Jenny squeezed Greg’s hand, and I gave her a smile. “It’ll be a cold day in hell when I let some pen-pushin’ government idiot tell me what they will and won’t do with my land, and I sure as shit won’t let ’em tell you what they’re gonna do with yours.” Not by a long shot.” I tapped the table with my finger. “They’ll be expecting that and’ll simply tie us up in red tape until we can’t afford to stay.” I’d never seen him so resigned, like he was beat already. “They’ll just wait us out to bleed us dry,” Greg mumbled. What they’re proposin’ to pay us off with isn’t worth shit anyway.” “I don’t want their bloody money, not a goddamn cent. I had to unclench my jaw so I could speak. I reckon he was as happy as a pig in the proverbial when he got his letter.” His kids don’t want his place, and he can’t work it like he should. Greg’s eyes met mine, and he shook his head in disgust. Melville owned property to the north of Greg, and he was no friend of mine. I would defend his property like it was my own. And that was something I just couldn’t rightly let happen. No, the bloody government hadn’t declared they’d just drop a few hundred kilometres of pipeline through Sutton Station, but they did tell Greg they’d put it through his place. The thing was, I was really pissed about this. No one spoke for a bit, while we all let our tempers simmer down and our thoughts settle into order. “But the property they wanna run a pipeline through certainly does.” “The water don’t belong to anyone,” Greg agreed. “The Artesian Basin is an underground water supply that feeds half the Territory and Queensland into New South Wales, even South Australia. “It doesn’t belong to anyone,” Alan added. I stared at the letter on the table while chewin’ on my lip, tryin’ to think. “Seems the government can do what they please, love.” “They can’t just do what they damn well please.” So one phone call from him was all it took for Trav and me to be sittin’ there over a cuppa with our serious faces on. Greg had been a mate to my old man too, and he’d been the one to come help look for Travis when Trav’d found himself lost overnight in the desert.

They were the reason I was on the Board of the Territory’s Beef Farmers Association, and together the three of us were, apparently, the faces of Farming the Future in the Northern Territory. I was Greg’s closest neighbour to the west, and over the years, Greg and Alan had become both friends and allies.

Travis and I sat at Greg Pietersen’s dining table along with Greg, his wife, Jenny, and Alan, Greg’s neighbour to the north.

Imago by nr walker