‘With whatever spare time we have, let’s work on it together,’ Luke suggested.
I decided to go to Hobart and made a plan to see Les, who cleared his diary and convinced me to stay the night. ‘Let’s have an adventure,’ he said. ‘We’ll have dinner, then set off early. How would you feel about a dawn departure? I want to show you Tasmania’s biggest tree.’
First, I arranged to meet Luke and Rodney. We exchanged ideas for a magazine that we thought could tell how real food started with produce and people. Luke said Tasmanians didn’t realise how lucky they were and I agreed. I dreamed of opening a produce hall to celebrate it too. Rodney told how he had just moved into an old schoolhouse in Lachlan with his wife and baby; they were a month into building their cooking-school dream, making smallgoods, buying chooks, researching heirloom vegetables and repairing the dairy.
The next day, Les and I rose early and the drive started slowly. It was foggy on the southern outlet that climbed steeply out of the city. Les had packed a wicker basket with a thermos of tea and the leatherwood-honey Anzac biscuits I’d baked for him the night before. I noticed how he kept the basket sitting on his knees while I drove, and it wasn’t long before he poured us both half a mug of hot tea. By the time we arrived at the Arve Road Forest, the fog had cleared, the day was blue and sharp, and the ground crunched underneath our feet, throwing up aftershave scents as we walked up the short track to see ‘Big Tree’.
It was impossible to take in its size: at seventeen metres in girth it was too wide to hug, and reaching nearly ninety metres, too tall to see anything but the foot soldiers of branches. Even arching back the neck, yoga-like, you couldn’t take in the vastness of Big Tree and the silent space it had mastered, surviving bushfires, logging and lightning storms. We clung to the observation deck, Les standing back to catch my response. This tree had lived for around three hundred years without a murmur; funny how our lives, so small by comparison, demand so much more of the planet.
That day, tall trees struck me in the same awe-inspiring way as stars or mountains do; they offer perspective on your woes. This tree had survived and was being cared for, but we knew that the logging road that had enabled us to see this one Big Tree had also carried millions of others out. I despaired at how these ancient trees might still be being felled in industrial numbers for corporate profit. We are all hurt when this happens. And yet the line between forestry and conservation was drawn so sharply on this small island that people who cared about their natural landscape were called ‘greenies’ or ‘tree huggers’. I wondered why the line couldn’t be redrawn with greater common sense so that what was here before we came might still be here when we were gone. I wanted to be able to look up at a leatherwood tree in the west-coast rainforests where they grew, to smell their sweet white flowers in summer that attract the bees that make the honey made here and nowhere else.
Leatherwood blossom at Corinna.
Luke and Katrina’s restaurant, though small and almost as far as it was possible to be from the centre of the restaurant-going world, was getting rave reviews in all the right places, so I decided to take Les there for lunch. He was always keen to see what could be done with produce in the hands of a good chef.
‘Let’s not order off the menu,’ he told Luke. ‘We’ll leave it to you. Just bring it out!’ Lit from within by Les’s invitation, Luke did exactly that, and the brisk, wintry afternoon passed as if in a dream, with every dish appearing as finished as a work of art.
Leatherwood-honey Anzac biscuits*
1 tbsp leatherwood honey
130 g butter
1 cup plain flour
pinch salt
1 cup sugar 1 cup coconut
1 cup rolled oats
6 drops vanilla (optional)
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tbsp boiling water
Gently melt honey and butter together.
Sift flour and salt. Add sugar, coconut, rolled oats
and vanilla.
Dissolve bicarbonate of soda in boiling water.
Combine all ingredients and mix well. Place heaped
teaspoons of mixture on a greased baking tray,
allowing room for biscuits to flatten and spread
during cooking.
Bake in 180°C oven for approximately 10 to
15 minutes. Leave biscuits to rest on tray for a
couple of minutes before lifting off to cool.
Eat with a slice of cheddar cheese on top.
* Based on a recipe from A.C. Irvine’s Central Cookery Book,
first published in 1930. For a long time, A.C. Irvine’s
book was the sole text for education in
cookery in Tasmanian schools.
CHAPTER 11
Autumn/winter, Tasmania
I wasn’t the kind of gardener who remembered the names of things, who got things right or who studied what needed to be done in meticulous detail. Instead, the garden taught me. I would plant things from seed, cuttings or pots, just shoving them in to see what happened. And I learned to see what was already here, mowing at the right time so that drifts of daisies would appear. In spring, the paddock turned pink with clouds of tiny flowers that Audrey said were ixia. She seemed to drag the name from some place deep inside her brain and it surprised me that she knew. Come summer, the paddock turned pink again with what Libby called naked ladies, otherwise known as the belladonna lily. I thought of them as paddock dames—a force of nature—both beautiful and poisonous. Shooting tall, nude of leaves, just topped with a crown of pink lily flowers, they seemed to accelerate out of a faded paddock as hard as concrete. It seemed the more solid the ground, the faster they would inch up, as pink as a galah’s breast or a Paris rose. The Nuns’ House deserved a paddock strewn with them.
I wondered how to make the paddock turn pink in autumn and winter, too. This was how my garden grew.
Some of the bulbs I’d planted over the months had come from Libby, who was gradually digging up the exotics and turning her garden back to natives. She grew and harvested native flora to sell to florists as well as to attract the birdlife that she loved. One day, close to winter, I was scratching around in the garden like a chicken when Libby rang, inviting me to visit her for the afternoon: ‘Come and have a fifty-cent tour.’ I knew that she lived on her own on the other side of Lilydale in the shadow of Mount Arthur, but I’d never ventured up her mountain road. Since living here, I tried to keep to myself and not accept too many social invitations or invite myself to anyone’s place. I’d made this opportunity to escape the stickiness of other people for as long as that might last.
I imagined that, in her own way, Libby was doing that, too.
I enjoyed setting off on the fifteen-minute drive, passing the old oval where cars still parked around the edge of the ground on local footy-match days, like a circle of dung beetles. Once out of Lilydale, the asphalt road soon turned into gravel and rose steeply through a patchwork of pastoral land and plantation forests. I always loved that feeling of hitting dirt road, and used to dream of it in England, of the heightened sense of freedom and escape it offered . . . of living on the edges. On the way up to Libby’s there were no white lines or concrete gutters, and few signs littering the landscape, as if different rules applied.
At the first gravel corner the Jeep slid and I managed to correct it without losing control. A wallaby bounced across the road and into the bush, where wattles were just coming into blossom. I reached a fork, a sharp-hooked bend with deep ruts and two, maybe three driveways coming off it. I was confused by the turn in the track, but straight ahead I could see an old Federation house with a pretty rose-covered veranda. A man was playing with a black dog that barked as I got out of the Jeep to ask for directions.
‘I think I’m lost,’ I called out. ‘Looking for Libby’s?’
‘You’re almost there—next house on the right . . . at the end,’ he called back. ‘Have a nice time!’
Thanking him, I motored off up the bus
h track to the top of the hill.
Libby must have been waiting for the sound of the car because she was standing at the front gate when I arrived. She waved me into the driveway and closed the gate behind me. A decade older than me, she was a tall and elegant woman with cropped hair and the air of an enthusiastic older sister. Her garden was impressive, like tamed bush. As we strolled through the grounds, she told me how she kept the gate closed to keep out the wildlife, but that she was also parenting orphaned bandicoots that she kept in a fenced-off area. She had an eye for the native birds that flocked to feed on the flowers and fruit of trees and shrubs she grew especially. From the back of her property, facing east, you could see the tops of nearby hills carpeted with plantations: the stripes of uniform colour in different stages of growth, and the scarring of cleared land. Sometimes, she said, the hills were red with flames and smoke when the forestry regeneration burns took place. We turned away and headed back to a netted area: her gated orchard. In summer, she said, there were all manner of shiny berries, fruit and stone fruit, listing trellised pears, nashis, cherries, apricots, peaches and nectarines, and the bloodiest of blood plums.
‘Libby, it’s a garden of Eden!’ I said.
‘I covered the orchard because the currawongs didn’t want to share the few meagre cherries with me,’ she laughed with a modesty that hid the effort it must have taken.
We went inside and Libby opened a bottle of wine and began preparing a cheese platter. I spotted a bird book and a pair of binoculars lying on a side table next to an armchair positioned to take in the westerly views. When she slid back the door of her pantry, I noticed shelves lined from top to bottom with jewel-coloured bottles and jars of preserved fruits, jams, chutneys, pickles and homemade wines. I had pantry envy and tried to feel better by telling myself that I had only been here for three years and four summers. Libby had lived here all her life.
On the western side of the ridge, Libby had positioned a fallen tree for viewing the night sky over Lilydale and as far away as Mount Roland. She called it the sunset seat. This was where we toasted the day and I tasted her homemade pickled walnuts. Libby was worried they might be the wrong side of tart but they seemed just right to me, paired with a crumbly Tassie cheddar and a glass of local sauvignon blanc. I enjoyed the conversation and how the view seemed to absorb our silences without either of us feeling the need to fill them. The evening started to cool so we moved back inside and I was about to set off for home when the phone rang.
‘It’s Barney,’ she said, holding her hand over the receiver. ‘My next-door neighbour. Just checking that you found me okay.’ She spoke into the phone. ‘Yes, Barney, she’s still here . . . oh . . . you’re on your own?’ She turned to me again. ‘He wants to know if we’d like to join him for dinner . . .’
‘The man with the dog?’ I replied. ‘Why not? I have no plans.’ The evening seemed to be steering me and I went with it.
‘Okay,’ she told Barney. ‘When would you like us? . . . Right, we’re on our way.’
We set off on foot down the track and I noticed how the sky had at once lost all its colour but was every colour—almost translucent—like a Turner painting. I thought how when you describe a view it changes so decided not to say to Libby how beautiful I thought the sky was. It just was.
A tall beanpole of a man with a beaming smile welcomed us at his front door and showed us inside, into a lounge room warmed by a huge log fire. He seemed to me the stereotypical Australian: brash, opinionated and at ease with himself, in the country uniform of jeans and a checked flannelette shirt. I looked at his right angles and sharp lines, all rib and cheekbone, and realised he reminded me of Woody, the lanky cowboy doll in Toy Story. Perhaps he was the kind of man who could save the day while crying into his dinner plate? Over a glass of ‘chardy’ he explained how he and his young family had moved to Tasmania four years ago after following a corporate career in Sydney and Melbourne. They’d bought the two-hundred-acre property and were farming hay and olives until he and his wife separated a couple of months ago. It had been amicable, he said, and the property would be on the market soon.
While waiting for the chicken satay sticks to barbecue outside, Barney picked up his electric guitar and played way too well for an audience of two, like Eric Clapton, I thought. He told us that when he was young he played in a band called The Streets, but, nearing fifty now, he played for the joy of it. I noticed his collection of CDs, and he showed me a set that had been sent to him by an old friend called Reg. Each one had its own title and theme; there was ‘Fast Music’ and ‘Slow Music’, ‘Know Your Roots’ and ‘Lean-To Music’. I liked the sound of Lean-To music. Each cover had a black-and-white photo of Barney or Reg, and a songlist featuring the who’s who of roots and blues: Ry Cooder, David Bromberg, Johnnie Johnson, Leon Redbone . . . Lean-To’s cover was a picture of Reg with his arms crossed, leaning against the doorway of an old shack. Barney explained how every now and then Reg would post him a CD a day for a week. Reg must have thought a lot of his old friend to do that.
Later that night, while peering out at the night sky from the Nuns’ House front veranda, I thought about the day and how it had moved, how Libby had shared her space and Barney his passions, and how enjoyable the day had been. It seemed to have an energy of its own. A couple of weeks later I decided to invite Barney and Libby to dinner in return, and Crabtree as well so there would be four of us. When I rang Libby she surprised me by saying that Barney was smitten. I hadn’t considered the possibility of this and didn’t know how I felt, so just told her I travelled slowly these days. But Barney didn’t, arriving for dinner unfashionably early, while I was still preparing the fish pie. I asked him to help make the apple crumble topping by slowly rubbing butter into flour with the tips of his fingers.
‘I’ve never done that before,’ he said. Unfazed, he washed his hands and put them into the flour and butter and I left him to it. How fussy does a crumble have to be?
While we prepared the meal together, I asked him why he’d left his job at BP and come to Tasmania. He told me how he’d started as a console operator; how after fourteen years, he’d worked his way up the corporate ladder to become the oil company’s Australasian marketing manager. His next step would probably take him to Singapore or London, and when he asked himself and his family if that’s what they wanted . . . it wasn’t.
‘It was good you recognised that when you did,’ I said, wondering why the marriage hadn’t survived the move, although really it was none of my business.
I gave him a tour of the garden while we waited for Libby and Richard to arrive, and he sat in an outside chair to take in the view of my mountain, Mount Arthur, that was his mountain too, and of the valley laid out in front of us. I don’t know what made me think of it, but I told him about the outside dining setting that my father had made when we were children, carved out of felled trees, and he said if I wanted to do the same I was welcome to come and get a few big logs that were lying around his property.
Richard arrived with a bottle of his latest vintage pinot noir, followed by Libby with a basket of her surplus produce and a tightly bound bouquet of native flowers and leaves. There was grevillea, waratah, native hop, bluegum leaves shaped like tiny hearts, kangaroo paw and tea-tree. Her mixed bunches sold for just a few dollars each on the driveway at Rob’s service station in Lilydale, but as it took all the late nights and early mornings in her life to tend, prune, harvest, trim, bunch and rubber-band them I thought they were worth much more than that.
It was a relaxing evening with comfort food and new friends. And as all of us were early risers the evening was over by 9.30 pm. Barney said he had to get up before dawn to drive the local school bus. Libby had to pick foliage and take it into town. And I’d noticed over the months how Richard never overstayed his welcome, probably because his days were long, tending to the vineyard.
‘Let me know when you want to come round for the logs,’ said Barney enthusiastically as he left. He might be smitten, b
ut that’s not what’s happening here, I thought, as I said goodnight and closed the door. Maybe Libby had it wrong?
Libby’s pickled walnuts
young green walnuts (the quantity depends on how many
you want to pickle, or the size of the tree. Use sufficient liquid
to cover walnuts.)
brine solution (½ cups water)
2 L malt vinegar
250 g brown sugar
60 g peppercorns
30g allspice
At about Christmas time, harvest young green
walnuts and prick the skins well with a fork to
allow the brine to penetrate. Place in brine solution
for 1 week, stirring occasionally. The walnuts should
remain covered by the brine solution so place a plate
on top of the walnuts to weigh them down.
Drain walnuts and place on trays in the sun until
they turn black and a bit withered.
Prepare a pickle with the malt vinegar, brown sugar,
peppercorns and allspice. Simmer together for about
10 minutes. Cool, strain and pour over walnuts that
have been packed in sterilised jars, and seal.
After about a month enjoy with a tangy Tassie
cheddar cheese.
CHAPTER 12
Winter, Karoola
I was happy when Leigh decided to visit again for a winter retreat with Fiona. We hadn’t seen each other for a year or so and we both felt it was time for a catch-up. She now understood and respected the need for me to set firm boundaries at the Nuns’ House, and I realised how strong that instinct must have been in me in the beginning: enough to risk a significant friendship. Since being here I’d watched newly planted shrubs and trees struggle to take root, and learned to recognise the point when they no longer needed watching over, or to identify when they needed to be replaced with something more suited to that spot. I had come to be able to look at my own circumstances with that same clarity and see how my life had taken root. Now there was less need to guard so fiercely the way I wanted to be.
A Story of Seven Summers Page 11