Making a date proves difficult. I have to fly to Perth to see a client. Then I’m free, but Mercy is busy. And so on. Weeks pass.
She isn’t at the jam session in June. I’m surprised by my disappointment. I mention her to Keith and a couple of the other musos – casually I hope – but nobody seems to know anything much about her.
Then, one sunny midwinter’s day, she’s back in my life, in what seems her usual whirlwind style. The text message doesn’t beat around the bush:
Had a cancellation for this afternoon. Are you free?
Can I come for my tour?? Does 3 pm suit???
And so, at roughly three o’clock, a cloud of red dust approaches, and precipitates a silver Saab Viggen. Or one which once was silver and now is dusky pink. Wisely, she has the top up and the windows closed.
‘Very dusty, your driveway,’ are her first words.
‘Hello, Mercy,’ I reply, offering my hand. ‘It is. Did you see the sign, by the way?’
‘Sign? No. Why? What does it say?’
‘Never mind. Come on in.’
‘Love to. I haven’t got long, though. An appointment at five-thirty, in Colac.’
‘You’re a busy lady.’
‘So it would seem. Where shall we start? The house, perhaps?’
Nothing like taking charge, girl. I should find it irritating, but for some reason it amuses me.
‘Sure, the house. Well, there’s three wings, as you know. The central block is from about 1845.’
‘Ooh, early, then! Is much of it original, what’s here today?’
‘Yeah, a lot. Modernised over the years, of course, but strip back the gyprock and a lot of the internal walls are mud-and-lath. Pull off the painted weatherboards and underneath is rough-hewn frame-and-slab. Up in the roof we found some original shingles under the tin. Come and see.’
‘What about the wings?’ she asks later, after I’ve shown her the main rooms and we’ve taken turns to ascend the stepladder to peer through the manhole into the roof space, shine a torchbeam on the ancient wooden shingles.
I may have absent-mindedly gazed at her bottom, up the ladder. She may have caught the direction of my gaze when she looked down. She may have smiled.
‘Those were originally completely self-standing buildings in a variety of materials. All pretty ad hoc, using what came to hand. They were only incorporated under the one roof, with the wrap-around veranda, at the turn of the twentieth century. So on the left there’s the cookhouse, the laundry and the dairy. The right, western wing contains the estate manager’s office and the servants’ quarters.’
‘They were squatters, I suppose? The original settlers?’
‘Uh-huh. Just basically rocked up and occupied the land, as much as they could grab. As I understand it. Still seems bizarre.’
‘Quite.’
‘They paid a licence to the Crown, based on how many head of stock they were notionally running on the property, or how much stock it could notionally support, I forget which. It was sheep back then, with a few dairy cows to supply the household.’
‘How much do you know about the squatters?’
‘A bit. Scottish pastoralist by the name of Archibald Brown and his wife Greta. They produced twelve sons together and four daughters. Nine of ’em made it to adulthood.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Yeah, I know, right? Sixteen kids. She must have been permanently up the duff, poor old Greta. And nearly half died in childhood.’
Mercy shudders.
‘No kids?’
‘No. None. It always seemed an inefficient method for producing more humans.’
Well, that was odd. I decide to take it as a joke.
‘Yeah. I guess the braincase to hip ratio is pushing the envelope, engineering-wise.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You know,’ I wave my arms, wishing I hadn’t started this conversation. ‘You have a baby with a big brain, and it has to pop out … somewhere.’
I have an uneasy feeling I may have glanced at the relevant region of my interlocutor’s anatomy while saying this, and suddenly I’m blushing.
‘Ah, yes, the popping out. After the popping in, so to speak.’ She holds my gaze without a waver, a faint smile on her lips. ‘Take me to the dairy.’
‘Sorry, what?’
‘The dairy. You don’t like it in there, and I want to know why.’
I never told her about the dairy, how it gives me the heebie-jeebies. Did I?
‘Hmm,’ is her response, when I unbolt the door and let her in. ‘Cold.’
‘It’s supposed to be,’ I say, as I lean in around the door jamb. ‘Thick cob walls, clay floor. There were tiles, but we pulled ’em up. Not breathable, causing problems with damp. Windows on both sides to create a breezeway – active and passive temperature management, see? Keeps the milk, butter and cheese fresh longer.’
‘Amazing that all this survived.’
‘Yeah, isn’t it just?’
‘But you feel uneasy in here.’
‘Uh, yeah. Guess.’
‘And don’t want to talk about it right now. That’s fine.’
We move back outside into the brilliant sunlight.
‘So what’s the plan with all this?’ She waves at the house.
‘First of all, to stabilise what’s here. We’ve pretty much done that, too. What with heritage reports and conservation experts and whatnot it’s taken five years. Maintenance will never end, of course. Then, with the benefit of having lived here, we drew up plans for modernisation, trying to strike the right balance between heritage and a liveable home. Obviously there are restrictions on what we – I – can do, ’cause this place is of historic value.’
‘Mmm, I can see that would be tricky. Museums don’t make comfortable, modern homes, as a rule. But you spoke before about art projects, residential stays. The Retreat, you called it?’
‘Yeah, we’ve got planning permission for a modern arts and media hub, with compact, basic pod accommodation – not much more than glamping, really. The idea is to provide a creative space for artists, writers, musicians who want to come out here for a few days or weeks, work on individual or collaborative projects.’
‘But creating all that must take an immense amount of work – and expert knowledge?’
‘Expert knowledge in the design, but a lot of the hands-on labour is just hard graft, the sort that can be done by volunteers. We ran a couple of small projects while Em was still alive, just trial-and-error stuff, learning by doing.’
‘Right.’ She sounds sceptical.
‘We’ve studied how these things can work, talked to others who’ve done it. We reckon we can get vollies in from all over the world: backpackers, gap-year students, WWOOFers, sustainable building enthusiasts. The hub will be strawbale and rammed earth construction. The pods will be salvaged timber, built in a factory in Colac and transported here by road.’
‘I can see how all this would be daunting to take on by yourself.’
‘There’s no rush, though,’ I say.
I’m getting a bit miffed, how she’s talking everything down.
‘Let’s go look around the property. Ever ridden pillion on a quad bike?’
‘There’s a first time for everything,’ she says. If she’s concerned, she doesn’t show it.
It’s actually rather pleasant, feeling a woman’s arms encircle me. I can feel her body’s warmth against my back, even through two thick jackets. Her hug seems a little tighter than strictly necessary, but maybe my driving is making her nervous, after all.
As we go, I stop at various points to show her features of interest, describe what will go where. I outline how colonisation changed the land, right down to the soil. How the nutrient balance has been skewed by nearly two centuries of ungulate grazing and dunging. How the hydrology has been wrecked by compaction and dessication, denudation.
I get a bit carried away. I talk about the role of small digging marsupials like bandicoots, bettongs and potoroos in loosening the soil. The role of deep-rooted native grasses in maintaining soil fertility, sequestering carbon. The difficulty of eradicating imported pasture grasses. Our wish to introduce an ecological burning regime informed by Djargurd Wurrung cultural practice, to replace the one-size-fits-all fuel reduction burns and stubble burn-offs.
I’m probably boring the tits off her, but she seems interested, asks sensible questions.
‘Yeah, so we can’t put it back the way it was, obviously,’ I conclude. ‘But it can become a more fertile synthesis of the old and the new.’
‘A chance to heal old wounds, atone for old wrongs,’ she observes.
Without intending to, I tell her about Herby, the incident at the Wetland, how it makes me feel.
Her response catches me by surprise. She’s good at that.
‘Why do human beings insist on bonding with animals that have less complex psyches? It just sets up so many misunderstandings.’
‘Sorry?’
‘A dog is a fine animal. Acute senses and amazing endurance. Admirably suited to certain roles in human society. Livestock guardian, camp scavenger, hunter, clown.
‘But it isn’t a furry human. Most of its responses are instinctual, its cognitive processes may surprise you sometimes but on the whole, they’re rudimentary. How a dog reacts to you isn’t a judgement on your character – at least, not one you should give any weight to.’
‘So I shouldn’t think I’m a shit human just because my wife’s dog tried to kill me?’
‘Absolutely not. There was something about the experience you had that day that unsettled poor Herby. Confused him. He was already struggling with separation anxiety from Em, and you started behaving like a stranger, not yourself. Suddenly you weren’t his leader any more, nor even the pack leader’s sidekick, but a prey animal – or a threat.
‘You’re carrying around a burden of misdirected guilt. Herby was a big, powerful dog and couldn’t be trusted ever again. To pass him on to another owner would have been irresponsible.
‘But anyway, let’s take a look at this wetland of yours. Is it far?’
We drive down the green lane that leads to the Wetland. I open the gate and let her in, warn her to look out for snakes that might have come out of dormancy to bask in the afternoon sun. We stomp slowly through the long grass, towards the water.
‘Ah,’ she says after she’s gazed at the water for a minute or two. As if she’s made a discovery.
‘Ah?’
‘This is a very odd place. I’m not surprised it triggers your migraines.’
Next week in Blind Spot:
Chapter 7: Attack
Memories prove too much for Ben.
Acknowledgement of Country: This story is set on the lands of the Djargurd Wurrung, while the author lives on Wadawurrung country. I pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. Characters, institutions and organisations mentioned herein are the product of the author’s imagination. The locations are based on real places.
What an interesting conversation!👏👏👏
Steve, you mentioned “Colonisation” and that brought back the memory of the book you decided to write on this topic.
I remember reading about it on your Medium. And now I am wondering what happened to that book?🤔