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.