LITMIR.BIZ

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disappeared briefly into the darkness of the house before emerging with a pile of wooden boxes that he manhandled awkwardly into the yard and stacked roughly against the old slab-walled shed. Grace gazed sleepily around the farm and took in the few overgrown fruit trees that were scattered about the place. A bush lemon leaned tiredly against the small shed, as if the two were providing silent mutual support to one another. An apricot tree grew near the back door of the house and a line of peach trees marched majestically up the driveway from the front gate. The gate hung open, leaning rather dejectedly on its sagging hinges.

      A pretty little trellis formed an archway from a small gate near the shed up to the front of the house, and a pale green grapevine, starved of water, covered the trellis. An old rusted- out water tank sat uncertainly on top of an elevated stand, presumably at one time designed to supply water pressure to the house. The stand leaned slightly towards the creek as it rose on stout wooden poles from the overgrown lawn. Some curious kookaburras sat on top of the tank with their heads tilted to one side as they observed the movements of the family below. Apparently amused by the new presence, they exploded in spontaneous laughter. Delighted, the children laughed along, their childish giggles joining the birds in their mirth. ‘Smart arses,’ Norm yelled, shaking his fist at the birds and failing to see the joke. ‘I’ll show you in time, we’ll see who laughs last in this story.’

      While Norm opened the doors and windows of the house, the older children moved the remainder of the packing cases outside. The youngest child, a boy aged about ten months, waited impatiently in his mother’s arms, apparently eager to go inside and explore the house with the rest of the children. Norm exchanged frequent happy glances with his wife as he worked, testing her reaction to the new surroundings and beaming with pleasure as he took in her obvious acceptance.

      They had endured some tough times during the dark years that had somehow been lost to the war, and for them the hardship had continued long after the war. Not for them the joyous homecomings of the conquering heroes, or the soldier’s land grants and the indulgence of an adoring population. Norm had not served in the forces, but he did not begrudge the returning servicemen their accolades, God knew they had suffered enough. Nor did he regret his own decision not to serve directly, but he often felt driven into the background and overshadowed by the hype over the war, and strangely guilty over his seemingly selfish little dreams.

      And while he had not donned a uniform, it was impossible to escape the impact of the conflict. The world had gone mad, he always thought, because everyone became so singularly focussed on the war that nothing else seemed worthy of attention. One was either fighting in the war, or working on some endeavour that had no other purpose than to fuel the military monster that consumed everything in its path.

      Norm’s plan to own a little farm and sideline himself from this madness was something he could never openly discuss with anyone, because he feared the recriminations of ‘selfish’ and ‘unpatriotic’ that would erupt from every quarter. But now he felt free to contemplate a new life on his own little farm, and independence from the relentless heartbreaking search for work and purpose that had plagued his past.

      They had scrimped and saved through the war years and beyond to buy the small farm, supported by Norm’s parents who had enjoyed some modest success in the saw milling business. His parents reasoned that the responsibility of developing the property would be good for him, and that it would force him hard up against his shortcomings and make him grow. He had been a bit wild during the war years he realised. Unruly, headstrong and fiercely independent, he often threw in a precious job on a whim, and he knew his parents did not regard the small fair woman as the best catch for their son.

      She came from poverty-stricken stock and appeared too earthy for their taste, and while they knew they were not wealthy and cultured themselves, they still had hopes that he would marry into some promise of a better future. They were disappointed too when the newly weds bred like rabbits from the beginning, apparently exercising little caution in their procreation as they spawned children into a life of certain poverty and hardship.

      ‘Tie a knot in the bloody thing for God’s sake,’ his father implored after each pregnancy announcement, but the breeding went on regardless. Norm smiled at his wife as he remembered and a surge of desire for her seized him as he watched her sitting quietly on the tailboard of the wagon, looking beautiful in the dawn light he thought.

      They were both aged only in their late twenties and already they had five kids. One, a girl they called Evyonne, had been burned to death in the open fire at the reserve, reinforcing the grandparent’s view that they were having too many children too soon. The memory of the small screaming child engulfed in flames burdened the young woman with a tremendous guilt that she would carry to her grave. It was an accident of course, though some said it was bound to happen given the living conditions at the time.

      But no amount of reassurance from all those around her could appease the regret that she felt. Her guilt gnawed at her heart with a constant dull ache that seemed to give her a greater focus on the other children, as if her loss had been a warning to be a better mother in the future. Breeding and mothering became her chosen lot in life, and she knew she would defend her brood to the death if necessary, like a mother hen with a clutch of chicks at her back and under her wings, cornered in the pen by a fox.

      But nothing could bring back the child who fell into the open fire. No amount of guilt and tears could undo the horrible burns that covered the tiny body. No power could clear her mind of the smell of burning flesh and clothing, and the hopeless screams of pain that followed her down the years. The child suffered a slow and painful death, lingering for several weeks before she finally succumbed to her burns and died. The woman cushioned her grief somehow by bearing more children, as if to make up for the loss through sheer volume. The babies came almost every year until now she had five – and only God knew how many she would have by the end.

      The old farm rested in a sweeping bend of the Grass Tree Creek, a stream that was just a lazy string of waterholes under the towering gums at the moment. Later they would learn that it could become a raging torrent when flooded, or a procession of stinking stagnant ponds in a drought. The creek rose near the tiny village of Leyburn then meandered through flat, rich black soil farmland until it joined the Condamine River on the main Toowoomba to Millmerran road near the small town of Brookstead.

      At about fifteen acres, the farm was small for the area because most properties ran to six or seven hundred acres at least. Even these larger farms had originally been part of Yandilla Station, a huge holding that once covered a great expanse of Southeast Queensland along the Condamine River. The soil on this little farm was rich and black and perfect for growing vegetables, provided there was water for irrigation.

      One of the older locals told Norm that the farm, known as Eastville Yandilla, had once been a shepherd’s outpost. In the early days an ancient Chinese shepherd had occupied it for many years. The old shepherd had asked the station owners to set up the area around the creek for growing fresh vegetables, a scarcity in those days. They agreed and laid an area of about one-acre with underground irrigation pipes, fed by a wind pump from a deep waterhole in the creek.

      The wind pump would have been functional but unreliable and, long before the new owners arrived; a four-inch pump that required some form of engine power had replaced it. Norm always referred to the deep water hole in almost hushed and reverent tones as the ‘pump hole’. He often boasted to all who would listen that it had never gone dry, even in the ‘big drought of thirty-two’.

      The pump fed the water from the creek through an underground pipe system into above ground spray lines. The spray lines rested on wooden props and could be rotated, allowing a wide area to be irrigated by each one. The above ground pipes were usually removed when the land had to be cultivated, and the underground lines had been buried about two feet deep in the ground. This allowed the soil to be tilled without the risk of fouling the cultivators or damaging the pipes.

      The story goes that when the Chinese shepherd became too old for regular work, the station owners surveyed off the farm and gave him title to the small plot. The retirement gift carried an understanding that he would continue to produce

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