I Dont Belong Here

It seemed like a big old shed, especially to a 5 or 6 year old. A high peaked roof barn like structure in the centre with large sloping roofed sections which came off either side, open on the sides like large verandas. The corrugated iron roof held up by old pine poles roughly hewn as you could still see where every branch had come off the existing tree.

One side of the shed represented order the other chaos with varying degrees of both in the center. The ordered side housed a tractor and workspace with a large solid bench loaded with tools, drills, oil cans and the like. Hanging around the walls were rotting yokes and bridles from days gone by before tractors were available and the farm relied on the pulling power of draft horses.

This structure was the old stables, with the horses housed on either side of a grain shed that would have stored all the grain for sowing crops as well as feed and charf for the horses.

Floor of the tractor shed was thick dust worn into a powder over time. All shades of brown and black, from its natural colour to areas were oil and diesel has been spilt and forever change the colour and texture of the ground.

The storage barn centre of this old tin shed stored an assortment of farm things, from piles of hessian wool bails, stacks of oats and barley in 3 and 5 bushel bags to 44 gallon drums. There was one 44 gallon drum which had the top cut off as if a giant had opened it with a massive can opener. It had a loose tin lid and contained a variety of grains. It was chook feed.

Every evening after school one of my chores was to feed the chooks. I would take a bucket of household vegetable scraps from the kitchen and add a couple of large jam tins of grain before wandering over to the chook pen and dumping it all on the ground for the chooks to devour.

I loved going into the big barn, there was an art to opening the big doors. I assume it use to be two storeys, but now it was one cavernous space. The doors stretched all the way to the roof and were secured together by a large metal rod on a chain which neatly slotted into two metal loops. To open the gates, you needed to give them a hard but controlled push inwards which released the pressure on the metal rod simultaneously sliding the rod upwards and releasing it from its marriage. One large gate would then swing outwards ajar enough for me to slip into the barn.

I needed to leverage all my weight to move the gates, so I felt that the only way to get in was to feel if you were one with the gates. If you did not become one with the gate then the forces which ruled the shed would jam the gate and not let you enter. Only those who were one with the gate could crack the code and unlock its riches.

The procedure was the same for closing these large gates. Again, I had to leverage all my weight and be one with the structure to effortlessly slot in the metal rod and secure the shed till next time. I was the master of the gate, at one with the rhythm of the structure and privileged to enter this private kingdom.

Inside the air seemed rarefied, as if I was in another world. I was always alert for the shed as full of mice and rats and in summer that meant that there could also be snakes. The most common of which was either the Brown or the King Brown. Both fast striking and both ranked as some of the deadliest snakes in the world. My heart would pump, my eye dashing about for movement of any kind that may indicate a snake and I would tread as if I was walking a tight-rope, one foot gingerly in front of another.

I’d lift the big round lid off the 44 gallon drum, grab the jam tin, fill it with grain and pour it into the chook’s bucket. If the 44 gallon drum as getting low on grain I had to leap up and balance myself on the drum rim so half my body could extend into the drum and access the grain.

Every now and then instead of going straight to the chooks pen I would walk around the chaos side of the shed. The grass was longer on this side so in summer I had to be extra careful. It was still set up like a stable, but unused for decades. The long grass was dry, straw like with big clumps of it inside the shed. An old charf cutter was decaying in the corner and next to it was a sulky. Its large wooded spoked wheels decaying with wood rot and pealing green paint.

The leather seat was torn and you could see what looked like course hair and straw which was used to upholster the seat. The large leaf springs rusting. It looked comfortable, although covered in dust. I never venture up on to the seat as I was concerned that it would fall apart under my weight, as little as I was. Besides I did not want to get that dusty. The long poles that were secured to the horse sat precariously balanced on old drums. More yokes, and chains and bridles adorned the walls and the rest of the stables seemed to be full of higgle-dee-piggle-dee unidentifiable junk.

To get to this side of the shed I had to go through a gate. This bit was fenced off as it lead to the sheep yards. It was like crossing a border. On one side was the organised side of the shed facing the farm house and the garage. The other was long grass and open farm, and the chook pen, of course.

Most days I’d walk straight to the chook pen. It too was a large structure made of the same rough hewn pine poles as the shed. Coated with chicken wire stretching 10 meters or more into the air. On occasions Dad would shoot a crow that had been harassing the chooks or stealing eggs and to discourage any other crows he would hang it on the chicken wire, wings outstretched woven into the wire, Christ like crucified.

So on occasions you were greeted by the decaying skeleton of a dead crow hanging Christ-like on the wire.

The gate to the chook pen was another trick only those in the know could master. Another pin that slotted in through a loop hole. The art was in how you jiggled the gate back and forth to feel the pin, keeping a keen eye on the chooks as they gathered around the gate knowing that as it opened they could make their escape to freedom. If they got out it was disaster and hell to pay. It was a skill I was proud to master.

Today I explored the chaos of the old stables and looked inquisitively at the sulky as if I was studying an exhibition in a museum. A relic from long ago. Maybe one day I would find dinosaur bones down in the timber.

The sky was blue, never ending large and clear. The day was warm. I knew I did not belong here. I left like an alien. I wondered how I got here. Not just here on the chaos side of the shed, but here on a farm in 1960’s rural and remote Australia. It was my home, I was born here. My family was here and all my ancestry was either based on this farm or my Great Uncles farm on the other side of the hill.

But I did not belong. I felt different, alien. I wondered if the CIA had planted me here to spy on these people and that one day I would have to tell them all I knew. Or maybe I was an alien from outer space who was left here by accident and one day my real people were going to come back and collect me. They would tell Mum and Dad it was all a big mistake and I would be happy to go away with my people and enjoy a sense of belonging.

I knew that one day this moment would come and that I would find where I belonged. Where this place was a mystery to me, but I knew one day I would find it and everyone would know that my life on the farm was a big mistake.

I dreamed that an alien craft would appear and people like me would get out. They would look at me and say; “We have come to bring you back to where you belong.” And at that moment I would know that it was right and that they were my people and they would take me to a place where I was understood and people did things that I was able to do; which meant in broad terms “not farming things”.

Slowly I walked back to the ordered side and meandered my way to the chooks yard and feed the waiting chooks.