A Dooralong Gem. Vale Dot Wightman.

Three Boys

Jack Wightman died about fifteen years ago and the dairy died too. Not that Jack being there was pivotal. On the contrary, in a way, it survived despite him. It was the halving of the price of bulk milk that killed that dairy and hundreds like it.
But the timing was right for Dot. All her children had left home except Kevin, the youngest so she became semi retired and lived off her ‘shop’. Beef cattle replaced the diary herd but she could never stop farming. Odd, considering how progressive she had been as a young woman, she reverted to methods used by her parents and grandparents. I suspect she understood about carbon footprints long before anyone uttered that phrase. She was smart and she was wise and she walked the walk

Around the house, that had no hot water, no kitchen sink and no water supply except one old steel tank, she grew her veggies and bred her ducks, chooks and the occasional turkey. Duck eggs and fowl eggs were placed under bantam mothers to hatch, because ‘bantams make the best mothers’ so around the yard wandered a motley mixture of species that seemed happily unaware they were being manipulated by the wily old woman who fed them. She was a true farmer who understood her animals and plants like nobody I knew.

Born in the farmhouse, she grew up there and took over the main role when her father died, buying a Grey Ferguson tractor in 1947, probably the first in the valley. When she went to high school, Jack was the school bus driver and Dot was his passenger. Some in the community never fully forgave him for marrying Dot, much younger, pretty as a picture and heir to the property. They said the roles were reversed when he moved in. He became the passenger.
But Jack, whatever some thought of him, helped her to the end. I say helped, because Dot was always the boss.

Her children, all five were bright and some super bright like Heather who studied mathematics and became a computer whiz and trouble shooter for BHP. But before she became too busy, she worked for me.
I met Dot at a community meeting where in those days she seemed to be the secretary of everything and asked if she knew any kids interested in zucchini picking, so she sent me Heather. Heather was not only a top student, she was a top worker as were all Dot’s children and every one of them worked for me at one time or another except John the eldest who I didn’t meet until his mother’s funeral a few weeks ago.

A couple of acres of zucchinis is easy to plant but takes a lot of picking and needs picking every day, so I asked the kids to see if they could find some more pickers. Next day, Kevin, Dot’s youngest turned up with two mates so I put each newcomer with an older person to learn the ropes and we got on with it.

After a while, I sensed something was wrong and looked up to see one lad throw a zucchini at another, so I warned him. All seemed to go well for a while until I found another of the three hiding in the vines and lobbing some big ones at another kid then all three started an all out war with my precious Zucchinis as ammunition.

I had no option but to send them home. Just as they walked off Jack and Dot strolled onto the paddock. They stopped for a minute to watch Kevin leaving with the other kids then came on to where I was working.
‘Nearly finished?’ asked Jack.
I looked across the paddock at the acres yet to be picked.
‘No mate, nowhere near finished, but I had to send the boys home.’
‘What happened?’ asked Dot.
‘They were throwing fruit at each other. I warned them a couple of times, but they kept buggerisin' around, so I had to send them home. Sorry.’

Jack was silent for a moment. He took a long look at the departing boys, still pushing each other, laughing and playing as they went, then turned back and offered me this little gem.

‘You know, if yer get a boy, yer got a boy. If yer get two boys, yer got half a boy and if yer get three boys, yer got no boys at all!’

Pic borrowed from here.

Dying to say no.

This true story has no funny twist or punch line. It is a tragedy, the telling of whch was prompted by Gabrielle Brydon's posts on mental illness.

Going back a bit and omitting names to spare some good people pain, I recall the many suicides, all men, tragedies that happened during the twenty-five years I spent in the small and to me, supportive community of the Dooralong Valley.

This one triggered a long period of reflection and I pass on my thoughts for your consideration.

My story concerns a young man who seemed to have it all. He was famous, commanded huge fees for his daredevil motor cycle show and seemed to be the master of his destiny. I met him when he called in to see his father, who was working on my property at the time.

When he stepped out of his Corvette, I was surprised to see how petite he was. Almost feminine looking with features, had they been on a girl would have been pretty. His persona was in stark contrast to his father’s big bluff English Midland. I was surprised by his gentle manner. It did not fit the daredevil image but it was the stress in his sad young face that came back to haunt me a week later.

His dad had just signed him up for a very lucrative tour of England to follow his current commitments. Then the headlines shocked Australia. I read that he booked into a hotel in Melbourne, bought a gun and shot himself dead. His father was devastated. He had lost his child, always tragic for a parent, and was totally at a loss to understand why his son, with so much to live for, had become so depressed he blew his brains out.

So, why did he do it? Nobody knows for sure because he said nothing and I think that is the clue. Here is where my ponderings took me.

Imagining myself jumping a motor cycle over twenty one buses night after night for years, I realised there would come a time after yet another close shave, when the bike did not quite hit full power and with the target ramp coming up a bit short, fear would replace exhilaration. Doubt is death to a daredevil. At that point I think I would have been over it and retired.

But wait a minute. I remember as a child doing dangerous things for my dad. I trusted him to keep me safe and in retrospect much of that trust was misplaced, so I do understand how it could have been, that this young man with the soft face and shy personality and with the stakes so high, could not say no to his dad.

Years had been invested, as his backyard jumps grew from fantasy fate-tempting tests of his worth into a marketable asset. It was fun to begin with and for a kid who craved approval, his fear of danger was probably less than fear of paternal disappointment. Then, as expectations grew into millions of dollars, the little power he had over his own life was abandoned. Calling a halt was no longer an option. He feared death less than her feared disappointing his father.

I am not blaming his dad here. Had he suspected his son’s mental state, he would have cancelled everything immediately. But like everyone in the team, he was carried along by euphoria and saw no reason to question his own motives at the time. The kid had always been a daredevil and apparently loved it. To see past that into his son’s psyche was beyond his ability or experience, so he never pondered why this inexplicably brave boy did what he did, apparently welcoming each escalation of danger. He could not have realised his son could have been risking all for fear of losing his dad’s approval.

So what is the message here? I guess you are ahead of me and maybe always were wiser. Although he is still alive, I lost a son too, not to suicide as we define it, but to the long drawn out suicide of heroin addiction. I can’t say which is worse; losing a child to sudden violence, or watching his slow destruction over days, weeks, years and decades. It is a sadness I carry always, along with the suspicion, that had I listened more then, things might have been different and now it is too late. Hindsight may be a wonderful thing but it can be exceeding cruel.

A Dog's Breakfast.

Cattlemen become hardened to cruelty as they push terrified beast onto trucks, through crushes and finally into the abattoir. Most people sitting down to a prime steak are vaguely aware of all that, but rarely get to see behaviors like this one, hinting at intelligence that surprised and inspired.

In spring, stone fruit must be culled or all our peaches and nectarines would be tiny things with big seeds and scant flesh. It seems that each tree has just so much sugar to go around which it spreads over as many fruit as it bears. So by culling to an optimum number, the farmer can achieve optimum fruit size. But it must be done as soon as fruit is large enough to rub off the branch to not waste energy on fruit that will be culled. So when the time comes, the farmer is at it each morning as soon as he can see.

In the Dooralong Valley, spring mornings are chilled by cold air trapped in low lying paddocks. Layers of mist, soft cotton sheets floating, thin above frosty grass delineate the strata. Warmer air at the hilltops keeps the cold air down until sunshine caresses the ground, releasing mists to rise and dissipate into invisible humidity. It was through such layered mist I walked, secateurs ready for the occasional overgrown branch or water-sprout when I became aware of the drama being played out beyond the orchard fence.

Covered-wagon style, about thirty cows were in a circle, heads lowered, bellowing their distress, presenting a wall of horns ready to gore and toss any who came close. Three wild dogs circled them, running fast, tiring the cows as they constantly adjusted their line of heads to watch and deter at each pass. Fatigue weakened their frantic hoarseness as fdaster and faster the dogs ran the perimeter searching for a gap. Sensing the rising panic they challenged the line causing it to buckle. Gaps appeared that would widen to let them through and they joined up to exploit weaknesses. Once they were in, organised defence would break apart. In the confusion each cow would search for her own and three dogs would be too much for one cow as they tore at the throat of the unlucky baby. Inside were the thirty calves, all bleating, picking up on the fear, wild eyed and huddled mid-circle.

I ran home for my gun. Two minutes later I was back at the fence ready to drop at least one and frighten off the rest, but a clear target was impossible through the dust, mist and swirtling bodies. Then one looked my way and without any apparent signal, they were all on the other side of the cows and gone. I was through the fence in a moment but by the time I reached the circle’s far side it was as if they had never been. Cows were breaking away and calves rejoining their mothers to suckle and be comforted.

Within minutes all was quite, cows grazing and calves cavorting around them, a picture of sylvan perfection. Not bad for a herd of dumb animals... maybe not as dumb as we would like to believe! Pass the sauce please.

Hoodoo in Dooralong.

Homonym.
“You do
Voodoo!”
“Who do?”
“That too!”

Or, 10,000 Men Praying.

With so much publicity being attracted to predatory behaviors of some unbalanced individuals within religious organizations, it may be time for Catholicism to rethink its insistence on celibacy. Evidence indicates that forcing human beings to deny natural instincts distorts their moral boundaries.

Looking behind the abusers, one must wonder how many non-abusing, but 'celibate' men and women go through their lives carrying the guilt of homosexuality, masturbation or at the very least, ‘shameful thoughts’.

However, sexual abuse is not the only aberration closed societies, religious and otherwise, produce when they exclude the averaging influence of the wider human community.

One only has to recall the Jonestown tragedy to be reminded of the hundreds of lives lost, including children, who as Richard Dawkins points out, are not Labor/Liberal/Christian/Muslim/Hindu children. They are just children, not yet having the maturity to choose political party or religious affiliation. But they were killed along with their demented parents, all victims of a closed sect whose thinking became so skewed that it led to the suicide-murder of hundreds of their own.

Of course, skewed thinking occurs wherever people choose faith over evidence and close their minds to challenging information and ideas. Closed minds can produce bizarre results. Here is one. It concerns the then recently deceased (ex) Australian Attorney-General in the Whitlam Government, (picture) who successfully changed the Family Law Act to introduce no-blame divorce, removing the need for farcical games, played to establish fault if none existed to comply with the law as they attempted to end toxic marriages.

This conversation happened.

Time: A week after Murphy’s death from cancer.
Place: On the roof of our Community Hall, me helping the tradesman rewire its outside light fittings.

He said: "We got rid of Murphy!"
Me: (expecting a joke) "Murphy’s Law?"
He: "No, Lionel Murphy. Ex Attorney-General, anti Christ. He changed God’s divorce laws!"
Me: "He died from cancer. What do you mean you got rid of him?"
He: "Ten Thousand Men Praying!"
(I'm supposed to join the dots.)
Me: "I've no idea what you're talking about."
He: "Every day at the same time, ten thousand men pray to God for the same thing. We’ve been praying for Murphy's death and we got him!"
Me: "WTF! That's outrageous!"
He: (apparently not hearing my outrage) “We're going after Bob Hawke next!”

Now, thirty years on, we can safely claim that ten thousand men praying was not enough to knock off old Bob, ex ACTU President, ex Prime Minister, ex drunk and full-on larrikin, who is still going strong, enjoying his golden years with his lover and partner, Blanche d’Alpuget. However, when Bob does finally kick the bucket, despite, by my calculation, over one hundred million unsuccessful man/prayers for his early demise, the spiritual terrorists will claim credit.
Such is the nature of delusion.

Stomping and other sports.

While Lyle Gilmore was the principal of Dooralong School, at age about forty, he continued to play rugby. Monday morning he often turned up with a bruise or a sore knee, but on this day, his face was swollen and torn, with a Betadine stained and stitched cut starting from is mouth and ending at his left ear. His face looked like a hand-made wallet.
‘A hundred and sixty eight stitches.’ he was able to mumble through diced-tomato lips.

When talking was less painful, he explained he had been ‘stomped’.
‘Stomped? You mean intentionally?’
‘Yes, intentionally.’
‘So this bastard makes a habit of ripping up people’s faces.’
‘Apparently.’
‘Can’t you sue the mongrel?’
‘He was banned for a few matches, that’s all.’
‘So behaviour that would land you in jail is OK on the sports field!’
‘Yep!’

Then last Sunday I read Plane Jane’s column in the Australian. She wrote about the pressure ARL (Rugby League) players are now under to perform extreme and spectacular collisions, risking permanent injury. She wrote about legal contact, but what about illegal contact?

Now, with video footage recording incidents of intentional foul play, good evidence is available to show if an act was intended to injure a player for the match, the season, or for life.
Intention to seriously injure was never part of any game. We now have the technology so it is time such breaches were recognized as criminal assault and dealt with in courts of law, damages awarded and punishment meted out, including fines and jail time if appropriate.

I contend that would stop intentionally inflicted injuries overnight.

However, there are some on-field encounters we cannot legislate against, but if only out of common decency, wouldn’t you think they’d get a room!?

Pics coutesy ‘Perfectly timed photos’.