y’know.”
And, invariably, because of Uncle Jasper’s little eccentricities, I’d have to compose my answers very carefully – for everyone’s sakes.
As it happened, Uncle Jasper and Dad were the very best of mates … on the rare occasions they actually came together. Their personalities, however, were like pavlova and pickle pie. I mean they couldn’t have been more different.
Dad was a Station Master’s Double Breasted Suit and Vest for all occasions-man; Uncle Jasper’s standard farm clothes were raggedy shorts and a raggeder singlet – plus an old army greatcoat when it turned cold. And when working away from the farm he wore overalls.
It was different when he was tricked up in his Sunday best, though. Uncle Jasper believed his black and yellow checked sports coat, brown trousers and tan and white shoes exemplified style and good taste. And he may have been right, for according to the stories I’d heard he’d turned many a young matronly mind to matters of more intimate moment in his travels around the community. Not surprisingly, the stories were his.
I have to say, however, looking back, that my boyhood bicycle trips to Granite Meadows comprised the most memorable and enjoyable times of my young life. I would add also that much of the pleasure in going there lay in Uncle Jasper’s welcome, for regardless of time or circumstance he was always delighted to see me.
“Gawd bugger me,” he’d exclaim, pretending not to have noticed my old rattle-trap bike coming along the track. “Take a bloody look at what’s blown in. —And just the young ratbag I’ve been waiting for as it happens.
“Leave your bike there and come down the back, me boy,” he’d say. “I want you to light the charge I’ve set in the old blackbutt stump / hold the pinion-shaft from spinning while I run the feedback chain over the flywheel sprocket / have a wee sip of this and tell me what you think…” etc. You know the sort of thing.
And if I pointed out the fuse was only ten centimetres long or the feedback chain would overrun and the whole thing would fly to pieces he’d say this was the reason it had to be me. My legs were younger than his and a lot quicker off the mark.
Later, when whatever misadventure we’d managed was done and we’d had a good laugh, we’d go inside and think up a story to cover the band-aids and bruises, following which, over lunch or a mug of tea (depending on the time of day), he would apprise me of our next project.
Every couple of months or so the two of us would go across to Bolter’s Gully at the back end of the farm. Sometimes he’d get his decrepit old Land Rover going and we’d drive there, though as often as not we’d walk – him pushing a wheelbarrow with something in it needed for the well he was sinking there, hoping to find water. The well was a lifetime project of sorts, something Uncle Jasper had been working at on-and-off for as long as I could remember. (—Off, mostly; he claimed not to go near the place unless I was there.)
One day I asked why.
“You’re my insurance,” he’d replied in a self-satisfied manner. “A man can’t be too careful working below ground, you know. What if a rock came down and broke me leg? No bugger would know where I was.” …a philosophy that seemed totally at odds with his usual cavalier attitude to safety. Yet even when I was there he would only do a token amount of work.
At the top of the well Uncle Jasper had set up a windlass, with a rope that went over a pole on a swivel – like a swinging arm. On the windlass rope was a twenty litre oil-tin bucket. He’d lower the bucket to the bottom then climb down the ladder with a couple of candles and fill it with dirt and gravel. Beside the ladder was a wire going down the well. This was tied to a knocker at the top. On his signal I’d wind the bucket up then swing the pole around and empty it into his rusty old iron-wheeled barrow. But the funny thing was, whenever I looked down the well I could never see him working.
“You just keep away from the bloody thing!” he’d said when I asked him about it. “I don’t want no rocks or nothing coming down and bloody braining me. The well’s crooked, that’s all. I come up against a granite boulder and had to go around it.”
They were the sharpest words I ever heard him utter.
Sometimes we’d cut and dress a few lengths of timber up on the ridge then barrow them down there. On arriving back Uncle Jasper would go down the ladder, after which my job was to wind the timbers down to him one length at a time.
“They’re to keep the sides stable,” he’d explain, “in case any rocks come loose.” Then, on his signal, I’d wind up the empty bucket and send down another log.
Interestingly, his actual digging routine was always the same: no matter the weather or time of day he’d only fill two buckets and then climb out again.
“Bugger it,” he’d announce as he appeared at the top of the ladder. “I’m not busting me guts for no water. Slow and steady, me boy,” he’d always add. “That’s the way to do it. —Leave the barrow for now little mate; I’ll sort it out later.”
Much of Uncle Jasper’s food came from his fruit trees and veggie garden, where, provided the weather wasn’t too hot, we might put in half a day. And many’s the time I found myself pedalling home with my bicycle basket groaning under the load of produce he was sending Mum for the house or one of her inevitable charity fetes.
Dinner at Granite Meadows could be interesting as well. There was rarely much in the cupboard or his fridge so a decision would have to be made.
“So what’ll it be, me boy?” he’d say. “Fish, fowl or feral?” …following which we’d head off to either the river with a couple of lines, the chook yard with the axe or the bottom paddock with the rifle.
To help with life’s other necessities Uncle Jasper would do a bit of bartering. Sometimes he’d sell a load of firewood or hay, or trap a few of the myriad rabbits around the place. If things got too lean he’d take casual employment somewhere or do a bit of work for the council.
One day they made him Temporary Relieving Inspector of Stock, Lantana, Prickly Pear, Rabbits and Banana Blight. This didn’t surprise me; he seemed to know everything about everything – bananas, prickly pear, lantana… And, you know: rabbits.
That’s not to say he worried about them. In fact Uncle Jasper never worried much about anything. But he was always interested to know what was going on around the place, and because of this we’d often pass the time on a couple of steel chairs under the lean-to behind the shed, having a mug of tea and a yarn.
The problem was, there never seemed much to tell and I always felt that I’d let him down somehow. I don’t know why, though; it was Uncle Jasper who always did most of the talking.
Often he’d take the time to teach me things – practical stuff, like how water pumps and engines work, how to make a battery powered electric magnet and how aeroplanes fly. One day he showed me how to make a bomb.
I couldn’t believe it! The stupid thing was just fertilizer and a bit of old sump oil! (This was long before terrorists got onto the stuff, of course.) We used it for lifting out stumps and collapsing rabbit warrens, though a couple of times it was to break up a big granite boulder. They were the best. They made the loudest bangs.
And sometimes Uncle Jasper would tell me other things, interesting things I would never have heard about at home. —Like the time Rack Jackson caught him and Jolene in the hay shed around the back of their meat house, for instance.
That was a really good story and one of the best he ever told me. Interestingly, it was later to have a considerable bearing on my own affairs.
Jolene was the youngest of Rack Jackson’s eight children, see, and of all his kids the only one to remain at the farm. After her mother died Jolene took over looking after her Dad and, for one reason or another, never married. This was possibly to do with Jackson himself. According to Uncle Jasper, the flint-hearted old bugger would have been enough to put off even the most desperate of hopefuls.
Others around Ferrets Junction had another theory. It centred on the strange and unnatural liking Jolene allegedly had for distinguished-looking bald older gentlemen wi
th no hair – like from when she was about seventeen.
Anyhow, as Uncle Jasper told it, one day he had to go up there to check Jackson's place for porcine influenza or mad swine pox or something. (This was a while back now, of course.)
Her father wasn’t at home, Jolene said, so Uncle Jasper went ahead with checking the pigs and yards and everything anyway. Half way through the job Miss Jolene turned up to say that when he was finished she’d have some tea and pigs-belly fritters ready for him up at the house. Later she offered to show him the new hay shed old Rack had built, up past the meat house. Naturally Uncle Jasper was polite enough to accompany her ... and gentlemanly enough to help with the hornet that got inside her dress as any true gentleman would.
But just then Jackson arrived back from up at the charnel pit where he’d been trying to set fire to old Bessie. Apparently Bessie’d had a fit in the milking bails that morning and broke her neck – Bessie being only just about almost probably the best milking cow around the whole of Ferrets Junction.
Jackson hadn’t had the heart to butcher her. Instead he’d decided to give her an honourable cremation. But the fire went out and he’d had to come back for something to get it burning again.
Anyway, when he went into the hay shed and found Uncle Jasper there with Jolene in her little pink knickers he