Letter From The Other Side; from Cynthia. 2011, No 6.

Dear Del,
It is hard to imagine how you must be feeling. To sit in the dark, with a barrier of surgical dressings between you and the world, your books, electronic media and the radio work which has been your life. The isolation must be shaking your foundations to the core.

I know you are not able to read this letter but I hope some kind soul will read it to you because during this stressful time you may like to hear of what is happening. I shall do my best to keep you up to date with news from our small part of the world and paint the pictures and characters with my words in such a way that your active imagination will enable you see it all happening as you listen.

It is autumn here as you know and the grey-green eucalypt and dark pine forested hills make a backdrop for the town where the streets and the valley are ablaze with every colour of claret, red and gold. It is also the season for the game the Gang-gang parrots play. It is called ‘drop the Liquid Amber seedpods on the dog’s heads’. They are a parrot which is grey and pink, rather like a Galah but larger and only their heads are a bright pink. When communicating, their voices sound like unoiled doors opening and closing and a tree with a dozen or more feasting on the seeds could be mistaken for a meeting of drunken town councillors.

Before dropping the pods which are about the size of large walnuts, they hold them in their claws the way children enjoy an ice-cream cone. When they are finished with them they aim the pod at anything passing underneath. The dogs pretend they don’t know what is happening and enjoy the fun until the aim becomes too good and they are hit in the eye or somewhere else they object to. They then wander away to sleep out of range and the birds fly off to find another accommodating mutt.
This time of the year is a feast of seeds and berries for all the birds and I’m sure despite the strong views held by many people concerning exotic trees being planted within the forested areas; the native birds have delighted with the northern hemisphere’s culinary additions to their diets.

The principal occupation and exercise for people at this time is the sweeping and blowing of autumn leaves into enormous piles ready to be heaved into mulch and compost bins.

Anyone mentioning within hearing of the most avid members of the gardening fraternity that compost as a subject really doesn’t hold their interest, would I think, receive the sort of look that is given to someone who has just committed the worst of social faux pars.

The type and design of the favoured compost bin is a topic which can fill an evening’s discussion. There are the rotating ones, the big traditional bin which has to be turned by hand, smaller neat lidded varieties and our favourite, the worm farm composting three story mansion.

We have five varieties of friendly worms munching their way through everything we place in there for them. They never complain about the cooking or the way it has been served.
I have read in a scientific journal that they are quite social creatures and if the amount of castings and the increase in the population of our mansion inhabitants is any guide, the article must be correct.
They make good neighbours in that despite their numbers they are extremely quiet, no carousing even when cake and biscuits have been served and they keep to themselves. They must have a very active life and produce enormous amounts of worm ‘juice’ which is great when diluted for seedlings or for using as foliage spray.
Where two or more people are gathered together outside shops, churches or just standing in the post office queue, you can guarantee the making of compost will become a hot topic. It may be avoided at funerals, although I doubt that the practical down to earth country people would consider it to be an entirely taboo subject.

Most good cooks have a recipe from great-grandmother’s cookbook for plum pudding or Christmas cake; likewise all keen gardeners have THE special recipe of great-grandfather’s compost making.
Compost is an essential part of any garden here because of the poor mountain soils.

A rather reclusive chap who lives in an old defunct pub took to making his compost in the pub’s cellar. He began in a small way because the cellar was damp, not well maintained and wasn’t much use for anything else. In fact if he doesn’t do some maintenance on the building soon, he may find the pub will descend into the cellar and he and his family will be living in a damp bungalow.

He is known to have the sort of temper that if the wind is right and he is hopping mad about something, he can be heard on the other side of the valley.
One quiet afternoon last week when even a sneeze from one of the genteel ladies of the retirement village would have disturbed the peace, he began yelling all sorts of retribution he planned for his children and down trodden wife.

This noise was disturbing his neighbour, a man who has spent his life chopping trees in the forest and hauling them to the timber mill and developed a great deal of muscle in that time. His size can block the light as he passes through most entrances. He is kind but generally a person not to be messed with.

His quiet afternoon in the garden was being spoiled by the twerp next door so he decided to try and cool the situation. He poked his head above the fence between their homes and asked what the trouble was all about.
‘Come and see.’ invited the pub dweller. ‘Come and see what those brats of ours have done in the cellar. They’ve only taken some dishes down there and smashed them all over the place. Wait till I get hold of the little bugger’s this time.’ He threatened.
The neighbour followed the irate chap down the rickety ladder into the dimness of the cellar. He could see round white objects scattered across one section of a bench. He lifted one up and put it to his face.
‘You stupid melon headed idiot,’ he said slowly. ‘Why don’t you check your facts before you start abusing the poor kids? Here smell this’ He held the white object out toward the other man.
“Oh…..Oh yeah.’ He sniffed at it. ‘I forgot I had tried out some mushrooms down here to see if they would grow. They’ve done alright haven’t they?’ He wheedled.
The neighbour tossed it at him and hauled himself back up into the light.
‘Stupid bastard’ he called back over his shoulder.’ I wish they had been toadstools ya’ silly fool.’
The poor little wife smiled at him gratefully as he passed her. He wiggled an eyebrow as he muttered. ‘Should shut him up for a while, love.’



My letter has been a long time dawdling its way to you because my computer had some kind of seizure and needed to be taken away by our little I.T man. I have to admit every time I see him I come over all motherly and want to keep him here and place him on an extended diet of boarding school stodge.
To be without the computer for so long left us quite a lot of time to redesign the vegetable garden.

This is now completed and we have the bad backs to prove it.
One day after a few hard hours of work we were slouching about on our couches enjoying the luxury of a job well done and reading our books.
I became aware of the dogs becoming restive and looked up to see an extremely large tourist bus sitting on its haunches outside our front fence.
It loomed over our garden as the flashing of camera’s twinkled through the windows the length of the vehicle. One woman even left the bus to lean across the fence to get a better angle of our Honey Locust and the Golden Ash.
We had been warned our street was on the tourist route during autumn but of course had forgotten.

The blinds will be closed a little more until the end of the season because I’m not keen to be caught by people taking photographs as I lie on the floor trying to exercise my spine back into its allotted place.

Many of our businesses rely on the tourists and that is fine by us because I think quite a lot of these people need to see the country where the sheep, cattle and other assorted animals can be viewed with their coats in place and not just when they have been undressed, had their insides scooped out and what is left of them is on display in neat little plastic wrapped trays on the supermarket shelves.
I had better go out and rake more leaves for the worms with our new rake which is quite wide. In fact I had great trouble carrying it back to the car and nearly collected a small group of children who were floating about loose on the pavement.
The leaves will soon be gone and we can expect the snow and the skiers to arrive.

I shall be interested to hear all the anecdotes you have heard while being in hospital. The place must be seething with them.
Your flower child friend,
Cynthia.

Visitors And Fish

By

Elizabeth M Thompson

The tourists, with the exception of a few wandering elderly citizens and grey nomads, had mostly left the village. The inhabitants could once again find parking where they wished, jay walk across the empty streets and saunter the isles of the shops. Even stopping for a chat here and there along the paths became possible once more without fear of being trampled by children or their parents as they barrelled along seemingly oblivious to where their feet were taking them.

During the summer, so many visitors appeared to wander along with their eyes permanently fixed on the hills surrounding the town.

Even the one-way street signs were once again being observed by the majority of motorists. The gentleman who lived at the end of Helen’s road and drove a large Mercedes on a restricted license was perhaps one exception, as were a few cyclists who held the opinion they were allowed to ignore road signs and knock over elderly ladies at will.

As usual, many of the locals had entertained visitors to their homes and for most this was an added pleasure, which living in such a picturesque place brought.

However Helen had learned it could be anything but a delightful experience.

While overseas during the southern winter, she had met a couple from Europe who expressed the urge to take part in an adventure holiday. She is of a generous and hospitable nature but confessed to her friend Del, as they sat chatting over a cup of coffee, that after having had time to reflect, she was most probably also under the influence of a very good red wine when she issued them an open invitation to come and stay with her.

She discovered to her chagrin that meeting and getting along with people in a hotel, could be a very different experience to having them under one’s roof.

The complaints began soon after their arrival. How untidy the bushland looked, how noisy the birds were, how the shops didn’t stock the right sort of food. She noted however they didn’t offer to do any cooking.

When faced with the reality of going into the wilder areas of the mountains, the idea of visiting such remote places where there were few people and little emergency help appeared to frighten the life out of them. It was patently obvious to her that any idea of an adventure trip could be completely thrown out of her ideas pool.

She could understand the culture shock someone who had spent their whole life in a large city could suffer when confronted with Australia’s great outdoors. Many possibly found them greater and less inviting in reality than on film.

For instance the wildlife all around had certainly not been trained to think it should stay well away from tourists. So when a brown snake about a metre and half long sidled past as they strolled along a bush track, the terrified couple refused to venture out again unless they were shielded in a vehicle. The snake Helen assured Del was going about its business entirely oblivious to the panicking couple. She surmised it had probably already enjoyed a meal and was simply trying find a warm spot in which it could take its afternoon nap.

Her temper began to really unravel when the complaints became more personal and hurtful.

She had grown up in her large rambling home. The house grew each time her family grew and her father built it section by section. She admitted that the plumbing had never really been changed and it was known to have idiosyncrasies which took some time getting used to. It could on occasion make a body feel as if it was a lobster about to be boiled or a pack of peas being deep frozen. They complained bitterly of these occasional spasms.

The neighbours came to visit. Being ordinary not very well educated folk with less than perfect grammar but possessing hearts of marshmallow, they tried to welcome her guests to their home for a traditional barbeque. The offer was met with disdain and the conversation gradually petered out.

It was about this time she remembered an old saying of her mother’s. One she had never fully understood until now.

Following each of the dreaded visits by her father’s unruly and enormous family, her mother would survey her usually neat and dusted living rooms which had been left by the guests looking as if they had been refurbished by an army of wombats, and mutter quietly.

Outside, her eyes would harden as she gazed at her carefully tended garden, now beaten by children who had thrashed about with cricket bats and flattened the herbaceous borders while searching for lost balls. The muttering would become audible and voiced with great emotion. ‘After a week, visitors and fish begin to smell the same.’

Helen’s patience had dried up along with her housekeeping money. With nerves twanging she watched them do as they had done each morning while drinking coffee through pursed lips. The cups would hover in the air and they would look into the liquid as if suspecting her of adding a pinch of foxglove or hemlock to the coffee beans. It was she had mused, not an unwelcome idea to her.

The days dragged on a little longer while she racked her brain trying to make the signals plain it was time they moved on……..preferably a long way on.

She decided to ask them to leave. It seemed the only sensible solution. It was after all, her own fault they were there at all.

Full of resolve, she planned to give them a pleasant day and after they returned home ask them to depart, begone, farewell, whichever word sprang to her lips first or if her resolve dissolved and she became the vacillating coward she now believed herself to be, think of a sick relative she needed to visit, without delay.

They left after breakfast for a local deer farm with magnificent gardens, views and a top class restaurant. A few miles out of town they passed an elderly gentleman walking along the rough gravel side of the bitumen road. He was a well known old ‘Bushy’ and lived in a shack in the hills. His plumbing for all anyone knew was non-existent and he was best conversed with upwind and from a distance. He shared his shack with his dogs and they probably shared their fleas with him. But he was known to be a dear old gentleman who had lived a very hard life.

It had been a particularly trying few days for Helen. The stifling heat made the effort to cook appetizing meals irksome and she swigged at her indigestion medication while she tossed salads and sizzled steaks; poking them savagely and too often in an attempt to ease her frustrations.

As they passed the old chap a brilliant idea occurred to her. She pulled up quickly, throwing her shocked backseat passengers forward in their seat belts with a jolt. While her guests straightened their hair and clothing she executed a quick three point turn and drove back to the stoic figure as he steadily crunched along the gravel in boots which seemed to be ill-fitting and filthy.

“Hello Arthur’ she called, hoping her bright manner would give her a positive response, ‘would you like a lift this morning, I see you are limping a little?’

A lift was a rare treat for Arthur because most people knew it took a good week and a can of air freshener and insect repellent to rid the inside of a car with the evidence of his presence.

His cracked lips spread out under about five days of bristle on his leathery face. The few yellow teeth he had left went up and down with pleasure.

“Would I Helen? You’re an angel, you bet I would!” He opened the back door, smiled happily at the appalled couple sitting in the rear. ‘Well, move over.’ he grinned at them, breathing heavily in his haste to make himself comfortable and filled the car with his special aroma.

They moved over, pressing against one another as they tried to avoid making any actual physical contact with Arthur. Helen observing their reactions in her rear vision mirror surmised with satisfaction that they appeared not to have entertained anyone like him in their vehicle at home.

The following day after much frantic repacking of their immaculate clothing into their immaculate and expensive suitcases they made very insincere farewells to her and she expressed the most insincere disappointment at the thought of them leaving.

After telling Del her tale she giggled girlishly, “I must take Arthur some scones next week, and wrap up some bones for his dogs.’

Del, smiled and suspected Helen hadn’t done very much for the tourist trade but felt it wouldn’t weigh on her conscience very much either.

THE END.