My country cousins, who are fairly expert at turning a furrow, are now learning to turn a phrase.
They are on the editorial committee of the local history book which the. district is producing as its Jubilee 150 project.
It’s one of a number of books that are being enthusiastically compiled and launched around the State, charting the lives and times of our rural communities. They are documents full of interest, folklore and a considerable amount of fun.
I have been made a consultant, a belated recognition that we urban scribblers have our uses apart from sensationalising sin and sex, misunderstanding the rural sector and leading hedonistic lives in our old dressing-gowns as we sprawl in front of the video player.
Certainly country people dig enthusiastically among the old days; among the industrial archaeology of primitive harvesters and bloody-minded ploughs; in a rich gallery of characters who ran post offices and local stores; the stock agents and auctioneers; the bank managers and travelling hawkers; the indefatigable women and the imperishable CWA.
Days of foundation-stone laying come to light; old pictures of bewhiskered dignitaries out in the windy, limestone country or in the sand and scrub of the mallee, patting the stone with a symbolic trowel with a background of traps and buggies and old cars and a foreground of girls with ribbons and boys in britches.
There are pictures of horse teams, drawn up in a proud line, the farmer posing on his seed drill, one hand on hip, the other holding the rope reins. Not too much technology, but that old dog sitting beside the drill was a damn sight smarter than a computer and he could fight like a threshing machine.
There are the old school pictures you find and my country cousins and their committee have found plenty.
The class of 26 at the little one-room primary school in the scrub. There they stand, the children of yesterday in long pinnies and short pants, the picture taken with everyone squinting into the sun.
The older folk of the district are called to identify the scholars and, as they look at the pictures, their eyes kindle at the memory of youth and old Wilf the Walloper, doyen of the cane—but he could teach arithmetic and make it stick and he declaimed poetry with a majesty and thunder that alarmed grade one.
Mind you, the editorial committee is well organised. The whole district is afire with literary zeal.
They are compiling a story for all seasons and situations; drought and rabbit plagues; football finals and tennis afternoons; work and sweat and tears and war; loves lost and loves remembered; houses that have crumbled into ruins and dreams with them; townships that have grown and prospered; district councillors who have suffered and served.
There’s a story of the local blacksmith’s shop with its vast bellows, its coke fuel and an enormous array of pincers, rasps, hammers and horseshoes, and cultivator shears. One can imagine the hiss as the hot horseshoes were plunged into water to cool and the ingenuity of the blacksmith in shaping a part for a harvester or a plough.
Or the accounts of country weddings, especially those in the evening when the light of the kerosene lamps in the church glistened on the tears of relatives while the kids gawked at a sister in bridal white as they wondered how a normally run-of-the-mill girl could be so transformed, even though she’d said she’d half kill them if they made a racket during the ceremony.
All these things are assessed by the editorial committee with the respectful consultant from the city making suggestions and could he have another cup of tea?
Someone has an account of a Sunday school picnic at the beach supplied from some family record. How they went in horse-drawn sheep wagons while sitting on bags of chaff and how at lunch under the tarpaulins held up by pitchfork handles, the children enthusiastically sang grace to the consternation of the parson:
Be present at our table, Lord.
Be here and everywhere adored,
These creatures bless
And grant that we
May feast on sausage rolls for tea.
Well, I’m sure we’ll have a good history before we’re finished. Anyone for sausage rolls?
Max Fatchen
(Fatchen’s view)