Pegs

Female | 20s | 5 to 10 minutes
Starts on page 146

EXTRACT: I was pregnant, we'd had a dud wheat crop, terrible season, plus the fuckin' interest rates. We'd borrowed to do some fencing that had to be done. When the wheat crop failed we'd had to borrow more. Then Jock carks it. Toby went for weeks without talking. He was like a zombie. We fought. I belted him in an effort to get some response out of him. It's pathetic. Here I was, eight months pregnant, belting into him. Dunno what the fuck I thought I was doing. When Toby's in one of his silent moods, there's only Artie...

Adult language, Adult themes

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Toby

Male | 30s | 3 to 5 minutes
Starts on page 140

EXTRACT: I love that place...riding out on that stupid mongrel of a horse, just me and the dogs...so peaceful and so, I dunno...at times it's even...(beautiful). Flat and dry to everyone else but to me it's...All the pasture we've put in, all the clearing, the hours we dragged rocks and shit away, ploughing, 12 hour shifts getting bogged and I feel...proud. Because it's our country, it's Murray country. Wherever I look I see the old man and my grandfather and his father and I think of them clearing all that scrub country. I look at the big scribbly barks, river oaks

Adult language, Adult themes

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Milo

Male | 30s | 5 to 10 minutes
Starts on page 138

EXTRACT: He was a great bloke your, old Jock. Taught me heaps. I'll never forget one day. I was mustering with him. We were moving this mob, about a thousand all told, towards this paddock wed kept specially. We were pretty pleased with ourselves because we reckoned we'd got through. It was getting' late and there was one of those sunsets beginning which make your hair stand up on end. I was day dreaming about going to town and getting on the piss. I remember leaning forward to stroke my horse's mane when I noticed all the sheep heading...

Adult language, Adult themes

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Toby

Male | 30s | 3 to 5 minutes
Starts on page 137

EXTRACT: Well like the rest of us he's been struggling. Had to borrow more, was encouraged to borrow more, and...well, the place was going down the mine. You know the story. Interest rates, wool prices, petrol prices, etc etc. Anyway Billy told me that he'd had the word, that he'd have to sell. I mean, that's a family like ours. Four generations. A lot to let go. He told the banks that if they foreclosed, if they tried to force him off he'd...it'd be over his dead body. Well that sort of thing doesn't worry a figures man, does it?

Adult language, Adult themes

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