Licodia Eubea

Marguerita rang last week, about 7.00am one morning. Lib wasn't working that day so I hadn't been up long. I croaked my first word for the day, "Hello."

"Is that you , Mr. Williams?"

I didn't answer straight away, trying to pick the voice.

"Did I wake you up?"

"No, I've been up a while. I'm sorting some washing. How are you Marguerita?"

"I'm good, very good. Hey listen, did you get any of those plants for me?"

"What plants?"

"I can't remember their name. You know, the ones I asked you about a while back. You were going to try and get some for me."

"Oh yeah, the white iris. No, I haven't found any. But now that you've reminded me, I'll have another crack. I forget things you know."

"That's a sign of old age. It happens to me. It'd be good if you get some. Now's the time to split them up and plant. How's your wife?"

"Not bad, a little better I'd say. She's not working today so she's in bed. She still gets very tired."

"That's what I was like. She needs lots of rest. What's happening about the tumour? What are they doing about it?"

"She's booked in for another MRI in February. They want to check it to see if it's grown. You made a good recovery after your operation."

"Yeah I did, but I've had more treatment. They found more tumours, more in the head. I can't have those MRI's, because of my pacemaker. They do blood tests and other things. They bombed the tumours with chemicals and stuff. They reckon they got 'em. Do you help with the washing?"

Marguerita always asks about Lib's tumour on her pituitary. It's what she had. Lib and her have never met. Marguerita wants me to take Lib out to her place so they can talk about it, but Lib hasn't taken up on it.

"Yeah, I do most of the washing, I suppose."

"You're a good boy, that's what she needs, lots of help. And going to work is the best thing for her. She's got to keep doing that. I gotta go, it's goin' to be hot today. Bye."

I hadn't really tried to find any white iris for her, I've been so busy. Where the bloody hell was I going to find them? One of those things I'd not get around to!

A couple of days later I was at the farm and I saw a new garden bed in the front lawn that had been recently planted out with what looked like iris, and edged neatly with timber slat, reminding me of Marguerita's request, so I told mum about it. She laughed and said, "I've got lots of white iris, that new bed in the front is all white, and all them along the side of the back shed are white. There's too many there, it'd be good to take some out, do the others good. Help yourself, as many as you want." Well that was an easy one, I thought.

Before going home on Friday afternoon I dug a big bag of iris tubers in less than five minutes, happy that Marguerita would get her iris, and that it was so easy the way it evolved. On Saturday afternoon about 3 o'clock I drove out to Marguerita's farm and knocked on the door. The big shed door was open and there were two vehicles inside, but no one answered. I thought maybe Marguerita and Joe were having an afternoon nap so I took the new pair of pruning shears from the van and started on the big biotis conifer encroaching on a flower bed of petunias and pansies. I'd told Marguerita some time ago I'd be back with some shears to do it one day.

After a few minutes Joe came out the back door. "How are you my friend?" he said, coming over to shake my hand. He'd been having a sleep after working all morning in his tomato patch, before getting back into it when it cooled off a bit, he explained. I'd never had a long conversation with Joe. He's always friendly when we meet in town, he knows and appreciates I'm helpful to Marguerita, but he's not at the farm when I am, which is usually during the week. He works at Red Gem.

I showed him the bag of iris which I'd put in the shade of a big camellia and said I brought along these new sharp shears to test drive. "If you don't mind me asking Joe, when did you come to Australia? Marguerita told me she came to this farm in 1958, the year she married. Had you been out here long?"

"I came to Australia in 1954, I was 17 years old, born in 1937."

"Did you come because there wasn't work in Italy?"

"Nah, there was heaps of work, but it was all hard, a lot of people had migrated, looking for opportunity. My brother was out here, he came in 1949, so it wasn't surprising for me to follow. Would you like to come inside and have a drink and I'll tell you my family's story?"

I jumped at the chance to learn more of the Italian/Gembrook connection. I'd never been in the house before. Joe sat me at the kitchen table. He offered me a beer, although he said didn't drink alcohol himself. He went outside to the shed and came back with a can of diet coke. The kitchen walls were adorned with family photos and blow up aerial shots of the farm and an Italian village. For the next two hours he talked, and brought down photos to show me up close. His story centred on his father. The stubby of beer Joe gave me had been in his fridge a long while. It was flat as a tack and tasted odd when I finally got the cap off. I didn't mention it, out of courtesy, and drank it slowly, right down to the last cloudy sediment in the glass.

Joe's father migrated to America in the early 1900's and lived and worked 12 years in Brooklyn New York. He came back to Italy during WW1 to serve in the army. On the way back on the boat he knew he was making a big mistake and suffered severe depression. He tried to suicide by jumping overboard but this was prevented by other passengers. After army service he returned to his home village, Licodia Eubea in the provence of Catania, in Sicily. He did not speak one word to anyone for a period of time, recovering eventually to marry. Joe showed me a picture of his mother and father taken soon after they married. He was 31, tall and strikingly handsome, she was 15, tiny by comparison. They had eight children in all, six born alive. Joe was the youngest.

From their farm you can see Mt.Etna in the distance. In the winter the snow line comes well down to about halfway and in summer it remains on the peak. the land is fertile and grows everything imagineable. The farms are small, and people live in the village and travel to their farms to work, a family might own three or four, of say 10 acres each. Joe's father had 300 olive trees on one farm and cropping land elsewhere. They grew wheat, barley, broad beans and all manner of vegetables. Each year they'd trek into the mountains maybe 8 hours away by horse and cart and stay for two weeks at a time, growing share crops on bigger properties. The landowners would provide the seed which had to be paid back two or three times over before the farmer made anything. Joe said, "Just as today and always, the rich get richer while the poor do the work."

The Romans thousands of years ago prized the Sicilian farmland. The crops were prodigious and the harvest came weeks earier than the rest of Italy. There was an abundance of good clear water, as there still is, underground and easily reached by well and bore. Marguerita's family also came from Licodea Eubea. The D'Angelo's had quarries from where rock was taken and 'cooked' with big fires in a time honoured method dating way back, before being smashed manually into crushed rock and used as building material.

One of Joe's older brothers went into the army near the end of WW2. This brother had phsycic ability. When he came home he said to his father, "There's no future here for me, I want migrate to America or Australia." His father advised him to choose Australia, it was a newer nation that needed building, with more opportunity.

I told Joe that Joe Lamendola once told me a story about his father who made a huge amount of money growing spuds in 1956 and then went 'home' to Italy, only to find he was not happy there, returning again to Australia. Amazing to me, the land that Joe Lamendolas father farmed when he made his fortune was the one and same where we sat, which Marguerita's father bought with the profits he also made just over the hill in 1956. When Joe Lamendola's father went 'home' to Italy, it was to his home village of Licodia Eubea.(He came back after missing the big farms and open space.)

When Joe's brother left Italy in 1949 he came to Melbourne and worked in factories Monday to Friday and then went to Emerald/Avonsleigh on weekends working for the Falcones digging spuds, as did Joe himself later. The Falcones were also from Licodia Eubea.

I told Joe that Gay Fialla told me of her grandfather Galenti who first came to Australia in the early 1900's and you can guess, the Galentis came from the same area. Nearly all the Italian migrants to come to Gembrook came from the same village or nearby. I hope to visit one day. It has about 3000 residents. About 4-5000 of those that left, and descendants, live in the U.S. and Australia. With new technologies, Catania is now a wealthy provence from where wine and table grapes in particular are exported around the world.

An Italian Adventurer

"I've known you since you were three years old. I watched you work on the farm through your childhood. I know you'll work hard and succeed if it's at all possible. Now that you are married and starting on your own, I'll lend you the money without your father being guarantor."

Gay Fialla was greatly relieved at her bank managers words. She had been petrified approaching him for the loan of 300 pounds*. (*I don't know if it's possible to find the symbol for pounds on a computer-- for anyone too young to know, a pound was money before the introduction of decimal currency in 1966. A pound was the equivalent of $2 at the changeover. I would guess allowing for inflation 300 pounds would be worth $50,000 plus today. When talking of pounds I usually use the slang word 'quid' to avoid confusion with the imperial weight scale but this doesn't seem appropriate relating Gay's story. She didn't use the word quid.) This was the early 1960's when bank managers often stayed at a branch, and money was hard to borrow.

The bank was in Emerald where Gay grew up, living on a farm about opposite to where the secondary college now stands. Gay and husband Bart made no profit on their first crop, the spud price was poor that year. Gay fronted up to the bank manager again the next year. Again he lent the necessary 300 pounds. The second year was also a bad year, the price again poor. They couldn't pay the bank debt. Gay and Bart were ready to walk away with nothing, Then Bart said one night, "Let's give it one more go. Go and see the bank manager and see if he'll lend us more money." Bart knew nothing but growing spuds.

To Gay's amazement, the bank manager lent them more money. Maybe he saw it as the best way of getting a return on the bank's money in the end. The spud crops were on land owned by Gay's father at Gembrook. The third year was the bonanza crop and price of '65/66, (previously recorded in this blog when Julian Dyer married and made enough money to pay for his first house). Gay and Bart paid their debt to the bank and purchased their own farm in Gembrook.

I enjoyed coffee and cake in Gay's kitchen as she told me this story. One of her daughters, a nurse, is doing a cake decorating course as a hobby and the cake was one of her projects. It was superb cake. I asked Gay when her family first came to Australia as I find the Italian influence on the district a fascinating story.

Gay's maiden name was Deluniversity (pardon please if spelling is incorrect). Her father worked initially for the Falcone's in Emerald, and met and married Gay's mother, a Galenti, who came to Australia with her parents as a thirteen year old girl. Her father, Gay's grandfather Galenti, must have been a bit of an adventurer, and first came to Australia almost a hundred years ago. He made 4 trips to America and three to Australia, each time returning to his wife in their village in Italy.

After returning home the last time, having lost a 27 year old daughter to illness while he was away, he said to his wife he was going back to Australia to live permanently. He was tiring of the travel and two of his sons had migrated to Australia, living I think on a farm at Corinella. His wife didn't want to leave Italy so they more or less agreed on a permanent separation. After this decision was made, Gay's grandmother overheard neighbours discussing it and one of them said something to this effect, "Oh well, it won't be long after he's gone, she won't bother to cook and she'll lose her other daughter." This galvanized Gay's grandmother to pack up and leave her village and accompany her husband to Australia. I wondered, on hearing this, if the lost daughter suffered anorexia, which would not have been undersood then.

The Galenti history is recorded in the Pakenham library, if I'd like to find it, Gay told me. Her grandfather worked at the spud farms around Corinella, then hitched rides on trains to Queensland with his swag on his back to work on the canefields. The Italian workers, she said, got on well in Australia because they didn't take offence at the dago and wog jokes and took it all in good fun, and worked hard.

I will follow it up in the library one day. I only wish Gay's grandfather wrote a book about his travels through America and Australia. He must have been an amazing fellow.

Heinz

Heinz snapped. He grabbed his antagonist, his boss, by the throat and squeezed. His boss was English. Heinz migrated to Australia from Germany in 1960, aged 25. He was from Koln, a German city destroyed by allied bombing in WW2 and rebuilt amidst post war poverty and hardship. First thing every morning Heinz's boss would come in pretending to fire a make believe submachine gun at him, then put two fingers sideways under his nose doing a Hitler imitation.

As the boss gurgled his eyes expanded, resembling two light bulbs. Heinz dropped his his right hand down and grabbed his balls. Squeezing, he picked him up and tossed him across the room. The boss screamed hurtling through the air then lay motionless after crashing into the opposite wall.

Heinz was sacked from his job as a head baker at Tip Top. The job was well paid, 28 quid a week, fitting for a skilled pastry/cook baker experienced in large commercial operation. There was hell to pay. The union became involved, and after a great hullabulloo the boss was also sacked, but Heinz was not reinstated.

He was desperate for work, night shift; his wife Lotte had a job in the pay office at Bosch and their daughter, who was 10 months old when they migrated, needed care during the day. He found a night shift at Humes Pipes. He picked up pipe making quickly. Not long after starting in the plant at Westall, Humes got the contract to supply pipes for the Cribbs Point/Bangholme sewer pipeline, requiring big numbers of 72 inch concrete pipes.

Management approached the pipe makers, Heinz and another German, a Hungarian, and two Maltese, explaining the urgent need to increase production and asking what length of shift they would like. The men decided a 12 hour shift from 6pm to 6am and they were paid on the basis of how many pipes they made. It was hard, dirty work but they worked well together and Heinz was earning 100 quid a week or more. In a little over 18 months he'd saved enough to buy a house for cash in Springvale.

After some years Heinz heeded a change from the heavy, dirty concreting and did a management course. He got a job as a production supervisor at a laminating and insulation company. He had no knowledge of laminating/insulation. It was a new company, and the owners and Heinz learnt together as the business expanded from one shift of eighteen workers to 3 shifts of 90 odd in total.

A few years later he left this job to go into business with a German friend in a business installing suspended ceilings. Heinz and Lotte bought a weekender at Gembrook and they liked it so much they came here to live a year later, in 1972. Heinz worked his last 9 years before retirement at the Dandenong Town Hall, in maintenance and then co-ordinating facilities and functions. He loved this job as he enjoyed dealing with people. He says he always had the gift of the gab. Lotte worked in the pay office at the protea farm. She died a couple of years ago after a long battle with cancer. Heinz continues their habit of walking their dog most mornings.

I often meet him on my walk. He's fit and debonair belying his age, with a healthy head of well groomed hair, a Prussian(?) moustache, and a walking stick under his arm. He likes a yarn. Given his personal history, it's no surprise he's a well of knowledge on many subjects. He's particularly well versed on European history. He's excitedly told me today of his grandson, an electrician, who plays 20/20 cricket in the burbs as an allrounder. He has three grandkids, the others a teacher and a nurse, children of his baby girl who came out in 1960.

I wanted to write this outline of Heinz before I forgot the details. It's a stinker of a day, a Total Fire Ban with a gusty north wind. A bushfire is a real possibility. The dog's tongues were hanging out (what long tongues dogs have!)up the Quinn Rd. hill as early as 7.15am. I have a dentist appt. at 1.15 pm and a museum meeting at 3.30. Light duties before and after is the order of the day I should say.

Norm and John

A voice called out to me from the main road as I picked up an empty stubby in J.A.C. Russell Park this morning. It was Norm Smith on his way to buy newspaper, as he does most mornings. I didn't hear what he said but, knowing Norm, it would have been something jocular or good natured. I waved and continued walking, calling out "G'day Norm, looks like it'll be a beautiful warm day."

I did my loop through the pub car park, where I picked up four empty beer cans, and was crushing the cans with my heel on the pavement in Red Rd. when a voice called, "That's a big noise you're making." It was Norm on his way back home, by now in company with John, another regular morning walker to the newsagency/post office. I crossed the road to join them.

I first got to know Norm in the early 1980's not long after Lib and I came to Gembrook. He was a regular in Col Turner's butcher shop (now 'Rubee Rose' hair dressing salon) on a Sunday morning, when Col would clean his shop and prepare for the week ahead, then have a couple of beers with whoever had turned up. Col didn't mind serving the odd customer (meat) on Sunday, and somehow beer on the morning of the Sabbath tastes extra good.

"You told me once Norm that you started work at U.S. Bus Lines in 1949, in the depot at Belgrave before you turned 15, but I can't remember what happened after that. Did you work for them all your working life as I know you drove a U.S. bus when we moved to Gembrook, before you retired."

"Yes I finished in 1996, I worked for U.S. all my working life, 47 and a half years, starting as a grease monkey. After I came back from National Service in the early fifties they moved me to the depot in the Gully. One of the drivers often didn't turn up, and by then I had a car licence, so they'd send me out with the bus so as to not upset the schedule, then because I didn't have a bus driving ticket, one of the other relief drivers would meet me along the way and take over the bus."

"That's a good effort Norm, living in the same town all your life and working for the same company."

"Yeah, my memory goes back to the thirties, somebody interviewed me a while ago for the fire brigade's website. I was about five years old when the '39 fires came. We lived in Launching Place Rd., on the high side. There was only nine houses along there then, six on the top side and three on the other. A spark started a fire somewhere down Le Souef Rd. and it took off in the grass and burned right round our house and left it standing. Mum sent someone up the pub and dad and a few blokes came and sat under the house with wet hession bags to put out embers that blew in."

I haven't known John for long, in fact I don't know his surname, but we always say hello and have a bit of a chat. He's amiable and articulate. I asked him how long he'd lived in Gembrook.

"Since 2006, when I retired. Before that we lived in Bayswater, for no particular reason except that you have to live somewhere, and it needs to be somewhere near work or transport. Like Norm I worked at the same place all my working life, 45 years at the The Herald Sun. We always liked Gembrook. We came up here a lot when we lived in Bayswater, often on weekends we'd go for a drive and have a barbecue or a picnic, at Kurth Kiln or out near the big dipper on Launching Place Rd."

"You must have started work in 1961. What did you do?"

"I started as an apprentice graphic reproducer at 15. That's to do with setting plates for newsprint. Over the years I did about 13 different jobs and ended up a manager. My last job was managing the new West Gate plant.

"So where'd you grow up if you don't mind me asking?"

"Elwood, then Heathmont by the time I started work. We had a good double brick house in Elwood but not much money. We couldn't afford a TV or many of the new things that were available, so mum worked out we could move to Heathmont into a weatherboard house and have money left over to buy some things. Funny when you look at it now, the Elwood property would be worth a $million plus, four times the value of the Heathmont house, and mum wasn't happy at Heathmont anyway."

"How'd the Herald Sun job come about?"

"I used to do a paper round. At 15 I was too old for that almost, but I was having trouble getting a job. I'd left Ferntree Gully tech in acrimonious circumstance and with poor school history, I admit I had a problem with authority, employers wouldn't look at me. The newsagent said I was the best paper boy he'd ever had and he'd put in a word for me at the paper where he had a good friend. They gave me a trial and after some time put me on. Over the years there were many changes and new technologies and after my youthful dislike of authority, I ended up in a position of authority. It's funny how things work."

I had no idea when I started walking this morning I'd be hearing stories like Norm's and John's. That's the great thing about life, and walking and talking. It's what makes Gembrook such a good community, and I hope it never loses it. I suppose it's up to us.

P.S. I was intending to write about something else today but wanted to record the above while it was fresh in my mind. (Last weekend I went out to Gay Fialla's and swapped honey for fresh eggs. I'd met her in the town during the week and she told me she had new chickens and to come out and get some eggs. We had a chat about her family's origins in Australia and Gembrook so that 'll be next. I'm behind with my blogging but I've never known January to be so full on work wise. And I have bee work to do, and wood splitting, so it dries out for winter. When I'm about to flag a big voice in my head says, "PERSIST".)

Snarly Snowie and Tom the Vet

Most days on my walk I tie the dogs up in front of the post office/newsagency and go in and read the Herald Sun for two or three minutes. I check Melbourne's reservoir levels on the weather page (it fascinates me on a daily basis to see whether the levels rose or fell the day before and correlate this in my mind to the weather.... the levels are falling rapidly now that we've had hot temperatures for this week, although amazingly, due to the cool and moist December, the overall level is higher now than it was on December 1), and flick over the day's horse racing page to see if there's a horse I'd like to put a dollar on ($1 place bet only.... just makes life a little more interesting). I don't buy the paper, why would you when you can glean what you want without paying, which saves me a dollar plus (funding the bet). The newsagent doesn't mind.

A couple of weeks ago while I was checking the form, an old bloke came in and said that the older dog outside bit him on the hand when he went to pat her. He thought she was only being protective of my backpack which I leave outside, adding that it was only a warning nip. He was sucked in, he said, because the young dog is so friendly and tried to lick him to death and jump up on him, so after patting 'Pip' he went to do the same to 'Snow'. I apologized for 'Snow's bad manners. "No worries", said the old fella, "I should be more careful."

Last week 'Pip' and 'Snow' had an appointment with the new vet for annual heartworm injection, and Snow was also due for C5 vaccine (parvo etc). 'Snowie' hates vets so I was a bit worried how she'd go when Tom started sticking the thermometer up her bum and jabbing her with needles. There was no problem with 'Snowie's behaviour, Tom seems to have excellent skills. In fact when examining her teeth as part of the general check up, he found she had a split tooth. This would need extracting under anaesthetic after a week on antibiotis. If left it would, sooner or later, become infected.

The tooth was extracted on Wednesday. While she was 'out to it', he found the tooth next to it was loose so he took it out too, and while polishing her other teeth he found another small one which was decayed so out it came as well. 'Snow' made a quick recovery after a "textbook" anaesthetic and operation, and she seems a lot happier. As well as the biting incident at the post office I'd noticed she'd been snarlier than usual for a while. Probably the broken and decayed teeth were upsetting her.

Tom the vet is making quite an impact in the town. I often see him talking to people in the street and it seems his services as a vet are greatly appreciated. And he's a good man... he walks to work from somewhere down Launching Place Rd. He's coming up sometimes while I'm going back down. When I took the the dogs up for their shots he explained he's walking to work to lose some of the Christmas cheer he put on, as well as reduce by a tiny amount some carbon emission. I told him however small his contribution seemed he was doing a great thing for the earth, every day, by doing that, and his attitude needs to flow on to everyone.

"One thing I've noticed," he continued, "when you walk it makes you more aware of things like the clouds.. you have an eye on the sky wondering if it's going to rain and get you wet."

"Dead right Tom, and not only that you'll notice you become aware of a lot more...trees, birds, noises, scents, you start to use all your senses more. The car robs us of much of this, makes us immune to our own senses. And distances and seperates us from other humans."

"Youre right you know. We noticed when we were in Africa a while ago, people are so carefree, happy and friendly. Most have never owned a car."

"We noticed the same thing in rural Peru. I don't like to be critical of my own countrymen, but we've lost our way."

"Yeah. But it's different in the outback. It's somehow different there."

I had to agree, not that I've spent a lot of time in the outback, but there's a huge difference in attitude. I haven't talked to Tom at any length about his background, but I know he was a vet in outback Qld. and got his pilot's licence so he could get around better in the bush. I read that in a local paper that did a story on him.

He seems like a hell of a good bloke, our new vet Tom, and I hope he and his wife Kath have a long, happy and successful association with the Gembrook community.

Lionel Smedley

I mentioned the Smedley family at Mt. Burnett in my last post. I don't think I've written about Lionel Smedley before, so I should.

I first met patriarch Lionel in the early 1990's when he was already an octogenarian. I picked various foliage and blossom in his established garden including beech, camellia, magnolia, rhodie, wintersweet, pieris, bay, pittosporum, and viburnum. Lionel loved nothing more than to walk around his garden showing trees and shrubs he'd planted and nurtured over the previous 40 years. He loved "the blooms" and grew a paddock of daffodils and jonnies just for the flowers, and a large vegie garden. Every visitor left with bunches of flowers and vegies.

Often he'd offer me a cuppa and usually I made the time as I loved talking to him about gardens, sport, history, and life in general. He was genuinely interested in my situation and offered good advice, somehow rolling it into an anecdote from his own personal experience. We became good friends.

He was born at home at Black River near Stanley in Tasmania in 1911. He remembered being sick on the trip across Bass Strait from Tassy in 1917 on the 'Marawah', a boat which carried general cargo and cattle as well as passengers. The family moved to Victoria so his father could take up a job as manager of a vegetable farm, 'Beach Farm' at Numerella, owned by three businessmen, near Port Welshpool. Lionel had 3 sisters and two brothers and went to primary school at Hedley, a 7 mile horse ride each way. It being wartime, the kids had trenches in the playground and used to throw clay as pretend bombs.

Lionel's father got crook a couple of years after moving to Port Welshpool, (he died of cancer when Lionel was 16 or 17) and the family moved to Clayton in Melbourne. Lionel went to Caulfield Tech and learned blacksmithing but couldn't get a job at that, eventually finding work at the Diamond Dry Cell battery factory in West Melbourne. From there he moved to the E.M.F. Electric Co. after being sacked for being late for work due to poor public transport. He moved to the Kiwi Boot Polish factory at Burnley, easy to get to by train, for 12 months, where every pay day they'd give you a free tin of boot polish, presumably because they knew you'd knock it off if you weren't given it.

He then worked at B.S.Spark Plugs West Melbourne for 3/4 months until they went broke. He went back to E.M.F. Electric Co. and shifted to Nth. Carlton where he lived with his boss who'd befriended him, but who could be "a bit cranky" at times. He'd lost a leg in the war and Lionel had to take his 'leg' to Repat for repadding. He was a Footscray supporter who drank at the footy and when he came home he wouldn't come out of the lavatory in the backyard. His wife would send Lionel out to try and coax him in. He was good to Lionel and taught him welding after work. Lionel worked for three months for C.J White and Sons making locks, welding fences etc. by arrangement with E.M.F.

The Depression bit hard and Lionel was sacked. He saw an ad for rural workers at Exell's Labour Bureau and went to a mixed farm at Dimosa, out from Charlton, for 15 shillings a week plus his keep. It cost 30 shillings to get there on the train. His boss was a bloke named McNicol, a Wycheproof councillor. Lionel slept in a tent at the back and his bed was a stretcher on four kerosene tins. He stayed for the wheat season and his time was spent loading wheat, cutting thistles, and building fences. On Sunday they would divert water from the main channel using sandbags to replenish dams.

McNicol's wife milked the cows and separated the cream, but there was no butter milk for inside, it was all sent away. There was no sheds for machinery, it was all left outside in the weather. There was a mice plague. Galvanised iron sheets were used to make fences eighteen inches high around the haystacks to keep the mice out. Less than eighteen inches and the mice would pile on top of each other till the those on top could jump over. The same was needed around Lionel's tent, or the mice would eat his clothes and bedding, a fate suffered by the previous worker.

He went back to Clayton, market gardening with his stepfather. They grew beetroot and Lionel would leave with a load by horse and cart at 9.00pm. after a day's work picking and packing, to get to market by 5.00 am. More than half the time he couldn't sell so he'd buy other stuff for variety to sell around houses door to door at Oakleigh on the way home. He did this for a couple of years in the early thirties till things got a bit better, when he went back to C.J Whites in inner Melbourne, doing welding around houses and banks. Metal fences were popular, and elevators containing metal cage and surrounds, were now common.

Before he was married in 1937, he took a job welding for A.I.Steel(Aust.Iron+Steel) as he needed the higher wage, but it invoved travelling. He worked on the wheat silos at Geelong and the Bogong Kiewa Hydro scheme. He stayed with A.I.Steel through WW2, during which he spent six months on Cockatoo Island off the Kimberley coast building the pier. After the war he lived in Caulfield and was well paid as an experienced heavy welder; his salary was 14 quid a week in 1952 before he sold his house and moved to Mt.Burnett where he bought a farm and the Post Office agency and the mail run Cockatoo to Mt.Burnett.

The Post Office agency paid only 4 quid a month and the mail run a similar amount, but Lionel had a strong desire to farm. In November '52, not long after he and Vera and the three young boys moved to the farm, 9 inches of rain fell for the month. The post office operated in a room at the side of the house for many years before later being relocated to a small building on the main road. Whilst he'd had a large drop in income, it didn't worry them as they grew their own food and the annual council rates on their 39 acre farm were 4 quid and four shillings. Lionel grew spuds for a couple of years but "couldn't sell 'em", so he changed to dairying and made cream, supplying the Dandenong Butter Factory.

Lionel had strong interest in sport and was an excellent footballer and cricketer in his day, having played at Oakleigh, Northcote, Springvale and Clayton. He barracked for Carlton, beginning when his father took him to a VFL match, Carlton vs Collingwood. His father, who before going to Tassy was captain/coach of Footscray at one stage in the VFA, barracked for Collingwood. His dad lifted him up so he could see. Horrie Clover, a high flying full forward, and 'Dasher' Donohue were stars for Carlton and Lionel was hooked.

When he first went to Oakleigh in 1928 or 1929 as a seventeen or eighteen y.o., Frank Meagher (ex Essendon mosquito fleet) was coach, and the team included several famous players; George Rudolf (ex Richmond), Eric Fleming (Geelong), Sailor Irwin, (Carlton) Driver(Melbourne) and Gomez(Essendon). Gomez, a Spaniard, "was a good bloke", and gave Lionel his guernsey at training, as he didn't have one. When he moved to Mt. Burnett he played cricket for Cockatoo and despite being in his forties he won the best player trophy in 1953/4 and the best bowler another year. He was a medium pace bowler with a nagging line and length and such accuracy that most of his wickets were caught and bowled, as batsmen were forced to play straight back. Some of Lionel's old teammates from way back still visited him.

I never met Vera, she died in 1988. Lionel enjoyed his garden and fresh air at Mt. Burnett till just before Christmas 2002 when he died, falling to cancer. He was ready to go, having lost his mobility through arthritis in his legs in his last couple of years. When I was trying to box the swarm three days after Christmas, Don and Barb were picking flowers before visiting the Gembrook cemetery where Vera and Lionel are buried.

Lionel is one of the people I feel so grateful to have met. I still pick in the garden. Bob and Dawn, Don and Barb, and Len, follow the family tradition of growing vegies and flowers. They live happily in retirement and show the same warmth, friendship and generosity that Lionel did.

One That Got Away

The phone rang about 3.00pm last Saturday. It was a warm sunny day. Our Christmas visitors had left about midday, I'd been shopping down at Pakenham and was ready for a bit of peace and quiet. "Who could this be?" I thought picking it up. "Hello."

"Is that you Carey? This is Dawn Smedley."

Dawn is Bob's wife at Mt.Burnett. My mind quickly put two and two together.

"Hi Dawn. You've got a bee swarm, yeah?"

"How did you know?"

"Looking out the window at the balmy sunny day, as soon as I knew it wasn't a regular caller, it just came to me. I usually get a call in November or see a swarm well before now. The weather's slowed 'em up this year."

"I'm just ringing in case you want them. They're hanging in a magnolia tree near the track to Lennie's, just past the big oak."

Lennie lives in the old house where the kids grew up with their parents Lionel and Vera. Bob and Dawn live next door on one side and Don and Barb on the other. I met Lionel through his granddaughter Linda who used to work in the Gembrook supermarket before she married and had kids. I picked foliage and blossom at Lionel's for years before he died and I still do.

"I've got some frames and foundation in the shed Dawn, I'll put them together this arvo and give you a ring in the morning. If the swarm's still there I'll come over and get them."

As it turned out I didn't have new frames and foundation in the shed. The parcel I'd had posted up by the beekeeping supplies people some months earlier had a couple of new boxes in the flat and some bits and pieces. I meant to order frames and foundation in the spring so the foundation was nice and fresh but I must have forgot, and then thought I'd done it and the parcel was it, but no. I had sticky combs, but swarms don't like stickies, they love foundation wax as they're ready to build new comb. I washed the stickies and found a box and base and lid thinking I may as well get the bees. I hadn't been to the Smedley's for a while and was too busy to get that way and pick pre Christmas like I usually do.

When I got there on Sunday Dawn wanted to watch me box the swarm. Bob stayed well away as he's allergic to bee sting. I shook them out the tree onto my hession bag and the bees obliged after a few minutes by 'walking' into the hive I'd put on the ground at one end of the bag. Dawn was fascinated.

There was quite a mass of bees still outside the hive, on the front face. Some stragglers flew back up to where the swarm was on the tree branch. I shook them down again. I had to go. I explained to Dawn that I'd come back at dusk and get them when they were all inside. I was confident they'd all go in even though I hadn't seen the queen, but I told Dawn it was still possible they may decide to go somewhere else.

I went back after 8.00pm, expecting to wait a few minutes while the late ones came home before locking them in and taking them home. Dawn saw me arrive and came over, saying after I left earlier the ball of bees returned to the tree, almost as big as before, but when she checked later it had gone and there were bees flying in and out of the box so they must have gone in.

That didn't sound right to me, so I lit the smoker and lifted the lid. There were few bees there. The queen musn't have gone in, instead flying back into the magnolia, causing the other bees to join her. Then they've taken off for a new home of their own choice, leaving only a small mumber of stragglers which were now in my box. Dawn was disappointed that I'd spent time and effort and two trips all for nothing. I explained that when you work with bees you have to be accepting that it's not all smooth sailing.

I put the hive with the stragglers near my other hives. I was up early and reduced it's entrance next morning so that my big hives didn't rob it. I'd put a frame of young brood in to help catch the swarm which would have been surrounded by fresh nectar. I didn't like to think of the stragglers, who were clustering on the frame of brood, being killed in a robbing attack.

A few hours later, after thinking about it, I moved it along a few feet to the end of the row and gave it a couple of frames of hatching brood from the hive next to it. I put three empty boxes on top of the lid, and took the sheet of tin that was on top of the hive next to it and put it on it instead. Now it looked similar to the other hive, so most of the returning bees from the strong hive started returning to it instead, bolstering it's numbers.

The next day the weather turned again and I haven't been back to check, but I'm assuming my 'new' hive is busily rearing a queen, which of course it'll need if it's to survive. I'll be interested to check when the weather improves.

Speaking of the weather, it's been amazingly cool. Too cool for bees and honey really. I hope it hasn't mucked up the red gum flow up north, which needs hot stable weather really to have a big flow. We had 15ml of rain last night and I'm loving it from my gardening point of view, but it must be the coolest summer in my memory. SO FAR.

Christmas Eve/ The Massage

Our 5kg organic free range turkey from out the the back of Byron Bay is cooked and in the shed fridge, wrapped in alfoil. Lib, who's working today, and Christmas day, cooked it yesterday with Robbie as assistant chef. The house has been spring cleaned and bedrooms reorganised for our guests. Food and beveridge fills fridges and pantry for two or more days of feasting.

Hughesie's grass is last to cut today to finalize work for me for the time being. It'll be nice to have a rest. A highlight of my pre-Christmas was a session in Vilma's massage chair. Vilma is a lady who lives nearby. I do her lawn and garden. Gord and I mowed her place last Saturday. I said I'd come back on Monday to pull a few weeds in her front garden and plant some roses she'd bought.

Monday turned out hot. I cut and poisoned several elm suckers in the garden bed in front of the house and Vilma helped me weed a row of mini agapanthus I'd planted some months ago as a border on a bed at the back. She said Ralph next door wanted a hand unloading furniture from a trailer into the new house he'd just moved into and asked me would I help him. So we left planting the roses for a cooler day and went in to rouse Ralph.

Ralph is an opportunist. A builder of sorts but entering his twilight years as far as building goes, he has made use of my services a number of times during the house construction. We muscled the heavy furniture into the house, Ralph slipped me $20 for a previous job, then Vilma said to Ralph, "Maybe we could do the fridges while Carey's here?" There was an old fridge sitting outside the back door that needed moving to the laundry under the house and another one that was to go further down the road to Vilma's friend Rosemary-Beth.

Off we all went in Ralph's Suzuki Vitara with the fridge in the trailer behind. Rosemary-Beth opened her shed where the fridge was to go and Ralph and I inched in carefully through all the paraphanalia, trying not to trip over a blue heeler dog chewing on corncobs. I told Rosemary-Beth what the vet had told me recently, that in his experience of operating for bowel obstruction for dogs, 80% of them were caused by corncobs. She thanked me for the tip and took away the cobs, adding that the dog was her daughter's, and yesterday her daughter's partner had kicked her out and locked the house so she couldn't get in again, and there was nowhere for the dog to go, and unless she found a home for it it would have to be put down. Ralph and Vilma didn't offer, nor did I.

Back at Vilma's, having by now spent far more time than I intended, Vilma offered me a sit in her massage chair while she made me a fresh squeezed juice. Forgetting for a moment that I had yet to pick tricolour beech at Huit's and was therefore short of time, I accepted quickly, thinking the massage may loosen up the tightness developing in my upper back.

Vilma sat me up in her chair and clicked the remote control. Her son, a bloke about my age, but very sick with a terminal illness Vilma has never specified, made conversation. The juicer whirred busily in the kitchen.

The chair closed around my calves ang gripped and squeezed. The seat and back of the chair vibrated and moved and kneaded me all the way up my legs and body including the neck. It was sensational in the extreme. If you've experienced one of these things you'll know what I mean. It was a surprise to me. When Vilma told me months ago she'd bought a massage chair on ebay for a figure in excess of $3000, I thought she was batty. Apparently they are usually considerably more than that and after a session myself I don't doubt it, given the amazing engineering that must be involved to make a machine do such a thing. It seemed to have a brain.

Vilma came in with a big mug of juice each. Carrots, three fresh pineapples, garlic, I recall she said, God knows what else. She bought the chair and makes the juice to help her son in his last years. I sipped at the juice and enjoyed the chair. It was a half hour of heaven. Vilma showed me the jewellery she makes. I bought a red jasper necklace for Lib for Christmas.

"What do I owe you for today?," Vilma asked as I was leaving.

"Nothing today Vilma. A fair swap for my go in the chair."

"Have a good Christmas, and come back anytime if your back needs a go in the chair. I'll call you when the grass needs mowing."

I left feeling fantastic with a little Christmas pudding Vilma gave me and a bottle of orange marmalade, made from oranges from her tree.

December Bonus

Well I never expected to be picking mushrooms in mid December. I had pinies for breakfast yesterday and field mushies this morning. The 80ml of rain that fell over the weekend after starting Friday afternoon has been the best rain for the year.

Our fig tree fell over with the weight of the water in the gusty wind. The trunk broke away from the roots just below ground level. I'll miss it but it makes a bit of space for something else, maybe a small flower bed. The garden was becoming a little crowded with trees and shrubs.

I worked through the weekend picking beech and holly, dodging rain and showers. The cool weather for this time of year is a big advantage for my line of work, the foliage not wilting quickly, and therefore giving more time before it needs to be in water. I certainly don't miss the searing sun and hot wind we get some years pre Christmas. This year it's been a bit of a dream come true, this last month. Today's another big beech day then I'm hoping it'll start to scale down as the wholesaler's sheds should be near full.

Then, if we have some nice weather, I can get into a few gardening jobs, like remove the fig tree and mow our grass and that of a few others. And if I get time and the weather's good I'll have a look at the bees. I've supered them twice, mid October and mid November, so they're 4 deckers. I haven't seen a swarm this season, The rain and cool has probably contained them some. The messmate is not going to flower this year so I don't expect a big honey season, but this rain should make the blackberry and clover and other ground flora give a kick. I'd hope to extract some honey after Christmas or in the new year given some settled weather from now on.

Native Frangipani

For a couple of weeks recently I enjoyed the fragrance of the native frangipani tree at the farm. It's on the bank of the old dam right near the shop and where every day I unload and often spend time bunching. A wonderful tree for its scent alone, it's a rainforest tree of NSW and Queensland which does well in the Dandenongs. It's botanic name is Hymenosporum flavum.

It's a slender inconspicuous tree that you don't even notice most of the time. It's the scent that strikes, making you look around for the source, then, every year as if a new surprise, there it is in full flower. Magnifiscent!

I asked Elvie did she plant it there on purpose. She said she got it in for a lady who asked for one, back when we had a thriving nursery business. The lady never came back, so rather than repot it, one evening she planted it in the nearest space she could find.

Sometimes good things happen by accident, or luck. My tree of the week. If you like a scented garden, it's a must.

Poor Little Pip

I could tell Pip wasn't herself yesterday on the way up Quinn Rd. She wasn't bouncing and sprinting here, there and everywhere as she usually does. She walked sedately close to me. At the top of Quinn Rd. she wasn't with 'Snowie' right there at my feet ready to be put on the lead but sniffing around in the grass nearby. She squatted to do a toilet. Neighbour Janice came down Launching Place Rd. on the other side with her two collies. Old 'Hannah' trotted along some metres in the lead. Janice called for her to stop at the roadside before crossing, "Wait", but 'Hannah' was on the way home and kept going, with Janice now in a jog to catch her. Young 'Bee', obedient at Janice's side, crossed with them, about level with where 'Pip' was.

"How are you today," she called to me from about 20 metres away.

"I'm good mate. And you?"

"Not Bad. I have to watch 'Hannah' here, she's on a mission to get home."

"'Snowie's the same, if she's not on the lead she just goes straight across the road on the way home, cars or no cars."

Pip had inched up to young 'Bee', without the usual frisky tail wagging exuberance.

"I don't know what's the matter with 'Pip' this morning, but she's not herself. Maybe she's sore like me."

"What've you been up to?"

"Oh, climbing trees and cutting foliage, twisting and reaching with the cutting pole. It's strained my hip and stirred up the arthritis in my foot."

"That's no good. Can you take a break?"

"No, I have a lot to do. I've taken anti-inflammatories, I'll be OK."

"Well good luck", Janice said as she turned and walked after 'Hannah' who was now 50 meteres down Quinn Rd.

Pip kept stopping on the lead as we went up the main road, wanting to do a toilet in the grass. After I took her off the lead at Innes Rd. she stopped every minute or so and squatted, but could not manage it. Constipation, I thought, now a little worried, as she seemed a bit distressed. In the park where she normally jumps up on the bench for me to put her back on the lead she remained grounded with a sad look. As we went up the main street she decided she'd had enough and sat on the footpath, unwilling to walk.

I didn't fancy carrying her home with her in pain. We were only twenty metres past the new vet's surgery in Gembrook which only opened a week or so ago. Opening time,8.30am, was half an hour away, so I sat on the front step nursing 'Pip' on my lap. She was a bit shivery and dribbling and shifted every minute or so, which showed me she couldn't get comfortable. I hoped the vet wasn't late.

While we waited, 'Snowie' kept letting me know we should be on our way home, wanting her breakfast no doubt. Sam Mazzarelli stopped on his way back from the post office. I explained and Sam wished me well, saying it was good to have a vet in town now. Geoff Howard stopped, Big John McCann, then Glen Binstead. I explained to each in turn. I appreciated their concern. Glen asked me had I seen his copper beech tree lately.

"No I haven't Glen. I've been meaning to trim some foliage off where we did last year, to stop it encroaching too much into your neighbour's carpark, but I haven't made it yet."

"Well the contractors who clear around the power lines have butchered it. I didn't even know they were coming, they always used to let you know. Come when you like and get some, you might be able to tidy it up a bit."

Thanks Glen, I will."

The vet's nurse came and let us in. While I was filling in the new patient form the vet came in with an animal in a big carry cage, said gidday, and went into another room. I'd met Tom a number of times over the last two months as I walked the dogs past his soon to be opened surgery. He and his wife Kathy, a vet also and a bloody good sort I must say, have worked hard preparing their first business venture. There was a lot of work to do. The building, owned by Vince and Traudie Lamendola for all the 27 years we've lived in Gembrook, has been vacant for a year or so and was previously the venue of 'That Really Retro Cafe in Gembrook' which added buzz to the town but didn't last. Before that it was a gift/craft shop for a while and way back Vince and Traud had a pizza shop there. Good pizzas too, not like some of the crap around these days.

Pip squatted and arched and as I watched, dropped a rock on the floor. It made a noise like a heavy stone hitting. The nurse picked it up with a tissue and took it in to show Tom. Tom came out and we took Pip into a consulting room and onto the steel table. I had to pick 'Snowie' up to get her to come in. She hates vets.

Tom said she should come good now she'd dropped the rock. "Man, that was a big hard one", he said. "Do you give her fresh bones?"

"Yes, every day."

"I'd say she's getting too much bone marrow. It's a bit strong for little dogs and binds them up. Give her less bones and some good wet food regularly."

I bought a bag of 'Science' dry food, a bag of 'Dr. Natural' seed that you soak in water for 12/24 hours then add to fresh meat, and a worm tablet for each dog. I left the dog tucker to pick up later as I had to walk home. Pip was back to her normal self going home. Including the consultation, I spent $145 at the new vet's surgery. That's better than the $2000 it cost a mate of mine after his dog ate a corn cob and it got stuck in the bowel. Tom said 80% of bowel obstructions in his experience have been corn cobs, they just don't break down in the dog's gut.

You learn something everyday, as I've said before. The good story of the day for me came later when I went to Glen Binstead's and picked the most beautiful dark copper beech I'd ever seen. It was meeting him at the front of the vet's that jogged me to go. There was more beech for me than previously as the tree needed balancing up after it was cruelled by the contractors.

A Red Gum Flow?

I'd read in the bee journal that there was good budset on the red gum in central and northern Victoria but I was still surprised when Lib and I tripped to Wangaratta to attend Mark Kelly's funeral. The trees were hanging heavy with bud, some just breaking, into the heaviest flowering I think I've ever seen. When I stepped outside at Moll's house on the Three Mile creek on Thursday evening I could hear the hum of bees from 40 metres away. It would gladden the heart of anyone who has kept bees.

River red gum is the most widely distributed of the the eucalypts in Australia. It has an aura that captures the imagination of painters, poets and writers, and therefore is probably the tree most easily recognized by Australians, and has a strong place in folklore. It is the quintessential tree of the Australian inland landscape.

A great thing about travelling is watching the flora change along the way. We left about 6.30 am and an hour later after the rise up and over Mt. Slide, we're on the north side of the Great Dividing range and soon into red gum country. There's a stong feeling of welcome in the nude trunks and sleek branches, in all manner of shape and contortion. A bit like going home for me, the sight of red gum fills me with nostalgia; swimming holes on searing summer days, beekeepers long dead and gone, mates interstate, and, oddly, travel in Mexico and Peru, where I've been astonished to come across huge red gum trees most unexpectedly.

It was good catching up with so many old mates. It was a bit like a football club reunion and a nurse's reunion rolled into one. We were all there to say goodbye to Kel, a good man, who will have a place in our hearts until we, in turn, reach the end. It was once many 21sts, then many weddings, then many 40ths, 50ths, I suppose we're entering the many funerals stage.

It was especially good to see 'Grub' there. He'd rung me a little over a year ago to tell me he'd had cancer of the face, and after extensive surgery and chemotherapy had been given the all clear for twelve months. He wanted to have a beer with me. I met him at his son's place in Wang. He'd lost an eye and half his jaw and the roof of his mouth, but he was in good spirits since he was well enough to have the odd stubbie or two and take pictures of his grandchildren. I rang him last weekend to tell him we'd lost Kel and he said he'd see me at the funeral.

After the service at St. Pat's church and again at the lawn cemetery, refreshments were at the Rover's clubrooms. I was sitting at a table with Grub. Des Steele, Pat McKenzie, Billy O'Brien and his brother Paul had gravitated to the table, there were others standing around, and Lib was next to me with a group of nurses at the other end of the table, some of whom I could place, some I couldn't.

"You remember Debbie Mead," said Lib.

"How are ya Gunna? Of course you remember me."

"Now I do, I saw you out at the cemetery. I knew I knew you, but couldn't put a name to you. It's been more than 20 years. Now it's obvious. How are mate? You're looking great."

"Yeah, I'm fine. I married again. You wouldn't know him. He used to chase me more than thirty years ago when I was with Lib at the nurse's home. I used to call him 'Mick the prick', now I call him 'darling'."

Deb always was a wag. She used to write humourous poetry, just had a talent for rhyme. She'd pull a poem out she'd written the previous night and have everyone in fits.

"How's Terry?" Her first husband was a friend of mine from the footy club. They went to Queensland. Nobody had seen 'Poo' in years. She closed her eyes and groaned and shook convulsively for a couple of seconds.

"Sorry. It's just that whenever he's mentioned I get this dreadful feeling of loathing. To answer your question, I don't know, and couldn't give a stuff. All I know is he didn't come down to his mother's funeral a couple of year's ago. Jean died slowly. She was in hospital calling out 'Terry, Terry, I want to see Terry.' She idolised him. She hung on. He didn't come. He didn't come to the funeral."

Grub stood up at the table opposite me. He'd been sitting there quietly chatting to Steely, having his third pot, his limit, as he was driving. He thrust out his hand. "It's been great to see you Gunna, I'm off now."

"Great to see you so well Grub. Next time I'm coming up I'll give you a ring and try to catch you out at the farm."

Deb heard this. "Is that Grub Younger? Peter Younger? You used to have the long beard." She got up and met Grub as he moved around the table. "Jesus Grub! What the hell happened to you?"

"The ants have had a bit of a go at me. But we're getting there, I just have a bit of trouble eating. I do a lot of dribbling." Grub showed no embarrassment.

"I love men that dribble. You poor darling." Deb said, as she stroked Grub's hair.

Later, that evening, when I stepped outside and heard the bees humming in the red gum, it was not just the thought of a honey flow that cheered me.

Life's Mystery

Mark's gone. My friend Mark died yesterday afternoon. Where has he gone? His body lies yet, most probably, in the big fridge at the back of the hospital, yet he has gone. Where is he?

Life's greatest mystery is death. We understand conception, birth, breathing, eating, loving, illness, ageing, but with death comes mystery. Where does the life, the spirit, the soul, call it what you like, go?

When I looked into Mark's eyes two weeks ago at the hospital I saw in him what I'd never seen before. Wonderful eyes; rich brown, clear, sharp, piercing like those of an eagle, but loving. I was looking at his life, his spirit, his soul, soon to be free of his crippled body.

I am convinced our spirit/soul goes somewhere after our body wears out. It's in the eyes. But where?

A Big Mob for Muster

I heard an aboriginal lady talking on radio Australia last weekend, about the difficulties she endures to buy groceries with her centrelink payments, since the 'intervention'. It was all too complicated for me to relate here, but she concluded by saying something like this-

"We feel like a big mob of sheep, the big boss calls a muster and we have to come and do this and that, and it's all so difficult, and then we end up paying so much for everything and getting so little."

Later, walking along Innes Rd as usual, I came to two barriers put across the road. 'ROAD CLOSED'. I continued into J.A.C.Russell Park. There was a jam donut van on the grass and people putting up tents for stalls, jumping castles,etc. A lady I know from Emerald said "Hi" as she rushed past, excitedly adding that she was a 'clown' for the day. It was a hive of industry. Ah yes, 'Kids Fun Run with Thomas' day. 'Thomas' is a small steam engine painted up to look like 'Thomas the Tank Engine' of the 1980's TV show.

I saw a couple of my neighbours helping organize. "I didn't know you were into this nonsense".

"It's Ok, the kids have a lot of fun," was the response.

"That may be, but you're getting them young, conditioning them to the 'big event' and organized entertainment, and sheep-like behaviour. Turning them into good little consumers and milking families."

"Do you know where the money raised goes?"

I knew full well who initiates and supports the event. As the brochure says, proceeds go towards providing additional facilities for children undergoing treatment at the Children's Cancer Centre in Monash Medical Centre. Makes it kind of hard to argue against.

"I'm not against charity, particularly one like that. I see a bigger issue, past all the whoopeedo."

I don't think my comments were appreciated. I watched them setting up for a while till I saw a whitehaired man go under the tent which had a big sign out front, "SHOWBAGS", to set up a table.

"Hey mate, what's in the showbags?"

He turned his head towards me briefly, irritated at being interrupted. "Different stuff, depending on the age, there's different age groups."

In fact there are six age groups, beginning with 'The Purple Fun Run with Thomas', for kids aged 2 and under, through orange, blue, yellow and red, to 'The Green Fun Run with Puffing Billy", for kids 9-12. Every fun run entrant gets a 'showbag', after paying $15 entrance fee, or $20 if they didn't submit their entrance form before Nov3. Or $35 special price per family before Nov3, or $40 for late entries. (3 or more entrants from one family).

"Yeah? What sort of stuff?"

"Chips, lollies, free tickets to things."

"Chips and lollies! That'd be good for them!"

I've checked the wwwkidsfunwiththomas website since, and talked to people. To be fair, there was also an apple, a bottle of water, fun things and stickers. Amongst the the showbag contributors was a couple of international restaurant/take away food chains.

Robin in the post office doesn't share my misgivings. "As a grandmother, I can only say it was a wonderful, fun day, the kids had a ball."

Perhaps I should pull my head in. So my town becomes a traffic jam for the day, a megaphone I can hear from my garden 2km away blasts out for hours along with hooting from the train. Big deal. Perhaps I should just ignore it, mind my own business, say nothing.

I came across another quote recently, something like- "Make it your aim to live quietly and to mind your own business, and work with your hands, so that in your daily life you may gain the respect of others, and that you may live independently."

(1 Thessalonians 4;11,12)

Bad News

When I got home last Wednesday evening there was a message on the answering machine to ring Mary Kelly. Immediately I suspected bad news. Mark and Mary are longstanding friends. I met Mark playing football at Greta, Lib and Mary trained as nurses together beginning the same year, and worked at Wangaratta Base hospital. But it was always Mark that rang.

I rang back. Mary told me Mark was in a bad way. "His heart?" I had often thought that Mark may have heart trouble, there was family history (his father died young, leaving Win with 5 kids under 10), and he loved his beer. Since the operations, unsuccessful, on his crook back, he'd put on a lot of weight and couldn't do much physical exercise.

"No, his liver went toxic, his kidney's aren't functioning properly. He's in a serious condition in the Western General Hospital in Melbourne."

I thanked Mary for letting me know. There was not much to say, she didn't elaborate and I didn't like to press. I told her I'd go to see him as soon as I could.

I drove to Footscray the next day, after buying a citylink daypass and studying a new 'Melways' in the newsagency. It was hot day. Traffic was heavy on the freeway. Grass everywhere had browned off, and dust and litter blew up with the north wind. I had the van widows down to get air moving through to cool me down. Exhaust fumes were poisoning me slowly and noise from truck engines destroyed all chance of peace of mind. The news and discussion on the radio was all doom and gloom; economic downturn, water shortage, strafed super funds, unfair carbon emmission targets creating unemployment, loss of business overseas.

I thought of Mark as a 21 yo when I first met him 30 years ago. A fit,strong, country boy who played centre half back or back flank, he loved to run hard and straight through whatever was in the way. And always quick to help a teammate.

I left the freeway at Racecourse Rd. Passing Flemington racetrack I could see sprinklers spreading water onto the course, the only green grass I'd seen since leaving the hills. The huge grandstand stood empty but I imagined the colliseum effect it would have when filled with people. Melbourne, the 'big event' capitol.

Pulling into the hospital carpark, relieved the 'Melways' map in my head had worked as effectively as a GPS, a sandwich board met me "SORRY CAR PARK FULL." I found a park in the street 5 minutes walk from the hospital, pumped some coins into the ticket machine, and took a big swig of cold water from the bottle in the cooler bag, before heading off into the fumes and heat on foot.

I found Mark in the bed in room 15 where the nurse at the desk told me he'd be. His face and arms were yellow. His hands and forearms were swollen, almost bloated. There were plastic things strapped to the inside of his wrist, presumably to hook up a drip to. His arm and hand shook badly as he put it out for me to shake.

Conversation was difficult, it's hard to find the right words. He coughed badly every few minutes. The nurse asked me to go outside while she removed his bedpan, which he was lying on unknown to me, when I arrived. "If it hasn't happened by now it probably won't this time," she said, as she filled in the chart.

When she called me back in she asked me did I have time to help feed him. It was roast beef, potatos, sprouts, cauliflower and gravy. He ate only a few very small mouthfulls. He wheezed and coughed and winced. The pain was in his legs he said. His sister told me on the phone that night that his legs were swollen, black and horrible, the toxins had been leaking down into his legs. Mark told me he'd gone from 105 kg to 173 kg in a short time.

I was there about an hour. He thanked me for coming. I told him I'd see him Saturday if I could, if he wanted visitors, maybe Lib could come. He said he'd love to see us Saturday, "Give Lib a big kiss for me."

It was a sad drive back to Emerald. I made it in time for the monthly museum meeting starting at 3.30pm. The president read her report formally, saying she was resigning as of now, explaining that burnout and ill feeling on the committee were her reasons. The secretary then spoke glowingly of the now ex president, then also resigned, not just as secretary, but from the committee too. The treasurer, a 90 yo gem of a man, then spoke, saying it had been his intention to give his resignation today, but given the circumstances that had just unfolded, he'd hang on till end of term if necessary.

The vice president, who was at her first meeting for some months after 'a break', and who had been involved in the 'ill feeling on the committee', reluctantly took the chair, humiliated. We stumbled through the meeting and set a date for a December meeting. That gives us some time to try to sort out something. Just what I don't know, but frankly, after visiting Mark, possibly on his deathbed, the politics of the Emerald Museum Committee are of little consequence to me personally.

Rememberance Day

Ninety years ago to the day, WW1 ended, after years of fighting and millions of deaths. I can't help but be moved when I remember my grandfather, Edgar, who was on the western front and survived more than 1000 days of army service overseas. I was five when he died.

His only daughter, our mum Elvie, turned eighty yesterday. She talks of her dad with great fondness. He used to take her camping and fishing when she was a girl, up around Warburton, which was in the bush in the thirties. When the '39 bushfires came, he left Elvie with friends and went off to help fight the fires. It was four days till Elvie next saw him, without a word of his well being in that time.

Edgar died of a heart attack on his last day of work in the late fifties. A grocer, he closed his shop for the last time, rang his wife Annie saying, "Put the kettle on, I'm on my way." His Bedford truck crashed through a fence after his last delivery. He was dead at the wheel.

In 1990 I gave up smoking. I nearly went mad. In the depths of my desperation, at my lowest, I said to myself, "I'm doing this for you too,'Poppa'." He'd smoked since the war. Nanna Wilson, who hated his smoking, told me he'd tried to give up so many times but couldn't.

As I think of history, I feel a softness for people. Everyone has endured God knows what. People should look after other people. Help each other. I detest violence, exploitation, and injustice. John Donne (1572-1631) wrote-

No man is an island, entire of itself
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were
any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls
it tolls for thee.

The election of a coloured man to the presidency of the United States fuels hope for me. Hope that I share with friends. Perhaps, ninety years after WW1, nations can finally unite to overcome the huge 'global' challenges.

Teeth

I munched on a granny smith apple this morning as I began walking. It's been a pink lady most mornings lately. Gee, they've been good. Crisp and juicy sweet. On my way home last night, knowing we were low, I looked for apples in Sal's mini mart at Emerald. The pink ladies were old, soft and crinkly, the royal galas the same. The granny smiths were all that looked half fresh, so I bought a couple for a change, although the boys prefer red apples. I wasn't sorry, it was a good apple.

Of course you need teeth to chew into an apple. My father Lyle couldn't, not without peeling it and cutting into small pieces. He lost his teeth when he was quite young and had falsies as long as I recall. When we were kids, he'd peel and cut up an apple with a pocket knife in the car while waiting at a red light, and say how he really missed being able to bite straight into an apple.

Dad's parents had no teeth either. It wasn't uncommon. Mum says there was a real craze on sugar which she thinks started as the sugar cane industry expanded into a major agricultural industry in Australia. Sugar was an affordable luxury. Mum's parents also had false teeth. Her older brother, born in the early 1920's, lost his teeth, but she, born in 1928, managed to keep hers.

But dad had a sweet tooth, no doubt about it. It was almost a craving. He'd eat a whole block of chocolate in 15 minutes when we went to the footy. 'Cherry Ripes', 'Violet Crumbles', boiled lollies, he'd put us kids to shame. Mum says he'd take her to the pictures when they were courting and buy a box of chocolates which he'd eat that quickly she'd be lucky to have two.

Apparently dentists were once quick off the mark to remove your teeth, right up to the 1960's. Dentures were considered more convenient than toothache and rudimentary dental tecniques. As a matter of course many WW2 servicemen on discharge, at their final medical, as a parting gift from the armed services, had their teeth removed to save them paying for it later.

Fortunately in my time the emphasis has been on saving teeth, limiting the intake of sugar, and dental hygeine generally. I thank mum for being such a nag about us cleaning our teeth when we were young. When I was discharged from the army in 1973, the examining dentist asked where I grew up; my teeth were that good he said, I must have lived where the water supply was flouridated, which wasn't the case.

Well before then, dentists had stopped pulling teeth so readily and started drilling and filling. I went to a dentist in Wangaratta in the second half of the seventies for a check up. I hadn't had toothache or any problem, but he booked me in for a few return appointments, and I ended up with my molars full of big silvery grey fillings. A few years later, when I met and married Lib, mother-in-law Molly told me that that dentist had retired, and was known for doing unneccesary work. I must have copped him in his last year. I wish I'd talked to Molly before choosing a dentist.

Twenty five to thirty years later those fillings fell out or loosened and bits of thin drilled away teeth broke off regularly. I'm told dentists drill away less tooth nowadays and the amalgum is better. Sometimes small caries can come to nothing if left. Just the same, me and my bank account dread the trip to the dentist. I learned that the Ferrari parked near the clinic was owned by my dentist, so I tried another. Only once. I'll go gack to the Ferrari man next time I suppose, and I'll keep up the private health insurance, which covers some of the dentist's charges to us. The trouble is the premium keeps going up.

I met a volunteer dentist, a Canadian, walking on an extinct volcano that we'd climbed on Amantani Island in Lake Titicaca in Peru to watch the sunset over the lake. She said sugar, soft drinks and lollies had been introduced to the diet of the Indian population in recent times and many young people were losing all their teeth early. She said many of the old ones had excellent teeth, not having had sugar, but in many cases gum diease caused them to lose teeth anyway. She spent her annual holidays each year in Sth. America, working for no pay to help improve the lot of indigenous people, who without such volunteers had no access to dental service. A wonderful lady!

Teeth, a blessing, or a curse? Keep 'em clean, I suppose, and stay off sugar. I'll enjoy munching on an apple each morning as long as I can.

Little Gem, Arisaema speciosa

Two good little stories came out of yesterday. I walked as usual first thing then checked for email about 8.00am, enjoying a mint tea. I was sending a cross fingers message of hope to Lib's cousin Druscilla in California, re the U.S. election in a couple of days, when the phone rang.

It was my friend 'Hughsey' at his croaky best. "Do you have access to "gem magnolia. Daughter Jenny, florist in Noosa Queensland, has been on the phone, she needs some for a wedding she's doing next Saturday. She's tried her wholesalers, they say it's unavailable at the moment."

"I think you mean 'Little Gem' magnolia foliage Allan. It'd be unavailable now because it's in new growth which would be too soft for use. It'd just wilt. How much does she want?"

"I don't know. How about I get her to ring you?"

"No worries mate."

I finished my one line email to Druscilla concluding, "God bless y'all."

The phone rang again. Jenny. "The bride must have 'Little Gem' magnolia foliage, she wants the smaller grandiflora leaves with the brown backing, it's of special significance, something to do with her father who died recently."

"There's been strong demand for 'Little Gem' down here. I don't have any growing. I have the normal grandiflora, I thought Little Gem would be a flash in the pan thing and ignored it. I tell you what though, I know a lady who has a one in her back yard. I cleaned out her overgrown garden for her in the winter, but I didn't cut the 'Little Gem', thinking it may come in handy later, but then forgot all about it till just now. It may be that it's been slow to grow, not having been cut before. I'll have a look later today. How much do you need?"

"Five bunches would get me out of trouble."

I was pleased to be able to ring her back later saying there was 4 and a half bunches and it was quite good quality, not perfect, but not bad. She was greatly relieved. We arranged that I'd take it to the farm and she'd have 'Ultimate Florist Connect' pick it up and send it to Noosa for her.

"How much do I owe you? I'll get dad to pay you cash."

"No charge Jenny, if it goes off alright you can get dad to give me a bottle of wine for Xmas."

In my post last Sunday I complained about the non appearance of the forecast rain. Well it did come, it started very gently about 5.30pm while I was in next door having a drink with Tom and Kath. We sat on their deck and watched it. There was 20ml in the gauge next morning and showers continued on and off yesterday, not enough to make me wear a raincoat while working, but sufficient to catch me out away from the van and get me wet.

I was cold and bedraggled with a painful right shoulder arriving at the farm with some good booty late in the day. With Tuesday (today) being the Cup Day holiday, one of our customers cancelled, and I was looking forward to a quiet day. It turned out not to be so as Shane (Titen Flowers) gave us an order for rosemary, bay, cumquats and whatever rhodie I could find. For reasons of seasonal timing and exhausting supplies it was all difficult. We've been scrounging for rosemary for weeks. I went into the post office to ask the girls if they had a bush at home that I could prune. Mark Tobin, who lives at Sunset where I pick laurel from the hedge, was at the counter. "You don't happen to have a rosemary bush at home do you Mark?"

"Yes we do, quite a few, around that glasshouse we put up down the back. It needs cutting back. Help yourself."

It was the most beautiful rosemary you'd ever see and I easily picked what I needed, almost 3 feet tall, a huge contrast to the scrappy stuff I've been using. It knocked the socks of 'em at the farm.

I had a whinge to Meredith about my crook shoulder and wet clothes and she said, "I've got something to show you that'll make you feel better." She went outside and came back with a plant in a 6 inch pot about 18 inches high. "Do you remember about 5 years ago you came in with some seeds, sort of soft and red, and gave them to me saying a lady gave them to you and said that they are well worth growing? This is the first time I've seen a flower."

"Do you know what it is?"

"Yes. Arisaema speciosa. For years I didn't, I was getting sick of looking after them, not knowing what they were or what to do with them. I took one across the road and Coral knew it was an arisaema of some sort, she collects them. I gave her six plants, I still had ten. Now that I've seen it in flower, I can tell from the book that it's 'speciosa'. It has that six inch long strand coming out of the flower and the red tinge around the leaves. It's quite rare."

I admit my knowledge of tuberous perennials is sparse, it's not been an area of interest for me. But I'm tickled pink. I only wish I could remember who gave me the seeds so I could thank them. For the record, the Reader's Digest encyclopedia says of arisaema-

"Genus of tuberous perennials grown for their large, curious, hooded spathes, each enclosing a pencil-shaped spadix. Forms spikes of fleshy red fruits before plant dies down. Fully to half hardy. Needs sun or partial shade and humous-rich soil. Plant tubers 15cm deep in spring. Propogate by seed in autumn or spring or by offsets in spring."

(Post script-- added after the running of the cup. I had a tip from an erudite punter to back Newport ridden by Chris Symons. I had $5 each way. It's easy after the event, but I should've known to back Bart Cummings. Viewed gave him his 12th Melbourne Cup, at age 80. Fantastic!)

No Rain, Musket, Metal Prices,The Currawong Egg

The weather forecast all week has been saying rain on Sunday. Not showers, rain. It was disappointing when I woke that there was no tinkle on the roof. There was a fog which had cleared by the time I reached the main street, leaving the young Canary Island oak planted in the pavement a few years ago dripping water to the ground from its satched leaves. This tree is jumping away, remarkable given its position.

The sun is shining brightly now with no indication that rain will come later. After a record dry September and a similar October, which has not had publicity with so much else going on in the world, the last thing we want is a dry November. God help us!

My walk was exceptionally pleasant today. Sundays are good as there's less early traffic. There were a few cans for Jod along the way. New people have moved into Richard and Sandy's, although I haven't met them yet. It looks like people have moved into the 'McMansion on the gouge', twelve months after the first excavation. A 'For Sale' sign went up on the acre block next door to it a couple of weeks ago. I rang the agent, they're asking $245-275,000. Out of my league, but if I won Tattslotto I'd buy it and put a shed and small eco friendly house on it with a BIG water tank, and plant it out with useful trees and shrubs for food, blossom, foliage and firewood and mulch. I'd let Jod live in the house.

Jod has a new cat, Musket. It's a dear little stray thing that he found at the back of his flat a couple of weeks ago. He took it to the vet, then the farm, where Elvie's looking after it. It had a tapeworm and was starving weak. Jod told me on Friday it must have been sent to him. He'd been sad thinking about Tumbleweed, really miserable, and suddenly Musket turned up.

"Why did you call it Musket?" It semed a strange name for a cat.

"Because just before I went outside and saw it around the rubbish bins looking for something to eat, I'd been standing looking at the photo on the wall of Daniel Boon and his musket. Stupid name for a cat, I know, but there you are. I owe Mum the money for the vet's bill, we're going halves. I was so pissed off this morning. I went all the way down to the recycling depot to sell me cans, and the bloke said he could give me only 20 cents a kilo, or $22, as he weighed 'em as 110kg. They were worth $1.10 a kilo two weeks ago, I would have got about $120. Fuck that, I brought 'em back. I'll keep 'em till the price goes up."

"Have you got room to store them?"

"Yeah, sort of."

"Do you want me to stop bringing the ones I find, for a while, I could store them in my shed?"

"I tell you what, that'd be really good, if you could do that, I don't have a lot of room. But keep gettin em, you're my best supplier, the price'll go up. If I'd left 'em there and took the $20, those bastards would only hold 'em till the price went up and make the profit. The bloke that works there told me that. He's a rough bastard but it was good of him to tell me. He said 'bring 'em back later'."

"That's a huge drop in price", I said, "when you think about it."

"Yeah, it's because of this global crash, metal prices have gone right down. Copper was worth $8 a kilo, that why blokes were knocking it off everywhere, now it's worth $2. I reckon now would be the time to buy into these big mining companies, while the price is down. The big ones will survive and the price will go up."

"The trouble is we don't have any money."

"No, but at least I saved the little cat's life."

"Hey, Jod, can you wait a minute? I found a bird's egg, or half a one, while I was walking a few weeks ago. It's in the van glove box, I put it there after I found it again in my jacket pocket. It got a bit squashed but you still might know what bird it's from. I keep forgetting to ask you."

I went out to the van, came back and showed him the egg. "That's a currawong's egg, they're not easily found. Where'd you find it?"

"On a seat on the the Puffing Billy railway station."

"I wonder how it got there. You can see the baby hatched, there's traces of blood. Yeah, a currawong's egg."

Wild October

Being the last Sunday of the month, and therefore curry pie day, I bounced out this morning into the warm stillness. It had been the warmest night for many months. I couldn't help but admire two paulownia trees in full bloom near the corner of Le Seouf Rd. Huge masses of pale violet. Beautiful! But I can't recall ever seeing them as such before.

We may well be in the grip of drought and the global environmental crisis has been large in the news during October, but the trees and local gardens are oblivious. I have never seen a better spring in terms of bloom, and new leaf growth. Lilac, viburnum, dogwood, cherry, crabapple, waratah, mintbush, magnolia, azalea, camellia, rhodo, I've gathered armfuls of blossom of all of them. The armfuls became van loads to the farm. From there the harvest left in wholesaler's trucks for shops in Melbourne. It will help keep our heads above water for another financial year.

Five inches of rain in August set it up, and the mild dry weather of September and October meant the blossom was unspoilt. But the dry spring means we are well down on aggegrate rainfall, and, shortly going into summer, if we don't get late spring rain, we'll be in diabolical trouble come February/March. This could be the cruncher for Melbourne's water supply, and businesses which rely on water. It's in the lap of the Gods. The spring at the farm that trickles out of the hillside has ceased flowing.

The curry pie was good. 'Snowie', refreshed by the haircut Lib gave her on the warm day last Thursday, and 'Pip', were tied to the post outside the baker shop where I sat at one of the tables. They looked up at me imploringly, waiting for their sausage roll to cool. I thought of Ricky Ralph on holiday in Bali. He emailed me during the week describing full body massages, lounging by the pool under coconut palms, elephant rides, and feasts of paw paw which he shared with the elephants. The little dogs snaffled up the sausage roll, I looked out toward the Warburton ranges and said to the dogs, "I'll take this any day, I never was one for airports and plane trips."

October's been a big news month. Reports on the global environmental crisis said there were huge ice melts in Antarctica. We've had the global economic melt down, the disappearance of Britt Lapthorne and the finding of her body, and the 'Muck Up Day' biz. The American election was pushed into the back seat. I've been busy with the spring harvest and gardening jobs but I've had one ear on the news on morning radio. Also, I heard the repetitious advertisements for the 'Ron Hotshot' Real Estate Investment Co., cajoling me to attend the seminar on the history of St. Kilda Rd. property values.

Now, you may be thinking that my mind is a bit of a jumble today. How could it not be, after such an eventful month? I'm trying to combine the many thoughts I've had and tie them together with a common thread, after weeks of frustration at not having time to blog.

'Ron Hotshot'(substitute name of course), Ricky Ralph, and me, were, once upon a time, about forty years ago, all at the same school. Fortunately I was expelled from the dreadful institution before I lost all remnant of sanity. Ricky Ralph stayed on for another year or so. He told me a story when he visited one Sunday morning, about 'Ron Hotshot', after I asked him had he heard all the radio ads.

Rick works for one of those companies that cuts vegetation away from power lines. A few years ago his crew was working in Wellington Rd. near a driveway at the entrance to a riding school property. A shiny Mercedes turned into the driveway and pulled to a stop. A man in a suit got out of the car, went to the mail box, collected his mail, returned to the car, then drove to the big house and went inside with other people.

"I know that bloke", Rick said to his mates in the truck. "Matter of fact, I've got a score to settle with him." When smoko came Rick walked to the house and knocked on the door.

Now Rick is a lovable ratbag, and in common with type, has an inbuilt injustice sensor. I recall, a few years after we left school, he settled a score with a sadistic music teacher whom we bumped into in the lobby of the Lorne picture theatre. This teacher had a unique method of punishment which consisted of making an errant student choose between a week's daily detention, a severe penalty indeed, or take the steel ruler. Most chose the ruler. The lad had to bend over far enough so that the trouser material was stretched tight across his buttocks. The sadist, of questionable sexuality we believed, looked at the lad's arse from various angles with great pomp before taking up a postion side on, like a sword wielding executioner about to behead his victim, except at the arse end. With a practised flourish he'd bring the ruler down and clip the buttocks, just connecting with the outside quarter inch or so. Three strokes of the ruler and the pain was unbelievably excruciating.

'Ron Hotshot' came to the door. "How can I help you?"

"Would you be 'Ron Hotshot?' "You may not remember me but I think we went to the same school many tears ago, ABC Grammar."

"Yes, I am Ron Topshot. I did go to ABC, but I can't place you."

"I'm Rick Ralph, we were in the same year."

"Rick Ralph? Oh yes, I have a vague recollection. Were you a star tennis player? Would you like to come in and have a cup of coffee with my friends?"

Rick could see the other people in the living room, within earshot. "No thanks, Ron. I just wanted to satisfy my curiosity that it was you. But now that I know it is, I have to say that I have a bone to pick with you. You were a prefect. You dobbed me in to Kanga Cordon for farting in the library. And it wasn't me. It was Waghorn."

Rick told me Peter Waghorn did this stinking rotten foulest of all foul farts in the library, and when the librarian went nuts he couldn't stop laughing.
Later he was called in to see housemaster Kanga who demanded he confess to the fart, and when he refused, saying it wasn't him, but not dobbing in Waghorn, Kanga suspended him from the school.

Ron Topshot was on the backfoot, embarrassed in front of his collegues. "I have no recollection of any of this. If you have a grievance over something that must have been a total misunderstanding, please let me offer you some compensation in good faith. How could I make this up for you?"

"You got me into a lot of trouble, dobbing me in. I was suspended. It was only Waghorn, to his credit, going to Kanga later and owning up that got me out of it. All because you were a dobber."

Ron Hopshot went to a drawer near the door and came back with a wad of free tickets to the riding school. "Here, take these Rick. Any time your family or friends want to go horse riding, it's on me."

Rick took the tickets, he told me he never used them.

It makes me think of 'Muck Up Day'. All those 16,17 and 18 year old lads at Grammar schools, having endured years of constraint, browbeating, and mind bending spin about success and money, it's no wonder they lose it. Half of them shouldn't be there at all, they should be outside somewhere learning about the natural world and skills to let them live in harmony with it, as humans are meant to.

Flux

Walking every morning the same route, you notice things and get to know people. Lib says I'm a snoop, which I deny. I see things happen. Houses are built, renovated, trees die, are removed, people change cars, get new dogs, sell houses, move, there's roadworks, weed control, garden plantings. Flux.

Richard and Sandy struggled the hard way to establish their garden. The acre block was treeless at the start, mowed by a ride on. I was pleased to see a host of shrubs go in, first on the boundary with what was Olive's place. (About a year after Olive died, the new owners removed most of Olive's shrubbery screen along the fence). Then followed plantings along the boundary with Quinn Rd, probably to give them some privacy from the road, their house being set quite close to it, maybe twenty metres.

Many of these first plantings died for want of water. With the succession of dry springs, gardening is more demanding than it was when we seemed to spend a lot of time in gumboots and raincoats. Richard, an ambulance driver, and Sandy, a nurse, both work shifts, busy with demanding work schedules, always looking for extra shifts to help with the mortgage. A 'working family', parents like a tag team shuttling kids to and from school, and doing chores.

I'd become friendly with both, often saying "hello" and having a quick chat as one or the other, and sometimes both, had a cup of coffee and a smoke on their front porch after a night shift or before an early shift. A great dane pup named 'Merlin' joined the family, became friendly with my 'Snowie' as we went past each morning, and played hell with everything in the garden, ripping out plants dead or living. After a few months a section of about a quarter acre was fenced off for 'Merlin' on the other side of the house, and planting resumed.

I never saw anyone working in the garden, I went past too early, but progress was made slowly but surely. Either Richard or Sandy was painstakingly weeding around each plant, and many were mulched. Still, the searing heat of summer and prolonged dry spells took toll and many more plants died. At times I was tempted to make suggestions and offer some plants I had in pots that were looking for a home, but I resisted, knowing, from my own experience, that people like to do their own thing their own way, and they may well have resented my intrusion.

A black poly watering system went in, camellias, photinias, hebes, standard lilly pillies, more and more plants. There was no lack of determination. Merlin would bark from his pen at the back as I walked past. Grass grew in the spouting around the house. One day last spring, a year ago, Sandy had the day off and was enjoying a coffee before taking the kids to school. I asked her if she had anything planned on such a nice day.

"I'm going to clean the spouts out."

"Bugger of a job. Shouldn't Richard do that?"

"He's scared of heights. On the other side of the house where the ground slopes down it's really high."

I'd like to offer to do it for you Sandy but I don't really have the time and I should clean our's first, if I did have time."

"No, don't worry about it Carey, I can do it, I've done it before."

The next day I noticed all the grass growing out of the spouting was gone. The fire season arrived. More plants died. By March gardens were hanging on by the skin of their teeth. A late extreme heatwave knocked the hell out of everything. Finally, some autumn cool, there was more hand weeding, more mulching, and more planting at Richard and Sandy's.

I was suprised, when driving up the main road one day a few months ago, to see the 'FOR SALE' agent's sign out front. I supposed that perhaps the maintenance had got too much for Richard and Sandy and with the soaring fuel prices, they'd decided to move closer to their work and to a smaller block.

I saw no one there for a couple of weeks, till one morning Sandy was on the deck with a coffee mug in one hand and holding a mobile phone to her ear with the other. I waved and kept walking. The next morning was the same. I waved again and as Sandy waved back she lowered the phone from her ear and called out something which I didn't hear.

"I won't stop and talk, I can see you're on the phone."

"That's alright, it's only me mum. She won't mind."

"No, I'll catch you another day Sandy. Have a good one."

The next week Richard came into view on the deck while I was still 60 or 70 metres up the road. He too had a phone to his ear, and when he saw me he quickly put the phone in his pocket and darted inside. In the three years I'd been walking I could not recall seeing Richard or Sandy on the phone on the deck, as if previously the phone was a no no that would disturb their coffee break, and Richard had never avoided me before. Something had changed. I hoped there was nothing wrong, but suspected there was.

A week later I was letting the dogs off the leads as we came off the main Road and on to the gravel, just past the 'McMansion on the gouge', when a car also came into the gravel road. I held the dogs and waved at Sandy who stopped her car and wound down the passenger side window to talk to me. I said "Gidday," but before I could add that I was sorry that we were to lose them as neighbours, she burst into tears.

"Richard and I are separated. We're selling the house. He's gone already. He doesn't want counselling. He has another woman." She cried almost uncontrollably for what seemed a couple of minutes while I tried to offer some hopeless words of encouragement and consolation.

"I thought something might be wrong. I hadn't seen Richard for ages then when I did last week he was on the phone and avoided me."

"He would have been talking to her. He's always on the phone to her. He just wants out. Keep it to yourself, I haven't told any of the neighbours."

A few weeks went by before the 'sold' sticker went up. Every day as I walked past I wondered and worried how Sandy was faring. Then she stopped on her way home after a night shift at the same spot we'd talked a few weeks earlier. She was sad she was losing the house and garden after all the work but was coping quite well with everything. She said she'd be better off without Richard anyway, he never did any work around the place and she had her nursing career, she was determined to do well. I was greatly relieved and impressed.

"Why don't you keep the house, I'd would think the court would let you stay there as you have the kids."

"No. There's a huge mortgage, and the fuel cost and travel time would be too much on my own."

Sandy moved out on 29 September. She kept up her spirit. I gave her my email address and I hope she keeps in touch. She knows I blog, largely about my morning walk, and she said she didn't mind me writing about her once she'd moved out. I hope you read this Sandy. It was my pleasure having you as a neighbour and I wish you well.

As of the date this post was drafted the new owners had not moved in.

Rosie's Wedding

Off we gaily on we go,
Heel for heel and toe for toe,
Arm in arm and row on row,
All for Rosie's wedding.

A week ago today Rosie was married at St.Mary's Anglican church in Glen Eira Rd., Caulfield. It was a conventional wedding. The day was warm. My tie was tight. The photography session that followed in the church gardens seemed to go on forever. The official photographer was a lady. I would guess she was of Italian extraction, with a booming voice. She organized the throng into various group photos with the command of a drill sergeant. Another pro, a man with an impressive movie camera, roamed among the gathered friends and relatives taking "best wishes Matt and Rosie" type comments for posterity.

The church, opposite Shelford Girls Grammar School, was built in 1871 according to the date stone above the front entrance. A feature of the garden is a magnificent cork oak, Quercus suber, of almost perfect spreading form. I found a church official who told me the tree was older than the church - there's a painting somewhere, he said, of the site before construction of the church which showed the then young tree already there.

We'd booked a two bedroom apartment at the Carnegie Motor Inn, where we had a little ziz before the reception, which was 'The Gables', in Finch St. East Malvern, commencing 6.00pm. 'The Gables' was built in 1902 as a private residence and was occupied thus till 1938 when it was first used for receptions. When a private residence, it was a well known hang out for underworld figures including 'Sqizzy Taylor'. An upstairs room was for gambling and a concealed shute was used for the crims to jump into and escape to the garden if police arrived. So said the Maitre d' who was in the garden for a smoke when I went outside with Lib, who needed 'some air' for the same reason. It crossed my mind that there is no concern about gambling and speakeasies now, the casino is open 24/7 and the grog flows all night in Melbourne.

By coincidence, Elvie and Lyle's wedding reception also was at 'The Gables', on 4 Dec 1948. Elvie Lived in nearby Ashburton and Lyle in Hartwell. Elvie's father Edgar paid for the reception. There were 90 guests, 75% of them from Lyle's side. Nanna Myrt, Lyle's mum, approached Edgar saying they wanted more of their people to attend, and that they would stand the extra cost. Edgar turned them down, saying it was his daughter's wedding, he was paying, the guest list was final, or there'd be no reception. Good on him. It must have been a huge cost for a humble, hardworking grocer, way back in the post war years.

Elvie said it was 104 degreesF on her wedding day. They were married at the Gardiner Church of Christ where Lyle played for the football team in the Eastern suburbs churches comp. This was another point of contention for Lyle's family, they wanted the wedding held at the Brethren Gospel Hall a few doors up. Elvie's mum Annie had a migraine attack on the day. It's a pity Lyle is no longer with us, to have seen Rosie and Matt marry. Rosie was his shining star.

Rosie's day had no hitches. The newly weds are honeymooning in Port Douglas and Dunk Island. The was a suggestion in the invitation that a wedding present of cash could be made to a travel agent so the guests contributed to honeymoon cost I suppose. We didn't like the idea of an anonymous gift via a travel agent so we gave Rosie and Matt cash, in person. She bought a camera with it, and took a group photo of us and her with it before she left the reception. We took another wrapped gift to the reception, a plate handpainted by Jennie Smith in 1982. (Keith and Jenny Smith are friends of mine from Gembrook and run the Camellia Range wholesale nursery) We wrote on the back in marker pen. 'To Matt and Rosie, from Libby, Carey, Gordon and Robbie, 26 Sep 2008'.

Jod didn't come to the wedding. He wasn't comfortable about the distance to travel and losing a day's work, it being a Friday. He looked after the farm and did what he could for Foxy's Sunday order. When I saw him on the Monday after, he spoke fondly of Rosie saying, "She didn't turn out too bad in the end." His eyes softened and a grin came to his face as he went on. "Isn't it strange? 26 September is the same day Daniel Boone died. In 1820. One hundred and eighty-eight years ago." Jod has a book about Daniel Boone and knows everything about him.

It never would have crossed my mind, Daniel Boone that is. But I clearly remember Rosie's birthday, June 20 1981. Meredith and Reg didn't make into the hospital. Rosie was born on the seat of the cabin of the Toyota one ton tray truck, in the hospital carpark, ten days after Lib and I moved to Gembrook from Wangaratta, 27 years ago.

Off we gaily on we go,
Heel for heel and toe for toe,
Arm in arm and row for row,
All for Rosie's wedding.