Chapter !0 General entertainment

                                                   Chapter 10 General Entertainment

 Rain fell often in the Burnett, and one day after a heavy downpour when I was three or four,  Dad and Mum took me walking up through the wet bush. I loved walks, and in the background we could hear the gurgling of rushing water as it gullied down the ridge hillside, cascading into an eroded hollow. A hill of brown bubbly foam swirled on the surface of the muddy pool under the little waterfall. Dad picked me up by the underarms and dangled my feet in the  rushing, water. Oh, what a thrill What a treat! I breathed the fresh warm earthy scent deep into my lungs. Lacy, wild maidenhair fern grew across the hillside like heather, and Mum named the  grotto Maidenhair Gulley. We walked there often.
              
The land in front of the house sloped gently, and after rain or a storm, little rivulets of water ran down the hill, winding their way between the stones and miniature sand-banks. As soon as the rain cleared enough, Larry and I rushed out with little paper boats that Mum had taught us to make out of lolly papers. We crouched over our boats as they set sail down the little rivers, unhooking them off stones with our fingers, until they ended up under the wooden swing hanging from the limb of an old wilga tree at the bottom of the slope.

 My favourite walks were through the scrub, a 200 acre patch of rainforest on a far hillside visible from the house.

 “Can we go to Turkey Gully or The Salt Caves Mum?”

Wild brush turkeys stalked silently over the leaf mould like meditating monks, and The Salt Caves tasted salty too.

As Larry got older he took time out to sit alone in the scrub, listening to the silence... feeling the stillness...the whispered scratching of the nest-building turkey, the pop and creak of old rainforest trees catching the breeze in their high canopy, the crack of a whip bird or the soft cooing of plump wonga pigeons.

You can breathe in the musty atmosphere of the warm scrub, and feel the special quiet of a  noiseless, teeming  eco-culture.

On one ‘scrub walk,’ Mum found a deep blood-red lily, which she carefully scooped from the rich leaf-mouldy ground and carried home, where she proudly dug it into a small garden plot near the back stairs. A second lily came out the next morning, but to her shock and dismay it was surrounded by blowflies, and gave off the most awful stench!

She told everyone it smelled, “Like a dead cow!”

Mum was so disgusted she dug the lily out, because she couldn't stand the smell, or the blowflies! Dad always referred to the incident as “That time Mum brought home the Dead Cow Lily.”

Another love of mine was the sound of drumming rain-drops on the galvanised iron roof, especially at night lying in bed drifting off to sleep. Occasionally I could feel a tiny spot of rain on my face. This wasn't surprising because there were bullet holes in the roof, and a couple of them were right over my bed.

 “Dad! Dad! There’s a snake in the house!” Mum and I would scream, terrified, when one crawled up into the high beams.

Even a green tree snake filled me with horror. Peace was restored when Dad arrived with  the .22 rifle.

Bored for something to do one day after going to the toilet, I decided to do a bit of climbing about. Because of the wide cracks between the wall boards, Dad had propped a piece of loose ply  between the seat and the wall. I’d noticed it rattling while I was sitting there, but I thought it was the breeze. As I stood up on the seat, I came face to face with the fat, yellow head of a carpet snake with two black eyes staring straight at me! It had been crawling up between the wall and the ply, and was peering over the top. I freaked out and jumped off the seat, yelling for my mother. It wasn't long before she had immobilised him with boiling water.

That was her first line of defence against snakes, and a simmering kettle was usually at hand on the stove. I'm afraid I didn't have much sympathy for wildlife in those days; I wasn't old enough to think about the fact that we were in their environment.

One dark night, Dad took Mum and me for a walk to the bore, about two miles from the house, to bring home a bee-hive that he had discovered. He carried a kerosene lantern. On the return journey a few minutes from the house, our faithful old black cat arrived to join us, and proceeded to march ahead of our little party like a troop leader leading his embattled troops home. Outside the gate, there was a salt bush about two ruler lengths across and about one ruler high. In front of the salt bush the cat halted and leaned forward, stretching itself to its absolute full-length; with its fur standing on end, it sniffed at the top of the little shrub. Dad, in a frivolous mood, picked up a long stick and leaning forward gently touched the cat on the back leg. The cat obviously sensed danger in the salt bush, and when the stick touched its leg it thought all its Christmases had come at once. It flew straight up like a rocket!

Mum and Dad almost collapsed with laughter. Nevertheless, they approached that shrub very cautiously, and thanks to the cat, discovered a large coiled brown snake sheltering there.

These stories, and many more, were frequently repeated to visitors around the wood stove when we were all huddled in the kitchen on cold winter's evenings. Sometimes Mum prepared a hot drink for everyone and my favourite warmer-upper was hot cocoa made using fresh milk, cocoa powder and sugar. Dad had a penchant for singing sad songs around the stove in the evenings too, and little did he realize how these songs upset me. The words escape me now but one memorable song involved the story of a mother forced to catch a train, leaving her children behind. It was all I could do to keep the tears from flowing.

 Clearly, when we’re parents we’re not always aware of the impact our words or actions have on our children.

Mostly, my dad just told yarns about his boyhood in the city. I hate to admit it now, but he was obviously quite a larrikin and a show off. The houses in Brisbane at that time were  generally weatherboard Queenslander style, with steps leading up to the front door set back on a verandah. Street lighting was poor, and the boys often used the cover of darkness for their mischief. It was at a house like this with a tin roof over the front verandah, where the boys decided to play a trick on the unsuspecting old lady resident.

Apparently a group of boys constructed a door knocker using a long string with a heavy steel bolt tied on the end. That evening, while most of them hid in the bush nearby, one of the group sneaked up to the door of the house and hang the bolt over the doorknob. Back with the group he pulled on the string to cause a knocking sound on the door. They were all entertained watching the lady returning to the door each time the knocking sounded!

The boys giggled together in the bushes, but it seems they pushed their luck too far.  After the fourth knocking, the lady came out and refused to go away. She stood on the verandah so long that the boys became bored. The perpetrator impatiently gave the string one almighty tug, hoping to get his bolt back. The string broke, and the bolt flew up and hit the tin roof with a crash, which must have startled the woman nearly out of her wits! The boys panicked and took off running! (Some of them may still be running!)