Ollie watches me trace the thread through the shiny guides and loops.
‘Oh, Mrs Pettergree, do you know I’ve been doing it the wrong way all this time?’ Her cheeks quiver. ‘It never worked properly, the stitches always pulled tight, and I thought it was me.’
She clumps glumly back out to her mother on the verandah.
I look at the photographs on the mantel. Generations of sharp-faced Bowds, Hec’s shy young face as a bridegroom, Ollie as a teenager in her Highland dancing outfit.
The auctioneer’s voice breaks through from outside. Many more people have arrived. A large crowd is gathered in front of the poplars. The auction men bring box after box of tools and equipment to trestle tables at the front where it is quickly dealt with. Hec Bowd is at the front, nodding and smiling. He tries to engage with the bidders – reassuring them of the quality of the goods but most are embarrassed to meet his gaze. Robert bids on the crawler tractor but is beaten to it by the Bowds’ neighbour who, although farming the same treacherous ground, seems to be doing better from it.
There isn’t much interest in the sewing machine but Robert is slow to bid. I grip his arm through his coat, urging his elbow up.
‘It’s a tool too. Just like a tractor. It’s a tool for sewing.’
Ollie comes over and helps us load it in the back of the car. Then she stands waving to us as we drive away and the dust kicks up around her.
Results from the
1936 Harvest
This year’s sample had a lower bushel weight (59 lbs) than in the previous year. It is hoped this downward trend will be quickly halted and reversed by next season. In accordance with standard sampling procedure a portion of FAQ (fair-average-quality) wheat was critically examined and subjected to analysis and a milling test in the experimental flourmill.
The sample is of generally pleasing appearance but the percentage of screenings is considerably higher than usual, due mainly to a high content of broken grain. The moisture content is slightly low, as is the protein content.
Test Baking
Purpose: To measure the quality of wheats grown by Mr R.L. Pettergree of Wycheproof in regard to high yields of good-coloured flour with superior baking quality.
Quality Tests: The Pelshenke figure, which indicates gluten quality (time taken for dough ball to expand under water at temperature; time divided by protein content = quality), is just below average. Mechanical testing of the physical properties of the dough using Brabender’s Farinograph and Fermentograph shows average to poor-average flour quality with acceptable gas-producing power.
I burnt loaf four. If it wasn’t an experiment I would have just thrown it away – tossed it out of the window to Will. The tendons in my arms ache from kneading.
It wasn’t my fault, as the baking technician, that the loaves were not as good as last year, but when I gave Robert the results I felt somehow responsible for them. I placed my hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it away.
— 13 —
BIG BEN FROM THE AIR
According to Robert, Ern McKettering likes his motor car. His paddocks are crisscrossed with homemade roads. Not just around the edges, but often right through the middle of the crop. He even drives out to the break. Ern invites Robert on a tour of inspection followed by sandwiches from the glove box.
‘I fancy I’m a bit of a science man, myself,’ he tells Robert between bites, ‘but expert advice never goes astray.’
Robert is perplexed by the many small, oddly shaped paddocks. The farm is a gridlock of gates and fences and roads with strips of different crops, even different varieties within the same field. Short-strawed wheats grow next to tall; white varieties mingle with russets. It is clear from the poor state of the crop that Ern is only just keeping it together – that he is knife-edge close to going under.
‘Must be hell to harvest.’
‘True, Pettergree, true. But she’s a treat from the air. Dad’s idea. He went up in a hot air balloon at the Quambie show and the pilot fella tells him to look down at the artistry of the crops. Well he got the idea he could make an actual picture with it.’
Robert looks around, trying to discern some sort of shape from the lines of fences filled with crop.
‘Hard to pick from the ground. It’s Big Ben. He worked from drawings in a book, “Clock Towers of England and Her Isles”. Big Ben was always his favourite.’
Robert has no hesitation in dismantling London’s famous timepiece. He prepares a farm plan for Ern with regular-sized paddocks fenced to soil type. He designs a laneway system to reduce roads and gates and allow easy access for machinery. He explains to Ern how he will be able to drive up the laneway and survey all of his crops and paddocks. He likens it to a conveyor belt on a production line. From the laneway all of the farm’s components will be visible, checkable, quantifiable.
Ern and Robert peg out the new fences together. It takes weeks, Robert running his eye over the land like a spirit level, Ern following on behind him, always talking, always telling stories. Ern tells of the trip to the sea, his sister’s near drowning in the Murray River, the snake that killed his pony, his pocket money job at the abattoirs bagging dried blood for poultry feed, the mouse plague of 1918, his prize-winning cow – Linga-Longa-Wattle-Speck – the research team that came up from Adelaide and personality tested all of the children at the Wyche School, the Charlie Chaplin film he saw at St Arnaud . . .
When they reach the farthest fences at the very back of the farm he tells Robert that he’d not really wanted to marry Doris because he had feelings for her sister.
‘Not Iris, of course – never liked a woman without some decent upholstery. There was an older girl, Sarah. She had all this dark curly hair.’ Ern rocks back on his heels for a minute in contemplation.
‘The family bred bulls and hired them out across the district. The bulls were aggressive bleeders. At certain times, if you know what I mean, the girls couldn’t venture off the verandah for fear of the bulls. I hadn’t really courted her – Sarah, that is. I was still young and so was she, but we had glanced at each other often enough and I fancied there was something between us. One day I heard that a bull had gored and trampled her when she was walking between the chook pen and the house. She was badly injured. They called the bone cart and took her to the big hospital at Bendigo. While she was gone the bulls went stale, all of them off their food and unable to do their duty, if you know what I mean.’ Ern looks away coyly.
‘After a few weeks they brought her back to the house because there was nothing more that could be done for her. She died on that first night back. The next morning they found the bull that had gored her drowned in the dam. He’d just walked straight in. Anyway Doris sort of stepped into the breach so to speak – not that I’m complaining.’
Ern breaks off to gaze at a cloud.
‘What do you think about all that then, Pettergree? Women and love and all that?’
Robert clears his throat awkwardly. The fencing is just about finished. He asks Ern if they can inspect the dam now. Robert sees water as the biggest impediment to Ern McKettering’s farming operation. Ern insists that they drive. The dam is old; its lips are cracked and flaking. The spongy feel of the soil around the rim means it is leaking. Ern and Robert stare into the clayey water.
‘How deep do you think?’
Ern picks up a stone and lobs it in. The water swallows it with a plop.
‘Less than six feet. They never dig too deep around here. Nothing to fill them with.’
Robert starts to unbutton his shirt. He needs a sample.
‘Coming in?’
Ern’s ageing body still holds its muscle well. Robert thinks there is something of the bull about him. Ern cups his genitals in his palm tenderly, more to comfort than hide himself. They edge in sideways, turning the smallest surface to the freezing water.
‘Cold enough,’ Robert grimaces.
‘Jesus, Joseph and Mary.’ Ern hugs his arms across his chest.
The water
is only thigh deep. There is a dead feeling about it. It is heavy water, like the swill that comes off metal. Robert sits on the bottom and manipulates his soil pick underwater. He dislodges lumps of clay, brings them to the surface and hands them to Ern, who throws them out onto the banks.
‘Here.’ Robert aims too high. A muddy lump hits Ern on the shoulder and slides down his chest.
‘Here yourself.’
Clay flies. Ern digs with his toes, Robert with his pick. They chase each other, lifting their knees high above the water. Ern beats his chest like a monkey; he has clay through his hair and smeared over his face. Robert spreads the clay over his chest making patterns with his fingertips. They float on their backs together for a while and then clamber out to dry on the banks.
An ibis lands on the far side of the dam and pokes its beak into the soil cracks. Robert and Ern sit up to watch it.
‘Beautiful,’ Ern says. ‘Who’d live in the city, eh? You’d have to be a mug.’
Robert shifts his gaze from the ibis to Ern.
‘I’m only here because of a bird. My uncle won some money on a racing pigeon. Enough for the passage and for university.’
Ern smiles broadly and slaps Robert on the back. ‘A winged benefactor. What a lark, Pettergree, eh?’
They laugh together. Ern drums his feet against the dam wall and the ibis takes off in alarm.
The men dress, gather the equipment and walk back to the car. Ern sits at the wheel turning the key over in his hand.
‘This science stuff, Pettergree. Well, it’s got me converted. I’m up for it. Anything you say – I’m up for it.’
That afternoon Ern McKettering opens the heavy volume of Jack’s Self-Educator on the kitchen table and thumbs awkwardly through the lacy pages. He stops at the section on Botany and starts to read: ‘We cannot fail to be struck by the root of the plant. Pull up even an insignificant herb and an extraordinary number of small roots can be observed branching and spreading out in all directions.’
Ern takes a crumpled shoot from his pocket. It is small and thin, barely tillering. He holds it upside down, examines the roots and reads on: ‘Anyone wishing to spend an instructive but tedious afternoon may be advised to pull up a plant, carefully wash out the roots and measure them all.’
The wireless crackles in the background. Something about breeding whippets? He tosses the plant out of the window and jiggles the volume dial.
— 14 —
A TRAINLOAD OF SUPER PHOSPHATE
Robert collects our mail from the post office. He shows me this letter with a certain pride.
Dear Mr R.L. Pettergree
The current world depression has created a looming crisis for our country. The Australian Balance of Payments is heavily in deficit and the flow of capital has been severely arrested.
Prime Minister Lyons plans to overcome these difficulties with an expansion in primary production. Mr Lyons has made a direct appeal to Australian farmers to GROW MORE WHEAT.
A target of a million more acres of wheat has been set by the Victorian Department of Agriculture. Your expertise in the parishes and towns of Teddywaddy, Wycheproof, Bunguluke, Thalia, Ninyeunook, Cooropajerrup, Carapunga, Narraport, Towaninnie, Tittybong, Nullawil and Jil Jil is sought.
We ask that you appeal most vehemently to the patriotic natures of the men of your parish.
A parcel of promotional goods will follow under separate cover.
C.J. Mullet B.Agr.Sc.
Victorian Superintendent of Agriculture
Now that the train has been decommissioned GROW MORE WHEAT is the superintendent’s new promotional project. The materials reflect his taste for theatre – rosettes, bright yellow, slightly crushed, and a poster depicting a farmer in a hound’s-tooth jacket and deerstalker hat smiling from a tiny golden field. GROW MORE WHEAT is emblazoned across the hedgerow, blackbirds fly overhead.
Robert plans his approach; the collection of soil data from paddocks in each of the parishes, then the public presentation to each man of the specific equation, including additives and treatments, to be followed. It is a recipe, like one of Mary’s, that if followed exactly, in every aspect, will produce the required result. He does our own first:
1936–37 Pettergree, R.L. Wycheproof
160 acres red land from undulating loam through to sandy loam.
Spread 90 lbs per acre super phosphate early.
Treat with Gypsum at 20 lbs per acre and Borax at 15 lbs per acre.
Sow 80 lbs of seed per acre: Ghurka and Rannee 4H. (Seed to be pickled in a wet solution of bluestone or formalin to insure against Take-All, Bunt, Loose Smut and Flag Smut.)
Yield: 12 bushels per acre = 1920 Bushels in total (0.71% OF THE VICTORIAN WHEAT EXPANSION TARGET)
To write such an equation for every farm hereabouts Robert must know its soil. So we go walking – not for exercise or pleasure – for knowledge.
I feel reinvigorated by this task. Like we are really in it together. We bend over the laces of our boots side by side each morning. I pack a rucksack with lunch and Robert’s field equipment: his notebook, a pick, collecting bags, a compass and a small jar of water. Robert has planned out the routes. We follow the jerky compass needle and mark our progress on survey maps. Sometimes we walk straight out from the house, sliding through the fences in our way; other times we drive to the starting point and leave the car along the road.
We walk in single file through pasture and crops, over fences, across bare ground dotted with tufty native grasses. Robert breaks the crust of the soil with his boots, leaving his print and a spray of fissured cracks around it. The flies are bad in places, especially at the salt lakes where they swarm at the wet edges of our eyes and mouths. Every fifty feet Robert stops to sample and I am ready with the equipment. He takes topsoil and samples from different depths. I hold the bags open for him and tie them up with string. I pour just the right amount of water into his hand for the elasticity test in which he moulds the soil into a sausage then squeezes it from its base to measure the ooze. We tie the sample bags to our belt loops. When we walk they make circles around us like small planets.
The soil is always different, although sometimes there is only the smallest difference – golden brown to golden red, dry to sugary to smooth. I like to watch it pouring into the calico bags and have to curb the impulse to reach out and feel it on my skin. It reminds me of the many fabrics I have handled and know by touch: silk, velvet, rayonelle, chenille, Irish linen, French linen, lawn. My fingers alone could read the warp and weft of the threads.
We often trespass, but avoid confrontation or explanation. If we come upon a house we veer off-course until we are well past it and then swerve back to the route. It requires some recalculation. I hand Robert a pencil stub from my pocket. He licks it, taking the numbers apart and putting them together again under his breath. Sometimes we hear dogs barking in the distance or the sound of a car but we have never been stopped or asked our business. Once, startled by rifle shot (some farm children hunting rabbits), we lay down together in a field of oats and held our breath until the danger had passed. (I imagine we looked like the couple in Mr Vincent Van Gogh’s painting, Siesta – a peasant man and a woman lie asleep amongst the swirling hay. Their working clothes are the same sad faded blue as the sky but there is such peace in the way that they lie together, not touching, but together in shared exhaustion.)
Lunch is under a gum tree or on the banks of the river. If it is hot we will swim first and then eat so as to be safe from cramps. The water is so bitterly cold it forces me quickly out into the sun. The Avoca is the colour of long-brewed tea, its waters oily with shadows from the sugar gums. Robert’s body is a patchwork beside it – red arms and face and neck, the rest of him pale and freckled. He stretches out to nap. His breastbone juts out sharply. When we are in bed I like to run my fingers up the sharp rise and then off into the sandy curl of hair on either side. If I hover above him in the dark his ribcage catches the deep sway of my breasts.
I l
ie next to Robert by the river and watch his chest rising and falling. The sun prickles my face. I stretch my hand out above my eyes and open and close it against the glare. I think about reaching across and touching him, but I am not sure how he would respond. I don’t understand this gulf between our bodies and our minds and why it is so hard to move between the two.
Robert grills Ern McKettering for information. He wants rainfall statistics, the exact dates of sowing and harvesting, the seeds planted and bushels produced. Ern says he’s got some diaries somewhere, but he can’t quite put his hands on them. The shire rainfall records show an average of thirteen inches for the last four years. There is an occasional worrying dip, six inches in 1926, but it seems more aberration than pattern. Robert sits at the kitchen table long into the night calculating and drawing graphs. He drafts an advertisement for the Wycheproof Ensign.
Farmers of the Southern Mallee – do you desire to GROW MORE WHEAT? You are cordially invited to a free lecture on improving profits and productivity. All the money in the bank comes from the soil! Teddywaddy Memorial Hall, 4pm, Saturday June 18th.
The meeting is held under the names of the district’s dead. The men and boys of Teddywaddy lie in Ypres, Flanders, Rheims, the Somme, Gallipoli and the Dardanelles. And somewhere thereabouts (according to a handwritten sign pinned to the wall) there are 236 pairs of socks, 142 pillowcases, 59 handkerchiefs, 40 ambulance cushions, two pairs of mittens and six cholera belts sent over by the Teddywaddy Women’s Auxiliary.
I put the chairs out, placing them what I hope is an appropriately masculine distance apart. This is only the second of Robert’s lectures I have attended.
A car pulls up outside and there is the sound of doors slamming, low talk and laughter. More cars and men arrive. They stand around the entrance to the hall lighting cigarettes and yarning and adjusting their hats. Finally a few start to file inside. Bill Ivers nods at me politely and helps Stan Hercules with the tripod for his camera. Within a few minutes the hall is full of the sound of chairs scraping and men exchanging greetings. I feel overly bright in my yellow patterned dress – like a cheap decoration.
Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living (Picador 40th) Page 9