A FLOWER
One of the fun things we boys did at primary school was to make, and fight mock battles with, crude wooden guns. Though not part of the curriculum, and indeed not highly regarded by the headmaster, it was tolerated. Like many other activities at our two teacher school it would be popular for awhile, and then be replaced by some other playground activity. Building straw humpies, playing bobbies and bushies (our version of cops and robbers), or a game we called wild ducks, would come and go, along with more conventional games.
The ammunition for our “guns” was cut from discarded inner tubes from push bikes, motor bikes or cars. These rings of rubber were stretched and when released flew forward with considerable force. Their range was short and their accuracy poor. But they had enough force to sting on impact. Perhaps they were tolerated because they were a harmless alternative to the potentially lethal shanghais that we sometimes made. Shanghais were banned at school.
A certain amount of practice was necessary at home to maintain sufficient skill for the playground. And so it came about that I was standing at one end of the kitchen, having come inside after some target practice. A beautiful deep red rose was in a vase on the dresser at the other end. My mother loved roses and whenever possible, would pick the finest bloom she could find, tastefully arrange it in a vase and place the vase on the kitchen dresser. This was enough to transform the otherwise sparse interior into a delightful work space. The rich scent of the old fashioned rose wafted through the room to complete the effect.
All this was wasted on me. The rose’s high centre surrounded by large gently opening outer petals formed the perfect target.
I resisted the temptation. I was having an internal debate. Obviously it would disappoint my mother. But there were lots more roses in the garden. And a flying piece of soft rubber would not damage the furniture. In any case our weaponry was notoriously inaccurate and I was sure to miss. I struggled.
It was the most accurate shot I ever made. The soft petals of the rose floated outwards and upwards and gently fluttered down forming a red mat at the base of the dresser. Mother stood in silent dismay. Not much was ever said. This made my feelings of guilt even deeper and more prolonged. I never took the toy gun into or even near the house again. I tried to make amends by helping in the rose garden and occasionally picking some for display. But really the best thing seemed to be to stay away from roses altogether.
It may be true that, “a rose by any other name would smell the same”, but to me seventy three years ago, a large open rose blossom was the perfect target.
Today, my wife loves roses. She has seventy or so in the garden. I do my best to help by pruning, spraying and dead heading. (Is this doing penance I wonder). When I see a particularly nice bloom I will sometimes pick it and take it to her. She seems to like that. I have never been tempted to use one for target practice.
THE NEW GUINEA BUTTER BEAN
Sometime in August last year my wife came home from shopping and announced, somewhat excitedly I thought, “I bought some New Guinea Butter Bean seeds, we used to grow them when I was a kid and mum cooked them with a little butter and they were great”. Now Hazel had talked about these before and I knew she always had an eye out for them but was starting to think that they had become extinct. I was also keen to give them a go in our veggie patch and imagined that they might be something like the Snake beans that we grow most years.We planted a few seeds late September and nothing happened for a time. I thought, well maybe the soil is too cold and we’ll have to wait to well into summer before we can expect something that hails from New Guinea to germinate. Mind you I’m not sure if they really do come from New Guinea. No one we spoke to had ever heard of them and this included people who had lived in New Guinea. Perhaps they were like the the Israeli Army Diet that was popular many years ago but no Israeli had ever heard of. Nevertheless before the end of October three plants emerged .
Two plants survived and one grew strongly. In fact as the weather warmed up and we had good rains it grew with ever increasing vigour up over the two meter high fence of the chook pen, across the bird netting that protects our young seedlings and onto the roof of the garden shed where it tangled with the choko vine. We looked forward with great expectations to a bumper harvest.
Each morning I walked down to the garden in keen anticipation of seeing the first flowers, but to no avail. Our bean seemed to be putting all its energy into wrestling the choko. Eventually the flowers began to appear, rather ordinary and white and not at all like bean flowers, nevertheless plentiful and promising indicators of fruits to come.
But when would they come? The vine continued to expand, the flowers continued to appear and to hang on, putting on a fair show but completely fruitless. I thought that perhaps we needed some real tropical weather. or there may be not enough bees for pollination. Perhaps I needed to hand pollinate. This is sometimes necessary with pumpkins and zucchinis but I resent having to help nature in this way, surely plants are well enough equipped to perform such tasks for themselves. Nevertheless I found myself clambering over all sorts of obstacles to examine the flowers. But all seemed to have the same anatomy. So, were the male flowers late in arriving as often happens with pumpkins, or do we need separate male and female plants, or are the actual flowers self pollinating like proper beans? I was still pondering these vexed issues and wondering whether to google the sexual preferences of New Guinea Butter Beans when at last some product began to appear.
By now I was getting impatient to try the fruits of our labours and to reap some reward for the anxious waiting of the previous months. We ate the first one when it was about forty centimeters long and as thick as my thumb. It was ok, more zucchini than bean. More “beans” started to emerge, many of them only to shrivel and fall off suggesting poor pollination but those that survived got bigger and bigger. They grew thicker than my arm, hung down to the ground from as high as two meters and their weight caused the bird netting to sag and eventually collapse. In fact it all became an uncontrollable mess.
Nevertheless they proved to be good eating. We used them like zucchinis in stir fries, baked, steamed, stuffed, made into a slice with bacon and cheese and other goodies using a favourite recipe of Hazel’‘s or cooked with a little butter like her mum would have done. It was all good. But there is a limit to how many two meter long thicker than your arm zucchinis you can eat. We gave some away to friends who accepted them gracefully despite the skepticism on their faces. We cut one into three pieces and donated it to a bring and buy stall, but none of this adequately dealt with the surplus. The frame holding the bird netting gave way completely under the weight.
It’s now nearing the end of September again and that presents us with a dilemma. It would be nice to revisit the culinary delights of this vegetable, but where will we plant the thing? Last years damage is by no means fully repaired and, even if it was, a different site is essential. Should we build a solid and no doubt expensive trellis and if so how big would it have to be. Would it be safe to risk damaging the presently enjoyed good relations with next door by planting on the dividing fence. A decision will have to be made soon. But no matter what the future holds, 2010-11 will always be remembered as the summer of the New Guinea Butter Bean.
WORKING FOR PADDY
It must have been in March 1944, just after my fourteenth birthday. I came home from school and my mother said, “ Pat Sheay called today wondering if you would work for him on Saturdays. He will give you ten shillings a Saturday”. This seemed pretty generous. I was excited and keen to give it a go.Pat, or Paddy as he was commonly known, lived perhaps a mile down the road. His farm was in the bush country that skirted the rich Clarence river flats. He made the most of his less fertile soils by growing peaches, oranges, a few melons and the like. He also planted a small pine forest for the future. To supplement the scant revenue he kept about fifty beehives. Most importantly he developed a new enterprise by digging the pure sand of an unproductive area and making it into concrete building blocks. My job was to help mix the batches of cement and then slowly shovel it into the moulds where it was laboriously rammed by Paddy and turned out to cure on the concrete floor for the rest of the week.
I mostly enjoyed the work. I shoveled away at a slow pace just keeping the moulds full enough to keep Paddy ramming. We talked about schooling, local events and the weather. Paddy never swore. He had one word that was apparently strong enough to express his deepest feelings. The word was “scissors.” In summer there were frequent exclamations of “scissors its hot” as he wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of a cement coated hand. And in winter, as the cold westerly wind howled through the open shed, “Scissors Ken, its a bit drafty”.
Although making concrete blocks was our main activity, Saturdays with Paddy were not all spent with shovel in hand. The diverse enterprises he had developed to make a living out of a difficult piece of land meant there was considerable variety. Every Saturday was a new learning experience.
There were the fruit trees to be sprayed. We would mix up the appropriate spray in the open topped tank sitting on the horse drawn slide. It was my job to work the hand pump while Paddy sprayed the trees. These were tiring days.
No less tiring were the days that we hoed the weeds from around the fruit trees. I became quite expert with the chip hoe. There was a section of the orange orchard that lay between the apiary and the bush. The bees travelled across this section in a direct line and seemingly with the speed of bullets. They stung on impact. That is where I learned to chip at high speed to get across that space.
The upside to the apiary was that I learned to work among the bees, carefully extracting the honey without too many stings and resetting the frames. Fascinating stuff.
There was an upside to the orchard as well. During the Christmas holidays we would load the old model A Ford utility with peaches and melons and head for the seaside town of Yamba. There we would sell door to door and also park at certain points and wait for customers to congregate. All sorts of people would come for some fruit and a yarn. As a young teenage boy I was fascinated one day to have a conversation with an Italian prisoner of War who wandered in. He seemed to be enjoying a good deal of freedom but was quite conspicuous in his Australian Army clothing dyed a deep maroon. There were some times that were not so exciting. On more than one occasion we sat huddled in the tiny cab of the ute while rain poured down and we fought off swarms of big black mosquitos.
Paddy’s ute was something of a marvel with its battered exterior and a sheet of masonite forming the roof of the cabin. One of Paddy’s repairs. Occasionally the engine would splutter to a halt. Paddy would fiddle under the bonnet and the engine would come back to life. “Ah scissors Ken if you’re gonna drive em you gotta know how to fix em.”
From time to time we would foray into the bush gathering firewood for the house. We would find a well dried hollow log, saw it into five or six feet lengths with a two man crosscut saw. Then, Paddy would split the logs open so as not to carry any snakes back to the house. I enjoyed these outings. Only two wheel drive, but having good ground clearance, the old Ford seemed capable of going anywhere with Paddy at the wheel. One day we were headed across an open but wet and slippery patch when we spun a full 360 degrees. But we just kept going in the same direction with a, “scissors she’s a bit slippery”.
House and shed repairs were part of the agenda. My role would have made an interesting position description if such a thing had been invented then. I spent hours straightening nails so that they could be reused. This resulted in a few blackened fingers but I realised the necessity of recycling even if I hadn’t heard of the word. There were no surplus materials in the nineteen forties.
One day Paddy was on the ridge cap of the house removing tiles and sliding them down the sloping roof for me to stack them. I was standing on a narrow board that was part of the ceiling structure. The tiles were coming fast. I took an involountry step back to catch one that I had missed. One foot went straight through the ceiling. Fortunately I grabbed a rafter which saved me from going right through. I swung for a moment before getting my head and shoulders above the roof again. “Ah scissors Ken she won’t take much pressure”. The tiles started coming again and I was too focussed on catching and stacking to give any thought to the shower of asbestos fragments that I had sent into the bedroom below.
Like many others, Paddy and I spent a lot of time working with asbestos cement sheeting oblivious to the associated health risks. He frequently extolled its virtues, cheaper than wood, did not rot, burn or suffer damage from termites. “But scissors it’s brittle”.
There were some days that I thought would never end. But these were rare. Most were interesting and varied. I will be forever grateful for the opportunity Paddy gave me to develop a range of useful skills on the job and his patient support as I did so.
THE MARY VALLEY RATTLER
Our fellow passengers represented all ages and seemed to come from all over the country, having included this as part of a larger holiday. They were enjoying themselves. Some were keen to participate in conversation and others more reticent. But my mind kept going back to my last trip on this train, fifty nine years before.
The carriage didn’t seem much different from the last time I did the journey. If it was the same one it had aged well. I couldn’t say the same for myself. And last time the passengers, whilst of all ages, were predominately young fit forestry workers. Many of these were what we used to call displaced persons or DP’s. Most were from Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic states or The Ukraine. Some were German. German migrants tended to receive a mixed reception at that time but they were popular as forestry workers.
As we slowly moved up the valley I searched for familiar landmarks. The small dairy farms that once dotted the valley floor seemed to have been replaced by one massive herd, and not much was familiar. My main interest was in the steep hillsides that form the valley wall. Much of the rain forest was gone but I was pleased to note that pockets still remained. But where were the pineapples?
I could see where the plantations had been. Now large patches of what looked like blady grass revealed where the pineapples had once grown. Row after row used to run straight up and down the steep slopes. An invitation to soil erosion I had at first thought. But this was controlled by a narrow zig zag service track which criss crossed each steeply sloping field.
We clanked slowly past the Dagun siding. This is where I got off fifty nine years before. The timber yard was still there but not much else was familiar. The store seemed to have gone and there were no cases of pineapples waiting on the platform, only some stall holders eager to sell their produce, and some placards objecting to a proposed dam.
Sixty years ago those steep eastern facing hill sides produced massive amounts of pineapples. Sidings like Dagun loaded tons of the fruit for the Brisbane cannery and elsewhere. A part of me was saddened to realise that mechanisation had ended the industry in this area and it had moved to gentler slopes where machinery could operate. The highly labour intensive farming on these steep hillsides was not sustainable.
When I got off the train at Dagun around the end of January 1951 it was to take on a temporary job on one of those pineapple farms. I think I spent six or eight weeks there, until I left to fulfil a prior commitment.
They were an interesting few weeks. Tiring and satisfying. We scrambled up the steep rows with heavy back packs to spray the plants with an Iron solution to overcome a soil deficiency. At another time we planted new plants in an area so steep we had to work on hands and knees. But the main task was picking the fruit and that’s how most days were spent. A simple job, it meant carrying a large wicker basket on one arm and a sharp knife in the free hand. Fruit deemed ripe enough to pick for the cannery was held in one hand, cut from the plant with a stroke of the knife and then had the top cut off with a second stroke and dropped in the basket. When the basket was full we carried it to the service track to be loaded on to the ex army truck that could traverse the steep and narrow track. If any fruit was too small we left it so that it would be fully ripe next time round, when it would provide a brief but sweet and juicy moment of respite.
As with most jobs, it was the people who made the days sustainable. There was the owner, a genuine and progressive farmer, his teen age son who seemed to delight in taking a rise out of Albert, who had recently migrated from England. Well, I think his name was Albert. He ‘come from Somerset’ and was an experienced and willing farm worker. I liked Albert. And I guess pineapple farming was a little outside his experience. What Albert seemed to have most difficulty with was the foreman’s leadership style. Albert used to say to me, “Frank should tell us what to do.” He was referring to the foreman’s practice of requesting, rather than directing. Frank (if that was his name) understood the Australian worker of the day. He was not without leadership experience having had considerable battle experience as a sergeant in the Australian Army in New Guinea not that many years before. No one ever refused frank’s requests.
Except for lunch with the farmer and his family each Sunday, I lived in the work man’s hut. It was simple but adequate. I returned there at the end of each working day to wash out my shirt and shorts and refresh my self under the bucket shower before cooking a simple meal. Then I would read awhile before bed. I slept well.
And that is how I spent Thursday the eighth of March 1951, the day I turned twenty-one.
NOTE: A little googling suggests that the valley still produces a lot of pineapples including from fairly steep slopes. That may be the case but the view from the train is much different to what it was.
