Mischief

The challenge this month put me in a bit of a quandary – I could not decide which topic to choose, so I decided to go with the mischief – some of it anyway!

Of course, being the good child that I was, the mischief I got into at home was nearly always my brother’s idea – he was, after all, 6 years older and should have known better than to suggest stuff to an impressionable 10 year old. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it like glue.

Spending all the school year at boarding school meant I had to fit all my fun times into the short periods I had at home in school holidays. The September holidays were the ones I enjoyed the most because the farm was just waking up after winter and there was always a lot to do.

It was always the time when my father replenished the meat supply for three farms. The Pearsons, Warhursts and Sheehans (us) used to butcher a beast when necessary and split the meat between the families and this particular year it happened to be our turn. We had a cow that was not a very good milker and my father had been talking about getting rid of her for some time, but cartage to the sale yards would cost more than she was worth, so she was chosen to be the sacrificial lamb {cow) for that occasion, thereby fulfilling his obligation and solving a problem at the same time. Regardless of who supplied the beast, my father always did the butchering. We had the only tree big enough to hang the carcase. Made sense!

Said cow (Crooked Tail by name because of an accident she suffered as a calf) was duly shot, lower legs and head removed and hung under the old Moreton Bay fig for skinning and the rest of the process. My father, because of a back injury many years before, found it easier to skin a hanging beast rather than having to bend and stretch for the required time it took to remove the hide from a carcase he had to manoeuvre round and turn over on the ground, sometimes quite difficult, especially with a larger animal. Anyway, Crooked Tail was hung up and skin removal began, I will not elaborate on the gory details or the myriad questions I used to ask on the rare occasions when I was able to witness the procedure. A wheelbarrow was wheeled in below the carcase ready to catch all the contents when my father slit the belly skin, then wheeled aside for later disposal. Then it was cleanup. The stomach cavity then had to be cleansed and my father preferred to do this with a cloth and bucket. He wedged an axe handle between the two sides of the rib cage then eased his head and shoulders inside so he could see to dislodge any remaining tissue and clean properly.

I swear the “what would happen if the axe handle fell out?” idea was all my brother’s but I was persuaded to put it into effect. I knocked the handle with a stick, just gently because I didn’t want to cause any damage, and it just fell out of its own accord. The ribcage then closed in, gripping my father firmly just behind the shoulders, but in effect, rendering his arms and shoulders useless for helping him to escape. I guess none of us realised just how strong the ribcage really is. I think that was the first time I remember hearing my father really swear and it scared me so much I grabbed my pony and took off up the paddock. My brother was already gone – the cowardly custard! – so neither of us was around to help with the escape. My mother was over visiting with Mrs. Warhurst and that was always a lengthy process, so I don’t really know how long it was before my father escaped from the carcase. What I remember is the amount of grumping he did over the long amount of time it took for my mother to get him out when she finally returned home, due to the fact that every other minute or so she doubled up with helpless laughter. Needless to say, all other butcherings were done with no kids around and the carcase was cut completely in half before being thoroughly cleansed.

There wasn’t really time to get up to much in the short periods I had at home, so what I did get up to had to be worth the effort. Some was deliberate and purely for reaction, but some had reactions far beyond my wildest dreams. Those ones always involved the younger of my two brothers, so technically I blamed him. You see, I wasn’t strong enough to tie the dunny door knob securely to the fence post when my brand new sister in law went in. My older brother had married a city girl who took herself way too seriously and treated her inlaws like know-nothing country bumpkins. Not good! She insulted our way of life once too often however, so we had to do something. What we did underestimate was her strength born of fear. One morning early, when she locked herself in the ‘disgustingly primitive’ thunderbox, my brother tied a rope round the doorknob, ran it round the back of the thunderbox, round the knob again and tied it off to the big strainer post near the door. Then we started loudly discussing whether or not we should tell Rosemary about the carpet snake that was on the beam above her head and used to catch the green frogs that lived inside the box she was sitting on. There was a bloodcurdling shriek (so I assume the snake was up there and got spotted) and the old dunny door was nearly ripped off its hinges, but my brother had done his work well and the rope held. The knob would turn but the door didn’t move. Then the whole side burst out and Rosemary fled screaming for the kitchen. Admittedly the structure was only covered with fibro, but it was a well built structure nonetheless. We were amazed at the ease with which she smashed through the wall. Half an hour later the car departed speedily for town taking my oldest brother and his wife to the railway and her mother’s home in Brisbane and leaving my other brother and myself to explain to my father just how the thunderbox got destroyed. We were in disgrace for weeks actually, because until my father got the time to build a new one, the whole family had to trek down the paddock to a big lantana patch – not a good trip at night time when it was raining and the torch batteries were nearly flat and lots of ‘things’ scurried away from the little track.

Those are the two most memorable bits of mischief I remember getting up to, but no doubt there were many more. In fact, if I were to note down all the memories that are flooding in, I would run out of space on my computer and we would be here till next week, so I won’t.

The farm life side of my childhood was really quite a lot of fun when I look back on it.

Incidentally, I have spoken to my partner in crime, my brother Dan, and he declared quite firmly that my memory is faulty and the aforementioned events never happened!