Here I go again .. eventually?

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My mother says that half the fun of a voyage is the planning of it.

I beg to disagree.

I’ve passed many a wakeful midnight during these last weeks over the arrangements for my next seven months. You see, I’m not one of that kind who can start out around the world (with one very small green suitcase and one even smaller red cabin bag) with a blank book. Not even this year when, I’ve decided, I shall not ‘guest’ myself upon friends old and new. Well, not so often as last year.

So, here is the plan. And it starts, already, with an imponderable. Groan.

The good ship the Gazellebank, Captain Peter Stapleton (see earlier blogs and pics ), was due to pick me up in Auckland 26 January 2008. At this moment, it’s re-scheduled for 14 February. And will, probably, unless Peter puts on the steam, not even make that. Which retards my arrival in Europe by at least 3 weeks. So my first adventure on the old Continent has been emasculated.



Now, I shall now arrive in Hamburg – after ten weeks on the high and low seas -- in late April, to be met by my dear friend Kevin (see blog) with whom I shall visit his birthplace, Berlin, before ending up in his present home town (see blog) of Amsterdam. From there, I am booked to fly, on 14 May, to Jersey.

In Jersey I am staying at the Bayview Guest House, St Helier. Yes, I’m in town this year. Sorry, Lucille of lovely Rocqueberg View, but my heart and feet are older now and last year’s shoes wore out. And I still fret about destruction of your umbrella (see blog).

From there, by two-part ferry (via Portsmouth) to the Isle of Wight for a lazy month of June at Hermitage Court Farm on St Catherine’s Downs. I and Red Ted’s (much) younger brother who will help me track down a few of my Victorian Vocalists in the island’s graveyards.



And then, on 1 July, France. That’s where I really want to be. So why have I tarried so long elsewhere? It’s partly the damned car-driving thing… I simply can’t drive again on the wrong side of the road. Hell, some people would say I can’t drive on the right side of the road… Especially roads with all those erratic touristy cars on them. Instead, I have to rely on the kindness of others.
So, what will I do, what do I want in France?
Umm. I wish.. I wish.. for a nice sixtyish gentleman (grin) to drive me around and help me find a new French home … At least, I think that’s what I want.
But, more realistically, I just hope to re-meet old and newer friends and almost-family, stay with (YES! but briefly) some darling people, and have a lovely French time…

Oh heck, mum is totally wrong. I loathe the planning, but I am looking forward to the places and the people.

Lyndall says...

...

That its a perfectly good picture
That I look better at 12 stone than thirteen and a half
That she even believes she spies a muscle
Have I been at the horse feed?
And that I'm to put it on the blog pronto
so here it is

The Cavalcade of Red Ted

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I left Nelson and mother at 7.45 this morning.

My wonderful little break was, I thought, at an end.

Good grief, I thought initially it was the other way round! HERE was supposed to be the break. But, no. I have some head getting-together to do.

I drove back south through mostly the same country as on the upward leg. Beautiful. Only a few of those beastly caravans and Maui trucks (may they be damned and banned for all time) to make one slam on the brakes. Four and a half hours instead of nearly six!. Did I speed? Red Ted can’t speed.

I don’t care much for driving. But today … cruising through the glories of NZ … hell, I was happy.
Again
Twice in two days.
Ted seemed happy too. What would I do without him?
He did the ups and downs and fought off all sane challengers (NZ drivers are THE PITS and there would seem to be no speed limit except for me!)

I took petrol at Wakefield, a brief lunch at Hope Bridge – it had to be brief thanks to the scourge of NZ, sandflies! -- and arrived home to find… water pump problems. ARGGGH!
I’m going to bed

Dream trip over!

I have had such a happy time.

Could life perhaps always be like this?

My Father

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When I go back to Richmond or Nelson, I’m not Kurt Friedrich Gänzl internationally famed, multi-award-winning author and blablabla…

I’m Dr Gallas’s son. Dr Fred Gallas, longtime headmaster of Waimea College, Richmond, and remembered with enormous respect (and occasionally just a little twinge of fear) by the many, many thousands of local boys and girls who attended the school during his long period at its head.
Even this week, leaning over the bars of the horse-yards at the racecourse … ‘YOU are Dr Gallas’s son…?!’
I sure am. And couldn’t be prouder of it.

This year was of course Waimea College’s fiftieth birthday, and the odd bit of uninformed twaddle found its way into print (as these things do) for the occasion. I could have reacted, but I didn’t bother.

If only those people knew the truth. And (chuckle) if only those thousands of boys and girls could have looked into the box of photos my mother gave me yesterday, and seen their benignly stern ‘Victorian’ headmaster when he was in his teens and early twenties.

Mountaineer, international skier, gymnast, health and fitness teacher, Ph D (and half a dozen other sets of letters) … and heck, how come I never inherited those good looks, not to mention that elevation….!

My wonderful father. God bless him.

An Anniversary Day at the Races

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I first discovered harness racing at the age of 11. My father had been appointed as the inaugural principal of brand new Waimea College, Richmond, Nelson, and in January 1957 the family removed from Wellington to Richmond. An 11 year-old is a bit of a pain when carpets and furniture are being unpacked, so I was allowed to wander down to see what was going so colourfully on down at the Agricultural and Pastoral Society’s grounds. What father didn’t realise, until some time later, was that the A&P grounds contain Richmond racetrack, and ‘what was going on’ was not a country fair but the Nelson Harness Racing Club’s summer meeting. That was the day I first got hooked on the sport. And, I suppose, if I hadn’t gone, I wouldn’t now have the farm of 'Gerolstein' and all its horses, I wouldn’t have been the proud achiever of 28 racing wins. There would have been no Davey Crockett, no Master Ado, no Lite Gasp, and, Zeus forbid, no Elena de Gerolstein. I’d be a lot richer. But much less happier.

It wasn’t till I started telling someone how long ago I’d first come racing in Richmond that it hit me. Today was my half century. Fifty years exactly from my first glimpse of Rosyth, Somerset Lad and the world of harness racing. Well, it turned out to be a truly wonderful ‘birthday’. I can’t remember when I last enjoyed myself at the races so much.

All the old Nelson/Richmond pals from the 1990s were there, and we had joyous reunions. All the horsey pals from down the years were there … who would miss Nelson? … and in holiday mode. None of the ‘rush to Addington on a windy Friday night, run your horse and get home as quickly as possible’. Here, everyone is happy to linger.
Wayne Higgs, who trained all my early horses for me, was there with a team. He’d grinned to me not long ago that he would win a dozen races on the holiday circuits this year. So I passed the news on to my punting friends. I’m afraid they scoffed. Well, I’m here to say that Wayne took out three races on 11 January alone, and at tidy odds too!
And Murray Edmonds, who drove our dear Davey Crockett at Nelson one year (he came 4th, I have the video) and now trains my Wanda, Fritzl and Seppl: as every year, he was there with a tidy team, including my Gwen’s half-brother, Boomdiddiboom, and her ‘nephew’, Ronnie Coute.
None of mine, alas. I’m having what’s politely called a fallow period, but I get just as much fun watching the rest of the red-white-and-yellow horses running. With Murray, Wayne and the other pals there in force, I always had at least two or three horses to cheer on per race.
And, of course, there was ‘Chrissie’. Chrissie is Konni Kase, and she’s trained and driven by Wendy’s sister, Jan. She’s five now, and hasn’t really shown anything on the track since a promising first start, way back. But she had trialled well last week, so hope was in the air.
Well, Wayne hit hard and first with his triple whammy. And Murray almost pipped the redhot expensively-bought favourite with a once wild beast named Barmy Army. I took my photo an instant too soon .. he got even closer than in this picture.




Ronnie ran very well for fourth (he will be hot fave on day two after that!), and Boom just behind him in his usual honest 6th, so Gwen and Duchess’s ‘family’ were far from disgraced.
Then it was Chrissie’s turn. Here she is parading in the birdcage before the race: she’s grown into a fine specimen.



I needed six eyes for this race, the Hoani Jack Cup, because, apart from Chrissie, my friends Erin and Arkie had a new horse running, and old pal Les St Clair had one in too. But of course, I watched Chrissie. She’d drawn 17, so she was lastish when they settled. But Jan took her courage in her hands, looped the field three wide, put the horse handy and Chrissie ran on stoutly to finish sixth just 3 lengths from the winner and just a length off getting in the money! That’s her on the outside, in the yellow jacket. She’s making ground all the time, and was closer by the end. Oh, and by the way, she was the rank outsider of the field, paying 100-1! Not next time!



This picture however, tells a further tale. That one sneaking through on the inside to win the race – that’s Fire Dancer aka ‘Erin’, and the one pushing through the middle to second? That’s Les’s horse! So Erin and Arkie got to take home the Hoani Jack Cup, and the remaining races of the day passed in a flood of joy, great company and cold chardonnay, under the glorious Nelson sunshine.




Yes, this is why I got into harness racing. Why have I stopped doing this thought of thing? Well, I know why I stopped. But now, I must start again ... next summer Red Ted the Suzuki Alto is going to have to work a bit more for his living!

And so my anniversary day, Johnny’s birthday, was a splendid one, finishing with a quiet little supper and a nice bottle of local wine with mother, and -- oh, bliss! -- a good night’s sleep. So, who thought he’d never be happy again…?

A Trip Northwards ... and back in time

January 11 2008 was brother John’s 58th birthday. January 11 2008 was also the Nelson Harness Racing Club’s summer meeting. And I wanted to spend a day or two with mother, before, in a few weeks, I head off back to Europe. Mother just happens to live directly opposite Richmond racecourse.
So what more logic than for us to spend Johnny’s birthday together, and of course take in a bit of summery harness racing.
Just to make this trip all the more logical, Nicho from Germany (and Barraba Station) has been staying with us, and has as yet seen of New Zealand only Sefton, horse racing and Mount Cook. So what more suitable than for him to ride with me the 400 kilometres from Gerolstein to Richmond and, from there, bus, hitch and walk his way back to Christchurch in time to catch his plane for Stuttgart at the end of the month.
And so, on January 10, the little red car (which, these days, isn’t used to doing much more than a short sprint to the shops or the racetrack) was rolled out of its bed at 7am, and off we set in a mild grey Canterbury drizzle.
What I didn’t realise was that it would turn out, for me, to be much more than a simple car trip.
Only once in the past five years have I driven over what used to be the familiar road between Canterbury and Nelson. The road that, in the 1990s, Ian and I scooted regularly up and down, from our cottage in St Arnaud, happily following our horses round the Canterbury racetracks or fulfilling various lecturing and book-related dates. What memories there were, round every corner of the road.
Happily, as we approached the Lewis Pass, the point in the mountainous’ backbone’ of New Zealand’s South Island where you cross out of the Canterbury plains, the clouds vanished and the sun came out, so for the second half of our trip we saw the Buller and Nelson provinces at their best. I’d somehow forgotten (how could I?) just how beautiful New Zealand’s countryside is.
We stopped at the impressive Maruia Falls for soda water and a choc-bar. More memories. A visit there with Ian ten years ago. And much further back, as children, Johnny and I with our parents. It hasn’t changed. Except at last they’ve put signs up so you don’t miss it. And a toilet and picnic table and a proper track to the riverside! But in true New Zealand Dept of Conservation manner: no rubbish bin. (Well, someone would have to empty it. Official answer!).



I’ve never wanted to go back to Lake Rotoiti and the village of St Arnaud, where I spent so many weekends of my childhood climbing and skiing, and where Ian and I had a small holiday farm for something like a decade. But Nicho needed to see it, so I bit the bullet and detoured. The lake first. It must be over half a century since I first paddled in its waters.
It too is, of course, the same. Its deep blue waters, its pebbled ‘beach’, and the friendly mountains, naked of snow at this time of year. I must be getting old and kindly. I ever felt warmth towards toward the happy families picnicking messily (no DOC wastebin) on the strand, until one little girl decided it would be fun to frighten the ducks (the same ones, I’m sure, from 50 years ago). She now knows that frightening ducks is not funny. Especially in a National Park.
I got Nicho to take a picture of me in the same place where I had one taken in my childhood, and I intended to put the Then and the Now up here together. But I can’t find the Then, and I take a lousy photo Now, so here’s Nicho instead.



From the lake we drove out through St Arnaud village. Much of it is the same, but the new village hall has at last been built (it looks more like an aircraft factory) and some grotty ‘developer’ has shoved a dozen or so tatty chalets onto what used to be one paddock on the edge of the (tiny) burg. A ghastly eyesore. And then, a couple of kilometres down the road, Fernenland. Our sometime wee house and 62 acres. I didn’t mean not to look, and anyway the buildings and gardens are hidden behind the National Trust mini-forest (my donation) that lines the road. I just clocked the fact that the trees had grown hugely since our time, and plunged onwards. Too many memories can be too many.

Through the vast Golden Down forests, on the road we used to take each week to buy supplies in Wakefield (a wonderful butcher) and Richmond. Alas, the butcher has sold up and his little shop is now a garish block of commerces. My friendly garagiste, too, has gone into retirement, but his successor has spruced the place up nicely. We press on.

At the bottom of the main street of Richmond, Nicho piled out with his backpack and headed for the busstop. And I turned in the other direction, to Villa 40, Oakwoods Village, and a whole lot more memories.

A long time between blogs

It’s been a long time between blogs, hasn’t it.

Mainly because there wasn’t a lot to blog about during this very indifferent hot-n-cold, grey-n-gold antipodean summer.

I’ve done a bit of writing and researching on my monster work on Victorian Vocalists. I’ve done a bit of horse, of course. A tiny bit of farming. And, in between, well, not a lot.

It has not been the most successful or exciting horsey season at Gerolstein. Mostly so-so racehorses and a whole heap of bad luck have kept success on the racetrack away, and my own beloved beasts … well, Elena, Wanda and Boris are all ‘resting’. Elena curbed a hock (the penalty, I fear, of her large size), just when she was starting to get things nicely together on the beach, and Wanda and Boris were both judged to ‘need more time’. Little Fritzl and Seppl are eating grass too, over in Motukarara, but they both – like Wanda and Elena – should hopefully be back in warm-up action more or less about the time I set sail for Europe (6 February). Gwen and Duchess (below) had a year off from baby-bearing, so they and I are having to make do with ‘other people’s babies’ (we have three beauties on the farm) for now, but they came home last week in foal to the French stallion Love You, so this time next year we will -- hopefully --have two fine Friwi foals.




We’ve had a horse lose its driver, a horse fall through the fault of an incompetent (other) driver and animal, we’ve had a horse caught in an electric fence (and it cost me 20 jolts of electricity to get him out), but the worst event of the horsey summer, was the loss of little Peggy, who died just after I posted her picture on this blog, aged five weeks. We are due for some luck! But that’s racing.

So 2007 is nearly over. It has had some high spots, some (including my first ever motor-car graunch) not so high, but I look forward to doing better in 2008. And, of course, I shall tell you all about it.

Bonne année!

Rosie's Baby

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With the easing of the equine flu restrictions in Australia, Barry and Rosemary were at last able to voyage up to the Hunter Valley and visit Rosmarino (Rosie) and her progeny at Brooklyn Lodge. Rosie and her last year's foal, Basil, came in for a share of the attention ... but, needless to say, the latest addition to the family, little Peggy (by Fusaichi Pegasus) was the most photographed girl on the block. She is much admired by those who have knowledge, so fingers crossed that she will grow up a bonny and speedy lass.

My name is Mikie!

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Well, its dusk .. and the wee boy has, as promised, a name!

Also its a degree or two less frigid. For the moment...

So we run (intermittently) to keep warm...

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Hey World, Here I Am!

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A bitterly cold night in Canterbury, NZ. Three degrees, and showers of heavy rain.

So this, of course, had to be the night that Sally chose to give birth, under the pine trees, to her fourth son, a baby brother for General George, for Ned, and for one year-old Rose.

Our first Gerolstein foal of the year! Welcome, ummm... baby. (I guess he'll have a name by the end of the day!)



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The Queen holds court

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Jack and Laura make the acquaintance of Elena de Gerolstein. Still growing and threatening to become an understudy to a giraffe!

Hilary's Tree

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November the fourth is not only a significant date in my life. It is a significant one in the life of my friend, Jack, as well. November the fourth was the birthday of his late wife, Hilary.
It had been our intention, during his present visit to New Zealand and to Gerolstein, to plant a tree 'for Hilary', and today seemed the logical occasion to do it.
Jack, I and Laura (daughter of Marion Hue, see my French episodes) chose a healthy looking little elm, bred on the premises, and this afternoon Jack planted it in the centre of my rose garden, where Ian's ashes also lie.

Dear Ian

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It's November 4. Somehow I've got through a whole year without you. Sometimes it's felt longer than the thirty odd I spent with you.

With love forever,

Kurt xx

A little more Sydney

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22 October, and here I am -- after two months of Australia -- in New Zealand again, for three months of summer racing, before, in January, I board the good ship Gazellebank (captain and purser ... guess who!) to sail across the seas to Hamburg and a northern summer cum autumn in places beyond.

This second bite at the sunny city by the sea was a merry if unadventurous wee stay spent mainly in enjoying the company of Barry, Rosemary and Holly the dog. Here they are pictured on the boardwalk at Balmoral where we spent a delightful few hours by a proper golden Australian beach, sprawled on the grass feasting on some rather superior fish and chips. That's what I call life!

Rosmarino Inc

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Five of the six owners of the splendid mare Rosmarino (5 wins and some $200,00 in prize-money a few years back) got together at a Sydney pub for lunch, and discussion on the future of our lady, her baby Basil (due to go to the yealing sales, which have been postponed because of Autsralia's equine flu epidemic) and his due-to-be-born-any-day brother (or sister). Also to top up the operating kitty: keeping horses in Australia is a rather more expensive business than it is in New Zealand. There was enough left in our pockets, when all was said and paid to sample some what was apparently Sydney pub-Thai food (?!) and a few bottles of local red. A grand time was had by all. Now we are all smoking the nervous cigar waiting for our grandchild's birth, and waiting for the various Sales people to get their dithering act together.
Left to right: Kurt, Ivano, Les, Barry, Gerald. Absent: Brian, somewhere between Warsaw, Berlin and France.

A Month in the Country

It’s very nearly a month since I arrived in Barraba, and tomorrow my visit will be over. It will be time to bid goodbye to the now familiar vines and dogs, fields and streets, and most importantly to my good, kind friends and hosts, to load myself into Coco’s car, and head back to Flood Street, Sydney.

The second half of my stay here has been as lively as the first … and as populated. The house welcomed guests from both sides of the family, the hotel welcomed another weekend full house including a posse of wandering travel journalists, and 20 year-old Nicholas from Germany arrived to take over from Benji and Sofie as the wwoofer in residence. And our daily activities continued the regular sun-broiled mixture of vineyards and hotel-rooms, washing lines and irrigation pipes, combined (in my case, at least) with a regular dose of lazing about.



Thanks to the less lazy moments, I discovered the unfamiliar joys of the swimming pool. What could be nicer, after a sweaty, fly-blown morning ripping recalcitrant weeds from the hard-baked earth around the struggling vines, with the aid of an effortful kitchen knife, than to strip off one’s dirty clothes and melt into a piscine full of fresh, cool and chemical-free river water? Bliss.

I’ll carry away a lot of new memories from here…

A visit to the home of Bill Bright, internationally renowned harpsichord craftsman, where we lunched on chicken salad and white wine on the ‘lawn’ overlooking a lake before a viewing of the workshop where his instruments are made. I even got to tinkle three bars of Chopin on one (before going wrong) … my first ever touch of a harpsichord.
Last night was Bill’s 61st birthday, so it was our turn to play host, and I took the opportunity to photograph the cutest (grrrr! wooff!) muso in New South Wales.



An afternoon at the Playhouse Hotel Theatre for Andrew’s screening of the German musical film Der Kongress tanzt. I’ve known about this famous movie for years … but, crazily, I had to come to Barraba actually to see it. I’m so happy that I did. It’s a delicious melange of naievete, sophistication and spectacle, with a couple of thoroughly plugged hit songs, and some splendidly characterful acting. I particularly relished the chance to see Paul Hörbiger, whom I’ve mentioned so much in my Encyclopaedia, doing his thing.



And then there was the snake. It wasn’t till I’d been here nearly three weeks that Haddon gave Nico and I a ‘what to do’ chat re snakes. And promptly found one in the woodpile. Then, yesterday, as we weeded our way down the alleys of vines, a volley of barking broke out. Alfie and Gus the ‘watchdogs’ (mostly they watch the inside of their eyelids!) were a little further up the field – where we would be working in 20-30 minutes -- bouncing up and down, snapping and yapping to beat the band. They had baled up a 4-5 foot brown (and definitely poisonous) snake. Weeding came to an abrupt halt, and we retreated briskly to the house with the dogs in gleeful pursuit. Alfie and Gus have, as far as I am concerned, thoroughly earned their title of watchdogs!
I wish, though, that they’d warned me about green ants. Those blighters have a nasty bite, and my digging forearm is right now a swollen mass of blistery fangmarks!



And finally, and oh so importantly, yesterday there was rain. About 12 millimetres of it, in three (very) short and sharp bursts. That may not sound much to those of us who live in damper climes, but what a difference it makes in this sunburned country. The greenery smiles. The weeds pop out of the ground instead of battling to stay in. And, of course, the house’s rainwater supplies get a top up. I’m glad I saw it rain on Barraba Station. It will be a happy memory to range with the others….

Glueckliche Reise, Benji and Sofie!

Silent spring

I’m sitting in the farm kitchen at Barraba Station. I was outdoors, but the heat these last few middays has been too much to take for more than ten minutes at a time, so I’ve retreated to the shade.
All around is the silence of the countryside. Now, that is, that the man next door has turned off the most insidious and longwinded water-pumping machine I have ever suffered. Now, it’s only the odd bit of birdsong that shoots through the soundlessness. The pink and grey galahs massing on the big trees or the tiny grey or blue-headed finches or wrens jittering around the woodpile.
Andrew is at the hotel, Haddon is pruning the vines, and everyone else of our crazy house-party has departed – Benji and Sofie to their next wwoofer place, Annie home to Sydney, Coco towards Noosa. So that leaves just me. And the silence and the spring bursting out all around. For, yes, trees and vines that were asleep when I arrived here a fortnight ago have leaped into life and the green sheen of springtime is everywhere. Lovely.

I have to say I really enjoy this quietude, and I can tell you that it is well-earned. For, in the days since the Warren Fahey concert and all the activity surrounding it, life here has not precisely plummeted back to the ordinary, the docile and the unexceptional. Quite the reverse. For, six days after that event, an even larger one took place: a big fortieth birthday party for thirty mostly out-of-town guests. And those guests were booked to occupy every square centimetre of space in the ten almost-finished rooms of the Playhouse Hotel. Which meant that those six days of grace had to be spent putting the said rooms into a spanking, sleepable-in state. Beds and mattresses of all shapes and sizes were magicked up from here, there and nowhere, along with duvets, duvet-covers, pillows, bed-linen and bathroom linen, and a battery of buckets and cleaning products, and every able body was press-ganged into service.




Coco and Annie headed the laundering, ironing and bed-making brigade, Benji and Sofie cleaned and kept us fed, Haddon was here there and everywhere, and I .. well, being always something of a solo act, I took on the bathrooms. Nine of them, plus three public room toilets. Another day, I spent a morning cutting a vast roll of decorated paper into squares as breakfast-tablecloths. Another … and always, always, there was something else to follow.
Well, once again, at the price of a huge effort, we got there. And when all was ready and in waiting for the invasion, the time came for our little exhausted band to begin to disperse, back into the real world. Except me.
The expression ‘the morning after the night before’ doesn’t just apply to alcoholic excesses. It applies very much to bed-and-breakfasting. And when the highly successful Saturday-night party had been partied, and the party-goers had departed, it was – of course -- time to begin the cleaning up. And now there was no Coco, no Annie … just Andrew. And me.
And the news that four (it turned out to be six) more nightly customers were due in 48 hours.
Well, I un-made 23 beds, sorted 23 lots of linen, re-cleaned nine bathrooms and two public loos, ironed up some fresh sheets and pillowslips .. and got a whole heap of experience of the other half’s unprintable habits. But Andrew got the thin end. All that linen had to be washed.
Now the Playhouse Hotel has been set up in splendid style. Fixtures, fittings, decoration, equipment ... all beautiful. But one or two things are unfinished and one or two others have gotten forgotten. And the greatest of these by far was … a washing machine. So Andrew had to journey back and forth to the friendly local backpackers, feeding sheets and towels and pillowcases into an economy-sized washer, and thence to the farm’s washing lines, for an entire day.
But we got there.
That was last night. And today is silence. Even though there are eight more guests scheduled for this weekend, and this house too is due to refill with family and friends. All I can say is, I hope they are all good at ironing and bathrooms.

Although the virtual debut of the hotel has been the focus of the last fortnight, my stay hasn’t been all chamber-maiding. In between more scrumptious meals than I’d normally tackle in twice the time, and quite a lot of supping and sleeping, I’ve had other novel experiences, too. Such as weeding grapevines and walnut saplings and doing strange manutentional things with irrigation piping (there must be 100 miles of the stuff here, but , when it doesn’t rain month in month out, you need it). I haven’t plucked up the courage yet to try Haddon’s beautiful little orange tractor, though. After my battered Fergie it looks like a Ferrari and I fear it might go like one!




So, as you can see, all is not gentle dolce far niente in the Aussie almost-outback. But you’ll understand when I say that I haven’t needed a sleeping pill for goodness knows how many nights!

Beating Round the Bush

I can’t tell you what a success it was.

The meal went with a will. So much of a will, indeed, that one beefy Australian called the second waiter (me, in my latest metamorphosis), after devouring Del’s chicken course, and asked if there were any second helpings. There were. This is Australia.

And then came the show.

I didn’t really know what was coming. My experience of nineteenth-century Australian bush songs and humour has really been limited to flipping through a book about the goldfields balladeer Charles Thatcher, and a little outback research for my books on Willie Gill, Emily Soldene and Lydia Thompson. Reading about something, and actually hearing it performed are, anyway, utterly not the same thing.
I also didn’t know who Warren Fahey was. Well, I do now, and I’m telling you I’m not about to forget. Not only is he an historian, who has dug and delved to rescue the old songs and stories of the Aussie outback from being lost, he is a performer who has the great gift. He can take an audience into his hand, make them laugh, make them shiver, make them think and then make them laugh (a lot) all over again. ‘Endearing’ is the wrong word, but he reaches out to you and makes you want to reach back. I’ll think of the right word eventually. But it’s special.
Warrren’s material is, much of it, pretty blueish. The outback men of the nineteenth century – the ‘convicts, bushrangers, shearers, drovers’ and others whose words and music he gives us -- had the usual preoccupations. And most of those nestled six and a half inches below the belt buckle. But none of his songs and jokes come over as oath-littered smut, or as raucous crudity of the kind so-called comedians often purvey. It’s all got a sort of genuineness and realness and warmth too it. You don’t snigger, you laugh out loud, and sometimes from the belly, at this twinkling man with the concertina who seems to have his legs growing directly out of the richest Australian soil.
An awful lot of the material, too, is pretty lumpy stuff. ‘Crude’ as in roughly-made. The tunes are street minstrelsy and popular melodies from the Old Country, the songwords are basic in vocab and in thought, and often fitted decidedly ill to the melody. But it doesn’t matter. In a way it even adds to the verity of it all. And as delivered in Warren’s crackly bass-baritone (I think he should keep the cold he was sporting this weekend) .. well, all I know is that at one moment I was laughing loudly at an Aussie version of an old ballad I once knew in a rather different form, and the next I (who am a blasé theatre specialist who simply doesn’t let ‘performance’ get at him) was feeling real shivers down my back, listening to Warren’s rendition of the terrified refrain of a mother watching her son transported to the colonies – ‘Son, son, what have you done’. I shivered again, now, just writing it.

Warren was supported by ‘the Larrikins’: Garry Steel, an extraordinarily sensitive keyboard player (you try being sensitive on an accordion), and Marcus Holden, who did virtuosic things on a variety of stringed instruments as well as playing (‘very badly’ so Warren confided) on the musical saw. In the few moments of the show in which the front man took a breather, the musicians gave us some rousing stuff which had sixty-five people (yes, even me) clapping away like a bunch of Irish reelers.

So, the whole world had a ball (Warren would, here, probably say something like ‘only because they couldn’t get a hand around two’) and the boys’ success was underlined in one more way that only someone like me – an old man of the theatre and of books – could understand. I took it on myself to man the ‘merchandise’ stand: Warren’s books and his and the musicians’ CDs. To an audience of 65 people – mostly couples – so lets say an audience of 35 units, I sold 18 books and recordings. That’s a percentage of audience-to-sales that I don’t think even The Phantom of the Opéra could match.

And then it was over, and entrepreneur, performers and ancillary workers collapsed around tables laden with a great heap of leftovers and the odd bottle of wine. I even bludged a cigarette from Garry as we sat in the darkening hotel courtyard swapping ‘recent bereavement’ tales. It may sound glutinous, but it helps, you know, listening to someone else’s sadness. It somehow relieves your own.

And then it was time for us all to crash. But my evening was to have an unexpected and special end. As I went to climb aboard Haddon’s truck, Garry put his arms around me and gave the most wonderful big hug. Well, he’ll never read this, so he’ll never know what it meant to me, to have a big, totally straight man, whom I’d know but a few hours, out of pure warmth and heartfelt empathy … Well, a little bit of my lostness and loneliness (yes, that’s where I still am) chipped off my vitals and flew away. God bless you, Garry.





When we got home, and everyone else went straight off to bed, I made myself a cup of camomile and sat in the kitchen and gently thought back over a great day. Yes, OK. I don’t need to say it. Grand though it had all been, I thought, of course, most of all of the hug.

The Playhouse and the Players

The Playhouse and the Players

If I had to describe Barraba Station over the past couple of days, I would say it is like a scene from Noel Coward’s Hay Fever played in a kibbutz.

For, yes. Each and every one of the nine us (Andrew, Haddon and seven visitors) has not been idle. You see, it was we – plus several locals -- who ended up as the hotel’s staff, as the theatre staff …

And very few of us had too much experience in that sort of thing. One musician-cum- composer, one fashionable Sydney shop-owner, one Australian actress warm from success on Broadway, one international prize-winning author (that’s me, in case you don’t recognise me), two teenaged ‘woofers’ from the Austrian Tirol currently doing their ‘work on organic farm’ at Barraba Station, and – thank goodness – one experienced restaurateur from Dijon, France via Noosa Heads. Plus of course our beloved Lord of the Manor and our daring entrepreneur. You recognise the ingredients for a three-act comedy of the ‘country-house weekend’ type?

Anyway, the inimitable Colette (‘Coco’) took the whole thing in her stride, and marshalled every force available to get the ‘restaurant’ created. Katie (Andrew’s big sister) took charge of upstairs, turning palpably never-used (and some not quite finished) rooms into habitable luxury accommodation. Locals Adele (chef), Ivy (sous-chef) and Bill (waiter) got ready to take on the actual cooking. And the rest of us wielded whatever was pushed into our hand, and wielded it with a will.
For me, it was a dustpan (builders never clean up adequately), an ironing machine (for table cloths, napkins and sheets), cutlery for sixty-five settings to clean and lay … not to mention a picturesque voyage from Barraba Station to the theatre on the back of Haddon’s truck, with items ‘loaned’ from the house to decorate the foyers. The picture opportunity had to be grabbed. That’s 20 year-old Benji from the Tirol alongside of me.






Well, we did it. By the time we crawled home at whatever hour it was in the early evening, the Playhouse and the hotel were ready to receive their performers and their public.