The Good Boy (9 page)

Sometimes we went to Tatura and spent the term holidays on the farm of Dad's cousins, Mick and Nora. My brother Peter and I had a wonderful time on the farm, ‘helping' with the milking in the morning, learning how to separate the milk and to clean and assemble the separator, feeding skim milk to the calves and hay to the other animals. While Mick had recently bought his first tractor, a grey Ferguson, most of the traction on the farm was still provided by horses, who would haul the dray around the paddocks while we broke open the bales and threw off armfuls of hay for the sheep or cattle following hungrily behind. Sometimes one of the horses would be backed in between the shafts of the gig and we would set off at a spanking pace along the country roads on various errands. Peter and I loved being allowed to take the reins and to ‘drive' in a way we never could with my father's car!

Mick had a faithful retainer called Old Jim who worked on the farm with him, and it was actually Old Jim who introduced Peter and me to much of farm life. He had apparently arrived at the farm some fifteen or so years earlier, a ‘swaggie' tramping the country during the Depression of the 1930s, and had asked for work and food … and had just stayed on since then. He lived in what had been an old horse-drawn caravan parked under a peppercorn tree in the farmyard and came into the house only for his meals, which he took in the kitchen, with Mick and Nora or on his own there when they had visitors such as us, and the big dining room next door would be used. Somewhat intrigued by these rules of etiquette, I remember asking whether Old Jim came into the house to have a bath or shower. Nora laughingly replied that he did not, and that as far as she knew he had a swim and a wash in the dam on Sunday mornings when the family was away at Mass. I had until then been a bit envious of Old Jim's rather gypsy life but the thought of washing in a chilly dam in the depths of winter, when there was a nice bathroom with hot water in the house, made me glad that, if I worked hard at school, I would be able to get a job that produced more comfortable living conditions.

Mick and Nora had two dogs, Shep and Smoky, and a black cat, Sooty, and all three animals had learned a few ‘party tricks'. In the evening after tea Mick or Nora would pull open a wide, deep drawer in the kitchen and say ‘Bedtime, Sooty,' and the cat would jump into the drawer and curl up on the cushion there ready for sleep. Then they would say ‘Prayers,' and ‘You forgot to say your prayers,' and the cat would jump back onto the floor and lean, forepaws on the top edge of the drawer, as if in prayer. It was very funny to watch.

With Smoky it was the word ‘Poss' or ‘Possum' that produced an amusing reaction, an excited yelp as he understood the signal that Mick had decided to go possum hunting. There was a small swamp or lagoon which separated Mick's farm from his neighbour's, its waters being a favourite stopover for passing wild ducks and its many big old river-gums being a popular residential site for the local possums. In the evening, after Sooty had gone to bed, Mick would take down his rifle and, with Smoky scampering along at his heels, would head for the swamp. He had only to say the word ‘Poss' now and Smoky would run from one tree to another, sniffing around the base, suddenly pulling up in front of one tree and looking upwards. Mick would then shine a torch up into the branches and there, sure enough, would be a possum, big round eyes looking down at us and seemingly transfixed by the torchlight. A single rifle shot from Mick or Dad would see the possum tumble from the tree and be instantly retrieved by the ever alert Smoky. Whether Smoky shared his reward with Shep, who took no part in this, I can't recall. A farm, it seemed to me, was a great place to learn not only about the realities of life and death and the food chain but about the many other interesting and indeed often vital things that were never covered at school.

The farmyard, or home paddock as Mick used to call it, was located more or less in the middle of the property, with a long red-earth drive leading into it from the road. Within the home paddock and separated from it by a chicken- and sheep-proof fence, was the half acre or so of house and garden. Entirely dependent upon rainwater caught on the house and barn roofs and stored in corrugated iron tanks alongside each building, Nora had struggled to develop a garden and to surround the house with trees, greenery and shade. Inside, the house was very comfortably, if a little sparsely, furnished. The dining room was very large with a table that seated twelve people and there were five or six armchairs and a coffee table near the fireplace. While we were there Nora would organise a couple of family meals so that the many relatives we could not visit in a short space of time could come over and catch up with my father and his young family. These meals were always midday dinners and most of the people attending would leave by around 3 p.m. so that they could be home on their own farms in time for the evening milking – dairy farms run to a rather inflexible timetable.

In one corner of the dining room was a big open fireplace and that was where we would all sit after the evening meal in winter. Mick had a strange and wonderful home-made bellows which Peter and I loved to use to freshen up the fire; instead of a pump action it was driven by winding a wheel (probably a remnant of an old bicycle), a little like the way an old-fashioned egg-beater worked. The faster you wound the wheel the stronger the draught and the louder the roar from the bellows … and the higher the flames would rise. Another thing that used to intrigue us at Mick and Nora's was the lighting system. Candles and kerosene lamps were still used and could be carefully carried from one room to another but in the three main rooms, the kitchen, the dining room and the sitting room (rarely used and full of the ‘best' furniture including a piano) there were ‘Gloria' lights. This was a system where a tank of petrol on the side verandah was connected by pipes in the ceiling to a central ceiling light in each room. Mick would pump the mechanism on the verandah every couple of days and that pressure would send vaporised petrol through the pipes to emerge with a hiss into a ‘mantle' (which looked like an incandescent globe but was made of white fabric instead of glass) in the room. A lighted taper applied to the mantel turned the hiss into a loud ‘whoosh' followed by a ‘pop' and then silence and a very bright white light as the vaporised petrol burned. There was at least one other brand of vapour light (called, I think, ‘Aladdin') and I couldn't understand why we had to make do with the far less interesting electric lights at home in Melbourne.

Out in the farmyard beyond the wire fence of Nora's garden roamed a few dozen chooks, a dozen or so turkeys, and a large family of ducks (which shared the dam with Old Jim). Finding and gathering the eggs each day was fun and we city kids were always intrigued by the way the birds would come back each day to lay an egg in the cosy nest they had created … but which was systematically robbed to supply the kitchen. Dumb birds! Not so dumb, however, were the roosters and particularly the turkey gobblers, who seemed to be able to detect nervous visitors like us and were prone to fly at us squawking, gobbling, and otherwise bluffing their way to the centre of their hens' attention. Another of the dogs' tricks involved these very hens. When Nora had decided that roast chicken would be on the next day's menu, she would walk over to the farmyard with Smoky or Shep in tow and would choose her bird, pointing it out to the dogs. They would then chase the poor bird around the yard, grab it by the neck and bring it over to Nora, and in next to no time the axe would have fallen, the chook would be dead and the scalding, plucking and cleaning would commence. This was a part of life not for the squeamish and I think I do prefer to get my chicken from the supermarket, tasteless though it may be.

There were so many relatives to visit in the area, so many farms pioneered by Uncle Mick or Uncle Jim or Uncle Johnny and so on, and so many afternoon teas and suppers to be enjoyed, that a visit to Tatura was something of a scheduling nightmare for my parents … impossible to accept all the invitations and difficult to accept some without offending other relatives … but Peter and I, at least, never grew tired of the farming experiences nor of the endless supply of jelly sponges, cream puffs, iced biscuits and so on with which each farm kitchen greeted us.

At other times we all went and spent the term holidays in a hotel or guesthouse somewhere (a more expensive solution but a more restful one for my mother). We stayed one time at a family-run guesthouse in Healesville called Le Château on the Don Road. The meals were wonderful and my father and I were able to indulge a sweet tooth by working our way through the list of alternative desserts on each day's menu. Another time we stayed at beachside Mount Martha in Dava Lodge, then a guesthouse but subsequently a licensed hotel, and on another we stayed in Mildura at the Grand Hotel, then managed by one of Dad's cousins.

The biggest adventure of all would no doubt have been the summer holidays when we went to Sydney for three weeks. A school friend of mine came with us and we all travelled up on the Adelaide Steamship Company's coastal liner
Manunda
, my friend and I returning home on the same company's larger liner
Manoora
; my father and sister flew home (in a 21-passenger DC3 operated by ANA, one of the pioneers of commercial flying in Australia, then barely out of its infancy), while my mother and brother had sleepers on the overnight train from Sydney to Melbourne. In Sydney we stayed in the Norwood, a family-run guesthouse at Milson's Point near the bridge and overlooking the harbour. We had a wonderful time, sightseeing, going to the beach, and visiting friends and relatives. A school friend of my mother's was by then the Reverend Mother of the Loreto Convent at Kirribilli, and there was the family of my father's youngest uncle, Uncle Lar (who had died the previous year) to visit at their home on the Hawkesbury River. At the insistence of my Aunt Nell, my sister Marie and I called on Dame Mary Gilmore, the poetess, in her flat in Kings Cross. (Dame Mary was the aunt of my mother's cousin Rupert, see Appendix 5.) Marie had read some of Dame Mary's poetry at school, whereas I had not, and I still squirm with the remembered embarrassment of having to pretend knowledge of and interest in the works of the poor woman. All in all it was a great holiday, one that must have cost a great deal of money, but as it turned out to be the last holiday we would spend together as a family, it was probably money well spent.

When I reached school age I began to go to Bendigo alone for most of the school holidays; I was asthmatic as a child and the dry climate or some unidentified aspect of life in that inland city resulted in me never having an asthma attack there. Sometimes I would drive up with my parents, who would return to Melbourne the next day; sometimes I would travel with family friends and, best of all, when I was considered old enough, I would travel alone by train. My very first train trip saw me driven in to Spencer Street Station by my parents and then handed over to two nuns (my great-aunt and a companion nun) who were travelling to their convent in Echuca, via Bendigo. I remember being a little nonplussed in that they were already installed in two seats in a compartment labelled ‘Ladies' at the end of the carriage, and I pointed out to my father that I was not a lady. He said it was alright for a young boy to sit there too, so I accepted the window seat which the nuns vacated and off we went.

In those days nuns wore so many layers of clothing, it was like squeezing in beside the contents of a whole wardrobe, the only bit of a person visible being the hands and face. The train left at 8.30 a.m. so we had all had an early breakfast and by midmorning I was a bit peckish, and assumed that the nuns were too. After the climb up the Great Dividing Range the train stopped at Woodend to take on water and passengers, and many passengers jumped off and raced to the kiosk on the platform to buy fruit and sweets. The same thing happened further on at Kyneton and at Castlemaine, but the nuns and I remained in our seats. My great-aunt produced some fruit and biscuits from a large black handbag but I alone tucked in: my parents had told me that nuns do not eat in public, and I found that not even the privacy of the Ladies Compartment allowed them sufficient latitude … at least while a young boy shared it with them.

When we arrived in Bendigo at about midday the train divided: the rear two carriages would go on to Swan Hill, the next two carriages would go on to Echuca, and the people in the front carriages of the train which were detached and shunted off to one side were divided up into batches and directed to the waiting trains to Robinvale, Sea Lake, Cohuna and Heathcote which all branched off from the main line at Bendigo. While all this shunting and bustling was going on, my travelling companions went on sitting in the Ladies Compartment, with the door and wooden window shutters closed, so that they could partake of the picnic lunch my grandmother had brought to the station in a large basket. My grandmother sat and chatted with them through the meal, but I was told to wait on the platform. I kept wondering whether nuns ever did need to eat and drink and wash their face and hands and so on, like the rest of us. After about half an hour in Bendigo we said goodbye to the nuns, their train set off for Echuca and we headed off to my grandparents' house.

As a special treat for having been good and for waiting quietly during this episode, I was given my one and only ride in a horse-drawn cab, from the station to my grandparents' house. At the time this occurred most people were using taxis, i.e. motor cars, for this sort of journey, but at major country railway stations such as the one in Bendigo, three or four horse-drawn cabs still operated and usually met the trains in the hope of stirring up some interest from holidaymakers and other less serious travellers. So not without some effort we climbed up into the cab and clip-clopped our way home. The cab was not a two-passenger ‘Hansom' with the driver perched high at the rear and the passengers stepping in through the low front opening, but was rather the large four- or six-passenger type with the driver in front, almost on the roof, and the passengers climbing up two or three steps at the rear to the doorless central entrance. The only openings in the walls were this open doorway (which with the jolting movement of the cab made me hang on tightly to my seat for fear of being catapulted out of the vehicle) and a smallish window in the front; the seats ran along each side wall. Passengers either looked out the back and watched the world go by backwards, or looked forward to the framed view of the horse's backside and the cabbie's trousered legs. And I remembered how my father liked to crack his little joke about ‘the horse with the Hansom/ handsome behind'!