The Winter Road Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE WINTER ROAD

  ‘Compellingly told, shattering in its reverberations, The Winter Road is a story for our times – a battle that is being fought the world over as we try to find a better way of managing the land and respecting the forces of nature that sustain us.’

  —Isabella Tree, author of Wilding

  ‘This book is a major contribution to the canon of Australian land and social history: a bedfellow with Francis Ratcliffe, W.E.H. Stanner, Tim Flannery, Bill Gammage and Bruce Pascoe … Its power is in exposing a hidden, suppurating sore in the psyche of our nation.’

  —Charles Massy, author of Call of the Reed Warbler

  ‘Holden brilliantly telescopes centuries of history and law into fatal conversations at a farm gate. As one man stalks another on a winter road, the whole psyche of modern Australian settlement comes under trial. An enthralling and disturbing tale told with deep insight and compassion.’

  —Tom Griffiths, author of The Art of Time Travel

  ‘This is a special book, and I cannot thank Holden enough for writing it.’

  —Anna Krien, author of Into the Woods and Night Games

  ‘Holden finds the epic thread in this crime.’

  —Chloe Hooper, author of The Tall Man and The Arsonist

  ‘An incredible writer.’

  —Books+Publishing

  ALSO BY KATE HOLDEN

  In My Skin: A Memoir (2005)

  The Romantic: Italian Nights and Days (2010)

  Published by Black Inc.,

  an imprint of Schwartz Books Pty Ltd

  Level 1, 221 Drummond Street

  Carlton VIC 3053, Australia

  [email protected]

  www.blackincbooks.com

  Copyright © Kate Holden 2021

  Kate Holden asserts her right to be known as the author of this work.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior consent of the publishers.

  This work was drafted on the Dharawal land of the Wodi Wodi peoples, which was never ceded. The author acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. The author pays respect to their Elders past and present, and extends that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.

  9781760640361 (paperback)

  9781743821671 (ebook)

  Cover design by Mary Callahan

  Text design and typesetting by Typography Studio

  Author photograph by Darren James Photography

  Dedicated to the dispossessed, to the dismayed and to the defenders

  And to my brave and clever Tim

  The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying ‘This is mine’, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: ‘Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.’

  —Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1754

  We could say well that the settlement of these plains saw a tragedy which arose from both sides being true to their natures.

  —R.J. Webb, The Rising Sun: A History of Moree and District 1862–1962, 1962

  Why did the man cut down the tree? Because it was there.

  Why didn’t the man cut down the tree? Because it wasn’t there.

  —Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton, The Treehouse Joke Book, 2019

  PROLOGUE

  The crunch of the ute’s tyres down the road. The sound of his breathing. His heart: he thought it would kill him. And his mouth was that dry.

  He had hoped the dark would hasten, for cover. He had been watching it coming: the dusk soaking down the trees, the shadows dissolving. They might make it, if only the winter dark could arrive. Robert Strange had heard the fear in Glen Turner’s voice, there in the shadows, crouched behind the ute. But he had also feared the dark because as it rose to hide them, Turnbull’s gun would begin to hurry.

  They were on Talga Lane, a broad dirt groove in the farming country heading east–west in the flat lands between Moree and Croppa Creek, in northwest New South Wales. The road went straight to the horizon. Lined with scrub on either side, and to the left and right, occasional properties, palisades of vegetation, and enormous quilts of cleared, cropped land.

  It was just before six o’clock. Knock-off time, nearly tea time. The road had been empty for the last forty minutes. Just Strange and Turner and Ian Turnbull, the two white utes, the brigalow scrub, the koalas and other little animals keeping quiet, the cloudless sky slowly lifting into the night.

  Then the raised gun. The quiet, urgent voices. The shots. The pleas.

  Now Turnbull’s rasping voice was gone and Turner’s panicked breath was gone and Strange could stop talking, stop this mad monologue to Turnbull holding the .22, saying we’re unarmed, we’re not here to hurt you, sir, please put the gun down, and to Turner, stay down, Glen, move up a little bit, Glen, move up, move, move, he’s coming; his mouth so dry he could barely get the words out and he needed to keep talking.

  There had been six explosions from the mouth of the gun.

  In the silence afterwards, Turnbull’s red tail-lights had grown small. The dark came down like a door, only a little light in the sky to the west.

  The tall scrub, the black grass, the man now lying on the earth with his head towards the trees. Such hush.

  Strange got in their ute and turned on the engine, trundling off the road to shine the headlights on the fallen man. He kneeled down next to Turner, who was still breathing, faintly. He got some water out of the car, took a mouthful and poured some over Turner. He talked to him. He said they were both going to be okay.

  Weak pulse. He rubbed Turner’s head. He poured more water over the man’s face. The water glistened in the white light.

  Turner, trees above him, earth beneath, receiving his blood. Strange, holding Turner. The men were bathed in a channel of light that bled across the rough grass. Behind, the scrub. Behind the scrub, the fields and the huge sky.

  Strange heard a vehicle approaching. He thought, He’s coming back. I’ve got no service and he’s coming back. Hang in there, hang in there, Glen.

  He let go of Turner. He ran out onto the road. If it wasn’t help, he didn’t want to see what was going to happen. In the winter dark, on the winter road, he closed his eyes.

  The car slowed, a solid young man behind the wheel staring at him. The man stopped, backed up. Strange said his colleague had been shot. Andrew Uebergang rang triple zero on his phone. He said to Strange, You have to talk, I can’t talk, handed the phone over with a shaking hand. Strange got into Uebergang’s white ute to explain and give directions.

  Far away in Dubbo, Strange and Turner’s boss at the Office of Environment and Heritage, Arthur Snook, was getting a call that Turner’s Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) had been activated. He tried Turner’s phone. He tried Strange’s. Tried again.

  Strange’s phone came to life. ‘Arthur, is that you? Arthur, Glen’s been shot, chase the ambulance, he’s bleeding badly.’

  ‘Where are you?’ Snook shouted down the line.

  ‘Talga Lane, Talga Lane.’

  The call dropped out.

  The ute driver said he’d go for help. His white lights swung away. Strange went back out to Turner. He pulled him to a sitting position,
cradling his head. Blood came out of Turner’s mouth, shining in the cold light of the headlights. He wasn’t breathing.

  Strange dropped him. Pressed his big hands against Turner’s chest. Pumped. Pumped. ‘Come on, Glen. Come on, Glen, you can’t do this. We’ve got to get home.’

  And he realised Glen was dead.

  Contents

  Part One: Trespass

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part Two: Murder

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Part Three: Inheritance

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  1

  The interior landscape responds to the character and subtlety of an exterior landscape; the shape of the individual mind is affected by land as it is by genes.

  — Barry López, Crossing Open Ground, 1988

  His name is Ian Robert Turnbull. A classic man of the district: iron-grey hair, barrel chest with great gripping arms, creaky legs from years on a tractor. A check shirt under a woollen jumper. Big tough hands of a farmer, the skin on the back of his neck creased by weather.

  He’s patriarch of the clan, with four sons and fifteen grandchildren. Been married to Robeena, Rob, for fifty-five years. He’s been a big man of the little town, given money when locals needed a hand, but kept out of the papers – nothing exhibitionist, nothing showy. Mates with everyone important, and the best lawyers. Began with one farm, and now look at him. Not afraid to think big, to think of his family to come. He’s travelled with the Australian Wheat Board, went to the United States twenty years back: much impressed by the large-scale farms there, the respect for the landholder, the rights of property owners, who aren’t told how to run things.

  His health as a child had been bad, with four bouts of rheumatic fever, inflaming the heart and its valves. But it didn’t stop him. He was the cheeky jackdaw in a kindergarten play. Won ‘best individual boy’ at primary school, snapped in a proud soldier’s uniform.

  His dad farmed a bit, around Inverell and Moree, but Ian grew up to work with wood. He was a carpenter and joiner, not a farmer. Then his chance arrived: a property came up for sale. ‘Yambin’ was on the slope above Croppa Moree Road, the slice of bitumen that linked the hamlet of Croppa Creek to the town of Moree. Later he bought little ‘North Yambin’, across the road from it. He got ‘Lima’ from Rob’s dad, along with ‘Buckie’; then ‘Wallam’, ‘Allendale’, ‘Erralee’, ‘Elgin’. And now ‘Strathdoon’ and ‘Lochiel’, next to each other on County Boundary Road. One of them is for his son Grant, and Grant’s a smart cookie; he’ll turn it to profit, like his other holdings. He’s already renamed ‘Lochiel’ to ‘Colorado’, stamping his mark. Turnbull helped Grant get started and now it’s grandson Cory’s turn, got him set up now too on the other block, used his own mortgage as a guarantee. He has four sons, though Doug and Sam don’t farm, and Roger – best not to talk about him. But Roger’s lad Cory is sound. So those two properties, they’re not really his, as such, just he has an arrangement with the boys.

  Between them, the Turnbulls have nearly 9000 acres of the best agricultural land in the country – the black soil of the Golden Triangle goes for thousands of dollars the hectare now. And to think it was all under scrub once. He might be seventy-nine and getting tired, but he’s going to see his family right before he goes.

  It’s all big wide monoculture fields around here. Mostly wheat and barley, but some chickpeas too. You can do anything in this soil; the country’s biggest pecan farm isn’t far, and there’s cotton to the west. Though Moree runs on artesian bore water, out this way, an hour east, there’s usually enough rain.

  A nice little place, Croppa: pretty creeks, and hills here and there. Only a few dozen people in the town itself, but more out on the properties, and it’s got the tennis and golf clubs, the little school, the general store. Australian flags on top of the cabs. Lawrence Tibbins’ collection of old farm machinery lined up right around a block. Now and then he gets them going – the kids help fix them up, and they even take the creaky old harvesters out into the fields to have a go. Turnbull is known for his quiet generosity – sending a heap of seed to a new farmer, lending his best dog to a muster, paying for a neighbour’s gravel and putting in to build the local nursing home; city kids screaming with delight on his tractor, clutching a special sample of sheared wool. Croppa Creek is less than a hundred years old but it’s doing better than a lot of little towns, and that’s thanks to the farms, the money brought in, the hard work people have done on the land for decades. The fields reach to the horizon – big, smooth blankets of gold. There’s a bit of scrub left on the fencelines and boundaries, of course, it keeps the wind off these basalt plains. But look at the place. It’s earning its living, and that’s thanks to people like him.

  The old Scott brothers owned ‘Strathdoon’ and ‘Lochiel’, just on the other side of the road from ‘Buckie’ and ‘Lima’, their whole lives. The blocks have been let go, half grown over with scrub since they were cleared a bit and grazed on back in the day. It was all grazing for a hundred years round here; then when Turnbull was young the scientists told everyone to plough and sow, and it was crops, crops, crops, while the Scotts’ blocks just sat there. Good soil waiting. Now, if he can get rid of the bloody scrub and get a tractor through with the seeds, those blocks will do well.

  ‘IF YOU PULL UP on County Boundary Road to the southern side of the property, you’ll hear the dozer,’ a man’s voice told him. Glen Turner knew what this meant. By the day of that phone call in June 2012, the compliance officer already had six months’ worth of files on the Turnbulls. His department, the Environmental Protection Agency, had written a letter advising the old man before he’d even bought ‘Strathdoon’ half a year before that he couldn’t clear without permission: ‘While the EPA fully expects that you will comply with legislative requirements, our aim is to ensure that you are fully aware of your responsibilities …’ They’d been warned he’d try. But the block was covered in native vegetation, and everyone knew it was probably protected by law.

  Turner had actually been out that way a fortnight earlier, inspecting another property near Croppa Creek. He’d seen a new crop planted on ‘Strathdoon’ and taken photos. After what he’d seen in February, March and April, it wasn’t really a surprise. The person who called in June had been in touch before, and he seemed reliable. Turner was busy, but he rang Ian Turnbull the next morning. If the dozers were running the previous day, they’d probably still be going.

  ‘Have you got some pimp out here reporting on us?’ asked Turnbull sharply. He had observed keenly how his neighbours had been treated by the regulators in the past. Small communities: not everyone respects the local ways.

  Turner told him about the anonymous tipster. Turnbull digested this. ‘You can come out,’ he said, ‘but I need forty-eight hours’ notice.’ As a compliance officer, Turner was used to this response. A lot could be cleared away in two days.

  Two days later, Turner headed out on the three-hour drive, picking up the quietly spoken ecologist Chris Nadolny to take along with him. The two had been on this case together from the start. On the roadside boundary the Turnbulls had left ten or so metres of fenceline vegetation as required, but the visitors could see immediately that more clearing had been done on ‘Strathdoon’ – all along the boundary with ‘Colorado’ and further into the property.

  County Boundary Road is unsealed, a pale tan ribbon grooved between wide grass verges and fences fringed with remnant scrub: brigalow, be
lah, box trees, smaller shrubs. The tree boughs arc towards the road, and the shaggy dark greenery is thick, but in places only a few metres deep. Native flowering shrubs wander towards the bitumen, and there are crags of prickly pear bedded in among the bush. Beyond are low fences.

  The entrance to ‘Strathdoon’ has a short driveway, then a double metal gate. The white four-wheel drive pulled in alongside the one already waiting. A tall, grey-haired man was standing by it. Turner and Nadolny got out and, not for the first time, the three men shook hands. Turner commented drily on the new work.

  ‘We’ve cleared,’ said Turnbull, meeting his gaze, ‘because this is prime agricultural country.’

  He acted as if he didn’t understand the problem. This was one of the last blocks still covered in scrub around here, he said. Though it was poor grazing country and had been eaten out by sheep, the soil was good under all that mess. It had had sixty or seventy years of brigalow on it, fixing nitrogen into the soil; in other parts of the country, you had to put the nitrogen in. It had just been let go. ‘Colorado’ next door had never even been rung – that is, the bark removed in a ring so that the trees died. Turner and Nadolny, gazing around, saw what they knew were remnant populations of protected species. But what Turnbull saw was, he explained with satisfaction, the last of the black soil.

  CROPPA CREEK, LESS THAN an hour from Boggabilla on the border between New South Wales and Queensland, is a speck of human habitation in a sea of vegetation. That vegetation used to be the grassy woodlands of brigalow and box and native grasses kept open by the Murri people of the Kamilaroi. Flinders, Kangaroo and perennials, which look dead in drought but revive after rain, flourished here. Edible herbs once grew between the clumps too.

  There are small hills and ranges to the east, and beyond them the mountains are visible, where Tenterfield, Glen Innes and other towns of New England brim the foothills of the Divide; further still is the coast where Glen Turner grew up, in Telegraph Point, among the warm coastal forests. Tamworth is hours to the southeast over tumbling hills; Narrabri and Gunnedah on the plains south are distant, too. There are little townships and localities sprinkled around, often based on former stations. On road maps the highways are scant red lines loosely strung across spaces, hours of driving between them.