“Australia all over”

To: The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, C/: Ian Mcnamara

July 29, 2001

Status: read on air

Dear Makka,

Thanks for your program!

I was cheered this wet and stormy morning (Sunday 29 July) listening to the letter from the couple that lasted almost 90 years at their place in the country before finally calling it quits and going into nursing care.

This couple spent most of the night awake fearing the roof panels might blow off or that one of the two large gumtrees, ringbarked decades ago but unwittingly ‘case-hardened’ by fire against slow demolition by termites, might now drop in through the side of our ‘instant ruins’ … I had some reason for concern: after all, I had built the roof myself 15-odd years ago, with bush timber from the local mill (paid for by a $450 cheque from the then Forestry Commission for some press kit material I’d written for them), and I was all too conscious of my mistakes (which included ‘framing in’ the top of my ladder with a hip rafter, so that I cut the top rung rather than dismantle that rafter!). I clambered onto the roof in between lashings of rain to retrieve the ridge capping of the veranda roof back that was sliding off (I had ‘temporarily’ jammed it in position rather than riveting it in place…)

Your letter has given me hope that there might still be some mileage in me, not even halfway through building a big shed from those light aerated concrete blocks that even a 65-year-old can handle with ease; the shed being intended to warehouse all the things Bianca, my wife of 36 years, blithely terms ‘junk’ - furniture, computers, an endless array of tools and builder’s equipment – now stacking up in the purported living quarters and preventing me from finishing that main building project.

You see, Bianca and I were sitting up in the (already fully functional gas/electric) kitchen at around 3am discussing our ‘options’, after eight years of roughing it on the bush block we’ve owned since the early ‘seventies in one of the most pleasant parts of the eastern seaboard. (I know, because when we first arrived in Australia 30 years ago, we travelled along the coast in our Kombi right up to Cairns, with four bairns in tow!)

Bianca wants out, particularly at times like this, after three days and nights of winter gales and almost incessant rain. This is not what she bargained for in coming to Australia (much against her wish, as she is wont to remind me):

o no proper house (a self-designed, self-built courtyard place whittled down to a three-room corner by circumstances as it grew haphazardly during long weekends of commuter-building from Sydney),

o no proper husband (I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get my head around Network Address Translation and other esoteric computing subjects as I busy myself with a six-node network in my allotted home-office space, instead of at least putting proper windows into a plastic-clad clerestory that invites in winter chills of down to 8.6 degrees!); and

o no proper eyeball/earshot contact, really, with friends, neighbours or children (our three grown-up daughters are in Sydney, of course, and our son and daughter-in-law live in Singapore).

I, on the other hand, am rather contented with my current place in life, particularly when the sun breaks through like just now as I’m writing this around 1pm, looking out from my ‘office’ on two sides through large sliding doors into the bush, with a gaggle of geese cleaning up their plumage a few metres away on a patch of lawn, past the veranda with half-a-dozen hens camping on the doormats and preening themselves (among other things…).

Bianca strides past purposefully now in gumboots and a hard hat (thin branches are being thrust down like spears). She’s armed with secateurs, ready to redress some of the rampage of the past few days and nights.

Let’s see her try to put the flowers back on my tropical nectarine, though, which had just burst into bloom before disaster struck!

When the wind dies down as it finally must, I will be able to hear the noisy nibbling of the red-tailed black cockatoos again in the dense dark she-oaks 20 metres from the house, and their harsh shrieks as they fly about, batlike, as mating-season minstrels…

Why would I trade this for, say, a neat little unit in Brizzie, when we both know, deep down, that we’d never thrive in such a setting, never mind the convenience, the culture, the crowds! Give me our ‘Clod Nine’ any day! (The unofficial name alludes not only to the original Lot 9 number and our early delight in this piece of paradise, but also to the deep clay soil of the place.)

The other thing I found most interesting in the day’s program was some in-depth information about 1080 poison baiting, from both the Parks and Wildlife bloke in Jindabyne and the Top End grazier.

We have been putting out 1080-baited liver for many years on our 50-acre block and it was a hard time at first convincing the neighbours that it was reasonably safe, as long as they kept their dogs in check. One woman in particular objected on the grounds that it endangered native fauna. But in recent years, more people have asked us about the program, what with warnings also prominently signposted nearby along the main road through Booti Booti National Park by the NSW Parks & Wildlife Service, and I believe the local Rural Lands Protection Board ranger now has a growing clientele in our area…

Dealing out death is not an easy way of life, to coin a phrase, even when directed at supposedly ‘harmful’ animals. (I must also plead guilty to having beheaded a goose and six roosters in my brief time ‘on the land’ - each with increasing reluctance, and the last few only after stiffening my resolve with a big glass of red!).

After last year’s baiting, we heard strange whimpering noises nearby at night. I finally dragged myself out at about midnight to investigate, and found a lone fox cub cowering next to the carcases of his kin in a hollow fallen tree not 30 metres from our kitchen door. He was a beautiful greyish animal, already almost fully grown, and for a moment I thought of taming him and putting him on a leash on trips to town… We noticed that he had started cleaning up around him, whether driven by hunger or other instinct. We fed him nightly on scraps of meat and homemade bread, and called him Freddie. But we also called the Ranger, who brought ‘round another serving of liver bait… The soft nightly howling then ceased. Instead, the crows made their raucous rounds once more.

We rationalised our guilt by identifying this fox - and his parents and siblings - as the beasts that had ravished black hens and white and sent our geese flying at night, soiling the side of the house in passing as they curved blindly toward a little lily pond… Come to think of it, Freddie might well have been the one who grabbed our leading gander Jochen one night and tried to pull him through the electric fence when Bianca, alerted by the racket both made, dashed out and pulled Jochen back, with Freddie the Fox definitely determined not to let go. (Bianca prevailed in the tug-of-war.) Or the one who attacked some hens in broad daylight and carried off their fearless defender Ruby into the bush and only relinquished his prey when your truly ran after them shouting and throwing sticks? Whatever, he must have had it coming to him…



Sincerely,

["Carioca"]

Poet & Inventor (but that’s another story)