by Ted Dawe
I have never been much of a one for God and all that stuff, or the people who reckoned they spoke to Him on a regular basis. It’s like there’s this great joke that’s been told, and you’re the only one that doesn’t get it.
“From this one visitation,” Uncle Frank continued, “everything made sense. I knew immediately that I had stumbled into the Palace of Wisdom after years of blundering around on the roads of excess. And from this one lesson, other teachings followed, and the main one is this…”
I waited but nothing followed. We sat for a long time saying nothing. Uncle Frank seemed to be struggling with something.
“We followers of William Blake don’t involve our children in the teachings directly. They must come to them through their own pathways when they are ready. But I think in your case, after what has happened to you, it is a bit different. So … so I’ll tell you this, for what it’s worth.”
Uncle Frank shifted on the fence post where he was perched and then began to speak slowly and carefully.
“Maybe it will make sense to you – maybe it will be complete gibberish. The universe is divided into two parts in the human mind, the known and the unknown. These two worlds are separated by the doors of perception. If we are lucky then at key times in our life we are able to open these doors and what can I say? Things make sense. Sounds simple but it gives you a marvellous feeling. Like floating on an ocean of peace.”
For some reason I thought of angels, lying about on fluffy white clouds.
“That sounds nice.”
“It is nice, and it will happen for you, and your dad, but it will happen in its own time and in its own way.”
“So this is the sort of stuff that you and the other Immortal William Blake followers talk about in the Palace of Wisdom. You learn stuff like this?”
“We don’t acquire knowledge so much as become knowledge.”
Well, he lost me there, so I let the matter drop. It doesn’t pay to show too much interest in these things otherwise people like Uncle Frank will never let up, and that’s pretty boring.
“Most of us live on the slopes of this mountain. There is a reason for that too.” He climbed stiffly off the strainer post and gestured to the snow capped peak behind us. “It’s a very special place this, Sandy. We see it as a new Jerusalem.”
“That’s how the farm got its name?”
“Exactly, but Jerusalem isn’t a place so much as a state of mind.”
I let him ramble on for another five minutes or so after that. It was all a bit much for me. Sick roses, worms, mental chains, poison trees, that sort of thing. I just kept on nodding and he kept on talking. It must have made sense to the other adults though, because they had formed a group called the New Jerusalem League.
After this we made our way slowly down the hill to where there was a proper path and then on to the race which led back to the house. There was a stand of trees just near the race and beside them stood a group of beehives. We detoured over to them.
Uncle Frank was keen to show me the honeycombs but I was nervous. I had been stung a few times by bees and I wasn’t interested in getting any more.
“Don’t worry about it. I used to be an apiarist. It’s what we did when we first came to the area.”
“What’s an apiarist got to do with bees?”
“A lot actually, and it’s got nothing at all to do with ape keeping. Lorna and I lived in a deserted house near the Whangamomona road. It was very isolated, even for these parts. I used to go around persuading farmers they needed bees on their land. I built up quite a good little business. Mind you, we had no rent, no electricity and we fetched all the water in buckets from a creek.”
“Doesn’t sound like fun to me.”
“We loved it. Our lives were stripped to the essentials. It was a great antidote to everything we had in Sydney. We were reverse pioneers, like Thoreau when he went to Walden Pond.”
“Who’s this Thoreau dude then?”
“Oh, he’s a guy who did the same thing in America.”
“He tell you about it?”
“No, he’s long dead. Hold on … maybe he did just that.” He laughed and knuckled my head the way Dad used to when I was small. I thought of the “old Dad”, the one who used to be around when Mum was there. It gave me a sudden stab.
“So this is what you did after the Mackthuselah period?” I blurted.
“Yeah, we hung out as long as we could but when the twins came the washing and baby stuff got all too much so we had to look for somewhere more civilised.”
Uncle Frank had the tops off the hives and was pulling out the honeycombs one by one. He didn’t seem to notice that he had a bunch of ultra pissed-off bees circling his face. He was one of those guys who didn’t bother with details.
“Eventually Lorna’s compo payment came through and we had enough to buy the farm outright.”
“What happened to the guy who drove the car?”
He wiped a bee off the end of his nose as if it were a fly.
“When he got out of hospital … we had done some pretty bad damage to him … he was tried and did a spell in jail.”
“It must have been good to get that money.”
“True. But it carried its own cargo of responsibility. We knew we had to do something special with it.” Then after a moment he said, “Come here, Sandy, look at this.”
I approached with a couple of steps, but nothing in the world would get me any closer.
“See this big bee here?”
“Yep,” I said, although I couldn’t.
“It’s the queen. The only female in the hive. Eats special food called royal jelly. Lives in a temperature-controlled environment. Just like air conditioning. Doesn’t matter how hot or cold it is outside, it is always the same in here.”
“You’d better put that honeycomb back, you must be making a real bad draught.”
After that we drove slowly back to the house. Uncle Frank told me all about the mysterious qualities of the hexagon. The bad things about the square world that everyone else lived in. About harmony and discord, and how bees talked through a bee dance.
Once you got him going there was no stopping him. Uncle Frank was one of those guys who was interested in everything. All the weird stuff you can point a stick at, but I didn’t mind. As Julius said to Cleopatra, “When in Rome, Cleo, do as the Romans do”. That’s what Dad used to say anyway.
ENCOUNTERS WITH NATURE
ONE of my regular chores was that I got to feed this cute little black pig called Pimpernel. Uncle Frank made it clear that he was my responsibility and if I didn’t look after him, he would starve. I’d never had a pet before so I didn’t know what to do here either. It’s like I was dumb: everyone else seemed to know everything. Sounds silly now but it still drove me a bit crazy sometimes.
Pimpernel wandered around in the small paddock next to the house. It was all his except for the bits given over to the goat, and the tractor shed. There was plenty of grass but it soon became clear that grass is not enough for a growing pig. What he really wanted was an exciting menu with a variety of items to tempt his taste buds. For a pig, an exciting menu means kitchen scraps.
Pimpernel was a smart little fulla and he and I found an easy understanding. As soon as I closed the back door of the house with the scrap bucket in my hand he spotted me and came running over making soft grunting noises. It was nice this, made me feel wanted. It may have just been the food but it seemed like more.
Pimpernel wasn’t just a pretty face though, he did other things, which maybe indicated high intelligence. He used to follow me round. Whenever I was climbing on the tractor, or maybe fiddling with the tools in the shed, there he was, watching my every move. He had this special look on his face like he wanted to tell me something, but he couldn’t because he was locked into a pig’s body. It reminded me of those stories I had read when I was really little about people being turned into animals by witches. What a nightmare it must have been, having to watch life go by while
you were stuck in the body of some dumb animal. Perhaps that was why I got into the habit of talking to him. Ordinary stuff, things that had gone down, problems that were bugging me, all sorts really. Sounds a bit weird I know but there was something about this pig that said “I understand”. And because he was a pig he was unable to tell anyone else what I had said.
I told Pimpernel about all the things I couldn’t tell anyone. About Mum. About certain bits of Dad’s behaviour, and how I felt about them. About living with these people. I know they were my relatives and that they were really nice but they were also strange. How they were a family, but they weren’t my family. I had so much stuff going round and round inside my head. It was a pile that seemed to do nothing but grow and it got in the way of my thinking. Stopped me from being my normal self. So in some ways it was like I had this spell placed on me too. I stared out of the body of this normal looking boy but I was hopelessly trapped and no one could do a thing. I guess this might sound a bit farfetched to you but that is the only way I can really describe it.
Anyway Pimpernel was like my shrink. My psychiatrist. He would stop eating and listen, making these little grunts after each thing I said. Like “aha” and “huh?” and sometimes a long “nnnnngh”, which is like “far out” in pig language. Of course I never did this when any of the other boys were nearby, I didn’t want them thinking I had gone completely round the twist. They probably thought I was weird enough anyway.
There were other dealings with the animal kingdom that weren’t quite as much fun. One of these was moving the goat. Now you might think that this was an easy task but I tell you it wasn’t. The goat – Uncle Frank called him Satan – was chained to a little goat house mounted on sleds. You had to drag the whole thing along the grass. Satan was a tall billy-goat with big horns, long black hair and an impressive beard. Not the sort of beast to mess with. He had these golden eyes that really gave me the heebie jeebies. They were evil. Cold, unblinking, they seemed to bore right into you.
Iain and Jamie claimed he was a good sort, fed him handfuls of grass. I was told that Ewan would even jump on his back. I would believe that when I saw it: none of this cut much ice with me. Just like with me and Pimpernel, me and the goat had an understanding too. And it was that was he was the boss, and that I better watch myself.
Whenever I was around, especially by myself, this Satan had one thing in his head: mounting me. I don’t know whether it was personal or whether the same would have gone for anyone else but every time I tried to move the shed this thing happened. Maybe it was a territory thing, he thought I was trying to mess with his patch, who knows, but every time I moved the goat house it went like this.
I was straining at the back of the hut trying to push the thing a few metres forward and the next thing you know the bloody goat thought this was an open invitation to climb onto my back. I tried everything I could think of to break the pattern. I would throw a handful of hay, to keep him busy and then hit the back of the hut at speed hoping to get it over and done with before the goat noticed, but he did notice. He would be around after me, hay still hanging out of his mouth, rearing up all ready for some goat action. I guess you get used to this sort of thing in the country but I was a city boy, and I believe that each species should stick to its own kind. I would stand up and push him away. He would stand off to the side as if he had lost interest but the moment I bent down to drag the sled he was on me again.
In the end I had to invent a non-bending over technique in order to complete the task safely. I would take a fence batten with me and lever the whole caboodle forward a few inches at a time. The goat would stand off to one side watching carefully as if to say “one false move and you’re mine!”
Satan totally dominated me.
When it first happened I mentioned it to Uncle Frank and Aunty Lorna as they were about to go out somewhere in the Landrover. Aunty Lorna did this sort of smile and looked away. I could see her shoulders moving and thought she might have actually been laughing about what I described. That wasn’t good.
Uncle Frank was more open. He just laughed, and said, “The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.” It was evidently a bit of wisdom from William B., who seemed to have something to say about most things.
“Thanks Uncle, like that’s a big help.”
I could feel my face going red and Aunty Lorna came around the Landrover to try to suck up, I could tell. “Would you like the twins to help you with it?” Which is another way of saying, “Is this job too tough for you, city boy? I’ll get a couple of seven-year-olds to give you a hand.”
I took a step back to keep her out of range. “No. It’s fine. I can do it. I just thought … oh it doesn’t matter,” and I stormed off.
You know what it’s like when everyone gets right up your nose?
THE NEW GUMBOOTS
SOON after this I was presented with a pair of shiny new gumboots. My size. I could stop wearing Aunty Lorna’s everywhere. It was like I had become part of the family. The gumboot family. It’s soggy everywhere on a farm, and without gumboots you can’t go anywhere. Your bare feet sink deep into the brown stuff and the earth sucks hard. (But at least Uncle Frank had pulled a bed out of Mackthuselah so the three of us got a decent night’s sleep.)
These gumboots had a bit of a down side too – I should have known. The following morning I was wrenched awake, along with Iain and Jamie, to help with the milking. I have never been up so early in my life. It wasn’t like early morning, it was more like late at night. The other two were used to it, I guess, but I found it really tough.
“Iain, tell your dad that I am not a morning person.”
He just laughed and said, “Everyone is a morning person in this house.”
That seemed to be the end of the matter.
You probably don’t know, in fact you will probably never know, what it’s like to get up at that time in the morning. It’s really dark and wet. After we left the house the only light was from the cowshed. We all stumbled towards it half asleep: only parts of your brain work at that time of the day. Our job was to bring the cows in, which meant walking to the back of the farm and undoing all the gates. The wolves went with us, like enforcers, but the cows didn’t need them. They knew what to do, in fact, I suspect they were looking forward to it. They led the way, we followed, making sure the stragglers didn’t hold anything up. Iain had a sort of businesslike attitude to all this. He was a real farm boy in that way. I could just see him taking over the place when he got older. Jamie was dreamier, a bit like me. He sang all the time, softly and to himself. I thought that this was a bit weird when I first came, but after a few days I hardly even heard it any more. It had its uses too. It made him easier to track down, which is handy when you are living in a big place.
When we got back, the island of light had become a sucking, clattering, rural party complete with Beethoven belting out of a little ghetto blaster Uncle Frank had tied to a wall. There were only a few jobs, and they were simple, it seemed to me. Changing the cups: this was the most skilled, along with getting the cows into the bale. Uncle Frank made a big point of pulling a cup off and squirting me with milk straight from the teat whenever I was standing around watching. The other two thought this was real funny. Ho, ho, ho. Country humour, eh? You have to laugh.
As well as these jobs there was the full time one of hosing away cow shit. They make a lot of it, cows, more than you would think. So it’s a busy scene; there’s milk being sucked out into a vat, there’s cow shit flowing down a drain into a sort of swamp, there’s cows coming in and cows going out. I guess it’s sort of organised. The smell’s a bit weird but I stopped noticing it after a while. No one talked much because of the noise. So we all just kept our heads down and got on with it.
Those noises! There was the clang of gates slamming, the stamp of hooves on concrete, and the Beethoven filling in the gaps. (Good milk music, Uncle Frank says.) Jamie particularly enjoyed singing along to the Beethoven so he sure added his four pence worth. And tha
t was just background music.
On top of this racket there was also another rural number that went like this.
Suck, suck … moo, moo … suck, suck … splat, splat … suck, suck … “Hold still Molly!” … suck, suck … “Iain get that hose!” … suck, suck … “whoa, whoa” … “Open the gate Jamie!”… suck, suck … “Watch out Sandy!” … squirt, squirt … “Yaaaargh!”
That last one was me being squirted with warm cow’s milk, which is Uncle Frank’s way of saying, “Come back to planet Earth, you space cadet.”
This chorus goes for the full eighty minutes. And the weird thing is no one else seems to hear it, just me.
When I got back to the house, boy was I hanging out for that porridge. After cleaning up, I get on with the cream, milk, golden syrup routine and I’m into it. Halfway through I notice that I am going hard in the eating department too, slurping away with the best of them. I guess I’m getting ruralised, real fast. I remember thinking, “Hmmm. Could be a good thing, could be a bad thing, it’s too early to say.”
DOWN TIME, COUNTRY STYLE
ALTHOUGH it sure seemed like it sometimes, life on the farm wasn’t only chores. There was down time and we always seemed to have plenty to do. I guess with no TV, radio, or even a newspaper we weren’t too concerned about what was going on in the outside world. Looking back now I see how this had a positive side. We were more creative about how we had fun. We had to be. There was nothing to spend money on, and nowhere to spend it.
One of our favourite places was the barn. This was a huge tin shed with hay bales stacked at one end and machinery and work bench at the other. It was the oldest building I had ever been in, filled with strange objects that had been hung on a rafter forty years ago and were still waiting to come in handy. In the country there could be a saying (although I have never heard it said): “Can’t think of what to do with ten metres of barbed wire/set of antlers/length of chain/old tractor seat/tin of grease/pair of fishing waders? Hang it on the rafters, so it’s right there, when my grandson needs it, in fifty years’ time.”