The View From Connor's Hill (15 page)

Now, to be honest, I wasn't sure if Meg and I were a good match for this game. You see, she was a bit on the heavy side; sort of plump, or pretty solid, is how I would put it. On the farm, you would call her a good doer, in prime condition. The game continued. We were approaching the broomsticks as Pat Boone — the bloke on the 78 record — got to the bit ‘on Moonlight Bay', when Mrs Jackson reefed up the needle. Terry and Linda, caught between the sticks, were out. Down went the needle again. We'd done about two rounds, and my poor old arms were stuffed. Then, as I rounded the bend, the broomsticks came into calculation. I bent down, went to lift Meg up, fell backwards slightly, and my hand shot up the back of her legs and got tangled in some clips or something.
Twang!
A shriek rang out, and Meg took a back-hander at me as her stocking separated from its suspender belt, and shot down to her ankles. Her leg was very white.

Holy smoke, cripes, and hell — the party turned into a riot. The girls all ran off to another room screaming and squealing. Jacko turned to me, winked and said, ‘Brilliant move, ya cunning bugger. You'll 'ave ta show me that one, mate.'

What one? I didn't know if I should run and hide, or maybe pretend that nothing had happened — or perhaps, in an act of total foolhardiness, look real cool in my new status as a womaniser. It didn't matter. Meg's Aunt Muriel, the evil-eyed old magpie, came out, looked at me with utter disgust, and then
tutted
. Now that put a damper on things.

Then a girl's head appeared around the door. ‘You're disgusting, Heard,' she said.

Not long after, the party ended and I rode my bike home, very confused. Again, I did learn something: never date a girl heavier than yourself.

Back at school, both Curls and Meg now avoided me. School holidays couldn't come quickly enough. I'd already planned my next bush venture.

chapter seven

Back in the bush

I SPENT ANY SPARE TIME I HAD IN THE BUSH
AT DORRINGTON'S
. But this rarely happened, as I usually went out with Dad and Gator Lambourne to work. Gator had been born and bred in the bush, and he enjoyed chatting away about the old days while he helped us with fencing, clearing, and burning off. Our first job had been to fence the Five Acres. We put in three gates, and wire netting all the way around to make it rabbit-proof. This particular year had been very dry: the Tambo had dropped to half its normal flow, and Sheepstation Creek was only a trickle, with just the odd pool. It was the start of the Christmas holidays. For me, it meant fun in the bush — I couldn't wait.

At school, I talked excitedly to the other kids about what I'd found in the bush. Some were keen to explore and help me finish the log cabin. This time, there'd be four of us. We'd take enough flour, spuds, onions, and the like to last at least a week. We had the added advantage of a horse and cart: we had Morrison's half-draught called Dolly, and a heavy, two-wheeled cart available. The Morrisons lived down the road a bit from us, in the same house that my mum had grown up in as a young girl — Boonabirrah Hill.

After school on the Friday, we were packed and ready to go. Two hours later, we were unhitching Dolly at the Five Acres and organising a camp fire outside the log cabin. Now, I have a confession to make after all these years. We had a packet of Turf cigarettes with us, hidden away with the food. They were cork-tipped — though I wasn't sure what that meant — and there were ten of them in the packet. The highlight of our first night, as you might have guessed, was the cigarettes. Pud was sick, I got the staggers and ended up walking backwards, and the other two gave up after a couple of drags. Naturally, we all tried to do the ‘drawback'.

In all, it was a very quiet, early night. We didn't even cook ourselves any tea. The idea of smoking got the thumbs down. First thing on the Saturday morning, we put up the stringy-bark sheets and waterproofed the cabin. For a door, I'd brought along a sheet of canvas with a board nailed to the bottom, to stop it flapping too much. By now, the cabin was quite comfortable and clean — although I didn't tell the others that I'd scared off a black snake in there a couple of weeks earlier.

We wandered down to the creek below the cabin, and I was surprised to find almost no flow. More fascinating was the fact that the large pool of water, which was about five feet across and only about a few inches deep, was full of trout. There must have been hundreds of them: tiny trout, about six or seven inches long, with a bright red dot behind their gills. We scooped up a small bucketful, and fried them for lunch. It was a delightful meal. Satisfied, we headed on foot for the First Waterfall.

An hour later, we were there. The three boys reacted almost the same way I did — they just went quiet. The fall remained completely hidden until the last moment, and then, there it was — what a sight. After 20 minutes of just looking and hoping to see some wildlife, we decided to have a swim in the large pool. This was a bad idea — it was freezing. Quickly, we were back on dry land, dressed, and ready to venture further up into the headwaters.

Briefly, I showed them the bullock track I'd found. By now, other locals, as well as Gator, had explained to me that it was a bullock track used in the late 1800s for both the small township of Brookville and the gold mine at Cassilis. My find had created a lot of local interest.

Back to the creek we walked — or, I should say, jumped — from rock to rock, as we moved up the stream. The banks were quite steep and the flow was almost nothing — just a dribble, but certainly more than at the Five Acres. Even in good times, it would have been only two to three feet wide. The water trickled quietly around large rocks and made little noise. As we climbed higher, we noticed the bush change from stringy-bark trees to grey box. Suddenly, the stream flattened again; there was a lot more water. The area became more open and, looking ahead, we spotted a huge waterfall — the ‘Second Waterfall'.

It was much higher than the first, and it was in two stages, or steps. Simply, it was awesome. Again, it was a formation of gigantic granite rocks. The first stage was a drop of roughly 25 feet, and the second was even bigger. We all just sat, talking about how stunning it would be after a good rain — even a flood. The surrounding area was different, too. Being higher up in the mountain, there were tree ferns and small reeds. The waterfall was 50 feet wide, and seemed way out of proportion to the small amount of water that cascaded over the top.

My camera quickly appeared, and I ended up running out of film; everyone wanted to be in a photograph. Fortunately, the camera had a self-timer.

After exploring the fall for more than an hour, we headed up Sheepstation Creek. After all our spectacular finds, the further we went up from Second Waterfall, the narrower the creek became, dividing itself into several gullies and then almost disappearing. We'd found the headwaters. By now, we were a very long way from the cabin, and decided to climb to the top of the nearest spur and get our bearings. It took two hours to trek back to the cabin.

I'd decided to cook a large stew in the camp oven. Pud wandered off with the rifle to get a rabbit, and I went down to the creek to get some water. As I was about to leap the fence, something caught my eye — a snake. It was dead. My guess was that it had been there several days. However, the way it had died was amazing. It was a huge, black snake, probably five or six feet long — it might even have been the one I'd scared out of the cabin weeks earlier. It was stuck in the wire netting fence, facing towards the log cabin. The poor thing must have gone down through the fence earlier, ventured to the creek, maybe, for a drink — who knows? Obviously, it discovered the trout and must have had a ball catching and eating them. In fact, its body was the size of a small football when I found it. When we cut the snake open, it had twelve trout inside its belly. It had managed to get its head and about ten inches of its body through the wire netting, and then it became stuck — its scales, which faced to the rear, wouldn't allow it to go backwards … it was one dead snake. I said it was probably five feet long as, already, a fox or a dingo had eaten part of its tail. Several battalions of sugar ants had already made a well-worn tiny path from the snake to their ant hill. Within a week it would be nothing but a skeleton.

The remainder of our holiday around the Five Acres was a lot of fun. We climbed Mad Lucy's Rock, trekked to the top of Mount Flagstaff overlooking Swifts Creek, and panned for gold, managing to get a few small specks. We set traps and caught rabbits, shot a kangaroo, and managed to scalp three wombats. In those days, the government paid ten shillings and sixpence a scalp. In fact, we devised a cunning way of catching them. After lighting a good fire slightly inside the mouth of their burrow, and then stuffing green leaves on top of the flames, we would quickly cover the entire opening with dirt. Invariably, when we returned several hours later and dug open the mouth of the burrow, the wombat would be there, dead, having suffocated.

We were away ten days, and it was a great holiday.

I FIND IT CURIOUS
, now, to look back and consider my connection with nature then. In those days, I wouldn't hesitate to shoot almost any bush animal I came across. When walking in the bush with my staff, I killed many a black snake — the most common animal I'd encounter — and I never gave this a second thought. For bush meals in the camp oven, I sampled snake, wombat, kangaroo, cockatoo, and emu. I found none of them objectionable. Yet give me a lyrebird dancing, a platypus, an early-morning dawn with kangaroos standing on a ridge, or two snakes curled around each other mating, and I would be struck by the splendour and wonder of nature. Never would I interrupt, or even consider ruining the scene with a rifle shot.

To add to the confusion, how do I explain that I shot dead many a wedge-tailed eagle, and then hung them on the fence facing the Omeo Highway to show passers-by that we were helping to get rid of such vermin — when, at other times, particularly when climbing the steep ridge on our Tongio farm, I had admired the splendour of the eagle? I would stand perfectly still and watch as it dropped out of a tree towards the ground, which it touched lightly, flailing its ungainly legs before jumping, several times, into the air and running until airborne. The transformation to complete beauty is almost instantaneous; this magnificent bird would simply float down off the ridge with such elegance and grace that I could only slowly shake my head in awe. It was a remarkable sight.

In those days, seeing nature, and any animal, as friend and then foe is difficult to explain. To the average country kid, there was no shock in beheading a chook or in drowning kittens. When your best farm dog had pups, maybe six or eight of them, the only decision that counted was picking which one had the most potential; the remainder were destroyed without a second thought. Mind you, this culture of considering almost any bush animal as vermin, and therefore likely to be culled, didn't stop there. It was the same with the bush. Clearing virgin bush on our Fowler Marshall bulldozer, or burning the windrows of trees after they had dried sufficiently, was a source of great satisfaction. Clear felling was very common, and I enjoyed looking back over a day's work because, suddenly, there was a paddock where there used to be a thicket of trees and undergrowth. Not only was this the way of life in those days; it was also the accepted way of life, and people on the land were admired for their farming practices.

GROWING UP
on the beautiful Tambo River was a great experience. It had clear water and well-grassed banks, and dotted along the sides of the river were Weeping Willow trees and giant rivergums.

In the banks of the Tambo, I could find, if I was careful, a fascinating gathering of Australian animals. Nowadays, most people only see a platypus on the back of a coin or enclosed in some pool — the poor little blighters. But they were quite common along the river in the 1950s.

As it is a very timid little creature, you had to be very quiet and tread softly as you approached its known territory. Then, lying down on the grass near the edge of the river in the early morning, with the sun in your face so as not to cast a shadow on the water, it was simply a matter of waiting until the show began. Usually, they would only venture out one at a time. On occasions, I saw two or more frolicking about, but I think these were youngsters. I say ‘youngsters', as I never saw a small platypus. They must have stayed in their burrowed little cave in the bank until fully grown. However, once they ventured out it was a great show.

They are vigorous animals, although I've always felt that grace and the platypus are at odds. With their strange, duck-like bill, they don't just delve into the sand looking for food; they charge it like a bulldozer. They tackle large stones almost as big as themselves, and viciously push and shove from every angle until the rock is dislodged or rolled over. If the bottom of the creek is dirty, or is coated with a sticky black sludge, they hunt with such enthusiasm that a dirty cloud of milky water hides these little battlers for ages. Then, as if to defy all this energy, a platypus will casually cruise to the surface and lull about, snapping its beak and scratching its belly in delight. Casually, it will turn this way and then that, checking things out with its beady little eyes.

Other little creatures shared this watery home. Sand trout, eels, waterjacks, ducks, water rats, and the odd snake were neighbours. About once a week a snake would slither off the bank and then swim to the other side. Naturally, it would only happen in the warmer summer months, and it was usually a brown or copperhead snake. I rarely, if ever, saw a black snake swimming. The black, which was the biggest of all the snakes, is very timid.