Unfamiliar Territory

Chapter Three

"Wow," Mac smiled to herself as she thought of the UK retirees all jumping in their caravans at sixty-five. It'd be like August bank holiday every day of the week. "So can people camp at the homestead as well as stay in the house? There's enough space for them?"

Felix looked at her, pulling his lips into a restrained smirk, "Yes, there's enough space."

"How many visitors are you getting in say... a month?" Mac was trying hard to work out exactly what the problem was that had necessitated the urgent need for her to fly half way round the world when there was already a manager here, on site, and presumably doing a perfectly ok job.

"Umm... in the last twelve months, I think there have been, umm... seven," Felix said this figure so quietly Mac wasn't sure she'd heard right.

"Did you say seven? Or seventy?"

"Seven."

"Jesus! Why the fuck did it take you so long to tell Dad?" Mac felt the blood drain from her face. She wondered if her father really knew exactly how dire things were out here.

"Listen," Felix hissed into the mouth piece connected to his headset. His words rang inside Mac's ears, "I wasn't the one employed to run the business here after the last steers left Mackinley several years back, that was... someone else. My job has always been the manager of the property and the land. I called your father the minute I was left alone out here and he had no problem letting it sit quiet for months, using it as a tax write off, but then when the dry season came, and it was time to start looking for someone new, to get the business back up off its knees, well lets just say there wasn't anyone willing to take the job on."

"Not willing? Did you even conduct interviews?" Mac's head was spinning with questions.

"Of course I conducted interviews," he snarled, "You... you grew up in London, you have no fucking idea what it's like out here. Six months of the year we're lucky if we get a day of rain, then the other half a year we get so much of it the roads are closed and the only way in and out is in this. It's harsh out here Mac, there's no Starbucks, there's no nail salon, there's nothing. It's just you, and nature. There are very few, if any, people willing to stick around."

The vitriol in this last comment was so palpable Mac chose not to respond to it, deciding instead that she'd go back to looking out the window at the beautiful environment below. Felix had done such a good job of criticising it, she wondered if he'd been giving the same speech to the prospective candidates. After half a day with him, it was perfectly understandable why no one had wanted the job.

#

Giving him a while to calm down Mac waited until she knew they'd been in the air for a little over an hour before she spoke again. Taking the camera out of her handbag she asked, "Can you tell me when we're nearly there please? I thought I'd get some pictures for Dad."

"We've been over Mackinley for the last ten minutes," Felix began fiddling with the various dials and switches in the bank of instruments in front of him and Mac felt the plane begin a slow descent.

"We have? How bloody big is the place?"

"Exactly one million acres."

#

Doing the calculation in her head Mac worked out the size of the place to be just over four-thousand square kilometres. How the hell had her father managed to keep something so big, a relative secret for so long?

As the ground grew closer she turned as far as the safety belt would allow, leant against the side window, and began clicking away, "Is that Mackinley River?"

"Yep, but you might want to save some of that memory," he looked at the camera then nodded straight out the windscreen in front of them.

Just ahead, built right over the very edge of a red-stone ridge on the high side of the river, an enormous house came into view. The main section, a large square lowset stone home was flanked on all four sides by a wide wrap-around verandah. Leading off of this, a covered walkway joined the main home to a long, straight timber section that looked at one end to be almost suspended out over the river below. The entire property was surrounded by a carpet of perfectly manicured lush green lawn, and a mix of gum trees and palms provided some shade from, and a border to, the baked dry environment outside of the oasis.

Breathtaking was the only word that came close to the effect it had on Mac, and even that didn't do it the justice it deserved.

"Oh. My. God. Is that it?"

Felix glanced across at Mac, his eyes flickered over her illuminated face and pushing down the familiar stirring he'd felt the first time he'd seen her he nodded slowly, "Welcome to Mackinley River Downs."