The Woman on the Mountain (4 page)

The cattle belonged to the original owner, who’d never needed fences since he’d owned the whole area, and he didn’t see why he should start fencing the cattle in just because he’d sold some of his land. They wandered far and wide and many had been doing so for years; our intruders were, in effect, wild. Whenever I saw them anywhere near our clearing I would race towards them yelling like a banshee, waving and throwing sticks at them. How I didn’t break a leg in my frenzied runs across the rough ground I don’t know, but our territory had to be claimed—and reclaimed.

We were told that to keep cattle out, a fence needed to be of barbed wire. As we were due to go away on holidays, that partial boundary fence had to be finished first. In cold rain, with scratched and sore fingers, leeches in our boots and water down our necks, we worked to get it done. It was extremely unpleasant—as far from idyllic as possible. On the last day, I left my poor husband to run out the final roll of wire while I went to pack.

As the year edged on, the little cabin grew walls and the tent grew holes, but by November we had forgotten what wet days were like. The country had dried out terribly and storms were bringing wild winds and lightning—and fires further along our ridge.

Our big double dam, with its island in the middle, was finished, and filling, ready for us to pump up to our new cement tanks on the ridge above us, but we hadn’t yet laid the pipes, as the pipeline routes were rockily off-putting.

To raise the alarm about the fires, we drove down to the dairy and rang the Forestry Commission for help, since they were our main neighbour. They came. No fire trucks or tankers for us then, just manpower with wet hessian bags, or rake hoes and backpacks if the Forestry had spares. Their back-burning measures took out 50 per cent of our property and the fires were still not completely extinguished everywhere. We hoped we were safe.

Yet the very next week they flared up again.

Just in case, I placed a big tub of water in the middle of our ploughed area in the wide clearing, for the kids and I to hop into, with a blanket kept soaking there ready to put over our heads.

More storms brought a little rain:

Violent electrical storms continued into December, but at least we now had the pipes connected and water on tap, with great pressure from the downhill gravity feed. We were preparing for Christmas. The weather was ‘extremely windy and dusty—unpleasant’.

Then the smouldering embers inside the old logs in the forest were blown into new life. The Forestry men were called back up and, along with the two only other locals and my husband, they battled the fires for the next six days. Nobody had Christmas that year.

20 December:

My husband was off early each day with the men, fighting fires to the back of us. My daughter was unwell.

22 December:

A local arrived en route to save his house in that valley and said both valleys were ablaze.

My husband ‘came home briefly with an injured possum to be nursed, singed, etc.... didn’t return until about 10.30—very tired.’

23 December:

Even previously burnt bits blazing away. They have apparently called in the Army and the Civil Defence to help. Other fires about to join up with this one—a real disaster.

But it had only been declared so when the fires were threatening pastoral country. Proper properties.

After that experience I started our local fire brigade. We would not so be helpless next time.

It was six weeks before any green showed in the stark black-and-white landscape of all the ridges and valleys we could see. Then it was bracken, no use to the animals. The fires had crowned all through the forests, so many baby animals and birds were incinerated, tragedies revealed when the big old hollow trees fell. Sometimes there were orphans, like a baby pygmy possum, that we tried unsuccessfully to save. And for months after there were sporadic mighty crashes echoing over the ridges as burnt-out trees gave way.

It would be 22 years before we had another such major and unstoppable fire.

Reliving that first fire through my diary has made me realise that one reason why I am so close to my place, my country, is that we have been through so much together. Writer and scholar Nonie Sharpe says indigenous people believe country is sentient; northern coastal people told her that new people must become known by country, must mingle their sweat with its water, so they become bonded to country. Fire can do this too.

My diary stopped at the stage when our cabin roof was about to be put on. There were still many gaps, such as gables and windows, but the mouldy, wind-battered tent was leaking so badly that we had to dismantle it and re-erect it in the house for a little while. As the cabin was finished and more functions moved indoors, I recall very vividly my sense of loss.

The fuel stove was installed inside, so no more outdoor cooking. I’d been used to washing up in a dish on a tin stand, outdoors; now, as I stood at a sink with at least cold running water, indoors, I felt trapped, deprived. I kept looking out the window—what was going on outside? Were the thornbills feeding past here yet?

I was cut off from my world, and I didn’t like it.

I shouldn’t have complained about my over-civilised sink, for I was soon to be cut off from the natural world in a far more drastic way. The ensuing thirteen years of exile in Sydney were not happy ones. But reliving the bad times can wait a little longer; I’ll approach them from the blessed position of my daily life now, back here, alone, and as contented as I have it in my nature to be.

That daily life is shaped and coloured more by the world around me than by my own solitary doings, which, apart from my writing, are not all that exciting. For example, it’s a big event when the cake of soap in the shower is at long last almost finished and I can choose a new one. Don’t laugh—it’s important. Will I really feel like sandalwood for a whole month, or would green apple be wiser?

All the activity is generated by my local society, a wild bunch, even harder to get to know and be accepted by than our jail’s villagers. It’s taken years, but I’m gradually learning how to get my own way, almost, without doing them any harm. Civilised conservation, I call it, or having your cake and eating it too—before the possums do. And if there are disputes they usually win, having the majority.

I’d like to introduce some of them. The most noticeable group, because the most populous, are the Red-necked Wallabies. As I said, it’s Wallaby World, and by Miss Austen’s social code, theirs would be considered a very middle-class one.

When I first lived here, there was no house fence to separate us from the locals, and there was already a wallaby in residence in the large clearing in which we chose to build. She had absolutely no fear of us or our vehicle; we were as irrelevant to her as to the possum.

No matter what we were up to or how close our actions brought us to her, she did not shy, merely interrupted her grazing for a brief instant to look. This was her patch. If we wanted a share tenancy on it, that seemed to be fine with her. She would often sleep during the day between two large stringy-barks, right next to where we’d erected the kids’ play tent. Even the noise and erratic movements of a three- and five-year-old at play did not cause her to do more than flick an ear in their direction. I hadn’t realised until then that their ears turn like individual periscopes.

Wanting to preserve such innocence, such lack of fear, we applied for our block to become a dedicated wildlife refuge. I thought the sign might deter shooters up from town for a ‘bush bash’, not to mention staghorn and orchid thieves, and it would at least tell dog and cat owners that their pets were only welcome here if under control.

Only much later did I understand that this ‘innocence’ is actually arrogance.

It was a strange feeling to be building where no others had. Pioneering, yes, but also intrusive, as it was clear to us that the wallaby and the possum had prior claims on this specific spot. As no doubt did others less visible to us. We thought we adapted to each other well, but everything we did had an effect; and later, as we fenced to protect our gardens, we also fenced them out from part of their regular beat. It didn’t seem much to ask of them to relinquish, but since we couldn’t actually ask, we simply imposed what we wanted. These days I feel less sure about the morality of takeovers and invasions of any type or degree. Going soft—or getting wise?

Since I’ve become the sole human resident it’s quieter on my side of the house fence, so I hear more and, without the distraction of human company, I see more. The wallabies have always known their place here. It was me who was confused. All these years they’ve patiently waited for me to muddle about, and fail, in my ignorance of how everything must work together here. But they’ve finally got the message through to me—wallabies rule.

As they graze all around this clearing, even from my house I see a great deal of their social and family affairs being carried on right under my nose. If I look up from the computer, through the window in front of me I can see quite a lot of wild ‘street life’.

Sometimes I feel as much a voyeur as my maternal grandmother, my Nanna, who lived in the same rented semi-detached house in a main street of Muswellbrook for 40 years. In old age, having broken her leg and needing to walk with a stick henceforward, she was too proud to be seen ‘hobbling about like an old crock’, and no longer went out. So she would sit behind the lace curtains of her front room and watch the world pass by on the footpath a few feet away beyond the fishbone fern ‘garden’. Surprising what she found out this way: who was pregnant (again!), who was drunk last night coming home from the pub, who was looking poorly, who was getting too big for his boots, who had the nerve to show her face in public, who was going to the dogs, who had walked past with her nose in the air but was no better than she should be...!

I will try to be less judgemental, although I am quite as fascinated by the goings-on.

The Mothers’ Club members meet on a north-facing grassy slope just outside my fence. In the morning sessions they sunbake without a care for danger or dignity, their legs sprawled apart, leaning back on their tails to expose their pale furry tummies to the warmth of the early sun. In the hotter afternoon sessions they take to the shade of the edging trees, stretch out wearily, lolling sideways in languid odalisque poses, yet with heads erect to keep an eye on their restless young who catapult about like overwound clockwork toys.

These toddler joeys are always on the verge of overbalancing, so fast do they bound and so inexpertly do they wield their disproportionately long tails. In mad circles, they race into clumps of bracken, disappear, then spring out again like jack-in-the-boxes further along. Definitely ADHD.

As any mother will tell you, life’s a lot easier before the kids become mobile. As the pouch-bound joey grows, it’s not unusual to see mother and joey eating in tandem, the big-eyed baby ‘practice grazing’ on what it can reach from the safety of the pouch as the mother slowly levers her way across the grass. If she stops and sits erect to check me out, the baby might withdraw until all I can see poking out are its black nose and eyes, ears hidden inside the furry parka hood of its mother’s pouch.

Bigger joeys, spending more and more time out of the pouch, each try their mother’s patience by interrupting her grazing to demand a drink of milk. When she decides that the guzzler has had enough, she pushes it aside and resumes grazing. At other times I see a mother holding her wriggling joey still with one dainty black paw while searching for fleas in the soft baby fur with the other. The joey cringes exactly like a child does when you want to wipe its face or comb its hair. ‘Aw, Mu-um!’

When the alarm goes up for the group to take flight, which they do in a very helter-skelter, every-wallaby-for-itself kind of way, these toddlers often rush to get back into the safety of their respective pouches, but it’s a terrible headfirst scramble and squeeze, and usually the mother takes off with a tangle of tail and long black feet and paws still hanging out. Or else the joey doesn’t notice her leaving, and when it suddenly becomes aware that it’s alone, goes hurtling off in any direction. Pure panic—just like any three-year-old in a department store who looks around and can’t see Mum.

As they’re allowed to remain in the pouch for about ten months, they’re quite big by the time the mothers evict them. Only then will the females give birth to the babies they had waiting in the wings, so to speak. Even with new ones in the pouch, they still suckle the expelled older joeys until they are well over a year old. New and old joey have a special teat each, from which they receive custom-designed milk. How clever is that? Once a joey is weaned, it’s about ready to start its own breeding cycle. When they do, such new mothers seem too small, are hardly much bigger than their growing offspring.

The young males front up to each other with typical teenage bluff and bravado. They ‘have a go’, play at boxing, cuffing each other over the head. As they still can’t balance on their tails, which they need to do if they want to use their big back legs to kick forward like the grown-ups do, they’re always falling over, looking foolish rather than impressive. I laugh, although I do feel for the oft-wounded vanity of adolescence.

But worse lies ahead for these young bucks.

The begetting of wallaby babies is preceded by a most elaborate and apparently difficult courtship. A peculiar hoarse grunting noise signals that an approach is being made by one of the males. I look up and invariably see the female object of desire patiently moving forward, attempting to keep grazing, while the would-be lover keeps hopping to get in front of her, trying to halt her progress, to make her notice him.

He rubs his face and neck against hers if she’ll let him, and leans under her to sniff if she’s on heat. But mostly it seems to be just a long, slow, fruitless procession across the paddock—her ignoring him, levering along on her hind legs and tail; him levering along behind, grunting away ineffectually, his little penis hopefully at the ready, pink and pointed, curved like a new moon.

I’ve never seen a female do anything but reject these advances, so perhaps the fellows are poor judges of when she’s ready, but they must succeed sometimes, as there are always lots of joeys about. And it would appear that she has to be willing. Perhaps she gives in well out of my sight, but I’d be surprised if she bothered to hide from me since I don’t rate much higher than a fencepost with this lot.

The most memorable courtship was heralded by violent crashing through the bush and constant grunting, sounding more like wild pigs than wallabies. Going closer to the fence to see what all the commotion was about, I saw one female flying from the very pressing advances of a big male, with five other young blades also in hot pursuit! Someone, presumably the dominant male, was grunting very loudly and vehemently.

She must have been on heat to attract such a crowd of panting males, all jostling to get close to her. Their tender crescent dicks were all exposed, their balls on strings hanging low—so vulnerable, I thought, given the blady grass and tussocks and fences they were belting through.

The main suitor was having a harrowing time, as not only was he trying to persuade her, but whenever he managed to get her to stop and listen for a minute, the other blokes would sidle closer and he’d have to keep one eye on their movements, making little rushes at them to hunt them off, coughing warningly at them, but never succeeding in getting them to keep their distance for long.

Then suddenly she’d make a break for it and they’d all follow, over the dam wall, round the side and through the edging bush again, cracking fallen branches and skimming through fences, clearing the tussocks in desperate bounds, she saying ‘No!’ all the while, emerging once more onto the open grass to pull up, panting, for yet another stand-off session.

At first I watched all this with some amazement, keen to see what would happen, then with diminishing interest for a while longer. When my legs were going to sleep from standing still for so long, I gave up, as it appeared that neither the fair maid nor the definitely-not-faint-of-heart young blades were ever going to. I went back to my vegetable gardening, and for ages after could hear them racketting about. Talk about playing hard-to-get!

The Red-necked Wallaby is a pretty species, sweet-faced, with a gentle look. Their fur is grey, dusted reddish-brown on their backs and heads, with black around their ears and down the middle of their rather triangular faces. They have a paler front, and neat black paws. At quite early ages they are recognisable as the more muscled, broad-shouldered, proud-chested males and the daintier, more rounded females. Within the sexes many have small distinguishing features—a whiter cheek stripe, a tatty ear, a darker back—but more often it is behaviour, ‘personality’, that marks them. More inquisitive, more set in ways, more solitary, more bold, more nervous...

There are other inhabitants who hop but they have no more to do with each other than they do with me. The wallabies are by far the most numerous but I also see wallaroos and kangaroos. It took me a while to recognise which was which from a distance, but the easiest giveaway is how they move. The wallabies lean more horizontally, lower to the ground, when they go racing by, compared to the kangaroos and wallaroos, who maintain a more erect carriage.

As time went on I came to know them so well that I can’t imagine how I was ever confused. I suppose it was rather like the racist-flavoured platitude about Asian people, lumping all those varied races and nationalities together—‘They all look the same’—hopefully uttered only until the speaker’s ignorance is relieved by actually getting to know some individuals.

The wallabies’ bigger cousins, the wallaroos, are the Common or Eastern Grey Wallaroos. They prefer rockier country, such as on my lower escarpment. In the Austen social scale, they’d be working-class, peasants, a bit rough—common! The first pair I saw passing through surprised me by their great difference from each other in colour, the male being nearly black and the smaller female pale grey. This is apparently typical. They were both much shaggier of fur and stockier of build than my wallabies, and for years that pair were the only ones I saw here. Since the 2002 fires, I have seen a small family of them, usually drinking at the little dam we put in below the house, but also grazing. They are still quite wary of me.

The Eastern Grey Kangaroos used to be seen higher up on my ridge, but since those same fires a group of them hangs around here a lot. By anyone’s standards, they’re upper-class—naturally grand, majestic in stature, the males as big as a pony, daunting when they stand fully erect. It’s a chastening experience to see them lope down my track towards the house, only to stop and look imperiously down at me over my yard gate. All that’s missing is the monocle.

We’re used to seeing big domesticated animals like horses and cows in the landscape, but given that we don’t have elephants or giraffes, these are the biggest native creatures I’m ever going to see. When they’re feeding nearby I often get a fresh shock as one of the males straightens up. The sheer size of him!