Scott Moss

The air was cool and calm at the first light of dawn, but the blameless empty skies spoke of the oppressive heat that was to come.

Scott Moss was standing in the doorway of his shearing shed. Dust was dancing in the weak light, and he surveyed the scene with watery, red eyes. 

There had been no shearing for two years now. Dank, rotting wool gathered in the corners and around the chutes of the once pristine shed. Floorboards, polished to a burned amber by a thousand footfalls, both man and animal, now wore a thick coat of grease. Mouse droppings littered every beam. Dear old Mol would spin in her grave, Moss thought sadly. 

The Moss family had been prosperous sheep farmers, priding themselves on the quality of their Merino wool which would

grace the chests of many, and the fat lambs that were sent off to the saleyards. Scott himself, a quiet, careful stockman, cared for his animals and in return they produced well for him. His wife, Molly, had been a sensitive but strong country woman, right by his side both at home and out on the farm. They lived a happy life on the land, not without its hardships but generally peaceful. In September 1989 Molly had fallen pregnant, and the following year she delivered a healthy baby boy, Jacob. 

It was the summer of 1991 that their lives took an unpleasant turn. Jacob, a laughing, boisterous child, had been playing in the garden while Molly tended to a vegetable patch merely feet away. A piercing scream sliced the air and Molly span around to behold Jacob writhing on the floor, and a hissing, thrashing Eastern Brown snake flailing away across the grass. Her distraught screams brought Moss at a run, and he applied a compression bandage to slow the spread of the poison as Molly flew inside to ring for an ambulance. He tried his best – they all did. Jacob died in his father’s arms twenty minutes before the white van came hurtling up the dirt road. 

Molly was never the same. Turning inward, away from the world, she became a recluse. Barely speaking to her husband, she dutifully cooked dinner and washed sheets; slowly dying inside.

Day in and day out.

When Moss came upon her dead on the bedroom floor, five years later, the official diagnosis from the coroner’s office was a blood clot that had eventually found it’s way to her heart. He knew the truth. She had been dying since that sunny afternoon in 1991. It just took her longer than it took her infant son.

Life for Moss had continued, as it had an unpleasant way of doing. The sheep still needed to be tended. Machinery needed to be maintained. Fences needed fixing. He employed a young man from the village to help with the animal husbandry, in replacement of his lost wife and lost son.

His heart was broken, but life on the farm went on. He reduced his flock from over 3000 breeders in the Moss Family’s hey day, to a more manageable 500. And life went on.

Fast forward to 2018. Moss, now nearing 60 years, gazed down at his rainfall chart and summarised that this January had been the driest he had ever seen, and he had been recording the rainfall since he was ten or eleven years old, as is the way for a fourth-generation farmer. Little did he know, little did anyone know, that this was the forefront of a crippling drought, the worst that Australia had seen in over a century of weather records. As the months ticked by, the ground became harder and harder. The dust, ever present, became a red cataract blinding the sun in the sky. The sheep, accustomed to the lush pastures Moss had worked so hard to cultivate for them, began to suffer. The worsening drought tightened its grip on the country’s throat. The lack of nutrients caused breaks in the wool, making it worthless at the wool markets. The ewes themselves, underweight and lacking the vital nutrients, failed to fall pregnant. The few that did fall, died trying to birth them. The daily checks of the paddocks atop his steady horse, Paddy, became tours of the battlefield. This cursed ground hadn’t seen a substantial rainfall for over two years.

Moss turned his gaze to the sheepyards adjoining the shed. Once used almost monthly, for vaccinating, weaning, tagging and of course the twice-yearly shearing, they now stood empty and neglected. There had been no money to buy any treatments for the animals this year. Fly had ravaged the mob, the already depleted animals having nothing within themselves to fight off the infections. To the right, there was a meaningless pile of wool, bones, and blood.

Two days ago, Moss had loaded the last of his flock onto trucks bound for the saleyards, for someone luckier than him to buy for a pittance. The ewes too weak to survive the journey to Dunedoo had been slaughtered by Moss himself and now lay with lifeless eyes gazing at the lightening sky.

He had cried as he did it. 

Moss sat. His mind casting back to the letter that lay open on his wooden kitchen table. The bank had run out of patience, had heard enough of his reasoning and excuses.

They wanted their money.

Ofcourse, there was no money, so they would take the farm.

He cradled the Winchester .22. The steel was smooth and cool in his calloused hands. Hands that were once so strong and sure. These hands had latched a thousand gateposts, helped hundreds of ewes birth their lambs, caressed his naked wife, held his dying infant son.

Now, they shook.

The twin black eyes danced infront of his own. The world held its breath. The steel steadied. 

Cockatoos alighted, screaming, outraged at the noise that had disturbed their dawn dreaming. Under the tree behind the homestead, the old Kelpie awoke with a startled, half-swallowed yelp.

The tan Akubra, lovingly remoulded and repaired half a dozen times, fell to the floor.

Moss knew no more.