From the first glimpse of a horse, small and kindly-looking,
with a yellowish coat and black mane; the first trip to the chicken coop, a
haphazard tin-and-wire structure in the corner of the yard; the first game of
tug-o-war with a foolhardy but benevolent dog – I was hooked.
I don’t know how my somewhat estranged brother ended up
owning a farm. I wasn’t really at the age where I was inclined to ask
conveyancing-related questions. I was at the age where I looked cute wearing a
leotard and a tutu and carrying a basket of fake flowers at said brother’s wedding.
So were my sisters. It was, I think, mainly for this reason (the wedding, not
specifically the leotards and tutus) that we took a seven week trip back to Australia
just before I turned nine.
While we had moved to the UK, my brother, whose name is
Nicholas but who has been known as Harvey all of his life for reasons unknown,
lived on a stud farm near Busselton, Western Australia. I think their main
source of income was a giant, rather frightening horse named “Chopin,” whom
everybody called “Chops.” I didn’t get the joke until many years later when I started
piano lessons. I thought the horse’s real name was simply “Show Pan,” and that
like Harvey, he had been given a pseudonym that had nothing to do with his
actual name.
We did a lot of things on this seven-week stint back in the
motherland. We circumnavigated Uluru, visited my grandparents in Newcastle – I vaguely
remember something about Sydney Harbour too, but really, one never remembers
specific visits to Sydney. They all just mesh into one. But we also stayed on
my brother’s farm for a while. I remember absolutely nothing about the house,
or where we slept, or even talking to my brother much. I was eight and he must
have been about twenty-two. At the time I thought he was old – a man – and placed
little distinction between his age and that of my parents. It’s only now that I
realise he was younger than I am now, and certainly quite young to be getting
married.
What I do remember is loving the farm itself. I loved the
hot sun on the coarse, browning grass. I loved the shrill, metallic notes that
each steel gate sung when opened or closed. I loved the sacred sense of
responsibility when entrusted with the task of collecting eggs from the chicken
coop each morning; the sense of wonder each time that, overnight, these
unassuming feathery dimwits had produced such miraculous feats of nature, and
that we could eat said feats of nature for breakfast. There was a novelty in it
that was appealing, for sure. But there was also a longer-term sort of personal
satisfaction that as an eight-year-old, I was more inclined to phrase as “this
is so cool.”
When I was in grade nine my parents bought Ironbark farm; 902
acres in the Hogarth Range, just southwest of Casino, NSW. For many years it
too was a source of novel pleasures, from Schoolies week to renovation
symposiums for Chinese PhD students. It had the same squeaky gates and scorched
grass. But over the last few years I’ve begun to see its value as a living,
breathing entity too. Its lack of mobile phone reception, internet or
television, along with its constant need to be renovated, cleaned, painted,
fixed, demolished and rebuilt is addictive. I have been unashamedly guilting my
parents out of selling it for three years.
I’ve seen my brother maybe six times since his wedding, with
increasing sporadicity. I know he moved to Melbourne and no longer seeks his
fortune in farming. When people ask me what he does I say “he's in IT,” because he is, but that’s all I know. I’ve never asked him what inspired his brief period
as a stud farmer. I’ve never asked him what inspired his decision to stop being
a stud farmer. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever asked him a single question
about himself except for “Harvey, why did you cut off all your hair?”
As I move
closer to the time at which I am bound to have a mid-twenties identity crisis
(also known as finishing university and facing the prospect of starting one’s
career) and entertain, with increasing enthusiasm, the notion of abandoning my
aspirations as a schoolteacher and moving down to Ironbark full-time and
becoming a hermit, I can’t help but wish I had, in fact, asked my brother these
questions. Perhaps I will now, and maybe while I'm at it, I'll ask him exactly what it is he does in IT.
.jpg)
