Mum would send us outside to ‘let the hills take care of it’.
Our new street was named after the Ruffles and I took huge delight in writing to my grandmother with the news that I was ‘keeping very busy having delicious banana cake on the Ruffles’ verandah on Ruffles Road’ with ‘Ruffles’ underlined so she understood the importance of my hosts. Childhood rolled along and we all survived the city-to-country transformation. All those almost invisible little initiations: dam swimming instead of pools; fresh milk rather than being storedependent; and forgetting our shoes when we had to leave our slice of paradise for supplies. As our forward-thinking parents predicted, before we knew it our family was largely self-sufficient, working as a fivesome, learning how to be farmers. Bananas were first, but between seasons we’d experiment with passionfruit,
cucumbers and zucchini. We saw that seeds need time to grow and that nothing worthwhile was fast. When we had a problem, mum would send us outside to ‘let the hills take care of it’ as they often miraculously did. A playdate with neighbouring farm kids could take up to half a day’s walk, which made us fiercely loyal pals. ‘It pays to be picky with who gets your time anyway’ was another one of our mother’s take-aways, always reframing a negative. Some of us thrived more than others, but the family pact seemed to be that one of us would take the hit in the face of the group’s newfound joy. My mother’s impressive output was evidence of her successful changeover, but I could sense, in the most invisible of ways, her constant struggle. Outwardly, though, her ideas were genius, resourceful and downright
magic-making. She was helped very much by her bible, Grass Roots, a magazine that would take like-mindeds step-by-step (with hand-drawn illustrations) through ways to do a wide range of useful things; from breaking in a pony, making crazy paving or building a pizza oven, to improving the microbes in your dam. My mother demanded a pool, the right of every Queenslander, so it was hand-dug by all of us. ‘If you can’t understand the job at hand,’ my Dad would say, ‘how can you ask another person to do it?’ Mum and Dad read up on mosaics, borrowed some gear and started to tile the pool themselves, bringing in a pro when it counted. With ideas bigger than they ever had budget for, and more chutzpah than they were born to, they decided at the last minute to add a pair of swimming dolphins in the
