Another Fantasy Of Mine...

I wish I had a photo of White Sox.

He was Beetlebombs's last foal- his Father had run off and left them after conception so I can't tell you for certain who the cad was- but his son as a leggy chestnut with four white stockings that stretched beyond his hocks. We still have a photo of Beetlebomb;she is a skinny-looking flea-bitten grey mare and is being led around the front yard , unsaddled, by my Uncle. He looked drunk. He probably was.

I remember one day I was out walking in the paddock with my little dog and I came across White Sox and Stripe- another chestnut Thoroughbred who wasn't fast enough to race; and Pinto, who was a Pinto but that's all I can tell you about him/her; who all being pretty much unbroken and unhandled, were all pretty wary of humans.

I stood stock still in the middle of the paddock and talked to them as they came closer and closer- until the golden moment that White Sox approached me and sniffed my out-stretched palm, snorted , and then turned and galloped off with Stripe and Pinto at his heels. I was so happy that he had trusted me enough to be the first person who had ever touched him- another fantasy of mine-that I raced back to the farmhouse with my little dog bounding through the grass beside me, just like Toto did in the Wizard of Oz, and told my Sister's and Cousin about it- but none of them believed me, of course, because it had never happened to any of them, and now they probably forget it ever happened at all.

Our Grandfather had promised us that he would have White Sox broken in -one day- for us to ride but he never did, of course. I think, like Jack and Beetlebomb and Stripe and Pinto- and even eventually Peter- he ended up at the Glue Factory like poor Boxer did out of Animal Farm after he had re-built the windmill for the third time. I don't know where I got the impression from that my Grandfather was overly sentimental about the beasts he owned; I mean, he didn't treat his animals like pets- if you get my meaning- so if an animal wasn't any good you either got rid of it or shot it, which is the 'country way' I suppose.

He had a tack room just like Farmer Jones' too, with assorted traps and empty red rifle shot casings strewn throughout the netting and fish boxes and rolls of cruel barbed wire. Surely he wouldn't have felt saddened by Jack's death, but for some reason I thought that he would have been when I was four or five. And that is how old I am, I think, when I am allowed to travel in the back of Granpa's Ute, asleep and on a foam mattress...

The drive to the Farm took just over two hours in those days but I've never understood why, to this day, why our Mother let us do it in the first place; did she just want a weekend off that badly that she didn't care that there weren't any seatbelts; or did it seem safe to her somehow just because it wasn't illegal in those days- even when that sort of an accident would have made national headlines if Grandpa had crashed the car with us lot in the back of the Ute?

Four children under ten- dead- after car rolls down mountainside.

Didn't they want us or something? Were they trying to kill us off? First one to sleep wins two bob and you won't even feel it when you're asleep.

Even if it wasn't illegal I wouldn't let my Father drive my kids around twisted mountainsides in the dark under a rainsheet while his chilly bin full of longnecks of VB rides safely in the passenger seat beside him. But that's just me.

When we arrived Grandpa would carry us in out of the car into the relative safety of the house- after locating the house keys that are on the curled leather key ring under the front step- while we are all still fast asleep. He puts us into bed, all four of Us together, three Sisters and one Cousin. There aren't five of us because the littlest Sister is still at home with Mummy because She is still to precious to ride around in the back of a Ute unrestrained. Maybe my Mother just didn't trust her baby around her big brother. I wouldn't blame her, by the way, if that were the reason. Sue Me Boof- see if I care. Now there's a name for my Mother's book when she gets around to writing it. Get ready to LOL, you all. Her book can be about how her brother used to lynch her kittens on the clothesline and how her parents could do nothing to stop their son- who had won a Most Beautiful Baby competition in nineteen fourty six no less- from being a cruel and sadistic bastard. Man- have I got some stories about Him. Another day...

We wake up early in the morning and my Sisters and Cousin make sugary tea while we check Grandpa's overlarge gumboots for spiders. It's almost an unspoken rule- when you are at the Farm you have to wear gumboots because you are on a farm; even when the boots are so big they seem to be as long as your thigh and every step you take feels like it was taken inside a giant sack made of strong rubber. Just as dawn is breaking we set out across the paddocks, clomping through the cloying mud, to go mushrooming for the Adults breakfast with a saucepan and a butter-knife; or to look for the Faeries that live in the small spider-webs on the ground that are bejeweled with hundreds of tiny dewdrops. It's quite impossible to avoid stepping on them- and when we look back we can see our footsteps clearly, like a meandering trail aross the well-grazed pastures.

Grandpa had a herd of around one hundred head of cows, steers and heifers that he sells to the abattoirs for good prices that justify his hobby nicely. So long, Black-and-White-Face. Maybe next year I'll be able to save someone like you from going on that butcher's truck and we'll get that pet calf that we always dreamt of having- and that keeps getting promised to us and then sold for someone to eat because that's what happens in the Real World.

When we were little we would worry about coming across the Bull in the paddock- if we weren't with Grandpa that is- who easily stood six foot six at the shoulder- and so we would avoid wearing red clothes in the paddock- we even worried over some shades of pink- lest we should come across the Bull and he would charge at us. It's funny; but that big old red bull couldn't even be arsed shifting his bulk from under the same dead crooked tree that he carked it beneath many years later.

But that didn't mean that it was impossible that he might have attacked us one day when we least expected it...