The Woman on the Mountain (15 page)

It infuriated me to be so helpless.

After I’d been on my own for about twelve months, and my ex-partner was re-matched via Internet Dating, I weakened and tried this techno matchmaking myself—and not for the pump’s sake. With hindsight, it was/is a hopelessly unrealistic and over-optimistic, back-to-front matchmaking method, and I don’t recommend it. But through it I met someone with whom I thought I was in love. Well, I was, briefly. His emails were long and articulate, and he could spell—you’d be surprised how rare that is; he claimed to be a Radio National listener, from which I assumed too much; from photos he looked just my type; at the next stage of progression from virtual to real, I found he had a deep and melting telephone voice. Who could blame me?

I am mortified to recall how besotted I became, raving about him to all who would listen. I was even going to marry him. You may gain an inkling of how badly I was smitten if I confess that I played John Denver love songs—and wept. What happened to cynical me? Please understand that the CD wasn’t mine. I mean, I didn’t buy it; it was an old one of my mother’s, kept by me solely for the country song ‘Grandma’s Feather Bed’, to play to my granddaughter. Honestly. Cross my heart.

But what does this pathetic hormonal behaviour have to do with the pump? Coincidentally, the object of my affection was very clever with things mechanical. He devised a way to replace the Herculean cranking system by connecting the big diesel engine, via a rubber belt and a pulley, to a smaller engine that theoretically I could start. Each time he set the system up, I watched, then had a go. It worked every time. I was happy—mechanical independence loomed. The down side was that I had one more machine with its attendant mysteries.

My rose-coloured glasses having begun to slip after only a few months of the real relationship, John Denver sounded soppy once more and was relegated to a dark drawer. After six months, I dropped the romantic dream in there too and stomped on those silly glasses for good. My generous Internet ex insisted I kept the small engine, amongst other items for which he had no use—like the lawn mower—and which I could never have afforded to buy. He’d been a big spender on men’s toys.

A pity I’d found him and his world too narrow and uncommitted. He was a nice man, but then so was my ex-partner and, once upon a time, my ex-husband. At least I was now cured of looking. I could share my life, enrich it further, with an equal, or I’d live it contentedly by myself. I’d finally understood that this didn’t mean carrying a vacant space around beside me. Nor a sign saying ‘To Let’.

The first time my daughter and I tried to start the pump this way, we thought we were doing well in getting the new system all connected up. We took turns in revving the little engine flat out, the vibrations shaking our teeth and every bone in our heads, the noise deafening, the pump engine going ‘puff, puff, puff’. ‘Throw the pressure switch!’ I’d yell, but when we did, nothing further would happen; it could not get past ‘puff, puff, puff’. We gave up, unbolted the engine, but left the pulley screwed on for another try when our strength and faith had returned.

A few weeks later, a most atypical female friend who understands motorbikes, and therefore ‘small engines’, came to visit. I showed her the pump engine and its manual. This genius worked out that my daughter and I had run the pulley backwards, and therefore the pump engine was not at ‘top dead centre’ or some similarly esoteric term, which it apparently had to be for starting. The pressure switch was not connecting with anything. What we had to do now was use the crank handle to turn the engine over to the right spot.

Only we couldn’t get the pulley off the crank handle shaft. Running it backwards had wedged it and its grub screw on too tightly for feminine bashing and pullings, no matter what unidentified heavy metal tool we applied to it. But at least I knew what was required. A male.

I called a relatively nearby local (half an hour away by trailbike) who’d previously agreed to accept money for his time if I needed help. He came a few days later. With much bashing and tapping, he got the pulley off. He fitted the crank handle and went for it with a fury, and the monster started up. I rejoiced. But he refused to accept any money, so I knew I wouldn’t feel comfortable calling on him again.

Since I only need to run the pump every few months, it’s a while between battles. But I was confident I had it sorted now. I knew which way to run the pulley, for I’d drawn Texta diagrams on it and the small engine, as I had on the bolt to undo for priming. Since the universal undo direction of anti-clockwise has exceptions, grunting in a red-faced and futile effort to undo, when I am actually over-tightening, is something I can live without.

After two victorious pump runs I had a right to faith and hope.

But then the next battle left me defeated. What on earth could be wrong now? I’d checked and re-checked everything I knew about. I was due to go away for a week and it was summer; I could not leave with the tanks nearly empty.

I walked home and had a coffee to calm down and consider the matter. Then I remembered the oil being rather black when I’d checked the level. I had no idea if it would help, but I could change the oil, because I’d bought the right diesel oil months ago. The job had been on my list of things that I’d never done before, so kept putting off. This must be a punishment for my procrastination.

My diesel engine is very close to the ground. Even more so, it turned out, was the plug I had to undo to empty out the old oil. I had a slim tray with me to catch it, but even that couldn’t be wedged under the plug. Since surely no one would design a drain hole that couldn’t be drained into anything, I assumed that when the plug came out, so would an extension tube or something. I’d forgotten that engines are designed by men. As soon as the little plug was halfway unscrewed, thick black oil rushed everywhere.

Catching what I could with the tray, downhill of the engine, I daubed the excess over every bit of cast iron in sight. Rust protection, I told myself. As I did this with my hands, and as I’d been kneeling as I scrabbled to channel the flow, I was a mess.

I emptied the oil into a patch of thistles that needed exterminating, found a rag in the car—leaving oily black marks as evidence of search for same—and wiped the plug clean and my hands at least a little less dirty. I poured in the new oil.

To do all this I’d had to disconnect the system, so I now reconnected it, took a deep breath, said ‘Please!’ and started up the little engine. ‘REV-VVVV—puff, puff, puff, puff—flick the pressure switch—‘chugga chugga’! ‘Yay!’ I yelled above the welcome noise of the diesel engine and, more quietly, ‘Thanks!’ as I danced over to the gate valves to let the precious water start uphill. Never having mastered cartwheels, I did a few pirouettes over the grass instead. Several wallabies on the dam wall sat back on their tails and queried my unseemly behaviour.

I couldn’t stop smiling and was so proud of solving the problem that, as soon as I’d showered the worst of the oil off myself and put my clothes to soak, I rang a male friend, to share my advance in mechanical competence.

‘Well, ’ he said, ‘I doubt if that would’ve been the reason it didn’t start. New oil’d make it run better, but that’s all.’

Confidence quashed; mysteries of machines and male understanding of same reasserted.

Six weeks later, I set it all up again, expecting no problem with the diesel engine this time. I didn’t get the chance to find out because I couldn’t even start the small engine! Not a peep. I walked back to fetch the manual. Over-cockiness, I thought. I must have forgotten the sequence of pushing buttons and squeezing levers. But doing it by the book, still no peep. I must have flooded it, I reassured myself—which was what I’d heard men say about reluctant car engines.

I waited, and tried again. Nope. I unbolted it all. I took the little engine to town when next I went, two weeks later. There my son-in-law started it first go, pronounced it OK and gave it back to me.

Feeling foolish and female, I brought it back here and went through the whole process once more. Same result—nil. I rang for help. He said that was surprising, but perhaps it was the spark plug on the way out then, and I should remove the plug and buy another.

Easier said than done. I vaguely knew that spark plugs require special spanners, but since I didn’t know what one looked like, finding the latter amongst the metal things in my shed was an IQ test that I failed. I gave up and took the engine down to him once more. The special spanner turned out not to look like any spanner I knew. Plus I discovered that spark plugs can be in awkward positions, so that even had I found the special tool, I couldn’t have used it. I was initiated into a piece of assumed knowledge: you often need extra levers.

Are males born with this stuff?

But, once I get the water into the tanks, it simply runs downhill in the buried pipeline, gravity feeding to my taps. Except that the pipe can be unburied by animals and broken by horse hoofs and leak and I won’t know until no water comes out of the tap and it’s a long uphill walk to find where and I may not have the right diameter joiner to fix the leak nor the wrist power to work the two wrenches to tighten it enough even if I find a joiner and I have to keep walking up and down the hill to turn the tanks off and on to test if my join leaks and even when it’s fixed there’ll be an airlock so I’m still not getting water in the taps and I can’t light the stove without water in the tank up top or I’ll blow it up...

Simple, eh?

I often enjoy the lifestyles of my neighbours, which they seem to have down to an effortlessly fine and simple art. Of course I’ve only been working at mine for decades, but I’m also disadvantaged by being hopelessly grounded, for much of the social activity in my world goes on above me. I can’t always see what’s doing up there, but I can certainly hear it.

From one side of the tree rim to the other, birds constantly dart, swoop or lazily flap, in following, chasing two or threes, in panicky, chattery flocks, or determinedly single. They fly over my clearing, an aerial intersection, and always make it across, but not always without incident or alteration of course. That’s because the upper reaches of it are patrolled by a group of dapper and daring magpies, who choose, apparently at random, to keep the others on their wingtiptoes by hurtling out of nowhere like turbo-charged sheep dogs, deflecting them offside into the nearest tree edge. They continue this pursuit between the trees at the same speed, unerring and unrelenting, only to abruptly veer off on other business as soon as their point is made.

They allow the lesser birds to visit the base of my bowl just often enough to become complacent before they strike. For days the kookaburras are permitted to decorate my fence posts and stumps, the rosellas to waddle about in my grass or sit on my verandah rail, and the currawongs to direct their beady yellow eyes and quick black beaks to the reddest strawberry for their morning snack. Then one of the bosses decides it’s time they were reminded of the order of things and in a black-and-white second he’s scattered them all. He never bothers about me.

The inhabitants of the forest seem to have very active social lives, with much tree swapping, violent bursts of cackling, squawking and shrieking accompanied by great shaking commotions of leaves and branches, interspersed with brief solos and duets before the gang arrives.

My small dam in front of the house is a great meeting place—hanging out at the local pool. As always when different gangs meet, there’s a lot of showing off, like the wattlebirds daredevil-diving from a high branch to skim the water and up to a tree on the other side. I sometimes see strangers, such as a lone cormorant or heron, stop by for a drink or a swim. Wood ducks from my big dam try too, but the magpies hustle them on their way, protesting, quacking and flapping.

Some of the get-togethers down there sound like unsupervised group therapy. The weird friar-birds, with their bald black heads and knobby beaks, have a scale of maniacal cackles straight out of bedlam, and over the top of them loudly boast the wattlebirds, ‘I got the lot, the lot, the lot!’ The racket goes on and on, up and down, back and forth, apparently reaching no satisfactory conclusion—a bit like parliament on one of its less than statesman-like days.

If I was going to apologise for perceived anthropomorphism I should probably have done so long ago in these pages, except I don’t see it as that. Living alone, with animal and birds as my only daily companions, it’s an affectionate way of relating to them, differentiating them, that comes naturally to me.

Birdcalls do begin to interpret themselves as speech, and I can’t hear them any other way once that happens. Even bird books, when trying to approximate the calls, sometimes use actual words, the choice of which can only be subjective. In my book the Red Wattlebird is credited with saying ‘chock a lock’. Now why would anybody hear a bird say that? At least ‘I got the lot!’ makes sense.

I suppose I only pick up on the choruses of the birdcalls, as they are the parts most often repeated. So what seems to be their very limited conversational range may be my very limited auditory discrimination, or due to my very considerable ignorance. I have tried listening to birdcall tapes to educate myself, but I drift off after a while.

Certainly repetitive is the call of the Willy Wagtail, who unceasingly compliments everybody and everything, or perhaps it’s himself he’s talking about—a treetop Narcissus? ‘Pretty pretty, pretty! Pretty, pretty, pretty!’ Others, who repeat their calls so unvaryingly that I find myself wishing they’d get an answer and shut up, are treetop dwellers that I haven’t been able to see, and thus haven’t identified.

One is the sociable bird who greets all comers with ‘Hello mate! Hello mate!’ A bit of a stutterer, he sometimes has trouble getting past the ‘Hello ... hello ... hello...’, but he’s very persevering for, if I listen long enough, a few minutes later he triumphantly gets out the final ‘...mate!’ I can’t tell if it’s him or a sympathetic mate who often lets out a long, relieved ‘Whe-e-e-w!’ after such feats.

Then there’s the bird who’s a contemplative type, doesn’t like to give too hasty an opinion, so he goes to the other extreme, ‘I think ... I think ... I think it can!’ He varies this with a more positive judgement, delivered in a WC. Fields descending tone, ‘I like it ... I like it ... I like it w-e-ell.’

Many of the little birds speak far too softly and quickly for me to catch any of it. The blue Fairy Wrens and their brown consorts are often in the wisteria vine on my verandah, a few metres beyond my computer, but they’re never still for long. Little birds mostly get about in big groups, fussing, fluttering, never sitting still for more than a second, always chattering and twittering and tinkling. Like the various Thornbills and Weebills, who mimic a handful of yellow-turning leaves being perpetually tossed up in the air to flutter quickly down, or the Grey Fantails, who dart about to land here and there for a quick, proud spin-on-the-spot to display their pretty tails.

Most voluble of all are the kookaburras, but they laugh too much to actually
say
anything. They start the day off with a rousing dawn chorus of belly laughs and cackles, tailing off into small half-suppressed chuckles; they sit around all day watching for, catching and scoffing worms, meet a few of their mates now and then for a quick snigger and then as the twilight is about to fade one of them decides It’s time and begins the big event: the evening chorus. He never gets past one solitary bar before his mates start to join in, pointing their big beaks to the sky, throats vibrating, the volume swelling as they all get in on the act, till suddenly the hidden conductor gives the ‘Cut!’ signal and they drop into silence. But whether someone asks for an encore, or the keener ones just feel like it, sometimes they’ll have a second, less substantial, go. There appears to be a few irrepressible ones amongst them who will not take direction and find it hard to make that final note
final,
who just have to give one more salutary chuckle to the last of the light.

Farthest down the line when the singing talents were handed out were the Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos. They don’t come often, but they are very big and very raucous, so when they fly over or sit in my nearby trees for a spell, usually when it’s wet and misty, all else gets drowned out. They sound like something mechanical that badly needs oiling. Yet they were at the head of the queue when the magnificence rations were being doled out, for they’re impressively beautiful—oversized for the branches they perch on, regally deliberate in their movements, glossy black feathers stiffly sculptured.

I once came across two of them sitting in a low branch of an old forest she-oak, neatly cracking open the woody ‘nuts’. They took no notice of me standing not 6 metres away, but continued calmly with their feast, each with one claw clamped to the branch, the other claw manipulating one nut after another up to the hooked beak to break the hard seed pod compartments open and prise out the seeds. Low squawks every now and then expressed approval of the quality of this year’s crop.

The Sulphur-crested White Cockatoo is a little less grating of voice, but there’s only one who passes over here, and when he does, it’s early morning, flying from east to west, and back again around sunset, uttering no more then one or two screeches. He’s been doing the same for nearly 30 years—at least I assume it’s the same bird, as they are very long-lived. The mundane theory is that he’s a scout, checking crops for readiness to call in the flock for a feast. My dad had so many of them round his last farm that he used to plant a third more corn that he needed, factoring in what the cockatoos would eat. But I think my cocky’s a tragic figure, not content to join the great white flocks eating farmers’ corn and decorating dead gum trees, condemned to wing his lonely way. Shades of Jonathon Livingstone Seagull—is he another fellow weirdo?

I’m glad I have flocks of Crimson Rosellas instead. Gorgeous enough visually as they flash past, rich red with blue and black, they are also near the top of the musical scale, with several sweet and lyrical passages as part of their wide repertoire. They are a delight to hear as they call to each other back and forth across the bowl and around the rim. They also make less delightful squawks, especially when they have a barney over whose turn it is at the bird feeder on the verandah.

From my desk I can see them now, in the ‘window’ that I keep clipped back amongst the vines near the feeder. This is a large upturned black plastic pot plant saucer, with holes drilled in it, which I’ve screwed to a protruding crosspiece that I screwed to the railing. Another of those male projects that didn’t get done until I was male-less, it’s rough, a little wobbly, but it works. I toss a handful of parrot seed in there now and then, or a sunflower head from the garden, just to keep the birds interested, not dependent.

The rosellas sometimes fly the length of my verandah, under its roof, shooting out the far end ‘doorway’ amongst the vines; or perch on the guttering, tails hanging below it, now and then twisting upside-down, so a beak and two bright eyes come into my view instead.

When a currawong lands in the bird feeder, it fixes the rosellas with a yellow eye and they vacate but don’t move far, just to the backs of the chairs at the nearby table. If a magpie arrives, red eye fixes on yellow eye, they both fluff up and look mean, and the currawong backs off, to another chair.

Alfresco dining thus requires removal of bird shit first; it’s strong stuff, and since I recently sanded and repainted those yellow chairs, I’m not happy to see paint come off along with the black-and-white drips and drops. Still, it’s worth it for times such as when we are sitting at the table and several brilliant jewels of rosellas land beside us to feed, only a few feet away. Welcome!

‘Aren’t they tame!’ a visitor might exclaim. The rosella cocks an eye at him. ‘Aren’t you!’ it might be thinking. They aren’t tame at all, merely unafraid, under our established rules of live and let be. If I were to approach the feeder while they were there, instead of going about my own business, they’d fly off at once.

Because I spend so much time at my desk, I am intimate with this view through the window in front. It’s an old window, with coloured bubble glass side panels of amber and green and three small coloured panes at the bottom of the lower sash—green, rose and amber—the very same colours as were in my courthouse windows. I can see two yellow chair backs and a crescent of round table, a weathered timber post and railings, layers of wisteria and grape leaves in sunlit patterns and depths of green, the birdfeeder, and birds feeding.

As autumn advances, the wisteria leaves turn from green to butter yellow, but not all together, so echoing my green and yellow window-panes, and the yellow chairs. The ornamental grape leaves go through a riot of shades of pink, red, burgundy and copper. When pink predominates I often place a faded-to-rose lace tablecloth on the oak table, purely for the visual pleasure of the synchronicity of colours. Dyed years ago to hide a claret stain, its usual role is to cover my little TV set, since high-tech black does not suit my rustic cabin.

By winter all the leaves are gone. My view is more open, an intricate pattern of twisted and arching brown stems framing wider views of my tree rim. Its leafy summer cover gone, the translucent sheet in the roof lets in the sun once more; as the sun angle lowers, sunlight reaches my window and my desk. The verandah is used less, the yellow chairs soldier on, often mist-drenched, until they’re needed in spring.

I’m fond of these plain wooden chairs, bought some years ago for $2 each in an op-shop. The cheery paint protects them—and renders the table even more reproachful. Of sturdy oak construction, it’s been with me for over 35 years. Sealed and oiled long ago, it’s now slowly turning black from the elements; it needs, and deserves, better protection from my mountain mists and sunshine. That job is on a list, the ‘hard’ one, as sanding it will be slow—gripping a sanding block tightly is not possible for long without protest from my thumbs.

When the verandah is free of greenery, kookaburras frequently use the railings as vantage points for spotting the minute activity in the grass that signifies a worm, so I can admire their intricate feather patterns up close. Like the rosellas, they don’t move if I walk past on the verandah. Compared to a worm, what am I after all?

Nor are the magpies bothered by my passing, but then, as the bosses, they wouldn’t be. The kookaburras don’t actually sing while on my verandah, but the maggies do. Magpies seem to have ‘got the lot’: good looks, great flying skills, and top singing talent. And they really do sing, aiming their voices skywards, warbling in unison. They seem to enjoy it as much as I do. Unlike the rosellas’ whistled tunes, I can’t imitate the magpie song to talk back to them. I’ve tried, but it was like gargling while making the French uvular ‘r’. I think I’d need a different throat.

Another songbird, heard only occasionally, is the Grey Shrike-thrush. Her rich, pure melody catches the ear immediately and I go looking for her. As at Birrarung, she is shy. Soft-grey toned, she has a large head and a large dark eye, less ‘birdlike’ in the gimlet sense, so she gives an appearance of gentleness.

The blue-black Satin Bowerbird used to only bring his large harem of olive-green females here in summer, the stone fruit season, until a few years ago. It was spring, and I was on the verandah with my then three-year-old granddaughter, when we heard a creaking whirring call. ‘That’s an odd one, ’ I said. ‘Could it be a rosella?’ My granddaughter shook her head in pity at my ignorance. ‘No, Grandma, that’s a bowerbird!’ As of course it was, instantly recognisable as soon as she said it but, out of season, out of context, my brain hadn’t computed it while hers, less rigid, had.