Australian outback

When I reached the start of the teenage years, I discovered all these wonderful love stories in the magazines my mother bought.  These could only be bought in the larger towns, which were about a 40km distance from our farm.  Many a time I was sent into the cafe to see if the new Woman, Woman's Weekly, Woman and Home and Woman's Own had arrived.  There would be great disappointment if they were late, or we had come too early.

The best of all the magazines was the Woman's Weekly, which had numerous stories set in the Australian outback.  Usually some rugged, widowed sheep farmer, advertising either for a housekeeper, or a governess for his children.  Very often the respondent was a star-crossed nursing sister, getting over a broken relationship, and wanting a bit of a change in her surroundings.

As soon as I arrived back from boarding school, I would dive under the table next to my mother's bed in order to check through the magazines, putting them in sequence, so as to have a nice, long, uninterrupted read, once I got around to it.  This I might add, was done surreptitiously, and not without a certain amount of guilt.  What did my mother think of my sudden interest in romantic stories?

I can remember one freezing day in July, getting dressed in my warmest clothes, taking a blanket, an orange and a pile of Woman's Weeklies, and making my way, accompanied by an icy wind, to the back camp behind our new house.   The large pile of leaves from the recently threshed mealies, afforded a small amount of protection from the Antarctic blast.  Wrapping the blanket around myself and burrowing into the leaves, I contentedly sucked the juice from my softened orange, and settled down to read the final chapter of yet another exciting outback story.

I lost count of how many times I read the last sentence, but with each reading, the thrill I felt never diminished, "and the two shadows melted into one."  I still remember it after all these years, only now with great amusement as to how little I needed to keep me happy in those days.  I literally fed off that sentence for years.  "and the two shadows melted into one."

Lambs to the slaughter

Lambs to the slaughter


After the lambing season had ended, and before the lambs grew too big, all the ewes as well as their babies would be rounded up and herded into the large milking shed which stood in front of the big dam.

The time had come, as it did each season, for the lambs to have their tails cut off, as well as to be neutered.  All the farm workers would line up, each holding a lamb securely upside down in front of my father.  He would pull out his pocket knife, which he had carefully sharpened on the large whetstone, which lay on the ground outside the side door of the shed, and proceed with the operation.

First the tails were cut off at a suitable length, and then the top of the scrotum was cut off and the exposed testicles removed by Pompi the old shepherd.  He would do this by squeezing the scrotum between his thumbs and forefingers, then deftly pulling out the tiny, pink testicles, with his teeth. I never tired of watching this process.  When I think of it now, I realise just how primitive we were.

Each lamb was then earmarked with a slit in one ear and the shape of a v cut into the other, for later identification.  After being liberally doused with a sort of antiseptic, the lambs were then released to find their mothers, who made guttural noises and snorted and stamped their feet until they found their blood-stained, bleating babies.  Feeling very sorry for themselves, they would look to their mothers for a comforting drink of milk.  Mothers it would appear, are the same the world over, protective and anxious about their offspring.

My big sister and I always watched the castrating and branding of the bulls, while sitting on the high stone wall surrounding the kraal where the process took place.  My middle sister couldn't handle anything like that, so she use to stay at home.  After the testicles had been removed and the red hot branding iron had sizzled it's way into the tough skin with a big DJ, which were my father's initials, the farm workers would congregate around a braai chatting and enjoying the fruit of their labour. 

The smell of barbecued sweetbreads would waft through the air, as my big sister and I happily made our way back home, well satisfied with the morning's excitement.