Unforgiving

By Carmel Beresford

It's March 2011. Our grazing property, Farnham Plains, is in pristine condition following summer rain and a record-breaking flood in the Paroo River. To look this way is rare for country in this dry, parched corner of south-west Queensland. The river is full, long strands of grass wave in the late summer breeze and cattle are fat.
Life is close to perfect for me, my husband, Mick, our twenty-one year old son, Sam and his partner, Krysta. Then tragedy strikes. Sam is run over and critically injured by the propeller blades of a gyrocopter he'd purchased from his instructor the previous day. The propeller slices through his body causing critical head and upper body injuries. Sam's life hangs in the balance for eight days but then he succumbs to his wounds and dies. Through the nightmare journey of inspections, reports, investigations and ultimately, an inquest into Sam's death, memories of Sam's life, our life together for twenty-one years, the love we shared and the struggles we endured for our property, 'Farnham Plains', come to the fore.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carmel Beresford
• Release date: Sep 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463437322

Book preview

I first came to Farnham Plains in August 1973. I had been hearing about this place from my boyfriend, Mick Beresford, for more than a year. Mick and I were at senior school together and I was flying to Cunnamulla to spend a week of school holidays with him and his family on their property, Farnham Plains – Farnham, as it’s sometimes shortened to. As the plane did a final pass over the town and airport of Cunnamulla, 900 kilometres west of Brisbane, I got a bird’s eye view of the stark countryside below – so different, I remember thinking, to the landscape and greenery of Brisbane.

Eulo, the closest town to the family property, was a further 60 kilometres west and, as we made our way there, I was mesmerised by my surroundings. I expected to see a flat, treeless land but instead, tall, craggy-barked trees with dull, green leaves were everywhere.

Mick answered my query about them. They’re called mulga trees, he said.

It was dark as we drove the final 18 kilometres of dirt road into Farnham Plains and after rain that day, patches of road were slippery and boggy. As Mick drove, he darted between trees and found detours that seemed to have us headed towards tree trunks before he’d turn again and find a drier track to follow. I had never experienced anything like this in my life. The homestead was in darkness as we approached, even though Mick’s mother was there. No men had been at home that evening to wind the handle of the big, diesel engine that generated the power for the house. So different to my city home where electricity was supplied at the touch of a switch.

Next morning, as the sun rose over this alien land, I looked out. The sky was the bluest colour I had ever seen it – no clouds, smog or fog filled the air like it did in Brisbane. The ground was a deep, red, ochre colour with scatterings of green clumps of grass and it was deathly silent – no traffic, no sirens, no noise: the sound of nothing. I was consumed by my surroundings and feelings of contentment on that first visit. Mick had a life of freedom here and during this one week of my sixteen years, I shared and experienced that freedom. Although I did not know it then, I seemed implicitly linked to this rugged, outback country.

When school life ended, Mick returned to Farnham Plains to work the property, I began my teaching studies and our long-distance relationship continued. With each visit, my love grew for this country, its everyday, salt-of-the-earth people and the community. During those next three years, holidays at Farnham meant long motorbike rides with Mick. We went wherever we wanted and we went alone. It seemed natural in his world for no one older to chaperone us. I sat behind Mick and wrapped my arms around him; for stability yes, but also for the exhilaration we both got from the closeness we shared on these rides. If the day was hot, we’d stop at a secluded stretch of river somewhere far from the house, strip off and swim naked in the murky brown water, basking in the excitement this brought us.

As we rode through the paddocks, Mick pointed out landmarks that he knew so well. We crossed open grassy plains where cattle and sheep grazed and skirted around a large expanse of water only filled after heavy, continuous rain. Further along the track were small indentations of earth surrounded and protected by large clumps of Gidgee trees that also filled with water after rain. Mick showed me the mud springs – natural mounds of mud formed as pressure releases from the inland underground water system we know as the Great Artesian Basin.

These can be dangerous, I remember him warning me. The mud might look hard on top but it can be soft just below the surface. If you jump or bounce you might fall through. There’ve been lots of times when sheep or cattle have been bogged in these springs and I’ve had to pull them out.

On one of our rides Mick took me further from the house than I had ever been. In the far distance, I saw a range of hills formed by a series of rocky escarpments framed against the brightness of the sky. The sides were steep and, in most places, impenetrable and caves were scattered around the cliff face. Our road wound past a bluff-like formation above us with an entrance protruding outward. Mick called this ‘Jack-in-the-Rocks’. I begged him to stop so we could climb and enter the cave. Inside was low and dark, scattered with the bones of dead kangaroos and goats and it smelt of stale death. The stench was overpowering and quickly drained away my enthusiasm for exploring this place.

Further on but hidden among the many trees that grew down the sides of the escarpment was the track that took us up onto the top of the ridge. Mick told me his family called this place, ‘The Tabletop’ and I could see why. It was the highest, flattest point for many, many kilometres and here the view was breathtaking. The surrounding country hypnotised me and I felt encased by it. I was not to know or even imagine the significance this place would play in my later life. At that time, though, as Mick and I stood and looked out over the vastness in front of us, we were young, carefree and crazy about each other.

Community life was active around Eulo, with many people of similar ages to Mick and me. Saturday night movies, sneaky visits to the local pub, tennis afternoons and cricket on Sunday, church even, were all well-attended events. When you become part of the life of a family in the bush you soon become part of the community, too, and I felt embraced. People openly welcomed me as Mick Beresford’s girlfriend, a part of his family even then and included in everything they did. I remember being overwhelmed with sadness each time I had to leave and every day in Brisbane I yearned for my return to Farnham Plains.

When those three years passed, Mick and I married, and I came to live permanently in western Queensland. We settled into a small cottage and like a typical, newly married couple, we were blissfully happy. I did a couple of years teaching then our first child, Patrick was born. With a drought affecting Mick’s family property in 1981/82, we left the west and tried life in the city. While we lived there our second child, Lauren, was born. But Eulo acted like a strong magnet and we returned to Farnham Plains in 1985 with our young family.

There’s no better place for kids to live and grow up, I remember Mick saying.

That was true, but Mick forgot to tell me or warn me of the hardships and realities of bush life and I’d only previously seen this life through my rose-coloured glasses. The prolonged drought of 1981/82 and the decisions that needed to be made then had sat on the shoulders of Mick’s parents – after 1985, and their retirement from the property, those kinds of decisions were ours. I knew little and I had not experienced the everyday trauma of drought and the cost of it on both animals and humans. There was the relentless, daily task of hand-feeding stock with expensive supplements. Weak animals were at the mercy of crows and most times these animals had to be euthanised – a heartbreaking and daunting task for someone who had grown up in the city.

Responsibility for the financial management of the property was also ours. We had to deal with banks and the balancing act that entailed, the reality of irregular farming income but regular bills and the cost in human terms if decisions at the time were not the right ones. We were like the clown trying to keep his juggling balls aloft only ours were the day- to-day decisions that had to be made to keep our grazing business afloat. It was in that period of our lives that an unplanned baby boy arrived - our third child. We named him Sam.

Living this kind of life, I was constantly thrown into new and challenging situations. When money was needed, Mick worked away from the property. That left me emotionally fragile at times and isolation in the bush can take its toll. I slept with a shotgun beside my bed to ward off the burglars I believed would break in during the night. I had to deal with snakes and centipedes that found their way into the house. I imagined that if I died in my sleep my young children would be alone with their dead mother for days before their father returned.

Choosing to live in the outback means foregoing facilities city dwellers take for granted - immediate intensive medical care is one of these. An ambulance for us at Farnham Plains was an hour by road from Cunnamulla, the same time it took the Royal Flying Doctor Service plane from its base in Charleville. I thought I was lucky that my children survived many of the scrapes and injuries of their childhood without needing such care. There were many cuts and sprains whilst our most serious injury was Lauren’s broken wrist. While out riding her motor bike she fell, putting her hand down to break her fall. She complained that her wrist was sore but there was no outward sign or swelling to show something was wrong. Next day, we were mustering sheep and Lauren’s help was needed in the paddock too. Her sore right wrist meant she had to use her left hand to work the right-hand clutch on her motor bike. Her father watched as she did these many times. In frustration, Mick rode across to Lauren and said to her, If that hand is so sore, go home to your mother and get her to take you to the hospital.

I did, and Lauren came home with a plaster on her arm. Mick felt awful.

Another time, Patrick showed signs of having the measles. I phoned the hospital and the response was, Don’t bring him in; keep him out there where he can’t infect anyone! My centipede bite on the finger got much the same reaction. Mick was away, the children were young; Sam was a baby at the time. I phoned the hospital and the advice I got was, Put your baby in his cot where he can’t hurt himself, dose yourself up with painkillers and soak your hand in warm water. The long infection line from my finger up my arm disappeared by morning and I had nothing to show for the excruciating pain I’d been in. I really did think I had been lucky that our injuries and sicknesses had not been serious, and I was thankful that minimal medical assistance had seen my children through their childhood and into adult life. But on a fateful day in March 2011 our distance from intensive medical care meant it was more than nine hours from the time of Sam’s accident to his hospital admission. His survival was always in doubt.

Through all the early years and the hardships and adversities, I always felt fortunate to live on Farnham Plains. My children were the fifth-generation Beresford’s there. The property was initially purchased around the turn of the twentieth century by Percy Ronald Beresford, PR as he was known. He had owned the original Eulo Store and bought and moved to Farnham upon selling that business. Stories abound of his money-making ventures and with the initials, PRB, he was known by many at the time as the ‘Paroo Robbing Bastard’ – Paroo coming from the name of the river that meanders past Eulo. Some generations of the family that followed him grew their wealth while others blew theirs, which made hard work of family successions. PR had two sons and two properties, so succession then was easy. Next generation was three sons and two properties, difficult but manageable and Mick’s generation was three sons and one property, an even more difficult situation.

By the time it was our turn to plan for succession, Patrick and Lauren had left Farnham and followed other pathways in their lives. So, when Sam turned eighteen, our succession plan for him began. He loved Farnham and everything about it – the land, the stock and the work it involved. We developed a plan for the future, his and ours, and with this in place we relaxed, knowing another generation would work and remain on our beloved Farnham. We discussed life without Mick – what Sam as the successor and I would do. We discussed life without me – again what Sam and Mick would do. But we never discussed life without the successor. Any thought of life without Sam never entered our heads. Why would it? He was young, fit, and healthy and hardly had a day sick in his life. The succession plan was so sound, so calculated and so right for his future, ours too and the future of Farnham.

I know what happens when that future is taken away; that is exactly what happened to us. I went through stages – grief at the initial time of Sam’s death, the feelings of total loss in the following months and then a feeling of grim resolve to continue on and build the life that would have been if Sam was still here. Mick held this feeling too and perhaps, in his own way, still does. But for me, that sense was short-lived; the knowledge that Sam would never be here overwhelmed and consumed me and was greater than the desire to continue his dream. I lost hope, I lost direction, I lost everything. With Sam’s death, my love for Farnham, the place I had called home for 26 years, died too.

Years before Sam died, I heard a saying on the radio as I was driving home from work. I had imagined the headstone of my grave quoting this as it seemed to sum up my feelings about Farnham at that time. It said,

You should never say I own this country.

When you feel this country owns you, you will know you are home.

It will not be engraved on my headstone – but it is on Sam’s.

He deserved it.

Chapter 2 - Wednesday 9th March 2011

The day began like any working day did on the 30,000 hectares of Farnham. Here we bred and raised beef cattle and goats, taking full advantage of the renowned country along the Paroo River. Krysta Garret was stirring. She was the partner of my son, Sam, and she lived with us. As the school’s part-time teacher aide and cleaner, Krysta started work at 6.45am. She left the house as my husband, Mick, and I finished our early morning cup of tea. Most mornings Mick woke, headed for the kitchen and made the tea while I slowly opened my eyes and tried to greet the new day. I didn’t appreciate mornings. I enjoyed the late afternoon when the working day was over and the last of the sun’s rays touched the western horizon. Mick and Sam had no difficulty rising and beginning the jobs planned for the day ahead. Sam was not usually up as early as Krysta or Mick, but he was on that day, eager to go to the hangar and to his new flying machine. Dear Sam, the unplanned child I’d had twenty-one years ago, the one I used to think of as my worst child, now meant the world to me. I heard him in the kitchen rattling plates, then caught a glimpse of him leaving the house.

As he passed my bedroom door I said, You’re on the go early this morning.

He smiled; he looked happy. He wanted to go to his two-seater gyrocopter – the one he and Krysta had picked up from Roma the day before.

A gyrocopter (gyro) is a small, compact flying machine usually made of fibre-glass, with a semi- attached windscreen in front. It has rotor blades overhead and a three-blade propeller and engine behind the pilot’s small, open cockpit. At the rear is a fin-like tail. A single-seat type only has the workings of the machine and room for the pilot. There is also a two-seater, used by instructors to train learners to fly. Other pilots choose them for the space to carry a passenger or some cargo. Sam began flying a single-seat gyrocopter in 2010 to help out on our property and to generate some external income for his future.

In 2009, we had begun our succession plan to bring Sam into our grazing enterprise. He had applied to borrow $650,000 from Queensland Rural Adjustment Authority (QRAA), Queensland’s main rural lending body and for that, share my half of the business. Mick, Sam and I would be a three-way partnership. On examination of his previous three tax returns, QRAA did not believe he had the means to meet repayments. No one at board level seemed to consider this young man had spent those years at home on low to nothing wages, helping us get through a terrible drought.

Sam was gutted when the letter of refusal came. No young man deserved more of a start in this business than he did; it meant everything to him. He was advised to go off to the mines and make some big bucks then make a new application to QRAA. Sam found this ridiculous advice. He’d stayed at home to build his future here and he wasn’t about to leave. That’s when the idea of flying a gyrocopter seemed to have been hatched between him and his father. Mick’s brother, Eric, had one and with it had built himself a healthy business in the district. Sam discussed it with Eric, too. Eric believed there was room across the district for another gyrocopter and it would likely take some pressure off him with the client base he had. So Sam decided that was what he would do. I don’t recall at what stage I was brought into the conversation, but it all seemed a done deal by the time I was told.

Sam went to Bundaberg, a town on the Queensland coast a thousand kilometres away for a ‘see and try’ with instructor and gyrocopter mechanic, Rob Patroney. He loved it. Flying was in his blood; generations of family members were pilots, so it should not have been any surprise that Sam was keen. But it was to me.

After his initial try with Rob Patroney, Sam and Eric went to Quilpie, 300kms north-west of Eulo, to inspect a gyrocopter there. Our business bought it and Sam would be its pilot. Some modifications were needed to make this new purchase safer to fly so Sam headed to Bundaberg again but this time towing the gyrocopter in a purpose-built trailer. Rob and he worked on the machine, then Sam had a few flying lessons as the tropical coastal weather allowed. Because Rob mainly taught recreational flyers and Sam was learning to fly to muster stock in these western parts, another flight instructor was recommended. His name was Campbell (Cam) Taylor, a registered flight instructor based in Roma, about 600kms from us. As well as instructing, Cam did aerial mustering. He was in his late thirties, athletic and with what many considered an easy-going personality. Sam and his father knew of Cam from polocrosse, the horse sport they all played during the cooler months in Queensland. The contact was made; Sam went to Campbell for lessons. My only knowledge of Cam at that point was as a polocrosse player but I learnt much more about him, about the association he was registered with and about gyrocopters when it was all too late.

I was a tad behind schedule for school that morning. I liked to be gone from the house by 7.40am. It was 7.50 and it was only me who felt that ten-minute difference could make me seem late. I drove along the road to where Sam and the gyrocopter were and slowed but decided I didn’t have time to stop. Sam looked up. It was rare for me to drive past if I ever saw him near the road, in the paddocks or around the sheds close to home. I’m sure he thought I would stop and tell him to be careful and to look after himself – advice mothers always seem to give their sons. In fact, surprisingly, I felt no real concern for him with this gyrocopter; after all, it was the machine he had learnt to fly in. Also, I believed, the purchase had been subject to the machine being rebuilt and mechanically checked, as we had done with the first one. Sam had paid an extraordinarily large deposit for this to be done as I well-remembered because we had disagreed over it.

Sam had come to me in mid-January for help with making a bank transfer of $25,000 to Cam and Adrienne Taylor’s business account. I asked him what such a large amount of money was for.

That’s the deposit I have to pay for the gyrocopter, he’d said.

That’s an awful lot of money for a deposit, I told him. When you’re buying a new car you’re only expected to come up with a deposit of around ten per cent. You’re paying half now. Sam replied, There’s work that needs doing to it and Cam doesn’t want to spend his own money. All his money is tied up in his new machine so if I pay that deposit, the work can be done before I pick it up.

Again, I cautioned him about this. What happens if his business goes belly up? I asked, You’ll not only lose your money, but the gyrocopter won’t be released to you; you’ll end up with nothing.

And I got the line from him that I would grow to hate hearing – It’ll be right.

I looked across to where he was working. I got a warm tingle and thought that life, at that moment, was good for us. We waved to each other, smiled and I drove on. I looked back in the rear vision mirror. Sam busied himself around the gyrocopter and I thought to myself how lucky we were to have him.

I arrived at school and began preparations for the day. Krysta was busy, too, and everything was normal. The students arrived at 8.30 and our second teacher, Rose Bladwell, was also there. The phone began to ring. As I walked across the classroom towards it, I noticed the clock on the wall above my desk read 8.40. Happy, laughing children, chatting staff and the ringing phone were the normal sounds that filled the morning air at Eulo State School – my school. The correct term is ‘our school’ but this was my school in this small town I’d called home for more than half my life. The phone’s ring reminded me my busy day as a teaching principal had begun. It was unbearable outside that morning as the heat of a hot, humid summer lingered into March. Although their school day hadn’t started, my thirteen students were reluctant to venture beyond the air-conditioned classroom. They played, talked, laughed and joked with each other. I could not have been more content with my life than I was that morning.

I reached for the phone. Hello Eulo State Sc…

I was stopped by the voice on the other end screaming, Quickly! You gotta do something! It’s Sam! He’s had an accident with the gyrocopter and we need help real quick! He looks real bad – get an ambulance and tell them to hurry!

It was Mick’s voice I was hearing. In the seconds he took to get those words out, my head was spinning.

He’s real bad so tell them to hurry, he repeated. You’ll have to do all this ‘cause I’ve got to get back to him! Hurry!

With those words and what followed, my world began to collapse. Life as I knew it was about to be turned upside down and nothing would ever be normal again.

Reviews for Unforgiving

[Kaye Ohlsen · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Heart breaking. Amazing courage to even write and to fight for justice. Life can be so cruel.