Jottings in an Oarsman’s Journal.

(Man in a rowing boat..Henry Scott Tuke.)

Jottings in an Oarsman’s Journal..#5.

Black Hill. 

The approach to the hamlet of Black Hill by skiff on the Marne River was over a flood plain of vast proportion. Since the heavy rains of this year of 192*, a huge volume of water descended down stream from the Eastern Adelaide Hills sending the waters of the river to lap against its widest perimeters..all roads and tracks were flooded or at least sections were made impassable and diversion roads were hurriedly cut above the flood line so as to facilitate access to the isolated farms and hamlets along the river…Black Hill was no exception. So it was with trepidation that I wound my way across the wide flood plain that lay before the village.

As I came near the collection of houses and buildings that formed the hamlet…I cannot in all honesty call Black Hill a “town” as it is too scattered and too small a gathering of peoples to call it such..but at least, I could see that a hasty mooring jetty had been erected right outside the post office cum general store cum inn that constituted the main building and gathering place for the folk of the village..it was to this location that I directed my rowing of the skiff and I pulled up and tied up to the jetty and stepped out into the welcoming, handshake greeting of Angus McBaine of Kingdom Hall Farm situated on the outskirts of Black Hill…all of it..that is not East or West, North or South, but all around the village was the property of the said Angus Stuart McBaine..or so I was handsomely informed over a period of at least a half hour of friendly chat..the vast majority by Mr Angus Stuart McBaine.

After an informed conversation inquiring, with thumbs in the small pockets of his waist-coat and bristling moustache, of my means of transport to the village and a general but not of much interest in my skiff and its construction, and realising I was a man of little influence, I was soon abandoned by Angus and left..thankfully..to my own devices of seeking supplies from the general store to re-stock my larder.

The general store of the village was owned and manned by a family whose name appeared upon the sign above the entrance..it announced that you were “Welcome to Grainger’s General Store…Step inside and Shop!”…a most unique greeting I was thinking…but the “welcome” inside the store was in contradiction to the optimistic greeting upon the sign outside, for the store was a gloomy interior with one long counter and several aisles of products of a general nature from building supplies to biscuit barrels…clothing to haberdashery with a clear glass display of assorted lollies behind the long, low counter behind which stood in stolid stare what I presumed was the owner of the premises..

He was a tall, lanky gentleman of middle years, dressed in a dark suit with a white, cotton grocer’s apron tied around the waist…his stern face was immovable and I could feel his eyes following me as I moved about the store…though his head did not move, I could detect a shifting of his eyes as they followed me about…a most un-nerving sensation I can assure you…it was like one of those portraits you see in a gallery that has that similar uncanny sensation.

Having purchased enough supplies that I thought would suffice for me to complete the last several stages of my journey downstream, including a last minute purchase of several lamb chops I saw looking so fresh in the store’s Coolgardie safe cooler, I set off to move outside the town centre to a smaller landing jetty around half a mile away where I could see a new church was built on a rise from the edge of the river bank. I decided to ask a man standing on the landing if I could tie up for the night to pack my supplies away and then to cook the lamb chops I was tantalisingly looking forward to cooking in my skillet for my evening meal..Thankfully the man standing there having a smoke happily conceded to my request…He introduced himself as Hector Rasmus..carpenter.

It turned out very fortuitous for myself that I met this carpenter, as he was there working in the new Lutheran Church, building and fitting out the new altar area and pulpit for the local diocese..and having been living “on site” for several months, as they say, he had gleaned much local gossip and information about the river and the folk of the district. I discovered this later in the day after he had finished work and smelling the delightful wafting from my campfire cooking came to my camp armed with two bottles of a brand of beer I was very familiar with…”Coopers brewed in the bottle ale”..a family that my family had long association with in the vicinity of Port Adelaide.

I welcomed Hector to my camp and also the proffered bottle of beer, quite cool from, he informed me, being stored in the cellar below the church..

“It keeps a constant temperature down there of twelve degrees…not icy cold, but cool enough to satisfy”…after popping the bottle top and taking a swig from the bottle itself, I had to agree..most satisfying, I must say!

In reciprocation, I invited Hector to partake in one of my cooked lamb chops, them being quite large enough for two to share..so it turned out to be a congenial evening.

After settling back and enjoying a sip of beer every now and then, I got to talking to Hector about my day’s observations in the village..I started with the greeting I got from Mr Angus Stuart McBaine of Kingdom Hall.

“Ah, yes..our Laid of the manor..he’s a sketch and no mistake”…Hector began..then he searched in his pocket for a pouch of tobacco and rolled and lit up a cigarette..”He owns all the land around the village..and I mean ALL of it…for miles around..sees himself as some kind of Eighteenth Century Scottish Laid and draws on the locals for labour and treats them as his serfs..”

“How do they take that?”  I asked..Hector shrugged..

“Like most people will suffer such things, either they haven’t worked it out that they are pumping up his ego or they like the income..” I had to raise my eyebrows at this understanding of what I believe is the basic human condition of toleration for many detrimental things, Hector took a deep draught on his cigarette and continued..”You know when Australia declared itself a Federated Sovereign State, evidently our Mr McBaine was most put out, as he was thinking along the lines of succeeding from the province of South Australia and declaring his little empire as a soverign state…quite peeved he was at the commonwealth beating him to it…but he satisfies himself with his pumped up self-congratulatory importance..”Progress” can’t be stopped!” is one of his catch-cries.”

I had to nod my head in affirmation of Hector’s analysis, as I have found similar behaviour in so many wealthy businessmen I have come across in shipping and such in the past…But I would have thought the last war had knocked some of the stuffing out of the shirts of many of those opportunists..but perhaps the passing of a decade or so has erased the memory of much of the slaughter of that war.

I decided to change the subject ..

“I notice several motor cars and trucks parked up at the store..are there many out this way, I would have thought the motor car would not have reached so far inland yet.”

“You reckon!?” Hector exclaimed…every cocky with a pocketful of money from his wool cheque is at an itch and a scratch to get hold of one of those blighted things…nothing but dust and noise and dammed dangerous…scares the horses something shocking!”..

I had to agree, and I saw first hand the rapid expansion on the streets of Adelaide of these clattering machines…but my days on the river had softened if not almost erased the intrusion of the memory from my mind and I realised I had been gliding upon the quiet  waters of the river sans mechanical noise, sans intrusive chatter, sans dreadful sights, dans utter peace and quiet..I will miss this, I was thinking…and I decided then to write a letter to my old confederate in the business world, George Cooper of the said brewing family, of my reflections and experiences whilst floating on cloud nine on the river.

Hector gave me a fairly concise rundown of the progress of the mechanisation of farming and social changes in the district post the war years from his experience growing up, living and working here, and what he said just reaffirmed what I had come to hear and read when I was looking up about the Murray Mallee Flats for my venture down the Marne River..I was able to research the local history through old regional newspapers in the Library in my newly gleaned spare time since relinquishing the reins of the Chandlering Company to my younger siblings…that and my own recent awareness of the changing requests of items of ropes to steel cables and wooden block and tackle etc fittings to cast iron or steel gear had me wondering on the importance of the moment of this shift to a new technology..even in shipping, I had noticed the store starting to lose that oh so familiar scent of hemp rope and tar…of wooden belay pins to steel hawsers and axel grease….but there you go.

The night in company soon ended with Hector having to get to sleep as he had a busy day ahead..so we parted in good cheer and I set about drafting my letter to George Cooper by the light of a tilley lamp while resting on my swag.

“Dear George”…I began..”I write this letter to you as an adjunct to our last conversation about this changing world and I trust I am not being too much of a pest in such a too regular subject in my discussions of late. I apologise if this is an intrusion on your busy time, but as you are aware, I am a chatty person when I get onto a favourite subject..and this one is close to my heart…perhaps I will try to reduce my verbosity in this letter, But I did want to say this and see if you..or any others you have spoken to.. have any thoughts on the subject, seeing as how you too have written so many words on such a familiar topic as the human condition. I also take into consideration the shared interest and admiration we have in Thorsten Veblen’s book, “Theory of the Leisure Class” and his theory on the transition from a more barbaric warrior caste to civil institutions possibility…you would think that this recent destructive war would have backed Veblen’s theory of the bleeding obvious and sealed the fate of such militarism to the rubbish basket of history….but, there you go.

Out here in the Murray Mallee where I am at this juncture, between the eastern face of the Adelaide Hills and the Murray River, on what is called “Break-heart country”..at the end of the war, there was a distinctive “cut” in a cultural tie with the methodology of working…particularly in regards to the older families of the pioneer farmers in the area.

Before the war, and indeed right to the end of the war, simple horse-drawn implements were a common form of ploughing, seeding and harvesting…in some locations the newer mechanical implements for ploughing and harvesting had been introduced, but they were such cumbersome technology, that it was a risky and expensive proposition to do a major “tooling-up” in cost and farm layout to change over. But it did happen, and with that event, there was not only a “cut” in ties from old technology, there was also a severing with the connection between the farmer and his soil….between “Humanity and its touch to Earth”..

Where once, in the pre-war era, the connection between philosophy of mind, religion of heart, to callous of hand was a real and tactile thing..The farmer man and woman, rose in the early morning, praised their God, saw to and fed the animals, groomed and attended to the health of both themselves and their beasts of burden…the harness of leather and iron, the equipment of home-smithed metal and timber..the feel of earth under foot and hoof…was it soft, hard, moist or too parched?…the entire process was “ of the senses, of the touch”.

Then, in almost the blink of an eye…it was gone…all that old expertise..redundant, along with an entire generation of labouring farm workers…the sound and scent of preparation and harnessing….of the simple three or four tyne plough, the harvesting with scythe or crude cutting machine for harvesting hay.

And so that was the end of something.

Another thing I believe has ended – right now – with an older generation is the understanding and/or sympathy in the writings by that older generation, of a younger generation for the reality of the human condition…NOT to be confused with the living standard..or material comforts..or the trysts of social relationship..but rather; that uncertain something that gets us out of bed in the morning to give touch to the start of the day…the hunger of physical contact however slight or intense with our fellows…our opposites…the moment of greeting to start the day..a gentle ; “Good morning, did you sleep well?”.

The haste of this lifestyle, that celebrates the “individual” to fulfil those material needs, driving many to fore-go that moment of space necessary for human contact and relationships to co-exist..after all, we can only fill one pair of shoes at a particular time, or stand on one patch of soil underfoot…it is our mood that makes us, and I feel there is a mistaken association with the sweeping adoption of the motor car as a means of quickened transport to and from the towns and places of social gatherings, shaping and dominating and in the end ; replacing..the unrushed mood of so many people so that the above understanding of the making of the human condition from another age..another generation of pre-war people, is being lost or thrown aside for a new-fashioned personality that has little time to look into either the eyes or the soul of our friends or neighbours..and like these post war farmers who adopted the new technology to up-the-ante in both speed of the deeds of farming and the output for profit that may result, I suspect in the decimation of an already fragile world, so too will a past generation’s experience of the pain and what is gained from that pain, be shunted aside for a more “profitably expedient” if tactile poorer outcome in human relations.

The raw brutality of life confronts one…you just cannot avoid it..and it is the same in the wider world .

It is this brutality that destroys the humanity of mankind…but humanity is “bigger” than what nature or cruelty can throw at it..so in deference to that brutality, we use art to create a better imagined world…a world of fine emotions and ethics…of beauty and love…and we do it well….or at least we once did…for Mother Nature is a jealous thing and she doesn’t like her habits of devolvement being disturbed and so humanity was injected with those “seven deadly sins” to bring us back to Earth…and there for a while, with the great musicians and writers of the romantic movements through the last couple of millennia, we have scaled great heights of human civilisation, we have also descended regularly into the depths of depravity..I believe we are at this point in time battling with one of those descents into depravity..and we are no longer listening to the “music” of our greater sensibilities.

I, myself..have written much of what I feel are sensitive moments between two people..moments of acknowledged love or shared humanity…but my too few tales do not get read much at all, many thinking my stories are but “romantic fantasy”, not aware nor caring that they are based on actually events…and it is sad and frustrating to watch a society falling apart and unwilling to alter course to save itself crashing onto the rocks and wrecking..I sometimes think that humanity has become morbidly obsessed with witnessing its own destruction…seeing how far we can go before slipping over the edge..

And that too, I fear..will be the end of something.

I make this claim because after years of writing story and poem on example of situation, devastation and humiliation of many good folk and their moments of life, I have to conclude that it has to the greater extent been to no avail and the grinding of those most vulnerable underfoot has continued almost unabated, the last horrific war being just another example…and this saddens me…NOT to the point of actual melancholy, but rather in that way where one has to sit by and watch a drama unfold and yet not be able to do a thing to stop it…like the proverbial train wreck slowly unfolding before one’s eyes.. and I curse this seemingly unstoppable mechanisation of our selves..our spirit.

And there were our grandparents and parents who saw it, lived it and told oral story after story about those times which we, of a better educated generation..in an eon of years, has put down in word on page those lives..and yet the lack of comprehension goes on…Perhaps, like that generational change from hand to mechanical tools, it cannot be stopped and the maxim of ; “You can’t stop progress”…better suits the times than the old ; “Work like you are going to live forever and pray like you are going to die tomorrow” ..which is..like this author..just too wordy to be called out of a swiftly passing window…

Anyway, my friend, I will leave you with this rambling missive from the banks of The Marne River, but I have reached a stage where I can see the finishing of my journey if not in sight, then in purpose and I thought I would share these thoughts with you before I strike out once again on these waters of tranquillity…wishing you were here to share the idyll…

Your friend in deed…Ambrose.”

 (To be continued).