Thirty Thousand Bottles of Wine and a Pig Called Helga Page 7

And there it was – we were both scared. It is a means to an end, I told myself, but in truth I wanted that end to come faster than immediately.

  Our Baptism of Fire

  Each Thursday, I left work a little before 5pm to catch the train from the city to Tuggerah on the Central Coast, a journey that took around one hour and forty-five minutes. Jeff would collect me at the station and then we would drive the one hour to our house. I was bursting with excitement those nights, so happy to be home, so eager to see what Jeff and Millie had accomplished while I was gone, and itching to set to work on the property the following day.

  Jeff and his mum transformed the house. In the first two weeks, it was fully repainted, had new door handles, cupboards were removed to build new bookcases to house my precious cookbooks, art was hung, cushions were staged (naturally), the deck was re-stained and the outside of the house was painted top to bottom. Jeff had drawn up plans for the kitchen renovation (I wanted two ovens so I had more space to bake and sterilise jars for preserves) and had employed a local company to fit it within about a month. New carpet had been ordered and together we ripped up the old stained cream stuff, preferring to live on raw floorboards while we waited for the new dark plush pile to come.

  The living room had been papered just like Ina’s house, in a two-tone pale cream stripe, barely noticeable to the naked eye. We travelled into Newcastle and ordered an open fireplace, to be installed early in the new year. We may have created the perfect home in Annandale, but to me this was more us; more to be ‘lived in’ than admired. Hell, we might even attract friends with kids to Block Eight – Mel was due to pop any day.

  In Annandale we’d had three square metres of lawn, which I’d laboriously cut with scissors or gardening shears. Knowing how ill-equipped we were at Block Eight, Dad had kindly loaned us his Aldi electric mower and it took Jeff about two hours to mow the green circumference around the house using three extension leads end to end.

  Despite the lack of rain, the grass on our property was very long. It looked more like hay – yellow and crunchy, but so dense it made getting around the property on foot difficult. We had no practical farm vehicle like a gator to get around in, so we were constantly trudging through knee-high – sometimes waist-high – grass. There was also the issue of brown and red-bellied black snakes: we’d seen a few of those, suggesting they weren’t exactly rare. Walking around with my face in my phone was a city trait I quickly grew out of, as one day I’d come face to face with a long brown snake while texting Mel. After shitting my pants I walked backward away from it and my legs shook for another hour or so.

  To minimise the risk of snakes venturing close to the house and environs, I telephoned a local grass-cutting company and asked the owner if he would be able to come out and slash the open fields at Block Eight. He went onto Google Maps and looked over our land as I explained which areas needed mowing. In all, it probably amounted to around twelve hectares and I figured that two or three times a year ought to do it.

  ‘Yep, the boys and I could come out and take care of that for you,’ he said.

  ‘How long would it take?’ I asked.

  ‘A couple of days,’ he said. ‘Three at most.’

  ‘And how much? I mean, if we were to get you out a couple of times a year to do it for us, how much would you charge to be our regular grass cutter?’

  ‘Around three thousand . . .’

  ‘Per year?’ I asked, thinking it a fairly reasonable price, if a little inflated due to my clear lack of experience plus the inflated cost for me sounding gay.

  He chuckled. ‘No mate, per mow.’

  And this didn’t even include mowing between the vines, the olive groves or around the house. Needless to say, I passed.

  The most important job on my to-do list was to get the vegie patch up and running. The previous owners had removed five acres of merlot grapes but had left the pine pole infrastructure behind, so Jeff got out his pencil and pad and designed a series of vegetable garden beds that would utilise the abandoned posts. Using Jeff’s fancy new chainsaw, we chopped down scores of the posts, piling them in the back of the Barina to take back to the shed. For weeks we worked on those lovely beds, making over twenty in all, proud of ourselves for frugally recycling rather than shelling out any of the savings we’d earmarked to build the accommodation.

  Just before Millie left, we placed all twenty beds in prime position near the kitchen window so I could look out over the garden while I cooked. We built a rabbit- and roo-proof fence around the enclosure . . . and only then realised we now owned a vegetable garden that was bigger than our whole property in Annandale. Well, it would be, in time; for now, I had trays full of seedlings that would soon be transplanted into beds full of fresh organic soil.

  Saying goodbye to Millie was particularly hard. She had become a part of Block Eight; would forever be linked to those early days of uncertainty and the excitement of exploring it for the first time. At the airport we all cried, though Millie always says she’ll miss Leroy the most.

  *

  Leroy soon settled into his new life. He developed a penchant for fluffy bunnies and tiny mice. We’d leave the bedroom window open at night (with curtains tightly closed, of course) to allow him to jump in and out at his leisure. One night he brought us a rabbit then proceeded to chase it around the room. Uncle Paul and Aunty Marie were visiting and sleeping in the room next to ours, so I hate to think what they thought all the bumps and noises were.

  Jeff eventually managed to get a hold of the tiny rabbit with the intention of setting him free through the window, which we would then close to keep Leroy inside. Leroy seemed to have forgotten about his initial catch and when he saw the fluff ball in Jeff’s hands, got all excited and wanted to play. In the ensuing confusion, Jeff forgot the curtains were closed and went to toss the rabbit out the window but misjudged things and smashed the rabbit’s skull against the window frame. He eventually got the rabbit outside but it was dazed and confused and once Leroy saw it looking a little stunned, he pounced on it again. A few weeks previously, Leroy had seen a goanna devour a baby rabbit whole, its body slowly disappearing down its throat, the poor rabbit squealing in tremendous pain. It was all rather dramatic and Leroy had been fascinated by the whole spectacle, wide-eyed (and possibly mouth agape with drool) so once he got a hold of the one Jeff had failed to set free, sadly, he knew exactly what to do.

  *

  When I came home the following Thursday night, Jeff took me into the shed to show me his surprise. He’d built the most beautiful little chookhouse and had painted it bright red. The soon-to-come chooks had drop-down doors to keep them safe from foxes at night and a little ramp up to their laying boxes which would in time keep us eternally stocked with eggs.

  With a beach ball in her belly, Mel and Jesus visited us for the first time and it was just like being back in the Barossa again, only now we could share it whenever we chose.

  Jesus insisted on getting to work and helped Jeff build the chook run, which was the first large-scale fence we built, mastered over a weekend with Jesus sweating half his body weight. We knew nothing of plumb lines so it turned out a little dog-legged but the chooks would have that lovely little red house thanks to Jeff, so I learned to take the mastery with the experimentation and never complained about the latter.

  A few weeks later Jeff and I went outside to watch a storm roll in over the property, admiring the silhouette of the enormous ironbark tree about fifty metres from our front door. A rural sky is so vast that nature takes on a whole other dimension and its sheer force is much more impressive. It really brings home that we are just tiny playthings at its mercy. The thunder was so loud it rattled the walls of the house and menacing streaks of lightning flashed the black sky alight. Every fork was discernible. We lounged on deckchairs on the deck sharing a bottle of wine, having turned off the television to enjoy nature’s show instead. The thunder became even louder, and the lightning seemed to have descended in altitude and was looking for a place t
o land.

  ‘Do you think we’re safe here?’ I asked Jeff.

  ‘Of course we’re safe, what could possibly happen?’

  On the word ‘happen’, thunder and lightning joined formidable forces and a fork pierced through the sky, striking the centuries-old ironbark near the house and arched onto the telegraph pole that takes power down to our pump house. Sparks flew through the air and the Bang! of impact sent me jumping up off my seat, landing practically in Jeff’s lap – though skilfully without spilling a single drop of wine.

  ‘We’re not fucking safe at all!’ I screamed, running back inside the house.

  ‘Bring the bottle inside would ya, darl?’ I poked my head around the frame of the front door a moment later. ‘And I think I may have left a nugget or two on the chair.’

  The storm brought no rain, so the next day I went to turn the irrigation on to water my vegetable seedlings, but nothing happened. The lightning strike had shorted the power, and the surge had completely destroyed the pump we relied on to get water to our crops and to all four corners of the property. It took weeks to have the pump’s electric pad replaced and cost us two thousand dollars to boot, as I hadn’t thought to insure it when we moved in. The saddest impact of the storm took a few more years to emerge – the lovely lone ironbark that filled so much of the view from the house had been sizzled and over time it lost all its leaves and then, one by one, its limbs began to fall.

  *

  By late October, four weeks into our tree change, the vineyard was a vibrant sheet of green in the middle of what was otherwise a brown, cracked, parched landscape, thanks to the fact that we’d had practically no rain since moving in. I called Shelly the real estate agent to see if she knew anyone who could help us make a decision about the grapes. Shelly had visited us with a bottle of wine to see how we were settling in, and was always on hand to answer my stupid city-boy questions, never showing the slightest judgement when I asked: What’s the code on the shed lock again? I’ve forgotten. Do you know who might want to buy our grapes? and Do you know if we’re allowed to tar our driveway without council approval? My calls never ever went through to voicemail and even as I write this, six years later, I know I can pick up the phone any day to call Shelly or Cain, and they’ll be on the end of the line dispensing advice, sharing a laugh and – without fail – asking how Jeff and I are going. It was important to have them in our lives – especially as advisers were few and far between.

  Surprisingly, we hadn’t met any of the neighbours. We’d assumed that in the country our arrival would be met with bottles of wine, just-baked apple pies and handmade macramé potholders, but in over six weeks we hadn’t heard or seen anything of the people on our road. The neighbouring property was used as a weekender, but it seemed only rarely visited; across the road was more or less the same story, so for a kilometre it felt as if we had our own private road – passing another car on it was a rarity.

  Shelly gave me the number of a local winemaker and grape-growing consultant named Jenny, who agreed to meet us up at the vines to discuss options for the vineyard’s future. Fortunately for us, she was not only familiar with it (having consulted with the previous owners on an ongoing basis) but had also been part of the team to plant the vines in the first place.

  We could tell from the instant we met her that Jenny was no-nonsense and didn’t suffer (farming) fools gladly. Her hair was a shock of pink, she wore riding boots and faded jeans and a long-sleeved woollen jumper despite the heat. She was probably in her early fifties but had a spark in her eye that suggested perhaps her sense of humour and joie de vivre were much younger, though when she spoke her voice had the unmistakable authority of an ex-teacher.

  By early summer that sea of green had produced fruit and there were more grapes than we could possibly wrap our heads around. We thought there might even be an opportunity for us to sell the fruit and make a little extra cash. (A quick buck for no work? Ha ha, who was I kidding?)

  ‘You can’t harvest these grapes,’ Jenny said with a slight laugh when I relayed my brilliant idea.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, the vines weren’t pruned which means there are too many grapes and not enough energy in the plant to produce great-tasting fruit. Also, by the looks of things you probably haven’t been watering them?’

  ‘No . . .’ Jeff muttered, like a kid in detention.

  ‘It’s stuffed, your irrigation. Look, there’s a break in the line,’ Jenny pointed to a tear in the thin black pipe, ‘and there’s another. So you’ll want to get that fixed as a priority. Not watering impacts the quality of the fruit too. And you probably haven’t fertilised them or sprayed them?’

  ‘No . . .’ Jeff said again, this time barely above a whisper.

  ‘So you could try to sell them on but believe me, when anyone looks at them they’re not going to be keen.’

  After we had chatted about the history of the vines, Jenny asked: ‘Do you boys have horticulture experience?’

  ‘Not much,’ Jeff said.

  ‘None,’ I corrected him. ‘My dad worked in the nursery industry, though, so I’ve always loved plants,’ I added helpfully and was embarrassed when Jenny chuckled in response.

  ‘And I take it that means you have no experience with viticulture?’

  ‘No, but we love drinking wine!’ This had become one of our fallback lines since taking over the property. Our city friends thought it was witty and charming; country people thought it was naïve and plain stupid.

  ‘Okay, so the way I see it then, you have three options.’ Jenny wasn’t exactly in hysterics. ‘You can bulldoze the lot and return the land back to grazing, then decide if you want to raise cattle on it in the future. You could get in a team of people to manage the vineyard for you, but that can be expensive. Or you could manage it yourself but by the sound of it I’m not sure you’ll have the patience, time or equipment to make that work. If you choose option two or three, you can then try to sell the fruit to someone or you could go down the path of making your own wine with one of the contract winemakers in the Valley.’

  ‘We tasted the 2006 Brokenwood and thought it was stunning,’ I said, hinting option one was not really a possibility – and instantly regretted my choice of adjective: ‘Stunning’ wasn’t a word real farmers used if the knowing little grin on Jenny’s face was anything to go by.

  ‘They’re good vines,’ Jenny agreed, ‘and with the right maintenance they can make good wine again.’

  ‘Would you be willing to consult with us on an ongoing basis? If we decide to make a go of it, I mean?’ Jeff asked.

  ‘Yes, of course I can help!’ she assured us.

  ‘So what do we do with the fruit this year?’ I asked.

  ‘You could pull it all off. In fact, you should pull it all off, it’ll be healthier for the vines in the long run.’

  ‘What, and just throw it on the ground?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Jenny left, saying to give her a call around March, after the season was over. Then she’d talk us through what we needed to do to get some decent fruit off the vines the following year, stressing that we should concentrate on the Semillon.

  ‘We can’t really let all that fruit go to waste this year, can we?’ I asked Jeff.

  ‘Well, what did you have in mind?’

  Clearly he’d temporarily forgotten that I planned on being Maggie Beer! Over the next few days I tried my hand at making verjuice, a Maggie staple: the juice of unripe grapes that can be used in place of wine and vinegar in cooking. Sadly, my attempt was cloudy and tasteless and soon oxidised, turning an unappetising brown.

  ‘Verjuice schmerjuice,’ I said with a shrug, ‘next year those suckers will be giving us some wine.’

  What’s That in the Dam?

  When you work for a fancy US internet company like I did, one of the perks is a four-week sabbatical to celebrate every five years of service. Because I was part-time, and had decided to take mine over the Christmas and New Year break, m
y second sabbatical (recognising ten years) stretched out over nine glorious weeks. It gave me a taste of what working full-time on Block Eight would be like, although I hadn’t been prepared for just how challenging it might get.

  About day three of my sabbatical, in early November 2012, I was walking by the main dam when I noticed something strange not far from the edge. I couldn’t make out what it was from a distance. It was not moving. It turned out to be something dead. A very large, very dead kangaroo. I rushed home to report.

  ‘You know that black thing in the dam?’ I said. Jeff nodded. ‘It’s actually a dead kangaroo.’

  ‘Gross,’ he said and kept on painting our front door a shiny black gloss.

  ‘Do you think we need to get it out?’ I asked.

  I mean, it was dead.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we use that water for our crops and vegies – maybe a dead kangaroo might infect the water or introduce some hideous disease or something? What if we ever wanted to swim in there?’

  ‘Swim in it? No way! Why don’t you google it?’

  Googling answers to questions that highlighted our ineptitude was a daily occurrence in those early days. How do dams get filled? What is PID? Are red-bellied black snakes deadly? How many grapes does it take to make a bottle of wine? How many bottles of wine per acre? What is the most popular tractor in Australia? Do you need a DA for a cellar door in Singleton Council? And the list went on and on.

  I tried many different configurations using some or all of the words ‘dead’, ‘kangaroo’, ‘dam’, ‘taint’, ‘remove’ and ‘water’, but for once Google didn’t have an answer. Even if it wasn’t a danger to anyone, my brother-in-law James and his family from Canada were due for Christmas in a couple of weeks and they’d shown me such a great time when I’d been in their country a few years before, I wanted to do everything to make their first Australian trip perfect. To the left you’ll see the lovely living kangaroos grazing in our olive groves but please don’t look to your right where you’ll see a stinking decaying corpse that I couldn’t be arsed to get out of the dam. Oh yes, feel free to swim in the dam whenever you like and eat those lovely vegetables that get watered from it . . .