Letter From The Other Side. From Cynthia written by
Elizabeth. M. Thompson.
Cynthia and Teddy take a trip to the Mallee country to visit old friends.
Dear Del,
It really isn’t any wonder they call the Mallee the ‘sunset country’. I am sitting here on Margaret’s veranda watching the fading light. The tenacious mallee scrub is silhouetted against the brilliant glow of the last crescent of sun as it dips below the western horizon.
A vapour trail from a jet, far too high for me to see or hear, has been turned into a glowing saffron ribbon which trails from the southern horizon to a point just above the house and continues unravelling as the jet travels north.
The nightly chorus of amorous frogs has begun down at the farm dam and the galahs and cockatoos have finally finished gossiping and fighting over who sleeps which side of the nest for the night.
Crickets and other evening sounds are taking over as I feel the frost beginning to come down and creep in under the veranda eaves.
The smell and sounds of the bush make me feel so mellow, I’m sure if there were a guitar close by I could pick it up and spontaneously play one of those soulful country songs the cowboys used to sing around the camp fires in the old Western movies and serials we watched as kids at the cinema; - the ones where the horses were usually smarter than the cowboys.
I wax lyrical and must admit to be thoroughly enjoying myself as Teddy and I revisit our old friends and sit quietly recalling some of our shared memories.
To know we no longer have to live here permanently fighting the harsh elements and the tyranny of distance also makes the visit rather poignant.
Teddy and Jim are at heart, still the young larrikins they were during the 1970’s.
It took them very little time after our arrival to disappear into the depths of Jim’s cavernous machinery shed and after a couple of hours emerge with a small ‘experimental’ wind turbine which appears to still need a lot of tinkering, because at present, it would take a force nine gale to make it rotate. They also produced a something they call a ‘gas gun’ made from white plastic pipe and plumbing bits and pieces they have cobbled together.
The idea for the gun was to frighten the kangaroos away from the one tiny cosseted area of grass Margaret tends with the small amounts of water she saves from her kitchen sink and bathroom. Its succulent green is naturally very attractive to them and when we humans are safely indoors at dusk, they hop quietly to graze on it, returning again at sunrise to enjoy any dew the small tender shoots may hold.
Jim didn’t want to hurt them, just scare them off. The two fellows had a difficult time deciding on suitable ammunition. This was solved eventually by using the very hard and juiceless mandarins produced by their thirsty trees this year.
Margaret was not at all pleased when she discovered the short bursts of gas being used were coming from her hair spray ‘borrowed’ from the bathroom. She has a sixty mile round trip to do any shopping, so I didn’t blame her one little bit.
I have to admit the mandarins travelled quite a long distance but as a ‘roo’ scarer the gun was entirely unsuccessful. The placid animals simply bounced around to the other side of the house and nibbled Margaret’s pot plants and some of her vegies which were poking through the vegetable garden fence. Now that did make Margaret cross as she evidently had problems only last week with an athletic calf which high jumped over her vegetable garden fence and ate some of her precious lettuce.
When we did live up here, Teddy’s Mum travelled from lush green Kent in the U.K to visit. We met her at the Melbourne airport and drove straight back home, adding 6 more hours to the poor lady’s trip, but we had cows to be milked and animals to feed etc.
She chatted happily most of the way catching up with family news and occasionally remarking ‘Innit flat!’ as she gazed out at the low undulating country.
When we at last arrived back home, it took quite a lot of convincing her we were still in Victoria, the smallest state on the mainland. She thought we had driven to Western Australia which as you know, is two time zones and over 3,400 kilometres away and across the desert.
For a lady not used to the vast open spaces she dealt very well with some of our wildlife, although when I handed her a large harmless stick insect to look at, she demurred very vigorously. The proximity of some of the sunbaking snakes kept her close to home, so we had little fear of her wandering off into the Little Desert and getting lost.
The family still have a laugh at her expense about the time she was in the shower and a Huntsman spider trying not to get drowned, took refuge by walking up her left leg. It was a big one, - not her leg, the spider I mean, - about the same size as the palm of my hand. Poor mum emerged from the bathroom still dripping wet and stark naked screaming so hard I think even Margaret and Jim heard her from way over at their place. Our kids thought it was great at the time and I’m sure they would have been the stars of ‘show and tell time’ in class at school the next day.
Jim still keeps quite a large flock of ‘Christmas dinners’ as he calls his turkeys.
Our old place used to be opposite Margaret and Jims farm but was pulled down when Jim bought the property from us. He kept turkeys then also and they used to sun themselves by sitting like a large row of gargoyles along the eaves of his tractor shed, until one day their weight finally made the entire roof spouting fall off.
They would gobble away amicably all day except when I made the mistake of walking out of our front door with anything in my hand which from their ‘birds eye view’ so to speak, looked as if it could be food. A shriek would go up from the leader of the pack or whatever they are called en-mass, and they would fly down like a large cloud of vultures and chase me up the driveway until I made the safety of the front door.
I took to keeping stones in my pockets as some sort of defence, rarely hitting them as I’ve never had a good throwing arm, but usually it was enough to divert them into thinking I was throwing food and some would stop to investigate the stones long enough to give me time to get back indoors. These days, I don’t like turkeys very much unless they are well and truly roasted.
As I mentioned our old place is gone now, swallowed up into Jim and Margaret’s property. He did us a great favour by buying it really and we were always very thankful to him as we were falling foul of the bank at the time, due to the drought and the mouse plague and an unfortunate incident when we were about to take some animals to the market for the first time in eighteen months. Of course this also meant we would be making our first money in eighteen months. A friend whose wheat crop was full of some sort of weed couldn’t sell his crop and rather than just dump it, he offered it to us for feed for our pigs. Feed was very expensive and it had been the bank’s advice to us to buy as much as we could which had got us into trouble in the first place. Anyway we thankfully took him up on his offer.
The day before our animals were to go off to market, Teddy fed them and next morning went up to load them onto the truck. Most were dead, some were still dying. Unbeknown to us all, the weed amongst the wheat was poisonous to pigs. It was the proverbial last straw for us. We spoke to Jim and Margaret during the day when we had recovered a little from our shock and explained we would have to sell before the bank took the farm away.
In 24hrs Jim had arranged to buy our property. He was a true friend and still is and we have never taken advice from a bank since.
Over our meal last night we recalled one of the highlights of our times here.
The adult population of the township would have only been about fifty people and I’m guessing it hasn’t altered very much in all the decades since. We had a one teacher school for the juniors with approximately 20 children. Of course once they reached the age for senior grades they were obliged to either be sent to boarding school( oh how those words bring memories flooding back Del!) or they were sent by bus each day on the long trip to the big towns. Of course that was at a time when there wasn’t any heating or air-conditioning in the buses. On the days over 35C, up here there are a great many of them, coming home from school was not a lot of fun…… I digress again.
The greater population lived on the farms, big farms with paddocks which were a square mile each. Some of them were soldier settler farms which had been amalgamated after hopeful men returning after the war tried to make a living from the marginal land and eventually because of the weather, the dust storms and the loneliness, or as in many cases, a complete ignorance of farming skills, they simply walked off the land in despair and others with more money and knowledge, took it over.
People would travel big distances to attend entertainment up here, they still do.
Well, we thought we would introduce a bit of culture into the place and some entertainment and decided to put on a play. We chose ‘The Importance Of Being Earnest’ by Oscar Wilde.
Like most small settlements we had a community hall where dances etc could be held and ours could seat perhaps a hundred or so people.
There were very few people willing to try out for the parts in the play but eventually we found enough to begin rehearsals.
The lass playing the Hon. Gwendolyn Fairfax who, you will recall is a young virginal Victorian Lady, was in real life married to a hot headed man, who suffered from unpredictable emotions and a jealous streak wide enough to park a bus on.
Rehearsals went very well and were a lot of fun. Costumes were sewn and some of the men made us very realistic and imaginative scenery and people generously and proudly provided genuine Victorian furniture and props from everywhere. The tickets were selling so well we realized we would need at least three nights of performances. It was gradually becoming one of the best community fund raisers for ages.
We were aware that our ‘Gwendolyn’s’ husband was getting restive and feeling she was spending far too much time away from his personal supervision and home with the rehearsals and especially, in his view only, with the leading man, our poor blameless school master.
Two days before the play was to have its premiere her husband’s jealous paranoia came to a head. He threatened if she went on with the show he would shoot the innocent school teacher and bulldoze the hall down and turn it into firewood.
We all knew him well enough to take this threat seriously. He possessed all three ingredients needed to carry it out. He had the irrational anger, the gun and the biggest privately owned bulldozer in the district.
Frantically we searched for a new Gwendolyn but there was no one who would take the part on at 48 hours notice.
There was just one alternative person possible or else we risked everything, our work, the money we were going to raise, everything would be lost.
So, hoping Oscar Wilde would see the humour of it all we persuaded the only possible alternative for our new Gwendolyn to take the part.
Our audience, most of whom would have heard via the ‘bush telegraph’ about all the ruckus and problems with the demented husband, roared with laughter when our stand-in Gwendolyn appeared.
It was the school teacher’s wife and to her credit she only occasionally had difficulty with her self control as she carried off some of her lines without collapsing in a heap of laughter, because our new, virginal, Victorian Gwendolyn, was very obviously 8 months pregnant!
People speed through tiny hamlets as they rush up the highways, but living in them can be very interesting at times, one meets so many different characters and the stories these people have to relate are well worth hearing.
We shall be staying here for another week, so I may send you more news next time,
I must go to bed as everyone gets up early to feed the animals and milk the house cows etc,
Teddy has been milking one of them much to his delight. He used to say he got some of his best ideas as he rested his head against Brownie our old cow and milked her. Goodness knows what he shall be making in the shed when we get back down to the coast.
The sun is gone now, and so is the vapour trail, the sky is bright with stars and the mosquitoes are hungry so I shall go inside or I shall need a blood transfusion,
It was up here I became the 1970’s flower child you met Del and the influence of this land and that time has remained deep within me all my life.
From your nostalgic flower child friend,
Cynthia.(C)
Elizabeth. M. Thompson.
Cynthia and Teddy take a trip to the Mallee country to visit old friends.
Dear Del,
It really isn’t any wonder they call the Mallee the ‘sunset country’. I am sitting here on Margaret’s veranda watching the fading light. The tenacious mallee scrub is silhouetted against the brilliant glow of the last crescent of sun as it dips below the western horizon.
A vapour trail from a jet, far too high for me to see or hear, has been turned into a glowing saffron ribbon which trails from the southern horizon to a point just above the house and continues unravelling as the jet travels north.
The nightly chorus of amorous frogs has begun down at the farm dam and the galahs and cockatoos have finally finished gossiping and fighting over who sleeps which side of the nest for the night.
Crickets and other evening sounds are taking over as I feel the frost beginning to come down and creep in under the veranda eaves.
The smell and sounds of the bush make me feel so mellow, I’m sure if there were a guitar close by I could pick it up and spontaneously play one of those soulful country songs the cowboys used to sing around the camp fires in the old Western movies and serials we watched as kids at the cinema; - the ones where the horses were usually smarter than the cowboys.
I wax lyrical and must admit to be thoroughly enjoying myself as Teddy and I revisit our old friends and sit quietly recalling some of our shared memories.
To know we no longer have to live here permanently fighting the harsh elements and the tyranny of distance also makes the visit rather poignant.
Teddy and Jim are at heart, still the young larrikins they were during the 1970’s.
It took them very little time after our arrival to disappear into the depths of Jim’s cavernous machinery shed and after a couple of hours emerge with a small ‘experimental’ wind turbine which appears to still need a lot of tinkering, because at present, it would take a force nine gale to make it rotate. They also produced a something they call a ‘gas gun’ made from white plastic pipe and plumbing bits and pieces they have cobbled together.
The idea for the gun was to frighten the kangaroos away from the one tiny cosseted area of grass Margaret tends with the small amounts of water she saves from her kitchen sink and bathroom. Its succulent green is naturally very attractive to them and when we humans are safely indoors at dusk, they hop quietly to graze on it, returning again at sunrise to enjoy any dew the small tender shoots may hold.
Jim didn’t want to hurt them, just scare them off. The two fellows had a difficult time deciding on suitable ammunition. This was solved eventually by using the very hard and juiceless mandarins produced by their thirsty trees this year.
Margaret was not at all pleased when she discovered the short bursts of gas being used were coming from her hair spray ‘borrowed’ from the bathroom. She has a sixty mile round trip to do any shopping, so I didn’t blame her one little bit.
I have to admit the mandarins travelled quite a long distance but as a ‘roo’ scarer the gun was entirely unsuccessful. The placid animals simply bounced around to the other side of the house and nibbled Margaret’s pot plants and some of her vegies which were poking through the vegetable garden fence. Now that did make Margaret cross as she evidently had problems only last week with an athletic calf which high jumped over her vegetable garden fence and ate some of her precious lettuce.
When we did live up here, Teddy’s Mum travelled from lush green Kent in the U.K to visit. We met her at the Melbourne airport and drove straight back home, adding 6 more hours to the poor lady’s trip, but we had cows to be milked and animals to feed etc.
She chatted happily most of the way catching up with family news and occasionally remarking ‘Innit flat!’ as she gazed out at the low undulating country.
When we at last arrived back home, it took quite a lot of convincing her we were still in Victoria, the smallest state on the mainland. She thought we had driven to Western Australia which as you know, is two time zones and over 3,400 kilometres away and across the desert.
For a lady not used to the vast open spaces she dealt very well with some of our wildlife, although when I handed her a large harmless stick insect to look at, she demurred very vigorously. The proximity of some of the sunbaking snakes kept her close to home, so we had little fear of her wandering off into the Little Desert and getting lost.
The family still have a laugh at her expense about the time she was in the shower and a Huntsman spider trying not to get drowned, took refuge by walking up her left leg. It was a big one, - not her leg, the spider I mean, - about the same size as the palm of my hand. Poor mum emerged from the bathroom still dripping wet and stark naked screaming so hard I think even Margaret and Jim heard her from way over at their place. Our kids thought it was great at the time and I’m sure they would have been the stars of ‘show and tell time’ in class at school the next day.
Jim still keeps quite a large flock of ‘Christmas dinners’ as he calls his turkeys.
Our old place used to be opposite Margaret and Jims farm but was pulled down when Jim bought the property from us. He kept turkeys then also and they used to sun themselves by sitting like a large row of gargoyles along the eaves of his tractor shed, until one day their weight finally made the entire roof spouting fall off.
They would gobble away amicably all day except when I made the mistake of walking out of our front door with anything in my hand which from their ‘birds eye view’ so to speak, looked as if it could be food. A shriek would go up from the leader of the pack or whatever they are called en-mass, and they would fly down like a large cloud of vultures and chase me up the driveway until I made the safety of the front door.
I took to keeping stones in my pockets as some sort of defence, rarely hitting them as I’ve never had a good throwing arm, but usually it was enough to divert them into thinking I was throwing food and some would stop to investigate the stones long enough to give me time to get back indoors. These days, I don’t like turkeys very much unless they are well and truly roasted.
As I mentioned our old place is gone now, swallowed up into Jim and Margaret’s property. He did us a great favour by buying it really and we were always very thankful to him as we were falling foul of the bank at the time, due to the drought and the mouse plague and an unfortunate incident when we were about to take some animals to the market for the first time in eighteen months. Of course this also meant we would be making our first money in eighteen months. A friend whose wheat crop was full of some sort of weed couldn’t sell his crop and rather than just dump it, he offered it to us for feed for our pigs. Feed was very expensive and it had been the bank’s advice to us to buy as much as we could which had got us into trouble in the first place. Anyway we thankfully took him up on his offer.
The day before our animals were to go off to market, Teddy fed them and next morning went up to load them onto the truck. Most were dead, some were still dying. Unbeknown to us all, the weed amongst the wheat was poisonous to pigs. It was the proverbial last straw for us. We spoke to Jim and Margaret during the day when we had recovered a little from our shock and explained we would have to sell before the bank took the farm away.
In 24hrs Jim had arranged to buy our property. He was a true friend and still is and we have never taken advice from a bank since.
Over our meal last night we recalled one of the highlights of our times here.
The adult population of the township would have only been about fifty people and I’m guessing it hasn’t altered very much in all the decades since. We had a one teacher school for the juniors with approximately 20 children. Of course once they reached the age for senior grades they were obliged to either be sent to boarding school( oh how those words bring memories flooding back Del!) or they were sent by bus each day on the long trip to the big towns. Of course that was at a time when there wasn’t any heating or air-conditioning in the buses. On the days over 35C, up here there are a great many of them, coming home from school was not a lot of fun…… I digress again.
The greater population lived on the farms, big farms with paddocks which were a square mile each. Some of them were soldier settler farms which had been amalgamated after hopeful men returning after the war tried to make a living from the marginal land and eventually because of the weather, the dust storms and the loneliness, or as in many cases, a complete ignorance of farming skills, they simply walked off the land in despair and others with more money and knowledge, took it over.
People would travel big distances to attend entertainment up here, they still do.
Well, we thought we would introduce a bit of culture into the place and some entertainment and decided to put on a play. We chose ‘The Importance Of Being Earnest’ by Oscar Wilde.
Like most small settlements we had a community hall where dances etc could be held and ours could seat perhaps a hundred or so people.
There were very few people willing to try out for the parts in the play but eventually we found enough to begin rehearsals.
The lass playing the Hon. Gwendolyn Fairfax who, you will recall is a young virginal Victorian Lady, was in real life married to a hot headed man, who suffered from unpredictable emotions and a jealous streak wide enough to park a bus on.
Rehearsals went very well and were a lot of fun. Costumes were sewn and some of the men made us very realistic and imaginative scenery and people generously and proudly provided genuine Victorian furniture and props from everywhere. The tickets were selling so well we realized we would need at least three nights of performances. It was gradually becoming one of the best community fund raisers for ages.
We were aware that our ‘Gwendolyn’s’ husband was getting restive and feeling she was spending far too much time away from his personal supervision and home with the rehearsals and especially, in his view only, with the leading man, our poor blameless school master.
Two days before the play was to have its premiere her husband’s jealous paranoia came to a head. He threatened if she went on with the show he would shoot the innocent school teacher and bulldoze the hall down and turn it into firewood.
We all knew him well enough to take this threat seriously. He possessed all three ingredients needed to carry it out. He had the irrational anger, the gun and the biggest privately owned bulldozer in the district.
Frantically we searched for a new Gwendolyn but there was no one who would take the part on at 48 hours notice.
There was just one alternative person possible or else we risked everything, our work, the money we were going to raise, everything would be lost.
So, hoping Oscar Wilde would see the humour of it all we persuaded the only possible alternative for our new Gwendolyn to take the part.
Our audience, most of whom would have heard via the ‘bush telegraph’ about all the ruckus and problems with the demented husband, roared with laughter when our stand-in Gwendolyn appeared.
It was the school teacher’s wife and to her credit she only occasionally had difficulty with her self control as she carried off some of her lines without collapsing in a heap of laughter, because our new, virginal, Victorian Gwendolyn, was very obviously 8 months pregnant!
People speed through tiny hamlets as they rush up the highways, but living in them can be very interesting at times, one meets so many different characters and the stories these people have to relate are well worth hearing.
We shall be staying here for another week, so I may send you more news next time,
I must go to bed as everyone gets up early to feed the animals and milk the house cows etc,
Teddy has been milking one of them much to his delight. He used to say he got some of his best ideas as he rested his head against Brownie our old cow and milked her. Goodness knows what he shall be making in the shed when we get back down to the coast.
The sun is gone now, and so is the vapour trail, the sky is bright with stars and the mosquitoes are hungry so I shall go inside or I shall need a blood transfusion,
It was up here I became the 1970’s flower child you met Del and the influence of this land and that time has remained deep within me all my life.
From your nostalgic flower child friend,
Cynthia.(C)
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