Chapter 20 Hazards in the Grass
In my early school years I had some friends to play one day from a neighbour's farm. I got so engrossed in the game I put off going to the toilet. When Mum called us all for lunch I set off like a jet engine. I had not a moment to lose, but I overran the door and slammed my head into the corner post. The sharp edge split my forehead open causing a nasty contusion. In time it healed fine, but left a vertical scar on my forehead that lasted for years.
Amused by my predictable answer, the teacher asked on a regular basis, "How did you get that scar, Gayle?"
"I ran into the toilet, sir."
Not until much later did I understand the reason that he could never quite disguise the sly smirk on his face.
I didn’t often have children come up to play at the farm, but one day a neighbour phoned.
“The boys want to come up with their new bikes.”
The two Edgertons boys, nine and eight, duly arrived. The eldest, Jimmy, tended to be portly and overweight and had plenty to say for himself. Round faced with big eyes, Basil was more timid, following his brother around.
Jimmy suggested a game of tag, which involved the boys riding their bikes while I chased after them on foot. I was a year older than Jimmy, so they probably thought that made us equal.
It’s worthy to note here that not far from our house, there was a horse paddock that hadn’t held any horses until recently. When the paddock was unused, Dad had removed a panel of fencing and the men had been walking through on their way to work, which created a recognizable track. Some weeks before the boys came to play, he had required the paddock for a horse that he wanted to keep close at hand for riding, so he had strung up a single strand of barbed wire across the panel.
All I remember is that Jimmy had his face in the air laughing heartily at getting away from me. Then he suddenly diverted down the little track through the grass towards the barbed wire. Panic stricken, I yelled a warning into the wind, knowing it was lost to Jimmy and knowing full well imminent disaster was upon us. Desperately I ran towards the fence. He lay on the ground holding his throat as I screamed for Mum. We got him to the house and I could see a deep cut on his pudgy upper arm. I was horrified to see the fat bulging from the cut.
Jimmy repeated “My throat – I’ve cut my throat!”
I couldn’t see any cut under his chin for the chubby joules, and I reassured him, “Never mind your throat Jimmy, look at your arm!”
Nevertheless Jimmy insisted his throat was cut and eventually we took a peek at the area he was holding, and sure enough a barb had cut his throat. Mum bathed his wounds and bandaged his arm as best she could, as Jimmy all the while remonstrated as to the stupidity of having a single strand of wire across a panel of fencing. Mum rang Fritz, his father, to tell him the good news, and he was inclined to shrug it off until she insisted that he take Jimmy to the doctor for a tetanus booster.
Jimmy told me later that the doctor had complimented whoever had done the first aid, so once again Mum’s singlet bandages had saved the day. But Fritz felt it necessary to remind my poor frazzled mother that he had expected that she would at least take care of his children!
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Dad decided out of the blue one day to buy some goats, and we had about a half dozen for a few years. We enjoyed having the goats but one was an old billy with long horns and an aggressive nature. On the day the bank manager came to visit, he and Dad were sitting at the table on the verandah having a cup of tea and a long talk. Hearing ‘tok tok tok’ outside, Mum took a peek through the kitchen window and was horrified to see the billy goat on top of the bank manager's car!
She got herself into a position where she could attract Dad's attention without the bank manager noticing. Then she pointed wildly and urgently out to the car, and Dad excused himself and walked casually outside, where he soon persuaded the goat to vacate the area. Mum engaged the bank manager in animated conversation, and he sat sipping his tea, none the wiser
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To her horror Mum discovered straight after breakfast one morning that two-year-old Owen and a new puppy were missing. They had apparently wandered off while she was cooking. She set off searching frantically for them and after a time located them about 500 yarns away across the road amongst the trees of a neighbouring property.
Owen hurriedly tried to reassure her, "Taking puppy, Mummy, puppy for walk..."but Mum paddled his bottom all the why home, following closely, as he ran as hard as his little legs could carry him.
I must have looked distraught because she explained, "I have to teach him love, I can't have him running away. Next time I might not be able to find him."
Another time while I was at school and Carlo was still with us, the three men were working close to a field of sorghum. Mum had gone to a CWA meeting and she had left Owen with them while she was away. Dad decided that Carlo could mind Owen while he and Larry worked. This plan would have been successful except that Carlo fell asleep and of course Owen wandered off through the stalks of sorghum. When Mum returned she found that mounted police were on the property searching for the baby, along with neighbours, Dad, Larry, and Carlo. At last Owen wandered out from the stalks of grain into the open, much to everyone's relief.
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One season Dad grew a ten-acre crop of beautiful lush lucerne, or alfalfa, to make hay for the cattle. When it was tall and lush with little purple flowers showing amongst the tops of the dark green velvety stalks, he cut an acre or two with a scythe. Just at that stage Granddad Jorgensen, who loved to spend time on the farm, arrived for a holiday. Dad enjoyed showing off his prize crop and his latest achievements to Grand-dad.
One early spring morning soon after Grand-dad’s arrival, Dad asked Mum, “Make a billy of tea and pack us some biscuits will ya Peg? Dad ‘n I are going up to the lucerne paddock.”
It was Sunday so I wasn’t at school, and they agreed to take Owen and me with them, on the condition we rode up on the back of the truck. Mum was concerned about the risk of us falling off, so there was a bit of a discussion about it before we left. We all arrived safe and sound and the two men went ahead, talking as they walked. I held Owen’s hand as we followed them, scrambling under the barbed wire fence and heading off across the cut lucerne. The day was rapidly heating up, promising to be bright and sunny after the cool night.
When Owen started to pull back and drag on my hand, I admonished him impatiently, "Come on Owen, hurry up!" I looked down to see what the hold up was, and immediately screamed in panic, "SNAKE!!"
I will never forget the reaction of my father as long as I live. He wheeled round on the spot, already with his boot up to his knee undoing the leather shoe lace, as he shouted at me, "Did it bite him? Did it bite him?"
Then he lifted Owen up in his arms and as his little legs dangled we could see the blood running down his leg on the inside of his right ankle from four puncture wounds.
He told me years later, “I couldn’t walk. I tried to drag my leg forward, but something was holding me back.”
Immediately Dad laid our little toddler on the ground and tied the shoe lace above his knee.
Scooping Owen up in his arms, he yelled, "Come on!" and started racing for the truck.
Grand-dad called out, "Go on son, I’ll walk!"
What happened next is imprinted on my brain like a terrifying nightmare. Dad drove the truck hard as fast as it would go. As we bounced up out of the first little gully, he shouted at me, "Suck the wound and spit out the window!"
I did, for all I was worth. Suck, spit, suck, spit, suck, spit!
In a few minutes we were at the gate near the farmhouse. We both jumped out of the truck, Dad carrying Owen. Mum heard the truck and ran out the back door. She had been worried about Owen falling off the truck and breaking his arm.
So shocked was I, that as soon as I saw her I yelled out, "It wouldn't have bitten him only he walked on it!" Then she knew the awful truth.
I heard her screaming as she ran back into the house. By the time we made it to the back stairs, she had a dish of hot water and a razor blade ready.
Owen kept repeating in his little baby language, "Tick, tick," as he thought a stick had jabbed him in the leg, and the picture stays in my mind of him lying on his back on the kitchen floor kicking his little sandaled feet and crying.
Mum too sucked the wound, then wasted no time cutting through the bites with the blade, first across the top two, then across the bottom two. In a vain effort to help she added Condy's crystal to the water as she washed the wound. Following standard instructions for snakebite at the time, Dad released the tourniquet about every two minutes, for some seconds. In their anxiety, they probably had the tourniquet so tight it would have caused Owen excruciating pain.
Being Sunday the local telephone exchange was only open between nine and eleven a.m. Even though the drama happened between those hours, the couple who ran the Gillman Creek exchange had gone to mass in Green Springs.
Poor Dad was so distraught he sat there screaming down the telephone receiver, "Are you there, Carri!? Carri are you there?! For God's sake answer, Carri!"
Finally they decided to ring Mum's close friend Jean, who was on the same party line. She lived three miles away, and Dad asked her to come to the hospital with them. When I asked Mum in later years why they called Jean at such a time, she couldn't really answer, but I guess it was a desperate need for support in an emergency they never dreamt they'd have to face.
Half a mile below our farm was a turnoff where Jean would drive up from the bottom road and meet them. We sat there as the time ground slowly by. Seconds felt like hours.
Suddenly Mum turned around and said to me, "You go back and make a cup of tea for Grand-dad." I was devastated that I had to leave them, and with a heavy heart I set off, taking a shortcut across the paddocks to the house.
“Why Mum?"I asked later as an adult, “Why did I have to go back?”
“I don't know why I did that. As soon as you left I worried myself sick about you. I thought to myself: ‘what have I done? She could be bitten by a snake too’.”
I reassured her, "Oh no, I wouldn't have been bitten by a snake. I checked every blade of grass on my way home and I searched every log for snakes."
When I got home I did just as I was told. Worried sick about Owen, I made a cup of tea for Grand-dad. He had returned from the lucerne paddock and brought the dead snake. It was a king brown, over 6 feet long and as thick as a young sapling. No doubt it had been lying in the sun, warming up after a chilly night, and obviously didn't appreciate the disturbance.
Jean arrived a minute or two after I left and they started their frantic journey. When they got to Green Springs, Dad raced up the stairs to the post mistress, who also ran the Green Springs telephone exchange, and asked her to call the ambulance and the hospital at Assville. Then he got back in the car and drove.
Minutes later Owen lost consciousness, and on the way to Assville he frequently convulsed and vomited green bile. It was a terrible time in my parent's life and Mum has related the details of that nightmarish trip to me many times. A few miles out of Assville they met up with the ambulance, where the driver replaced their makeshift tourniquet with a rubber band especially for the purpose.
When they reached Assville the ambulance drove around to the doctor's surgery, which was on the far northern outskirts of the town. The doctor had no prior knowledge of their arrival and was out in his backyard gardening. His wife was hanging washing on the line.
The doctor spoke to his wife, "It's a snake bite."
"Oh my God."
With the doctor on board, the ambulance rushed through the town to the hospital on the far western outskirts. The hospital wasn’t expecting them either, but the doctor soon found the brown snake antivenom and read the instructions.
My parents were beside themselves with anxiety and impatience. Mum was almost hysterical and the doctor spoke harshly to her in an effort to calm her down. He criticised the way she had cut the wound, across the muscle instead of vertically. At least Dad knew what type of snake it was for sure. Brown snakes were common on the farm, along with red bellied blacks, carpet snake's, and green tree snakes.
Finally, the antiveniom was administered, and slowly, Owen regained consciousness.
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