Chapter Twelve
Early every morning, around five or six, I open the blinds in my tiny loft bedroom.
The national park is a solid band of green, but Cameron’s farm is a patchwork of greens and yellows.
I watch the sun rise over his pavilion house, the stable block, horse paddock, sheds and cattle yards.
This morning, the cattle have been corralled in the smaller paddock to the side of the house where the horses, the tall black thoroughbred and the smaller stocky grey, are generally kept.
At six fifteen, I kick off the sheet and shuffle across the bed to the ladder.
‘Good morning, Keith Urban.’ The kelpie wags his tail. ‘We’re going somewhere different today.’
Every morning last week, I worked in the surgery.
Dogs and cats, pet rabbits, native animals I patched up before sending on to wildlife rescue.
In the afternoons, I made house calls. Milly and Benedict’s cow Belle is still in one piece.
Maggie’s Rocket is eating well and increasingly keen to get out of his cage.
The supplies I picked up on Friday afternoon are stacked in boxes near the door.
I vaccinated and castrated calves during placements when I was at university, but my experience in sorting and handling cattle is limited.
As a farmer relying on cattle for his income, it would be uneconomic for Cameron to pay a vet to do what he’s asked me to do today, but my labour is free so maybe this makes sense.
‘Rent in kind,’ I remind myself.
I haven’t seen him since I visited Julia’s house, but I heard his voice when he talked to the builders at the surgery two days ago.
They’re working hard on the kitchen installation and the refurbishment of the bedroom, bathroom and living spaces, but nothing will be finished until February.
By then, I’ll be gone. Where to? I now have four options: a company wanting to implement best practice for the treatment of the beagles they use to test drugs for cancer research; two universities; a livestock corporation.
‘I’ll finish this job first.’
Keith Urban, who was down in the dumps after I disconnected his Zoom call with Gordon last night, wags his tail.
I’ve resisted the temptation to follow the laneway over the past three weeks. What if Cameron was there? What excuse would I have? The land slopes gently downhill towards the house, sheds and yards. A sharp fork to the right must lead to the land that borders the mine.
Cameron, blue shirt, jeans and Akubra, is on an excavator digging a ditch, but by the time I’ve parked the ute, he’s striding towards me.
Our shirts are navy and we’re both wearing worn blue jeans.
Same hat and long black gumboots. If he wasn’t Cameron, if he didn’t make me feel awkward and uncertain and confused and defensive, would I joke about our matching clothes?
‘Hey.’
He looks me up and down and almost smiles. ‘Morning.’
Keith Urban, immune to awkwardness, gallops across the gravel to Cameron, who crouches and ruffles his fur.
‘How are you going, mate?’
‘Is it okay to bring him with us?’
‘I brought the cows and calves in this morning. There’s nothing for him to do.’
‘Keith has no idea about herding.’
When I smile, Cameron’s gaze goes to my mouth. ‘Thanks for coming.’
I clear my throat. ‘You moved your horses. How often do you ride?’
‘Not often.’ He frowns. ‘I can show you the horses.’
‘We’d better do the cattle first. How many are there? How old are the calves?’
‘Two hundred and ten cows, two hundred and six calves, six weeks to four months old.’
‘Have you separated them?’
‘I’ll wait till we’re set up. It minimises the time they’re apart.’
‘I wish all farmers operated like that.’
‘It wouldn’t be like this up north, right? Cattle come in from all over.’
‘In remote regions of the Northern Territory, they dehorn without pain relief. Particularly with older, often feral cattle, it’s brutal. Some die.’
‘You’ve seen that?’
‘We have to document the problems to change how things are done.’
‘You don’t make it easy on yourself, do you?’ He puffs out a breath. ‘My cattle don’t have horns.’
‘I haven’t done much of this type of work, sorting, castrating.’
‘Tell me what you usually do.’
‘When cattle are in stressful situations due to dehorning, tagging, castration, even vaccinations, I take blood and other samples. Then I do comparative studies of stress levels, pain responses, recovery times and mortality.’
In the early morning light, his eyes are bright and green. ‘Then what do you do?’
Am I standing at the front of the class and telling them what I did for homework? I desperately want to shut up, but he’s asked a question so …
‘After doing literature reviews and writing scientific papers with hundreds of footnotes, I make recommendations.’
I earn my second smile of the morning. ‘Are you ready to start, Dr Peterson?’
When I’ve worked with livestock in the past, I’ve been isolated in the ‘vet section’ of a crush, an area where vets are separated by thick steel barriers from the hooves, horns and heads of the cattle they’re working with.
In some facilities, animal handlers will lift calves onto a bench and pin them down so vets can work safely.
Cameron offered me the vet section today, but if I was stuck in there, he would have had to do all the work in separating the cows from the calves and herding them into the long, narrow pens that make up the crush.
It would also have meant we could only work on one calf at a time.
As it is, we coral the calves in groups of ten.
Once they’ve been vaccinated, wormed and, for the boys, castrated, that batch is returned to their mothers.
Cameron’s cows are fat with shiny black coats.
They crowd together in the yards, bellowing long and loud, until they’re reunited with their calves.
At first, the calves are shaky but soon enough they lower their heads and latch on to a teat.
An hour passes, two, then three, until the final batch of calves is released.
They dart through the gate to the herd and I shut the gate behind them.
Cameron, smiling as if just for the hell of it, is even filthier than me.
Our boots, jeans, shirts and hands are smeared with cow dung and dirt.
‘You enjoy this,’ I say as he walks towards me.
‘Don’t you?’
A simple question, and one I’d be a fool to answer in the negative because we’ve worked side by side all morning and he knows the answer is yes.
He cursed when a calf did an unexpected 360-degree spin and threw him onto the ground.
I cursed when I climbed the railing to anaesthetise a calf, slipped and bashed my shin.
We’ve shouted instructions to each other: ‘Head him off!’ ‘Shut the gate!’ We’ve encouraged each other.
‘Great job!’ ‘Two hundred down, six to go!’ Sometimes, we’ve laughed.
‘Yes, I enjoy it,’ I say.
‘That’s one week’s rent accounted for.’
‘When there’s no bath or laundry in the cabin?’ I brush my filthy jeans with even filthier hands. ‘I must’ve paid a year’s rent at least.’
He thinks about that. ‘Deal.’
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘Too late.’ He looks me up and down before smiling again. ‘You can’t take that gear to the laundromat in Summerfield.’
‘Jeannette would ban me for life.’
‘Have you got a change of clothes in the ute?’ He points to the house. ‘There’s a mudroom and shower around the back. First door on the right. Leave your clothes in the sink and I’ll wash them with mine.’
‘Thank you, but …’
Already walking away, he looks over his shoulder. ‘I’ll take a shower in the shed.’
The paved area behind Cameron’s house is framed by broad, upright posts that will presumably support a pergola.
The view from here is a close-up version of the valley visible from the window in the loft.
The mudroom Cameron directed me to is a series of rooms. In the laundry there are two enormous concrete sinks, granite benchtops, cupboards, a commercial-sized washing machine and a matching dryer.
There’s also a bathroom with a toilet and basin, and a separate room with a shower, cabinet, mirror and a rack of towels.
The water in the shower heats immediately and the pressure is good, but it takes time to scrub the muck from my nails and wash my hair.
Cameron’s shampoo and conditioner. His soap.
If I were Jimmy, would Cameron have offered his mudroom?
Of course he would.
Keith Urban lies on the laundry floor as I fill a sink to soak my clothes.
Five minutes later, he trots alongside me to check the cattle.
The cows and calves are still gathered, but not in such a tight-knit group as they were.
Many of the calves are drinking from their mothers, other calves and cows are lying down.
Some cows are at the gate, clearly keen to be let out into the larger paddocks.
‘Not long now,’ I reassure them as I walk to the shed.
Just inside the wide double doors and sitting on a pallet, there’s a two-metre-high potted spruce, a miniature version of the tree Cameron climbed.
Hand-carved timber ornaments, some painted in whitewashed colours, hang on narrow silver strings from the branches.
A partridge sits at the top and two doves hang beneath it.
I search for hens. One, two, three. Four colourful parrots—a cockatoo, a parakeet, a budgerigar and a rosella.
I’d never have sung ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ carol when I was young, but I recall the numbers and search for the ornaments that match.
Five rings, six geese, seven swans. No maids-a-milking, but eight cows have the black and white markings of dairy cows.
The dancing ladies are represented by ballet shoes, and—
Cameron, a towel under one arm, looks down and curses as he pulls his shirt out of his jeans before zipping the fly. His shirt is open and his skin is wet. He swipes dripping hair from his face before looking up.