As I worked in Emerald yesterday, I watched an old lady coming down the footpath towards me , slowly, and with a dog on a lead. My ladder was set up on the footpath and with pole cutters I was working above me cutting cherry laurel pieces from the hedge. They were falling onto the path. I descended the ladder and moved it and the cut foliage so as the old lady could pass without having to go around me, or worse, trip and fall.
As she reached me she thanked me and added that I needn't have stopped, she would have been happy to go around. She spoke with an Irish accent and I guessed she was over eighty years old, but she was well groomed and had an erect stance. Her white hair was neat and brushed and her whole face smiled, wide eyed. I liked her straight away.
I said, "No, the footpath is for people to walk on and it is up to me to make sure I don't create a hazard."
I added a gentle enquiry, "Are you of Irish origin?"
She replied that she was and told me that she came to Australia from Dublin in 1960. We had a short conversation. I learned that she and her husband had 5 children when they migrated and a sixth born in Australia. They lived at first in a migrant hostel in Altona. Her husband was a bricklayer and there was much building happening at the time and they would have been better off to stay in the hostel because it was cheap accomodation, but it was crowded and not the best place for their kids who were mixing with hordes of kids of many nationalities and getting up to mischief.
So after 3 months they moved to Cockatoo where they lived till 1983 when the bushfire burned their house, which was not insured. They also lost all their possessions. Her husband died in 1992 but three of her kids live close by. The others are spread around Australia but she sees them now and again. She has been back to Ireland twice since 1960 and said it is beautiful and is now a rich country. Everybody is at university she said.
She said her name was Breda (she spelled it for me) O'Gallaher, and asked me mine. She walks six km every day , which used to be 11km but she is slower and more careful now after having a fall not long ago. Walking and reading ensured she was never bored. She loved communicating with people and talked to as many as she could. Communication solved everything she said.
I asked was she Catholic and she said "Yes, I am. Are you?"
"No, I'm not, but some of my best friends are."
Breda then said, "It doesn't matter that your not Catholic. Even when we were in Ireland we had Protestant neighbours and Jewish. We all got along well, there was no problem. If someone needed help they were helped. I might have pointed to the Protestant church and said to the kids, " You don't go in there," but that was all."
I gave Breda a small pot of honey I had in my van (it was intended for Steve, whose hedge I was working) and thanked her for sharing a little of her story with me. She wanted to pay me for it and when I wouldn't accept the payment, saying it was a gift, she thanked me and said she hoped to bump into me again.
I felt good for the rest of the day. I had enjoyed meeting Breda.
The very next day I was again working the same hedge when Nadia came out of her gate and waved to me and slowly walked towards my van parked on the nature strip. Her little dog was in tow. I had dropped Robbie off at the bus in Emerald and needed a small amount of laurel to fill an order, and I had 'Snowy' in the van, standing on her box behind the driver's seat. I came down the ladder to say hello to Nadia who had spotted 'Snowy'. She said as she reached the van, "Bennjji", as she looked at 'Snowy' through the window.
I said, "No, that's 'Snowy'"
"I call them all 'Bennjji'", she said.
By this time her Bennjji and my Bennjji were touching noses and wagging tails at the open back of the van. Nadia smiled.
" How is your arm?" I asked. Some weeks ago while working in the same spot an ambulance had been outside Nadia's house and I saw her being wheeled out on a trolley and taken away. Then two weeks after that she came out with her arm in a sling and said that she had broken her upper arm in a fall and it was painfall and looked horrible. "Do you want to seee itt," she had said, her eyes half crazed, "Itt is bleeeeding."
"No, no," I quickly assured her, as I carried the box of old lettuces inside for her. Someone had left them at her gate for her ducks.
"The arm is a little better", she replied. "Much pain still. They are sending someone tomorrow to help me do exercise, to help it moove."
I've known Nadia for about fifteen years. I used to pick in her garden, an old garden esblished probably about 1930/40 and shared by dozens of Nadia's ducks. One day after watching me work thirty feet up a tree in pouring rain she told me she didn't want me coming anymore. If I fell out of the tree I would sue her, she said. I was happy not to come anyway, the more I got to know her the more she worried me and she was difficult to deal with, and, she was mistrusting or even paranoid. One of her ducks would die occassionally and she was convinced it was a neighbour sneaking in and killing them.
I did like her eccentricity. I remember describing her to my family as a seventy year old hippy. She wore colourful, loose fitting clothing that hung from her tall angular frame as did her tied back,long chestnut hair and extravagant necklaces. Her eyes held a wildness, gipsy-like would be a better description of her appearance than hippy.
She sometimes invited me in for a cup of herb tea and I accepted out of politeness, but I was never comfortable in her house. It was untidy and and crammed full of odd things and ornaments, like stuffed birds and medusa statues. Once she told me she grew up in Checkoslavakia and was 17 when the Germans came. They put her to work in a factory with other women and were not unkind to her. One soldier was very good to her. They told her how evil the Jews were. She believed the Jews were responsible for most of the trouble in the world, and was still fearful the Jews would come for her in the night. Then the Russians came. They were murdering pigs. My intuition suggested she had a German lover who was killed by the Russians. She also told me her daughter stole $10,000 from her and if she came near her she would 'keeel herr'. As she said this she waved around a ten inch kitchen knife menacingly, which left me in no doubt it was not an idle threat.
In the 1990's there were annual family picnic days held in Nobelius Park, I remember her wandering down with her 'Bennjji' after lunch, drawn by the music of the bushband. She won the the ladies nail driving competition easily, despite being decades older than her rivals. She could really handle a hammer.
Thinking of Breda yesterday and the honey, I reached into the van for the 500gm billy I again had for Steve, and offered it to Nadia, saying it will help her arm.
"I want to pay you for it," she said, "What is the price?"
Thinking quickly I said it was $2.
She looked at 'Snowy' and said, "Hee iss a terrible liar."
She went inside and came out with two $2 coins and put them in the van, then said, "I want to buy some more. Do you have more?"
I found a 1kg billy and she went inside again and came out with four $2 coins.
So Steve missed out again. I'll catch up with him next time.
