On the Road Again

This weekend I'm in Gloucester for the Gloucester Writers Festival, then onto Canberra, Uluru and Sydney before heading south again to drive the 'Great Ocean Road'. Fingers crossed that Betsy is up to the job. A friend of mine theorises that the state of your car reflects the state of your health. Interesting then, that a couple of days after I unwittingly buy a car with a dodgy fuel gauge and a suspected leak in the air conditioning which leaves a puddle in the passenger foot-well, I'm diagnosed with liver/spleen disharmony and too much 'heat' by a scarily good acupuncturist. But, thirty little black pearls a day and I'm raring to go again. Maybe I should pop some in Betsy's the fuel tank, just in case.

Some of you wanted to see Betsy - so here she is, in all her splendour.

It seems to be standard practice here to 'bring your own', partly because food is so expensive now after the Queensland floods, but also because 24 hour shops are few and far between, in fact, most places close at midday on Saturday for the weekend. Bliss! Imagine the chaos if that happened in Ireland of the UK? What would people do at the weekend? How would they worship at the alters of industry if the cathedrals of commercialism were closed? Oh yes, they would shop online. So in Betsy's boot, tucked in between my sense of adventure and expectation are my esky, my flask, my 'spork' (thanks Lucy) and my tin plate. All those years of packing 'tea-bags for the field' are finally paying off.

Later, I prepared a little feast for one; artisan bread rolls, tapenade, garden tomatoes and cheese, perfectly ripe pears and Anzac biscuits (estimated calorific value of 2000). As the drunken sun slid behind the Bucketts, I devoured a little slice of heaven on the veranda of my unexpectedly fabulous little B&B.

After almost two months on the farm, I did feel a little sad as George, Jean, Jean's daughter and grand-daughter all waved me off. The resident family of plovers provided me a low-flying escort as I headed down the pot-holed lane where I learned about pace while shovelling gravel with George in 34 degrees. Any sense of poignancy soon evaporated as Mother Nature threw big, fat sunbeam spears through the tree canopy and decorated Bago Head in a rainbow. I was on my way, and feeling utterly privileged.

Easter Yum Cha and Chocolate Bilbys

This year, Anzac day fell on Easter Monday and Aussies got a 5-day bank holiday weekend so I decided to take Betsy on her first real road-trip and headed to Sydney to celebrate Easter with a Sydney-city-girl- now-Irish-country-girl friend and her very hospitable mates in their beautiful home. Easter Sunday morning I was presented with a chocolate bilby and that night I was asked to house-sit soon for a week. Easy decision.

The bilby is an endangered native species and there is a rather clever 'Protect the Bilby' awareness campaign here that is replacing the Easter Bunny with the Easter Bilby. Rabbits are also rather unpopular here... I will say no more on that subject to spare the feelings of my bunny-loving friends.

My Mammy's traditional roast lamb Easter dinner is an institution at home. I actually prefer it to Christmas dinner and this is the first time, ever, I have missed it. But apparently, this year there was no roast lamb dinner in Ramstown (no pun!) anyway.

Instead, my two new Sydney friends took me for some excellent Yum Cha in Market City and a stroll around Sydney harbour. Great food, great company, great city. Just what a girl needs after one too many glasses of merlot the night before.

On the way back to Pappinbarra, I took the scenic route and couldn't believe how much the landscape reminded me of home. It was wonderful to be on the open road again. I love driving here. Everyone cruises along and there's no aggression, no hassle. There is a very prominent 'fatigue awareness' campaign and every hour or so there are excellent rest-stops providing free coffee and facilities. The police were out in force and with 'double demerits' (points) and nobody, not even me, broke the speed limit. At the end of the 5 days there were relatively few road deaths reported – and the radio stations did keep a morbid running tally.

All in all, a rather unconventional but thoroughly enjoyable Easter and I have to say that fatigue-awareness campaign combined with the 'Protect the Bilby' campaign has started my old campaign synapses firing again....

Good start to Good Friday

The tradition here is that the 'gaalic' has to be planted before Anzac day or it won't grow, so as Good Friday dawned George and I headed in convoy to the triangular paddock to get the job done. I always think there is something a tiny bit exciting about driving in convoy in the very early morning.

As George made one last run with the rotavator, I had my breath taken away by the cool, fresh wonder of the dawn. A million candy floss cobwebs were tangled in the long wet grass, with a couple of perfectly formed webs, complete with proud spider. The dew sparkled like diamond dust from the silver threads as the sun sneaked over my mountain and brought the world to life.

 

Later that day we headed over to a neighbours house to join her for a traditional Good Friday brunch. The usual Aussie tradition of 'bring a plate' meant a wide variety of high quality food and champagne was on offer from 11.30am finishing up around 2.30pm with coffee and hot cross buns, made on the spot. I'm getting to know quite a number of people here now and every social occasion seems to generate another party invite. Shame I'm not gong to be here for some of them.

I didn't attend any religious service over Easter but I like to think that I was worshipping in my own way while kneeling in the soil with a kuckaburra choir singing and the sun warm on my back as I planted, by hand, a quarter of an acre of garlic on the idyllic river 'flats'. Does that make me a bit of theist? Either way, I'm not sure the Catholic Church would approve but it left me feeling at peace with the world.

Rain, rain...

It's raining. Just like it does at home except it is not so cold. 'My mountain' is being contorted by the smouldering mist raging up its familiar face before falling, yet again, as rain in a fit of temper. If I was a geography teacher I would probably get quite excited about such a brilliant example of the precipitation cycle. But I'm not a geography teacher and it just feels like a very wet day at home, which is quite nice actually.

The planned trip to Bellingen Market was postponed and I made a quick trip to town in Betsy (the new-to-me car), who promptly, but conveniently died 500 metres from the garage where I bought her. Turns out that neither the fuel gauge or the fuel light works, so as I am congratualing myself on the fuel ecomony of my randonly selected car, it is actually running on fumes. Suddenly that 1000km trip is looking more interesting.

When I got back George and Jean had decided that today was a go-slow day and the wood stove in the living room was lighting. We lunched on one of George's signature soups; a divine pumpkin, sweet potato and coconut milk combination.

I've just put a loaf of bread in the oven and have a large pot of deliciously syrupy fruit stewing on the kitchen stove. The house smells of comfort and contentment. Sometimes it's not just the garden that needs a rainy day. And, there is talk of watching 'Jean De Florette' later. 

Not bad for a wet weekend.

Sunday - a day of rest

I haven't been feeling in top form the last few days and I didn't feel up to joining George and Jean at a picnic at Indian Head today. I'm missing a great day with lots of people I've met here and the opportunity to go swimming. However, the last time I went swimming I didn't feel great but went swimming anyway and paid the price with headache, fatigue and joint-pain which became glandular fever. I have similar symptoms the last few days and, of course, my over-active imagination is conspiring with my fear of leeches, ticks and mosquitos and thoughts of any number of horrible diseases carried by the little blighters is foremost in my mind. But I think my subconscious is using my body to send me a warning shot about over-doing it, just as it did last year, but this time I'm in listening mode and I've had a day off. No work and no Spanish lessons.

I have spent the day just pottering. I've sorted through some paperwork (how can I possibly have paperwork when I am living out of bag??) and done loads of laundry. It is a perfect drying day and call me old-fashioned, but I get great pleasure from the sight of freshly laundered clothes swaying gently in the warm breeze. As long as I don't have to iron them, in which case it fills me with dread.

In the safety of an empty house I also sat down at the piano and played for a while. I use the term 'played' loosely, not to mention generously, as I haven't played in YEARS and it is painfully obvious. It felt both strange and familiar at the same time as my hands and fingers started to remember the notes, chords, sequences and rhythms, even when my conscious mind or memory didn't. The ivory keys felt wonderfully cool but slightly resistant – as if in indignation at my obvious lack of practice. I miss playing the piano. It's good for the soul, but probably not particularly enjoyable for anyone else who happens to be around at the time.

I've also been hanging out on the veranda, watching the sun and the odd cloud play chase across 'my mountain' and doing a bit of reading. And really enjoying it. And thinking I really need to do more of all of this.

The Chief

As we oil and fuel up the tractor I see his hand on the pump. I hear his voice as George explains the role of a tractor's governor and it is his right hand I see on the steering wheel as I as corner the tractor at the end of each drill. I smile as I imagine him shouting 'lock hard, now, lock hard!' and gesturing to the left or right as I reverse the ute and trailer.

The almost acrid, but reassuringly familiar smell of the farm workshop; a mix of gear-oil, soil, hay and something else that I can't describe and suddenly I am five years old again, sitting on the workshop floor busily 'helping' him, separating nails from screws or by spinning the lever of the bench-vice as he manoeuvred some awkward piece of metal into place with his 'good arm'.

The grease-gun laying casually on the workshop bench launches another fleet of childhood memories, like trying in vain to recover a thick dark squiggle of dust-coated grease from the workshop bench. Gloriously messy and very important work for tiny hands and dirty fingernails.

A few days ago, I graduated from wellies to elastic-sided working boots. The same sort of boot that he wore every day of his working life. All weather boots that protected from the frost and mud of ploughing, the long dusty days of seed-sowing, the heat and chaff from of barley harvesting and the cold and wet of the sugar beet harvesting.

As I child, I learned the rhythm of his gait in those boots, with my little legs trying to keep up to him striding across the land, or through the haggard, or around the corner of the house as night fell. That same stride, just slower, that good old Toby waited on in later years.

I now recognise the residents of this house by their footsteps. I can even distinguish between the dogs as they race along the veranda at night in hot pursuit of a rogue possum or bandicoot.

Today, on the third anniversary of his death, I heard the echo of the chief's footsteps as I walked along in my working boots. Daddy's boots are too big for me to fill, but for a brief moment 12,000 miles away from where he walked and worked the land, I was following in his footsteps.