Shearers' Motel Read Online Free PDF

stood ready at the side of the stove. Tonight’s menu: fried sausages, potatoes to be served either hot or cold, tinned beetroot and sliced tomatoes on the side. Should he open the five-kilo tin of Gee-Veepickled cucumbers he’d brought? These were the big questions now. He was no longer a small-time primary producer or a writer selecting phrases with care and frustration. He was Cookie peeling onions with even knife strokes.
    There had been another time in his life when he had stood in a kitchen deciding what to do. It had been almost twenty years ago. He had never cooked until then, except for throwing steak in a pan or peeling a hunk of salami and munching it with bread and cheese while tossing back a beer, a novel or a book of poems propped on the table while he ate. Sharon had done the cooking until then. But then they had their first daughter and he began experimenting with recipe books in the long evening intervals before the baby slept. Close to midnight, the table would be spread with Indonesian or Italian food from Cheap Dishes of the World and Continental Leftovers . Over the years, he had continued this way, doing much of the household cooking. That way he escaped the washing-up. That way he ate when he was hungry. He prided himself on his abilities as an improviser and considered writing a book, A Man’s Book of Scraps . But he had never been tested till now. He had never cooked the sort of food he had been brought up on: Australian food, it was called — meaty, barley-thick, soapscud-grey soups; stringy roast legs of mutton and coarsely baked potatoes; thick yellow custards and heavy steamed puddings.
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    Over among the trees a tall, dark-haired woman in jeans and a T-shirt dropped to the ground from the cab of the truck and directed the caravan into position. The sound of the truck engine died, a second figure dropped to the ground. This must be Barbara and Davo, the married couple. Clean Team Alastair Crown had mentioned them when he first spoke about the job. (‘The shearers are Maoris,’ Alastair had said on the phone. ‘But they’re good blokes. Four shearers, two girl rouseabouts. Then there’s a woman classer and her husband. Fine young couple — Davo’s the presser. Only eight to cook for in all, ninecounting yourself. A small team, a good start, they’ll make allowances.’)
    The sun poured heat on the western side of the quarters. It was unremitting, even at five-thirty. He kept working, ramming the stores away in the boxes they came in, wedging them into corners of the kitchen and shoving them behind doors. Sorting through their contents might have been like Christmas if it wasn’t for the hurry, the panic, the numbness he felt. Oranges, cauliflowers and pumpkins went into the empty fireplace. He worked in a space that looked like a freight office after a train smash. Jars of jam, cans of baked beans, spaghetti, creamed corn, pie apple, tinned fruit, stacks of toilet paper, packets of steel wool dumped where they fitted. Bottles of chilli and garlic sauce. It was a jumble, but he intended to get properly organised soon — maybe in the cool of the evening, maybe the next day. He still had that hope.
    Another glance through the window. The new arrivals were setting up camp, erecting a striped awning over the entrance to the caravan, putting out a picnic table and canvas chairs. Now they were sitting in the shade and drinking beer.
    Suds slid from the washing-up as he clattered it through onto the draining board. Finished. Done. Plates sparking clean. He pulled the plug in the sink, dried his hands, watched dirty water spurt into the bone-dry sludge drain outside the window under the drum boiler. On a Formica-topped folding table at the far end of the kitchen near the pantry he dumped an armload of loose items: sauces, sugar, spices, pickles, Alfoil, Gladwrap, cooking oil. On the floor under the table he placed a twenty-five-kilo bag of