Friends are those people you pick to be in your life, in the beginning simply because you like them, you’re comfortable with them. Then you grow to love them. Having found myself alone now, I am appreciating anew my special people. What is there about them?
Donna – Donna lost her husband Roly about three years ago. She is a woman of substance, courage and adventure. As a nineteen year old she took herself off to New Zealand in answer to an ad for a shearing shed hand. Arrived in what was Auckland airport – a tin shed in the middle of a paddock. 2am. Caught a bus to the shearing contractor’s house and arrived there later that evening. As one of forty applicants in the house, Donna put her hand up to be shearers’ cook. At eleven that night a Maori man took her and a few others out to a deserted farm-house in the middle of nowhere. No street-lights, just starlight and headlights along a lonely country road. All she ‘knew’ about New Zealand was they had lots of sheep and that the Maoris used to eat white people! She was well prepared! She had her steel-tipped comb ready in case they were being taken out to be eaten, or to face some other fate worse than death. At one in the morning they arrived at a ramshackle deserted farm-house with filthy mattresses piled up in a corner. An eighteen year old girl was asleep on the floor in a sleeping bag. She woke and told Donna that the rest of the shearing team were out drinking at a country pub somewhere. A little later, the team arrived back – drunk to the eyeballs and brawling like a pack of mad dogs. A wild looking Maori grabbed a carving knife and lunged at one of his mates who ran. He was chased through the house as they screamed at each other. Donna had never been so terrified.
Next morning she was up at five to prepare breakfast for the team of ten. The previous cook had quit three days earlier. The ganger brought in the day’s side of lamb and dumped it on the table. He cut it up into a couple of roasts and a few dozen enormous chops, telling Donna to watch carefully as she would have to do it daily from now on. (She later married him).
The kitchen was filthy. Broken windows, cobwebs everywhere, flour and sugar spilled out of their hessian bags on the floor, boxes of wilting cabbages, potatoes and onions piled up around the edge of the room. No fridge. Everything was sticky – tins of jam, salt and pepper, vegemite, jars of coffee. As Donna alone had to prepare five meals a day for the team, she soon realised there wasn’t enough time to keep the place spotless.
There was an assortment of commercial sized pots and pans, a wood stove for which she had to scrounge for firewood, and an electric frypan which, if to be used, had to be taken outside to a suitable power point. Breakfast each day was bubble and squeak leftovers from the previous night’s meal with chops and eggs. Morning smoko – scones with lamb or jam. Lunch – cold lamb with potato salad and tired coleslaw. Afternoon smoko – more scones, and the evening meal – something with lamb! Either a roast or a curry. If the shearers liked the cook, they called her ‘Cookie’, if not ‘Tucker F…..er’. Donna was ‘Cookie’.
She rose at 5am and generally finished around ten each night. Seven days a week. In her first stint with this team, she worked forty four days in a row – in various sheds but all with pretty much the same décor. At one stage she asked one of the roustabouts if she could swap jobs for a while. She loved being in the shed. The Maori shearers sang, joked and drank beer all day as they worked. The number of sheep these guys shore in a day, over five runs, was phenomenal – in the four hundreds.
Donna has had this adventuring spirit all her life, and this is one of the things I love about her. We are beginning to talk about testing this side of our natures again – together – out there in the big wide world that calls people like us.
Ian and Nat – These guys have been our friends since year dot. Warren’s and my first holiday together was with them – a pre marriage romp at Port Lincoln – documented (titillatingly) in my memoir. Ian was a shearer for more than forty years, and his worn out body is showing signs of it now, including the loss of one of his legs. He shore for us during all those years. Many yarns about those times in my book as well. Nat is an intrepid bush walker. Has walked and camped out for sometimes weeks on end in some of Australia’s toughest terrain. These two love to entertain. They live in an old Barossa stone cottage overlooking rolling hills. The central passageway of the house has such a decline to it, a tennis ball let loose at the front door would roll until it hit the back wall. Every room is a surprise. Art work and collectibles on the walls and shelves, picture windows with views that change hour by hour with the light. Nat is a fantastic cook. They invited me there for lunch the other day. The three of us and a farmer friend of theirs sat at their farm kitchen table eating a delicious roast of lamb backstrap on a bed of exotic lentil salad, drinking a full bodied Langmeil Shiraz (after a glass of bubbles) and indulging in great conversation. Peach frangipane for dessert.
They also invited me out for lunch a couple of days after Warren’s funeral. I didn’t know if I could do it. At that stage I just wanted to curl up and make the world go away, but I had promised myself to continue to live life well and fully. So I accepted. They too were grieving deeply for Warren and as we sat in Pindarie’s beautiful old barn cellar-door space overlooking the Barossa and the hills country that Warren loved so much, we shed more than a few tears as we remembered the good times, funny times, sad times. We have sat together in my hills country and enjoyed a glass or two of wine and memories on more than one occasion. In the eight months since Warren died Nat has checked in regularly – with a text or a phone call just to make sure I’m ok, and I appreciate it beyond words.
Some friends we lose touch with over the years. One was a fellow poet and philosopher. We shared our work through the late seventies. Our alliance was born of a deep quest to understand life, the universe and our purpose in it. I recently came across one of her poems from that time.
‘There was a dog on a chain
and the chain was as long as the dog’s wanderings
never restricting never holding
And there was a bird in a cage
and the cage was as big as the world
so no matter where it flew
it never touched the wire
And there was a man alone in the universe
with total knowledge and power at his disposal
Was the dog
or the bird
or the man
really free?’
Questions I am pondering anew today.
I’m excited to be writing about my unique friends. So many more tales to tell. Next time.
Thanks for reading. Write to me anytime if you have read ‘So Big The Land.’
Cheers.
Sue