‘They’re good chooks,’ he said. ‘The woman down there is a real chook lover. Birds everywhere.’
They are lovely chooks, backyard-reared Australorps. Mike got half a dozen for himself, still asleep under the tarp in their crates. They didn’t even cluck. The old chooks stared as we unloaded the new ones, then went back to pecking in their pen. I keep telling our chooks that hens don’t live to be 16, but they still refuse to fall off the perch.
We tipped the new girls into the run. Each squawked once, ruffled its feathers then as ours gave that Michael Jackson head wobble look about the pen. Gertie the old Isa Brown pecked at them, flapping her wings so they couldn’t get to food or water. The other chooks ignored them. Gertie was bullied herself when she first arrived. Like humans, the bullied become the bullies. Luckily we have a double pen so the new chooks can stay in there till the others get used to them.
I fed the wombats. Mothball managed to eat from both bowls – Wombatosaurus Rex. Bruiser cowered behind the daffodils. Mothball finally wandered off, stuffed. While Bruiser managed to eat a bit before a bower bird startled him. Bruiser will never be the John Wayne of wombats, but it would be good if we can give him enough courage to eat his dinner.
July 16
I forgot that I’d just been to the loo and wondered, as I visited it again, why nothing was happening. Remembered.
This is not good. Noel says it’s giving me a taste of what things are like for everyone else. Normally I remember everything. Literally everything, from the age of nine months, when Mum gave me a choice of red or green corduroy rompers each morning. There was a floral pattern on the carpet and it tickled when I crawled.
Ask me a conversation from five years ago and I’ll give it to you word perfect; if I was paying attention, not watching the pigeons out the window. Sometimes I want to turn my mind off, in case one last fact makes the whole overflow and my brain starts leaking.
Switching off is not a problem this morning. My mind is still scrambled like Bryan’s breakfast eggs, except mine aren’t sprinkled with chopped spring onions. No black pepper either. Maybe black pepper would spark me up.
Rosie’s joey, Emily, peered in the bathroom window as I washed my hands, curious at the sound of a creek indoors.
Bryan is down at the shed working on his new rat trap, this one will catch several at a time. Will post his design on my website, so no one can patent it and stop others making their own.
I curled up on the sofa with a newly translated thirteenth-century book, a mix of medieval theology and housekeeping. A few days ago I let the cheese sauce burn, fascinated at the glimpse of port levies. Now I gave up after two paragraphs.
I climbed the ladder in the book-room and hauled down the Georgette Heyers, their tatty covers and dust thick as a mummy’s tomb. I haven’t read them since I was twenty, hunting for secondhand copies of the childhood books Mum had taken to the dump when I left home at fifteen. Picked the tattiest Georgette Heyer to read today. It says on the cover it cost thirty-five cents, and was a gift to Marion, with love from Gran and Poppa. I thanked Gran and Poppa, and Marion too.
Made more hot milk. Read. Slept.
I was awoken by a grumpy wombat gnawing the doormat a metre from the sofa. Grnch, grnch. Chomp. Mothball, with Bruiser peering round the corner.
I put food in Mothball’s dish first, waited till she was eating, then poured food into Bruiser’s bowl. Mothball considered the matter for two minutes. Wombats rarely make quick decisions. At last she settled back to her own bowl. Bruiser looked scared but happy, a rolled-oat-like beauty patch on his nose.
Sometimes I think I need to write a postscript to Diary of a Wombat. P.S. This wombat is not cuddly. If I wrote her full story, it’d be X-rated.
The phone rang while I was watching Bruiser watch Mothball watch Bruiser. It was Noel. Then Dad. Then my brother, Fred. Jenny called too. Gave them all my Marlene Dietrich impression with glass of water in hand. Then Susan, from Studio Altenberg in town, sending their love. Then Helen. Helen’s husband is Jeremy, owner of our local supermarket. He has forgiven me for saying he lurks among the butter fridges. He still lurks, but not as often. These days he does more bag carrying for Helen, as she jets off to her exhibition openings around the world.
Also, Roger the ranger (who appears on page 162) would like it understood that he drinks black coffee, not cappuccino.
July 17
Answered emails. And tried to start the next novel. My computer stared back at me with that puzzled glare computers get if you don’t caress their keyboards. My mind was blank. No words except clichés, the last refuge when your mind can’t focus on what you need to say. My coffee cup sits next to me, empty. I made the coffee, but forgot to pour it in.
Turned off the computer and fed the chooks instead.
Gertie spread out her wings and squawked like an elderly pterodactyl to stop the new chooks getting at the scrap bucket. Worth fighting for today. Thirty-four elderly choc walnut slices, richer than the entire US military budget, half a slug-eaten lettuce, bunch of beetroot tops, seven squishy avocados, a loaf of stale bread – Matt the baker up in town makes bread that tastes of wheat and sunlight, but it grows mould fast. A sign of its goodness. Why eat bread that won’t even support mould?
Backyard chooks could save the world. No more methane burping farting cows; no more methane drifting up from rubbish dumps, where forty-five percent of our food ends up. I don’t feel guilty buying three loaves of Matt’s bread – sourdough rye, a multigrain and wholemeal – even though we won’t get through them all. The chooks get the rest.
Australorps are tough. They strutted past Gertie and tucked into the choc walnut slices.
July 18
Bryan is out with his chainsaw on a stick, pruning dead branches from the stone pine trees.
My horoscope for today said there’d be a long lunch with friends, and Bryan’s told him to expect cuddles from his partner. Not with a radioactive one, he won’t.
Sue arrived, with mail, gossip and cold hands. She held them by the wood stove while I made a cuppa and read the mail. Filed most of it in the rubbish bin and put the letters to answer in a pile. I couldn’t face reading them, much less writing answers.
Slept.
July 20
E is here for a few days. Ridiculous joy in having him home, hearing the footsteps on the floor above the kitchen. Sometimes, just sometimes, I long for when six-family generations lived in the village around you. But only sometimes. Other times I know it’d drive me mad.
It’d drive them mad too.
Cooked roast lamb, with garlic, rosemary, lots of pumpkin, all with my hands in gloves which isn’t as easy as you think. How do surgeons manage? I watched E’s and B’s faces as they sniffed the meat and garlic, but it was mechanical cooking. Feeding those I love, rather than the joy in matching ingredients, creating something that wasn’t there before. Much like writing a book, which is still beyond me.
July 21
Didn’t bother to turn the computer on this morning, not when I realised I’d dressed myself entirely but forgotten my jeans. Took off ugg boots and put on jeans.
I am officially no longer radioactive, so I cleaned out the larder instead of working. I’d cleaned out the larder on the night of September 11, too, when E called us at 2 a.m. from a Greek ferry bound for Italy, during his ‘gap year’.
‘The US is under attack,’ he said. ‘Turn on the radio. All the news is in Greek. I’m trying to keep some sort of order here!’
We listened and reported back to him, and he called out the news to the boatload of passengers, many of them Americans frantically trying to call home through overloaded switchboards, desperate for news. The ABC reported the towers falling, another plane uncontactable. No way to sleep, so I started sorting jars of jam instead. Come plague, meteor, or bushfire, all our chutney will be neatly shelved, though most are too old to eat, as I make jam and chutney in vats, and Bryan eats perhaps four jars a year.
Today the c
hooks got a packet of dates, raisins with a touch of weevil, much relished by chooks, a packet of shortbread someone gave me three months ago. I should have given it to the chooks then as Bryan won’t eat packaged biscuits, and a box of milk chocolates, ditto.
Mothball is sitting between both food bowls, daring Bruiser – or Rosie wallaby, or Emily, or the bower birds – to get near either. Sad shrieks from Bruiser.
I wish I could explain to Mothball that she has long been a wild self-sufficient wombat, and has Bruiser to thank for the fact that she’s getting any oats and feed at all.
July 22
Three eggs from the new chooks! Must have been the chocolate slices. Or maybe the weevils in the dates.
I feel guilty, as they are the chook equivalent of twelve-yearolds, still too young for sex and procreation. On the other hand, as far as I know there’s been no sex. Just three eggs, warm from the chook’s bum. One is brown – there must be Isa Brown rooster in their ancestry, the others pale as the cheek of a Chinese emperor’s concubine. Fresh eggs almost glow…
I fed Bruiser. Mothball lumbered up, half asleep. Bruiser gave a short sharp yell. Mothball blinked, then lumbered off again.
Victory for Bruiser!
Whoops – sorry. Rose and Emily have scared off Bruiser.
Later…Mothball has just got rid of Rosie and Emily.
July 23
A currawong is pretending to be a vulture, peering at me from the pergola. He’s trying to psych me outside, bearing birdseed.
Tough. I’m going to heat some milk instead. I make lime butter, the citrus branches are heavy to cracking point…
July 24
Four eggs, all from the young chooks. Dulcie must be having a break from egg laying at last.
No words on the computer. Am a bit frightened of what I might write. The doctor warned me that I’d ‘feel a bit moody’, which is like saying Hitler didn’t get the Nobel Peace Prize.
These aren’t moods. They’re cyclones, terror for half an hour then normal again; suddenly sobbing for five minutes. As I write this I am grumpy, which is okay, as Bryan is too nice to grump at. I’d like to bite the doctor though. I had to look up the Journal of Endocrinology to find out what was happening. As the throat tissue decays, it releases stored thyroxine, which at the end of a long hormonal story has turned me into Maniac Millie.
Just looked out the window. Two small piles of feathers, ground thrushes I think. We call them the ‘secret birds’ as they dart from bush to bush, but very vulnerable to cats.
I told Bryan about the feathers. That is, I gave a hoarse loud whisper, which is still the best I can do. Bryan’s just put out his feral-cat trap made from an old supermarket trolley. He made the prototype decades ago and it’s been much copied since. Works a treat. Take that, you feral moggies. (Must be on the hormonal upswing again.)
July 25
No cats in trap.
No voice.
No brains in head.
Six eggs, two quarrelsome wombats. I wonder if I’ll ever write a book again.
July 26
I heard a cat meowing when I woke up, so stayed in bed for another half an hour in case I scared it away from the trap when I opened the curtains. Not a hardship, it’s cold out there.
No need. I think it’s been trapped there since last night. A giant grey cat. Not the black one I’ve glimpsed a few times, which means there is at least one more nearby, probably lots. I see fresh cat scats every morning on my walk.
Scats are wonderful things. You know exactly who’s been where and what they’ve been eating. I found a python scat last summer, the first in over a decade. Wonderful to know at least one is still around. Must have been useful in prehistoric times to look for human droppings to see who else was nearby too.
July 27
Another feral cat in the trap – a giant black one, all claws and snarls. Terrifying even caged…
Impossible not to grieve for it though, all that anger and beauty behind bars. Impossible not to rejoice for the birds and tiny sugar gliders, the frogs, the bettongs and antechinus who have a chance to survive now it’s gone.
A small chance. Ten years ago a hobby farmer released his surplus goats into the gorge. Now there are thousands of them, despite all attempts to keep the numbers down. Ferny gullies have turned to eroded clay. We’re custodians of this land, not owners; an unremitting, sometimes gruesome battle to preserve the tiny helpless ones who live here too.
July 28
Woke up, watched the sunlight creep up cross the valley to the window, and listened to the lyrebirds song trickle through the trees. Suddenly realise I feel normal.
Got up. Dressed. All garments correct. A bit tired and a sore spot I don’t want to touch on my throat. Also only two notes, low and lower, when I tried to sing in the shower. I haven’t had any emotional surge for forty-eight hours. Pulse is normal. No shaking hands. Never believe a specialist when they tell you, ‘Just take it easy for a few weeks.’ It’s going to be hell.
I sat at the computer, tried to write. Instead ordered seven books and three DVDs, and a box of dark chocolate-coated sultanas for Bryan; read the headlines on the London Times, China Daily, SMH and The Age. Also Crikey. Browsed ‘new releases’. I stopped pretending I was going to do any work and went outside.
Rosie and Emily were eating the scraps from Mothball’s breakfast when Bruiser came wandering back from down the orchard, falling asleep midway, a dazed expression on his face. I expect Bruiser may have just lost his virginity. Though there have been no mating screams – wombats mate loudly – so maybe he’s just found a friend. But I think he’s heading back to his own hole under our bedroom tonight. And a very nice one it is too. Bryan has taken away twenty-seven barrow loads of dirt since Bruiser moved in.
July 31
I’m sitting by the fire sipping hot milk, the frost melting and dripping from the roof, when I realised what the lack of wombat mating yells this year means.
It’s going to be a summer from the backblocks of hell.
Damn.
I have learned how to read the weather signs in the past few decades: when there are so many wattleseeds they form a crinkled black hand hanging from the branches, and when the indigophera flowers have that particular purple flame, then there’ll soon be barren creek beds and fires that rage across the bush. The trees on the far ridge are thin topped. They, too, are shutting themselves down for the summer ahead.
Last year the wombats shrieked for three days. The spring grass was tender enough to sprinkle with salad dressing, and even midsummer was green. At this end of the valley anyhow. That’s the problem with wombats as weather predictors. They only care about their own patch. I know what the season will be like here in the valley, but not anywhere else.
At least the creek is still running cold and clear. I’m giving every tree around the house one deep watering. Hopefully that will keep them alive for the next eight months – dusty, limp, and browned at their edges, maybe, but surviving.
August 1
One of the lyrebirds was pecking out the last of Bruiser’s wombat nuts this afternoon. Lyrebirds aren’t supposed to eat wombat nuts. What have I started?
What I still haven’t started is the novel.
August 2
Seven eggs today. No words on the computer, if you don’t count these. I can describe, but I can’t think…
August 3
Rosie eats neatly, picking up the big bits of chaff in her paws and nibbling at them. Emily pokes her nose into the bowl, coming up with stray bits stuck to her fur. Wallabies shouldn’t eat carbohydrate. The wombats eat the wombat nuts, and the wallabies leave the tougher bits of chaff they can’t be bothered with.
The animals here are fellow inhabitants. Most have got used to us just as we have got used to them. (There are exceptions. The echidna is still nervous of us. And I get edgy when I meet a brown snake.)
I watched a one-legged kangaroo bound down the mountain on my walk this morning, then saw the second l
eg was withered, held up against its body. He’d didn’t bound as high or long as most roos, but it was still astounding, the tail used for balance as well as spring. Who’d have thought a one-legged roo could bound like that?
These days as the rosellas chatter to each other I know it’s speech, not noise; watch Rosie instruct Emily on the finer points of flower eating. The world would be boring if it was inhabited only by humans and their pets and useful species. Not just boring, I think we would lose our soul.
We evolved with other species and with trees and flowers and myriad living things. I know that when I am in cities, surrounded by only humans and their products, I find life very simple. There are only the complexities of one species, not 100,000.
Possibly there is a moral reason to share my garden with wombats, wallabies and the changing seasons of the birds. But mostly I do it for myself. Without the others, I would be less.
August 5
Restless tonight; maybe after E has left, perhaps still thyroid residue. I left Bryan on the computer, catching up with mates from his tracking station days, and grabbed the torch. Once outside I didn’t need it. The moon was a nine-month pregnant belly, dancing on the clouds. Even the trees had shadows.
The bush is different at night.
It’s a myth that light disappears at night. Light changes. Starlight is blue and gold. The night sky isn’t black, but deeper blue. You just have to look longer and closer to see night colours.
Year in the Valley Page 27