Childhood memories of a professional ratbag (Part One)

I recieved an email from a friend of mine this morning. One of those "Do you remember when" sort of things and another friend (yes I do have more than one) commented on another site about how glad she was to be living in the country. This got me thinking and in spite of the risks of perpetual headaches, I kept on thinking. Mainly about why I was glad I grew up in the country. I must admit that there are advantages to city life, but they concern mostly grown up things like access to medical services and good concerts. So thankyou to Barry and Donna for reviving thoughts I had not seen for a long time.

The Murrumbidgee river flowed past the end of our street when we lived in Hay and at the bottom of the street was a beach, known locally as Butt's beach. Probably named after George Butterworth, one of the early pioneers of the area and the family still owned a timberyard in the street. That was the local swimming hole and I nearly drowned there once. I got out of my depth and sank. When I hit the bottom, I pushed off, burst through the surface, yelled for my sister and had time to grab another lungfull of air before repeating the process. After what seemed like several hours of this, my sister realized that I was in trouble and flew down the bank, saved me and told me not to tell Mum about it. I think she was more worried about Mum finding out than she was about my welfare.

We were a very strict Methodist household and of course I had to go to Sunday School. That was in the middle of Sunday afternoon and all my friends would be going of to picnics, swimming or just visiting each other so Sunday School was not very popular with me. My girlfriend , Glenda, lived over the road from, us and she was the daughter of one of the local chemists. In those days, chemists sold cigarettes as well and she would go into the shop, pinch a packet and take me down behind the scout hall to smoke them. My, we did think ourselves very adult and all growed up. Glenda taught me a few other things down behind the scout hall as well, but they are not for listing here.

The company Dad worked for in Hay was bought out by Permewan Wrights and Dad didnt think much of his chances of staying on under the new owners, so he applied for a similar job, Hardware manager in a department store, in Cohuna. (Pronounced K'yunah by the locals) and this was a town I loved growing up in. About the same size as Hay, but not nearly so remote. The nearest town of any size to Cohuna was 20 miles away, Hay was 86 miles from it's nearest town and there was nothing between Hay and Deniliquin but saltbush.

I remember camping out near the Gunbower Creek mostly but sometimes near the Murray River and there is nothing quite like the experience of lying under the stars on a clear night looking up and seeing how deep the sky is. Diving into it like a spear thrown by the gods and floating over its secrets. Seeing a point of light and wondering if there is someone on that point of light looking at this point of light. Spotlight shooting on Friday nights for dogfood. That's where I learned to shoot, when you have to skin and clean the rabbit, you quickly learn to make them headshots. Eventualy I even learned to take headshots on the run and I was so proud of myself the first time I did it.

We also used to go shooting the wild pigs, but that was a real adventure with quite an element of risk to it. Of course they were't really wild pigs, they were domestic pigs gone feral, but some of them were pretty big and they were all bad tempered. The best way we found was to use a shotgun loaded with Coopall cartridges. These had a load of one single big piece of lead instead of the usual handfull of small shot. They would do a lot of damage with they hit something. We'd go out into a billabong when the sows were in season and the boars were feeling even more territorial than normal. Make a bit of noise and the boar who owned that patch would come looking pretty quick. At this point, it was a good idea to be close to a fairly substantial tree, cos when the boar saw you, he'd charge and those tusks can be big and they are always sharp. Pull one trigger and up the tree. If you wait to see if you need to climb the tree, you are too late to climb the tree. That's why you only pull one trigger, it's very embarrasing to be treed by an angry boar and have nothing left to discourage him with.

There is nothing like an irrigation channel for swimming. It teaches the delights of skinnydipping in a way that has never been equalled. Imagine it if you will. Your brave young heros, disporting themselves in the water as God intended and a couple of those lesser beings, girls, come along. They note the clothes discarded on the bank and insist on hanging around to embarass and confuse the frolicing sportsmen. They will not go away, they ignore the combined pleas, threats, bribes, and any other inducements to leave the scene until they have thrown the clothes into the creek. so we arrive home, sopping wet and tell mum how we fell into the channel. Then, only three days later, the same band of brave heros wallking along the same bank of the creek, discover girlish laughter and giggles coming from some way ahead of them. Sneaking up quitely and unobserved, they watch as the girls, blissfully unaware, frolic and play. we took pity on them and did not let them know they were discovered. We simply took away their clothing and hid it up a hollow log. Then we waited until they were out of the water before we let them know that we were around.

Here endeth part the first. To be followed by part the second, maybe.