My Mind's Eye...

If I'm trying to do anything I'm trying to create an impression about my Grandfather's farm that you can somehow actualise for yourself in your own way. Everyone has somewhere special from their childhood that was, to them at least, the most magical place on Eath, a place where everything is beautiful and untainted like a newly broken morning, a place where you longed to be, not just during the school holidays, but during every minute of every day of your life.

In an ideal world my Grandfather would have bought me a pony and I would have lived at the Farm with him and my Parents and Sisters and Cousin- and we would have ridden to the nearest school every morning, just like the Morgan kids who lived just down the road did every day. Just like the old guy who lived up the road had done sixty or more years before, maybe before there was even a school bus known to the area, when all the parents worked at the sawmill or fished the Lake for mullet and bream. I wanted to go to the dairy every morning for fresh warm milk that was still steaming and collect the cow-tusks from the ground after the steers were de-horned. This was the life I was supposed to live; the one I wanted, walking in thigh-high gumboots through a yard full of cow shit- and it is so far removed from where I actually am that it's really quite laughable now that I was so certain, when I was younger, of how exactly my life would turn out- how things were 'going to be' for me. How wrong can one person be? I probably even thought I would deserve a nice life and not deliberatly sabotage the one I had that was perfectly normal and alright, too, but that's another story...

The Farm meant something different to every single one of us, but all of us wanted to live there. Even though it was very easy to get lost there, you seemed to find yourself in the process. I remember thinking one day that I was walking backwards through time because I couldn't find my way back to the farmhouse. I had myself convinced that I had travelled back into the past, to a time where the house had not even been built and there wasn't even a track- let alone a road- to follow. And as there was no house I wandered aimlessly along with the black dog I had chanced upon further and further away from Reality. Maybe what happened next was that I lucked across a rainbow and followed it to the pot of gold- but all the ones I ever chased sprang up on the other side of the Lake all of a sudden, or disappeared from view altogether, so after a while I stopped believing that rainbows had an end to them at all, and then there was no point to following them anymore.

This is what happened to the Farm.

It stopped being beautiful and got very ugly, very quickly. What was once unsullied became corrupt and tainted and choked with weeds and broken cars and other crap. I wouldn't want to go on a holiday there anymore, let alone live there, even if I could. But if I could I would take you back to the place I knew then. I'll try now- if you like.

Imagine, if you can, driving down a somewhat twisted and narrow driveway, splashing occasionally through giant mud-filled puddles. At some point we stop and let the dog out and she runs along behind the car as we continue up towards the farmhouse, her pink tongue lolling out the side of her slobberflecked jaw. You can tell that she's loving it. As we round the final bend and the farmhouse comes into view the four children in the back seat all break into a song that has been sung every time upon arrival in all of living memory. I see the red roof of the house between the trees and can see the hill we gallop up when we ride the horse back for someone else to have a turn on. We knew the horse just wanted to get back as quickly as he could to get his saddle off his back- and there was no holding him back once we'd gotten him in the habit of doing it. Not that I minded. I told you before I liked going fast and I wasn't lying- not that time, anyway.

But when we first arrive and we have thrown our pillow on some creaky piss-stained bed or other, claiming it as ours for the next five nights, or however long we were lucky enough to be here this time. Then all of Us kids would race over to the Little Old House- if we had managed to avoid helping Mother drag all the groceries that are packed into their laundry baskets out of the car, that is. It was actually an old weekender that had also been the original homestead on the property, where the old man from up the road had been born- right there in the tack room that holds Grandfather's stock saddle and the duck decoys and rabbit snares. And we would settle down to cleaning the house up so that it might be habitable for at least part of the time we are here on holidays. Even though there are little bats living in the roof; so we probably Won't.

It's like living in the Little House on the Prairie- we even run down the hill that leads to the Lake like Mary, Laura and Carrie did- even down to me- being the youngest- falling down like Carrie, tumbling over and over, down the hill trying to avoid the many splots of cowshit that pepper the landscape. We're lucky, too, and have a gas stove we can cook pancakes on and a real China cabinet full of crockery and Tupperware containers that have strange sticky substances on their lids. The whole first morning is spent cleaning out the cupboards and washing all the dishes. Then we'd make the beds up with the fresh linen bought from home and pretend for a while that we were going to be brave enough to sleep there, but we rarely did when we were very young.

We'd set up our fish box full of Lake water that we have dragged up the hill to use as our fish tank- that will hold the tiny Mullet babies that we catch in old strainers that we find in the pantry. We'd practice our 'end of Holiday ABBA concert' that we put on for our Mother and Father on the last day of our holiday, on the verandah that overlooks Grandpa's peach trees that are draped in netting to catch the fruit-foxes; how my Parent's loved those ABBA concerts.

We would set up an old ironing board with the stock saddle on it, on the front verandah, with the bridle hanging from the front like it was on a horse's head, with the reins draped over the elephant-ears of the saddle- and yes- we did take turns in riding it. We even have photographic proof that is still pulled out sometimes when We are all together and remembering some of the happier times. This was something we all looked forward to each year, being here at the Farm, seemingly in a whole other world aside and apart from what we usually knew every day.

Before every holiday I would write myself a list to take with me to the Farm, the list being a complete itinerary of activities that will be performed for however many days we were staying, as well as the list of every article of clothing or object taken that I wanted o take was also duly noted. Like on Day One we will visit Slippery Log after we have a swim in the Lake, for which I shall require my swimmers, two pairs, and towels, both beach and bath- and in the afternoon we will go and catch some Beakies down at the boatshed, for which I shall need my Other shoes that can go squelch in the mud without Mother having a fit and asking anyone for a glass of Arsenic. We're fresh out of that today, Mother; how about a glass of Chardonnay instead?

And then on Day Two we will wake up at six in the morning and go out on the Lake and pull in the fishing nets with Grandpa in his little Outboard and come back and gut the fish and then Grandmother might make us some fishcakes if we are being good little children and keeping mostly out of the way. Then we'll catch the horse and take him for a swim in the Lake, if we can convince him to go in there this year- if the Bran-Person is doing their job properly. And then our Father will cook that chicken dish with tomato and corn that he can never remember how to make before we sit around on the verandah, cleaning the saddle and bridle with Joseph Liddy saddlesoap and plenty of Elbow Grease because we're holding our own gymkhana in the morning and we all want to win the Turnout class and get the Supreme Champion Sash that my Sister has sewn with red white and blue silk for the occasion.

Gasp for breath.

The poor horse is still soapy in most places from where we've had to skimp on water from the rainwater tank- washing his mane and tail so they can be plaited without revealing too much of the dirt and scurve- and after we have picked out the hundreds of bush ticks that he is literally covered in; the little blood-suckers are in his mane and tail, in his ears, even down the crack of his arse and behind his tail.

You know what I mean...This is real tank water and fresh air stuff I'm talking about; this is the smell of rain on clean dirt and the heat of the bush in Summer and the relentless drone of the cicadas above us in the tall Scribbly Gums. This is drinking cold water that is somehow still alive from the dam- and thinking that it was good for you because the Farm's water is somehow purer.

Can't you hear it when the only sounds at dusk are the mighty Magpies warbling to each other as we all sit on the verandah that goes almost all the way around it? Or the feathery wisp of the Swallow as it swoops past you and darts up to his gummy nest up there in the rafters? Can't you still see the murky green underworld of the Lake weed garden as you realise for the first time that you can open your eyes and the water won't sting? Can't you still feel the rush in your stomach as you jump off the roof of the houseboat that is anchored near the Point? Can you still taste the wild blackberries that we'd pick from around the warren-riddled dams, or feel the tiny fingerlings gently nipping at you as you sit silently among the tall reeds?

I can. And if I really think about it, I can still see, in my mind's eye, the view from top of Grayer's Hill on a still and cloudless morning- how the Lake shimmered like a flat plate of steely white-grey glass, liquid and velvety as Mercury, and seemingly as dense- as it bounced mirrored reflections of the hills deep below the shoreline of Mangroves. I have pictures of it in my mind which are far more valuable than a thousand polished words. I only wish that I could show them to you.

And you know, I have always wondered what Everyone thought of us when they looked down the paddock and across to the hills and saw us, from a distance, as we tramped for hours through the paddocks and disappeared in and out of the bush, and if we really looked how I felt we looked...

Five Little Specks-as seen from the farmhouse.