Purple Roads Read online

  Their bank balance had dwindled until their savings were all but gone, the overdraft was sky high and the interest kept accruing with each passing day. Every year, however, even though it meant going deeper and deeper into debt, they fronted up to the starting line again. This year, the bank had made clear, was their last chance.

  The truck fire had been devastating to them both, even more so when, a few days after the fire, they realised the insurance on the truck had lapsed. There just hadn’t been the money to insure it, a fact Matt had kept hidden from his father. Now there was no way of buying a new one or making any extra money. It had been Matt’s trucking wage which had been keeping food on their table.

  Anna had long since become an expert at scrimping and saving, but sometimes when she dressed Ella in hand-me-downs from one of her friends, she had to push aside a feeling of resentment at their bad luck. One day, she promised herself, her little girl would have beautiful clothes that were bought straight from the shops, not the threadbare ones she wore now.

  ‘I’d better have a shower and get going,’ Matt said, breaking into her thoughts. ‘He’s going to see me at twelve so I haven’t got long.’

  ‘Maybe Ella and I could come too,’Anna suggested. ‘I can do the shopping while you’re at the bank. It would save on petrol.’ Their small local town of Spalding had lost its only bank when the powers-that-be had decided they needed to be centralised, and there weren’t enough people to support a large supermarket.

  ‘Yeah, good idea,’ Matt agreed.‘We can talk figures and plans on the way there.’

  Anna scooped up Ella, smiling. ‘Sure.’

  Although the cold, grey day was punctuated with heavy showers and the clouds sat so low they touched the peaks of the hills, the drive from Spalding to Clare was enjoyable. Anna and Matt relished the wet landscape, the creeks that had begun to trickle then flow with a force not seen in years and the puddles which had formed on both sides of the road. There were tractors in the paddocks, pulling seeding rigs across the rich ochre-coloured soil; the hum of the engines raced across the landscape.

  Anna was aware of Matt’s face darkening as he watched the machinery work; no doubt he was wishing he didn’t have to go cap in hand to the bank because he wanted to put in more hectares of crop. But the fertiliser was such a large investment; he couldn’t just book it up without talking to Bill about what he wanted to do. Already struggling to pay the interest and monthly accounts, it was a huge deal to add another fifty or sixty thousand to their overdraft.

  Anna squeezed her husband’s hand, and he turned to her with a smile.

  ‘Look at all this water,’ he said.‘Can you remember when you last saw it like this?’

  ‘Not for ages, honey,’ she said. ‘The last year the Broughton River ran a banker was the year I left school. What’s that, ten years ago?’

  ‘At least! This season will get us out of the mire, I’m sure of it.’

  His optimism reminded her of the first few years of their relationship.

  Having both caught the same bus across to Clare every day to attend high school, she had known who Matt was, but never dreamed he could be interested in her.

  She’d been just fifteen when Matt had asked her if she wanted to go to the school social with him. She still remembered how the large footy club rooms had been decorated with coloured streamers and balloons; the school principal’s personal stereo had belted out tunes from the eighties. The whole school had taken great pleasure in singing ‘Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again?’ and adding their own lyrics to the chorus.

  But it was when she thought of Matt clumsily putting his arms around her, as The Police sang ‘Every Breath You Take’ that she got goose bumps. Even after all this time, whenever the song came on the radio she relived their dance.

  Stunned that a boy two years older had noticed her, she’d taken special care when dressing that evening. Her brothers, Nick and Rob, had ribbed her endlessly, although they too had been very attentive to their appearance, since they were taking the Timer sisters to the social.

  Matt’s mum had agreed to drive Matt and Anna to the dance, and as she pulled up in the quiet street just on dusk Matt tumbled from the car. From her bedroom window Anna watched him walk nervously up the path and knock on the door. Nick answered and, being in the same year as Matt, talked local and AFL footy until Anna walked through the door. Both boys fell silent as they looked at her.

  Anna would say the moment she fell in love with Matt was when she walked into the sitting room and he looked at her with a glorious, shy smile. He was dressed in denim jeans and a red shirt, the sleeves rolled up. His strong arms and tousled brown hair had had a tingling effect on her she’d never felt before. Sensing a change in the mood, Nick had punched Matt on the shoulder and told him to behave himself – he’d be watching!

  The social had been sparsely attended. It was seeding time and many of the farms’ kids hadn’t been able to get back to Clare. When they weren’t dancing Anna and Matt had sat on some of the plastic chairs that lined the walls and talked.

  Matt confided to her his dreams of owning a farm, being his own boss and feeling the freedom the land offered. He told her he was working on a local farm at weekends to save up enough money to buy a ute and a few sheep he had been told he could agist there. ‘It’s my start,’ he told her. ‘I’ll get where I want to, I just know it.’

  Anna recounted the difficulties of being a bank manager’s daughter and constantly on the move. It seemed that as soon as she started to make friends they’d leave for a new town, a new school. Eventually she’d decided it was easier to hang out by herself.

  ‘We’ll have to change that,’ Matt said as he slipped an arm around her shoulders.

  From then on, they were inseparable. Anna, who had only ever been to friends’ farms before, braved sheep poo and flies to visit the farm where Matt was working. Over the following years she became well versed in agriculture and began to understand Matt’s craving to acquire land of his own. In the end it had become her dream, too.

  After Matt left school, his father gave him part-time work driving for his truck company and, within time, Matt was able to buy the truck he was driving. This part-time job gave them a steady income and was the only way his parents had been able to help him financially. Still, Ian and Laura encouraged their son’s hard work and aspirations. Matt’s maturity and determination also impressed Anna’s parents, even though they insisted she only see Matt at the weekends, so as not to disrupt her studies. It was clear to everyone these two young people were destined to be together.

  Once Matt had left school and got a full-time job on a farm, he and Anna fell into an easy routine of Matt driving to town and picking up Anna on Saturday mornings. They would drive to footy or cricket, have Saturday together, and then spend Sunday at the farm. He taught Anna everything he was learning about farming.

  Two years later and with the closure of the bank, Anna’s family eventually moved to another town, but Anna stayed. Being from a close family, she found it lonely without her parents and noisy brothers, but the pull to be with Matt was too strong for her to even consider leaving.

  A year earlier, her brother Rob had gone to Adelaide to study hospitality; he occasionally made the trip back to Spalding for a weekend, as did her parents, from Port Augusta, the town they had been transferred to. Nick moved to Port Pirie and got a job carting fuel all across South Australia. If he was passing through Spalding he would stop and call in on her or ring to see how she was, and it was those visits that eased the gap left by her family moving.

  Anna was proud of Matt as he gradually bought more sheep, then a tractor. He raised some capital, started a contract seeding business, and after a busy seeding season, bought a header, which he contracted out at harvest time. While Matt was busy with the cropping, Anna would look after the sheep, all the while studying agribusiness at the University of Adelaide’s Roseworthy campus.

  Finally, six years after he’d left school and two year
s after her parents’ terrible accident that killed her mother and left her father a paraplegic, Matt had enough money for a deposit on a farm.The accident caused grief to filter throughout Anna’s family and for some time she wasn’t able to even think about buying a farm. She was away from Spalding for weeks at a time. There had been the funeral to get through, organising her father’s care and treatment, finding somewhere for him to live and helping him with his own heartbreak. It had been a highly emotional and draining time and she had been so thankful for Nick and Rob’s support. Matt had been incredible; more than once she had told him that she was sure she wouldn’t have been able to get through it without his constant support. Finally she managed to come through the hellish spell and they started to search for the perfect property.

  Within a year they had found it: three thousand, three hundred and forty hectares to the north of Spalding.The older couple who sold it to them told Matt and Anna they were thrilled to be passing it on to such an enthusiastic couple.

  Matt negotiated a bargain price for the rundown farm, but it still left them strapped for cash and very much dependent on some good seasons in order to hang on to it and improve it. For two years the seasons were mostly with them – good opening rains, follow-up rains at the right time and high sheep prices.

  But then came the five consecutive years which weren’t so good. Some of those years it hadn’t rained until it was too late and too cold to seed the crops. During that time, sheep prices were low, wool was in the doldrums and as for cattle . . . well, as much as Matt had desperately wanted to buy some cows, they had only been able to afford an old Friesian that Anna milked every morning.

  Anna grinned as Matt squeezed her hand and smiled at her. This year would be different, she hoped, glancing over her shoulder at their beautiful sleeping daughter.

  Chapter 3

  Matt gulped down scalding coffee and savoured the bacon and eggs Anna had cooked for him.

  He had planned this seeding down to the minute and he didn’t have time to waste by eating, although he knew he had to. He wanted to be on the tractor from midnight until nine in the morning. That gave him the rest of the day to fix any breakdowns, deal with trucks or quickly do a stock check around the farm, before snatching four or five hours’ sleep and then heading back out to the tractor. Anna could keep an eye on the stock, he knew, but it was more difficult for her now she had a toddler to look after. Her world revolved around Ella’s feed and nap times.

  Everything had gone according to plan today but the few hours’ sleep he’d grabbed early in the night hadn’t been enough. He had the first thousand hectares in and today the next two road trains of fertiliser were arriving. That meant around one hundred and twenty tonnes of fertiliser! He was worried though. Rain had been forecast and he hadn’t yet been able to afford to build a fertiliser shed and so he had made the decision to pile it on the ground. If it rained while it was still out in the open, it would be ruined.

  Matt rubbed his eyes. He was worn out and cranky, and there was no option but to keep going. There was so much riding on this season. Every time he thought about the crop failing or something going wrong – the tractor breaking down, a crop disease they couldn’t afford to spray for or anything similar – he felt physically ill. The size of the debt they’d accumulated during the bad seasons was huge. He had to turn things around this year. So far the season was going really well and it was up to him to make the most of it.

  Anna had tried to ease the pressure by offering to find work in town – maybe pulling beers at the pub or cooking in the kitchen of the local roadhouse – but Matt knew the little she would earn really wouldn’t make any difference to the farm finances, only the house. And really he needed her to help on the farm.

  Matt sighed as he finished his breakfast.

  Anna glanced at her scowling husband.‘Can I do anything to help?’ she asked, as she moved across to a grizzling Ella.

  ‘Nope,’ he said, his voice short. Distracted.

  Anna had to steel herself to ask the question. ‘Matt?’

  ‘What?’ he said testily.

  ‘It’s the rams – they’re still in the yards. Where do you want me to put them?’

  Matt threw down his knife and fork. ‘Anna, I don’t care. Just keep them away from the ewes. Bloody hell, I’ve got enough to think about without you hassling me about minor things. You know as much about what’s going on as I do. You make the decision. And shut that kid up. I’m going to unload the fertiliser trucks then get back on the tractor.’

  Ella’s crying intensified, becoming shrill as Matt stomped out the door.

  Anna picked her up, whispering, ‘Shh, shh. It’s okay. Daddy can’t help it, it’s just a busy, stressful time of year.’

  Matt had become difficult to live with over the past few weeks; worse than he’d ever been. She’d tried to be understanding when he boiled over but he wasn’t the only one who had pressure on him. Anna would look at all the bills before Matt and she knew as well as he did there wasn’t the money in the bank to pay them. Even with the bridging finance Matt had negotiated to buy the fertiliser with, they were still sailing too close to the wind. She needed to talk to him about it, but it wasn’t the time.

  ‘There’s never a good time at the moment,’ she murmured against Ella’s soft skin, feeling increasingly uneasy. She hoped once seeding was finished it would get better. She tried to calculate how many hectares there were left to seed. All going well, perhaps another week would see them finished. Well, the bills would have to wait until then.

  Putting Ella back in her play pen, Anna cleared the dishes from the table and went to find her rubber boots. It was a welcome change to have yards muddy enough to warrant them.

  Matt watched as the white-gold fertiliser tipped from the truck onto the ground. White gold, he called it. It was certainly as expensive as the precious metal. He was driving the front-end loader, the bucket ready to scoop some of the fertiliser up and empty it into the seed and super bin. Once he filled it to the brim he would spread a tarp over the rest of the pile to keep it dry. Heavy logs sat nearby, ready to secure the tarp to the ground.

  A trickle of anticipation ran through him; he was excited to be heading back to the tractor, but it was quickly followed by a feeling of guilt. He’d been horrible to Anna and he knew it – he hadn’t meant to be. He should phone her and apologise.

  He pulled out his mobile and punched in their home number, all the while watching the white pellets flow from the truck. No answer. That’s right, he remembered, she would be putting the rams back in their paddock. He thought briefly how lucky he was to have her before switching his mind back to the job at hand.

  Finally the truckie pulled the lever to lower the bins then gave Matt the thumbs-up. Matt responded in kind, then watched as the truck rumbled out of the gateway and back onto the road.

  It wasn’t until the last trailer was out of sight that Matt realised his heart was beating way too fast. It was an after-effect of the accident, he knew. The memory of the tyres bursting into flames and the loud explosions would be with him forever.

  ‘When will I get over this?’ he muttered, annoyed at his weakness. He jammed the tractor into gear and tidied up the edges of the pile then jumped down from the cab to spread out the tarp, making sure it was held down tightly with the logs.

  ‘Shouldn’t get wet now!’ He grinned, his hands on his hips as he admired his handiwork, confident that it was as safe as it could be.

  The next twelve hours passed in a blur of diesel and soil. He headed home for a nap and before he was ready, it was midnight again.

  Matt woke and, bleary-eyed, forced himself to get up. Taking care not to wake Anna or Ella, he went to the kitchen to fill his thermos. Anna had packed sandwiches and thick chunks of chocolate cake into an esky before she went to bed.

  He let himself out of the house and headed towards his ute. It was raining gently and even though he had the fertiliser on the ground, he was grateful that the rain wasn’
t showing any signs of stopping.

  Matt was about to shift the ute into gear when he heard a tap on his door and looked up to see Anna. He wound down his window and smiled at her.

  ‘I hope it goes okay tonight,’ she said, touching his face gently.

  Matt grabbed her hand and held it to his cheek. ‘Only about another week and I’ll be able to sleep again,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been so tetchy. I shouldn’t have yelled at you this morning.’

  Anna shook her head.‘It’s forgotten! I know how important this crop is.’

  ‘Yeah, but I still shouldn’t have reacted the way I did. Anyway, I’d better get going. No point in getting up at this hour and wasting time.’

  Anna leaned down to kiss him and he felt a burst of love for her. She was the constant in his life, the person who made everything worthwhile.

  It was quicker to take the dirt road bordering his farm to the paddock he was seeding in, so he headed out the driveway, dodging the puddles.

  Matt was concentrating on the wet road when he swung into the paddock and his lights flashed over the tractor, and at first he didn’t register what was wrong, just that the front-end loader had moved and some of the logs had rolled off the tarp.Then he saw the tarp was lying flat on the ground, its edges lifting in the wind.

  He stared at it for a moment, trying to work out what was going on. Then he realised: there was no pile.

  Their precious fertiliser was gone.

  Chapter 4

  The man driving the truck was apprehensive. It had been a while since he had done a long night run. He couldn’t wait until he crossed the border into New South Wales. At least then he could disappear into the back tracks and dirt roads until he reached his destination. Unfortunately, until then, he had to stick to the main highway.

  Every time he saw lights through the raindrop-stained windscreen, his stomach lurched.