From the very beginning of writing this Travels in Life series my focus as been on my desire to read, write and speak eloquently.  I have written about my country childhood deprived of music and books. I’ve have written about my twenty-five year marriage when I was kept so busy that I found it almost impossible to read or study.

When my marriage ended I began a two year fight to avoid bankruptcy, selling my home, the factory and attempting to sell my farm in an endeavour to pay the debts which had been incurred in my name. Just as joint assets may be divided for a divorce settlement, the Family Law Court also considers such as debts as were in my name, joint debts of the marriage. In addition, my husband had signed a guarantee to meet any shortfall when purchasing the factory.  His wealth of more than a million dollars was tied up in family trusts within the transport company controlled by his father, uncle and brother. This meant that I wasn’t fighting for my rights against one runaway husband, but against four ruthless men determined to protect their family assets.

My other battle was against depression. I could envisage no future that I wanted to live. Although I knew my husband had ended our marriage because I had become a financial liability, I felt that he had taken “The best years of my life” and then discarded me like a worn out rag.

My anxiety was deepened by fear of the unknown. I continued to see my psychiatrist for medication and counseling as I talked my way through this period. He helped me to understand that my longing to be loved by this man was a form of addiction, much like many women experience who stay with brutal, wife beating men. I saw that throughout our marriage my husband had displayed a form of passive aggression. The psychiatrist advised me that if the marriage hadn’t ended when it did, Stewart would have destroyed me. He helped me see my love for Stewart like that of a drug addict craving heroin.

All this was happening while I was still coping with the physical work related to trying to keep the factory and farm functioning until I could find buyers. My women friends were sympathetic, but I didn’t want to burden them with my tears, so sought the advice of a woman counselor, a psychologist. She was of great assistance for two reasons.

• She suggested I undertake the Myers/Briggs tests to determine my personality and temperament type, saying she thought I was one of the rare ones. This proved true. I am an Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceptive an INFP. From then on I read psychology voraciously as I tried to come to an understanding of myself and others around me.
• I mentioned that every week I was writing a letter to Margaret Arnott in Canada, pouring out the anguish I felt. She advised me to keep a copy of all these letters and put them into a book format. “One day,” she said,” your book could be of great value to another woman facing your present situation.”

Stewart had left Dalby immediately after telling me he wanted a divorce, leaving me alone to clean up the mess he had created. He moved hundreds of kilometres away to make a fresh start with a woman who had been his lover during the last year of our marriage while he planned his escape. It was there that he placed our youngest son in boarding school, far from me. He divorced me 2 days before the wedding of our daughter Debra.

Finally, more than two years after he deserted me, my legal team brought him to trial before a judge of the Family Law Court. After two days his legal team could not mount a defense. They asked me to settle out of Court. I had never sought vengeance. I asked that his affairs be placed in the hands of an Official Receiver, that his assets be sold, that our joint debts and legal costs be paid, and that any remaining money be divided equally. His legal team forced him to agree to this.

It does not matter to me that he was able to secrete money and that the assets were never equally divided. What was important to me was that I retained my sense of integrity.

After the factory was sold, I had abandoned the small farm and moved to live in Toowoomba where I could obtain work as a kitchen hand. It was there that I met Eberhard Helwig, who owned a coffee shop restaurant. A man of German birth, he was fourteen years older than me and frequently able to offer wise advice. Through this troubled time while I fought for a settlement to clear my debts, he became a steady rock upon which I could lean. We were married on 28th November, 1988 in a civil ceremony with 2 witnesses.

Fay and Eberhard

The Official Receiver, unable to sell my farm, returned it to my ownership free of debt, as part of my settlement. In addition I received a cash amount of twenty thousand dollars. I used a small portion of this money to purchase a computer and I began to write in earnest. Taking the earlier advice of my counselor I wrote a biographical novel based on the story of my marriage, desertion and fight for a just settlement. It was cathartic as once more I poured out my sense of betrayal. When the manuscript was completed I sent it to the editor of Allen & Unwin, who to my surprise, read it. In 1992 she advised me that my novel, The Dingo Ran, was an enthralling story, but much too long for the Australian market.

In the interim I had placed a small advertisement in a Dalby newspaper, offering my farm for sale with vendor finance. The son of the man from which I had bought the farm approached me, offering me a house as part payment for the farm. We negotiated a contract. After a period of time I was able to sell the house and he was also able to pay me the balance of the money owing on the farm.

By 1992 Eberhard and I were in a financially sound position. Eberhard wished to retire, but I was too young at 52 to consider retirement an option. Nor was I ready to be a full time writer. Perhaps I could have written a shorter version of The Dingo Ran, which perhaps Allen & Unwin would have published, but I could not steel myself to pursue the matter further. I did not wish to inflict further pain on my children. Nor did I have any other story I wanted to write.

We compromised and purchased a farm at Glen Aplin on the Granite Belt where we established Das Helwig Haus B&B.

To be continued.

Every year when I was a child my father cleared a piece of scrub land on our farm at the foot of the Bunya Mountains and burnt off the felled scrub, before planting pumpkins, watermelons and other vegetables in the ashes. Years later he asked me if I knew why these crops flourished? By then I had become the gardening guru in the family. Dad said, that if he merely added ash to a vegetable garden he couldn’t get the same healthy result. I explained that not only was he using fertile soil for the first time, but the heat of the fire had killed all the nasty pathogens in the soil which might have inhibited the growth of his vegetables. This is a method of growing vegetable gardens in tropical countries like Papua New Guinea.

When I was a child we never ate baby vegetables like button squash and zucchini. The Acorn Squash and Marrow, as we called zucchini, were rather despised and tasteless vegetables, best hollowed out and stuffed with a savoury meat mixture. It was only after Eberhard and I moved to live on the Granite Belt of southern Queensland in 1992 that I came to have an appreciation of Mediterranean vegetables like zucchini, eggplant and capsicums. The Granite Belt has a cool mountain climate and many of the farmers here are descendants of earlier Italian immigrants. Each year this district supplies a huge volume of vegetables and fruit to the Brisbane and Sydney markets.

Disaster struck the Granite Belt community on Christmas Day with a huge hail storm that destroyed or damaged many of the vegetable crops as the farmers were about to commence the seasonal picking.

Hail storm over the Granite Belt on Christmas Day 2008

The farmers had two choices. They could slash their damaged plants to the ground, plough the soil and replant, or they could pay workers to strip from the plants and throw away all the damaged vegetables, in the expectation that the bushes and vines would recover and begin bearing produce again.

At Glen Aplin, directly below Das Helwig Haus B&B our neighbours, Joe and Nerrina, had planted a field of zucchini. They made the decision to try to salvage their plants and were cutting off all the hail spotted zucchinis in their fields when I spoke with them. They invited me to take as many as I could use.

Hail damaged zucchinis

Santo and Nancy sent me capsicums and eggplant from their farm. In my own garden I had fresh tomatoes, carrots, basil and parsley available. A few onions remained in my coldroom. With these ingredients at hand I decided to make up a batch of Ratatouille an Italian recipe.

RATATOUILLE

1-2 eggplant. Dice unpeeled eggplant, sprinkle liberally with salt, set aside for an hour then wash, drain and dry. 3 medium tomatoes. Peel and chop tomatoes. 1 capsicum. Seed and slice capsicum. 2-3 zucchini. Slice. 2 onions. Slice. 2 medium carrots. Peel and slice. 2-3 tablespoons olive oil.

In a large pan stir fry and saute vegetables, one variety at a time.

Lightly fry onions

Layer in a casserole dish sprinkling with remaining ingredients.

Parsley, basil and garlic.

1 tablespoon parsley, chopped. 1 tablespoon fresh basil, chopped. 2 cloves garlic, crushed. 1/4 teaspoon sugar, salt and pepper.

Cover and cook at 190-200C for about 1 hour or until vegetables are tender.

I took these photographs in March this year when there was a seasonal abundance of all these vegetables. I made up five large dishes of ratatouille which,  after cooking, I ladled into freezer boxes for storage. I find this such a great vegetable dish to pull out of the freezer and heat while some pasta is boiling and meat is grilling. It is a way that I can serve a hot meal to my family if I only get home thirty minutes before dinner time.

In 2009 I will be featuring more zucchini dishes in my Abundance series.

When a girl of my generation dreamed of her future, it was a dream about marriage and a family. Despite years of hardship I continued to dream of a future when Stewart and I would sit one day on a veranda dandling our grandchildren on our knees. Never did I dream that after twenty-five years of marriage Stewart would leave me destitute and take my children from me.

How did it all happen? I had, like so many other women of that generation, been prepared to follow my man. I had uttered marriage vows to love, honour and obey till death do us part. Selflessly, I gave.

When Stewart wanted a farm where he could teach his sons farming skills he promised to spend two days a week with me and our children working that farm. He promised to take mid-week days off from his work with the transport firm if he was obliged to work there over weekends. I knew of a small farm that I could afford to buy. Stewart looked it over and negotiated the price. I wrote the cheque. Stewart sprang into action. He said, “This place has great potential!” He hired contractors to come in and demolish an old packing shed, clear old grape trellises and bulldoze the eucalyptus trees from more land suitable for planting with citrus trees. Friends and family came to help with the building of new trellises; the planting of more table grapes and citrus trees. Stewart arranged for the construction of a new farm shed and sourced a tractor and other farm machinery for me to purchase. I agreed to every request until my money was exhausted. It would be at least five years before the farm became viable, but I figured it was worth the wait for a return on my investment to be able to have my husband spending time with his family.

When Stewart could no longer exercise a managerial role, he lost interest in working the farm. It fell to Paul to do much of the cultivation work, while Adrian helped me pick oranges and grapes. The girls preferred to spend their weekends in Dalby.  Rodney moved west to Quilpie to work. Within two years Stewart’s work role within the transport company changed. His younger brother became the managing director and Stewart accepted a role requiring him to travel widely throughout Queensland. Feeling a sense of responsibility for my inheritance, I threw myself into working the farm. Always I mouthed Stewart’s words about the potential and spoke enthusiastically to family and friends, masking my disappointment that once more Stewart was absent from his family for days at a time. Nor was it easy for me to be a single parent to teenagers who got into the scrapes of highly spirited young people. I continued on with my Forum speaking and acted as treasurer or secretary on a number of community committees.

Above all, I began to desire a time when I could just do something for myself. I wanted to write. I enrolled at the Adelaide College of TAFE - Technical and Further Education, to undertake a correspondence course in Writing for the Media. Due to evolving pressures, I was only able to complete the first year of this course, but achieved a Distinction.

I began writing a column for a hobby farmer magazine. My column was called Waste Not, Want Not. The magazine printed my submissions for a couple of months, then replaced me with a professional journalist.

My effort to become a superwoman taking care of family, home, community and farm, while still keeping a positive attitude before others, took its toll. Early in 1983 I fronted my doctor in tears and told him I was slipping into depression. He referred me to a psychiatrist in Toowoomba, who diagnosed physical fatigue and anxiety. Stewart was horrified by my ’sickness’ and belittled whatever the psychiatrist said should be done. When I reminded him of his promises, he coldly replied, “Circumstances have changed.”

I couldn’t find a buyer for my small farm as no one wanted a property that wasn’t viable. My anxieties were caused by two things.

• Stewart had continued to spend money, including speculating in shares, for which he required me to charge the debt to my credit card.  Because of conflict with his brother, the managing director  of the transport company, Stewart was required to charge all his expenses to a personal credit card and then submit it to the company for payment. Also, ever since he had begun work in this family company he had brought his pay packet home to me for management. Thus he believed he could spend what money he chose and request me to pay it from our savings. When the savings were gone he then expected me to charge expenses against my credit card and pay them off from his wages. When Carol got engaged he grandly promised, “Order whatever you want for the wedding.” I was constantly in debt.
• I could not voice the fear, but I needed reassurance that Stewart truly loved me. Although he was highly sexed, this appeared to be his only understanding of giving me love. His frequent absences throughout our marriage caused me great loneliness. I needed a soul mate. Whenever I tried to have a heart to heart talk with him, Stewart would agree with everything I said, but nothing would change.

Carol’s wedding day passed in a drug induced haze. In this confused mental state I was vulnerable as Stewart increased the pressure on me to do more for our family. After a row with his brother he came home saying we must make our own future, but the only assets we possessed were the farm which wasn’t bring in any income and our family home. Both these assets were in my name, he pointed out, but all our lives he had worked for me and our children. In my desire to please him, I succumbed. He purchased a factory which Carol and her husband would manage. I mortgaged my home, farm and factory. Stewart took two months holiday from the transport company to re-equip the factory. It was never my intention to work in the factory, but during the next year Carol was not always able to get workers and Stewart was soon demanding (from long distance) that I assist her. Once more I found myself trying to protect my investment. Stewart had told me, when purchasing the factory, that he would be able to get new markets for its products. This proved no more than wishful thinking.

The year was 1985 and I was still heavily medicated. Stewart was absent from home much of the time. I could see that both the farm and the factory were financial disasters and recognized that I would lose them both and my home would have to be sold to pay debts. We would once more have to start again.

There was light on my horizon. I believed that if we pulled together we would clear our debts. In a heart to heart conversation Stewart agreed that I should enroll to obtain an agricultural degree with the Orange Agricultural College and I could undertake a journalistic course through the University of Southern Queensland. I saw a future for myself traveling with Stewart, working as a free lance journalist, writing and photographing stories for rural newspapers. He gave passive agreement, while remarking that he could not understand why I wanted a career, saying surely it was enough to be his wife and mother to our children. The four older children had all left home. We could send Adrian as a boarder to the Toowoomba Grammar School. Like a mirage on the horizon, it gave me hope, but like all mirages it was an illusion.

Rodney got married. Paul broke bones in his wrist in a fall from a motor bike. Our 25th wedding anniversary approached. I planned a small party at home for family and friends. Stewart opposed the idea, suggesting instead that I should charge another debt to my credit card and we should have a second honeymoon at a Great Barrier Reef island resort. I refused to incur further debt. At the party, Stewart distanced himself from me, until finally he was called on to make a speech. He said only that I had been a wonderful wife and mother. I realized at that moment that he had never seen me as a person, but only as a woman fulfilling a role.

A month later I sold our home. This was the most easily disposed of our assets. As I began packing, Stewart announced that our marriage was over. He wanted an amicable divorce. He told family and friends that I had never forgiven him for the loss of my dowry and our bankruptcy in 1972 and now that I had lost my inheritance he could not bear the thought of living the remainder of his life with a cold and bitter woman. He told our children that he had worked all his life for us; he had given me all his wages and now had nothing to show for all those years of work; he would not say anything bad against me, but when free of me he could be a better father to them.

To be continued.

For me, cherries have always been associated with Christmas mornings. As a child I left a pillowslip at the end of my bed on Christmas Eve as I recited, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” Waking in excitement at the first light of dawn I would peer into the depths of the pillowslip to find the small brown paper packet containing apricots, plums and cherries. Stone fruit were scarce and expensive, but always a Christmas treat.

I knew nothing of Morello cherries, the sour kirsche of Europe, until I married Eberhard. Almost thirty years ago he established one of the first coffee shop restaurants in Toowoomba, which became rightly famous due to his skill as a baker of Continental cakes. In those days it was nothing for him to bake and assemble two large Black Forest Torte every day. In those days he was able to buy 5kg tins of sour kirsche imported from Yugoslavia.

When we moved to the cool mountain climate of the Granite Belt in 1992 and established Das Helwig Haus B&B, one of the first trees I planted was a Morello Cherry tree to enable us to harvest and preserve our own cherries. Like many other Australian fruit eating birds, the Eastern Rosella parrots have flourished since fruit orchards were established on the Granite Belt and now every year farmers set up scare guns to startle the parrots away from their orchards and vineyards, or they shoot hundreds. These birds are not an endangered species and the alternative is costly - to net the crops.

Grape vines covered in bird netting

I did not want my cat,  Patches, hunting the parrots and bringing them to me like trophies.

I had some netting, but found it insufficient to cover the tree this year. For a couple of hours while I went to purchase more, Patches was placed in a canary cage under the tree to ward off the fruit eating parrots.

Patches guards the cherries

Within two weeks the cherries had darkened in colour and were soft to the touch, indicating that they were ready for picking. They were so soft that I stripped the cherries into a bowl, leaving the stems on the branch.

Ripe Morello cherries

Whenever I work in the garden Patches always comes to investigate. She is a companionable cat who my WWOOF workers say is their supervisor. She lay beside the bowl of cherries begging to have her tummy tickled.

Patches

After the pits were removed I had 5kg of cherries. As I still have bottled cherries left over from the 2007 harvest, I decided this year to convert the entire crop to jam. Cherries are lacking in pectin, which means they don’t set a good jelly unless pectin is added in another form. Most old recipes suggest cracking open the cherry pit and including the almond like kernel to add pectin, but I prefer to add the pulp of stewed Granny Smith apples.

Sugar, cherries and apple pulp.

As I would for Apple Jelly, I peel and core the apples. I place the skins and cores in a pot and barely cover with water. I simmer this until the peels are soft, then drain off the liquid. I pour the liquid over the sliced apples and simmer until soft. I puree this mixture.

Please note, when cooking fruit for jam, the fruit should not be cooked over a high heat until sugar is added, or the pectin will be destroyed.

Morello Cherry Jam

Next I combined the 5kg of pitted cherries, 5kg of sugar and 2kg of apple pulp in the jam pot and brought to a rapid boil, skimming off the froth until the jam started to thicken.

This volume produced 38 jars of Morello Cherry jam, each jar weighing 400gm.

Jars of Morello Cherry Jam

Sunshine returned to my life in 1974 when I realized I was pregnant with our fifth child. I had been feeling the despair of poverty - making do on a truck driver’s wage, the loss of a car and the need to once more begin paying off a home.  All my homemaking skills came in useful as I again established a vegetable garden. I began sewing school uniforms to earn a little cash.  To this day Carol despises any food called soup or stew and refuses to eat ripe bananas, because I discovered that one of the fruit shops put aside boxes of spoiled fruit and vegetables, which could be purchased for only a dollar. We ate lots of apple pies, banana cakes, fruit salad and vegetable soups. My children were never hungry but they sometimes wished for the ‘take away’ foods that other families bought. Stewart’s work meant that once more he was frequently absent and I had to cope alone in emergencies, like when Paul had acute appendicitis.

The return to Dalby and Stewart’s employment in the family transport firm had a downside, in that there is always dissension and rivalry when family members live and work in close proximity. The bankruptcy of our business brought shame on the McIver family name. Stewart worked long hours partly to bring home extra money, but also to lose himself in his work. Less forthright women within the family began to see me as different to them and labeled me as “strong and capable“. This allowed all family members to look the other way when I was in need of assistance. I was slipping into depression when I realized I was pregnant. Stewart welcomed the thought of a new baby, saying he had neglected his other children and promised to become a family man after the birth of our son. Adrian was a much loved baby and I called him the “Sunshine of my life,” because he brought joy and hope back into our home.

Then Cyclone Tracey struck Darwin in the Northern Territory and once more our lives were changed.

There is and old saying, “It is an ill wind that doesn’t bring some good!” So it was with Cyclone Tracey. The city of Darwin was largely destroyed by the cyclone and had to be rebuilt. Goods needed to be trucked north from Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide and many transport companies flourished. The four men in Stewart’s family established a new transport company to shift building supplies and other items from Brisbane to Darwin. Instead of working as a truck driver, he now supervised the loading of trucks in the depot at Dalby. This meant he slept in our bed at night and ate meals at home, but he remained absent from our lives as he worked long hours. The transport businesses prospered and our income improved so that by 1979 Stewart and I could afford to take our first overseas holiday. My mother cared for our children while we toured New Zealand for two weeks. It was there that I bought the beautiful suede suit of Wapiti deer skin that I’m wearing in the family photo.

The family, 1979

When Adrian was born the older children were all at school and I decided to become involved in the Dalby community, taking him with me to meetings or leaving him for short periods with his grandmothers. I joined the Dalby Queensland Forum Club, a group of about twenty women devoted to improving their speaking ability and knowledge of meeting procedure. Although nervous about speaking in public I thoroughly enjoyed reading for research, as I garnered knowledge on the differing speech subjects. While a teenager at boarding school I had been denied the opportunity to learn Art of Speech. Now, I was self-educating myself and relishing the drama whenever I stepped up to the Dais. An unexpected advantage was that when I picked up a book to read, my children no longer saw me as having idle time and available to be approached with their problems. Instead they respectfully told each other, “Mum is researching!”  Another wonderful aspect of my years in Forum was the long lasting friendships I made with other women.

By 1979 my life had reached an enjoyable period, but it wasn’t to continue. My sisters and I each received a large legacy. I now had money and no idea of what to do with it. My father always said, “A man will create wealth, his children will conserve wealth and their children will squander it. Wealth seldom lasts more than three generations.”

Money brings responsibility. I would have conserved my wealth, as did my sisters, but Stewart urged me to invest the money to create a secure future for our children. He became concerned when I paid off the debt on our home, bought a new lounge suite and a set of stainless steel saucepans. For months he pestered me with suggestions until he finally shouted at me, “If you don’t invest your money, inflation will mean that you won’t have enough left within a year to buy a Holden Kingswood! You want me to spend more time with the family. Well buy us a farm where I can teach our sons farming!” He convinced me to act by persuading me that my actions would benefit our children. There was nothing I wanted more than to have my husband spend time with his family.

I bought an eighty acre farm 20kilometres from Dalby with a three bedroom cottage, an orange orchard, several rows of grape vines and about forty acres of cultivation land suitable for growing grain. I saw it as no more than a hobby farm, a property where Stewart and I could relax with our children at weekends. I envisaged myself baking bread in the oven of the combustion wood stove while Stewart spent time with our children teaching them farming skills. I didn’t invest my inheritance to earn money, I spent it to buy us a family lifestyle.

To be continued.

As November came to an end and December arrived in this cool mountain climate of the Granite Belt, I have dealt with an abundance of mulberries, strawberries and currants, converting these to fruit compotes in Vacola bottling jars, jams and jellies. There is such a huge abundance of Boysenberries each year from my three vines in the garden at Das Helwig Haus that I can’t keep up with the processing and I have learned to save for another day the fruits that I can’t use today by temporarily freezing them.

Frozen Boysenberries

One begins by picking the berries from the vines, which are thorny, and then removing any green husk that comes away with the fruit. When they are harvested and cleaned you must make the decision of what to do next. Freezing is easy, just fill boxes like shown above and place in the freezer.

Wear a long sleeved shirt when picking Boysenberries to avoid scratched arms. I don’t wear gloves, finding them too cumbersome, so frequently have to use my teeth to extract small thorns from my fingers.

Boysenberries

Sometimes the berries come away clean, other times the green portion at the end remains, which I remove when I go into the kitchen. Only pick the berries that are turning black.

If making jam place the berries in a jam pot and weigh. Add an equal weight of sugar and stir the berries, partly crushing to release juice.

Place the jam pot on the stove on high heat and bring to a rolling boil. Skim off the froth.

Skim the froth

Continue cooking the jam over a high heat. In the illustration I am working with 4 kilograms of berries and 4 kilograms of sugar. I find the old saying, “More haste, less speed” particularly appropriate when making jam. I could fit double the quantity into this pan, but then I would not be able to boil the jam rapidly for it would quickly spill over on to the stove creating a mess for me to clean. It is quicker to make up small quantities. The reason I need to boil the jam rapidly on high heat is that the sooner the jam is cooked, the brighter the colour.

The jam will go through a frothing stage, after which the bubbles will become larger. When they start to explode and spit hot jam at you the jelling stage has been reached. I can tell, due to experience, when my jam is jelling by holding my wooden spoon over the pot and watching the drops as they slowly fall back into the pot. You may prefer to pour a little jam off your spoon and chill it prior to pushing with a finger to see if it will wrinkle, thus proving that it has jelled.

Boysenberry Jam

Any of the comercial jars with clip tight lids are suitable for storing your jam. I pour my jam into a jar, screw on the lid tightly then upend each jar until I have finished filling all the jars. The jars should remain upside down for 2 minutes to sterilize the air within the jar and to create a vacum seal. Place the jars upright. Label when cold.

A THOUSAND MILES AWAY

The twists in my journey through life have been unexpected. Within two years of leaving the farm at Bell, situated on the road between Dalby and Kingaroy, and moving with our four children into a house in Dalby, I was to find myself living temporarily with them in Cooktown, north Queensland. Cooktown was established as a busy port during the Palmer River gold rush. Cooktown sits on the banks of the Endeavour River where Captain Cook beached his ship for repairs after holing it on the Great Barrier Reef in 1770.

I had moved a thousand miles from my home.

The Old Palmer Song

Oh, the wind is fair and free, my boys, the wind is fair and free,
The steamer’s course is north, my boys, and the Palmer we will see.
The Palmer we will see, my boys, and Cooktown’s muddy shore,
Where I’ve been told there’s lots of gold, so stay down south no more.

Chorus

So blow, ye winds, heigh-ho, a-digging we will go,
We’ll stay no more down south, my boys, so let the music play,
In spite of what I’m told, I’m off in search of gold,
And we’ll make a push for the brand new rush, a thousand miles away.

Just before leaving the Bell farm I had received from Margaret Arnott in Canada a gift of Artex embroidery paints. Being the creative homemaker that I am, I used the tubes of paint with ball-point ends, not to colour in designs as the manufacturers intended, but to paint the X of cross-stitch embroidery patterns on the small square checks of gingham fabric. Soon my children were wearing gingham dresses and shirts painted with cross stitch pictures and when I needed to give gifts to family members I was able to sew and embroider a whole range of novelty items.

The move to Dalby allowed me to begin working the party plan demonstrating and selling the Artex embroidery paints. I loved the work and party goers found me both inspirational and entertaining. This meant that I had to arrange for other motherly women to care for my children during my day time absences. At that time, my youngest sister was a primary school teacher in Dalby. In return for her baby-sitting my children at night, I became her dressmaker.

Stewart would be away two or three weeks at time, hurrying home for quick family visits and to see that all was well with the management of our farm land.  For our tenth wedding anniversary in 1970 Stewart surprised me by telling me to arrange for the grandmothers to care for our children for a week, while he took me to Hayman Island on the Barrier Reef. I wondered how we could afford the cost, but he reckoned the earth-moving business was prospering.

When the December school holidays arrived, he arranged for our family to stay in a  fisherman’s hut at a Hay Point beach, near Mackay, where he was then constructing railway culverts. By the following August he was working near Cairns and I took the four children from Brisbane to Cairns - a two day journey on the Sunlander Rail service, to join him there for 2 weeks.

Queensland road map

Stewart had driven our car to Cairns so I could take the children sightseeing, but I remember the long drive home as horrendously uncomfortable. He not only packed the six of us and our luggage into the car, but added two employees and their baggage.

Stewart then moved on to his largest project - the building of a dam for the town water supply in Cooktown. Those next few months were worrying. Creditors were constantly harassing me, the farm manager resigned as he couldn’t accept responsibility for the farm costs Stewart was instructing him to incur, and whenever Stewart returned home he would take any cash I had saved from my work. Selling the Artex hobby paints had proved successful and I became one of the top sales persons within Australia. Every month I would receive an incentive prize, much to the delight of my older children. For each of six months I won a setting for a dinner service until I had a full table setting. Then as the top salesperson one month I won a gold Seiko wrist watch.

A new farm manager was hired and temporarily some of his household furniture was delivered to our Dalby address. Rodney and Carol arrived home from school and sighted the furniture. Rodney shouted, “Look, what Mum has won now!”

Terrible things began to happen. One morning we found our garden gate open and our faithful old British Bulldog, Rodney’s pet for ten years, had disappeared from our garden. Such a dog would surely be noticed within the town, but despite the reward I offered, we never saw “Bullo” again. Stewart immediately sought out the breeder and was able to obtain an adult female dog, who quickly bonded with me. She would remain at either the front of back door of our house - the closest spot to where I was working or sleeping. Within two weeks she was poisoned.

Other things occurred and I began to fear for my children. Perhaps a person Stewart had wronged was trying to bring him home by terrorizing his family. As the 1971 December summer school holidays drew near I made the decision to take my children and flee to Cooktown to be with my husband for the six weeks of the holidays. He rented for us a one room motel unit at the Sovereign Hotel. For a period of time I enjoyed a holiday with very little to do other than care for my children and I found time to immerse myself in the culture of this old gold mining town. Due to the climatic nature of the north, many bush characters  assembled in the town to wait out the WET season. I also discovered that many people had fled from civilization to this distant region.

I was obliged to remain in Cooktown, not six weeks as I had planned, but four months. The cheque I had written to pay for our return flights to and from Cairns wasn’t honoured by the bank and the return portion of the ticket was canceled. Stewart’s monthly applications to the Cooktown Shire Council for contract payments were never  paid in full.  The engineers who designed the dam had failed to undertake drill tests and when our earth-moving equipment met with water-bearing shale they were unable to establish a sound base for the dam - a base that would not leak. The Council could not afford to pay the mounting costs and threatened to sue the engineers. But, the engineers had to approve Stewart’s work before the Council need pay the contracted amount. Naturally, the engineers found excuses every month to disallow portion of Stewart’s claims for payment. The result was that we were unable to pay our creditors. We returned home to Dalby in April, the job unfinished, to begin litigation against the Cooktown Shire Council. Meanwhile our creditors, dissatisfied with Stewart seldom meeting his promises, moved to bankrupt our partnership. We had assets - our farms, house, livestock and machinery, which could be sold to meet portion of the debts. There was no choice. We filed for bankruptcy. We lost everything, including our car thus making it impossible for me to continue selling the Artex paints. Stewart obtained a job, working as a truck driver for his father’s transport company.

Cooktown was a watershed in my life. It was a period when I was removed from familiar circumstances and had the opportunity to read; converse with university educated drop-outs and evaluate the beliefs of others. I bought and read Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch and began to question the chauvinism of male members of my family and the reluctant acceptance of the status quo displayed by older women.

To be continued.

As an idealistic personality type I had extremely high expectations of myself. I attempted to be the perfect wife and mother which meant that I found it almost impossible to say “No” to my husband. He in turn always took on more work than he could handle and delegated jobs to me. I have a strong sense of responsibility which he exploited.

The year after we bought the second farm and were experiencing one of the many droughts of the sixities Stewart needed to transport truck loads of water and attend to other matters, so after breakfast he would feed the pigs and I would wash down the floors of the piggery. I would then put Rodney and Carol in the family car, before releasing a herd of beef cattle onto a road fronting our property. The ‘long paddock’ is the name for stock routes used for droving cattle in times of drought. We had a permit to graze our cattle on a 2 mile strip of road, linking  arterial roads in the Bell district. I would release the cattle and turn them to walk and graze in one direction. When they reached the arterial road, I turned them back to graze in the opposite direction. The forage was dry and dusty and the cattle did more walking than eating, making it necessary for me to spend the day in the car with my two young children. We played word games, we sang and I told them stories. I also succeeded in knitting them each a pullover.

It was at this time that a National census was taken. When as ‘head of the household’ Stewart filled out the forms he listed our occupations as FARMERS. Late one evening as I was bathing Rodney and Carol, a city born woman came to, collect the forms. After examination, she said, “You can’t write your occupation as farmer, you are a housewife.”

Having spent the day on the road I was dirty and tired, in no mood to comply. My house was in a mess, my children were noisily jumping up and down in the bath and the vegetables were probably boiling dry on the stove.

I argued that my husband and I were equal business partners, but she said I must be receiving a wage before I could call myself anything other than a housewife.

“Okay,” I said, “I draw a monthly allowance for housekeeping and personal needs. I’ll call that my wage.”

The confrontation continued for some time. Finally, she crossed out the words FARMER and replaced them with PAID HOUSEKEEPER, PAID PIGGERY ATTENDANT. This was the story I typed up and sent off to the Australian Women’s Weekly magazine for which I was paid ten pounds the equivalent of twenty dollars.

In 1967 Debra and Paul were born. I was still writing to Margaret Arnott in Canada and on 24th May, 1969 I sent her this letter.

“My babies are now more than double trouble! They are driving me up the wall. Debra has just squashed apple all over one of the walls. She is the chief wall painter - using pencils, bananas or wet soap. Paul is a climber and mechanically minded. He loves switching off refrigerators and lights. I can’t leave the iron plugged in or he is sure to switch it on. They can open every cupboard in the house and hardly anything is out of their reach. By standing on tiptoe I can reach the top of the kitchen cupboards where I now store what I consider dangerous items. This follows an incident last week when Debra and Paul got to the contents of my cutlery drawer. Debra stated hitting Paul over the head with a wooden spoon and he retaliated by trying to stab her in the belly with the carving knife. Fortunately he only nicked the skin, but she then had a finger cut trying to fend him off.

While I was administering first aid to Debra, Carol began to scream as Paul had just climbed to where she kept her favorite doll, dropped it and cracked the head.

My house is one continual mess as they are constantly emptying things - the teapot, the tea canister, a packet of rolled oats, detergents - squeeze bottles are particularly popular, the contents of the toy cupboard, or worse, turning on water taps. I hope for some warning if I’m to get visitors. After having Rodney and Carol go through this stage, I know it will pass, but I never realized what utter chaos two babies together could cause.”

The day after the knife incident, late in the evening, Debra was running towards the house when she tripped and fell. She hit her cheek on a sharp rock, opening up a deep cut, which needed stitching.  An employed man was available to remain with the other children while I drove Debra into Dalby to have the wound treated. Two hours later when I arrived home, Stewart was there. He was treating Paul like a pariah. What a sad sight was this little boy, standing in his cot with a heavy, wet nappy hanging around his knees. Rodney and Carol didn’t know how Debra had received her wound and told Stewart that Paul had attacked her with the carving knife. Stewart had put Paul in the cot, told him he was in disgrace and used this as reason why he should not learn to change a nappy. Although we were later to have a fifth child, Adrian, Stewart never gave me any assistance with housework, meal preparation or child care considering these duties to be a woman’s work.

The small farm house is gone now.

During 1967 Stewart had begun using our farm Caterpillar D4 tractor to build farm dams or clear a few trees for our neighbors bringing in some handy, cash income. As always, he worked from sunup to sundown, moving further afield looking for work for the tractor. Soon he figured he needed a second tractor, then other machinery for particular jobs. Next he needed to pay men to drive the tractors and cultivate our farm fields in his absence. We were constantly in debt, struggling to keep our creditors from suing us for payment of accounts. Stewart was too busy to reply to demanding letters from our bank manager, and  would send me to explain our position. I walked out of the bank once, in tears and feeling I had failed my husband as a business partner because the manager had said to me, “I don’t want to talk to you. Send your husband in to see me!”

Stewart had a solution. In 1970 he was offered a contract to construct road culverts on a new railway line to transport coal from the mine at Blackwater in central Queensland. We would purchase more machinery and he would put a team of men together and move with them to Blackwater. I refused to live alone with the children on the farm, supervising the farm work. It was decided that we would employ a farm manager, purchase a house in Dalby and I would move to live there with our family. To be continued.

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AN ABUNDANT SUMMER BEGINS.

Is it possible that our Queensland climate could be reverting to the type of summer weather this state hasn’t experienced for two decades? It is shaping up that way with excellent rain on the Granite Belt and a devastating storm hitting Brisbane a few days after my last Red November garden tour. Now my garden is growing like a jungle and the neigbour’s cattle are happily grazing our grass land. The Severn River is flowing and our dams are full.

I set out to take a walk with my camera on Saturday afternoon and met our flock of geese marching home to be penned for the night safe from foxes and other predators. They are always rewarded with a handful of cracked corn to encourage their return, although as a grazing bird their diet consists mainly of grasses and herbage.

Geese coming home.

I was heading down to photograph one of the dams when I began to see the occasional speckle of a white field mushrooms amongst the grass, so promptly returned for a basket and knife.

An abundance of water.

When a young child my parents taught me how to identify the edible field mushrooms and distinguish them from the various forms of poisonous toadstools. They were the only mushrooms we had as children.  There are two large commercial mushroom farms on the Granite Belt, with one only a kilometre away at Glen Aplin. Earlier in the week I had bought mushrooms, but couldn’t resist this chance of harvesting the highly flavoured wild ones.

Field mushrooms growing wild

Rain in November or March will often trigger the growth of wild mushrooms, which require a number of cloudy days with an even temperature of between 15 and 18 degrees to thrive. Once the sun shines they rapidly blacken and spoil. Unlike the factory mushrooms, which can be kept for days, wild mushrooms should be cooked immediately. I also peel my wild mushrooms. To store them, I saute the mushrooms in butter and place in freezer boxes for later use in soups, stews or gravy.

This time there were only enough mushrooms to add flavour to a stir fry dish of bacon and onions. I photographed these wild mushrooms beside the factory grown mushrooms and the other ingredients, to show you the difference. The bought mushrooms have thick white flesh with little taste, whereas the white tops of the wild mushrooms are thin and the flesh is much juicier, quickly making a black sauce. When I was a child we would place large mushrooms, white side down on the top of our wood burning kitchen stove, sprinkle them with salt and when they were blackened and oozing juice, pop them into our mouths.

Bacon, onion and mushrooms.

Meanwhile the Flanders poppies in the Remembrance Field have almost finished flowering and are now running to seed. We usually slash them at the end of November but the field is too wet this year to bring in the tractor.

The potatoes I had planted in rows on the edge of the poppies needed to be hilled up. I worked there with three Korean wwoofers to undertake this task.

Potatoes at the edge of the Remembrance Field.

Each day brings the joy of anticipation as I walk out to see what my organic garden will yield. We are already using freshly dug potatoes, lettuce, butter beans, radish and spring onions from the vegetable garden. I have picked the red and yellow currants and made jelly. Each day I gather about half a kilo of strawberries and pluck a kilo of boysenberries for jam.

The spring season has finished and today, our summer begins.

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When a younger generation looks back over a record of my life the thing I expect they will find so different from their own was the expectations that marriage brought to men and women when I married Stewart McIver in 1960. At this time in Australia a married woman was still expected to leave her paid employment to become a wife and mother. Often, it was also impractical for country women to take paid work away from their farm homes because they didn’t have any form of transport. The family car or utility vehicle was possessed by the man of the family.

My parents gave me a substantial dowry when we married, on condition that Stewart’s parents would assist him with an equal financial contribution. This enabled us to borrow additional money and purchase a mixed farm - dairying, grain, pigs and beef cattle at Walker’s Creek near Bell.

The first farm

This large square hill was in the centre of our property at Walker’s Creek. I took this photo when visiting the area a year ago.

The prevailing attitude of the time was that the husband was the provider and the wife’s role was to meet the needs of her husband. Below is a copy of a text that was still taught to high school girls in 1962 as to how they should greet their husband on his arrival home at the end of the working day.

FROM A 1962 HOME ECONOMICS TEXT

Get your work done. Plan your tasks with an eye on the clock. Finish an hour before he is expected. Your anguished cry, “Are you home already?” Is not exactly a warm welcome.

Have a nice meal ready. Plan ahead, even the night before to have a delicious meal on time. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they come home from a hard day at work and the prospect of a good meal is part of the warm welcome they need.

Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you will be refreshed when he arrives. This will also make you happy to see him, instead of too tired to care. Turn off the worry and be glad to be alive and grateful for the man who is going to walk in. While you are resting think about what you can do to make him happy. When you rise take care of your appearance. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh looking. Remember, he has had a work weary day. Be a little gay and a little interesting. His boring day may need a lift.

Clear away the clutter. Make one last trip through the house just before your husbands arrival, gathering up school books, papers etc. and put them away for sorting later. Then run a dust cloth over the tables. Your husband will feel he has reached heaven of rest and order and it will give you a lift too! Having the house in order lets him know you work hard to please him. Planning for the homecoming lets him know you care.

Prepare the children. Take just a few minutes to wash the children’s hands and face, comb their hair and, if necessary change their clothes. They are his little possessions and he would like to see them look the part.

Minimise all noises. Especially give heed to this if your husband has to join rush hour traffic. At the time of his arrival eliminate noise of washer, dryer, dishwaher or vacuum. Try to encourage the children to be quiet at the time of their father’s homecoming. Let them be a little noisy beforehand, to get it out of their system.

Some Don’t’s: Don’t greet him with your problems and complaints. Also, never complain if he is late for dinner. Count this as a minor problem compared to what he may have gone through that day. Don’t let the children rush at him with problems or requests. Allow them to briefly greet their father, but save demands for later.

Make him comfortable. Have him recline in a comfortable chair or offer that he take a nap before supper. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him. Arrange the pillows, offer to massage his back, take off his shoes. Speak in a soft, soothing, pleasant voice. Work to allow him to relax.

Make the evening his. Never complain if he does not take you out to dinner or other places of entertainment. Instead, understand his world of strain and pressure. He needs time for you to make him feel relaxed. If he is cross or irritable, never fight back, but try to understand his world of strain.

The Goal. Try to make your home a place of peace and order where your husband can renew himself. If you apply yourself to this application of all the principals of womanhood, your husband will want to come home.

Some things to say when your husband is discouraged: Suffer with him. Feel with him. Try to understand what he is going through. Some things to say: “Life is so hard I don’t see how you men put up with it.” “You poor dear I know how you feel.” “You have every reason to be discouraged.” “You are doing fine considering the problems you face.” Don’t let his gloom rub off on you. Restore his confidence by pointing out his masculine qualities and achievements. Be patient and remember you’re there to serve his needs.

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According to Myers/Briggs temperament and personality types, I am one of the rare ones - an Introverted Intuitive Feeling Perceptive, which I will later refer to as INFP. I discovered this understanding of myself only in 1986 after my marriage to Stewart had ended. This knowledge allowed me to better comprehend what happened during those twenty-five years.

INFPs are particularly idealistic and altruistic. They have strong core values based on morality.

Equality to Stewart meant that I did half the work, without the status of being a property owner. I still remember the shock I experienced the first time we sent some livestock for sale in Dalby and I announced my intention of going to the sale yards to see them sold. In no uncertain terms he told me that that was his role, while I attended to the grocery shopping or paid accounts. Naturally, this meant that he also had sole use of our vehicle and I wandered the streets awaiting his return.

Soon I had two infants, Rodney and Carol, needing my care while I continued to milk cows, grow a productive garden, raise poultry, cook the meals and do the housework. During this period of my life we had no electricity. I had to boil water in a copper for washing clothes and cook all meals on a wood burning stove. This was my first attempt at becoming Superwoman and by the fourth year of marriage I suffered constant fatigue, verging on depression. I had been warned, “Marriage is give and take. Men take and women give.”

There was no time for relaxation in my life.  Stewart was engrossed in his work and determined to become successful. “We will make our own breaks,” he would say. “All we have to do is work hard!” If Stewart saw me reading, he would quickly point me in the direction of jobs that needed doing, or send me to town on an errand. Nonetheless, my mother saved all her magazines, like the Australian Women’s Weekly, and passed them on to me.

Our only outings were on Sundays when we attended Church and visited with our families for lunch or afternoon tea. Alternately they visited with us on Sundays, leading me to undertake a flurry of baking on Saturday to be able to set a fine table with at least two varieties of biscuits, two slices and two cakes.

Unable to physically manage the work of milking cows twice a day, plus care for my children, I insisted that Stewart hire a lad to help him on the farm. For the next six years we were never without one or two lads sharing our house. I then had to provide their meals and wash their clothes. The employment of these lads allowed Stewart to undertake more farm work and we began to prosper. He constructed a large piggery on our farm, but this necessitated the buying in of grain.

We borrowed again and bought a second farm with more agricultural land to allow us to grow grain and moved house. This farm was closer to the Bell school, which our children would attend, traveling each way by bus.

Bell to Kingaroy Road

Our first year provided an excellent wheat harvest and Stewart spent the money constructing grain sheds and more piggeries. We sold the dairy cows to graze more beef cattle.

Then the notorious droughts of the sixties began and year after year our income did not match our expenditure. These were hard years, debt ridden years. Stewart avoided our creditors by always being at work from dawn to dusk, leaving me to answer the telephone or receive a court order from our local policeman. I found this humiliating. These accounts were for farm costs which Stewart had incurred in his role within our partnership. One man accosted me at the grocery store and in front of customers said, “You women want equality. You’re a partner. Now, you write my cheque because I can’t pin down that husband of yours!”

Unable to earn money, I attempted to save money by frugally sewing clothes, growing vegetables, making butter and practicing the skills I now teach as self-sufficiency.  I had an Olivetti portable typewriter and at least twice a month I would receive a letter from my pen-pal, Margaret Arnott, in Canada. No house work would be done that afternoon as I pounded off a letter to Margaret.

Mailbox gate

The mail was delivered three times weekly to a cream can mounted on this post at the farm entrance as our mailbox. The mailman also collected any letters I had placed there and posted them for me.

The Sixties became known as the Swinging Sixties as women became liberated from the fear of an unwanted pregnancy by the arrival of the ‘Pill’. For me personally being able to control my fertility was a relief, but I saw little other change until Merle Thornton, the mother of actress Sigrid Thornton, with another woman friend chained themselves to a bar in a Brisbane hotel and demanded the right to drink lemonade. Women were allowed to drink alcohol, but only in the hotel lounges, not in the bars, then the precinct of the male population. After a lot of kerfuffle these two women won the right for all Queensland women to front the bar and order whatever drink took their fancy.

The Australian Women’s Weekly magazine ran a feature story about these two intrepid women and asked for readers to send in their stories concerning equal rights. Ten dollars would be paid for the best story and five dollars for any additional stories printed. My story won the ten dollars and my writing career was launched.

To be continued next week.