A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33750, 24 January 1975, Page 9

A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

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TUSCAN)

“It's a warm wind, the West wind, full of bird's cries:—” Masefield.

Recently there was a west wind in Christchurch, buffeting down across the shimmering plains from the blue hills. To me it did not bring the cries of birds but carried, instead, a combination of scents and sounds which wafted me out of my office chair and back to the days of my youth when 1 worked on a farm in Mid Canterbury. Thus I was lifted out of a coldly efficient present in which harvest begins only after the clinical scrutiny of a moisture meter and whisked back to my young days when the crunch of a brittle grain between the farmer’s teeth or the crisp parting of a wheat grain split by his pocket knife showed readiness.

I felt again the quickening excitement that inevitably pervaded the home farm as the smoke from our particular mill was picked out from the others which rose like tall black poplars from the surrounding farmlands. Soon the collection of machinery appeared clattering and snorting down the road in a circus-like procession.

We had been warned, as yesterday that autocrat of the times, the mill-owner, had driven into our yard in his Overland to alert us. With military precision the combine was set up level, the drays were loaded with sheaves, and across the stiff wheat stubble floated the crooning of the big Clayton mill and the throb of the Fowler steam engine that drove it.

Many and varied were the human’types who appeared like magic out of limbo each harvest time to vanish and then emerge again next year from hibernation. During the depression most came from the city in a struggle to earn a meagre livelihood at Is 3d an hour. Thoughts of wives and families left behind in poverty kept them grimly toiling on, long after the blisters had burst and the fork handles had bitten deeply into raw flesh. Rising over and subjugating all else was the exhortation of the machines.

Above the smoothing hum rose the insistent rhythmic call of “chuck-it-in, chuck-it-in” of the engine chanting in unison with the moaning of “more, more” from the mill. Together they joined forces to drive the cursing, sweating forkers to greater and still greater exertion in the hopeless task of trying to satisfy the insatiable maw of the drum. But then how wonderful were those times when a belt broke and allowed the aching drayman to sink blissfully into a bed of sheaves, to dream warmly i for a while nestled in the rustling tuscan straw. Alli too soon he was summoned i again to obedience as the shriek of the steam whistle i wrenched him from his idle' reverie. Later that same ; strident signal would divert |

the suspicious farmer from a furtive quest with his hat for loose grain under the elevators or for unthreshed heads in the straw It ordered him to stop his espionage and to scurry back to the shed for more bags or seaming twine.

Sometimes, too. drama came as an unexpected burst of steam from the Fowler sent the young “shafter” draught horse into plunging. panicstricken leaps across the paddock, roughly upsetting his drayman in the process

All the time, out in the scorching stubble the forkers lifted the sheaves in twos and threes to place them unerringly on the frames of the drays, virtually building the load if they were well disposed to the man up there. If not, they could just as readily make life hell for him by tossing tuscan sheaves at his face in great disorder.

Now and again they were able to quench their mighty thirsts with draughts of oatmeal and water fortified with salt and sugar to replace the vital minerals that they had sweated out or used up. Then there were those rugged and well coordinated "baggies” who weighed, sewed, and then with apparent ease trotted with ballroom steps and tossed the 2031 b sacks, with precision, on to a bed of straw.

Across the paddock, that jack of all trades, the “water-joey” quietly filled his mobile tank from a weedy creek, using a half kerosene tin impaled on a fork.

Behind the flapping elevator the folorn “strawwalloper" cursed in his suffocating nest as he struggled to keep the straw clear, or better still,

occasionally built a squaie stack for the farmer for 10 shillings. To add insult to injury the wet sears joined forces with the depression and poor and frustrated faimers listened disconsolately to the sounds of grown and matted sheaves going into the drums as single fhuds through a fog of dust Later in the year some semblance of tranquility came as the clamour of the stook threshing gave wax to the more genteel autumnal occupation of winning the matured grain from the stacks. B\ that time the air was crisp, the smoke of gorse tires and frost clouds lay in long filmy veils along dark hills already topped with the glistening white promise of winter. Finally, nature's bounty was gathered, quietness and solitude reigned once more and only the neat heaps of bags and the ragged crags of straw remained to tell the tale. Once again the patient farmer began anew his age less cycle of following his plodding team of six Clydesdales under the chill sky. turning over the fragrant black soil with his double furrow plough amid the wheeling, screeching gulls. All dreams must end. Briefly the spirit of the nor’west had taken me back. Suddenly the vitality of the present shattered my dreams. The school bell clamoured. I snapped to reality as 1 sensed the animated clatter from the playground outside. 1 turned to face a small tousled boy who poured out an urgent statement. "Please sir. Jimmy Smith thumped me for nothing” The wind of memory had changed and I was back to earth again.