Easter Long Weekend - an audiovisual fiesta!

Hi everyone,

This post was written over the three days I was away over the Easter long weekend at the family's new place at Shepparton.  It was mostly written on my phone at night in multiple sections.  I'll try and edit it into shape now, but if it seems a little Frankensteinian, that's why.

SATURDAY

It's 9:10pm as I draft this, and I‘m in bed (well, specifically on a thin foam mattress on the floor under a doona) in the house on the new property. It‘s quiet as a crypt here. You can‘t hear a motor running, or a dog bark, or a bird call. The only audible sound is one mosquito and the click of my phone as I type.

So much I want to say. Well, I think I should cover the day first. I didn‘t sleep well last night. It took me a long time to sleep, and even when I did I had rather unsettling dreams involving food and busses.  I don't recall the details, although I remember they weren't enjoyable.  Anyway, I found I woke up tired.  I had a bit of breakfast, and Dad and Michael and I were getting ready to go when one of the neighbours (well, actually one of the neighbours‘ property managers) rolled in seeking Dad‘s help with pulling a calf (since he‘s the only person in the district who owns pulling tackle). This did mildly annoy me - I got the feeling his good nature was being a bit abused. Still, it didn't seem to trouble him so I guess that's what's critical.

We got on the road about 11:00am and came up to the new place. It‘s an impressive bit of geography. The house is frankly palatial. Well, not in the sense of something you could find on Toorak Road in Melbourne or St Charles Avenue in New Orleans, but it's large with mains power, running water, reasonable carpet, and multiple bedrooms. The gardens have run a bit to seed and there's an abandoned tennis court. I had limited time to explore the rest of the buildings, although they appeared to run to a large shearing shed

shearers' quarters, a machinery shed and a general storage shed,

as well as a set of yards clearly built for sheep rather than cattle.

We unloaded the mower and other things we‘d brought up, then headed over to the block at Rushworth to get some furniture we had over there. This took us through Rushworth township

and then on to the block there.

We loaded up a lounge and a couple of armchairs and a few other things and then came back here. It was dark by the time we were back here, with a full moon the colour of honey hovering over the horizon. We unloaded the furniture, then heated up some stew Michael had made for dinner, followed by the present early night.

SUNDAY

I slept pretty well last night, but for a weird dream of which I can‘t recall the details. The foam mattress being on the floor was surprisingly good: my spine felt better than it had in ages when I woke up. I woke up about 6:30am and lay listening to the dawn chorus for a bit, then realized that there was no reason not to get out in the clean air and see it up close and personal.  I took a bunch of photos in the light of the rising sun of the sheds,

the nearest paddocks,

and of the steam rising off the dam.

I also encountered a friendly native in the shearing shed.

I did a 360° video near the gate to the paddocks - you can hear the birds in the background.


By this time Michael and Dad were on their feet too and Michael cooked up breakfast of toast, sausages and baked beans. We took a look over the paddock at the stock up here

and looked into a fairly unappealing little shack some distance from the house.

The morning was otherwise taken taken up with work around the house and sheds. Dad scoped out the cattle yards and various sheds. I moved 3 barrows of firewood up to the house and also retrieved a bed base out of the shearers quarters and washed the dust off it to put my mattress on (not a complete success: I‘m lying on it at this moment and I can feel my backside and parts of my spine sagging between the slats!). I was also able to check out an older couple of items onthe place. One was a trolley cart of which the wheels were cut from whole rounds of a tree.  Judging by the weight of it and what little metal fixings for harness remained on it I‘d say it was designed to be pulled by bullocks.

The other feature was the little shed beside it. When I had a look inside, it turned out that the tin roof had been simply laid over an earlier roof of bark, and the walls were logs with the gaps filled with stones and mud.

Going purely from general knowledge of history and so on I‘d put its construction in the 1870s-1880s (basically, it has to be before better construction materials were readily available and while large logs and sheets of bark were readily available; the 1880s seems a reasonable guess noting that when the Kelly Gang made its last stand at Ann Jones‘ hotel in Glenrowan in 1880 it had still made sense for that building on an established rail line and with a significant potential clientele, to have had a bark roof).
After lunch we moved some more furniture about and cut some of the fallen branches off the road fence. Michael did the cutting; I did the chucking away. We were able to cut off a respectable amount of firewood as well. I found time to take another 360° video while we were about it.


As the sun went down I got a few more pictures of the sun refracting through the west-facing glass of the front door and its adjacent window. We got a fire going in one of the fireplaces.

I took another 360° video of the fire and the surrounding room. It made me think of the fire we had going at the home place, when Joni first came out here and we had the home place to ourselves for two nights, and it made me miss her a lot. I took a picture of the fire and typed her a quick email that‘ll send when my phone next has some reception.  As yet I haven't heard back.  I think sometimes the time delay means she gets these things so long after the event there seems no point replying, which just breaks my heart.  It's like the universe is trying to get the whole "no-one gives a damn because you're so far away" thing into my head.

The dynamic between Dad and Michael remains interesting to watch. What I recall saying about it once before bears repeating: Michael is the son Dad never had.  And I couldn't be happier to say it. He can talk agriculture in a way that I just never could. And having him about seems to make Dad feel young too. I know that I should be jealous and bitter and all, but I'm genuinely not. It just seems to be a really fortunate way for things to have panned out. The other thing is that we've all had a few doubts about whether this is a good relationship for Fran. Hearing Michael talk about her, my feeling is that it is.  That is, that he does care a lot about her and wants to make her happy, even though his manner with her might be a bit offhand. It might not be the sort of relationship I‘d want, but it seems to work for them, which is good enough for me.

EARLY DAWN, MONDAY

I'm blogging this before I forget it. I've just woken up from a series of dreams, all of which involved blazing conflict:

1. A fight with an old friend Vincent L who was convinced I‘d been bad mouthing him and his mother which I had no recollection of doing (I should add that I haven't seen Vincent in a couple of years);
2. A blazing fight with Dad at Glenhope over the Corporations Act after a distant family member had gotten into trouble; for some reason I was back at my last job when this happened;
3. Two dreams, both set in the Disney movie The Aristocats - which I‘ve never seen! - where I‘d gotten into a fight with a pet store owner after some prize cat had gotten too fat, and where I then began to act in the most inflammatory ways imaginable, although more by being mischievous and insulting than actually violent.

I have no idea what any of this means.

MONDAY EVENING, BRUNSWICK

Today was a good way to end the weekend.  We spent some time re-wiring the electric fence unit which is in one of the sheds, to get it back a bit from the weather.  I took a couple of photos of the surrounds

And another 360-degree video.  After that was done we set to, cleaned the place up a bit further and got on the road.  Traffic was heavy with people returning to Melbourne.  I took a couple of quick snaps of the countryside by the Hume Highway.

We got back to the home place about 4pm.  I stayed for dinner and drove back to town about 9:30, getting back about 11pm.  Will log on, upload the photos and videos and post this and then turn in.  This will be a big week at work.

* * * * *

Over the weekend I've thought a lot about the email Jennie sent me, urging me to think about doing something more rewarding with my life than just being a lawyer. Oddly this has been counterpointing inside my head with that John Mellencamp song, Rain on the Scarecrow.

Rain on the scarecrow, blood on the plough;
This land fed a nation, this land made me proud

Those of you who know me understand that I've pretty well made peace with the fact that I‘m not going to be a farmer. Despite a lot of attempts to learn and absorb that sort of knowledge, it‘s something for which I have less than no aptitude. I still have a twinge when I see a statue like “Young Herdsman and a Bull"

but I know that isn't me, and that trying to be that person could only lead to an ocean of regret.

Well there's ninety-seven crosses planted in the courthouse yard;
And ninety-seven families who lost ninety-seven farms

I‘ve also been able to accept in the last few months that I find being a lawyer profoundly unsatisfying.  I can admit that from almost the first day back in 2002 (or even when I began my law degree in 1997), I've found it an immensely stressful chore, rather than a challenge to be excelled at or an actual career to be pursued.  It must be the only thing I've ever found that combined mind-numbing boredom and gut-wrenching stress. There's just no way that a vocation should feel like this.  Where a disastrous interview for another job in the legal field so messed with my sense of wholeness that it spoiled what should have been a lovely long weekend away for Joni and me (Easter 2009). Where I'm so automatically afraid to leave my work for any length of time that I didn't - to my unending regret - take time off work after my girls are born. Where I have such a low opinion about myself that - even after working for him for 8 years - I could barely bring myself to ask my boss for the luxury of working from home one day a week to care for Grace and Rachel. And where having my ‘dream job' with my present employer has regularly seen me driving home hating myself so much that I could only think of how much better off Joni and Grace and Rachel would be without me, and in the end fairly regularly getting my head read and having a multiple-repeat prescription for antidepressants.

Being a lawyer is a good thing. I‘ve been able to help a lot of people and do some things of which I can be rightly proud. But there is no way on God‘s earth I‘ll do it forever.  Jennie's thoughts - that I should look at working in a historical or history-related field - actually seems instinctively right.  By way of example, when we were messing around with the electric fence unit this morning, I noticed an odd manufacturer's stamp on a door inside the shed -  a pattern of Stars of David and crescent moons.

With the maker's name being H&T Vaughan Ltd.  And the first thought I had was - will the ASIC database tell me when they were incorporated?  When were they active?  How did this lock mechanism come to be here?  And why did their logo use the customary symbols for Judaism and Islam?
Maybe you can't fight your own programming.

And grandma‘s on the front porch swing with a Bible in her hand;
Sometimes I hear singing "Take me to the promised land"

Tonight, Easter Saturday 2012, marks 5 years since I was (a) baptised and (b) received into the Catholic faith. Looking back on the process, I‘m not sure what to make of the fact that I didn't or couldn't (and I'm not sure which it was) tell my family I was going through the R.C.I.A. process. I have no idea what Dad would have made of it, save that I almost think he would have been just slightly embarassed even though I‘m not sure why. And I think Mum would have responded with perhaps slightly discouraging indifference. On the other hand, Kate and Fran would have been polite about it, and I think Jennie would have been positively encouraging and would have rather wanted to attend the service.  In hindsight, I regret not sharing this particular detail with her.  I'd love to say something deep and profound about having converted, but all I can really think of are platitudes and that seems inappropriate.  Suffice it to say that I am glad I swam the Tiber.  And even more so this evening now that a judicious prayer to St Joseph has kind of helped show me a way though a knotty little moment. 

* * * * *

Thanks for sticking with me through all of that...  You've been a great audience!

See you tomorrow.