Can My Pony Come Too?

by Rosemary Esmonde Peterswald

  ‘Are you interested in women?’ I asked warily.

  There was a slight pause; then a cough. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, with a chuckle down the line. ‘I’m always interested in women.’

  I’m sure he thought he had a total nutter on the phone and I wasn’t so sure I didn’t have one also. The next day I set off nervously for an interview, after finding a friend to look after the girls. I was dressed in a smart red suit with a silk scarf tied around my head in the latest fashion.

  An hour later I was sitting in a small office down a set of narrow stairs in the middle of Civic Centre. John Perryman, a delightful Englishman, with laughing brown eyes, a polished head and wearing thick black rimmed spectacles, sat opposite me. It wasn’t long before I realised I’d got the job. I worked for the next five years with John and his charming wife, Pat, and his wonderful mother, Peggy (the lady I’d first spoken to), who ended up becoming great friends of ours, even coming to Tassie on a few occasions.

  Although years later in Hobart I employed a staff of many women in our office, in the seventies in Canberra there were few women in the business. Lauris Andrews was a trail blazer and one of the most successful and a great source of inspiration to me as we worked together over the coming years.

  Canberra at this time had changed enormously, spreading its wings to the far reaches of Belconnen to the north and the Woden Valley to the south. There were new suburbs popping up everywhere. The lake had become a haven for bird life, sailing boats and swimmers, with the Cotter and the Goodradigbee Rivers still fabulous places to go camping. With many of the Duntroon class of ’65 now living back in Canberra, most with young families like ours, we frequently spent weekends on the riverbanks.

  I sold a house on my first day at Perrymans’, making me think: how easy is this? I was soon to realise that was a fluke. No study or examination was required for real estate in Canberra in those days. No licence required. I was given a listing book and told to go for it. The hours were long and arduous, but I’d discovered something I loved and was good at. I liked the flexibility of having time to do tuckshop at the girls’ school for a few hours or take them to the doctor if needs be if I made up for it another time. I sold all across Canberra. Nothing too small. Nothing too big. Eventually I studied for my Manager’s Licence, enabling me to open my own office if I so desired, yet I didn’t do that until we’d been in Hobart for quite a few years.

  Jim Fitzhardinge had been selling in Canberra for decades and was one of the better-known agents. Jim had been a prisoner of war at Changi, forced to work on the Burma Railway. To me he was one of life’s greatest gentlemen, always arriving at work in a dapper reefer jacket, camel trousers, and sporting a different club tie each day. Sharing an office with him gave me valuable training on how to deal with people. And, as he’d an inroad to many of the embassies and huge estates in Forrest and Red Hill, I soon found I was selling many of the more expensive homes. It was a fun office with many characters. And the more I got to know John, Pat and Peggy, the more I liked them.

  The girls started at St Thomas Aquinas in Charnwood, the next suburb to where we lived. I arranged for them to go to a lovely woman’s house after school for a couple of hours where they played with her children until either Rob or I could pick them up after work. I must admit I agonised over this. Like all working mothers around the world, guilt plays an enormous role. When I was at work I thought I should be with the girls. When I was with the girls I thought I should be at work. Somehow we managed to compromise and I don’t think they were duly stressed. Rob, appreciating the income I was bringing in, was an enormous help, cooking meals often and being with the girls if I suddenly had to head out to show a property or do open homes on a Saturday or Sunday, for unlike mine, his hours were regular.

  My parents arrived in Canberra for their two-yearly visit on the same day Gough Whitlam was controversially deposed from government by the Governor General Sir John Kerr on 11th November 1975. Malcolm Fraser took over as Prime Minister with his Liberal Government in a care-taking role.

  One of the most notorious days in Australian politics, it was also one of the hottest. My parents nearly expired in the heat when I picked them up from Gill and Colin’s house not far from Bowral where Colin was now managing another Santa Gertrudis stud.

  Georgie was not too sure about these two new arrivals, having only met my mother briefly in Wewak and my father not at all. She horrified me somewhat as I heard her tell my father: ‘There’s really not enough room in this car for you; maybe you should go back to where you came from.’

  Fortunately this lack of manners, at age three, only lasted a few hours and it wasn’t long before she didn’t want to let them out of her sight. It goes without saying that we were all devastated once again when they returned to Cloneen and their shop in Glendalough after a long hot summer in Canberra, with many dinners on the back patio under the grapevines at Ijong Street or in our courtyard at Flynn. Christmas was a grand affair at our house, with Gill and her family and Dibs who’d flown up from Melbourne. Eugene was in Brisbane and Viv far away in Wales.

  In the meantime Rob was working at Russell Offices, implementing the Kerr Report into pay and conditions in the services. Although he found working at Russell somewhat boring, he enjoyed having a normal life; coming home each night, being able to play squash again and take up sailing. In partnership with his brother Dick, still living in Goulburn, we bought a Boomeroo 22 sailor trailer, an ideal boat for the unpredictable conditions of Lake Burley Griffin. (Rob won our share of the cost playing in a poker school!) Many Sunday afternoons and weekday evenings were spent racing and cruising, followed by a dinner or barbeque at the yacht club on the shores of the lake afterwards – where the children could play on the sandy beach.

  Adding a bolt of joy and the odd bit of naughtiness into our lives at Flynn came Gatsby, a tiny half-Labrador and half-Chow puppy. I’d spied him one afternoon when I was showing a purchaser through a house and I’d heard a commotion next door. Putting my head over the fence I saw a very noisy litter of puppies, of which Gatsby looked the cutest. Soon he was installed in a new cane basket under the breakfast bar in the kitchen where he managed to wheedle his way into all of our hearts, before he blotted his copybook time and time again by chewing anything he could lay his hands on. Even so we forgave him and he became very much part of the family for many years, though just like Porky, he’d have nothing to do with strangers. As we’d sadly had to find Gunga Din a new home when we were posted to Wewak, we were delighted to have another four-legged member of the family, even if at times he drove us all to total distraction.

  Chapter 27

  Our Own Drominagh

  The third summer we were in Canberra we packed the Boomeroo up with supplies and towed it to the Myall Lakes north of Port Stephens, where we spent four glorious weeks meandering around this magical stretch of water. Rob’s father and Wendy brought tents to camp in at night, Even so, with Gatsby on board as well, it was a tight fit to say the least.

  Gatsby adored the boat and would wrap his paws about the mast with a life jacket wrapped around him. When we arrived at an anchorage he’d leap off the boat, take himself ashore; then he’d swim back, knocking his tail on the side of the hull to let us know he was home and needed to be hauled up.

  There were lovely sandy beaches where the children could swim and build sandcastles, rocky islands to explore and light campfires on to cook the fish we’d catch each day. The water was as warm as a bath, often enticing us in for a swim at midnight, well after the children were tightly tucked into their tiny berths down below.

  On Christmas Day we pulled into the shore and decorated a small pine tree with tin foil and flour and cooked our fish over a campfire. Even now, when I decorate the Christmas tree with my grandchildren, I think of that tree by the lake where Rob handed out presents, which we’d carefully hidden in one of the lockers. Both girls remember it as being one of the most cherished holidays of their childhood.

  Shortly after
this trip we decided to become farmers. I was selling a property along the Wallaroo Road on the way to the Murrumbidgee River outside Hall. Nearby I discovered forty acres with a small creek and stunning views to the Brindabellas, not far from where the Perrymans were living at Coolongolook in a long low-line Spanish Hacienda they’d built on sixty acres.

  We leased the house at Flynn to an American embassy family and moved to ‘Drominagh’, where we lived in a caravan down by the creek, as we built our new house up on the hill. We set up a chicken run and started a vegetable garden. Sadly all the chickens were eaten by a fox, (reminding me of the slaughter at Clonmoylan, which nearly finished my father off), apart from the cowardly rooster, Chante Clair, who managed to escape to the roof on the partly finished house, where he crowed loudly in disgust.

  We set our solar plastic shower under a gumtree and the portable loo was moved from spot to spot where Rob would dig a hole and then fill it in later. Somehow or other after a quick shower under the gumtree I managed to dress myself for work each day. With the girls in their school uniforms and Rob in his suit we’d all set off for the forty-minute drive into town. The girls at this stage had started at St Thomas Moore’s in Campbell so we could drop them on the way.

  It was stinking hot and the dust horrendous. At times I wondered what on earth we’d let ourselves in for, moving to this dry hot, dust bowl of a place when we’d a perfectly good house in the suburbs. The flies were horrendous, which was not surprising, as we were right in the middle of sheep country and I also suffered dreadfully from hay fever.

  But it wasn’t long, despite all the drawbacks, before I loved our small farm with a passion.

  My parents came back from Ireland to visit. My father helped with the supervising of our cedar house, with verandahs to the front and rear, which Rob and I paved ourselves. We also painted the house, taking many hours after work and weekends. My father was chuffed that we were calling our place Drominagh and insisted we take heaps of photos with Charlotte and Georgie leaning over the front sign on the gate.

  Nearly all my family came that year to visit: firstly Dibs, then Eugene and Jenny with their two, Godfrey and Eugene and finally Gill and Colin with Andrew, Allison, Mia and Liam. There was no way we could entice Viv to make the long trip back across the world; however, it was lovely for my parents to have the rest of us there together.

  To the front of the property we built a large dam, surrounding it with weeping willows and installed a flock of geese that immediately took over the farm, often preferring to perch on the house verandah. In the garden we planted just about every imaginable native bush, and many wattles and gumtrees. Rob dug out a large pond off the front verandah, which never seemed to hold water no matter how hard we tried, leaving an ideal place for snakes to sunbake, a couple of which I killed myself with a spade – once, on the way to work, with the children already sitting in the car. Rob I might add killed many, as the place seemed to be teeming with them.

  Where was St Patrick when we needed him?

  We were determined to make the farm work, planting the land out with a commercial crop of walnuts and almonds and going into Angora goat breeding, ending up with a sizable flock, mostly sired by Simon, a regal-looking buck. All this in our spare time, although by this stage I’d come to an agreement with John and Pat Perryman that if I didn’t take a lunch hour I could knock off work early to pick up the girls from school. By now I was managing the sales part of the office and had dropped out of actually selling.

  Rob’s father came to live with us full time once we got the house finished, only throwing his hands up in the air once when the entire flock of goats got into his garden, devouring most of the plants. After a frantic call at work, I raced up the dirt driveway by the dam to see him in the front garden, waving his walking stick in every direction, still trying to shoo the goats out. I thought he was going to die of a heart attack right there and then in front of my eyes, for after all he was in his seventies.

  ‘It’s the worst day in my entire life,’ he assured me, stuttering dreadfully, as he always did when excited.

  Poor Poppy was to endure a few more ‘worst days of his life’ coping with our farming ventures both here and in Tassie over the next twenty years or so.

  The next day the whole flock of goats disappeared, including the Saanens we’d been told to mix with the Angoras as they were more intelligent. We found them about twenty miles away, happily padding along the road, the bell on the Saanen leader goat ringing loudly. After fixing the hole in the fence where they’d disappeared, we soon learned that goats have a definite pecking order. Initially we’d put our bell on the wrong goat, which annoyed the recognised leader no end and she didn’t give up until the bell was around her neck. Unlike sheep that will run in a million different directions if they think you want to do anything with them, I discovered that if I went out into the paddock and called ‘Goatee Goatee’, they all came running to my side.

  Anchored recently off the glorious tiny island of Trizonia in the Gulf of Corinth on Sea Dreams we watched a Greek farmer herd his goats along a steep path, all the time calling out to them to keep in a straight line and not to get seduced by the enticing bushes along the way. Amazingly they seemed to do what they were told. And whilst anchored in a quiet bay off the island of Poros we watched an orderly flock of Saanen milking goats take themselves for a walk down to the shore and along a rocky path and up into the hills. When we were sitting on the deck that evening savouring an icy cool vino we were amazed to see the happy group return along the very same path and back up to their shed on the side of the hill. No sign of a goat herder anywhere. And just as the sun disappeared for the night a group of them posed on the crest of the hill, silhouetted in the fading light, apparently enjoying the cool breeze and the extensive view.

  For hours the girls and I’d sit feeding a cute and cuddly newborn Angora from a baby’s bottle by the fire at Drominagh, crying sadly when we lost one. The excitement when female twins arrived in the world was immense, as that’s where the money was. The males weren’t worth much, so we sold them off as pets, although I’m sure a few ended up on the tables of Greek or Turkish families, despite their assurances this was not going to be the case, particularly as a few families came back time and time again.

  We won first prize in the Canberra Show with one particularly stunning female and eventually started to make some money. When we ran out of feed in the paddocks in summer, Rob used to scrounge leaves from around Russell offices, fill the back of our new one-tonne Holden truck and bring a load home. The goats adored the leaves and as Rob said quite reasonably: ‘I’m helping the gardeners to clean the grounds up around Russell.’

  I found Merrylegs, a small dappled grey Shetland pony, for Charlotte and Georgie – just as strong willed as the Merrylegs of years before in Clonmoylan. Her greatest trick was to bolt down to the dam with one of the children on board. Here she’d hurl herself into the water, saddle and all, refusing to budge no matter how hard we tried. Yet, despite all this, she soon squeezed her way into our hearts, even joining us and a few of the tamer goats, a couple of the ducks and one particularly domesticated goose, (who had decided Poppy was her soul mate and Gatsby her enemy – the only being that I ever saw Gatsby cower from) on the verandah for our sundowners. Here the children would spend hours grooming her mane to perfection. I was also given an ancient horse called Ned to look after. He loved to join us here too, standing with his head on my lap. When we discovered he had cancer, and there was no hope, the vet told me to hold him by the reins and she would shoot him in the head.

  ‘This is the most humane way,’ she assured me, as I looked at her in total horror.

  Yet, seeing she was smaller and more fragile looking than I was, I didn’t want to appear a wimp. So after taking a deep breath, I did what I was told. Whilst I gave the poor unsuspecting Ned a handful of oats I watched her raise her gun to his head and aghast I saw him fall to the ground in a heap, with me still holding the reins of his halter.
The next day we sadly buried him in a large hole we dug with a bulldozer up the back paddock over the hill.

  Gatsby adored his new home, roaming the paddocks with the goats, swimming in the dams and lazing in the shade on the verandah when the goose wasn’t there. Yet he blotted his copy-book more than once, having been seduced by the charms of the Perrymans’ two Border collie bitches. Every so often I’d receive a frantic phone call from Pat to say: ‘Gatsby’s visiting again,’ and I’d have to hurriedly get in the car and collect him.

  Once we lost him for five days. He’d jumped off the back of the truck when he and Rob were out shopping for supplies for the farm out at the commercial suburb of Fyshwick. Eventually, after many pleas to the radio station he was located and arrived home in grand style to a warm welcome.

  Then the rains arrived. For hours we tried to stop the bottom dam’s walls bursting by valiantly trying to divert the water. One night I remember being knee deep in mud still trying to do this at midnight. In the end it gave way under pressure. It wasn’t long before the low crossing leading into the farm was under flood too, meaning we couldn’t get the cars in for days at a time. We ended up using a wheelbarrow to bring shopping up to the house after we’d waded through in gumboots. One day, when Charlotte was sick and needed to go to the doctor, I wheeled her down in the wheelbarrow, a cushion under her head and then carried her across in my arms. It was amazing to see the transformation from the dry to the wet. Almost overnight the grass turned an emerald green and the garden and nut trees burst into life.