Bella's Run
About the Book
Bella threw her hat into the air. ‘We’ve lived one of our dreams, Patty. Our outback road trip is done. Now we’re free and ready for our next adventure. God, I love life!’
Bella Vermaelon and her best friend Patty are two fun-loving country girls bonded in a sisterhood no blood tie could ever beat.
Now they are coming to the end of a road trip which has taken them from their family farms in the rugged Victorian high country to the red dust of the Queensland outback. For almost a year they have mustered on cattle stations, cooked for weary stockmen, played hard at rodeos and danced through life like a pair of wild tumbleweeds. And with the arrival of Patty’s brother Will and Bella’s cousin Macca, it seems love is on the horizon too . . . Then a devastating tragedy strikes, and Bella’s world is changed for ever.
So she runs – from the only life she has ever known. But can she really turn her back on the man she loves? Or on the land that runs deep in her blood?
Both funny and heart-wrenching,
Bella’s Run
is a rip-roaring debut bursting with love for life on the land.
‘An outback story of life, friendships and undeniable love. A great read’
SARA STORER
In loving memory of the three women who have helped shape my life:
my mother, Ellen Osborn (1939–98),
who always encouraged me to throw my hat into the ring;
my grandmother, Margareta Osborn (1910–2006),
our refuge and safe harbour;
my aunt, Elizabeth Shepard (1941–2011),
for showing me what guts and determination are all about;
and
for my dearly loved father, John Osborn,
who believes in me.
Contents
Part One: Ainsley Station Outback Central Queensland
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Prologue
Every ounce of the thirty-tonne semi-trailer bore down on the ute, caught like a startled rabbit in the fog lights of the B-Double.
On impact the ute disintegrated, the shriek of tearing metal, breaking glass and screeching air brakes shattering the peace of the surrounding valley. One sound cut through the rest, reverberating across the wide, open paddocks sprawled beyond the mist.
The piercing screams of the dying.
Filled to the brim with grain, the semi rested against the broken boundary fence, its driver slumped over the steering wheel. His shocked gaze took in the devastation ahead of him.
On the far side of the bitumen road lay two bodies. The first, splayed at an unnatural angle, and unrecognisable as either man or woman, did not move from the white line on which it lay.
The other, some 5 yards on, was female. Her chest moved spasmodically underneath a shirt patterned with splashes of brilliant red. The woman’s denim jeans were already black with blood, and only one of her feet was visible, clad in a brown leather elastic-sided riding boot, surprisingly intact.
White-gold, curly hair lay tangled across her blood-smeared face, which minutes before had been wreathed in smiles of happiness, laughter and love.
PART ONE
Ainsley Station
Outback Central Queensland
Chapter 1
Sunlight shone through the glistening soap bubbles in the sink, turning the suds a rainbow of colours. They were far too pretty to be found in spartan stockmen’s quarters on a remote and rugged cattle station in Central Queensland.
Peering through the grimy aluminium window, Isabella Vermaelon sighed at the glorious scene outside. It was so hard to stay in this dreary 1970s Formica kitchen cooking. She wanted to be out there in the sun, galloping across the open plains with the stockmen or mustering cattle hidden in the Brigalow and Blackbutt scrub.
The stock camp had been short of a ringer this morning, and someone would’ve loaned Bella a spare plant horse. After all, she could ride and muster stock. The only thing she couldn’t get a grip on, here on Ainsley Station, was lacing rather than buckling a damned girth. Her best mate Patty, on the other hand, was a natural, so
she
was the one now out mustering cattle for the feedlot, the breeze riffling through her auburn hair and sunlight streaming onto her tanned face.
She was right where Bella wanted to be, ducking and weaving her horse across this remote landscape with its miles and miles of red soil scattered with stands of yapunyah trees and sally wattle bowing and twisting under a sweltering sun. Bella could almost smell the earthy stench of hot cattle, the eucalyptus scent of the scrub; feel the flying insects dive-bombing her face.
‘Can you thread this up for me?’
Bella jumped, startled by a broad-shouldered, ruddy-faced stockman who was peering around the kitchen door. Wearing tiny half-moon spectacles, he looked fifty rather than twenty-eight.
‘Jeez, Rodney! Didn’t anyone teach you to knock? You scared the crap out of me.’
Rodney ignored her, focusing instead on what he held in his big hands. ‘I can’t see the damned eye in this needle for looking at it.’
Bella moved to the door and glanced over Rodney’s shoulder into the stockmen’s dining room. A torn chambray work shirt lay on the table, sporting a rip that looked terminal. ‘Do you really want to have a go at mending that? There’s a bin in the corner.’
‘Nope, it’ll be right. Just use those pretty green eyes of yours to thread this needle, ay.’
Bella’s eyes were blue. A brilliant lapis-blue actually. And her halo of long, white-gold curls, a legacy from her mother, made the colour of her eyes stand out like the sun appearing on a foggy day. She smiled to herself as she took the needle, threaded it and shooed Rodney out the door. Bloody Queensland blokes were as stubborn as the men back home in Victoria.
Bella heaved a sigh and returned to what she was supposed to be doing.
Trying to make a sixteen-egg pavlova using one Mixmaster probably wasn’t the cleverest thing she had ever done. Then again, browning eight kilos of beef mince using two small frypans was pretty silly too; but the frypans were all she’d been able to find, and they were making the cooking of her mother’s famous spaghetti bolognaise excruciating.
She had missed her family dreadfully this past year, especially her mother. They’d all been supportive when she had taken twelve months’ leave from her job at the Department of Agriculture and convinced Patty to put her nursing career on hold to head off on this road trip. After drinking and partying their first few weeks up the Kidman Way and over the border into Queensland, they’d scored a couple of jobs on Johanna Downs, a small cattle station by Queensland standards, owned by an elderly couple, Stan and Betty Johnson. There, under the tutelage of Stan and his old stockman, Harry Bailey, they’d learned all about being a ringer – mustering cattle day after day, working horses, helping with fencing, fixing windmills and pumps. They’d loved every minute of it.
Unfortunately, after only six months the Johnsons had sold their property to the owners of neighbouring Ainsley Station, which had absorbed the smaller place. Stan had negotiated for them to be taken on by the new owners, but there had been only one ringer’s position and Bella had lucked out. So now her regular job on Ainsley was to mow the acres of lawns, and care for the island gardens scattered around the buildings on the cattle property.
But not a cook.
Never
a cook.
This whole kitchen job stank of her boss, Siobhan Davidson’s petty mindedness. The station manager’s wife had taken a dislike to Bella soon after they arrived. Patty reckoned Siobhan had Bella pegged as trouble, which was weird since Patty usually held
that
title. What sort of trouble Bella had no idea, but if she’d known she would definitely have caused it. She couldn’t stand people stomping on her for no good reason.
This weekend, Siobhan had worked it so Bella was the relief cook, which meant she exchanged her Akubra hat, sunshine and mower for an oven, Mixmaster and an apron with pink tits on it. Jimbo, the usual cook, had a lot to answer for in his choice of kitchen attire. What was Siobhan – who was supposed to relieve her own staff – doing?
