In the Shade of the Shady Tree: Stories of Wheatbelt Australia

Ben gets on the phone immediately and rings his brother, who farms two hours’ drive away. It’s raining! he yells. Really raining. It’s raining! What’s it like at your place? Nothing here, replies his brother in a subdued tone. Ben then rings his neighbor, whose three thousand acres share a boundary with his three thousand acres. How’s it comin’ down at your place? he asks. It’s not, replies the neighbor . . . I can see the black clouds in the distance, about over your place, I reckon, but nothing here at my house yet. Not even sure that it will rain here . . . not much of a breeze, but what there is, is blowin’ away from my place.

Ben hangs up and rings his neighbor on the other side, whose property doesn’t actually join his property—there is a large granite nature reserve between them—but is the next on down the road. Not a drop, mate, and it doesn’t look like it’s coming our way. And I’m starin’ at the wall barometer, and nothin’s changed. Same as yesterday, the day before, last month. There’s bitterness on the other end of the phone, and Ben doesn’t know what to say, so he just hangs up and walks back to the window to watch the rain bucket down.

It continues to rain. It rains all day and through the night into the next morning. And into the afternoon. He rings around again. Same story. We’re not even seeing any runoff, mate, your place is like a sink, all flows into the middle and then down the creeks into the river. By the time it hits that dry riverbed it sinks into the sand. You’re the only bloke gettin’ weather, and the runoff stops at your boundaries!

What starts as a joy, a reason for celebration, becomes disturbing. Ben has stayed inside during the rain, having been a bit crook of late. But he is feeling better, and decides he’ll go and check over his property. He kits up in his wet-weather gear and heads out through the back door to make his way over to the machinery shed where the ute is parked. He checks the rain gauge. An unbelievable fifty points! Then it dawns on him that the rain has suddenly stopped—that it stopped the moment he stepped out into the open. A few drops hit his hands and then it stopped. He looks up at the sky and it starts to clear. It swirls and convulses and the sun breaks through the clouds. Then he notices that where the rain has touched his skin the skin burns slightly, guiltily.

Driving along the fence line of paddock after paddock, he finds it’s the same story everywhere. A strong green carpet of growth has appeared on his side of the divide. He will start seeding immediately. There’s been no serious thought of it for the last couple of years. He’s put crops in, like everyone else, but other than some short, light falls there’s been nothing. His immediate neighbors have culled their sheep flocks for want of feed. Distant neighbors have auctioned off plant to meet bills. Ben has hung in there, bringing feed in from his brother’s place, which has managed to yield enough hay for that purpose—enough to feed his own animals and to sell to friends to keep theirs alive—but that’s it. He’s held on to all his machinery.

Ben sees a measure of how much it has rained when he arrives at the salty ground in the dead center of the property. It is, indeed, a sink, with the two creeks that branch out of its heart winding their way down through the rubbish dumped as landfill there over the years, like a rush of blood through clogged arteries—an arteriosclerosis of the farm. Rolls of fencing wire, old spray drums, wood, even a seized truck motor. It doesn’t look healthy, Ben whispers to himself, so quietly he can hardly hear it.

Arriving back at the house paddock, he starts planning the seeding. He has enough seed grain, and the machinery is all in good working order. He has had nothing much to do other than mess around with it and keep it working. He will lightly work the soil then seed and fertilize. He heads back up to the house.

But the moment he steps inside, he hears the rain on the roof again. It spooks him, because he glanced up at the sky before he stepped onto the verandah, and it had pretty well entirely cleared. Barely a cloud.

Now he stares out of the window at the black swollen skies and the hard driving rain. Harder than during the days before. A deluge. He feels giddy. He sees the farm under water. He sees the green carpet become the algal floor of a fetid ocean. He sees the corpses of a thousand sheep marooned on the granite outcrop, with the ocean of his farm lapping at their hooves. He collapses into a chair and cries. He hasn’t cried since he was a small child. His mother forbade him to cry because his father found it embarrassing and she never liked to see her husband, whom she loved so much, upset. Your father is such a good provider, she’d say again and again, a mantra. It’s unbecoming to cry, son. Ben’s tears rain down over the slightly greasy tablecloth, and he can’t hold them back. A deluge.

I must stop, he yells, to no one but himself. He pauses. Then he cries: It! It It! I must stop it! The house resounds with the words, the gravel out of his throat. The lampshade vibrates overhead, disturbed. The lampshade he’s done so many farm accounts under; that he did his school homework under while his mother prepared the dinner in the kitchen before telling him to set the table because father was due in from the paddocks . . . I must stop it!

Ben tears his clothes off piece by piece. He can hear the rain driving into the tin roof so hard he sees nails. He sees fencing wire stretched so taut it snaps. He hears a wheel-nut shear from being overtightened and a bullwhip being cracked at the show. Everything taut and tense finally reaches its point of no return. He prays for the rain to cut through the roof, through the ceiling insulation, through the ceiling itself, to cut up his now-bare body. He raises his arms to the deluge and speaks as he imagines a great biblical figure would have spoken when confronted by the harshness of God’s judgment, Why have you chosen me, why have you left me in the wilderness so long only to reward me when it is too late? He demands to know. He pleads.

Naked, he runs through the back door and out into the rain. He feels the rain strike his body and burn away the dry, flaky outer layer of skin. A snake shedding its skin. A moulting.

And then the rain stops.

Ben looks around. He hears the parrots laughing in the York gums. He covers his burning nakedness with his hands and slinks back into the house. The rain doesn’t start again. Nothing. He dresses and goes to bed without eating, sleeps all night and through the next day. When he wakes, there is no rain on the roof. He rings his brother. Been no rain here, Ben, says his brother in the same limp voice. He rings his two neighbors. No rain, mate. No rain, mate. They ask how it’s going out at his place—must be good with all that rain he’s had. Ben can taste their bitterness. Most of it just rolled off the surface into the creeks—made it look like more than there really was, he says. Only a few points in the gauge for a couple of days, in the end. Not enough to start seeding, I’m afraid.

Ben wants to reassure them all. He keeps talking, Well, just enough rain, I guess . . . but it’s not worth wasting my seed grain when there’s no chance of any weather down the track. The long-range forecast is for dry days and cold nights. Thought my ship had come in, but it hadn’t. You can’t bet your life’s savings on such long odds . . . Hah, nah, didn’t amount to much. Not so strange after all . . . really.

He wanted to stop reassuring them—his brother, his neighbors, himself—but his skin still tingled with the burning of the rain.

They had their hearts set on purchasing a piece of land up north, but not too far north. Coastal—or as near coastal as they might afford. Close to a town for supplies, but not too close to a town: they wanted privacy and a sense of having got away from it all. This wasn’t really a sea change (as the trendies and media would have it)—going down to the city had been that, for them. They were country people who’d retired from the farm early and given the city a go. Now they wanted out. But not a place on a large scale. A small property of, say, thirty acres. Grow a few olives, keep a few sheep for hobby shearing, nothing more.

A suitable block came up not long after their search began. They visited a small town close to the Batavia Coast and had a chat with the local real estate agent. There was nothing up in the sales window, but she had her ear to the ground, as real estate agents do, and knew of a property about to go on the market. The owners had only had it for a year, so it was good luck they were selling—land in the region was at a premium and much sought after. There was a waiting list but, recognizing like minds—she was a farmer’s daughter—and the prospect of cash on the button, she juggled her list.

The boy watched his dad’s car emerge out of the setting sun and speed down the gravel driveway, the back end dropping out in clouds of dust, then pulled back into line. Perched on his trail bike on the hill, he glanced across at the people walking the neighboring property with the real estate agent. He revved the engine and dropped the clutch, spinning the back wheel and kicking dirt and stones out towards the newcomers. They were too far away to be hit by the debris, but not too far to sense some kind of aggression. They stared at the boy zigzagging over the crest of the hill—that bare property next door . . . not a tree on it.

For a moment, the couple basked in the neat mixture of clear space and white gums they were buying. And they had (for in their minds it was already theirs) a small hill as well—looked like an old mine on the far side, to the east, but it’d been filled in or blasted shut. The estate agent said she didn’t know much about it, but could guarantee it was entirely sealed and there was no risk of sheep wandering in and being lost. As an ex-farmer, the man—or Darl, as his wife called him—took a close look, and agreed. Perfectly safe! At the access road end of the property—to the west—there was a creek, dry midsummer. Plenty of water too: a well had been sunk and there was a dam in the western corner which would catch the entire flow off their hill, and off their neighbor’s. The couple was going to sign off on the deal that evening—one last wander around and chat with the