It’s been around 6 weeks here so far on my journey of a year. I flew into Heathrow and landed, spending 3 days in a local hotel. I had no local phone number, no car and no home but I did have a friend and his family from Australia who live in Eastbourne. After three days this friend arrived to take me to his home and his wife and child welcomed me knowing I had contracted Covid-19 and despite her and her daughter not being vaccinated. I was unwell but not too bad, indigestion and lack of appetite being my worst symptoms. They brought meals to my room and generally looked after me. I was really scared they’d catch it from me but thank God they did not and I emerged after a week to some sense of normalcy. I will be forever grateful to them for looking after me. My friend had sourced and bought a car for me from a titled woman in South Kensington London and had brought it back. It was a bargain. A class Mercedes Benz auto for around 3500 pounds. So I had a car. I’d got a new sim and a new English phone number so I had a working phone and during the next three weeks I found a terrace house in County Durham that had failed to sell on the auction day and made a bid for it which was accepted. So I was on the way to having a home.
A few weeks later and I’m waiting for the bank to do the right thing so I can finalise the purchase. So technically, I am still homeless and renting short term rooms on Booking.com and through AirBnb. I have stayed in Eastbourne, Coventry, Stockton-On-Tees and currently in Darlington. I have visited my new home in a small County Durham village. Its a bit of a shithole to be frank but at least it will be my shithole. There’s a lot to be done. Tiles off the roof, a broken window, old crappy furniture to be removed and an overgrown garden but I am itching to start. It’s in a small town which I am used to. I am, and always will be, a country girl. I even went into a pet shop today to look at the pets because I am missing my chickens and ducks. They had some Siberian hamsters which are tempting as long as I can pass them onto a new owner when I leave here. They are smaller than guinea pigs and a lot cheaper to buy. 10 pounds as opposed to 30 pounds each.
So how is England different to Australia? Things are expensive here. When I convert the pounds to dollars things are often twice as dear as home. Car and home insurance was cheaper. Diesel is about 1.45p so about twice the price of Australia. The rolling hills and flat green paddocks remind me of home in the Southern Highlands. Most country roads are lined in high hedgerows. We don’t have these in Australia. The roads are very much worse than Oz. They are very narrow and often force you to park at the side to let oncoming traffic through. The Motorways are good. The M1 from the south to the north has three lanes. It has a 70 mph speed limit which is too much for me, I go along at 60mph.
The historic sites are fabulous and there are a lot of them. I have already visited London twice and seen Piccadilly Circus, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey. The trip to London one day on the train from Eastbourne cost around $200 including entry fees so it is expensive, particularly the trains.
In East Sussex I visited the site of the Battle of Hastings in 1066 at Battle Abbey and saw the plaque where King Harold was supposed to have died. I have seen Pevensey Castle- part Roman, part Medieval, Dover Castle which overlooks the amazing ferry port and Lewes Castle in the quaint town of Lewes. Michelham Priory was very interesting with its Tudor interiors and medieval herb garden. The highlight of my visits was to see Shakespeare’s birthplace Stratford-Upon-Avon. I have a real feel for 15th and 16th century dark furniture and low ceilings with black beams now. Shakespeare’s father sold gloves out of a ground floor window in the house. Anne Hathaway’s cottage though extended since her time is a typical cute chocolate box of a house with a thatched roof and black and white exterior.
Gardens are lovely here. Summer brings out all the roses, lavender and poppies and some town councils have made a huge effort to have nice gardens such as the seaside town of Eastbourne. I got quite used to walking on the pebble beach there every night when I left my friend’s house and stayed in a small apartment. The houses are pretty cute too, lots and lots of terraces. Even in the new estate where I stayed, they build the houses in the traditional way out of brick and tiles or slate and they look like Lego houses.
Well the adventure continues. A favourite site is to go to Seaham Beach and look for seaglass. The last time I went, I was happy with my haul only to find a hole in my collecting bag had let out most of my treasures. There’s a moral in there somewhere- don’t count your seaglass until you get it home?
This may well be my last note from ‘Rivendale’ for some time. New adventures call. It’s long been a dream of mine to go overseas and live , to really absorb another culture and to make every day an adventure. The country is already my culture but I’ve never lived there- England. Why go there? I am already a citizen due to my Dad’s birthplace and I plan to make it my base to travel to all the places I’ve wanted to for a long time: Egypt, the Holy Land, Italy, Ireland, Scotland and to revisit some places in Europe I haven’t seen since I was 17 and did a lightning tour of the Continent with my parents in my last year of High School too many years ago.
Its exciting and unsettling at the same time. I plan to go for a year. I will really miss my family , especially the grandchildren whose young years are so precious, but I feel it’s the right time to go before I get too older. Every time I have gone on an extended holiday, it has inspired my writing and I am sure it will do so again.
I’d planned to buy a small terrace house to renovate and then have been seduced by modern apartments and hope to buy one of them. For really, I just need a bolthole from which to travel forth.
I have to sell most of my animals and this has indeed been hard but I am determined. I may have to give many of them away if no buyers turn up fast enough. Already most of the ducks have been sold and a few chickens. More chickens and the turkeys remain. My son wants a few chickens but only half a dozen. We have far more to let go than that.
I’ll have two summers this year and the year I return I’ll have two winters. It will be strange and wonderful.
Wish me luck,
mes amies
PS: I will keep writing here to let you know how things go.
I am pleased to announce this historical biography is now available from Amazon.com . It tells the story of my great grandfather, an amazing pioneer who lived in some very remote parts of Australia across three different states. He started out a draper’s assistant in Adelaide, went to Mt Gambier and the copper fields of Moonta as a shop keeper and driving a hawker’s dray. From there he went to Tibooburra and a tiny place called Yalpunga on the Queensland border where my grandfather was born. Here he ran a shop and catered to the local miners and travellers. Next move was as a wheat and sheep farmer for 25 years in the Ungarie district of NSW where everything was still done by hand. Finally he retired to Dromana in Victoria, a seaside resort. In his 80’s he travelled to Great Britain just before the Second World War. He wrote poetry and articles for newspapers many of which are in the book.
The book starts with the reasons for social unrest in the farmlands of England in the 1830’s and the schemes for immigration started by Edward Gibbon Wakefield and Robert Gouger to establish a colony in South Australia. Great poverty was a motivator for emigration to the new colony of South Australia in 1836. The second chapter explains why Charles’ parents, William and Martha Field emigrated to Adelaide despite William’s father, Daniel, owning substantial areas of farmland in a town called Garford in Berkshire (Now situated in Oxfordshire) William did very well in Adelaide and built one of its famous pubs: The Cathedral Hotel, known as the Scotch Thistle Hotel in his time.
Chapter Four details how Adelaide grew in the 1840’s and Chapter Five looks at relations between Aboriginals and white settlers. In Chapter 6, Charles is born and his early years are explained. The rest of the book goes into the history of the places in which he lived and includes lot of documents from the time as well as images to give this history a real vibrancy.
Chapter Eleven is devoted to Charles’ own writings showing his lively mind and sense of humour.
In the course of my research, I discovered a convict in the family and chapter twelve explains who he was and how the convict system was regarded in Australia both by convicts and the authorities.
Extensive notes /references allow the serious historian to see where I got all my information from.
Hoping you will enjoy this very detailed history of Australia over 100 years and my grandfather’s life,
I am pleased to announce my new historical fantasy novel, ‘The Island of Cats’ has just been released. It is available though my website duckfarmpress.com.au and Amazon. I thought I would post a few chapters over a few blogs to wet your appetites.
Chapter One
‘As you wish, Sire!’
His brother bowed low concealing the scowl William knew would be etched on his face. Gerard backed away from the throne through the murmurs of the courtiers lining the dark-walled reception room. William motioned to his Chancellor, enough.
Leaving the throne, William sought the sanctuary of his sitting chamber flinging the door closed behind him. Today’s Audience was longer than usual. Insufficient grain, emaciated animals and villagers, polluted water – the list went on and on. Did they think he could control the weather? He’d already depleted half of the Treasury’s reserves in supporting his countrymen and women. Mortally tired of the ashen faces presented to him, he would find out for himself what was really going on tomorrow.
Mounted on his second-best cream charger and liveried as a castle guard, the King had donned a black wig and had his valet dye his ginger beard black. He also wore a large felt hat pulled down over his face. Passing by men he knew, he was pleased to see they failed to recognise him. Accompanied by only two other mounted soldiers, they left through the North Portcullis on to the well-worn cobbles of the Drummoyne Road. His valet had packed both victuals and drink so they could wander all day, if need be.
From where they rode, the late summer fields of golden stubble stretched out before them. Upwards of fifty gleaners were busy combing the rows for stray grains tossing them into the sacks secured to their backs. They appeared to be finding quite a lot.
Suddenly William turned to one of his men, ‘Where are the granaries?’
‘Sire they are a few leagues north of here.’
As they continued, the road turned to dust as carts trundled along it, their owners ragged and thin and the beasts that drew them looking almost skeletal. There was a serious discrepancy here, thought William who was determined to discover the reasons behind an apparent healthy harvest and a near-starving population.
By mid-morning, they reached the first granary, a low-slung mossy stone barn, thatched with wheaten straw now grey with age. There were two half asleep peasants ‘guarding’ the entrance who jumped up on seeing the distinctive blue and yellow livery of the soldiers.
‘Hey, you peasant, do you think it wise to be asleep guarding this granary!’ shouted Rufus, one of William’s soldiers.
‘No, mi’Lord, sorry mi’Lord’, gushed one of them while the other hung his head in shame.
‘Look lively, then’ said Paxton, William’s other companion. ‘Get water for our horses and set them grazing on that grass over there’. He indicated the grass at the side of the granary.
They all dismounted and stretching their legs walked around the granary to observe its general condition. There were gaps in the walls and the thatch looked almost rotten. Paxton reached down. He could almost fit his fist into one of the holes in the granary wall.
William shook his head. This did not bode well for what was in the interior. They tracked back to the entrance and bowing down, for the door was low, entered the building. For a few moments they couldn’t see much for there were few tiny windows up high under the thatch letting in little light.
‘The wheat is moving,’ gasped Rufus. Indeed, hundreds of tiny creatures were fleeing from their approach scattering all over the heaps of grain. A foul stench of urine and faeces assaulted their nostrils as the animals moved. Almost gagging, the men peered closer to take in fully the scene before them.
‘I’ve seen enough,’ exclaimed William in disgust. They rapidly exited and stood coughing in the sunlight. ‘Who is responsible for this!’ demanded William of one of the granary guards.
‘For what, mi’Lord?’ William struck the man across the face, ‘For the vermin, imbecile! Why is nothing being done?’
‘Excuse me, mi’Lord, but what is to be done?’ offered the other, bracing himself for a similar blow.
The soldiers stared at him. How could it be that nothing was being done?
‘Are there no cats,’ asked William, ‘to catch the rats and mice?’
‘Cats, mi’Lord?’ asked the bolder guard.
‘Cats? Have you no cats?’
‘I never seen a cat here,’ offered the other, a bruise now blossoming on his face.
‘Dogs, then?’ asked Paxton.
‘We never seen any, mi’Lords, never here. I never seen a cat ever. Have you, Ploughman?’
Ploughman furrowed his brow, ‘Nope, heard of ‘em but never seen ‘em.’
William, exasperated, ordered the granary guards to fetch them stools which were set well away from the rodent stench of the barn.
In the little glade nearby, William and his companions drank and ate a little food. When they were fully satisfied, Paxton asked his Sire, ‘I knew that cats and dogs were expelled from the City, Sire, but I never believed there were none in the countryside as well.’
‘It seems that We are not aware of much that has befallen the crops and their storage. Cats must be obtained but that may take some time. What is to be done meanwhile to save what is left of this harvest?’
They sat in silence tossing ideas around in their heads when finally, William expounded an idea. ‘Rats and mice drown, do they not?’
‘Yes, mi’Lord,’ answered Rufus, careful not to call William, ‘Sire’.
‘Well then, we must have made a barrier of water they cannot cross around the granary. We shall organise a group of men to destroy what animals are residing in the barn and then construct a small moat around each granary to prevent them returning. This will take some time, but it will be worth it if we can preserve the grain. However, as sure as the sun rises and drops each day, the vermin will return and we need a more permanent solution for them. We must obtain cats.’
‘Agreed,’ said Rufus and Paxton, impressed at their King’s practical abilities.
‘First, we will visit the other granaries and see if the same thing is happening.’
‘Aye, mi’Lord, let’s continue,’ said Paxton.
Ploughman and his fellow guard were given written instructions to seconder farmers to destroy the rodents, meanwhile masons and engineers were to be sent out from the City to construct the small but hopefully effective moats and devise how to keep them filled but not overflowing.
William and his men found throughout the day that similar laxities besieged the other granaries. William was very angry. ‘Who is in charge of overseeing the granaries?’
Paxton was hesitant to answer. ‘Well?’ demanded William.
‘That would be your brother, Gerard, mi’Lord.’
William seethed all the long way home. They reached the North City Gate just on dusk. The guards refused them entry because they didn’t have the day’s password and reluctant to reveal who he was, William and the men retreated to a Way Inn to spend the night. Once the horses were stabled, they entered the Inn and ordered Porter, bread and a soup laden with meat chunks.
Tucking into their repast, they listened carefully to the talk in the Inn of trade with their neighbouring lands, of the price of beef and lamb, difficult to obtain and very, very lean, of this one’s daughter who had an ague and this one’s son who was proving to be a poor blacksmith. William was fascinated because conversation within his earshot in the Palace was always circumscribed and stilted. Here he was getting people’s real opinions.
William listened to the conversations in the end interspersed by the calls for victuals and the clanking of lead tankards brought by barmaids to thirsty patrons. Paxton and Rufus seemed relaxed as this was their natural environment honed by many evening’s diversions after hot and sweaty guard duties. Still, there was no reason he shouldn’t use the opportunity to gain information about his Kingdom particularly the mysterious Island of Cats.
He called out to a barmaid to have his tankard filled and when she returned with the jug, he asked her if she had ever heard of the Island of Cats.
‘No mi’Lord,’ she curtsied overawed by his livery. ‘Perhaps Suzanne might know.’ She bid Suzanne to come who after serving some patrons arrived wiping her wet hands on her ample muslin apron. ‘Yes, mi’Lord? Are the victuals to your liking?
‘Ample and hearty,’ replied William, ‘I thank you. However, it is of another matter I would like to inquire. Your girl here says you may be able to tell us information about the Island of Cats?’
‘Aye, my Lord. I have heard of it but not much. All I know is that many years ago, a wild woman, crazy some said, was deeply affected when the burgermeisters began killing cats in the City. She wailed and screamed at them, but they ignored her and pushed her out of the way. She so annoyed them that they devised to fill a boatload of cats with her in it and cast them out to sea. They figured to solve two problems at once. No one knew what became of the harridan and her unwanted companions. However, two years later a sailor came here and told us of an island some leagues off the coast where he’d seen a windswept figure around whom moved great numbers of furred creatures. The rocks prevented the sailors getting any closer but ever since the place has been known as the Island of Cats.’
‘And has anyone landed to find out if this sighting was true?’
‘Not as far as I know, my Lord.’
‘Thank you, Suzanne. Now we would like accommodations for the night. Do you have anything available?
Soon they were lying on straw palliasses in a modest oak lined room, the exertions of the day having taken their toll.
‘Will you not be missed, mi’Lord?’ asked Paxton.
‘Fear not, I told my Chamberlain I was going early to my country estate by myself and was not to be disturbed for a week. This hiatus gives us leave to pursue this legend and find its truth. Can you procure a ship tomorrow?’
‘Aye, mi’Lord, it’s possible. I will go to the dock at daybreak and see what I can secure.’
‘Excellent! Then good night men. Tomorrow may prove as fatiguing as today.’
Not long after dawn they embarked on a modest sailing vessel with a handful of crew whose captain was glad of the gold sovereigns he’d earn from the trip. However, he warned his passengers, ‘Mi’Lords, there are many islands off this coast which match your description. It may take some time to find.’
‘Very well, do your best Captain,’ said William whose pleasure at being away from Court for longer was more appealing than not.
By day’s end they had visited or inspected five or more islands none of which had cats or even human inhabitants. After dinner they anchored and each spent the night sleeping in gently swaying hammocks. It was on the third day they came to an island surrounded by rocks. It was impossible from the ship to tell if it had inhabitants so accompanied by some sailors they sailed the ship’s skiff around protruding rocks and landed ashore. The island had a small grey sandy beach, no trees only a low growing scrubby heath covered in tiny purple blossoms leading to rocky outcrops in the centre of the island.
Finding narrow paths through the heath they struck forward towards the rocks. The soldiers carried loaded muskets, William and his men only their swords. They heard loud mewing and hissing within a few yards of a deep fissure in the rocks. Alert the party paused, waiting for whatever creature was within to emerge. As seconds ticked by, tension built and William expected a large wildcat to launch itself at them. Unable to contain himself any longer, he called gently into the caves entrance, ‘Hello there! Show yourself. We mean no harm.’
Not a lithe cream wildcat but a young, lean woman dressed in skins ducked her head out from the shadows. ‘Go away!’ she hissed. ‘There is no gold here. Leave me alone or it will go badly for you!’
William was amused but the humour left his face when he saw she had an arrow drawn and ready to fire into his chest. ‘Please we don’t want to hurt you.’ He made the men lower their weapons. ‘We are searching for an island of cats but perhaps we were wrong.’
‘Nay, there are many cats here,’ explained the girl, lowering her bow.
‘We were expecting an old woman,’ said William, as the raven-haired girl emerged from the shadows. He held his breath for though ragged and dirty, she had a grace and loveliness which struck him greatly.
‘I am William, Commander of these men. Let me explain myself. We have a land many leagues from here besieged by rodents who are destroying our grain. We come in search of cats to deal with the infestation. We will pay you well for them!’
The girl stood boldly before them, hands on her hips. ‘They are my friends,’ she explained, ‘for I have no others.’
‘Do you live here alone?’ asked William, astonished.
The girl stepped back and raised her bow again, ‘You will not steal them,’ she shouted, defiant.
‘Please,’ begged William holding his hands palm outwards towards her. ‘We will pay a fair price, however if you are alone as you say would it not be better to accompany us back to civilisation, among your own kind?’
‘My own kind sent my mother to her death, or so they thought,’ she replied.
William understood now. The old harridan sent seaward with her cats must have been with child and this girl was her issue.
‘Aye, she was badly done by,’ added Paxton, ‘and for this we all apologise and wish to make amends to you and your animals. But we really do need your cats now, that is if you still have any?’ The girl seemed reluctant and twisted her face into a grimace. She was torn with emotion both attracted by the men, whom she had only heard of spoken of by her mother, and afraid of them.
‘And where am I to go in this place of towns and villages, where I know no one? Tell me this?’
William tried to reassure her. ‘We will pay one gold sovereign per cat for your trouble. With this money you could buy a small farm or house. We would leave you a male and female cat to breed and earn money. You could be self-sufficient and until you are settled you’re welcome to live in my house. It has many rooms.’
‘Oh,’ said a girl, deeply conflicted. To go with them she must leave her island, the only home she knew and where her mother was buried, a life of complete freedom and self-reliance to go to a place where crowds of people would frighten her. However, she knew to be alone was a terrible sorrow which in the last year since her mother died had worn her down with torments.
‘How many cats do you have?’ asked Rufus, ever practicable.
The girl thought for a moment, ‘About twenty dozen at least.’
William grinned. The boat would be awash with them. ‘Very well young maid, what is your decision and if I might ask, what is your name?’
‘My name is Klyesha.’
‘Good day to you, Klyesha,’ replied William, waiting expectantly.
She looked at the men, heard the mewing of her cats who are always hungry despite the mice she bred for them and quickly made up her mind. ‘It will take some time to catch them all.’
‘Very well, let us begin,’ replied William, ‘by having something to eat.’
They opened the satchel Rufus was carrying and spread its contents on a cloth. The men had not long had their breakfast and they could see how interested was the girl and how entranced by every new food she tasted so they let her eat the lion’s share. Perhaps it was the food or their friendly banter, but Klyesha’s mind was made up after the feast. ‘You must let me coax them,’ she declared, rising from the food.
It took many hours to catch and crate the cats and store them below decks. Brindle, white pawed, ginger, glossy black, tortoiseshell, patchwork cats of all colours and ages stowed in the crates. The men couldn’t go near them for they would hiss and spit and bar their teeth and claws. Klyesha’s tiny bundle of belongings touched William as he helped her up from the skiff onto their ship. The Captain was already alarmed at his loud and hissing cargo but William reassured him he would be well rewarded for the assault on his ears.
By next day’s break they had reached home port where Paxton and Rufus organised carts to transport the cats to the various granaries where they were to be stationed. Klyesha truly agonised over which of her precious companions to keep and finally settled on a handsome marmalade Tom and a quiet, silky black female. She carried them in a small wicker basket along the gangplank to the Wharf where her eyes widened at the buildings and numbers of humans who crowded the docks. Awestruck, she remained transfixed quietly staring at all before her. Indeed, many stared at her too clad only in her cat furs.
William realised how overwhelmed she must be and gently persuaded her onto a cart which he himself drove away flinging commands over his shoulders to his men as they left.
At the castle gate, he flung off his black wig and the castle guards stared as they hurriedly waved him through. Klyesha was amused at their obvious deference to him and wondered what it meant and also why he had been wearing a wig. For some reason she was greatly delighted by his flaming orange hair. Quickly, he manoeuvred the cart into the mews of his own apartments shouting to servants who hurried to greet them.
The building’s solid stone walls comforted Klyesha reminding her of her now abandoned cave home. William escorted her himself to a chambermaid he could trust who was instructed to bathe her and find her suitable fresh garments. He took the cats gently from her and placed them in a guest bed chamber awaiting their mistress. He fetched a dish of cream for them from the kitchens and leaving hurried to his own ablutions neglected for the past few days while on the high seas.
Refreshed and able to eat a substantial lunch, his brother Gerard broke in on his repast, ‘Sire, we were worried. Reports came you didn’t reach your estate. We feared you captured by bandits.’ The look on Gerard’s face did not match the concern in his voice.
‘Brother, I am here, as you see, quite well before you. Even a King needs a holiday.’
‘Yes, Sire, as you wish. Only please inform us next time you go roving, so we can provide you suitable escort.’
‘Of course, I will. My venture required a somewhat clandestine approach, dear Brother, please excuse my indulgence. As you are here, I do require you to justify the neglect of our granaries which I believe you are solely responsible for?’ Gerard coughed and turned away embarrassed struggling to find a suitable response. William continued, ‘You might have made me aware of their state in time to allay the worst of the grains’ destruction. May I assure you, I will attend to the granary’s proper husbandry myself in future. The sufferers of this neglect have traipsed too many times before me during Court receptions.’
‘Of course, Sire, as you wish,’ blurted Gerard, still red in the face. ‘May I inquire as to the outcome of your recent excursion?’
‘You may. I have obtained cats, long excluded from the Kingdom to our great loss, to replace those culled in previous years. They are a part of my plan to halt destruction of the grain supplies. Also, there is a young woman, Klyesha, whose husbandry of the cats has given us this opportunity. You will soon meet her. Her presence here is not to be questioned and she is to be afforded all due courtesy as she is under my protection.’
Gerard’s eyebrows raised, ‘Good Sire, but is that…’
‘Wise?’, William interrupted. ‘It’s certainly not up to you to judge. She may not be with us long, anyhow. Is there anything else you want?’
‘No, Sire, except to say the household, indeed the country is gladdened by your safe return.’ He bowed low and left. William returned to his meal uneasy at the vibes of insincerity his brother gave out.
He was almost finished his meal when a chambermaid entered the dining room and requested if the young woman was to join him or be given her meal in the kitchens.
‘No bring her in. She can dine with me.’ answered William. The young woman who entered the dining room was almost unrecognisable! Clean, her face shone with a healthy suntan, her green eyes made bright by the pale green gown she wore so closely laced over her chest but flowing river-like from her waist.
Klyesha stood awkwardly, unsettled by the tightness of the gown’s bodice and totally unsure about how to behave in the presence of who she now knew was the King.
‘Come,’ said William, gently aware he had stared at her too long, ‘Sit beside me and eat.’ He called servants to bring her a platter of bread, cheese and roasted meats and a glass of wine.
‘Thank you, Sir, I mean Sire,’ she said, quietly astonished at the pewter candle sticks on the table and the fine silver cutlery none of which she knew how to use.
‘I placed your cats in your bedchamber,’ he explained, ‘and they finished a dish of cream in seconds!’ he laughed.
She smiled at that. ‘I do not even know what cream is, Sire,’ she whispered.
‘It seems you do have much to understand about our foods, customs and ways. I do not envy your learning journey but permit me to say, I intend to assist you in any way I can.’
Now she was embarrassed and did not know where to look or put her hands, folding and refolding them on her lap. The food appeared and thankfully for Klyesha there was no need to talk.
William sat sipping his wine trying not to watch her too much. Silence filled their repast. Unsure whether his presence upset her, William stood and bid her finish her lunch, he would see her later and asked she rest until then. He left and went to the balcony of his room looking out over the City to the now yellowing agricultural fields beyond and asked himself whether he was most to blame for the poverty of his people. How could he have been so blind and so lax as to leave critical decisions to the brother he knew hated him?
Winter is here! We have had some frosts and a few cold, windy days but so far not too cold. If your heaters working it’s ok. The most annoying thing I find about this time is lack of daylight but as we have just past the shortest day, the daylight will start increasing anyway. Some chickens are laying but no ducks as yet.
The biggest news this week was calling the vet out to see our Miss Goat, whose real name is Tulip though we don’t use it too much. Her condition was quite disturbing, a prolapsed uterus. This is usually seen in younger pregnant goats but our goat is at least 10 years old and is certainly not pregnant. The vet came and operated on her in the paddock. I set up a table for him to make it a bit easily and more hygenic. That was on Thursday, yesterday, and today she is quite ok, no obvious signs of pain or discomfort. He gave her a long acting antibiotic and an anti-inflammatory. The visit will not be cheap, probably more than $400 but Miss goat is a loyal and valuable member of the farm who has eaten blackberries and other weeds consistently for years and deserving loyalty in return.
I have been digging jerusalem artichokes- they look a bit like ginger but have a lovely nutty flavour when steamed or baked. They are considered a super food due to them being low GI with many important minerals like iron. They grew super well this year due to all the rain and the chickens and other poultry love them too so they are a winner here to grow as a supplementary crop for the animals. They do have a little side effect of causing flatulence but hey, they are so worth it!
The kiwifruit went crazy this year too. I have buckets of fruit and was just going to get the last ones off the vines when their leaves fell and exposed them to currawongs etc so there are none left now. At least I got a decent amount off in time! They are full of vitamin C. They ripen quite slowly off the vine too so you can stagger the picking so they don’t ripen too many at a time. I am hoping to make kiwi fruit jam from them this year.
Not your typical Summer. The whole school holidays it rained with only a few days of complete sunshine. Then at the end we got a week of sunshine. Yesterday was hot and the aircon was on in the office for my first day back at school. Today we didn’t use it and tonight its back to being a bit chilly. The bright summery faces of new Year 7’s cheered me up no end. Excited to be in high school, a little scared, some very prepared, some without even a book to write in. I gave them books. I’m only the literacy tutor, they weren’t my classes. Was I over the top with my enthusiasm? I hope not.
This is going to be, I believe, my last year of teaching. I am a dinosaur, a troglodyte who keeps getting dragged kicking and screaming through new programs and acronyms enough to make your eyeballs fallout. You gotta give the Dept. credit for the bean counters who rebadge the same things every year, except that most of them are now educational companies in on the take. Nothing, repeat nothing will replace a teacher with a Degree, commonsense and experience of child behaviour and learning. You can throw all the data you like at us but it doesn’t take a teacher’s observation of student writing and reading long to see where they fit on a continuum from competent to struggling. Give us resources that are easily reproducible not the latest online assessment. I’m all for hands on , not brains captured by a screen, well not for too long anyway. I’m not such a Luddite that I don’t see the value of google but I am still in love with books. Again and again we are realising- well I didn’t need to- that books capture the child and give them the ideas and the structure of language that a deprived background cannot give them.
I will give you an example- I was small group tutoring last year. I gave them a writing exercise about a ‘Holiday at the Snow’. I added a word bank of words associated with snow sports and the experience of snow. These were the only nouns they used in their paragraphs because none of these kids had ever been taken to see the snow because in Australia that is a wealthy family’s holiday and we don’t get snow where we live. They were better writers for ‘A day at the Beach’ because the sea is less than an hour’s drive away. They had experienced going to the beach.
This is one of the unhappy effects of the covid-19 pandemic on our students- no excursions. Kids who are not taken to new places have limited experience and those limitations are reflected in their writing and their thinking. Books can fill in a gap for information about experiences but they don’t fill the mind with a memory like splashing your feet in the waves as you walk along the shore.
So, parents out there, take your kids to new places. Catch a train, take the car for a Sunday drive, take them to a new restaurant and buy them books- they cost very little secondhand. Your child’s ideas, their thinking need stimulation from books and from experiences not the dulling down *’soma’ of the screen.
*’soma’ was the drug used in Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ to keep everyone happy in the highly regulated social stratum of that society. One of the classic ‘must reads’ for older teenagers and adults
Read to the end of this article and you will see how the title of this blog fits in:
“Now that the worst has happened the Government of New South Wales is quite entitled to insist that Victorian infection shall be a home commodity. There should be no chance of it pouring into this state; and Mr. Holman and his colleagues may be sure of hearty support in the action they have taken to prevent additional infected persons from adding to our already heavy burden. It is a monstrous thing that we should be penalised because Melbourne doctors have pooh-poohed the idea that pneumonic-influenza could attack the southern metropolis; but it would be criminal if New South Wales were to be treated as common ground in fighting the disease just because Victoria at least has been declared an infected State. We have done our duty from the beginning. As a return for our prompt declaration of in-fection, thus putting up a barrier against Victoria in spite of the apparent reverse process, that State has also been declared infected; and if we do not take the strongest action there may be no limit to the invasion of pneumonic-influenza in a form of increasing virulence. Already the deaths in Melbourne are mounting up. The case for self-protection for New South Wales is so strong that the check upon any further invasion should be as complete as possible. Meanwhile there are local pre-cautions which require our attention. The decision of the Government to make the wearing of masks compulsory is a wise one. This was clearly a matter which could not safely be left to individual good sense or individual caprice. The exhortation of the Press and the medical faculty, the hinted pressure of unofficial bodies would obviously have been a poor substitute for an authoritative order. Mean-while the citizen must remember that the Government’s decision will be stultified unless it is reinforced by his individual goodwill. Why not begin to-day? The refusal to wear a mask will be an offence as from Monday next, but it must not be the fear of detection and punishment that will influence the community. lt will be possible, even easy, to evade the law, but we should remember that in effect we have been put upon our honour by those who are charged with our public health, and that on our faithful observance of their policy depends our welfare.
The wearing of masks has now been ordained, but there are other more general precautions which are still left to our personal sense of responsibility. The most important of these is the unnecessary crowding which can be seen every day in trains, trams, shops, and restaurants. We must still go to work and earn our bread, but we are entitled to ask those upon whom no such obligation is imposed to remain at home until the bread-winners are out of danger. One may say without exaggeration that most suburban trains and every tram is a hot-bed of possible infection dur-ing the crowded hours of traffic. The travellers are not only those who are going to work or returning from it. There is a proportion of passengers whose object is pleasure or shopping. We have a right to ask that these should limit their expeditions. In America it was found that restriction on traffic had an immense bearing on the spread of influenza, and American experience should teach us a lesson.
In America they had actually to establish a system or permits for the shortest of journeys. We have not yet come to that, but we can profit by their example. What cannot be too strongly emphasised is that we are in a singularly fortunate position; we have quickly localised and isolated the disease. Our task is now to keep it under control after an excellent be-ginning. The precautions we have already adopted are those which the bitter tribulations or other countries have found serviceable, often too late to save them the worst damage. If we neglect any possible precaution which the wisdom of medical experience suggests we shall be culpably foolish, and we should never forget that all the vigilance of the authorities is worth-less unless each individual does his share.’
Sound familiar? Yet the source is ‘Sydney Morning Herald’, January 30th, 1919!
What we ignore because it’s in the past , we are doomed to repeat my friends. Au revoir and Happy Christmas, Feliz Navidad, Joyeaux Noel, Frohe Weihnachten, 敬祝圣诞，恭贺新喜,
krisamas kee badhaee
APA citation
INFLUENZA CAMPAIGN. (1919, January 30). The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), p. 6. Retrieved December 19, 2021, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article15822505
It’s Spring and though still a little cold in the mornings and at night the resurgent spirit of Spring- it must be a goddess bedecked in flowers- is very much apparent. White apple blossoms contrast with a big bush of red waratahs. Purple, mauve, pink and white hyacinths waft their delicate scent on the air from pots and also in my fenced front vegie/flower garden. We have had rain! Suddenly the little purple hyacinths have emerged and grown overnight- they line one part of the sandstone edged path of the garden and are competing with the luscious growth of silverbeet. Three red tulips- the biggest I have ever grown- stand proud against the large sandstone rock marking my beloved cat, Foxy’s grave. Other bulbs which were a bit stunted and distraught are surging forward, their flowers still a promise. The King Alfred daffodils are already finished for the year, their long leaves falling back to the earth. The crop was poor this year due to tiny snails and overcrowding. There will need to be a massive subdividing of plants in January and digging of bulbs to ensure a better crop next year.
Love is very much apparent in the poultry side of the farm. Our grey/white muscovy duck has successfully hatched four little yellow and brown ducklings. I have successfully hatched, so far, 7 chickens in the incubator. I tried to get some more Pekins as I have a male and a female bantam Pekins- both speckled grey- but none of her eggs were fertile. They are very cute chickens, low to the ground and very gentle, ideal for my granddaughters. Maybe later in the year, I can raise some.
Meanwhile, despite collecting eggs as diligently as possible, two hens are sitting on random eggs at the moment. They are very persistent, as are the other ducks who want to be mothers. However, I do not want a massive surge in the duck population as happened last year. Four new ones are enough. One turkey hen is sitting on eggs. She has a persistent co-sitter which is of course, another duck. This duck is going to be disappointed however, as duck mothers can’t raise turkey poults because they are very susceptible to bacterial disease from chicken or duck droppings. I have made the turkey mums a new pen- almost finished- to keep their babies away from the other poultry.
The other turkey hen, white like the first one mentioned above, is laying a lot of eggs in a separate love nest with a very lucky male. The other 5 turkey males are very jealous of him and are constantly parading near their pen, big tail feathers puffed out, gobbles- if that’s what you call them- on prominent display on their necks. These guys always give me a laugh. They run to the kitchen/dining room door as soon as it opens for scraps, legs splaying out like a bunch of ostriches, pecking at other ducks and chickens who dare to share the feast. The turkey males also fight quite a bit, drawing blood until they’re exhausted, fighting for dominance and the right to mate. Usually the turkey hens are completely disinterested in them. You rarely see them mate and I often wonder if any of their eggs are fertile but miraculously they usually seem to be.
The turkey hen in her love nest with the male is there for a reason. She was the one who would escape the pens each morning to wander around on the grass just toying with death especially when the fox was active last month and I’d have a heart attack- almost-seeing her when I got up and had to race out and feed them all to get her back in. She is also the turkey hen who in her imagination was creating the ideal nest when she started laying on top of a small aluminium shed we have in the garden which is at least 2 1/2 metres off the ground. It was a nest with a view, I’ll give her that and rat and fox proof too. The only problem would be her pouts would have fallen off the roof when hatched. Somehow I thought this was not a good idea, hence the containment option and me wasting an afternoon building her a new nesting box out of an old coffee table. Stay tuned for progress on this unusual potential mother who has laid about 13 eggs so far in the nest.
Last year during the Covid-19 lockdown and the impending sense of doom which it engendered, I decided to publish a collection of my poetry. It took several months of frantic Youtube watching, reading the fine print of print on demand publishers and scouring the manuscript for errors. To make matters even harder for myself, I wanted to add 20 or so illustrations from my own art and photography. Finally it was uploaded and I felt like I had just given birth. The emotions were quite strong. I was equally stoked getting copies of it finally from the online publisher and on demand seller. Due to Covid, I couldn’t have a book launch, even at home. So I set up a website and a Youtube channel for the company, Duck Farm Press. The marketing of books is not something I am very good at and I am seriously distracted from the marketing by the compulsion to write- atm it’s a history book- well part history and part family history.
To add to the diffculty, poetry is not a popular genre. Some book distributors won’t touch it. I can guarantee to you now, that no poet is going to become wealthy through the publication of their poetry, though, some young poets are making money with compelling Youtube videos. Mine are not compelling because I believe my poem is more important than what I look like reciting it. My husband told me to make myself “look more pretty” and that my editing and video angles were poor. Yep, I can see that, though my feminist heart rebels a little at the surface shallowness of my ‘image’ ie what I look like not the images I am reading to you. My mother is on there too. Her video is equally unprofessional and one continuous take but she’s compelling because of the early 1930’s lived history she is talking about. She’s not a poet. She’s a fiction writer but the book, ‘Land of the Rippling Gold’ she is talking about is largely autobiographical.
Back to poetry. Picture me at my local High School ‘teaching’ poetry to a group of Year 10’s who, honestly don’t give a fig about poetry. They drew on their carefully constructed sheets provided to me by their teacher whom I was temporarily replacing, one even shredded theirs in their contempt for the poem- it was by Emily Dickinson. I did some annotations of the poem on the board and said sarcastically that copying was the lowest level in an intellectual hierarchy and I “couldn’t make it any easier.” The better among them read the poem and answered the questions as best they could. I began mingling among them, helping them individually. I told a small group of boys I got it that they didn’t identify with a feminist poem and a difficult one to interpret at that. One reminded me that white males were the most maligned group in society now. I didn’t disagree because this is how they feel, but I had to ‘teach’ the poem so that kind of discussion wasn’t appropriate. I picked the toughest kid in the class, one who is just biding his time until he can leave and work in a proper job, ie as a tradie. I did ask him if he had a part-time job. He did. He commented that if we paid him at school then maybe he would do the work then. I didn’t bother to add that he was working to get an education. I continued to circle the room. Some kids work in their own vacuum, bless them, obvious to the negativity around them. The best one, had already finished the sheet, and I got him to interpret lines on the board and he did this very well.
Then I went back to ‘tough guy’. He’d written nothing on his sheet. Not even his name. I read a line to him: “They put me in a closet.” How would you feel if you were shut up in a cupboard? I asked him. He said “claustrophobic, trapped, angry.” I wrote out on the paper for him, ‘Emily Dickinson is feeling claustrophobic, trapped and angry in this poem.’ See, I said, you can do this. Yes, they can do it. They do not realise that life lived in all places and in all times has been captured in poetry. I told the class, “Poetry is a time capsule. Poetry captures someone’s emotions so that everyone hereafter can see and feel those emotions again.” Poetry does this better than prose because poetry is trickily not explicit, it is open to interpretation. You can keep delving down into the layers like peeling an onion and get more and more out of it. Even more than the poet themselves thought they put in the poem.
This is one of my poems from the collection ‘How to Smoke the Soul-Poetry for the Heart and Mind’ published in the Covid-19 year of 2020 but written 15 years earlier. I put it on Facebook and asked my friends to tell me what it was about:
Theatre of the Thimbleless.
Knitting, we patch and darn the air
worn thin at bedtime.
A clock in the morning ticks harder,
exposed skin is abraded,
nerves are fringed.
If we open an op shop
of ragged knees and rubbed elbows:
‘You’ve knocked the stuffin’ outa me, love’,
we’ll re-tailor the décor,
wadding is what we want.
______________________________ 2005
This is what my friends commented (Names deleted):
Friend 1: Long Term pain?
Me: More heartache.
Friend 1: I was in the ball park then.
Friend 2: You are working too hard and need help and comfort.
Me: Hi I think it links a bit to Macbeth’s speech in the play: ‘sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care’. The idea of trying to correct what’s wrong with sewing techniques. Relates to how the kids and I felt about the divorce.
Friend 3: I Love the striking prosaic metaphor that sets the dark tone of emptiness. ’Theatre of the Thimbleless’ using a forgotten art. Darning is immediately revealing our vain attempts to repair the damage that comes from the abrasion of everyday “wear and tear” living… especially in the darker hours. Your symbolic clock that is in itself an enemy with its punishing strokes wearing us thinner daily.‘ Fringed’ keeps the knitting imagery moving forward where only the exposed parts are decorated to keep our worn ness hidden…Your vision of tired and worn people collecting in places where there is second or third life possible in the op shop is startling but most inventive. Comparing notes about past hurts that have left you ‘ragged and rubbed’ but still substantially intact. The colloquial expression is light hearted but also cuttingly honest. You have played with the ‘Stuffing’ to suggest the inner things we all need to survive as humans: love, acceptance, relationships. You have a positive view of recovering what you can with the threads available and whatever wadding can be pressed into the ‘re-tailoring’ of this exterior we present to the world cleverly described as our ‘Decor’.Your economy of expression and suggestive imagery give me the view of a strong person who has been worn down by breakdowns and the rough and tumble of ordinary life. But also looking to the fellowship with so many others who come together in the op shop of people at ease with their state of wornness but celebrating what can be darned and repaired. Pretty bold and forthright ideas???that may well be my own world view pressing into your words… but the associations came thick and fast with a consistent theme of being remade not discarded.
Me: Wow! A really insightful analysis, D—-s. You are spot on. Sometimes, trying to rework the clothing of habits we have draped ourselves in won’t work when we are thimbleless ie we don’t have the tools. What we want is a cushioning or wadding against those raw emotions.
As you might guess, Friend 3 is a retired English teacher. He gave me insights into the poem I didn’t see myself.
I hope when you read this, you might like to try your hand at interpreting poetry and unraveling it for yourself. One that comes to mind is the only poem this poet wrote and he wrote it as he was waiting to executed in the Tower of London. I find it haunting:
Tichborne’s Elegy
BY Chidiock Tichborne
My prime of youth is but a frost of cares, My feast of joy is but a dish of pain, My crop of corn is but a field of tares, And all my good is but vain hope of gain. The day is gone and yet I saw no sun, And now I live, and now my life is done.
The spring is past, and yet it hath not sprung, The fruit is dead, and yet the leaves are green, My youth is gone, and yet I am but young, I saw the world, and yet I was not seen, My thread is cut, and yet it was not spun, And now I live, and now my life is done.
I sought my death and found it in my womb, I lookt for life and saw it was a shade, I trode the earth and knew it was my tomb, And now I die, and now I am but made. The glass is full, and now the glass is run, And now I live, and now my life is done.________ 1586
Today I was having a lazy Sunday so my token gesture to that was to sit on a seat while weeding my very overgrown brick patio. I got great pleasure from seeing the bricks swept and free of weeds. Even the orchids in pots had taken the opportunity to send roots out into the dirt on top of the bricks. They were moved and I’ll probably plant a few into proper soil in the garden. I get some kind of perverse pleasure out of seeing the grass straight against a path- green against terracotta. Why is that? Why do I like to see a green paddock against the messier entanglement of Bush? Why do I like to see a perfectly weeded rockery with bush rocks or sandstone along the edge and the surrounding area with everything tidy?
This got me thinking again about the talks I heard at the Sydney Writer’s festival, Adam Goodes talking about sovereignty and reconciliation and another indigenous speaker talking about Aboriginal deaths in custody. I’m writing a book about my great grandfather and the colonisation of South Australia. I couldn’t help myself but I had to understand the context of that settlement in 1836, the only colony without convicts, so this meant going back to the 1830’s in Britain. There’s a lot I could say about how they tried to set up a Utopian colony and that included how Aboriginals were to be treated. I hope to write a chapter about European and Aboriginal contacts in the book. But what I realised when weeding that patio was that the fundamental difference between the European approach and the Indigenous approach is that we push back nature and Aboriginals work with nature.
And why is that so? We push back nature because that is the way we feed people and it has been that way for Europeans and Asians and Africans for millennia. We clear paddocks of trees to plant crops, we pump water from rivers, we plant our own species of trees and vegetables to feed ourselves. It is not an easier life than living from the land as Aboriginals have for thousands of years. In many ways it’s a much harder existence, farming than gathering and hunting. The early colonists had a very tough life clearing trees by hand, building their own houses, trying to work out what grew best in a land almost completely foreign to them. It still is a tough, physical life on the farm with choices to be made which people who live in the city don’t understand. The better farmers today do work with nature: not complete stripping of the land; mindful of the way water flows over bare land; reducing or eliminating the use of poisonous pesticides and fertilizers.
Which farmer today does not curse those early settlers who advertently and inadvertently brought foxes, rabbits, European rats and mice to this pristine land and later unwelcome visitors such as cane toads. But should we retrospectively curse them and vilify them for coming at all? Should we label all settlers as hostile or murderers of indigenous people because some were? Should we ignore the legitimate efforts by many settlers and members of governments of the time to treat Aboriginals well, to legislate for their well being and instead only focus on the lack of understanding between the two groups which led to fatalities on both sides? Yes ‘White Australia does have a Black History’ but this is not the full truth. It is only in the details of history, in the first hand documents of the time in which we can find a deeper truth. In saying this, I lament the lack of Aboriginal voices in the records of early Australia. We have diaries of early settlers, newspapers, government legislation but I have yet to find Aboriginal voices speaking their own words to me in searchable documents regarding South Australia. If anyone knows where I can find them, please message me.
Forgiveness and reconciliation has never been needed so much as it does now in our time.
amundr 