Bilgarra Springs (6 page)

‘This one usually has Cal’s Australian Stockhorse stallion, Alpheus, but he’s out servicing a few mares at a neighbouring property at the moment. Not quite sure when Cal will bring him back.’

She stopped in front of the second one and leant her hip against the wall beside a half-door.

‘This is where the mare that arrives tomorrow will go for a bit, once the stallion comes back. Cal likes to leave them in stalls side by side overnight so that they can get the smell of each other etc. before he introduces them. She’ll have her own permanent stall further down the row.’ Fiona continued with amusement in her voice, ‘Hopefully Cal will get back in time to organise it, otherwise I s’pose I’ll be doing it first thing in the morning. I’d rather he did it as he’s a bit fussier than me with them. Actually, he’s down right fanatical about them, truth be told.’ Fiona laughed briefly. ‘See what time they all arrive back this arvo.’

A nose appeared over the half door of the third stall down. Aurora hung back behind Fiona a little and after they had taken a couple more steps, a whole head popped over, which was eyeing Aurora curiously. Aurora remained that couple of steps back. Fiona walked straight up and ran her hand up the nose of the horse, rubbing it between the eyes.

‘How you going Lolly? Aren’t you a good girl. That’s nice, hey? You’re a bit spoilt you are.’

Despite the attention, the horse hadn’t taken her eyes of Aurora. The mare’s nostrils flaring ever so slightly as it noticed the new smell. Fiona continued rubbing and talking gently.

‘This is Aurora. She’s not going to hurt you. You’ll like her. Yes you will. You’re the favourite aren’t you. Know it too don’t you, hmm?’

Eventually the mare’s attention shifted to Fiona, temporarily satisfied that Aurora wasn’t a major threat. Aurora wasn’t quite so sure that the reverse was true. She was scared shitless of horses. They were so big and they kicked and they bit and people died falling off the things. Aurora watched positively horrified as the mare gently nuzzled Fiona’s cheek with her nose. Fiona rested her forehead against the horse’s — they were in effect nose to nose. Aurora’s brain couldn’t take that in.

NO WAY, NO HOW.

No, No, No.

Absolutely not.

There was no way that she could ever be that comfortable with an animal that had to weigh at least half a tonne. Fiona lifted her head.

‘If you step back a little I will open these gates up and let her out. May as well do the morning rounds while we’re here.’

Aurora didn’t need to be asked twice to get out of the road. She stood back and watched silently as Fiona pulled out sliding gates that ran inside the walls of the stall and locked them into place on the wall on the other side of the corridor. She then swung open the gate from the paddock and swung the gate on the horse stall. Lolly then moved out of the stall, ears pricked and her eyes firmly planted on Aurora. Once Lolly got across the corridor into the paddock she broke loose, racing around kicking her back legs up and looking like she was having the time of her life. Fiona moved across and closed the gate to the paddock, closed the gate to the stall and slid the first of the sliding gates back into place, leaving the one that adjoined the next stall locked in place. Fiona climbed through the gate and moved to the next stall, stopping in front of it and placing her hands on the top of the half door.

Aurora couldn’t quite decide whether she wanted to move to the next horse, or run like mad. This one didn’t have its nose poking over the door like the last one. She decided that at least she should probably climb through the gate as Fiona had done, grateful that she stood all of five feet two tall — much easier to bend a small body than a tall one. She stood beside Fiona, but shoved her hands in the back pockets of her jeans; less chance of getting accidentally bitten if they were out of the way. Fiona quickly glanced at her and then back at the horse.

‘This is Biddy. She doesn’t love people. Lolly laps up as much affection as you can give her, whereas Biddy is more inclined to bite than love you back. She doesn’t have a very sparkling personality, but she throws the most beautiful foals, which more than makes up for the fact that she is a bit on the nasty side.’

Fiona went through the gate into the stall. Personally Aurora thought she was mad. Bad enough being in a small space with something that size, let alone with such a huge creature that you knew actually wanted to harm you. Fiona stood beside her and gently ran her hand down the mare’s neck.

‘The horses in the last two stalls are hers. So far she has given us one little girl, Poppy, and one little boy, Hamlet. They are beautiful animals and Cal has been putting a fair bit of work into them to see exactly how good a performance he can get out of them. So far, they look promising.’

Fiona moved around in front of the mare, rubbing its nose like she had for Lolly.

‘You’re not quite as grumpy as you would have us believe, are you? How about we let you out and you can go for a bit of a run.’

Fiona stepped back and came back out of the stall again, latching the door behind her.

‘If you wouldn’t mind pulling that other sliding gate out and latching it for me, I will let her out.’

Aurora quickly grabbed the gate and pulled hard, expecting it to be stiff. Instead it came out with a rush that took her by surprise and knocked her a little off balance. She recovered herself quickly and tried to latch the gate with nervous, bumbling fingers. She desperately wanted to have the gate latched and be through before the stall gate was opened, but the hurry was making her movements jerky and made fitting the pin in to lock the gate difficult. Fiona meanwhile had opened the paddock gate and was about to open the stall door. Aurora secured the pin and virtually threw herself through the sliding gate in her hurry to be out of the way. Fiona thankfully had her attention firmly placed on Biddy.

‘Come on. Out you come. Stop being such a grump.’

Fiona moved closer to the mare and she flattened her ears and starting doing funny things with what Aurora supposed you would call her lips. Fiona when she spoke was gentle but her voice held a note of warning.

‘Pick your ears up and don’t be such an old bitch. We both know that you are not going to bite me. You’ll find yourself in a whole world of hurt if you do.’

The mare raised her hind leg as though she was going to kick. The tone of Fiona’s voice changed dramatically. She didn’t yell, but the authority rang through clearly.

‘I wouldn’t if I were you. That’s a really quick way to end up at the sausage factory.’

The mare placed her foot back on the ground. She was clearly intelligent enough to understand what the tone meant, if not the words. Fiona stepped back out of the doorway to the stall and the mare very slowly made her way through to the paddock. If the pace were anything to go by, she had all day. Once the mare was out of kicking distance, Fiona came out and slid the bolt home on the door. She then did the same to the paddock gate. She looked at Aurora and rolled her eyes.

‘Bloody old bitch. She’s never bitten or kicked me, but she has had a couple of goes at Con, although he dodged at the right time and she didn’t connect. She has nipped Theresa once and planted a really good kick on Gerry. We were a bit worried that she had broken his leg, but fortunately not.’

Fiona climbed through the gate.

‘She’s one that you have to keep your eye on.’

Aurora’s palms went sweaty just at the thought of having to go anywhere near her. She wiped them down the front of her jeans. She hoped that she was nowhere near here when it was time to put the horses away again. This was way, way, more up close and personal than the quick tour that they had done at an acquaintance’s breeding property near Scone in the Hunter Valley. That had been a quick walk through. No touching required, no interaction encouraged, which had suited her just fine.

Over the space of the next hour and a half, she and Fiona had done what needed to be done for the horses. One stall at a time, they had released the other six horses into the paddocks. There were three other mares, plus Biddy’s filly, Poppy, her colt, Hamlet and one Thoroughbred stallion. Two of the mares, Pippa and Josephine, had carried on like Lolly, frolicking and farting and racing around. The other mare, Telila, had merely wandered across, but without all the nastiness of Biddy. Apparently Telila was the really cruisy one. Poppy and Hamlet had been a little on the skittish side. The stallion, Levander Rogue, had snorted and pawed and carried on in the stall and once through the gates had pranced and preened, generally parading for all he was worth, showing off to the mares who were separated from him by one full, day paddock.

Oddly, Fiona had maintained that the best way to deal with him was to ignore him, because he hated it. Apparently he was an attention seeker. If he didn’t have your attention he would make sure he got it, but he also liked to pretend that he was high maintenance, being difficult to handle. Aurora didn’t mind at all that he didn’t want to be handled — suited her just fine, though, she had to admit that he was beautiful: tall, muscled and such a dark brown that he was almost black.

After letting them out, they had systematically gone through and moved the feeding troughs from the stalls to the paddocks and fed them all. Then they had turned their attention to cleaning out the stalls and changing straw, making sure all the automatic water systems weren’t blocked and that the water was actually full in each stall. It had turned out to be hard work. They had finished by 9:00 — ironically enough, about the time Aurora’s lecturing day normally started. Fiona had then shown her the two wash down stalls that were in a part of the stables building that was built at a right angle to the rest of the building.

From there, Fiona had continued with the tour of the other buildings. She’d seen the large shed where her car was parked in further detail. She hadn’t realised how much machinery went into cattle farming. She had always pictured tractors and the like as being for vegetable farmers; funny how stereotypes affected perceptions.

Then they had moved to the cold room, which was fairly large in size in order to store the food stuff able to be frozen. Fiona informed her that they went to Charters Towers once a month and did a monster grocery shop and this was where as much as possible ended up. The cold room also had to be big enough to hang a full beef carcass for a couple of days before they cut it up each time they killed for their own supply. There also needed to be room to store all the beef once cut up. Aurora mentally turned her nose up at the thought of a dead animal being hung in there, but she had to face it, meat had to start somewhere, it didn’t just grow on styrofoam trays.

She’d been impressed by the line of ten super-sized water tanks where they stored the rain water that the various rooflines collected. The system was really well set-up. Aurora hadn’t thought about where the water supply came from out here, miles away from any town supply.

They had then looped around to the yards that were just visible from the courtyard area. They spread out quite a bit with different sized and shaped yards linking together. Fiona had pointed out the crush and the ramp for loading cattle onto trucks. She thought that they were due to load more for sale in one weeks time, so Aurora would get to see them in action. To one side of the yards was a 100 acre paddock where the working horses were kept.

It seemed to be a well laid-out and functioning property. Aurora appreciated the fact that she had been offered the chance to explore it without feeling like she was under the watch of the others. Most of all though, she had been grateful for the break from the pushing, pulling, lifting, shovelling and raking that they had done in the stable building earlier. It wasn’t that she didn’t like to work, but she was a pen pusher usually and the physical work had really knocked it out of her.

As they had been making their way back from the yards to the house, Aurora could hear talk and laughter coming from inside. She smiled. She was glad life here had light-hearted and happy moments. Childhood was a precious thing and the news was full day after day of abused and hurting children. It made it worthwhile to think that there was still the possibility of a happy childhood available.

Trudy had seen them coming and had organised morning tea, after which they’d helped her finish off the baking. Aurora was thankful that she had done some baking with Gran when she was younger. She would have felt a right fool when the two young girls seemed quite at home in the kitchen. Trudy had decided after breakfast to go into a baking frenzy. She was certain that when the crew got back they were bound to be ravenous.