Read Online You Never Met My Father by Graeme Sparkes - Free Book Online
Authors: Graeme Sparkes
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where the bedrooms were located, overlooked a paved enclosure with a large fishpond. In the middle of the pond was an ornate fountain that operated whenever Campbell was in residence. Behind the homestead stood some spreading nut trees that cockatoos enjoyed feeding on.
Nearby was a shed that housed a generator and a bank of batteries, the source of electricity for the homestead. There was also a small dairy where Daisy the cow was milked. It had a special motorised vat that separated cream from milk. Up until then in my short life I had taken most endeavour and invention for granted, but these sheds opened my eyes to human ingenuity, gave me an inkling of the sort of creature I was. The smells, too, were intoxicating, the acrid fumes of diesel and acid, the sour fetor of the dairy, the smell of human cleverness. It made me anxious about growing up. About how much there was to learn.
Yet all this was nothing compared to the magical way my mother transformed cream to butter simply by adding salt and beating it for long enough, first with spoons or a hand-held beater and then with small wooden paddles, after draining off the excess liquid, the buttermilk, until it looked and tasted the same as what could be bought at the grocers.
I loved to watch her at work in the kitchen, whether it was making butter or cakes or scones, or roasting lamb, or doing dishes, or sweeping the floor. She wore a clean, ironed apron, and often hummed or sang to herself, unaware that I was watching her, a faraway expression on her face. She liked to listen to music from a bulky Bakelite radio on the bench near the meat safe, which played songs by Frank Ifield, Pat Boone and Doris Day. One of her favourites was a young man called Elvis Presley, but only when he sang his ballads, not that rock-n-roll, up-tempo nonsense. I soon had the impression that the kitchen with its cooking smells and music was her favourite place.
The smells always made me hungry, and if it wasnât meal time, I would fill up on bread and honey or the scones she baked, which I ate with jam and Daisyâs cream and an earnestness fit for a rural show judge. âYou must have hollow legs,â sheâd say and we would laugh together.
My mother had grown up on a small farm in Gippsland, not far from La Trobe River. Living once more on a farm probably reminded her of the idyllic childhood sheâd had. She often reminisced about her four older brothers who had treated her and their younger sister, Barbara, like mascots, taking them to their football matches, teaching them how to milk the family cow, taking them camping along the Ninety Mile Beach for Christmas holidays. Sea and sand. Brothers fishing in the waves. Garrulous gulls overhead. Making sandcastles with buckets and spades. Carefree times that she returned to in her mind as the years went by.
At home with her mother she had learnt the domestic skills that she would practise with pride throughout her life. But when her mother died suddenly, Patâs life had veered off on an unexpected trajectory. Her father never had enough land to run a profitable farm. He earned extra money as a nightsoil man around the district. Yet somehow he took on a housekeeper to manage his large family and (according to some of my relatives) to be his mistress, just as the nation became embroiled in the Second World War. Two of his sons were conscripted, the eldest, Mick, was exempted on account of his Morse Code skills at the General Post Office, the other because he had a milk run, while the sisters were assigned to a clothes factory in the nearby township of Sale. The two girls spent the war years sewing military uniforms and dreamed of leaving home. They never warmed to the housekeeper-mistress and her daughter, who treated them like vassals.
Pat often told me the story of how she had moved to Tasmania with Barbara shortly after the war ended to escape the petty tyrannies of these âintrudersâ. It was her luck to meet
Nearby was a shed that housed a generator and a bank of batteries, the source of electricity for the homestead. There was also a small dairy where Daisy the cow was milked. It had a special motorised vat that separated cream from milk. Up until then in my short life I had taken most endeavour and invention for granted, but these sheds opened my eyes to human ingenuity, gave me an inkling of the sort of creature I was. The smells, too, were intoxicating, the acrid fumes of diesel and acid, the sour fetor of the dairy, the smell of human cleverness. It made me anxious about growing up. About how much there was to learn.
Yet all this was nothing compared to the magical way my mother transformed cream to butter simply by adding salt and beating it for long enough, first with spoons or a hand-held beater and then with small wooden paddles, after draining off the excess liquid, the buttermilk, until it looked and tasted the same as what could be bought at the grocers.
I loved to watch her at work in the kitchen, whether it was making butter or cakes or scones, or roasting lamb, or doing dishes, or sweeping the floor. She wore a clean, ironed apron, and often hummed or sang to herself, unaware that I was watching her, a faraway expression on her face. She liked to listen to music from a bulky Bakelite radio on the bench near the meat safe, which played songs by Frank Ifield, Pat Boone and Doris Day. One of her favourites was a young man called Elvis Presley, but only when he sang his ballads, not that rock-n-roll, up-tempo nonsense. I soon had the impression that the kitchen with its cooking smells and music was her favourite place.
The smells always made me hungry, and if it wasnât meal time, I would fill up on bread and honey or the scones she baked, which I ate with jam and Daisyâs cream and an earnestness fit for a rural show judge. âYou must have hollow legs,â sheâd say and we would laugh together.
My mother had grown up on a small farm in Gippsland, not far from La Trobe River. Living once more on a farm probably reminded her of the idyllic childhood sheâd had. She often reminisced about her four older brothers who had treated her and their younger sister, Barbara, like mascots, taking them to their football matches, teaching them how to milk the family cow, taking them camping along the Ninety Mile Beach for Christmas holidays. Sea and sand. Brothers fishing in the waves. Garrulous gulls overhead. Making sandcastles with buckets and spades. Carefree times that she returned to in her mind as the years went by.
At home with her mother she had learnt the domestic skills that she would practise with pride throughout her life. But when her mother died suddenly, Patâs life had veered off on an unexpected trajectory. Her father never had enough land to run a profitable farm. He earned extra money as a nightsoil man around the district. Yet somehow he took on a housekeeper to manage his large family and (according to some of my relatives) to be his mistress, just as the nation became embroiled in the Second World War. Two of his sons were conscripted, the eldest, Mick, was exempted on account of his Morse Code skills at the General Post Office, the other because he had a milk run, while the sisters were assigned to a clothes factory in the nearby township of Sale. The two girls spent the war years sewing military uniforms and dreamed of leaving home. They never warmed to the housekeeper-mistress and her daughter, who treated them like vassals.
Pat often told me the story of how she had moved to Tasmania with Barbara shortly after the war ended to escape the petty tyrannies of these âintrudersâ. It was her luck to meet
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