Jack
Every now and again we meet special people who have a unique impact on our lives - Jack was such a person. He was a gifted story teller, joker, amateur artist and musician. Being around Jack you were guaranteed to have fun! He spent most of his working life as an inspector with the Adelaide Electricity Trust which involved tripping around the State on various jobs. His social life centred around staying in town pubs which provided meals and accommodation and attending country race meetings such as Gawler, Tailem Bend, Hamilton, Penshurst, Colac and Warrnambool. They say that typical Aussies would bet on two flies crawling up a wall - Jack would fall into that category. He loved nothing better than to relate his successes and near misses in acquiring a fortune. He always lived in hope that the elusive quadrella that contained the pot of gold was just around the corner.
Ballie and I couldn't wait for Jack to be picked up from 'The Mount' (Mt. Gambier) and to spend the Christmas holidays with us on the farm. On one occasion we were excited when he arrived with a small female grey kangaroo in a sugar bag. We kept it warm in the kitchen and fed it with milk from a bottle with a teat on the end. At night it curled up on the end of my bed and this became a problem as it grew larger. In no time at all it was an adult and its favourite food was bread crusts. It became such a popular pet that Jack decided to bring home a red kangaroo from the Woomera rocket range. This worked fine until it reached full maturity and stood over six feet tall when it leant back on its tail. Being raised in the kitchen, the 'big red' insisted on coming inside on a regular basis and this was a problem when he became hungry. When he decided to snatch a full loaf of bread from the table it was unwise to try to take it from him. One strike from that foot could mean a terrible injury. Male red kangaroos can be bad tempered and one day we found that out. We heard a commotion from under the pine trees at the white gate and we rushed out to find the roo jumping up and down on 'Big fella' the large old age dog. "Get off him you bastard" Ballie yelled. The kangaroo immediately bounded away and 'Big fella' eventually staggered to his feet quite a bit the worst for wear. When we wouldn't let the red kangaroo come into the house he would start circling the house. We would notice him bounding past the kitchen window as a red blurr every few minutes. After a few weeks of this Ballie decided to put an end to it by attaching a stiff wire mesh above the small gate at the tank stand. This did the trick because the next time 'big red' headed off on one of his circuits he bounded up to the gate only to be catapulted onto the broad of his back. This stopped the house circuits.
Coleraine had two milk bar/grocery shops owned by the Chinese, affectionately known as 'Chows'. They were happy people and were always ready to pay us for our home grown peas, apricots, beans, potatoes and our collection of old lemonade bottles. Early one morning 'big red' decided to visit the local town about 3 miles away. Louie Sing couldn't believe his eyes when he stepped outside his shop and saw a kangaroo bounding down the main street. It was reported in the next issue of the 'Coleraine Albion' and Louie swore that he hadn't been drinking. We kept quiet of course, because you weren't really allowed to keep kangaroos as pets.
Most of the six week Christmas holidays was spent carting in hay. Jack wasn't a farmer and he always reckoned you had to get into a 'terrible bad mood' in order to begin hay carting. He seemed to build himself up mentally for the long sweltering summer ahead and then pressed on doggedly until the task was completed. First the hay was cut and bounded in sheaves by the harvester and then scattered in endless lines across the paddocks. The next job was to gather up ten or twenty sheaves into stooks to facilitate easy retrieval. Every new day we began work it was hard to see what we had accomplished on the previous day. Ballie built a frame over the large trailer and then we began the long task of carting in the sheaved hay and building a stack. These were far from easy to make and Ballie learnt the art from an old guy named Watty Moore. He must have been in his seventies when I saw him teach us how to build a oat sheaf hay stack. It was a work of art when he finished with the sides gradually slopping out and the top tappered to a line like a house roof. One false row with the sheaves facing the wrong way could result in whole sections of the stack slipping to an untidy mess on the ground.
We usually began the stack on a stinking hot day with all of us in a good frame of mind. Jack's job was initially easy having to use the pitch fork to toss the sheaves from the trailer on to the ground below. I was the sheaf turner who picked up each one with the fork and pushed them to Ballie's feet who then placed them in neat fitting lines in the stack. We became pretty frayed with each other as the stack rose up higher than a garage roof. Eventually, we couldn't see Jack and the only way we knew a sheaf was coming was the sound of a heavy grunt below. Irritations arose when sheaves banked up or we were hit in the legs with them. Ballie seemed to like working with hay but we could tell when Jack was getting fed up and that was a time to keep conversation to the bare minimum. One afternoon Ballie became concerned that the stack was getting too high and that Jack might need a breather. He yelled out, "How are ya goin' down there?" The reply came back swiftly when we noticed a sheaf heading up over our heads to the other side.
After each load I had the enjoyable and easy job of driving the tractor while Jack built the load and Ballie pitched the sheaves up. Loads had to be always built forward of the trailer because the hills were dangerously steep and dozens of sheaves could easily slip off. By the time we finished Jack was perched high up on the load and then he would lie down to rest while the trailer lurched and groaned back to the stack. Even though I was twelve years old I was entrusted with carefully negotiating the hillsides and I became quite accomplished in using the side independent brakes to manoeuvre the tractor when the wheels started to skid. The secret to safe delivery of the load was to gradually begin or stop the tractor by depressing the clutch slowly. Ballie decided one afternoon that one section of the paddock was too dangerous for me to negotiate so he took over the controls. I stood clear and was horrified to see Ballie depress the clutch so quickly that the tractor stopped abruptly and the full wait of the trailer pulled back on the drawbar snapping it in an instant. Half the load was thrown off and Jack disappearing over the back of the trailer. I thought "Oh no! Jack's going to get a broken neck out of this." Ballie locked the brake pedal and we both sprinted to the back of the trailer to find out Jack's fate. Fortunately, he had ridden the avalanche and was buried under a pile of sheaves. Thankfully he appeared from the near disaster with straw and dust in his hair. The three of us looked at each other and words were unnecessary.
Jack never drove the tractor except for the day when he was nearly killed. Driving tractors in hill country can be extremely hazardous. Roll bars have only become common in more recent times and the first generation grey Massie Ferguson tractors were notorious for flipping and jack-knifing. In a farm close by we knew that a farmer had been killed trying to scoop out a dam with a Fergie. I only had two near misses in all my years driving tractors on the farm. On one occasion when we were travelling down hill, the pin came out of the draw bar of a fully laden trailer of hay. The trailer pushed forward and the draw bar rose up pinning me against the steering wheel. The only thing stopping it from impaling me was the back wheel of the trailer fortunately wedged behind a stook. The other incident occurred as I drove the tractor across the creek on a crossing we had constructed. As I opened the throttle on the outward embankment, the back wheels started to spin and the tractor started a scary slide backwards towards a drop off to oblivion. I rode it for a few seconds and then stood up ready to jump when thankfully the wheels gripped and I was able to churn up out of the danger zone with my heart beating ten to the dozen.
Winter can be the worst time for tractor accidents and this was when Jack decided to do his little stunt. God knows what he was doing with the tractor, but as we were coming up from Pierces flat we noticed Jack careering down the hill in the adjacent paddock at breakneck speed. He was standing nearly bolt upright like a jockey on a runaway horse with the throttle open and his foot planted hard on the brake. He was doing all the wrong things and the wheels were spinning backwards similar to the illusion of stage coach wheels on the Westerns. Ballie started yelling frantically - "Cut back the revs - take your foot off the brake!" But with the roar of the engine Jack was in no state to heed or indeed hear any instructions. Luckily he kept going straight and by the time he flew through the open gap in the first fence he was going like the clappers. There was nothing we could do except watch this episode with hopeful fate. He negotiated the second gate and we watched helplessly as he disappeared into the distance. It was such a relief when he finally brought the mechanical bolter to a stop half way across Pierce's flat. By the time we reached Jack he was a limp figure, pale as ghost and his face was wrung out like a mop.
With two weeks of the holidays to go we got a spring in our step as we noticed the paddocks quickly giving up their remaining stooks and we turned our attention to some leisure activities. High on the list was fishing. Ballie was always going on about his new 'Black Queen' rod and how many red fin and trout he was going to catch. With the mere mention of the word 'fishing' the dogs went mad with excitement running around in crazy circles of delight. Finally, the day came when we loaded up the old yellow Chev and we headed off to the Wannon River. We found a beautiful spot among the magnificent old red gums and I baited up while Ballie preferred to use his bronze spinner. Meanwhile, Jack wanted the best chance possible so he was always trying to caste his line out of sight or endeavouring to perch himself on precarious dead trees in the river. It wasn't too long before we heard a splash and Jack had a wet bum. Of course, he had me splitting my sides laughing with his hilarious comments about what he had been trying to do. My laughter turned to tears when he caste off from the bank and landed his worms in the gum tree on the opposite bank. "That was a great cast" I said. Jack replied "Well, don't you know - I'm fishing for birds." It took him ages wrestling with the branches until he realised that cutting the line was the best option. I don't think we caught too many fish that day but we sure enjoyed ourselves and Jack made fun at his own expense for quite a few days afterwards.
Sunday was usually a day off to go to Church and have a roast dinner. Ballie polished the lino, put a new table cloth on the kitchen table and placed bougainvillea flowers in a vase. By the middle of the afternoon we were lazily resting in our easy chairs and eight dogs lay sprawled across the floor contentedly asleep. We know that dogs have great hearing and they were always ready for the sound of someone coming through the gate about 100 yards distant from the house. So within an instant Pat, the sheep dog, rose to his feet barking wildly and started the race for the back door. This involved a sharp turn left out of the kitchen and a strategic kick of the back door. The dogs forgot about the shiny lino and my annoyance at the commotion turned to hilarity as they all skidded into the far wall with a series of thumps.
Jack seldom involved himself with sheep or cattle but when he did he preferred not to use dogs. He wanted to avoid a 'bloody fiasco' at all costs. Pat and Mick the sheep dogs seem to work reasonably well for Ballie but I found them frustrating. Pat had an flighty, erratic and over enthusiastic manner while Mick was a great dog but was hampered by being half blind. When I whistled them to round up the sheep Pat would race off in the widest circle possible bounding through a series of fences with a clever sideways skip. The sheep could be within 50 yards of me but by the time Pat had decided to wield around on his torturously long route the sheep had gone in all directions. In the meantime Mick was very obedient and barked on cue but he was forever stumbling blindly into obstacles including sheep.
Buzz words are common in any age and back in the 60's everything was 'massive' which in today's lingo means 'cool'. One particular day in the apricot orchard Jack got tired of my overuse of this superlative. He suddenly blurted out: "Look - massive means big!" I suddenly thought about how stupid it was that all the kids were saying it and I've seldom used the word again even in the right context. Jack never thought too much of modern education and he often told me how well Sr. Martina, a St. Joseph's sister, had trained them as kids.
In the evenings I often listened to Jack's stories. He told me about a job where another crew lost control of one of those huge four cornered electricity poles. It rolled away out of control down a hillside and eventually speared itself into the bottom of a valley. His own crew consisted mostly of Europeans including Yugoslavs and Hungarians. They were great workers but some possessed very little English. One guy tried to relate to Jack how he could hear a frog at their campsite one night. "Listen, the shit" he said. "Snake he come - the shit no more speak!" On other evenings Jack would sometimes get the urge to knock out some joyful songs on the push button accordion or his harmonica.
All too soon the holidays came to a close and it was time to take Jack back to Mt. Gambier. I've still got the Encyclopaedia he bought me in the newsagent there when I was twelve years old.
Brian on the tractor in 1966
