Fourth summer, Karoola
Australia Day. The sun was perhaps an hour off rising, but the birds were already up. I loved the anticipation of dawn, like a tightly wound spring, holding energy to burn. Kerouac had his neck between two palings and was nosing his way into the next paddock. Proof that the grass was always greener . . . even for alpaca. There was a hint of yellow as the first sunflower planted a few weeks ago showed its face, ready to turn with the day. A family of magpies lined the fence, sweet-gargling as if they’d swallowed an orchestra of flutes. It was a holiday. I couldn’t get used to the fact that a whole country could have the day off to be itself together. Today, collectively, even though most people were just making it back from their summer break, everyone stopped, had a barbie, and relaxed. A ute passed by on Pipers River Road with four Australian flags tied to the stainless-steel toolbox on the back . . . It’s only for one day.
I watched as the morning light finally hit the line of poplars in the valley and crept up the side of the Karoola community hall; the soft hilltops in the distance were sun-drifted. I could see my slanting shadow on the study door. Hello, sunshine. Thanks to the sun, each day renewed itself, while the night wiped the slate clean. You could rely on that. One day celebrated a happy new year. Each day celebrated a happy new day . . . I tried to carry this silly sense of wonderment with me and not worry too much about the future.
On the radio news, I heard the national supermarkets were dropping the price of milk to one dollar a litre—below the cost of production. Later, a listener called in to ask: ‘How could they do that—on Australia Day of all days? How un-Australian is that?’
I thought about what this meant for dairy farmers, wondered how they would be able to make ends meet, and how was it possible that milk cost less than bottled water? I recalled an advertisement that had caught my eye while I was researching the history of Karoola in the Launceston library, in the Launceston Weekly Courier for 1 July 1920. The ad, placed by FW Heritage & Co.—Merchants and Manufacturers, read: ‘We receive all description of farm produce for sale.’ But it was the headline that stood out: We Pay Highest Price for Cream.
I wanted to live in a world that valued farmers, because without them how would we have enough to eat? I wanted to pay the highest price for cream! I didn’t phone the radio program, or write a letter, or stew and fume, but I sat with this thought for a while. And then wondered what I should do with the morning. The smell of overnight rain on the garden beckoned like perfume—bottle that, Chanel! So did the bucketful of apricots on the kitchen table that I’d picked from the old tree in the backyard the day before. Maybe I’d make some apricot jam or sauce, or both, before heading off to work to pour bubbles.
Sometimes I’ve thought (and if I were being cocky I would say I know) that when I feel in tune with myself the world seems all joined up and offers up things without me asking for them. On that Australia Day, while thinking about what it meant to be Australian, I fiddled with the radio dial and caught a gravelly voice in conversation. It was a while before I realised it was the all-Australian actor Jack Thompson. He was speaking about an Indigenous foundation he had established, and about a line his own father had written many years ago, a line now etched in his memory:
They gathered from
the living ground their
common needs . . .
‘The Conqueror’ by John Thompson (1907–1968)
‘The living ground,’ said Jack, ‘had sustained the local Indigenous populations for over 40,000 years.’ I wrote this sentence down and regarded it as profound. The living ground was ours to share if we cared for it. Would our living ground sustain us for another 40,000 years?
On Australia Day, and on ceremonial occasions around Australia, acknowledgments to Country are made by and for the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. Often this ceremonial prose would seem clunky to me when spoken at a podium, on a stage; out of place. It may not be possible yet, I thought, but in these days of moving towards reconciliation, one day perhaps it would become a universal acknowledgment that we all made to The Land (not our land or their land) regardless of our race or boundaries. A thank you to the place we lived in and everything it provided for us. Hopefully, too, one that was not duty bound or paid for, but a thank you—heartfelt.
In some ways I wondered if that was what recipes were. If we only reminded ourselves of where they came from, they too could be a thank you to our land, to what is grown and reaped, turned into something by caring hands, and finally handed down through families and to friends in one unbroken line, like Rose’s recipe for egg and bacon pie.
Rose was a rural reporter who lived alone in the orchard country of Hillwood, about twenty kilometres west of Karoola. We were about the same age, and as children had attended different schools in the same town, but only met each other later in life through working at the ABC. Home for Rose was an old weatherboard farmstead with a wide veranda on two sides, and an established orchard overlooking the Tamar River. Her driveway was long and lined with bush, and, if I compared it with my own open view from the road, I sometimes envied her privacy.
Rose had many fine attributes, none of which would have made a man feel like she needed him. She could do anything for herself: re-roof, dig garden beds, prune tall trees, make her own cello out of myrtle . . .R ose also specialised in what she called ‘veranda food’: this meant freshly made pie, or cake, and a platter of plump cheeses, salamis and olives, served with freshly chopped whatever was in season, and, always, a glass of something sparkly. She introduced me to amaranth, chickweed, mulberries and macadamias. It was simple home cooking, based on what was in the garden and the time available to rustle it up. Food with a view and with friends—a form of cooking that went well with what Rose called ‘the occurring world’. That is, what was happening right now.
Rose laid a cloth on the veranda table and placed a vase of cut lavender on top to stop it from blowing off in the breeze along with just-out-of-the-oven ‘Cloud Nine’ scones, a bowl of plump berries and a pouring jug of cream.
Stuff, plop, toss, dollop . . . chunks of this and that— I loved the absence of fuss on these occasions. And that if the food were the point of our visits, what might we be missing in our conversation? Food, however, was what we gathered around, sat ourselves near, salivated over and enjoyed. We swapped dishes and plates with each other in the same way we swapped recipes. A plate of food that we’d grown, caught, dug or preserved was just as special as the dishes we’d baked. I brought a rhubarb tart and Rose made the egg and bacon pie she’d learned to make at her mother’s knee, the recipe never written down. As the sinking sun leaked into the Tamar River and the first star appeared, we hoped to catch a glimpse of the Comet McNaught and strained our necks to look up at the sky—without luck. It was only 140 million kilometres away from us.
As I turned out of Rose’s street that night to make my way home to Karoola, I spotted the incredible tail—a starry smear, like the spray from a hose, that stretched millions of kilometres across the sky. I texted Rose straightaway. ‘It’s lower in the sky than we thought—south-west and low. Stand on far corner of veranda. Can’t miss it.’ I wondered how the comet could stay together when its tail was so far apart from its head, but I drove home anyway feeling all joined up.