The Sparrow Garden

by Peter Skrzynecki

  As a six-year-old I had accompanied the brothers and their father in an old blue Bedford truck to where they were cutting down pine trees for posts. Andrew was working the saw. A tree started to fall and the saw jammed; their father went in to lean against it, as did the other two brothers, Peter and Warwick. As they did, the blade shot out of the tree. How it missed their father he can’t say, but the blade flew out and “just cut them down like a couple of saplings”. At first their father noticed only Warwick and, using his belt, tied a tourniquet around Warwick’s knee. Then he saw that Peter had been injured also.

  Andrew apologises to me for the haste with which everything happened from that point on. I had to be kept in the truck while paddock gates were opened in the headlong race to the homestead so that an ambulance could be called. Shock. Confusion. The uncertainty of what had actually happened to the two brothers. Peter was cut across the backs of both legs. Warwick lost a leg.

  Andrew tells me of the complications that Peter has had up to the present, although he, like Warwick and Andrew, has made a success of his life, has married and raised a family. Warwick, whose hero, he says, was Tin Legs Bader, has achieved a lot also. He married, had a family, went on to get a pilot’s licence and a commercial rating. Their father, he says, never talked much about the accident and somehow blamed himself for it.

  The brothers were raced to hospital and given blood transfusions. Warwick, especially, had lost a lot of blood and it seemed like he wouldn’t last the night. Andrew admits that he felt “rotten” because he “was on the saw”. He says it took him ages to get over it. When people used to ask questions about the accident, all he could do was say nothing.

  We continue talking a little longer. I share with him the stories of Aleksander Hrubski and the shooting of the strays. I describe the sewage works as they are today, still uncovered, full of dirty rainwater.

  He talks with a farmer’s stoicism about living on the land and the acceptance of life and death, the need to kill and destroy rodents, and the need to slaughter for meat rationing and how not to look into a sheep’s eyes when you are cutting its throat.

  We discover we have an interest in Australian birds and exchange stories about our experiences with them.

  Dorothea returns from town and I’m invited to stay for lunch. I decline the offer but promise to return before my departure for Sydney.

  Cockatoos screech outside, as if to scold me, warn me about overstaying my visit. They are saying that I am an intruder, that I must leave, that I have no place here anymore. The sky belongs to the birds, the land to the animals and these country people.

  At the Parkes Champion Post, the file for all the newspapers from 1951 is missing. The newspapers are stored in a back room, on deep shelves, like groceries, inside large cardboard covers; they resemble giant scrapbooks. The office staff is helpful, but no one can explain why everything from 1951 is missing.

  I drive over to the local library and find what I am looking for on microfiche; however, when I try to photocopy what I need, the photocopier won’t work because it’s out of toner. The chief librarian tells me that it’s been ordered from Bathurst and assures me it will be here tomorrow afternoon.

  I still have one more visit this afternoon. I make a telephone call and arrange it. It’s well past lunch time but I’m not hungry.

  Maria Dziuba works in a local nursing home. Her family and mine became friends on the voyage to Australia. She was one of my playmates at the migrant camp but her family stayed in the district when the camp closed. Fifty years later, she lives with her mother and one of her brothers in a street that is less than ten minutes’ drive from the site of the former camp. My mother re-established contact with the family several years ago and we’ve stayed in touch since. Maria knows that I want to interview her mother about life in the camp. The visit to the nursing home will be short and has been timed to coincide with Maria’s afternoon tea break.

  We meet in an office where a receptionist has asked me to wait. I’ve met Maria before and there’s a bond between us, a link because we’ve shared part of our childhood in Parkes but also, I think, because our mothers came from the Ukraine. I’ve seen the two women together and there’s something intuitive between them, a bond also, but deeeper, unspoken. Their dialect is the same, the vocabulary they use and their manner of speaking — even the hand gestures.

  Maria shows me around the grounds of the nursing home and I tell her about today’s interview, that there are still two brothers and her mother to interview.

  Elderly people on walking frames and in wheelchairs pass by us. We look into a large room where afternoon tea is being served to residents sitting at a long table. The gardens are full of bright flowers and trimmed bushes. Neat lawns decorate the spaces between buildings.

  She sees me out to the front garden and we make a time for me to visit her mother. The sun is starting to set and there are elongated shadows on the rectangular lawns.

  It’s well after four o’clock when I return to the Bushman’s Motor Inn.

  Tuesday, 23 February 1999

  “Kimbar”

  The directions to Mary and Warwick Tom’s property take me along a different route from the Bartley’s Creek Road. I travel down lower Clarinda Street and turn off at the Eugowra Road. Travelling along it I pass by the racetrack and the bulk grain terminal, and drive over a railway crossing.

  As I make my way down the turn-off to the homestead, across paddocks wet with dew, Red Angus cattle watch me warily. At one point I have to slow down and pass among a group of these beasts that have come out of the trees and right up to the track. They peer at the stranger. There is something primeval about the shape of these animals. Their huge, humped shoulders denote tremendous strength. They are bigger than my car and their faces gloom frighteningly into its interior as I edge forward, metre by metre.

  Mary and Warwick meet me at the door and we exchange greetings. I’ve never met Mary before; Warwick looks exactly the same as he did in 1989 when Mum and I returned to Parkes for the Migrant Camp Reunion. Warwick speaks while Mary serves tea and biscuits.

  He admits he didn’t have much to do with the migrant camp — although he remembers going out to it in the utility truck to pick up my mother in the mornings and return her in the afternoons. He remembers the exact route, however: he’d go by the Eugowra Road or else along the Back Yamma Road.

  We discuss the exact dates of our arrival and departure at the camp, the death of the “little boy” in the sewage works and the date of the drowning, Monday, 3 April 1950. I refer to the photocopy of the newspaper I obtained when my mother and I returned for the Migrant Camp Reunion.

  He doesn’t remember the drowning, but realises it would have been before the accident.

  We talk about none of them having met my father and how my mother used to find work in town with certain families: the Brownhills, the Ahrenses (Mrs Ahrens was the English teacher at the local high school), the Burnses, and the Barbers.

  His account of the accident is less detailed than Andrew’s, although the facts are much the same — the pine trees being cut down, Peter and him pushing on the tree over the saw’s blade because the tree had “started to come back a bit”. A gust of wind brought the tree back against them and the saw jumped out, spinning “at full throttle”. Peter turned around and was struck from behind. Warwick pulls up his trouser leg and show me his prosthesis and the scars made by the saw’s teeth. His voice is without sadness or regret. He says his leg is bearable and he has progressed with his life. He healed quickly because the cut was clean. Over and done with.

  We talk a little longer, and before we say our goodbyes I ask Warwick and Mary if I could have a photograph of them in their front garden. They agree and stand in front of a cypress pine that’s been clipped. As I line up the camera I realise it’s as perfect a day as it could be. Any feelings of żal that emerged while Warwick spoke have been dissipated and I can’t help blessing these people for sharing their lives with me. The light
is clean, warm and cold at the same time. There’s a purity in the air that’s more than invigorating. My body feels it, my bones, my blood. I feel like I’ve come to Parkes for the first time in my life.

  I go for a drive out to Eugowra and Forbes, where I have lunch. Back in Parkes, I visit the Henry Parkes Museum and buy a pictorial history of the town in a small bookshop in Clarinda Street. Again, I go for a swim at the motel. Back in my room, with images of the countryside drifting in and out of my mind, I fall into a deep sleep. There are two more interviews to be done.

  Wednesday, 24 February 1999

  I spend the morning shopping and sightseeing around Parkes. After lunch I drive out to the home of Mrs Maria Dziuba, Maria’s mother, in Russell Street. All the while it’s hard not to be drawn back to what Andrew and Warwick have told me in the last two days.

  Maria and her mother show me around the large garden with its vegetable plots and fruit trees. There are chestnuts, pears, apples, oranges. Grape vines trail over wire fencing. A number of sheds and outhouses have been built in the yard. This agrarian scene reminds me of where I grew up in Sydney. Both places have an atmosphere of rural antiquity about them. Both were created by people who emigrated from the Old World.

  Walking inside the house is like entering a fairyland cavern of glass and porcelain, silks and beads. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of dolls, vases and trinkets of every imaginable size, colour and shape in cabinets and on shelves in the hallway. We sit in the lounge room on a couch covered in embroidered rugs and bright cushions. There are pictures and brass rubbings on the wall. A cuckoo clock and a painting of a river scene look familiar. Below them, a mock jade-and-sapphire peacock look backwards over its tail and screeches in silence.

  We arrange ourselves in the room. I switch on the cassette recorder and ask Mrs Dziuba to tell me about life in the migrant camp.

  What do you remember? I ask.

  Her three Pomeranians share the room with us and they immediately start yapping. Mrs Dziuba reprimands them and they stop their commotion. When something else disturbs them they will start again. This will happen all the way through the interview.

  What do I remember? Oh, I remember a lot … about how people lived, how they went to the kitchen for food … I witnessed a lot … I didn’t like what they did in the kitchen … They stole food for themselves, but when you came into the kitchen they didn’t want to give you food … Like the time I said to the chef … I tell him the bread is old, and he says for me to soak it with a bit of water and it’ll be alright … It was New Year, the men had returned from work … They were giving them potatoes but not fresh bread. There was bread … but he was giving them bread that was too hard and couldn’t be cut … So I got to the lock in the pantry in the kitchen where the bread was and opened it with a leg from a seat and got half a loaf of bread … I took what I was entitled to …

  I ask her if she remembers the boy who drowned.

  Yes, I remember.

  Whose fault was it?

  I don’t know but … Did you know his mother came back after ten years and they took his remains and buried him out near Liverpool somewhere?

  She asks me, Do you remember the Polish fellow in the camp who drove the truck to and from the station with the baggage? He drove the truck over the bridge. Do you know which bridge I mean? No? Well, it collapsed and he was killed … He had something like eight children. They buried him here but his wife and children moved to Melbourne … Later they dismantled the bridge and built a new one.

  I mention the killing of the dogs and she goes into details about the circumstances of the killing, how it was precipitated by complaints — from one woman in particular. The dogs were bothering children. I tell her how I heard that they were strays and were responsible for killing sheep in the district. Does she have more details? And what happened to the man who did the actual shooting? She said there was a terrible accident afterwards and people kept quiet about that trouble.

  But there were other kinds of trouble too … The men would fight a lot … Yes, there were lots of fights and the men would hit each other … and they yelled a lot … We also had trouble with the young Australian men who came to the camp and wanted to get to the women … One woman set a trap for them … and then … Oh boy, did we get stuck into them … They cried and said they’d never return, and they never did …

  She talks about the difficulties of raising children in the environment of the camp, and the problems of cooking for them.

  I used to have a small stove there and spent most of my time sitting by it and cooking for the children … Oh yes, did I ever work hard and tire myself out … All sorts of cooking … Cabbage rolls, dumplings, pancakes, apple cakes and doughnuts … Also I made my own meatloaf … I used to cook it all up for Christmas and be visited by one or two Australian families and have a chicken also … They always wanted me to give them my recipe but I said that I couldn’t because I don’t have one, that I just cook as I have a taste for something … I said that even if it’s in the fridge for three or four weeks it doesn’t go off …

  Then we had troubles with accommodation … New arrivals would come to the camp and there wasn’t enough room … Oh I had troubles with that … So I found this little house and we moved into it …

  Mrs Dziuba goes into minute details about the purchase of her home, the size of its rooms, extensions, the previous owner. She speaks about families from the camp who settled in the area but who, once their children grew up and moved out, ended up by following them.

  She also tells me that my mother’s father was a Hungarian Jew and she received the name “Kornelia” from him. Did I know that? No, I tell her, not about the name-giving, but my mother had told me about her father without going into details about him. I tell her that it wasn’t something that greatly interested me when I was growing up. It was never an issue then, though I do wish now, regretfully, that I’d asked more questions and learnt more of my mother’s story.

  She sees me looking at the cuckoo clock and the painting of the river and starts to laugh, asks me if I recognise them.

  Your mother gave them to me but said not to tell you because you’d be upset.

  The penny drops and I remember the cuckoo clock that’d been taken down because it’d stopped working, and the painting bought at a rummage sale and hung behind the laundry door. Mrs Dziuba and Maria once visited us at 10 Mary Street and my mother must have given these things to them at the time. I can’t help but laugh. The dogs start yapping.

  Her narrative becomes less a description of life at the camp and more of a personal history, a recounting of her own life in Germany and the Ukraine, her mother, her father, her siblings, her husband, her marriage and the birth of her children, their schooling, finding work, the difficulties she’s having with her health in old age. Again and again we have to stop because of the dogs.

  I sense that the interview is coming to an end and describe my recollections of the journey on the General R. M. Blatchford. I tell her that several years ago I researched the ship’s file in the National Archives in Canberra and read the nominal roll and the paperwork dealing with the ship’s journey.

  She asks if there was anything about the rape of a young Polish woman by a gang of crew members. No, I tell her. There was nothing about that.

  No, there wouldn’t be. The captain said he’d fix it up … It was terrible what they did to that poor girl … terrible.

  Maria interrupts and asks her mother to recount what happened when the ship docked in Sydney Harbour.

  We were near Manly and everybody was calling out, I see land! Land! You could see Sydney on the left side … There were little trees … We had to stand for about an hour, then another hour … It was about nine or half-past at that point … Then we moved on and it was about eleven o’clock in the morning and then we stopped and waited … and we arrived near the Harbour Bridge … By the time we stopped again it was about four o’clock and they told us to clean the ship before we left �
�� Well, it was about ten or eleven o’clock before they finally let us off the ship and the buses arrived to take us to Bathurst.

  Before I stop recording we have touched on the arrival of our two families in Sydney and the journey to the Bathurst Migrant Holding Centre where all of us stayed for two weeks before being moved on to Parkes. After Parkes the two families were separated, the Skrzyneckis moving to Sydney, the Dziubas remaining in Parkes. Ironically, fifty years later, the stories of their lives are being joined via the medium of electromagnetic tape, turning very slowly, recording sounds, words, memories. Everything seems to be coming together, piece by piece, not always making sense but at least recognised as being related to our lives. Even the yapping of three small dogs doesn’t seem out of place.

  Thursday, 25 February 1999

  “Bartleys Creek”

  The last of my interviews in Parkes. Tomorrow I return to Sydney. Much of what Mrs Dziuba said yesterday circulates in my head. The reference to my maternal grandfather and his being Jewish was a surprise. How much of her life had my mother told her? And what am I to do with this fact? How do I incorporate it into the rest of my life from now on?

  In town I purchase various gifts that I want to give to the three Tom families and Mrs Dziuba before I leave.

  I first drive out to “Araluen” and say goodbye to Andrew and Dorothea. I leave them a gift and ask them to pass it on to Warwick and Mary, neither of whom are home today.

  They agree to be photographed and stand under a trellised grape vine, its leaves a deep green, under which a wind chime has been hung.

  Dorothea’s glasses are slung around her neck. She is smiling a countrywoman’s smile, warm and welcoming. Andrew stands with his hands in pockets, looking stoic and detached, as wise as any Greek philosopher, as if to say, I have seen it all, the good, the bad, the happy, the sad. I haven’t noticed before how tall he is and think he must be very strong.

  * *

  The “Bartley’s Creek” homestead is painted pink and green, set inside a circumference of trees and shrubs. There are palms, climber roses, wisteria, variegated creepers trailing over walls and windows. One could be forgiven for thinking this was part of rainforest country, not the central west of New South Wales. When I visited with my mother in 1989 I remember there were many paintings and books in the rooms — many first editions by established Australian writers. The rooms smelt of an aesthetic antiquity that I found comforting and that attracted me. Whoever is or was responsible for those acquisitions has similar tastes to mine in the arts. This is the house, I remember, where my mother worked and where I played outside while she worked. Like the surrounding landscape, the cattle grid, the wheat, the sheep, the crows and galahs, this is where I identify with the “real” Australian countryside.