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Out of all of us, I think Mama had the hardest time of all. Remember that in the Philippines she never had to cook or do the laundry or cleaning, she had quite a social life and was very much a party girl.
Then all of a sudden she ended up in a dirty little “shed” in the middle of the Australian bush with no friends, no house-maids, no washing machine and her biggest bug-bear was not having a bath tub.
We had a very small shower stall with cement floor to keep the dirt off but nothing else. Anyway, I think she was really upset about this because Papa went to Darwin with his first pay-check and bought her a small bath-tub.
Then one day, we heard this horrendous screech from her, she had just stepped into the little square tub for a shower and there was a python coiled up in there. What a hoot that was!!!! She didn’t think it was funny but as kids I remember we were very excited. Papa just lifted the big snake out of the tub and sent it on its way.
Rainy season was really good fun for us, but not for Mama. After days of heavy rains the creek would rise up and sweep right through our “shed” and I remember the current being so strong even inside our house (shed) that when Mama dropped a saucepan lid, it would take off with the current straight out of the house.
The only dry spot in the whole place was our little trailer. I remember going out one day during the flood and walking out onto this big open field and the current was so strong that even when you stood still, you felt like you were moving side-ways. And there were lots of snakes swimming around trying to find dry ground.
Yes, Mama cried a lot in those days. But, kudos to her, she put up with a lot and she adapted after a while. She learned how to do the laundry and the cooking and even got stuck into the ironing. She was a tough lady, my mother.
We had many adventures on that property, we were given .22 calibre rifles to go hunting for kangaroos (I didn’t do any shooting) for our dog Allah.
That was all he would eat, raw kangaroo meat. Mr. Barnes taught Christian how to skin a kangaroo and butcher it into pieces for the dog and he showed Mama how to roast a kangaroo leg.
I was forced to taste it but I didn’t like it very much. I remember the first kangaroo Christian tried to skin, he was shaking so much he couldn’t do it. I thought he was so close to fainting Mr. Barnes had to take over. Sometimes they would shoot a female with a baby in her pouch (that was really heart-breaking for me) and the kindest thing you could do for this little pink baby was to put it out of its misery as quickly as possible.
I remember seeing Mr. Barnes pull one out of a dead mother’s pouch and with one quick stroke of a very sharp blade, sliced it’s head clean off. It was mercifully quick but I wasn’t expecting it and was so traumatized I had nightmares for ages.
Another “fun” thing we used to do, Christian especially enjoyed this very much, was on some weekends he would have one or two of his friends from school come and stay and we would go fishing for Barramundi’s (a very nice tasty fish in Australia) in what is called a Billabong. They are actually great big ponds (almost like a lake) that were created when the floods receded but left water in big huge depressions in the ground.
I remember Christian used to catch huge Barramundi’s with scales the size of a fifty cent coin (Australian) and weighed between five and ten kilos, from a pond, can you imagine that? As much as I hated catching these poor things, I have to admit they were certainly quite delicious.
Supposedly there were crocodiles in these billabongs but we never came across any, if they were there they didnt bother us or show themselves so who knows.
These ponds were quite a few kilometers away from our home and we used to have to walk for a couple of hours into the bush to get there, and sometimes we used to get lost and wouldn’t get home till almost dark, but we always got home, especially if we had our dog Allah with us.
I remember one day we were out there miles away and we came across a wild bull and this huge white creature chased Christian up a tree and he had to stay there for a very long time. It was so funny seeing him stuck up in the tree. Susan and I were hiding under some dead fallen down trees terrified and didn’t budge an inch until the bull had disappeared.
That was a story that went around the school for a long time afterwards, much to Christian’s embarrassment.
Mr. Barnes had a little mini-moke; do you know what that is? Its a little all-terrain open top vehicle, which used to go through the bush like a four wheel drive. That was fun, he used to take us out to an old abandoned airstrip (I believe the Japanese built it when they invaded Darwin during WW2) on his property, a few miles away and he used to let us drive it around.
Another interesting thing we had on the property was a lot of old pill-boxes with spent ammunition casings still lying around. The Japanese who used that airstrip during the war and had built concrete bunkers on the hills (that’s where we got most of the rocks for our sewer pit from) and left a lot of old rusted out bits of machinery and firearms around.
I don’t remember how Mama felt about us going out into the bush for hours on end, I don’t know if she worried about us or what she thought, but I don’t recall ever getting into trouble for anything. She sometimes used to let us camp out overnight in the bush during the summer months and that was always good fun.
You have no idea how magnificent the night skies are, out in the middle of nowhere, so clear and millions and millions of stars, it was awesome!!!
Yes, we had lots of great fun times at Mr. Barnes’s ranch; we even found a way to earn some money from him. We had a big open field at the edge of our shed perimeter and he taught us how to raised a fine crop of cucumbers and spring onions and come harvest time we picked our produce and Mr. Barnes took boxes of them to the markets in Darwin and gave us all the money from the sale of our beautiful crops.
We learned how to farm and look after our crops, and we were quite richly rewarded for our efforts. I don’t remember ever having that much money before, and it was great.
Sometimes, Mr. Barnes would hire a helicopter to bring him down to the ranch and we got to fly over his vast property on the choppers, I was scared though, I never like flying at the best of times and the choppers were very tiny and claustrophobic. But the scenery was awesome.
There were wild horses called Brumbies on the property and we would chase them around from the choppers. They were really beautiful creatures and I fell in love with horses for the first time in my life.
There's lots more to this story but this was the best part.
