Posts from — February 2009
The End
At last Fred reached the end of the red sausage and found that he could no longer stand for the weight of the earth had settled on his heart.
February 23, 2009 2 Comments
Middle
Right in the middle of now where he stopped and ate a red sausage.
Next page……..
February 23, 2009 2 Comments
The Beginning
The back of the packing shed, my bed, no windows.
Down the track from the loading bay… my Grandfather’s bush cot, a bush larder holding several bottles of Bundaberg op rum, hard bread and cheese, the open sky.
Under the lean to, always boiling, a billy and sometimes the smell of roasting wallaby with skin.
I came from Melbourne on a truck, red, Thames Bedford, flat tray. Myself, a four year old, parents grown not quite, brothers two. Pineapple suckers, many. Hope great.
Pineapple plant
Bulldozers, chains, trees, acres splintered. Dams dug filled. Dad finds me floating, face down in the dam. It’s pleasant I don’t mind. I’m drifting away and it’s ok. A wrench I’m back. I see his fear face. I feel the frantic jolting of his chest and arms as he runs with me. Black.
Smell of soup. Warm metal presses on my lips. Eyes open, Mums smile.
School, first year on the farm. First teacher, Mrs Gaylard, I learned quickly jumping grades. Rejected by the other kids, as too weird for a farm kid. I read too much, apparently!
I was not lonely. I read.
Confusion over who taught me to read. Overheard snatches of conversation,” did you teach her to read….? I thought you did… No not me! She must be pretending.” I remember teaching myself to read and I was reading by age three.
Read Jack London’s, White Fang at five. Who had the insight to see that I would love a book like that I can’t remember but it was most likely my Grandmother. In my world animals talked and the trees and sky whispered, the Earth felt me as I felt it.
School lunch, chopped pineapple in a jar or vegemite sandwiches, unless Dad made it and then it was likely to be excentric or avant-garde depending on your view of chopped dates with grated carrot or peanut butter and celery. Ridicule from the other kids.
His breakfasts were better.
French toast, golden syrup, Tarzan the Ape man on Russ Tyson’s Children’s breakfast half hour followed by Biggles and the Goon show, hot black billy tea. Dad and Grandpa working and rolling hysterically through the pineapple rows singing “Ying tong, ying tong iddle I po”.
Fruit bats aren’t normally made pets. Nocturnal creatures dotting the evening sky. Travelling to the fruit tree café.
Knowing that other night hunters were around she wouldn’t have chosen to land so close to the ground. Her choice limited, her wing torn.
I watched her intently, curiously, smiling as she hung there clinging to life and tree. Me waiting, for her to move. Soft pretty head. Face, kind. Eyes terrified.
I was about five she was about six months I guess. Not every one understands fruit bats or even likes them.
Mum went inside.
Grandpa approached, gun swinging.
Grandpa looked at me, suddenly aware that there was a difference of opinion here. “She can’t live in the wild she’s wounded bub, she can’t fly and feed herself.”
I’ll feed her. Myself between gun and creature. Gramps stepped back. Smiled, tousled my hair, ambled off.
“Try getting her to suck some pineapple.”
I did and she did. I call her Ying-Tong.
YingTong
Grandma arrived from Melbourne to the nearby seaside resort of Redcliffe. I was the only one to think that was a good thing.
Brother number three arrived. Turmoil. My Grandmother scooped me up we rode the big red bus to Redcliffe. It was along ride, I slept.
Arrival, Grandmother woke me up and I looked out the window, darkness to the east a blue-black ocean, languorous. The bus tired, winced as it ground its gears turning into the home straight.
The driver. ”Almost there Dot.”
Moments later, a room clean white with a great brass bed and windows.
At dawn I woke up. I leaned out the window. Mango trees. I left the room. From the front steps the great blue, and the smell, already, of drying kelp from a beach further down the bay.
The sound, chook, chook, chook. I traced its path through, a stand of pawpaw trees on the left, bananas on the right, a tall Tahitian lime in the corner, ahead chickens, ducks and goat feeding under the mangoes.
Eggs collected tea and toast dispatched. At last to the beach.
Finally sand and salt removed. A short walk to the Woody Point hall. Confusion, adults talking, laughing, exchanging money. My first Bloch’s, soft pink. My first of a twelve year Saturday ritual of ballet lessons.
After the lesson I find Grandma behind the hall in the croquet club. Women in white hair and uniform with croquet mallets. I make a mistake and walk on the green. It’s not done. Must have the proper shoes. Bad me. Gran defends me.
Game finished. Uniform changed. Grandma is different. I never realised. A sea of sensible dresses and shoes Gran wears linen trousers, shirt, Cuban heels and a Chinese paper parasol to keep the sun off. She plonks a hat on me. The other women give me a look. I don’t understand. Its pity, but I still don’t understand. Ding-bats comes from under Grandmas breath.
A building lined with books. More talking laughing. Not confused, perplexed. I look at the card handed to me. I’m shown a room. A few kids with glasses smile and turn back to their books. I find the adventure section. Happy.
Monday, red bus, Grandma back to the farm and Ying-Tong.
A new pup, I called him Speed.
My brothers and I with Speed
February 23, 2009 3 Comments
