Passing Clouds

by Graeme Leith

  For Sue, the arrival of the children would mean having to be a surrogate mother of somebody else’s pre-teenagers, something that she had never contemplated. However, we couldn’t leave the vineyard as Sue’s Carlton house had been rented by that stage, and she was now working at a newspaper in Bendigo.

  It turned out to be easier than I’d expected. Sue drove daily to work in Bendigo so she could drop the kids off at their new school in Inglewood. The move from Melbourne was somewhat softened because they would be with me, their father. We had great times together as well as periods of friction, but the good times easily outweighed the bad.

  As the children had already made friends with the local kids during their visits to Kingower over the years, they had instant mates. It wasn’t long before they were sharing projects, the most notable one being the restoration of an old hut in the bush where they would go camping, cooking their own meals and generally being quite autonomous.

  It was becoming apparent that Ondine was a girl of exceptional capacity. Years later, fellow vigneron and her teacher at Inglewood school, David Reimers, wrote: ‘She was humble about her natural, lively intelligence, and eager to learn. Oni was like a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stagnant country school.’ Sue and I were able to supply much fodder for her voracious brain. Thus plenty of carrot was on hand and not much stick was needed, so ambitious was she to succeed.

  Sebastian was such a bright spark, so aware of what was going on, that Sue and I had concluded that he was probably going to become prime minister one day. Although less academically inclined than his sister, Sebastian had plenty of friends, his footy and his cricket, and therefore much to do. We set up a CB radio near his bed so he could hear the truckies talking to each other at night, and he soon knew their codes.

  Plans were in train to ‘borrow’ a horse for Seb. Sue’s brother Hamish had bought some smaller, more agile polo ponies, so one of his horses, ‘Jester’, became redundant. We were all so very pleased to have him in our lives and Ondine, perhaps to her surprise, fell in love with him. From then on her mate Karina would often come up on weekends and the two girls would ride him and groom him almost to death. But before all that we had to build him a little stable and yard. Sebastian had to play football the day before Jester was due to arrive so Ondine and I were working on the new horse accommodations. She was moved to comment: ‘Isn’t it interesting, Poon, that if you see a Disney film and the kid gets a horse, there’s already a stable and yard there for it. You would never see them having to actually build it!’ Ondine’s name for me seemed to appear from nowhere. I once asked her where it came from and she professed not to know, but her friend Karen Gilmore still calls me that almost thirty years later.

  After school and work we often used to make our own entertainment at Kingower, particularly on weekends. Adults and children would get together for campfire concerts with music from David and Alvin and whoever was up from Melbourne and could play an instrument. ‘Poon’ would recite and the kids would put together sketches, often satirising television commercials.

  Ross and Dorothy Reading, tired of selling books on counterculture and not being able to practise organic and sustainable living in the suburbs, had planted almond trees at nearby Rheola, so our friends and neighbours from Carlton became friends and neighbours at Kingower.

  There was a theatrical group at nearby Wedderburn and we used to perform melodramas at the various town halls in the district, always being careful to use a couple of actors from neighbouring towns in the interest of bucolic harmony—and swelling the audience numbers. As I’d been acting at La Mama over the years while working in Melbourne, and Ross Reading had directed a play or two there, things became a little more ambitious after Ross’s arrival, but the golden rule regarding audiences was broken and we once took a whole truckload of props to Charlton and played Alan Ayckbourn’s Gosforth’s Fete to about five people, for we didn’t have a Charlton actor in the cast. Ross had a bit to learn about living in the bush!

  Ross also produced a couple of theatrical events at the neighbouring Rheola Hall, in cooperation with Drummond Jewitt. One I remember was entitled the Mallee Whirlpool, a play on words related to our geographical situation and the brand of a popular washing machine. He also set the poem ‘We’ll all be rooned, said Harahan’ onto the stage. He chose a local, ‘Jungle Jim’ Poynton, who spoke with a classic slow Aussie drawl, to deliver the punchline. When Jungle Jim asked Ross how he should act, Ross went pale. ‘Don’t act, James, don’t act!’

  Those shows staged at Rheola were generally successful and rivalled the local ‘black and white minstrel shows’ at nearby Arnold for popularity. Full of wisecracks and slapstick, minstrel shows used a formula that must have been imported by some of the American goldminers who came in after the gold rushes quietened down in America—think of all those ‘California Gullies’ in the area, and even the ‘Jim Crow Creek’ at Daylesford. There were certain set passages and procedures in these shows, one where ‘Mister Johnson’ would conduct a dialogue with another man wearing blackface, allowing them to make commentary on local characters and events. This would lead to the singing of verses satirising such events. I got a gong once after having reversed my brakeless forklift into the creek—another trip I’ll never forget! There was also a drag component where very large ungainly farmers would dress in tutus and dance to the music of Swan Lake played on a fiddle.

  There was no set date or year for these minstrel shows, but they were always put on during a drought when people were bored and frustrated and had nothing to do. They were a rare cultural phenomenon for Australia, probably gone forever, such innocent and creative fun succumbing to television and changing lifestyles.

  Sue and I were more or less marking time as the vines grew over the years. I was doing an odd job here and there—I still had my electrical contractor’s licence and wired a few houses. (Today I think the greatest luxury in my life is ringing the electrician!)

  During this time we wrote articles for This Australia magazine, and we co-authored The Grassroots Vegie Growers Companion, dog-eared copies of which were still in public libraries many years later; incredibly, to me, cheques for lending rights were posted to us annually.

  Sue wrote the copy for Derek Stone’s lovely coffee-table book Life on the Australian Goldfields. Writers are frequently confronted by that long journey from the kitchen table to the typewriter and will often procrastinate to delay it. Sue was no exception. We decided that discipline could be enforced by me locking her in the tasting room with her reference material and her typewriter, but no telephone, so while she was writing I’d do just that, between the hours of ten and twelve-thirty every day.

  It worked brilliantly! I wrote Establishing Your Own Vineyard using the nom de plume Grenville Nash, for I was terrified of anybody knowing that I had the presumption to be writing a book on the subject, because at that stage, I was studying part-time at what was then Riverina College of Advanced Education. My lecturer in viticulture was Max Loder, who was planning to write a book upon his retirement. The publisher, Thomas Nelson, was doing a series of four books for hobby farmers and Dorothy Reading had got the gig for the ‘Chook Book’.

  I’d had a children’s book, Annie the Anaconda, published by Greenhouse, and the publisher, Sally Milner, insisted I was qualified enough to do the vineyard book and, if I didn’t, it would be done by some pen-for-hire with possibly less knowledge of the subject than me. The identity of Grenville Nash (Grenache), as with that of my other nom de plume, sometime food critic for The Melbourne Times, Ezekial Kearney (yes, zucchini!), remained undiscovered for years, if anybody cared. I discovered the self-discipline required to complete these short works due to my fear of Sue locking me in the tasting room!

  Sue’s mother, ‘Poggy’, would sometimes come to stay, and although she was used to a better standard of living, she didn’t seem to mind the primitive living conditions that were imposed upon her at Kingower. She always had her bottle of Scotch in her suitcase and h
er carton of Benson & Hedges handy. She behaved like an outrageous snob and played the ‘Grand Dame’ to the hilt with the theatricality of an actress, but I sometimes thought she was a bit tongue in cheek; I didn’t find her snobbish at all, apart from the superficial.

  Once she was staying with Sue while I took Ondine and Sebastian camping and fishing to Eucumbene in the Snowy Mountains. On the way back the ‘Golden Holden’ finally died and stranded us by the side of the road about 80 kilometres away from home. I walked to the closest house and they generously allowed me to use their phone. I rang Sue and explained that we wouldn’t be home that night, but would try to organise things for the morning. Poggy realised what was happening, got on the phone to me and said, ‘Don’t you worry, dear boy, is there a tow rope here, does Susie know where it is? I’ll find out from Susie exactly where you are and come across in the morning and tow you back.’

  The next morning Poggy turned up in her medium-sized Renault and towed us back to Kingower, skirting the Bendigo traffic. Every, say, 15 kilometres or so there’d be a few puffs of smoke emitted from the driver’s side window as she fired up another B&H. If she was a snob she was a remarkably down to earth one; I think she took herself less seriously than some other members of her family, as did Sue. A couple of times, when we were living in Sue’s house, at 28 Carlton Street, on some pretext or another she would ask me to meet her at the exclusive Alexandra Club where she was staying. I was to meet a couple of other ‘old girls’ and tell them some jokes.

  Once, at a party at a property in the Western District, Ondine was wearing a very pretty dress and Poggy and a female friend asked her where she had bought it.

  Oni replied, ‘I got it from the Op Shop. I’ve washed it twice but I can’t seem to get the “old lady” smell out of it.’

  The two charming old ladies looked at each other and smiled. I was standing nearby and overheard the conversation. I was discomfited by Ondine’s innocent candour, but Poggy’s friend, Mrs Rymill, said to Ondine, ‘Yes, dear, we know exactly what you mean!’ The local children were awed but not overawed by Poggy, who would lock horns over a Scotch in a friendly manner with John Sendy, our Communist neighbour. So there were some fun and games along the way that led us inexorably to the production of our first barrel of wine in 1979.

  Family relations

  In the meantime, Ondine had taken herself back to Melbourne, had in fact ‘run away from home’. Although initially annoyed and angry, I had accepted it as inevitable and probably ultimately for the best because, despite her attachment to her friends, particularly Karen Gilmore, at Kingower and Inglewood, she was never going to have the intellectual and social challenges she needed. So at the age of fifteen she was reunited with her beloved school at Princes Hill and her old schoolmates. She was boarding with our mutual friend Ann Polis and her daughter Mary in North Fitzroy, not too far away from her school.

  However, none of us knew the difficulties and traumas she was about to face, for Vosje had fallen into an abusive relationship and was being bashed by her then boyfriend. Ondine had chosen not to tell me of Vosje’s predicament for reasons of her own. I am sure now that she wanted to spare me the worry, knowing I’d had a bit of that with Vosje over the years, and she hoped that she could separate Vosje from a physically abusive partner, and the scourge of drunkenness. This was too big a challenge for a fifteen-year-old girl, although she tried—how she tried—to rescue her mother, then and over the following years.

  I had no idea what was going on, but once when visiting Vosje, who was accompanied by the boyfriend, Clarrie, I commented on her obvious injuries. She insisted a fall from her bicycle had been the cause. This was clearly not the case, and I insisted that whoever had done this to her should be reported to the police and hopefully sent to jail for a very long time. Vosje stuck to her story, and it was some time later that I realised the perpetrator had been walking along beside us, saying nothing.

  He later made the mistake of threatening Ondine. On a previous occasion Ondine had rung the police, knowing that her mother was being bashed in the house, but when the police went there they could hear or see nothing. Some weeks later she went to her mum’s house again, realised that again she was being bullied and bashed, and went to the police station around the corner, which was unattended. She returned to the house and yelled through the door to Clarrie to let her mother go, and that’s when Clarrie made his mistake. He said to Ondine: ‘If you don’t clear off, you’ll get the same.’

  Ondine had enough coins in her pocket to call me at Kingower from the phone box outside the police station in Amess Street. She was terribly distressed. ‘What can I do, Poon? What can I do?’

  ‘Go to Karina’s,’ I said. ‘I’ll fix it.’

  My big Honda was full of petrol, as always. I put on my jacket and helmet and rode the 200 kilometres to Melbourne powered by rage and adrenalin, every nerve and muscle in my body tensed. I don’t know if any police pursued me; I didn’t see any. A couple of times I snatched a glimpse of the speedo—I was doing up to 180 kays. There’s not much separating life and death at such speeds but it didn’t matter, Ondine needed me. Roaring along, I searched my mind for the quote from Edgar Allan Poe’s story The Cask of Amontillado: ‘A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.’

  By the time I reached Carlton, my plan was formed. This Clarrie had put it around that he was some sort of karate expert so I had decided on the way down that my tactic should be based on surprise. To paraphrase Poe, I wanted that bastard punished; I didn’t want him to punish me. The door, I knew, was not very substantial and it yielded easily to my adrenalin-fuelled shoulder. The lock broke, and I used my strategy of surprise to good advantage and didn’t stop hitting him until he was pulped, leaving him no time to employ any possible karate tactics. I then threw him out the door onto the footpath below.

  Vosje was a mess. I left her there while I went around the corner to the public phone box to ring Ondine and let her know that her mother was safe and that she could sleep tight, Clarrie was no longer a threat. It had been a nerve-wracking ordeal; my hands were shaking so violently it was difficult to dial the numbers. I had hardly been back at the house for ten minutes, coping with Vosje’s tearful mea culpas, when to my amazement Clarrie knocked on the remains of the door—could I throw his cigarettes out? Extraordinarily I felt sorry for the pathetic little bastard, his power gone, his woman, too, and his cigarettes! But I suspected a trick and threw him down the steps again without a cigarette to keep him company. Predictably, Vosje wanted me to sleep with her and comfort her. By this stage I was a bit fragile, too. I told her to go to sleep and spent an uncomfortable night on her sofa.

  The next day Sue and I discussed the matter and we decided to shout Vosje a trip to Holland and worry later about where the money would come from. (Sue contributed to my ex-wife’s holiday!) But Vosje didn’t stay there long; middle-class Holland still didn’t suit her. She missed her children, and Ondine, I know, missed her mother, so the Little Fox was soon back—and back to her old tricks.

  Our first vintage—Easter 1980

  I had managed to buy a barrel of Reynella Vintage Reserve claret so that after the wine was matured and bottled I could use the barrel containing its all-important malo-lactic bacillus bacteria, and when the first grapes were picked and crushed in our tiny crusher and pressed in a tiny press (which at that time seemed quite large), the resulting 1979 wine was magnificent.

  In 1975 I had been fortunate in being able to work the vintage at Brand’s Laira winery at Coonawarra in South Australia. While there, working with Eric, Jim and Bill, I’d learned some rudimentary winemaking, but not much winemaking intervention was required because the grapes were in such good balance. However, I’d left before learning anything about the care of wine in barrel so, due to too many enthusiastic tastings and insufficient sulphur, I allowed the wine to go off. It seemed to b
e fading fast and a friend of my friends Mike and Jane Buck—one Steve Goodwin, who was a chemist with Vickers Gin and Tulloch wines—examined it under a microscope and declared it to be invaded by acetobacter and a host of other bacteria that shouldn’t be there, and I should either learn what I was supposed to be doing or give up.

  So I enrolled at Riverina College at Wagga Wagga in New South Wales and, by doing the new short courses in winemaking they’d recently instituted under wine whizkid Brian Crozer, recently returned from the acclaimed wine-oriented University of California at Davis, and the lecturers, whom I irreverently referred to as the ‘Andrew Sisters’—Markides, Hood and Burke—I learned enough to allow me to approach next year’s 1980 vintage with some confidence, albeit with unformed skills.

  We were expecting a crop of about 10 tons, so we had to extend the two-car corrugated iron garage, buy a settling tank and acquire a couple of open fermenters. We used ex-milk vats; these were plentiful as they had been made redundant by the use of refrigerated milk tankers. With the insulation removed, they were ideal for the job, since stainless-steel vats shed their heat from fermentation, so necessary in a hot climate. They enabled us to avoid refrigeration as they were small and had a large surface area compared to their volume.

  Thus, with our trailer for picking buckets behind the Ferguson, the crusher and the settling tank clean and ready to go, and the press waxed to prevent wine getting into the grain of the wood and possibly causing contamination and therefore spoilage problems further down the track, we were quite ready for 1980 and what was to be our first commercial vintage.

  The vines were healthy, the fruit was good, the friends who wanted to pick were alerted—their only reward to be a swim in the dam after work, great food, decent wine, the camaraderie that comes from being part of a hardworking and successful team, and hopefully that hard-to-define satisfaction that comes to so many of us when we have been involved in the process of winemaking.