Chapter One
Heaven and Hell
Many years ago as a small boy, I stood on a windswept limestone hill and gazed over a broad sea of waving green fields stretching westward to another distant range of low, rolling hills. A verdant carpet of grass weaved strange patterns around the smooth, lichen blotched white stones where I stood and I marvelled at the different shades of green that punctuated the landscape. There were the vivid green of the clover grasses, the muted green of the eucalypt trees and the sombre green of the marsh reeds. The unrelenting westerly wind, whipped the shining leaves of the surrounding trees into a frenzy of hissing and clattering, interrupted by the beautiful clear calls of hundreds of native birds. Heavy, rain-laden clouds hurried by, heaving and boiling like inverted oceans and I could smell the strange sweet scent of the pastures under my feet.
The cold air was constantly searching for gaps in my heavy clothing and my thick woollen socks and carefully polished leather shoes helped insulate my feet from the cool, moist soil. I could feel the glacial tentacles of the wind as it numbed my exposed hands and my ears ached in response to the biting cold. The wind whipped my short hair into an untidy mass of moist curls and tears welled in my eyes from the ferocity of the turbulent air. The remoteness of the area was evident, even to a child and I could see as far as my little eyes would let me. There were no other human beings or buildings in my view, only thousands of contented sheep and cattle grazing intently on the huge flat plains below me. As I leaned into the buffeting wind, I saw strikingly coloured birds navigating their way from one waving tree canopy to the next, their skilled aerobatics and beautifully intricate melodies captivated me.
As a child, the whole amazing area was mine to explore; the small, slender brown lizards that hid under loose, pristine limestone rocks, the myriads of trees to climb, the large number of animals that ran, shuffled, slithered, hopped, and flew in all directions. There was the endless number of grasses, native shrubs and elegant trees that clung precariously to the fragile, fragrant earth. The strange smell of fungi that dotted the earth after rain, the countless numbers of insects and the endless rhythm of light and dark that swept softly over the ancient hills and plains. There was a sense of timelessness, freedom, wonder and joy that was spellbinding for a small child and there were so many incredible discoveries, every single day. From a child's perspective, every day was an absolute miracle, it was like exploring an exquisite distant planet and life was amazingly new and exciting. Behind me was our farmhouse, its quietly smoking chimney reminding me that warmth and beautiful food would be waiting on my return.
What I was experiencing was vastly different from the industrial cry of the city I had just come from, with the ebbing and flowing tide of countless people and the roar of cars, trucks and buses as they noisily lumbered their way through their charted black canals. The stench of their tailpipes assaulted my nose and stung my eyes, but the city was now a distant memory in a sea of luxuriant green. I was standing on the rolling hills of my parent's large farm and over the coming years, I would return many times to that round, windswept hill to reflect on the world around me.
I was born in a small, ultra conservative rural town, where generation after generation sank to their armpits in boredom. The town was a bastion of conservative politics, deeply bound to the wealth of the large landholders in the area and one of these landholders would ultimately connive their way through the corridors of power to become prime minister of Australia. My parents, unlike their peers, were adventurous, rebellious and inquisitive and moved interstate to a major city when I was four years of age. They had purchased farmland in the fertile, dark volcanic soil of southern Australia and after enduring the trauma of the Second World War, suddenly found themselves financially liberated by the global demand for wool when war ended. The price of wool from the local farmers reached astronomical levels as global economies boomed in post war consumerism and woollen mills around the world clambered to restock after the scarcity of raw materials created during the global and Korean wars. After receiving more than a pound per pound for their large wool clip, they were able to pay off their mortgage, sell their farm and move away with a considerable profit. They literally hit the jackpot!
I started school aged five in the city we had moved to and we moved back to the country when I was eight. The new farm my parents purchased was in a very remote area of South Eastern Australia. We were 45 kilometres from the nearest small town, along an apocalypse of a road that wound around trees and sometimes faded into wheel ruts that dodged chassis warping boulders and patches of black, vehicle immobilising mud. Small sections of the road consisted of readily available pulverised limestone rock that crawler tractors casually gouged from the nearby hills and spread over the worst sections of the track. The thin crust of crushed limestone was no match for large trucks or heavy rain and vehicles found themselves sliding and spinning off the road at regular intervals.
During the worst of winter, we would sometimes have a knock on our isolated farmhouse door after dark and discover a dishevelled farmer asking for a tow through the worst of the track. My father would offer the farmer a glass or two of fortified wine to blunt the chill of foul weather, throw on his heavy waterproof clothing, hand crank our cantankerous old Massey Harris tractor with its pitiful lights shining at odd angles and armed with a length of cable and the farmer, pluck the stricken vehicle from the bog.
A trip along the country road was an incredible adventure for a child, as much of the area was undeveloped and some areas had never seen a farmer's axe or bulldozer blade since white settlement. There were remnants of forest that were pristine and nearly the same as the indigenous natives had experienced it, thousands of years before us. Some areas were so remote and hidden in blankets of thick native vegetation, that it was possible the footprints we left on the ground, were the first human footprints in that area. My parents were careful not to let me or any child wander into the deep forest, as it was unbelievably easy to become totally disorientated, lost for days and perish in the blinding mass of vegetation.
As my father skilfully navigated around the vicious, suspension shattering potholes of the 'road,' we would often see kangaroos and emus racing for cover in front of us. Some of the kangaroos we saw were massive Eastern Grey bucks with bulging biceps, ripped pecs, menacing bear-like claws, solidly set black tipped muzzles, spear shaped ears and coal black eyes. Standing over two and a half metres (8 feet) tall, their powerful muscular legs let them bound with rhythmical grace and speed, easily clearing fences and small bushes that blocked their path. As a child, they seemed more like flesh eating dinosaurs than herbivorous kangaroos, towering ominously over our car, their rippling muscles gleaming below their short, sleek grey fur and sometimes we came so close we could smell their strong 'fermented coffee' body odour. We would often see young 'Joey' kangaroos poking their heads adorably from their marsupial mother's pouch shortly before the female kangaroos saw our vehicle and took flight.
The huge, flightless Emus we disturbed were sent into blind panic, but occasionally my father would stop the car if he saw them soon enough and wave a piece of clothing from the car window. The excessively curious birds would be fascinated by the waving material and cautiously approach to within ten metres of the stationary car before pounding noisily back into the safety of the dense bushland, the sound of crashing branches following them as their massive, black leathery legs smashed through the tangled undergrowth. To a young boy, the emus were incongruous creatures that reminded me of comical mobile haystacks, with their unique double-quilled feathers, draped over their large bodies like lengths of long, dark straw. Their exaggerated long necks, blue heads with long, wispy facial hair, wide beaks and large black eyelashes shielding enormous, black eyes only added to their comedic appearance.
More strange creatures would stand in the middle of the road and blink slowly as they tried to make out our car bumping and pitching toward them. As we got closer we could see they were sheep, but had missed several visits to the shearing shed and their long, dark, matted fleeces were dragging on the ground. The sheep would stand in frozen terror until our car was nearly on them, before suddenly discovering they still had legs and dash for the safety of the all-consuming bushland.
We saw myopic Echidna with their long, sharp quills, elongated nose and huge claws as they slowly ambled across the track. Their eyesight was so poor, they couldn’t see our car bouncing toward them until our wheels were only centimetres from them and then, realising their danger, they would frantically dig into the tightly compacted earth. The prehistoric Echidna was so powerful they could clasp the ground like a powerful magnet and it was impossible to move them from their temporary dugout. Their armour of dense, sharp, pointed spines ensured no predator would ever molest them. They would wait for close to eternity before cautiously venturing from their emergency burrow to resume their slow, calculated search for colonies of ants to devour.
There were often no fences parallel to the road and our car would noisily vibrate over 'cattle grids' that indicated the end of one large rural property and the beginning of another. The cattle grids were a break in the farmer's boundary fences running at ninety degrees to the road that allowed single vehicle access without having to stop and open gates. Set over a pit of roughly one and a half metres, the ingeniously made cattle grids consisted of parallel, welded railway irons. The railway irons were cleverly spaced to prevent the farmer's stock from crossing, but allowed cars and tractors to move freely. There were large double gates at the sides of the cattle grids that allowed wide farm machinery and large trucks access to the road.
The road coiled its way through some spectacularly wild country, with wide, flat black plains harbouring stately old eucalypt trees that stretched for hundreds of kilometres on the west and heavily forested hills in the east. Occasionally, the dense bushland cloaking the hills would open, revealing dark red soil and contrasting white stone outcrops tipped with living fossil Yakka bushes. The ancient, slow growing Yakka stood out from the landscape like three-dimensional artwork, their mass of dull green, razor sharp spines formed an impenetrable sphere around their thick black stem and massive three metre high, spear like seedpods towered vertically above them.
The natural hill clearings were home to Boobialla trees with wide, dense green domed foliage that provided a playground for frisky young rabbits. We would often see the juvenile rabbits chasing each other on the luxurious mats of rich, green moss that gained protection from the Boobialla’s ground level branches. The playful young rabbits were never far from their carefully smoothed burrows that provided easy escape from danger. As our car approached the rabbits, we would see them thumping their rear legs loudly on the compacted earth and flashing their white tails in warning, before hastily entering the safety of their cool, strongly scented, subterranean world.
Around the edge of the forest clearings stood massive hill gums, their huge, white arms towering over the smaller trees and bushes. During spring, the whole bushland would explode in a spectacular blaze of flowering plants and trees, with countless numbers of birds attracted to the sweet smelling nectar that saturated the air. Thousands of small, black and white New Holland honeyeaters noisily invaded the branches of the wattles, gums and Banksia trees. Larger grey 'Wattle' birds with their prehistoric, raspy call, clacking beaks and bright red cheeks clambered through the dense foliage creatively sampling the bountiful nectar. Hundreds of brightly daubed parrots and delicate wrens were entertained by the stunningly beautiful operettas of the Grey Shrike-thrush. Elusive native orchids would emerge from their cold winter sleep and shyly reveal their pale blue petals, accompanied by a soft burst of colour from other equally furtive native grasses and shrubs.
With winter, the bitterly cold westerly winds would sweep viciously over the plains, bringing rain and hail in abundance. The plains would fill with vast lakes of shallow water, populated with ducks, geese, swans and myriads of waders, snipe and shrill calling Moorhens. Masked Lapwings, with their outrageously bright, yellow faces and incredibly loud metallic voices, stood guard on the edge of the shallow water ensuring no predators came within three hundred metres of the waterfowl colonies.
There were literally tens of thousands of squabbling ducks covering the vast swamps. They ranged in size from the large colourful Mountain duck to the petite Teal duck with bright, distinctive flashes of iridescent green on their wings. The noisy waterfowl would use the short, warm period of spring weather to hatch and raise their young before the scorching summer sun evaporated every last drop of water and scarred the ground with large, dark black patches of salty, barren earth. As the weather warmed, our track was home to hundreds of shuffling, shingle backed lizards and lithe venomous snakes.
The sparse houses and implement sheds of the isolated farmers were dotted along low rolling hills, safe from the winter water of the plains. The houses ranged from rough corrugated iron and asbestos sheet 'humpies' with dirt floors and crude furnishing, to magnificent solid stone bungalows, complimented with bright red roofs, tennis courts, exquisitely manicured lawns and tastefully decorated interiors. Some of the reclusive farmhouses remained carefully hidden from sight by an unbroken veil of trees and only a wispy set of tyre marks, winding through the twisted gum trees indicated their presence.
The area was extremely remote and meeting other cars on the road was rare. If my father saw any of the farmers on the road, it was his opportunity to stop our shiny, blue Plymouth Belvedere and engage in a conversation about the weather, livestock prices, family news and any other gossip about the district in general. People living in remote rural areas were desperate for social interaction and conversations would be a marathon event with my father, and the farmer locked in a verbal embrace lasting over an hour.
The road trip from the city to our farmhouse took over five hours to complete and I can never recall falling asleep on any of those early journeys. The beautiful rural panorama was totally mesmerising to a small child. The slow, steep climb from the plains of the city into wet, winding mountain roads and the narrow mountain passes with their striated, oozing damp rocks. The colours, the scents, the people, the animals became fused in my brain and I can still re-run the trips like a movie in my mind to this day. Although the city we came from had many stunning parks and tree lined suburbs, the countryside beyond the city outskirts was captivating in its relentless enormity and diversity. A mystical element of antiquity seemed to bind the countryside into a magnificent, ever changing, colourful, three-dimensional tapestry that stretched to the hazy horizon and beyond.
Finally, there was the excitement of reaching our farmhouse. A steep limestone hill led to a coarse limestone and asbestos sheet home with a massive Cyprus hedge on its southern and western side. The house was stoically functional, it kept us dry in winter, provided a place to prepare meals, sleep and kept the insane summer sun from frying our brains. A steeply pitched roof funnelled precious rainwater into strategically placed storage tanks on the western walls.
By today’s standards, the cottage was boring, lacking the elegant lines of architectural sophistication and status. Nothing set the house apart from any of the rural dwellings in the area, except it was a home, a place for a small boy to experience the full gamut of human emotions from love to hate and all the incredible feelings in between. A place to feel warm and secure in a home-made feather quilt as the wild winter storms slammed into windows and clattered loudly on the corrugated iron roof above my head. The cosy cottage was a place to listen to stories of pioneer Australia from people who lived in the area and as I sat close to the glowing warmth of the wood stove, I heard tantalising tales of mystical, faraway places and adventurous characters that frequented distant tropical shores. Local farmers with their huge calloused hands, rough clothing and broad smiles enjoyed watching the boisterous antics of a small boy from the city when they visited the farmhouse.
The hedge near the house provided shelter from the violent winds of Antarctica and provided us children with the most amazing hedge racing games ever. The local children would often venture over to our house for a race along the top of the colossal, strongly scented hedge. As children, we knew every trick to a successful hedge race. We watched in amusement as our competitors fell through gaping holes in the hedge canopy, lightly concealed by flattened Cyprus branches. With one miscalculated footstep, our competition would feel themselves sucked into the dry, mysterious interior of the manicured hedge and were unceremoniously spat from the side of the hedge at ground level, coughing, spluttering and covered in dust and pine needles.
Occasionally, our eager young visitors would suffer the embarrassment of sliding, head first like a torpedo, into the black, foul smelling drain that oozed ominously nearby. No matter how many times our friends tried to beat us, they never succeeded and with two hundred metres of hedge canopy to negotiate, they seemed to find every weak spot in the hedge cover and plunge their way to disaster. In an effort to ease their bruised egos, we would offer them a re-start and give them a twenty-metre head start. They still managed to fall embarrassingly through the Cyprus canopy to ground level as we rattled overhead to the finish line and victory.
A large orchard, packed with a variety of lovingly pruned fruit trees, spilled down the southern slope, past the hedge toward the valley below. The Mediterranean orchard contained varieties of grapes, apples, apricots, pears, plums, peaches, nectarines and citrus trees and was absolute heaven to us children as the various crops ripened. We would gorge ourselves on the delicious fruit as it matured and fortunately there were sufficient trees to allow my mother enough fruit to preserve for the long winter months that followed the summer ripening. Any remaining fruit found its way to eager neighbours and relatives. As a very small boy, I was useful during the fruit preserving process, as my hands were small enough to pack fruit into some of the more petite preserving jars. The fruit would be carefully sliced and neatly stacked in vertical rows before sugar syrup was added, the jars sealed and clipped, then heated in a preserving unit. The delicate fruit would remain edible for several years, although my mother was careful to ration her supply of magnificent preserves to ensure we didn't eat them all in a single week.
One of the old European varieties of apple tree was close to the lounge room window, so close; we could open a window to pick an apple at mealtime. Although the apples appeared repulsive with wart like bumps, they tasted magnificent and my father was able to harvest them and store them for many months in a cool area of the house. The stored apples would develop a thick, waxy, protective coating that eager children could polish to a mirror shine and crunching into a tasty red bauble was absolute Dreamland.
Ripe fruit was also a signal for thousands of small 'Silvereye' birds to invade the orchard, along with parrots, magpies and currawong, all eager for the smorgasbord of delicious fruit. Possums and our own chickens and turkeys would also join the feast of delectable food that hung invitingly from the overburdened limbs of the trees.
On the eastern edge of the orchard was a large vegetable plot with potatoes, beans, peas, silver-beat, rhubarb, cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce and carrots. The garden grew enormous quantities of fresh vegetables, spurred along by the copious choice of fertiliser from the farm animals. The bottom of the orchard was defined by a petite, rabbit proof netting fence and a row of towering poplar trees that just begged for young boys to climb them.
The farmhouse held a small, unkempt garden on its northern boundary with several large ornamental eucalypt trees, a smattering of scrawny geranium plants and tangled roses pleading for attention. A tiny curved metal gate gave us entry through a tired old netting fence to the rear of the house. The back door and accompanying 'fly screen' door, crying for lubrication, opened noisily into a louvered patio that contained a laundry, bathroom and a curved, cream coloured kerosene fuelled fridge. There were a small set of well-worn steps that dropped down to a white, wooden door that led to a cavernous kitchen with a wood-fired, green and yellow 'Metters' cooking range, directly opposite the entry to the main room. The stove hearth was a large, smoothed cement area, designed to protect the nondescript linoleum floor from wayward embers that flew enthusiastically from the glowing teeth of the cast iron stove. A carefully constructed wood-box, lovingly made by my grandfather was to the right of the robust wood-fired stove and provided storage for the neatly chopped fuel that fed the hungry cooker. As a child, I would spend time foraging outdoors, happily collecting the kindling wood or 'morning sticks' used by my father for starting the wood-fired stove in the morning. I would set off exploring with our faithful working dog that enjoyed looking for reptiles, snails and witchetty grubs as much as I did. It must have amused my parents that such a simple task could take hours to complete.
My mother had learnt the art of cooking on a wood-fuelled stove as a young girl and some of her meals were legendary. She had mastered the art of judging just the right amount of wood to use to avoid reducing meals to charcoal or grinding our teeth to stumps with par cooked food. I can remember watching in awe and amazement as she deftly moved pans, adding spices, salts and seasoning to transform simple food into mouth-watering works of gourmet art. She was able to coax the stubborn stove into life with an assortment of steel pokers and hooks that spread embers around the firebox in preparation for another carefully selected log. The whole process was hypnotic as sparks flew noisily in every direction and orange fingers of flame voraciously explored the new supply of carefully split wood.
The stove provided welcome warmth during the ferocious winter gales and a ready source of warm water from the merrily 'singing' kettle for any visitor's tea or coffee, as well as hot water for washing hands and dishes. The stove provided enough heat for my mother to dry clothes during the harsh winter days by using a wooden drying rack that folded away in concertina fashion. The radiating cooker was a wonderful place for children to warm their boots before venturing into the wretched wintertime weather that lashed the farmhouse relentlessly.
Occasionally, the stove became a hospital bed warmer for small lambs separated from their mothers in early spring and the healing heat of the fire helped our family revive them. As the tiny lambs lay close to the stove, we could always tease our gullible young friends from the city, by telling them we were having roast lamb for lunch. They were suitably horrified.!
The large cooking range provided my mother with the ability to produce inspirational meals of mammoth proportions to feed the many relatives and guests that frequented the farm. She had accumulated some truly gargantuan frying pans, saucepans and serving spoons to cater for the large settings at meal times. The gleaming stove was impressive, with its collection of lovingly polished pans gently clattering and hissing as they boiled above the dancing flames of the firebox.
A chrome edged, green 'laminex' kitchen table with matching green vinyl and chrome legged chairs failed to fill the large kitchen area and there was plenty of room for an odd assortment of shining green kitchen cupboards with fine mesh doors and chrome lever latches. As children, we loved launching ourselves on the kitchen chairs that hissed noisily as we sank into the thick layer of foam hidden by the green vinyl seat covers. The rest of the cosy cottage contained two bedrooms and a cramped lounge room. The view from the southern end of the house revealed a picturesque valley between the limestone covered hills. The lounge room door opened onto a steep set of concrete steps that led to the sloping orchard through an archway in the dense, Cyprus hedge.
At the lowest point of the valley below the farmhouse and orchard was a 'two stand' shearing shed and accompanying sheep yards, surrounded by stately eucalypt trees. The trees provided welcome shade for the yarded sheep during summer as they waited patiently to have their hot, bulky fleeces removed. The woollen fibre, skilfully removed annually from thousands of sheep by itinerant shearers, was a major income source of the property and the carefully maintained shed used to shear the sheep sat in the scenic hollow below the farmhouse. The iron clad shearing shed became a multifunction warehouse that stored seeds and fertiliser for pasture renovation and cropping when the shed wasn’t being used for shearing or crutching.
The surrounding sheep yards were designed to funnel sheep towards a central drafting race and the exterior section of the area contained a long narrow set of yards that led to a circular, corrugated iron 'dipping' tank, configured to remove irritating and fibre destroying lice from the sheep after shearing. A small, tractor driven centrifugal pump sprayed arsenic rich water over the sheared sheep and the water from the drenched animals drained into a large square concrete reservoir and recycled. Only lambs walked freely and easily to the dipping tank, once they had experienced the discomfort of being sprayed with foul smelling liquid, they were extremely reluctant to ever go anywhere near it. The older the sheep became, the more difficult it became to get them anywhere near the outer yards at dipping time and our faithful working dogs were stretched to their limit trying to move the reluctant animals toward their annual shower. Some of the more senior rams flatly refused to move at all and we would have to use incredible deception, colourful language and persuasion to get them into the bathing area.
On the eastern end of the valley, a thin, euphemistic car track disappeared past the grey, corrugated iron shearing shed and vanished abruptly into a magnificent mass of lush, tree covered hills. The treacherous, single lane track wound its way up a steep sandy hill and then dropped abruptly into another beautiful wide valley that led to more remote properties. The millions of trees and indigenous shrubs covering the hills provided food and shelter for the many native birds and during the day, their exquisite, magical melodies echoed beautifully through the gently sloping hills.
At night, I was sung to sleep by the sound of wind, constantly caressing the trees outside my louvered bedroom window and thousands of lovesick frogs croaking outrageously in the swamps to the west. In the mornings, I would wake to the beautifully clear sounds of magpies, kookaburras and colourful blue wrens as they welcomed the first hint of daylight. As the first iridescent rays of sunlight brushed the ancient forest with tender strokes of orange light, the symphony of bird song rose to a magnificent crescendo of natural composition that flowed through the valleys in a cascade of reverberant, audible wonder.
The house was already 30 years old when my parents purchased the farm and there was no state supplied electricity or water, no central heating, no inside toilet, no hot water service, no shower and household water from the roof was collected in large, dull grey galvanised iron tanks. A massive 'squatters tank,' capable of catching 80,000 litres of rainwater from an implement shed