There were unexpected bonuses of moving in with the Williamsons. One was being introduced to a set of people I’d never before met: the other local landholders. They didn’t use the village and hadn’t need of the school. With their own phones in their homesteads and Bon’s mail car stopping by their gates each week, they never needed to visit the Weabonga PO. So I’d never met them, even though they lived all around me.
Paul explained that the local propertied families had always been hospitable. Now that their fleeces were attracting high value once more, they could celebrate and begin to entertain again. When the Williamsons received invitations to dinner, I was expected to attend with my host family. How enjoyable these outings were.
Between Weabonga and Limbri there were about twenty sheep stations. Along the Limbri Road the properties had frontages of about one and a half miles both to the road and to the creek, and the best land on each farm was that abutting the creek. Nowhere was flat, but in those paddocks the slopes were reasonably gentle, the trees had been cleared years earlier, and the pasture was improved with clover and an agricultural innovation, super spreading.
Earlier, Australian farmers had learned of the swift growth grasses and clovers could experience when their fields were spread with superphosphate as a fertiliser. Much of the superphosphate, or ‘super’ as it was more generally known, came from the Pacific island of Nauru, where seabirds had roosted and deposited huge piles of guano. Mining and sale of super had assisted Nauru economically and wealth was spreading, in turn, for Australia’s farmers as super became more widely used. Paul had been an eager adopter of super enrichment.
This creek-side land carried good numbers of sheep per acre. Away from the creek, the slopes were quite acute. It had been much harder to fell trees in the uplands, so vegetation there could be dense. The slopes were crowned with rocky outcrops and tumbling screes: the realms of tiger snakes and death adders, or so I was told. This land carried less stock, and it was mostly cattle in those back paddocks. At their furthest boundaries, the properties were edged by wilderness. On both sides of the creek, once the cleared lands were crossed, lay huge tracts of government or Crown land. There were no roads into these pristine areas, not even fire trails, but once or twice I rode with others a fair distance into that real bush and camped overnight alongside streams that I felt, probably incorrectly, may have never been seen by white eyes before ours.
Each farming family was isolated and might go for days without meeting someone outside their homestead. Fresh company was very welcome, and invitations between the properties became more frequent. I looked forward especially to visiting two farms.
About ten miles along the Limbri Road lived a couple who were expert hosts. Allan Watermain was the direct descendant of a famous early Australian explorer and had, in his home, furniture and materials he’d inherited from the earliest days of the colony. The house wasn’t more substantial than those of neighbouring homesteads, but the way it was organised and decorated was quite different. In the dining room there was a magnificent cedar table that could seat up to ten; arranged around it was a suite of chairs of matching grace. All stood on a huge Persian carpet, of a size to cover the generous room almost to its edges. The floorboards, which could be seen at the limits of the rug, gleamed with beeswax polish. Against the walls was a pair of sideboards, obviously early colonial, glowing with a burnished deep-red patina. Victorian oils, mostly of scenes of the Arabian desert with Bedouin figures and camels, hung on the walls and suited the atmosphere, bringing a sense of the exotic. There were candles and low lamps creating a subdued air, which drew the focus onto the table and the people sitting around it. This room was the most impressive domestic space that I had yet experienced.
As a host, Allan was witty and laconic, keeping the conversation flowing with ease. His charming wife, Claudine, was as skilful a talker as Allan, so, between them, they created a sense of a country home salon. Claudine was also a wonderful cook, creating special menus from dishes I enjoyed in no other home. A night at their homestead gave me enormous pleasure.
By contrast, their immediate neighbour, Barry White, entertained in his converted dairy: a comfy and snug space made from an unpromising start. There was nothing lavish or exotic when we dined with him—except the host.
I’d met Barry first when motoring with Paul one Sunday in the farm ute; we were foraging for blackberries and mushrooms along the creek. Suddenly we came across a mounted figure. We stopped, as one always did in the country, to say hello and for me to be introduced. I tried to look this stranger right in the eye as we conversed. I didn’t want to be seen checking out his attire, but couldn’t help doing so.
Barry was naked apart from a G-string affair, a sort of body builder’s posing pouch—which, I learnt later, he’d made by cutting down an already skimpy pair of Speedos. This garment barely covered his genitals. He had no pockets, and nowhere to carry his tobacco, papers or matches, which he needed as he was almost a chain smoker. To solve this problem, Barry was wearing a ladies’ nylon stocking on his head, with the toe hanging down behind, stuffed with the ingredients for his fags. He chatted with us as though all this was absolutely normal and no cause for comment. I admired his insouciance.
Paul told me of an evening when Barry had come to a dinner at the farm. It was during the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games, and ABC Radio was rebroadcasting a description of the torch relay’s entry into the stadium. A low fire was burning in the grate, and Barry—in a burst of patriotic fervour, perhaps—grabbed up a lighted stick and commenced to run around the lounge with the flame held high. All went well until he ran too near the net curtains, which immediately caught fire. Without so much as a goodbye, Barry continued running, exited the house and wasn’t seen again for many weeks.
I never experienced anything quite as exciting as this event when he was present, but we were entertained from time to time by his playing of a harp he’d made from the jawbone of a horse—not quite the biblical jaw of an ass. Barry had trained himself to coax tunes from this instrument, and occasionally I could almost recognise the air he was attempting.
His stories of nature were also memorable. As he worked his property either on horseback or on foot, he explained he could approach animals closely without their noticing. In this way he had witnessed many events and activities involving native animals that few others had seen. I truly enjoyed his tales, as they had, mostly, a ring of truth and revealed quite fascinating aspects of our wildlife. His stories of wedge-tailed eagle behaviour on the ground, for example, were remarkable for his acuity of observation and his ability to bring the birds’ actions to life. Ungainly on the earth compared to their aerial grace, the eagle’s lumpish hopping and skipping were most comical as he mimicked them—but, as our host made clear, they retained their air of menace. He accurately reproduced the soft caws they made when seemingly conversing, and their harsh cries that warned of any approaching danger. Barry also mimicked the excited whistles of playful eagles as they tumbled and swooped like acrobats in the air.
Occasionally, though, he went a little far. ‘Did you know,’ he asked one night, ‘that deaf adders can enclose their tails with their mouths to form a perfect circle?’
Well, he called them ‘deaf adders’. We knew them as death adders. Whatever they were called, they frightened me.
Barry asked, ‘Did you know the adder can then bowl itself along, just like a wheel, covering distances with remarkable speed?’
We nodded and smiled.
Occasionally I missed out on such dinners when I was on school holidays or taking a quick weekend break in Sydney.
Twice I flew down to Sydney when Patricia let me know she’d be in the city for a weekend visiting her family. Flying was expensive and quite daunting; older Douglas DC-3 aircraft or more modern but quite small planes were flown in a very bumpy and turbulent way by Butler Air Transport from the Tamworth Airfield, their base. On each of my flights, many people were airsick.
A few times in Sydney I met up with Patricia at Pfahlerts Hotel on Margaret Street, where she might order a Pimm’s No. 1 Cup. Pfahlerts was a favourite of ours, as we felt comfortable there together in that elegant setting. We always enjoyed a few happy drinks in the front garden and could chat for hours in amiable contentment.
Pfahlerts was only the start of the evening. We might set off for a movie at the St James or the more upmarket Prince Edward Theatre. Sometimes we took in a foreign film at the Savoy Cinema, a bijou theatre in Bligh Street, always leaving us with a sense of having experienced European sophistication.
Very occasionally we booked into a show at the Silver Spade Room in the newly opened Chevron Hotel in Kings Cross, Sydney’s first four-star accommodation. We had the real pleasure of seeing Ella Fitzgerald one night; we were thrilled by her musicality and ability to improvise, and the ease with which she sang her way into and out of any song. She was generous with her performance, spending some hours on the stage. That nightclub was about as smart and worldly a venue as Sydney could provide and, although attendance almost broke our piggybanks, we enjoyed the sense of being in society. We spent such nights beaming at each other in happiness.