In Tune With Nature

Evening Star, Issue 23527, 16 March 1940, Page 3

In Tune With Nature

The pbpular idea, is that- the former livea deUghtfully close to Nature. (The peoplewrite like totally + say “ close to the great heart of Mother Nature.”) To this proximity is presumably to be attributed his rugged simplicity and comparative stupidity; he is supposed to accept Nature s decrees and to rejoice in her vagaries, observing the changing scene about him and commenting thereon in curiously allegorical and archaic language. (X°u will judge from these remarks that 1 have just been reading another English -novel of the land and its strong, silent men—and you will judge rightly). ;

As a matter of fact the average farmer finds that he. lives a great deal too. close to Nature and knows too much about her. He envies his cousin in town who enjoys her, so to speak, at second hand, and; with some measure of detachment. The_, townsman is free to revel .-in sunshine without apy anxiety, about his newly-planted swedes; he can enjoy the magic of sumlncr rain without painful thoughts of his hay crop, yesterday turned for the third time. The city man has no scruple in drawing his chair close to the hearth «n a bitter night in winter and saying contentedly: ‘‘After all, it’s only on a night like this that one can really enjoy toe comfort of one’s own home and a good fire,”

The farmer is not so fortunate. His

fire may he more/generous, his hearthside chair as comfortable, hut he knows little rest or peace. His mind is with his flocks and herds, with the lambing ewes or the thin cattle, worrying over the scanty feed that such a night reduced ' still further, over toe haystack that may succumb to this blizzard and scatter to the winds of heaven toe last of his winter’s store of feed. Even when he has at last left his farm and retired to the' comparative ease and, comfort that, are so seldom the farmer’s fate nowadays, lie cannot banish the anxieties of a life-time; he can never again enjoy a stormy night, for he knows about the suffering it brings to the animal creation. All these melancholy reflections have been induced by an uneasy stirring of conscience. We have at last enjoyed a week of summer weather; but should wo be enjoying it when our neighbour across the hill is praying so frantically for rain ? For unfortunate Mrs B. only a week ago said complacently to me: *‘ This is the summer I’ve been waiting for to have my tanks cleaned. It’s : perfectly safe. It rains every other day. I shall have mine emptied tomorrow.” She had, being a woman cf determination and invincible cleanliness. And now the weather is at last

fine —beautifully, feverishly, firmly fine. The B. family are having a painful time, trying to fit the needs of a large household to the supply of one tiny tank now half-filled. Already they are severely rationed about baths; soon it will be case of father, mother, and three children following eich other in rapid'and unclean succession through one bath of water that will shortly become solid enough; to roll back, like the Red Sea. Certainly a modicum of freah water is added in order to soothe the feeling of each successive bather; but, although mother a fresh ■tart everv night. the sad plight of SJVSSrt *f ,»*■ “e temptation. Truly and hterally a case ef the devil taking the hindmost. In' a dry season, strange are the expedients to which the farmer s wife has to resort; water brigades from the creek to the tanks, passing bucket after bucket untilthe safety of her liot water cylinder is assured; taps carefully tied up lest a careless hand turn on the water; even, when the worst has happened l and the cylinder is empty, cooking outside on

Written by M.E.S., for the ‘ Evening Star.’

an open fireplace, reinforced by primuses within doors and camp ovens without. “ Really, one daren’t enjoy a fine, summer -if one - lives in the backblocks,” one woman told me plaintively. “If you have a month of sunshine the whole family has to hath in the creek and I hove to sledge the washing to toe river.” And so, even in midsummer, the farmer must rejoice with reservation. “If the, dry weather lasts, 111 have to look out for bush fires,” he says gloomily; and every cigarette smoker becomes a suspect until the rains come.- Or—“ A wet summer; of course there’ll be an outbreak of eczema if it comes out suddenly hot —and his wife feels slightly guilty at having watched her overflowing tanks with thoughtless glee Blit it is too dry summers that hold the worst perils; inevitably then dry winds and hot suns cause a minor epidemic of small fires. You cannot blame the farmer who lives in a damp climate and whose farm is infested with dead unburnt timber beneath which grows every imaginable weed. To him the dry weather is a God-send, and he sets to work to clean up his paddocks and light fires round a hundred logs and stumps that have defied the passing of the years. If the fires are good he will be able to plough this land next year* these fires will prove an economical solution of the problem of logging-up. Unfortunately they may prove an expensive ally in the end. Given a dry gale, fire can take possession of an entire country-side in an alarming way; you may have seen only a score or harmless fires before the wind came. In half-an-hour there are hundreds of them and you must fight for the life of your stock and often of your family. For here in the bush country, where the fuel is unlimited, the opportunity for disaster is immense. Where the stock are scattered over enormous paddocks, some ten miles from the homestead and all strewn with timber after poor burns, the chances of rescue are small. A bush fire can sweep hundred of acres of feed and miles of fences, destroying in its passage hundreds of valuable stock. Small wonder, then, the station manager does not regard a dry summer as an unmitigated blessing, that he watches with anxiety while .the small farmers on his boundaries light fires with casual delight and small attention to the prevailing wind.. Small wonder that picnickers are unpopular and careless smokers anathema. With the house tanks almost dry and the men of the station engrossed in the saving of stock and wool-sheds, the run-holder’s wife spends many an anxious night, her family armed with wet sacks and ceaselessly on the lookout for sparks and flying timber. But this ; year has saved her that anxiety. If she has had to cancel outings, to endure a lively family ceaselessly active in toe house, to dry her washing by degrees in her hot water cupboard and to watch the weeds rioting in her garden, she has been saved the worse anxiety of bush fires. Her husband may grumble about his fat lambs, the danger of eczema, the luxuriance of weeds and fern; at least she will not know the horrible danger of raging fires suddenly let loose, all around her. She can even smile as she reads her sister’s letter, written from the security of town: “ A horrid summer 1 Hardly any tennis and no picnics. Of course it makes no difference to you. When one has to live in the country, one gets used to all tricks of the weather. I suppose that’s what they mean by living close to Nature’s heart.”