Christmas time, says my Oldest Country Cousin, always reminds him of an old strainer, fencing post that stood at the corner of the homestead property and acted as a letterbox.
At first it was a totally primitive system, the mail being left under a piece of limestone rock on the top of the post by the mailman driving by in his floppy-hooded old tourer.
The car had a distinctive roar, ejecting the galahs from the gums and with a heraldic horn that sent the kids saddling the pony to collect the mail, everyone hoping for a letter or for a cheque or even for something sealed with a loving kiss.
Bu came the time, towards one Christmas, when the mailbox post was modernised with an empty Griffiths Brothers tea tin nailed on top. The tin had a lid, it glinted and it was ritzier than the four-gallon-kerosene tins which some used These mailboxes were sometimes sent spinning by nosy cattle or passing whirlwinds.
But the tea tin survived and shone like a beacon. It received its first Christmas deliveries, sheltering the postcards of cribs and kings and more Wise Men than on the local council and even old-fashioned cards decorated with brightly-coloured thread patterning shepherds and stars.
So the mailbox did good service on top of the strainer post and it was about the right size for the parcels too. The mailman always blew the hot in a prolonged blast when there were parcels. Once he blew it so long that he ran down the battery, says my Oldest Country Cousin.
There were a few tragedies; the cake from Aunt Hetty in a battered parcel had been left in the mailbox for a few hours and the bull ants came stampeding from every hole within wind whiff. By the time my Oldest Country Cousin arrived the whole post was a rippling black army of currant-carrying ants wishing each other a merry Christmas.
My Oldest Country Cousin always squeezed the parcels when he collected them because it gave him a hint of what might be in them.
Then he’d lean against the strainer post, watching the clouds go past and wondering how the old character with the reindeer coped in an overcast and whether he’d ever shaved the nearby ranges.
It worried my Oldest Country Cousin, the thought of Santa walloping into the sharp spears of the yakkas on the range summit with toys scattering everywhere amid the outraged wallabies.
Sometimes the strainer post was washed with a few tears when expected letters didn’t arrive or unexpected letters did. He’d shed a few tears himself when he grew older and got his superphosphate bill.
Once he’d nearly broken his toe on the old strainer post when a particular communication from the land tax people made him kick out in sheer exasperation.
But near Christmas the family would wait for the mailman to give him his present and to have a celebratory drink or two.
The mailbox was decked with tinsel and a tiny Christmas bell that tinkled lightly in the breeze.
My Oldest Country Cousin’s mother had always brewed wonderful ginger beer for Christmas and the mailman liked it.
It was a dangerous brew, often exploding in the pantry in frothing shrapnel and once, when in a hurry she’d left a bottle in a wet sock for the mailman, the heat had dried the sock and the bottle had exploded with dramatic force, bringing the sleepy lizards to full alert.
But when the family met the mailman everyone sang and drank from pannikins and wished a merry Christmas to each other and the mailman said it was his best call and don’t forget to wish merry Christmas to the land because it was what everyone stood on, built on and grew on and it deserved to be remembered.
The afternoon sun caught the strainer post mailbox and it gleamed like a star while the little bell tinkled tiny greetings.
The strainer post mailbox is no more. The post is still there, split and splintered by age, the tin has long since rusted away and the homestead has a fancy box number in the nearby town where you can get to quickly in your air-conditioned car.
The bull ants wait in vain for Aunt Hetty’s cake but the stars are bright on Christmas Eve and I understand the ho-ho character and his reindeer haven’t yet clipped the yacca spears on the top of the ranges.
“They’re too busy dodging Halley’s Comet, and them soaring interest rates,” says that wise man, my Oldest Country Cousin.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Max Fatchen