Clay Gully

by Sally van Gent

  Witlof and Anchovy Salad

  2 hard-boiled eggs

  English salad cream (or mayonnaise)

  8 anchovy fillets

  1 head of witlof

  1 green apple

  small piece of onion

  1 teaspoon lemon juice

  salt and pepper

  Slice eggs in half lengthways and place in centre of a plate yolk down. Coat with salad cream and arrange anchovy strips over them. Slice the witlof, apples and onion. Mix together with the lemon juice, salt and pepper and a little salad cream. Arrange around the eggs.

  Coby our German shorthaired pointer is my constant companion in the orchard. But when she turns fifteen, dementia sets in, so we have to call the vet and say a loving farewell. We have already adopted a two-year-old English springer spaniel named Morgan and now she, too, follows me into the orchard. Sadly we don’t have her long.

  One lunchtime we return from shopping to find that she is ill and vomiting repeatedly. At first glance it appears to be a stomach upset but when she begins to shake and lose the use of her legs, we rush her to the vet. He tells us she has been poisoned by something quite deadly; most probably snail bait.

  The vet puts her on a drip before sending us home to try to discover what she has eaten. We don’t use poisons in the garden so I can’t think what she could have found, but in amongst the revolting pools of vomit I see the black feathers of a bird. Less than an hour later the vet calls to tell us he couldn’t save her. It is heartbreaking and unexpected, and I now wish I had stayed with her. She was a lovely young dog, and she suffered horribly.

  Two days later, there’s a dead chough in the middle of the driveway. It’s a strange place for a bird to die. There are no marks on its body. Then a little distance away underneath a small wattle bush, I discover a second dead chough. The next time I hear the familiar whistling I look for the other members of the family. Only three of the nine birds are left. They must have been feeding in some distant garden and eaten snail pellets.

  Sadly Morgan had a habit of chewing on anything interesting she discovered in the bush. It seems that by finding and eating one of the dead choughs she’s become another victim. If only gardeners would use some of the simple organic ways available to keep snails from their vegetable plots.

  As yet there have been no summer thunderstorms to refill the dams. Despite last year’s effort to deliver water directly to the roots, the orchard is suffering from a lack of moisture. Still I’m convinced the drought will end soon and the rains will return as they always have in the past. I just have to keep the trees alive until then.

  As the weather grows hotter and water becomes scarce, I move as many plants as possible into the shade of the verandah. They attract both butterflies and dragonflies. When these become trapped by the shadecloth overhead, they make easy pickings for the pardalotes and fairy wrens.

  The drought is interminable and all around life is struggling for survival. Dead branches are dropping from the gum trees. The bush is strangely silent, bereft of birds. In Ouyen, desperate farmers’ wives perform a naked rain dance, as the soil in the paddocks turns to dust and blows away on the wind.

  We’re eating outside, our food illuminated by candlelight, when joy of joys, we feel the first drops of rain. Soon it’s falling steadily but no one moves to go inside. It’s been so long since we felt its gentle touch on our warm skin. A fat brown frog appears from nowhere and nonchalantly hops across the dinner table before disappearing into the undergrowth.

  In the morning the wrens and silvereyes return, joyfully calling out to each other as they search for the newly emerging insects in the gum trees. Water has run into the dams during the night, and the apple trees have had a thorough soaking. A few days later the kangaroos are feasting on tender new shoots of grass. But this is only a temporary respite. Within two weeks the sun has done its work and beneath cloudless blue skies, the soil returns to dust.

  The Tydeman’s Early Worcesters are almost ready for picking and the skins of the Autumn Pearmains are showing their characteristic deep-orange stripes. During the night the temperature remains high as the heat wave continues. It is unusually hot, even for January in Bendigo. The thermometer, nailed to a fence post at the corner of the orchard, registers forty-two degrees. Despite frequent watering, the leaves on the rose bushes turn black and when I touch them they crumble into dust.

  Now the apples are changing colour and I realise the fruit is actually cooking on the trees. Even those growing in deep shade have been affected. In past years there has been some fruit spoilt by sunburn but I’ve never seen anything like this. The whole crop is ruined. Months of pruning, thinning and spraying have come to nothing.

  At the end of a long night’s foraging, the kangaroos stop for a while in front of the house to stretch, clean, and scratch. Then they go to sit in the shade below the far dam, before finally falling asleep amongst the yellow everlasting flowers.

  Two of the dams are dry and only the one above the orchard still contains water. Tall reeds have grown in its centre, making it impossible to see how much remains. Presently I am running the irrigation for the trees at six day intervals. The water runs slowly into the buried pipes, gently spreading underground to reach the thirsty roots. I have a water meter with a prong which I insert into the soil to test for moisture, so I don’t give the trees a drop more than they need.

  Now the question is—how many more times can I irrigate with these last dregs of water? The answer is probably only twice, which means that unless it rains very soon the trees will begin to dry out and die.

  A week later it still hasn’t rained and I’m losing hope. Instead of putting on the usual amount of water, I’m now rationing the trees to a few brief minutes at a time. This is not good for them but I’m finding it hard to face the moment when the dam runs dry. Twice a day I go to the computer, scanning two different websites to check the forecast. This constant monitoring is of course pointless and I know it’s becoming neurotic. I need a miracle, preferably in the form of a big storm, but I’ll happily settle for a few showers to see the trees through another week. No rain is forecast.

  There’s nothing more I can do except leave the block for a while and think about something else, so I drive into the town and wander around the shops. At lunchtime I return, swinging my car into the small dirt road beside our property. As I do so I hear a loud rushing sound. A great torrent of water is bursting out of the bush and madly, wildly, heading towards our dam.

  This isn’t the gentle flow of irrigation water, nor even what happens during a storm. This is an amazing thundering river coming from nowhere, surreal in the parched landscape. I drive onto our block and run down to the dam. In half an hour it will be overflowing.

  Some distance away in the bush the irrigation channel passes under a small road, and I set off at a jog through the trees to see the origin of this miracle. The concrete channel has never been more than half full, but now its steep sides are hidden by a wall of water which is pouring into the bush. A dry walking track between the gum trees has been transformed into a rushing river.

  For some time I have scarcely heard a bird sing. The little blue wrens that so merrily hopped around our front garden are long gone, driven away by the drought and lack of insect life. Now above the noise of the running water I hear their excited twitter. I return to the house to somewhat reluctantly do the right thing and telephone the water authority. There is as much water now in the bottom dam as we have received in our entire allocation for the year. The orchard will survive.

  In the evening the sound is amazing as dozens of frogs make love calls to each other. I stand beside the bottom dam in the moonlight listening to them. One sounds as if a saw is cutting back and forth through a log. Then there is an interrupted creak … creak. Between the sawing and creaking I hear the full-throated, intermittent bonk … bonk of the pobblebonk frog, and a classic rivet … rivet echoes from the far bank.

  The frogs have dug deep down into the mud at the
bottom of the dam in order to escape from the heat of the hot summer. They have been silent for a long time. I am happy to hear them again and know they have survived the drought.

  A constant stream of birds comes to the water fountain. In the searing heat they hold their beaks wide open as if they are gasping for breath. A currawong strides through the bushes before perching on the side of the bowl. Even though he must be desperate for a drink, he’s nervous. He looks this way and that for several minutes, checking and re-checking for predators, before finally dipping his beak into the cool clear water.

  There’s no feed in the paddocks and few insects in the trees, so everywhere animals are parched and hungry. There are all kinds of native plants in the front garden, put there to attract the birds, but there are no flowers and there’s no food in them now.

  Nick hangs a bird feeder on the front verandah. I fill it and scatter seed on the ground below. In no time there are a dozen birds coming to eat there, including a lame duck and a one-eyed magpie. Ducks rule, chasing away the crested pigeons and magpies until they have finished. The shy bronzewing pigeons have to wait for the leftovers, but the eastern rosellas avoid the fight by using the feeder.

  Because of its overhanging roof, it’s impossible for the birds to access the seed from above and they need to land directly onto the base. The rosellas have no difficulty with this and nor do the crested pigeons. Our two resident galahs, however, alight over and over again on the roof, and with one claw grasping the chain try without success to slide down to the seed. After a week they figure it out.

  A flock of galahs lives in the paddock across the road, and periodically these birds also come to the feeder. They take turns trying to access the seed, but without success. Suddenly every bird rises in panic as the dark shadow of a hawk crosses the verandah.

  Some months after losing our spaniel we adopt Tilly, a bouncy, ball-crazy Airedale terrier. With her curly wool coat and brown button nose she is a cross between a sheep and a teddy bear. Along the far side of the orchard our previous neighbour erected a metal fence, ‘to keep out the snakes’. Occasionally Tilly escapes from the back garden and then she heads directly for this fence. Two little fox terriers live on the other side. Although Tilly can hear them, she’s never actually seen them. There are several small depressions in the ground underneath the fence where they poke their noses. Tilly doesn’t know at which hole a nose will appear, so she waits for a while, quivering in anticipation. When one suddenly pops out, there’s barking and a crazy rushing up and down on both sides.

  Nearest to the road on the unfenced side of the neighbour’s house, there’s a small patch of bright green lawn. In the early evening, the whole mob of eleven kangaroos squeezes onto this little square to enjoy the tender green shoots. The neighbour’s main windows don’t face in this direction so I doubt if he’s seen them. In any case, he’ll never need to buy a lawnmower.

  When she isn’t visiting the foxies, Tilly loves to play with soft toys, especially ones which make a noise. At Christmas I buy a toy parrot for my grandchildren. When squeezed, it plays ‘Deck the halls with boughs of holly’, followed by a raucous squawk. They don’t seem very interested in it, but Tilly is. She keeps eyeing it, and when Christmas is almost over she steals it and runs off into the garden. It’s buried somewhere, but periodically she digs it up. It is annoying to be woken in the early morning by the sound of Christmas carols, but before we can take the parrot off her, it vanishes again.

  Denied adequate winter rainfall, the dams are less than half full at the start of the season. Evaporation soon takes its toll. Already the reduction in soil moisture is resulting in damage to the fruit and a greater vulnerability to disease. Last year’s generous error by the water company was all that saved the trees from dying and drastic measures are required if they are to survive another year.

  We no longer have enough water to keep everything alive, so I have to make the decision to stop irrigating the native flowers and abandon the project. There are twenty plum trees at the top of the paddock which may also have to be let go. Right now they are in poor condition, mainly because the kangaroos attacked them at the end of summer when there was nothing else to eat.

  Recently we have been entertained by boxing matches between the young male roos. Unfortunately, this year one lone vandal has discovered plum trees are springy, making them an ideal alternative when no sparring partner is available. He’s doing a lot of damage.

  When we planted the young apple trees, we took care to leave a wide margin between them and the roots of the gum trees growing on two sides of the orchard. The drought has continued for so long that even these native trees are struggling for survival, and now new roots reach across the divide for a share of the irrigation water. They are easy to find, for they have scarcely penetrated the surface of the rock-hard ground and I am able to chop them back with an axe.

  Before he began his own business, Nick was the engineer at a hospital surrounded by extensive native gardens. The stormwater pipes there were frequently blocked by tree roots. One river red gum put out a root over a hundred metres long, which went straight as an arrow to a water pipe in the distance. I wonder how trees sense the water, especially when it’s far away and sealed in a pipe.

  It’s late summer and in the scorching heat a flock of pink and grey galahs circle overhead before dropping down to drink from the bowl of water I leave for them in the orchard. They scavenge for seed, and when they’ve gone I see the dusty ground is riddled with holes where they have turned over the soil.

  An hour later the sky darkens and a brisk breeze stirs the gum trees. There is a sudden crack of thunder and at long last it begins to rain. As I watch the drops fall, I notice a galah hanging upside down from a branch high above my head. It looks very strange and I’m concerned it may be caught up in something. In a moment though, amid cries of joy, the whole flock is swinging by its feet in the rain.

  Two days after this first break in the weather our galahs are back at the nesting box. I wonder why they should be there out of season, but then one bird quickly releases the catch and opens the inspection door. She reaches into the box and emerges with a sprig of gum leaves in her beak. The box gets a thorough cleaning and will be ready for fresh eggs in the spring.

  Encouraged by the rainfall, I decide to order next season’s fertiliser and perform a soil test. As I zigzag through the orchard collecting earth from twenty holes, I delight in seeing the dark, friable soil, so different from the pale heavy clay of a few years ago. The application of all that lime and good organic matter has had its effect.

  A few days later the test results arrive and at first seem encouraging. Then I am shocked to see the salt level in the orchard is sky high. It has never been a problem before. Perhaps it came in with the irrigation water. Even so, a few good storms might have leached it out of the soil. A friend who is an agronomist warns me that any further increase will probably kill the trees.

  Now the season has ended and the autumn rains have come. Not heavy dam-filling rain, but frequent sweet showers which change the brown dust between the rows into paths of rich green clover. Gum trees that were turning pale and sickly towards the end of summer regenerate new growth, and soon the bush is regaled with the yellow beauty of the wattle. Although there is only one partially filled dam so far, I have new hope for the coming season.

  Then I hear that despite the better rainfall, the water in the catchments is at its lowest level ever, so there will be restrictions once again. Without good summer storms, thirty per cent of our allocation will not be enough to keep the trees alive through another year. Soon a letter arrives from the water authority, telling us we will receive no allocation at all this season unless there are massive inflows into the dams in the next few weeks.

  It is September and there has been no more rain. Next week a contractor is coming to pull out the trees.

  The lame duck and the one-eyed magpie still come to the birdbath. At twilight the kangaroos meet in the front paddock t
o eat lucerne and drink from the trough. There is enough water to keep a few trees alive, so my grandchildren will know the taste of a Bramley’s Seedling, a Cornish Aromatic, and an Autumn Pearmain.

  And I have my memories.

  Acknowledgements

  At times the orchard demanded arduous labour in extremely hot weather. I’m grateful to Les Parslow for coming to work with me whenever I needed him, and for his endless patience. Richard May provided invaluable advice on soil management. My son, Nathaniel, lent a hand when he was home, and my husband always came to my rescue when everything went wrong. I’d like to thank Denise Gadd, gardening guru, and Stephen Ryan, former host of ABC TV’s Gardening Australia, for their generous comments, and my wonderful editor, Julia Beaven, for her persistence and support. Finally, I owe much to Margaret and Clive Winmill: Margaret for her helpful suggestions and review of the book, and Clive for teaching me almost all I know about apple trees.

  Recipe Index

  Appelflappen

  Apple Chutney

  Apple Dumplings

  Apple Sauce

  Bacon and Apple Slice

  Baked Apples

  Coffee Hazelnut Cake

  Cold Tea Cake

  Dutch Apple Cake

  Dutch Honey Cake

  English Sherry Trifle

  Oliebollen

  Olive and Tuna Tart

  Orange Pistachio Biscuits

  Quince Paste

  Raw Herring Salad

  Red Cabbage with Apple

  Witlof and Anchovy Salad

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