Chapter 39 Far Horizons

                                                    Chapter 39   Far Horizons 

Steph was only fifteen months old and Ashley was just over five when we arrived to take up the new job towards the end of January 1978. Peter was the new officer-in-charge and I had responsibility as the wife of the officer-in-charge, which was quite significant in those days. The wife of an OIC in the country was expected to support her husband on the money-raising side of the work, answer phones or radio when necessary, and generally provide support where needed. The Sunshine Coast was the fastest growing area in Queensland at the time. Consequently, the workload of the ambulance was also increasing rapidly. 

    The residence was above the Centre, so it was rather a big house. It had carpets, but no curtains. I bought the cheapest fabrics I could find, and made curtains myself. To combat the harsh western sun shining directly in the kitchen window in the afternoons, we had a pretty Holland-blind patterned with pink apple blossoms made.

    One disadvantage of living in the ambulance residence was the lack of backyard space. Over a small strip of grass outside the downstairs laundry between the main building and the huge shed at the back, was a retractable clothes line. We lived very close to the front footpath which meant that passers-by could take a wander in if they were so inclined. We lost a lot of clothes off the line and kids toys from the yard while we lived there. The massive back shed housed cars, the men's kitchen,  tables and chairs, and other miscellaneous equipment. We parked our car there and I became very proficient at backing the car in between the posts, as that was the only practical way of parking.

    Soon after our arrival, Snuffles also moved in. It was our theory that he had jumped out of a car and run away while on holidays with his family, because he always had a great fear of cars. He arrived on our back porch one day, slinking his large, well fed feline body close to the wall and sniffing the air as he walked stealthily towards our backdoor. I could see at a glance he was somebody's well fed pet so I tried to chase him away. In fact one day I even chased him with the broom. But something about our place must have appealed to him, for after about his fifth visit, I realized we had been adopted.

     "All right,” I made it plain to him, “You can live here, but you'll have to be content to live outside." He seemed happy with the arrangement.

    I had been brought up to believe that animals lived outside. Our cats on the farm had always been allowed in during the day, but spent their nights out. And our dogs wouldn’t have dared set foot inside the house, night or day.

     Snuffles did encounter some hazards though. One day he found some abandoned fish lying around in someone else's backyard and decided to eat it. The trouble was the catch still had the hook and line attached. A couple of the ambulance officers rescued him, wrapped him in a towel to immobilise him, and extracted the hook from his mouth. Then they untangled the line from his body. That cat was always blasé about his nine lives!

    One summer day he was sleeping on the cool concrete in the back shed while I was out in the car. Unfortunately he chose our car space to plonk his body. I came in from shopping and backed straight over one of his back legs. I heard a bloodcurdling yowl, and was horrified to see what I'd done. The car tyre had taken the skin off a large patch on the inside of one of his back legs. Poor Snuffy lay around for days licking at the wound and I was stunned once again at how quickly he healed.

    Sometimes the men moved the cars out of the shed to use it as a lecture room for first aid classes, and with regular monotony they set up chairs and tables during the day for me to conduct 'Hoy.'  This is a card game similar to bingo. The women from the Ladies Auxiliary sat around tables with their cards, while I sat up the front, calling, “One diamond... six hearts...” Eventually one would empty her hand and call out, "Hoy!” Then I’d stand up and carry my little tray of goods to their table, so they could select a prize.

    It was another money raising venture common to small ambulance centres. During the week while I was shopping, I bought things for the prize tray, such as packets of rice, flour, sugar, or other small items like torch batteries, for about a dollar. I also had a supply of little, plastic sandwich bags and I divided up the rice or flour into small lots. The old ladies loved their little treats from the tray, but my mind was preoccupied with the ironing I had to do upstairs or one of the other countless jobs that was waiting for me when I returned ‘home.’

    When we first moved in at Maroochydore, Peter had only two other officers to assist him. He worked six days a week, had only Sundays off and was on call twenty-four hours a day.

    One autumn Sunday soon after we started there, we decided to go for a walk to the beach with the children. They were excited. As we passed the plant room downstairs, the senior officer stopped Peter to talk to him. Ashley refused to hold my hand, and trotted on ahead, ignoring my calls to come back. I had no choice but to keep walking with Stephanie on my hip. When we reached the sand of the beach, I turned around to look for Peter, but he was nowhere in sight. 

    Ashley ran into the water, and within minutes completely disappeared. I was distraught. I kept scanning the heads of the bathers. It was a bleak day and there weren't many in the water. Because it was a Sunday, there were no lifeguards on duty and no flags. There seemed to be about five young boys, all blonde, in the water, but they each had a surf board. I couldn't see Ashley anywhere but thankfully, after what seemed like a lifetime, Peter arrived beside me. The two of us set off hurrying along the edge of the water, searching.

     At last we saw him, about 100 yards ahead, stumbling out of the water. A rip must have carried him away up the beach and from a long way off he staggered up to us. 

    He was almost sobbing, and we will never forget his words. "I was crawling on the bottom! My legs are soooo, so tired."  I sent up a silent prayer of thanks that Ashley had survived yet another brush with the ocean.

                                                                --0-

    The following year, 1979, we decided to take our caravan on a long six-week tour to Melbourne. My parents joined us, travelling in their own caravan, and to maintain communication while we were driving, Dad bought two CB radios and installed them in the cars. It was a wonderful trip. We all set off together in May, via Goondiwindi where we joined the Newell highway. At G. we were told that further south there was a locust plague. A local garage assisted the men to attach mesh in front of the radiators of our cars as a screen.

    Sure enough, a short way down, we met them. We had never seen anything like it.  Thousands of large, brown grasshoppers hitting the windscreen is uncanny. I got the feeling I was on the Starship Enterprise and we were in a meteor shower! Eventually it passed and we travelled between endless fields of yellow sunflowers. It seems very sad to me that those beautiful sunflowers which yielded healthy sunflower oil, have now been replaced by fields of yellow, genetically contrived canola, which yields oil, from my research, suitable only for engines. I believe it is clever marketing that has seen it foisted on the food markets of many Western countries in the form of cooking oil and margarine.

    The highway down through New South Wales was long, flat, straight and at times seemed endless. (unusual on Australian roads.) With the sanity that returns when arriving at a destination after a long hard drive though, we realised it was a fast trip. We stopped at Parkes to view the big dish, the sixty-four metre radio telescope, which was fascinating not only to the children, and which we now know played a vital role in the moon landing, and which featured in the great Australian movie, The Dish.

       Unused to the colours, we delighted in the landscapes unfolding in front of us, in the range of yellows, reds and orange tones of the poplars along the roads, so different to the Queensland landscape.

    We stopped at Gilgandra in the Dubbo shire for an overnight stay in a caravan park, only to discover their huge observatory, so the next evening we took the children and had a wonderful time looking through their big telescope at the stars.

    Crossing the border into Victoria, bathed in the magnificent sight of the gilding autumn forest, we continued south through the Dandenong ranges, fascinated by the splendid  height of the eucalypts, so straight, reaching for the sky.

     Notwithstanding, we were stung by the very severe cold, and the penetrating damp under our feet at the rest area. One question troubled me: why do councils in freezing cold climates persist in erecting stainless steel toilet bowls with no seat on them in public toilets?! It is beyond me! Don't they realize what a shock it is to us heat-hardened Queenslanders?

    However, it wasn't long before we settled into a caravan park in Melbourne and our journey of togetherness and discovery continued. Pete and I loved being in Melbourne, immersing ourselves in nostalgia for a couple of weeks. What we didn't realise though, was that Dad was suffering agoraphobia. He'd always been a bit skitish in cities, sort of claustrophobic. As a consequence, Mum was also suffering anxiety, worrying over him. I guess that's why he loved the farm, wide-open spaces and no one to hassle you. No lawns to mow. No appearances to keep up.

    We also later learnt that my poor father had been a nervous wreck as we drove through cities on the way down. As a matter of fact when we first reached Melbourne, he tried so hard to keep up with us that he became stranded in the middle of an intersection once, holding up all the cross traffic with his car and caravan cutting off the carriageway. Pete wasn't taking particular care to stay with him because we didn't realise how unsure of himself he was. Young and thoughtless! Still, they carried on without complaint.

     One evening Peter and Dad took Ashley, now seven, to an ice skating rink. Mum and I stayed home with Stephanie who was just three and I looked forward eagerly to the return of the boys, expecting to hear an exciting report of the ice skating. However, it seemed to be, from Ashley's point of view, quite underwhelming. On return, Pete reported that our son had no trouble keeping his feet on the ice, but he just walked around the rink all the time, eventually glad it was all over and he could be done with it and go home again!

    After ten days in Melbourne, we drove out to St Andrews, to visit Peter's friends, Brian and Naomi, and their two children. They lived in a huge mud brick house that Brian had built. A building of mudbricks was a novelty, and we all tried our hand at spinning on Naomi’s spinning wheel. In the evenings we sat around their potbelly stove in the middle of the lounge room, Naomi continued her spinning and the men told yarns. On the weekends they took us to the markets, where Naomi sold home-made pies, and Brian sharpened saws to make a few extra dollars. For the most part, I enjoyed my time with them. except the incident when I got a leech on me while squatting amongst the dripping wet bushes with my pants down! 

    They had a few acres of land, were practically self-sufficient, and across from their house was a steep mountainside of tall bush timber. Their house was built amongst trees in  thick bush which seemed to drip moisture constantly from frequent misty rain showers. I was cold all the time. I never seemed to get warm until Pete and I went to bed at night.  Typical Queenslander! 

     Ironically, Mum's greatest concern was that a bushfire would sweep down the range and burn us all in our beds! When the subject was mentioned, Brian maintained that a bushfire moves more quickly up a mountain than down and because of that he felt the risk was minimal. Unfortunately, my mother’s concern turned out to be not unfounded, and not such a silly notion when the conditions are right, which unfortunately came to pass in 2009. Pete and I saw the remains of the house on a TV report of the Black Saturday bushfires. Brian and Naomi have long since moved elsewhere. Unfortunately we lost contact a long time ago.

    After leaving St Andrews, we headed down the spectacular Great Ocean Road and spent an overnight stay at Port Campbell. As we awoke the next morning we all breathed in the bracing, fresh sea-air and felt exhilarated after the confines of the city. Peter and Dad drove up to a local dairy farm where they bought billy cans of fresh cream and milk. Dad wandered along the sea edge, exploring, and the children sat on the lush, thick grass just outside the caravan, throwing crumbs to the seagulls. Even now I still love the snow white and pure grey of seagulls’ feathers. That morning I was struck by the contrast against the rich, green of the turf.

    We carried on slowly, exploring all the inlets of the Great Ocean Road. We stood on ‘London Bridge,’ which has since been partly washed away by the relentless crashing ocean. We admired nature’s famous sculpted, sandstone shoreline known as the Twelve Apostles.

    Apparently at the time of the collapse of London Bridge, some tourists were standing out on the end of it. When the middle fell in, they had to be rescued by helicopter. It must have been nightmarish for them, wondering if the earth under their feet was also going to suddenly give way, and commit them to the boiling surf.

      Further along, we stood and stared down into the Blow Hole, where some young tourists fell down and died just a few years later. There but for the grace of God.......
There is also a photo of Ashley sitting on a crumbling sandstone cliff edge, which must have seemed like a good idea at the time, and it made a great photo.

    But when we saw that palm-sweating image we gasped in horror, and when my father saw it he exclaimed, "God Almighty!  What fools we were letting the child sit there!"

    Eventually we made it to my friend Jean in Warrnambool, down along the southern coast of Victoria, where she lived with her mother. Jean and I had been students in the same midwifery class of 1966 at the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne. They were wonderful, gracious hosts and squired us around the town and tourist spots. I have a precious photo of Dad standing at a vantage point staring at the Brown Lakes, a tourist attraction just outside of the city.

    Before we left Victoria we decided to have a day in the snow, and took a trip up to Mount Donna Buang. Dad and I determinedly climbed to the top of the lockout tower and the cold from the wind was unbelievable, but we stayed there long enough to take a photo. The looks on our faces tell the story.

     Heading home, we drove up the coast of New South Wales as far as Bega, famous for its cheese, where we turned off and slowly ascended Black Mountain. The steep drive was such a hard pull for the caravan, the only reason the car engine didn't overheat was because the temperature outside was so cold. We drove through Jindabyne in the Snowy Mountains, admiring the huge Jindabyne Dam, part of the historic Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme. At a caravan park in Cooma for the night, where the taps are plumbed in under ground because of the freezing cold, the locals told us the snow would fall in about three weeks. My hands were red with the cold and refused to warm up, even though I sat in front of our little bar heater in the caravan until my shins burned.

     Every time I hear about a caravan fire I think of the number of times I have sat in front of small bar heaters in small spaces; and I think of the crocheted rug made from nylon knitting ribbon for one of my children. During one northern winter I found it slung over the heater and slowly melting. I must have narrowly avoided a fire. I was one of the lucky ones.

    As we progressed Dad played photographer with his movie camera, over doing it at all the sites along the way, and capturing the family at every opportunity.

    From the Snowy Mountains we followed the road down to Canberra, our national capital, where we stayed long at their famous war memorial. The men loved it, hated leaving, and vowed to go back one day. Then we carried on up to Sydney and stayed there for a few days in a caravan park at Lane Cove. 

    Mum looked forward to a tour through the Opera House, but Dad’s agoraphobia was taking hold again and his confidence deserted him. We only found out later that he would have taken her through the Opera house if we had gone with them, but because we had been before we declined to go, and that meant she missed out too. As a matter of fact Peter and I were feeling a little claustrophobic ourselves and wanted to get away on our own and have a walk around the city. I have regretted that move ever since, because I didn't understand the situation. You do those things when you are young and inexperienced at life. The trouble is you never get that time back.

    As we neared the Queensland border, the weather was noticeably warming up.  Somewhere in the north of New South Wales we stopped at a holiday theme park to give our son a ride on a horse. At that time he had thick, blonde wavy hair which I was reluctant to have cut.

    "Has she ridden a horse before?" asked the manager. I knew in that instant his golden curls would have to go!

     Further along the coast of northern New South Wales we made a brief stop in a tiny town called Pottsville, where Dad browsed in a quaint little art gallery. Eventually he called me to come and choose a painting. I chose one with an old house and a road. He bought us the painting for $100 as a thank you gift for taking them with us on the holiday. It hangs in my lounge room today, a constant reminder of times gone by.