North Star (11 page)

Kate took pity on Georgia, who was complaining she was too exhausted to walk after a weekend spent ripping up old carpet and digging in the garden, and drove part of the way. Kate left the car when the track all but disappeared in overgrown grass.

‘Where are we?' Liam asked, jumping at her heels like an excited puppy.

‘How much further?'

‘Not much further, George, almost there.'

‘Don't call me that!' the teenager muttered as she lashed out at some long grass in her path.

‘You used to like being called George.'

‘I also used to like to eat dirt, but I outgrew that too,' she snapped back, swiping irritably at a fly.

‘Oh wow! Mum, come and look at this!' Liam shouted from further up the overgrown track.

‘Be careful, mate. Watch out for snakes,' Kate called. It had been second nature to Kate and Jenny when they had wandered North Star as girls, but Liam and Georgia were city kids, not used to looking out for snakes in the long grass.

‘Oh gross, Mum, it's a graveyard,' Georgia moaned when they caught up to Liam. ‘You have the weirdest ideas about what you think is fun. This is just sick.'

‘Get over yourself, George,' Kate said, reaching the end of her patience. ‘This is your family history.'

The little cemetery was tucked away in a grove of eucalyptus trees, protected by the silvery guardians for the last hundred and forty-odd years. Carefully Kate edged around the heavy headstones, brushing away the dry grass that had grown around them. She began pulling the weeds from the graves as she went; they came out easily, and soon the place looked a lot better. She'd uncovered Jack and Ella's gravesite, the large headstone arched above the two graves, big enough to list the names of the entire family.

She found older graves too, sectioned off by rusty fences; some were single graves, some double, and the dates went back to the mid 1800s. This part of North Star had been out of bounds when Henry was alive, and an overgrown grave hardly compared to the fun of the waterhole, where she and Jenny had spent most of their time.

It was staggering to Kate that so much of her history was sitting right here on her property and these people were her family.

Finally she found the stone she'd been searching for. Harold ‘Harry' Campbell,
Taken from us too soon
. She pictured the happy face in the photo and wondered how she could find out what had happened to him. Maybe it was simply because she never knew this man had even existed, and was fascinated by the fact that she'd discovered him, that she felt compelled to search for answers, but something seemed to be pushing her, nudging her impatiently, to figure it out.

‘Who was Harold Campbell?' asked Georgia, curious despite herself as she watched her mother standing triumphantly in front of the gravestone.

‘He was Henry's twin brother,' said Kate. ‘He drowned when he was twenty-two.' Kate couldn't shake the feeling that somehow the event had been the beginning of Henry's slow demise.

Later that night, after both children had gone to bed, Kate sat down at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and her trusty notepad full of lists.

She needed to get serious about her future. Her single-parenting payment had ceased now she was the owner of North Star. She had too many assets to qualify for any assistance. The fact that you couldn't actually
eat
the land or pay the bills with it was apparently not enough of a reason to continue receiving an allowance.

Still, they'd been working hard on the garden over the last few weeks. It was now a clean, aerated and fertilised plot of fertile soil planted with an abundant variety of vegetables. Eventually she hoped to be able to supply the majority of the family meals with her own produce.

Just how she was going to support two children and pay for the electricity and other household bills, though, she had no idea.

She stared hard at her list of pros and cons for staying on North Star, clicking the pen in and out a few times as she thought. Keeping the place was a positive lifestyle change. There was less stress; the kids were making friends; and she had a support network she could count on in Jenny and Nathan.

The downside was that she had no income. Unless she made North Star a working property again. The idea stirred something in her, but she gave a small snort of derision. How on earth would she make
that
work? She didn't have a clue about livestock or farming. Did she really think that because she'd planted a few veggies and managed not to have killed them all in a week that she was up to farming on a large scale?

She almost laughed at an image of her following step-by- step instructions in a
Farming for Dummies
textbook as she tried to drive a tractor and castrate a bull. No, she knew her limits, and running something the size of North Star was way beyond those limits.

She supposed she could hire a manager, but where would she find a manager who would work for nothing? And for that matter, where was she going to find a nice bank manager who would give her a loan to restock the property based on a complete lack of farming knowledge and absolutely no way of paying it all back if it failed?

If she didn't sell North Star, Kate wasn't sure she could afford to actually live here. She thought about the possibility of selling off some of the property. Maybe she could offer Unterheinner part of the place? She brushed away her dislike of the man and any sentimental reasons to keep the property intact. She wasn't a farmer, and holding on to valuable land was of no use to her. Maybe she could ask around town for a job, although she knew the chances of finding anything were remote. With the limited number of businesses in Widgerry, the majority of them were family owned and run. She decided that the next time she was in town she'd look into finding out whether she could sell off some of the land. She might not want to sell to Unterheinner but she didn't have much choice.

On Sunday Jenny and Nathan came over for afternoon tea and Kate brought out the shoebox of photos and the old album.

‘Wow, is that Henry? Look how young he was,' Jenny exclaimed, pulling the album closer to her and flipping through it. ‘North Star used to be the finest breeding station around.'

‘What happened to it?' asked Kate. ‘I know Henry raised beef cattle, but I don't remember seeing any of these photos up around the house or hearing talk about prize-winning cattle. Look at this photo, it hardly seems like the same place,' Kate said, shaking her head.

The photo she was referring to had been taken from the rise, looking down onto North Star, showing the house, regal and grand, and the pristine gardens around it. A large marquee dominated the front lawn and a crowd of fashionably dressed people milled about, women in long flowing gowns, their pretty parasols shading their delicate complexions, and men in rather dashing-looking tuxedos.

‘If you ask locals they'll say it was the Campbell curse,' Nathan said in a spooky voice, before noticing his wife's disapproving glare. He gave Kate an apologetic smile and added, ‘But of course that would be just plain stupid. More than likely it was because he was never really a farmer, he never socialised with any of the other locals, it was like he hated the place. It was a miracle he managed to hold on to North Star at all.'

‘How could it have gone from this to what it is now in one generation?'

Nathan shrugged and scratched his chin absently. ‘He must have lost interest in running the place a long time before you came along. Plus, it's hard to make good decisions if you're never sober.' He picked up a photo. ‘I remember my granddad telling me stories about North Star. In its heyday it was the biggest place around. They say your great-great-great-grandfather brought over a breed of cattle that could be traced back to the purest line in England. There was nothing like them anywhere in Australia at the time. Cost them a fortune.'

‘Imagine if we still had them, all my problems would be over.' Kate sighed.

‘You know, North Star would be in an ideal position to get organic accreditation,' Nathan said, staring thoughtfully at the photos on the table.

Kate glanced at Jenny with a puzzled look on her face. Jenny gave a ‘no idea' lift of her eyebrows in reply.

‘Why would that be a good thing?' Kate eventually asked when it seemed Nathan wasn't going to elaborate.

‘Talking about that old bloodline the Campbells brought in got me thinking,' he said. ‘You know there's a fortune to be made in organic meat at the moment, selling it to the Japanese.'

‘You think I should put cattle back on here? You know I wouldn't have a clue how to run a property.'

Jenny frowned. ‘Look, Katie, don't take this the wrong way—I'm over the moon that you're here, you know that—but North Star is a very big property. Your grandfather got a lot of locals offside when he let this place run down. He rejected offers of help, he refused to sell, and it angered a lot of people that he let a place like this just rot away. Maybe you shouldn't completely dismiss the idea of selling.'

Kate felt the now familiar reaction rear up inside her. She didn't know why the thought of selling seemed to evoke such anger and disappointment in her. Perhaps it was the sense of belonging she was beginning to feel, the budding pride at having breathed life back into the old house.

‘I've been thinking about subdividing,' she conceded. ‘But it seems so . . . wrong doing that. I know it sounds absurd—I don't know the first thing about farming—but I feel as though I
should
be here.'

‘It was your home,' Jenny said logically.

Yet Kate's childhood should have been the very reason she'd never want to see her old home again. She had very deep emotions about that, which she'd buried a long time ago with no plans to excavate, and that was why this need to stay seemed so irrational to her.

An idea suddenly struck her. ‘Why don't you guys lease it off me and cash in on this market for organic meat?' she said.

Nathan and Jenny exchanged startled glances.

Excitement began to bubble up into her voice. ‘The other day I was joking when I told Matthew Unterheinner that I might turn North Star into a retreat, but the more I think about it, the more it doesn't seem like such a dumb idea.'

She glanced over and saw looks of suspicion and disapproval on her friends' faces. ‘Before you jump to any conclusions,' she said quickly, ‘hear me out. It wouldn't be a yuppie spa retreat with meditation and yoga and organic alfalfa sprouts. Just a holiday farm stay for families.'

Their uncertainty softened into something resembling interest and Kate ploughed on. ‘There's already accommodation—the old shearers' and drovers' cabins are still standing. They'll need some work, but at least they're upright. To start with they'll do—we can always build something better once we're up and running. Plus there are the rooms in the back of the house. If I refurbished those, I'd have different levels of accommodation, everything from romantic getaways to families and school groups. It would open up all sorts of different avenues.'

‘What's that got to do with us leasing the land?' Nathan asked.

‘Well, if I could find someone—say a couple who maybe lived next door and needed to expand their station—I could lease the land to them and that way my guests could experience a real live working cattle station. It'd be a win-win situation.'

Her two friends stared at her across the table. She could almost hear Nathan working out the logistics of it all in his head, while Jenny still looked startled, seemingly trying to come to terms with the offer.

‘That's a big plan,' Nathan finally said slowly. ‘It's a direction we've never really seriously thought about. Our place is as big as we can go, and frankly we can't afford to buy any more land outright, even if there was any available around here. You're sitting on the only viable land in the area. But to lease a place the size of this would still be out of our price range. I'm not sure you fully grasp the size or value of this place, Kate.'

‘Well, it's just an idea. Promise me you'll at least think about it.'

Kate let the matter drop at that, trying not to feel disappointed about Nathan's apparent lack of enthusiasm.

Later, she closed the front door behind Jenny and Nathan and gave a long sigh. ‘Sorry, house, I'm doing my best, but I'm running out of ideas here.'

The old place groaned as if in sympathy and Kate felt her heart grow heavy.

Later in the week, as Kate was helping Liam go over his spelling words from school, a four-wheel drive pulled up outside. Kate walked out onto the front verandah, puzzled by this unexpected visit from the Beaumonts.

Smiling a hello at Matt as he raced past her to find Liam, then hugging Amy before she went inside to see Georgia, Kate waited for Nathan and Jenny, her curiosity piqued.

‘Kate, we need to discuss something with you.' Nathan came straight to the point, and for a moment Kate's heart fluttered anxiously.

At the kitchen table, Nathan slid a folder of papers across to her and sat back, watching her expectantly.

‘What's all this?' she asked, opening the folder cautiously.

‘Well, if you're still serious about going into business we've been in to see our bank manager and come up with what we think might be a feasible plan.'

Kate began to scan the papers, too excited to concentrate properly. ‘Tell me, quick, this will take too long to read.'

‘Our plan is to lease North Star and get it organic accredited. We'll buy pure-bred Wagyu cattle and start breeding. It'll take a few generations to get the herd established, but the returns once we get there will be well worth it. We've made out a business plan with all the projected costs and outcomes,' he said, tapping the file.

‘Okay, dumb question, guys, but what is a Wagyu?' Kate asked.

‘It's a breed of cattle that produces a marbling effect in the meat. The Japanese are paying around two hundred bucks a steak.'

Kate's jaw dropped open in shock. ‘Two hundred dollars for a piece of steak?' She mentally tried to tally up how many steaks you'd get off one cow—even with her limited knowledge of the anatomy of a beast, the answer was
a lot
!

‘To get certified will take three years. There'll be inspections and audits and a whole lot of requirements we'll have to meet, but after three years we'll be fully certified and able to sell the Wagyu as certified organic, which is where the big money is.'

She could see by the tempered excitement in her friends' eyes that this was something they believed in, and they had obviously put a lot of time and effort into planning it. She picked up the proposal again and scanned the first few pages. As she reread a sentence halfway down the second page, she hesitated, then looked up at Jenny. ‘I don't understand this part—you want me to be your partner in this thing?'

Jenny gave an eager nod. ‘Basically, it says we'll give you an upfront payment to cover the costs of getting the farm stay up and running, and then take a ten-year lease on the land at a price we can afford with the option of renewing at the end of that time.'

‘But why the upfront payment—surely that's too generous?' Kate protested.

‘We had an evaluation of what we'd expect to pay for this much land,' said Nathan, ‘and, trust me, what we're offering is only a fraction of what you'd get if you advertised it for lease. So we want to make it clear that you are under no obligation to lease to us if you want to get a better deal. As soon as we start making back our money, we want to cut you in as a partner, with a fair value share that will offset the cheap lease we're suggesting. We don't intend to take advantage of you, Kate.'

‘The upfront payment is a way of taking the sting out of the lease price.' Jenny smiled gently.

‘Guys, I don't care about making money, I just want a safe place for my kids to grow up. Between the farm stay and the lease money, that's all I'll need to get by without starving. Let's do it!'

‘Good grief, woman, this is a monumental decision you're making. At least take a few days to think it over,' Nathan said with an exasperated shake of his head.

Kate rolled her eyes; she didn't need to think this over. She would trust these two with her life. She knew that whatever decisions they made would be the right ones. But to keep the peace, she promised them she'd read the proposal cover to cover and think it over before she made her decision.

Kate felt her eyes sting with unshed tears. Maybe, just maybe, everything was going to work out after all.

The smell of a roast cooking in the oven and the sight of Kate standing at the stove stirring a saucepan of thick rich gravy immediately made the children suspicious.

Liam sniffed the air and asked why they were having a fancy dinner if it wasn't anyone's birthday. Georgia, equally wary, stood in the doorway, arms folded, a guarded expression on her face.