The House At Salvation Creek

by Susan Duncan

  From each window, rugged escarpments stare back unblinking, tens of thousands of years old and still intact. A miracle, of a kind. The only history, perhaps, that really survives truthfully, no matter how diligent we are. Through the window next to the stove, bare rocks look like giant, rusted stepping stones where the waterfall runs. When there's a deluge, they disappear behind a swathe of white and furious foam, glacier-smooth in the distance like a lustrous, long white ponytail. From the sink you can look out at Bob's saucy-bottomed yacht, Larrikin, swinging on its mooring. If her rear end, which sits high in the water, suddenly drops, we sprint down the steps in a panic. It means the bilge pump isn't working. Leave her too long and she'll go under.

  A cluster of mop-topped spotted gums screens the waterfall from the third window. Every November and December, their salmon pink bark rips like fabric from the trunk. When the wind blows hard, pieces hurtle through the air until they shred and fall on the lawn like litter in the aftermath of a frenzied party. The underbelly of the trees is silky. Lime green. Renewed and youthful every season as though it's no effort at all.

  A bench with sliding drawers for kitchen equipment sits in front of this window. The food processor stands on it, and bowls of fruit. When I make cakes, I gaze at busy bush life. Noisy miners get sexy in spring. A scruffy old kookaburra lands on the same dead bough at almost the same time every day as though it's part of a personal training program. Magnificent but skittish king parrots, bright crimson and vivid forest green, drop in when the magpies fly away. On hushed summer evenings, flocks of snowy-white sulphur-crested cockatoos pace the lawn with long strides or stare down at us from the trees. Subdued for a while, but still an arrogant army.

  When Bob lived here with Barbara, the kitchen had a table and eight chairs with kangaroos and koalas pressed into the wood on the backs. Bob wanted his daughter, Nicole, to have the table. 'She has her own children now,' he explained. 'Nice for them to carve their initials into the top alongside their mother's.' To take its place he built a large island bench with a top made from Tasmanian oak and sliding drawers to store spices, little white dishes of all shapes and sizes, mixing bowls and platters. He might have been hoping the extra storage space would free another hallway cupboard for his files. It didn't.

  'You can never have too much cooking equipment,' I told him when he suggested getting rid of the least used stuff. When he looked doubtful, I added: 'The kitchen is my version of your shed.'

  Understanding flooded his face.

  'And books,' I added, because I was on a roll, 'are my version of your tools.'

  'Ah!'

  Only a built-in cupboard with glass panes that can be opened from the kitchen or the living room has survived intact. Visiting French friends were intrigued by the design. 'So modern,' said Helene. 'And so clever!'

  Her husband Marc, a farmer from Normandy, checked the workmanship. 'It's good,' he announced. 'Very useful.'

  'Praise from the French,' I said to Bob after they'd gone. 'It must be good!' And I look at it with fresh eyes. The caretaker's grandson told us there were wooden plate racks along one wall, too, but they are long gone, replaced by glass-doored cabinets.

  Next to the kitchen, the pantry is a small, self-contained room with a window for light. Not like the dark built-in cupboards of so many new houses, where shelves are short and deep and anything shoved to the back gets lost forever. Each wall has shelves reaching almost to the ceiling. There's a wooden ladder that looks like it's as old as the house. Which it is – the inventory lists it in the broom closet and notes it is worth two pounds and ten shillings. A sinister black house spider has lived here since we moved in, and his web mats the window. Every time I brush it away, it's back the next day, thicker than ever. I could poison him or squish him, although he moves like lightning into a protective crevice when I come too close, but I opt to let him die of old age. He's not doing any harm.

  'Can you tell if the pantry has changed much?' I ask Bob.

  'Yeah, it's changed, but not a lot,' Bob replies. 'A couple of shelves have been pulled out. A couple put in. The original doorway is where the fridge is now.'

  The kitchen and pantry seem to have been austere spaces in Mackellar's day, perhaps because they were mainly the domain of servants:

  KITCHEN INVENTORY

  Seagrass Matting Mat 3. 3. 0

  2 Kitchen Chairs and Stool 2. 10. 0

  Utility China and Glass 5. 0. 0

  Burmese Silver Tea Caddy 3. 13. 6

  2 E.P. Toast Racks 2. 10. 0

  3 Various Tea Trays and Cane Newspaper Holder 2. 10. 0

  Set Scales and Weights 1. 10. 0

  Copper Kettle and Copper Hot Water Jug 3. 10. 0

  Mixing Bowls, Moulds and Pyrex Dishes 3. 12. 6

  Aluminium, Tin and Enamel Ware 7. 10. 0

  3-Burner Kerosene Stove 12. 10. 0

  'Prefect' Kerosene Refrigerator in Cream Enamel Cabinet 70. 0. 0

  2 Colored Woodcuts by Margaret Preston 4. 4. 0

  PANTRY

  Galvanised Flour Bin 1. 5. 0

  3 Various Baskets 1. 15. 0

  Sundry Kitchen Utensils 1. 10. 0

  I close Barbara's file and put it back in its box, wondering how the assessor must have felt as he catalogued the contents of the house from east to west. Did he close doors after he'd finished with each room, the way removalists do? Did he covet? Or was the house simply full of things?

  How about seventy pounds for a kerosene refrigerator? A monumental sum in those days. And two woodcuts by Margaret Preston on the kitchen walls! Two in the bathroom, too. Now they'd hang over the fireplace. It's a thought that sends me rushing back to the file. The art! I've completely overlooked the art. Art tells you so much about a person's taste and even, sometimes, hints at inner desires. I write out a list of the artists' names: Margaret Preston, Percy Leason, Kenneth Macqueen, Thea Proctor, Violet Teague, Lionel Lindsay, Arthur Murch, AB Webb, Gladys Owen, J Richard Ashton, B Mansell, Frank Payne and a few others, including C Fossi, who I discover is probably C Rossi.

  Randomly I pick out Violet Teague and research her on the internet to find that at the turn of the nineteenth century she was one of Australia's most internationally recognised artists. Yet she is almost forgotten now, when you think of her in the context of Preston, Lindsay and Ashton. She is credited with introducing Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira to painting when she visited the Hermannsburg Mission in Central Australia in 1933. At the time, the community was suffering from a long drought so when she returned to Melbourne, she organised an exhibition to raise funds to set up a permanent water supply. It was hugely successful. Hermannsburg today has a thriving Aboriginal art colony and I can't help wishing she was alive to see how a single compassionate act made such a difference.

  And what about Preston? 'Hard to believe you could buy a Margaret Preston woodcut for two guineas,' I say to Bob. 'Last time I looked, they were about $25 000.'

  'Tough, being an artist. You rarely make a living until after you're dead.'

  'It's all wrong, isn't it? It's like we never appreciate talent until we lose it.'

  Bob shrugs. 'Human nature. You always want most what you can't have.'

  'Not me. Not anymore.'

  Preston was diagnosed with breast cancer in the 1930s and it's generally thought she moved to Berowra, on the Hawkesbury River, not far from Pittwater, to recover. Or perhaps to die. She fell passionately in love with the crackling bush and lost interest in what she scathingly referred to as garden flowers. Each year she waited impatiently for the beginning of the native flower season and she had the rare gift of seeing power where others saw only ugliness. She turned that power into art. Even the dead-looking grey cobs on banksia trees had a primeval beauty in her eyes. Preston, who never had the luxury – or curse – of inherited wealth like Mackellar, knew what it is like to have your back to the wall. In her, it brought out the best, as it so often does.

  7

  SUMMER UNFURLS AFTER a hot, dry spring. A luscious lipst
ick red flower blooms alongside the pathway from the shore to the house, throbbing with colour in a bush seared yellow by the drought. A few days later, more blooms erupt like spot fires.

  'There must have been a garden here once. A formal garden, I mean,' I say to Bob. 'Filled with flowers for vases.'

  'Maybe. Hard to know how, though, with wallabies that eat almost everything,' Bob replies.

  'Well, they don't eat these plants. We know that. And they seem to be drought resistant.'

  I discover they are called fire lilies (cyrtanthus). And they are not native but come from South Africa, so I put aside ideas of filling the garden with them. With regret.

  During the next few weeks, Bob clears bracken further back from the edge of the stairway. It is part of a plan to drive ticks as far away as possible from where we walk. Each day, he finds little treasures under the matted bush. Stone steps. A clump of rock orchids. A pebble pathway. Some exotic palms chewed so low by wallabies they're hard to see. At some time, someone has attempted to build a structured garden. Could they have succeeded? Or have we stumbled over the remnants of failed dreams?

  Late one afternoon when Bob is pulling out clumps of agapanthus (also from South Africa) to stop them spreading, I take him a cup of tea and a slice of fruit cake. The kind where you boil the fruit and then tip a cup of brandy over as soon you take it from the oven. It sizzles and soaks up the alcohol, then stays moist for months. He is sweating from the effort, covered in dirt. He sees me and grins. And I want to tell him how the sight of him makes me weak. And strong. But I say nothing. There's really no need to.

  We sit together on the steps to drink our tea. A halyard knocks the mast of a boat, making a soft sound, like a cowbell. The sky and water are matching shades of peach.

  'Why don't we go to Mt Annan Botanic Gardens and talk to some native plant experts, see what might go well at Tarrangaua?' I ask. 'There is such careful planning to the paths and garden beds. Shame to let it sink into the soil until it completely disappears. To let all that hard work of long ago amount to nothing.'

  Bob sighs. He feels a noose tightening around his neck. Gardens are ruthless. They bleed your strength and your bank account. And revert to wilderness the moment you turn your back. But he cannot bring himself to say no.

  'Could shift a few projects around, make some time,' he says, handing me his empty mug. 'But it might be a waste. This is a tough environment. Anything that will grow is here already.'

  'Maybe you're right but we'll never know unless we have a go.'

  Mt Annan is located in the seared heartlands of Sydney's south west. A bloke called Peter, who seems to run the place, gives us a tour, makes suggestions. I buy a couple of flannel flowers in pots and a couple of glossy native gardening books, but I'm disheartened. Everything that blooms prolifically needs full sun and Tarrangaua lies in the dappled shade of spotted gums.

  As we leave the car park, one of the gardeners runs towards us. 'Heard you want to start a garden?'

  We nod.

  'Heard you live near Bayview.'

  We nod again, puzzled.

  'There's a garden open there this weekend. One of the most beautiful gardens I've ever seen. Go and have a look at it. It's your area. Maybe what grows there will grow for you. Hang on, I've got the newspaper where it's listed.'

  He darts off, a little man with grey hair and a bowling ball tummy under his gardening overalls. Dives into the back of his car and waves the newspaper at us as he rushes back.

  'Here it is! Waterfall Cottage. Open Saturday and Sunday from ten am to four thirty pm. Cabbage Tree Road. There's tea. And the cakes are fantastic! A woman owns the place. What's her name? Ah, here it is. Jeanne Villani.'

  Bob shakes his hand. 'Thank you.'

  'Be lovely to have a wander around,' I tell Bob when we're driving home. 'Good gardens inspire you. Wonder what kind of cakes?'

  ***

  On Saturday morning, we find the name of the house chipped into a large sandstone block at the top of a steep, potholed driveway: Waterfall Cottage. 90 Cabbage Tree Road.

  'We're early. It's not even nine thirty. Might still be closed,' Bob says, half hopefully.

  'Let's go down anyway. You never know,' I reply.

  Closer, we see a trampoline and an old restored ute parked on a bare patch of ground.

  'Sure we're in the right place?' Bob asks. Around us, the brittle drought-stricken bush is both melancholy and menacing.

  'Hang on. There's a sign. Next to those green gates. We're looking at the wrong house.'

  We pick our way down the track and then stand and stare: 'Oh.'

  There's a long, straight gravel drive bordered by a lawn of baby-fine grass lolling loose and unkempt. Thick stands of bamboo loom above us. Deep blue wisteria crosses the driveway like a wedding arch. Rainbow-coloured carp glide in a pond. There are cliveas in orange swathes, azaleas in bloom like bridesmaids' dresses and, in the midst of it all, a sandstone house with chimneys and peaks, like something out of a fairytale.

  'This is . . . extraordinary,' Bob says, looking around.

  'Yes. Not quite real.'

  We pay a small fee and wander along secret pathways softened by drifts of flowers, mostly blue and pink. Bromeliads sit lightly on rocks at the bottom of what must be a waterfall when it rains. Hundreds of doves in dovecotes as big as cubbyhouses coo in a muffled chorus. The air is steamy, not thin and stringy like the parched world outside the gates.

  'Feels like we've stepped into another country,' I say. 'Looks like it was a stony, barren gully once. Wonder how long it took to build?'

  'It must take a team of gardeners to keep it going.'

  'We're a team,' I respond.

  'Not the kind it takes to do this,' he replies flatly.

  We return to the house and find a table on the porch set for tea. There's a steaming urn, white mugs, a wooden caddy filled with every flavour of teabag Twinings makes. Slices of cake are perfectly arranged on small blue and white china plates. Chocolate and carrot, six slices of each. Six muffins, too, lightly dusted in icing sugar. We throw some money into a basket, choose a cake and sit down.

  Bob sees desire plastered across my face. I hunger for a garden. A real one, where you can pick flowers for vases and wait each season to see what will happen. As a kid, our garden was one of the best at Bonegilla Migrant Camp, where we lived while my father worked as the supply officer. A stunningly vivid collection of trees, shrubs and flowers planted and tended by my Uncle Ted, who came to stay for two weeks and didn't leave until he died almost two decades later.

  Uncle Ted was practical, but my mother had the ideas. She brought home cuttings snipped ruthlessly from other gardens. She always had huge vases of flowers at home. Later, when she and my father ran a pub, people came from miles away to see the arrangement in the front lobby. It was vast and voluptuous, like something you'd find in Windsor Castle before a formal dinner. And she'd pick most of it from roadsides or by leaning into front yards. Other people's front yards, of course. She would get caught occasionally, but she always charmed her way out of trouble. Beautiful women have that knack. No, it's not a knack. It's confidence.

  When my first husband and I lived in the white house on the banks of the Nepean River, I planted fruit trees, herbaceous borders, and massive beds of sunflowers that were so damn beautiful I'd stand and stare until my legs began to ache. I built stone retaining walls, rock by rock, and covered them with roses. I grew vegetables for the table and herbs that made even the dullest meat taste luscious. My friend Pat, who stayed in the house when Paul and I were away, taught me about preparing soil and watering in new plants. She laughed herself silly the day I rushed out with all the umbrellas I could find to protect the baby tomatoes from hail. In the end my husband, who thought gardening was a lot of toil that frequently culminated in disappointment, grudgingly admitted it was worth the effort.

  My mother was fit enough then to fetch and carry gardening tools all day without a break. I never hesitated to send her
off to find the secateurs I'd casually left somewhere in a five acre garden. She grumbled a bit but she always found them. One day I rented a ditch witch to dig trenches to lay irrigation hoses. It was so powerful it took two of us to swing it around at the end of a line. My mother took one handle, I took the other, and we pooled our strength and beat the machine, laughing our heads off when we let go for a second and it took off crookedly on its own.

  'Straight lines are boring,' my mother said, still laughing as we grabbed it again.

  'Anyone can do "straight",' I agreed. 'We're creative!' Remembering that silly day makes me wonder if she realises she is barely coping at home. She boasted a few weeks ago that the local grocery store now delivers her shopping to her kitchen. I thought she meant services in her small town were getting swish but a few days later, I realised she was telling me she no longer has the strength to carry her groceries up the steps. I promise myself that Christmas will be the deadline for insisting we make major changes in her lifestyle.

  When Paul and my brother died, I couldn't see the point of gardens because you have to believe in the future to be a gardener. Breast cancer made me even more suspicious of planning ahead, so it is a stirring of old passions, this desire for flowers and shrubs, born out of contentment, or perhaps a new ability to relish the process instead of yearning for the result.

  'Let's see if we can find the owner,' Bob suggests with a sigh. 'She might be able to give us some advice.'

  Two women, one old and one young, are wiping dishes in a kitchen with gleaming wooden benches.

  'Which one of you two old tarts owns this place?' I ask. I have no idea why I've been so rude. Overcoming shyness? It's still inexcusable.

  The elder of the two women looks up. She puts her hands on her hips, tea towel still clasped in one of them. 'This old tart,' she says, unoffended and with a grin on her face.

  'We want to build a garden. A small one,' I explain.

  'Good,' she says. 'Everyone should have a garden. Any size.'