The Woman on the Mountain

by Sharyn Munro

  When my arms have recovered, I can take the splitter, a sort of axe with a heavy fat head, and forestall some of that incipient upper-arm flab by breaking the cut logs into burnable slabs. When I’m missing the log more often than I’m hitting it, and liable to hit my boot instead, I know it’s time to give up for this session. Some logs have interlocked grain that won’t let go and require ten times the effort to split. Others are not splittable—or not by me; the splitter just bounces off, jarring my wrists and threatening to knock me out on the recoil. Such logs have to be left for the heater, which has a bigger firebox than the stove.

  One of Nanna’s most enduring sources of pleasure and pride, before failing eyesight forced her to give it up in her eighties, was being able to ‘splitta bitta deal’ for kindling for her fuel stove. While my hardwood is far more obstinate than the packing case ‘deal’ or pine she used, the activity itself always reminds me of her. Perhaps there’s a ‘tough old lady’ gene? I’d be proud to have hers.

  If I have visitors who can back a trailer, which I can’t despite many attempts to learn, we might take the Suzi and my small trailer to get a bigger load. Not too big, as she might strain something. Backing a trailer is something I admire, but I see it as a gift rather than a skill. Otherwise I’d be able to do it, wouldn’t I?

  Like everything here, the wood provisioning can involve unforeseen complications. Take the other week when, busy on a writing job, I’d let my indoor woodpile run very low. I thought I’d better split a wheelbarrow full, since rain was forecast. It should only take ten minutes.

  But my 25-year-old wheelbarrow chose that moment to snap the last rusty threads of its axle bolt. I knocked the broken bolt out with difficulty and went poking about in the shed for the right length, right diameter bolt. After much to-ing and fro-ing, which intensely annoyed my quoll, I admitted I didn’t have one. I’d need to file the metal hole bigger. That took quite a while.

  The wheelbarrow and I rattled up to the woodheap. There were really only the unsplittable rejects left. To save time, I decided to drive over to my son’s cabin and pick up the last of his building off-cuts. I found the pile overgrown with tall bracken and interlaced with rotting chipboard sheets. Sorting through it, with an eye out for snakes, took quite a while.

  Loading the wood into the back of the Suzi took quite a while too. With wood that’s been on the ground like that I have to turn over each piece in case some small creature has already claimed it as habitat, in which case I put it back.

  I did beat the rain, but when I finally stumbled inside with my armfuls of wood, I realised it had taken nearly three hours to fill that wheelbarrow.

  Yet wood gathering is only part of the wood system. Despite avoiding damp or green wood where possible, I have to clean the flues regularly—a filthy job, but creosoted flues and blocked dampers catch fire, usually when it’s dark and raining, and climbing on the roof in a panic, dragging a running hose, slipping and cursing, is no fun. In fact, it’s another way in which I could maim or kill myself here.

  And then there’s the actual wood-burning units, composed of loose bits of metal and firebrick that occasionally fall out and won’t say where from. The stove is particularly good at this, and appears to be held together with screws of an infinite variety of sizes that don’t fit any of the increasing number of visible holes. Without taking the whole heavy cast-iron unit apart, I can’t access the parts that are supposed to move to see why they no longer do. It also has nastily disintegrating asbestos seals that will have to be replaced at some stage. Clearly neither the stove nor the heater was designed by women.

  They both do a great job. I am warm, my water gets hot, my bread tastes great, I can slow simmer soups and stews beautifully—but simple, they are not.

  And I’m not even going to talk about the highly esoteric hot-water system, devised and built by my ex-partner. I can see that the 44-gallon drum that kneels quaintly askew on my roof is rusting through, and I try not to think about what’s going on in there around the copper inner tank, nor what I will do when it needs replacing.

  Hot water comes from cold water and that cold water comes from my big dam a few gullies away. For over 25 years a faithful duo—my Lister diesel engine and its Ajax pump—have been squatting there, ready to pump water 60 metres up, but longer in actual distance, to the cement tanks on top of the ridge. Even when I was 30, I couldn’t crank that pump engine fast enough to start it. To do so demands a ridiculously ferocious burst of effort for a short time—the perfect heart-stopper. I have seen all but the biggest of males just about ‘bust their boilers’ in trying, but they manage in the end.

  It remains impossible for myself and my daughter, and we are both strong. It is not a human-friendly pump, let alone a female-friendly one. A small drinking water tank on the house means I’m never actually waterless, but pressured water is factored into all systems and is essential in the fire season. Having to count on my rare male visitors for this was hardly self-sufficiency.

  Invariably the shanghai-ed male would give it one rapid burst of cranking and away she’d go—puff, puff, chugga, chugga—and slowly but surely the water would rise up the pipeline. I would leave it doing this overnight, as I had to make the most of that male’s effort; who knew when the next one might turn up? I had fleeting fantasies of Sirens on the island in the dam, drawing passing men to me and my pump. Only I can’t sing, and it might be months before anyone at all passed.

  It infuriated me to be so helpless.

  After I’d been on my own for about twelve months, and my ex-partner was re-matched via Internet Dating, I weakened and tried this techno matchmaking myself—and not for the pump’s sake. With hindsight, it was/is a hopelessly unrealistic and over-optimistic, back-to-front matchmaking method, and I don’t recommend it. But through it I met someone with whom I thought I was in love. Well, I was, briefly. His emails were long and articulate, and he could spell—you’d be surprised how rare that is; he claimed to be a Radio National listener, from which I assumed too much; from photos he looked just my type; at the next stage of progression from virtual to real, I found he had a deep and melting telephone voice. Who could blame me?

  I am mortified to recall how besotted I became, raving about him to all who would listen. I was even going to marry him. You may gain an inkling of how badly I was smitten if I confess that I played John Denver love songs—and wept. What happened to cynical me? Please understand that the CD wasn’t mine. I mean, I didn’t buy it; it was an old one of my mother’s, kept by me solely for the country song ‘Grandma’s Feather Bed’, to play to my granddaughter. Honestly. Cross my heart.

  But what does this pathetic hormonal behaviour have to do with the pump? Coincidentally, the object of my affection was very clever with things mechanical. He devised a way to replace the Herculean cranking system by connecting the big diesel engine, via a rubber belt and a pulley, to a smaller engine that theoretically I could start. Each time he set the system up, I watched, then had a go. It worked every time. I was happy—mechanical independence loomed. The down side was that I had one more machine with its attendant mysteries.

  My rose-coloured glasses having begun to slip after only a few months of the real relationship, John Denver sounded soppy once more and was relegated to a dark drawer. After six months, I dropped the romantic dream in there too and stomped on those silly glasses for good. My generous Internet ex insisted I kept the small engine, amongst other items for which he had no use—like the lawn mower—and which I could never have afforded to buy. He’d been a big spender on men’s toys.

  A pity I’d found him and his world too narrow and uncommitted. He was a nice man, but then so was my ex-partner and, once upon a time, my ex-husband. At least I was now cured of looking. I could share my life, enrich it further, with an equal, or I’d live it contentedly by myself. I’d finally understood that this didn’t mean carrying a vacant space around beside me. Nor a sign saying ‘To Let’.

  The first time my daughter and I tri
ed to start the pump this way, we thought we were doing well in getting the new system all connected up. We took turns in revving the little engine flat out, the vibrations shaking our teeth and every bone in our heads, the noise deafening, the pump engine going ‘puff, puff, puff’. ‘Throw the pressure switch!’ I’d yell, but when we did, nothing further would happen; it could not get past ‘puff, puff, puff’. We gave up, unbolted the engine, but left the pulley screwed on for another try when our strength and faith had returned.

  A few weeks later, a most atypical female friend who understands motorbikes, and therefore ‘small engines’, came to visit. I showed her the pump engine and its manual. This genius worked out that my daughter and I had run the pulley backwards, and therefore the pump engine was not at ‘top dead centre’ or some similarly esoteric term, which it apparently had to be for starting. The pressure switch was not connecting with anything. What we had to do now was use the crank handle to turn the engine over to the right spot.

  Only we couldn’t get the pulley off the crank handle shaft. Running it backwards had wedged it and its grub screw on too tightly for feminine bashing and pullings, no matter what unidentified heavy metal tool we applied to it. But at least I knew what was required. A male.

  I called a relatively nearby local (half an hour away by trailbike) who’d previously agreed to accept money for his time if I needed help. He came a few days later. With much bashing and tapping, he got the pulley off. He fitted the crank handle and went for it with a fury, and the monster started up. I rejoiced. But he refused to accept any money, so I knew I wouldn’t feel comfortable calling on him again.

  Since I only need to run the pump every few months, it’s a while between battles. But I was confident I had it sorted now. I knew which way to run the pulley, for I’d drawn Texta diagrams on it and the small engine, as I had on the bolt to undo for priming. Since the universal undo direction of anti-clockwise has exceptions, grunting in a red-faced and futile effort to undo, when I am actually over-tightening, is something I can live without.

  After two victorious pump runs I had a right to faith and hope.

  But then the next battle left me defeated. What on earth could be wrong now? I’d checked and re-checked everything I knew about. I was due to go away for a week and it was summer; I could not leave with the tanks nearly empty.

  I walked home and had a coffee to calm down and consider the matter. Then I remembered the oil being rather black when I’d checked the level. I had no idea if it would help, but I could change the oil, because I’d bought the right diesel oil months ago. The job had been on my list of things that I’d never done before, so kept putting off. This must be a punishment for my procrastination.

  My diesel engine is very close to the ground. Even more so, it turned out, was the plug I had to undo to empty out the old oil. I had a slim tray with me to catch it, but even that couldn’t be wedged under the plug. Since surely no one would design a drain hole that couldn’t be drained into anything, I assumed that when the plug came out, so would an extension tube or something. I’d forgotten that engines are designed by men. As soon as the little plug was halfway unscrewed, thick black oil rushed everywhere.

  Catching what I could with the tray, downhill of the engine, I daubed the excess over every bit of cast iron in sight. Rust protection, I told myself. As I did this with my hands, and as I’d been kneeling as I scrabbled to channel the flow, I was a mess.

  I emptied the oil into a patch of thistles that needed exterminating, found a rag in the car—leaving oily black marks as evidence of search for same—and wiped the plug clean and my hands at least a little less dirty. I poured in the new oil.

  To do all this I’d had to disconnect the system, so I now reconnected it, took a deep breath, said ‘Please!’ and started up the little engine. ‘REV-VVVV—puff, puff, puff, puff—flick the pressure switch—‘chugga chugga’! ‘Yay!’ I yelled above the welcome noise of the diesel engine and, more quietly, ‘Thanks!’ as I danced over to the gate valves to let the precious water start uphill. Never having mastered cartwheels, I did a few pirouettes over the grass instead. Several wallabies on the dam wall sat back on their tails and queried my unseemly behaviour.

  I couldn’t stop smiling and was so proud of solving the problem that, as soon as I’d showered the worst of the oil off myself and put my clothes to soak, I rang a male friend, to share my advance in mechanical competence.

  ‘Well, ’ he said, ‘I doubt if that would’ve been the reason it didn’t start. New oil’d make it run better, but that’s all.’

  Confidence quashed; mysteries of machines and male understanding of same reasserted.

  Six weeks later, I set it all up again, expecting no problem with the diesel engine this time. I didn’t get the chance to find out because I couldn’t even start the small engine! Not a peep. I walked back to fetch the manual. Over-cockiness, I thought. I must have forgotten the sequence of pushing buttons and squeezing levers. But doing it by the book, still no peep. I must have flooded it, I reassured myself—which was what I’d heard men say about reluctant car engines.

  I waited, and tried again. Nope. I unbolted it all. I took the little engine to town when next I went, two weeks later. There my son-in-law started it first go, pronounced it OK and gave it back to me.

  Feeling foolish and female, I brought it back here and went through the whole process once more. Same result—nil. I rang for help. He said that was surprising, but perhaps it was the spark plug on the way out then, and I should remove the plug and buy another.

  Easier said than done. I vaguely knew that spark plugs require special spanners, but since I didn’t know what one looked like, finding the latter amongst the metal things in my shed was an IQ test that I failed. I gave up and took the engine down to him once more. The special spanner turned out not to look like any spanner I knew. Plus I discovered that spark plugs can be in awkward positions, so that even had I found the special tool, I couldn’t have used it. I was initiated into a piece of assumed knowledge: you often need extra levers.

  Are males born with this stuff?

  But, once I get the water into the tanks, it simply runs downhill in the buried pipeline, gravity feeding to my taps. Except that the pipe can be unburied by animals and broken by horse hoofs and leak and I won’t know until no water comes out of the tap and it’s a long uphill walk to find where and I may not have the right diameter joiner to fix the leak nor the wrist power to work the two wrenches to tighten it enough even if I find a joiner and I have to keep walking up and down the hill to turn the tanks off and on to test if my join leaks and even when it’s fixed there’ll be an airlock so I’m still not getting water in the taps and I can’t light the stove without water in the tank up top or I’ll blow it up...

  Simple, eh?

  15

  OVER MY HEAD

  I often enjoy the lifestyles of my neighbours, which they seem to have down to an effortlessly fine and simple art. Of course I’ve only been working at mine for decades, but I’m also disadvantaged by being hopelessly grounded, for much of the social activity in my world goes on above me. I can’t always see what’s doing up there, but I can certainly hear it.

  From one side of the tree rim to the other, birds constantly dart, swoop or lazily flap, in following, chasing two or threes, in panicky, chattery flocks, or determinedly single. They fly over my clearing, an aerial intersection, and always make it across, but not always without incident or alteration of course. That’s because the upper reaches of it are patrolled by a group of dapper and daring magpies, who choose, apparently at random, to keep the others on their wingtiptoes by hurtling out of nowhere like turbo-charged sheep dogs, deflecting them offside into the nearest tree edge. They continue this pursuit between the trees at the same speed, unerring and unrelenting, only to abruptly veer off on other business as soon as their point is made.

  They allow the lesser birds to visit the base of my bowl just often enough to become complacent before they strik
e. For days the kookaburras are permitted to decorate my fence posts and stumps, the rosellas to waddle about in my grass or sit on my verandah rail, and the currawongs to direct their beady yellow eyes and quick black beaks to the reddest strawberry for their morning snack. Then one of the bosses decides it’s time they were reminded of the order of things and in a black-and-white second he’s scattered them all. He never bothers about me.

  The inhabitants of the forest seem to have very active social lives, with much tree swapping, violent bursts of cackling, squawking and shrieking accompanied by great shaking commotions of leaves and branches, interspersed with brief solos and duets before the gang arrives.

  My small dam in front of the house is a great meeting place—hanging out at the local pool. As always when different gangs meet, there’s a lot of showing off, like the wattlebirds daredevil-diving from a high branch to skim the water and up to a tree on the other side. I sometimes see strangers, such as a lone cormorant or heron, stop by for a drink or a swim. Wood ducks from my big dam try too, but the magpies hustle them on their way, protesting, quacking and flapping.

  Some of the get-togethers down there sound like unsupervised group therapy. The weird friar-birds, with their bald black heads and knobby beaks, have a scale of maniacal cackles straight out of bedlam, and over the top of them loudly boast the wattlebirds, ‘I got the lot, the lot, the lot!’ The racket goes on and on, up and down, back and forth, apparently reaching no satisfactory conclusion—a bit like parliament on one of its less than statesman-like days.

  If I was going to apologise for perceived anthropomorphism I should probably have done so long ago in these pages, except I don’t see it as that. Living alone, with animal and birds as my only daily companions, it’s an affectionate way of relating to them, differentiating them, that comes naturally to me.