This extract is from Freda in 1964.
So, the unexpected has happened. We have sold our home, built six years ago in this leafy suburb where I came as a bride. Our nest, where our two babies changed us from a couple to a family – on a small acreage with a shed, fruit trees, a garden and many memories. I walk through the empty rooms and feel much sadness …. But the future calls. We are going to be farmers!
Am I mad?! I always knew I couldn’t marry a farmer – I hate snakes. But my husband is a good salesman. He convinces me his vision has merit. “The country will be a better place to bring up children” he says. We are committed. With goods and chattels loaded, we farewell friends and family and leave for an old farmhouse perched on a hill surrounded by paddocks to begin our new life as dairy farmers.
Novices, we will be milking the herd unaided next morning, having watched the previous evening’s lesson. I wonder how on earth they can call each cow by name when all cows look the same.
Knowing the milking must be finished in time for an early morning pick-up, we are keen for a good night’s sleep. We try. But it is mid winter. The wind chases itself eerily around the high stumps under the house and plays with the ill-fitting doors which wake us periodically with their crashing. We reassure the children who are disturbed by the strange dog howling under the house and all jump from our beds in terror when a stray cat flies shrieking down the hallway right through the middle of the house. Refreshing sleep has eluded us.
Morning comes at last – 5am – shrouded in heavy fog. Two hundred acres of farm surround us. Do we need radar to find those cows? No, they’ve beaten us to the yard and are quietly chewing their cud outside the gate. I look at the children sleeping soundly. The shed is close to the house and I must go and help. Soon the milking machines are pumping, the radio is playing, cows are flicking their tails and stamping their feet while ruminating and belching. Over all the hullabaloo I shout, “Just checking the children – back soon”.
And there, outside, is our daughter, not yet three years old, standing terrified in the semi-dawn. In her Wee Willie Winkie flannelette nightie, bare feet on the frosty grass and surrounded by a circle of inquisitive, sniffling cows, she is screaming, “Mummmmeeee!!!”
That’s when I wonder “Can I ever be a success at this new venture? And can this bare house, perched on a lonely hill ever really be ‘home’?
The dairy cows are now but a memory. Fat beef cattle graze on the extended pastures. The old farm house has been transformed into our castle overlooking the pool and surrounded by acres of gardens and flowering trees my husband has planned and planted. We, my husband and I, stroll past the skis and paddles lying on the edge of the dam and come to the garden filled with gold flowering plants – gifts from our six grandchildren to celebrate our recent Golden Wedding Anniversary.
AND…NOW
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