AUTUMN

Evening Star, Issue 22026, 11 May 1935, Page 2

AUTUMN

“ FALLING LEAF " [Written by M.E.S., for the ‘Evening Star.’] Despite the poets’ alleged preferences, autumn is usually regarded as a melancholy season, time of falling leaf and fading flower, of change and decay, and all the sad, inevitable processes of Nature. Spring, they tell us, is the season of hope and promise, of young life and happiness. Possibly it has something to do with anno domini and not a little with your choice of dwelling place. To the young spring is fairest of all seasons; to the towns dweller it brings promise of long golden days by the sea, of camping and boating and outdoor sports.

Nor is it less .alluring in the country. Spring means there that the discomforts of winter are passing; mud is drying from the roads, and leaving a lighter deposit upon the kitchen floor; the hearts of the animals are lightened by the blessed sunshine and the promise of fresh feed to hungry stomachs; the season of plenty is at hand; the farmer knows that soon lie will be selling stock, receiving that well ear-marked monthly cheque, hoping for a rise in wool, and, on the strength of it all, he walks boldly down the main street of his town, conscious that very soon lie will owe not any man. Gone the painfully zig-zag course that alone brought security in the hard winter months. Such emotions may have little sesthetic value, but they make glad the heart of the farmer. And it is well that he can count the blessings of spring, for upon the other side the scale tips heavily. It may be the season of plenty, but work is more plentiful than anything else. The wet, cold winter may have passed, but the eighteen-hour day is at hand and life has become once more too real and earnest to be enjoyed. THE BUSY SEASON. And this strenuous atmosphere persists through the long summer, and, in a season like this, right on through the sunny and relentless autumn. At last the winter is at hand, and the farmer speaking with heavy gloom of “ the nip in the air.” But even in his determinedly pessimistic heart there are consolations, although a wise wife refrains from pointing them out. Clocks have been put back at last, and the long evenings by the fire with book and pipe are with us again. Soon the rains will come, the face of , the earth and the surface of the roads be changed, and life take on that strange flavour, half moated grange, with a beleaguered garrison holding the bills at. bay, half recklessly secure desert island. Tremblingly I venture to assert that there are compensations that make the farmer’s lot in winter not altogether an unhappy one. We may be poor, but we have our moments of comfort. It may be hard to obtain our stores, but our mother-in-law cannot descend upon us, save improbably by parachute. Our papers may be a week old before wo open them, but so are our bills, and there has been ample opportunity for the sun to rise—and set—many times upon our banker’s wrath. Clay roads may be poor “ arteries,” but they pro-, vide excellent barriers; the hard-up farmer may have to retire literally to earth for many months, but he certainly arises financially refreshed from the seclusion. Particularly are these the consolations of the dairy farmer. The .man on the bush farm has a less monotonous winter. True, he may have no cows to milk or feed, but winter is his time for bush felling and scrub cutting, and from April to September there is little respite upon a big station. BUSH CAMPS.

Particularly has the packman cause of complaint and bitterly does he envy the shepherds who, when the daily round of their'sheep is completed, can sit round the cookhouse fire and take bets as to which packhorse has slipped over the cliff to-day. For the packman does his heaviest work in winter, when he must keep all the bush camps supplied with the almost incredible amount of “ tucker ” that bushmen casually consume. He has his • revenge, of course, in the spring, for then the shepherd’s job is all day and every day. In fact, the severer the storm the greater the necessity to succour lambing ewes, and then it is the packman’s day to turn on the radio and spend painful hours practising ‘ The Man on the Flying Trapeze ’ on the mouth organ. But these are the troubles of the big stations. On your smaller bush farm autumn has much to commend it. If amongst a forest that is always and unchangingly green spring lacks much of the joy of bursting life that we see upon the plains, at least autumn is without the sadness of a dying world. Indeed, the fall of the year has an almost uncanny beauty in bush country, for outlines that have been blurred and hazy all suinrner m take on new and miraculous clearness as the days become colder and bush fires smoulder no longer upon the horizon. The clear sharpness of the golden evenings brings out every shade of purple and bronze upon the hillsides of dying fern; far away across the plains thin lines of gold mark the rivers above which the autumnal willows sadly droop, and upon the far horizon the mountains rise pure and pale in the glitter of their first snow. The air tingles with a sense of adventure, of beauties old yet for ever new. THE WOMAN’S SIDE. And the fanner’s wife? _ She dares to enjoy the slackness of winter, though she is careful not to let her husband guess it. If she be a needlewoman this is her crowded hour of glorious life; if a knitter, whole uncharted realms beckon and allure. But if she be neither—then she can conscientiously enjoy her book by the fire and decide that' “ after all there is plenty of good wear left in them.” With the road a quagmire, what has she to fear from the fashionable visitor? And personally she is glad to feel that she has a mind above mere externals. She can usually muster one presentable frock, and the dogs’ throaty clamour gives excellent warning of the distant approach of the hardy caller. Yes, for her the winter certainly has cbnsolations, for if the washing hang for a week upon the line who can possibly expect her to do the ironing? It the cows be drying off there is loss butter to churn, and who can be so unfeeling as to demand cakes with the fowls running about naked and unashamed? The mornings may be pitilessly cold, hut at least they are not ushered in by the shrilly hateful clarion of the alarm, and she may savour them carefully for some time from beneath the bedclothes. There may be little money for pleasure and no pleasure to spend it on, hut‘there is plenty of firewood, and what pictures are more beautiful than those to be found in the heart of a mightv rata log at that witching hour when darkness is already pressing upon the window pane?