The last pages, including notes

Ross had taken to teaching like a duck to a country dam, full of noise, splash, and a sense of destiny disguised as play. The classroom, to him, wasn’t a box for rote and regulation. It was a living, breathing organism, part chalk dust, part imagination, part controlled rebellion. He refused to let it sit still.

Of all places in the wide, bustling world of classrooms and chalk dust, Ross was to commence his “in-school practical training” at none other than Drummoyne Primary School. The irony was not lost on him. Drummoyne, where the streets smelled faintly of laundry and the river whispered of lazy afternoons. His days at Drummoyne though were locked behind the steel gates of the orphanage. And here he was, about to navigate the labyrinthine politics of pencils, playgrounds, and primary-level pandemonium just a few hundred metres from the very place.

All to the tune of ‘Click go the shears’ 1966 was the year Australia woke up and found its pockets lighter and its world tilting slightly off-centre. Decimal currency arrived with a bureaucrat’s grin and a popular Australian shearing song to promote it, but in the shearing sheds and public bars, it was still pounds, shillings and pints that measured a man’s worth. The old hands refused to speak in dollars. “Bloody decimation,” they’d growl, rolling the new coins across their palms as if they were counterfeit tokens in someone else’s country. “Shoulda left the decimal coins until all the old people died” some wise old punter had said. “Alright for the young fella’s”

Finally, Monday morning. The town yawned itself awake, and Ross was already standing at the brass-handled doors of Goldsborough Mort & Co., looking as if he’d been waiting there since Federation. The clock struck nine with a sense of ceremony that the rest of Echuca didn’t share. He stepped inside to find that the world of commerce smelled faintly of tobacco, ink, and smugness.

Indeed, it was a vision, scary and surreal, as Ross slowly opened his eyes. The room swam into focus, whitewashed walls glaring, faint scent of antiseptic pricking at his senses, and the persistent beeping of something that probably wasn’t a church bell.

“Good afternoon…hellooo…”

Ross muttered under his breath, certain he was still trapped in some fevered dream or nightmarish sequel to his droving adventures.

The first man Ross met who knew sheep the way a gambler knows odds was named Arthur “Blue” McInnes, though his hair hadn’t been blue for thirty years. It was the washed-out silver of an old coin and framed a face that looked like it had been carved out of leather, then left on a fence post for a few seasons.

Ross found him at the Echuca stockyards late on a Wednesday afternoon, sitting astride a gate, smoking a cigarette that had gone out halfway and never been relit. He wasn’t watching the sheep so much as judging them, the way a priest sizes up a congregation and knows who’s sinned before the first hymn.

Unlike Clancy, who had apparently “gone to Queensland droving” and vanished into the dust and legend, Ross Cooper was charting his own curious version of a bush ballad. The difference was that Ross had never so much as held a stockwhip or sat a horse that wasn’t bolted to a carousel. But he did have a restless itch and a tendency to act on whims disguised as divine revelation.

1963 Australia hummed along with its peculiar blend of promise and absurdity. Sir Robert Menzies, unflappable, eternal, and utterly convinced of his own indispensability, remained at the helm as Prime Minister. If he were to win the election on the 30th of November, as everyone seemed to assume he would, it would mark his seventh successive term. Seven! Ross, polishing a glass behind the bar at the Royal, couldn’t quite imagine anyone staying in one job that long, let alone steering an entire nation.

Meanwhile, the motor vehicle industry kept the nation distracted. Holden released the EH to replace the trusty EJ, proudly boasting its new “Red Engine”, a marvel of Australian engineering and a car that promised more torque than tact. The Valiant S model arrived on these shores as well, flexing its muscles, trying to wrest attention from Holden and the mighty Ford XP Falcon. Ross had never been particularly interested in engines; he preferred a well-poured pint over horsepower, but the boys at the bar found endless delight in arguing over which car would get them out of a scrape faster.

Cricket was, of course, never far from conversation. Australia hosted the Ashes, and Richie Benaud, Captain, bowler, commentator, and general force of nature, held the nation in thrall. On the football fields, Saint George Dragons clawed their way to an eighth consecutive premiership, a feat so improbable it seemed as though the universe had simply decided to reward them for sheer persistence. Hawthorn, not to be outdone, claimed their first-ever premiership, toppling Geelong and causing celebrations that echoed all the way to the Royal Hotel.

That night, Ross sat at the kitchen table of his rented cottage with the cigar box open in front of him like a treasure chest from a parable gone wrong. The money was spread out in loose piles, crumpled, mismatched, some of it still sticky from the envelopes, all of it whispering to him in the soft rustle of freedom. He’d counted it twice already and still didn’t believe the number. Enough to buy a house. Enough to buy a business. Enough, he realised slowly, to buy a new life.

He leaned back in the chair, the lamplight turning the smoke from his cigarette into a shimmering halo. The idea arrived the way a hymn does, quiet, then building, then suddenly everything. The Royal Hotel.