Tash angled her phone at Castlereagh Road and swept it north towards Emu Springs before panning back until she faced south. Against the iron-coloured sky, the straight gravel road seemed to disappear into infinity. Earlier there’d been a light shower, and the air smelled of ozone, eucalyptus and shifted dust.
She pursed her lips, wondering if she shouldn’t give it up until the afternoon when the clouds were forecast to be gusted away by a northerly change, and decided against it. The dash of rain had given the grass and trees a rinse, leaving them vivid against the gunmetal backdrop. Tash wasn’t an overly vain person—she couldn’t afford to be, the way she bared herself online—but she cared enough to acknowledge that the duller light was also more flattering to her complexion.
Resetting the camera to selfie mode, she positioned herself near her parents’ front gate and raised the phone to just above head height. After an adjustment, Tash’s face filled the left-hand edge and a scene of rural tranquillity unfolded behind her; vast, serene, and very, very pretty.
‘Welcome to Castlereagh,’ she said, grinning and tilting her head as if to say ‘come on in’. Then she slowly turned to capture her face in profile as she regarded the scene with a deep contented sigh. A few seconds’ more filler and she lowered the camera to review the footage.
Not bad. The gate to her parents’ farm was conveniently located near the top of a rise. From there the landscape sloped gently west, easing down to the distant marshy murkiness of Baron’s Swamp and the rich flatlands of the border district. Before settlement, vast stretches of this low-lying country had been swampland. Drain construction had begun as early as the late 1800s but it wasn’t until the 1950s and ’60s that the real engineering works began. Baron’s remained one of the few swamps left undrained and now, thanks to environmental regulation, it never would be.
Tash had always loved the swamp. The permanent supply of underground water ensured the farm’s western fringe maintained a constant understory of green, even at the peak of summer. Black swans were frequent visitors, and endangered Australasian bitterns could sometimes be spotted in the reeds, frozen in death-still poses to escape detection. Despite the swamp’s rampant black snake population, Tash had spent many happy childhood hours there, adventuring and daydreaming, well drilled in keeping alert for dangerous slithery things. Shingleback and blue-tongue lizards also abounded, along with the occasional swamp rat. Sometimes the frog choir was so loud the water seemed to tremble from the vibration.
The foreground was dominated by her parents’ house, a simple single-storey, three-bedroom home of beige brick and tile, with an enclosed rear aluminium-screen extension that faced a well-tended back lawn and rotary clothesline. To the right, separated from the house by a neglected vegetable garden, was Tash’s new residence and workplace. Fondly known as the Poppy Flat, for many years it had been home for her widower grandfather, who’d had it built when he’d given up the main house for his son Peter’s growing family.
Trying a different angle, with a less revealing shot of the house, Tash filmed another welcome message before wandering back down the drive, snapping an iridescent feeding butterfly and friendly black-and-white peewee along the way. Handy images to decorate her social media accounts until The Urban Ranger Goes Country went fully live.
‘Want a cuppa?’ Tash called to her mum, who was at the clothesline, pegging up a load of towels in expectation of the coming change. Coco, her mum’s young chocolate labrador, was parked rump down next to the washing basket, ragged tennis ball held expectantly in her mouth.
Her mum smiled. ‘Must have read my mind.’
On a typical Wednesday, Liz Ranger would be busy at Emu Springs Primary School where she was bursar, a job she’d had for nineteen years and would probably last another nineteen if allowed. Despite Tash assuring her it was unnecessary, Liz had taken the week off to help Tash settle in, but really to spend time with her daughter. It had been too long. When Tash had first moved to the city, she’d made the four-and-a-half-hour drive home at least once a month. She missed the farm, the space and animals, the easiness of Emu Springs and the comfort of people she had known all her life. Then, as she’d settled in to uni and made friends and enjoyed new adventures, once a month became once every six weeks, then every two or three months. Over the last couple of years, with The Urban Ranger demanding more and more of her attention, along with her part-time job as a receptionist at a printing firm, trips home had been relegated to birthdays, Easter and Christmas.
Giving up on her mistress, Coco lolloped over and dropped the ball at her feet. Tash regarded it with a screwed-up nose.
‘You know, you’d have a lot more success if you didn’t slobber on it so much.’
Coco tilted her head, then deliberately eyed the ball for a good few seconds before looking up as if to say ‘Well?’
Tash rolled her eyes and delivered the ball a hefty kick, sending Coco off in delighted chase. Before the dog could return, she slid open the screen of the sunroom and entered, pausing to lever off her elastic-sided boots and line them up with the rest of the impressive collection. After dumping her socks on top, she padded into the kitchen, trailing fingers over the big hardwood table’s scrubbed surface as she passed. The soft murmur of the television filtered from the lounge. Tash flicked the kettle switch and gazed for a moment out the window, and sighed happily.
Wandering her parents’ property had been one of the best things so far about coming home. Every walk had Tash breathing deep lungfuls of air and hugging herself with joy as the sounds of the country sang in her ears and the breeze and sun blessed her skin. With each step memories resurfaced: racing her older brother Matt on their motorbikes, the dogs galloping behind with their pink tongues flapping; watching the comical gambols of newborn lambs and calves; skies so blue and sunsets so colourful and nights so starry they seemed impossible, like Van Goghs made real; riding her sweet bay mare Bubbles around the paddocks and roads with Maddy Handreck, discussing life with adolescent intensity, their conversations profound and steeped with importance, only for them to end up long forgotten and, in one case, deeply regretted.
There were new things too, things Tash had once taken for granted but which now struck her afresh. Like the slowly crumbling remnants of the farm’s original house, and the way the empty windows of the abandoned limestone cottage seemed to observe the dry paddocks with lonely eyes. Yesterday, taken with how its stark walls and shadows contrasted against the clear sky, Tash had tagged and uploaded a photo of it to her accounts with a comment about wishing walls could talk and how rich the land was with stories.
It was wonderful to walk, wonderful to have proper quiet time. She’d become too accustomed to the constant noise of the city and forgotten what silence was like. Except Castlereagh wasn’t really silent. There was the wind through the trees and grass, the lows of cattle, the bleats of sheep, the carols and calls of swamp and other birds. Insects hummed and whirred and buzzed, and the grass occasionally rustled with creatures scuttling to safety from Coco.
The kettle flicked off, jolting her from her thoughts and reminding her she hadn’t prepared a pot. She could hear her mum at the door, talking nonsense to Coco.
By rights Tash should have been at the Poppy Flat supervising, but the space was so small she’d only get in the way and the workmen seemed to know what they were doing. The kitchen was poorly equipped but she’d been savvy enough to negotiate a new stove and rangehood as part of a sponsorship deal. Fitting them had required minor renovations that Tash had arranged through a local company and her pa had overseen a few weeks before. Once the stove was installed, she would have space for the large stainless-steel laboratory bench on casters she’d serendipitously discovered in a second-hand furniture store and planned to use as her main work surface. With light streaming through the sliding glass doors and a new kitchen skylight, it would be near perfect.
For filming, that was. As a living space the flat lacked the soul of the main house. It didn’t have a tape measure glued to the pantry doorjamb with Tash’s and Matt’s heights marked off at every age. It didn’t have silly school-made craft items proudly displayed on the sill above the kitchen sink or a fridge patterned with faded photos and reminders of local events. There was no two-way radio on the end of the bench, or calendar from the local ag supplies hanging on the wall. And it didn’t have the worn timber table that had witnessed the preparation of thousands of meals and treats, and an unfathomable number of cups of tea, and around which every Ranger family drama and joy had played out.
Time and a few touches would fix that though. Creating homeliness was one of Tash’s talents.
‘Did you get the shots you needed?’ asked Liz.
‘Yep.’ Tash raided the pantry for the container of brownies she’d made the day before. It had been a strange experience, not cooking to camera, and wonderfully nostalgic, reminding her of the times she’d shared with her nan before she passed away, learning to sift, cream, beat, roll, chop, bake, roast, and every other country cook skill. Her mum was a fair cook, but it had never been a passion like it was for Tash and her nan. Together the two had made kitchen magic, leaving Tash permanently connecting food with generosity, fun and, most of all, love.
With the tea brewed, Tash and her mum settled at the table. They added milk and sugar, took sips and leaned back, smiling at their mirrored mannerisms. Tash even looked like her mum, which was not a bad thing. With her short wavy hair, fine features and English rose complexion, Tash had always thought her mum resembled her namesake Queen Elizabeth when she was young. But where her mum was as long and lean as her husband, Tash was cherubic and short like her beloved nan.
Tash’s phone pinged. She checked it and smiled. ‘From Ceci, asking how things are going.’ She tapped a swift message back and pinched an edge off her brownie.
‘You’ll have to ask her to come to visit.’
‘I will.’ Tash sucked on her fingers. She’d have to make the brownie to camera, perhaps with a local variation of some sort. ‘Once I’ve settled in.’
‘And Thom?’ asked Liz, raising an eyebrow.
Tash’s cheeks flushed. There was something truly embarrassing about your mother knowing you’d had sex. And ill-advised drunk sex with your next-door neighbour at that. ‘I’m sure he’d enjoy a trip too.’
‘Mmm.’ Her mum eyed her with a slight smile for a moment and to Tash’s relief changed the subject. ‘So what’s on the agenda for the rest of the day?’
‘Keep an eye on the flat, I suppose. Think about the garden. Write up some blog ideas. I have a radio interview at 2 pm but that won’t take long.’
‘You could go and see Maddy.’
Tash kept her reaction neutral. ‘I should really be here. In case the workmen want to show me anything.
‘I can fill in. You’ve been home four days. You should probably visit.’
She probably should. Trouble was, she didn’t want to.
Tash focused on her brownie, tossing up whether it was time to reveal the truth about her and Maddy’s friendship, and quickly quashed the idea. She sighed inwardly. What did it matter now? Plus Nicola and Grant had always been kind, and it wouldn’t hurt her to say hello and offer a bit of company for a while.
She hated it though, the hypocrisy. It crawled over her skin like a nasty insect. If only Tash hadn’t let their stupid argument fester for so long, but Maddy had always been impetuous, even reckless, and Tash had wanted to teach her a lesson, unaware that same recklessness would nearly cost Maddy her life a couple of months later.
Now their rift was frozen in time, and it was Tash who had to live with the shame of her own hurtfulness.
‘Tash?’
She glanced up to find Liz frowning at her. ‘Yes, sorry. Lost in thought for a moment. A lot on my plate.’ Swallowing her guilt, she forced a smile. At least this time, with the workers, she had an excuse not to linger. ‘I’ll take some brownies. Maddy always liked them.’