Letters - Part 1

It was always my intention, when I began Bessie at Burragan, to weave a little history into its stories. You see, Burragan is an entity of its own, with an intriguing and mysterious past - involving arson, a multi millionaire, and a murder plot! To me, Burragan is the star of the show. It writes the stories… I just retell them.

Burragan’s previous owner Elinor, who was always known as Lin, was an intensely private person. So much so that she actually used to have the mail box set up on the opposite side of the road from where the driveway was (and at one stage, even on the highway many miles away) so that people wouldn’t know how to find the house. Many neighbours had never visited the homestead, and the story goes that workers were also always directed straight to the wool shed (which is several kilometres from the house), and rarely, if ever, invited in for tea and cake.

After many years in a nursing home, with dementia, Lin died last year aged 79. And I’m sure she’d be mortified to know I’m broadcasting stories about Burragan to the entire world. Though I have been told by many locals that she always liked my in-laws – who were, of course, her family’s neighbours for many generations - so would be happy to know Burragan is in good hands with them… and that I too am in love with Burragan in my own way.

I won’t give the whole story away at the start, though really, given Lin’s discrete nature and secluded life at Burragan, I’m not sure anyone truly knows the whole story.

These simple facts I can tell you:

Born in August 1933, Lin was the only child of Des and Margaret (Madge) Fitzgerald. Des had owned parts of Burragan from as far back as 1903. He died in 1948, when Lin was 15, and she returned home from boarding school in Adelaide, to live and work at Burragan for the next 60 years. Much to her mother’s disapproval, Lin married Laurie, a station hand on the property, in 1964. They never had children. Madge passed away some years later, and Laurie died in 1998. In 2007 Lin was found collapsed, though still alive, at the Burragan homestead. She moved to a nursing home in Broken Hill, where she lived for another four years.

With absolutely no known family, the contents and collections of Lin’s life at Burragan were sold at auction before ST’s family bought the property, and so the house was nearly empty when ST and I arrived at the beginning of 2011.

But in an old, wooden box, in the loft of a machinery shed, we came across one small wad of letters dated 1957. Some are to Lin, others are to Madge, some are receipts for purchases, others are newspaper clippings. While they don't say much individually, to me they provide an fascinating patchwork of time, place, life and the story of Burragan.

Interestingly, in 1957 Lin would have been just a year younger than I am today.

I’d like to share these with you over the coming months - if I can decipher the ornate handwriting.

Here’s an easy one to start…

Postmarked: Cairns, Queensland, 1957.

To Miss Elinor Fitzgerald
Burragan Station

From M. Fitzgerald
Green Island
Pacific Ocean

Your Whacko Letter from Green Island.

Dear Pal,
My trip was Delightful
I’m having Good Fun
However I’m expecting A Dose of Sunburn
Because I Have Been Sightseeing
But I’ve acquired Lots of Weight
The weather is Delightful
I have been Kept Busy
And enjoying The Scenery
As well as Motoring, Eating and Boating
If you could only see How Well I Look
Just like a Rising Sun
But I’ll be back Next Month
My love to The Gang
Signed, So! Cheerio, All My Love, Your Pal
M
P.S. Don’t forget to Feed The Dog

The best thing since sliced bread…

Remember the “bread incident”? Well, there’s been a delightful and hilarious development…

For those who aren’t on Facebook, or need a refresher, late last week I posted a story on the Bessie at Burragan Facebook page about our ongoing struggle with transporting bread from Town to Burragan without it ending up totally decimated… Here it is:

“Ever since living at Burragan, and therefore buying groceries from hundreds of kilometres away, ST and I have had an ongoing issue with bread.... yes, bread.
It doesn't matter how far it's got to travel (110km or 500km), how many loaves we buy, or where we put it in the car - even if I nurse the bloody thing in my lap the whole way home - the bread ALWAYS ends up squashed and barely salvageable by the time we're home.
Yesterday we thought we'd be clever. We put the three loaves of bread in their own container, all lined up together nicely, by themselves, protected from the elements, tied up in the back of the ute... What could possibly go wrong?
Well, late last night we pulled up at ST's mum and dad's place to drop them off their shopping - including a loaf of bread - only to discover the welded piece of STEEL that holds the SPARE TYRE onto the back of the cab (The VERY same type of spare tyre hold-er-on-er-er used on thousands of Landcruisers across the country without any issue whatsoever) had actually SNAPPED OFF and the MASSIVE Landcruiser tyre had SMASHED straight on top of the container holding the BREAD... basically creating a mass of plastic and wholegrain pulp.
I couldn't even make this stuff up if I tried...”

And now there’s a Part 2…

Yesterday evening I had a phone call from our neighbour. JE is in his 60s, has lived in the area his whole life, and lives next door (about 12km away through the back paddocks) with his wife, son and daughter-in-law.

JE said he had a parcel for me that he was going to leave at the boundary gate between our two properties. He seemed kind of in a hurry, so I didn’t question him about the parcel. As yesterday was also our mail delivery day, and JE mentioned he had just come back from Cobar (200km away) I simply assumed he’d either picked up something in Cobar for ST, or something for us had been accidentally delivered to the wrong mail box.

A little later, after the daily evening tasks of watering plants and feeding animals, ST and I made the drive out to the boundary gate.

This largish, white box sat on the ground. It had a heavy stick on top to hold the lid on.

I’ll admit my first thought was it was going to contain either (a) some kind of reptile or (b) some kind of baby animal. I was definitely suspicious.

We approached the box with caution and noticed it had a message on top:

Using the stick to carefully flick the lid off, we were surprised to see the contents:

And then we just Could. Not. Stop. Laughing.

JE is not on Facebook, so I wondered how he even knew about the “bread incident”… but a bit of investigation revealed he has a few Facebook Fairies who’d told him the story.

So to JE and the Facebook Fairies – THANK YOU! The choccy is already half gone (I’m blaming ST – of course!) and my toast was extra deliciously fresh and beautiful this morning!

It’s official: the very best thing since sliced bread is magical neighbours who deliver it to you (with chocolate)!

And a note for everyone on Facebook who mentioned it's time for us to get a breadmaker... you'll be pleased to hear we already have one! I just felt it was a bit unfair of the Universe to constantly destroy our store bought bread when we only get the luxury of actually buying bread from the shops a few times a year. It is a nice treat to have one less job to do sometimes. I am sure the universe was laughing at us - and trust me, I was laughing too - when it squished our bread with the spare tyre! Good one Universe, good one. Who's laughing now? ;)

Everything I know about drought

I don’t know much about drought. Even when I saw her face, I didn’t recognise her.

Years before I moved to Burragan, we visited ST’s mum and dad one summer. Their house yard was a true oasis in the middle of a desert, in every sense. Outside the confines of the garden fence, they were feeding hay to cattle and saving animals from of empty, muddy dams. At the time, I didn’t realise that was what she looked like.

I don’t know much about drought. But I know that she’s inevitable.

I am lucky – or perhaps unlucky and lulled into a false sense of beauty and romance - to have moved to Burragan in the middle of several great seasons. This year, we’ve just less than average rainfall. We are thankful for that. And yet it’s dry. It’s dusty. It’s only getting hotter.

I don’t know much about drought. But I can feel her creeping up on us.

The signs are there. Selling stock. Buying hay. Blowing bores. Boggy dams. Empty tanks. Moving stock. Fierce winds. Thunderstorms that are no longer viewed as salvation, but instead, as fire threats. Those afternoons that smelt like rain; but when they came, they looked, and felt, and taste, like dust. Perpetrations for a dry summer.

I don’t know much about drought. But I know she’s more than a lack of rain.

She’s stress. She’s suffocation. She’s the haunted eyes of men whose strength is buckled by the weight of the world, and women who wish they could take the load off.

I don’t know much about drought. But I wonder if we will recognise each other, when we meet again.

I know we can’t be friends, and yet, to survive in this environment I cannot view her as the enemy.

We might have to learn to get along for quite a while.

It's a jungle out there

I’ve faced many challenges during my time at Burragan which seem totally removed from my previous life. These things were definitely not part of the plan. Not part of being a farmer or farmer’s wife. Not part of being 100km from the closest tiny town, or 200km from the next.

But generally they are a lot to do with being smack bang in the middle of the Australian bush. Because let me tell you, it’s a jungle out there.

Yesterday I was weeding in the garden when an emu came right up to the fence to say G’day. That’s pretty standard. I’m used to it now. There’s a group of three who’ve been living near the house for years and every season they bring their babies back too.

Kangaroos are a common occurrence over the back fence too. And when I see them cruising by so casually, I think to myself, If I was from another country, then this would be the equivalent of what Australians feel when confronted with lions, elephants and giraffes while on safari in Africa.

Except I’m not from another country. So it’s just like, whatevz.

But remember how excited I was when we had that run of echidnas a few months back? They’re more elusive you see. A bit of a novelty.

Conversely, there’s the livestock. Sometimes they also get a bit closer than expected. This one time, before we had a fence around our house, I got up in the chilly hours of the morning, stumbling to the bathroom without my glasses on. I looked out the window into a blurry sea of white and called back to ST in the bedroom, “Baaaaabe… Either it’s snowed overnight, or there are 3,000 sheep camped on our doorstep.”

The cattle are also notoriously curious, with a need to rub themselves up against, or attempt to eat, anything man-made. Including the electrics in the tractor.

And then there’s the wildlife that isn’t so welcome. Lizards I can cope with. Sort of.

Snakes I cannot.

It’s open season for snakes again and after getting our first one near the house last week, and two more in quick succession nearby, I was left feeling violated and traumatised.

Yet also relieved.

Because before that first encounter, I was walking around like a reformed drug addict craving a fix. I didn’t want to see one. And yet I so desperately needed to see one, to remind myself that the world wouldn’t suddenly spin off orbit when I did. It didn’t need to be a big one, and it didn’t need to be close by, but just a teeny, tiny, little one, just casually sunning itself out on the road, off in the distance, a million miles away. Just to take the edge off, you know? That would have been fine.

The fear of the unknown was almost paralysing. I was avoiding being outside, just to avoid the possibility of my first run in. And then, knowing how the universe works in weird ways, I was beginning to contemplate wearing my boots inside – just in case, you know, the universe might have been thinking, ‘If she doesn’t come to the snake, we’ll bring the snake to her.’

I was pretty much convinced all the snakes in the general vicinity were plotting my demise. If not by venomous strike, then by slowly turning me into a raving, paranoid, shaking mess of a crazy person.

In the end my amazingly brave mother was there to save the day, while I ran around with my eyes shut, practicing deep breathing exercises. And by deep breathing exercises, I mean hyperventilating between cuss words, obviously.

And now the encroaching wildlife has moved into insect mode. Flies are a given as we move into summer. But this season we’re experiencing another insect en masse for the very first time.

When we first moved into Burragan I remember cleaning out window sills that looked like this:

We thought this must have been what 30 years’ worth of unclean window sills must have looked like. Turns out that could have just been one week’s worth. Because MOTH PLAGUE.

That’s right people. While you enjoy your quiet Thursday night dinner in relative peace this evening, ST and I will be dining with 3,000 sets of moth eyes beaming down at us from the ceiling. Of every. Single. Room.

I’m not quite sure what to make of it all. Especially when you’re halfway through a cup of coffee and then discover a moth head floating around in it, just millimetres from your lips. *Pithhh, uggghh, sppluugh*

But like usual, I will take it on as a challenge. Just like the sheep, the snakes, the frogs, the pigs, the foxes, and the mice… oh, sweet Lord, the mice… now they were a real welcome to the jungle. But I’ll save that one for another time.

(EDIT NOTE: So it turns out attempting to take photos of the moths after dark is not the best idea in the world. Given the need for flash photography, and the whole moths being attracted to light thing...the squeals were chilling.)

Cheat sheet for country living…

Yesterday I did something which caused ST to call me a “city slicker on her first trip to the sticks.”

Did I accidentally leave a gate open?
No.

Did I mix up some sheep in the yards after they’d been drafted?
No.

Did I drive the ute to the other side of the property and run out of fuel?
No.

So what did I do that could possibly have received such a harsh critique?
Well, when asked to pick up some steel posts from the shed and deliver them to him about 15km away, I grabbed 210cm long posts instead of regular sized 165cm ones. Woops.

ST: “But didn’t you look at them when you grabbed them, and hold them up next to you and realise they were too big?”

Ummm… No. I popped them straight in the back of the ute and drove off, congratulating myself on what a good job I’d done choosing the nicer, straighter, blacker posts instead of the bent, rusty, dodgy looking ones next to them.

As the saying goes, you can take the girl out of the city but you can’t make her drink when a champagne in the hand is worth two in the fridge. That is what they say, isn’t it?

So as a public service to the people of Australia, I'm sharing some of the stupidest, most embarrassing city slicker things I’ve done in my 2.5years at Burragan. This way everyone else can learn from my mistakes, and we’ll become a nation of uber paddock-savvy, professional farmers.

Things you need to know (or what not to do) when you visit your country cousins… or marry a farmer:

1) Not all sheep look like miniature versions of Goulburn’s famous Big Merino.
I found this out not long after moving to Burragan, when I went to collect the mail and came back with a wondrous story about all the things I’d seen during the trip. It’s 15km to the mailbox and most of that is through the neighbour’s place…

Bessie: “…and oh, you should have seen the goats! Thousands of goats that were in the neighbour’s place… thousands, just thousands… all there running in a mob! You should have seen them! It’s like they are running goats instead of sheep!”

ST: “Where did you say they were?”

Bessie: “Just in the neighbour’s place there, in the paddock with our mail box in it.”

ST: “They’re not goats. That’s the neighbour’s dorper-damaras.”

2) Some sheep don’t have wool.
They’re still sheep. Not diseased sheep. They’re just meat sheep, not wool sheep.
I found this out during my very first shearing experience. ST and I were helping his parents draft sheep at their place. His mum and I was pushing up the sheep from behind, making sure they were running through the draft continuously… when all of a sudden this crazy looking animal came through the mob with all its weird hairy wool stuff half falling off…

Bessie: “Ohmigod! Ohmigod! WHAT on earth is THAT, that, that, THING?”

ST’s Mum: “What thing?”

Bessie : “That! That one there! What’s wrong with it? Why does it look like that!? What’s happening to it?”

ST’s Mum: “Which one?”

Bessie: “The one with the MOHAWK! What IS it!?”

ST’s Mum: “The dorper ram?”

3) Sheep eat grass.
They have done for centuries. They’re unlikely to try eating meat any time soon.
I found this out, quite embarrassingly, when ST’s sister and brother-in-law were visiting. ST and the brother-in-law were talking about poison baiting for feral animals such as foxes and pigs, when I piped up and asked: “But doesn’t anyone ever have any trouble with the sheep eating the baits?”

BIL: “Well, generally sheep eat grass.”

Bessie: “Yeeeaahhh… but what’s stopping them from accidentally eating the baits?”

BIL: “Being herbivores and all… they don’t eat meat.”

And my brain connected the dots in three, two, one...

4) Driving with a flat tyre is not OK.
It’s not even forgivable. Even if it's an accident. Just don't do it.
I found this out the hard way. The overhead tank at the house was empty so being a good farm-girl I grabbed the jerry can and jumped in the ute to go to the dam and start the pump. ST was on the motorbike, moving some sheep in the same area, and when he noticed the ute parked over at the dam, he called me up on the UHF…

ST: “Hey Bess, did you fix that flat tyre on the ute?”

Bessie: “No. What? What flat tyre?”

ST: “You’re joking, aren’t you?”

Bessie: “No. What flat ty- oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.”

ST: “Tell me you didn’t just drive that ute all the way from the house on a rim.”

Bessie: “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit…”

5) Mustering the wrong paddock is also not OK.
Remember the time I tried to muster Pretties Paddock? You can read about it HERE. But, yeah, let’s not bring that up again.

OK, I told you mine, now you tell me yours... Go on!

Life… with a side of salt

I’ve been feeling a bit off colour lately. More of a volcanic grey than my usual sunshine yellow and devil’s sidekick red.

Blame it on the lead up to shearing, the atmospheric pressure, the post party blues that happen after nine lots of visitors in nine weeks (and just before the tenth), the end of winter funk, the poddy calf getting sick, or a lack of champagne and decent evening TV… but I just can’t seem to kick it.

It has been one of “those” weeks, you see.

The ones where you manage to burst three underground water pipes within 24 hours (one with the bobcat and two with the trench digger) despite consulting the pipe layout map.

The ones where you end up washing all the dishes by hand because the dishwasher is full of clean dishes that no one is feeling sprightly enough to unpack.

The ones where you eat leftovers for dinner four nights in a row.

The ones where you discover the freezer at the shearer’s quarters was accidentally turned off a week ago. And it’s full of meat.

Yeah, those weeks. Ever been there?

And it’s not like anything totally disastrous has happened (though listen up universe, I’m not trying to tempt fate with that comment, OK?)… but as usual there’s just too much to do, not enough time, not enough hands, not enough energy, not enough money, not enough swear words in the world to get it done.

Wow, that came out much more whiny and depressing than I was aiming for. Oh well.

But moving on…

You might have read my last post A poem for my friend in the stars…

Late last month my friend M should have turned 25. Instead she is forever 18. I don’t talk about her because I’m acutely aware the internet is a very loud place. Her memories are not mine to broadcast.

But she is in my life, in everything. And she is my daily reminder that I am intensely lucky to have a voice, and a platform to use it.

My blog was very bare last month as (a) we’ve been busy and (b) I wasn’t up for writing any more light hearted, entertaining posts. And I like to try to use my words wisely.

This was going to be a blog about criticisms on the internet and a correlation between that and “yard language” (farmers will know what I’m talking about there)… But instead I’ll shelve that idea, keep it short and sweet, and hope that getting this out in the open will clear the channels for many more up to date blogs this month.

As for those little things that go wrong in life, I am learning to take them with a big salad-bowl sized serving of salt.

I just wish it was more often preluded by a shot of tequila.

That would keep my cheeks rosy.

A poem for my friend in the stars

Peace stretches endless, a gaping wound, and surges like butchered blood; solace is bare.
Like shadows consuming all, there are visions that dissolve gaunt, but my heart remembers yours.
At times, like words upon my tongue,
I stumble, plunging
Awkward and uneasy without-

Jewelled fancy of future passions shatter, and spill in scalding tears; your now is ever.
Like darting moths to light, there are instants that pass us, but your memories are mine.
At times your eyes beneath the smoke
Ask me to burn again,
Craving, howling to keep.

I need your naked hand like blossoms need nature’s glow,
Or maybe, as certain as sunset is soon forgotten and the next will draw.

Sparks of cindered timber jolt as gusts desire, and soar like falling wishes; night is glittered.
Like infinite mornings of life, there are things that fade far, but our love reaches.
At times, like leaves across the wind
You drift away with me,
Senses adoring in all you give.

I need your naked hand like blossoms need nature’s glow-
As certain as sunset is soon forgotten and the next will draw.


Bessie Blore - 2008