Childhood Adventures in the Grain Bin

Being grain growers kids there were many delights that other kids never knew. One favourite was to play in the grain bin of a truck just in from the field after harvest. We’d climb up into thee bin and wade around in the grain. Each grain had its own characteristics. Wheat is clean and hard and its seed is shiny with a certain nobility. Linseed was interesting though we only grew it for a short time. It would be prone to heliothis caterpillar strikes. We’d get up early before the school bus came and go out to watch the crop duster fly in and skim over the crops releasing its old of insecticide. As the caterpillars attacked the growing plant rather than the mature plant, sometimes it had to be done a number of time through the growing season. A bin of linseed was particularly fun to play in with its oily seed, a flat oval with a hint at one end. Its oily sheen made it softly stick to your skins but only of kids, uncle were to hairy but the son smooth skin of children was a perfect surface for the seeds to adhere to. We would roll around in the grain and get up with linseed mask covering every square millimetre. It felt a like mail of a medieval knight that we so love to impersonate or a lizard perhaps. It became unprofitable on account of the insecticide and too troublesome since the cut stalk of a harvested plant would occasionally be sharp and strong enough to puncture a tyre of the John Deere header. Other people referred to the machine as a combine harvester but for us it was always ‘the header’ and a combine was the machine you used to sew.

Being American, the header used petrol with a different octane rating than the rest of the vehicles on the farm so it meant that there was always the extra job of handling’s 44 gallon drums. When empty they we fun to put on their side and stand on and roll along by moving your feet like a circus act, but they were heavy and if you fell off in front you’d want to make sure you landed on your feet and jump out of the way of the drum that by then could be moving with some force.

Barley was the worst. It has a seed similarity to wheat but its dust mad you itch like crazy. So much so that you’d make yourself scarce when the trucks came in to empty into the silos, because you knew you’d be sent into the bin to empty out the last couple of bags, that’s the way you’d measure grain, though by then bags were only used at seen at sewing time and everything was handled in bulk at harvest, out of the truck. Sorghum could be itchy too though nothing like barley.

Transition from Bags to Bulk Handling and Storage Changes>

Before bulk handling grain was moved in hessian bags. That was in the first couple of years before we got the first header. We used an old tractor drawn Shine Harvester. You’d work until the harvester bin was full then stop and bag off the grain. Granddad or Papa, mum’s dad would come out sometimes and help sew up the bags. The old ford truck had a hydraulic arm for lift the bags onto the truck to about the shoulder height of a man standing on the tray. There was a cradle at one end so the bag stayed in place. The man on the ground would drop a bag onto the cradle and inso doing pull on a leather strap that would engage the hydraulic ram and the arm would swing the 80 kg bag up onto the waiting many shoulders. It was back breaking work. The bags would then have to be unloaded at the shed so that the harvest could be brought in as quickly as possible. If rain threatened the bags would be sewn up and brought to the shed in the light of a kero lantern or two. It was a stressful time. Then bulk handling came in and much of the work could be done by one or two men rather than aa team.

As bags gave way to bulk handling we needed some way of storing it in the shed. My uncle net door built a shed with a bitumen floor and the grain was dumped in a pile. A long auger meant that the pile of grain could be really high. We only played in that pile once. Climbing onto the wheat hill had spread out the grain making it more difficult to load into the truck at delivery time. The message not to do that was delivered in such a way that it became part of permanent memory.

Life as a Young Tractor Driver

As I got older more country was being cleared and ‘broken’ for cultivation. We had a Caterpillar D6 crawler tractor with a small but heavy eight share plow. It was only used for the first plowing. And so in school holidays I became a tractor driver. I hated it the monotony with a vengeance. In winter time the driver was exposed to the weather from a frosty dawn to dark. Dad would come and give me a break at breakfast time, that would give him a chance to see that that every thing was going all right. I’d come back with sandwiched and a thermos of tea packed in a little port, that what Queenslanders call suitcases. It the milk, supplied in a separate bottle was particularly creamy, a blob of butter would have formed on top of the milk by smoko from the vibration of the tractor. An oily slick formed on the cuppa tea but would just fine. Anything would be fine as an interruption to the boredom. One time I was overjoyed when after about half an hour I had completed a round of the paddock, I saw one of the plough disks lying in the paddock. It had broken the previous round and I hadn’t noticed. Once I realised it wasn’t my fault I was delighted that the work would be halted until repairs were made.

As Dad dismantled, welded and reassembled the plough I went on to scarifying on of the other paddocks in preparation for sewing. The relief was short lived. I think I finished plowing the paddock in time to go back to boarding school. “What did you do in the holidays?” “Ploughed!” It’s the was it was.

Navigating Life's Crossroads

As time went on I became more and more disaffected with farming life. I’d become a machinery operator, mostly cultivation. I was away at boarding school for sewing and harvest and cam home for cultivation and grain delivery. When I was old enough to get a driver’s license I drove a truck into town and pulled up at the police station. The sergeant said, “How did you get here?” “I drove the truck,” I told him. “OK, come out and do the test. Drive up the street, truncates around and come back. I’ll stand here and watch.” I was pretty nervous and thought there must be more to it than that, so I when up an extra block before turning around and coming back. On returning I was greeted with, “What took you so long? I said just up to that street!” As so I got my license. I’d probably been driving for six years by then. When I started driving I had to sit on the very edge of the seat to reach the pedals.

By the time I finished boarding school, and contrary to expectations had decided against going to the Lutheran seminary in Adelaide, dropped out of uni and finished year of Technical College I had no idea of where my life was going. I got a job for a short time working for a guy who was erecting wheat silos on farms. He put on a keg for the workers. I got drunk, got pick up by the price riding my motor bike and spent a night in the cells. My name appeared in the court notices a few days later in the Toowoomba Chronicle a few days later and brought to the notice of my father. My brother was sent to fetch me, my father furious and my mother distraught. I was at home, miserable and directionless. Dad started looking at farms in the district for sale. I realised though there was no discussion that his plan was for me to become a father, I was horrified and so got a job on the weigh bridge out at Wheat Board silos at Bungunya in the Goondiwindi region for a couple of weeks until a job came up in Sydney for which I was most unsuited. I took it. Anywhere had to be better so I hitched a ride down south. Mum was mortified, her eldest son going to work in “sin city”. And so my education began anew.

Embracing Change and Discovering a New Path

It took a lot longer to unlearn the old ways than to learn the new and was deeply depressed, disaffected and dispirited. I worked in the city and travelled to lodgings in the North Shore by train. I was shocked by the inexplicable urge to throw myself off the train while crossing the harbour bridge. I had no idea of how vulnerable I was and that it was my social anxiety that was keeping me safe, parallelised by fear. It was a road of trials that I would wish on anyone. I had two years part time to go in the Technical College course I’d begun in Toowoomba. I turned out that New South Wales didn’t have an equivalent course and so decided to go back to uni. Meanwhile, the Whitlam government had abolished university fees and since I’d just got the sack decided to do a Science degree, Botany major. I was still struggling with the idea inculcated from birth that this life was a vale of tears as an antecedent to the main game in heaven. Uni was the real godsend, I started to develop an awareness of deep ecology, and heard the amazing herbalist Dorothy Hall on radio and decided I would do her training. I was desperate for a new outlook on life and her’s message resonated with me on a spiritual level yet was completely secular. The idea that my life was mine to live was beginning to take root even though my personal life was a complete shambles and in an emotional turmoil. My life was mine to save were I to find a way.

Tags: farm life

A Journey from Biloela to Tummaville

When my grandfather moved form Biloela to Tummaville with his five sons times, were looking up with the difficult war years behind them. As a dairy farmer, he and his boys were classified as having a reserved occupation - not merely exempt from conscription but forbidden military service. Being German speaking and with no soldiers in the family brought it’s own hardship especially in the playground especially from those who had lost brothers and uncles in the European theatre. It was in this context that the teacher at the country school advised my father at the beginning of his intermediate year that he already had all the education he needed. What’s more, he would be the only kid in the class and it would mean a lot of extra work for him. The there would be the added pressure from the fiercely uncompromising district inspector and he didn’t know if he could manage it anyway, un-resourced as he was with so many youngsters coming on and demanding his attention.

So next trip to town, granddad bought may father a pair of boots and long pants, and he became a farmer. Having been barefoot up until this time, the boots were found to be restrictive and uncomfortable. So he took a sharp blade and cut out the dome of the toes, turning them into, what would you say, a kind of elastic sided sandals. That action was immediately regretted not on account of ruining a new pair of boots, but because they now became the perfect vessel for collecting grass seeds that became a constant source of irritation. What’s more, hard earned money had been paid for them. Grandad had tried his hand at growing wheat alongside the dairy pastures. It was a great success and the first crop yielded eleven bags. Since he didn’t have a vehicle at the time he carried the full harvest just shy of a ton, bag by bag on his back the seven miles to the nearest railway siding.

A Rural Community on the Condamine River

The move to the block on the Condamine River would be a hard earned change, establishing a rural community with another large family of sons who already had plans for building a church. The farm was pristine with an elevated red soil sandy ride protruding above the rich alluvial black soil plains. The ridges were populated by Morton Bay Ashes, to me one of the most spectacular and stately eucalypts, crafted as it were, with a utility and precision that suited the germanic temperament. They had a rough tessellated base to about the height of a tall man or greater of scales the size of your hand, in a pattern resembling the black soil as it dried out, shrank and cracked leaving deep furrows between. Above the base a steely blue trunk that roses abruptly straight as a die, unless it had been damaged by fire or lightning in its juvenile stage. Overhead a canopy that whispers in the breeze and cast a cooling shadow in the hottest of summers. The very old ones are habitat trees for flocks of galahs, cockatoos and egg-loving goannas. Where the grassland is more open it is studded with smooth barked apples, actually an angophora species closely related to eucalypts, bloodwoods splashed with wattles and clumps of cyprus pine.

Within a couple of years of arriving the farm was paid off thanks to the buoyant European wool market and the family settles down to clearing the ancient river gums form the black soils plains. The Condamine flooded regularly before being dammed upstream and great expansesof water covered the country in anticipation of the lush grasses that would follow, something that occurs less and less now a-days and when it does it happens with a vengeance.

The family settled in with high prospects. The uncultivated paddocks were cleared of their ancient river gums and the kangaroos moved on. Those that stayed to grow fat on the sweet wheat grass were short lived, finding themselves within the farmers sights. Their carcasestipped the balance in favour of generations of goannas before they too became rare. The sandy ridges were unprofitable for grain growing as so a couple of family groups of euros, a smaller roo that prefers hilly woodland to the open plains stayed on.

So the sons married and had families. The eldest and youngest move away and the ones in the muffle became established. Families grew and soon I arrived, an easy and happy child, my mother said, but there are certain expectations on a first born son that only work were certain types personalities. As a loved up mummy’s boy who was sensitive and empathic with a sort of hapless naivety the incompatibility with those expectations would inevitable become obvious though not before everything else is tries. Old dogs, leopards spots, many aphorisms apply but now amount of teaching and no degree of harshness can make a person become who that are not.

The Abundant Beauty of the Farm

My feet dangled over the edge of the bench seat in the Holden ute, looking ahead to the round lines of the dashboard, feeling my skinny body rock and roll over as we drove over the bumpy track to see where the clearers were working. They had two huge Caterpillar tractors with a chain between them ripping the trees from the ground as the went. Ears filled with the roar of the tractors, diesel in the air gave way to the smell of sap, then the sound of straining wood, creaking, cracking, splintering. It sounded for all the work to me like screaming. I burst into tears overwhelmed by the palpable violence. Is this hell? My dad looks at me kindly, puzzled and says “What wrong?” I start up on the final seat and slide over to him and put my arms around his neck, he takes one hand off the wheel and pulls me close. I am comforted but not consoled, it will just have to take its course as we drive on down that bumpy track.

When I was old enough I was given an air rifle for my birthday. By that time I was seeped in the TV pioneer culture of the American west. Goodness, we call one of our horses “Trigger”! I sometimes trick ride standing on the saddle going down to bring in the house cow and put her calf in a pen over night so that there would be milk for us in the morning. We has a tank stand at the back of the house for rainwater that fed the house and garden. Beside it was a fig tree that bore delicious fruit year after year. It was a magnet to parrots from all around and many seasons they would strip the tree just before the fruit was fully ripe. This year I though I would save the crop, so with John Wayne in mind and slug gun in hand I went to teach them a lesson they would not forget.

The Weight of Guilt: A Lesson Learned

I took aim and pulled the trigger and immediately realised what I had done. I was ashamed that I felt so strongly and hated myself for it. But still this little creature lay dead on the ground. I felt compelled to make restitution form my own benefit but there was no way that I could think of to make amends. I got a spade and gave the little bird a Christian burial nearby, but it would take more than a fig leaf to cover the shame I felt. It didn’t feel as if the little funeral ceremony ‘took’, I felt God had turned away and I was as damed as that beautiful little parrot.

Seeking Forgiveness and Facing Consequences

A few days later I confessed to everyone what I had done in the hope of punishment that would make me feel better. None came. I was bewildered and sentenced to sorting it out on my own.

Tags: FamilyHistory, farm life

I was resentful for a long time of my father’s propensity to harsh disciplinarianism. It was the was things were done generally and I think stemmed from the anger that arose ion those charged with the responsibility of maintaining good order when they found themselves without control. In order to regain control and respect, a harshness, and sometimes brutality and violence was resorted to generating a n atmosphere of fear and anxiety and sometimes terror.

I want to work with a number of incidents from my first years at school, a small county one-teacher school of about 30 pupils. There was violence there were one would have expected find love and compassion, and us being infants simply put up with things because there wasnot other choice.

The great evil that was perpetrated there was to use corporal punishment for failing to meet learning expectations, being caned for not having learnt spelling words. I recall in the second year of school not knowing spelling and having to stand up on the form. There were big long desks that seated maybe 6 children and a long form to match. If you you didn’t know your spelling you would be told to stand on the forms and hold out your hand for “six of the best”. For me every bit of that school was steeped in violence and terror. We were farm kids and our parents had by and large been raised under a similar rule. The violence felt indiscriminate. It mande me angry and powerless. I recall one of the word abuses was when chub had trouble with something or he may have been a bit cheeky the teach lost control and started laying into him with the cane. Chub fell to the floor and curled up to protect himself while the teacher beat hime with the cane. We felt both the distress of seeing our friend so abused and at the same time feared for our own safety. What went on was literally unbelievable, and when we tried to raise the alarm were simply not believed, that such an atrocity should be happening. I tried to protect myself with illness. Every morning I would be sick and not wan to go to school. The mothers would take turns to car pool. I remember on morning after the holidays that I could not be prised out of the car such was my fear, I don’t know what such consistent resistance to go ing to school didn’t raise concern. I guess it was because our parents had met with similar school experiences.

But I was a precocious learner. What strikes me most on reflection that there was no instruction on how to learn just an expectation that you would meet the grade. Learn was mostly by rote and memory not an understanding of the material being learnt. Most of the learning exercises felt pointless to me. I remember one craft exercise that I thought was going to be fun. It was simple enough. We had an exercise book with a square with geometrical shapes drawn inside. We were given some squares of glossy coloured paper which we had to cut to size and paste in the shapes.

I though this was going to be easy and felt relieved that it didn’t involve a memory exercise that could bring down punishment for being incorrect. To my horror I soon discovered that there was no method to cut the coloured paper to shape. The paper was too thick to trace through and there were no tools available. I decided to put the paper as close as possible to the shapes and draw the shape on the underside with a pencil. Imagine my alarm when I cut out the shapes and found them wildly inaccurate. You were not permitted a second chance. My world cam crashing down in an instant expecting to caned.

The thing is I loved learning and do to this day but found the tools to learn missing. There seemed to me to be a huge gap between knowing and not knowing with no crossing. After two years of this brutal regime it ended. The country school was closed and we were bussed to Milmerran to the central school. But my basic wariness of teachers had been set and became a potent force in my life and thereafter avoided school learning ensuing it for independent learning undercover. I became fiercely antiauthoritarian but nevertheless scarred, shamed at my lack of perfection and caring a kind of survivor guilt. But I loved learning and was curious about the world. It was inevitable that sooner or later I would have major issues with the authoritarian nature of the Lutheran church and the huge disconnect between the message of the gospel, that of compassion and loving kindness and emphasised the ideas of sin borne of shame and unworthiness.

Over the years I watched as my friends, boys of my own age scrummed to mental illness and in some cases suicide.

As I reflect in order to redeem those memories, that love of learning and a respect for custom it seems impassable. I know that the attitudes generated by those experiences left me wounded and unable to be the person I wanted to be. I became an unhappy child and a social misfit, defensive and craving protection. The time comes now to honouring the suffering of that child knowing that these traumatic experiences were within the context of a dogmatic order that was intolerant of straying from the official line. I was unable settle down to earn a good living but continue to battle my demons.

In this process of writing I have focused mainly on those areas were I felt shame and guilt and much less on traumas that I experienced. I considered my suffering less than others and only have to remember those kids that literally shit themselves with terror from abuse and consider myself fortunate to survive. In comparison tho the horrors we hear on the news we seem to be in a protected par of the world. But when I think of it now That safe secure community that he’d its secrets tight is broken open, like a boil that has been lanced and can now heal. But for real healing there must be restitution, restoration that now at this late stage only I can provide for myself. For this writing is not simply to revealhorrible stories of the past but to apply a remedy for others who my find themselves in this position while reform is carried out by a new generation.

When I think about it, that community had to crumble and disappear, for as much as there were romantic notions about growing up on country there desperately need to be an injection of vitality of regeneration that religion was not providing. I think straight away of the rainbow serpent and hoe that principle was not present. And it is that principle that I call upon now to heal and make whole. A spiritual force above and beyond biological and humanistic reasoning. The God that had been captured and constrained within that little country community had lost power. God had been strangled to death by dogma. God in the heavens too had been relegated it seems to me to a private sector of space time, fragmented and neutered. And for all the talk of an all powerful god it was human vigilantes and henchmen that maintain control where one might have expected freedom and these enclaves need to need lanced also.

This is the sense in which the desert lawmen say that the great stories and body of knowledge they contain are the first owners of this country. The people do not own the stories but belong to the stories and the stories belong to or rise up out of country. And to find healing and regeneration we need to reconnect with the source of all that is. Now I realise that this was the same idea that gave rise to ideas about god and dogma was a rationalisation that tried to understand it. But it no longer fits any more than my cut pieces of craft paper to the image. The method used for sizing them up is in adequate to the task. The meetings come as a result of a flawed perception of how learning works and an over zealous craving for safety thought to come from conforming to the conservative order.

Therefore we turn to the process of storytelling and restore those past experiences into a greater context now that the boil is lanced and the guilty secrets broken. I held my parents and all those entrusted with the care of children accountable for their ignorance. At the same time I know by my own experience that you can never know enough to solve these problems. It can only be done through community renewal and that means that the old communities must be demolished rather than idealised so that fresh life force can re-enter and renew. Sacrifice is necessary. Sacrifice of the adherence to safe views. Courage is needed and a degree of cheekiness and humour.

And what of all those who adhere to the old ways. We must not be impatient. We must not resort to killing fields to quicken regeneration in an effort to capture the new god under whose name a new rule is enforced and the old evils perpetrated. God also must be allowed to evolve, for the god we see reflected in creation id ever changing as our ability to perceive.

I think of returning to Adelaide across the Kookatha plains, the Autumn showers in the golden afternoon sunlight, rainbows and sun showers earnestly restoring country exhausted by labour. I feel myself in loving embrace, a state of grace breaks out in oncoming starlight. And the lone bell of silence peels in the vastness of the night, peace falls upon our troubled soul. Finds rest.

Men with chutzpah Gods agents of becoming, but never forget to grow god.

Crossing Kookatha plains,

Autumn showers late golden sun

Replenish country and my soul

With loving embrace of starlit grace

Vast bell of silence peels against black night

Rest for tomorrow comes anew

It doesn’t have to be good poetry only true.

Tags: farm life, hero/heroines Journey

Thanks for being here. Thanks for turning up. Keep doing that and your success, whatever that might be for you, is guaranteed. Not that you will find all the answers here on this page, but that, thank goodness, is not necessary for you to succeed. Because you already have within you what it takes. Some things you already know about and are already well advanced. Others are in potential, already seeded and the others are somewhere in between. So this bit of information is in away the last piece of the puzzle.

You know those big jigsaw puzzles people do on holidays, do people still do those any more, anyway those big jigsaw puzzles where every time you look for the next piece there's a feeling that there is a piece missing. Perhaps it was mfr's mistake or maybe there was a terrorist on the assembly line intent on causing torment it would remove peace during the packaging. Or you find yourself looking around on the floor to see if one has slid off the table onto the floor Will you find yourself looking at the cat and asking," what do you have your mouth."

Then you happen upon it and declare, "I've got it," and start the process all over again.

Well I've got some good news for you–there are no pieces missing, they’re all there. There's no terrorists in the jigsaw puzzle factory. You didn't accidentally dropped a piece of the floor out of sight, unless of course you did, and the cat is quite content with and actually prefers her regular catfood.

How do I know? Well, it was just a matter of time and continuing to turn up in my life. Any questions?

"Thanks for that piece of the puzzle," I hear someone say, "what about the rest." Look on the floor, check that cat… no forget that. The way, or one way, not the one way, I think is to look inside. And I hear someone say,"I did. It's dark and equally in the, even vacuous."

"That's great," I say, "because now we have something to hold onto." In theatre studies, with actors and all that they talk about the need to suspend disbelief so that your imagination can unfurl, unfettered and free to contemplate the unlikely.

I did the opposite. And started the process of suspending my beliefs. I found my disbelief started to unwind all by themselves and that's how I came to realise that I had had a blizzard childhood. It was something that I wanted for along time. I felt, I was going to say I deserved it, I didn't but I thought it was a reasonable thing to ask would want. I didn't really think there was anyone to ask and by then it was too late anyway you would have to approach this thing from an altogether different direction.

You see I grew up in the country, on the magnificent black source of the common mind replying. My father and his brothers with the young wives to parents and some friends I had met through the National Centre of the Lutheran Church decided to build an intentional community there on the Darling Downs. The German Dyas bro was already establishing yourself there with country churches dotted around the fertile farming lambs. I'm looking forward to broad acre farming in that open country the huge skies and leaving behind the relentless toil of the dairy shed. Great sigh of relief after the war years that had the wrong challenges for men who grew up speaking German who were now the food providers of the nation have found themselves in a reserved occupation and exempt actually forbidden from military service along with bakers, doctors and engineers.

We belong to one of the more conservative synods and the struggle between the Conservatives nd the more progressive Lutherans even as, and perhaps because of discussions about the amalgamation of that two major synods have been progressing for some time. I would eventually joined together I was uneasy marriage for some and the process formed three splinter groups.

Well the internal misalignment was Troublesome even kind full, it was joining the outside world it was so destructive of that paradise, that walled garden that got me started in counting my I'm blessings as I say suspension of belief. And crossing no mans land around the garden was painful to many of my friends, painful for my mother, deeply concerning for my father, and deeply incomprehensible to my siblings, uncles, parties and cousins.

So while many people today are driven by the sense of belonging prevent a job, I Lasting soulmate, a bigger this, a bit of that, comparative improvement, I found myself in golf with the nostalgia for what might have been, hey God not fallen asleep at the wheel.

Who wasn't that said," a computer is like an old Testament god, lots of rules and no mercy." When I realise what I was looking for was a new software engineer, one who had the exquisite ability, but when you make a mistake or just randomly, instead of nyewk!! And Olivia an error message, the operating system would flash up cracking really good joke and once you have recovered from the recoil you were in a deliciously altered state, the superlative artificial intelligence of the computer system would go on to say in well modulated times in your 3-D headset," that reminds me of the story…"

Well here I have to tell you that you have been selected, self-selected 30s, to be that software engineer of the operating system that is your consciousness. And it all has to do with storytelling, something with your hardwired for from birth to do, and the unique creative skill of wish can only see the tip of the iceberg with the rest lurking in the diva prices of your mind. I say looting because it can be scary when you go looking for it, but they're inferior so you last year.

As a story geek it's my job to help you suspect your disbelief that recalibrate your self belief to reveal the real you, the One in hiding.

Tags: farm life

As a child I found adults strangely incomprehensible, for example, they might say things like, “Now, whatever you do, don’t go anywhere near the river.” It was Easter time. Perhaps the most significant religious and social times of our year. After a sombre and introspective Good Friday one or perhaps two of my mother’s brother’s or sister’s families would come for a farmstay

and hence No what do they mean by that. Do they mean don’t go in the water, or perhaps stay out of sight of it, maybe out of earshot. Or maybe it’s like, don’t go too close to the fire, you’ll get burnt” One thing for certain; there was something interesting going on with the river and it was dangerous, beware. Or they might be saying, “Church is in an hour. Don’t get dirty.”

One thing for certain was that now that the Condamine River, which incidentally was now in flood, had been mention edits allure was irresistible. Precise meanings of words were important. We were Lutheran. Like an arcane doctrinal matter, for instance, should the church dress code for women, that is to say , compulsory hats and gloves or other more recent concerns such as, should gramophones be permitted.

In those days, we Lutherans enjoyed an orderly life. Some might say prescribed but that doesn’t by any means imply that we took things for granted but rather all kinds of issues were thoroughly debated at any and every opportunity. That is except for things that were taboo like sex or money, except where they occurred together, like prostitution. The Old Testament was full of it so it seamed.

Many things don’t require explanations. When to plant crops, how to herd cattle, what punishments should be dealt out to you children, how much to give to the missions. These things were to taken as axiomatic, and if something came up of which you were unsure, you were to follow the example of your elders. Though in truth that approach was not so helpful in explaining matters that were taboo.

Tags: farm life

My father’s youngest brother, in need of some quick cash, bought a mob of store cattle to fatten up on his block next door to us. I sensed my father disapproved. They turned out to be completely unlike the docile animals he selected and bred over many years. There were a wild bush breed unknown to us and since they were more than one person could handle on their own, their presence encroached on our orderly farm life. Come muster time us kids were found to be occupied with other pressing jobs. It wasn’t that we didn’t like to help, we actually fancied ourselves as barefoot cowboys. But these beasts were too much for us, particularly the brindled heifer with big horns that evoked images from grandad’s days as a dairy farmer.

At milking time, so he told us, his cows adopted a fixed routine and day and night and sorted themselves in a fixed order for milking each with a preferred stall. He knew intimately the temperament of each one and named them accordingly, Daisy, Gertrude, Strawberry and of course, Satan.

To avoid his brother’s disdain my uncle fixed upon the idea of getting a blue heeler. He had high hopes that their working partnership would be the way forward to restoring neighbourly relations and retrieving his independence. After all that was the point of the exercise in the first place.

Truth is, we were scared of the wild bush bunch brought in to the lush pastures to fatten and ready for market. Perhaps that’s where Bluey got the idea that he was in charge. He had the enthusiasm and the instinct characteristic of his breed but not the prerequisite training for handling a wild mob. In the paddock he was a menace, his nipping at their heels just got them riled. The ensuing free for all drove them in all directions. The brindled one in particular got worked into a frenzy, bucking and kicking and lashing out until spent. Then she’d turn on the dog inviting a head to head stoush. How Bluey avoided being tossed on horn tip was a marvel in itself and a tribute to his indomitable spirit, and exquisite agility.

Loading the truck for sale ushered in with a sense of relief. Bluey, full of his usual bravado, drovethem up the ramp onto the truck. But the brindled heifer would have the last word. Kicking at her old rival darting and nipping at her heels she smashed his jaw against the bottom rail. The vet said he would have to be muzzled until his wired-up jaw had time to heal.

Muzzling Bluey brought on a couple change of attitude. His boundless energy gave way to complete inertia. He lay motionless for hours until his next mushy meal, his eyes moving, following, pleading.

Every animal on our farm had a personality, every paddock sewn with wheat, barley, sorghum or sunflowers, its story. It might be a good strike, or a poor crop, recovering from a late frost or looking good after the last shower. Everything was embodied in story from fixing machinery, to accessing the condition of crops, animals and country.

Our stories propelled the cycle of seasons, ordering and sanctity a familiar yet enigmatic life. Our personal stories were related over the breakfast, lunch and tea table then sanctified by larger Testaments both Old Testament and New that opened and closed each day.

Our country church nestles amongst Moreton Bay Ashes, men with Akubras and suits squat with straw in hand, to chew over some thought then drawn it out in the sand. Cicadas shriek to our chorus of fervent voices, organ pedals creaking, straining to stay relevant in this land to Luther’s Reformation.

Tags: farm life

Remembering Easter

The Darling Downs grain growing country lies between two weather systems. Winter rain is fairly predictable and in many seasons spectacular electrical storms bring good summer rain as well.

Sometimes heavy falls come around Easter too. Before the Condamine River was “improved” its flow ambled along contentedly with nary a hint of urgency, kept in check by fallen logs tree stumps and gentle bends, its far flung destination weeks away in the Great Australian Bight. When rains persisted water level rose, flooding the river flats, rehydrating and regenerating the deep alluvial soils. On our farm, water backed up through the Canal creek system into Dog Trap Creek and the black soil plains became a shallow sea for frogs and wading birds. It’s one of the most compelling phenomena one experiences living on the Condamine. It forced a reprieve from the endless hours of tractor work for a couple of weeks before efforts were reinvigorated to reclaim order as Bathurst Burr, Stramonium and other weeds germinated.

Change was in the air for our little country church of perhaps 60 souls. Amalgamation with the progressive Lutheran Synod had been cautiously discussed for decades. Many on our side were skeptical. Both branches struggled to get enough pastors to serve the German farming diaspora of small congregations scattered across the country side. Each pastor had a flock divided into three or four parishes that he administered to in turn. It was beyond his powers to attend to each parish every week. Sometimes a retired paster would ‘fill in’. One of our favourites from the fire and brimstone variety caught the early rail motor from Toowoomba and walked the remaining ten miles to preach and exhort the congregation to give generously to the boarding school in Toowoomba. We did.

Before my time, parishes had pooled their resources to buy him an automobile, the caveat being that it had to have a strong enough engine to drive everywhere in third gear. He had never mastered the gear change. However, the initiative proved unsuccessful. Weather was against it. There was no vehicle on the market that could accomodate both sandy roads in the dry and greasy black clay roads during the wet in third gear.Lay preachers with printed sermons were elected and stepped in to conduct ‘reading’ services. There was no other choice. But attendances suffered from shortened liturgies, which us kids found a blessing, since in the absence of an ordained servant of the word sacramental rites could not be accomplished.

Easter was as big a time for adults as Christmas was for children. Uncles, Aunties and cousins would come for a farm-stay. Mum felt the isolation of a famers wife and loved family get togethers. Eider downs would be laid out on the floors for the kids as adults spilled into the bedrooms. I had thirteen families of sixty-five first cousins, and the house was jammed to capacity many holidays, except when it was their turn to put us up in Kumbia, Brisbane or Harvey Bay. Sometimes we’d all rent a house at the beach either Caloundra or Coolum. Best of all was family camp in the Bunya mountains.

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One Easter it was our turn, and Dad been impressed on my siblings and me that we should be on our best behaviour in front of our guests. “Best behaviour” was never really spelt out. We were God fearing, obedient children on the whole. The plaque on the wall a reminder: “Christ is the head of this house, an unseen guest at every meal and a silent listener at every conversation.” We were pretty clear on the hierarchy from there down. But the fact that it had been thought necessary to remind us created an air of tension. Such occasions often didn’t end well since our fear of misstep made us timid and unsociable and given the chance overanxious to please. I, being the eldest, lead the way.

If asked what bad behaviour was I could tell you; swearing, showing off, asserting yourself, being cheeky, leaving a mess after yourself. Then there was the ill defined, “being bad”. It was really had to be a matter of trial and error. On the whole we were pretty good and happy but we didn’t operate well under pressure. Nevertheless the popular child rearing practices of expectation, warning, scolding and punishment would all pass without anyone being any the wiser. We came to understand that life surprised you with challengers for which you would be responsible. In social situations you are responsible for everyone’s reputation not just your own. Experience is a good teacher.

Lutherans are people of faith. Having faith is the key that unlocks God’s Grace. You’ve all seen it, the rays of light that shines down between the clouds on summer afternoons. And by grace we are saved through Jesus’ blood. Having faith meant that you were able to read and interpret the Bible correctly and thereby have faith. It is through faith we are saved by the blood of the Lamb. I already knew a lot but still very confused. It only I knew the questions to ask.

We were well versed with Bible readings and devotions twice daily, yet doctrinal certainty was elusive and contentious and occupied a lot of the adults free time. I’m not saying people weren’t certain, they just didn’t always agree.

From a young age I had a very active religious imagination. I grew up in a mythic world of heaven and hell with earth here as proxy. But I had mixed feelings, the idea of heaven was poorly sold, an eternity of singing praise. Frankly, I felt better where I was, the world was really good. Hell on the other hand was easy to imagine. Years later I would discover I was a mis-matcher, learning doing and eliminating the things that don’t fit by trial and error. It’s not a very efficient strategy in religious or social life and to my chagrin I found trying to not do the wrong thing was fraught. Eternity is a long time so best sort things out before we get there.

My parents aspirations were for their eldest son (me) to become a pastor and serve the congregations so in need. To visit the poor and comfort the sick and provide guidance and support to the less fortunate. Not everyone had the certainty and assurance that our little community enjoyed. We were truly blessed. And we were. In early years I though it was a good idea too, until one day I climbed up on the sofa in the lounge room, imitating the preachers I had so often seen in the pulpit, only to be shocked to find I had nothing to say.

Our rellies had come up from Brisbane early, arriving in plenty time for a late Easter Sunday church.There had been a lot of rain all up the catchment so they came around the long way over Grasstree Creek just in case the lower bridge over the North Branch of the Condamine was flooded. There was a lot of speculation about whether it would be or not, but no one had been to have a look.

Mum had a little custom for the occasions we we had to hang around waiting until it was time for church. She signalled that we were in in-between time by not having us dress in our Sunday best too early. Instead we would put on shorts and a clean white singlet. Boys being boys we would only get good clothes dirty, and we couldn’t play normally because then we would need another bath.

While the women and big girls are doing the prep for after church, Dad, the Uncles and cousins are wondering what to do. Some farm entertainment is required for our visitors. That presented an immediate challenge since regular farm stuff was forbidden during this ‘singlet time’. My father said to me, “Look after your cousins, will you and David, don’t go near the river.” Now all I heard was “River.” He might as well have said, “David do you know if the flood waters have gone over the bridge yet. It sure would be interesting to find out but don’t even think about it.”

It was about then that I though of going for a walk, not near the river but maybe in that direction. So off we went like ducks in a row, oblivious to the mud puddles and Sunday dresses of the girl cousins who didn’t know about the singlet protocol, and had left their homes dressed for church. Being girls they probably didn’t need to know about it either.

What does near the river mean anyway? Does it mean out of sight, or ear shot or the more likely don’t touch. Not that it mattered because we were not going to go near the river anyway. Yet somehow I found myself leading my little flock, with all the confidence of a farm bred six year old towards the Condamine bridge. It would be ages before we were anywhere “near” it anyway.

As we drew closer I though probably it meant not past the grid at the top of the approaches. Yet when we got that far, it seemed more likely that it meant don’t paddle in the water. I already knew how to inspect the waterline to see if the level was rising or falling. So I went for a look and perhaps all would become clear. My little flock were getting restless and wanted to go back but by now weren’t sure of the way. There might be wild bulls and other scary things too. They were from town after all.

When I discovered that water level still rising it suddenly occurred to me that I was probably too near the river. In a panic I wondered if the presence of the cousins who were now waiting for me up at the grid would alleviate or exacerbate my predicament. After all they hadn’t gone near the river, had they.

Running back home I discovered that when your feet are cold and muddy you can step on bindi-eyes and they don’t even hurt. It’s even fun.

As we approached the house we met a search party coming towards us. Someone quite unnecessarily remarked, “Boy, are you in trouble!” It made me curious how punishment worked in other families.

Within a minute our motley little mud spattered flock was gathered on the lawn by the house. Dad arrived from somewhere. I had no idea where he had been. In front of the assemblage of uncles and cousins, Dad with exasperation demanded, “David, where have you been, it’s time for church.” I looked down at my pink toe tips peeping out from mud covered legs. My ears burned with embarrassment, self conscious under the eyes of the uncles. Thankfully the mothers were inside doing their hair up. They had been dying to try the new hair drier that one of the teenage girl cousins had brought along. They intended to do themselves up at the last minute demonstrating they were across the latest fashions. It was as sort of mini hot air, reverse vacuum cleaner with a hose and plastic bag you tie on your head. It must be a city thing.

“ Did you take these kids to the river?”

I was shocked by a question so completely without nuance and honestly think my reply was not so much a lie as a plee for more time to prosecute my case.

“No…”

There are moments in life when in the blink of an eye your destiny is realised and all chance of redemption is forfeit.

“Well actually,” began an older cousin who knew from experience that a lie was a lie, and intuitively reached for his lifeline, said, “he did.”

The girls were sent inside to the horrors of “What have you done to your clothes? You’ve nothing else to wear!” and roughly tugged to the now overflowing bathroom. They should not have to witness what was about to happen.

A child’s behaviour is a yard stick by which his parents are measured. His father, ultimately responsible for his child’s training and direction is on public display and in a case such as this provides an inexhaustible case study for disciplining children. I pictured being sent inside to retrieve the leather strap or perhaps a bare-handed walloping.

I had placed my father in an intolerable position; he was called upon to urgently administer stern discipline in a perfect storm; the kids are a mess, your late for church, you are under close scrutiny by your brothers in law and your eldest son has lied, been defiant and left you exposed. Incorrigible!

“ Get inside and clean yourself up. Stay in your room.” Now I was confused. This was new. The strap I understood, it was administered swiftly and you could just as quickly return to living on the edge. I found disgrace and banishment the harshest punishment of all.

My relationship with Dad would never recover. Mostly we were respectful to each other, nothing more. We were simply at odds. He was admired even revered in our small community. He was a stalwart, a temperate man, dependable, reliable.He answers were clear and certain.

I, though it would take many years to discover had a kind of naive curiosity that abhorred predictability. In school holidays it fell to me to drive the tractor round after round yearning to see beneath the endlessness of it all.

I loved my dad, and told him so. His reply didn’t satisfy, correct though it was. It wasn’t his words I wanted to hear, I hopelessly craved the emotional connection between father and his eldest son, but not like crucifixion and stuff. And banishment reminded me of the Israelite priest putting the sins of the people on a poor goat then sent out into the wilderness.

Self imposed banishment would in time become a reminder of irreconcilable disappointment. Our clashes would become more intense and less frequent.

Twice we briefly broke through to each other, the first time during a heart to heart when my first marriage disintegrated. He when he told me how he was unable to take on the role of brass band leader for the men of the congregation, he simply didn’t have the confidence.

The second time was as he lay in hospital, broken in the car accident in which our beloved wife and mother died. He surfaced out of his delirium and asked, “Was I too harsh on you?” Shocked by the unaccustomed candour I said, “what did you say?” When he replied I was no longer afraid of him, “Dad, it’s Okay. We do the best we can.”

From time to time I would revisit this memory and reexamine it with the unflattering lens I had become accustomed to, that of the misunderstood country yokel. For many years I had taken refuge in self pity believing I was powerless to do otherwise. The view of this world as a vale of tears was deeply rooted.It was a kind of negative fractal that crystallised on relationships with authority as it wrought havoc on my personal and professional relationships as I became ever more reactive and defensive.

I knew I was in trouble. I went searching for answers both in science and religion. Years later I experimented with different religions.For a time I was for a time a eucharistic minister in a the local Catholic church. The priest was one of the earliest to be jailed for pedophilia. I was briefly a member of a lay Anglican order based in Kent in the whose founder was caught up in a scandal for being in a same sex relationship with one of the other founders. At around the same time I visited a Yoga Ashram. There the director was later convicted of sexually abusing the teenage girls of members under the guise of spiritual practice.

As I sunk deeper and deeper into desperation and that utter conviction that I was irreparably broken, hopelessly trodding a rocky path to nowhere. Nevertheless there was always something of value to be gained in each of these encounters. Even though their overall trajectory revealed an unpalatable truth they led to new alternatives.

Fast forward to about 25 years. I came upon the recordings of Jean Houston’s three or for day seminar on Pazival and the search for the Holy Grail. By this time I discovered that my relationships with wise women teachers were positive experiences. Through the cassette tapes I met with Jean’s treatment of Pazival, a country bumpkin, unskilled in the ways of the world and unaware of himself. I found his casual attitude to tradition appealing and his naive curiosity familiar.It would be a significant turning point and life line.

Later I attended many ofJean’s seminars and began to reconstructed my world view, my relation to it and my own, shall we say, operating system. Amongst a wash of nourishing ideas and psychodramatic exercises she declared what I thought to be an improvable claim. She said, “I am fortunate to have had a blessed childhood.”

But this time I had heard her tell a series of childhood stories and knew them well. They were revelatory and inspirational but in my mind to claim them as blessed was either a misrepresentation or delusional. Yet in the wallow of heavily disguised self pity the idea struck me, of how fortunate one would be if you were one of the lucky few, unlike me, to have had a blessed childhood. I didn’t reject Jean’s claim outright but was in a state of unbelief. My attitude shifted from “o mea miserum!” to “what about me?” Parzifal’s awareness of his unschooled and unskilled experience combined with his naive curiosity left him in a perpetual state of me too to any new or broadening experience. I found some of that in myself too. “Me too.” I want to have had a have had a blessed childhood too so I set about finding out how to acquire one. From what I had learn about neuro-plasticity it was all a matter of brain rewiring. There was no in function between a brain that had resulted from a blessed childhood and one that behaved as if it had. I would be more than content with the second. How to go about it.

I had heard that studies of memory had discovered that we don’t actually remember an event as a fixed entity but rather our memories drift over time and we recall the contents of a memory as it was at the last time we thought about it. Eureka! I would rewrite, as if in the draft of a movie script, as many debilitating memories I could find. The tools I would use were those I had read about in Neuro-Linguistic Programming many years before, but had been too frightened to use.

Tags: farm life, hero/heroines Journey, nostalgia

Tags: davidsalomon, farm life

Trick or Treat?

Halloween is upon us and all manner of costumes, witches, skulls, skeletons, ghouls and vampires are in demand again. Of course this is a northern hemisphere festival, invented in Ireland and popularised in America and is exactly out of phase with the seasons in Australia. In the north it is Fall, leaves are dropping as the sap stream of plants is retreating into the earth for the winter. So it is a little bit curious that here in Australia we celebrate, all souls and the undead, at precisely the time that the life force and vitality of the natural world is gathering to a crescendo. But regardless of being in sync with the seasons or not, there is a clear impulse to have a time for honouring the cycles of life, of creation and destruction.

It got me thinking about young children inventing and fantasising about monsters and ghosts in their games, so much so that they will frighten themselves with just their imagination. It turns out that the brain has the same reaction to imagination as it does to real events. Neuro Linguistic Programming uses this phenomenon in a great many situations.

Pumpkin Power

I remember an occasion from childhood, I must have been 4 of 5 and my brother 2 or 3. He really wanted to go and have a look at some baby chicks that had arrived that day in the post. He wanted someone to go with him but no one was so inclined, He was simply told, "You know where they are, just go down the hall and turn the corner and they are right there by the laundry tubs." But no matter how much coaxing, he wouldn't go on his own.

In those days in the latish 50's we didn't have mains power, there wasn't yet a telephone service, I don't think we yet had a radio. We did though have power for lighting from an ex army generator connected to a diesel engine that powered it and the bore water pump. The 32 volt system was much more convenient than the hurricane lamps that neighbours used but it still cast a dim shadowy light that played tricks on the imagination. Naturally, we had a wood stove for cooking and water heating and a substantial wood box, with a hatch that opened to the outside of the house kept a plentiful supply of dry firewood at hand. It just so happened that it was also a good little nook for storing pumpkins through the winter.

When we finally got to the bottom of why my brother wouldn't go to see the chicks on his own it was because he was frightened to go past the pumpkins. Now I have no idea where that came from other than his own fanciful notions because we didn't celebrate Halloween or pumpkins in any way.

The Creator/ Destroyer

The idea of life and death, creation and destruction, the undead and wandering souls is alluring to young and old alike. The realisation that we don't remember were we came from makes us curious not only about that but also about the end of life. I think it is one of the big themes we suppress for most of the year in order to get on with a normal life, and having a special time especially devoted to it compensates.

There are other times when this motif becomes important, at transitional times in our lives especially. The hero journey places this phase directly after the Belly of the Whale and the Road of Trials. Emphasis is not so much on the wandering souls as recognising the great cycles associated with the Mother Goddess. It is an inner conflict that needs to be integrated, for not only is the mother or Earth Goddess the source of all nourishment, affection and protection to the infant, She also incorporates the destroyer and the grand recycler from which none are immune.

Harnessing the power for Transformation

So as you light the Jack-o'lantern either figuratively or literally, remember it has magical power in being able to identify malevolent spirits, and once identified they lose their power, in this halloween, think about what you are letting go of, releasing to the compost as it were, that will provide the raw materials, and the nutrients for your next stage of growth. Relate it to a project, a stage of life, anywhere you desire progress and be inspired by the energy, the wisdom and the knowledge of those that came before.

Subscribe to the mailing list for more information on empowering your life and projects using the Hero's Journey. Read more about stages of the Hero's Journey in Threshold Crossing and Belly of the Whale.

Tags: davidsalomon, farm life, hero/heroines Journey

Dad, Me and the Wheat Board Inspector at Brookstead c.1962:This picture appeared in the "Grain Grower" newspaper with an article about the change from delivering wheat in bags to bulk handling.

Over the past two decades I have learnt a lot about Australia's first peoples, around the campfire, listening to stories, watching inma and travelling over country. Like so many "Europeans" it's a curiosity I have had since growing up on the farm in South East Queensland. We lived near the Condamine River and when it flooded, which it did more more then than it does now, the Grasstree Creek would flood and cut the road for the school bus at Yandilla. Canal Creek and the Condamine would cut the road to Pittsworth and flooding on Dog Trap Creek cut us off from Warwick. No school. Now normally it would be welcomed as providential, a bonus holiday. But not so one year, one of the few times I felt I was missing out on something by being kept home from school.

This was the middleish 60's, we'd only had the electric wireless for a couple of years and ...

Tags: davidsalomon, farm life, First Nations, soul talks, storytelling

By the time I showed our documentary, "Two Brothers Walking" to the senior men and women at Umuwa we had been working on it for about five years. It was a time of discovery for me. I was acutely aware that I didn't have any experience of how first nations peoples see the world. I knew that interpreting what I heard and saw in terms of what I knew would filter out the most valuable insights. I was on a journey of discovery. The big question was, "How do you discover new things when being there stops it happening?"

The colonisation of Australia was as brutal as ...

Tags: APY Lands, davidsalomon, farm life, nostalgia, Pitjantjatjara, storytelling

There's an old bridge on a farm where I grew up. The approaches have grown over and the deck is in a sorry state of disrepair. (Link to Google Earth Image) Every flood demolishes it further. Locals with wheat crops on both banks of the Condamine used the gravel road to get to their paddocks and bring in their harvest. When public demand for the bridge subsided, a few local farmers still needed it.

So ownership was passed to local interests on the proviso that ...

Tags: davidsalomon, farm life, nostalgia, storytelling

That's my dad, Arnold Salomon on the right with his poddy calf at the calf show in 1938. He didn't win. Notice the footwear (or lack of). From this we can safely assume he is still at school and dairy farming and raising poddy calves is a part time pursuit.

The milking shed photo from the previous post turned up when we were going through Dad's things. Looking now, I realise I hadn't really looked at it before. The people had caught my attention, my granddad in the right milking stall, and my dad, or so he told my sister, is in the left. It was his eyesight that grew dim in later years, not his memory. Grandad's about the age of my children now, perhaps a bit younger and Great Granny Goos with camera in hand, was then about my age now. I remember the Box Brownie she passed on to Grandma. We only see her shadow, her back to the morning sun.

Tags: davidsalomon, farm life, nostalgia

The photo was taken of morning milking on a typical morning at Proston in 1938 by Great Granny Goos. By the look of her shadow, she's most likely using a Kodak Box Brownie like the one I first took photos with. It was a useful camera with two viewfinders.

Memories of old women with thin boney hands and skin incapable of thermal retention. In my farming community, men's hands and women's hands were oh so different, men's, growing thick and calloused, like a pair of bricks as their lady's hands grew thin and wispy.

Life on the land wasn't for me. Mum said ...

Tags: farm life, nostalgia