Shearers' Motel Read Free

of the Australian ethos.
    Nobody anywhere. He wanted to go inside and pour himself a glass of iced water, and maybe never come out, just spread his elbows on the gold-flecked Formica kitchen tabletop, drop his head, fall asleep. The underside of his eyelids felt as if they were lined with felt, spread with ground glass. In his mouth was the taste of dust and ashes: he felt burnt out at the limit of his existence.
    Yesterday morning he had left a tin-roofed farmhouse far to the south of here — Sharon, his wife, and his three daughters hardly stirring in their sleep as they said goodbye. Then while he was out at the truck tying down the last of his load they woke up more, stumbled from bed and huddled in jumpers, stamping their feet in the chill, hugging themselves in the greyness of first light. Marie and Ella told him to speed it up, they wanted to get back to bed. The youngest, Irene, howled because she wanted to go too — ‘ Why not? ’ — and clung to his trouser leg. Sharon brought him a mug of tea and they stood lookingat each other over the steaming rims. Well, there was more to this going away than met the eye. The talk of money. The talk of returning to the country of his childhood. It wasn’t the full story. The promises made about trying out the work, then coming home again, not somehow wandering off the edge of the map — like men had a habit of doing, Sharon knew well enough, when they reached his age, ruining themselves and making their families miserable in the process. It had to be watched. Sharon wasn’t blind — she was just a little confused about what she was left holding. There was something unexplained in the air, evasive — had been for a long time. What did it all add up to? Everything was here that she loved. He said he loved it too — the farm she had built up from neglect while he got on with his writing, improving the pastures, selecting the stock, making mistakes, then scoring successes. Her old Nissan Patrol stank of sick sheep dragged from the paddocks, of spilt jetting mixes and dust. It had school exercise books trodden into the flooring and ice-block sticks and lolly wrappers in layers under the seats. But it was also a big, warm cabin when they drove home late, half-drunk after dinner parties and country dances, drifting over the frosty hills, and she slid across to him while he did the driving, and it seemed this was all they wanted together, all they needed.
    At last he really was ready to go, and everyone piled into the cab of the truck, a jumble of warm bodies, and rode up to the second gate.
    Then he took the cool, pre-autumnal, misty dawn track away — across sheep paddocks dotted with poplars. In a ground mist a flock of starlings formed a perfect heart collapsing into the tatters of a pine windbreak. It was a reversed image of emotion. He was leaving a house, making a break, following a pattern he barely understood. He only knew it was happening; that he was making it happen, and was going, and if he didn’t there was a kind of death he would face, he couldn’t name what it was.
    Money was what he talked about most when giving reasons for packing his truck and heading out west like this, to do work he had never done in his life before. A total of one thousand dollars a week. It was possible. No small farmer earned as much from wool. What writer earned it from writing? A thousand (or more) was what a shearers’ cook could earn in a big shed by ‘going contract’. That was what he had learned by phoning Alastair Crown, the contractor. ‘The big sheds don’t come round every time. But of course when they do, it’s the reputable cooks that get them.’ He would start on the basic rate of $428.20 per week and work his way up from there. ‘If you’re a good man,’ said Alastair, ‘I can use you. Too bloody right.’
    He thought he was a good man in that sense.
    â€˜Then go for it,’