HMASVendetta.He takes an interest in the local youngsters who enlist.’
‘Vendetta.That would have meant Vietnam, right?’
‘Right. So, you don’t look dressed for competing. Can’t tempt you to have a burl now you’re back in town?’
‘I’m just here as Bruno’s driver.’
Roger looked over to where Bruno was giving his opinion on how the cold wind would be riling up the cattle. ‘We haven’t seen him since the campdraft at Ironbark two years ago. He’s lost a lot of weight.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I hear it’s been scratched off the calendar permanently. That’s a real pity.’
‘He didn’t discuss it with me.’
Roger looked at his watch as a voice came over the loudspeakers warning people they had ten minutes to grab a sausage and find a seat in the grandstands. ‘I’m needed over at the far gate. Good to see you, Tom. See if you can talk Bruno into changing his mind, why don’t you? There’s plenty of people who’ll come up and lend a hand.’
‘Thanks, mate.’
Bruno looked happier than he had in weeks, so Tom decided he could leave him to it and set off for a wander through the Dalgety Showgrounds, feeling like he was walking through some old home movie from his childhood. Animal pens stood disused in long rows, signs like GOATSand PIGStacked to their eaves a reminder of the agricultural shows that had been huge when he was a kid, and probably still were this far from the city. A long building had canteen doors flung open and its walls were decorated with panels of plywood painted up with cattle musters, Clydesdales pulling wagons and turn-of-the-century fossickers sluicing river silt through gold pans. He nodded to a group of older women seated around a plastic table—local CWA types for sure—who’d probably put in a few hours’ work on the land already today before baking a batch of scones and prettying themselves up in floral shirts for an afternoon of socialising at the showgrounds.
The cattle pens were choked with two hundred head or more, some Brahman, some Angus, but mostly Hereford, and on the field beyond the cattle were the horse floats and tents of the families who’d travelled a long way to get here.
He and Bruno had never camped under the stars, of course. Back in the day when he’d been mucking about in the junior division and Bruno had been a Snowy River legend of the draft, they’d stayed in the Ironbark Station horse float: bunks, an aircon unit, even a shower that was better than the ones he’d used on the Navy boats he’d been deployed on before being seconded to the antipiracy taskforce in Bahrain.
He skirted a horse float and a noisy genset and—kaboom—there she was.
