Thursday, August 30, 2007

44 Finishing the mansion


Gordon had run out of time but his son-in-law arrived to complete the house that Gordon built. It might take 6 months at a leisurely pace then he would return to his job as a steeplejack in Sydney. He already knew the area well but this time he started having problems with strange feelings particularly during thunderstorms.
He became aware of being watched whenever he was working outside and noticed his tools were sometimes being moved. On one occasion he rang me to ask if I had emptied their 8000 gallon water tank; someone had turned on the tap and drained it onto the garden causing a flood. Later all their apples were stolen from the tree. His working chain saw had been exchanged for my broken one. There were too many strange happenings to readily explain. I began to wonder whether my moonlight experience really was an off-world one.

This was confirmed later when a ‘sensitive’ moved onto a property a few kilometres away. She and her partner saw lights hovering over the place at night, lights that were not natural.

That season was a particularly good one for the raspberries and we were benefitting from the extra crop in the enlarged enclosure. We had our highest yield to date and one tonne of fruit seemed a real possibility. It was also a really good season for the birds. The welcome swallows had started mating early, in August, so by March there was a large flock in the area made up in part by the dusky wood swallows and fairy martins; the fairy martins had been attracted to nesting material freely available in the cement filler of Gordon ‘s decaying wall boards scattered around the garden. Our big shed and all the power lines started to be covered by hundreds of birds as they collected in readiness for migration. The numbers swelled over maybe a week.

Clearly our place had to be special, a marker node for migrating birds on a super highway.
I couldn’t work out why the birds didn’t leave, they just sat around. I soon found out. A weather front was moving in and riding that magnificently were the kings of the air, the needle-tail swifts, zooming from out of sight above the thunder clouds to almost head height. The air was filled horizon to horizon with their speed. The swallows joined the frenzy, but slowly by contrast. By next morning the super highway sky was empty and the only action was the occasional grey thrush pecking on the ground and calling in their single but melodic autumn tone.

The problems continued with the never-seen souls that watched the area. The phone started to ring at odd hours, usually at night, before telecommunications collapsed entirely. The local telephone node had been destroyed, apparently with an axe; some blamed the damage on lightning. The node was replaced but internet connections then became difficult and very variable though Telstra could find no faults with our local systems.

All these disturbing happenings, particularly the loss of building tools, had their effects on the finishing of the mansion next door which extended well beyond the estimated six months into years. This is the price paid for drinking river water and living close to granite tors. City people don’t know how lucky they are.

43 Guru flash back

The rats reminded me of when we lived in India for a bit over a year. There the rats were not cute, were huge and popped out of open drains inside our house whenever they were hungry or needed fresh air. The spooky night also took me back to floating with the mystics during that period.

My work colleagues in New Delhi had been able to work even less than usual because their guru holy-man was visiting at the weekend. He normally existed somewhere in the Himalayas but travelled around occasionally to get up to date with his flock of souls and the world generally. He was quite old, now in his third reincarnation, and guessed to be approaching his 180th birthday. He had mentioned to my colleagues while they were astral-planing together that he would like to meet me in the flesh to check whether I was a positive or otherwise spirit for his disciples. Many others had wanted to see him so a meeting place had been arranged.

She wasn’t keen but together with Jane, then about 16 months, we entered the large tent erected so as to fill the street and block any traffic. It was pretty dull inside as it depended for lighting on electricity leaked from the nearest street pole but clearly it was full of many cross-legged sitting people; a number of them murmuring words together. We three hid at the back of the gathering trying to be invisible but standing out like traffic lights.

The chanting stopped and there was complete hush as a stretcher was carried in bearing a person in deep trance. Somebody from the middle of the crowd began to speak, like a reading of authoritative words. Garlands of flowers were brought by a train of supplicants and placed around the holy neck. Then, one of my work colleagues appeared from the gloom and said in my ear that the guru would like to meet me at the front. He had his eyes closed throughout and spoke to no one so I was sceptical. She shook her head. She didn’t want to be part of any meeting.

Jane could handle anything, only had to smile at any person and they melted. With her tightly curled very blond hair and blond and pink complexion she looked like a god anywhere, but specially so here. I thought with Jane to look after me, no problems, and so up I strolled nonchalantly, weaving through the crowd, carrying Jane like a trophy.

We stood in front of the guru. Nothing happened. Then the eyes opened for the first time. They were red like he had been overusing mushrooms or they had been scraped with fine sand for days. Instead of focussing on us, they cleared from red to black. The black became an infinitely large deep clear pool falling into outer space. He and I interacted in this space. After a while the black pool’s surface dissolved into the coarse unappetising red cover. He slowly took off three of his garlands like an old person working forceps at a distance and placed them carefully around Jane’s neck. The crowd murmured.

Jane loved all Indians and especially Indian men. She chuckled when they touched her white arms and pinched her on the cheeks. She played up to them.

She didn’t like the guru. She strained her head away over my shoulder to avoid his contact and tore off the garlands and threw them on the ground. The crowd murmured. The guru re-entered trance. Our audience was over.

Next day my work colleagues came around to tell me that the guru was very impressed with me. Indians in India do always like to say the right thing. He had told them that I would do good work spasmodically on the Indian sub-continent all my life and they should support me whenever possible. My child also would return. Nice story.

42 Spooks in the night



The round house wasn’t ready for living in. I had to make the fitted cupboards and furnishings, bring in water mains, build in the sinks, shower and toilet, estapol the walls and ceilings, stain and seal the floor and do all the outside painting. While we were erecting the yurt I had placed all the mains wires in the walls and roof in readiness for an electrician to do the final connecting. A plumber would complete the work we did on the septic tank and associated structures. This meant there were still a few weeks of living in the tin shed which I had aired after the erectors left.

I usually slept really well because I’m pretty deaf, but this night I was wakened up by something. It was a loud and repeated metallic banging sound. I lay very still and listened, working out an escape plan. It was full moon and so relatively bright in the shed but I still couldn’t see the threat. It had to be outside, maybe someone trying to get me up because of an emergency. I pulled on a jumper because it was frosty and slowly opened the door but kept a low profile in case there was a gun. Nothing; but the banging had stopped.

Outside it was amazing. The stars were brilliant and seemed to fill the sky to bursting despite the brightness of the moon. But it felt strange. There was a spooky feel in the air. The light from the trees seemed to effervesce with pale colours that weren’t quite real. It was deathly still and quiet. I started to think about the several aboriginal stone scrapers that I had found lying on the surface and buried down to 40 cm deep not 30 m from where I was standing. This curve in the river must have been well used over the centuries. Maybe there were a few lonely souls wandering around that night. I went back to bed.

Next night the banging woke me again. I had been sleeping lightly, maybe waiting. I turned on the light quickly and thought I saw a movement over on the stainless steel sink in the kitchen sector of the shed. The usual piece of dried up soap was on the sink but now bore teeth marks and other scratches. It couldn't be a Cunningham skink because they were awake only in summer and then during the day. It had to be a rat that was banging the soap on the sink as it enjoyed its feast. What a relief to know that I would die in bed from a giant rat tearing out my jugular rather than a sad soul.

The rats really had moved in. They sat around and tidily nibbled scraps even in the middle of the day, completely unconcerned by human presence. They were cute and intelligent. It was cold so why shouldn’t they be inside and warm.

Then things started disappearing. The table cloth went off the table, plastic bags that had held fruit and were stored for the next use disappeared, bits of paper, bit of polystyrene boxes, a dishcloth, all went. Till the table cloth the items could just have been misplaced or forgotten, but the table looked bald and obvious without its covering. All items took a while to find. They were all together neatly arranged on the compressor dome of the fridge. It was warm there and an ideal place for a nest for little pink baby rats. When the compressor ran it must have rocked the babies gently in their sleep and hummed to them.

They had to go. Unfortunately the babies were too small to skin and anyway wouldn’t have been impressive pinned on the wall or even stitched together as a counterpane.

Over the years the rats came back to nest and be evicted several times. The only sure way to dissuade them was to turn off all freezers and fridges. When the time came this could be the excuse for ending our fruit and jam enterprise.

41 Our own Merry-Go-Round


The original yurt plan had fallen through. But the Yurtworks could do us a good deal on an alternative if we wanted to proceed now. We decided that it was time to move up market from our tin shed and hang the consequences. We would have a yurt with windows right across the northern side and a few annexe modules for kitchen and laundry-cum-bathroom attached around the south. Local government regulations, new since we chose our house site, insisted we should be at least 100m from the river. This limited us because we were surrounded by river and put us near big manna gums and on a slope which would require us to have the dwelling on variable length props. This we argued positively would be safer in a flood. Before building could start, local council would have to approve the plans and the site. This could take some time as they didn’t get out our way often.

In two months our yurt arrived not on a yak but on a big truck. It was 7:30 am and minus 7°C. I had told the erecters that they might need long johns and definitely not to wear shorts if they wanted more kids. Jeez, it’s frigid said one climbing out of the vehicle. We unloaded the truck in about half an hour with them placing the components in a knowledgeable way around the site. The empty truck turned around to leave up our lane. The wheels spun and the truck drifted sideways into a fence. I’ve only got enough beds for three I said.

You got a tractor with a chain? That was the nicest question I had ever been asked. I trundled off to get the Red Dragon. Within 5 minutes, almost lost in tractor smoke, the empty truck was on its way stopping for nothing till it reached the road.

Somehow or other the rectangular sheets of plywood pinned down on joists on the variable height props turned into a flat round floor and we could sit on it for lunch in the chill wind and watery sunshine. They had to keep moving they were so cold. The walls modules were raised, arranged to complete the circle and fastened through the floor with hex bolts and held vertical with the odd plank temporarily nailed to the floor. They were thirsty.

Despite the cold they all wanted cold beer and absolutely nobody would join me in a sensible room temperature shiraz. He reckons we’re poofters said one. John and Jill had offered warm showers at their place. This was an opportunity for a yarn and a few beers. Jill made encouraging noises to stay for a meal and a beer which was accepted. About 10 pm they made their way back to the tin shed and its roaring fire. After a few beers they would go to bed. I escaped to the frigid caravan.

At 7 next morning they were already working on the roof. It was warmer. Jeez I had the shits last night said one. Must’ve been something I ate. I was delegated to go the 160 km round trip into Cooma to get some bits they had forgotten for sealing the roof and could I get another three cases of beer for tonight. They reckoned they could manage without me for a little while, at least till morning tea. I got five cases for if we were snowed in.

I got back with the goodies and some cake things for morning coffee. All but one of the roof triangles were balancing precariously on the wall modules and propped up with sticks at the pointy end. The last triangle wouldn’t squeeze all the way into the circle. Some fit perfectly, some are real bastards said the boss man. Sometimes we have to take the bastard down and start again. Out came an extremely large hammer called an enforcer and this was delicately applied to various roof sections that budged a little and progressively the cake became a whole. The steel rope around the structure pulled the circle in tight, the whole creaking and complaining. Hex bolts did the pinning and lunch was held in a good-humoured group under the big top. The boss lay down and went to sleep.

After lunch annex walls were erected, their large rooves pinned down and attached to the central circle and it all looked finished. It was time for a beer. They kindly invited me to tea in the shed. One of the guys had brought a huge and raging curry with him that just needed heating up and the rice preparing. This time the beer had a purpose. I told them to piss on the trees and not in the toilet which was flowing over from last night. I left them about 9 pm to complete their business. They still had a case to crack.

Day three was a small one, tidying up the structure and weatherproofing the roof. They left at 4 pm saying how much they had enjoyed themselves. Sadly, a few months later the cook died from a heart attack.

40 The Queen visits



My mum was keen to know whether or not she had got her money’s worth. From long experience she knew she couldn’t trust what I told her, she had to see the farm with her own eyes. Despite advancing years, eighty or so, and a heart that had gone to sleep a few times recently, she would make the long haul from England, non-stop to Sydney, where we would pick her up. Dad had died a few years earlier so she was a free agent. She instructed my youngest brother, a manager at a large company, to accompany her at her chosen date.

No doubt she was tough, she had had to be growing up fatherless and then raising an unruly mob of her four sons, four sons who seemed to spend their entire existence just sprawled around on the floor watching the tiny television that had been cobbled together from ex-army spares by her all-purpose husband.

The draw of the farm was powerful. A farm in the family was a strange novelty. All the relatives had wanted to see it. Her lot were accountants, historian, artist, teacher, diplomatic and new lawyer, and mine were architect, arts history, computer development and me, hobby farmer; I was a strange person out on a strange limb. Luckily it was a hobby and they all thought not serious.

Mum was bemused and disorientated when the jumbo eventually disgorged her onto land so we rushed her off to a motel to recover her aching bits. The beachside motel had been caught in a Sydney storm the previous day and the carpets were all soggy underfoot and it smelt of mould but she was too lost to notice. Next morning it was different, the sun was shining, the sea was crashing on the shore, the gulls were making their noises and breakfast was good. Let’s get to the farm she said.

Despite being nothing like a farm at all, except there was a tractor, it was approved. Her money was not wasted. The birds were different and singing, the river was rushing, the chestnut trees looked promising, there were raspberries and kangaroos, wombats and sheep, platypus and tussock grass and the sun continued to shine on everything. The reality was pretty close to the imagined dream.

39 Broken gate


Two youngish women were coming to live at number 13. All the men in the valley pretended no interest but listened intently for news. Number 13 had been running down for years. The fences were broken, the gate posts had collapsed and the gate lay on the ground. The water tanks leaked since somebody with a shotgun targeted a nearby kangaroo. Rumour was they paid very little for it.

Neither of them was interested in men. Even Basil couldn’t raise interest. One was an artist, dabbled in pottery and had left a marriage way behind. The other was a teacher. Why did you come, I asked? They told me they were enraptured by the valley and just had to live in it. They loved its colours, moods, aspects, and its wildly swinging weather patterns, but it was still summer. I said it can be tough in winter. They said no problems. All the men were keen to provide assistance in every department. Everybody knows women are quite useless in the bush but surprisingly these ones seemed interested to learn. Consequently with all the willing male hands things went nicely and they were happy. Everybody liked them.

They were taught to split wood for their fire after one of the men, keen to curry favour, had delivered a truck load of quality material. They were lent a pump to move water from the river up the hill to their place and shown how to attach and start it. They were given a TV to help them while away the long evenings. Nothing was too much effort and they responded with enthusiasm and friendship. They bought a couple of sheep with coloured wool so they could spin and do artistic knitting and fixed up a fence with string to keep the sheep corralled.

Interestingly, they didn’t seem to learn the lessons they were taught and designed to help them live comfortably in the bush. They needed lots of demonstrations that gradually petered-out. In response to fading help from neighbours, they progressively down-scaled their lifestyles to avoid the physicality of bush life. Rather than keeping their house warm by building a roaring fire, they piled on more clothes and cuddled up; the wood piles had long since disappeared. They found they couldn’t start the pump down on the river, in part because it always seemed to be dark when they thought of it, so they bought plastic buckets and placed them carefully under their eaves. This became their water supply when it rained and when it didn’t they bought a bottle or two of drinking water in town. They used candles for light and ate meals in town. They had arrived with two cars, but one broke down and couldn’t be repaired. The girls took it in turn to hitch rides. The spinning wheel was still fine but now was unused because the sheep had broken down their flimsy fence and run away. All problems were deftly circumvented and they coped. Moth and rust were ignored.

As time progressed their lives became increasingly green and carbon neural, a beacon for others.

Somehow they faded away until one day they were no longer there. People had different speculations. They had been seen in Bredbo, Cooma, Jindabyne, but always in the distance. Someone else came to live in number 13. They now had their chance to fix the gate. But that’s another story.

38 Wombat-proof enclosure


To avoid similar problems in the planned new and improved enclosure wombat holes trafficable by other things had to be disallowed. I sought advice from Rural Fire Brigade colleagues.

You can borrow my exterminator said Paul. This was a loaded shot gun mounted vertically over active wombat holes with the trigger attached to a trip wire. You just move it between all the holes around your place and have 100% protection. I have no wombats now he said.

Alan had a different and quite green solution that he had used. The method was to let the wombat make its hole. Wombats aren’t interested in raspberries so you can let them in. You then frame the hole in timber and fit it with a top-mounted but heavy swinging gate. The wombat can come and go freely through this adapted hole while weak things like rabbits and birds can’t move the gate. Good in principle but wombats don’t always go out the hole they enter by. My own solution, the least innovative and least exciting, was to drop the wire-mesh side walls of the enclosure 30 cm into the ground so hampering the wombat digging process. That was the plan I followed.

Digging a slot 30 cm deep around a site 100m x 20m is hard work. I called on Ben. This was to be a father-son bonding exercise like watching Pale Rider together and listening live to touring jazz musicians at local clubs. It didn’t work out that well. I wasn’t sure why until I recalled a similar interaction with my dad. He wasn’t a great gardener, usually restricted in his activities to making borders of bricks around garden beds. These bricks were slanted upwards on their edges for classy effect but also inflicted maximum damage on falling children and tripping old people. Mum was the natural gardener. Dad liked to treat the garden as a route march with compass. You start, you do, you finish, preferably in minimum time. Repeat after a year or two.
His vegie garden hadn’t been dug over for a couple of years. It also hadn’t produced anything in the interval except chickweed, dandelions and grass. The plan was to dig it over to two spades depth thus releasing the deep bound up nutrients and allowing good root penetration. We started but it turned out he had urgent exam papers to mark and lessons to prepare for Monday so could I finish it before going off to rugby. We continued to buy vegies.

Ben and I dug half the length of the slot and because we were trapped in the bush nobody could go anywhere else to do pressing business. It was a good interaction for me. The following week I worked out a much quicker way to dig the remaining slot with less muscle, but by that time I was alone. Ben had learnt nothing except it’s cold at the farm.

The design was brilliant. The 120 cm high fence with 30 cm in the ground was chosen with a mesh that small birds could fly through easily. They were birds like superb blue wrens, bush wrens, diamond firetails, red-browed finch and European Goldfinch and pollinators like eastern spinebill, white-cheeked and white-naped honeyeaters and the chattering New Holland honeyeaters. These were mainly local residents that were joined in summer by yellow-cheeked honeyeaters. It was good to see them foraging at various times. The mesh excluded the larger crop-damaging birds like the sulphur crested cockatoos and crimson rosellas.


Above this strong fence material was hung a 2m wide metal bird mesh which was fragile but very cheap at the time and the roof would be a woven nylon bird net that wasn’t cheap. We had a local timber mill that supplied the 3.5 m treated pine poles that would support the whole structure. Total cost was around $2000 which we could cover in jam sales in a month or two.

I had previously foolishly bought 100m of nylon bird net at a very low price, primarily because I can’t go past a bargain. It was single strand nylon rather than the woven finish. I put some of it up to see if it worked. After three days it had caught and hung three rosellas. They tried to force their bodies through the mesh which stretched but not far enough to free them and in their twisting around they had become hopelessly entangled in other nylon cells. It worked well in the fashion of the shotgun on the wombats. I took it down and put it in a locked cupboard.

37 Don't go on holiday



Despite our failures to grow our wool and chestnut enterprises, we couldn’t satisfy the demand for our berry fruits and it was a nice little earner. The problem was that growing, picking and selling berries was really demanding hard work, unlike growing wool which is a doddle. We had to expand our tiny plot. This was forced on us after an overseas holiday when we spent all the jam proceeds.


We arrived back to a mess. Our canes, nicely ready to bear next season’s crop, had been felled to 15 cm high and wouldn’t be yielding anything. Whatever felled them had a very sharp pair of secateurs and always cut at a 60 degree angle. The young hazelnut trees and sprouting quince trees were pruned similarly. I didn’t know anyone who would have worked so hard.


Then it became clear, the chicken wire fence around the orchard had been broached. A wombat had excavated a large hole from outside to inside and the rabbits had used it for their evil purposes. I had been confused by the large number of pied currawongs inside the enclosure that was netted above as well as fenced, particularly as I couldn’t find any holes in the net. They too were strutting down the wombat hole and up into the enclosure.


As well as being cowardly and sneaky and therefore un-Australian, currawongs are really smart.

36 Jamram hits back



Jambo and Rambo had now been put in the same paddock solely for company; that’s the way real farmers do it with all the boys together. It wasn’t working. They didn’t make friends. I had expected that in any disagreement between them Rambo would win and maybe maim and even kill Jambo, but they just kept their distance. I assumed Rambo’s frightening horns and vigour were the reason.


It came time to move Jambo in with his ewes, but first we had to put the two rams into the yards to separate them. This forced them into close proximity, a few metres apart. Jambo instantly ran into the side of Rambo totally bowling him over. Then showing he wasn’t a gentleman, further steam-rolled Rambo while he was prostrate. Victorious, Jambo then trotted into the paddock with the ewes and made friends.


After a couple of weeks interacting with the girls Jambo leapt a series of fences and went the 20 kilometres back home. He had made his decision, our place was inadequate. We had decided in the meantime that he was gay because he always seemed to keep at least a few metres between himself and sheep.


Despite his leanings, when spring arrived it was accompanied by two cross-bred lambs, both male and therefore useless to us, but proof that Jambo had been at least a bit active and slightly hetero. The lambs grew into fine boys who looked exactly like their father. They showed no trace of merino genes. Jambo was too special to mix. The boys were however quite tasty when curried.


This last curry supper marked the close of our fat lamb enterprise. Somebody said you get what you pay for.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

35 A suitable house



Goodness knows why but she thought a yurt might be OK for us. I had thought that a yurt was a round tent made of animal skins that spent half its life on a mule wandering around Kazakhstan. One week, as we were leaving Wombalano for Canberra, she suggested we take the scenic route and drop in at Goulburn Yurtworks to update my knowledge bank by checking out real yurts. These were designed in California. I was against the idea on the principle that we never agreed with each other on anything at first.


Yurts turned out to be round wooden houses, or more correctly, nearly round houses made from triangles like the slices of a cake. Each slice was a prefabricated roof section, a prefabricated wall and a bit of wooden floor. The ‘modules’ were delivered on site as flat packages and screwed together to complete the yurt cake. The bit that everybody knew about except me was that a steel hawser was tightened around the cake at the end to squeeze it into a perfect round, fairly similar to the Kazakhstan original.


We sat in one at the Yurtworks yard while we waited for a salesman to appear. The wait was intentionally long because it gave us a chance to experience circling slowly round and round while suspended under a wooden ceiling that focussed the eye on a sunlit apex; a bit like being on a merry-go-round. The pungent mountain smell of the red cedar walls completed the sensation. I should have left in anger because the cedar was fully imported from the USA, not the superior locally-grown Toona cedar that I had dreamt of.


We both liked it, no arguments. They could deliver one in a couple of weeks and erect in in 3 days maximum. The one for delivery had been prefabricated under order and the order had bounced, hence the short delivery time and very low price near cost. The plan wasn’t quite right so we would go away and think about it.

34 Idyll curtailed



Sadly Gordon had not been able to beat the cancer that riddled his abdomen and gave him intense back pains. He died without needing to use the steel bridge in an ambulance mercy dash to Bombala. His death ended one of the many love stories of the valley that had brought him, his new wife, and the younger members of his wife’s family together to Creewah. He had given up the Sydney Water Board and his grown up family to become a hobby farmer and try out his many talents in the bush. Temporary sheds had gone up quickly, the cows purchased and producing milk, chooks pecked around the sheds and made eggs, and the fruit and vegie garden thrived.


They had chosen and cleared a position overlooking the river to build their house. The sheds worked out well as temporary dwellings for the family and the bathroom shed had a lovely view over the garden. The teenage daughter boasted that her experiences in that hot bath were unrivalled anywhere. Who else could soap, watch birds and simultaneously pick and eat raspberries from canes overhanging their bath? Incidentally, she also wrote poetry while in the bath, at least that's what she said.


Their climb to the idyllic lifestyle was not dissimilar from that of others in the area. Get the basic necessities together in temporary form while you work on the better and permanent structures.
The plan was to expand the agricultural activities later. They purchased an elegant and large kit house that they would build. No components were prefabricated. The kit was essentially a plan and all the bits and pieces needed to complete the dwelling delivered on site by the manufacturer. It was sized to take the whole family and any future additions like grandchildren, so it was big.


The dream house task was too great. The sheds were there so there was no immediate urgency to complete. It progressed but weeds grew faster and components and tools, put down till tomorrow, disappeared under the grass and the debris of normal family life. Eventually the roof was complete so it was a good time to try it out and move in. The view was great without the walls.


Then Gordon’s pains started, the kids suddenly grew up and left and the lovers were marooned alone on a settee under a big roof with the wind howling through. Amazingly, they battled on and got the walls up and the ceilings, the septic tank worked, the river water was plumbed in and electricity attached. They had done it apart from sundries like shapely verandas and deckings and painting and the odd chimney. It was a remarkable achievement but time had run out. Gordon often said ‘we haven’t got a round to ot’ which was supposed to be a funny toilet joke but was also deep and meaningful.


She said, we’re not going to have a big house. Anything we have has to be complete in a week. Let’s get on with the dream without the pain. And we started looking for a cheap house that would fit the plan, but suitable for a lawyer now earning money.

33 Ram for jam



Fat lambs, if on the market prior to Christmas were bringing in good profits. Maybe we could get into this. We certainly weren’t going to try emus, ostrich, alpaca or lamas. An acceptable starter crossbred was merino x Border Leicester. Border Leicesters are those tall proud-looking sheep that featured in ‘Babe’. We had merinos, so all we now needed was a Border Leicester ram to start printing money. The grapevine soon told us of a local one that would be cheap despite his good pedigree. He was now used only for mowing grass on a property no longer interested in sheep. We rang up for an interview.


He was in a large shearing shed waiting to interview us. He looked us over but didn’t seem able to decide whether we were up to the job. He needed to look at our place to decide. We asked the farmer for the decision. He thought we should just take him. He would like the change. I backed the ute up to the shed’s ramp, opened the cage gate and he walked in, no hassle and so strange.


How much do you want for him she said? What do you reckon he’s worth was the standard reply? Now we always carried a few jars of jam with us on the off-chance that we might meet a receptive old lady, preferably past 80, and as usual there were 3 jars in the ute. How about 3 jars of jam I joked? OK he said, and the deal was sealed with the hand shake.


We started to laugh about the deal on the way back to Wombalano, but when the face peered through the ute’s rear window, quite unamused, we realised he thought he had been undervalued.


He seemed to like being at our place, getting into the green feed immediately after a brief look around. We couldn’t put him with the ewes quite yet but had him in the neighbouring paddock. Rambo was in a further paddock. After a few days we would start our new cross-bred flock.

32 A death in the family



By our fourth season we had 80 sheep and they were all beautiful. Cecil and his girls had done us proud. They had made lots more than the current 80 but the extras had been despatched to other properties. The flock included Rambo, a big strong ram not quite as good in wool quality as Cecil but close. He was one of Cecil’s sons who we had preserved to inherit the mantle should Cecil eventually get old. We had kept a second ram to keep him company but he was slightly mad and liked running at full speed into anything solid like a shed wall. Eventually he killed himself.


I found Cecil’s carcass under a small tree in the River Paddock. He showed no signs of damage more than associated with a tough life servicing ewes. Clearly he died happily of a heart attack. Rambo couldn’t wait to use his inheritance and instead of taking it gently and savouring the intimate pleasures of his sisters and mother, he had the circuit of the half flock we allowed him done in a few days.


She didn’t like it, pointing out that it was not only morally wrong, but would result in loss of vigour in the flock and possibly even homosexuality, considering also the river water. We should get a proper ram.


Recently, the bottom had dropped out of the wool market with the diminution of the Soviet armed forces; they didn’t need greatcoats any more. The Italians were making suits from brilliant new polymers that were lighter and warmer than the finest wools and selling them relatively cheaply across Europe, and Australia had just been through some over-productive wool years and the nation’s stockpile was building. Wool was now hardly saleable. Despite its good quality and doubled quantity, our wool was earning less than half the small amount we banked in our first season. It really was time to rethink the business plan again.

31 Annejam



The story as told went something like this.

Years ago, when she could get the fruit, Anne occasionally made a batch of raspberry jam exactly like her mother did. The relatives loved her jam, the neighbours were occasionally treated to a jar and everyone was happy. Then one of her lawyer friends called Charlotta suggested she should sell her jam instead of giving it all away and call it AnneJam. This caused some rethinking: How to make more than a few jars and have no failures, how to grow enough of our own fruit but not so much so that the whole thing became really hard work.

But first we had to work out why Anne’s jam batches weren’t always the same. How did Grandma do it? Anne said Grandma just followed the recipe. Grandma’s recipe headed ‘Raspberry Jam’ was in a tattered book called Cookery Book; South Australian School of Mines (and Industries).

It said concisely: Allow 1 lb. sugar to each pound of fruit. Wash fruit, place in preserving pan with the sugar, bring slowly to the boil and boil quickly until it gels.

There were crossings out and scribbled replacements in faded biro. The 1 lb became ¾ lb. Wash fruit was crossed out, with crossed out and replaced with boil then add. The word slowly was removed and ½ hour added after boil quickly.
These seemed to be fairly significant modifications and not really following the recipe. I looked at other recipes in the book and they too were rewritten.

This was a little bit wrong but near enough to the truth of the birth of AnneJam. The reality was that we had to come to grips with lots of old wives tales about jam-making so we could make reasonably consistent jams across seasons from our range of raspberries, and the boysenberries, blackberries, and blackcurrants that had joined them by the third season.


Remarkably, people did seem to want to buy our jam but she wasn’t sure. There is a big gap between giving away and selling. Giving away carries no responsibility. No fault for the dead insects in the mix, no fault for the chip in the lip of the jar, no fault for the furry growth on the jam surface. Even knowing these possibilities you can feel a warm glow when giving it away. Recipients can always dump the product and not tell you or even pass the burden on to someone else.

As a newly-fledged lawyer she worried endlessly about selling jam. It would only be worth a few dollars but if someone died from eating the product, and we were sued, we would lose everything we had and more. Was it worth the hassle? I reminded her of the business plan and that we were recognised primary producers with little produce. The Taxman might be worse than her suers.

We started with the gullible, weak and defenceless sector of the population, namely the old. It seemed our jam teleported them to long-forgotten scents and tastes of their youth.


Remembered stories wafted from the jam spooned onto freshly-baked scones; go on have some cream, you only live once. After a year of delivering to old people’s homes and selling by word of mouth someone commented that we were losing quite a few of our clients through death. No links were intended.

30 Fate



When I was at school, my occasional nickname was Rasper. This alliterated with my surname, which was enough, but had been picked from the air by a smart kid in the class who had heard of Rasputin who died 30 years earlier. Those who weren’t into history liked the name because it was associated with raspberry, a rude noise made with any part of the body, and slightly disparaging which nicknames usually have to be. There was no truth to the rumour that I had won the Form 4B ‘Long drawn-out fart competition’ leading to this name. I had actually come second, but only because the winner cheated by momentarily breaking to get her second wind at 32 seconds. This was allowed. Some mothers may have been concerned with problems in that week’s wash. ‘What have you been eating dear?’ Actually the winner wasn’t a girl; that was made up.


Maybe if I had been nicknamed Toona or tree or forestry instead of Rasper my path into the future would have been what I wanted. But unfortunately, I was doomed and at that point fate dumped me heavily and pointed me towards distant raspberries and AnneJam.

29 Failure



We worked out from our weather trends that we might get some chestnuts every 10 years, possibly enough for a bit of a party around a bonfire, participants roasting the nuts and themselves and pretending to enjoy it when they burnt their tongues. Decades into the future it would be something to tell their grandchildren accustomed only to high rise apartments and fast food.


What was it about trees and me? The Toona hadn’t even got into the ground to later wither up and die and the chestnuts promised but then retracted. Was this a progression of failure perhaps launched a long time before? When I was a mediocre and uninterested student at secondary school, the idea of trudging through a life tied to a desk from 9 to 5 was a vision of sheer pointlessness and gloom. I didn’t like inside, I only liked outside and the more apparent space that outside provided the better. I told my dad, I’m going to be a bulldozer driver. They earn heaps more than you and it’s outside work, sort of. He freaked. I guess he freaked because parents are supposed to sacrifice their lives so their children can move into higher quality air than they themselves breathed. A distinguished schoolmaster shouldn’t beget a bulldozer driver. He declared I must do one more year at school to get at least a few ‘O levels’ to my name and then I could do what I wanted. I couldn’t get a bulldozer driver’s licence anyway until I was 16.


This was serious because he normally didn’t bother me at all except once when I dated his school’s cleaner’s daughter who was very cute. I had to rethink my life. I was incredibly bored with school except for the sports things and the occasional interface with girls. So I decided to do science to fill the year; Physics, Chemistry, Botany, Zoology. And maybe I could then be a Forestry Officer, living and working outside and occasionally driving a bulldozer. It seemed to satisfy the future mirage. Of course I would continue with advanced music because only girls did that, and maybe a bit of art and woodwork which I liked.


To fill out the new maybe dream, I worked in forests during holidays with real forestry workers. Trees were magic. My holiday work the previous year being a D8 bulldozer driver’s mate was forgotten.


A couple of years passed and I now had an acceptable school record with both ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels. My dad was happy but didn’t crow by saying I told you so; he had a few hundred other kids to worry about. Scholastically I had now exceeded the Forestry Officer requirements and could contemplate aiming for an administrative job in Forestry, a desk job 9 to 5 inside, perhaps in Rhodesia or Kenya. Foreign parts at this stage were unknown so in my brain were classified as outside, thus acceptable. I applied to do a Forestry degree in a foreign country, the University of Wales. I was closing in on working with trees, outside with things I liked.


In those days it wasn’t just scores that got you into university courses, it was interviews. I headed off into this foreign land inhabited by small strange-speaking peoples for my interview. There were 15 places and 65 students short-listed. We think you should do Agriculture or Crop Science my interview panel said. You are not suitable for Forestry. Trees turned from mirage to miasma as distant as ever.

28 Raspberries and chestnuts


Two seasons after their discovery the raspberry canes were doing well. We had put them into beds, pre-dug to half a metre and then heavily composted, and transplanted their offspring canes to make maybe 200 plants in neat rows. They liked the copious compost and water from their drippers judging from the almost 2 metre height they achieved on their wire trellis. We were picking around 200 kg of fruit. Even after visitors had eaten their fill there were plenty of berries left over for jam. Maybe we could include jam in our business plan to augment the sheep and chestnuts.



The chestnuts were hopeless they were so frost sensitive. Everybody said that since chestnuts grow in very cold places in Europe, they could obviously handle our place. This was very true while they were dormant and leafless during winter, but once leaf and fruit buds started to swell in spring, anything colder than -2°C was a disaster. The buds browned, dried and died and had to be replaced by new buds for the leafing and fruiting process to begin again. This took around 1 month thereby reducing an already short season and resulted in half-filled unsaleable nuts at the end. Expanding leaves were also sensitive to frost. The expanding bits just dried up making very untidy-looking trees.


As we discovered, we could have frosts even in the middle of summer, indicating that without considerable global warming on our place, chestnuts could not be relied upon. Our 100 trees that had the potential to realise tens of thousands of dollars weren’t worth $100. On the bright side, at 800 metres above sea level, we were likely to be safe from any rise in sea level and we could climb the trees to get away from lions.

27 Skins



One frosty morning, after checking the sheep, I noticed something draped over the fence. It was a kangaroo with its leg twisted in the top wires hanging upside down. Its head had been chewed off during the night. I untangled it and put it on the ground. It had a beautiful grey skin. It seemed a pity not to skin and tan it for posterity.


Skinning a kangaroo is quite easy because there is very little fat to wade through, the meat is dry and firm and the skin itself is strong and elastic. In fact, after the first couple of incisions, the skin can be torn off like a wet suit or a sock. Having no eyes looking critically at me as I did the surgery made the job easier.


A few days later I came across a large dead wombat that had been bounced off the road by a vehicle during the previous night. Nearby was its baby. It was also dead but just looked asleep. Maybe it had been thrown out of the pouch. I had never attempted skinning a wombat, so now was the opportunity. I chose the baby. Its tiny feet were lovely and soft, totally undamaged by walking and digging. However, I soon began to wish I had walked past the corpse and let it rot because skinning was so difficult. Above the behind the skin overlaid gristle that was a centimetre thick and the two were firmly glued together. I struggled for more than half an hour before being satisfied with the cute baby, hands feet and head all nicely displayed and flattened. It tanned well, but not quite as perfectly as the kangaroo.


When Ben heard that I now had a collection of rabbits, wombat, kangaroo, sheep and Basil variously decorating chairs, walls and the floor he made a wish. He wished I wasn’t the person to find him after an accident. He reckoned it wouldn’t feel nice being skinned, stretched out and pinned to the wall for all visitors to see; an art work and long term dust catcher. I asked if I could keep his head in a small bottle.

26 Marking lambs



The average age of the lambs was six weeks and it was as late as I could leave it to do the business. They have to go through an initiation ceremony that can be painful. It builds their characters and gives them something to talk about in the long hours between meals. Marking involves an injection that protects against six unspellable things, involves putting a rubber ring around the tail and another around the scrotum, drenching, and finally, clipping an ear mark, personalised in shape for your property. Real farmers might include mulesing. They might also chop the tails off with a sharp knife and slit the scrotum to allow removal of the testicles by a suck, bite and spitting process. The dogs love the product and leap on it in frenzy. It supposedly parallels ground unicorn horn in its aphrodisiac power.


Doing these numerous steps yourself requires some organisation. With help it is supposedly easier and she volunteered to do the injections and hold the lambs. The first lamb took around ten minutes including the initial catching and the second catching after the tail band went on. It was fairly close to torture though in some countries it wouldn’t be defined as that. That little pink ear didn’t look half as pretty after I had torn a lump out of it so we dropped marking in favour of ear tagging. In this process which is just as unsavoury, the ear is sandwiched between two 10 cent-sized coloured buttons held together by a rod. The rod works a bit like a rivet. Attaching requires a hygienic applicator that doesn’t work in the hands of someone of poor resolve. The advantage of tagging is that it’s lovely to see all your lambs skipping around with coloured fashion-earrings.


Lamb two was a male which meant two rubber rings and reloading the ring applicator between. The rubber bands can fly off in all directions when you hurry. More importantly, the tiny balls disappear from the scrotum if you have cold hands, or no confidence, and you have to get them back. I had practised this operation when helping a neighbour and had had dummy runs on our own lambs. It’s interesting what some farmers get off on.


The balls came down nicely with a two finger abdominal prod and a gentle reassuring blow in the ear. The rubber rings went on and the balls were nicely captured in the scrotum. And off he ran baaing to mum saying it was nothing really, and don’t I look cute with my ear marker. Ten minutes after ringing the lambs were in agony as the appropriate parts discovered they had no blood supply. They hopped, ran, stopped, lay down, curled up and did yoga. But within half an hour it was back to mum for a drink.


We worked our way through them and gradually perfected the methodology. If I sat down comfortably on a box and cuddled the lamb on my knee on its back throughout the process, and did all the operations, it worked much better. She acted as nurse handing over scalpels, swabs and so on. We did the last ten lambs in the time it took to do the first one. Surprisingly, none of the males turned into rams possibly because they drank the river water.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

25 Basil Faulty


Poddying a lamb sounded like a fun thing to do so we drove into Queanbeyan to get the appropriate feeding devices and the two types of milk substitute. One was to be given initially to replace the natural high-powered stuff lambs get as their first feed, the other was the run of the mill stuff that the lamb would get on demand. On demand, surely not, this was starting to be a bad idea.

Basil was hungry. He seemed to think the bottle was great and he especially liked being held close while he was performing. The compound went through quickly coming out the other end as a bright yellow dribble, perfect for sunshine colours on a painting. After a few days of feeding the yellow turned dark and harder and he and we were in business. The problem was we had to return to Canberra as work hadn’t gone away. Basil was totally dependent on us. We squeezed him in a cardboard box, closed the lid and put it on the back seat of the car.

This was ridiculous. He couldn’t be outside on our back lawn in Canberra because he would run away or be eaten by marauding cats or dogs, so we had to have him inside. The sun room with its tiled floor was the only place that could be easily washed free of lamb poo. However, his hooves weren’t designed for slippery tiles and he couldn’t stay upright, doing 4-legged splits acts when he tried to move. He asked for a carpet. An old Indian one seemed to do the trick. The feeding nearly on demand continued and he grew and the magic carpet changed colour. He also became more adept at balancing, clicking around on the floor at a fair rate and distributing his little raisins more widely. The room looked more and more like a paddock. After 3 months it would have been knee deep in organic grass.

He really had to go outside. He wasn’t impressed with that move and the enclosure I built setting up a big baaing din which the neighbours thought was lovely, a reminder of spring. After a couple of weeks he was nibbling grass and really growing. Children came from around the area to see this sight and have a hold and a stroke. Briefly we were famous.

The 28 lambs back on the farm were far less demanding than Basil and were growing better. They had a different shape. Basil was getting bigger but his body wasn’t getting higher off the ground, much like an obese child. He had lumps on his back that lined up with the front legs. His legs weren’t fitting into sockets at the top; the sockets hadn’t developed. Basil really was faulty and his mother was right to ignore him. We had been dealt a bummer. I took him in the shed, closed the door and shot him.

Charlotta was concerned. She warned my partner not to get ill or she too might finish up in the shed. I became widely known as the lamb killer. No neighbours reported the shot to the police despite the signs up the road declaring it a neighbourhood watch area.

It seemed a pity to waste the wool so I skinned Basil very neatly, salted the skin, bought some tannin solution, and started him on the way towards a very small pair of slippers. His body was a bit small to eat. He was the first and last poddy lamb we ever had.

24 Lambing



It is about 150 days between joining and lambing, so by back-calculating, it seemed that Cecil got to work pretty much as soon as he was allowed to mingle with the ewes. Interesting they call joining work. Judging from the rate at which the ewes dropped their lambs, Cecil was treating it as a retirement holiday. On real farms with real ‘working’ rams, all the lambs come over a few days. This makes it easy for the farmers to do what farmers have to do all at once. Like she said, I didn’t know anything about lambing so I had to find out pretty quickly exactly what farmers have to do.


The first three ewes didn’t need me. In fact I wasn’t even there when their lambs came. They were baaing instructions to their offspring who were feeding, bleating and bouncing like in the movies. It continued smoothly until a week later when I noticed one ewe wasn’t completing the birth process. It lay down, tried a push or two, stood up and walked around, laid down and tried again; a bit like when Jane was born. But in this case the lamb was stuck half way out like a fat sausage. She said ring the vet. That would cost money so I hopped across the river on the rocks to seek out an even higher authority that would probably be free.


John came straight away, leaving the dishes for later. No discussion, he just caught the sheep, sterilised his hand by wiping it on a nearby tussock, and plunged it in around the lamb. It’s dead he said, we have to get it out. I was ready to receive my instructions but the ‘we’ was apparently a royal one. He pushed the lamb back in, flicked it around and it and other stuff plopped out. The sheep got up and ran away. He resterilised his hands on the tussock and that was it. The lamb was enormous.


In the Boy’s Own book I had once read the hero fastened up the bereaved sheep, skinned the dead lamb and tied the skin on a lamb that had been dumped by its mother. The sad lamb and sad mother instantly became a joyful pair. This was a great idea, but there were no spare dumped lambs, yet.


Basil came two weeks later. He was second of twins. His mother decided he was a runt or had the wrong father or something. She just kicked him away whenever he came for his milk. The first lamb was nuzzled, licked, fed copiously and otherwise treated like a prince.


Her mothering instinct came to the fore. What can we do she said? Can we poddy it? In this case the ‘we’ wasn’t royal, it meant ‘you’.

23 A balancing act



I had been thinking about how to get the steel beams across the back creek during the week. I was able to multi-task so work didn’t suffer. The mind pictures depended on the tractor as even the whole Creewah RFB wouldn’t have been able to lift the beams manually. I would line up a beam with the centres of its two prospective supports and place the tractor on the other side of the creek again exactly in line but up a hill. Then I would pull the beam rapidly across the creek canyon. The various chains would link the leading edge of the beam and the tractor hoist, the latter giving extra height.


The picture included the beam falling into the water as well as digging into a permanent grave half way up the bank. This nightmare would be avoided by having planks leaning against the receiving pillar on the creek side. If the leading edge of the beam did fall into the creek, it might just ride up the planks as the tractor proceeded.


It was all set up. I was scared because there would be no second chance. I started with the easy beam. It didn’t need me to dodge the tractor through trees. It slid nicely on the first support and edged over the chasm, the tractor front wheels lifted as the beam crossed half way and started to drop but it then hit the planks and rode up onto the second support. I panicked and stopped to go back and investigate. Another 30 cm and I was there. I could centre it later using the crowbar.


The second beam worked well too. Everything was finished apart from a bit of welding and appropriate dancing and drinking. The latter was a D’Arenberg Shiraz with more power than the tractor. Pity she didn’t drink. Despite that we sat on a beam together with our feet dangling over the water.

22 Fern Creek



Because our lives were so flat out and everything seemed to be on deadlines we hadn’t even properly explored the farm. It was so much more than the paddocks. There were the precipitous hills that were covered in bush and remained unknown.


We set off to discover following a small creek that passed the remains of the superphosphate pile. It cut through a dead sphagnum moss bed up into the lower part of the Hanging Valley where it trickled through a gulley. There was a huge wombat hole in the gully. Outside the hole two babies were chasing each other while the parent nibbled the grass nearby. They saw us, stopped activities, stared, focused and decided it was home time.


A bit further up the creek started to climb. Tree ferns (Dicksonia antarctica) sat in and shaded the creek cutting. Manna gum trees fallen many years ago had to be climbed over. The atmosphere was still and prehistoric.


Large overhanging granite rocks dominated the area like they had owned it for millennia. We sat down by the creek now easing its way through the rocks and making a small pool at our feet. It was breathtaking when five white-naped honeyeaters appeared to forage busily in the ferns. They are small, brilliant-white breasted birds with dark backs and sharp red eyes, but not the menacing witch-like red eyes used by white-winged choughs. Two green birds with loud voices joined; white- cheeked honeyeaters. Not being bird watchers, we had never seen these things before. A little further up the creek stopped. It was just a spring appearing from under large rocks.


Fern Creek was now named, so it came into reality. No longer was it a prehistoric nothing, but a walk, a destination. Relatives and visitors had something to do when they visited. They could go on the Fern Creek walk. The property suddenly had a new perspective.

21 The Bridge



Pick up and delivery of the now two metal beams went perfectly in the very cheap truck we hired. We left them by the creek above high water mark and were back in Canberra in time for me to go back to work for an evening session to catch up. The problem now was that I would have to build the footings for the bridge which would have to be big enough and strong enough to carry these massive metal beams as well as a vehicle.


Our back creek crossing had once been trafficable. When the land agents had created our approximately 100 acre blocks back in the 1970s, they had been required to provide access on to each block. For our place they had put 1m diameter concrete pipes into the creek to carry flood waters and placed the gravel road over the pipes. They had done a similar job on another creek further into the property using slightly smaller pipes. All had been washed out in a flood a decade later.


I found three of the big pipes tumbled down stream but still intact. The fourth was broken into pieces. I also found 2 of the smaller pipes with their tops protruding from a soil wash 20m from their original site. One was intact. I decided to sink the 4 intact pipes vertically into the creek banks, well back from the sides. I would fill them with rocks then place the beams on top and weld them in place against steel posts that would be concreted into the pipes. Ideas are so easy. The mental moving pictures can be so vivid and detailed. At this stage though the concrete pipes were still scattered and they were too big for me to handle alone.


It was time to call out the red dragon. I had a big $100 drag chain, a couple of heavy wire hawsers bought via the Canberra Times adverts section for $10 and the bits of bullock chain from Johnny the shearer. All fastened together they were long enough and strong enough to pull the required concrete pipes out of the creek and burial sites. The tractor provided the shaking power. Phase 1 was complete almost exactly as pictured.


Digging the round holes to take the pipes was easy, just needing a pick, shovel and muscle power. The soil was soft. A copperhead snake wandered over and watched me. Probably thought I was wasting my time that should have been spent in planting Toona. Too much digging affects the thought processes.


There had to be quite a bit of thinking to work out how to get the heavy pipes into their custom-made holes. The tractor hoist couldn’t take the weight without bending so there had to be a flash back to the pyramids to solve the problem. Of course I could have called on muscles in the shape of the RFB but I already owed them heaps of Brownie points. Better to use my brain. As I shovelled the soil out of the holes I arranged it in a spiral ramp around each hole. Theoretically I could balance each heavy pipe on its edge and wind it up the ramp till it exactly overhung its hole. Winding it just a bit more over the edge and jumping sideways should see it dropping vertically straight down the hole. Precision balancing was required. I could finish up in the hole with concrete on top of me.


Amazingly the first pipe followed the mental video exactly. I stopped then to make sure this was reality and not brain pictures. The snake was still there, the tractor was watching as before. I decided to celebrate with a coffee break. So it was Nescafe Instant, two spoons, delicately lifted with a little myrtle honey.


The next two pipes fell in as ordered; now it was the small one. That was so easy to manoeuvre. But I rushed it. It fell into the hole at an angle so the lip caught half way down. I couldn’t budge it by muscle power. The tractor and chain completed the job. The snake had got bored and left. I filled the pipes with rocks and sealed them with concrete. Next weekend was the big one, putting the heavy beams across the creek, somehow.

20 Bureaucracy



Despite being in the middle of nowhere with no town facilities like sealed roads, piped water, sewerage and rubbish collection, the bureaucracy caught up with us. The double garage we were living in most comfortably wasn’t classed as a dwelling, only as a shed. If we set in play the building of an actual house by sending the council the plans and paying the appropriate dues, we could continue to live in the shed till the house was built. It was also noted that the access to the property was inadequate, not being trafficable in all weathers, and not being wide enough for the passage of two vehicles simultaneously. This should be attended to as a priority.


We hadn’t factored in these costs and time consuming activities. By now she had almost finished her Law Degree with exams looming and I had additional responsibilities at work, but no more pay as happens. Luckily for us these council demands were followed by personnel changes in council and so the pressure was off for a while on the shed. Unfortunately, Gordon next door got really sick with cancer and there was an increasing likelihood that he would need to use the ambulance to Bombala Hospital occasionally. This may not seem relevant, but when the river was in flood, our neighbours’ only way to get to Bombala was through our place as that avoided crossing the river. But our place had a back creek which also rose to more than a metre deep.


I talked to Garry. He came up with a plan. Build a bridge over your creek he said. I had images of using a shipping container placed on the high banks to span the creek. It would work and containers were only $100 plus delivery. Garry liked to do things very cheaply and always read the adverts in the Canberra Times for bargains. I was sure he memorised many of them for revisiting on a rainy day. A metal H-shape beam from a decommissioned overhead crane was advertised a couple of weeks ago, he said, and it was only $20 though it must have cost $100s. I didn’t get his drift. If it’s long enough to span the creek when cut in half, I could weld in some spacers between the halves and you have a roadway. He got on the phone. The beam was big enough. The selling firm in Fyshwick would do the cutting for nothing and an adjacent company had a truck with a hoist big enough to load the metal onto our truck. The hoist driver would do it for a case of VB.

Garry said we can do it tomorrow. I need a day off work. Of course he had to get permission, so I gave it to him.

19 Rural Fire Brigade



I was so embarrassed next day when I called the Captain of the Rural Fire Brigade. Had he any suggestions for getting my tractor out of a deep bog? He told me many stories quite similar to mine that were later added to when the whole valley learnt I was an idiot. He knew I was a weekender and had to be back at work in Canberra ASAP so suggested I leave it with him.



The following weekend I found my tractor sitting quietly under a big Manna gum near the bog, covered in dried mud but otherwise OK. The bog, disengaged from its prize, had closed again with only a sandy creek bubbling from the grave as evidence of the adventure. Clearly I had destroyed some spring system or aquifer probably thousands of years old. The only water that could be feeding the boggy lens was 300m uphill where a small creek disappeared into the ground. I apologised to all the watching spirits and declared never to be bad again. I was ignored and the trees turned their backs.


The tractor started first time after a copious injection of ‘Aerostart’ into the engine air intake. Driving away I passed two deep boggy ruts I hadn’t seen before. The RFB report indicated two people had attended the emergency in the 4WD fire truck. They had become bogged whilst manoeuvring into position and had had to winch their vehicle out by attaching the cable to a large tree. The winch was then used to extricate the tractor, anchoring their vehicle to said tree. The gurgling sucks and sighs as the tractor emerged must have been huge.


I became a member of the Creewah RFB and she after a few years became the brigade secretary as well as editor of the newsletter.

18 Superphosphate spreading




Attaching the 6-bag super spreader onto the 3-point linkage and PTO of the tractor wasn’t easy for someone who didn’t understand the devices. The two main lifting arms had to match the width and height of the brackets on the spreader, the angle adjusting arm had to be right so the PTO meshed with the drive to spin the thrower, and the spreader should lift up straight and not bounce around when operating. There were telescopic arms with pins and big screws for distance adjustment and I didn’t know whether I had all the required bits.


By the time I had the spreader in position on the tractor I could have spread the pile by hand and it would have taken less physical effort. I knew I had to do it though otherwise someone would say “why did you waste money on that tractor”. I pulled the lever to raise the spreader. There was just a loud humming noise but no action. I tried to raise the massive blade on the front of the tractor. Same result. Clearly the hydraulics had expired. I shouldn’t have bought the tractor. It turned out the hydraulic oil tank was empty and after a refill everything worked, though hesitantly at first.


I bounced the tractor the 1.5 km or so up to the blue-tarpaulin pile and started loading. There are a lot of shovels-full in 6 bags and the spreader lip was high. I bounced the loaded tractor back to the River Paddock and we were away. The spreader was fantastic covering an acre in no time. By mid-afternoon I had the whole Paddock done and the pile had enough left for a couple more runs.


I was so cocky. I decided to take a short cut back through the Middle and Top Paddocks to the diminished pile and leave the tractor there overnight and finish off tomorrow. The route by the Long Paddock road was too far. That season was wet, the creeks were flowing strongly and the river had been in flood twice. It was really quite a good season to apply fertilisers. No problems through the Paddocks, the tractor pulled beautifully, until we had to slow down approaching the pile from a new angle, down a steep slope. The brakes didn’t do anything but still no problems as I was in control. At the bottom, the ground wobbled and bounced as we started to cross it, the surface broke, and quite quickly the whole tractor sank right down to the engine. The big blade at the front was fully immersed in wet soil. A spout of water a metre high burst out of the ground at the side. We were going nowhere. It was time for a cup of tea anyway.

17 More gems from the list



It appeared that large amounts of different types of clover had been spread around the farm along with the essential superphosphate during Torsten’s reign. Clover needs phosphorus to enable it to fix nitrogen from the air and thus fertilise the soil. Creewah soils are very nitrogen deficient even though the Acacias/wattles and the many types of native peas try hard to address that problem. Torsten had used contractors to supply and spread the superphosphate but the amounts supplied and spread didn’t match. Either Torsten had been ripped off or there was a large pile of superphosphate lying idle on the property somewhere.


While wandering I had been interested in a blue tarpaulin attached tightly over a small hillock in the Mountain Paddock but hadn’t been interested enough to poke under it till now. It was the un-spread superphosphate, several $100 worth. I was overjoyed. This gave me an excuse to learn to use the super-spreader on the tractor.

16 Torsten's list


During the hour or so that Torsten and I had spent together prior to our purchase of Wombalano he had told me many things, like how to start and run the fire pump that lifted water from the river to the 8000 gallon concrete tank sitting on a small hill 200 metres away. Like where the 2 inch water pipe ran and how he had dug it in and his plans for linking in to Gordon’s similar line as a fire emergency measure. Like about the kit 4000 gallon tank that had been delivered but never unwrapped and where I would find the thousands of nuts and bolts needed to fasten it together. He told me where the rolls of spare irrigation pipe were, the wire and netting for fencing and explained the tools I was inheriting. They had many expansion plans and had bought in sufficient materials to do them. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel he said.



Over the following months and years I got to know Torsten intimately despite never communicating ever again. He was methodical, so once you learned the method, you knew he would always use it. He spaced things equally, kept his old nuts and bolts separate from his screws and nails and had categorised them in sizes. He overbought everything so there were spares. He made lists. The lists were in neat folders and arranged alphabetically. He obviously went to a different school from me, or perhaps he listened instead of looking at girls.


While browsing through one folder I found an envelope containing the labels from all the plants they had tried to grow. The labels were numbered and there was a diagram of where the numbers were placed on the farm. Very many things had died or soon would. Grapes, many fruit trees that would thrive in Sydney, nut trees like almonds and hazels and a couple of walnuts. They had spent a fortune. Included were 5 varieties of raspberry, 5 plants of each.



We grew a few raspberries in the cold of Canberra so I thought they might be alive somewhere. I followed Torsten’s diagram to the Middle Paddock where there was just long grass. No signs of the bushes. They should have towered above the grass. I started up the enormous trimmer that was part of the walk-in-walk-out deal using the nylon cutter rather than the blade that was big enough to fell a small tree. Sadly, Torsten hadn’t bought the plough attachment. I started cutting the grass and within a few minutes had located a very small raspberry plant. The others were equidistant and due east and west of the first. All 25 had survived the 6 years since they had been planted, but hadn’t grown or spread. They weren’t on a dripper line like the dead and miserable fruit trees and the seriously bored-out blackcurrant bushes. They had got this far so they might as well be rescued and treated nicely with at least a dripper line and a bit of a weed and fertilise.



She said it would be nice to grow raspberries. Then we can make raspberry jam like your mother makes. She didn’t mean my mother who never made jam though she was great on other stuff, but rather her mother. Her family had a strange tradition of referring to their parents by “Yer mother/father”. They were all pretty keen on their parents so it wasn’t an attempt to distance themselves from that relationship. They still do it which is pretty weird. Maybe an Adelaide thing to do with expurgating any convict links which of course they didn’t have.

15 Selling the wool

I asked Johnny how to sell the wool. Take it into TWG on Polo Flat in Cooma, ask for an estimate and if you don’t like it take across the road to the other agent. What should I get? Should be a fair amount, he said, because it’s beaut wool, about 19 micron. I borrowed John’s trailer and with some difficulty rolled the bale and bits up some planks onto it. It looked strange perched up behind the Alfa.

I recalled Garry’s story about when he sold his first wool clip, just 3 bales, and driving into the Agent’s car park and queuing behind semi trailers stacked high with wool. How much you got they asked. Three he replied which they mistook for 300.

The agents weighed it, opened it and pulled out a few hands full. Nice wool! Who’s your shearer? I told them. How did you get him they asked, he retired? Did he class it? I said he and John did that. They approved. It seemed both were well known and considered good enough to delve no further. I had been in good hands. Paper work was filled in with unit, price per unit, amount and total. There were 3 categories and it all came to $1210.

Inputs were $850 for the sheep which included the agent’s fees and delivery plus $45 for insecticide and $100 for shearing so I was $215 ahead in just 3 months of farming. Plus I still had 34 sheep, mainly carrying lambs. I would have maybe $1600 income next year. Farming was money for jam.

14 Deals with a shearer

Johnny and Rosie had been really wonderful to us so when dropped in next morning I wanted to pay them back generously without being excessive. I had decided to give them twice what they asked me for. How much do I owe you I asked? Whatever you think it’s worth said Johnny. I jumped back mentally to our year in India. Then you never knew the going rate and the hope was you would offer a very large amount based on costs in your own country. The other party would then look very hurt and claim the going rate was twice that. The final agreed amount would be somewhere between your original offer and their claim. You were ripped off.

I had found out that the going rate was $1.60 per sheep. Doubling would make it $3.20 and the full sum for the day would be about $100. I asked if that was OK or should it be more or less. He looked hurt but said it was OK. I’ll drop you off a case of VB next time I’m passing, I said, and a bottle of scotch for Rosie. He looked slightly brighter. Total sum $120 and the cheque was written.

I thought we had finished but he said he had a few things for sale and was I interested? There was a fold-up wire spinner, just what I needed for the fence mending around the Mountain Paddock, a couple of heavy duty chains one of which was clearly from an old bullock cart and the shearing gear. I took the spinner and chains for $40. I later discovered that the spinner was from my property, given to Johnny by Torsten as part of a job lot during his clear out. It really was back to India, but I was pleased.

Monday, August 27, 2007

13 Shearing


It was three months after we had bought the sheep and it seemed time to make some money instead of just spending. I had no idea how to go about shearing. Davo had introduced me to my other near neighbour John who Davo declared was uncrowned Creewah Mayor; certainly royalty. I asked him for advice. John was a man of many parts who together with Jill had lived several previous lives. Among these were policeman, postman, shearer and gardener and landscaper. They ran sheep and cattle on their place. John’s favourite greeting wasn’t ‘Good morning’, but ‘Do you want a hand?’ These few words kept the royalty very busy.

He reckoned we should ask Johnny about shearing. He lived with his partner Rosie in the small stone house by the river where it was crossed by New Line Road. The corrugated iron sheds opposite his place were shearing sheds that had been built by his father and grandfather. They had owned much of the land around the area. Johnny had been a shearer but had retired to concentrate more closely on more serious things in life. Davo’s comment was ‘He’s a wreck’.
Johnny didn’t look a wreck. He had sharp eyes, black hair with no trace of grey and a slender body that looked about 40. I had seen him and Rosie several times as we drove past their place. I had thought Rosie might be his mother. They liked to sit outside in the sunshine and take in the view while they enjoyed liquid refreshment. They waved at everyone who passed. Johnny agreed to come out of retirement and shear the sheep. It would likely take him two days as his back was stuffed. He would start on Saturday about 8.30. Put them in the sheds late Friday so they’ll be dry to shear, he said.

When John said ‘Do you want a hand’ it often meant he would take charge and you would give him a hand. He came around with his dark brown Kelpie-style dog called Tuffy on Friday afternoon and it was on. The dog without much help had the sheep in a tight controlled group in no time and we set off to walk them through Gordon’s then Johnnie’s place to the sheds. The sheep were coaxed into the pens in the sheds to spend the night.

I like to be early for anything, so she and I arrived at the sheds at 8.15 am to check out the poor sheep. They were standing quietly, stirring a little as we came in. They knew more about what was going to happen than we did. Johnny appeared a little after 8.30. We had to move the big diesel generator from his house to the sheds. It would drive the shearing gear. That completed he turned on the radio to country music, set to sharpening blades, oiling and assembling his handpiece and attaching it to the driving arm.
What do I do I asked? Sweep the floor, he said, and make sure it really is clean and then clean the table and move it onto the floor. The wooden slatted table was where each fleece would be thrown so the oily edges could be removed as second class wool. She and I followed the instructions. Rosie appeared and told us about classing and pretty much everything else about the process including that some of our sheep would soon be lambing. You have beaut sheep she said. Nicest around here.

Johnny went into the pen, grabbed a sheep by its front legs and dragged it on its back to lie quietly between his knees under the shearing gear. The starting string was pulled, the handpiece started rattling and humming and within seconds the sheep had had a haircut and its rear end was scalped. The bits were on the floor. They had to go in separate empty fertiliser bags hanging on the wall. Meanwhile the fleece came off. It was beautiful to watch the long gentle strokes that peeled the wool away in one big piece. The sheep was mesmerised by Johnny’s touch. It seems I was now supposed to pick up the fleece and throw it onto the table like a sheet onto a bed, outside up. I needed a lesson. It hit the roof, landed upside down in a crumpled heap. Rosie reckoned it wasn’t too bad for a first try. I didn’t get any better though.

Luckily John and Jill arrived at that point. Do you need a hand? Silly question. He took over throwing, string pulling, bagging, fleece pressing in a wool pack suspended in a green machine in the corner and probably lots of other things I didn’t notice. It all went really well until Johnny stopped the gear at about 10.30. It was morning tea time. Rosie brought out the thermos and Johnny went for a leak and for his own private tea over in the house. We only found out much later that food was our responsibility. We didn’t have a clue. Rosie knocked up some thick sandwiches.

It all started again about 20 minutes later. The sheep were even more relaxed in Johnnie’s hands than previously. It seemed he only had to breathe on them to make them almost comatose. We were supposed to spend two days on the exercise but it was finished before lunch. The retired shearer had done a brilliant job and the sheep were now shining white without a trace of blood anywhere. The dog could take them back home. One wool pack was bursting full of fleeces and there were a few bags containing the dags and other extras. Johnny said come over tomorrow with the cheque.

Hanging Valley