Barra Creek Read online

  Di Morrissey is Australia’s leading lady of fiction. She planned on writing books from age seven, growing up at Pittwater in Sydney. She quickly realised you don’t leave school and become a novelist. Di trained as a journalist, worked as a women’s editor in Fleet Street, London, married a US diplomat and in between travelling to diplomatic posts and raising daughter Gabrielle and son Nicolas, she worked as an advertising copywriter, TV presenter, radio broadcaster and appeared on TV and stage. She returned to Australia to work in television and published her first novel, Heart of the Dreaming, in 1991. Barra Creek is her twelfth novel.

  Di lives in Byron Bay, New South Wales, Australia, when not travelling to research her novels, which are all inspired by a specific landscape.

  Di Morrissey can be visited at her website: www.dimorrissey.com

  Also by Di Morrissey

  Heart of the Dreaming

  The Last Rose of Summer

  Follow the Morning Star

  The Last Mile Home

  Tears of the Moon

  When the Singing Stops

  The Songmaster

  Scatter the Stars

  Blaze

  The Bay

  Kimberley Sun

  Barra Creek

  The Reef

  Dedicated to . . .

  a special friend

  First published 2003 in Macmillan by Fan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  This Pan edition published 2004 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

  St Martins Tower, 31 Market Street, Sydney

  Copyright © Lady Byron Pty Ltd 2003

  Reprinted 2004 (three times), 2005 (twice), 2006

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  National Library of Australia

  cataloguing-in-publication data:

  Morrissey, Di.

  Barra creek.

  ISBN 0 330 364 766 (pbk).

  1. Frontier and pioneer life – Fiction. 2. Family – Fiction.

  3. Cape York Peninsula (Qld.) – Fiction.

  I. Title.

  A823.3

  Typeset in 11/13pt Sabon by Post Pre-press Group

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  Cover design: Deborah Parry Graphics

  Illustrations: Ron Revitt

  Cover photograph: Mark Coombe

  Author photograph: Starshots Glamour Studios, Surfers Paradise

  Barra Creek is a work of fiction. The story, events and most of the characters in it are fictitious, although some people have kindly allowed their names to be used in the book.

  Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  These electronic editions published in 2003 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

  1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  Barra Creek

  Di Morrissey

  Adobe eReader format: 978-1-74197-044-9

  Online format: 978-1-74197-647-2

  EPUB format: 978-1-74262-204-0

  Macmillan Digital Australia

  www.macmillandigital.com.au

  Visit www.panmacmillan.com.au to read more about all our books and to buy both print and ebooks online. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events.

  Contents

  Cover

  About Di Morrissey

  Also by Di Morrissey

  Title page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  AS ALWAYS MY DEAR family, who are such good sounding boards and always mightily supportive . . . my mother Kay Warbrook, my children, Dr Gabrielle Morrissey and Nick Morrissey, Uncle Jim, Rosemary, David and Damien Revitt. Ron Revitt Jonach and his family with thanks for Ron’s sketches.

  And in the USA . . . Leila, Julie, Emma and Sherry. Happy ninetieth to darling Dottie (Dorothy Morrissey). To Mollie and the gang, all the Hutchinson clan and Aunt Edith Morrey.

  Darling Boris and little Bunya who make every day precious.

  Thanks to all my friends in Normanton, especially the Gallagher family. My thanks as well to Kevin Miles.

  Thanks to Anne and Bill Meyer for their New Zealand input.

  Thanks to Dr Kate Irving for her advice on Alzheimer’s disease. And also thanks to Susan Bradley.

  Bernadette Foley, my editor, for her calm patience, sensitive advice, hand holding and always being cheerful and protective.

  EVERYONE at Pan Macmillan, in particular, James Fraser, Ross Gibb, Roxarne Burns and Jane Novak.

  And not forgetting Ian Robertson from Holding Redlich with a promise to write the you-know-what-book before too long.

  WHILE THIS IS A work of fiction, please be aware that this novel is set in the 1960s when times were different regarding the treatment of, and attitudes to, the Indigenous people of Australia. This book reflects the language, customs and treatment of Aboriginal people on many outback stations at that time. It does not reflect contemporary mores or the opinion of the author. Many Aborigines who worked on stations in the Gulf in the 1960s and 1970s have been consulted about what those times were like.

  DM

  Prologue

  New South Wales, 2003

  SHE WAS STRAIGHT-BACKED, hands folded in her lap, feet together flat on the floor, her head turned towards the window that framed the rain wet garden. In the grey light the woman in dark clothes looked like a black and white photograph, the caption possibly titled: ‘A woman alone.’

  The words ‘sad’, ‘lonely’, ‘abandoned’ came to Kate’s mind as she paused in the doorway of the small room that was now this woman’s world. A single bed with a table beside it, a shelf, a small cupboard, functional carpet, a table and two chairs. She had pulled one over so she could sit by the window.

  She was one of the lucky ones, they told her, having a window to look out onto the garden. But it didn’t open. There was no breeze, no smell of flowers to relieve the antiseptic air. The view only reminded her of that other world, now lost to her. How had she come to this? The shame and embarrassment ate at her. It wasn’t paranoia. She didn’t feel safe and secure here. She longed for all that was familiar; a place where she could feel valued and accepted with the knowledge of the distressing journey ahead of her.

  ‘Lorna?’ Kate spoke gently so as not to startle her. It was a greeting and a question, unspoken: Are you here at the m
oment? Or are you back among old friends, past enemies, other days, other places?

  The woman turned in response to the soft, warm voice. Kate looked far too young to be the Director of Nursing, Lorna thought. A sweet, caring girl, not yet thirty. How long before she would become brisk, bitter and frustrated in a job where she was always battling for funding, drowning in bureaucracy, shouting in the face of disinterest and discomfort at the business of aged care? What would a pretty blue-eyed brunette, so slim and tiny she didn’t look fully grown, know about how it felt to be old? To know you were losing your faculties, your grasp of reality, that soon enough you would forget even the habits of a lifetime – how to dress, brush your teeth. Why would this little girl want to study this thing they called Alzheimer’s disease?

  ‘What are you thinking, Lorna?’ Kate pulled up the other chair and sat facing Lorna, diagnosed by two doctors and a psychologist in a swift and efficient interview as being in early stage dementia.

  The woman’s face softened and her shoulders relaxed slightly as she smiled. ‘I was thinking how long would it be before you start to hate your job, before the system beats you, before you get out and get a life? Before it’s too late.’

  Relief flashed across Kate’s face as she realised Lorna was here today. She’d lost a few hours last week, the staff had told her. Though often Kate felt that may have been by choice; Lorna would rather be anywhere but here. Apparently the family were well off. Her sons, no doubt dutiful, but living far away, didn’t visit. An English daughter-in-law had brought some grandchildren in once but Lorna had sent them away after a short while. It was depressing for them all and anyway the children didn’t know her, Lorna had told Kate.

  Before Kate could speak, Lorna asked, ‘Why do you do this?’

  ‘Because I care. I want to make a difference, make a change. It’s a challenge, Lorna.’

  ‘You can say that again.’ She gave another faint smile. ‘How am I doing?’

  ‘You tell me.’ Kate reached over and took her hand. ‘Do you want some more library books?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ She paused. ‘Would it be too much trouble to find some older books – about Queensland, about the Gulf country?’

  ‘You’ve been thinking about those days again, have you?’

  ‘I never stop remembering.’ Lorna looked back at the wintry garden. ‘I never thought I’d miss it, the red earth, the dryness.’

  ‘What else do you remember?’ Kate leaned forward. Some of the people she cared for at the home remembered the past so vividly, while the day before or an hour ago could be a problem. It was a professional question but she was unprepared for the vehemence of Lorna’s reaction.

  ‘I wish I could forget it. All of it. Except her, she’s the only one . . .’ her voice trailed off. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s too late now.’

  ‘What is? What’s upsetting you, Lorna? Who are you talking about?’

  ‘I wish I could see her. She’s the only one who’d understand.’

  ‘Tell me about her.’

  The woman’s agitation had subsided and Kate wondered if Lorna had retreated from the present. Although it was healthy that she showed this frustration and spirit. So often people with dementia lost their sense of excitement, adventure, interest in the world around them. They could be impulsive, though, suddenly selling possessions they’ve cherished, giving money away, buying expensive things when they’d always been frugal before. But lifting her shoulders, Lorna sighed, ‘The governess.’

  Then in a stronger voice she said, ‘I must see her, Kate. While I’m sane and sensible enough to tell her. I must talk with her.’ She turned her stricken eyes to the young woman. It appeared desperately important to her.

  ‘Where is this governess now?’ Kate recalled anecdotes and rambling stories about Lorna’s days on a cattle station far up in the Gulf country of North Queensland. She imagined it from books, photos and TV shows as a place of vast emptiness, blue sky, red dirt tracks through scattered gums, a wide river and a homestead with lots of lattice and shade. For a girl who had grown up in the damp lushness of a Victorian dairy farm, outback Queensland – the Gulf country – seemed to Kate to be a romantic place, unchanged since Lorna’s days there in the 1960s and seventies.

  ‘Can we phone her?’

  ‘No, I must see her.’ She rose and went to the drawer in the bedside table and took out an envelope and handed it to Kate. Inside was a Christmas card and under the printed greeting was written:

  Dear Lorna,

  I hope this reaches you and that you are keeping well. Fond wishes and regards to the boys. I’m now running a small art gallery down on the south coast and I am a grandmother! Can you believe it? I think of you often.

  Love Sally.

  Kate looked at the envelope. The postmark showed it had been sent two years before from Kiama, New South Wales. ‘I don’t suppose Kiama is a very big place.’

  ‘Take me there, Kate. Please, I’ll have no peace until I talk to her.’

  ‘What could be so important, Lorna? Besides, I can’t kidnap you from here.’

  The older woman ignored her hint of levity and said calmly but with resigned seriousness, ‘Then kill me.’

  It wasn’t the first time a patient, in pain and afraid, had asked Kate to relieve them of their anguish, to release them from a lingering death. But Lorna’s request, her demand, shocked Kate. She was spry and quite fit and healthy for her age – apart from the periodic misfiring of her brain that caused blanks or haziness in her thinking. She suffered a little from arthritis but otherwise she was doing exceptionally well. The disease was only in its early days, but Lorna would continue to decline over the following months and years. Alzheimer’s had a trajectory of five to fifteen years. Now, though, she was fit enough to be living on her own, Kate thought, as long as someone checked on her each day, even by phone. But the family and the local authorities along with her doctor thought otherwise. Lorna had had a few ‘turns’; several lapses at times of stress. She’d had one on the day she was examined and had floundered when they had asked her a series of routine questions, and was therefore diagnosed as being of ‘diminished capacity’.

  Kate had always argued that this judgement of capacity was relative; that it didn’t account for fluctuations in behaviour and state of mind. Nevertheless, the papers had been signed and Lorna Monroe was declared incapable of running her home or her life.

  Lorna was one of the few in the nursing home who had clung on to who they were. She took care of herself and maintained order in her life. Her grey hair was neatly smoothed into a French roll, she wore powder and lipstick. Her nails were manicured. She wore jewellery – earrings, her watch and a double strand of pearls; and dressed smartly in sweaters and blouses, pressed slacks or skirts. She chose not to wear the formless floral frocks favoured by most of the women in the home.

  It hurt Kate to see her here. If only on the day of her medical assessment Lorna had been fully present and alert, aware of the importance of the occasion. Maybe it was nerves that had sent her retreating to whatever safe place she went to in her mind.

  The silence had lengthened since Lorna’s shocking request and now she said firmly, ‘I’m serious, Kate. I’m not asking you to take any action. Just give me the means to do it. I’ll decide when.’

  ‘To kill yourself? Lorna, you aren’t in any danger of falling apart yet. From what we know it will be a long time before the full loss of awareness sets in.’

  ‘Then why am I here?’

  Kate had no good answer to this. Lorna would probably do much better in familiar surroundings, stimulated by some social life, looking after her house, her garden, a pet. ‘I believe it was your family’s decision,’ she said quietly.

  It always was, thought Kate. Few came willingly to a place like this, even though it was an expensive aged-care home. Home! Facility more like it. Kate had her own ideas about how to make these places less institutionalised. She’d just finished her PhD on nursing care of patients with d
ementia. At twenty-nine she was leading a small group at the Department of Health as well as teaching aged-care nurses new methods for looking after the frail and elderly.

  Kate was vibrant, a party girl, popular at university. Her friends wondered why she had decided to bury herself in smelly, old-aged homes with infantile, spoon-fed, wandering patients. But they didn’t know how Kate had come to this field or why she found it stimulating and challenging. People like Lorna made it special.

  So now as she looked at Lorna’s hurt expression, she knew a platitude wouldn’t suffice. ‘Your sons think it’s best for you.’

  ‘My sons!’ She turned back to the window and Kate waited for what she heard so often – After all I’ve done for them!

  Instead Lorna spoke to her reflection in the glass. ‘It’s my fault. I brought this on myself. It’s what I deserve, though I never thought it would come to this.’ She shrugged and turned back to Kate. ‘One never anticipates or plans one’s last days on earth very well, I suppose.’

  ‘Lorna! You’re eighty-two but you still have years ahead of you.’

  ‘In here? And in what state of mind?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Please, Kate, help me find her.’

  ‘The governess?’

  ‘Yes. Sally Mitchell, as she was then. She might not want to see me, though.’

  ‘She sent you a Christmas card.’

  ‘She always had good manners. She was well brought up, came from a good New Zealand family.’ She paused. ‘We went through some hard times. She might not want to remember them. But I must, she must. I need her help.’

  ‘Write her a letter.’

  ‘What I have to tell her cannot be written down.’

  Kate stood up and placed the chair back at the table, then crouched down in front of the woman and rested her hands on the laced fingers.

  ‘Unfinished business, Lorna?’ Kate knew that the elderly often needed to make amends, achieve resolution, extract retribution – reach closure.

  Lorna nodded. ‘I must see her. Please, please help me. I’m trapped in here.’ She waved vaguely around her, then tapped her head. ‘And in here.’