Author: Christine Eyres

A year full of changes. We moved to the 12 acres we bought in Roleystone. No water, no electricity. For six months we lived in a large shed while we built our rammed-earth house.

I enjoyed those months. Life was pared down to basic necessities. A plate and bowl and one set of cutlery for each of us, the washing-up done in a tub on a wooden box. We bathed in the river, sometimes putting John and Rob in an old copper where we also washed our clothes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A year full of mayhem. The adorable Labrador puppy, we bought to divert the kids from the upheaval of moving house, teamed up with our very old Samoyed, Keisha.

 

 

 

Keisha had convinced us she was too old to do anything strenuous like play with the kids. However, Nelly roused Keisha and together they had a great time chasing ours and the neighbour’s sheep, causing the death of several.      

 

 

Sadly, we took Nelly to the vet who said he would find a suburban home for the very valuable little pedigreed killer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A year of learning. Don’t be sucked in by a real-estate agent who sells you a block and tells you it’s shame that you don’t want the two horses in residence because they’ll be sent to the knackery.

Don’t build a chook yard at the bottom of the block – Mrs Fox will kill the lot. Don’t offer to look after a friend’s dog even though it’s small and cute and suburban (the name ‘Butch’ should have been a give-away). It too will discover the joys of chasing sheep and you’ll throw off your sarong and find yourself stark-naked in a muddy dam, home to excreting ducks, trying to rescue a water-logged sheep while Butch tries to sit on its head. Don’t climb the fig trees growing wild on the block. David did so, and after reaching out to pick a fig came crashing down, breaking his arm so severely he was hospitalised for two weeks and out of action for months.

 

A year of joys, one of which was ‘EP’ (short for Extra Pooey’) a baby kangaroo, presented to us by a friend who rescued it from its dead mother’s pouch. I had to quickly find out what and how to feed it. I started off with a formula of sunshine milk with various additives, fed from a bottle with a length of bicycle valve rubber. At first it seemed OK but the poor little thing had the scours and took an hour to swallow two ounces every feed time. It improved slightly after I phoned the zoo and was told to put charcoal tablets in its milk. Things looked up for EP after finding an amazing woman called Joan Moore in the Middle Swan. Marsupials and other animals roamed all over her property and you would find her feeding four joeys at once – 2 bottles in each hand. She supplied me with lactose-free milk and special marsupial teats.

February 1983

Our house is still being built.

Robert is heading off to his first day at school, full of confidence. He’s just turned five in December and looks so small. His teacher seems offhand compared to John’s first teacher but as soon as Rob was settled in his desk, he told me to go home. I felt most unneeded.

 

We have another orphan. The goslings and ducklings have started to hatch. John found a duckling wandering in the rain. It’s been housed in an incubator in the family room. It has formed an attachment to EP. The little thing likes to snuggle into the ‘pouch’ and sleep with him, unaware of the danger of being squashed.

 

 

Grandpa helped make a scarecrow to keep the crow away from the chickens

I made EP’s pouch from an old jumper and lined it with sheepskin. He still wears a nappy for the scours but is improving. The ‘pouch’ hangs on the back of a chair in the dining area or sometimes around my neck. The thing about marsupial is that they are noiseless so I can take him anywhere without anyone noticing. He has even been to the movies in Perth.

 

 

March 1983

Now the kids are both at school, I am enrolled at W.A.I.T. (WA Institute of Technology) to do some art studies. EP has been taken to Mrs More for temporary fostering. I am home in time to pick up the kids from school and have resolved not to bring work back to avoid conflicts of interest

 

We have had a lot of excitement with snakes. Our property seems to be riddled with them perhaps because we have rampant Paterson’s Curse for them to hide in. I have seen at least 20 this summer and we’ve had no eggs for three months. We saw a dugite entering our small feed shed last week. We gingerly moved everything out until there was just a board on the floor. David was being cautious but I was sure any self-respecting snake would have found a way to escape, with all the commotion. I lifted the last board and then hurriedly dropped it as I found myself face- to face with a large dugite.

On Friday night as we were driving home from squash, a large Carpet Python was crossing the bridge. It didn’t move as we approached so we wanted to have a look at its beautiful markings. I knew they were non-venomous but didn’t know they can still give a nasty bite until later. Having had a few drinks after squash, I tried to catch it. I reasoned it could live in the roof and catch mice because I hated cats. However, it didn’t like my advances and sped away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another snake decided to rest in, what the kids called the ‘Wild Tree’, a gigantic ancient Ficus where they spent hours playing. They came running to the house with white faces but we never found it.

 

I took the kids to the peace rally – great turn-out. All the children had gas balloons with origami paper cranes tied to them. When they let them go it was a great spectacle. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when John and Rob’s balloons kept getting tangled and they had a punch-up in the middle of a peace rally. I pretended not to know them.

For me, the highlight of the year was taking the kids on a field trip with the sculpture department to Wilgie Mia, the site of an Aboriginal ochre mine just north of Cue. It is the biggest ochre mine in Australia and later when I went with an ANZUS expedition to Central Australia we sometimes came across ochre balls (balls of ochre bound with saliva). The anthropologist on the expedition said ochre from Wilgie Mia was taken all over Australia. The ochre mine was huge with a large variety of ochres. In a niche, high up in the wall of the cave was the body of an elder in a casket. It was obviously a very sacred place and we were intruders. It would not be allowed today.

 We all chose an isolated place to set up camp. The kids and I could have been the only people on earth and didn’t see other people unless we wanted to. It was an enriching experience, having time to notice things. It was fascinating to see the kids almost melting into the environment, completely at one with the bush. Both spent a lot of time preoccupied with the campfire and I don’t think there was a cross word all week. It made me conscious of two things: firstly, I loved being ‘alone’ and needed long periods of being alone to make sense of the world. Secondly that being ‘alone’ is considered unwise for a woman. A man can be alone in the bush and nobody questions it but a woman is ‘inviting trouble’. I resented that and vowed to one day learn self-defence so I could feel free. (I never got around to it.)

Planting fruit trees and growing veges – a steep learning curve but love growing things.

On the 29^th April 12-year-old, Keisha had to be put down. We were all very sad. She had been part of the family but she had a good life including having a litter of pups, some of which went to friends.

 

 

 

 

 

 

EP has returned to us along with a friend, Bluey. They have grown enough to forage for themselves but we give them a bottle a day to keep them coming back. It was lovely to see the kid’s enraptured faces as we brought them home. Each sitting in the back seat of the car with a joey in a ‘pouch’ on their laps.

 

 

At the end of 1983, Rob turned six. He requested a rose for his birthday. Angelic! This is the kid who admitted in a year five ‘autobiography’ that during this year he teased another boy because his skin was dark (called him sunburnt) and that he pulled out the chair of the girl who sat in front causing her to sit on the floor