Read Online The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway - Free Book Online
Authors: Jill Ker Conway
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then with exaggerated cries of absence of mind, recall that he had brought me some candy.
In quiet moments, when he had caught up with the supply of wool and had time to sit down, we exchanged confidences. On some Mondays, he would confess to having had too much to drink over the weekend. Once, deeply troubled and exasperated with himself, he talked of going to see “the girls.” I knew in a general way that this was not the best conduct for a married man, so I tut-tutted with as much wisdom as I could summon up and said once didn’t matter. It seemed to offer him some relief.
Twice a day, the whistle blew for “smoko” time. The cook would bring over billies of tea and mounds of sweet pound cake and biscuits. Everyone would relax, consume vast supplies of tea from tin mugs, and roll the inevitable cigarette. Sometimes, a shearer might get what Shorty thought was too friendly with me. “The kid’s a girl,” he would say warningly. That would end the matter. It was easy to see how people might be mistaken, because I wore my brother’s cast-off clothes for work outdoors and had my hair tucked away under the usual Australian felt hat.
Each year I waited eagerly for Shorty and the rest of the team to return. Yet I also knew that there were class boundaries to all our dealings with one another. In the evening during the two weeks of shearing, Mac, the wool classer, being an educated person, was always invited to dinner at the house. We were all eager to see Mac, a witty and ironic Scot, whose friendship my parents valued. I loved to see him because he was a great storyteller, and the hour by the fire before dinner would be filled with jokes and laughter. Because he saw the Coorain wool clip each year, he could offer valuable advice about its good and bad characteristics, and make suggestions about qualities that should be introduced into the breeding lines. Best of all for my parents, because he had been traveling from station to station year after year, hewas a fount of gossip, and news about distant friends, comical happenings, marriages and divorces, signs of changes in the cycle of wet and dry years. My parents were hungry for talk with other adults, and they would stay in animated conversation till long after I had drifted off to sleep.
The war brought another form of sociability into the routine of our lives. My mother, a shy woman, and a nervous driver over country roads, nevertheless felt that in addition to the work of Coorain, she should undertake some further form of war work. Our district contained not much more than thirty families within its fifty-mile radius. My mother recruited the women of these families into a local branch of the Red Cross. The twenty-five or so members of the branch held very formal meetings in the creaky old Mossgiel village hall. The minutes of meetings were recorded in my mother’s neat handwriting, and the branch set to work to raise money for comforts for soldiers, and to produce the standard khaki socks, scarves, sweaters, and balaclavas which Sydney headquarters of the Red Cross said were needed. Thereafter, my mother’s evening reading was accompanied by the click of needles, and I was taught to knit the simple squares which were crocheted together to make scarves.
The best part of the Red Cross activity was undoubtedly the fund raising. This was done by means of organizing dances in the Mossgiel hall, to which people came from hundreds of miles around. The floor would be prepared the day before. Sawdust was sprinkled about liberally. Candles were then cut up and scattered about over the sawdust, and any children fortunate enough to be around were asked to sit on clean burlap bags on which they were towed in wildly exciting circles about the floor. When the floor was pronounced just right for dancing, the sawdust was swept up to reveal a gleaming floor. My mother’s garden provided a sizable part of the decorations for the hall. Garlands of flowers and streamers were
In quiet moments, when he had caught up with the supply of wool and had time to sit down, we exchanged confidences. On some Mondays, he would confess to having had too much to drink over the weekend. Once, deeply troubled and exasperated with himself, he talked of going to see “the girls.” I knew in a general way that this was not the best conduct for a married man, so I tut-tutted with as much wisdom as I could summon up and said once didn’t matter. It seemed to offer him some relief.
Twice a day, the whistle blew for “smoko” time. The cook would bring over billies of tea and mounds of sweet pound cake and biscuits. Everyone would relax, consume vast supplies of tea from tin mugs, and roll the inevitable cigarette. Sometimes, a shearer might get what Shorty thought was too friendly with me. “The kid’s a girl,” he would say warningly. That would end the matter. It was easy to see how people might be mistaken, because I wore my brother’s cast-off clothes for work outdoors and had my hair tucked away under the usual Australian felt hat.
Each year I waited eagerly for Shorty and the rest of the team to return. Yet I also knew that there were class boundaries to all our dealings with one another. In the evening during the two weeks of shearing, Mac, the wool classer, being an educated person, was always invited to dinner at the house. We were all eager to see Mac, a witty and ironic Scot, whose friendship my parents valued. I loved to see him because he was a great storyteller, and the hour by the fire before dinner would be filled with jokes and laughter. Because he saw the Coorain wool clip each year, he could offer valuable advice about its good and bad characteristics, and make suggestions about qualities that should be introduced into the breeding lines. Best of all for my parents, because he had been traveling from station to station year after year, hewas a fount of gossip, and news about distant friends, comical happenings, marriages and divorces, signs of changes in the cycle of wet and dry years. My parents were hungry for talk with other adults, and they would stay in animated conversation till long after I had drifted off to sleep.
The war brought another form of sociability into the routine of our lives. My mother, a shy woman, and a nervous driver over country roads, nevertheless felt that in addition to the work of Coorain, she should undertake some further form of war work. Our district contained not much more than thirty families within its fifty-mile radius. My mother recruited the women of these families into a local branch of the Red Cross. The twenty-five or so members of the branch held very formal meetings in the creaky old Mossgiel village hall. The minutes of meetings were recorded in my mother’s neat handwriting, and the branch set to work to raise money for comforts for soldiers, and to produce the standard khaki socks, scarves, sweaters, and balaclavas which Sydney headquarters of the Red Cross said were needed. Thereafter, my mother’s evening reading was accompanied by the click of needles, and I was taught to knit the simple squares which were crocheted together to make scarves.
The best part of the Red Cross activity was undoubtedly the fund raising. This was done by means of organizing dances in the Mossgiel hall, to which people came from hundreds of miles around. The floor would be prepared the day before. Sawdust was sprinkled about liberally. Candles were then cut up and scattered about over the sawdust, and any children fortunate enough to be around were asked to sit on clean burlap bags on which they were towed in wildly exciting circles about the floor. When the floor was pronounced just right for dancing, the sawdust was swept up to reveal a gleaming floor. My mother’s garden provided a sizable part of the decorations for the hall. Garlands of flowers and streamers were
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