Two Worlds - The Fifties

Two Worlds - The Fifties

Pistons poised like a sprinter on the blocks. A constant hiss of escaping steam, the pungent smell of smoke, the ebb and flow of voices, the platform alive with scurrying people. Small hillocks of bags and cases constantly growing and then diminishing to eventually disappear into the half-light of one of the stationary carriages.

The shrill whistle of the guard, the clunk of the couplings followed by the immediate lurch of the carriage as the train slowly puffed its way out of Perth station. Leaning out the window, one final dutiful wave to my mother. I was at last on my way to my uncle's farm at Ballidu.

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For the next week I need not worry about Latin verbs, Greek roots, conjunctive clauses or the smack of the strap on cold morning hands. That instant stinging, two throbbing hands, other students looking to detect any sign of weakness, a fierce determination not to shed a tear. Corporal punishment was simply a part of the daily routine, something that happened to some of us more than others. In some ways it was almost a badge of honour.  At times there was a sense of injustice but usually it was accepted. In fact, given we were often able to choose either the cane or the strap as the medium for the punishment it was viewed with a certain nonchalance, seen as a part of a democratic world in which there were real choices.

As the train struggled to climb the Eastern scarp a recurring thought bubble was singing its way around my mind 'I think I can, I think I can', 'I think I can'. Head constantly out the window watching the curve of the track, eyes brimming with smoke and soot, I was soothed by the clickity-clack, clickity-clack of the carriage as it skipped along the rails. By the time we approached  Chidlow the thought of a soon to be bought steaming hot railway pie was at the forefront of my consciousness. Before the train hissed to a jolting halt I was already savouring the flakey pastry, the tongue burning meat and the trouser staining tomato sauce. As a kid I was never let down by that iconic West Australian Government Railway Pie, the standard fare for travellers on any country line.

My uncle and aunty lived in the township of Ballidu with its wide gravelled roads, railway station, garage, corner pub, co-op, town hall, some small stores and the inevitable farm machinery business. There were a few streets of houses each with access to a dusty back lane along which, every week the Dunny cart would arrive with a clatter and and a biggish bloke in a blue singlet would jump out of the truck to empty the the can. These men were not 'effluent technicians', they were known simply 'the Dunny men'. As a kid it took a torch and a lot of courage during the night to brave the noisy dark and walk the distance of the backyard to the 'outhouse' and enter its dark interior.

Before sunrise I would travel with my uncle and cousin the thirty or so kilometres to the farm; we would return just as night had fallen.  Each day seemed to hold something different. It might be time spent on the tractor ploughing in anticipation of the rain, or sitting in the back of the truck bumping our way across gravel corrugations to pick up drums of fuel. Often it was wandering around the big shed that housed tractors, farm machinery and the trucks, along with bags of wheat, fertiliser and fuel. It was about savouring the smell of hessian bags, diesel, oil, dust and that sweet invasive scent of eucalyptus. There were piercing cold mornings and hot dusty days accompanied by sunburn and the itch of straw. In winter there were those mud luscious puddles, the slippery clay and the sting of rain thrown with some violence by the strong wind as it carelessly cut its way through any available opening.

Amongst the changing cycles of the seasons there was one constant, the textured earth, the sounds of the bush, the changing landscape and the pleasure derived from being close to nature. The farm was that other world I sometimes inhabited. I now sense that the times spent there were, in a small way, my Wordsworthian moments, although, as a twelve year old male, being force-fed poems  at school like The Daffodils, the emasculating potential of poetry was something that terrified me so much that from my perspective these experiences were more prosaic than poetic.