A Story of Seven Summers

by Hilary Burden

  boil while stirring.

  Add ½ punnet of raspberries. Stir through—simmer

  for 5 minutes to break down the flavours.

  Meanwhile, soak the leaf gelatin in cold water for

  2 minutes. Squeeze out gelatin.

  Take Jansz raspberry syrup off the heat and stir in

  the gelatin until completely dissolved. Set aside to

  cool for 30 minutes.

  Pour ¼ of mix into a greased jelly mould. Add

  ½ punnet of raspberries and sit for 15 minutes. Put

  in another ¼ mix. Repeat steps until mould is full

  and raspberries are evenly dispersed (save a handful

  to scatter over jelly after turning out).

  Set for minimum of 4 hours, preferably overnight.

  To turn out, dip mould into bowl of hot water—

  5 seconds at most. Turn onto platter, surround with

  remaining fresh raspberries and serve with fresh

  rose petals.

  CHAPTER 8

  Third summer, Karoola

  The crown of the year is harvest time, and if you cannot

  enjoy that you are unlikely to enjoy anything. You sweat

  and toil, along with friends and neighbours, to gather in

  and make secure the fruit of the year’s labours. The work

  is hard, hot, sometimes boisterous, always fun, and each

  day of it should be rewarded with several pints of home

  brewed beer or chilled homemade wine or cider.

  John Seymour, The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency, 2003

  It was my third summer in Karoola and, somewhat to the surprise of friends and family, I never felt lonely or without purpose. I found companionship with the swallows who had returned to the front veranda of the Nuns’ House and there was always something to do, to learn, to make or take care of. Jack and Kerouac were booked in for their first haircut at an alpaca open day at Jillian and Ian’s. I tried to coax them from their paddock into the trailer with a handful of fresh leaves but in the end had to resort to force and recruited four wranglers instead. Simon, Joe and my neighbours Stuart and Rosemary helped me run them into the corner of the paddock and wrestle them to the ground.

  ‘You should make a corral,’ said Stuart, who kept a few cattle, ‘pen them in. It’ll be much easier.’

  I could hardly watch as Kerouac was stretched out on a rack on the floor of the barn, screaming as the shearer readied his electric shears. A man from among the onlookers directed me to watch, and I understood then that if I wanted to keep animals, it was my responsibility not to look away. In fact, I could be useful, as he suggested, collecting their fleece from the floor and stuffing it into bags. The man insisted next year I ask the shearer to come to me. ‘Less stressful for the animals,’ he said.

  As well as alpaca duties, there were aunt duties. When Riley and Grace arrived for sleepovers I loved their open hugs and joyful play. Riley liked catching grasshoppers in jars and chasing the alpaca in the paddock. After a while, he worked out that if he stood in the paddock and turned his head away from them, they would slowly approach of their own accord. Grace drew and scribbled and I treasured as works of art the sheets of paper she left behind. Both played dress-ups from the big drawer that I kept especially for their visits, home to all my old has-been London scarves, gloves and handbags—redundant in their splendour. The two of them made a cubbyhouse in the shade under the stand of golden plum trees. Stools, mugs and a teapot made their way outside as furnishings and props. And nine-year-old Riley added the finishing touch by hanging a cardboard sign from one of the trees. On it he’d scrawled ‘The Monk’s House’ in thick black felt pen. I’m not sure if he understood what a monk was, or that I wasn’t a nun.

  I was starting to make new friends, it so happened, meeting women who ran properties and lived on their own. Libby first introduced herself when she heard a conversation I was having on the radio about where lyrebirds could be found in Tasmania. She knew a local expert and wanted to put me in touch. When we spoke on the phone later Libby told me she’d grown up in Ringarooma and now lived on her own in north Lilydale. I thanked her for the information about the lyrebirds and felt sure our paths would cross again.

  A few weeks later she rang me at home. She wanted to introduce me to Annie, a friend of hers who lived just across the hill that I could see from my front veranda. Libby was heading over to see her, why didn’t I come too? I liked the neighbourliness of this and that’s how our friendship started, over a tour of Annie’s garden. She said she’d inherited the 10-hectare property from her late father who was a shearing contractor and kept it stocked with sheep and alpaca. She’d planted a Blackwood grove herself and, in spring, thousands of bobbing daffodils lined the driveway and coloured her garden beds. She even knew all of them by name: ‘That’s Carnival, there’s a Pink Charm, here’s Erlicheer, and those jonquils are over!’

  Both women were older than me; not that it mattered, because our similarities brought us together. None of us had children and I got the sense that we had learned to look after ourselves because we preferred it that way. They were both lithe and full of life and I liked how, meeting outside of work, we were meeting as ourselves. Job descriptions seemed irrelevant as Annie introduced us to her beloved alpaca, one by one.

  ‘I want more,’ she said. ‘I just want more.’

  It was a Lulworth morning and I decided to invite Annie and Libby. They had their own secret beaches, sacred places where the heart could be replenished, in the hot sand, under a cooling she-oak, or on a cove between the rocks, but I was surprised when they told me they were yet to discover Lulworth.

  Libby pulled into the Nuns’ House driveway in a handsome vintage automobile, a 1948 Ford Anglia she called ‘the old girl’. She looked handsome herself in a jaunty cap and leather backless gloves that fastened at the wrists. The old girl’s roof was down and Annie was sprawled across the back seat. ‘Come on, Hil!’ she called out, as I ran down the front steps. We had all packed cold bottles of beer wrapped up in beach towels and headed down the straight at a feisty fifty miles per hour laughing and hooting like vintage teenagers.

  There was nowhere else I wanted to be other than at Lulworth Beach with new friends—swimming, basking, and drinking straight from a beer bottle that had been chilled in the ocean. We returned when the day started cooling and, as we said our goodbyes, the three of us made another date for the following weekend. Over summer we took it in turns to drive to Lulworth, and each time our beach days became more gourmet and basket-laden. We had a sense of coming together, touching base, and making the most of the wonderful seasonal harvest. I liked how summer seemed to heat you on the inside, making you lazy when you needed to be—at the end of the year when tiredness sets in.

  It was my fourth Christmas and a perfect morning with not a breath of wind. Debs was visiting again from London, on her second visit to the Nuns’ House, and we decided to spend Christmas Day at Lulworth Beach with Libby and Annie. We arrived in convoy, unpacked the cars, and loaded each other up with towels and umbrellas, baskets and cooler bags of food. Bare feet squeaked on hot sand as we climbed up the dunes and stopped to catch our breath at the top. There were synchronised sighs and squeals as we saw the colour of the water and that the tide was just right. Libby returned to the car to fetch a few more things that included a special portable table she had invented. It was called the ‘the entertainment table’—a round table top with a pole that screwed into the surface underneath while the other end poked into the sand.

  We all brought something for the table. Libby had picked the best fruit from her orchard that morning—a platter laden with raspberries, strawberries and silvanberries. I think you could still spot the dew on the berries. Annie unwrapped fresh Tassie king prawns and dips. I brought a bottle of homemade rhubarb sparkling wine that served as an aperitif, and a generous wedge of gooey White Pearl camembert. And Debs had made a plate of rich chocolate brownies from a reci
pe she saw and fancied in a magazine on the plane.

  It wasn’t a family Christmas, or a traditional one with hats and bonbons. But it was a sharing of special friendships in a place where we all felt relaxed.

  One weekend, as Annie and I headed home after an afternoon at Lulworth, she mentioned she needed to put away her bales of hay. ‘Let’s do it,’ I said, ‘quicker with two,’ although I’d never stacked hay before. My last season’s harvest was taken away by Patrick Flynn as payment for cutting it. He was working in town now, so I’d have to sort out soon what I was to do with this year’s hay.

  It was late afternoon on a hot January day when we arrived at Annie’s farm; two gold-dusted paddocks were dotted with baled-up rectangles. Annie headed into the house and came out with long-sleeved shirts, gloves and long pants.

  ‘It’s to protect us from the hay—stops you itching!’ she said. ‘You’ll need them.’

  She introduced me to her neighbour, Darren, who drove the truck, and Davo, who was standing on the back, ready to stack. Annie and I were on foot, loading from the paddock, taking it in turns with each bale, grabbing the bright pink or blue string in a certain place so as not to trap a finger. The heavier bales needed both of us. Working into the evening we found a natural rhythm, bending and lifting, as we snaked our way across the paddock until two truckloads of hay were stacked neatly inside the barn. Annie showed me how to stack safely, crisscrossing each bale neatly so the floor-to-rafters pile was locked safely in place without risk of tipping. She showed me how easy it was to twist an ankle, or fall down a gap between the bales. Finally, we shut the barn door on a hundred and forty-five bales, put away now, all dry for winter.

  ‘Hey, Darren,’ said Annie. ‘Can you cut Hilary’s hay?’

  ‘Won’t be able to get to it for a couple of weeks. Try Dave Pinner up the road. He’s cuttin’ hay this year,’ said Darren. ‘By the way, you two ladies work harder than most blokes I know.’

  ‘That’s high praise coming from Darren,’ said Annie, as the blokes headed off. We took time to catch a beer before sundown on Annie’s veranda. She went to the kitchen, brought out a plate with two succulent steaks, and lit the barbie. We ate in the setting sun knowing that we’d truly earned it.

  Underneath the farm boots and checked flannelette shirts, Annie wore the colours of a master of arts in dance from New York University. During the week she worked as artistic director of Tasmania’s only professional dance company. At the weekend, she was a farmer, drove a Massey Ferguson tractor, operated her own chainsaw, and kept a gun to ward off unwanted wildlife. When the local paper interviewed her on her fifty-fourth birthday, she explained her preference for living alone in this way: ‘I have had relationships but I’m comfortable being on my own. It allows me the freedom to be who I am and be where I need to be.’ I liked the ease of her words and the way they were spoken without the need to defend.

  I left for home with a feeling of fullness, exhaustion and reward. This was a life ritual, rather than a day dictated by a TV program guide, the nine-to-five pressures of a working day, or a job that my heart wasn’t in.

  Since living in Karoola, my shoulders had broadened— literally. An Armani dress I once wore to a posh wedding in Belgium was now at least two inches too tight at the back zipper. I had developed mower shoulders. No need for gym membership here. When I got home, I rang Dave Pinner, an organic seed farmer who lived on his own at the other end of the straight, and arranged for him to cut and bale my paddock. That night I fell straight to sleep.

  When Dave arrived a couple of days later I thought he seemed dark and brooding. ‘This’ll be the last year I’ll be hay cutting,’ he said. ‘It’s just not worth my while anymore, especially now the seed business is on its way.’

  I asked him if he could just cut and bale it, and said I’d do the rest myself.

  ‘Okay. It’s a dollar a bale. How big do you want it?’

  ‘Small enough for me to pick up. You know—woman’s size.’

  Dave laughed, and I watched him settle into a gentle tractor-sway rhythm across a thick carpet of golden grass, the alpaca frolicking in his hay-wake. I loved the smell and the look of the paddock just before it was cut, and how the wind seemed to turn each blade of grass into an orchestra of light and shade.

  The next day, Libby and Annie picked me up to go to Lulworth.

  ‘You’ve got some stacking to do,’ said Libby. ‘Looks like you’ll need a hand.’

  When they dropped me home at the end of the day they insisted on helping me put away the hay. They called me ‘the new girl’, and I smiled to myself as both of them ran the job as if I were a hired hand.

  ‘Okay, girl,’ said Libby, as I started the Jeep with the trailer on the back. ‘Go to the bottom of the paddock and work your way back up! We’ll stack.’

  Within an hour the barn was stacked to the rafters. We counted fifty-six ‘woman-sized’ bales from my one and a bit paddocks.

  ‘What are you going to do with them?’ asked Libby. ‘You don’t need all that hay.’

  ‘I don’t know, but I sure feel good the hay is in.’

  Something to do with reaping a surplus . . . If I were a farmer the profit of the summer was right there in my barn: feed for the alpaca, mulch for the fruit trees, hay to sell, or just seats for the garden. I realised I was feeling the kind of satisfaction that makes you stand back and put your hands on your hips.

  Christmas rhubarb sparkling wine at Lulworth Beach.

  Rhubarb sparkling wine

  (first heard on ABC Local Radio spoken

  by Sally Wise* and scribbled down)

  3 cups chopped rhubarb

  3 cups sugar

  1 whole lemon, chopped (including rind, seeds, the lot)

  150 ml white vinegar

  5 L cold water

  Roughly chop rhubarb in half-inch lengths. Place

  all ingredients in a large food-safe pot, cover loosely

  with a clean tea towel and leave for 48 hours.

  Strain liquid through a pair of clean stockings into

  sterilised bottles. Wait 2 weeks. Chill before opening

  and be careful when you do!

  * Sally Wise, A Year in a Bottle, ABC Books, 2008.

  CHAPTER 9

  Fourth summer, Karoola

  Australia Day. The sun was perhaps an hour off rising, but the birds were already up. I loved the anticipation of dawn, like a tightly wound spring, holding energy to burn. Kerouac had his neck between two palings and was nosing his way into the next paddock. Proof that the grass was always greener . . . even for alpaca. There was a hint of yellow as the first sunflower planted a few weeks ago showed its face, ready to turn with the day. A family of magpies lined the fence, sweet-gargling as if they’d swallowed an orchestra of flutes. It was a holiday. I couldn’t get used to the fact that a whole country could have the day off to be itself together. Today, collectively, even though most people were just making it back from their summer break, everyone stopped, had a barbie, and relaxed. A ute passed by on Pipers River Road with four Australian flags tied to the stainless-steel toolbox on the back . . . It’s only for one day.

  I watched as the morning light finally hit the line of poplars in the valley and crept up the side of the Karoola community hall; the soft hilltops in the distance were sun-drifted. I could see my slanting shadow on the study door. Hello, sunshine. Thanks to the sun, each day renewed itself, while the night wiped the slate clean. You could rely on that. One day celebrated a happy new year. Each day celebrated a happy new day . . . I tried to carry this silly sense of wonderment with me and not worry too much about the future.

  On the radio news, I heard the national supermarkets were dropping the price of milk to one dollar a litre—below the cost of production. Later, a listener called in to ask: ‘How could they do that—on Australia Day of all days? How un-Australian is that?’

  I thought about what this meant for dairy farmers, wondered how they would be able to make ends meet, and h
ow was it possible that milk cost less than bottled water? I recalled an advertisement that had caught my eye while I was researching the history of Karoola in the Launceston library, in the Launceston Weekly Courier for 1 July 1920. The ad, placed by FW Heritage & Co.—Merchants and Manufacturers, read: ‘We receive all description of farm produce for sale.’ But it was the headline that stood out: We Pay Highest Price for Cream.

  I wanted to live in a world that valued farmers, because without them how would we have enough to eat? I wanted to pay the highest price for cream! I didn’t phone the radio program, or write a letter, or stew and fume, but I sat with this thought for a while. And then wondered what I should do with the morning. The smell of overnight rain on the garden beckoned like perfume—bottle that, Chanel! So did the bucketful of apricots on the kitchen table that I’d picked from the old tree in the backyard the day before. Maybe I’d make some apricot jam or sauce, or both, before heading off to work to pour bubbles.

  Sometimes I’ve thought (and if I were being cocky I would say I know) that when I feel in tune with myself the world seems all joined up and offers up things without me asking for them. On that Australia Day, while thinking about what it meant to be Australian, I fiddled with the radio dial and caught a gravelly voice in conversation. It was a while before I realised it was the all-Australian actor Jack Thompson. He was speaking about an Indigenous foundation he had established, and about a line his own father had written many years ago, a line now etched in his memory:

  They gathered from

  the living ground their

  common needs . . .

  ‘The Conqueror’ by John Thompson (1907–1968)

  ‘The living ground,’ said Jack, ‘had sustained the local Indigenous populations for over 40,000 years.’ I wrote this sentence down and regarded it as profound. The living ground was ours to share if we cared for it. Would our living ground sustain us for another 40,000 years?