Australian Thoughts at the Weekend 18th and 19th October, 2008.

Australian Thoughts at the Weekend 18th and 19th October, 2008.

[Revised from an ATAW published 3rd October, 2004]

I have met some great Old Timers over the years. It has been great to sit and listen to their yarns of old times. They have not so much gathered many stories but have lived them. The stories they tell the best are the stories that they were personally involved in. These stories live in their memory and as they paint their word pictures and highlight them with their emotions, my imagination has to work overtime to reach back to times and conditions so foreign to my experience.

I lived in a country town in Central New South Wales for a couple of years, and I had opportunity to listen to Old Timers there who had spent a life time in the bush. One of these was a neighbour, who lived with his sister and her husband just across the way from where I lived. I first learnt of his existence when I heard an accordion being played loudly, tunefully and persistently for hours at night. This happened about once a week.

After a few nights, I made my way across to him and introduced myself. I found the accordion was a simple button accordion but it was played with a passion that came from deep within the player. His enthusiasm was catching and the tunes and rhythms soon had my blood pumping as I listened. However, I learnt to value the times when he put down the accordion and began to talk about times past. He had been a bush worker who did what ever was necessary in the way of work to exist. He had learnt music at an early age and was really self taught on his instrument of choice, the button accordion.

He told me Saturday nights were his big night, because that’s when the bush dances were held. They were held in halls, hotels, even wool sheds which in another season would be used in the shearing of thousands of sheep. I asked about the music for the dances and he said often there was a piano, often mouth organs. Sometimes a fiddle. There were those who played a gum leaf. I asked about drums. No he said we didn’t need drums, a couple of musicians in their work boots can knock out a pretty good rhythm on a wooden floor as they play. The real rhythm is in the music he would say.

As I listened to him playing long and loud at night, often a Saturday night, I longed for more stories, but I knew as he sat on the seat outside his home and played the accordion, he was reliving those Saturday dance nights of long ago.

Another Old Timer, got a far away look in his cataract marked eyes as I asked him when did he first come to the bush. He looked back to his earliest memories of the beginning of last century. He was born in the bush. As he said “I grew up helping me family. Things were tough. All of us kids had to.” I can still here him saying “Me mum learnt me to read and write and do me sums. They took me to school once but I didn’t stay at that. I come home for lunch and never bothered going back.” It seems his formal schooling lasted half a day.

“Us kids use to pick up sticks” he said. His father in those days was a fencing contractor. Mum looked after the babies and the very little kids and the other kids picked up sticks. Picking up sticks was clearing all the debris from a bit of land that had just been cleared of trees. Some of the trees were selected for the fence posts or in some cases loaded on a dray to be taken back to the ‘big house’ where the property owner or manager lived. The kids moved the small bits of stick and some of the rocks that were left. The sticks were mostly thrown in a heap to be burnt with the other scrap trunks and branches.

My friend told me how he longed to be a fencer. He loved to watch his dad and his mate digging holes, splitting trees for posts, drilling holes for the wire to pass though. He liked to help running the wire and then watching as they tightened the wire using a horse. He thought his life was made when his dad said to him he could help with the fencing. His dad said he was big enough and old enough to be a man so he should earn his keep with the men.

He told of the new lessons in fencing that taught him that his hands would be blistered and sore. His back, his arms, his legs, in fact his whole body would ache. It was tough work digging holes in the rocky ground. Even when there were no rocks, the ground seemed to be rock hard. The trees which had to be cut, split and drilled to become posts seemed to be made of the hardest timber possible. His hands ached from shovel, saw, axe, adze and auger bit. He decided he did not want to be a fencer, so one day he just got on his horse and never came back.

He told me of different jobs he had. He had been a drover with sheep and cattle, at one time he worked with a camel team. He had managed a property. In the Depression of the 1930’s things got so tough with a wife and a child to support, he even took a job as a fencer. He said in those days he thought a lot about his father and the things he had shown him. When I met this Old Timer, he was working driving his horse drawn Cobb and Co Coach at a large tourist attraction in Central Queensland. He would have been a great Coach driver, if his driving matched his stories of the Australian Bush in days gone by.

There is real skill in making stories come alive. Jesus was a great story teller. He reached out to people and talked about the things they knew with real knowledge and authority. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount Matthew records:
“When Jesus concluded his address, the crowd burst into applause. They had never heard teaching like this. 29It was apparent that he was living everything he was saying--quite a contrast to their religion teachers! This was the best teaching they had ever heard”. (Matthew 7: 28,29. The Message).

[Listen: Chatswood Salvation Army Singing Company :
http://www.salvoaudio.com/audio/music2/mus_3646.mp3
The London Citadel Songsters Canada : http://www.salvoaudio.com/audio/music/mus_2760.mp3

Tell me the stories of Jesus
I love to hear;
Things I would ask him to tell me
If he were here:
Scenes by the wayside,
Tales of the sea,
Stories of Jesus.
Tell them to me.

First let me hear how the children
Stood round his knee;
And I shall fancy his blessing
Resting on me;
Words full of kindness,
Deeds full of grace,
All in the love-light
Of Jesus' face.

Tell me, in accents of wonder,
How rolled the sea,
Tossing the boat in a tempest
On Galilee;
And how the Master,
Ready and kind,
Chided the billows
And hushed the wind.

Into the city I'd follow
The children's band,
Waving a branch of the palm tree
High in my hand;
One of his heralds,
Yes, I would sing
Loudest hosannas:
Jesus is King!

Show me that scene, in the garden,
Of bitter pain;
And of the cross where my Saviour
For me was slain;
Sad ones or bright ones,
So that they be
Stories of Jesus;
Tell them to me.
Author: William Henry Parker (1845-1929)
The Salvation Army Song Book: Song Number: 848

Twilight Of Our Lives

Old age is full of wisdom
That youth can never know
Though eyesight now is failing
Our gait is getting slow.

Old age is like a harvest
That started as a sprout
Now ready for the reaping
Our crop has mellowed out.

Old age is like the autumn
It doesn't make a sound
A time of sweet reflection
As leaves come tumbling down.

Old age is like the sunset
Its color brings the light
As evening shadows gather
It fades into the night.

Old age is like a pirate
Who steals our youth away
He takes the sail and anchor
Our ship begins to sway.

Old age is like a typhoon
The seas may get too ruff
But God doth gently whisper
He’ll say, “we’ve had enough.”

Old age is like a bright light
More brilliant than the sun
We’ll find a lovely rainbow
When life on earth is done.

Old age is like the red grapes
Turned into sparkling wine
Its fruit, aged to perfection
Has ripened on the vine.

Old age is like collateral
Tis money in the bank
Our debts have been forgiven
We have our God to thank.

Old age is like a promise
Our souls will never die
When Jesus comes to claim us
Across the eastern sky.
[ Author/Written By:
Marilyn Ferguson ©2006
ferguson@adams.net
http://www.marilynspoetry.com/
This writing may be used in its entirety, with credits in tact,
for non-profit ministering purposes. ]

Let my mouth be filled with thy praise and with thy honour all the day. Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth. For mine enemies speak against me; and they that lay wait for my soul take counsel together,
( Psalm 71:8-10 )(KJV).

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