Nathan didn’t answer straight away. ‘No-one else full-time. I’m there on my own.’
Ludlow turned his head and stared. ‘Just you?’
‘Yup. One-man show. I mean, contractors and people when I need them.’ And could afford them.
The sergeant was openly gaping. ‘And your place was what, seven hundred square kilometres? And how many cattle?’
‘Probably five or six hundred.’
‘Christ, that still sounds like a lot.’
Nathan didn’t reply immediately. It was and it wasn’t. It was enough to overwork his crappy strip of land until it became a sandpit. It wasn’t enough to help him break anything like even.
‘But –’ Ludlow scanned the extensive horizon all the way from one empty side to the other. ‘Don’t you get lonely?’
‘No.’ Another quick glance in the mirror. Xander was watching now. ‘No, I’m good. I don’t mind it. And as long as there’s enough water, the cattle pretty much look after themselves.’
‘Not completely, though.’
‘No, not completely, but we’ve been lucky with the Grenville the last couple of years,’ Nathan said, keen to change the subject.
‘What’s that, the river?’
‘Yeah. It picks up all the nutrients from the rainwater so it’s good for the ground when it floods. Flooded last year, then a couple of years before that.’
Ludlow squinted at the sun.
‘How much rain does that take?’
‘It floods around here without rain,’ Xander said from the back seat, and Ludlow twisted around.
‘Really?’
Nathan nodded. It was a strange sight, even after forty-two years, to watch the water rise, silent and stealthy, under a cloudless blue sky. The river would lap at its banks, swollen with rain that had fallen days before and a thousand kilometres north. He pointed outside.
‘When it floods, most of this is under water. The river gets ten kilometres wide in places. You can’t get over without a boat. The houses and the town are all built on high ground but the road disappears.’
Ludlow looked amazed. ‘How do you get out?’
Nathan heard Xander laugh. ‘You don’t. A lot of properties become islands. I was stuck out at my place for five weeks once.’
‘Alone?’
‘Yeah,’ Nathan said. ‘It’s all right though. You just have to be prepared. No choice, it’s the geography.’
He looked out at the red earth stretching around them. It was hard to imagine, but millions of years ago this had been the bottom of a massive inland sea. Aquatic dinosaur bones had been dug up under this soil and there were still places in the desert where mounds of fossilised seashells baked under the sun. Nathan suddenly remembered how he and Cameron had used to go dinosaur hunting when they were young, shovels in hand and bags ready to bring home the bones. Years later, it had been Xander’s turn and Nathan’s pockets had bulged with plastic dinosaurs to bury when the real ones inevitably didn’t come out to play.
The sergeant was writing in his notebook again.
‘Who are the neighbours?’ he said.
‘Nearest property is Atherton.’ Nathan pointed north-east. ‘The town’s south of that, then you’ve got another couple of properties east of there. The second biggest one around here is Kirrabee Station, and that shares a border with me. It’s owned by a company now.’
It had previously been family owned, though. Specifically by Nathan’s father-in-law.Ex-father-in-law, Nathan reminded himself, because he preferred the sound of it. He put his foot on the brake as they approached a spot in the fence line where he could pass. Xander jumped out and opened the gate, and they bumped through, and were once again on Cameron’s land.
‘Not far now,’ he said to Ludlow.
‘What were you saying earlier about your brother knowing the grave area well?’ The sergeant looked over. ‘Seems like a strange place to want to spend any time.’
