Love In a Sunburnt Country

by Jo Jackson King

  At the end of 2014 it was suggested Cathy apply for the principal’s position at the little town of Cue, an hour’s drive north of Mt Magnet. Again, with some assistance in selling herself, which is not Cathy’s thing, she applied and was successful. It was time, she said, for a change. She was getting too comfortable at Mt Magnet. Cathy has no interest in being kept in—or keeping herself in—cotton wool. This is something all her boys have learned from her. They do not shy away from challenges. When one of Cathy and David’s sons is faced with a challenge they research the possibilities and take thoughtful action.

  ‘They didn’t collapse in a heap, they kept going,’ Cathy says with pride, knowing that David is proud too.

  ‘On Sundays, Josie always asks God to look after Henry and David. I say to her, “You don’t need to ask God to look after them. They’re okay, God has to look after the rest of us.” It’s a bit of banter between us. She always says it and I always tell her, “No, they’re alright, you don’t have to worry about them!”’

  Cathy talks to David every day. She says such things as: ‘I love you David, but I’m not ready to come up there yet.’ She tells him what is happening with his sons. From time to time she can feel his physical presence, and a comforting weight pressing on her arm or her hand.

  ‘Anthony had to write an essay in exam conditions. Last time he was asked to do this he baulked totally and just wouldn’t. So I was speaking to David about it the other night, and I felt like he was with me. And so I thought, it will be alright with Anthony, he’ll be okay.’

  As I’m listening to Cathy share this story I’m taken back to the night when I met David all those years ago, and his very evident pride in Cathy. Suddenly I have the sensation that if I look up I’ll see him standing behind her, watching her with that gentle, proud, loving smile. I don’t look: I will not be able to see him. But before me I can see Cathy, at peace and comforted, strong and persevering, supported still by David’s faith in her and their love for each other. And looking at her I realise that I have answered to my own satisfaction the question of whether love is primarily an action or a feeling.

  The argument that love should not be considered an emotion but a set of actions is one made most often by psychologists. Love, they say, is something that you do, not something that you feel. Psychologists say this particularly to married people who are finding it hard to love. They encourage them to act lovingly and see what happens. Often it seems to work! It seems that in acting with love we can find it again. But I suspect that there is another explanation here too. Having another person act with love towards you perhaps creates that feeling in you—just as you are creating it in them.

  Philosophers rebut this by saying: ‘If love is simply a set of actions, then how can it continue after one person has died? If the person we direct our loving actions towards is gone, how then do we love?’ And yet we clearly do keep on loving them, wanting the best for them, relating to them even when they are gone and there is little more ‘action’ we can take. And Cathy still loves David, and still feels that he loves her, and I can see the impact this has had on her life. So I have come to side with the philosophers on this.

  On the other hand, the story of Cathy and David might also be evidence of something else entirely: that death can’t end love because our spirit continues on after death. Perhaps it shows instead that even when we are dead, we continue to act with love and to feel love. This is what Cathy believes, as she believes that she came to Mt Magnet both to be with David and to serve the community. And if she had not married David we would never have kept her here in the Murchison, where she is so very valued and where she makes such a difference. This is love working at its ineffable, mysterious, bewildering best.

  Lovely Boy, Beautiful Girl

  John and Mary te Kloot, Marmboo Station, Longreach, Queensland

  For Mary Curran and John te Kloot to have met at all required not just every star in alignment but twinkling in synchrony—she is Irish, he is Australian. Their story illuminates how each successive generation grows out of the choices offered to and made by the preceding generation. We know this applies to all kinds of things, but it’s perhaps most apt when it comes to how we rear our children, and also, to how we love. So for these reasons the story of John and Mary’s wonderful closeness begins with the story of both of their parents’ marriages. Their parents’ generations had gone through depressions and wars, and so survival was key, and their parents’ endeavours had ensured that the next generation had it easier. John and Mary (and many others of their generation) could focus on more than just surviving. They could aim to have a close marriage above all else.

  Mary’s mother, Vera, had been a nun with the Medical Missionaries of Mary in Ireland and had trained and worked as a nurse. After two years she had found that religious life was too restrictive for her and she left the convent and continued her nursing in Dublin, though she retained her strong religious sensibilities. In her thirties she married John Joseph Curran and in 1953 the couple moved to Southern Ireland to the little village of Cappoquin, in the County of Waterford. This is where Mary and her sister, Veronica, were born.

  Being married to John Curran, the eldest of six children, was not as free an existence as Vera might have expected. John’s mother controlled the family, and she kept the books. Although Vera and her husband were running the family farm, they had little cash to spend. The meat supply was controlled by Granny Curran, and it was doled out grudgingly and sparingly every time.

  Even the house Vera lived in did not feel like her own. This house, three storeys, beautifully symmetrical, with many paned windows, some arched, some rectangular, had thick walls, and the trees under which it sheltered were grander than the house itself.

  ‘Once servants lived in it and were brought by carriage to a bigger house about five miles away, where they actually worked,’ explains Mary. ‘There were fireplaces in all thirty-two rooms. On the ceiling in the kitchen, which was very high, there were hooks for smoking hams. It was so big it needed a lot of maintenance and Mum was a very houseproud woman. When we lived there many of the rooms were closed off.

  ‘It was owned by my father’s family, and my father’s sisters often came to visit, bringing their friends and showing them around as if the place was theirs. I remember the Irish winters in this house. There was no heating, Veronica and I took hot water bottles to bed and we very often ended up with chilblains. Mum and Dad sold the house (although they kept the farm) about the time I went away to boarding school at thirteen in 1967.’

  Vera wanted to give her own daughters wings. She wanted them to have the freedom to choose lives outside the village. It was unusual (and disapproved of) to send children away to boarding school, but that is what Vera did. She believed in the power of education. Even on holidays Mary and Veronica could never just do nothing—if they were not helping in the house or on the farm, they were away at ‘Irish schools’ to improve their Gaelic. The two compulsory subjects in Ireland at that time were English and Gaelic, and Vera was trying to help her girls get ahead.

  ‘Not that it did much good,’ says Mary, for whom languages remained a challenge throughout her education.

  Mary remembers her father as a gentle giant, saying little, but not averse to putting his foot down. She loved to help him on the farm, particularly with animals, and gloried in meeting his high expectations of her. That shared love of farming and practical skills built a close bond between father and daughter.

  But her parents’ relationship was sometimes strained. Mary remembers hearing fiery arguments over simple things. Like so many children, she worried that her parents might go their separate ways—and the anguish of that thought has stayed with her, even though such a separation never happened. Very young though she was, she decided then that such arguments were not something she wanted in her own marriage. And in Australia, out in Queensland’s station country, in his very different sphere, a young John was also thinking about the kind of marriage he wanted and re
aching much the same conclusions as Mary.

  John, with his usual precision and empathy for his parents, shares the story of his father and mother with me. John’s father, Jack te Kloot, was a grazier’s son from Cunnamulla in south-west Queensland.

  ‘For three months in 1944 he was commander of RAF Squadron 249, which at the end of the war was reputedly the highest-scoring RAF squadron, that is, had accounted for the most enemy planes shot down during the duration of World War II.’ Jack was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) medal in recognition of his leadership, superior strategic skills and his flying, and returned to Australia ready to resume his life on the land.

  On returning, Jack put his name into the War Service Land Settlement ballot. This was a lottery whereby returned soldiers were randomly allocated land. It had operated in World War I also, but had been revamped recently. Previously, this scheme had simply included any man who wanted to go onto the land in reward for war service. After World War II this changed and now only returning soldiers who could stock and develop the land were permitted to enter their names in the ballot. It was in one of these ballots that Jack drew Marmboo Station. This was the equivalent of winning the lottery as far as he was concerned.

  Jack had made many friends during the war, and friendships that survived it were special. He had become friendly with Joan Armstrong, an Englishwoman who had been a member of the Women’s Royal Naval Service for six years, mostly as a petty officer. (It still puzzles John that his father didn’t have a girl waiting for his return in Australia. Jack was, after all, a rather dashing figure.) While they didn’t have a great deal of time together during the war, Joan and Jack had found enough in common to make a correspondence worthwhile. This had continued throughout the war and afterwards. When Jack won Marmboo, Joan was one of the people with whom he shared his good news.

  It was a great bonus to Jack that he won the property free and clear of debt. Debt had nearly crippled his father’s grazing enterprise during the Depression. Jack had learned to detest and fear debt, and from a very early age he had begun to put money aside. Jack also encouraged Joan to come out to Australia to visit, and she did. After all, England had been shattered by the war effort, life there was austere and bleak, food was rationed and queued for and prospects for improvement seemed far too distant. Jack met Joan in Sydney in his US Army jeep and took her on the long journey back to Cunnamulla to visit the family property.

  Jack and Joan married in 1947 and they became a highly effective team. This was just as well, for Marmboo was no sinecure. The Depression and the war had given birth to a generation of people with the kind of self-discipline we find hard to imagine today. They did whatever had to be done well ahead of time. Jack had repeatedly put his life on the line in the war and he continued to live in a decisive and forthright way; he held back nothing of himself from doing all that was needed to make Marmboo thrive.

  With his aversion to debt, Jack found it hard to borrow money, but often there was no choice. He traded in stock, built fences, and added water and stock-handling facilities. He was a progressive and thoughtful farmer. Joan told her children that, ‘What was good enough for his father is not good enough for yours.’

  And Joan’s staunch English spirit that had taken her through the war was now required for a different kind of battle. For a homestead to run smoothly, it requires systems in place, forward planning and hard work every day, even in the twenty-first century. In the 1950s, on what was effectively a new property, all of that had to be created from the ground up and with almost none of the household equipment that exists now. This is Joan’s description of her early life on Marmboo from when she arrived in 1947, which she wrote at the request of a local historian.

  ‘The country was drought-stricken and eaten out and there was very little water at the house. I described this house as a “biscuit box on stumps”. It had never been painted, lined or ceiled and, although families had lived here, water had never been laid on, nor was there power of any sort. The windows were merely sections of the corrugated-iron walls cut out and hinged, then propped open with iron bars. The bathroom was a separate building with a camp shower which was filled by a bucket, hot water coming from the copper attached to the wood stove. The “private sitting room” was a hundred yards down the paddock.

  ‘Shortage of water was a problem for some years and at one stage we used to cart a hundred gallons [378 litres] from a neighbour’s dam each Sunday when we went out to the road to collect our mail (which included a regular order of bread, a dozen eggs and a pound of tomatoes).’

  Even for a woman who had managed staff and accounts in a war zone, a woman of that era who was used to hard physical work, it was tough.

  ‘On Mondays the copper was lit bright and early—outside—and the laundry fed in according to cleanliness. Eventually the hot water was used to scrub the kitchen floor (which was so splintery my first child never crawled), the bathroom floor, and finally there was a trek down the paddock with a bucket and scrubbing brush. I remember getting a large pair of wooden tongs which were a big improvement on the usual stick for the copper, and a deck scrubber which was a wonder, too.’

  Though this was less than a hundred years ago, Joan’s brand-new household tools were tongs and a deck scrubber! Such a contrast to the wonders in today’s households. They will cut up and cook the food. Wash your clothes. There are even little robots that vacuum floors …

  ‘Good rain came in 1949 and the fifties were bountiful years. The first big rain found the leaks in the old roof on the house, which had been erected about the turn of the century. We had to drape a tarpaulin over the baby’s cot, when before that he’d slept for many hours with a wet sheet over the cot to keep him cool.

  ‘Over the years we enlarged the house at each end of the old nucleus, making it L-shaped and reasonably cool even before air conditioning. When the second baby came, a new bathroom and a bigger bedroom, lined and ceiled, were added. An early-model Holden replaced the old army surplus jeep, although this vehicle continued in service until the two boys grew tall enough to drive it—when they were about seven.

  ‘Number two son was a year old when we installed a lighting plant, followed later by a wind-driven battery charger, which was very effective. What joy to have an electric iron and a mixer. The third baby, a girl, merited a washing machine (the cement-mixer type) and the second girl was born into an entirely different establishment a few years later. A 240-volt generating plant was bought in the mid-1960s and then, in 1980, came that greatest of all modern conveniences—rural power.’

  Joan had help from time to time with cooking, and she had a nanny or governess for the children. The home she ran singlehandedly and to very high standards. One of John and Mary’s youngest daughter’s black-and-white photographs shows Grandmother Joan on washing day. She is smiling and very slender. There are two drums through which the washing must pass. One drum is steaming. Joan, her curls ruffled by the wind, is bending over the other, rubbing out stains. Beyond that is a smaller rinsing tub, and then a final container with laundry ready to be hung.

  ‘Of the three generations, my parents genuinely knew through the Depression and the war what it was to go without. We, as kids, had everything we needed, and,’ John adds ruefully, ‘our kids have everything they want.’

  Most vegetables were grown on the property in line with the seasons, which meant there were only a few weeks in which you could have, for example, cauliflower or green beans. Preserves were made year round to capture those seasonal abundances. Milk and meat would both have come from the property. Bread, biscuits and cakes were all made at home. In the early days Joan made nearly all her own clothes as well as her children’s.

  ‘Mum was very good to us kids. She went without so we could have things,’ says John.

  Joan’s children gave her great joy. The goals of parents then were not the same as parents now—with their own experience of life being so hard, many postwar parents simply aimed to make their children tou
gh enough to survive. But the love with which Joan and Jack raised their four children was evident. John’s warm, stable childhood became the foundation for his life. However, there were many distractions in Jack and Joan’s married life and John feels now that worked against their being able to achieve real closeness in their marriage.

  ‘Right from day one, there were staff around and that would have played a part in their relationship,’ says John. ‘There was always someone there.’

  It was, he says, a very orderly upbringing for that reason. It wasn’t until John was away at boarding school that he remembers the six of them—Jack, Joan and their four children—having a meal as a family.

  ‘I always worried that my father hardly knew my mother, and that then their lives would have taken them further apart. And Dad was a very dominating character,’ says John. ‘There was never any doubt that he was the boss. It was good in some ways—he trusted his own judgment, he could be kind and generous—but not in all ways.’ John knew he didn’t want to have a marriage exactly like the one he perceived his parents shared.

  Granny Curran, who had unceasingly attempted to control all around her, did not change as Mary grew up. Her sights were now set on controlling her grandchildren’s adult lives. She believed she had found the ideal husband for Mary and promoted the match whenever and however she could. She could not understand that Mary’s goal in marriage was intimacy. The marriage Granny proposed was one of financial security and improved family networks—Tom was thirty years older than 21-year-old Mary, and a respected local farmer.

  ‘My grandmother thought that I should marry him, because she herself had married a much older man—and she’d been a widow for a long time because of it. She would say: “Oh, Mary, how’s Tom going? Lovely boy, now lovely man, lovely man.”’

  Under considerable pressure from her grandmother to become friends with Tom, Mary accepted his invitations to spend time with him, and she grew to value him as a mentor and friend.