Chapter 7 Country Living
‘Let’s just head further up the road. The further up into the hills we get, the easier it will be to find someplace.’
‘Sure, Vicks, it certainly looks just the ticket up here. Really isolated. No bloody neighbours to poke their noses into our business.’
In reply she just looked at me, smiled and nodded. A smile was never far from her face in those days. Happy days. Just the both of us against all comers. A world of two. Vicky and myself had been staying with friends in the Casino area, of northern New South Wales, but by then we wanted our own place. I continued driving up the narrow unsealed road, heading to God-only-knew where.
‘If we can find a nice cheap place, we should be able to live just on our dole payments. I can’t be bothered working.’ I mused.
She laughed.
‘Not that you have done a lot of that lately, anyway.’
I laughed along with her. They were days of laughter. A time of wonder. We had successfully signed up on the dole, something not particularly hard to do in Australia in the late ‘70’s. Being a Kiwi, I was acutely aware that I was somewhat reinforcing the image of the New Zealander in Australia; a bit of a dole bludger. But on the other hand, Vicky was Australian, so I guessed it all sort of balanced itself out. Frankly, the moral dilemma didn’t really keep me awake at night. It was free money, so I took it. As we had a steady money flow coming in, we wanted to get a place of our own, but we needed a cheap place to live. Obviously we didn’t want to waste all that easy income on anything as banal as rent. We had a fairly heavy drinking lifestyle to maintain, and the odd bit of weed as well, so we preferred to keep those activities as our priority expenses. Neither of us wanted to live in a city, or town, so it was going to be out in the country for us. Simple, healthy living was what we both wanted. Clean air, quality food - vegetarian, and lots of booze and dope. The quintessential hippy lifestyle. We had been looking around at old empty country houses to possibly stay in, when we came across the find of the century. It was more a vision than a house. Utopia. We had been driving up in the hills to the west of Casino, when I spotted it. I pulled over the trusty Hillman Hunter.
‘Shit, Vicky, look at that place! What a beauty! That would be fantastic.’
She was even more ecstatic than me.
‘My God, it’s just so beautiful. I wonder who owns it? That would be perfect for us. It looks pretty run down, it’s definitely been empty for a long time.’
‘Yeah, just waiting for someone like us. We’ve got to look into this place. No neighbours to bother us.’
It was a spectacular colonial-style wooden house, up on a hill. Behind it were bigger hills, some bushclad, others with grasslands for the cattle to graze. It was built in the old Australian country style, up on high stilts, to create an air flow underneath, to help cool it down in summer. It had a fabulous verandah around all three sides facing the road, far below. Access from the road, down in the valley, was across a wooden bridge over a small river, then up along the ridge lines of the hills, snaking up to the house. From down in the valley it looked truly magnificent, It dominated the valley. From the house itself the view would be nothing short of breathtaking. With no other houses in sight, you could only see rolling hills, with a pine forest further up the road.
‘The only problem might be finding out who owns the place.’
‘Let’s go further up the road, and see if we can find someone to ask who the owner is.’ suggested Vicky.
Vicky was the definition of beauty itself. Blonde, suntanned, and with a fantastic body. Australian beauty at its best. We had been together just over six months by that stage, and I was madly in love with her. My first love, an intoxicating mixture of sexual attraction, similar lifestyle choices, and total insanity. I felt that I would love her forever. She was six years older than me, and very sexually experienced. Far more than me. When she looked at me with her cute brown eyes, and cheeky little smile, I could never resist her. Did I mention that she had a nice body? I put foot to peddle in the ubiquitous Hunter, and drove off, further up the isolated road. Just a few hundred metres from where we had spotted the house, we found ourselves driving through a pine tree forest.
‘Wow, it’s so nice around here,’ said Vicky, her face a vision of happiness, and beauty, ‘smell the pine trees! This would be the perfect place for me. I need some peace and quiet to perfect my yoga. I get too distracted with people always yapping, and constant traffic noise. Plus I need to get out of my clothes, they are just too restraining.’
Vicky liked doing her yoga naked. I could live with that.
About thirty minutes further up the road, It was a really isolated area, we came to what looked like a working farm, complete with house, a few sheds, and a couple of tractors. Dogs were barking, but, luckily, it appeared that they weren’t running free. As I pulled into the yard, a slim, fit looking guy of young middle age, dressed in the typical Aussie country style, came out of the house. Cowboy hat in place, of course. I think they were glued on. I got out of the car, and approached him.
‘Hi there, I wonder if I can ask you some information?’
He looked at me, not really suspiciously, but his interest was heightened.
‘Sure.’
He would prove to be a man of few words.
‘Do you know who the house, about half an hour’s drive back down the road, belongs to? We are looking for a place to live for a while, and that looks pretty good to us.’
While I was speaking Vicky had got out of the car too.
‘We could clean it up a bit. It looks like no one has lived there for a long time, it could use a bit of loving care.’ she said sweetly, a lot more diplomatically than me. I had the habit of getting straight to the point, probably too bluntly. Definitely too bluntly.
‘Well, that place is part of this farm.’
‘Are you the owner?’ I asked.
‘The owners are down in Melbourne, I’m the manager. Ron.’
Taking my cue from Vicky, I slowed it all down. We really wanted that house, and I didn’t want to ruin everything before we even got a foot in the door.
‘Hi Ron, I’m Matt, and this is Vicky. Basically we are a bit sick of the city lifestyle, so we’re looking for a nice quiet place to live out in the country. It’s just the two of us, so we wouldn’t cause any fuss, and we could clean the place up a bit. What are your thoughts on the subject?’
Ron instantly came up with a excellent proposal, one that could satisfy us all.
‘I could let you stay there in exchange for one day’s work a week. You look young and fit, what do you say? Just a bit of fencing, and stuff like that.’
‘Yeah, brilliant. I’m pretty good with my hands. We’d love that.’
Vicky loved the idea too, especially since she didn’t actually have to do any of the work. That would be all down to muggins.
‘Thanks a lot, that’s very nice of you. We’ll get the place all spruced up. It’ll be a good thing for all of us.’
Ron, without saying another word, that was his way, gave us the key to the back door, and we headed back down to the house. Our house. Our new home.
We were both elated as we drove up the long driveway, and took a closer look at our new abode. The outside was fantastic, with its magnificent prominence. Then we went inside. Not so good.
‘Vicks, it’s actually pretty rough, don’t you think?’
Inside it was pretty dirty. Bits and pieces of who-knew-what were scattered all over the place. She wasn’t deterred.
‘No, I love it. A few days of cleaning, and it will be looking good. I think it’s in pretty good shape, it just hasn’t had anyone living in it for a while. A long while, I would say.’
We checked out the rooms, one by one. It was a pretty big house. In one room, with a broken window, birds had made a lot of nests. They would fly in and out through a fairly small hole in one pane of glass. It was quite something to watch. They actually had to close their wings as they entered and exited through the small hole. It was a great display of skill to watch, but their excrement on the floor looked like it would make for a monster amount of work. We decided to leave that room to them for the time being, the clean up in there would be rather daunting, besides the place was incredibly big. There was room for us all. That would be our own private aviary. An aviary where the birds were free to come and go as they pleased. The house had no electricity, but there was a water tank, collecting rain water from the roof. The verandah was very wide, and with, as we had expected, an incredible view.
‘Look at this view! It’s incredible, Matt. I already love it here. This is definitely going to be my yoga space.’
‘I’m pretty sure this is where we will be spending most of our time, Vicks. It’s so peaceful, just absolutely surrounded by nature.’
From the verandah you could see the valley far below, rolling hills behind, grazing cattle, and pine forests further up the road. We couldn’t belive how lucky we had been. It was such an idyllic setting. We briefly cleaned up as much of the rubbish lying around as we could, and then headed back to our friends place, to load up all our stuff, and to pick up some cleaning materials. We would clean the place up while we were living there. We just couldn’t wait to move in.
First priority was to clean up our bedroom, which, as Vicky had predicted, wasn’t really that big a job. The wooden floors and walls were actually pretty easy to wipe down.
‘You were definitely right there, Vicks, it comes up pretty clean quite easily. Tomorrow I’m going to get to work on the kitchen. There’s a great looking iron stove, but it definitely hasn’t been used for a while, plus it seems to be full of all sorts of rubbish. Anyway, it’s all coming together well.’
‘Hey, I told you. I’ve cleaned up the toilet a bit, but It’s going to need a bit more work. I’ll get onto that tomorrow. That’s enough for today, let’s get to bed, and get an early start tomorrow. We need to make a run into town too, to pick up some food, and things.’
‘Sounds good to me.’
We hit the sack early, it had been a big day.
The bathroom amenities proved to be rather primitive. The toilet was outside, with just the old country style long drop. I’ll leave that one to your imagination. We soon found out, well, Vicky did really, that the toilet proved to have a bit of a problem associated with it, at night anyway. During the day, the house was ours, and ours alone. At night, underneath the house, and around the toilet area, it belonged to the rats. Monster rats. Scary looking rats. Not long after we went to bed, that first night, Vicky went off to the toilet with our kerosene lantern. The next thing I knew, I heard her scream wildly. Then she absolutely flew back in the door. I went into high alert mode.
‘What’s up, is someone out there?’
She was absolutely terrified.
‘There are bloody rats everywhere, dozens of them.’
Relief flowed through me. I had been expecting something dramatic.
‘What?’ I laughed, ‘They won’t hurt you. You just need to show them who’s boss.’
‘Here,’ she said, holding out the lantern with a smirk, ‘go and show them then. Boss.’
To prove my point I went confidently down the back stairs, and walked around to the toilet. Rats. Big rats. Big rats roaming everywhere. I freaked out completely. I fled back up the stairs as fast as my legs would carry me, and slammed the door shut behind me. Vicky was laughing.
‘Now do you believe me? I’ve never seen rats so big.’ Her expression turned worried. ‘What on earth can we do, Matt?’
‘Shit, that’s unbelievable. They’re monsters. And there are so many of them. Don’t worry, when we go into town, I’ll get some rat traps. That will eventually sort them out. In the meantime, we’ll just have to try and go to the bog before dark.’
In the morning, ostensibly rat free, we did some cursory cleaning, before we would head off for supplies. I tackled the kitchen. The house had the most marvelous wood burning stove, that served for both heating and cooking. For some unknown reason, the inside was jammed full of bits of paper, and all sorts of rubbish. While I was cleaning it, actually by putting my hand in to drag out all the rubbish, a rat came flying out of it, just inches from my face. Those rats were starting to ruin my life. But I hadn’t finished with them. I hadn’t even started.
‘OK, Vicks, let’s head into town, grab some lunch, and stock up on whatever we need.’
‘Yeah, that’s enough cleaning for today. A few more days like this and we’ll be right. That’s if we can sort out the rat problem, of course.
‘Hey, I’ve got it. Let it go.’
She looked at me slightly sceptically. I really loved that look, and all her other looks, too.
We cleaned ourselves up, and made the quite long run into Casino, our nearest town. By luck it was Friday. Every Friday the women of some charity group or other, had a stall in town selling home made goods. I had previously tried their Picallily chutney, and just loved it. Chutney and cheese, on a sandwich, that was all I needed. Done and dusted. A banquet fit for a king. That chutney was top on my shopping list, just above rat traps. Maybe first equal. Before anything else, I made a beeline for their stall. The women, as ever, were always full of smiles, and very welcoming.
‘Hello there, I really love your Picallily chutney. It’s not at all like the sort you get in the supermarket.’
The elderly women absolutely loved the positive acclaim.
‘Oh, thank you so much. It’s made with Phylis’s secret recipe. She won’t even tell us how she makes it, so don’t you even bother asking!’
We all laughed together. They were always surprisingly friendly, considering the two different planets we came from. Our styles of life couldn’t have been more different. It was nice, sometimes almost astonishing, to find such open minded people, especially in such a small town. I replied in the same jocular banter.
‘That’s a real shame, my girlfriend Victoria was looking forward to trying her hand at it. I guess we’ll just have to stick to buying yours, then.’
Vicky gave me an icy stare. She hated being called by that name, even though actually it was the name on her birth certificate. I think it sounded too much to her like long dead ruling monarchs, or, perhaps, railway stations. It never failed to get a rise out of her. Anyway, I just about cleaned that stall out of their chutney stock. I could have lived on that stuff. Actually, I just about did. We were both vegetarians, well, she was, so I was too. I was pretty easily influenced back in those days. I have never been a fussy eater, and simple, healthy foods have always been more than enough for me. We continued on with our shopping mission. As soon as we had distanced ourselves from the chutney ladies, Vicky elbowed me, hard, in the ribs.
‘Are you ever going to give up on the Victoria cracks? You know how much I hate that name.’
‘Probably not. I really like it. It makes you seem so regal.’ I said, with a straight face. ‘My Aussie Queen!’
‘You’re not funny, you know?’
She was not amused. She really did hate that name, but never fully explained why. Quite possibly it had something to do with her difficult family life when she was young. Maybe I should have been more sensitive? Then we stocked up on some basics, including half a dozen big rat traps, the biggest I could find, picked up some booze, and headed home. That country house was now our home, all I had to do was to get rid of some unwelcome intruders. Not a problem. That evening I put out the rat traps.
‘A few nights of these, and there won’t be any of the buggers left.’ I promised Vicky. ‘You’ll see.’
She didn’t reply , but I could tell she was a bit dubious about it all. Anyway, I would show her. Man stuff.
Even though it was our second night in the house, it almost seemed like the first. The essential rooms had been cleaned up, and I fired up the wood stove for the first time.
‘Hey, it works really well, Vicks, look.’
‘Brilliant. So you’re not just a pretty face, then? Let’s put some rice on to boil, and I’ll prepare some veggies to steam. Get the wine open, Matt.’
‘I have a selection of only the best house reds for you to choose from, Madame. I would heartily recommend the cheap-as-shit red.’
We laughed together, there in our brand new house. Things were looking good. Dinner cooked on the wood stove was a great success, helped along by a couple of bottles of wine.
‘Get your guitar out, Matt. Let’s sing some songs.’
My heart lept into my mouth. Vicky had a fantastic singing voice, but strangely would only sing when the right mood struck her. I quickly went to the bedroom, and grabbed my guitar. Now, I was not at all good on that thing, but I could play some nice background rhythm while she broke into the sweetest, most alluring singing. I started strumming one of her favourites, and she gently joined in, taking my heart on an angelic journey. That was the moment when I knew that I was at home. When Vicky was singing. Never have I since participated in such a fantastic house-warming party, as that night. Just the two of us. That was all I needed. When Vicky had sang herself out, we called it a night. The next day we would relax on the verandah.
That night, at around 3 am, there was a loud bang, followed by a wild scream.
‘One down,’ I said, still half asleep, ‘plus that will scare the rest of them off.’
I rolled over, looking forward to getting back to sleep. However, the screaming continued, and continued, for another half an hour. It was nerve racking.
‘Go and see what’s going on.’ She fairly ordered me, as she pushed me out of the bed. I got dressed, lit the lamp, and headed off out the back door. As I was walking down the open wooden stairs in the darkness, I saw something jump up at me, and then fall back down. I quickly took a couple of steps back up, and held up the lantern to see better. A big rat, with it’s head in a trap, and it’s neck obviously broken, was trying to jump up at me! It was just the weight of the trap that had stopped him from reaching me. Fuck that, I thought. I quickly retreated to the safety indoors. Vicky was waiting for me just inside the door.
‘You’ve got no idea how tough those bastards are. One of them is caught in a trap, with its neck broken, but it just refuses to die. What fucking race of rats are these?’
She could see that I was a bit shaken. She took me by the arm.
‘Let’s leave it for now, and work it all out in the morning. C’mon, let’s go back to bed.’
No way was I ever going to go out there at night again. Just what sort of super rats were they? The screams that night continued for at least another half an hour, but neither of us was going back out there, and I was never going to put out any traps again. I knew when I had lost a fight. The rats had won. The night was theirs. We would lock ourselves in, with all necessary buckets. Strangely, but luckily, we never saw any of them during the day. We could never work out just where they would go during the day, but it didn’t really matter. That was enough for us. It was half a victory. A stalemate. A standoff, with both sides eyeing the other cautiously.
‘Windy enough for ya?’
Ron was at the back door, ready for the day’s work. He was a man of few words. When I would open the door for him he would always say that type of curt expression. Depending on the current weather situation.
‘Cold enough for ya?’
‘Wet enough for ya?’
‘Hot enough for ya?’
We would generally work in silence, but not an uncomfortable silence. The silence of two blokes getting on with the job. Even though he was a cowboy, and I was a hippy, we actually had fairly similar personalities. We were both fairly reserved, and left the bulk of the talking to others. With the two of us working together, we just didn’t need to do a lot of talking. There was a good understanding between us, and I would follow Ron’s lead to learn how to do the work. He was always very patient about showing me how to do all the jobs, and I would throw myself into it full steam. The one day a week of work usually entailed putting up new fences, fixing old ones, or repairing gates. Physical work, but actually quite enjoyable, and in such a peaceful, quiet place. Ron, with his lithe body, was actually incredibly strong. He was a hard worker. I made sure that I gave it my all, so as to not look like a wimp. I found I had a knack for manual labour, and especially loved fixing up the hinged wooden gates. It felt good to hold a hammer in my hand. I felt that I could easily become a carpenter, or maybe a serial killer, if things went the other way. Ron, although he never said it, he wasn’t that sort of bloke, seemed satisfied with my contribution. Without speaking much, a mutual respect grew, and we became very good friends.
‘Let me find my hat, and we’ll be off.’
Vicky liked wearing a black beret when we would head into town for our weekly shopping. It made her look very French, and even more sexy than usual, which was already an extremely high level.
‘OK, I’ll get the Hunter fired up.’
‘Can I drive a bit?’
My heart sank. I had been trying to teach her how to drive, but it had all been going disastrously. She could never work out the clutch-to-accelerator change, and ended up stalling the car, or just staying forever in first gear. My main strategy was to just keep on putting her off when she wanted a lesson. The stress level was too high, and I found myself behaving like my father had, when he had taught me. A scary proposition. I was becoming my father. As she jumped in beside me, I tried to think of a good excuse.
‘We’ve got a big day ahead of us today. Let’s go further up the road another day, and do that.’
She was so trusting, that she actually believed me.
‘OK, you’re probably right.’
Usually once a week we would head into town for supplies, pick up our dole cheques, and stock up on booze and weed, if we could find any. Quite often, I must confess, when there wasn’t enough money to go around, we resorted to stealing the odd bottle of liqueur. It was wrong, I know, but hey, we had developed expensive tastes.
‘Shall we pick up a bottle of the good stuff, Vicks?’
‘Shit yeah, that stuff is fantastic.’
We had developed a taste for the highest quality liqueurs, the sort that we could never have afforded to buy anyway. I reasoned that if you are going to steal, you may as well steal the best quality. I know, I know, but that was the way it was back then. Anyway, the strategy was relatively easily, and basically foolproof. We would pick a booze shop with a male running the counter, enter separately, as if we didn’t know each other, although, admittedly, having two hippies in your country town shop at the same time should have been a dead giveaway, but we always chose a shop with a male running the show, remember? While I would cruise the aisles pretending to look for whatever, Vicky, looking as beautiful as ever, in her very french beret, would ask some question or other to the shop assistant. While he was totally absorbed with her charm, as any man should have been, I would stuff a bottle of the best quality liqueur down my pants and casually wander out, while the shop assistant was madly falling in love with Vicky. Foolproof, but only with a male shop assistant. And only with Vicky as bait.
I stashed the bottle in the ever-present Hunter, and waited for Vicky.
‘He wants to meet up for drinks tonight at a bar, over where I live, near the coast.’
‘Oh yeah, you’re living on the coast these days? Nice one. Did you ask him if your boyfriend can come along as well?’
We both laughed.
‘You can be my driver.’
I waved my arm in a great flourish.
‘Madame, your carriage awaits.’
‘Of course, you’ll need to cut your hair, and wear a suitable cap.’
That was going too far, even in jest.
‘Well, that’s that done, then. You can take the bus.’
She laughed as she put her hand through my arm, and we walked along the street. I loved my wavy, shoulder-length hair, and wasn’t going to cut it for anyone.
‘Last exercise, and I’m done for today.’ she said.
I didn’t answer, I knew it was more a statement than a conversation starter. It was just another day in paradise. As was the case most of the time, we were happy to stay out on our verandah. It was such a nice place, with the beautiful scenery, and the total quiet. Vicky was doing her yoga, naked, and I was ploughing my way through the numerous books I had picked up in the second hand bookshops in town, also naked. The naked reader. Vicky usually finished off her yoga sessions with the rather odd exercise of being upside down, supporting herself on her hands, with her back and legs up against the side of the house. It always looked more like gymnastics to me, but then, what did I know about yoga? She gently folded herself back down to planet earth. She sat, relaxed, and smiled at me.
‘I really feel like I’m finally getting to where I’ve always wanted to be with my yoga. Thanks for not interrupting me while I’m doing it. It really takes complete concentration. I can really feel the benefits. I don’t understand why you don’t try it, too.’
‘You know, I think I reach the same level of relaxation through reading. That also takes a quiet environment, and total concentration. I don’t really think our hobbies are that different.’
Vicky laughed, even though I was actually being serious.
‘Really they have nothing in common, but if it keeps you happy, and quiet, that’ll do for me. I like reading, too. It’s not the same.’
I wasn’t going to argue the point, it was a discussion lost before starting, but I was sure that I was at least half right. She came and sat beside me, and gently ran her hand across my body. After doing her yoga she was usually