A Country Holiday - Part 1

Uralla - Armidale, NSW

The thought of going on holidays always filled me with high spirits and excitement, the anticipation was unbearable like that of youthful Christmas eve's, and waiting up to catch a glimpse of Santa Claus. The night before leaving we hardly slept, the air was filled with a commotion of whispers bags were packed, fishing rods out, tents lined up and the clothes to be worn the next day were laid out ready to slip into at 4:00am the next morning. "Check the batteries in your torches boys" Dad said to us all before hitting the hay. These were the summer holidays and we always had such great adventures wherever we went. If it wasn't camping on a river with canoes and fishing it was to the farm with trapping rabbits, shooting and riding horses. Sometimes it was a holiday house at the beach on the mid north central coast where we would swim, play cricket and run down sand dunes for two weeks. There were fourteen of us boys in total and never a dull moment had. We ranged in age from 20 years down to the youngest, 7, that was me. Two vehicles were packed and loaded and one with a trailer hitched the day before leaving. Early in the crisp quiet morning everyone was woken and piled into the vehicles and I was the last to be woken only to be ushered into the back of the little blue ford station wagon and laid down on my sleeping bag where I continued to sleep whilst traveling north to Uralla, outside Armidale, NSW. Farm country! Bush, dust, heat, plains, hills, creeks, cattle and flies! millions of flies.
Mom and Dad were fortunate enough to know someone who knew someone else that would rent out this small farmhouse on their huge property. Their names now slip my memory but they also had their own dwelling which housed the young family of five, with two boys around 10 or 12 and the youngest a girl of around 7 or 8.
The trip started out in what seemed the black of night, but in reality was around 4:00am but not far into the trip the sun dawned appearing with its blazing light shining directly upon us and square into our eyes. It was brilliant! The day was fresh and now stirring, we full of yawns and waking now sitting upright in our seats were headed for adventure.
We traveled along the main roads and highways that passed through toll gates on route. Coins were readied to be thrown into the basket at the toll booth so that the red light could change to green giving us the all clear to proceed on our way. Mom was driving the wagon on this occasion and the toll gates were dead ahead. Her speed never seemed to alter as we approached the light at the toll booth with the lowered boom gate. I could hear the fumbling for change as us boys stared at the boom gate wide eyed as we seemed to approach quicker and quicker! MOM we yelled! slow down, you have to slow right down and put the money in the basket! but Mom so casually kept going without even braking, whether she was nave or just gutsy I don't know but we all groped for the roof, the sides of the car, the dash whatever we could as Mom ran the red, she tossed the coins out of the window and they tumbled and crashed into the basket then making their way down to the bottom, she planted her foot just as the boom lifted in time. All this happened without Mom ever applying the brakes. We sailed through with not so much as a blink from Mom as we just sat there stunned with dropped jaws and bulged eyes.........well! this is how I remember it anyway. She let out a laugh and her grin was from ear to ear like a cat chuffed with itself after escaping with its ninth life, we were speechless. What at first seemed like a huge kerfuffle turned out to be one of the coolest things Mom ever did, we all laughed and thought how groovy Mom was. Where did she learn to drive like that? She must have seen it at the movies, where else?
The drive was long and dry but we had finally arrived turning onto the long dusty road that afternoon which would wind us through to the farm house. Through open yellow paddocks and cattle grids, and through the opening and closing of rusted old gates, we were on the open acres of their property. Rusted barbed wire fences with rickety tree stumps used as posts lined the dusty long track all the way through the dry bush. Flies buzzed around the windows as dirt smeared them and visibility was poor from the cloud of dust settling from the vehicle in front of us. I recall the long track as it was well traveled by us all which led out to the main road, it was the only way in and the only way out. The baker would come each morning and leave hot fresh loaves of bread in the mail box situated at the beginning of the drive. They were wrapped in open ended thin paper and we would ride the farms motor bike down the long road to pick them up. It was way to far to walk too. The aroma of that crusty bread still remains with me and the large thick slices with peanut butter spread across them were more than delicious. Lambs running in the paddocks and cattle roaming, dogs rounding up strays with whistles from the master were all a part of farm life here. I remember the fresh milk and the pale cream which sat beneath the bubbly froth collected in those metal buckets. Scones were made fresh with the milk from those early morning milking's and whipped butter smeared across those warm yellow cakes served right out of the hot oven with fresh cream and home made preserves. The smell of the wood fire oven even in the heat of summer was sensational, the small chimney stack on the iron roof was so charming in the setting of draped willows which surrounded the little farm house and sheltered it from the scorching summer heat. The cool breeze pushed the old tyre swing under the large tree nearest the house whilst we all ran about playing near the wooden veranda which swept all the way round the old quaint cottage. Cool lemonade was served for afternoon tea with those delicious scones and cake while the dogs lie in the shade tied by long rope to the heavy old machinery lying about in the tall grass.

For us boys fourteen in all, exploring for the first couple of days was the immediate plan of action with barns and wool sheds, dams and bush to conquer. This saw us through as mom and dad needed wind down time after the long haul to the country and several months of the getting us off to school, checking homework, cooking and cleaning, driving us to boys brigade to church and other social functions. Teacher parents interviews, kisses and cuddles, tucking us all in at night, saying prayers with us all morning and night then entertaining us with comical antidotes from their travels from England to Australia on the cruise ship the Oriana and the war stories of the bombing raids upon great Britain during the second world war. All these things took place while Dad held down full time work at the local technical teaching college. He repaired the family cars at home on weekends, worked on hobbies we undertook and could not finish without his help, fixed bikes, took us all water skiing or fishing but also had the infamous task of disciplining us boys with our quivering bare bottoms staring up at him right in the eye waiting for the spanking of a lifetime. It must have been as traumatic for him as it was for us staring at all those bottoms over the years, any wonder his hair curled and eventually fell out. Dads favorite word was Taboo! If we weren't to touch or do something it was always referred to as TABOO! Dad had a unique and apt way of gathering us all together on outings if we had wandered off too far or too long or simply when we needed to head off again. He would whistle! but not just any old whistle. He would cup both hands together with a hollow center in between his palms then put his cupped hands to his lips and blow through a small gap between his thumbs, we could hear it from afar. It was so distinct we all knew it well and we would come a running to that sound he was famous for.

The weeks passed by so quickly whilst on holiday and there was never a dull moment. The hours in the day never seemed quite long enough, we filled them to capacity with so much living. We rode horses and went rabbit trapping, shooting kangaroos in the wild and caught small green frogs placing them in glass jars with small holes punched into the lids and trapped tadpoles with buckets down at the dam. Nestled up in the trees we had nailed potato sacks from the farm across branches and lay around in them watching the long property views and spying on those who would walk by underneath in stealth. Looking back it was a little foolish laying high in the lofty branches but what did we know? just as well we were slender boys who actively worked off every calorie with hard play. We'd help out on the property by picking apricots and eating our fill of them whist doing so, gathering wood and helping with other chores around the place. There's some old footage somewhere of dad and I riding a motorbike which belonged on the farm. Dad left a trail of dust behind him as he rode down the dusty track towards the old 8mm camera up by the farm house we all stayed in. He looked as though he was riding solo until in the last few frames you could see my thin arms straining to gather around his waist and then the terrified look upon my face came into view as we both rode past the camera. One day we boys asked mom for chocolate as we were all hankering for something sweet, but none was to be found. Mom then realized that she had packed some chocolate laxatives, boxes of the stuff. Why she ever had thought to bring so much with her we will never know but she had thought what would it hurt if she gave it to us. It would do us all good to be cleaned out I guess! she must have thought. So she gave the chocolate laxatives to us......a whole box each!! We woofed it down so fast at the thought of that delicious silky chocolate not knowing what lay in wait for us all. Well may I just add at this point that there was only one thunder box for sixteen people! and not to near the farmhouse, for sanitation reasons of course! It consisted of a metal bucket underneath the roughly made timber seat which had to be emptied into a pit every time it was full. Flies buzzed about ferociously banging into the walls and our faces like blinded swarms of bats escaping daylight for the cover of darkness.
Well what a fiasco...within the first 20 minutes or so the grumble of tummy's began and the pains of swamped bowels started to show on our small faces or should I say the pipes started to moan and the mad dash towards the thunder box was on. It was the survival of the fittest when all fourteen boys needed to go at once. We danced about like natives on hot coals, choreographed like blinded drunks and nothing that you've ever seen before, running about like chook's with heads cut off banging into one another as we escaped through the fly wire screen door hands covering our bottoms as if trying to hold back the forces of nature in vain and anything that might want to suddenly escape. Some dashed behind trees some made it to the toilet and others ran into the paddocks. For the rest I don't know or wish to remember but all I know is that the pit needed filling in twice before our holiday was over.....

Rinaldo