Down a Country Lane. Gary Blinco
lie in bed and just look out at the stars, or on bright, clear nights when the moon was full we often ventured outside to play, very quietly, so as not to wake Mum and Dad. The bush took on a different look and feel in the moonlight – a kind of bright ghostly silver covered the land and the moon shadows were purple across the garden and over the rippling surface of the creek. Cicadas chortled in the native shrubs; wallabies and hares risked the occasional raid on the vegetable patch and mopokes called mournfully through the gloom.
Possums sometimes came up from the scrub along the creek and walked along the verandah rail. They were cute friendly little creatures and we fed them scraps of bread or damper that they accepted with strange little guttural cries as they ate hungrily. We stole scraps from the meal table and hid them under the bed so we could feed the possums at night. They seemed unafraid of the various cats we kept, quite the contrary; the cats were scared of them.
When the violent summer thunderstorms descended over the downs the verandah was less fun. Usually I liked to lie in my bed and listen to the patter of rain on the naked tin roof, but the storms were sometimes very violent, making the verandah an unpleasant place to sleep. Bright flashes of chain lightning ripped up the dark night sky with jagged gashes of fire that danced over the scrub and flooded the trees in ghostly white light. Thunder shook the old house and thumped and rattled through the bush like empty railway carriages being shunted on the track. The heavy rain slanted in under the roof, invading the verandah and pooling on the bare wooden floor. The storms were deafening and we could not speak and be heard without yelling.
My parents frequently had to come to our rescue, moving the old beds as close as possible to the wall to protect us from the rain. Sometimes in a really bad storm we retreated to the kitchen floor to escape the downpour and the lightning as the rain hammered in a deafening roar on the iron roof. I was scared during the storms when I was very young, but came to like them as I got older. They seemed to give off a feeling of raw power that excited me somehow. I could feel the strength of the storm enter my being and I felt invincible as I gazed out at the tormented night sky.
It was more misery than fun during the long breathless, sticky summer nights when swarms of mosquitoes visited the verandah. When the summer had been wet mosquitoes bred in the still waters of the gullies in their millions. We seemed to provide a ready source of nourishment for these horrible creatures, as we lay unprotected in our beds with clouds of the insects whining around our ears. I often prayed for a cool breeze, as this always seemed to blow the mosquitoes away and cool the place down. Otherwise we lay awake, hot and mosquito bitten, waiting for the dawn when they would disappear to be replaced by the flies.
After the mosquitoes I did not mind the flies. At least they did not bite and we usually had enough distractions during the day to take our minds off them. Mum was not so sure. The flies attacked the meat she tried to keep fresh in the heat, littering it with great white maggots, sometimes even depositing the lava through the mesh of the gauze meat-cover like high-level bombers. I think given a choice she preferred the mosquitoes. Giving up her sleep was nothing compared to the constant battle to feed us with fresh food. Food was hard enough to come by in the first place and would not be easily surrendered to the flies. The long hot summers were wonderful for us kids but they must have been hell for Mum. I am sure she longed for the winter when she could keep food fresh for weeks.
The long summer days on the farm were always full of activity. Apart from the work we were required to perform there were numerous other activities to occupy our spare time. We could hunt hares or pigeons with our shanghais, or spend hours fishing in the creek. The nights were more of a challenge. With only kerosene lamps to provide lighting we groped about the house in semi-darkness most of the time. My mother endeavoured to get the evening meal, or ‘supper’ as we called it, over before it became too dark. There was a period on dusk when the flies had departed for the day and the night insects and mosquitoes had not yet arrived. This was the best time to eat, during this period of blissful truce.
With darkness closed in and the lamps lit, thousands of insects of various types were attracted into the house by the light. Because of the hot weather the windows and doors of the old house were always wide open and there were no screens so the creatures had an easy access. At night we crowded around the lamp and read old magazines, played ludo or snakes and ladders as we listened to Dad play his mouth organ on the back verandah. He often paused to chat with Mum or roll a cigarette as he rested between tunes. Sometimes we trapped insects and kept them in bottles in order to study their characteristics, or watch them fight to the death when we combined incompatible species in the same container. This helped pass the time and we compared collections. The sorry creatures always expired before morning due to lack of oxygen in their prison, but they kept us amused for a short time.
My mother loved to tell stories of her early life on the various cattle stations her father had managed. We often crowded around the wood stove in the kitchen on winter’s nights to listen to her tales, some of which I am sure she invented or embellished. I sat back from the glowing fire in the dim light of the lamps and listened quietly, slipping away in my mind to become part of the stories she told. When Mum bogged down I often prompted her by throwing in an idea, trying to lead the yarn in the direction I felt it should develop. ‘I’ll bet I know what happened then’, or, ‘is that when you first met Dad?’
Mum had a good sense of telling a story and took up the lead without hesitation. She read her audience and played to our expectations. My parents used language that was less than grammatically correct, and they seasoned their conversations with some pretty salty additions. It was inevitable that their children would pick up and build on their idiom. In time, isolated and therefore insulated from the outside world, we developed a kind of bastardised Australian English with a spattering of our own localised words and expressions.
At our rare family celebrations, like birthdays and anniversaries, we sang ‘Freeza a jolly good fella’. Campfire songs consisted of a few words from American hillbilly tunes we had heard second hand, or gutsy renditions of ‘Worlsing Matilda’. It was only when we began to mix with other people that I became embarrassed by our hick ways and language, but for now we did not know any better and therefore did not care.
‘Shit you can tell some beauties’; Dad laughed one night, after Mum had finished a long story about how her father had survived a gunfight with a bushranger. ‘Your old man would shit himself if anyone said boo to him in the dark.’ Mum flushed a bit at his comment, or perhaps it was the heat from the fire that brought the colour to her cheeks as she turned to peer at him where he sat in the shadows at the table.
‘I didn’t know you were there’, she said, uncertainly. ‘Why don’t you tell them a yarn, if you’re so smart?’ Dad laughed. ‘I know you didn’t see me come in’, he said. ‘I was with you when some of the stories you told actually occurred remember? And even I couldn’t wait to see what happened next. I’ll tell yers what, if Mum made some fried bread and a cuppa tea, I could prob’ly remember about the first time I came to the farm.’ The squeals of delight and encouragement shook the room as Dad winked at Mum. ‘You are such a cunning bugger’, she said. ‘But alright, you kids sit at the table and listen to your father bullshit for a while, and I’ll make us some supper.’
Dad was less animated in his technique, speaking softly in his deep, even voice as he painted graphic pictures and emotions with his words, but I soon changed my mental reception mode and fell in easily with his story. These moments as a family were so precious and I wondered if life could ever be better than this. The sweet smell of fried bread and freshly brewed tea wafted around the old, cold house. The contrast of the harsh whistle of the strong winter wind in the roof added to the feeling of contentment and safety that filled my being.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Oft in the stilly night,
Ere slumbers chain has bound me,
Fond memory brings the light,
Of other days around me;
The smiles, the tears,
Of boyhood’s years,
The words of love then