Bringo Springs
Ross is a city boy, working on his thesis and living with his trendy boyfriend. When his grandfather breaks a hip and winds up in the hospital, Ross is enlisted to take over the running of his grandfather’s farm. When he arrives at the farm, he finds one problem after another; everything from the bore pump no longer working, to snakes taking over in the house. After calling in for reinforcements for the bore pump, he sets out to get everything else working.
Relief arrives in the form of Geoff, who is impressed with Ross’ willingness to get his hands and boots dirty in order to get the work done. That’s not all that impresses Geoff, and when their attraction appears mutual, Ross must decide what to do. Can this city boy find happiness in the Australian outback?
Bringo Springs started serialisation in January 2007, and is available here.
“Laney’s thoughts on Bringo Springs:* There are a lot of thank yous attached to this novel. I wrote it after staying with my friend Cathy’s parents, on their farm, which is the setting for the novel. My friend Kris spent a day with me, showing me how she cares for her horses, so thanks are due to her, and Charlie and Appy. Kris also proofed the novel, pointing out many factual errors, especially about horse care. Finally, my friend Karen assisted me with detailed information about emergency medical care, especially at Geraldton Regional Hospital. Thanks!
Excerpt:
Chapter One
Late autumn, mid-May, and the bite was gone from the sun by mid-afternoon, though the black strip of road still rippled with heat. The paddocks beside the road were bare red dirt; disinterested cattle drifted aimlessly in the search for shade, kicking up trails of dust.
Ross knew the road to his grandfather’s farm at Bringo Springs; it was burned into his memory by endless visits during school holidays, and then later when he was an adult, to give Granddad a hand with seeding or cropping or calving.
That was why he was making the five hundred kilometre trek from the city yet again, to help out. Granddad was in the nearest hospital, nursing a broken hip and an attitude problem, fretting over his cattle, his beloved horse, his dog and a cantankerous bore pump. Ross’ mum had rung Ross, and here he was, on the road, looking forward to not having to deal with his life for a while.
There were two slabs of beer in the back of his car, along with his laptop, a mountain of journal articles and a couple of changes of clothes. His family hadn’t grasped the subtle difference between graduate student and unemployed, they only knew it meant that he had the least commitments or money of any of them and was available to go and help out.
The road curved over the top of the final hill, then dropped down to the turn off for the farm. He knew the view behind was breath-taking, looking over the coastal plain to where Geraldton was a blur on the horizon, but Ross was far more interested in the view to the left and ahead, where he could glimpse the treed ridge that sheltered the homestead.
He parked his car at the front gate to the farm, collected the mail from the tin can nailed to the fencepost, and opened the main gate. It wasn’t easy, with a clip on the gate, and a length of chain, then a star picket to be lifted out of the way. The gate frame dragged in the dirt, wearing a furrow, but when Ross lifted it higher, the hinge at the other end flexed alarmingly. Looked like he’d be making some repairs while he was here.
The cattle in the front paddock spotted him, and it became a race to get back to his car, drive it through the gap, and get the gate shut before any of them got out onto the road. There’d be diced beef if one of the passing iron ore trucks hit a cow.
He hadn’t been on the farm since Christmas, and hadn’t spent more than a couple of days there for a year, so he didn’t actually know the cows individually. A dopey looking grey head-butted him solidly as he opened his car door, complaining in low moans, and he patted her head.
“I know,” he said. “You want your dinner. Give me half an hour, and I’ll come and feed you.”
He had to inch his car across the paddock, cows milling around. Granddad’s blue heeler, Dog, hurtled through the far fence, shouting his head off, bounced across the cattle’s backs and jumped onto the bonnet of Ross’ car.
Ross wound his window down and Dog was inside instantly, bounding all over the front seats, licking Ross’ face and yipping.
“Hey Dog,” Ross laughed, trying to get the animal off the steering wheel. “Guess you’re hungry, too.”
Ross stopped the car again and went to tackle the next gate, and Dog followed him out of the car, dived through the strands of the fence and streaked up the track through the gum trees to the house, too impatient to wait for Ross.
The house had a ring of gums around it, sheltering it from the blistering heat of the summer winds that blew across a couple of thousand kilometres of desert before reaching the house. Ross parked his car under one of the gums, in the shade, and picked up his laptop out of the back. He’d unpack the rest later, there was work to be done first.
The fly screen door banged, marking Dog’s passage through it, and Ross grimaced and grabbed a broom from beside the door. If the screen door was ajar, there’d be snakes inside.
Dog bounded at Ross in the laundry, barking, then skittered into the kitchen. That was a ‘come and help’ bark, so Ross dumped his laptop on the washing machine and gripped the broom with both hands.
The snake was curled up in front of the fridge, Dog nose down and growling at it. “Get out,” Ross ordered, and the dog backed off, following his obedience training.
The snake was a tiger snake, black back and yellow belly. Hideously poisonous.
It turned a little, tongue out and tasting the air, so Ross shoved the head of the broom at it, pinning it to the ground. He really hoped the broom handle didn’t snap. The snake twisted and coiled, and he jammed the broom head harder over it, rocking the wood across the snake’s body, crushing it against the vinyl flooring. It made satisfying crunching noises. He kept the force on it until it was still, then grabbed a knife out of the block on the counter and hacked through the less dangerous end of the snake, severing it right through.
Dog yipped, and Ross lifted the broom head up. He’d made an icky mess on the floor, but the snake didn’t move at all. “Round one to opposable thumbs,” he said to Dog. “And use of tools.”
He swept the snake bits onto a sheet of newspaper and tossed the meat up onto the shed roof for the crows to pick over, then dumped the soiled paper in the compost bucket.
Dog barked again, and Ross patted his head. “Dinnertime?” he asked.
Dog’s dinner should be in the meat fridge in the shed beside the house, alongside the huge freezer, and Ross picked up a spade from beside the shed door and went in. Spades were better than brooms for killing snakes, and until he’d done a round of the sheds and house checking for snakes, he’d be happier with something sharp and metal in his hands.
He found a slab of roo meat in a plastic container in the otherwise empty fridge. Dog hovered around Ross’ knees while Ross lifted the lid and sniffed.
“Doesn’t smell off,” he told Dog.
He hacked off a chunk of the meat with one of the slaughtering knives that lived in the shed, dropped it into Dog’s tray, then added a scoop of kibble from the sack sealed in a cleaned out 44 gallon drum.
Dog dropped to the ground, nose on his paws, and looked up hopefully.
Ross waited, counted to ten, then said, “You can eat.”
He left Dog nose down in his tray, shed door open, and went to find a pair of boots that fit.
He found a pair of Blundies on the boot rack beside the back door, in the right size, that might even have originally been his, so Ross removed the spiders from the boots and swapped his sneakers for the protective footwear.
When Ross pulled the tractor to a grinding halt at the gate, the cattle were lined up at the fence, pressed against the barbed wire strands and making the fence lean alarmingly.
“Bugger,” he said under his breath. The electric fence was off, and that was not a good thing. If all of the electrical fencing was out, not just that paddock, there’d be a bull wandering loose somewhere eventually.
Opening the gate distracted the cows from their fence-crushing attempts, and he trundled the tractor through the gap up to the feeder.
The lucerne went into the feeder, and Ross tramped through the dust to check the water trough.
He poked at the small amount of sludge at the bottom of the trough. Quick inspection revealed the line was intact at surface level but the feeder tank that held 250 litres was empty.
“Fuck, fuck,” Ross said. Granddad had said the bore pump was on the blink. This was a variation of ‘on the blink’ that involved no water at all reaching the cattle in that big front paddock, and possibly no water anywhere on the entire property.