as she’d crossed South Australia’s vast inland farming country, the cultured voice hadn’t faltered.
True, the last turn had made Penny uneasy. The accent had told her to proceed for thirty kilometres along the Innawarra Track, but it had hesitated over the pronunciation of Innawarra. Penny had hesitated too. The country around them was beautiful, lush and green from recent rains and dotted with vast stands of river red gums. The road she’d been on had been narrow, but solid and well used.
In contrast, the Innawarra Track looked hardly used. It was rough and deeply rutted.
Penny’s car wasn’t built for rough. She was driving her gorgeous little sports car. Pink. The car had been her father’s engagement gift to her, a joyful signal to the world that Penny had done something he approved of.
That hadn’t lasted. Of course not—when had pleasing her father lasted? Right now she seemed to be doing a whole lot wrong.
She was facing a creek crossing. It had been raining hard up north. She’d heard reports of it on the radio but hadn’t taken much notice. Now, what looked to be a usually dry creek bed was running. She got out of the car, took off her pink sandals and walked across, testing the depth.
Samson was doing no testing. Her little white poodle stood in the back seat and whined, and Penny felt a bit like whining too.
‘It’s okay,’ she told Samson. ‘Look, it only comes up to my ankles, and the nice lady on the satnav says this is the quickest way to Malley’s Corner.’
Samson still whined, but Penny climbed back behind the wheel and steered her little car determinedly through the water. There were stones underneath. It felt solid and the water barely reached the centre of her tyres. So far so good.
Her qualms were growing by the minute.
She’d estimated it’d take her two hours tops to reach Malley’s, but it was already four in the afternoon and the road ahead looked like an obstacle course.
‘If worst comes to worst we can sleep in the car,’ she told Samson. ‘And we’re getting used to worst, right?’
Samson whined again but Penny didn’t. The time for whining was over.
‘Malley’s Corner, here I come,’ she muttered. ‘Floods or not, I’m never turning back.’
* * *
Matt Fraser was a man in control. He didn’t depend on luck. Early in life, luck had played him a sour hand and he hadn’t trusted in it since.
When he was twelve, Matt’s mother had taken a job as a farmer’s housekeeper. For Matt, who’d spent his young life tugged from one emotional disaster to another, the farm had seemed heaven and farming had been his life ever since. With only one—admittedly major—hiccup to impede his progress he’d done spectacularly well, but here was another hiccup and it was a big one. He was staring out from his veranda at his massive shearing shed. It was set up for a five a.m. start. His team of crack shearers was ready but his planning had let him down.
He needed to break the news soon, and it wouldn’t be pretty.
Hiring gun shearers was half the trick to success in this business. Over the years Matt had worked hard to make sure he had everything in place to attract the best, and he’d succeeded.
But this afternoon’s phone call had floored him.
‘Sorry, Matt, can’t do. The water’s already cut the Innawarra Track to your north and they’re saying the floodwaters will cut you off from the south by tomorrow. You want to hire me a helicopter? It’s the only alternative.’
A helicopter would cut into his profits from the wool clip but that wouldn’t bother him. It was keeping his shearers happy that was the problem. No matter whose fault it was, an unhappy shed meant he’d slip down the shearers’ roster next year. He’d be stuck with a winter shear rather than the spring shears that kept his flocks in such great shape.
So he needed a chopper, but there were none for hire. The flooding up north had all available helicopters either hauling idiots out of floodwater or, more mundanely, dropping feed to stranded stock.
He should go and tell them now, he thought.
He’d cop a riot.
He had to tell them some time.
Dinner was easy. They had to provide their own. It was only at first smoko tomorrow that the proverbial would hit the fan.
‘They might as well sleep in ignorance,’ he muttered and headed out the back of the sheds to find his horse. Nugget didn’t care about shearing and shearing shed politics. His two kelpies, Reg and Bluey, flew out from under the house the moment they heard the clink of his riding gear. They didn’t care either.
And, for the moment, neither did Matt.
‘Courage to change the things that can be changed, strength to accept those things that can’t be changed and the wisdom to know the difference...’ It was a good mantra. He couldn’t hire a chopper. Shearing would be a surly, ill-tempered disaster but it was tomorrow’s worry.
For now he led Nugget out of the home paddock and whistled the dogs to follow.
He might be in trouble but for now he had every intention of forgetting about it.
* * *
She was in so much trouble.
‘You’d think if there were stones at the bottom of one creek there’d be stones at the bottom of every creek.’ She was standing on the far side of the second creek crossing. Samson was still in the car.
Her car was in the middle of the creek.
It wasn’t deep. She’d checked. Once more she’d climbed out of the car and waded through, and it was no deeper than the last.
What she hadn’t figured was that the bottom of this section of the creek was soft, loose sand. Sand that sucked a girl’s tyres down.
Was it her imagination or was the water rising?
She’d checked the important things a girl should know before coming out here—like telephone reception. It was lousy so she’d spent serious money fitting herself out with a satellite phone, but who could she ring? Her father? Dad, come and get me out of a river. He’d swear at her, tell her she was useless and tell his assistant to organize a chopper to bring her home.
That assistant would probably be Brett.
She’d rather burn in hell.
So who? Her friends?
They’d think it was a blast, a joke to be bruited all over the Internet. Penelope Hindmarsh-Firth, indulged daughter of a billionaire, stuck in the outback in her new pink car. A broken engagement. A scandal. Her first ever decision to revolt.
There wasn’t one she would trust not to sell the story to the media.
Her new employer?
She’d tried to sound competent in her phone interview. Maybe it would come to that, but he’d
