Outback Corporation - 10. OBC Chapter 10

I sat at the base of a euclyptus tree at sunset, on one of the far reaches of the station, settling in for a rare night alone. As my 28th birthday was fast approaching, I realised that I was so much like my father, working long hard days on the stations, with a huge responsibility on my shoulders since I was a young age, and I enjoyed every moment of it, and it’s been 9 years now since I have taken over running the family business.

It didn’t seem that long ago that I was in Canada enjoying my first ever white Christmas, but since then I have travelled back to Canada every second year to spend Christmas with Dad and his new family. Over the years my family have joined me in my bi-annual travels. I continued to run the two pastoral companies from my home at Pondana Station, and somehow through all the droughts, floods, cyclones and fires, we managed to survive and continue to grow.

As the wild nightlife came to life, announcing their presence with sounds, my mind drifted back through the years…

A year after my first trip to Canada, I met Natasha Henderson, a city girl born and bred. She was orphaned at a young age and was mostly brought up by her only living relative, a great aunt on her mother’s side. While she was working as an administration assistant for a mining company, she attended a rodeo in Kalgoorlie,where she met and fell in love with a (handsome, her opinion) young man. She had no idea who I was and where I lived.

When she realised who I was, she was not sure if she wanted to get involved in man who spends a lot of time in the real outback of Western Australia, but slowly I convinced her to come and spend some time on the station. First, with just weekend visits, and eventually during holidays, were she began to love the lifestyle of remote outback living.

Just 18 months after we first met, and just a month before my 21st birthday, we were married on the station, with dad and his family travelling back home for the wedding. All my uncles and aunts and their families also travelled to attend our wedding.

It was at the reception afterwards that we announced that we were expecting our first child in 6 months’time, which was and another excuse to celebrate, which our family has always enjoyed doing, especially when it is a big barbeque lunch or dinner around the homestead. It was during this family get together, that Dad and I sat down for an executive meeting to discuss how business was going. Dad mentioned that with the assistance of the hovercraft that I had purchased for him, he was able to develop a business just from providing a ferry service up and down the river. I smiled at the memory.

He went to tell me they had widened the laneway from the river to the sheds, and turned one of the river front paddocks into a guest retreat, with the construction of three small chalets, with plans to expand more once the finances can allow it. After dad had explain all this, I immediately offered to assist with finance for the project, I could still hear his voice “Kes, I’ll only accept if you become a 40% shareholder.” I gladly accepted.

Once we had worked out the nuts and bolts of how it was going to be structured and operated, we spent the remainder of the time with the rest of the family, forgetting about business for the time being, as it was very rare now for the whole family to be together. By the end of the year, not only did dad have another 6 chalets built and operational, but he had also purchased a number of other small farming properties and developed them into tourist accommodation retreats.

Dad and I were on the telephone talking business at least once a week, especially when dad established a new company to be known as Silverton Canada Corporation, of which Dad and his partner are the main share-holders and I have 40% shares. I continued to assist with financing major projects over the years, to allow the business to grow.

For the next 6 years not only had my dad’s business in Canada continue to grow, with now 8 properties totalling 4,000 acres, but the same was happening at home, with me purchasing another 3 stations in the far north east of the state, with the nearest town being Halls Creek, where temperatures can easily reach over 50 degrees Celsius in the shade. Nicholson Station located right near the border to the Northern Territory, also Flora Valley Station, and Gordon Downs Station; in total another 3.8 million acres of pastoral country, and in some of the harshest countryside in the whole nation.

During the first few years of me taking over the business from my father, I had to struggle, working very long hours, a lot of it spent out in the paddocks alongside my staff, often camping out under the stars for a few days as we worked on maintaining the property fences, water supplies and checking the stock. That is I am doing as I reminisced. I sipped my water and continued with memories…

Over the next six years, our family continued to grow. Natasha never complained about the life on the station, growing to love the station as much as I did. She had given birth to 4 healthy sons, and she was hoping with this pregnancy, she would finally get a daughter out of one or both of the twins that she was carrying.

This time instead of an easy pregnancy like she has had in the past, this one was continuing to be difficult. She had to make regular trips to see her doctor in Kalgoorlie every month, ever since she learnt she was pregnant again.

A month before the twins were due, Natasha woke up in the middle of the night in extreme pain, and I didn’t hesitate to contact the RFDS for urgent assistance. Within a few hours she was resting comfortably in hospital, as the doctors made a whole stack of tests to check how she and the twins are, and I remained on the station, worrying about how she was all the time…

A small smiled graced my mouth at the memory of my Uncle Chris deciding that I was totally useless on the station and packed a suitcase, sending me to Kalgoorlie to be with my wife, leaving him and Daniel to look after my four sons, Bryce – 6, Toby and Isaac – 4 and Micah aged 2.

My smile disappeared as I remembered more… After a worrying two weeks in Kalgoorlie, and at theinsistence of the doctors, I had gone to do some shopping to try and relax. I had only been gone about an hour, when I received a call from the hospital, informing me that I am to come back to the hospital straight away as there are some complications.

By the time I arrived I was informed that Natasha has gone into to labour and that there is some internal bleeding, so she was being rushed into surgery. I anxiously waited in the surgical waiting room to hear any more news.

Nearly two hours later, I was informed that I have two healthy sons, but he told me that Natasha was in a critical way, having lost a lot of blood. The surgeons were doing the best they can to correct it. I thanked him and informed the doctor of the pre-selected names of Evan and Preston,

Two weeks later I was holding both newborn twins in my arms, as we were saying our final goodbyes to Natasha as she was being laid to rest at the family cemetery on the station, my world had collapsed when I had been told that Natasha had suffered from too much blood loss and died in surgery.

Some family members quickly travelled into town to be beside me, and from then till the day of the funeral it was all just a blur, I did not remember one day from the next as I tried to understand why I had lost my beautiful wife, the mother of my wonderful six boys.

Although I was assisting with the daily task of bringing up 6 boys without a mother, Chris and Daniel had taken over most of the responsibilities of running the two companies, it was almost a year later before I eventually snapped out of my shattered world. When the youngest twins turned one year old, I realised that I could no longer lock myself away from my responsibilities, not only as a single parent but also the CEO of two large pastoral companies, consisting of 15 cattle stations, totalling 23.9 million acres.

From that point on, I was back to working long hours, but I was making sure I spent plenty of quality time with my 6 boys. I now have all of my uncles and aunts living and working on the family stations, Christine and Hamish and their family, along with Amos & Juliana and family, were now managing the three stations in the Kimberly District, while Mark and Tristan and family along with Nadia and Carson and family are now managing the three stations in the Interior District, and Jonah & Antonia and family along with Chris and Daniel are assisting with managing the Nullabour District stations, making it a full-on family operated business.

As well as the stations, the NPRPA - Nullabour Plains Region Pastoral Association was still going strong, and although the NCoST – Nullabour Collage of Station Training had closed down, what has formed instead is the NPGS – Nullabour Plains Grammar School, situated near the natural water spring where my dad’s favourite camping place is located, the school consists of students from the main private schools in the district who elect to take up farming or station work as their future, and elect to do their final two years of studies at NPGS.

The school has a total of 80 students, with 8 cottages each consisting of 5 twin bedrooms to accommodate the students and an adjoining living quarters for the house supervisor/teacher, each student bedroom has its own bathroom, which the students are responsible for keeping clean and tidy, as well as their rooms.

The school itself consists of 8 large roomy classrooms that are octagonal shaped buildings; two more simular shaped and sized buildings, the first consist of the staff lounge, admin office and teacher offices, while the second one has the school library, computer room, and study lounges, another 4 more cottages have accommodation for administration and general staff.

The daily routine on week days is a 5.45am rise, with breakfast at 6am, and the first of two classes, starts at 6.30am out in the paddocks, with each class lasting for 1 ½ hours. At 9.30am there is a 30-minute rest break, including morning tea, before class room lessons start at 10am, and the lunch break is at 1pm for an hour, with an hour of rest following, to allow for most of the heat of the day to pass.

At 3pm the third classroom lesson for the day commences and this is followed by the final outdoors class at 4.30pm, and ending at 6pm with dinner served half an hour later. Although it is a tough routine, it is designed to build up the student’s stamina for hard work, both in the classroom and outdoors. On the Saturdays there is two outdoor classes starting at 6.30am, and ending at 9.30am. After morning tea there is sport and recreational time till lunch time, with the remainder of the day as free recreation time, as is all day Sunday.

Each class room has a maximum of ten students, with two classes for year, and there, are two teachers for each of the 4 main subjects, that being English & Social Science, Mathematics, Environmental Biological Science, plus Agricultural & Animal Science, with other studies include Computer studies plus basic Business Administration Management.

I was pleased that this was doing very well, with the support of the private schools in Kalgoorlie, Esperance & Albany, making this an extension campus to their schools, and in the four years that it has been operating there has been a 100% occupancy of places available for students, plus there is a waiting list of students wanting to be part of the NPGS experience, and I was going to make sure that my boys would be a part of that when they reached the age to enter the school.

The 3 oldest boys were doing very well with their distance education studies, while the 3 youngest are just been toddlers, creating havoc where ever they go, which kept the family going all the time trying to keep up with their mischief and antics, but I wasn’t going to miss any of it, as I was now spending a lot more time closer to the homestead, allowing my staff to take on more of the outdoor work.

It was hard to believe that my younger cousins were growing up so fast, Hannah the oldest is now 19 and is in Perth studying Law at University. She was one of the first to enrol into the newly formed Nullabour Plains Grammar School, and was the first Dux of the school. Her brother – Joseph and cousin – Mitchell are both 17 and currently in their final year at NPGS, the remaining three younger cousins are also enrolled to attend the school, two of them entering next year and the last one two years later.

As the night canopy of stars shone bright it was time for me to settle into my bedroll and sleep. Tomorrow was another day and I had a large business to run, 6 sons to bring up on my own, thankfully with the support of my family. There was also my involvement in my fathers’ business from a distance.

In the 9 years that I have been in charge of the two companies, I have been getting annual reports from the family accounting firm, who have been informing me of how the businesses are going. Amongst the information I received, was what my net worth is each year, including with the 40% shares in the Canadian company, and for each year my net worth has been increasing on an average of 14%

Now the latest report, states my net worth has gone up to a staggering $330 million, which was quite a shock for me. I decided to travel to Perth to have meetings with the family accountants and lawyers, which I have decided to start doing from now on instead of just regular telephone calls and emails.

When I returned from my trip, I informed Uncle Chris of my plans. Once I had finalised meeting dates with the two companies that I needed to see, I started organising the trip. A week later, after a long drive to Kalgoorlie and the train trip to the capital city, I went to the hotel where I had booked an executive suite for my stay. I had also organised a vehicle to lease for the time I am in the city, which was no more than four days.

After I had settled into my suite, I decided to take a walk through town before it got too dark, as I had been sitting down for the past day with all the travelling. After a relaxing dinner in the hotel restaurant, I retired to my suite for the evening, as I wanted to be well rested before my first meeting at 9am the next day.

I had two meetings scheduled for the first day, one with the Accounting firm and one with the law firm in the early afternoon, and the rest of the day I am free. I had a second meeting with the accounting firm at 11am the following day, and another meeting with the law firm at 9am on my third day in the city, with plenty of time to rest, relax, and even do some sight-seeing.

The first day seemed to pass very quickly, and I was soon enjoying a nice lunch at a classy restaurant in Kings Park, where there was a magnificent view of the city, the Swan River and South Perth. As I stepped out of the restaurant, I made my way down one of the many scenic paths in the park, I had this feeling that I was being watched, but I couldn’t see anyone looking at me when I stopped to look around, and so I continued with my walk.

Once back at the hotel, I contacted Pondana to see how things were going back home, and the boys said they were missing me terribly, and they kept asking what I would bringing back for them, which made me smile. After a short afternoon nap, I sat in my suite reading a book, which I hadn’t done I quite a while before deciding to take a short stroll around the block before dinner.

As I was taking my early evening walk, I had that feeling that I was being watched again, and after a few attempts to try and spot if anyone was actually looking at me, I decided that it was best to return to the hotel. Just after I passed a laneway I heard a noise and began to turn around to see what it was I was suddenly grabbed and a hessian bag was thrown over my head and knocked unconscious. When I eventually came around, I had no idea how long I had been out for, as I looked around I could see I was in some bare room that was dark, dusty and smelled of mildew.