We’re about an hour south of Perth, just past Mandurah, when we start seeing the bright orange flowers of the Christmas trees dotting the paddocks – Nuytsia floribunda or moodjar. But I don’t feel the excitement flood through me until we turn down the gravel road signposted with mum’s family name.
As we round the corner, the roofless remains of the old house jut up above the overgrown grass, now a site for play among the crumbling walls. Then comes the dairy, the sweet smell of cow dung wafting in the air, the newer big shed, the older littler one, filled with tools and grease. We take the back road, past my uncle’s house and swing into Nanna’s yard, parking between the house and the mulberry bush – which has only beared its glorious, purple fruit for one season that I can recall. Nanna emerges from the back door, enveloping us with hugs and kisses. We take our bags to our rooms, saturated in the embrace of the familiar. Then we’re itching to get out.
We look for the dogs first, Blue the favourite. Then find the cousins, two on the farm, but 10 more to see. We visit the chickens, checking for eggs, and let the calves suck our fingers with their coarse tongues. One year, there’s ducklings, another year, puppies. We ride in the back of the silage tractor, hanging from the roof and skipping over the ridges of the conveyor; climb the hay bales in the shed, jumping and tumbling between them, on alert for snakes.
There’s trips to the dam for waterskiing; and to Auntie Janice’s place at Myalup, where we sleep in a row with our cousins in the half-finished holiday house, up the ladder, in the loft. We pile into the back of the ute, headed for the endless, wide expanse of sandy beach, where the waves dump us ashore. Uncle Bernie reels in the fish, one after another, while everyone else’s hooks float free in the seemingly fishless ocean.
Back on the farm we wake at dawn among the magpie’s calls to join Uncle Johnny for the milking, radio blaring classic rock. We use the high-pressure hose to blast the yard clean of shit when it’s done. And then, always, there’s the motorbike. Riding with Blue, my uncle, my dad, my cousins. Speeding down the dirt roads, flying past the paddocks.
Heat, dirt, hay, climbing, jumping, riding, playing, “I dare you”, electric fences, electric shocks, electric summer. Then the leaving, sweet goodbyes to the dogs, who will howl for us for days, hugs and hidden tears for Nanna, drinking in the landscape as we drive away down the winding gravel road. And afterwards the dreaming, the longing, the neverending wishing to go back.
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