Chapter 13

Was life all about existing or living? It’s amazing the thoughts that run through your mind when you actually have some clear air around you. The closer I got to home, the more I realised that in Canberra I was just existing. I had never been in a place that drained the living essence out of you. But to come home the body mind and soul would be replenished. I hadn’t made it home for Christmas and my nineteenth birthday on New Year’s Eve had been quietly celebrated with a couple of others who were relative strangers. Only as we had parted just after midnight had I told them that I had a double celebration the day before. Mum of course had rung and left a message and I called back and it was wonderful to hear her voice, the gruff and concise wishes of Dad, and of course the ramblings of Tom as he filled me in on anything and everything that was going on in his life. There was no call from Jean and no-one knew of her whereabouts.

Luck doesn’t always come my way but I lucked out on the way home. Landing at the air base in Townsville I made contact with the flight director about getting in contact for a possible return flight. He said that if I got my arse into gear there was a Flying Doctor Service flight with a spare seat leaving from Townsville Airport next door in twenty minutes. It was heading up to the Gulf and the seat was mine if I wanted it. The nine-hour road trip would be cut by two thirds if all went well. It was an immunization flight but if there was an emergency then I might find myself dropped off at a homestead somewhere. Was I willing to risk that? If that happened, I’d still be closer to home and a radio call would see Dad come down and get me anyway. I hugged the flight director. I should have saluted but hey, I was on leave. Someone drove me over to the civilian airport and it was probably one of the few times an RFDS flight had a passenger on board grinning from ear to ear.

No emergency, no early drop off. In fact, the pilot made a slight detour and landed at Croydon airstrip. As I watched the plane take off amidst the cloud of dust, I breathed it all in, the sounds, the smells, the sights of home. No-one was in the small building at the edge of the strip but a public phone was there and after rummaging through my wallet I found a few coins. Mum’s voice came through, clear as a bell. Her immediate reaction was that they had improved the phone line and that all the taxes they paid were finally amounted to something coming their way. She asked what the weather was like, figuring I was still in Canberra. I said it was dry, dusty but that some monsoonal clouds were building in the Gulf and if someone didn’t come and get me from the airstrip then the ensuing mud might see me trapped here. That was the first time and only time I ever heard her swear. I then heard her bellow to Tom to get Dad to come and get me.

We arrived back and the smell of the perfectly timed and perfectly cooked scones came wafting through the doorway to the kitchen. I had been gone for just shy of six months and it was if I had never left. Hugs all around except for Dad of course. Mum loved the uniform and fussed around. But I was keen to get out of it and headed off to my old bedroom to change. It hadn’t changed either. Mum had obviously dusted and cleaned as regularly despite the low occupancy rate. I got out my farm clothes only to find they were a bit tight, not in the waist but obviously, I had put on some muscle definition recently. I walked back into the kitchen and sat down awkwardly and hoed into the scones laden with jam and cream. The scones were laden not me. I made sure not a trace of the scones and their toppings were left on the plate or around my lips or even on my fingers. Mum kept bringing them out and I kept scoffing them down, much to the amusement of Tom and the smiling disapproval of my father.

I eased upright and mum saw my dilemma with my clothing. She grabbed some of Dad’s clothes as a temporary measure, told me to wear them and then kicked us all out of her kitchen while she got the sewing machine out and did running repairs on my old clothes. Outside Tom was still grinning as he said that I looked like a younger version of Dad. He got two whacks over the head, one from me and the other from Dad as simultaneously we both felt that we had been insulted. He would have had had no headaches if he kept his mouth shut or it hadn’t been school holidays, but full of himself he soon ran ahead to the shed out of harm’s way. I envied him and his ability to breeze through school. Everything came so easily to him. I was the one who had a hard slog and things didn’t come naturally. But at this stage I could still box him around the ears if I could catch him.

When Dad had inherited, or taken over the family farm from his father, whom I had never met as I was born just after the funeral, most of the cattle mustering was done on horseback. Dad had a penchant for mechanical engineering and had set up a magnificent workshop with lathes, mills and assorted machinery and tools. Horses were slowly phased out and now his chosen form of transport was a motorbike. He had an early ex-army Landrover as well which he used as well to carry tools out to fix pumps, windmills and stuff for fencing. There were times he could become so self-absorbed while working in the shed that he was oblivious to anyone around him. His concept of time went out the window on those days too and Mum often had to bring food up to the shed to lure him back to the house.

The shed still housed the saddles and bridles and sundry horse gear from a bygone age. There was a lovely jinker that my grandfather and grandmother must have paraded around the district in wearing their Sunday best. It gathered dust in the corner. We had seen it a couple of times when Dad had taken the heavy canvas tarpaulin from it. He did that to regrease the axles and wax the leather. They were quite solemn occasions and we watched silently as he paid homage to a past era and his parents. My grandmother had died when I was around three, before Tom was born. She and Grandad now were back together in the family plot in a shade covered quiet spot on the farm down near the main road. I remember being held by her but not much more. She seemed very distant and not prone to the humour that sometimes broke out occasionally on the house. I know Mum was very deferential to her, after all Mum had moved into the house and had taken over the matriarchal role. Grandma had very readily faded in the background and kept out of the way. Mum said that once Grandad had died the spirit had just left my grandmother and that she seemed just waiting to die. That made me upset when she told me that when I was about ten. Looking back in hindsight though, Mum was pretty much spot on. Early photographs in sepia and black and white of my grandparents looked stiff and stilted but in a couple of them, the look of adoration from my grandparents towards each other shone through and in others there seemed to be a mischievous twinkle in my grandmother’s eyes; the same one that Tom had when he was being a smart arse.

All three of us sat astride the trail bikes and almost as if a flag dropped, we charged out of the shed in unison. Dad took the lead and I followed dutifully behind. Tom as carefree and impervious to fear crisscrossed behind us launching himself off any slight rise he could find in the desolate scrub strewn paddocks. We were going out to check the cattle. The wet season rains had been light and the greenish tinge was an illusion. Much more rain was needed before the dry began in a month or so. There were some clouds, dark and foreboding west north west of our farm and a slight change of wind pattern and heartbreak could be avoided but Dad like most farmers was not optimistic. I viewed him in a totally different light now that I knew so much more of his background. I hope he did the same with me. I was desperate to appear far more grown up than I had been and so didn’t join in Tom’s silly antics much to Tom’s disappointment. I wondered whether my father had also tried to impress his own as well and that was just what men did.

We came across a fence that had one of the few trees that provided any sort of shade, collapsed across it. Cattle had stripped it bare and were now through the fence as well. Dad had some heavy cable in his pannier bags and we looped it around branches and tired it to the bikes and used those to eventually manoeuvre the tree clear. All three of us were covered in dust from each other’s bikes where the rear wheels had spun in the soft sandy dirt. Dad reached again into the bag which seemed like Harpo’s of the Marx Brothers to be bottomless and full of everything. Small strands of plain wire, fence strainers and pliers were soon put to work. Just before we closed the gap, we mustered the cattle back through, working independently and without verbal direction but definitely as a team. They were soon back where they belonged and the fence repaired and restrained. Our reward was the smile that cracked Dad’s dust stained face. That was more than enough for Tom and me.

We headed back and for the first time I can remember dad let rip on his bike. Free and with reckless abandon he went in search of mounds like Tom had. He was more courageous than even Tom and his bike seemed to soar in slow motion and come down beautifully balanced and ready for the next leap. I was left staring incredibly at the exuberance but Tom was all about trying in vain to outdo Dad. In the end, I just rode flat chat to get ahead of these motorised grasshoppers and waited for them. I practised doing perfect figure eights and doughnuts. They were quite impressed when they rode up but then with a nod from Dad, we rode sedately back to the shed in case Mum was out in the garden.

We walked into the house only to be sent packing out to the outside laundry to shake off all the dust and wash our “disgusting” faces and hands. Dad like Tom ad I dropped our heads and humbly obeyed. After all, Mum had spoken. There was the sound of heavy thumps on the roof and we raced outside. Rain was beginning to fall in the beginnings of a torrential downpour. Tom raced into the house to tell Mum. Dad turned to me, shook my hand saying, “Welcome home son, thanks for bringing the rain.”