Proverb : Knots well tied are easiest undone.

Parable : Richard Hocking gingerly poled the punt off the bank of the Murray River with the

butt-end of the oar, the intent was to ferry his expectant wife, Alice Hocking, across the

Murray River to the Blanchetown side where a car was waiting to take Alice to the hospital

for the birth of their child. The Mid-wife comforted and settled Mrs.Alice Hocking as best as

possible in the cramped craft. Considering the advanced state of her labour, this was no easy

task for either woman.

Alice groaned with another prolonged contraction.

“There, dear, It’s near now, we’ll soon be over the river and at the hospital”. The mid-wife

soothed.

Now, in those days, the government, in its’ kindness, gave a family an endowment of five

pounds for every child born. At the end of The Great Depression, five quid went a long way,

with the Hocking family, it went the whole hog! Fivers weren’t something you came across

every day, so it had already been earmarked for some desperately needed items for that

family that lived in a wheat bag tent on the” wrong side of the river”.

Richard Hocking was standing in the punt as he rowed across the river so as to allow as much

space in the punt as possible for his wife and the midwife, alas, he hadn’t noticed the mid-

wife subtly cajole his wife into signing a document that granted the said five pounds to her ;

the mid-wife, for “services rendered”, never mind that she was already in the pay of the

government hospital !  Alice Hocking was in no state of mind to contend what she had

groggily signed her name to.

The mistake the mid-wife made was to hold the freshly signed document away and up to the

sun for the ink to dry and in doing so inadvertently displayed the treachery to the curious

gaze of Richard Hocking, whose face was only inches away from the paper as he rowed the

punt across the river.

“Five quid!” He cried as he snatched the paper.

The mid-wife froze with her arm still outstretched, mouth slightly agape and a sharp gasp

sprung to her lips.

“Mr. Hocking! Now give that back this instant. That is a legal document and it is mine!” She

demanded.

Richard looked at the document, then at the mid-wife. An angry smile came to his lips.

“Then swim for it!” and he screwed the paper up and flicked it into the river.

“Ahh! You can’t do that!” the midwife cried and with both hands gripping the gunwale,

watched the ball of paper drift away and sink.

“Consider it done!” Richard smiled gleefully.

“Then, then I’ll not attend your wife!”

 

“Ohhh!” groaned Alice.

“Then we’ll stay right here on the river!” shouted Richard as he flung the oars into the punt.

“Ohhhh.” wailed Alice again, and at this point mother nature intervened and a baby girl was

born in the punt on the middle of the Murray River.

Five quid went a long way in those days.

There was the mythology that said : “If you are born on the river, you will die in the river”,

and it was this myth that made that baby girl born in the punt in this yarn fearful, when she

grew up of ever crossing the river on the ferries, so much that if she needed to make the trip

to Nildottie from the flats, she would drive all the way around to cross on the Blanchetown

bridge rather than risk the Swan Reach ferry.