JULY 8 - 10 PREVIOUS | NEXT | HOME | CONTENTS | ABOUT | SEND EMAIL Happy Homestead, Fab Farm, Kangaroo Chase Wednesday, July 8; Melbourne - Kawarren After breakfast (more Vita-Brits) I planned to take a couple of photographs of Paddy. I just had to clean my camera to remove a hair that was irritatingly present when I looked through the viewfinder. An hour later the hair was still there and had been joined by several other hairs and particles of dust, despite my best efforts with a mini-bellows. I held off on taking pictures and give up trying to clean the camera. Instead I listened to Paddy talk about my family politics. He got sidetracked and talked in pronouns so much ("her uncle," "his daughter's second cousin," "their father's brother-in-law's aunt's house's first owner's sister") that I became totally confused, gave up trying to follow, and just nodded. Please don't tell him. Paddy proposed that he take Denise and I to visit more relatives of mine. Oddly, they are not Paddy's relatives at all, since they are on my father's side of the family. Eugene (also known as Tom or Oolie), my father's brother and the eldest child in his family, emigrated to Australia in 1949 and married Mary, an Australian lass. They raised a family on a farm at Kawarren, about 3 hours west of Melbourne. Although I had met Oolie and Mary when they had visited Ireland about fifteen years earlier, I was young and had little recollection of either of them. Oolie died in Australia in 1988, when I was in my early teens. I don't think that my father knew his eldest brother very well, as there was a large difference in age between the two of them and Oolie left Ireland while my father was still a young boy. I had allegedly met a couple of my cousins when they had visited Ireland too, but they were far older than me and I was too young to remember. I was due to meet six out of my seven Australian cousins (and their families) within the next few days - Robert, Barney, Marilyn, Peter, Mick and John. I would not meet Cathy, as she lived and worked near Adelaide. Paddy knew all of them quite well, through common ties to my family, and a telephone call from my home in Ireland to Kawarren on a Christmas morning will invariably find Paddy relaxing after a large dinner in their hospitable company. Our first stop on the way to Kawarren was at Marilyn's home on the outskirts of Melbourne. She had invited Paddy, Denise and I to lunch. Apparently satisfied with my driving on the previous evening, Paddy had me drive again, although I received plenty more back-seat advice and criticism en route. Upon meeting Marilyn, I found that I recognised her from a photograph on the wall in our kitchen at home in Ireland. I had often wondered who that lady was. We ate Marilyn's excellent meat pie with Kevin her husband, and their two young sons Brendan and Matthew. I also met their daughter Alicia, but she didn't partake of meat pie as she was only six months old. It was odd to think of Marilyn as a cousin, since the age difference between us made her seem more appropriate as an aunt. I don't suppose that she would like to hear that. Nobody likes to hear that someone considers them old, even if it is just relative. I was to feel the same disjointed relationship between all my cousins that I met over the next couple of days. After lunch Marilyn presented me with a large Reader's Digest "Discover Australia" book as a gift for my family. She had meant to give it to my sister Michelle who had visited the previous year, but had forgotten. It was a beautiful book, but weighed a ton. My backpack was already full to bursting and awkwardly heavy, yet I gratefully assured Marilyn that I would be happy to take it home. Marilyn took a few snapshots for the photo album, including me holding a disgruntled Alicia. I like to think that she was scowling because she didn't get any meat pie, rather than because she was in my arms, but she refused to identify the source of her displeasure. We hit the road again en route to Kawarren. Actually that's not quite true. Paddy had forgotten to turn on his house alarm so we went back into Melbourne to amend the situation. Paddy also offered to hold on to the "Discover Australia" book until a suitable Ireland-bound carrier with a luggage deficit could be found to take it home. We conspiratorially agreed that he would hide it if Marilyn came to visit. We pointed the car west again and drove for a couple of hours towards Kawarren via Geelong and Colac. After almost passing through Kawarren without realising it, one of my first preconceptions was banished - Kawarren, about which I had heard so much about while growing up, was not a town at all. I wasn't even sure if it was a village. A small sign opposite a break in the trees pointed down a narrow country road towards the settlement. Just off the main road were a small school and a tennis court. Uncle Oolie puts Maxwells on the map! Apart from a few scattered houses set back into the trees, that seemed to be it. The Maxwell farm was about one hundred meters back from the junction. When we pulled into the yard it was already late afternoon. It felt odd to have the intangible farm in my imagination replaced by the real thing. It confused entrenched mind's-eye images that had been conjured up over the years to serve as a stage for stories and events told to me by others. Still, although it was physically new to me, the place seemed comfortable and familiar, and I felt as if I was returning home. We were greeted by Mary and two energetic young boys who I learned were Ronan and Timmy, sons of my cousin John and his wife Gail. They were on holiday from school and staying with their grandmother for a few days. Ronan (rear) and Timmy. We also met my cousin Barney, a dark-haired guy in his mid-thirties who lives at Kawarren with Mary and my cousin Robert, who runs their dairy farm. After chatting for a while, Barney went out jogging into the rainy and darkened evening, trying to stay fit for his football team. We drank tea with the kind and soft-spoken Mary and lounged around the open fire. I was to become accustomed to a daily schedule of tea-drinking and eating while staying at Kawarren, which seems to punctuate all of the daily activities on the farm. After dinner, Robert returned from milking the herd. Within minutes I saw many of the traits of my father and uncles in him, quite an unexpected impression to receive so far away from home. I got deeply involved in a discussion with Ronan and Timmy about Sonic the Hedgehog, Mortal Kombat, and dozens of other rather less familiar video games. Although Ronan is nine and Timmy is only seven, they delighted in telling me that all of their video games are violence rated for over-fifteens only. All other games were boring. Ronan trusted me with the secret that he peels the over-fifteen stickers off the packaging in the shop and his mother never suspects a thing. After such a shocking revelation I needed some fresh air, so I joined Robert and Denise on a jaunt across the farm to the dairy. We got all dressed up in wet gear and rubber boots to protect against the rain and the mud. I was dead impressed by the milking parlour. Not that I was a milking parlour expert or anything like that, but the Kawarren setup was state-of-the-art. A large elevated concrete turntable slowly rotates in the middle of the sodium-lit dairy. The turntable is divided into about thirty pieslice-like pens into which the cows are enticed by automatically dispensed food. Once inside the pen, the turntable rotates beyond the entry/exit ramp, and the cow is happily enclosed inside. A couple of operators (usually Robert and his neighbour) work at attaching and detaching the teat cups from the cows' udders, keeping the teats clean and disinfected, and identifying any cattle requiring special treatment. Once the cups have been attached, warm milk begins to flow through the rubber tubing into the extensive collection system. A heat transfer system uses running water to cool the milk before it is pumped into the base of an enormous refrigerated stainless steel tank. A cow has about ten minutes before her pen completes a full rotation on the turntable. Robert detaches the cups from the cow's udder just before she reaches the exit gate, whereupon she backs out of the pen and wanders back out into the field to eat more grass and produce more milk. Over three hundred cattle are milked in the dairy twice a day, every day. Weekends and public holidays do not apply to livestock. Robert, king of the dairy. That evening our task was to take a tank of milk from the milking parlour across the farm to a shed of young thirsty calves. This milk had been taken from recently-calved cows. It was collected separately from the milk of the other cattle because it was high in nutrients necessary for growing calves, but unfit for general consumption. It was visibly different to ordinary milk, more yellow and thicker. I didn't check to see if it tasted differently, emphatically passing up the opportunity to load up on precious vitamins and minerals. My recommended daily values would survive just fine thank you. After we had finished, Robert introduced me to his most effective means of transit around the farm - a four-wheeled motorbike. Against the clearly-stated advice on the bike's safety sticker, he offered to take Denise and I for a spin around the farm. Denise declined. I agreed and clambered aboard. Little did I know that it was to prove to be one of the most exhilarating activities of my entire travels in Australia. Robert drove and I hung on tightly behind him as we sped across the fields searching for kangaroos. In the moonlit near-darkness, I could barely see where we were going, but Robert knew his farm backwards, and he raced unhesitatingly down paths, over crests and through troughs of mud. The cold wind whipped at my coat and stung my eyes. I was gripping the bike so hard that my hands ached, but I was still only just hanging on over the bumps. The roar of the bike pierced the night air as Robert changed gears and accelerated. It was better than a roller coaster. Robert knocked off the headlight as we approached a field where he thought we might encounter some kangaroos, but he made no attempt to decelerate. We topped a rise and I caught a glimpse of several large kangaroos scattered in front of us. They were surprised but reacted quickly. They darted away in all directions, bounding quickly and powerfully towards the nearby woods. Robert powered the headlight, dropped down a gear, and accelerated. The engine roared as we raced after one of the 'roos and trapped him in our headlight. He bounced away, swerving from left to right, but we gave chase. We gained, then he turned sharply and pulled away. He was getting away. We gained again, but we were running out of field. Without hesitating, the kangaroo leaped easily over the fence into the adjoining field. We swerved at the last minute and came out with a different 'roo in our sights. Another chase, the same dodging, veering, and bouncing, and the same conclusion. We raced over to the gate and came through to the next field. For several minutes we sped around the field, pursuing different kangaroos, all of whom avoided us easily and eventually escaped us by jumping over the fence. But it was a experience unlike any other - the adrenalin-fuelled thrill of the chase. We left the scattered kangaroos in the darkness and turned our headlight onto the herd of cattle in the next field to check that none of them were calving. As we meandered among the cows, they dumbly assumed that it was milking time again and started for the milking parlour. We had to cut them off at the pass. On the way back to the house, we checked on another forlorn-looking calf sitting alone in the corner of a field, but apart from being wet and miserable, he was dandy. It was good to get back into the warm kitchen. I stayed up writing this journal after everybody else had gone to bed. The comfortable peace was broken at 1am when a pyjama-clad Ronan ran at top speed through the kitchen en route to the bathroom. He was in far too much of a hurry to acknowledge my presence. Even the cat looked a little unnerved. A few minutes later he returned, looking greatly relieved, and he sat alongside the cat by the fire until I went to bed.   Jacka the Knacka, Rural Rambling, Milking Misadventure Thursday, July 9; Kawarren By the time I got up, Robert had already returned from the morning's milking - Denise and I were greeted with a "Good Afternoon." The weather was all over the place - bright sunshine alternated with low cloud and rain showers every few minutes. While enjoying honey-loaded toast I read a magnet on the refrigerator door - "Jacka the Knacker. The only 100% locally owned knackery. Collecting dead and injured stock all year. Quality calves purchased." As it happened, after breakfast, a truck pulled into the farm to pick up the male calves that were being sold. Such calves are no use on a dairy farm and are sold to the meat factory soon after they are born. I don't know if the truck driver was Jacka the Knacker, but he wasted no time in weighing the unsuspecting calves and loading them into his truck. He was accompanied by his wife, who watched and recorded the calves' weights on a torn strip of cardboard. She was obviously the record-keeper of the duo. They were a friendly couple, chatting to Denise and I and wishing us well on our travels. I was surprised with the pair, as I had expected a knacker to be a mean and heartless scumbag. I think that was an image I had formed of knackers when we had studied George Orwell's "Animal Farm" in school. In the book, Boxer, a hard-working and devoted horse, is taken away by the knacker as soon as he shows the first sign of growing old and losing his strength. Unaware of his fate, he thinks that he is being taken to the animal retirement hospital as promised. As the knacker's van pulls out of the farm, the other farm animals realise the awful truth and try to warn Boxer of the danger. The valiant horse tries to break out of the van, but he has lost the strength of his youth and cannot break the door down. The knacker's van speeds out of the gate and Boxer is never seen or heard from again. The toolshed. Denise and I spent the morning exploring the farm. We introduced ourselves to the dogs - Jessie, Tiger, and two others I christened Frisky and The Dalmatian. In truth, the Dalmatian wasn't really a Dalmatian, he was just a seriously dirty collie. We found the tool shed, a treasure trove of oily and dusty tools and spares - enough to fix anything. Robert later modestly phrased it as "enough to wreck anything," but from what Paddy had told us, Robert was handy and could fix almost anything. Wandering around behind the house, Denise and I found a lonely-looking fireplace and chimney stack in the middle of a field - all that was left of an old house whose painting is on Mary's kitchen wall. I had a cock-a-doodle-dooing competition with the chooks. I was winning despite their best efforts (Denise was the impartial judge) but the contest had to be called off because it started raining. After the shower we walked down to Love's Creek which runs across the farm and looked for the platypus that Mary claimed lived near the dam. We couldn't even find the dam, let alone the platypus. Ruins of an old house on the farm at Kawarren. After lunch we went exploring farther afield in the car, with Paddy as our semi-knowledgeable guide. First we drove south to Gellibrand, the closest village to Kawarren. Gellibrand had a shop and a pub. Neither were compelling enough to lure us out of the car, so we did a u-turn and headed back through Kawarren to Colac. We drank coffee in the Botanic Garden's warm and peaceful café and then took a look around the gardens. I am ashamed to say that we drove, albeit slowly, around the garden loop. It was just too cold to walk around, and nothing was in flower anyway. Consequently, our circuit of the gardens took no more than 3 minutes and burned precious few calories on all of our parts, certainly not enough to negate the rich slice of cake we had just shared. We drove on to Red Rock lookout via Cororooke and Alvie. We were the only ones up there. Near Red Rock lookout. From the windy hilltop we could see the green countryside for miles around. We could also see the weather patterns pouring rain onto some areas while splashing other pockets with sunshine. With so much green landscape laid out before us, I wondered why they called it Red Rock lookout until Denise turned around to see the deep red earth exposed on the side of a hillock. Apparently all of the surrounding landscape had been formed by volcanic activity. We didn't hang around outside to study the geology too much though - it was so cold Paddy was back in the car almost before he got out, and Denise and I only exposed ourselves to the elements long enough to take a picture. We meandered around the hilltop lanes in the warm car for a while instead, while the rain outside battled with the sun for control of the countryside. Red Coat Denise at Red Rock lookout. Back on the farm, Denise and I got suited up and sauntered to the dairy to watch the evening milking. It was already dark when we arrived. Robert and his helper Graham were working the turntable, and Robert's nine year old neighbour John assisted. John was an obvious fan of Robert's and an aspiring farmer. He kept a watchful eye on greedy cows who tried to get a second chance (and a second feed) on the milking turntable. By dextrous aiming and quick-fingered shooting of his power hose, John proudly discouraged any gluttonous cattle. There was no doubt as to who was the Clint Eastwood of the dairy. John. We watched Robert removing the teat cups from the cows' udders and clean the teats with a disinfectant spray. He worked fluidly as the turntable rotated, making it look easy. I tried it. Not so easy. My troubles started immediately. I attempted to take the teat cups off the cow's udder, but they were stuck. I didn't cop that they were held on with vacumn pressure, and that the rubber hosepipe had to be kinked to release the cups. As I struggled to get the cups off, I was almost swinging out of the cow's udder. After a few tries, I began to get the hang of it, and Robert left Denise and I to get on with the job while he took care of another task. Dave playing dairy farmer. I was getting on fine until a "special" cow rotated around. This cow had recently calved so her milk was routed into a separate tank. The plumbing was different, and complicated looking. I only had about ten seconds to figure it out or the special hose and tank would be crushed as the turntable swept alongside the exit ramp. Which hoses went where? How was I supposed to detach the separate tank? The platform was still rotating. Denise saw the danger now too. I couldn't figure it out in time so I reached for the overhead emergency stop cable. Denise and I pulled it simultaneously. Nothing happened, the platform was still rotating. The hose was already being contorted as it hooked over the ramp. Oh shit, Robert leaves me for one minute and I destroy his dairy. I gave the stop cable another tug, harder this time. The turntable stopped, just in time. Phew! If Indiana Jones movies were set in milking parlours, this is how they would be. One of the cows must have sensed our relief, and so she relieved herself. Unfortunately in the excitement, Denise and I had moved into the path of the incoming crap. My hat caught a little, and Denise received a dose on the arm of her coat. We were christened! We took photos to celebrate. Denise laughs off the less attractive aspects of dairy farming. Later in the evening, after another large and delicious dinner, Robert brought out a armful of family photo albums. Mary came in almost immediately after him with an equally large number of albums. Denise assigned herself to Mary's photographs and commentary, while I listened as Robert guided me through his collection. I didn't recognise most of the people in the photographs, but many were taken when I was very young. Robert showed me photographs of his trip to Ireland. There was even one of Robert with my parents and toddling sisters at my home. Where was I? Denise and Mary come across an even earlier photograph taken at an extended family gathering in 1973. I was in this photograph, but only as a bump in my pregnant mother's belly. It was strange to see a picture of my family without me in it - obviously I don't remember a time in my family's history when I wasn't around. Denise and Mary browsing through family photos. They all looked pretty happy without me - what a nerve! Ah, but wait. Now I get it. They are happy in anticipation of my birth. Yes, that's it. Much better. The cat wasn't inside when I was going to bed. She was out mouse-hunting under the full moon and the clear sky. Friggin' cold though - I'd wager she lost a life or two from hypothermia.   Various Visitations, Dairy Duty Friday, July 10; Kawarren - Melbourne I meant to get up early and photograph Robert and the dairy during milking in the soft morning light. I was sharing a room with Robert. His radio alarm clock shattered the silence at full volume around 5:30am. After what seemed like an eternity, Robert switched it off, got up and turned on the light while he rummaged around and got dressed. I turned away from the light and fell back to sleep. Getting up and taking photographs wasn't even an option. I eventually got out of bed at 9am. I was getting used to being overfed and happily munched through a large breakfast. Joydozing. Today was a big visiting day. Our first stop was at the home of my cousin Peter, his wife Marie, and their six year old daughter Sinead. Peter was very soft-spoken. He trained for five years to be a priest before leaving the seminary. I could easily imagine him in a collar and robes. He now works in Colac as a nurse for the intellectually disabled, while Marie works for the civil service. He is well read too, from what I could gather, certainly in botany. He has a great interest in flowers and plants and gave us a grand tour of his greenhouses. He confessed that he used to be an orchid fanatic while still living at Kawarren. He used to keep many different types and strains of the flower in a heated greenhouse there and tended to them meticulously. Then one day, one of the men helping with the milking disconnected the greenhouse heater to plug something else in and forgot to power the heater again when he was finished. Peter didn't discover the error until a few days later, by which time many of his carefully nurtured orchids had died from frost. Oops. We were back at Kawarren for lunch. Ronan told us stories while we ate. He made them up as he went along and all seemed to involve aliens and fridges falling from the sky. Timmy tried to tell us a story too, but it never really got off the ground. Carol (my cousin Mick's wife) arrived with their children Siobhan (11), Rhys (10), Sean (7) and Kelly (5). The three elder children were going to be staying with Mary for the weekend. After the mandatory period of sitting in with the grown-ups, the children disappeared outside. I got suited up in overalls again and took a nervous Denise for a spin on the quad bike. She insisted that I keep below the speed limit, which she set at about walking speed. At one stage when I departed from the track onto the grass she screamed us to a stop and nearly clobbered me, and only got back onto the bike after my most sincere apologies and assurances that it wouldn't happen again. We agonizingly put-putted up as far as the dairy and I took the bike for a spin on my own. It was excellent - curving s-bends, bouncing over ruts, splashing along lake edges, growling up dangerously steep inclines and ploughing through mud. It is no wonder cowboys used to get so attached to their horses. We went looking for the platypus of Love's Creek again, but were no luckier this time. I dropped Denise back at the house and went back to the dairy in search of Robert. We were leaving with Paddy soon and I wanted to say goodbye. Giddy up Horsey. The cows were already gathered for the afternoon milking, but Robert was nowhere to be seen. Graham, his helper was there, starting the milking on his own. This can be done, but it is a slow and awkward start-stop process. When Graham saw me approaching, he assumed that I was Robert. When he realised that it was me, he decided to put me to work anyway. In his apron and wide-brimmed hat, the middle-aged and weather-beaten Graham gave me a quick lesson in how to attach teat-cups to cows' udders. The previous day I had learned how to remove them, so this was obviously module two in the dairyman's diploma (Univ. of Kawarren). Up the lane to the dairy. First, he showed me, you need to depress a plastic button in the centre of the stainless steel hub from which the four cups and hoses extend. Pressing the button alters the pressure on the cups so that they can be attached to the cow's teats. Then you reach in with both hands between the back legs of the cow, who is slowly rotating past on the elevated turntable. Holding the hub and the button with one hand, you attach the cups one by one to the teats with the other hand. It is best to attach the pair of cups farthest away from you (nearest the cow's head) first so that you don't get the hoses tangled. As you attach more cups, it becomes easier to attach subsequent ones, although none of the cups are fully secure until all four have been attached and the vacumn suction holds them firmly in place. If the cow is kicking or shuffling about, or if the operator is inexperienced (that would be me), the first and second cups can fall off while you are busy trying to attach the third and fourth. Then, when you reach in to reattach cups one and two, cups three and four fall off. Teat cup attachment is definitely an acquired skill. Cows with spray paint on their rear ends are not the victims of rural graffiti artists. They have been marked as recently calved so their milk must be separated from that of the other cows. Graham showed me how to attach the special plumbing that had so confused me the previous evening. Graham left me alone while he operated the detachment of the teat-cups on the far side of the ramp. I was working against the rotating turntable, and losing. The cows sensed that I was an amateur and tried to kick me in anger at my fumbled groping. Fortunately there was a bar around the circumference of the turntable that protected me against their lashes. But I had more to worry about. In my position behind and under the back legs of the cow, I lived in constant fear of being shitted upon. There would be no warning or nothing that I could do. My head was at udder level, right beneath the cows arse. If anything was released there would be no warning and I was going to get it full force. I tried to convince myself that since the cows were in "milking mood" their bowels were off duty for a while. This theory lasted about ten minutes, whereupon a cow waiting to be processed released a lumpy torrent. As I was concentrating on the udder in hand (pun intended), I was taken unaware. If she had waited one more minute, I surely would have received a far worse dosing than the few splashes across my coat that I got away with. Perhaps Graham was wearing a wide-brimmed hat for a good reason. I had to stop the turntable a few times to catch up with Graham, but by the time Robert arrived, I was getting the hang of it. I bid him farewell and returned to the house where my arrival was overdue. We were supposed to have left already in order to get to Mick and Carol's home in Geelong in time for dinner which Carol had offered to host for us. I was required to have a cup of tea and piece of cake before I left though. A day in Kawarren is punctuated by tea. And since tea needs accompaniment, they get through a lot of cakes and biscuits at Kawarren too. I think that if I had stayed there any longer I would have been as fat as the cattle in the fields. Puss near Boots. Paddy, Denise and I started back towards Melbourne. We found Mick and Carol's house in a Geelong suburb without trouble. The house was quiet without the three elder children, and Kelly played happily with his toy car collection. Denise joined in. Paddy and I talked to Mick while Carol put the finishing touches to dinner. Mick is a plumber - he's been running his own business for about five years and is always busy, despite employing a few sub-contractors. Carol runs the paperwork end of the business - Mick calls her his debt-collector. We enjoyed a delicious dinner and drank the mandatory cup of tea before heading on to our next port of call. At Lara, we visited my cousin John and his wife Gail, parents of Ronan and Timmy, (who were still at Kawarren), and of Christopher, who I took to be about 5 years old. I had become a little confused by all of my cousins at this stage, and mistakenly greeted John with "Hi, Peter." Oops. I was not the only one who was confused though. Earlier, Peter had tried to confirm with me that I was the son of my uncle. Oversights aside, John and Gail continued to offer the warm hospitality we had been receiving all day. We had a cup of tea, and although I thought I was full, I managed a slice of cake too. John is a civil engineer. Gail gives him a hard time about driving around strange cities when he is on holiday and admiring suburban housing developments. We got back to Melbourne by ten o'clock, after Paddy had only grumbled about the price of petrol about half a dozen times. PREVIOUS | NEXT | HOME | CONTENTS | ABOUT | SEND EMAIL