Way Out West

I was recently interviewed on a Danish breakfast show and whilst the main topic was my holiday farm out in Charleville, the conversation briefly detoured into my personal life and my relationship with Dolores. I said as little as possible because I've always been cautious of opening the door on your private life but afterwards as we sat in a café in Nyhavn, Dolores suggested that perhaps I should write the story of how we got together.

"It might help to put some demons to bed and give you a fresh perspective."

*****

That's what I love most about Dolores. She seems to be able to drop these little pearls of wisdom without warning. I've heard similar advice over the years, albeit phrased differently but perhaps I was just feeling contented and a little more relaxed. However it's taken me the better part of three months to get around to writing this so without further ado let me fill in the background.

Prior to moving to Australia I had several images that would pop into my mind whenever I thought of Australia and in no particular order they were the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Uluru, Bondi Beach and some film footage of a woman on horseback herding cattle in the outback. The last one is the more poignant because although I don't know her name, she was the first woman I was ever sexually attracted to. That was in my last year at the Gymnasium, the Danish equivalent of Senior High. It took some time for me to come out and it wasn't out of shame, I was always the studious one who put studies before other things.

My name is Elke and I come from a fairly interesting family. My mother is a local politician in Aarhus and my stepfather is an energy consultant who travels frequently throughout Europe and Asia. It's an unusual match when you consider that my mother's politics are very left of centre and Jakob's are very right wing and conservative. I knew he was my stepfather very early in life and yet I can't recall having any great desire to find out who my biological father was and in fact mum did not tell me until I was sent to Afghanistan but more of that later.

For most of my youth I was in the centre because that was the safest place to be in our house, the arguments could become quite animated and as a result I developed a healthy sense of balance that has proved to be far more useful now than it seemed when I was younger.

My life took a distinctive turn however when I finally came out and admitted my sexual orientation, which was a relief to my mother but my father was somewhat bemused, because my girlfriend had just applied to join the army. In hindsight he was probably correct, I followed Birgitte into the army and not long after basic training we broke up when she found someone else. This left me on my own in a place where I felt almost at odds with everything around me and so I did what I usually did when I was feeling out of sync, I threw myself into studies in particular languages and computers. I was soon fluent in Farsi for the simple fact that Danish troops were in Afghanistan.

It wasn't until I was in Afghanistan however that I finally got in contact with Gunnar, my biological father and that was a matter of pure chance. It happened after our unit had been interviewed by a journalist and there was some dispute about photographs. Our commander was insistent that some parts of the base were off limits for photographers but he acquiesced to a few candid shots, one of which was a group photograph. I was at the front near the only other female member of our unit and it was that particular picture that went viral. It was hyped as an example of the Nordic model, which is what they like to promote around the world, equality in action or something like it.

Some two weeks later when I called my mother she had some news for me.

"I got a phone call from your biological father, Gunnar. He recognised you from the picture that was on the Internet."

The fact he recognised me wasn't so unusual, I'm very much a younger version of my mother with blue eyes, long blonde hair and the same heart-shaped face. What was unusual was the fact that he lived in a relatively isolated part of south-western Queensland, just outside of Charleville. Its one claim to fame being that it was the base for Cobb & Co who once made carriages, it has a museum dedicated to the carriage although I've only ever seen it once and that was enough.

To cut a long story short though, I called Gunnar from our base in Afghanistan and although it was a choppy conversation we connected on some superficial level at least, he was very much like my mother. He'd gone to Australia in the aftermath of the counter culture of the '70s and stayed, he had a cattle ranch in south-western Queensland and in the absence of cutting edge technology we reverted to email and snail mail. The latter was especially nice because he didn't just send letters, he sent whole packages, a variety of non-perishable foods, a magazine, a newspaper and some quirky little knick knack. He'll never know how much I appreciated these monthly packages because even though the items were fairly mundane they helped me survive my tour in country.

Despite his monthly packages though, Gunnar was very much opposed to the war, citing previous U.S wars that had been touted as building democracy. Whilst I agreed with him on some points I was still very much of the opinion that we were performing a vital function and yet even as we tried to keep a lid on the situation, it seemed as if no sooner as one fire was put out that we were en route to yet another fire. I look back on my time in Afghanistan with mixed feelings, the best intentions don't always produce the best results and whilst I can be proud of what we did accomplish, there is a part of me that wonders why our government, along with other governments, signed on so quickly to war in a country known as the graveyard of empires.

In hindsight I'm beginning to understand his opposition a little more clearly. Gunnar had the advantage of age and could recall a war much closer to Australia when the powers that be were obsessed with the Communist Domino theory. In this day and age it's the War on Terror and I was to understand the similarity after my return to Denmark. I'd thought that I had escaped relatively unscathed but PTSD is one of those conditions that emerges slowly and over the next six months I found myself withdrawing. One of the most dramatic moments occurred when I was out with my latest girlfriend, Helena and a car backfired. I threw myself to the ground, much to her shock and then amusement. It was only when I went to see a therapist that she told me I was most likely suffering from PTSD.

It was a shock to my system because I'd tried hard to deny that I was any different. Granted we saw action but due to the fact you're part of a tight-knit unit you feel somewhat justified in defending your actions. What came out of my sessions however was an acknowledgement that my time in the army wasn't good for my mental health and so I was discharged. It wasn't a dishonourable thing but it took me a while to adjust. One day you're in uniform and the next you're in civilian clothes and feeling very much like every eye is on you.

Gunnar died suddenly of a heart attack a month after I was discharged, which upset me and even my mother, despite the fact she and Gunnar had only been a couple for a few weeks around about the time I was conceived. What really knocked me for six though was the phone call I got from a lawyer based out in Toowoomba to inform me that I was now the sole owner of Forbes Rest, the farm Gunnar had bought years ago. I remember staring out the window at the grass outside and trying to reconcile this image in my head. I mean I got on well with Gunnar but I'd never been to see him, I might have recognised him in the street but we'd never met and yet here I was, the sole owner of his property.

Mother was a little hesitant at the time, she saw it as an opportunity to put some distance between Denmark and my struggles with PTSD, and a chance to find a new life even if it was a short term thing. On that matter however she's proved to be right on the first thing but when I flew out of Kastrup on a flight to Sydney I took myself and all my problems with me. At first though it really did seem as if I'd landed in the middle of paradise.

Sydney is a bustling metropolis built around the finest natural harbour in the Southern hemisphere even though it has a dark underbelly but even Copenhagen has its own secret world and I was barely there for two days before it was back to the airport for the two hour flight to Brisbane.

Prior to arriving in Australia I'd had little concept of distance, Afghanistan is larger than Denmark but we were constrained to Helmand province and so we didn't really understand distance. This country however was big and after landing at Brisbane I had to transfer to another terminal for the two hour flight via turboprop to Charleville. I remember staring at this antiquated plane and wondering out loud if I'd gone back in time. That feeling was heightened when we landed at Charleville airport, which is literally a dirt strip carved out of the flat scrubland with a nondescript terminal building, there was no airport security, no passport checks, and a total of two ground crew to attend to the plane.

The man who met me inside looked pretty much like one of those Crocodile Dundee or Steve Irwin types, right down to the hat and shorts. He looked me up and down for a full fifteen seconds as if trying to summon up some kind of welcome and then extended his hand.

"G'day, I'm Stan, welcome to Charleville."

"Elke," I shook his hand, "it looks pretty small from up there."

He turned as a woman with a dark complexion and black hair moved away from a vending machine and advanced towards us. I was immediately transfixed by her and not for her flawless features and lithe figure. She was wearing a flannelette shirt over a Motorhead tee shirt that was tucked into a pair of jeans, a pair of cowboy boots completed the outfit and yet amazingly enough she didn't appear to be sweating. I was wearing shorts and a tee shirt and I was still feeling the heat despite the air conditioning.

"This is Dolores, she lives in a dormitory on the property, she's our horse handler."

"Elke," I held out my hand, "pleased to meet you."

"Likewise," she took my hand, "we've been looking forward to meeting Gunnar's daughter after all this time."

I didn't quite know how to answer that one because I didn't know what Gunnar had been saying about his daughter but Stan was already moving towards the exit.

"Come on, we've got to get moving."

"How far away is the farm?"

"About an hour, give or take," he glanced at my bags, "we have to grab some food from the local supermarket. I tend to save it all up for one trip into town and do it all in one hit."

That was another thing I found hard to come to terms with, the isolation and dearth of facilities once you get past the cities, even the bigger towns have more than Charleville. It might seem a romantic place to be but as we headed out of town I was starting to wonder if this might not be the shortest holiday yet. I couldn't imagine anything living out here. How my father had managed it was beyond me and yet people seemed to survive, I'd been the subject of a few long looks as we exited the supermarket. The fact I was with Stan and Dolores had a lot to do with it because I was obviously not a tourist.

On the way out to the farm I did learn that Dolores was part Aboriginal although she seemed a little unwilling to specify a particular tribe, only that her mother's people had come from west of the Simpson desert.

"I'm not a traditional," she told me, "but grandfather is always saying my time will come."

"Well your grandfather is always welcome at the farm," I answered.

"He's not my grandfather," she lit a cigarette, "everyone calls him grandfather."

"So he's like a chief?"

"Something like that," she blew a cloud of smoke out the window, "I don't think even he knows what he is, but he takes the young men out walkabout. I been living at the farm since I was knee high to a grasshopper," she glanced at Stan, "since before Stan's time."

"Uh huh," Stan rubbed his stubble, "and I couldn't run the farm without her."

It was only when we pulled up outside the farmhouse an hour or so later that I finally recalled the woman in that documentary I mentioned earlier and it only happened when Dolores got out of the car and something in the way she looked triggered that particular memory. I stared at her for a few seconds and then realised I was staring and snapped out of it, hoping she hadn't noticed.

The farmhouse wasn't the only dwelling on the property. There was a barn, a shed, two dorms, the stable and an odd shaped building that Stan referred to as Gunnar's Folly. It was octagonal shaped and looked out of place behind the main house due to its shape and relatively small size. However, the building had three subterranean levels that were apparently blast proof.

"Gunnar spent a lot of time in Nimbin, a little country town in northern New South Wales, he must have smoked some quality weed down there because he came out with this belief that nuclear war was around the corner. The people in town thought he was nuts at the time, the Berlin Wall had been down for years and people were starting to think we might have world peace at last," Stan stepped inside the building.

"This was going to be his home and he planned to rent out the main house, but the place kept flooding and he kept pumping the water out," he moved to the staircase and peered down into the semi gloom.

"Eventually he managed to solve the flooding problem but by then he was starting to run out of spare cash and so it's just been left."

"He was going to turn it into a tourist attraction at one point," Dolores studied a spider crawling up a wall, "this country is known for having the dumbest tourist attractions, you'll drive a hundred and fifty kays out of your way to see a big pineapple or a big car on top of a pole and wonder why the fuck you bothered."

She leaned on the bannister and stared down at the next level.

"But maybe you've got a use for it."

I didn't have a use for it, but I was unnerved by the hairy spider inching its way towards her.

"Spider," I pointed.

"Oh don't worry about him," she reached up and let the spider crawl onto her hand, "this is Horace the Horrible, this is his house," our eyes met and she grinned.

"Sorry, we're used to them here. The big ones will give you a nasty bite but they're harmless, it's the little buggers you got to worry about."

And that was my first insight into Dolores, and considering my arachnophobia I was pretty taken by her ease around wild creatures and that supposition would only be strengthened over the next few weeks. Stan certainly wasn't exaggerating when he said he couldn't run the farm without her, she had a natural affinity with horses and cattle that had to be seen to be believed. She could drive a mob of cattle through a gateway without breaking a sweat. It took me six weeks to get used to the rocking gait of a horse and yet she never made me feel awkward. She had the patience of a saint as she lunged a horse with me trying hard to stay in the saddle. I fell off more than once but in true Danish spirit I got back on again and eventually I felt confident enough to ride on my own. My mother was amazed when I sent a video clip of me riding a horse, but now I have to do some paperwork so it's time to save this document and get on with it.

***

Okay I am back and it's been a hectic week. We had a steady stream of visitors and a rodeo, and that is a good start to this next part of the story of how Forbes Rest went from a failing cattle ranch to a thriving holiday farm.

This is cattle country and if you're not running cattle then you'll find it hard to make money, it's not for want of trying but Gunnar was always battling the odds and as I mentioned earlier, the money he threw into Gunnar's Folly had put a serious dent into the finances. This was put into perspective by Gunnar's lawyer who came out to see me a couple of weeks after my arrival. Dawn is a thirty-something, vivacious redhead who moved from Melbourne to Toowoomba just to put some distance between herself and her ex husband.

"On paper you're making a profit but Gunnar's eyes were always bigger than his stomach. The drought has sent quite a few farmers to the wall, he's only managed to stave off the inevitable by borrowing against his equity. This house was part of that."

"So I could lose the lot," I stared out at the endless horizon.

"If you keep going the way you are then it's only a matter of time."

"So, what do you suggest?"

"You can always sell up," she propped on her palm, "or you can do something entirely different with this place."

"Like what?"

"You're not that far from town, and you've got plenty of land. I'd suggest putting Gunnar's Folly to good use, you'd need to sell off quite a substantial proportion of your cattle and juggle the figures but you could turn this into a hotel."

"A hotel," I stared at her, "we're an hour out of town, a town that is so small I doubt it appears on Trip Advisor."

"Hear me out," she straightened up.

"You have horses and plenty of cattle, you turn this into a holiday farm. There's nothing like it in this part of the country, and that's your main selling point, Gunnar's Folly could be turned into accommodation and because you keep some of the cattle you've got some extra income, but your main income comes from tourists who want a taste of the outback without the drama of camping under the bloody stars. You can have air conditioning, wi-fi and all the mod cons inside but step outside and you're on a cattle station, it's a winning combination."

"A win win?"

"I've always hated that bloody saying," she smiled, "whenever someone says that to me I always think they're on the back foot trying to sell me a shitty deal and they think that repeating the same word twice turns it into a positive," she leaned back in the chair.

She had more to say of course over the course of the rest of the day and that night but by the time I drove her into town the next day, the idea had taken root because for all his crazy apocalyptic dreams, my biological father had actually laid the foundations for something more uplifting. Gunnar's Folly was still unfinished inside, but the basic wiring had been completed and it wouldn't take much to turn it into a motel.

It took the better part of six weeks to bring me around but my mind was made up when I had what they call a blue with one of the women in town. A blue I learned is an Australian name for a fight or an argument, funny name I know but at the time I was furious. It started when I let some of Dolores' people move onto the property, we had a couple of smaller sheds that been retro-fitted to make them into bungalows. Word got around town that I was letting Aboriginal people onto my land and one afternoon when I was outside one of the leading lights from the Country Women's Association turned up to lecture me on the rights and wrongs of living here.

Now I've got nothing against the organisation, met me be crystal clear. They do a lot of fine work for charity but like any organisation from any part of the political spectrum, there are a few bad apples lurking around. Jean was one of those apples, a portly middle-aged woman in a white dress with red polka dots. I thought she was taking her time about welcoming me because she took a picnic hamper from the back of her 4WD but I caught the disdainful look in her eyes when she saw Dolores and two of the women rubbing liniment onto a horse. I thought nothing of the look until she had a foot over the threshold of my door and then she took one last look over her shoulder and whispered in a conspiratorial tone.