After lunch we stood up under the flame trees, saying prayers and singing hymns. Sister Agnes has a beautiful voice, but although Sister Cornelius and Sister Ambrose sing with passion, they’re always out of time and out of tune – not a good combination. If more boys would’ve sung properly instead of mumbling, we wouldn’t have had to suffer listening to Sister Cornelius and Sister Ambrose sing their hearts out.
As everyone was on charcoal duty that afternoon, we made our way past the orchard, veggie garden and beehives to the charcoal pits. There were piles of dead wood and mounds of dirt in the paddock, but no sign of any charcoal.
Lance handed the shovels to our team. ‘There are charcoal pits under all that dirt. We hafta dig out all the charcoal before we can make a new pit. Yer gunna love this, Joe!’
While Lance stood there barking orders, Charlie, Pete and I shovelled dirt from the top of our mound until we hit something made of metal.
‘We need to do the rest by hand,’ Lance said. ‘That tin’s razor sharp.’ Getting down on our hands and knees, we removed all of the dirt from the overlapping sheets of tin. ‘Be real careful liftin’ ’em off or ya’ll slice ya hands open.’
Under the tin was a large pit filled with lumps of charcoal.
‘Joe, go get a dozen hessian bags from Sister Ambrose to pack this lot into,’ Lance said, grinning.
What he didn’t tell me until I got back was that Pete and I would be digging up the charcoal and filling the bags while he and Charlie started collecting dead wood for the new pit. This was payback and I wasn’t about to argue the toss. It was hard, filthy work and by the time Pete and I’d finished shovelling all of the charcoal into bags, we were black from head to toe.
‘What’s all this charcoal for anyway?’ I asked Pete.
‘Fuel for Henry’s truck, mostly,’ he replied. ‘The Three Sisters also need some for their hot-water heater an’ the copper in the laundry. Charcoal burns hotter than wood, ya know.’
I’d never heard of trucks that ran on charcoal before and couldn’t see them taking off in Sydney.
We wandered down to the creek to have a drink and cool off. The creek was in the shadow of the mountain at that time of the afternoon. It was cold in the shade and the water was icy – refreshing to drink but too cold for a swim. Pete and I sat on the creek bank, listening to the frogs croaking. They were so loud and annoying that I started to get a headache.
‘Let’s go to the orchard an’ pick some fruit,’ Pete said, jumping to his feet.
We ran around the orchard, picking as many oranges and grapefruit as we could carry back for afternoon tea. Sister Ambrose used a razor-sharp pocket knife that hangs off her rosary beads to cut the fruit in half. By the time I’d polished off two oranges and a grapefruit, I had juice running down my arms and chin. Pete and I volunteered to take all the skins to the compost heap next to the veggie garden. Nothing is ever wasted at the Farm. There are no garbage bins – what can’t be re-used in some way gets burned in the incinerator.
It was time to make a new charcoal pit – the last thing I felt like doing. Charlie and Lance passed dead branches and small logs down to Pete and me, and our job was to make layers with them inside the pit. At least it was easier than shovelling charcoal into bags. When there were enough layers, we grabbed handfuls of twigs and dry leaves to fill up the spaces. The ground around our pit was totally cleared. There wasn’t a leaf or blade of grass left in sight – smooth as a cricket pitch.
We all lent a hand to light the fire in our pit. Sister Ambrose gave us some matches but it wasn’t easy getting the wood and leaves alight. There was a lot of smoke but not much flame. When it was finally burning hot, we covered the pit with the sheets of tin then shovelled the dirt back on top.
The pit work isn’t over until the bags of charcoal are loaded onto Henry’s cart, and more dead wood and branches collected to dry out for the next charcoal duty in a few weeks’ time. With everyone pitching in, the charcoal was loaded onto the cart in no time.
‘I’ll meet you boys back at the barn in half an hour,’ Sister Ambrose called out, taking off in the horse-drawn cart.
‘The best wood is down by the creek. I’ll race ya,’ Pete said, taking off and already a few yards in front. He was fast but I soon caught up and could’ve overtaken him but didn’t.
‘Over here,’ he said, climbing up a river gum that was overhanging the creek bank.
We sat quietly on one of the branches, and watched as Lance and Charlie ran to the water’s edge, looking all around. They were almost directly below us.
‘Where are they?’ Charlie asked.
‘I don’t trust ’em,’ said Lance.
I signalled one, two, three, then we jumped. I landed on Lance’s back, while Pete jumped on Charlie, the four of us wrestling on the creek bank.
‘Ya little bastard!’ Lance shouted. He rolled me over and then grabbed my feet in his large man hands, dragging me face down into the creek. I tried to throw my body around to break free but couldn’t. ‘Time to teach ya a lesson!’ he said, as I thrashed about, swallowing water.
‘Let him go, he’ll drown!’ Pete shouted. As soon as Lance let go of my feet, I rolled over and saw Pete on Lance’s back – but not for long. Lance swung around and threw him off into the water.
‘That’ll teach both o’ yer who’s boss ’round here!’ Lance stormed off back to the pits.
‘He’s a nut case,’ said Pete. I was busy coughing water out of my lungs, but couldn’t have agreed more.
‘Ya should see him on a bad day,’ Charlie said, offering me his hand to get up out of the water. Walking along the creek bank, we picked up as many dead branches and small logs as we could carry to the pits. When we got back, Lance wasn’t there; nobody was.
I was tired and hungry – we all were, and still had milking duty to do. On the way to the barn, I looked at the sheep in the paddock and the chooks in the pen in a new light. They were no longer woolly lambs and clucking chooks, but mouth-watering Sunday roast dinners.
With the milking and separating done and the cows herded back into the paddock, it was all hands on deck to get the showers ready. There were two cold-water drums and a hot one outside the shower shed. One team was on pump duty with the cold drums, while another kept the fire going under the hot drum and pumped warm water into the shed.
The rest of us took it in turns to strip off and shower. There are only three shower heads in the shed and no taps. Although cold water is always being pumped, it only comes out in fits and bursts. Every ten seconds, warm water is pumped through as well, but only enough to make it bearable. There’s just enough water to work up a lather with the one bar of soap we have to share, but at least the showers aren’t freezing cold like at St Bart’s. I had to scrub my skin with a brush to get all the black soot and dirt off, and was red raw by the time I’d finished. I looked like a skinned rabbit.
Henry brought jars of sticky sap that had been squeezed from a cactus plant for us to rub onto our skin to soothe and calm it down. It worked a treat.